CHAPTER VI
BRAT
My Brat had been frozen in the spring of 1884, losing the toes of the right foot. When I got back to Fort French in the fall of 1886, his wound was still open, although he wore boots and walked without a limp. He was on light duty as orderly-room clerk.
Even before he joined the outfit, the boy had been in love with Got-Wet, the ridiculous half-breed flirt whose father, Bad Mouth, alias Shifty Lane, was trader at Writing-on-Stone beside Milk River. She would have none of the boy, yet would not let him go, and Brat's little heart was true. In a land where girls are scarce all hearts are faithful. By secret means of his own, Brat managed to keep watch on that lone trading post a hundred miles to the eastward. How he knew was none of my business, but my brother had been kept informed through the tedious catalogue of the girl's flirtations. Grain by grain that fowl had filled her crop, while Brat was tortured, haunted by dismal jealousies. And jealousy disclosed far more than her wiles could hide.
Especially Brat was jealous of two cow-hands who worked on a ranch about fifty miles north of Milk River, and so, being next-door neighbors to Got-Wet, had all the chance denied to an invalid lover a hundred miles away. Very bad characters, Brat moaned, were these his rivals, especially the elder, Low Lived Joe, who was in a smuggling partnership with old Shifty Lane, and had given the girl a black silk skirt, said to be of great value. Oh, a tremendous dog was Low Lived Joe, putting on awful side, the fop of local society, claiming to be engaged. Brat wailed at the very thought of that wealthy rival. As to the other cowboy, he was worse—the blue-eyed, curly-headed Alabama Kid, a Harvard graduate, no less, from whom the faithless Got-Wet had accepted a diamond engagement ring. When I chaffed him Brat was peevish, when I advised, he sulked, when I consoled him he kicked me on the shin with his bad foot.
While I was still new at Fort French, a complaint came in from one of our ex-policemen, the cock-eyed Honorable Barrington Beauclerc, rancher for whom these two cowboys were riding. Cock-eye wanted our help because the pair of scamps had run away, making off with his imported stud horse, Lightning, a notorious crock, which he thought could outrun Phoebus. Our troop detective, McBugjuice, traced the kidnaped stallion, and found him at Cheyenne, down in the left-hand bottom corner of Wyoming. Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid had sold the horse to a livery man, and vanished.
So Brat was quit of his rivals? Not a bit! Got-Wet had disappeared and the boy was frantic. To comfort him I told him he could kick my shins with his right foot as often as he pleased. He would not be comforted.
Now the best way to capture Miss Got-Wet's two scamp lovers, was to keep a very close watch on papa, for Mr. Shifty Lane's trading post was general headquarters for horse thieves, smugglers, whisky runners and every sort of thug along the border. Of course, it would never do to post a constable at Writing-on-Stone, for it is a rule in trapping never to sit on the bait. But only a dozen miles to the west was our outpost station of Slide-out, abandoned since the rebellion had drawn our men in from detachment. So Corporal Buckie, who knew the district better than his prayer-book, was posted to Slide-out, and asked to select a brace of constables. He selected me because I knew the country, also a man called Poggles, a genius with the banjo and a cracker jack at cooking.
As for me, I flatly declined to listen to Buckie's worries because Black Prince had been grabbed by a mere officer. Black Prince was quite the most famous horse who ever served in the outfit. In those far distant times of 1886 he was a rookie, claiming—quite untruthfully—to be a four-year-old, a bouncing infant made of whalebone and rubber, shying at clouds rather than shy at nothing, full of loving-kindness, light-hearted innocence and baby fun. Range horses are never black, but his spring coat was brown, deepening to brown-black, until in autumn one almost caught a blue glint on his flank.
That such a charger should be wasted on any mere inspector was an outrage. So Black Prince and I came to a little private arrangement between ourselves. Whenever Inspector "Blatherskite" sent his servant to saddle up, I put a burr under the saddle blanket. Thus, when "Blatherskite" mounted, there were always volcanic eruptions. The horse detested the very sight of "Blatherskite," and yet was always a perfect lamb with me. To own him I would have volunteered to stew in Suez. The day he broke "Blatherskite's" off collar-bone I cheeked the sergeant-major, knowing quite well that he would try to get even with me by some unholy act of malice. The chap, by the way, is doing well now as a parson.