THE CHEERFUL
BLACKGUARD

ROGER POCOCK

Author of
A MAN IN THE OPEN, CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE, ETC

Good people, since God alone, can make you wise
and kind, the jester's province is
merely to amuse you

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I [The Glamour of Youth]
II [The Age of Knighthood]
III [The Swing of Events]
IV [The Passions of War]
V [The Wumps]
VI [Brat]
VII [A Ship Without a Rudder]
VIII [Mr. Rams]
IX [The Sacrifice]
X [The Ordeal by Torture]
XI [The Soul of La Mancha]
XII [Inspector Buckie's Narrative]

THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD

CHAPTER I
THE GLAMOUR OF YOUTH

I, José de la Mancha y O'Brien, was born on the ninth day of November, 1865, in Spain, of an Irish mother and a Spanish sire. Ten years later my parents entered the service of God, my father from a battle-field, my mother living in a convent.

With my brother, Don Pedro, the Brat, then eight years old, I was sent away from Spain to Tita, a fat Irish aunt, whose highly poisonous husband, Uncle Tito, was English, and lived in London. From their house, when he was old enough, I took the Brat to my school where I attended to his morals with a small strap. I had been busy for several terms explaining to the other chaps at school that they were heretics and doomed to hell, and as my skin was not large enough to hold the lickings they supplied me, they paid the balance to my little brother. He spoke as yet but very broken English and could not understand why he should share with me the glories of an early martyrdom. He shunned me.

Yet, when in 1883 I went to college, the Brat was not content to be left alone. Indeed he ran from school, and when I next heard from him, was in America, where he had gone to work for a man called Lane. When the summer vacation left me free, Aunt Tita supplied me with money and sent me off to collect my Brat. I was to bring him home and place him at a private school in Oxford where I could always keep him out of mischief. Thus I set out, determined to tear the Brat's hide off over his ears when I caught him. Perhaps he expected as much and was ungrateful, for when in due course I arrived in Winnipeg—from whence his letter appeared to have been posted—I could find no trace of my brother or of any man called Lane in Manitoba. There the search ended in bitter disappointment.

When I had lost my brother, with nothing left in all the world to love, a dog adopted me. Rich Mixed was named after a biscuit box containing twenty-seven distinct species of biscuits. You will realize that a dog must be of the noblest pedigree who had twenty-seven quarterings on his coat of arms and showed unmistakable descent from every possible kind of thoroughbred from daschund to great Dane. I loved him dearly and was consoled for my brother's loss.

Since I could not take Brat home, and would not return without him, I had no use for the remaining funds. Most of the cash was disposed of at a race-meeting where the wrong horses won. The rest of it merely dispersed.

At that time, a laundress pursued me with a bundle of my washing and a bill I could not pay. To dispose of this poor widow, I despatched her with a note to the Presbyterian minister. My letter accused him of deserting one whom he had sworn always to love and cherish. Mrs. Minister appears to have been morbid, for she put the police after me for attempting to levy blackmail. I could not safely remain in Winnipeg.

And yet I had not then the means for flight until I thought of Tito's dressing-case, a gift from His late Catholic Majesty to my fat uncle. It proved good enough to pay for a farewell dinner, at which I consulted my friends on the idea of flight from the city. Then just as they began to give me good advice, the police became obnoxious. I fled with my advisers in a cab beyond the city limits, and there we found a bad house where wine was plentiful. At the door we left cabby crowned with a chaplet of ham frill and crooning lullaby songs to his aged horse. Indoors we drank more wine than we could carry. Later in the evening Rich Mixed and I set forth to find my brother. We had no place to go to, and no money, so we did not get very far before I fell asleep out on the starlit prairie.

Once Rich Mixed woke me up to hear a terrible wailing close beside us, a wolf-howl, but for its human throb a thing beyond all anguish of the beasts, heartrending desolation keening star-high, while its faint echoes throbbed on the horizon. The huskies at the mission gave tongue in answer, the tame dogs bayed in distant Winnipeg. For some time Rich Mixed and I lay listening, while above us the star-blaze drowned in depths of the vast sky.

Again I woke, feeling the frosty crispness of the grass, breathing delicious air scented with perfume of roses. The green dawn widened, edged at the sky-line with clear topaz light. There, in the electric air of the Great Plains, life was all delight, up from the perfumed ground to those immensities of aerial splendor heralding the sun. I had never felt so well, or half so happy. And I had been drunk. Is the reader shocked? Why? If we poor moths were horrified by candles, our wings would not get burned.

Through sleep itself, and from the very moment of awaking, I was disturbed by the noise of the middle night, those agonized and desolating howls. Who howled? And what the deuce was it howling about? To see about that I got up, stretching myself and feeling rather dizzy, as though from running in circles. Then I lurched forward, tripped and sat down with a bang on a grave mound. The place was full of graves!

And as I fell the mournful wailing in the twilight changed at mid-howl into a funny chuckle. Then a soft voice said to me, "So. You come!"

I looked up, and saw Rain.

You may remember Tennyson's words, about the Woman you, and I, and all true men have loved:

"As I beheld her, ere she knew my heart,
My first, last love, the idol of my youth,
The darling of my manhood, and alas
Now the most blessed memory of mine age."

The wilderness has always been to me a visible expression of that great Holy Trinity, of Power, Love and Truth, which we call God.

In Rain, the glamour of God's wilderness had taken human form as a red Indian girl with youth's delicious gravity of bearing, the childlike purity of the untainted savage, hale strength, athletic grace and eyes derisive. Sorrow had made her at that time aloof, remote from the world I lived in as a Madonna set above an altar, and yet her smile seemed to make fun of me. I looked up at her with reverence, with wonder, and if I loved, the love I offered to her was sacred, not profane. Yet if I seemed to worship, she would ridicule, so I had to pretend as a boy does to a girl. "Oh, don't mind me," I stuttered. "Please go on with that howl!"

"Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," she answered. "My dream, he say you come."

"So I have come," said I.

Years afterward, when I had learned her language, Rain told me in Blackfoot the whole story of the adventure, which led her to that meeting with me there on the plains at dawn.

She was a Blackfoot, of the Piegan or southern tribe, which settled in Montana, and her father was Brings-down-the-Sun, a war chief and a priest. In the winter before we met, the Piegan chiefs came to her father's lodge. At their request, he opened the sacred bundle of the Buffalo Mystery, whose ancient and solemn ritual engaged them for a day and a night in prayer. Afterward, they held a meeting of the council, to discuss the manifest wasting away of the bison herds on which the people depended for their food.

For years, the Stone-hearts (white men) had been slaughtering bison by millions for their hides, leaving the meat to rot. Now the last herds were surrounded by hungry tribes, and the end was in sight when the people must die of famine. So the chiefs sat in council.

Flat Tail had been told by his dream that all the buffaloes were hidden in a cave. Iron Shirt believed that the Stone-hearts were hiding the main herd in the country beyond the World-Spine (the Rocky Mountains). But Brings-down-the-Sun spoke of an Ojibway from the far East, who told him about the Man-it-o-ba or Land of the Great Spirit near to the lodge where the Sun God lived, from whence he rose each morning to cross the sky. "I am going," he told the council, "to this Land of God, and there I will open again my sacred bundle. I will speak to the Sun Spirit about our herds of bison, and How they are being wasted by the Stone-Hearts. I will pray that hearts of stone may be changed to flesh and blood lest all the people die."

So taking his daughter, Rain, to serve him in the ritual, Brings-down-the-Sun set out from their home beside the World-Spine, and traveled eastward for a thousand miles, crossing the plains to Manitoba, which was the Land of God. There at the sunrise making his prayer, he died, passing the threshold of God's house into the presence.

Rain showed me the hole where the Stone-hearts had buried her father. The ground spirits would catch him there, so she had torn up the earth and taken out the body. She had built a scaffold, where now her dead lay robed and armed in majesty, facing the sunrise. She had shot her father's horse so that its ghost might carry his shadow to the Sand Hills.

And afterward she had prayed.

"Oh, great Above-Medicine Person, Spirit in the Sun, I pray to you!

"All you Above Spirits and Under Spirits carry my prayer to the Sun!

"And all you holy Animals, wiser and stronger than I, have pity! Pray for me.

"I have made sacrifice of my jewels, and my long braids of hair. Great Sun God, take my father's shadow to the Sand Hills, that he may be with our dead."

The Seven Persons, our stars of the Great Bear, were pointing to the earth; the Lost Children, our Pleiades, were sleepy on their way to bed, when Rain felt the spirit leaving her father's body to ride the Wolf Trail, the milky way which leads to the hereafter.

And there was Morning Star. "Dear Morning Star," she pleaded, "don't give long life to me, for I am all alone."

She threw herself upon the upturned soil. "Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I'm all alone, and oh, so frightened. And you, dear Beaver Woman, my Dream Helper, can't you send me help? Oh, send a man to take me to my people."

The Piegan camp was a thousand miles away. What chance had she of escaping death among the hostile tribes between, or outrage at the hands of the Stone-hearts?

It was then she lifted up her voice in the Indian death-wail, and so continued mourning until I came in the gray of dawn, sent by her secret helper in answer to her prayer.

I saw the rifled grave, the scaffold and her dead. "The people," said I, "who run this graveyard will be so pleased!"

"You think so? My old man, he seeks the Mán-it-ou, but the Black Robe," she pointed to the Mission of St. Boniface, "the sacred man, he say 'The King of God is within you.' So my old man," this with a great gesture sweeping toward the skies, "he go seek!"

Rain's talk was a compound of charm, French half-breed patois, two or three English words, and the sign language. But, as we Spaniards have it, she was sympática, her eyes, her smile, expressing all she felt, and I have found love a great interpreter.

Her blanket, fallen wide apart, disclosed a beautiful tunic of white antelope skin, set with the teeth of elk, which tinkled softly.

"You little duck!" I whispered. That was profane love, but it really couldn't be helped.

"K'ya!" She drew back, folding the blanket across her breast. "Boy-drunk-in-the-morning, you métis, es?"

"Half-breed!" said I, not at all pleased. "No. Español."

"Why you come?"

"Well, you see, my little brother, Brat, was at school."

"All same mission?"

"Yes, a place called Eton, mission school for half-breeds. He ran away to be a pirate, and I ran after him to keep him out of mischief."

"Meescheef? I not understand. You catchum?"

"No, he's with a man called Shifty Lane."

"Bad Mouth, I know him. He dog-faced man." She darted forked fingers from her mouth, the sign of snake tongue, meaning that Lane was a liar.

"You come," she pleaded, "I take you to Dog-Face Lane. My dream, he say I take you."

"That's awfully decent of you."

Day filled the sky, but as yet there was neither sunlight nor shadow, only a clear fine radiance full of hushed fussiness of birds, a growing blaze of color from goldenrod and prairie sunflower, and fresh wild perfume.

Some little devil possessed me at that moment, for I flung my arms about the girl, only to find I held an empty blanket, while at arms' length the jolly little beggar stood flushed and panting, while she mocked me. Had I plenty scalps? Was my lodge red with meat? How many horses had I to buy Rain? "Oh, Little-boy-drunk-in-the-morning, the quick fox catchum trap!"

Ah, me! I never could withhold the tribute due to women, which every citizen must pay to her sovereign power. So long I pleaded mercy that the sun burned the sky-line, and the whole east was one vast glory before she would consent to be my mother. A girl who chaffs is irresistible.

"Swear!" she said. "You touch me, you go hell plenty quick."

"I swear I love you."

"You love as the wind, eh? Too many."

"I'm frightfully nice when I'm kissed."

"Maybe so. Now you catchum horse."

My horse? I had no horse.

"You poor?" she asked.

"I'm all I've got," I told her.

"S'pose," said Rain gaily, "I make 'um Indian man?"

"What! You'll make me an Indian? Oh, what a lark! Come on!"

She led me through an aspen grove, all tremulous green and silver, and in her little teepee, Rich Mixed and I had breakfast. Then she left us to watch a copper pot of herbs which simmered on the fire, and slid away to her father's burial scaffold. There, with some quaint apology to the Sun God, she took back her braids of hair and sacrificed instead the tip of her left little finger. When she returned to the teepee, she showed me her bandaged hand, and said she had cut her finger, but at the time I felt more interested in my cigarette, the last. Then, while I sat with a shaving mirror before me, she wove her braids of hair into my black thatch, so that the long plaits came down in front of my shoulders almost to the waist. I was delighted, especially when she set at the back of my head one straight-up eagle plume.

My dress suit, which last night had astonished Winnipeg, seemed no longer congruous. Rain bade me take it off, showing me the juice from her pot of herbs, also a breech clout, at which I shied a little. Still it was not long before I stripped, to play at red Indians with the brown juice and the clout, until Rain came back to see. She opened a trunk of parfleche (arrow-proof hide) to show me her father's clothes, then squatting by the fire she burned sweet grass for incense to cleanse us both.

To me, the dressing-up was a joke; to her, a sacred rite, the putting on of manliness and honor. With each new garment, she recited prayers: as I put on the buckskin leggings and war-shirt, with their delicious perfume of wood smoke, the parfleche-soled moccasins, from which the Blackfoot nation takes its name, and the broad belt studded with brass carpet tacks. Then she gave me a painted robe of buffalo cow-skin, and showed me how to carry myself with the medicine-iron, a .45-70 Winchester.

Perhaps I should mention that Rich Mixed flew at and bit this Indian, before he realized that the person inside was me. But I had never been so pleased.

Let me confess most humbly to an unusual strength and grace of body, the carriage of a gentleman, and a most lamentable face: the pinched forehead and strong features of an Indian, the pointed ears, the devilish eyes and brows, and wide flexible mouth of a faun. In civilized clothing, I had been grotesque; but there was mystery in the Indian dress, which made me for the first time real and natural. I had always a passionate sick craving for all things beautiful, a fierce delight in color, line, proportion, harmony, and now with the change of dress was no longer hideous. I had come to my own, and while Rain struck camp, ran yelling with delight to round up her herd of ponies.

At this point, I should pause to be sententious with sentimental comment on all the blessings I had left behind me:

Item. My worthy aunt, damp with many tears, but much relieved. She had hopefully predicted my untimely end.

Item. My pernicious uncle, who in due time appeared before a judge in Chambers asking leave to presume my brother's death and mine, so that his wife might have our heritage.

Item. My prospects. Mine was the only kind of education which can be guaranteed to turn out drunken wasters.

Item. Winnipeg. This city was supported at the time by the single industry of cheating in real estate. I had been offered employment as a cheat.

Item. The House of the Red Lamp, where my guests of the night before awaited me.

Any reader who hates geography had better skip this passage. It is a dull subject, only introduced when the writer wants to show off. That should be enough to choke off the skipping reader, and so I may safely divulge to the gentle reader that I allude to the geography of love.

Rain led be along the boundary trail, which follows the main divide between the land of boyhood and the domain of manhood. It is a narrow trail, no wider than a tight rope, so we fell off on both sides. Rain's adopted son was too old, you see, for motherly caresses, too young for the other kind. And Rain herself set me a bad example. She never could hit the motherly attitude without exaggerating, but was usually about a hundred years old before breakfast, and lapsed to five at the first cup of coffee. Then I would waste time being her affectionate infant son when it was my manly duty to murder a rabbit for supper. I was never traceable of a frosty morning, when mother sent me off to my bath in an ice-filled slough. That daily bathing in all weathers is a most gruesome habit of the Blackfeet, whereas I like being warm. An adopted child, too, ought not to cuddle mother while she is cooking, yet when she clouted me, I would take offense. And how could Rain howl of an evening for her poor father, while I sang ribald songs, such as "Obediah! Obediah! Oh, be damned!"

I fancied myself as an Indian warrior, and expected Rain to admire me in the part. Play up? Of course I did. Had I been rigid English, forcing the world to fit me, too proud to make a fool of myself, too austere to see the fun, but I am not. I am human, Spaniard with a touch of Irish, fluid to fit my surroundings. I riotously overplayed so wild a burlesque redskin that Rain would laugh, ache, sob and have hysterics.

We played at the hand talk, until we could converse. We played at the Blackfoot language, until I understood when she didn't gabble. I learned my roping, packing, tracking and sign quicker than she could teach me. Yet what was the use of Rain playing the teacher, when her pupil would chase her round the camp-fire, then rumple her with infant hugs and kisses as a reward for having been too good. In vain, she reminded me of my oath that I would go to hell if ever again I touched her.

"Me Injun now," said I. "White man's hell too full: no room for Injun."

She could not teach me the craft of warriors, and my ideas of finding water led always to dry camps. I liked a nice big fire in the evening, and by day delighted in riding along the sky-line firing off my gun—in that land the Crees, Dakotas, Grosventres and Absarokas collected scalps as you do postage stamps.

My notion of hunting was to ride down wind and miss the game on the wing, which suited the antelope and the jack rabbit. As to the prairie chickens and ducks, they sat out my rifle shooting in perfect confidence at no risk whatever. Even before I fired my last cartridge, Rain was obliged to add my work to her own, and had she not snared ground game, we should have starved to death. Her religion forbade the eating of fish and ground game, so in her most pious moods I ate for both. And since I was neither of use nor ornament, Rain mothered me. Mothering is the play of girls, the life of women. Rain enjoyed me, too, as a comic relief to life.

I would have you understand that we were boy and girl together, not man and woman. We played at love as one of many games, but lived apart. We played at mother and son, teacher and pupil, but not at husband and wife. I thought my honor must be a thing heroic, sacred, absolute, like a great fortress, while Rain trusted me.

A gentleman, I suppose, is one who expects much of himself, little of others. He is liable to be disappointed with himself if ever he betrays a woman's trust, fails to live by his own resources and opportunities, or marries for money, or finds himself kept by a woman. Yet he may engage to be a woman's servant, be she queen or peasant, and fight for her defense without loss of honor. I was content for the time to be Rain's servant while she was in danger. And afterward? Boys do not worry about afterward.

From the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian Plains form three steps, the lower or Manitoban, the middle or Saskatchewan, and the upper or Albertan, in all about one thousand miles across. At the time of our journey, these lay in almost unbroken solitude. In many districts, the bison skulls lay like the white tombstones of a graveyard, reaching in all directions beyond the sky-line. The herds were gone, the hunters had followed, and the land lay void, a desolation such as our world has never known and never may again.

Rain steered us clear of the few and scattered homes of frontiersmen, wide of the camp grounds used by possibly hostile savages, and at the end of the tenth week, led me to the high western scarp of the Cypress Hills.

Beneath us the grass, with many a tawny ridge and faint blue vale, reached away into golden haze, and like a cloud belt far above soared the gray World-Spine, streaked and flecked with snow. Yonder, beside the Rockies, lived her people. Here at our feet was the Writing-on-Stone by Milk River, where my young brother worked for Shifty Lane.

For that day's rations we chewed rabbit skins, and at sundown came to Lane's trading post, expecting after we make camp to barter for provisions. But while Rain unloaded the ponies, and I composed myself upon a robe to watch her, Miss Lane rode over from the house. The trader's half-breed daughter was eager to show off in her dress of cotton print, a sunbonnet, real shoes of leather and jewelry of rolled gold set with gems of glass, insignia of her grandeur and importance.

"K'ya!" she cried, when Rich Mixed had finished barking, then reining her roan cayuse, surveying our beggarly camp. "Kyai-yo." She patted her lips with one hand, so that the exclamation came out in broken gusts. "Ky-ai-i-yo-o! You poor, hungry ones!"

"I have a horse," said I, "to trade for food." But she ignored me, pattering in Blackfoot. "Don't," she chattered, "don't think of trading horses to my father. All people try to trade them off for food, but we haven't enough grub for winter, and he gets mad. So then they go away and eat a pony."

"My rifle," said I, "won't he take that in trade?"

"No buffalo left," said Miss Lane, "and the people can't find any deer. Why, Flat Tail's band are reduced to fish, and you know that the Sun God forbids them to eat fish."

"Don't you hear?" asked Rain. "Oh, Got-Wet, we'll sell the rifle."

But Got-Wet stared at me, then turned to Rain with a grin as she declared in English, "He sham Injun!"

