Scarlett of the Mounted Part 7

That is, if---- Officer," she again consulted Barney, "is he really the best protector you can find for us?"

Pushing his hat back from a brow heated by such unwonted drafts upon its thinking powers, Barney scratched his head while regarding his superior with disparagement. Finally, "well, yis, he is," he admitted, as if it were the last d.a.m.natory word to be spoken of the man.

Having ascertained that something over a dollar a day and his keep was as much as he was used to in the way of wage, Miss Durant instructed her new courier in his duties--"to look after our trunks, bicycles, banjos, pianola, mandolins----"

"And the pets, dear," put in Ruth, who was rather tired of trying to keep the peace between an Angora cat and a canary, a parrot that looked as if it had a wicked past and a bull pup who wished to include the parrot, past and all, in his present rampageous scheme of life.

"Oh, of course the menagerie! Then you must go ahead to engage the best suites for us at the hotels, and----"

"And follow ye to pick up the articles ye leave behind," Scarlett nodded, understandingly. "But till we get fairly started, I'll just accompany ye."

"Very well," a.s.sented Evelyn. "Sarah, I hope you won't mind having the young man eat with you while we are traveling?"

"I suppose it can't be helped, miss," gloomily replied the maid. "I only hope the young man will have the grace to improve the opportunity."

"Oh, I'll improve it fast enough," promised Scarlett, with a twinkling eye on Sarah, "so long as ye don't expect me to embrace it."

Evelyn cut short the maid's angry reproof. "Now, Gerald, you must keep your place. Conduct us to the nearest large city. We must telegraph my father to join us there. Meanwhile, we want to do a lot of shopping. We want, oh, ever so many things! Girls, which of you has my list?"

"I put down prizes for our bridge parties," cried Effie, her eyes snapping at the thought of the unhallowed joys in store for her.

"And materials for making fudge," whispered Ethel, who had thirty-two sweet teeth.

"Yes," a.s.sented Evelyn. "And we must buy presents: neckties and things for the poor dear miners who have been so kind to us. Also cotillion favors. As soon as we are settled I mean to give a ball."

"But, miss, how about money?" Sarah reminded her. "We have only fifty-odd dollars left."

"Oh, we can have things charged!" cried Evelyn, airily. "My father's name will be letter of credit to any amount."

Scarlett looked about with a growing uneasiness. The day was fast subsiding into the long twilight that precedes the short northern summer night. Barney had departed with his captives on the long march that was the most effective object-lesson conceivable in what could be accomplished in policing a district by but two men, with the might of a Government behind; and here was he, practically alone, save for the minister, to guard these women, since, as he shrewdly guessed, in an emergency the courage of the other pa.s.sengers traveling by the coach would prove of negligible quality. The horses had been put into harness some time before, yet the driver kept delaying their departure on the most trivial pretexts. On this Gumboot Annie, when appealed to, threw a lurid local color. "Guess Logan is timin' things fer the hold-up."

"The hold-up!" in alarm, exclaimed the pa.s.sengers, who enjoyed these things better on billboards forthsetting Bowery melodrama. "You don't mean to say they really have hold-ups in these parts?"

Gumboot Annie spat deliberately before replying, "Why, that's our specialty."

"But the driver--does not the driver defend his pa.s.sengers?"

"The driver! Now wouldn't thet jostle yer!" demanded Gumboot Annie of the mountains. "Logan hes ter stand in with the gang ter save his own skin. And, mind you folks don't make no fuss. Pa.s.s in yer checks an' no jawin', and the boys won't hurt yer none. But if yer squeal--well, it's none of my funeral."

Great consternation prevailed among the pa.s.sengers who had booked to Camp Perdu, the stage's next destination, and elaborate were the preparations they made to conceal their valuables. The bills and gold-dust Maclane had collected for his hospital he skilfully packed into his moccasin, while, to the general amus.e.m.e.nt, Sarah bestowed Evelyn's ready money in the fauna and flora of her own bonnet.

