THE PASSIONS OF WAR
I
Two human lives flow sparkling down childhood's merry rapids, and
more sedately across the sadder years, to draw together, then to run
apart, until at last they meet midway upon their journey, and as one
life go married toward their rest.
Two rivers tumbling down the Rocky Mountains, sparkling through the
foot-hills, racing across the plains, draw near together, then flow
apart a while before they meet, and marry to form the great
Saskatchewan rolling toward the sea.
There is my map, but I was always bad in my geography, and as to
history--well, what can you expect of a blackguard?
Just where the two Saskatchewans first draw near, and are but fifty
miles or so apart, our base, Fort Carlton, stood on the northern
branch, and Batoche, the rebel camp, was on the southern river.
Below these, in the land between the rivers, lay the Prince Albert
settlement, and its trading village stood on the northern branch
fifty-five miles down-stream from Fort Carlton. So you see, the
rebels commanded the main approach both to the fort and the
settlement. They were strong enough to threaten one while they
attacked the other. But neither fort nor settlement had strength
sufficient to attack the rebels. So much for strategy.
Louis Riel commanded at Batoche four hundred buffalo runners, dead
shots at full gallop, and perhaps the finest marksmen in the world.
He had two hundred Assiniboin warriors, and twenty-two hundred
Crees--in all three thousand men. His envoys were at large among the
Blackfeet, and if they rose--good night! Still worse, the Irish
Fenians in the United States seemed able to control the government,
for they were openly preparing, in Riel's interest, their third armed
raid upon Canada. Worst of all, we could not arrest the rebel
because he happened to be French Canadian, and had the active
sympathy of fifteen hundred thousand brave compatriots. Our first
motion might give the whole Dominion to the flames of civil war.
I don't know whether that paragraph is politics or tactics, but the
position was very awkward.
For eleven years now, with only from three to five hundred riders,
the mounted police had held that big wild empire of the plains, so
that civilians went entirely unarmed because we kept the peace. Now
the settlers were threatened with every horror of red Indian warfare,
and they had no guns.
And we were isolated. No help could reach the plains. There was not
then, and is not now, any trail connecting the plains with Eastern
Canada, or with the Pacific coast. On either side of us rolled the
terrific and unbroken forest, and the Canadian Pacific Railway was
still a string of gaps. When Canada raised a field force for our
rescue the United States refused a passage for her troops. Neither
could England help us, for the Russians were marching on India, and
war might be declared at any moment.
So everything depended on little scattered clusters of the police and
on our big chief, Sorrel Top, commissioner of the outfit, gentle,
brave, strong, wise and greatly loved. All through the winter he had
been throwing small detachments into Carlton until on the first of
March, in '85, we numbered a hundred men. Fifty civilians joined us
as volunteers, and all the loyal Scotch half-breeds came to us for
refuge. The rest of the Prince Albert settlers held their village,
some of them armed with sticks.
On the twenty-sixth of March, at 2 A.M., a despatch came in from
Sorrel Top to Paddy, our commandant at Carlton. At three o'clock the
rider was released to catch some supper, and from the mess-room his
news went through the fort Rich Mixed and I were over at stables, for
Anti, my poor horse, had all his pasterns badly stocked from too much
work patrolling. So he had some sugar, and we were getting on quite
nicely with the treatment when somebody came over from the mess-room.
"That you, Buckie?"
"Remnants of," he growled.
I told him I was on picket again at four. Life was too good just
then to waste on sleep.
"It's war," said Buckie.
War at last! He sat on the bail between two stalls, drooping with
weariness, while the lantern light cast shadows on his face, dead
white with smoldering eyes.
"Turn in," said I, "or you'll be crocked by morning." He told me he
was on flying sentry until four, then gave me news.
By stripping his far-flung outposts, our big chief, Sorrel Top, had
scratched up another hundred men and was marching from Fort
Qu'Appelle. Two men were badly frozen, sixty-five were snow-blind,
the horses had played out, and some civilian teamsters lagging behind
were captured. Then a rebel ambush had been discovered just four
miles ahead, so Sorrel Top, with a sixty-mile march, had swung into
Prince Albert. There he was resting twenty-four hours to organize
the settlers for defense. He would arrive this day, the
twenty-sixth, take over our command, and with the combined force
crush the rebellion before it got too strong. But we were not to
move until he came. That is a wise delay which makes the road safe.
"Who do you think," asked Buckie, "rode in with that despatch?"
I supposed he would be some poor B Troop coyote.
"His name," said Buckie impressively, "is Joe Chambers."