Rain bribed the girl to silence with a gift from St. Boniface Mission, a pincushion cover made of Berlin wool, which represented a blue cat on a green sky, seated, head at right turn, eyes of pink beads. In excruciating raptures, Got-Wet promised a supper after dark. Meanwhile, she stayed for a gossip, advising Rain in the art of pitching camp, with now and again a peep at the sham Indian, followed by great pantomime of fright. As for me, I was too proud to be routed out of camp by a girl's impudence, too hungry to search for my brother, too shy to interview the trader and buy food. How could I, with Rain's last streak of yellow face-paint across my lordly nose, confront a white man? I sat in high gloom, disdaining to notice Got-Wet.

And in excited whispers, Got-Wet divulged to Rain how Pedro, a white boy of marvelous incompetence, had run away with her cow. Yes, only last night he had stolen her cow and run for the Medicine Line (United States-Canada boundary).

Oh, so handsome, too! And how he admired her. Why, once, the rest was told in whispers, and must have been a secret I was too young to hear.

Pedro, of course, was my Brat, but I could hardly imagine a La Mancha stealing a mere cow. Still, this could be none other than my brother.

Yet, according to Got-Wet, my brother had skipped the country, and a rider had been sent in haste to fetch the pony soldiers. I had not heard of any mounted troops. Who were these pony soldiers?

I could see that, whoever the soldiers were, Got-Wet was thoroughly frightened lest they should catch my brother. She began to plead with Rain to ride at once, to ride hard all night, to catch my Brat, and bring home the stolen cow. Yes, she would pay us a sack of flour and a side of bacon, if we would fetch the cow. And while we were about it, we might just as well warn the foolish boy to hide himself in the rocks, until the soldiers passed.

Rain gave me a glance, to show that she understood my brother's danger. Yes, she would ride with me, as soon as we finished supper and had the flour and bacon for our journey. But who was the messenger who had gone to fetch the soldiers?

"Why, Tail-Feathers-round-his-neck. Who else could go?"

I saw Rain flush. "But," she said, "Tail-Feathers went to the buffalo hunting."

"There were no buffaloes," said Got-Wet. "So Tail-Feathers came back. You know, he's the greatest rifle-shot that ever— Well, that's how he got a job, with rations and big pay. He's scout-interpreter now to the pony soldiers."

With nods and winks, Got-Wet would have us understand that Tail-Feathers also adored her. Not that she would stoop to marry a mere Indian. "Oh, no," she simpered. "Die first. Still, he adores me, and rode off at once when I told him to fetch the soldiers."

"How far had he to go to fetch the soldiers?"

"Only to Slide-out. They'll be here by daybreak. Oh, Rain, you'll ride and warn that boy to-night? Promise me, dear."

"Shall I tell Pedro you love him?" asked Rain demurely.

But Got-Wet shouted, "No," then swung her pony and galloped homeward, calling over her shoulder, "Tell him I'm going to marry your sham Indian. There!"

However hungry, I always liked to see Rain pitching camp. She took the four key-poles of her teepee and lashed them together near their smaller ends; then set their butts four square upon the ground, so that they made a pyramid. Next, she laid the spare poles against the crotch of the key-poles, so that their butts made of the square a circle. Taking the skin cover of the tent, she draped it round the cone of poles, mounting its ears on the ear-poles to hoist it up into position, so that the ears, or wind-vanes, and the door opened down wind. She had cut the lodge down small as a sign of mourning, with barely room for our two back rests and sets of robes beside the middle fire. It was none the less snug for being small, so when I saw its lighted smoke in the dusk, I crept in to sulk at home. I found Rain laughing softly, while she laid down the beds, and bubbling over at intervals, she explained to me all the news of how my brother had stolen a cow, and how his enemy, the Blackfoot warrior, Tail-Feathers, had gone to fetch pony soldiers. Rain blushed to the roots of her hair, and told me then about Tail-Feathers. She was to be Mrs. Tail-Feathers as soon as she got home to the Piegan camp.

"Then," said I, "why does Tail-Feathers flirt with that fool?"

Got-Wet, Rain told me, was artful, and a liar.

I sulked. The time was in sight when I must part with Rain or marry her. It did not seem right in those days that my father's son should marry a mere squaw, and yet the thought of parting hurt me very sorely. I hated Tail-Feathers the worse because I saw Rain loved him. And I was so hungry.

At dark came Got-Wet, her pony loaded with flour and bacon, which she made us hide at once because it was stolen out of her father's store. She had also a dish of scrapings, cold fried potatoes and bacon, with soggy slapjacks and a can of tepid coffee, good enough for Indians. She squatted in the teepee to watch our ravenous eating, while she gave trail directions in a gale of talk. So came a gray and long-haired frontiersman, old Shifty Lane, shaggy and roaring, who cursed his daughter for feeding Indian beggars, and drove her homeward storming through the darkness. Rain wanted to talk, but I who had been empty was now full, and snored with intention. Presently the fire fluttered out.

When Rain awoke, a slender ray of moonlight was creeping across the darkness near where I lay, and seated in the chief's place, she saw her father's spirit. He was always there to guard her through the night, perhaps to hear her sigh of deep content when she changed dreams.

III

At midnight, Rain bustled me out to round the ponies up while she struck camp. Why should she be so eager to warn my Brat? She would not spare me time to water the ponies, but drove the outfit hard, wasting whole hours in bad ground by starlight which in the morning we could have crossed at ease. Day broke at last, and we took up the tracks of the stolen cow. Beside them went the marks of a white man's boots, just large enough for Brat and too small for any one else. Rain trailed her travois of lodge poles and our loose ponies, to blot out those telltale signs, while I rode well ahead down the Milk River Valley, under long cliffs of castellated rock. There were orchards of wild ripe fruit, but Rain insisted on a racking pace, while the sun climbed up the eastern and down the western sky. So when the sun was waning down the west, we came upon our quarry, El Señor Don Pedro de la Mancha, with his arms round the cow's neck, sobbing bitterly.

Such was the heat, that I rode in breech clout and moccasins, the Indian war-dress. Add to that the devilish Indian war screech, and the charging horse, and you will realize that poor Brat had scarcely time to jump out of his skin with fright, before a wild and naked roaring savage galloped over him.

He sat up, quite prepared for death, and yet, his nose being crushed, and his heart full of indignation, he resolved to sell his life dearly. Heroes, he remembered, in redskin fiction, always sell their lives dearly, but are never seriously killed because that would spoil the plot. The proper thing was to lug out his .44 Colt revolver with its eight and a half inch barrel and thus be prepared for great deeds of war. It was a pity that all his cartridges should be .45. Had they only fitted the gun, what a scene of blood!

"What d'ye mean by stealing cows?" I asked him. "Eh, you dirty rotter? Stand up and have yer head punched! I'll teach you to get into mischief! Now, Brat, I'm going to give you the durnedest hiding."

Yet, though I addressed the Brat in my very best Eton manner, the tone of the public schools, as proceeding from a naked savage, entirely failed to convince. It was not until I dismounted, and diligently performed my promise, and having given him a jolly good hiding, proceeded to give him some more, that Brat began dimly to realize that I was indeed his brother.

So far, dear Rain, very impatient with us, had from her saddle watched the ceremonial observances of white men, when brothers meet after long separation. Now seeing that I had dropped a tail of my false hair, she made me squat down while she hurriedly braided it on again, cooing with sympathy when she tugged too hard. Brat sat down opposite, to pant and make friends with my dog, and while his nose bled, announced that he also would turn red Indian.

I asked him, gravely, "How?"

"Then," said he, "I'll be a robber, anyway."

"Look here," said I, "you know I've come a long way and taken no end of trouble to keep you out of mischief. You're not going to play the hog. You Gadarene swine, if you're not respectable in this life, where will you go when you die?"

Brat couldn't see why I should have all the fun, so I invited him to another thrashing, and he excused himself.

"Promise," said I, "to be good."

Seeing preparations for war, he gave a sullen promise.

"S'elp you Bob?"

"S'elp me."

"Honor bright?"

"Bet yer sixpence."

"Brat, why not turn cowboy?"

"But is that respectable?"

"Extremely so. Go and be good in the United States, where you'll have lots of room. I don't want to crowd you, Brat."

"I know that, Hosay."

Of course, we were talking in Spanish, and in our language my name is spelled José, lest the English should guess the pronunciation.

"And you can say," I added lavishly, "that this gun," I was taking sights, "was stolen from you by Indians. Also the cow."

"But it's not true!"

"It is."

"Oh, but it's not fair!"

"Child," said I, "our ancestors were not caught by mere pony soldiers with such trifles as a gun and a cow."

"Pony-soldiers?"

"Yes."

"You don't mean the mounted police?"

I had never heard of mounted police, but I looked grave and wooden.

"I don't care!" he cried. "I bought that gun from their sergeant."

"And a license?"

"But the cartridges," said poor Brat, "are forty-fives, and they don't fit the forty-four bore. You might let me keep my gun."

"Oh, all right." I must own I was reluctant. "Catch!"

"And the cow. Shifty Lane wouldn't pay me my wages, so I collected his cow. The police will say it served him jolly well right."

I was too hungry to relinquish real beef. "No," said I firmly, "you'd better let me look after the poor cow."

So Brat began to tell me his adventures, and how he had been fool enough to flirt with Got-Wet. I was disgusted with him, especially as Lane's half-breed daughter had been making violent love to the Indian, Tail-Feathers. I told Brat he really must remember his social position, the natural obligations of his rank, the utter folly of stooping to such a creature as Got-Wet. Indeed, I had some hope of improving my brother's morals, laying down precept and example, when Rain said the soldiers were coming. She had been worrying us all the time we talked.

I kissed poor Brat, and we promised to write letters, though neither of us thought of giving a postal address. Then I sent him away with my blessing.

"Vaya usted con Dios!"

"Adios," the Brat sobbed, "Adios!"

So we parted, and my little brother went on down the valley, very grateful. At an angle of the cliffs, he waved his hat in farewell, and passed on out of sight.

For my part, I mounted my sorrel and rode off, driving the cow toward a break in the cliffs, where I proposed to dine for once on beef without any foolish delays. But Rain trailed after me with the pack beasts, pleading that there were soldiers in pursuit. She spoke of some awful fate awaiting Indian cow thieves caught red-handed with the white man's beef.

Of course, what she said was all very well for Indians, but I told her I was white, and all the pony soldiers could go to blazes. I was hungry.

Poor little girl! I suppose she craved as much as I did for a juicy rib, a tongue, the kidneys. Unable to resist the kidneys, Rain followed. The low sun was right in our eyes. The meadow was all haze; we could not see very well. And Rain was crying.

And through her sobs, Rain warned me. The scout-interpreter, who was bringing the soldiers to take a cow thief, was none other than her own betrothed lover. Tail-Feathers would see us two together. He would be angry, jealous. He was the champion rifle-shot of the Blackfoot nation. I had a rifle to threaten, no cartridges to fire. So she made me fly from him, and march swiftly these weary hours. To delay our flight was death.

I set my teeth, and refused her the slightest notice. I hated Tail-Feathers!

Between the meadow and the foot of the cliff some former channel of Milk River had left a narrow lake. This pulled me up short, and as I looked for a way round the water, a smoke-puff appeared at the rim of the cliff overhead, a rifle-shot rang out with rumbling thunder echoes, and my sorrel horse crashed down dead, leaving me more or less in the air. A second shot crumpled my cow. A third grazed my naked shoulder, lifting blood. Then came Rain at full gallop to my rescue, screaming in Blackfoot to the man up there on the cliff.

"Tail-Feathers! Oh, Tail-Feathers, how could you? Killed my pony, spoiled the cow! Don't kill my squaw!"

Her squaw! She called me a squaw! Me! I jumped up and down in my fury.

"See," Rain shrieked. "My squaw is dancing! Look!"

"How dare you!" I shouted at her.

"Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," her eyes were dancing with fun, "I'm saving your life, you silly."

"Mind your own business!"

"See!" She pointed at a gaunt, middle-aged Indian in a gray slop suit, who rode along the sky-line seeking a way down the cliffs. "There," she said. "My man."

It was certainly very awkward.

"I am his woman," she said demurely, then tossing her head with a flash of royal pride, "and he's my man! He comes now to take me to his lodge."

"But what right had the fellow to shoot me? Confound his cheek, he has shot me!"

"Not much," she caressed the long wale carved in my shoulder. Then she gabbled so quickly in her sweet liquid speech, that I could only just catch flying words.

She was telling Tail-Feathers to stop killing me. As if I cared!

Tail-Feathers was a mighty warrior, who could never stoop to killing a mere boy with no scalp, a boy with a false wig of woman's hair. She begged me to set to the camp work, the squaw's work, so I could stay alive until the soldiers got me.

Blind with tears, moaning with rage, I shot back the lever and jammed it home, as though I were loading my rifle. Tail-Feathers should think he had an armed man to fight, not a squaw begging his mercy. I knelt down and took a sight at the approaching horseman. If it were only loaded!

Rain was nervous. Her little toil-worn hands were trembling as they caressed my head. "You're not an Indian," she crooned. "Not like an Indian, kneeling out here in the open, exposed, with an empty rifle. Fight-in-the-open-with-an-empty-gun is the sort of person who makes my man laugh. Oh, surely he must see that you're a mere boy, a child, too young for killing.

"See how he leaves his pony and climbs down—and comes from bush to bush and hides behind the rocks— He's coming very near to see what's wrong, why you don't fire. And I stand behind you, so if he fires he'll get us both. Hear how he shouts— Wants me to get out of his line of fire. I'm so frightened!" She rumpled up my hair, and laughed with queer, little, tremulous chuckles. "Ho, Tail-Feathers," she called, "you're not to kill my funny boy any more. I'll never love you if you hurt my boy."

But Tail-Feathers yelled from behind a rock, denouncing her for a wanton unfit to be his woman.

"Men are so stupid," she whispered in my ear. "He's going to shoot us both."

I asked her quickly and roughly if she would be my wife. If I had brought her to such a pass as this, it was her due, and as a gentleman I could do no less. Yet when she answered, "No," I felt relieved.

"To marry you," she chuckled, "to be your woman? Boy-drunk-in-the-morning will take me to his lodge of all the winds, a queer person who can not hunt or fight or even run away. He'll feed me through the hunger-death next winter. Oh, you funny boy, I hope my man won't get you."

Now she had roused me to such a pitch of frenzy that death was easy compared with the shame of life. I could see the Indian creeping behind a rock not fifty feet away. The Blackfeet have no oaths, but I could swear, and did, until Rain shrank back in horror. I sprang straight at the man, who was so startled that he fired high.

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.

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.

PAIN. Buckie rode down the valley all day long wondering what could have become of his chaperon. Toward sunset, a sound of rifle-shots ahead aroused him to a sense of something wrong. He saw the chance for some great deed of war, and since he could not bear the pain either of trot or canter, he had to charge at full gallop, keeping his eyes shut because he was scared to look.

PRIDE. He pulled his gun.

Now I was standing on his chaperon's neck, whetting my knife to scalp my first real Indian, when suddenly I saw a proper Tommy Atkins, of scarlet cavalry, somehow broke loose from England and charging straight at me, blind.

"Whoa!" said I. "Whoa, hoss!"

At that, the rangy gelding pulled up dead, but the soldier came straight on until he bumped, and slid right to my feet.

"Hello!" said I.

The soldier blinked at me, leveled his gun and grunted, "Hands up, you swine!"

But at that moment, I wanted a whole regiment to defy, so I told him I'd see him damned first, for I would not throw up my hands for any bally Tommy.

"Come, hands up, nitchie (friend)."

"You silly ass," I said. "Can't you see I'm a white man?"

"You look it," said he with sarcasm; and being nicely stained brown all over by way of costume, I could only smile.

The rookie had misgivings. This episode would be grand in Saturday's letter to mother, but what would they say in barracks about pulling a revolver on an unarmed man. He smirked, so I told him to put his gun away and not try to be funny. He obeyed.

"Consider yourself under arrest," he growled, for that was the way the non-coms. always addressed him. "Now," he stood up, "what d'ye mean by killing the cow and my scout-interpreter?"

"If you—" I suggested blandly.

"If you—what?"

"If you please, pig," said I.

"Well, I'll be dog-goned! Say," he asked, almost respectfully, "have you seen a young fellow along here by the name of Pedro la Mancha?"

"You dreamed him."

"Ax that girl."

So I asked Rain in my best Blackfoot, but she did not understand it very well. Then it occurred to Constable Buckie that I might be Pedro in disguise.

"Here, you," he asked Rain, "who killed that cow?" I translated.

Now Rain was afraid of pony soldiers, but she remembered being insulted by her man, and charged with being a wanton. He should rue that!

"He killed the cow," she answered, pointing at Tail-Feathers, who lay still unconscious.

"And the pony?"

Again she pointed at the police-interpreter.

"And who killed my Indian scout?"

For answer, she showed the soldier that long red, burning wale across my shoulder, while her pointing finger accused the police-interpreter of attempted murder. "Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," she said in Blackfoot, "tell my words to the pony soldier. Tell him, I say you had no cartridges when this man tried to kill you."

"She says," I explained, "that I had no ammunition, and that's a fact, worse luck."

"Tell him," said Rain, "that you clubbed Tail-Feathers with your medicine-iron."

I blushed as I translated. "This mighty hero," she says, "charged like the great chief of all the buffalo. His name is Charging Buffalo, and all that sort of stuff, don't ye know."

The Indian began to groan.

"Say," said Buckie, "Charging Buffalo, alias Pedro la Mancha, just tell the girl you're both my prisoners."

"The silly ass," I translated, "thinks I'm Pedro, and so we're prisoners. Isn't it a lark!"

"She's a nice little piece," added Buckie. "Tell her to cut up the cow and get supper."

So I sent Rain to get supper, and she went, head bent, feet dragging, for she was terrified at being a prisoner.

"Pedro," the soldier was unsaddling his horse, "you may play at Indians, but I guess you've been raised for a lord, or some sort of pet. Say you won't run, and your word is good enough."

Having nothing to run from, and nowhere to run to, I readily gave parole. Wild horses could not have dragged me from that camp with real beef in sight.

"As to this infernal Tail-Feathers," Constable Buckie looked round. "Hello! Look out!"

The scout-interpreter felt so much better now that he was able to sit up with his rifle and take a pot-shot at my back. I had just time to jump on his stomach before the thing went off.

Rookie he was, and not over-wise at that, but Constable Buckie felt that for a scout-interpreter this Indian was too impulsive. He therefore persuaded Tail-Feathers to lie down and take a nap with contusions, then put the man under what he called close arrest, tied up like a brown paper parcel, for delivery to the sergeant-in-charge at Slide-out.

The dusk was falling, and big white stars broke through as the sky darkened. "I reckon," said Constable Buckie wearily, "we've time for a swim before supper."

So I challenged him to race me at undressing, and dived into the lake, which was nice and warm for swimming. When Buckie had shed his uniform, he joined me, and very soon our troubles were forgotten. At nineteen, it is rather hard to be officially minded after business hours. As for me, I liked Buckie first-rate, because he happened to be a clean-bred Canadian. I did not know that we should be chums for life.

Rain was ever a busy little person, and now in the twilight she made haste to get everything ready. She cut loose Tail-Feathers, who passed away into the gloaming, no longer in anyway attached to the mounted police. She used his lashings to make a neat bundle of Buckie's arms and uniform, which she dropped without a sound into deep water. Then leaving the supper to cook itself, she adjourned to an ant-heap a little way from the camp, where all alone in the gloom she howled for her poor father.

There was a tang of frost in the air when we came out chilled, famished and distressed by Rain's most dismal lamentations. The fire was dead, there was nothing to eat, and Tail-Feathers had escaped, so it seemed, with Buckie's kit. As to Rain, she said we were very rude to interrupt her grief. She was an orphan, and a prisoner.

Wrapped in my painted robe, with chattering teeth, Buckie sat by our fire, projecting schemes for tracking Tail-Feathers by torchlight and by moonshine. It was awkward, though, that the Indian had decamped with both the police carbines, both their revolvers, all the ammunition. Even when comforted with much beef, the pony soldier trembled at the thought of his doom when he made official report to the sergeant-in-charge at Slide-out. Later, in the darkness of the teepee, I heard him weeping, and at dawn he set out barefoot on some futile attempt to track Tail-Feathers. The ground was then white with frost.

