Scarlett of the Mounted Part 6

"Let him wait, then," ordained Evelyn, "and I'll see about him myself.

Meanwhile--oh, officer, I want your help! I'm in such a pickle for lack of a man servant," she went on to confide in Barney. "The French courier I brought out with me deserted the moment we set foot in Skagway, taking my camera, automobile, and I don't know what besides. Of course, my father will see to it that he's found and punished--and the things don't matter, because, till my own are recovered, they can be replaced. But the difficulty is to replace Alphonse. I never before saw so many idle and poverty-stricken men in all my life; yet--it's the strangest thing--no matter what inducements I offer, no one is willing to take service with me."

"Myself, I don't think it much loss, miss," Evelyn's maid struck in.

"That Alphonse was too tight-laced to be of any good use. And, anyway, for my part I don't think it respectable for a man to wear corsets any more than for a woman to go without 'em."

"Oh, it's not Alphonse's usefulness I mourn for," admitted Miss Durant.

"It's the appearance of the thing; the _chic_. My father always likes me to have the best of everything; and I owe it to his position no less than to my own dignity to travel in the best style. Officer," again she appealed to Barney, "can't you recommend me a courier?"

Barney looked his bewilderment. "Is it a currier for the horses av your automeboiler ye do be wanting, miss?"

Perceiving in this breach his opportunity, Scarlett stepped boldly into it. "May I apply for the position? I'm looking for work."

"Lookin' for throuble, more like," muttered Barney, with solicitude.

"Wid all thim la.s.ses! Begorra, I know the sect."

Evelyn turned about and surveyed the speaker critically. "Ah, I'm glad it's employment and not alms you want," she commended the busiest, most hardworked official in the district. "But--I wonder--are you qualified?"

Into her pretty eyes there crept a look of doubt.

"I know something about horses," with truth the Mounted Policeman a.s.sured her.

"But not about la.s.ses," Barney anxiously tugged at his sleeve. "'Tis them as leads ye the divvle av a ride, and is like as not to run away wid ye."

"H'm!" Evelyn considered the matter. The s.h.a.ggy picturesqueness of the prospectors in colored flannel shirts, top boots and corduroys, with hands ever on gun or pistol, their odd phrase and lurid expletive, touched the silly streak of romanticism in her as had they been chorus of an opera in which she found herself enacting the star role, but this clean-skinned young man, with unadorned speech, in commonplace, work-a-day clothes, at first failed to interest her.

"H'm! Well," she conceded finally, "I'm something of a judge of people.

Step into the light where we can take a good look at you."

As Scarlett obeyed, "There!" cried little Kate, triumphantly. "The nice, modest way he changes color, I'm sure he doesn't drink!"

Evelyn also noticed, as who could fail to do, the ingenuous blush that overspread the white crescent of the young giant's brow, and it flattered her woman's love of power. "Well, girls," she demanded, in an audible aside, "and what do you think of him?"

The verdict of the orphans was unanimous; they thought him fine, Gertrude, who would have been frivolous and slangy had her inst.i.tution permitted it, p.r.o.nouncing him "a peach." Sarah alone challenged him.

"He's a sa.s.sy piece," she informed Evelyn. "Look at him now, fit to burst with laughter at us! I never heard of a decent man-servant that couldn't keep his face straight."

"But if I'm not straight-faced and strait-laced like Alphonse," urged Scarlett, "at least ye can count on me never to take French leave of ye."

Sarah shook her head ominously. "He's too young, miss," she warned Evelyn. "Far too young."

"But I'm growing older every day," pleaded the postulant, "and up here the days are so long, one grows old twice as fast."

"He has too much command of language for a man-servant, miss," insisted Sarah. "That kind is apt to put on airs above their station. And--look at him now!--there's something altogether too masterful about the way he walks."

"Ah, that comes from soldiering," the young man explained. "Me legs are always under arms, as it were."

Evelyn laughed with a distinct prepossession. "What is your name?" she inquired.

"Scarlett."

"Scarlett what?"

"It's what Scarlett."

"Eh? What do you sign yourself--that is, can you write?"

"Oh, I manage to make me mark with my fist on any human doc.u.ment that gets in my way. I sign myself J. Scarlett."

"Oh! And what does J stand for?"

"Gerald."

"Gerald! How do you spell it?"

"The usual way. G-e-r-a-l-d."

"Then, why do you sign it J?"

"Oh, that's just a mistake other people make in the p.r.o.nunciation," the owner of the name elucidated, to his own if not to his hearer's satisfaction. "It once nearly cost me a lawsuit to establish it."

Sarah groaned: "He talks for all the world like an Irishman."

"Murther will out," Barney proclaimed, with pride.

Evelyn turned on the owner of Dunshinnanon. "Are you Irish?"

"It's the best excuse my parents could make for me," admitted Scarlett.

"I am more than half inclined to take him on trial," Evelyn stated. "But first," she again consulted Barney, "officer, can you give the young man a character?"

"A character? Faith, but that's phwat he does be needing some ginerously minded person to bestow on him, for niver a wan av his own has he to show at all, at all!" cried Barney, mindful of his chief's earlier injunctions to depict him in unflattered lights. "Glory be! If I was to begin to tell yez phwat I don't know about the lad he'd be afther breaking my skull for me, an' not for the first toime."

"Nor the last, either, you idiot!" growled Scarlett.

"That's rather vague," commented Evelyn. "Tell me, is he honest?"

"Gosh! th' Irish is no thieves," Barney answered handsomely for his race, "though now and thin maybe wan might snap at something in your hand. It takes a dhirty Hollander to do the stealin'!"

"Oh! And--is he sober?"

"Sober! A pure-blooded Celt like himself!" Wishing still to carry out Scarlett's first orders, Barney hotly repudiated the charge of damaging sobriety on his behalf, but warned by a surrept.i.tious kick that he was exceeding instructions, he softened it by asking, generally: "Wid a felly like himself, that dhrunk or sober is aqually an omadhaun, phwat the divvle is the differ?" And Scarlett also pleaded his own cause by admitting that he was frequently quite sober, though, thanks be! never to an intemperate degree.

Sarah groaned portentously, but the missionary spirit was awakening in Evelyn. "I can put up with a good deal," she a.s.serted, "if I feel I am giving employment where it is really needed. But I must first know where I stand. Is this young person reliable, to be depended on in an emergency?"

"You betcherlife on that!" yelled the prospectors, in delighted chorus.

As outlaws, the mounted policeman was their natural enemy, but for the time he had downed them, as in the long run, they, by instinct, realized he always would down them, and they respected him.

"You stake yer bottom plunk on it, d'ye see? He's the only man ever got me skinned forty ways from the Jack," in a generous climax conceded Bully Nick.

Evelyn's pretty face was clouded with perplexity. Categorically there was no specific charge against the applicant; moreover, the longer she looked at him the more was she impressed with the promise of strength in his splendid proportions, the resolute chin, clear, friendly eyes, even though the corners of a mobile mouth did curl as if with perpetual laughter in an outlook on life too original to be seemly in a wearer of livery--yet, evidently, something was being withheld from her. Urged, however, by all the little orphans, who by this time were in love with Scarlett, she remarked: "Yes, we must remember that we came up here not only for our own pleasure, but also to do good. I am tempted to take the young man on a month's trial, and at least endeavor to reform him.