But that was the name of Mrs. Sarde's old lover, the Montana cowboy.
Had he joined the force?
"Asked for you, Blackguard."
"Go, fetch him."
By the time I had saddled Anti and bridled him--he was
Anti-everything, especially the bit--Buckie came back with Chambers.
He was a suspicious, jealous, clear-eyed sort of beast without any
small talk. He sized me up, judging my points as though he were
asked to buy me, but not one word would he say until Buckie cleared.
Then he spoke slowly, tersely, and with weight in all he said, most
clean of heart, direct and sterling man.
Miss Burrows, he told me, had wrote from Troy in the British
possessions, to Loco, her fool uncle. Claimed that she'd met in the
cars going west a man which belonged to the police, name of La
Mancha. Was that my name?
I owned up.
Name sounded Dago, but I seemed to be white. Had treated her white,
anyways. He thanked me, and I bowed.
At Troy this lady got off the cars to marry an officer, name of
Sarde. Was he any good?
"No."
She was Sarde's wife, she wrote, and heaps miserable.
I could have opened Mr. Chambers' eyes. His lady had a smile for one
man, "Oh, thank you, how nice!" for another, dropped her gloves for a
third--she was great at dropping parcels--made eyes at all the rest.
She had three-fourths of our garrison in a state of day-dreams and
fond hopes for more, the kind of flirt who ogles niggers so that they
go crazy and have to be burned. I could not tell Chambers all I
thought of his lady, who wrote that her heart was broke.
Nothing had this real man to say about his own engagement to the
woman, of the ranch he had stocked with cattle under her brand,
registered in her name, not his own "with the stock association up to
Helena." He told me nothing then of the 'dobe cabin, the fixings,
the pi-anner, all for her, of the months' wages he had given that she
might get eddicated down in civilization, or of the callous way she
had betrayed him.
Only he stiffened, and his voice came near to breaking as he told me
of suspicions. This guy she'd married up with must be some swine,
and needed shooting a whole lot for making her unhappy. So he'd rode
to Troy and found her gone. That meant, I suppose, that he had
sacrificed his living, to ride a thousand miles for a woman who had
not even troubled to send a post-card. At Troy he reckoned to find
the preacher who had hitched up that team. I had tried also, but
only discovered that Miss Burrows went with Mr. Sarde from Fort
Qu'Appelle for a sleigh-ride, and came back married.
Chambers had tracked the pair to Troy, where he found that the
ceremony had been performed by Happy Bill, a converted railroad
fireman, not in holy orders; not licensed to marry people. He had
broken the law to perform a sacrilege.
"He ain't no branded preacher," so Chambers put it, "but a maverick
which ain't allowed in the herd, and railroad men is worse than sheep
herders, anyhow."
Sarde had found the woman in my arms, and as she played crooked with
him, so he had done with her. There had been no marriage. She was
not his wife.
"And now," said Chambers, "I done joined the police, to follow this
here Sarde. Your general give me a despatch to ride, and I shorely
burned this trail to get here quick." He pulled the service-revolver
from its holster.
"I hain't stuck on this hyre soldier gun," he said, "but I had to
hang up my Colt at the Troy hotel--so this will have to do. Where's
Sarde?"
"I'd like to see Sarde killed," said I, "but I'd hate to see you
hanged."
"Where's Sarde?"
"Search me," said I, "he's not my property."
"Where's Sarde?"
"Find him," said I, and swinging to the saddle, rode away.
II
At 4 A.M. I relieved the chap on picket just at the brow of the
plains where the road curves over southward, toward Batoche. The
orders he repeated showed quite clearly that Paddy expected the
rebels to rush the fort at dawn.
Orion was setting already, and the stillness became more terrible
every moment, the live menacing silence. Before I had even time for
an alarm shot the rebel scouts might rush me, for if they meant to
attack the fort at dawn it was high time they put me out of action.
Stars rose upon my left, they set upon my right, then the earth's
edge darkened black against the east, and it looked as if some angel
with a brush made a faint wash of stars to paint the sky.
Up the hill behind me came thud of hoofs, and swish of skidding
runners, clank of harness, voices, "Gid-up you! Haw, Mollie!" I
sensed a mounted man leading a string of sleighs up the long hill
from the fort, but never saw them until they topped the brow curving
past me filmy-gray like ghosts. They were bound, they told me, to
get the traders' stores from Duck Lake Post before the rebels came.