On his departure, Rain sat up, a little heap of mischief, and whispered across the teepee, "If I were only free!"

And I yawned back, "What then?"

"I think," she said demurely, "I could find the soldier's clothes."

"Cat!"

She purred. "And make you back into a white man, Charging Buffalo."

"Why for?"

"So you could go and be a pony soldier."

"What's that?"

"You saw the red coat, and your eyes were so hungry! You followed him like a dog, and forgot poor little Rain. Threw out your chest, so! and your shoulders, hump! And your eyes, ever so far away. Then I call, and you yawn, so! You're tired of Rain, and playing Indians, eh?"

I made shamefaced objections, blushing hot all over as I realized at once that what Rain said was true.

I wonder if other men feel as I do. I can not look unmoved at a pretty woman, and yet the sight of the British scarlet excites me more than anything else I know of. To speak to a man who wears it makes me catch my breath. Equally strong is the appeal to my senses of revolvers, cartridge belts, long boots, skin clothes or any gear of horsemanship or wild life. To see these things makes my heart leap, to use them is a lasting enjoyment, whereas I have looked on big stacks of gold, or silver, or treasures of diamonds, without the least emotion.

As soon as Rain spoke, I was sick of Indians. Life was impossible outside the mounted police.

"I only try," she mimicked my voice when I talked to the Brat, "and take so plenty trouble to keep you out of meeschief!"

"And if I go for a soldier, what about you?" I asked.

"Me?" she sighed. "Oh, I go catch poor Tail-Feathers. He got no beef."

As a matter of fact, poor Tail-Feathers had come in the night, had loaded his horse with beef, and now, well hidden in the cliffs, was eating the same while he watched Buckie's futile attempts at tracking. The soldier came back blue with cold, gray with despair and only too glad when I proposed that Rain should be free from arrest if she could find his clothes. She placed a string in his hands, and bade him pull. So he hauled the bundle of arms and clothes out of the lake.

Over a big fire inside the teepee, we hung his clothes to dry, and after breakfast, while I made a most careful toilet, a naked constable drafted in a damp note-book the full official version of his patrol.

"How will this do?" he began. "'Dear Guts!' I mean, 'Sir, I have the honor to report for your information that when I made Lane's from information received'—from Got-Wet when we hid up in the barn loft—'to the effect, viz: that old Shifty was up to his usual games, cheating said Pedro la Mancha out of four months' wages, so Pedro skinned out with Got-Wet's cow, which didn't belong to Lane anyway, because Pedro's brother Hosay la Mancha, a respectable British subject, had gone to collect the cow for Got-Wet.' So that's all clear, eh?"

"Fine," said I, from behind the hanging clothes. "'Meanwhile, I sent the interpreter ahead'—so he wouldn't catch on to Got-Wet and me in the barn loft—'with instructions to pick up the cow tracks, and when I caught up'—Say, old fellow, don't want to let on that I invaded the damned States under arms. It wouldn't be good for Guts, and he'd throw Catherine wheels if he thought I'd raided Montana. We'll say I caught you up at the boundary line, 'where my interpreter was shooting up the cow, the pony and Hosay la Mancha. I detained the prisoner in close custody, but he skinned out'—and you can't see his tail for dust—'so I brung in Mr. la Mancha, who wants to take on in in the Outfit, and have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, regimental number'—I'll have to look that up—'David Buckie, Constable.' How's that, umpire?"

"Bull's-eye!" So I stepped out from behind the clothes-line. After all, my dress suit was by a jolly good cutter in Savile Row, the shirt a bit rumpled but a decent fit, the pumps and socks quite new and, nothing paid for. In my best Oxford manner, I held out the white tie and asked Buckie to make the bow. "You bally idiot!" I added, because he rolled into the fire, singeing my painted cow-skin.

Stark naked, the buck policeman rolled back over the cooking-pots and prayed to be carried away for burial. Then he sat up wiping his eyes with my necktie. "Chee! Now whar hev I put me lavender kids?" he howled. "Oh, hang my collar on the chandelier while I sweat! Me pants is split from ear to ear, and it's my night to how-w-l! Yow-ow-w!"

I told him these were all the clothes I had.

"Just turn them loose on Slide-out. Think of Guts! Why, you ring-tailed, lop-eared coyote, you can't join Our Outfit dressed like a blasted Comet!"

"What's to be done?"

"I guess I'll cache you in a prairie-dog hole until I've stole you a shirt and overalls. Allee samee, that kit would take first prize for fancy dress at a ball, or I'm a shave-tail."

Even in those days, Buckie suffered from a respectable soul, which made him a bit of a prig for routine, a glutton for etiquette, a shop-walker for deportment, and most maidenly particular about his clothes. He kept us at work for hours cleaning kit before he would get into uniform, then mourned aloud because for all my evening dress I had lost my opera hat and ought not to go bareheaded. In the end we departed riding his big horse tandem with me behind, pursued by Rain's howls, malicious, derisive, devilish little howls. Were these for her poor father?

CHAPTER II
THE AGE OF KNIGHTHOOD

Rain was a little brown hen-angel, the half-grown, all fluffy chicken of a seraph, with a tang of earth about her, just deceptively human and alluring enough to tear my heart-strings when she flew off leaving me to bleed.

To guard her, I forsook my Brat whom I care for. But when she seemed to love another man, and laughed a good-by to me I could only go. A boy may love a maid and yet love life. So I loved Rain, but not as yet more than I loved my life. That was to come, but in those days, life was calling me, yes, tugging hard.

Certain fabulists have alleged that I joined the mounted police in evening dress. This is not true, for when Buckie was escorting me to Fort French, my place of enlistment, we lunched by the trail-side with an American cowboy who had a quart of pickets. Afterward, we played cards, my kit staked against his. He won, riding away in my dress suit with the tie under his off ear, and the near end of the collar pointing S.S.E., while through his nose he sang a hymn beginning, "Oh say, can you tell?"

I still had my broken heart, and a dog, but as to the costume in which I joined the police, my modesty forbids particulars.

One of the greatest difficulties in the writing of this book is that my publishers have a craze for particulars. They say that the story is too vague. I ought to state the facts. Now if, to take an example, I give my regimental number in the mounted police, I shall be identified, extradited and hanged just as I have begun to settle down. I have borrowed Buckie's number, a cruel humiliation for me because he was always so durned respectable that he had scarcely any defaulter sheet.

"Regimental Number 1107 Constable la Mancha, J., is hereby taken on the strength of the Force from the 20th instant, and posted to C Division."

So read the orderly corporal, standing at the south end of number two barrack room in Fort French while I lay on my trestle and purred.

Presently the corporal, announcing details, told off Surly McNabb, troop teamster, to fetch a load of coal with me for off man. My purr changed to a groan.

The bugle was sounding "Last post" with a cold in its head as the orderly corporal clanked away to call the roll next door. Then Windy O'Rooke sat up and shouted he had a dollar to say that "Surly bucks stiff-legged at taking a blanked rookie on coal fatigue. It's me he wants."

"Mr. Affable McNabb," said I, "has been using influence to get me. You cuckoos who steal one another's ideas think Affable's a morose beast with a thirst. But gentlemen, he has a faithful heart. My dog to your dollar, Windy, I'll make him deliver a speech of fifteen minutes."

"Done!"

McNabb intervened with a horse brush, which I fielded, and returned to its own address. Reprisals followed, while I dived under beds capsizing their peaceful inhabitants. So there was roughhouse for the space of thirteen minutes while I was partly killed, before the bugle saved me. For at "Lights out," the room corporal ordered silence. The lamplight changed to moonlight and a red glow from the stove, the stampeding of elephants became a creeping of mice, and Windy sat up in bed for a long luxurious scratch.

Next morning Surly drove his four-horse team to an outcrop of coal about sixteen miles up the valley of Old Man's River, and not one word would he vouchsafe to me. While he watched me load the wagon he ate his lunch, and smoked for hours but still said never a word. Once when we started back toward barracks I thought he was going to speak, for I asked him politely if he were not too tired, but he only shouldered me off the wagon seat so that I lit on my tail in a blue pool of profanity. I had to climb on the tail-board, dead tired, black as Satan and most frightfully cold.

Did you ever try to whistle Te Deum in rag-time? I tried it, with my teeth for castanets, while I sat in a wind like a scythe and whittled Surly's grub box into kindlings. Then I made me a lovely fire in the load of coal, and sang Lead Kindly Light to cheer old Surly.

When it got too hot, I dropped down and walked behind singing,

"Oh, Paradise! Oh, Paradise! I greatly long to see
Old Surly in his Future Home attempting repartee,
While small red devils rake the coals to keep him good and hot
And when they ask him to cheer up, he'll say he'd rather not."

I was beginning to run short of rhymes when the horses got a whiff, and all four of them stampeded as though there were no hereafter, while Surly poured forth rhetoric from the midst of that bounding conflagration, until he managed to capsize the wagon. When I arrived on the scene I found him perched on a boulder still declaiming, so I sat down to take notes of his benediction. "Please," I would ask, "I can't do shorthand—what comes after 'lop-eared'?" or "Hold on, McNabb—from 'pigeon-toed son,'" and at last, "Say, Affable, what's the time? You've preached a good fifteen minutes so I've won my dollar bet."

Then Surly grinned for the first time on record, so I measured the smile with my pencil and noted it down at five and three-quarter inches. At that the teamster laughed until the tears rolled streaks down his dusty face.

What with reloading, and too much conversation, we got to the post an hour late for supper. So the teamster told the troop cook that I was a blackguard. Such is the origin of two famous nicknames, for he was known as Chatter McNabb, and I as the Blackguard as long as we served in the force.

The affair of the Matrimonial Gazette has grown into a regimental myth, but that is due to Rocky Mountain liars, for whose inventions I do not claim credit. Historically the matter dates from my first patrol, when a one-horse rancher at The Leavings gave me a copy of the journal. I made haste to advertize. I announced myself as a respectable bachelor, considered extremely good-looking and very young, with pretty habits, domestic tastes, nice manners, a bewitching smile, a romantic past and enormous expectations. Ladies might correspond with a view to matrimony, and as my address was "Fort French, North West Territories, Canada," they must have felt that distance gave them safety. Sixty-eight damsels responded, ranging from fourteen years of age to eighty, and most of them sent photographs, original or borrowed. Keeping a dozen beauties for my own consumption, I sold the rest by auction or private treaty at prices varying from ten cents in cash to as many dollars promised. Each mail brought sixty-eight love-letters addressed to J. la Mancha, by his fiancées, and as Cupid's postman I distributed the ladies according to their post-marks. If two damsels happened to write from the same town, when a virgin changed her address on going to school or leaving, when our gallants at Fort French swapped, sold, traded, or pawned their dames, or parted with their dearest girls to settle a canteen bill—then there was misunderstanding and prospect of a fight. The claimants for a lady's hand would meet behind the stables while the rest of us made a ring until the pair found out which gentleman loved best. The correspondence was enormous and confused.

In these annals of true love I can only select one case as bearing upon my story. The little cat in question claimed to be Mrs. Burrows, widow, of Helena, Montana, submitted the photograph of a widowed aunt, and loved Mr. la Mancha with a headlong passion. I traded her, I remember, to the troop cook for an I.O.U. on a sucking pig for Christmas. Cook swapped her for a terrier of three sorts to Sergeant-Major Buttocks. He was caught by his wife in the act of mailing his irrevocable vows, and finding himself severely reprimanded, made a hasty sale of the Helena widow, trading her for a pair of long boots to one of our officers, Inspector Sarde.

So far the game went merrily with no harm done, but now the sergeant-major had to explain that although he was forever her adoring José la Mancha, he was about to change his penmanship. This he refused to do because his own wife forbade him, so I was sent for by Inspector Sarde. At the troop office I had to concoct a letter. In this I was Samuel Partington, requested by J. la Mancha to advise the widow Burrows that he had injured his right hand while trapping a catamaran, but was learning to write with the left, for what odds if the fist was awkward so long as the heart was true.

Both the inspector and the sergeant-major were so delighted that I made them a fair copy while both of them sat by without suspicions. In this I explained to the widow how she had been swapped for a sucking pig, a dog and a pair of boots, her latest proprietor being Inspector Sarde. The fair copy was duly posted.

Still all went merrily and no harm was done. But none of us liked Sarde. With all his undoubted merits he had a meek and guileful tongue which curried favor, and a smile a deal more friendly than his eyes. An officer who creeps in search of popularity is sure to be detested by soldiers, and their opinion is not far astray.

One night in the barrack room a debate arose as to whether Inspector Sarde was a gentleman. I took his part and bet a dollar I would prove him thoroughbred. Next day I addressed a post-card to Constable Buckie who was still at Slide-out, and on the back of it wrote the story of a little jest I had at Sarde's expense. The card was posted at the orderly room, found by the clerk and shown to Inspector Sarde. I am sorry to say that Sarde read my post-card, and handed it to the officer commanding, who refused to look and told him he was a cad. So it proved by testing that poor Sarde was not a gentleman, and I lost my bet. Moreover, from that time onward he was my enemy, a fact observed by every officer and man in C Division. This was a boy's feud with a man, the quarrel of a trooper with an officer, the risks on one side, the power on the other, and I preferred an open breach without any sneaking, free from degrading secrecy. Looking back I know I was a fool, but not unmanly.

In the good old times there was a law of prohibition excluding liquor from the territories lest it should reach the Indians. In an arid country, such a law produces unnatural thirst, and even the most temperate men take a delight in outwitting a fool government. So the law breeds law-breakers, informers, whisky thieves, drunkards, bad liquor and delirium tremens, promotes the use of drugs and generally plays havoc with public morals. Let any man who doubts my statement ask the nearest policeman whose duty it is to know the actual facts, while legislators live in a world of dreams.

During a severe winter drought, Inspector Sarde's mother sent him a case of eggs. As far as one could see it was quite in order that Mrs. Sarde should send twelve dozen eggs to her abstemious son in partibus infidelium, where luxuries are scarce. They were packed in salt, shipped C.O.D. by express, forwarded from Fort Benton in the stage sleigh, consigned per I. G. Baker and carried to Sarde's quarters by a constable on fatigue. That was I.

In course of duty, I just bumped the eggs to see if they were "fragile" as advertised on the case, and at once there arose a perfume which no police constable could possibly ignore. Did hens, I wondered, lay eggs filled with whisky? Or having laid eggs full of meat did the hens blow them, fill them with comfort, and seal them up with wax? Or had they matured on the way? Or was an officer, a justice of the peace, importing illicit refreshments? Would they be good for Sarde? Was it not my duty to save the officers' mess from making a beast of itself?

I took that case to the barrack room and submitted it to a board of constables, who pronounced each several egg to contain more than two and five-tenths per cent. of alcohol, and resolved to compensate the owner for that disgusting state of intoxication to which he was no longer liable. The case was therefore reloaded with a dead cat, and a puppy of last year's vintage, and a twelve horse-power bouquet on which we laid an epitaph in verse.

"Toll for the eggs
The eggs which are no more
All sunk within the Braves
Fast by their destined shore.
We were not in the bottle,
No barrel met the shock,
We sprang a fatal leak,
We ran on Duty's Rock.
These are but cat and pup,
Not alcoholic eggs,
So weigh the vessel up;
Stand firm upon your legs:
Then boil the tea and pass it round
To the Guardians of our Land,
You bet your life it's not our fault
That whisky's contraband!"

Next day at morning stables, Inspector Sarde, being orderly officer, put all the duty men under arrest for making chicken talk when told to answer names. He said he was surprised.

Afterward, at breakfast time, he opened his case of refreshments, which stampeded the officers' mess. He really was surprised.

Before office, old Wormy, our officer commanding, sent for Mr. Sarde. "My yong frien', how you charge my mans for dronk on catan'puppy, hein? Or you say dronk on veeskeyegg. Whose veeskeyegg? Yours? How you come by dose veeskeyegg? Where you get, hein? Bien, M'sieu L'Inspecteur Veeskey-smoggle! Sacre mo'jew Ba'teme. Damn!"

So we were all released without trial, but Mr. Sarde would like to see Constable la Mancha at his quarters. I told the orderly sergeant that I was suffering from severe alcoholic depression, but all the same I was paraded up before the bereaved inspector.

"My man," said Mr. Sarde, "you know that a commissioned officer can not threaten a constable."

I was shocked at the very idea.

"But I may promise, La Mancha, to watch over your interests like a guardian angel."

I told him he was a tripe hound.

"Orderly Sergeant," said the officer, "you will note the words used, and place this man under close arrest."

So I got a month's imprisonment, and they say it was most impressive in the guard-room to hear my voice in the cells as I prayed for Sarde.

You may not remember, but an American cowboy won my dress suit at cards. When he got back to his outfit over in Montana, he met my brother, and gave him my address. Then Brat wrote to me, telling me how on the day we parted he had struck grub with the Double Crank beef round-up who took him on as wrangler, at twenty, while they worked the Kato-yi-six.

This being translated from cow talk into English means that Brat as he wandered afoot down Milk River coulée, came to a wagon where a cook was busy molding pies on the tail-board. The cook told Brat that his wagon attended the riders of the Double Crank ranch, who were collecting beef cattle for shipment on the Sweet Grass Hills of Montana. They had mislaid the boy who handled their pony herd, so their foreman, when he rode in at sundown, engaged my Brat to take the job at twenty dollars a month.

Moreover, Brat, being a good boy whom I had raised by hand, kept his job for four months, and because he had a wooden face at poker won, in addition to his education, wages and board, three ponies, a pair of shaps, a saddle and spurs damaskened with gold. But as the winter closed down, and spare men were discharged, my brother's heart filled with dumb yearnings, so he took his pay, and rode across to Lane's where he showed off his wealth, splendor and success in front of Got-Wet. She very nearly succumbed.

Along came Buckie on patrol from Slide-out, very smart in a buffalo coat and fur cap, a Russian grand duke to the very life with a ruby and diamond engagement ring he had picked up cheap from a Montana robber.

Brat found himself outnumbered, "by a mere Canadian, too," and in his desolation blamed the soldier's scarlet serge. He wanted a red coat more than all else on earth since cowboys were of no account in the eyes of Got-Wet.

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.

And so he told me the story of Rain's adventures during the Winter of Death.

When the buffalo hunting failed, Many Horses took his women and children up into the valleys of the World-Spine and there, through the moon of falling leaves, they had meat in plenty. But when cold weather came, he and his woman Owl-calling-"Coming," out hunting far from camp, got snowed up for more than a week. Only after much prayer and sacrifices to Old Man were they able to climb through the soft snow and get a back-load of meat to their home lodge on Cut-Bank Creek. And then they came too late.

When Many Horses told me that, I had my eye at the knot-hole to watch the sign talk. He finished with a sort of apologetic squint as though he hated to worry me with trifles. It seems that toward the end of the long waiting, his little son, aged five, had moved to the chief's place, facing the door of the lodge, and there said family prayers with the sacred pipe in his little frozen hands. So his father found him, and the two younger wives with all the children sat in their places, dead.

Owl-calling-"Coming" ran mad, but Many Horses got her down to Two Medicine Lake, hoping for human company to lure her spirit back. There they found a lodge with Tail-Feathers and his woman Rain, dying of hunger.

It was in a dry, cold, dreary way that Many Horses answered my questions concerning his sister Rain. She had married Tail-Feathers because he wished her to. Now she was very poor, her property and that of her man being sold for food in the early days of the famine. Moreover, instead of hunting, Tail-Feathers would tumble down dead and lie doggo, until Rain snared a rabbit and he smelt food. But the big snow had put an end to Rain's poor foraging, and the man lay doggo while the woman prayed.

It was then she vowed that if her man got well she would dedicate a temple to the Sun God. Rain's prayers were very strong, for sure enough her brother came with meat, and her man got well. So she sat for days chirping and twittering like a small brown squirrel while she fed her man with soup, and his strength returned. In those days, Owl thawed to weeping, and her spirit came back to her body.

When all the meat was finished, Rain's secret helper came in a dream bidding her send the two men, Tail-Feathers, her husband, and Many Horses, her brother, to steal ponies from the Stone-hearts, and use them for hunting the white man's buffalo (cattle). The men obeyed and very soon her lodge was red with meat.

