Slick Buckie was no fool. His triumph might last its little hour, but his official visits were rare as transits of Venus, whereas the cow-hand, a mere civilian, could be there all the time. So he talked seductively about the outfit, but doubted if Brat was old enough to join, or brave enough to face a rough career. Oh, he was very doubtful about vacancies for recruits, and couldn't be bothered anyway with Brats. They had one La Mancha in C Troop already, and that was enough in all conscience with his devilish practical jokes, when he fired that load of coal, got an officer mixed up with one of his cast girls, and the whole division drunk on smuggled eggs. So gently Slick lured his rival away from the arms of Got-Wet, and got him duly enlisted at Fort French a hundred miles from temptation.
With Brat in barracks, I felt that my responsibilities were overwhelming. There was so little room in number 4 cell for setting a good example, and through the loop-hole in the log wall at the back it would be difficult to train a young man in the paths of virtue. Thrice daily I had him up outside the loop-hole to see that he cleaned his nails and had no high water mark about his neck, that he committed the standing orders to memory, brushed his teeth, wrote to his mother, threw a smart salute, and minded his manners when addressing a superior officer. He must not play cards except with rookies, or borrow money from chaps who ought to be kept at a distance, or get acquainted with any beastly civilians, or make silly practical jokes, or give cheek to a blanked inspector, or correspond with girls. Long years later, he explained to me why he had been content to stand and freeze while I lectured. I was all he had in the way of parents, and my voice reminded him of one which was hushed at the solemn gates of Paradise "except of course," he added, "when you used bad language."
It was rotten luck for him that I should be in prison just when he needed me. Nobody else could be bothered to teach a mere coyote. Nobody, for example, took the trouble to warn him to have moccasins in his pockets during a sopping thaw out on the Milk River Ridge. The patrol were wet to the waist when they camped, but by midnight it was thirty degrees below zero, and the frozen boot cut the toes off my brother's right foot, laying him up for two years.
Brat's great soft black eyes seemed always to be lighted from within, his smile had a haunting tenderness. In him I could see my mother, as I remember her before she left us.
III
Rain often used to tell me about her hero, her elder brother, Many Horses, chief of the Crazy Dog band in the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet, and of his woman, the daughter of the head chief, whose name was Owl-calling-"Coming."
Many Horses stood six foot two, lithe as a whip, rode like a god, and had the surly pride of Lucifer. You may see his likeness, both as to form and color, in old bronze portraits of Augustus Cæsar. But please take that in profile, because poor Many Horses had a most sinister spirit. Apart, however, from that, his was an astounding combination of blessings—youth, health, beauty, grace, dignity, high rank as a warrior, and virtues so exalted that I found him painful to contemplate. He was a mixture of Bayard, Galahad and the Cid, a knight-errant of stainless honor who had never seen a joke in his life, being void of the slightest vestige of any sense of humor. Among the merry Blackfeet that man was a freak.
At the time I lay in the cells, this savage gentleman discovered my address and came north to kill me. Ideas with him were very rare events, and in this one he took the pride of an inventor. But how could he get inside the fort? A white man had merely to walk in through open gates, but these were closed to Indians. He hoped for the vacancy left by Tail-Feathers of scout-interpreter, but found that the place had been filled by old Beef Hardy. A clever man would have seen a dozen ways of getting in, but this hero was stupid as heroes are in fiction, so he thought that only as prisoner could he gain admittance. To get himself made prisoner he rode to Stand-off, reined his horse at the door of the police detachment, made sure that the boys were watching him through the windows, then fired at their pet dog. So he was brought as a prisoner to Fort French, and lodged in the cell next to mine.
Confinement knocks the morals out of any Indian, so after the first night this poor chap was lonely and frightened. I was bored to tears, and both of us were glad to have a gossip. Thus, before we had heard each other's names or seen each other's faces, we were fast friends, whispering Blackfoot through a knot-hole in the bulkhead.
We talked through Saturday afternoon and Sunday, we gossiped in the sign language when out at work on Monday. By Monday evening, I had given him full directions for finding and killing Boy-drunk-in-the-morning, his sister's lover, his mortal enemy.