I heard reveillé sound, its notes faint silver, tingling the fine
air. The eastward sky was lemon flecked with rose, the snow-field
was changing from indigo to lilac, then the red sun shone level
through poplar groves, and made their frosted branches cornelian in
mist of fire. The sky was cobalt next, and shadows like blue pools
filled all the hollows, while the poplar groves were changing to
tremulous white diamond. It was time for breakfast, but my relief
was late. Then I was drowsy pacing old Anti on a measured beat to
keep us both awake. Half sleeping I heard at distant intervals the
bugles calling "Dress," "Stables," "Grub pile."
The string of teams came rattling homeward now, at a sharp trot,
taking the hills on a lope, the teamsters shouting chaff one to
another, the men in the sleigh beds with their carbines ready,
peering back. The sleighs came past me empty, and somebody shouted,
"Rebels! Run, Blackguard! Rebels coming!"
"Send my relief," I yelled as they went swinging down the curve, the
first patrol of the regiment which ever showed its tail to an enemy.
For a long time I scanned the rolling plain ahead with all its frozen
pools and clumps of aspen. There was no sign of rebels. Then from
the fort I heard the bugle crying a new call: "Boot and saddle!"
Not knowing what that was, I rode to the lookout, from whence I could
see the square aswarm with men, all falling in like atoms of some
crystal until a general parade stood rigid on command. It was but a
mile. I could see Paddy making a speech, and heard the thin thread
of sound, lost in a riot of cheering. Then there were short sharp
barks of command while the advance guard formed fours, the little
brass seven-pounder swung her little tail, dismounted men piled into
all the sleighs sent out again to load at Duck Lake Post, and the
rear-guard covered all--out through the water-gate, round the
stockade, across the trampled meadow and up the timbered hillside.
Two scouts came ramping past me and plowed on into the blinding
glare. Next Paddy, attended by his bugler, rode up to the hill
crest, and I begged him to let me come.
"Fall in," said he, "rear-guard." So I spurred through the drifts to
get there lest he should change his mind.
The column was in half sections, the last consisting of Buckie who
fancied himself with the stiff cavalry seat, and the Montana cow-hand
who rode easy. I dropped in behind them and called Joe Chambers
back. Had he seen Sarde, I asked.
He had not.
Sarde was just ahead, riding abreast of the column in full view, but
Chambers did not know his enemy by sight, and Buckie had not told.
"You see that officer?" I asked.
"Your partner," said the cowboy, "says that's Inspector Brown."
"Yes, Bunty Brown," said I.
"Your partner called him Jocko," said the cowboy. "So that's Sarde!"
He whipped out his gun and spurred forward.
"Old Bunt was a jockey," I explained, "before he went to the bad and
joined the police."
Chambers fell back beside me and sheathed his gun.
"Seen Mrs. Sarde?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Sent her a note," said Chambers; "she sent a letter back."
He would not tell me what was in that letter.
Ten miles we rode through park-land with its little tarns for ducks,
its aspen groves and drifted glades where soft snow lay neck-deep
beside our trail. Then, as we passed through a narrow belt of bush,
word came from man to man, that the scouts were racing in. Beyond
the timber our column formed front on the left, extending out at
right angles from the road for nearly a hundred yards. The big
sleighs plunged through drifts like boats in a storm at sea, forming
a rough and broken line of rampart. Then we dismounted into snow
breast-deep, and sent back all the horses into the bush for shelter
with one man to each bunch of four, while the rest of us took cover
in clusters behind the sleighs, and our officers tramped out a
pathway close behind us.
The open land ahead was only about a hundred yards across encircled
by clumps of bush. On our far right, across the road, a lane
deep-drifted, went off to a little shack on rising ground. That farm
had a field enclosed with a snake fence which filled the angle
between lane and road.
Out there along the road beside the fence was Paddy, with our
interpreter, Joe McKay, a half-breed, a chap we liked. He was
interpreting to the skipper while an Indian, wrapped in a dingy white
blanket, stood making a long oration. This was the Cree chief,
Beardy, who owned the farm on our right. He seemed to be talking
forever and ever, amen.
I felt it was all some endless, rambling dream, from which I should
wake for breakfast. Beside me on my right was Chambers, and half my
mind was listening while he talked. He told me of the ranch he had
made for Miss Burrows, the shack he had built for her, the fixings,
the ornymints. Those made me chuckle, while the other half of my
mind wondered resentfully what the joke was about. It seemed profane
to laugh while in my dream I knew I was badly frightened.
Out on the road the Indian suddenly snatched at the interpreter's
carbine, but McKay was on the alert, and emptied his revolver into
Beardy, who crumpled up, staggered against the fence and lay there
twitching. Our leader swung round in the saddle, and "Fire, boys!"
he shouted.
