I don't know whether that paragraph is politics or tactics, but the position was very awkward.
For eleven years now, with only from three to five hundred riders, the mounted police had held that big wild empire of the plains, so that civilians went entirely unarmed because we kept the peace. Now the settlers were threatened with every horror of red Indian warfare, and they had no guns.
And we were isolated. No help could reach the plains. There was not then, and is not now, any trail connecting the plains with Eastern Canada, or with the Pacific coast. On either side of us rolled the terrific and unbroken forest, and the Canadian Pacific Railway was still a string of gaps. When Canada raised a field force for our rescue the United States refused a passage for her troops. Neither could England help us, for the Russians were marching on India, and war might be declared at any moment.
So everything depended on little scattered clusters of the police and on our big chief, Sorrel Top, commissioner of the outfit, gentle, brave, strong, wise and greatly loved. All through the winter he had been throwing small detachments into Carlton until on the first of March, in '85, we numbered a hundred men. Fifty civilians joined us as volunteers, and all the loyal Scotch half-breeds came to us for refuge. The rest of the Prince Albert settlers held their village, some of them armed with sticks.
On the twenty-sixth of March, at 2 A.M., a despatch came in from Sorrel Top to Paddy, our commandant at Carlton. At three o'clock the rider was released to catch some supper, and from the mess-room his news went through the fort Rich Mixed and I were over at stables, for Anti, my poor horse, had all his pasterns badly stocked from too much work patrolling. So he had some sugar, and we were getting on quite nicely with the treatment when somebody came over from the mess-room.
"That you, Buckie?"
"Remnants of," he growled.
I told him I was on picket again at four. Life was too good just then to waste on sleep.
"It's war," said Buckie.
War at last! He sat on the bail between two stalls, drooping with weariness, while the lantern light cast shadows on his face, dead white with smoldering eyes.