A Romany of the Snows Part 37

Halby stared. He knew Pierre's bravery, his ingenuity and daring. But this was the last thing he expected: that the malicious, railing little half-breed would work with him and the law. Pierre seemed to understand his thoughts, for he said: "It is not for you. I am sick for adventure, and then there is mademoiselle--such a finger she has for a ven'son pudding."

Without a word Halby wrote on a leaf in his notebook, and presently handed the slip to Pierre. "That's your commission as a special constable," he said, "and here's the seal on it." He handed over a pistol.

Pierre raised his eyebrows at it, but Halby continued: "It has the Government mark. But you'd better bring Throng's rifle too."

Throng sat staring at the two men, his hands nervously shifting on his knees. "Tell Liddy," he said, "that the last batch of bread was sour--Duc ain't no good-an' that I ain't had no relish sence she left.

Tell her the cough gits lower down all the time. 'Member when she tended that felon o' yourn, Pierre?"

Pierre looked at a sear on his finger and nodded. "She cut it too young; but she had the nerve! When do you start, captain? It's an eighty-mile ride."

"At once," was the reply. "We can sleep to-night in the Jim-a-long-Jo"

(a hut which the Company had built between two distant posts), "and get there at dawn day after to-morrow. The snow is light and we can travel quick. I have a good horse, and you--"

"I have my black Tophet. He'll travel with your roan as on one snaffle-bar. That roan--you know where he come from?"

"From the Dolright stud, over the Border."

"That's wrong. He come from Greystop's paddock, where my Tophet was foaled; they are brothers. Yours was stole and sold to the Gover'ment; mine was bought by good hard money. The law the keeper of stolen goods, eh? But these two will go cinch to cinch all the way, like two brothers--like you and me."

He could not help the touch of irony in his last words: he saw the amusing side of things, and all humour in him had a strain of the sardonic.

"Brothers-in-law for a day or two," answered Halby drily.

Within two hours they were ready to start. Pierre had charged Duc the incompetent upon matters for the old man's comfort, and had himself, with a curious sort of kindness, steeped the boneset and camomile in whisky, and set a cup of it near his chair. Then he had gone up to Throng's bedroom and straightened out and shook and "made" the corn-husk bed, which had gathered into lumps and rolls. Before he came down he opened a door near by and entered another room, shutting the door, and sitting down on a chair. A stovepipe ran through the room, and it was warm, though the window was frosted and the world seemed shut out. He looked round slowly, keenly interested. There was a dressing-table made of an old box; it was covered with pink calico, with muslin over this.

A cheap looking-gla.s.s on it was draped with muslin and tied at the top with a bit of pink ribbon. A common bone comb lay near the gla.s.s, and beside it a beautiful brush with an ivory back and handle. This was the only expensive thing in the room. He wondered, but did not go near it yet. There was a little eight-day clock on a bracket which had been made by hand--pasteboard darkened with umber and varnished; a tiny little set of shelves made of the wood of cigar-boxes; and--alas, the shifts of poverty to be gay!--an easy-chair made of the staves of a barrel and covered with poor chintz. Then there was a photograph or two, in little frames made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of putty, varnished, and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workmanship. Some dresses hung behind the door. The bedstead was small, the frame was of hickory, with no footboard, ropes making the support for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings.

Pierre looked long, at first curiously; but after a little his forehead gathered and his lips drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain.

He got up, went over near the bed, and picked up a hairpin. Then he came back to the chair and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, still looking abstractedly at the floor.

"Poor Lucy!" he said presently; "the poor child! Ah, what a devil I was then--so long ago!"

This solitary room--Lydia's--had brought back the time he went to the room of his own wife, dead by her own hand after an attempt to readjust the broken pieces of life, and sat and looked at the place which had been hers, remembering how he had left her with her wet face turned to the wall, and never saw her again till she was set free for ever. Since that time he had never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone.

"What a fool, what a fool, to think!" he said at last, standing up; "but this girl must be saved. She must have her home here again."