"Please, sir, you're right in the way!" cried the seven-pounder gun.
"Oh, never mind me!" laughed Paddy. Beardy had held him in talk
while the rebels, four times our strength, traveling light on
snow-shoes, hidden within the bush, closed in a horseshoe formation
with our line between its prongs, almost surrounded at point-blank
range for the coming massacre. We faced a blinding snow-glare toward
the sun, where trees of branched sprayed diamond sparkled along their
roots with jets of flame, and gusts of smoke like pearls rolled in
serene air. We fired out a blue smoke film, our bullets whipping the
crests of snow-drift into spray, and dust of diamond fell from the
fairy woods.
So rifles blazed and smoked, so bullets whined and sang, but still
the dream sense told me it was all a mere twittering as of summer
birds amid the mighty silence of the plains which filled the vault of
heaven sun-high with peace. Then my mind cleared, for a gust of lead
was smashing the sleigh-box above me, shattering and splintering
planks into long slivers. I knew that our force was helplessly
bogged down, ambushed and being destroyed. After one shot the
seven-pounder jammed. Nine gallant civilian volunteers were killed
attempting to charge the shack upon our right. The enemy at both
ends enfiladed our broken line.
Then in the bush I saw a man leap, falling. Buckie let out a little
yelp of bliss, but this was my meat and I claimed it. "And what's
the next article?" said I. At my side I heard something grunt.
"Pig!" said I, but Chambers rolled over against me. So Buckie and I
let our carbines cool off, while we watched Chambers to see what was
wrong with him. The red flush faded under the tan, the strong
features became thin, pinched, frozen. His buffalo coat spread broad
upon the snow, the sunlight blazed on scarlet serge and glittering
buttons, but his face was in gray shadow.
"Wake up, old man," said I, stripping his serge apart to give him
air. "Where is it, Joe?"
His fingers plucked at my sleeves. He whispered but I could not
catch the words. Then the clay-white face relaxed, a blue shadow
like rising water flooded over it. The lips parted. I took a letter
out of the dead man's pocket.
A bullet whipped fur from my sleeve, one crashed against my carbine
so that it stung my fingers, and half a dozen shattered through the
sleigh as I turned back to the fighting. Those shadowy figures
moving through the bush toward our rear must be stopped quickly.
Just then Doctor Miller came mooching along behind me, and half a
dozen men were begging him to take cover, while in a gentle drawling
voice he told us not to fuss.
"Fine scrapping, boys, make the most of the entertainment. Just been
shot in the pocketbook myself. Bullet hit a pack o' debts but nary
one receipt. So, this man's promoted, eh?" He knelt down beside
Joe's body. "Beyond my jurisdiction, Blackguard, eh?"
He gave me the dead man's belt of ammunition, dusted the snow from
his knees as he stood up, and went lounging back down the line,
giving a new heart, a finer courage to every man he passed.
Red Saunders had found his place too warm a corner, so he climbed
over Buckie and lay down on the dead man's outspread overcoat, his
legs across my own. He said he always 'ated getting wet.
"Happy?" I asked him, for I liked the sailor hobo in those days.
"'Ungry. Gimme blood! Did ye see Sarde? 'E's the only h'orficer
lying dahn. Got Gilchrist's carbine. I kicked 'im--by h'accident,
cruel 'ard, too. 'Ad to appollergise."
"Aim lower," said I, "point-blank. And lie low; your blazing red
hair draws fire."
My next shot got my man, at least I think so, although Buckie claimed
him.
"If I'm knocked," said Red, "I 'ereby wills and bequeaths to you,
Blackguard, h'all my just debts. Share up them cartridges and don't
be a 'og."
To cheer up my Brat in hospital at Fort French I had sent him by the
last mail out a nice dirge set to our old Spanish tune of _Alcala_.
So I began to sing that while I loaded, pumped and fired:
"Carry Brat reverently, gently, slow,
Pace by the trunnions with patient tread
Over the drifts of the rolling snow
With arms reversed, for the dead."
"Cheerful, eh?" was Red's pungent comment.
"Little we thought of him while we shared
All that was worst in the long campaign,
Little he guessed that we really cared:
But drums roll now, for the slain.
"Spreading the flag o'er his last long sleep,
Leading the charger he may not ride;
Though for the living the ways are steep
The road for the dead rolls wide.
"Bravely he suffer'd, and manly fought,
Great with Death's majesty, rides he there,
Royal the honors he dearly bought,
The peace which we may not share."
"Oh, shut it," Red wailed.
