The Luck of the Mounted Part 16

"Eh?" the sergeant glanced critically at the red, bulbous nose. "Fwhat's in a name?" he murmured. "Eyah! fwhat's in a name?"

Glibly the tramp commenced an impa.s.sioned harangue, dwelling upon the hardness of life in general, snuffling and whining after the manner of his kind. How could a crippled-up man like him obtain work? He thrust out a grimy right hand--minus two fingers. He had been a sawyer, he averred.

Slavin sniffed suspiciously. "Ye shtink av whiskey, fella!" he said sharply. "That nose, yeh name, an' a hard-luck spiel du not go well together. Fwhere did yu' get yu're dhrink?"

The hobo was silent. "Come across," said Slavin sternly, "fwhere did ye get ut?"

"I had a bottle with me when I come off th' train," said the other, "ther was a drop left in an' I had it just now."

In the light of after events, well did Slavin and Yorke recall the furtive appealing glance the hobo threw at Gully; well did they also remember certain of Kilbride's words: "There'll be quite a lot of things crop up in our minds that we'll be wondering we never thought of before."

The justice cleared his throat. "Sergeant" came his guttural, booming ba.s.s, "suppose!--suppose!" he reiterated suavely "on this occasion we--er--temper justice with mercy--ha! ha!" His deep hollow laugh jarred on their nerves most unpleasantly. "I need a man at my place just now,"

he went on, "to buck wood and do a little odd choring around. Times are rather hard just now, as this poor fellow says. If you insist--er--why, of course I've no other option but to send him down . . . you understand?

I would not presume to dictate to you your duty. On the other hand . . .

if you are not specially anxious to press a charge of vagrancy against this man I--er--am willing to give him a chance to obtain this work--that he insists he is so anxious to find."

Slavin's face cleared and he emitted a weary sigh of relief. "As you will, yeh're Worship," he said. "T'will be helpin' me out, tu . . . yeh undhershtand?" His meaning stare drew a comprehensive nod from Gully.

"I have not a man tu shpare for escort just now."

He turned to the hobo. "Fwhat say yu', me man?" was his curt ultimatum, "Fwhat say yu'--tu th' kindniss av his Worship? Will yeh go wurrk for him? . . . Or be charged wid vagrancy?"

The offer was accepted with alacrity. In the hobo's one uninjured optic shone a momentary gleam of intelligence, as he continued to stare at Gully, like a dog at its master. The gleam was reflected in a pair of shadowy, deep-set eyes, unblinking as an owl's.

Gully arose and looked at Lee. "All right then! you can hitch up my team, Nick!" he said, and that rotund worthy waddled away on his mission.

"Come on, my man" he continued to the hobo, "we'll go round to the stable." He turned to Slavin and Yorke, shedding his magisterial deportment. "Well, good-bye, you fellows!" he said, with careless bonhomie. He lowered his voice in an aside to Slavin. "Sergeant, I trust I shall see, or hear from you again shortly. I would like to hear the result of the inquest and--er--how you are progressing with the case."

A few minutes later they heard the silvery jingle of his cutter's bells gradually dying away in the distance. Slavin aroused himself from a scowling, brooding reverie. "G----d d----n!" he spat out to Yorke, from between clenched teeth, "ther' goes another forlorn hope. 'Tis no manner av use worryin' tho'--let's go get that jury empannelled!" He uttered a snorting chuckle as a thought seemed to strike him. "H-mm! Gully must be getthin' tindher-hearthed! Th' last vag we had up behfure him he sint um down for sixty days."

CHAPTER IX

_Take order now, Gehazi, That no man talk aside In secret with his judges The while his case is tried, Lest he should show them--reason To keep a matter hid, And subtly lead the questions Away from what he did._ KIPLING.

"Hullo!" quoth Constable Yorke facetiously, "behold one cometh, with blood in her eye! Egad! Don't old gal Lee look mad? Like a wet hen. I guess she's just off the train and Nick hasn't met her. There'll be something doing when she lands home."

