Sure enough Sergeant-Major Samlet palmed off Black Prince on me, and said that if I got killed I should make a jolly good riddance. At that I looked so glum and near to tears that he felt he had done me the worst turn possible. Not daring to sit in the saddle because of the burr underneath I led Black Prince to the stable. I had got him!
That evening I bought at the Hudson's Bay store a black silk shirt, and a silk scarf of ruby and orange very broadly striped. These, with my old shaps and glittering cartridge belt made the right colors for my heaven-born horse as I rode out with Buckie on the trail to Slide-out. Poggles drove the team with our supplies, and we made the eighty-eight miles in a couple of easy days.
So we began to keep house in the old 'dobe shacks at Slide-out, Corporal Buckie to give counsel on all proprieties, Poggles to make our hearts glad with the sauce-pan and the banjo, and me in a purring mood with my tail up—the happiest household that ever was or could be. Rich Mixed was the officer commanding.
In that life of the lone outposts each constable by turns was cook for the week, and had charge of the station, leaving the other fellows free for patrols which visited every settler in the district. To save the people from infection among their livestock, to preserve the game for their use, to succor them in storm, drought or famine, guard them from thieves, advise them in difficulties, assemble them to fight range fires and entertain them without charge in camp or quarters, to make aliens into citizens, to lay the foundations of the state—such was the work of police out on the frontier.
To this little outpost of Slide-out Buckie had been attached in his rookie days, when he brought me, dressed in blushes and a vest, to my enlistment. From here he had flirted with Got-Wet, and lured away his rival, my dear Brat, to be another coyote at Fort French. On the strength of all that Buckie was most paternal, and a 'dobe shack may house much dearer memories than any palace.
We had not been so very long at Slide-out when the massive detective, Sergeant Ithuriel McBugjuice came ramping down upon us, reined his portly cart horse, and in a double basso-profound roar, "How, Buckie!" he shouted; "How, Don Coyote! Hurroar, young Poggles, what's there to eat? Great Jehoshaphat! I'm absolutely starving. Bai jove, yaas!"
We fed roast antelope to the dying man until we thought he would burst, with powerful coffee, and a heap of slapjacks, and finished him off with apple dumplings. He whispered hoarsely that he felt much betteh, yaas, able to sit up, bai jove—er and take a little nourishment. He had news from the Cheyenne sheriff, a propah sportman, yaas; Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid were heading northward indeed—ah.
Now I had seen myself that very day tracks of two unknown horsemen with a pack pony shod on the fore heading northward from Shifty Lane's trading post on the trail to Cock-eye Beauclerc's. Here then were the wicked cowboys who had stolen Cock-eye's stallion. Detective Sergeant Ithuriel F. McBugjuice ordered us all to bed for a rapid sleep, bai gingah!
At midnight Poggles and Rich Mixed, who were to remain in charge at Slide-out, awakened us for tea and ah—refreshments. By one o'clock A.M., Buckie and I helped hoist the ponderous detective on to his roomy chargah. On through that starry night we slung long miles behind us, then shivering in the dawn chill, let our horses graze until there was light enough for reading tracks. We seemed to breathe the pale fine gold of the East like some divine draught which gives perpetual youth, to stand upon a floor of living gold as wide as heaven, to wait for the sun as though God were about to rise. Then, looking back, I saw the Rocky Mountains, angels of clear flame, kneel on a wall of tenderest violet. No poet's dream brings me so near to Heaven as the plains at daybreak.
We had been waiting on a ripple of the prairie for light enough to read a little winding trail. Before the sun rose, we saw. Two shod horses, attended by a pack pony shod only on the fore, traveling swiftly, by night, and blundering through sage-brush, had passed on the way to Beauclerc's. We followed, rolling our tails for Hand Creek which we made by half past ten. The ranch was empty.