Now it was time, said Rain, to lay her vow before the chiefs in council, so they broke camp and went down to the agency. There they found the great chiefs begging the agent to have mercy upon their people, for already a fourth part of them were dead, and the rest were dying.

But the agent fed their corn to his fat chickens, and said he was grieved at the deplorable superstitions of the Indians. Then the chiefs starved in council until Rain sent them a pony-load of meat, so that their hearts were warm, and they consented to her plea. If the tribe lived at the full moon, in the moon of falling leaves she should be made a priestess, and dedicate a temple to the Sun.

"My prayer is heard," she said, in her great joy. "My man is saved from death, the Sun has given us food, and the animals will be kind to us and pity us. In three suns, the wicked agent will be sent away, and there will be food for all our people."

Three days were scarcely past before a big Stone-heart chief arrived at the agency, who gave the corn and the agent's chickens to feed the dying women crouched beside the gate. The wicked agent was sent away in shame, and a wagon train of the Long Knives (United States cavalry) brought food for all the people. Surely Rain's medicine was very strong!

But as it happened, the trader, Bad Mouth, together with his woman, and his daughter, Got-Wet, were staying at the agency, and when they heard that Rain was to be made priestess of the sun, they put a rumor about that she was unclean. She had lived, said Got-Wet, with a white man disguised as an Indian, aye and traveled with him all last summer. The chiefs had chosen a harlot to be their sacred woman.

Many there are among us who see appearances only, who live to keep up appearances, even as a coffin does with varnishing and brass-work though that within is something less than man. Tail-Feathers had kept up appearances as became a virtuous husband as long as Rain's wealth lasted, and now must make up appearance as an outraged husband, casting his woman out of the lodge which was all that remained of her dowry. She sat in the snow, her head covered with ashes, hiding her face from women she had fed, who passed by holding their noses. Even Many Horses believed her guilty, but Owl bought her a little lodge lest she should die of cold.

For two days the chiefs debated her case in council and Many Horses, though he believed her guilty, would not allow his fellows to accuse his sister. At the end, he brought her before them for judgment, she standing woefully frightened, with clenched teeth and fists lest her timid feet should be tempted to run away.

"Woman," said the head chief, Medicine Robe, "we know that your mysterious power saved your man from death. We know that your dream foretold the coming of the Long Knives with food for our dying people. We have heard your claim to be a sacred woman, and we may not deny that right lest we offend the Spirit in the Sun.

"Yet by our law, no woman may be priestess unless her man declares her a wife and mother of clean life.

"Your man accuses you of being a harlot. He asks that your nose may be cut off as a warning to all the people. Come, I promise full pardon if you confess your guilt."

"Am I a harlot," Rain answered angrily, "because I was sister to a helpless, useless boy? Would God have spared my man because a harlot prayed? Would God have sent food to our people but for this mysterious power which is in me? Let God be my judge!"

The head chief was sorely troubled. "If you are a harlot," he said, "and we make you a priestess to defile the holy ground, to profane the House of the Sun, your death is nothing to us when God stamps out our fires. Once more I offer mercy. You are free to go, so we never again shall see your face."

Rain clutched at her breasts with both hands. "And my baby," she cried, "my baby that is to come—shall it be called the White Man's Sin? Do you think I will go away like a guilty woman, and have my baby shamed? I stay, and in the name of God, I demand my right to prove myself clean, a faithful wife, an honorable mother, a sacred woman."

"Then we must open the Sun Lodge," answered Medicine Robe, "not by the Blackfoot, but by the Absaroka rites. Among the Sparrowhawk people the sacred woman comes up from the river bearing a fagot of wood, and a bucket of water. She walks to the Sun Lodge, there to make fire, to boil water, to keep house for the Holy Spirit."

"I am content," said Rain.

"But," said the chief, "her path is lined on either side by all the warriors, and they will see that no woman suspected of foul life shall reach God's house, for if any man knows that she has sinned, he must thrust a spear through her body, and all the men must bathe their weapons in her blood.

"Are you content?"

"I am content."

"In the moon of falling leaves, at the full moon, the Sun Lodge shall be built at Two Medicine Lake, and there you shall walk through the lane of warriors, to die as a harlot, or to live as a sacred woman."

"And I shall live," said Rain.

Many Horses, being of crossed vision, confused the issues. He was shocked that his own sister should be accused, indignant with her for being condemned to death, but most of all, enraged against the white man who had caused the scandal. In his poor stupid heart, his honor was the important thing at stake, and not his sister's innocence and life. So he came to find me out and kill me, then take the consequences as became a chief.

"Your sister," I told him, "has two friends, two champions. So one must be murdered and the other hanged. Then Rain will have no friends."

He had not thought of that.

Our superintendent commanding was painfully short of men, with half his troop out on the plains, while the rest had staff jobs exempting them from duty. At the great ten o'clock parade, the orderly officers, sergeant-major and orderly corporal would assemble to hear one rookie answer his name for recruit drill, stable orderly, mess fatigue and odd jobs. So, at the end of a fortnight's rest in the cells I received a hint that an apology to Inspector Sarde would win me back my freedom, to do half the work of the post. I asked leave to appear before Superintendent Fourmet, and when I was paraded at the orderly room, was so jolly glad to see the old chap again that I could not help smiling brightly.

"Prisonnier," said Wormy, "you withdraw the tripe 'ound?"

"Yes, sir." I cocked up one eye at Sarde.

"You apologize?"

"I wish I hadn't said it."

"Bien! You promise to be'ave?"

"For six months, sir; till the moon of falling leaves."

"Eh? Vat you means?"

"Then I'll put in for a pass, if you please, sir, and blow off steam outside."

Bubbles of suppressed joy disturbed the serenity of the court. I always find joy pays.

"Return to duty," said Wormy.

"About tur-r-n! Mar-r-r-ch!" said the sergeant-major.

But I snatched my forage cap out of his hand, jammed it on and threw a salute.

"May I speak, sir?"

"You are permit to spik."

"Release the Indian, sir, and let me serve his sentence. Please, sir, the poor devil's a friend of mine. He's innocent, and belongs to the South Piegans, so what's the good of wasting government grub to feed a United States Indian. If he's free, sir, you won't need a guard."

"Stoff a nonsense. You would be prisonnier! How you say no guard?"

"Oh, sir, that's all right. I'll keep the guard-house clean and lock myself in at night."

Dear Wormy loved a joke. "You say zees Indians he is ennocent, hein? How you know?"

"I talk Blackfoot, sir."

"Vell done, my boy! Veil done."

"He's in for shooting up a dog. Can't be done, sir. His rifle used to be mine—so I know it shoots round corners, and that dog, sir, is all corners. Why, sir, if you aim at a cow with that old gun you have to fire backward. The Blackfeet are rotten shots, anyway, and this man's a champion misser with a squint. Let him off, sir."

"You offer to serve hees sentence?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can you proof hee's not guilty?"

"You have my word of honor, and his squint, sir."

"Humph! You can go to your duty."

I cleared out quick lest Wormy should change his mind, and whistled piercing shrills to Rich Mixed across the square.

For Many Horses, that day was one of bewilderment. From the interpreter he learned that I was the very man he had come to kill, that I had offered to serve his sentence for him, and that he was pardoned. On his release at sundown I met him outside the gates and gave him a long knife, just borrowed from the cook-house. "You came," said I, "to kill me. When does the fun begin?"

For a long time he stood looking down into my eyes, then swung the knife close to my ribs to see if I would flinch.

"Frightened?" I asked.

He dropped the knife between us in the snow.

"If I kill you," he muttered, "and they hang me, Rain will have no friends."

I gave him some tobacco and my pipe. Then we sat down in the snow and smoked, while some of the boys were jeering at us from the gateway. But we spoke in signs and in Blackfoot, so that they did not understand.

The man's very slow mind was working out new ideas. "We are Rain's friends," he said, holding the pipe to the four winds, to sky, and then to earth.

"And we believe," I said, "that she is innocent."

He made the sign of assent.

"You are ready," I asked, "to stake your life that Rain is innocent?"

"You and I," he answered, "are her brothers."

"I was her brother."

"Then," he said, clasping my hand, "I give you my name, and call you Many Horses. I take your new name, Charging Buffalo."

He offered me blood brotherhood, the greatest honor that one Indian can pay to another. But I laughed.

"You," said I, "shall be Charging Buffalo, but I'm too poor to be called Many Horses. My name shall be No-horses-but-wants-to-owe-for-a-mule."

He shook his head, bewildered, and made the sign, "No good," flicking his fingers at me. How dull must life be for men who never see a joke.

"Go," said I, "tell Rain to keep her courage up, and not to fuss." So I made the moon sign and the zigzag fluttering down of a falling leaf. "I will be there in the autumn."

"Think of your sins.
What made you a soldier a-serving the Queen,
God save the Queen!
And God save the duffer who thinks of to-morrow,
God save the man who remembers his sorrow,
God save the man who must mourn for the past,
Sundown at last.
Here's rest for the past, and here's hope for the morrow."

That is what the bugle said, thrilling the clear dusk with torrential music, as I came over from seeing my frozen Brat in hospital. Rich Mixed danced ahead on three legs sidewise, while his eyes worshiped me. For this day he had seen me at guard mounting, chosen as cleanest man for commanding officer's orderly. The bugle thrilled my bones, my heart was lifted up to the angel glories, which followed the sun to his rest, but all the same to me most beautiful of all things visible were the glowing scarlet of my own serge jacket, the poised forage cap, the flash and gleam of my boots, the silver note of my spurs, as I swaggered across the parade ground. For five months, I had been a beauteous example of piety in humble life, and though I was rather stiff from yesterday's patrol of sixty miles, both loveliness and virtue were my portion. Rich Mixed lay on his back to pant with adoration, and my riding whip flicked him tenderly as I passed. For, in that instant, I thought of Rain. All my hopes, dreams and desire made throne and clouds and rainbows for her court.

In thirty days more, I was to die for her, and had no other wish or expectation.

Close in the wake of the bugle music tame the soft, distant, mournful howl of a wolf. That was Rain's call!

Oh, then I knew I had been too good too long. With a sigh for departed virtue, I swung off round the stables, dodged behind them, climbed the manure heap piled against the stockade, and there stood looking out across the plains. From somewhere close at hand in the dusk, I heard a most seductive little howl. At that, I sent Rich Mixed home, dropped lightly down the outer side of the rampart, and pounded across the boulder flats until I saw a little heap of something up against the sky-line.

"Oo-oo!" said the little heap, and "Oo-oo-oo!"

I scrambled up the bank of Old Man's River and whispered: "Is that you?"

"Oo."

So I squatted, with ominous cracks at the seams, on one spurred heel, then lighted a cigarette, so she might see my little new mustache. "Well," I puffed, with becoming condescension. "What's up?"

Of course, I adored her, but with a woman it never pays to be monotonous, for if she knows exactly what to expect, she loses interest.

"Once, in the very-long-ago-time," she crooned, in a sing-song voice, "there used to be a queer person called Boy-drunk-in-the-morning."

"Oh, bosh!" said I, hating the memory of such a name. "You mean Charging Buffalo."

"Um?" With one wicked eye cocked up, she moued at me. And that struck me cold, for she had never flirted. "I used to like being kissed," and she turned the other cheek.

"You little liar," said I, disgusted, "you never once let me kiss you, made me swear I'd go to hell if I touched you. Why, half the time you wouldn't let me into your lodge, so I had to freeze outside. And when it was warm, you slept outside yourself. And when I said I'd let you be my woman, you went and married Tail-Feathers."

"Still," she crooned, "I liked your attempts at kisses, and cuddles, yes, and little wee, tender scratches round my neck."

The seductive little rogue! And yet how could a buck policeman in barracks run his own squaw on fifty cents a day—and keep our wolf pack out of her teepee—and not be caught by the authorities? Think of the chaff, Sarde spying, the fury of the officer commanding, the disgrace to the service!

Besides, there was something wrong, something artificial, unreal, unworthy about Rain to-night. It was not to a cheap flirt I had given the worship due to my mother, and to the Queen of Heaven.

"Go back to your man," I said sternly, "it's his job to scratch your neck."

"I come," she purred, "to be your woman."

"I'll see you damned first!" I rose to go.

Then Rain stood up erect, all pride and joy, holding a baby at her breast, for all the world like the great sacred pictures of Our Lady.

"See," she whispered. "My own man, Tail-Feathers, has a baby son. I nurse this ever-so-small Two Bears. I love him, oh, so dearly. Isn't he beautiful!"

"The deuce." It wrenched my heart to think what might have been—my child, my happiness.

"Growls-like-a-Bear. Says 'Woof! Woof!' because I love my son!"

"Oh, I don't care," said I in a jealous rage. "It's nothing to me. Once we were sister and brother, you and I, innocent children playing in camp, and on the trail, playing at being grown up. You never were my woman."

Then all about me in the gloaming, I heard a ripple of laughter, and one by one there rose up out of the dusk gaunt Indians, trying not to laugh lest they should seem ill-mannered. One grand old chief lifted his head, palm forward, to the stars, making the peace sign. "My son," he said, "I ask you to shake hands, after the way of your people."

"How!" came the greetings all around me. "How, Shermogonish! Greeting, soldier! We all want to shake hands."

"My son," said the head chief, "you are a Stone-heart. We believe that your tribe are like ghosts, because you have no hearts, and do not really live. Because you have no heart, our daughter, Rain, is innocent."

My memory flashed back to that world I had left behind me ever so many weeks ago, to happy parishes in Mayfair and St. James's, where men were simple and unpretentious, frank and kind. So I saluted Medicine Robe as one would address a minister of state, expecting a blessing from Mad Wolf as though he were a cardinal, and felt that Flat Tail was a retired general who had led an army in battle not so long ago. Then there was Many Horses, my blood brother. I was so glad to see them!

"My son," said the head chief, throwing his robe wide open, disclosing the bow in his hand, the arrows at his belt. "I came to kill you. It is well I waited. You will eat in my lodge?"

I said I was hungry enough to eat the lodge.

So they escorted me, walking in single file, with feet straight to the front, as softly shod people do, lest they should bruise their toes against the trail edge. When we came to the lodge, the head chief took his seat with his guest and the men on his left, his wife and all the women on the right. We had an Absaroka sausage, full of interest and excitement as a haggis, Chicago bully beef, and a dish of berries, with graceful acts of tribute to the gods, and the decorous ceremony of the pipe to follow. Then Medicine Robe, as host, spoke with a tender irony of the white men, but said that some were straight even as Rising Wolf, his oldest friend. For Charging Buffalo had given courtesy to Rain, his daughter, and lately delivered Many Horses from prison.

Mad Wolf spoke next with grave sweet dignity, saying that his prayers were answered as to Rain. They knew her powerful medicine came of a pure life, and as a sacred woman she would bring good fortune to the people.

But Many Horses said, "Let us wait till after the storm before we dry our clothes. Some of the chiefs are seeking my sister's death, and her own man has sworn to kill her at the Medicine Lodge. I ask my white brother to attend the holy rites of the Sun God, and tell the people he has done no evil to our sacred woman."

On this, the white brother made his first speech in Blackfoot, with a strong foreign accent, somewhat to this effect: "I've been most frightfully good for five whole moons, because I'm putting in for a pass in civvies, for the moon of falling leaves on urgent private business; and the Great White Chief, Old Wormy, will have to stretch his heart to the size of a kit-bag before he'll trust me out of sight in the dark. His heart is small this week, because somebody stuffed his parrot till it bust.

"Unless he believes I bust his bird, I think he'll be all right. My little brother, Brat, has lent me his cowboy kit. I'd have his horses, too, but Brat lost them at poker to the hospital orderly. Look here, Many Horses, your white brother wants you to come with a spare pony, and show me the way to your circus."

"It is good," sighed my blood brother, who disliked lending his ponies.

"All right," said I, "that sausage has made my heart warm to my Indian fathers," I waved my hand to the women, "and aunts, and things. I'll be on hand at the medicine joint to speak with persons who talk bad about Rain, and I've put in five months' pay at revolver practise.

"Now look here, you chaps, excuse my country manners, but that's 'First post' sounding in barracks now, so I'll have to run like a rabbit to be in time for roll-call. If I'm late, I'll be disemboweled and fined five dollars. So long, Chief. Cheer up, little girl."

I bolted, leaving the Piegan chiefs to preserve their ceremonial gravity, while the women rocked and sobbed with hysterical laughter.

VII

On the eve of my furlough, "to attend the funeral of an aunt at Billings," I was accused by the sergeant-major of bursting the esteemed green parrot of my commanding officer; and for giving cheek got one month confined to barracks.

Also the Brat, in an attempt to win back his horses, played cards with the hospital orderly, and whereby he lost his cowboy kit, a residuary interest in Rich Mixed subject to owner's decease, a three-pound pot of greengage jam and my new private revolver.

To crown all, I was warned for mess fatigue, so that when I bolted I would be missed at daybreak.

Thus dogged by undeserved misfortune, I assuaged my grief by playing cards with the hospital orderly. If he won, he was to have two black eyes, an inflamed nose and a complete set of fractures, as shown on a chart in the surgery. Perhaps this medicine man preferred not to be greedy, for he lost three horses, a cowboy kit and stock saddle, a .38 seven-chambered blue Merwin and Hulbert revolver with adjustable three-inch and six-inch barrels, a pot of jam, a residuary interest, thirty-two dollars and seventy-five cents in cash, and the cook's I.O.U. on a sucking pig.

Much soothed, I addressed a private note to the commanding officer, in which I told him that I had not spoiled his parrot, but tendered in its place a tame whisky-jack, who could swear in French almost as well as himself. With regard to breaking barracks and being absent four days without leave, I felt bound to do so on a point of honor, but left Rich Mixed as a pledge of my return to take my punishment.

The letter, the whisky-jack and the dog were to be delivered after breakfast, when Wormy was always peaceful.

The moment after roll-call, I told the corporal of my barrack room that I had an appointment to smash up the man who had busted old Wormy's parrot. As it transpired, I had already done so, but the corporal seemed pleased, and would not expect me back before he fell asleep. At the stables, I changed into cowboy kit, then took my newly-won saddle to the manure heap, where I dropped it outside the stockade, and jumped down myself. Many Horses was waiting with his ponies, and so I saddled one and we rode away, bound for the herd camp. There lived Brat's ponies which I had won from the hospital orderly, but the event of stealing them fell quite flat, since they were now my property. My blood brother's Indian silence got rather on my nerves.

We rode breast-deep in a silver mist, while the moon came glowing like a coal above the frosty levels in the East, and swung the stars blind across the awful silence. Once in two hours, we rested and took fresh horses, at times would flounder through some deadly river, or pass a sleeping herd of the range cattle, or clatter down the steeps of hills invisible. Then the slow dawn merged into frosty daylight, while on our right Chief Mountain, a snow-draped cube of limestone, captain of the Rockies, glowed in the sun's red glory as he rose. We passed the Medicine Line and entered the United States, quite safe from all pursuit.

Toward noon, when a hundred and ten miles had given us a taste for food and sleep, Mount Rising Wolf was high against the sun, edged with an icy silver to where its wall fell sheer into blue-gray shadows. Then, while the ridged and furrowed plain still seemed to sweep straight on into that shadow, with staggering abruptness a valley opened right before our feet, miles wide, of lake, meadow and timber. We looked down, through scattered Douglas pines, upon a circle of teepees a mile in girth, each tawny lodge of bison hide painted with unnatural history animals, rows of dusty stars, or symbols of lightning, flood, or a protecting spirit. The smoke of feasts went up from within the lodges, the children played about them, gamblers squatted chanting over the stick game, crowds in their gayest best watched some old battle played by warriors, and round the tent-ring crept a gorgeous procession of mounted men, singing some tribal hymn.

Midway between camp and lake, stood a tall post, whence dangled a faggot of sticks, and round it was a circular fence of branches sloping inward as though to form a dome, not quite roofed over. This was the Sun's house, completed after four days of ritual preparation, and now awaiting to-morrow's dedication. Facing its east doorway, Rain kept the long fast, attended by celebrant priests and sacred women.