I fired once more at a pearl of smoke under the diamond trees, while
I heard the death-scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of
orders and then the bugle crying, "Cease firing! Retire!"
The rebels were charging. The horses led up to our line were
bucking, fighting, breaking loose, falling as the teamsters backed
them to the sleighs. Anti went down dead as I mounted. I saw a
teamster crumple up, the chap whose load of coal I had burned to make
him speak, Chatter McNabb!
Then I went mad with hatred of the rebels, I was mad with everything,
with everybody, jostling Chatter's horses into place, snatching the
traces up and hooking on, swearing at Red's bungling attempts to help
me. I shouted at Chatter to keep his hair on for I wouldn't let him
be scalped.
I dragged him, all white with snow out of the drifts, hoisted him to
the sleigh, and tumbled him into the sleigh-bed all of a heap. There
was Sarde in the sleigh-bed telling me to make haste, for he had
business with the officer commanding, needed swift transport. I
hated him for the trick he had played on a woman, I hated him for Joe
Chambers' death, I hated him too much to look at him, or speak, but
jumped to the driver's seat, and standing on it to get a better
purchase, lashed the team to a gallop hoisting them over the drifts
in flying snow surf and a hail of lead.
And then I heard a yell from the rear, shouts that a wounded man was
being left behind. I must go back. But Sarde heard nothing of that,
and cared for nothing except his errand to the commanding officer.
"Drive on!" he shouted at me as I swung the team. "Drive on! I
order you to drive on!"
I swung the sleigh sharp to spill him, drove back to where some
fellows were lifting the wounded man, then, standing on the seat I
threatened Sarde with my whip.
"Get out, you cur!" I screamed at him. "You're a coward! A coward!
Hear, you chaps! I charge this man with cowardice in the field! Get
out of my sleigh or I'll flog you!"
The wounded man was lifted on board, the rest of the chaps piled in
to ease him through the jolting, and once more I swung my team round
to a gallop joining the retreat through clouds of flying snow. A
sharp jolt brought us up to the firm ground of the road, and I
swerved right, tailing in with the outfit at a swinging trot.
We had left twelve men dead in the field, we had eight wounded in the
sleighs--one of them dying. We knew that we were thrashed, had let
red war loose on all the settlements.
The last dropping shots astern gave way to silence, the glare was no
longer blinding in our eyes, our confused rush found itself and was a
disciplined column in retreat. In the presence of wounded and dying
men a hushed quiet fell upon us like that of the Holy Eucharist. I
drove on, praying.
Then I remembered Sarde with a sudden bitterness, and called back
laughing, "Say, boys, where's Sarde, the coward?"
"In your sleigh, Constable," he answered quietly. "Is there a
non-commissioned officer with us? You, Sergeant Boyle, put that man
under arrest."
"Conshider yerself," said Boyle in his delicious brogue, touching my
shoulder.
"And when we reach the fort," my enemy continued, "you'll put that
man in the guard-room."
But Boyle was nettled, for that, at such a time, was an act of spite.
"Constable la Mancha," he shouted, so that all might hear, "for
charging an officer wit' cowardice in the field, ye'll be
conshiderin' yershelf under close arrest, d'ye hear me?"
"You witness," said I, "to my charge of cowardice."
"Silence, prisoner!"
I handed my reins to Red Saunders as off man.
"Well, Sergeant," Sarde became affable, "might have been worse
weather, eh?"
The sergeant turned his back on an officer under charge of cowardice,
and a trooper at the tail end of the sleigh asked his neighbor, "When
will Sarde be court-martialed?" From that moment the outfit treated
Sarde as a leper.
Meanwhile I sulked, humped on the driving seat, though the blue sky
and the fair snow-fields called on my soul to rest, to be at peace,
and shamed by distracted spirit with their quiet. There was silence
in that heaven for the space of half an hour, teaching me not to
care, never to hate. I think I went off to sleep.
As we came to the rim of the plains looking down on Fort Carlton, we
saw clusters of men in the square waiting for news of victory; and
over to the right on the Prince Albert trail old Sorrel Top's relief
force--come too late--was swinging down the curves of the long hill.
III
"jo Dear--I can't bare it any longer i ain't got nothing to love
it's up to you take me away or i'll kill myself. The first nite
Mister Sardes on duty meat me outside the stockade i'll bring a
bundle just round the corner on the left as you go out so they
wont see us from the bastion Come at nine.
"Your broken hearted
"Vi.
There is the letter which Joe Chambers was trying to give me when he
died. It made me sorry for Sarde, ashamed that I'd lost my temper
and brought a false charge against him. He had been anything but
coward on that winter march from Qu'Appelle, had treated me half
decently ever since, and certainly played the man at Duck Lake fight.
