“Young lady,” with a droll little vainglorious gesture which amused her intensely, “behold in me one of those important officials who hold the High Justice, the Middle and the Low in these parts ... a sergeant of the Mounted Police!” Then suddenly bitter remembrance set his pale, steady eyes agleam with their peculiar ruthless light and his strong white teeth gritted, as he added, “Otherwise, just a ‘prairie cop.’”
She stroked and patted Johnny who, scenting a new friend, nickered softly, tucked up his nigh fetlock in a beseeching manner, and nibbled at her for sugar.
“Isn’t he just a beauty!” she murmured. “My, but I’d be a proud girl if I had a horse like him to ride. Do you ever?— What is it, Auntie?” she said, breaking off short as a stout, elderly lady with a petulant frown on her forbidding face, came bustling up.
“Gracious, Mary!” snapped the aunt, very much out of breath, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” and angrily drawing the unwilling girl aside, Ellis heard her say, “You shouldn’t go talking to strange men in that way, child ... really, Mary, I’m surprised at you!”
“But, Auntie,” came that young lady’s slightly indignant answer, “I was only asking him about his horse, and he speaks quite like a gentleman.”
The elder woman’s response was partially inaudible to the Sergeant, but a fragment of it—“Only a policeman!” smote his ears unpleasantly with its pitiful snobbishness.
As they moved away, though, he was repaid for that lady’s uncharitable remark, as the girl, taking advantage of “Auntie’s” ample back being turned, faced round and bowed to him with a kindly smile, an unspoken “Good-by” manifested in the gesture which he at once returned with a courtly grace, saluting gravely.
Mechanically, his eyes followed the two ladies until they became lost in the crowd, and then, with a muttered oath, he wheeled Johnny around and rode slowly out of the town.
“What a fine-looking girl that was,” he reflected. “Some rich American’s daughter, no doubt, en route from Banff or elsewhere in the mountain summer resorts West, after having a good time.” Why shouldn’t she talk to him? And mixed with his brooding thoughts came the consciousness of his own joyless, danger-fraught life, with the bitter, hopeless, lonely feeling that the single man past thirty knows so well, whose occupation, and more especially—means—place him without the pale of matrimony.
With the exception of those holding responsible staff appointments, marriage was not particularly encouraged amongst the rank and file of the Force, for many reasons. Lack of suitable quarters was partially the cause of this policy; also (and not the least) the indisputable fact that in the majority of cases where men are engaged in hazardous pursuits the average single man is freer, and—as is only natural—willing to run far greater personal risk in the execution of his duty than a married man.