The Luck of the Mounted Part 4

CHAPTER III

_St. Agnes' Eve. Ah! bitter chill it was.

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped, trembling, through the frozen gra.s.s; And drowsy was the flock in woolly fold_.

ST. AGNES' EVE

Edmond did not have to wait long. Sounding faint and far off came the silvery ring of sleigh-bells, gradually swelling in volume until, with a measured crunch! crunch! of hoofs on packed snow, a smart Police cutter, drawn by a splendid bay team, swung around a bend of the trail and pulled up at the platform. Redmond regarded with a little awe the huge, bear-like, uniformed figure of the teamster, whom he identified at once from barrack gossip.

"Sergeant Slavin?" he enquired respectfully, eyeing the bronzed, clean-shaven face, half hidden by fur cap and turned-up collar.

"Meself, lad!" came a rich soft brogue, "I was afther gettin' a wire from th' O.C., tellin' me he was thransfering me another man. Yer name's Ridmond, ain't it?---Whoa, now! T an' B!--lively wid thim kit-bags, son!--team's pretty fresh an' will not shtand."

They swung off at a spanking trot. George surveyed the white-washed cattle-corrals and few scattered shacks which seemed to comprise the hamlet of Davidsburg.

"Not a very big place, Sergeant?" he remarked, "how far's the detachment from here?"

"On'y 'bout a mile" grunted the individual, squirting a stream of tobacco-juice to leeward, "up on the high ground beyant. Nay! 'tis just a jumpin' off place an' shippin' point for th' ranches hereabouts.

Business is mostly done at Cow Run--East. Ye pa.s.sed ut, comin'. Great doin's there--whin th' cowpunchers blow in. Some burg!"

"Sure looked it!" Redmond agreed absently, thinking of the casual glimpse he had got of the dreary main street.

They were climbing a slight grade. The sun-glare on the snow was intense; the cutter's steel runners no longer screeched, and the team's hoofs began to clog up with soft snow.

"They're 'balling-up' pretty bad, Sergeant!" remarked Redmond. And, as he spoke the "off" horse suddenly slipped and fell, and, plunging to its feet again, a leg slid over the cutter's tongue.

"Whoa, now! whoa!" barked Slavin, with an oath, as the mettled, high-strung animal began to kick affrightedly. Slipping again it sank down in the snow and remained still for some tense moments.

Like a flash Redmond sprang from the cutter, and rapidly and warily he unhooked the team's traces. This done he crept to their heads and slipped the end of the tongue out of the neck-yoke ring. Slavin by this time was also on his feet in the snow, with the situation well in hand.

He clucked softly to his team, the fallen horse plunged to its feet again and the next moment all was clear. George, burrowing around in the snow unearthed a big stone, with which he proceeded to tap the team's shoes all round until the huge snow-clogs fell out. In silence the two men hooked up again and were soon on their way.

"H-mm!" grunted the big Irishman at last, eyeing his subordinate with a sidelong glance of approval, "h-mm! teamster?"

"Oh, I don't know, Sergeant" responded Redmond deprecatingly, "of course I've been around teams some--down East, on the old man's farm. . . I don't know that I can claim to be a real teamster--as you judge them in the Force."

"H-mm!" grunted Slavin again, "ye seem tu have th' makin's anyway." He expectorated musingly. "Wan time--down at Coutts 'twas--a young feller was sint tu me for tu dhrive. Mighty chipper gossoon, tu. 'Teamster?'

sez I--'Some!' sez he, as if he was a reg'lar gun at th' business--'but I'm gen'rally reckoned handier wid a foursome 'n a single team.'"

"'Oh!' sez I, 'fwhere?' An' he tould me--Regina. Sez I thin ''tis Skinner Adams's undershtudy ye must have bin?--for he was Reg'mentil Teamster Sarjint there, an' sure fwas a great man wid a four-in-hand team.'"

"'Fwat, ould Skinner Adams?' sez me bould lad, kind av contempshus-like, 'Humph! at shtringin' out four I have Skinner Adams thrimmed tu a peak.'

We was dhrivin' from th' station tu th' detachmint--same like tu we're doin' now. Whin we gits in I unhitches an' puts up th' team. 'Give us a hand tu shling th' harniss off!' sez I tu him--an' me shmart Aleck makes a shtab at ut wid th' nigh horse. He was not quite so chipper--thin, an'

I noticed his hands thremblin', an' he was all th' time watchin' me close how I did wid th' off ha.r.s.e. I dhraws off wid th' britchin' on me arrum--'Come!' sez I--an' he shtarts in--unbucklin' th' top hame-shtrap.

