As we came to the rim of the plains looking down on Fort Carlton, we saw clusters of men in the square waiting for news of victory; and over to the right on the Prince Albert trail old Sorrel Top's relief force—come too late—was swinging down the curves of the long hill.
III
"jo Dear—I can't bare it any longer i ain't got nothing to love it's up to you take me away or i'll kill myself. The first nite Mister Sardes on duty meat me outside the stockade i'll bring a bundle just round the corner on the left as you go out so they wont see us from the bastion Come at nine.
"Your broken hearted
"Vi.
There is the letter which Joe Chambers was trying to give me when he died. It made me sorry for Sarde, ashamed that I'd lost my temper and brought a false charge against him. He had been anything but coward on that winter march from Qu'Appelle, had treated me half decently ever since, and certainly played the man at Duck Lake fight. Of course, an officer should be a gentleman, has a job in which any one else is a misfit, but that was Sarde's misfortune, and not his fault. A pig is a pig, so one should make the best of him as pork, and not expect his meat to be caviar.
I was in the cells with plenty of time for sleep and remorse while all the boys were at work through the night and the day after Duck Lake fight. Toward evening Buckie came to see how I was getting on, and when he found me starving brought some grub. The provost guard had been withdrawn, he told me, because the whole garrison served the relief on patrol, picket and the inner line of defense. The men on fatigue were lugging the stock out of the Hudson's Bay store into the square. They swamped the grub with coal-oil, piled the dry goods and burned them, and had been told to help themselves to the jewelry. At midnight we should abandon and burn the fort to fall back upon the threatened settlements.
Now I must explain that there was only one entrance to the fort, the water-gate, a square tunnel through the log building which fronted upon the North Saskatchewan. As you left the fort through this tunnel, the guard-room was on the left. The guard-room stove had an iron pipe which went up through the ceiling to warm the surgery on the upper floor. Next to the surgery was a ward where lay the two wounded men I had rescued, Sergeant Gilchrist, shot through the thigh, and Chatter McNabb, shot through the lungs. The orderly in charge of them was Baugh, the chap who got his face frozen off on our march from Fort Qu'Appelle. He had come on by the stage sleigh convalescent.
Buckie had been at work with Sergeant-Major Dann up in the surgery. They had emptied a couple of palliasses, stuffed them with clean hay and placed them in the sleigh set apart for the two wounded men. At midnight Buckie was to help the orderly to get them down to that sleigh. Since the guard-room stove had gone out, the cells were so beastly cold that I asked Buckie to bring me down the stack of old hay he had left on the surgery floor. He laughed, telling me to come out on duty and get warm with work. He left the door wide open, but I was too sulky even to leave the bed where I lay trying to shiver myself into a sweat.
Late in the evening some half-breed refugees were quartered in the guard-room, and made a hearty fire which warmed me up. I could have slept but for their clatter of talk, and then they got the stove red, and the heat was beyond endurance. Roasted out of my cell I told the half-breeds to tame their beastly stove or they would fire the fort and burn the wounded men in hospital. The breeds were merely insolent, so I took down my side-arms from a peg, slung on the belt, loaded the-gun and flounced out in a huff, refusing to stay in jail another minute unless the authorities kept my prison decent.
I found myself in the covered gateway, and on my right was the square with a bustle of men loading sleighs. On my left were the gates ajar with the sentry pacing his beat. Beyond him lay the river winding through that quiet starlit wilderness which is the only medicine for perturbed spirits. I noticed the gear on the wall for fighting fires and took down the ax which I hefted and threw across my shoulder. The sentry was only a B Troop man, so I told him I had been sent out to cut a waggy, to repair the broken mutt of a whiffleswoggle. Anything is good enough for B Troop.
Outside I swung off to the left, and all I cared for in the world just then was to be alone with my dog, and my bitter heart, there in the quiet. But rounding the end of the wall I came upon Mrs. Sarde. Then I remembered her letter, her assignation with Joe Chambers at that time and that place. Of course, she must be attended to, so I raised my cap.