Unconsciously he put the hairpin in his pocket, walked over to the dressing-table and picked up the hair-brush. On its back was the legend, "L. T. from C. H." He gave a whistle.

"So-so?" he said, "'C. H.' M'sieu' le capitaine, is it like that?"

A year before, Lydia had given Captain Halby a dollar to buy her a hair-brush at Winnipeg, and he had brought her one worth ten dollars.

She had beautiful hair, and what pride she had in using this brush!

Every Sunday morning she spent a long time in washing, curling, and brushing her hair, and every night she tended it lovingly, so that it was a splendid rich brown like her eye, coiling n.o.bly above her plain, strong face with its good colour.

Pierre, glancing in the gla.s.s, saw Captain Halby's face looking over his shoulder. It startled him, and he turned round. There was the face looking out from a photograph that hung on the wall in the recess where the bed was. He noted now that the likeness hung where the girl could see it the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning.

"So far as that, eh!" he said. "And m'sieu' is a gentleman, too. We shall see what he will do: he has his chance now, once for all."

He turned, came to the door, softly opened it, pa.s.sed out, and shut it, then descended the stairs, and in half an hour was at the door with Captain Halby, ready to start. It was an exquisite winter day, even in its bitter coldness. The sun was shining clear and strong, all the plains glistened and shook like quicksilver, and the vast blue cup of sky seemed deeper than it had ever been. But the frost ate the skin like an acid, and when Throng came to the door Pierre drove him back instantly from the air.

"I only-wanted--to say--to Liddy," hacked the old man, "that I'm thinkin'--a little m'la.s.ses 'd kinder help--the boneset an' camomile.

Tell her that the cattle 'll all be hers--an'--the house, an' I ain't got no one but--"

But Pierre pushed him back and shut the door, saying: "I'll tell her what a fool you are, Jimmy Throng." The old man, as he sat down awkwardly in his chair, with Duc stolidly lighting his pipe and watching him, said to himself: "Yes, I be a durn fool; I be, I be!" over and over again. And when the dog got up from near the stove and came near to him, he added: "I be, Touser; I be a durn fool, for I ought to ha' stole two or three, an' then I'd not be alone, an' nothin' but sour bread an' pork to eat. I ought to ha' stole three."

"Ah, Manette ought to have given you some of your own, it's true, that!"

said Duc stolidly. "You never was a real father, Jim."

"Liddy got to look like me; she got to look like Manette and me, I tell ye!" said the old man hoa.r.s.ely. Duc laughed in his stupid way. "Look like you? Look like you, Jim, with a face to turn milk sour? Ho, ho!"

Throng rose, his face purple with anger, and made as if to catch Duc by the throat, but a fit of coughing seized him, and presently blood showed on his lips. Duc, with a rough gentleness, wiped off the blood and put the whisky-and-herbs to the sick man's lips, saying, in a fatherly way:

"For why you do like that? You're a fool, Jimmy!"

"I be, I be," said the old man in a whisper, and let his hand rest on Duc's shoulder.

"I'll fix the bread sweet next time, Jimmy."

"No, no," said the husky voice peevishly. "She'll do it--Liddy'll do it.

Liddy's comin'."

"All right, Jimmy. All right."

After a moment Throng shook his head feebly and said, scarcely above a whisper:

"But I be a durn fool--when she's not here."

Duc nodded and gave him more whisky and herbs. "My feet's cold," said the old man, and Duc wrapped a bearskin round his legs.

II

For miles Pierre and Halby rode without a word. Then they got down and walked for a couple of miles, to bring the blood into their legs again.

"The old man goes to By-by bientot," said Pierre at last.

"You don't think he'll last long?"

"Maybe ten days; maybe one. If we don't get the girl, out goes his torchlight straight."

"She's been very good to him."

"He's been on his knees to her all her life."

"There'll be trouble out of this, though."

"Pshaw! The girl is her own master."

"I mean, someone will probably get hurt over there." He nodded in the direction of Fort O'Battle.