Many Horses unloaded his pack pony, and after making prayer set out a scrap of looking-glass and an array of face paint, to put on symbolic colors, with all the gravity of a white man busy shaving. Next he adorned his war-horse, who showed much pride and joy. Last, he put on his own ceremonial dress—a quilled and beaded buckskin war-shirt, embroidered moccasins, leggings fringed with scalp locks, a coronal of eagle plumes and a painted robe—each with its proper formula of prayer, as befitting the whole armor of righteousness, which we Christians have abandoned since it went out of fashion. I helped him reload the pack horse, and then he passed me riding his war-horse after the manner of the French haut Ecole. No horsemen in the world rival the plain's Indians in grace, or the Blackfeet in strength, beauty and majesty of bearing, and Many Horses, noblest of all the Piegan leaders, looked gravely pleased with his magnificence. As we rode down the hill, for all my fine cowboy gear, I felt mean and common, consigned to the lower classes. One would have thought this gallant and not myself had come to challenge the nation as Rain's champion.

My reception at the chief's lodge was an affair of long and gracious procedure, which I marred by chewing a dried cow-tongue, and finally spoiled by going off to sleep with the meat in my mouth, and rude growls when disturbed. While still I slept, More Bears, the dignified public crier, drummed his round of the camp with my challenge.

"Listen, all people, to the words of Charging Buffalo, adopted son of Medicine Robe, brother of Many Horses.

"Who says I slept with Rain? Who says the sacred woman is unclean? Let him meet me in single combat to the death, or wash his mouth and keep himself free from slander.

"Does Tail-Feathers wish to prove his woman a harlot? Let him come to the meadows at sundown and make his words good, or hold his peace forever!"

When the sun was nearing the World-Spine, Medicine Robe made me wake up for coffee, dog tired, stiff and famished, feeling the sick reluctance toward life of some client in a dentist's anteroom, or prisoner given a nice breakfast prior to execution. Presently, I was to be taken out and shot by Tail-Feathers, champion rifle-shot of the Blackfoot nation. I wished I were somebody else, anybody anywhere else, yet managed to conjure up a pale and dismal grin when Many Horses arrived, leading his painted war-horse and bearing his splendid war-dress as gifts for his white brother. In return, I gave my cowboy kit and the three ponies, quite sure I would not need them any more. Then I sat cross-legged, forcing myself with sick distaste to eat, while I made lamentable jests to shock my squinting brother.

Many Horses had just seen Tail-Feathers in a frightful passion, showing the people how he could shoot at full gallop using his carbine with one hand like a pistol. Kinsmen were rallying to his support, whole clans were painting themselves for war, the duel might well be prelude to a battle, and the whole outlook was extremely black.

"Don't cheer me up any more," said I, thrusting the food away. My shoulder ached where Tail-Feathers, with a very long shot, had creased my hide only a year ago.

The Piegan chiefs drifted in, each leaving his horse at the lodge door, to join the solemn gathering and profound misgivings, while I twiddled my small revolver, and showed them the tiny pellets with which I proposed to fight. Flat Tail wanted to lend me a roer, a young cannon warranted at five feet to split a grizzly bear. Iron Shirt, the sarcastic, told me I'd best clear out. Medicine Robe proposed that each chief rally his clan for a display of overwhelming force, lest there be civil war. But I explained that little medicine-irons like my small revolver had all the fierceness of the biggest cannon full of compressed ferocity, the same as with small dogs. I sent a boy with one of my cartridges as a gift to Tail-Feathers who, seeing its smallness, would not run away. That set the chiefs to laughing, and I went on chaffing until I had them happy. The honor of the outfit was in my keeping, the honor of the flag, the honor of my race. I pity cowards who daily undergo such fears as I had then, and suffer the throes of death without gaining death's release.

Five months of daily practise at the cost for ammunition of nearly all my pay had proved to me the virtue of my little killing gun up to three hundred yards. For small targets it outranged my opponent's carbine. Besides, I had filed a cross on the head of each bullet to make it spread like a mushroom, large enough to put a bear out of action. That is against the rules of war, so let the critic judge me who has faced the odds himself, and with his lone gun challenged the champion of a savage tribe in face of all his kinsmen.

Nothing had I to say about the range of my weapon, and as to my practise, it was not wise to brag. Only by striking awe into the hearts of the Blackfoot nation could I save the woman they had sworn to sacrifice.

The chiefs were busy helping me to dress, chanting the prayers which go with sacred garments, and with a strange thrill, I felt that these men loved me. They roused within me the knighthood of my fathers, that ancient chivalry which inspired men to fight for the honor of ladies.

And now I remembered my spiritual ancestor, the knight of the sorrowful countenance, el Señor Don Quixote de la Mancha. I laughed with triumph as the chiefs fell back when I stood robed and armed. Then I breathed the Ave in prayer to Our Lady, the great Queen of Heaven, whom I served, defending Her woman, Rain.

The chiefs formed my mounted escort as we rode through the camp, then past the Medicine Lodge, and that small booth where little Rain sat praying. The big empty meadow was before us now, and here on our right were all the people massed upon a hillside, the women and children like great beds of flowers, the men in clusters, mounted, their war-plumes at large upon the breeze. On our left, a solemn grove of trees in autumn gold curved with the blue lake into a haze of purple against the mighty cliffs and snow-fields of Mount Rising Wolf poised like a cloud in the windswept blue of heaven. Ahead, the low sun filled the meadow with a dust of light.

Then came a sudden impassioned roar of warning from the people, the chiefs behind me stampeded to either side clear of the line of fire, and out of the gold haze swept a rolling globe of dust. Then there was silence, save that the dust globe scattered, revealing the earth-devouring rush of a charging horse.

When danger comes at full gallop, there is no time for fear. The brain works at lightning speed, the exalted senses live an hour within each flying second. To shoot from the saddle? But would this horse I rode stand fire! To gallop for position broadside to that glare? Why make myself a target! To dismount, for cover and steady aim behind the horse? Most certainly. The turf was quivering. Can't see the man! Only fluttering plumes above the dust. Can't see his horse—but only that blur of black. Point the forefinger along the barrel, closing the hand. One!

Tail-Feathers fired also. His bullet whirred quite close.

Point, closing the hand—Two! Again—Three!

Down went the Indian's horse with a shattered shoulder, while the man came sailing on a long curve through the air, head down—smashing to earth on the nape of his neck—while the dust rolled away. There he lay black against the glare, head twisted horribly aside, legs twitching—stark now in the rigor of death.

I swung to the saddle and pricked gently forward, gun covering my enemy lest he show signs of life. The palms of my hands were sweating, my body all a-tremble, heart jumping, brain reeling, in a great roar of voices. Why were the chiefs yelling as they closed round me? Like a hurricane, the Piegan warriors, thousands strong, came charging at me, firing at me, swirling round me with uproar, like tumbling waters—distant waters—the rush of some far-away rapids—or rain at night When my head cleared, the head chief, in a blaze of passion, was roaring at the mob: "Silence! Fall back! Who fights my son, fights me!

"Silence! Silence! Hear me! That liar defamed his woman, fouled his own lodge, slandered the holy servant of the Sun, insulted God—and died!

"You saw him die—not in fair fight, but trying to steal an advantage over my son, who fought with the glare in his eyes.

"Are there any more liars here to slander our sacred woman? One at a time—come, liars! My son and I and all your chiefs, are ready to do battle.

"You, Thunder-Brooding, will you dare to fight me? You helped raise the slander. Fight, or take your shame back to your lodge, you dog-faced cur. Get home!"

The crowd was breaking, sullen, cursing me for a Stone-heart, muttering at their chiefs, while the mother and sisters of Tail-Feathers began to wail for their dead, appealing for vengeance.

"My son," said the big chief tenderly, "the anger of the people turns on you, and my young men are very hard to hold. We chiefs will be your escort until we get you safe out of this crowd, and your brother, Many Horses, will ride with you to Fort French."

I was not allowed to see the sacred woman.

VIII

There was the Union Jack ablaze up in the sunshine above the gray stockade. The bugler was sounding "Evening stables"; the duty men would assemble, number off, number by fours, march to the stables, break, and tend the horses. It was all exactly as usual, the commonplace of life, the old routine, the dear familiar duty, the knowledge of days to come shaped in the very pattern of days past—even if one dropped in from another world. Attended by Many Horses, I rode in past the guard.

Eleven poor devils were on parade in the brown canvas fatigue dress, with brushes and curry combs. The orderly corporal was calling the names, he and the sergeant-major in scarlet undress uniform, the fat Inspector Bultitude in black undress, with a saber. I tumbled off my horse and leaned against him reeling, then braced myself to attention and saluted—the back of my hand touching the great rustling coronal of eagle plumes, as I faced that staring, grinning and convulsed parade.

"Come, sir," I reported, "to give myself up."

"Drunk!" Bultitude burbled at me. "Bur-r-r! Disgrace! Take that bur-r-r—man to the guard-room, shove him bur-r-r—Cells."

"Consider yourself," said the corporal, taking me by the arm.

The air was all gray fog, and the corporal's voice was very far away. "Come, chuck a brace! Stand up, man." The ride of two hundred and twenty miles within two days had overtaxed my strength.

The gray fog went back, against the walls of old Wormy's drawing-room, and the hospital sergeant said I was all right. He gave me more brandy, and I sat up quite well.

The superintendent commanding stood with his back to the stove, and Beef, our interpreter, was questioning Many Horses. My Indian brother spoke, at first with a shy dignity, then with warmth, as he told how I had saved Rain's life, and lastly with power, as he strung wild flowers of native rhetoric pronouncing a message from his chief. When he forgot his lines, I prompted him in whispers.

"From snake-tongued agents, land thieves, and Colonel Baker we turn in our despair to the white North. We know that the fires of the north men—(the northern lights) can never give us warmth, but only portend the storm. Yet we put up our hands to that glow and feel some comfort from men who never lie. The world is very dark for Indian people. To show our hearts toward the mounted police, we send your warrior back as our adopted son, with the name, the dress, the rank of a Blackfoot chief."

You know how a horse has a child's brain with a saint's character. My Indian brother was like that, with intellect enough to run an errand, and majesty of character that made him seem more than human. He spoke for a conquered and dying people, who yet were a master race more spiritual than ours. Perhaps, in the life to come, we may be their servants.

Wormy shook hands with the envoy and gave back a hearty message to his brother chief, then sent off Many Horses to receive the hospitality of the fort.

The old man sat down, glaring at me, for we were now alone.

"You begin," he said, in his native French patois, "by burning my coal wagon, you make of my fort a matrimonial scandal, you steal Monsieur Sarde's egg-box, you explode my parrot, you call me Wormy behind my back, you rogue, you write that impudent letter, and break barracks, you mix with those savages to bring disgrace on the force, you run away to kill an American Indian and embroil me in an international row with those infernal states, and then you come back dressed as an Indian chief to turn my troop upside down, looking so damned innocent!"

I tried to look like an orthodox police constable in a scrape.

"Please, sir," said I in French, "I gave you my word I'd be good for six months, and I've been too frightfully good. The time was up, sir, on Monday."

"But my parrot?"

"I thrashed the man who did that."

"Who?"

"Dunno, sir."

"I see. You can not betray a comrade. Still, I should like to know. It was so mean."

"You'll know, sir. He'll be the first deserter. We're driving him out of the force."

"My boys don't hate me, then?"

I couldn't answer. He had brought up tears which I had to swallow, for we loved him.

Then he tried English. "Tink yourself, boy. Le bon Dieu. He send my wife no child, an' ze pay—not too moch for buy tings at Hodsonbay Compagnie, so? We haf not the life of luxury. Vot haf we but zee troop, an' my leetle 'orses, eh? So you call me Wormy."

"English for Fourmet, sir."

"So!"

"Men, sir, without nicknames don't count. They're not worth counting when there's trouble coming."

"They call you Blackguard."

I grinned.

"Then," he flashed round at me, "why you behave lak dam' baby, eh?"

And I flashed back, "Were you never young?"

The grizzled superintendent blushed with pleasure. "I took on," he said, "as constable—Regimental Number Six, the Constable Fourmet. But, my boy, I try. So you? Pooh! You burn my fort next! So you go to headquarters."

"Oh, not that, sir!" I pleaded. "Can't you punish me here?" For I thought of Rain.

"And I shall miss you," he sighed. "Je suis Canadien. I, too, was le beau seigneur. So I lak not to loose a gentilhomme from my troop.

"Now you call me old fool, eh? Go ron away—change you your clothes. Vite! An' to-morrow you report at orderly room to take your medicine."

So we shook hands, and for once in my wicked life I shed tears of remorse.

I had sinned against the discipline of the force, attacking the foundations of the public safety.

I had disturbed the serenity of the Blackfoot nation, the most formidable savages on earth, at a time when our weak settlements lay at their mercy.

While in the Canadian service, I had killed a subject of the United States, and nations have been embroiled in war by trifles less than that.

It was Superintendent Fourmet's duty to expel me from the service, and deport me from the country.

Oh, well for me if he had done his duty. With Rain my wife, we might have lived in honor, helping to save a dying people before it was too late.

I am an aristocrat for the same reason that a wolf is a wolf, and hold equality to be an illusion of the uncouth. And as a wolf will mate with wolf, Rain was my natural partner.

But we were held apart by an unnatural convention, that horrible fetish respectability, god of the Anglo-Saxons, enemy of Christ, forever forging chains for free and liberal spirits, parting honest lovers, selling virgins in marriage to beasts, and vending clean men to most unholy women. The temple is profaned by all who buy and sell their bodies in wedlock or without, but most of all by the respectable, who bind us with chains most grievous to be borne, and where Christ gave us the one commandment—Love, dare to forbid the banns.

CHAPTER III
THE SWING OF EVENTS

Before I left Fort French on my way to regimental headquarters I promised old Wormy to lead a better life. The first duty then was to provide for my Brat in hospital; so I raffled my war-horse, and sold off by public auction a dozen damsels to whom I had been postally engaged; then lost the whole of the money at cards with the hospital orderly. So I said good-by to Brat.

Parted from all my vices I felt like an empty box, all chiaroscuro and good intentions, yet in the stage sleigh caught by a two days' blizzard it was really too cold to reform. That autumn storm was a hundred and eight miles long from its tail at Fort French to its nose at Fort Calgary with a hundred degrees of cold and the nip of a crocodile. Then at Fort Calgary I had to wait in barracks, for the unfinished Canadian Pacific Railroad ran trains, weather permitting, or when the driver was sober. Anyway, I had time to lose my sustenance money over a game of poker, and when Rich Mixed and I got on board the train we had nothing to reform with except a tin of crackers. We were beastly pinched on the six hundred mile crawl east to Regina, the mounted police headquarters.

I had rather looked forward to seeing civilization after some eighteen months of the other thing, but the train was jammed with men coming down from the construction camps in the Rockies and most of them had forgotten to take a bath. The floors of the cars were swamped with tobacco juice, the stoves were red, there was no ventilation. The air made my head swim, and Rich Mixed was taken sick.

I had been pining for company, but—well, there were some Canadians—fine chaps, playing cards, the stakes in hundreds of dollars. I could only afford to look on for half a minute.

There were American commercial gents, pale, high-pitched, talking millions and millions of dollars. I could not afford to listen.

Then there were navvies busy getting drunk, and even their talk never went as low as ten cents. They, too, were above my station. I even heard a man say, "Catch on to all that for fifty cents a day!" I could not tell him my pay was fifty-five cents.

That was when I stood up to take off my buffalo coat, and all the people stared at the red tunic. Somehow these good folk did not belong to my tribe, but I did not know till then that the red coat shuts off the world like a wall. Only I felt they despised me, so I blushed. It was as though a flock of sheep stared with contempt at a collie, and that made me grin.

The better half of me is Irish, sharing the same heritage with every British Tommy, every British bluejacket, every British irregular on the far flung frontiers. Even the English feel it, whose hearts are like cold fish, the glamour of the service, the magic, the witchcraft, the religion of this justice-under-arms guarding a fourth part of all mankind from war, keeping the peace of the sea! Spain was, England is, and Canada will be, a power snatching fire from Heaven to yield the peace of el Eterno Padre. Santissima Maria—I belonged to that!

Oh, but it was more, a great deal more. In the frost of the window beside me there was a patch of clear glass, and I could see a cloud race past the moon, above the driving surf of the snow-sea, while the blizzard battered and thundered, half lifting our train from the rails. I wanted to be back where I had been, riding storms. I belonged there, I belonged to that.

If we who serve with the colors under Old Glory or the Union Jack were serving for pay the public enemy could buy us for more pay. Could you bargain with us in terms of cash for the austerities of actual service, disease, wounds, death?

"Credo in unum Deum," roared the storm. "Omnipotentem," roared the storm. "Creatirem Coeli, et terrae," roared the storm. I and the storm were servants of one God. I knew then that never while I lived could I belong to a civilization which measures life in dollars.

I was at a castle in Spain tipping the groom of the chambers with one raw oyster in his extended palm, when Rich Mixed woke me up with his cold nose in my hand. The dawn was breaking, the train had pulled up at Moose jaw, and there was a new passenger approaching, all furs, frost and fuss. The men in the car were stretched or coiled on the seats, like corpses in the wan gray light of morning. The only empty place was the one which belonged to my dog, so he was saying in dog talk.

"Ur-r! Gur-r-r!" which means: "Isn't he poisonous. Don't let him take my seat. Yur-r-r!"

So I took Rich Mixed on my lap and said, "Sit on your tail, my septic friend."

Yet this person must needs argue about seats farther on, so the brakeman called him a fool and walked off. It seemed to me, though, that this unwholesome stranger shied, not at the dog but at me. So I told him I was only a policeman, and the dog was most particular as to what he ate. The man sat down.

As yet I had no suspicions at all, but the person must needs explain a lot of stuff about being a photographer and making good money with pictures of mountain sceneries. That set me wondering, for if he came from the Rockies, why should he board the train five hundred miles out on the plains? And if he really was a photographer, he should have the camera tripod, slide box and that well-known professional manner.

"Cur-r!" said Rich Mixed.

Where had my decent dog met this liar who shied at police? My septic friend was a town scout, so the only town where the dog could have known him would be Winnipeg. Then I jumped the rest of the way to that House of the Red Lamp, the place where this book began, where Rawhide Kate had shown me a photograph of her husband—this very man—a circus artiste with a breast of revolting decorations, and a brace of revolvers—Jonathan Withal, King of Guns. Afterward, I remembered, he murdered Rawhide Kate. The police description mentioned a wen on his neck and oddly enough this duck sat in his fur coat with the collar up while he sweated. Besides he kept his hands in the side pockets, and by the bulge, it was guns. He had me covered.

You know how one thing leads to another. We talked about Rich Mixed. Then I got confidential, telling him all about my dog's half-sister, Biscuits, and he told me exactly how much money he made. So I was envious, sick of the police, proposing to desert, that I might take to drink and photography which in his case were such a success. But he explained through his nose how some folks being prejudiced jest nachurally couldn't see the difference between a drinkin' man and a drunkard whereas he could take it or leave it alone: that's what, although there's some as would figger five dollars a day for drinks as coming rather steep, yes, sir, but them's cheap men. As for him he wanted me to know that he was bad, and wild, all hard to curry and full of fleas and could shoot the spots out of the ten of clubs at a mile.

He paused, giving me time to admire.

Then he mentioned a bottle right here in his valise.

By that time I had caught a strong Amurrican accent, yes, siree, and owned his talk made me thirsty, although one drink of the real quintessence would put me under the seat dead drunk, because I'd just recovered from hydrophobia.

Out came his hands from his pockets which made me real proud to have his confidence, you betcher life. Then the patient turned round to open his valise while I grabbed his collar and wrenched it down, locking his elbows behind him until I tied his thumbs together with a string.

He wanted to give a display of fireworks, but couldn't reach his guns. So I had to tell him not to say things I was too young to hear.

"Jonathan Withal," said I, when we were settled down again. "I arrest you in the Queen's name. You will be charged with the murder of your wife, and I warn you that anything you say will be used in evidence."

The episode was sordid, its memory has become unpleasant, and it would not be mentioned here but for the issue which altered the course of my life. I had been sent as a bad character for a course of recruit drill and discipline at headquarters, but arrived at Regina with a prisoner who was in due course committed to trial for capital felony at Winnipeg. I was sent as escort to give evidence of arrest, and pending the trial and hanging was posted to our detachment at Fort Osborne just outside that city. Afterward I remained on detachment during the early winter.