"'As ye were!' sez I 'that's enough! I'm thinkin' th' on'y 'four' you iver shtrung out me young flapdhoodle was a gang av prisoners, an'

blarney me sowl! ye shall go back tu th' Post right now, an' du prisoner's escort agin for awhile.'"

They had now reached the top of the grade where the trail swung due east, and faced a dazzling sun and cutting wind which whipped the blood to their cheeks and made their eyes water.

"Behould our counthry eshtate!" said Sergeant Slavin grandiloquently, with an airy wave of his arm, "beyant that big pile av shtones on th'

road-allowance."

He chirped to his team which broke into an even, fast trot, and presently they drew up outside a building typical in its outside appearance of the usual range Mounted Police detachment. It was a fairly large dwelling, roughly but substantially-built of squared logs, painted in customary fashion, with the walls--white, and the shingled roof--red. A strongly-guyed flagstaff jutting out from one gable, and copies of the "Game" and "Fire Acts" tacked on the door gave the abode an unmistakable official aspect. Over the doorway was nailed a huge, prehistoric-looking buffalo-skull, bleached white with the years--the time-honoured insignia of the R.N.W.M.P. being a buffalo-head, which is also stamped on the regimental badge and b.u.t.ton.

Dumping off the kit-bags, the two men drove round to the stable in the rear of the main dwelling, where they unhitched and put up the team. The sergeant led the way into the house. Pa.s.sing through a small store-house and kitchen they emerged into the living room. On a miniature scale it was a replica of one of the Post barrack-rooms, except that the table boasted a tartan-rugged covering, that two or three easy chairs were scattered around, and some calfskin mats partially covered the painted hardwood floor. The walls, for the most part were adorned with many unframed copies of pictures from the brush of that great Western artist, Charles Russell, and black and white sketches cut from various ill.u.s.trated papers. Three corners of the room contained cots, one of which the sergeant a.s.signed to Redmond. The room, with its big stove, in a way looked comfortable enough, and was regimentally neat and clean and homelike.

George peered into the front room beyond which bore quite a judicial aspect. At one end of it a small dais supported a severe-looking arm-chair and a long flat desk, on which were piled foolscap, blank legal forms, law-books, and the Bible. In front was a long, form-like bench, with a back to it. At the rear of the room were two strongly-built cells, with barred doors. Around the walls were scattered a double row of small chairs and, on a big, green-baize-covered board next the cells hung a brightly burnished a.s.sortment of handcuffs and leg-irons.

"'Tis here we hould coort," Slavin informed him, "whin we have any shtiffs tu be thried."

Opening the front door George lugged in his bedding and kit-bags and, depositing them on his cot, flung off his fur coat, cap, and serge.

Slavin divested himself likewise and, as the burly, bull-necked man stood there, slowly filling his pipe, Redmond was able to scan the face and ma.s.sive proportions of his superior more closely.

Standing well over six feet, for the presentment of vast, though perchance clumsy, gorilla-like strength, George reflected with slight awe that he had never seen the man's equal. His wide-spreading shoulders were more rounded than square; his deep, arching chest, powerful, stocky nether limbs and disproportionately long, huge-biceped arms seeming to fit him as an exponent of the mat rather than the gloves. Truly a daunting figure to meet in a close-quarter, rough-and-tumble encounter!

thought Redmond. The top of his head was completely bald; his thick, straight black brows indicating that what little close-cropped iron-gray hair remained must originally have been coal-black in colour. His Irish-blue eyes, alternately dreamy and twinklingly alert, were deeply set in a high-cheeked-boned, bronzed face, with a long upper-lipped, grimly-humorous mouth. Its expression in repose gave subtle warning that its owner possessed in a marked degree the strongly melancholic, emotional, and choleric temperament of his race. There was no moroseness--no hardness in it, but rather the taciturnity that invariably settles upon the face of those dwellers of the range who, perforce, live much alone with their thoughts. Sheathed in mail and armed, that face and bulky figure to some imaginations might have found its prototype in some huge, grim, war-worn "man-at-arms" of mediaeval times. Redmond judged him to be somewhere in his forties; forty-two was his exact age as he ascertained later.

In curious contrast to his somewhat formidable exterior seemed his mild, gentle, soft-brogued voice. And with speech, his taciturn face relaxed insensibly into an almost genial expression, George noted.

Attracted by a cl.u.s.ter of pictures and photographs above and around the cot in the corner opposite his own, the young fellow crossed over and scanned them attentively. Tacked up with a random, reckless hand, the bizarre collection was typically significant of someone's whimsical, freakish tastes and personality. From the sublime to the ridiculous--and worse--subjects pious and impious, dreamily-beautiful and lewdly-vulgar, comic and tragic, also many splendid photographs were all jumbled together on the walls in a shockingly irresponsible fashion. Many of the pictures were unframed copies cut apparently from art and other journals; from theatrical and comic papers.

