In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality of Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the surrounding boxlike structures of the town.
In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon which was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was an occasion.
Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was that a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the importation of five gallons.
Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table possible.
Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness; they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an eagle.
Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was always that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste shell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West as a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."
A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty idea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."
"The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is supposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has remitted," Harden explained to Carney.
"Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.
His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from the roadway; it was a weird drool—the droning, hoarse note of a tug's whistle.