During those few weeks at Winnipeg I had a couple of letters from my Brat who had taken to crutches and felt able-bodied. He told me that there was some rumor of Sarde getting married. The inspector had bought an engagement ring, also a girl's fur cap and coat which had gone by the stage sleigh to Helena where Widow Burrows lived. He had applied for transfer to depot at Regina as being nearer to civilization. My friend Buckie was in from Slide-out Detachment and was going on prisoners' escort to Regina.

In response I sent Brat my first poem, in celebration of Sarde's alleged engagement to Widow Burrows.

When the artful Meringue
Met the gay Macaroon,
And they sighed, and then sang
In the light of the moon—
'Twas there! 'Twas thus! 'Twas then
I met my first, my only love.
'Twas warm!

One day I was on sentry at the gate of Fort Osborne when a tramp came along the street, a bare-headed, red-haired hobo shivering in remnants of a jersey and broken down sea boots.

"I'd been in Roosia once," he told me afterward, "and you made me think of a Roosian grand dook I'd seen reviewing troops—wot chanct 'ad I got, eh?"

I remember being very comfy in fur cap, short buffalo coat, long stockings, moccasins, and my belt of burnished brass cartridges in the sunlight shone as a streak of blazing light. I asked the freezing sailor if he wanted to take on in the force. For answer he gulped at me, so I pointed out the way to the recruiting office. "Second door on the left. Good luck to you."

A few minutes after the tramp had gone to his fate a municipal policeman arrived, one of the famous Winnipeg giants. He inquired after a red-haired hobo, who was badly wanted for kicking a booking clerk of the Canadian Pacific through the office door which happened to be shut. The clerk was being removed to hospital.

Yes, I remembered seeing a person with red hair—of course, the very man. Ten minutes ago he had passed going toward Red River in a parachute.

The Winnipeg police giants are ponderous of understanding and sensitive to chaff.

The guard-house was not in use, and the men on guard lived in the barrack room. So there I was when, after my relief, I lay on my trestle half dressed, doing bed fatigue, my dog asleep beside me. Yes, I was eating dates when Red Saunders, the sailor hobo, came out from the medical ordeal.

"Hullo!" I called. "What luck?"

"They snapped me up!" cried Red, and at that the corporal of the guard, who was playing cards at the table, looked up laughing.

"'Ere!" Red seized the corporal by the collar, "come and 'ave yer 'ead punched!"

"Two, four, six," said the corporal over his cards, "and a pair, eight."

"Carrots!" I shouted. Red forgot his corporal and hastened across to destroy me. "Dates, I mean," said I gently, holding out the bag. "Sit here on my bed; Rich Mixed is only snarling for effect. Won't bite. Too full to hold another mouthful. Do you know, Red, that the gentleman over there is your superior officer?"

"Swine!"

"How true. Yet for touching even a chaffy corporal the punishment is death."

"'E insulted me!"

"Death. Court-martialed and shot at sunrise, then buried in the dogs' churchyard with a dreadful epitaph. After that you'd be punished for kicking that clerk into hospital."

"'E can't 'and me over to the police," Red lowered at the corporal, "'cause we're shipmates now. I belong."

"That's so. We've all got to behave as shipmates, and we mustn't scrag the bosn."

"I can take an 'int," quoth Red, who was gulping down the dates, stones and all. "I sai—wot d'ye think the josher said in there? Axed me my catechism, s'elp me, and I 'ad to write the answers.

"''Ad I served before? Yes, before the mast.

"'Married? No, thank Gawd.

"'Could I read and write?' So I wrote down, 'Hain't I a-doing of it?

"'Character from the clergyman of my parish?' Parish, mind you. Mine's the sea, so I writes down, 'Reverend Davy Jones don't give no discharges.

"'Care and management of 'orses?' Well, I said, I'd 'ove some overboard acrost the Western.

"Makes me strip bare, buff 'n buttocks.

"And take them oaths. Oaths from me! I axed 'im if I looked like a traitor, or a Dago."

"A Dago, like me?"

Red gave me his grubby sticky hand in sudden sympathy, bidding me cheer up. "'Cause even a Dago ain't so bad as niggars."

I mopped my eyes with a handkerchief and begged him not to comfort me too much lest I shed unmanly tears. "Tell me," I went on, "about the man you kicked."

"Ruptured, I 'ope. You see I went into the C.P.R. office and ast for a job, and 'e said no English need apply. I'd best go, says 'e, to the Society for the Relief of Destitute Englishmen. So I ast 'im wot 'e was and 'e says, 'Canadian, get-to-'ell-out-of-'ere.' Then I 'ummed Gawd Save the Queen at 'im for maybe fifteen minutes to lure 'im out from behind that 'ere bulkhead.

"The girl with the parcels was buying a ticket to Troy, and 'im showin' off of 'is manners and gold-filled teeth. Sort of, 'Yes, madame, the twelve o'clock train leaves at noon to-morrow, and the fare don't h'include no Pullman bunk nor meals nor an extra h'engine, and in the event of Indians you won't be scalped, madame, 'cause you're just too beautiful.' And she is, too.

"Meanwhile I just sang the national anthem at 'im, knowing it was bound to work if I kep' on patient, 'e gettin' as red as a lobster with 'is un'oly passions, until at last she says, 'Good-by,' an' drops 'er parcels. Stands like an 'elpless angel, saying 'ow silly she is.

"Yuss. There's me at 'er little feet a-pickin' up the pawcels 'and over 'and, when h'out comes Mr. Clerk from 'is sheltered 'utch to say I'm a thief—so I lets out a mule kick and 'e performs the high trajectory—yuss, and busts his bloomin' hypotenuse right fair across the seat. And I never said nothin' to nobody. Nar! Then just as I'm opening the door for 'er ladyship to pawss out 'e comes along for another, and gets some more of the same in 'is bleedin' gizzard. I gives it to 'im abundant, enough to lawst, but the lidy says, ''Ow could yer!' and wants to offer me money. Says I to meself, 'I 'ear thee speak of a better land,' so not wanting to interfere with them 'ippopotamus police I comes 'ere for sanctimony.

"Oh, yuss. She was h'angels h'ever bright and fair by the nime o' Vi'let Burrows. That's 'er tally. Tells the clerk she 'ails from 'Elena, Montana."

"What!"

"Vi'let Burrows, of 'Elena, Montana. 'Ere, what's up?"

But Violet Burrows, of Helena, Montana, was the lady I had swapped for a sucking pig to the cook who traded her for a dog to the sergeant-major who sold her for a pair of boots to the good Inspector Sarde. Then I had written advising her to bring an action against poor Sarde for breach of promise of marriage. According to Brat's last letter, Inspector Sarde was at Fort Qu'Appelle twenty miles north of Troy station, on the Canadian Pacific. And here was Violet Burrows on her way to Troy. It would never do. She was much too good for Sarde. She belonged to me.

I rushed at the corporal of the guard, and told him to parade me to the officer commanding.

"Oh, go and die," said he, still at his cards, "my deal."

But I had him firmly by the ear. "Come quick," said I, "come on. I've got to get transferred—tomorrow's train—a little widow—a grandmother of mine, and bound for Troy. Oh, by my sainted aunt's dear speckled socks, come on!"

III

A mile outside of Winnipeg station, just at the end of the sidings, the west-bound train slowed down, then stopped to admit three passengers who came in a government sleigh. These boarded the train and marched through the cars in procession: an important dog snuffling at the passengers on an official tour of inspection, a red-haired sailor tramp, so badly wanted by the local police that he had to be shipped outside their jurisdiction, and a black-avised soldier who, to judge by contemporary portraits, looked rather like the devil.

As we three entered the day-car the tramp shouted, "There she is!"

I told him it was rude to point, bade him stow my luggage and sit down, and then approached the lady, throwing a salute.

"Widow Burrows?" I asked.

"Miss Burrows," was the prim answer.

She was a pretty, tip-tilted blonde, of the best housemaid type, a dead common young animal, yet quite attractive in a land where women were still rare. In England I used to sample them by dozens, taking an educational course in any favors that they had to offer. This one had a pert fur cap, a coat of the same which fitted crushingly over a most pretentious bustle. The skirt seemed hung the wrong way round. From the size, shape and condition of the hands, gloves would have been advisable. She giggled under inspection.

From Sarde's photographs, of course, she knew the uniform of the mounted police and airily supposed me to be his messenger; so I told her I was to be escort as far as Troy, then shed my hot furs and asked if I might sit down.

For a mere messenger she thought that rather familiar, so I told her not to bristle because it was not becoming. "Now, don't drop your parcels, my dear." I pointed out Red Saunders in the corner.

"The kicker you hired yesterday is tamed and eats out of my hand. But have you engaged assassins for to-day?" I searched under the seats, and told her that I was timid about being kicked.

"Oh, say!" She was all of a flutter. That species usually got excited when they expected kisses. It was well to keep them expecting, for when they had nothing to hope for interest was apt to flag.

"Now don't be formal, young woman. A smile, please. There, how charming the sudden sunshine! And how is your late husband? The one in Hel—in Helena?"

"Sir!"

"How stupid of me. Not introduced, eh? Miss Burrows, allow me to present Mr. la Mancha who wrote to you once or twice, you may remember, eh?"

"Oh!"

"Please do that 'Oh!' again. Lips perfectly enchanting, Mrs. Burrows. I could arrange my kisses in that vase like roses."

Miss Burrows played at indignant heroine molested by a villain.

"I—I—I'm n-not Mrs. Burrows. I told you before."

"So? You've exorcised the ghost of the late husband? May his divorced spirit fry, for all I care, Miss Burrows. Or perhaps you're only a widow, at home in Helena."

"Now you go away, Mr. la Mancha, or I'll get right mad."

"Don't call me mister. Call me Blackguard."

"I got no use for you anyways."

"You advertised for me."

"I didn't! I never! You advertised!"

"Ah! And you sent me the photograph of an ugly aunt—a scarecrow—instead of your lovely self. Why—why?"

"Say," she bridled, "if Mr. Sarde sent you to —wall—all I kin say is—"

"Don't you mean was?"

"I'll tell Mr. Sarde—there!"

"Do you know that his father was hanged when his mother stole the ducks?"

My arm stole round her waist.

"Oh, we'll be noticed! I'll scream! I swear I'll scream!"

"We'll both scream. Then we're sure to be noticed."

"You're just too horrid. It's not respectable."

"I hang in thy sunshine all spread out, like a kipper. Make me what you will." My arm closed round her waist, and was hardly long enough.

"Now you want to let me go right now, or—"

"My dear, you've never enjoyed yourself so much in all your life."

"I shall call for help!"

"Do. If I'd only a tuning fork, I'd give you the note—the high Q."

"When the brakeman comes, or the conductor, I will, I swear I will!"

"Won't the newsboy do? Don't eat me, try a banana."

I bought one from the newsboy for fifteen cents, half peeled it and held it to her lips.

"I won't touch it," she said, and bit. "I—"

"Bite, ruby lips, clutch hard, oh, pearls, and give your tongue a rest, 'cause you can't talk with your mouth full, greedy. To think that all your ancestors lived on nuts! Exit banana up center. And now with its tender inside skin I wipe the powder gently off thy nose."

"We'll be seen!" she pleaded.

"And envied. Don't I flirt nicely? Banana skin should be good to swab off rouge, but I think this must be a preparation of pig fat and brick dust, for it won't come off. I use cherry tooth paste, but then, I'm a brunette. And now, my dear, if you'll turn your nose half left, I don't mind kissing you."

"I dare you!"

"This way. Um. If I weren't so painfully shy, yes, you may tickle me."

"I didn't."

"Then you should. Now, when you're finished huffing like the female puff bird, you'll tickle me, or I'll dance you the length of the car."

"Will that do?"

"Nicely, thanks. Now left ear."

"There's the brakeman, he'll see us!"

The brakeman passed, followed by the conductor who examined tickets, but Miss Violet with her nose in the air and my arm around her waist, pretended total strangers.

I began to lose interest. The girl was mine for the asking. Any man in the force could have won her easy favors. She only interested me as Sarde's property. "And so," said I, "you're meeting him at Qu'Appelle."

"Mind you own business."

"It is my business. Didn't I tell you to sue him for breach of promise?"

"There isn't any breach. We're engaged, so there."

"So you've got to marry him, eh?" and I led her on to talk about herself, the only topic she had for conversation.

Miss Burrows, was, I believe, not fortunate in the selection of her parents, and had been adopted at the age of fourteen by an uncle, Eliphalet P. Burrows, known as Loco, because he happened to be cracked. He was caretaker at a bankrupt mine near Helena, absorbed in a fool invention which used up all his wages, and glad to have Miss Violet because she was cheap. A servant would expect to be paid.

To those who have eyes, ears and a heart, the wilderness gives a better education than the schools, but the girl turned her back on that, sprawling in the parlor with windows draped to shut out all things beautiful. The place was full of shams and plush vulgarities, and there she spent her leisure reading novels.

Now fiction honestly made by craftsmen may be true to human life, and at its best a mirror reflecting the world. But an average novel depicts a hero perfectly sweet, canned virtue, guaranteed bullet proof; and a heroine who is potted chastity and warranted tender: two figures void of human character, whose respectable passions are thwarted for about three hundred pages, saleable at one dollar and thirty-five cents. Then they marry, and live happily ever after. Truth may be stranger than that—but I have doubts.

Miss Violet's novels depicted villains of spotless blackness, the good flawlessly innocent but painfully underfed. Vice lived in guilty splendor, wicked earls lunched in their coronets, lurid adventuresses went hurtling to the bad, and nobody had the slightest sense of humor. She fed on offal.

Old Burrows had a stepson, young Joe Chambers, a cow-hand earning forty dollars a month, a decent fellow, tongue-tied and a lout, but with the makings of a first-rate husband. He spent his money on presents, his spare time in devotion, while Miss Violet, who had nobody else to flirt with, made love to him out of books, had him for dummy to keep herself in practise, and wrecked his life without the least compunction.

She waited for the lover of her dreams, the hero of fiction, and in this condition replied to my mock advertisement in the Matrimonial Ashbin. Some shreds or casual patches of modesty impelled her to send the portrait of a repulsive aunt, and to fit herself out in bogus widowhood.

Decent women avoid that sort of correspondence, and our boys of C Troop felt that the girls who made love by post were fair game for any sort of lark. For the sheer repulsiveness of the photograph she sent, this correspondence was a standing joke in the troop until Inspector Sarde was fool enough to take her seriously. She sent him a photograph of herself and dropped the pose of widow. I sent her ample warning.

Had she shown my letter to her lover, Joe would have ridden across and shot me. Had she shown it to Uncle Loco, he would have prated and been tiresome. Even her conscience told her she had laid herself open to insult and as a matter of common sense, had better take no risk of something worse. But her vanity had been wounded and in a silly rage, she must needs get even. She would take my advice and lead Sarde on into a promise of marriage, then if he broke his pledge threaten an action at law.

So came Sarde's photograph in uniform, and with quite regular features and a viking mustache he seemed her ideal lover, her hero of fiction. He wrote too as lonely men are apt to do. After all, he held Her Majesty's Commission in a distinguished corps, had official rank as a gentleman, was ex-officio justice of the peace, could give her a social position, offered marriage, and was now in earnest. The poor fool thought herself in love.

Sarde was not very clever. An Ontario farm, a military college, and some forlorn outposts on the frontier had not completed him in worldly wisdom. With a lieutenant's pay, to marry on the strength of a pretty photograph gave him distinction in a world of fools. By running into debt, he managed to send an engagement ring, and afterward that sealskin cap and coat, cut as the fashion was, to fit over a bustle. All that I knew, from my chum Buckie who sent me a letter of gossip from Fort French. Later, Sarde sent the girl a hundred dollars, a month's pay, and got himself transferred to Fort Qu'Appelle within reach of civilization.

For her part Miss Violet developed lumbago in the left leg, so that Loco had to engage a Chinese servant. Released from housework, she decided that her mission in life was to help Loco with his invention, for which she must prepare by spending a year at college. Thus Loco was induced to borrow sixty dollars for her fare down East—"spoiling the Egyptians" she called that, and Joe raised forty dollars. "All's fair in love," said she.

Heart-broken, she left old Loco to his fate, boarding the train at Helena in floods of tears. "I cried my eyes out." By the time she reached Fargo, she cheered up. "Can't be helped," said she, and took the train for Winnipeg. There, feeling much better, she bought a ticket for Troy. A stage sleigh thence would take her to Fort Qu'Appelle, and she wired Sarde the date of her arrival. By the time I met her outside Winnipeg on board the west-bound train, she had recovered from her late bereavement. "It's all in a lifetime," said she.

"It's love at long range," said I. "The adoring swine sends you a first-class ticket for Cupid's express, saying, 'Come to my arms, regardless of expense.' But, my dear, why Sarde?"

"And why not?"

"There's me."

"You? You're only an enlisted man, but my Cyril is an officer."

"Comfort me," I squeezed her, "or I'll scream."

My attention wandered to Rich Mixed, to Saunders who grinned and winked, to the few passengers and the passing landscape. But Miss Burrows, to bring me back to the main thing, herself, produced a grubby hand while she talked palmistry, bidding me read her fortune.

I told her, between yawns that the paws of little cats are much alike, useful for mousing.

"But I'm a lady."

"Ladies and cats are pretty much the same. Both wash themselves all over every day."

It was not in that sense Miss Burrows had claimed to be a lady, and with an angry flush she set to work to put me in my place.

"Oh, say," she asked incisively, "ain't English common soldiers with red coats called Tommies?"

"Toms," I corrected, "not Tommies. Toms. A she puss, who uses cheap scent instead of licking her fur, is apt to get scratched by Toms."

"How dare you say I'm no lady?"

"You're not, my dear. You're nice and common, frightfully attractive, pretty enough to turn the head of any Tom. Why, pussie, dear, if you lived in England, any of our chaps would walk out with you in the park. They'd charge half-a-crown—but, by jove, I'd do it for a bob."

"Holy snakes! Me to pay you for—wall, I guess that's all you red-coats are fit for anyway. We thrashed the stuffing out of you!"

"We're better without the stuffing. Oh, much better. I never pad. Do you?"

"We chased you out of Amurrica."

"We liked it. We like being noticed. What breaks our hearts is being ignored by a proud people."

"How about Bunker Hill?"

"Ah, yes. How true. But if he'd been a good Amurrican you'd call him Bunker G. Hill, or Bunker Zee Hill, eh?"

"It was a battle, and you ran like rabbits."

"Eh? Did we smell some beer? At the slightest whiff of beer we outleap the longest rabbit. Makes me thirsty to think of. Wish I'd been there. Pussie, where is Bunker V. Hill? There may be some beer left."

"Boston, of course."

"Boston. We've got a little town named after it. And where's Boston?"

"You ain't so ignorant as that. Wall, I reckon it's the capital of New England."

"Oh, we've got a place named after New England, too. Let's see—oh, yes, isn't it run, like ours, by the Irish?"

"You make me sick."

"How charmingly frank you are."

"And you," she sniveled, "just"—sniff—"treating me"—sniff—"as if I wasn't a lady."

"That," said I gravely, "I shall never be."

"So I'm no account," said Miss Burrows with asperity. "I think you've got just the homeliest face, and the most or'nary manners I ever seen. You're no gentleman."

"Alas, no! I was found in an ashbin with dead cats. My manners were a disgrace to my native slum. My face is my misfortune. Pity me."

"You're a brute!" she sobbed.

"Cry, but take care, my dear, not to sniff. There, you spoil it all by sniffing."

"Beast!"

"Beauty! And so we're Beauty and the Beast. She loved him."

At that she cheered up, and scratched.

"The beast," said she, "was a prince in disguise, but you're a—"

"No, my dear. He wasn't a mere prince. He traveled in white goods, a real gent, a swell."

"You're laughing at me."

"All the time," said I.

"Oh!"

"Because you're angry, my dear, for once in your life you're behaving simply and naturally—first lesson in being a lady. You'll get on."

"Oh, that's what you think."

"American girls are the cleverest in the world at the great business."

"Wall now, what's that? I'd love to hear."