George gazed on them awhile in utterly bewildered astonishment; then, with a little hopeless e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, swung around to the sergeant who met his despairing grin with benign composure.

"Whose cot's--"

"'Tis Yorke's," said Slavin simply. It was the first time he had mentioned that individual's name. He struck a match on the seat of his pants and standing with his feet apart and hands clasped behind his back smoked awhile contentedly.

"Saw ye iver th' like av that for divarsiment?" he continued, with a wave of his pipe at the heterogeneous array, "shtudy thim! an', by an' large ye have th' man himsilf. He's away on pay-day duty at th' Coalmore mines west av here--though by token, 'tis Billy Blythe at Banff shud be doin'

ut, 'stead av me havin' tu sind a man from here. He shud be back on Number Four th' night."

His twinkling orbs under their black smudge of eyebrow appraised the junior constable with faint, musing interest. "A quare chap is Yorkey,"

he continued gently--shielding a match-flame and puffing with noisy respiration--"a good polisman--knows th' Criminal Code from A tu Z--eyah!

but mighty quare. I mis...o...b.. how th' tu av yez will get along." He sighed deeply, muttering half to himself, "I may have tu take shteps--this time! . . ."

A rather ominous beginning, thought George. But, curbing his natural curiosity, he resolutely held his peace, awaiting more enlightenment.

This not being forthcoming--his superior having relapsed once more into taciturn silence--he turned again to Yorke's exhibits with pondering interest. Sounding far-off and indistinct in the frosty stillness of the bleak foothills came the faint echoes of a coyote's shrill "ki-yip-yapping"--again and again, as if endeavouring to convey some insidious message. George continued to stare at the pictures. Gad! what a strange fantastic mind the man must have! he mused--what rotten, erratic desecration to shove pictures indiscriminately together like that! . . . Lack of s.p.a.ce was no excuse. Millet's "Angelus," "Ally Sloper at the Derby," a splendid lithograph of "The Angel of Pity at the Well of Cawnpore," Lottie Collins, scantily attired, in her song and dance "Tara-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," Sir Frederick Leighton's "Wedded," a gruesome depiction of a Chinese execution at Canton, an old-fashioned engraving of that dashing, debonair cavalry officer, "Major Hodson," of Indian Mutiny fame, George Robey, as a nurse-maid, wheeling Little Tich in a perambulator, the grim, torture-lined face of Slatin Pasha, a ridiculously obscene picture ent.i.tled "Two c.o.o.ns scoffing oysters for a wager," that glorious edifice the "Taj Mahal" of India, and so on.

"Divarsiment" indeed!

To this ill-a.s.sorted admixture three exceptions only were grouped with any sense of reason. The central picture was a beautifully coloured reproduction of Sir Hubert Herkomer's famous masterpiece "The Last Muster." Lovers of art subjects are doubtless familiar with this immortal painting. It depicts a pathetic congregation of old, white-haired, war-worn pensioners attending divine service in the chapel of Old Chelsea Hospital, with the variegated lights from the stained-gla.s.s windows flooding them with soft gentle colours. Flanking it on either side were portraits of the original founders of this historical inst.i.tution in 1692--Charles II (The Merry Monarch) and his kindly-hearted "light o' love" Sweet Nell Gwynn of Old Drury.

With curiously mixed feelings George finally tore himself away from Yorke's pathetically grotesque attempt at wall-adornment. Strive as he would within his soul to ridicule, the pictures seemed somehow almost to shout at him with hidden meaning. As if a voice--a drunken voice, but gentlemanly withall--was hiccuping in his ear: "Paradise Lost, old man!

(hic) Paradise Lost!"

And, mixed with it, came again out of the silence of the foothills the coyote's faintly persistent mocking wail--its "ki-yip-yap" sounding almost like "Bah! Yah! Baa!" . . . Some lines of an old quotation, picked up he knew not where, wandered into his mind--

_Comedy, Tragedy, Laughter and Tears!

Thou'rt rolled as one in the Dust of Years_!

With a sigh he turned to his own cot and began to unpack and arrange his kit; in regulation fashion, and with such small faddy fixings customary to men inured to barrack life. Thus engaged the time pa.s.sed rapidly.

Later in the day he a.s.sisted the sergeant in making out the detachment's "monthly returns" and diary. This task accomplished, in the gathering dusk he attended "Evening Stables." There were two saddle-horses beside the previously-mentioned team. A splendid upstanding pair, George thought them. He was good with horses; possessing the faculty of handling them that springs only from a patient, kindly, instinctive love of animals.