Benton of the Royal Mounted Part 26

_"I am the Resurrection and the Life," saith the Lord: "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."_

Often-ah, how often-with the callous indifference bred of active service and its cruel, sordid realities, had he listened to them before, out there on the far-away South African veldt, blaspheming, as like as not, under his breath at the heat, and the dust, and the maddening flies as, "Resting upon Arms Reversed," he stood beside the freshly dug grave of some dead comrade.

"_The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away._"

And the vision of his dream rose up in his brooding mind once more; and again he seemed to behold that poor girl before him, arisen from the dead, and the glory in her eyes as, with bowed head and outstretched arms like the Angel of Pity, she gazed sweetly, but sadly, down upon him from amidst that great, shining, billowy cloud of light.

And then-his brain sank into a deep oblivion of dreamy, chaotic thought, through which the curate's sonorous intonation, sounding far off and indistinct, penetrated at intervals.

"_We therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust._"

At the well-remembered words mechanically, from long practise, he stooped and cast a handful of earth into the grave. And, the dull thud of its fall upon her coffin, was on his very heart.

The service ended, but still the scarlet-coated figure remained there motionless, with bowed head, as of one in a dream. He was aroused from his reverie by Musgrave touching him on the arm.

"Come, old man!" said the doctor gently, "it's all over now; let's go.

Are you going to wait for the-other?..."

"Yes," responded Ellis in a strained, unnatural voice, without raising his eyes.

Drearily, without another word being uttered on either side the whole way back, they returned to the detachment and, sitting down in the little office, filled their pipes and smoked moodily awhile, amidst an embarra.s.sing silence, which was finally broken by Musgrave.

"Well, Ellis, old man," he said quietly, "seems we've come through rather a sad pa.s.sage."

Benton raised his troubled eyes and, for the first time that day, looked the other squarely in the face, with a certain sense of relief as he did so.

"Yes," he answered listlessly. "I know I have. Charley," he continued, "I don't know exactly why it is, but that girl's death's shaken me up rather bad ... kid was an utter stranger to me, but somehow-somehow-it seems as if I'd known her always. Must have been her eyes." His voice shook a little, and trailed off into a murmur. "Yes ... they were very like poor Eileen Regan's-way back there in Jo'burg-very like hers, weren't they?"

He paused, and the doctor nodded sympathetically. Before the war he had known the Sergeant's dead love well-had attended her in her last illness. There was a long silence.

"Don't worry, Ellis," said Musgrave softly. "She's in a better place now, I think, for she was more sinned against than sinning, poor girl."

Benton got up and, leaning out of the open window, looked dreamily away over the sun-scorched prairie.

"Aye," he muttered slowly, half to himself; "I don't think-I know. I saw the look on her face the night she died ... an' I saw her again-afterwards. That should stop me from worrying. See here; look, Charley," he went on, in a steadier voice, turning to his companion: "You must have seen many deaths in your time-lots more than I have, I guess ... an' G.o.d knows I've seen enough, one way an' another. I tell you-people in their last stages see something that _we_ can't. It's beyond _our_ ken-but it's there. Probably you as a doctor, with all your scientific medical theories, a.n.a.lyze it differently, but you know what I mean, for all that."

Musgrave did not answer at once, but smoked thoughtfully on for a s.p.a.ce.

"Yes," he agreed, with a curious, dry intonation in his voice, "I know what you mean, all right. No doubt they _do_ possess some strange prescience ... but I don't think we'll start a discussion on that, old man. Circ.u.mstances have reduced both of us to a certain frame of mind just now, wherein we might be persuaded into believing anything."

Ellis cogitated awhile over this last utterance.

"M'm-yes," he admitted reluctantly. "Only temporarily at that, too.

Begad!... I'm the one that knows it.... Guess I'm the most impulsive, changeable beggar that ever was.... Always have been more or less of an impressionable fool-where women are concerned, anyway. S'pose it's my nature. Here are we two-we've both had our troubles at various periods of our sinful lives. Some were of our own making-some were not. Mind!

I'm not meanin' this lightly, remember ... far from it at such a time as this ... but just the plain, absolute facts-coming from a man who knows himself too well to trust his pa.s.sing emotions." He struck a match and lit his pipe again, continuing with some irritation in his voice. "All that bunk.u.m that religious extremists and temperance cranks would have you believe ... about sudden conversions an' all that.... Fellows _can_ alter their ways a bit-chuck a brace, an' climb out of the pit they've dug for themselves, no doubt. But it's a _gradual_ process, an' doesn't come quick by any means, like these fanatics try to make out. There's one of 'em, in particular, who makes a specialty of writing-what he, in his limited knowledge of actual facts-conceives to be true Western yarns. Most of 'em, I guess, pa.s.s as such with the general public who read 'em. Oh, he's great on this conversion business. One was a fool book about _our_ Force, I remember, where he makes the bucks go pallin'