Of course, an officer should be a gentleman, has a job in which any
one else is a misfit, but that was Sarde's misfortune, and not his
fault. A pig is a pig, so one should make the best of him as pork,
and not expect his meat to be caviar.
I was in the cells with plenty of time for sleep and remorse while
all the boys were at work through the night and the day after Duck
Lake fight. Toward evening Buckie came to see how I was getting on,
and when he found me starving brought some grub. The provost guard
had been withdrawn, he told me, because the whole garrison served the
relief on patrol, picket and the inner line of defense. The men on
fatigue were lugging the stock out of the Hudson's Bay store into the
square. They swamped the grub with coal-oil, piled the dry goods and
burned them, and had been told to help themselves to the jewelry. At
midnight we should abandon and burn the fort to fall back upon the
threatened settlements.
Now I must explain that there was only one entrance to the fort, the
water-gate, a square tunnel through the log building which fronted
upon the North Saskatchewan. As you left the fort through this
tunnel, the guard-room was on the left. The guard-room stove had an
iron pipe which went up through the ceiling to warm the surgery on
the upper floor. Next to the surgery was a ward where lay the two
wounded men I had rescued, Sergeant Gilchrist, shot through the
thigh, and Chatter McNabb, shot through the lungs. The orderly in
charge of them was Baugh, the chap who got his face frozen off on our
march from Fort Qu'Appelle. He had come on by the stage sleigh
convalescent.
Buckie had been at work with Sergeant-Major Dann up in the surgery.
They had emptied a couple of palliasses, stuffed them with clean hay
and placed them in the sleigh set apart for the two wounded men. At
midnight Buckie was to help the orderly to get them down to that
sleigh. Since the guard-room stove had gone out, the cells were so
beastly cold that I asked Buckie to bring me down the stack of old
hay he had left on the surgery floor. He laughed, telling me to come
out on duty and get warm with work. He left the door wide open, but
I was too sulky even to leave the bed where I lay trying to shiver
myself into a sweat.
Late in the evening some half-breed refugees were quartered in the
guard-room, and made a hearty fire which warmed me up. I could have
slept but for their clatter of talk, and then they got the stove red,
and the heat was beyond endurance. Roasted out of my cell I told the
half-breeds to tame their beastly stove or they would fire the fort
and burn the wounded men in hospital. The breeds were merely
insolent, so I took down my side-arms from a peg, slung on the belt,
loaded the-gun and flounced out in a huff, refusing to stay in jail
another minute unless the authorities kept my prison decent.
I found myself in the covered gateway, and on my right was the square
with a bustle of men loading sleighs. On my left were the gates ajar
with the sentry pacing his beat. Beyond him lay the river winding
through that quiet starlit wilderness which is the only medicine for
perturbed spirits. I noticed the gear on the wall for fighting fires
and took down the ax which I hefted and threw across my shoulder.
The sentry was only a B Troop man, so I told him I had been sent out
to cut a waggy, to repair the broken mutt of a whiffleswoggle.
Anything is good enough for B Troop.
Outside I swung off to the left, and all I cared for in the world
just then was to be alone with my dog, and my bitter heart, there in
the quiet. But rounding the end of the wall I came upon Mrs. Sarde.
Then I remembered her letter, her assignation with Joe Chambers at
that time and that place. Of course, she must be attended to, so I
raised my cap.
"Oh!" she said. "How you frightened me! And I've waited hours. Oh,
Joe!"
"Joe couldn't come--sent me."
"Mr. la Mancha!"
"At your service. I suppose you thought I was your lover's ghost."
"His ghost? Say, what d'you mean? Oh, Mr. la Mancha, he must have
sent a letter, a message, something."
So she had not been told. It was damned awkward. I set my ax
against the palisade. "Joe has been hurt," I explained as I bent
over her, "shot in the fighting yesterday."
"Dead?" came her awestruck whisper.
"Dead. He told me to tell you."
"I must go to him," she sobbed.
"You needn't worry," I told her. "I got your letter out of his
pocket and destroyed it. You're all right."
She was crying convulsively and there is nothing that annoys me more.
"Don't cry," said I, "you know you don't really care, so what's the
good of shamming?"
She tried hysterics.
"Drop that," I told her. "What's the good of play-acting at me? You
know you can't fool me. Drop it."
"Oh," she wailed, "how dare you say I don't care! You've b-broken my
h-heart."
"Drop it."
She gulped, pulled herself together and looked up. "Well?"