"It's my belief the woman only said that to frighten us," decided Evelyn as, with a flourish of his horn, the driver shouted, "All aboard!" And as the stage rumbled peacefully along she added: "In any case, our party is safe. Our courier will protect us!" In no respect, however, were her predictions justified. Hardly was Lost Shoe Creek left behind when from the bushes by the wayside sprang a band of men, with hats drawn over their faces, pistols in hand, bidding the driver halt.

It was the most systematic proceeding in the world, reducing the bandits to the level of petty tradesmen, and their victims to that of unwilling contributors to a recognized if oppressive impost. Not one of the former offered to spare the fair s.e.x on condition its fairest representative should tread with him the stately measure of a minuet; not one of the latter invoked the memory of the former's spotless childhood hallowed by a mother's caresses beneath an old oaken bucket or spreading chestnut tree. Instead, Logan wound the reins about the whip as this stood in its socket, and held up his hands, though without ceasing to chew the straw in his mouth, while the pa.s.sengers under invitation apparently no more coercive than that of the average trolley car conductor to step lively or move up, dismounted and stood with uplifted arms while methodically relieved of purses, watches and the like. Terror tied the women's tongues, while the men, knowing the futility of remonstrance, were silent. Only Scarlett, while submitting with the rest, ventured on a lively sally or so that called down on him a few curses or served to provoke a laugh that later helped him in identifying the malefactors.

But not a word of importance was uttered on either side till the leader of the gang, surveying the pile of loot, muttered, discontentedly: "Well, this is a blamed mean crowd! Go over 'em again!"

It was then Scarlett took a quick decision. Little as pa.s.sivity suited his fighting manhood; much as, in his own phrase, it pained him to Evelyn's appealing glances to turn a deaf ear, he knew that to offer the slightest resistance would be to forfeit his own life and leave the womenkind to a fate one dared not think of calmly. Nevertheless, when at the second overhauling he saw her jeweled belt and studs torn rudely from her he could not forbear a movement of impatience that drew to himself the serious attention of the robbers.

"Say, young feller"--one pressed the cold muzzle of a pistol to his forehead--"air you in an all-fired hurry ter see yer affairs wound up?"

"Oh, as to that," he answered, "ye can wind up me affairs and welcome if ye'll take the time. They're just the Waterbury watch inside me pocket."

The ruffian laughed, and told him he could keep his worthless timepiece for his wit, but Evelyn shuddered with a disgust that gave her voice.

"The pitiful coward! When I took it for granted you would risk your life for me!"

"Faith, but I'm not dying to be corpse at me own wake," jeered Scarlett.

"For a lady I might risk my life, but not for the dust the reverend gentleman is treading under foot, nor for the greenbacks sprouting from yonder good woman's botanical headpiece!"

Shrieks from the women, groans and reproaches from the men, denounced this treachery, as the bonnet of the protesting Sarah yielded up its riches and the minister in heartbroken silence suffered himself, perforce, to be despoiled, while old Blenksoe, taken off his guard, in his natural tones cried, approvingly, "Ah, thet's somethin' like!"

As they hurriedly packed their loot, "Rustle, boys," in undertones, warned the leader, "else we shall have that blasted M. P. of a Scarlett on our backs!" His caution came none too soon. At Scarlett's instigation, Barney had contrived to get word to Perdu, and just as the robbers had cleared into the jungle with their booty an armed delegation of citizens appeared upon the scene. As the victims were left penniless, Dave Hastie, proprietor of the Grand Hotel, offered them gratuitous hospitality for the approaching night, a kindness that was accepted only too gladly.

"But before we start," cried Evelyn, amid general acclamation, "I wish to denounce a coward, a poltroon, a traitor! A contemptible being whose betrayal of those who trusted him should not go unscathed. Creature,"

she turned on her smiling courier, "have you no sense of shame?"

"Sure, but I have," he answered. "Never a day pa.s.ses that I don't blush for human nature in the lump!"