It was about ten o'clock on the following morning. The three policemen (Redmond had returned on a freight during the night) were standing outside the small cottage, next the livery-stable, the abode of Nick Lee and his spouse. After a casual inspection of their horses they were debating as to possible suspects and their next course of action.

Yorke's remarks were directed at a stout, red-faced, middle-aged woman who was just then approaching them. She looked fl.u.s.tered and angry and was burdened down with parcels great and small. As she halted outside the gate one of the packages slipped from her grasp and fell in the mud.

Unable to bend down, she gazed at it helplessly a moment. Yorke, stepping forward promptly, picked up the parcel, wiped it and tucked it under her huge arm.

"Thank ye, Mister Yorke," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed gratefully, "'tis a gentleman ye are," she glowered a moment at the cottage, "which is more'n I kin say fur that mon o' mine, th' lazy good-fur-nothin', . . . leavin' me t' pack all these things from th' train!"

Like a tug drawing nigh to its mooring--and nearly as broad in the beam--she came to anchor on the front steps and kicked savagely at the door. A momentary glimpse they got of Nick Lee's face, in all its rubicund helplessness, and then the door banged to. From an open window soon emerged the sounds as of a domestic broil.

"Talk av Home Rule, an' 'Th' Voice that breathed o'er Eden'," murmured Slavin. "Blarney me sowl! just hark tu ut now?"

From the cottage's interior came several high-pitched female squawks, punctuated by the ominous sounds as of violent thumps being rained upon a soft body, and suddenly the portal disgorged Lee--in erratic haste. His hat presently followed. Dazedly awhile he surveyed the grinning trio of witnesses to his discomfiture; then, picking up his battered head-piece he crammed it down upon his bald cranium with a vicious, yet abject, gesture.

"Th' missis seems onwell this mornin'," he mumbled apologetically to Slavin, "I take it yore not a married man, Sarjint?"

"Eh?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed that worthy sharply, his levity gone on the instant.

"Who--me?" Blankly he regarded the miserable face of his interlocutor, one huge paw of a hand softly and surrept.i.tiously caressing its fellow, "Nay--glory be! I am not."

"Har!" shrilled the Voice, its owner, fat red arms akimbo, blocking up the doorway, "Nick, me useless man! ye kin prate t' me 'bout arrestin'

hoboes. I tell ye right now--that hobo that was a-b.u.mmin' roun' here t'other mornin's got nothin' on you fur sheer, blowed-in-th'-gla.s.s laziness."

"Fwhat?" Slavin violently contorting his grim face into a horrible semblance of persuasive gallantry edged cautiously towards the irate dame--much the same as a rough-rider will "So, ho, now!" and sidle up to a bad horse. "Mishtress Lee," began he, in wheedling, dulcet tones, "fwhat mornin' was that?"

That lady, her capacious, matronly bosom heaving with emotion, eyed him suspiciously a moment. "Eh?" she snapped. "Why th' mornin' after th'

night of racket between them two men at th' hotel. Th' feller come b.u.mmin' roun' th' back-door fur a hand-out--all starved t' death--just before I took th' train t' Calgary." She dabbed at the false-front of red hair, which had become somewhat disarranged. "La, la!" she murmured, "I'm all of a twitter!"

"Some hand-out tu," remarked Slavin politely, "from th' face av um. . . .

Fwhat was ut ye handed him, Mishtress Lee, might I ask?--th' flat-iron or th' rollin' pin?"

"I did not!" the dame retorted indignantly. "I gave him a cup of coffee an' sumphin' t' eat--he was that cold, poor feller--an' I arst him how his face come t' be in such a state. He said sumphin 'bout it bein' so cold up in th' loft he come down amongst th' horses 'bout midnight--t'

get warmed up. He said he was lyin' in one o' th' mangers asleep when a feller brought a horse in--an' th' light woke him up an' when he went t'

climm outa th' manger th' horse got scared an' pulled back an' musta stepped on this feller's foot--fur th' feller started swearin' at him an'

pulled him outa th' manger an' beat him up an'--"

But Slavin had heard enough. With a most ungallant e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n he swung on his heel and started towards the stable, beckoning hastily to Yorke and Redmond to follow.