"Now look here," I told her, "you stop playing the fool. You asked
this man to run away with you. If you'd cared for him the least
little bit, you wouldn't have asked a soldier on active service to
get himself court-martialed and shot for deserting in the face of the
enemy."
"I never--"
"Don't lie. Don't play crocodile tears on me. Stop shamming and
lying for once in your mean little life. Joe came to save you from
yourself, and died in the attempt."
That brought her to bay.
"You're cruel. You're unjust. You're insulting. You're a brute!"
"Chuck it," said I. "You've got to face the truth this once because
it may save other lives. You told me you'd always despised him,
thought he was stupid, dull, a fool, played with him, used him,
accepted his presents, borrowed his pay and had him to flirt with and
keep yourself in practise. 'It does 'em good,' you told me. Then
you lied to him and left him in the lurch. Joe told me," here I had
to improvise, "on the morning of his death, that you expected him to
run away with you, through an enemy's country, in time of war. He
saw through you at last. He said he'd see you damned first, and
that's the message I bring to you from the dead."
She held her hands to her ears screaming, "Oh, let me off! Let me
go!"
"Go," said I, standing aside and pointing toward the gate, "cut
along, young woman, back to your duty."
She crouched down, cowering against the wall. "I daren't," she
whispered, "he'll kill me!"
"Serve you jolly well right if he did. There isn't a man with any
manhood in him would stand you for a day."
And I was sorry for her all the time. To be so mean a creature must
be a wretched fate, endowed with pleasures but no happiness. Like a
constricting snake she was created to crush the manhood out of men,
to slaver them over, to destroy them, and hunt for more. To be a
snake with a conscience must be horrible. So while my words were
harsh I spoke only in pity to rescue this poor creature from herself.
"Your eyes," I said, "are a brace of harlots making wanton love to
every man in sight. Your lips have no restraint while your tongue
flatters and you make your sacred beauty a thing of hell. You fool
men with sham tears, sham smiles, sham sentiments, sham
emotions--playing the game of life with marked cards, cogged dice--a
shark at getting, only a miser at giving."
"Oh, I don't!" She stood up to face me again. "I never! I--"
"Virtuous woman, eh? Why, Mary Magdalen and all her poor little
sisters will keep house in Heaven before you've finished being
grilled in hell."
"Oh, pity me," she moaned, "have mercy!"
"The pity you gave Joe, who escaped you in death? The pity you show
poor Sarde who can't escape? I'm fighting Sarde to get him cashiered
before he has me expelled, but yet I'm sorry for him. At worst, he's
a Canadian, one of the finest, manliest race on earth. Go, make
yourself worthy to have a husband, and don't stay whining here."
"I daren't. He beats me!"
"And you've richly deserved it, eh?"
She looked up with a weak, wan little smile. "Oh, yes."
"You won't be flogged unless you earn it, eh?"
"N-no."
"Run away back to your quarters. Grasp life and its thorns turn
soft."
"I daren't. Oh, save me, José."
Without a rag of self-respect she flung her arms round my knees. As
to her sobbing, it sounded almost real.
"So," I asked her gently, "you don't a bit mind wrecking another
life?"
"I'd do anything if you told me. I'll be good, always."
"All right," said I. "Sarde found you in my arms, and that's my
fault. I'll pay. Come on--get up." I lifted her to her feet.
"I'll break up this marriage for you, and when you're free--"
"Oh, you're so good!" She was shamming again. "So noble!"
"Now, don't trot out your mock heroics. You're not a serial heroine
by instalments. Come on. Since I've got to pay the price I may as
well have the fun." I kissed her. "There, now you may kiss me.
Kiss hard. It won't last long."
There were dropping shots from snipers in the hills; the hum of rapid
business in the fort grew to a tumult; the sentries called from post
to post:
Number one: All's well!
Number two: All's well!
Number three: All's well!
Then from a greater distance:
Number four: All's well!
And, faint as a little echo, far away:
All's well!
And silence is the rhetoric of lovers. Why should it matter? What
difference could it make? Why should the innocent passions of good
beasts be interdict for men?
The women were being loaded into their special sleighs when Sarde
first missed his wife. With growing anxiety he visited every place
where she could be, asked questions and heard rough laughter the
moment his back was turned. He found that Mrs. Sarde had crossed
toward the gate-house at nine o'clock, carrying a large bundle. He
failed to notice a bright and growing light which flickered in the
surgery window above the guard-room; but pressed on through the
covered way, and asked impatient questions of the sentry who answered
him in gibberish about a waggy, a mutt and a whiffle-swoggle. Yes,
Mrs. Sarde had passed hours ago with a bundle and a gold-topped
umbrella, turning off sharply to the left.
