"'Never mind me!' said Crozier. Then the rifles began to crackle on both sides, and our thirty-five civilians were detached off up a lane on the right. One of the police boys was sent to recall them, because the snow was waist-deep when once they got off the trail. The way was a sort of lane, with a fence on the left, bush on the right shutting off all view of the main crowd, and a log-house at the end full of loop-holes pouring out a most awful fire. You see, the half-breeds had filled that little house with all their crack marksmen, while our boys had nothing to aim at but logs and smoke. Men were falling thick, the snow was too deep for a charge, and there was no particular use for getting to that house anyway. At last, what was left of the party fell back, fighting hard, leaving their dead in the snow. But one of them wasn't dead, only wounded, and that was the policeman who had followed the civilians out of shelter. He saw the half-breeds swarming down from the cabin, Indians swinging their clubbed rifles to make sure of those who were down by cracking skulls. I guess that policeman was too far gone to care; he watched them lazily through a sort of haze, forgetting all about the full revolver slung on his belt. Of course, there were no white men left in sight, but Indians and half-breeds were swarming out from cover as our whole outfit, police and civilian, harnessed their teams for the retreat. But one of the police remembered having seen his own chum go out after the fools' charge of civilians, and never come back. Any other man would have tried his best to forget, but this chap broke away through the bush, waded in deep snow to where his chum lay among the dead, fired a few revolver shots to keep back the Indians, slung the wounded man over his shoulder, and brought him back to the main road just as the last sleigh was passing under cover of the rear-guard."
"What a hero!" cried the Tenderfoot. "Yes; that was the Blackguard, and the wounded man was me."
"Charlie," said Miss Violet after that interview, "why are you only a Tenderfoot?"
"You're always flinging that in my face. How can I help it?"
"Don't be cross. A Romeo by any other name would—. No, a quotation is worse than a rat-trap. But there is something wrong with you; I know there is. You don't wear pretty clothes like Mr. Irvine, you don't write me beautiful blotty love-letters like the Blackguard."
"How can"—
"Now, there you are again, flying at me like a sitting hen when I poke too hard. I took you to worship me on approval—you don't suit—you're too horrid; I shall give you a month's notice—so there! Now, as to giving you a 'character.' Of course, I don't want to be hard—so you be very good this month and—I'll see about it."
CHAPTER XII
Mr. Burrows was gravely disturbed. Sufficient had been his responsibility ever since a dying sister bequeathed to him the guardianship of her child. At first he had not taken the matter very seriously. The girl was at school, doubtless being well cared for, but presently, although every dollar he could raise was needed for costly mining machinery, he had to pay her tuition fees. Then the Lady Superintendent wrote, hinting deftly that her pupil had reached an age when the chaperon might have a more desirable influence than a teacher. He never read between the lines, he was too little a man of the world to realise that a paying pupil would not be unacceptable to any lady superintendent so long as the young person was docile. The young person in question was anything but docile, as Mr. Burrows found to his grief when Miss Violet came to rule himself and his mine with a rod of iron. Certainly she cost less at a time of straitened means than his late Chinese cook; but then, she was such a nuisance. He loved her not at all, his affections being wholly devoted to certain patented steel fans in a cylinder. Unlike the steel fans, she set his will at naught, ignored his rules, his regulations, his beautifully machine-made precepts, distracted him with interruptions, pulled his ear, demanded new frocks which were quite beyond his means, and finally, to crown her misdemeanours, fell in love. His cylinder never fell in love, or, if it conceived so indelicate a line of action, would certainly refrain from two several and concurrent flirtations.