"Yu hear that?" he burst out on them, with lowered, savage tones. "I knew ut--I felt ut at th' toime--that shtinkin' rapparee av a hobo was lyin'--whin he said he did not renumber a ha.r.s.e bein' brought back. We must go get um--right-away!" His grim face wore a terribly ruthless expression just then. "My G.o.d!" he groaned out from between clenched teeth, "but I will put th' third degree tu um, an' make um come across this toime! Saddle up, bhoys! while I go an' hitch up T an' B.

d.a.m.nation! I wish Gully's place was on the phone!"

Some quarter of an hour later they were proceeding rapidly towards Gully's ranch which lay some fifteen miles west of Cow Run, on the lower or river trail. A cold wind had sprung up and the weather had turned cloudy and dull, as if presaging snow, two iridescent "sun-dogs"

indicating a forthcoming drop in the temperature.

Yorke and Redmond, riding in the cutter's wake, carried on a desultory.

Jerky conversation anent the many baffling aspects of the case in hand.

Gully's name came up. His strange personality was discussed by them from every angle; impartially by Yorke--frankly antagonistically by Redmond.

"Yes! he is a rum beggar, in a way," admitted Yorke, "not a bad sort of duck, though, when you get to know him--when he's not in one of his rotten, brooding fits. He sure gets 'Charley-on-his-back' sometimes.

Used to hit the booze pretty hard one time, they say. Tried the 'gold-cure'--then broke out again"--he lowered his voice at the huge, bear-like back of the sergeant--"all same him. I don't know--somehow--it always seems to leave em' cranky an' queer--that. Neither of 'em married either--'baching it,' living alone, year after year, and all that, too."

"Better for you--if you took the cure, too!" George flung at him grinning rudely. He neck-reined Fox sharply and dodged a playful punch from his comrade. "Yorkey, old c.o.c.k, I'm goin' to break you from 'hard stuff' to beer--if I have to pitch into you every day."

"You're an insultin', bullyin' young beggar," remarked Yorke ruefully.

"I'll have to 'take shteps,' as Burke says, and discipline you a bit, young fellow-me-lad! I don't wonder the old man pulled you in from Gleichen. Come to think of it, why, you're the bright boy that they say well-nigh started a mutiny down Regina! We heard a rumour about it up here. Say, what was that mix-up, Reddy?"

George chuckled vaingloriously. "All over old 'Laddie'," he said.

"'Member that white horse? I forget his regimental number, but he was about twenty-five years old. You remember how they'd taught him to chuck up his head and 'laugh'? I was grooming him at 'midday stables.' Old Harry Hawker was the sergeant taking 'stables' that day. He was stalking up and down the gangway, blind as a bat, with his crop under his arm, and his gla.s.ses stuck on the end of his nose--peering, peering. Well, old Laddie happened to stretch himself, as a horse will, you know, stuck out his hind leg, and old Harry fell wallop over it and tore his riding-pants, and just then I said 'Laugh, Laddie!' and he chucked his old head up and wrinkled his lips back. Of course the fellows fairly howled and Harry lost his temper and let in to poor old Laddie with his crop. It made me mad when he started that and I guess I gave him some lip about it. He 'pegged' me for Orderly-room right-away for insubordination.'

"I pleaded 'not guilty' and got away with it, too. Got all kinds of witnesses--most of 'em only too d----d glad to be able to get back at Harry for little things. Laddie was a proper pet of the Commissioner's.

He used to go into No. Four Stable and play with the old beggar and feed him sugar nearly every day."

Yorke laughed mischievously, and was silent awhile. "Gully's knocked about a deuce of a lot," he resumed presently. "Now and again he'll open up a bit and talk, but mostly he's as close as an oyster--and the way he can drop that drawl and come out 'flat-footed' with the straight turkey--why, it'd surprise you! You'd think he was an out and out Westerner, born and bred. He's a mighty good man on a horse, and around cattle--and with a lariat. I don't know where the beggar's picked it up.