That was La Mancha's name, by consent of the five troops of the Mounted Police; and somehow the common use of it conveyed no sense of reproach but rather of endearment. From the Commissioner down to the smallest recruit the whole five hundred were half-afraid of him, except one man; yet no civilian ventured to speak ill of the Blackguard, or he would have had his head punched. To say bad things about the Blackguard was to slight the Force.
And the one man who did not fear this latter-day satyr, who ruled him as mind rules matter, was a certain little Corporal, who, with a neat briar pipe well alight, was picking his dainty way over the gravel—coming down from the camp in the evening calm. This was Corporal Dandy Irvine, with a sunburnt face, a neatly-pointed moustache, the buttons of his scarlet jacket glowing like gold in the light, whose clothes always fitted, whose forage-cap was correctly poised on three hairs, whose boots and spurs were always brilliantly polished. And now he just touched the Blackguard to show that he was present, and sat down beside him without any remarks whatever. So, for five minutes, the two looked gravely out over the valley like Dignity and Impudence, both too lazy to speak.
They were looking across the Kootenay Valley—the upper Kootenay, from a tongue of the bench-land made by the deep gulch of Wild Horse Creek where it came down from the mountains. At their backs rose the huge timbered foothills of the Rocky Mountains; opposite, across the vast Kootenay trench, rose the still mightier foothills of the Selkirks, and high above the deepening purple of the forests soared the clear cool azure of the snows up into the silence of those sharp-cut Alps, reaching away forever and forever to north and south against the roseate translucent afterglow. Down yonder the river wandered crimson through misty prairies, where the trees stood in clusters pointing up, as the sentinel stars came one by one on guard.
"Dandy," said the Blackguard, without stirring, "lend me five dollars."
Without comment the little Corporal took from his breast-pocket a slender roll of notes, one of which he surrendered.
"Five dollars." The Blackguard took the crisp paper, spreading it out upon his knee. "I was wondering whether there was anybody in the world who cared five dollars for me. Here, take it back—I don't want it."
"Stick to it, Blackguard,—stick to it. You've been fined a month's pay every month since last December; and I guess you'll keep up the motion every month till your time's out—stick to it."
"I'll keep up the motion," said the Blackguard vindictively. "I'll get drunk to-night. They fine me because they can't spare me off duty, and because they've jolly well proved that there isn't a guard-house in the Territories strong enough to hold me over night."
The Corporal chuckled. "How about number five cell at Regina?"
"Number five cell be ——. It was nine months last time."