The camp beside Lake Windermere was destined to be my last before I left the force. So I recall the last evening of my peace, dwelling on all its memories, so bitter sweet.
I was in Buckie's tent, and sat by the door with palm and buckskin needle sewing a little sack of milk-white antelope hide. Red Saunders, still my friend in those days ere ever I knew him as an enemy, sat by me with his button-stick burnishing tunic buttons for to-morrow's guard. Yonder, across the way was Sergeant-Major Samlet, a plebeian parody of Sam, out patrician chief, instructing Buckie who wore the orderly corporal's cross belt for that week. With them stood the orderly officer, poor old Blatherskite, his frogged coat sharply black against their scarlet. In the nearest tent on my right were Brat, in charge, Beef Hardy the scout, Pieface and Spud Murphy of Cor-r-k, playing poker, silent as the grave. In the nearest tent on my left, that queer triumvirate, Mutiny, Calamity and Tribulation, were concocting secret plots with which the welkin rang.
And at my side Red Saunders comfortably grousing.
"When a man's got a 'orse," he growled, staring across at Blatherskite in a somber passion, "and grooms that 'orse and feeds that 'orse and rides 'im, and gets to like 'is 'orse, and the 'orse tikes to 'im, see? And some blatherskiting —— of an orficer tikes thet 'orse awi' from 'im, and 'e bucks stiff-legged—wot I says is hair on 'im!"
I might 'ave 'eard much more about that 'orse, but Detective-Sergeant Ithuriel Fatty McBugjuice (Damme!) flicked me as he passed by with a bath towel (eh, what?) and bade me come for a swim in the blawsted lake. (Indeed, ah!) As he had taken off his serge with its gold badge of rank, I went with him in the evening calm to bathe. Afterward, Buckie's official duties permitted him to sit with me on the lake shore while I smoked.
Above the mirror lake with its flaws of silver, the dull gold hills bore scattered firs of solemn indigo, and faint in the gloaming loomed ranges of purple mist edged with the cold blue pallor of high snowfields. There floated the upper pinnacles of the Selkirks against the afterglow. And one by one white stars came out on guard.
I told Buckie that I intended to get drunk. He stiffly advised a milder line of conduct, and indeed milk with a bun would have proved too exciting for Buckie's indigestion department. His mother had a weekly letter from him to say that he wrote in the saddle, at the summit of the Rockies surrounded by hostile redskins, a bloody sword in one hand, a smoking revolver in the other. These letters were unofficial.
"Lead Kindly Light," he hummed. "Lead thou me on." The mother was his kindly light—but mine went out. He had a girl, too, who fancied him as a buck angel, whereas I suspected the prig even as corporal, and knew he would be an insufferable sergeant.
I, too, had been in love, and in my kit-bag was a photograph album of all the girls I had been engaged to marry, except the little lot which got burned in Carlton. I had tried to be good for each of these, except when they liked me bad, and even now could go straight—with occasional side-steps—if somebody really cared.
Buckie swore he cared—but what he really cared for was to be sergeant-major.