Mackinaw Bob, leaning back against the shanty wall very drunk, was one of the thirty men who in Fort Walch defied for three days the largest Indian army ever raised, to wit, the Sioux forces of Sitting Bull, when they came to Canadian territory triumphant after the massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry.
The Blackguard? But the Blackguard's story is the purport of this present writing. He had taken up the bad old song called "Limerick," of many naughty verses, strung to an idiotic tune—
"Ho, there was a non-com. at Macleod
Who got so infernally proud
That he busted his vest
With the swell of his chest,
And they bore him away in a shroud.
Yah, there was a recruit at headquarters
Who loved all the officers' daughters,
But he couldn't choose which,
So occasioned a hitch,
And broke all the girls' hearts at headquarters."
"Boys, who's this Tenderfoot they've got at the officers' mess?"
"I found the duffer," said one of the boys just in from Windermere patrol,—"he'd strayed like a something Maverick—didn't know who he was or where he belonged to—lost his led horse with all his dunnage. I rounded him up and headed him in towards camp. His name's Ramsay."
"Is he any good?"
"No. Puts on enough side for a Governor-General, called me my good fellah—the blawsted Henglish jumped-up, copper-bottomed, second-hand, brass-bound swine."
"Where is he going to sleep?"
"Colonel's tent, I guess, unless the old man turns up unexpected; but he's still at the mess with a brandy-and-soda and two blanked adjectived Inspectors. I want to know what we've done that he should be palmed off on a white man's camp instead of old Isadore's Reserve, the rat-tailed, lop-eared, pigeon-livered son of a"—