"Getting on. The principal word in the great American language is the verb to get. I get, you get out, he gets there. We are getting on, you are getting way up, they are busted. Do you use hair oil?"

"No, of course not."

"Then you may lay your golden head upon my—hold on. I'll spread my handkerchief—so. Now, cuddle up for a sleep."

She had supper with me at the dining station, and afterward while I smoked, ate candy until she could hold no more, and played with Rich Mixed until both were tired.

"Sleep is good," I told her, "so two sleeps are better than one. I told the brakeman to wake us up at Troy. Sweet dreams."

Sometime in the dead middle of the night, Inspector Sarde boarded the train at Troy, and came swaggering through the cars in search of a girl with an aureole of bright hair, a dainty tip-tilted nose and pouting lips, wearing the furs he had sent her, awaiting his first kiss, demure, shy, innocent.

He found his promised wife clasped in my arms, her head upon my shoulder and both of us fast asleep. He never really loved me, anyway.

Being a Canadian he had the national qualities of strength and self-control, and yet was capable of a blind white fury in which his eyes would blaze from a livid deathly face. Because he did not lift his voice or use unnecessary words I found him quite impressive. On this occasion a stroke from his whip aroused me so that I started broad awake staring up at an officer of the corps. I threw off the girl, stood to attention with wooden gravity and saluted.

As to Miss Burrows, with one blink she sprang into his arms and said, "Oh, Cyril!" which made him rather comic in his high authority. He licked his dry lips before he could even speak.

"Constable," said he, very cold and rigid, like some cold monumental lamp-post entwined by a siren or a mermaid, "what are you doing here?"

"Transferred, sir, Winnipeg to Regina."

"Get off the train," his words were stinging, his tone had malice. "I'll wire the commissioner that I detained you on my detachment, and in the morning you report at my office for duty."

"I understand, sir," for he had me at his mercy. I saluted and turned to obey.

Then Sarde faced the woman who had betrayed him.

"Come," he said icily, and turned on his heel.

"Oh, Cyril!"

"Come," he repeated, over his shoulder, "unless you prefer to go on with the train; you can go to hell for all I care."

"Oh, Cyril, let me explain!"

"Are you coming or not?"

So he left the train, with the woman trailing after him, making a scene. I followed.

Far back in the long ago time an Indian woman lay in her teepee dying and with her last breath called her lover's name. And many miles away her lover heard. He pulled up his dog-train and stood beside the cariole, and listening to the silence, cried, "Who calls?"

The French Canadian voyagers would tell that story of the Indian who heard a spirit voice, and answering cried, "Qu' Appelle?" From that cry was the valley named, and the old Hudson's Bay Fort is still called Qu'Appelle.

On the hillside overlooking the fort stood our log shanties of the police detachment, but Inspector Sarde, the officer commanding, and his new wife had quarters at the hotel.

I was posted to Sarde's detachment and as all soldiers know, when an officer commanding is down upon any trooper he can easily drive the man to mutiny, desertion or suicide within the first few weeks. Sarde did his very best to that intent, hazed me, nagged at me, goaded me, set traps to catch me in some lapse of temper, told me off to impossible duties and used false charges to give me ruthless punishment. My pay was collected in fines, the other fellows had their leave stopped on my account that they might be turned against me, and once I passed a night in the cells with a hundred degrees of frost. Of course I deserved all I got, and made no moan because I had so richly earned Sarde's hatred. He put me on my mettle, forced me to excel in every duty, made me the best man in his command, set me to keep the other chaps in good spirits and make him a good example in the way of manners.

Of course, our men told nothing to civilians about affairs within our family; but passers-by on the road who saw me undergoing punishment, began to spread the scandal until nobody in the place would speak to Sarde or call upon his wife.

Buckie, the dear chap who first had introduced me to the outfit, was recently transferred to this division, and posted to Fort Qu'Appelle. He was my friend in very bitter need, feeding me coffee when I was like to freeze on pack drill, rousing the other fellows until they would perjure themselves to the eyes in my defense, getting me help with my extra work, turning the crowd against Sarde. And then he used to comfort me in private.

One Sunday afternoon Sarde was away to Troy, and Buckie helped me at the stable where I had to set the ring for a stove-pipe in the roof of an A tent. For some time we were busy while we measured and cut the canvas. Then, sitting on up-ended buckets in the warm dusk, we began the stitching. After a morning talk with Sarde I felt so ill that I asked Buckie if the man intended to kill me.

"Sarde," answered Buckie, "says he'll tone you down or kill you, one or the other. You need it a whole lot. Why? Because you'd got to think you were Adam before the creation of Eve. The world is not inhabited entirely by one Blackguard. Suppose you think about somebody else for a change."

That was straight from the shoulder anyway. Since first I had seen him a rookie of the rookiest, he had become tremendously grown-up into the very stock pattern of buck policeman.

"The C Troop crowd," he went on, "think you're the sort of bounder who needs to live in lime-light on salvos of applause."

Buckie's respectable soul was in full revolt at my enormities. I tried not to flinch.

"I ain't much on soldiering"—he was so nice in the vernacular!—"but I been taking stock of the men who count, who do things and get the outfit a good name."

I thought of Buckie's first advent on the charging steed, and how I halted his trooper, so that the cavalier sped at me through the air, gun still in hand and resolute for duty.

"The real men," said he, "keep their mouths tight except when they've something to say. That gives 'em time to think; you don't get any. They obey orders, and there's nothing else in life until they've done their job. So they've no time to show off; you have. You'd make a showman, or a clown in a circus, whereas this outfit is something serious."

I reminded Buckie of being really serious once when Rain stole his clothes and he paraded around in my painted cow-skin robe tracking a malefactor.

"Now, Sarde," he went on, "was only a corporal when he took a prisoner out of Big Bear's camp in face of two thousand guns. He's a man, and he'll be superintendent before he's through. You'll never get your stripes. Why, Blackguard, Sarde wouldn't be a man at all if he allowed you to monkey with his wife."

I told Buckie to pet me, or I'd cry. He said he couldn't because he was using his foot to hold the canvas down.

Then, stitching away with sail-needle and palm thimble, he looked up at me with just the expression of some prim old maid. "Did you ever hear tell," he asked, "of old Fort Carlton?"

Rather! Fort Carlton stood on the bank of the ice-clad North Saskatchewan, a cluster of framed log houses inside a stockade with bastions on the two rear corners. How well I remembered the picture! It was a trading post, strong against bows and arrows, but from the high edge of the plains even a trade musket had range enough to pick men off in the square. All that, I had read as a boy in fine adventure books, longing to ride with the French half-breeds and the Cree Indians running buffaloes up there on the plains above the fort. I wanted to taste the pemmican made by their squaws of bison beef and berries, to sail with the gay brigades which carried that food to other Hudson's Bay posts all down the great Mackenzie. But now the bison herds were swept away, they and the hunters and the brave voyagers.

"We're going there," said Buckie.

"What, to Fort Carlton?"

"You bet. That's why Sarde ordered a stove-pipe hole for this tent. It's to cover a sleigh for his wife. The sleigh will be rigged as a shack with a stove, kitchen, bed, everything."

Now I began to understand why men were being drafted in to Fort Qu'Appelle, the tons of harness and gear we had been overhauling, Sarde's visit to Troy and lots of other happenings.

Buckie began to gossip.

"Down at the Hudson's Bay store yesterday a Scotch half-breed from the North was talking of Louis Riel, the man, you know, who got up the Red River Rebellion way back in '71. He is up there now, among the old buffalo runners and voyagers, who used to hunt and man the brigades for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Carlton. He is spreading treason among the breeds and the Crees. God has sent him, he says, to raise war against the police, the white men and the pope, to found a republic of hunters and voyagers, to be the father of all the prairie men. They are to burn Fort Carlton, to kill all the mounted police, to drive the whites from the plains—for then the buffaloes will come back, and their lodges will be red with meat as in the good old times."

"So there'll be war?" I asked and my heart was jumping with excitement.

"When the grass comes." Buckie threaded his needle neatly as a housewife. "War," said he. "That's why we're going to Carlton, and Sarde won't have much time to spare for hazing you, eh, Blackguard?"

Buckie proved right in all that he had told me. Within the week we marched, some sixteen men, mostly green recruits, each driving a one-horse sled known as a jumper, laden with forage, bedding, kit, camp gear, grub and even fire-wood. As on a sea voyage, there was nothing to be had by the wayside, so our jumpers were laden like so many little ships, as our flotilla drove on the great snows. The mercury was frozen, and at the Salt Plains, it was sixty degrees below zero, rough travel for Mrs. Sarde in her sleigh-tent, not comfortable for us. One of our fellows, Crook, had his brain chilled, and in high delirium drove off to chase a star until a little chap called Sheppey rounded him up and herded him to camp. We had to leave Crook at the Salt Plain station, and Doc, with his face frozen off, stayed with him by way of nurse.

Sarde was quite friendly to me on that trail, and for once I liked him because he played the man, taking his share with us, not with his wife. And I was happy trotting beside my jumper, pulling my horse out of snowdrifts, busiest man in the crowd when we set up the tents and cooked, rolled down our beds and slept, broke up our camp and marched.

I even made Buckie own up I was not a bounder.

Indeed, that five days' journey had been quite perfect if only one might have left the baggage behind, and gone without a cold uncomfortable body, a sled and a weary horse. The spirit needs no baggage to enter that great White Silence of the snow-field or to visit the night splendors of the star drift.

On our last march of sixty miles we drove through the log village of Batoche where Louis Riel was hatching his new rebellion, and some of his hunters lounged sullen in their doorways. There we crossed the South Saskatchewan and all day long were driving through the land between the two branches of that river, so very soon to become the seat of war. It was dusk when we came to the edge of the plains, looking down on the valley of the North Saskatchewan. It was starlight when we reached the foot of the hill, and swung round the stockade to enter the river gate of old Fort Carlton.

CHAPTER IV
THE PASSIONS OF WAR

Two human lives flow sparkling down childhood's merry rapids, and more sedately across the sadder years, to draw together, then to run apart, until at last they meet midway upon their journey, and as one life go married toward their rest.

Two rivers tumbling down the Rocky Mountains, sparkling through the foot-hills, racing across the plains, draw near together, then flow apart a while before they meet, and marry to form the great Saskatchewan rolling toward the sea.

There is my map, but I was always bad in my geography, and as to history—well, what can you expect of a blackguard?

Just where the two Saskatchewans first draw near, and are but fifty miles or so apart, our base, Fort Carlton, stood on the northern branch, and Batoche, the rebel camp, was on the southern river. Below these, in the land between the rivers, lay the Prince Albert settlement, and its trading village stood on the northern branch fifty-five miles down-stream from Fort Carlton. So you see, the rebels commanded the main approach both to the fort and the settlement. They were strong enough to threaten one while they attacked the other. But neither fort nor settlement had strength sufficient to attack the rebels. So much for strategy.

Louis Riel commanded at Batoche four hundred buffalo runners, dead shots at full gallop, and perhaps the finest marksmen in the world. He had two hundred Assiniboin warriors, and twenty-two hundred Crees—in all three thousand men. His envoys were at large among the Blackfeet, and if they rose—good night! Still worse, the Irish Fenians in the United States seemed able to control the government, for they were openly preparing, in Riel's interest, their third armed raid upon Canada. Worst of all, we could not arrest the rebel because he happened to be French Canadian, and had the active sympathy of fifteen hundred thousand brave compatriots. Our first motion might give the whole Dominion to the flames of civil war.

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.

"Turn in," said I, "or you'll be crocked by morning." He told me he was on flying sentry until four, then gave me news.

By stripping his far-flung outposts, our big chief, Sorrel Top, had scratched up another hundred men and was marching from Fort Qu'Appelle. Two men were badly frozen, sixty-five were snow-blind, the horses had played out, and some civilian teamsters lagging behind were captured. Then a rebel ambush had been discovered just four miles ahead, so Sorrel Top, with a sixty-mile march, had swung into Prince Albert. There he was resting twenty-four hours to organize the settlers for defense. He would arrive this day, the twenty-sixth, take over our command, and with the combined force crush the rebellion before it got too strong. But we were not to move until he came. That is a wise delay which makes the road safe.

"Who do you think," asked Buckie, "rode in with that despatch?"

I supposed he would be some poor B Troop coyote.

"His name," said Buckie impressively, "is Joe Chambers."

But that was the name of Mrs. Sarde's old lover, the Montana cowboy. Had he joined the force?

"Asked for you, Blackguard."

"Go, fetch him."

By the time I had saddled Anti and bridled him—he was Anti-everything, especially the bit—Buckie came back with Chambers. He was a suspicious, jealous, clear-eyed sort of beast without any small talk. He sized me up, judging my points as though he were asked to buy me, but not one word would he say until Buckie cleared. Then he spoke slowly, tersely, and with weight in all he said, most clean of heart, direct and sterling man.

Miss Burrows, he told me, had wrote from Troy in the British possessions, to Loco, her fool uncle. Claimed that she'd met in the cars going west a man which belonged to the police, name of La Mancha. Was that my name?

I owned up.

Name sounded Dago, but I seemed to be white. Had treated her white, anyways. He thanked me, and I bowed.

At Troy this lady got off the cars to marry an officer, name of Sarde. Was he any good?

"No."

She was Sarde's wife, she wrote, and heaps miserable.

I could have opened Mr. Chambers' eyes. His lady had a smile for one man, "Oh, thank you, how nice!" for another, dropped her gloves for a third—she was great at dropping parcels—made eyes at all the rest. She had three-fourths of our garrison in a state of day-dreams and fond hopes for more, the kind of flirt who ogles niggers so that they go crazy and have to be burned. I could not tell Chambers all I thought of his lady, who wrote that her heart was broke.

Nothing had this real man to say about his own engagement to the woman, of the ranch he had stocked with cattle under her brand, registered in her name, not his own "with the stock association up to Helena." He told me nothing then of the 'dobe cabin, the fixings, the pi-anner, all for her, of the months' wages he had given that she might get eddicated down in civilization, or of the callous way she had betrayed him.

Only he stiffened, and his voice came near to breaking as he told me of suspicions. This guy she'd married up with must be some swine, and needed shooting a whole lot for making her unhappy. So he'd rode to Troy and found her gone. That meant, I suppose, that he had sacrificed his living, to ride a thousand miles for a woman who had not even troubled to send a post-card. At Troy he reckoned to find the preacher who had hitched up that team. I had tried also, but only discovered that Miss Burrows went with Mr. Sarde from Fort Qu'Appelle for a sleigh-ride, and came back married.

Chambers had tracked the pair to Troy, where he found that the ceremony had been performed by Happy Bill, a converted railroad fireman, not in holy orders; not licensed to marry people. He had broken the law to perform a sacrilege.

"He ain't no branded preacher," so Chambers put it, "but a maverick which ain't allowed in the herd, and railroad men is worse than sheep herders, anyhow."

Sarde had found the woman in my arms, and as she played crooked with him, so he had done with her. There had been no marriage. She was not his wife.

"And now," said Chambers, "I done joined the police, to follow this here Sarde. Your general give me a despatch to ride, and I shorely burned this trail to get here quick." He pulled the service-revolver from its holster.

"I hain't stuck on this hyre soldier gun," he said, "but I had to hang up my Colt at the Troy hotel—so this will have to do. Where's Sarde?"

"I'd like to see Sarde killed," said I, "but I'd hate to see you hanged."

"Where's Sarde?"

"Search me," said I, "he's not my property."

"Where's Sarde?"

"Find him," said I, and swinging to the saddle, rode away.

At 4 A.M. I relieved the chap on picket just at the brow of the plains where the road curves over southward, toward Batoche. The orders he repeated showed quite clearly that Paddy expected the rebels to rush the fort at dawn.

Orion was setting already, and the stillness became more terrible every moment, the live menacing silence. Before I had even time for an alarm shot the rebel scouts might rush me, for if they meant to attack the fort at dawn it was high time they put me out of action. Stars rose upon my left, they set upon my right, then the earth's edge darkened black against the east, and it looked as if some angel with a brush made a faint wash of stars to paint the sky.

Up the hill behind me came thud of hoofs, and swish of skidding runners, clank of harness, voices, "Gid-up you! Haw, Mollie!" I sensed a mounted man leading a string of sleighs up the long hill from the fort, but never saw them until they topped the brow curving past me filmy-gray like ghosts. They were bound, they told me, to get the traders' stores from Duck Lake Post before the rebels came.

I heard reveillé sound, its notes faint silver, tingling the fine air. The eastward sky was lemon flecked with rose, the snow-field was changing from indigo to lilac, then the red sun shone level through poplar groves, and made their frosted branches cornelian in mist of fire. The sky was cobalt next, and shadows like blue pools filled all the hollows, while the poplar groves were changing to tremulous white diamond. It was time for breakfast, but my relief was late. Then I was drowsy pacing old Anti on a measured beat to keep us both awake. Half sleeping I heard at distant intervals the bugles calling "Dress," "Stables," "Grub pile."

The string of teams came rattling homeward now, at a sharp trot, taking the hills on a lope, the teamsters shouting chaff one to another, the men in the sleigh beds with their carbines ready, peering back. The sleighs came past me empty, and somebody shouted, "Rebels! Run, Blackguard! Rebels coming!"

"Send my relief," I yelled as they went swinging down the curve, the first patrol of the regiment which ever showed its tail to an enemy.

For a long time I scanned the rolling plain ahead with all its frozen pools and clumps of aspen. There was no sign of rebels. Then from the fort I heard the bugle crying a new call: "Boot and saddle!"

Not knowing what that was, I rode to the lookout, from whence I could see the square aswarm with men, all falling in like atoms of some crystal until a general parade stood rigid on command. It was but a mile. I could see Paddy making a speech, and heard the thin thread of sound, lost in a riot of cheering. Then there were short sharp barks of command while the advance guard formed fours, the little brass seven-pounder swung her little tail, dismounted men piled into all the sleighs sent out again to load at Duck Lake Post, and the rear-guard covered all—out through the water-gate, round the stockade, across the trampled meadow and up the timbered hillside. Two scouts came ramping past me and plowed on into the blinding glare. Next Paddy, attended by his bugler, rode up to the hill crest, and I begged him to let me come.

"Fall in," said he, "rear-guard." So I spurred through the drifts to get there lest he should change his mind.

The column was in half sections, the last consisting of Buckie who fancied himself with the stiff cavalry seat, and the Montana cow-hand who rode easy. I dropped in behind them and called Joe Chambers back. Had he seen Sarde, I asked.

He had not.

Sarde was just ahead, riding abreast of the column in full view, but Chambers did not know his enemy by sight, and Buckie had not told.

"You see that officer?" I asked.

"Your partner," said the cowboy, "says that's Inspector Brown."

"Yes, Bunty Brown," said I.

"Your partner called him Jocko," said the cowboy. "So that's Sarde!" He whipped out his gun and spurred forward.

"Old Bunt was a jockey," I explained, "before he went to the bad and joined the police."

Chambers fell back beside me and sheathed his gun.

"Seen Mrs. Sarde?" I asked, to change the subject.

"Sent her a note," said Chambers; "she sent a letter back."

He would not tell me what was in that letter.

Ten miles we rode through park-land with its little tarns for ducks, its aspen groves and drifted glades where soft snow lay neck-deep beside our trail. Then, as we passed through a narrow belt of bush, word came from man to man, that the scouts were racing in. Beyond the timber our column formed front on the left, extending out at right angles from the road for nearly a hundred yards. The big sleighs plunged through drifts like boats in a storm at sea, forming a rough and broken line of rampart. Then we dismounted into snow breast-deep, and sent back all the horses into the bush for shelter with one man to each bunch of four, while the rest of us took cover in clusters behind the sleighs, and our officers tramped out a pathway close behind us.

The open land ahead was only about a hundred yards across encircled by clumps of bush. On our far right, across the road, a lane deep-drifted, went off to a little shack on rising ground. That farm had a field enclosed with a snake fence which filled the angle between lane and road.

Out there along the road beside the fence was Paddy, with our interpreter, Joe McKay, a half-breed, a chap we liked. He was interpreting to the skipper while an Indian, wrapped in a dingy white blanket, stood making a long oration. This was the Cree chief, Beardy, who owned the farm on our right. He seemed to be talking forever and ever, amen.