around arm in arm with their superior officers-doin' the 'Percy, old chap,' stunt, 'When we were at college together, you know!' Sounds all hunkadory-like a happy family, an' all that but, unfortunately, it ain't true. Can't imagine it happening with any of the powers that be in _our_ Division, anyway. Take 'Father,' for instance-what? Then, again-all that stuff-what 'Tork abaht Tompkins' our regimental teamster calls "Igh falutin' Bull-Durham,' and 'Father'-'Poppyc.o.c.k' that's written about the Force. An' oh-_always_ in a bloomin' red serge, of course, no matter what dirty job they're on ... never a stable-jacket-they don't wear such things. All the pictures you see of Mounted Policemen, too, chasin'

cattle rustlers, arresting bootleggers, an' nitchies, in which we're depicted as such 'eroes'-red serge, again-so's the n.o.ble Mounted cop can be seen comin' a long ways off. That reminds me, though-I'll have to ride back to the Creek in one myself," he added ruefully. "My stable-jacket's ruined with all that blood on it."

He paused, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"No, _sir_," he continued emphatically. "_I_ know what becomes of the large percentage of your sudden converts. Most of 'em land up as hopeless booze artists in the last stages of D.T.-or else go _completely_ bug-house. Lord knows, we get all kinds of 'em in that guardroom at the Post. Many's the screechin', prayin' strait-jacketed nuisance I've had to escort up to Ponoka. After all's said an' done, the only philosophy a man can practise to make life worth living at all, is just to peg along quietly, doing the best he can under the circ.u.mstances in which he finds himself placed day by day. I know it is for a Mounted man, anyway for, begad! he get's everybody else's bloomin' troubles dinned into his ears in addition to his own.

"As you said just now, we've both come through a sad pa.s.sage. We have.

But this feeling won't stay with us. We'll be genuinely an' sincerely sorry an' repentant for the time being, but by degrees we'll fall back into our old ways again. It may be smug, complacent reasoning, but it's a fact. Now, isn't that right, Charley?"

The elder man smiled wearily. "Guess you're pretty near it," he admitted. "Don't know whether you're able to put all _your_ troubles behind you as effectively as you intimate. I know I can't lots of mine.

There's some I can't forget-even after all these years. They're with me night and day. Remember me telling you ... that day when we were up at Cecil Rhodes' tomb, 'way back there up in the Matoppos?"

He gazed at Benton anxiously, almost timidly. Ellis bowed his head in a.s.sent, but he could not find words to answer just then. For there was something in the haggard, deeply lined face of his old friend that forbade conventional condolence.

A long silence ensued, and presently Musgrave rose to go.

"The Devil was sick- The Devil a monk would be;"

he quoted, with a wry, whimsical smile. "I guess I'll go on over to the hotel and see 'Wilks,' as you call him. He was much better this morning.

Believe he'll pull through without an operation now. Churchill should be able to take him down in three or four days' time if he keeps improving like this. By the way! Churchill's making a pretty long stay at the Post, isn't he?"

"Oh, I don't know," yawned the Sergeant. "P'r'aps he's not through with that case of his yet. It was right at the end of the docket. Maybe he's got mighty good reason for not hurrying back, too," he added ominously.

"I never noticed till the other day he'd got the South African ribbon up-whatever outfit was _he_ in?" inquired the doctor.

"Search me," said Ellis contemptuously. "The 'Can I Venture,' 'Jam Wallahs,'-'Sacca Bona's Horse,' or some irresponsible bunch o'

Bashi-Bazouks, I guess. I've never asked him. I think I told you before, Charley, there's five hundred dollars' reward for Wilks. If it comes through, so much the better for both of us. I'll see you sure get your fee an' expenses in full. In all fairness you're ent.i.tled to half of it, anyway, in consideration of the whisper you gave me in the beginning."

"Didn't think you fellows were allowed to accept rewards," said the doctor.

"Well, we're not, as a rule," Ellis admitted. "But now an' again they make exceptions when the crime has been committed outside our usual jurisdiction. Take that hold-up of the C.P.R. pa.s.senger train near Ducks in B.C. that time, by those three chaps-Bill Miner, Shorty Dunn, an'

Lewis Colquhoun. Five of our men got rewarded for nailing _them_. Let's see! there was Wilson, s...o...b..tham, Peters, Stewart, an' Browning. They got thirteen hundred an' fifty apiece for that job. But we never receive it direct. It has to come through the Commissioner. Generally it's turned into the Fine Fund at Headquarters, an' the grant is made from there."

"All right," said Musgrave indifferently, as he opened the door. "If it does come through-why, all well and good, though I'm sorry, in a way, for the poor devil."

With his hand on the k.n.o.b, he turned, the ghost of a smile flitting across his strong intellectual face.

"Guess you weren't far out in your remarks just now," he said. "Seems the transformation's begun already. Afraid we've come down to Mother Earth again with a vengeance. Remember Sir Noel Paton's great picture-'The Man with the Muckrake,' Ellis? So long!"

"So long," the other answered mechanically, without turning his head.

And the door closed softly.

CHAPTER XV

O Memory, ope thy mystic door!