The Luck of the Mounted Part 9

"Talk about game c.o.c.ks!" he began lightly. "Ten years ago, say! you must have been a corker--regular 'Terry McGovern'."

"Eh?" Yorke's far-away eyes stared at him vaguely. "I was in India then. Army light-weight champion in my day. Slavin wasn't joshing much at breakfast, by gum! . . . Now we're here! . . . We're a bright pair!"

He made as though to cast snow upon his head, "Ichabod! Ichabod! our glory has departed!"

He lifted up his tenor voice, chanting the while he rocked--

"_Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, d.a.m.ned from here to Eternity, G.o.d ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!_"

Redmond flinched and raised a weakly protesting hand. "Don't, old man!"

he implored miserably, "don't! what's the--"

"Eh!" queried Yorke brutally--rocking--"does hurt?"

"_If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep, And all we--_"

"No! no! no! Yorkey!" George's voice rose to a cry, "not that! . . .

quit it, old man! . . . that's one of the most terrible things Kipling ever wrote--terrible because it's so absolutely, utterly hopeless. . . ."

"Well, then!" said Yorke slowly--

"_Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?_"

"It wasn't beer," muttered Redmond absently, "it was whiskey. Slavic and I drank it." With an effort he strove to arouse himself out of the despondency that he himself had fallen into.

"Listen! . . . Oh! quit that d----d rocking, Yorkey! . . . Listen now!

we've put up a mighty good sc.r.a.p against each other--we'll call that a draw--let's put up another against our--well! we'll call it our rotten luck . . . D----n it all, old man, we're not 'down an' outs' doing duty in this outfit--the best military police corps in the world! . . . Let's both of us quit squalling this eternal 'n.o.body loves me' stuff! This isn't any s...o...b..ry brotherly love or New Jerusalem business, or anything like that, either. I'm not a bloomin' missionary!" He qualified that a.s.sertion unnecessarily to prove it. "But let's stick together and back each other up--just us two and old man Slavin--make it a sort of 'rule of three.' We can have a deuce of a good time on this detachment then! . . ."

He spoke hotly, eagerly, with boyish fervour, his soul in his eyes.

Yorke remained silent, with averted eyes. That imploring, wistful, bruised young countenance was almost more than he could stand. George, dropping on one knee beside him put a tremulous hand on the senior constable's shoulder. "What's wrong, Yorkey?" he queried. He shook the bowed shoulder gently. "What's made you consistently knock every third buck that's been sent here? 'till they got fed up, and transferred? . . .

They tried to put the wind up me about it at the Post. What's bitin'

you? I don't seem to get your angle at all!"

"Oh, I don't know!" Yorke coughed and spat drearily. "Kind of rum reason, you'll think. Long story--too long--dates back. Listen then!

Ten years back, in the pride of my giddy youth, I held a Junior Sub's commission in the ---- Lancers--in India. This is just a synopsis of my case, mind! . . . Well! the regiment was lying at Rawal Pindi, and--I guess I kind of ran amuck there--got myself into a rotten _esclandre_--entirely my own fault I'll admit:

_Man is fire, and Woman is tow, And the Devil, he comes and begins to blow--_

the same old miserable business the world's fed up with. Since then seems I've kind of made a mess of things. Burke Slavin's about right--his estimate of me." He sighed with bitter, gloomy retrospection.

"I've always had a queer, intolerant sort of temperament. If I'd lived in the days of the Indian Mutiny I guess I'd have been in 'Hodson's Horse'." (Redmond started, remembering his curious dream.) "He was a man after my own heart," Yorke continued slowly, "resourceful, slashing sort of beggar . . . he ruffled it with a high hand. Bold and game as Sherman, or Paul Jones, but as ruthless as Graham of Claverhouse. He put the ever-lasting fear into the rebels of Oude--something like Cromwell did in Ireland. My old Governor served through the Mutiny--he's told me stories of him. My G.o.d!"

He drew his fur coat closer round him. "Well!"--Redmond watched the sombre profile--"as I was saying . . . I 'muckered'. . . . Since then, with the years, I guess I've been climbing down the ladder of illusions till I'm right in the stoke-hole, and Old Nick seems to grin and whisper: 'As you were! my cashiered Sub.--As you were!' every time I chuck a brace and try to climb up again. How's that for a bit of cheap cynicism?"--the low, bitter laugh was not good to hear--"Man!"--the brooding eyes narrowed--"I've sure plumbed the depths--knocking around, with the right to live. Port Said, Buenos Aires, Shanghai. . . . I've certainly travelled. Some day I'll throw the book at you. Now--substance and ambition gone by the board long ago, and mighty little left of principle I guess--I am--what I am--everything except a prodigal, or a remittance-man--I never worried them at Home--that way. . . ."

He spoke with a sort of reckless earnestness that moved his hearer more than that individual cared to show. Redmond felt it was useless to offer mere conventional sympathy in a case like this. He did the next best thing possible--he remained silently attentive and let the other run on.

"You take three men now--stationed in the same detachment," resumed Yorke wearily, "by gum! they're thrown together mighty close when you come to think of it. It's different to the Post, where there's a crowd. Life's too short to start in explaining minutely just what that difference is.

Fact remains! . . . to get along and pull together they've got to like each other--have something in common--give and take. Otherwise the situation becomes d----d trying, and trouble soon starts in the family."