I felt it was all some endless, rambling dream, from which I should wake for breakfast. Beside me on my right was Chambers, and half my mind was listening while he talked. He told me of the ranch he had made for Miss Burrows, the shack he had built for her, the fixings, the ornymints. Those made me chuckle, while the other half of my mind wondered resentfully what the joke was about. It seemed profane to laugh while in my dream I knew I was badly frightened.

Out on the road the Indian suddenly snatched at the interpreter's carbine, but McKay was on the alert, and emptied his revolver into Beardy, who crumpled up, staggered against the fence and lay there twitching. Our leader swung round in the saddle, and "Fire, boys!" he shouted.

"Please, sir, you're right in the way!" cried the seven-pounder gun.

"Oh, never mind me!" laughed Paddy. Beardy had held him in talk while the rebels, four times our strength, traveling light on snow-shoes, hidden within the bush, closed in a horseshoe formation with our line between its prongs, almost surrounded at point-blank range for the coming massacre. We faced a blinding snow-glare toward the sun, where trees of branched sprayed diamond sparkled along their roots with jets of flame, and gusts of smoke like pearls rolled in serene air. We fired out a blue smoke film, our bullets whipping the crests of snow-drift into spray, and dust of diamond fell from the fairy woods.

So rifles blazed and smoked, so bullets whined and sang, but still the dream sense told me it was all a mere twittering as of summer birds amid the mighty silence of the plains which filled the vault of heaven sun-high with peace. Then my mind cleared, for a gust of lead was smashing the sleigh-box above me, shattering and splintering planks into long slivers. I knew that our force was helplessly bogged down, ambushed and being destroyed. After one shot the seven-pounder jammed. Nine gallant civilian volunteers were killed attempting to charge the shack upon our right. The enemy at both ends enfiladed our broken line.

Then in the bush I saw a man leap, falling. Buckie let out a little yelp of bliss, but this was my meat and I claimed it. "And what's the next article?" said I. At my side I heard something grunt. "Pig!" said I, but Chambers rolled over against me. So Buckie and I let our carbines cool off, while we watched Chambers to see what was wrong with him. The red flush faded under the tan, the strong features became thin, pinched, frozen. His buffalo coat spread broad upon the snow, the sunlight blazed on scarlet serge and glittering buttons, but his face was in gray shadow.

"Wake up, old man," said I, stripping his serge apart to give him air. "Where is it, Joe?"

His fingers plucked at my sleeves. He whispered but I could not catch the words. Then the clay-white face relaxed, a blue shadow like rising water flooded over it. The lips parted. I took a letter out of the dead man's pocket.

A bullet whipped fur from my sleeve, one crashed against my carbine so that it stung my fingers, and half a dozen shattered through the sleigh as I turned back to the fighting. Those shadowy figures moving through the bush toward our rear must be stopped quickly.

Just then Doctor Miller came mooching along behind me, and half a dozen men were begging him to take cover, while in a gentle drawling voice he told us not to fuss.

"Fine scrapping, boys, make the most of the entertainment. Just been shot in the pocketbook myself. Bullet hit a pack o' debts but nary one receipt. So, this man's promoted, eh?" He knelt down beside Joe's body. "Beyond my jurisdiction, Blackguard, eh?"

He gave me the dead man's belt of ammunition, dusted the snow from his knees as he stood up, and went lounging back down the line, giving a new heart, a finer courage to every man he passed.

Red Saunders had found his place too warm a corner, so he climbed over Buckie and lay down on the dead man's outspread overcoat, his legs across my own. He said he always 'ated getting wet.

"Happy?" I asked him, for I liked the sailor hobo in those days.

"'Ungry. Gimme blood! Did ye see Sarde? 'E's the only h'orficer lying dahn. Got Gilchrist's carbine. I kicked 'im—by h'accident, cruel 'ard, too. 'Ad to appollergise."

"Aim lower," said I, "point-blank. And lie low; your blazing red hair draws fire."

My next shot got my man, at least I think so, although Buckie claimed him.

"If I'm knocked," said Red, "I 'ereby wills and bequeaths to you, Blackguard, h'all my just debts. Share up them cartridges and don't be a 'og."

To cheer up my Brat in hospital at Fort French I had sent him by the last mail out a nice dirge set to our old Spanish tune of Alcala. So I began to sing that while I loaded, pumped and fired:

"Carry Brat reverently, gently, slow,
Pace by the trunnions with patient tread
Over the drifts of the rolling snow
With arms reversed, for the dead."

"Cheerful, eh?" was Red's pungent comment.

"Little we thought of him while we shared
All that was worst in the long campaign,
Little he guessed that we really cared:
But drums roll now, for the slain.

"Spreading the flag o'er his last long sleep,
Leading the charger he may not ride;
Though for the living the ways are steep
The road for the dead rolls wide.

"Bravely he suffer'd, and manly fought,
Great with Death's majesty, rides he there,
Royal the honors he dearly bought,
The peace which we may not share."

"Oh, shut it," Red wailed.

I fired once more at a pearl of smoke under the diamond trees, while I heard the death-scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders and then the bugle crying, "Cease firing! Retire!"

The rebels were charging. The horses led up to our line were bucking, fighting, breaking loose, falling as the teamsters backed them to the sleighs. Anti went down dead as I mounted. I saw a teamster crumple up, the chap whose load of coal I had burned to make him speak, Chatter McNabb!

Then I went mad with hatred of the rebels, I was mad with everything, with everybody, jostling Chatter's horses into place, snatching the traces up and hooking on, swearing at Red's bungling attempts to help me. I shouted at Chatter to keep his hair on for I wouldn't let him be scalped.

I dragged him, all white with snow out of the drifts, hoisted him to the sleigh, and tumbled him into the sleigh-bed all of a heap. There was Sarde in the sleigh-bed telling me to make haste, for he had business with the officer commanding, needed swift transport. I hated him for the trick he had played on a woman, I hated him for Joe Chambers' death, I hated him too much to look at him, or speak, but jumped to the driver's seat, and standing on it to get a better purchase, lashed the team to a gallop hoisting them over the drifts in flying snow surf and a hail of lead.

And then I heard a yell from the rear, shouts that a wounded man was being left behind. I must go back. But Sarde heard nothing of that, and cared for nothing except his errand to the commanding officer.

"Drive on!" he shouted at me as I swung the team. "Drive on! I order you to drive on!"

I swung the sleigh sharp to spill him, drove back to where some fellows were lifting the wounded man, then, standing on the seat I threatened Sarde with my whip.

"Get out, you cur!" I screamed at him. "You're a coward! A coward! Hear, you chaps! I charge this man with cowardice in the field! Get out of my sleigh or I'll flog you!"

The wounded man was lifted on board, the rest of the chaps piled in to ease him through the jolting, and once more I swung my team round to a gallop joining the retreat through clouds of flying snow. A sharp jolt brought us up to the firm ground of the road, and I swerved right, tailing in with the outfit at a swinging trot.

We had left twelve men dead in the field, we had eight wounded in the sleighs—one of them dying. We knew that we were thrashed, had let red war loose on all the settlements.

The last dropping shots astern gave way to silence, the glare was no longer blinding in our eyes, our confused rush found itself and was a disciplined column in retreat. In the presence of wounded and dying men a hushed quiet fell upon us like that of the Holy Eucharist. I drove on, praying.

Then I remembered Sarde with a sudden bitterness, and called back laughing, "Say, boys, where's Sarde, the coward?"

"In your sleigh, Constable," he answered quietly. "Is there a non-commissioned officer with us? You, Sergeant Boyle, put that man under arrest."

"Conshider yerself," said Boyle in his delicious brogue, touching my shoulder.

"And when we reach the fort," my enemy continued, "you'll put that man in the guard-room."

But Boyle was nettled, for that, at such a time, was an act of spite. "Constable la Mancha," he shouted, so that all might hear, "for charging an officer wit' cowardice in the field, ye'll be conshiderin' yershelf under close arrest, d'ye hear me?"

"You witness," said I, "to my charge of cowardice."

"Silence, prisoner!"

I handed my reins to Red Saunders as off man.

"Well, Sergeant," Sarde became affable, "might have been worse weather, eh?"

The sergeant turned his back on an officer under charge of cowardice, and a trooper at the tail end of the sleigh asked his neighbor, "When will Sarde be court-martialed?" From that moment the outfit treated Sarde as a leper.

Meanwhile I sulked, humped on the driving seat, though the blue sky and the fair snow-fields called on my soul to rest, to be at peace, and shamed by distracted spirit with their quiet. There was silence in that heaven for the space of half an hour, teaching me not to care, never to hate. I think I went off to sleep.

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.

"Oh!" she said. "How you frightened me! And I've waited hours. Oh, Joe!"

"Joe couldn't come—sent me."

"Mr. la Mancha!"

"At your service. I suppose you thought I was your lover's ghost."

"His ghost? Say, what d'you mean? Oh, Mr. la Mancha, he must have sent a letter, a message, something."

So she had not been told. It was damned awkward. I set my ax against the palisade. "Joe has been hurt," I explained as I bent over her, "shot in the fighting yesterday."

"Dead?" came her awestruck whisper.

"Dead. He told me to tell you."

"I must go to him," she sobbed.

"You needn't worry," I told her. "I got your letter out of his pocket and destroyed it. You're all right."

She was crying convulsively and there is nothing that annoys me more.

"Don't cry," said I, "you know you don't really care, so what's the good of shamming?"

She tried hysterics.

"Drop that," I told her. "What's the good of play-acting at me? You know you can't fool me. Drop it."

"Oh," she wailed, "how dare you say I don't care! You've b-broken my h-heart."

"Drop it."

She gulped, pulled herself together and looked up. "Well?"

"Now look here," I told her, "you stop playing the fool. You asked this man to run away with you. If you'd cared for him the least little bit, you wouldn't have asked a soldier on active service to get himself court-martialed and shot for deserting in the face of the enemy."

"I never—"

"Don't lie. Don't play crocodile tears on me. Stop shamming and lying for once in your mean little life. Joe came to save you from yourself, and died in the attempt."

That brought her to bay.

"You're cruel. You're unjust. You're insulting. You're a brute!"

"Chuck it," said I. "You've got to face the truth this once because it may save other lives. You told me you'd always despised him, thought he was stupid, dull, a fool, played with him, used him, accepted his presents, borrowed his pay and had him to flirt with and keep yourself in practise. 'It does 'em good,' you told me. Then you lied to him and left him in the lurch. Joe told me," here I had to improvise, "on the morning of his death, that you expected him to run away with you, through an enemy's country, in time of war. He saw through you at last. He said he'd see you damned first, and that's the message I bring to you from the dead."

She held her hands to her ears screaming, "Oh, let me off! Let me go!"

"Go," said I, standing aside and pointing toward the gate, "cut along, young woman, back to your duty."

She crouched down, cowering against the wall. "I daren't," she whispered, "he'll kill me!"

"Serve you jolly well right if he did. There isn't a man with any manhood in him would stand you for a day."

And I was sorry for her all the time. To be so mean a creature must be a wretched fate, endowed with pleasures but no happiness. Like a constricting snake she was created to crush the manhood out of men, to slaver them over, to destroy them, and hunt for more. To be a snake with a conscience must be horrible. So while my words were harsh I spoke only in pity to rescue this poor creature from herself.

"Your eyes," I said, "are a brace of harlots making wanton love to every man in sight. Your lips have no restraint while your tongue flatters and you make your sacred beauty a thing of hell. You fool men with sham tears, sham smiles, sham sentiments, sham emotions—playing the game of life with marked cards, cogged dice—a shark at getting, only a miser at giving."

"Oh, I don't!" She stood up to face me again. "I never! I—"

"Virtuous woman, eh? Why, Mary Magdalen and all her poor little sisters will keep house in Heaven before you've finished being grilled in hell."

"Oh, pity me," she moaned, "have mercy!"

"The pity you gave Joe, who escaped you in death? The pity you show poor Sarde who can't escape? I'm fighting Sarde to get him cashiered before he has me expelled, but yet I'm sorry for him. At worst, he's a Canadian, one of the finest, manliest race on earth. Go, make yourself worthy to have a husband, and don't stay whining here."

"I daren't. He beats me!"

"And you've richly deserved it, eh?"

She looked up with a weak, wan little smile. "Oh, yes."

"You won't be flogged unless you earn it, eh?"

"N-no."

"Run away back to your quarters. Grasp life and its thorns turn soft."

"I daren't. Oh, save me, José."

Without a rag of self-respect she flung her arms round my knees. As to her sobbing, it sounded almost real.

"So," I asked her gently, "you don't a bit mind wrecking another life?"

"I'd do anything if you told me. I'll be good, always."

"All right," said I. "Sarde found you in my arms, and that's my fault. I'll pay. Come on—get up." I lifted her to her feet. "I'll break up this marriage for you, and when you're free—"

"Oh, you're so good!" She was shamming again. "So noble!"

"Now, don't trot out your mock heroics. You're not a serial heroine by instalments. Come on. Since I've got to pay the price I may as well have the fun." I kissed her. "There, now you may kiss me. Kiss hard. It won't last long."

There were dropping shots from snipers in the hills; the hum of rapid business in the fort grew to a tumult; the sentries called from post to post:

Number one: All's well!
Number two: All's well!
Number three: All's well!

Then from a greater distance:

Number four: All's well!

And, faint as a little echo, far away:

All's well!

And silence is the rhetoric of lovers. Why should it matter? What difference could it make? Why should the innocent passions of good beasts be interdict for men?

The women were being loaded into their special sleighs when Sarde first missed his wife. With growing anxiety he visited every place where she could be, asked questions and heard rough laughter the moment his back was turned. He found that Mrs. Sarde had crossed toward the gate-house at nine o'clock, carrying a large bundle. He failed to notice a bright and growing light which flickered in the surgery window above the guard-room; but pressed on through the covered way, and asked impatient questions of the sentry who answered him in gibberish about a waggy, a mutt and a whiffle-swoggle. Yes, Mrs. Sarde had passed hours ago with a bundle and a gold-topped umbrella, turning off sharply to the left.

So for the second time poor Sarde found his pretty mistress in my arms. He stood beside us unnoticed and there was a quivering agony of shame in his first words, "Oh, don't mind me."

We leaped apart. The woman nipped round the corner screaming. The powerful impulse of a soldier's self-respect compelled me to stand to attention, forced me to salute that long thin fool, poor Sarde.

"You?" he said in a husky whisper, "You!"

"That's me."

"Give me the 'Sir', confound you!"

"Why, dammit, I nearly did!" The impulse to obey was almost overwhelming, yet only by pressing a quarrel could I compel him to release the woman.

"Prisoner: right turn—quick march—get to the guard-room—or—or—"

"Or what?" He had threatened. He had ceased to be an officer, to claim respect for his rank. He was only the peasant with the grotesque dull rage of a mere lout. I laughed. "Or what? Eh, bumpkin?"

This was mutiny, and Sarde lifted his whistle to blow a call for help. I snatched the whistle, blew the call myself. They seemed to have a bonfire in the fort, quite a big one, too, and so much clamor that nobody heard the call. I watched Sarde's sluggish northern way of reaching for his revolver, fumbling at the holster flap, and lugging out the gun. The Anglo-Saxon peasantry are so slow!

With one flash I had him covered.

"No, you don't," said I. "Hands up, hands up, my fool. That's right. Now be good." I pitched his whistle over the stockade, then wrenched his gun from the lanyard until the shackle parted. With both guns I jumped back, bidding him drop his hands and stand easy for a nice, cozy little chat. "There are no witnesses," I had to reassure him, "so you see we're man to man."

"Until—" Sarde's voice was full of menace, for that sort of animal is never more than half tamed at the best.

"Until," said I, "you bring a charge, and I call Miss Burrows for my first witness."

"Then since we're man to man," he shouted—they always have to shout—"what were you doing with my wife?"

"Pooh! She's not your wife."

"You dare—"

"Stand back, Sarde. I don't like your perfume. No, the question, my good man, is whether you loose this woman—"

"Because—you—"

A little sound caught my ear from round the corner, and at first I whistled Three Blind Mice lest Sarde should hear it. But that seemed unfair. For a moment I had to think, scratching my head with Sarde's gun. Then I jammed it into my belt, bolstered my own revolver and picked up the ax.

"Look here, Sarde," I had to explain, "it's deuced awkward, but I heard your—ahem—good lady listening round the corner. I didn't mean to give you away, old chap. Excuse my country manners. You see she's found out she's not your wife. She'll interfere now; she'll spoil our fight. Suppose we move, eh? We'll go to the back of the fort. Come on, you've got to. By your left, quick march—left—left—left, right, left—and if you hail the bastion, I'll drop you! Left—left—you need a setting up drill, Sarde. Left, turn. I know you don't want to come, so you needn't explain. Left—left—left, right, left. There. Halt! About turn! Stand at—ease. Stand easy."

I set the ax down against the curtain wall, thinking, I remember, that it must be a deuced big bonfire they were having inside the fort. The sniping was a nuisance here at the back, and one bullet splashed between us. Poor Sarde was convinced, I suppose, that a dangerous lunatic had best be humored. He was getting patient, too.

"I guess," he remarked quite affably, "you mean to murder me, eh?"

"Certainly not. Don't be silly. Will you release this woman? Yes or no?"

He wanted to argue the point, to keep me in argument until somebody came to his rescue. He had to be roused from such dreams pronto.

"All right," said I, "you needn't get excited. You see I dislike you, Sarde. I take exception to the shape of your feet, you mule-foaled outrage on nature's modesty; you bandy-legged, stridulating, peevish, pop-eyed anachronism; you supercilious, illegitimate, high-bounding, beef-faced, misdirected, spatch-cocked swab of erring parents! You don't seem really to understand me even now. Let me explain."

I whipped one of my mitts gently, swiftly across his stupid face, and stood back to see how he liked it. I certainly had done my best for him, and he was obliged to clench his teeth to steady his rasping voice, hissing staccato:

"The reckoning is not to-night!"

"Bad form, Sarde. Melodrama. You mean well but you're rotten in the part. You should say, 'The r-r-reckoning is to-night! Ha! Ha!' That's how the villain talks. If you live, you can blame the rebels, and say the snipers got me, see? We have our revolvers, and so—" What more could he want?

"Constable," he played up another excuse. "I hold Her Majesty's commission. You forget yourself."

"Ah! Let us be calm. José Maria Sebastian Sant Iago de la Mancha y O'Brien consents to waive the difference of rank." I raised my hat and bowed. "Come, Sarde, we know that you're a coward and dueling is forbidden and all that, but never mind. For once you shall behave exactly like a man. Brace up!" I struck him hard and harder across the face. "You—really—must—understand. At fifteen paces we turn, and as I give the word we fire, and keep on firing. No? Now don't disappoint me, please, I beg you. Have you no inside? Are you an empty pretense? Nombre de Dios! What have you done with your manhood?"

"I've told you already that officers can't possibly fight with—"

"With me, señor? Haven't I explained? The Marquis de las Alpuxarras consents to waive the difference of rank, and meet a peasant. You scrambled skunk, take your gun! I insist. I command! Now you're armed, and at the word I shoot. I step back ten paces and at the word three, I fire. One! Two!—"

Sangre de Cristo! The beastly cad fired at "Two," and there was I clutching a burning pain in my gun arm above the elbow.

"What the devil do you mean," I asked him, "by firing before I gave the word, eh? I'll smack your beastly head!"

He fired twice more while I rushed him. Then, with a swinging left-hander, I got the point of his chin, and he went down.

A gentleman must always think for others before he thinks for himself, but Sarde being attended to, I had time to look around.

THE CHEERFULBLACKGUARD

CHAPTER ITHE GLAMOUR OF YOUTH

CHAPTER IITHE AGE OF KNIGHTHOOD

CHAPTER IIITHE SWING OF EVENTS

CHAPTER IVTHE PASSIONS OF WAR

THE CHEERFUL
BLACKGUARD

CHAPTER I
THE GLAMOUR OF YOUTH

CHAPTER II
THE AGE OF KNIGHTHOOD

CHAPTER III
THE SWING OF EVENTS

CHAPTER IV
THE PASSIONS OF WAR