He was pumping a fresh cartridge, and praying the Great Mystery to guide his aim. By all the rules of war, I had no right to charge him, for no sane man would dare. He thought me crazy, bullet proof, inspired by the Big Spirit.
But when he turned to run, I thought I was losing him, and with a scream of passion hurled my rifle whirling through the air. It caught him just at the base of his skull, and felled him.
Then, with my foot upon his neck, I turned on Rain. "Am I a squaw or am I a man?" I asked. "Woman, come here, you're mine!"
For just one quivering moment, Rain obeyed me. Then we both felt a tremor in the ground, and looking up the valley saw a mounted man, full gallop, charging at us. "The pony soldiers! Fly for your life!" cried Rain.
V
Slide-out Detachment was an outpost of the Northwest Mounted Police, where the sergeant-in-charge had the mumps, which made him look ridiculous and feel cross. To him came Tail-Feather, the scout-interpreter, with complaint from Shifty Lane about a stolen cow. There was not a man to be spared, so a recruit was sent on patrol, Constable Buckie, with the scout for chaperon.
Poor Buckie rode in mingled pride and pain:
PRIDE. Half a mile out, he chucked his white helmet into a bush and put on a stetson, the flat-brimmed slouch hat of the prairies, which in those days the police were not allowed to wear. He took off his gauntlets because their pipe-day smeared him, and stuffed them into his wallets. He sported a silk handkerchief to dust his beautifully polished long boots about once in every mile. For the rest, he had a red dragoon tunic, indigo breeches with a yellow leg-stripe, white cross belt, a blazing bright belt of burnished cartridges, a foot-long Adams revolver in its holster, and a Snyder carbine slung athwart the horn of the stock saddle.
PAIN. The poor soretail would have died on duty rather than let his grief be seen by an Indian, but he rode well over to starboard or at times with a list to port, and hung on with bloody spurs, while he loped a rough rangy gelding whose trot was agony.
PRIDE. Approaching Lane's, he put the gauntlets on, and ogled Got-Wet, who made him first flirtation signals while she talked to the scout in Blackfoot. She was making Tail-Feathers to understand how Rain, his promised wife, was traveling just ahead with a white man disguised as an Indian. Leaving Constable Buckie to play with Got-Wet, the scout rode on to kill me. What happened afterward between Got-Wet and Buckie in the barn loft is entered in the constable's official notes as "information received." He was both proud and shocked at his own conduct, supposing that every flirt went direct to perdition.