"By what divine right I should consider myself qualified to--to--Oh! shut up, you young idiot! . . ." Redmond, forehead pressed into the speaker's shoulder, giggled hysterically in spite of himself--"Shut up! d'you hear?

or I'll knock your silly block off!"

The two bodies shook, with their convulsive merriment. "You can't do it!

old thing," came George's smothered rejoinder, "and you know darned well you can't--now! . . . Go on, you bloomin' Hodson!--proceed!"

Yorke gave vent to a good-natured oath. "Hodson? . . . you do me proud, my buck! . . . Well now!--this 'three men in a boat' business! . . .

I'll admit I 'rocked' it with Crampton. I virtually abolished him because--oh! I couldn't stick the beggar at all. I simply couldn't make a pal of him. He was fairly good at police work, but a proper cad, in my opinion. Always sw.a.n.king about the palatial residence he'd left behind in the Old Country. He called it ''is 'ome' at that. Typical specimen of the middle-cla.s.s sn.o.b. Followed Taylor. Thick-headed, serious-minded sort of fool. Had great veneration for 'his juty.' No real knowledge of the Criminal Code, and minus common sense, yet begad! the silly beggar tried to be more regimental that the blooming Force is itself. I systematically put the wind up to him 'till he got cold feet and quit."

Redmond recalled the fact that Taylor had been his predecessor.

"Followed!" he echoed mockingly, looking up at his handiwork.

Yorke, with a twisted smile glanced down at the bruised, but debonair young face. Benevolently he punched its owner in the back.

"Followed . . . a certain young fellow, yclept 'Nemesis'," he said, "I sized you up for one of these smart Alecks--first crack out of the box, and egad! I think I'm about right."

Said Redmond, "How about our respected sergeant? we seem to have forgotten him."

"Slavin?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the senior constable; and was silent awhile. There was no levity in him now. Slowly he resumed, "I guess as much as it's humanly possible for two men to know each other--down to the bedrock, it's surely Burke Slavin and I. Should too, the years we've been together. The good old beggar! . . . We slang each other, and all that . . . but there's too much between us ever to resent anything for long."

"I know," said Redmond simply, "he told me himself--last night."

"Eh?" queried Yorke sharply. "My G.o.d! . . . Tchkk!" he clucked, and burying his hands in his face he gave vent to a fretful oath. "My G.o.d!"

he repeated miserably, "I'd forgotten--last night! . . . I sure must have been 'lit' . . . to come that over old Burke. . . ."

"You sure were!" remarked Redmond brutally.

"Keats' 'St. Agnes' Eve'! . . . Oh, Lord!" . . . He drew in his breath with a sibilant hiss, "There seems something--something devilish about--"

"I know! I know!" breathed Yorke tensely, "what . . . you mean." His haggard eyes implored Redmond's. "No! no! never again . . . I swear it. . . ."

There came a long, painful silence. "See here; look!" began Yorke suddenly. He stopped and surveyed George, a trifle anxiously.

"Mind! . . . I'm not trying to justify myself but--get me right about this now. Don't you ever start in making a mistake about Slavin--blarney and all. No, Sir! I tell you when old Burke runs _amok_ in those tantrums he's a holy fright. He'd kill a man. Might as well run up against a gorilla."

A vision of the huge, sinister, crouching figure seemed to rise up in Redmond's mind--the great, clutching, _simian_ hands.

"In India," continued Yorke, "we'd say he'd got a touch of the 'Dulalli Tap.' The man doesn't know his own strength. I was taking an awful chance--getting his goat like that last night. It's a wonder he didn't kill me. He's man-handled me pretty badly at times. Oh, well! I guess it's been coming to me all right. Neither of us has ever dreamt of going squalling to the Orderly-room over our . . . differences. I don't think Burke's ever taken the trouble to 'peg' a man in his life. Not his way.

'I must take shteps!' says he, and 'I will take shteps!' and when he starts in softly rubbing those awful great grub-hooks he calls hands--together! . . . well! you want to look out."

Lighting a cigarette he resumed reminiscently: "They were a tough crowd to handle up in the Yukon. The devil himself 'd have been scared to b.u.t.t in to that 'Soapy Smith' gang; but, by gum! they were afraid of Slavin.

He doesn't drink much now, but he did then--mighty few that didn't--up there--and I tell you, even our own fellows got a bit leery of him when he used to start in 'trailing his coat.' They were glad when he 'came outside.' That's one of the reasons why he's shoved out on a prairie detachment. He wouldn't do at all for the Post. He never reports in there more than he has to--dead scared of the old man, who's about the only soul he is afraid of on earth. The O.C.'s awful sarcastic with him at times, and that gets Burke's goat properly. He sure does hate getting a choke-off from the old man."

He grinned guiltily. "That's why he prefers to wash the family linen strictly at home--what little there is. But, sarcasm and all, the O.C.

gives him credit for being onto his job--and it's coming to him, too.

He's quick acting and he's got the Criminal Code well-nigh by heart.

Regular blood-hound when he starts in working up a case."

He yawned, and rising stiffly to his feet stretched his cramped limbs.

"We-ll! Reddy, my giddy young hopeful!--Now we've fallen on each other's ruddy necks and kissed and wept and had a heart-to-heart talk we'll--"

"Aw, quit making game, Yorkey! Is it a go? You know what I said?"