Evelyn sighed, and again addressed the delegation of Perdu's Law and Order League, who, having missed the robbers, were fairly spoiling with eagerness to kill the next best man. "He never so much as lifted a finger to defend us," she explained.

"Oh, but I did! All ten of them," he defended himself, in injured tones.

"It's only what one might expect," Sarah harangued the throng, "taking on a scallywag without character or references. Practically robbing miss here of every penny of ready money she possesses, and damaging this bunnet that I got at a reduction off of a lady friend as has set up a swell millinery establishment in Sixth Avenue."

"He delivered us to our enemies!" There were tears in Maclane's voice.

"He stripped the sick, the suffering; turned into channels of vice the contributions for my hospital."

All agreed that hanging was too good for the culprit, and some were in favor of lynching. One consideration alone deterred them from extreme measures, even while a rope was being hunted for among the skunk willows, sage and wild lupin by the road: namely, the unpopularity of such punitive proceedings with the Mounted Policeman newly appointed to the district.

"Times is sadly changed, boys," the leader reminded the delegation. "The gentlemanly way with us has allus bin ter choke off a traitor's last prayers with a hempen Amen. But this blamed M. P. is as apt ter pinch the gentlemen as acts impulsive in a little lynchin' matter as quick as he'd pinch a criminal. Thar's only two of 'em," he explained to the travelers, "the Sergeant and his man--but the way the feller covers distances--his horse has seven-leagued boots for sure! Now, as president of Perdu's Peace Committee and Law and Order League, I'd claim it my proud privilege ter fit the noose ter this young rascal's neck--but as husband to a good woman and father to her kids I don't want ter run up contrairy-wise agin Scarlett of the Mounted!"

"Very well," decided Evelyn. "I myself am in favor of government. I belong to several ladies' a.s.sociations for upholding clean streets and economy in the Mayor's office and things like that. From what you say, this--I didn't catch the Mounted Policeman's name, but he obviously must be an officer; and though with us, in New York, policemen, even mounted ones, have no standing in Society, yet, in his way, he must be a gentleman. Then let this miserable fellow be bound and taken before him for sentence. I myself will press the charge against him."

"Good business," applauded the delegation, heartily.

But as they were about to bind the prisoner with a rope taken from the skeleton of a wretched horse that some inferior brute of a human being had put to purposes of transportation under conditions for which nature had never intended it, the Irishman put them lightly aside.

"One moment, please. Now that ye've wisely decided to postpone suspending the judged, also, as a famous American in a crisis once remarked, suspend judgment. All the accusations brought against me are dead true, which is why ye are alive to make them. I a.s.sisted in the despoiling of ye, on business principles, sacrificing small sums to one ten times their combined amounts. For under my own right foot I carry a sum that will not only replace Sarah's bonnet, greenbacks and all, but also reimburse the hospital with a little contribution of my own to boot."

As he spoke, he drew a roll of ready money from its hiding place and handed some bills over to the astonished maid and the no less astonished minister. "The rest, a draft, I am commissioned to deposit in the bank on account of one Durant, now absent on a prospecting trip, for the maintenance, till he returns, of his daughter----"

A loud chorus of surprise, admiration, grat.i.tude interrupted the young man who was now hero of the hour.

The League enrolled him an honorary member on the spot. To his terror, three depressed women with bundles wanted to kiss him for his mother, while Maclane, on behalf of all the disabled people in the district, nearly wrung his hand off. As breaking away he started to make his escape, Evelyn detained him. "My preserver," she cried, in impa.s.sioned tones, "let me reward you!"

And when Scarlett, laughing, shook his head, refusing a moiety of his own ready money that, at Evelyn's direction, Sarah was proffering him, "Then at least tell me your name--for in the excitement I am ashamed to say I have clean forgotten it."

"Yes, yes," insisted the group, "your name!"

"'Tis the same as it has always been," he answered, blithely, turning on his heel. "I haven't changed it yet. Any time ye want me just ask at headquarters for Himself, for Scarlett of the Mounted."