"You mean La Mancha? Hum!—I wish we had a dozen men as useful. Well, never mind the rules—he's safer occupied."
The Inspector spoke to the Orderly Sergeant, who left the tent saluting.
"Blackguard," he said, overtaking the culprit, "got a job for you. Saddle your horse and Polly. You're to take that Tenderfoot up to the Throne Mine. Report before lights out to-morrow, and see you don't 'mislay him' anywhere."
CHAPTER IV
An hour later, when the sun was high in the heavens, Mr. Ramsay, attended by a "common soldier," set out in state westward for the Selkirk Mountains. The Englishman's feelings were mixed, firstly with admiration for the common soldier's ease in the saddle, for his coal-black charger, standing sixteen hands, clumsy as a dray-horse, the one weight-carrying animal in D Division, for the belt weighed down at one side with a ponderous service revolver, and glittering all across his back with twenty cartridges of burnished brass like a serpent of golden fire. His second feeling was pride at being sent out with such an escort, for the Blackguard on horseback was magnificent. His third feeling was poignant humiliation over what had passed when, in presence of a dozen grinning troopers, he had tried to mount the gentle brown mare at the lines.
"If you will mount on the off side," was La Mancha's stinging comment, "she'll kick off your head to begin with."
Then somebody had made a remark about his riding-breeches, which came from the most expensive tailor in London. "Why, you idiot, they're for swimming. Don't you see the baggy parts blow like footballs to keep the duffer afloat?" He had not caught some further remarks about his leggings, but a chill went up his back at the thought of it. All across the continent he had looked in vain for such baggy riding-breeches, such leather leggings, such loud-checked tweed as his tailor had insisted upon in Conduit Street. Such things were not worn in Canada.
But now, away from the atmosphere of that camp, in which he had scarcely dared to breathe, away from the troopers who had looked upon him as a sort of penny toy, and the officers who had failed to see how much he needed rest after yesterday's ride, Mr. Ramsay felt that he must shake off his diffidence.
They had reached the river, and, as the Blackguard slacked rein in mid-stream to let the big horse drink, Mr. Ramsay did the same, not observing that he had halted his animal so far forward that the water went down muddy and foul for the other. The Blackguard favoured him with a glance of some virulence, and went on a little. On the far bank there was more humiliation—dismounting to recinch the saddles after the western custom, the shortening of his own stirrup leathers, then the mounting, this time a little better done.