So for the second time poor Sarde found his pretty mistress in my
arms. He stood beside us unnoticed and there was a quivering agony
of shame in his first words, "Oh, don't mind me."
We leaped apart. The woman nipped round the corner screaming. The
powerful impulse of a soldier's self-respect compelled me to stand to
attention, forced me to salute that long thin fool, poor Sarde.
"You?" he said in a husky whisper, "You!"
"That's me."
"Give me the 'Sir', confound you!"
"Why, dammit, I nearly did!" The impulse to obey was almost
overwhelming, yet only by pressing a quarrel could I compel him to
release the woman.
"Prisoner: right turn--quick march--get to the guard-room--or--or--"
"_Or_ what?" He had threatened. He had ceased to be an officer, to
claim respect for his rank. He was only the peasant with the
grotesque dull rage of a mere lout. I laughed. "Or _what_? Eh,
bumpkin?"
This was mutiny, and Sarde lifted his whistle to blow a call for
help. I snatched the whistle, blew the call myself. They seemed to
have a bonfire in the fort, quite a big one, too, and so much clamor
that nobody heard the call. I watched Sarde's sluggish northern way
of reaching for his revolver, fumbling at the holster flap, and
lugging out the gun. The Anglo-Saxon peasantry are so slow!
With one flash I had him covered.
"No, you don't," said I. "Hands up, hands up, my fool. That's
right. Now be good." I pitched his whistle over the stockade, then
wrenched his gun from the lanyard until the shackle parted. With
both guns I jumped back, bidding him drop his hands and stand easy
for a nice, cozy little chat. "There are no witnesses," I had to
reassure him, "so you see we're man to man."
"Until--" Sarde's voice was full of menace, for that sort of animal
is never more than half tamed at the best.
"Until," said I, "you bring a charge, and I call Miss Burrows for my
first witness."
"Then since we're man to man," he shouted--they always have to
shout--"what were you doing with my wife?"
"Pooh! She's not your wife."
"You dare--"
"Stand back, Sarde. I don't like your perfume. No, the question, my
good man, is whether you loose this woman--"
"Because--you--"
A little sound caught my ear from round the corner, and at first I
whistled _Three Blind Mice_ lest Sarde should hear it. But that
seemed unfair. For a moment I had to think, scratching my head with
Sarde's gun. Then I jammed it into my belt, bolstered my own
revolver and picked up the ax.
"Look here, Sarde," I had to explain, "it's deuced awkward, but I
heard your--ahem--good lady listening round the corner. I didn't
mean to give you away, old chap. Excuse my country manners. You see
she's found out she's not your wife. She'll interfere now; she'll
spoil our fight. Suppose we move, eh? We'll go to the back of the
fort. Come on, you've got to. By your left, quick
march--left--left--left, right, left--and if you hail the bastion,
I'll drop you! Left--left--you need a setting up drill, Sarde.
Left, turn. I know you don't want to come, so you needn't explain.
Left--left--left, right, left. There. Halt! About turn! Stand
at--ease. Stand easy."
I set the ax down against the curtain wall, thinking, I remember,
that it must be a deuced big bonfire they were having inside the
fort. The sniping was a nuisance here at the back, and one bullet
splashed between us. Poor Sarde was convinced, I suppose, that a
dangerous lunatic had best be humored. He was getting patient, too.
"I guess," he remarked quite affably, "you mean to murder me, eh?"
"Certainly not. Don't be silly. Will you release this woman? Yes
or no?"
He wanted to argue the point, to keep me in argument until somebody
came to his rescue. He had to be roused from such dreams _pronto_.
"All right," said I, "you needn't get excited. You see I dislike
you, Sarde. I take exception to the shape of your feet, you
mule-foaled outrage on nature's modesty; you bandy-legged,
stridulating, peevish, pop-eyed anachronism; you supercilious,
illegitimate, high-bounding, beef-faced, misdirected, spatch-cocked
swab of erring parents! You don't seem really to understand me even
now. Let me explain."
I whipped one of my mitts gently, swiftly across his stupid face, and
stood back to see how he liked it. I certainly had done my best for
him, and he was obliged to clench his teeth to steady his rasping
voice, hissing staccato:
"The reckoning is not to-night!"
"Bad form, Sarde. Melodrama. You mean well but you're rotten in the
part. You should say, 'The r-r-reckoning is to-night! Ha! Ha!'
That's how the villain talks. If you live, you can blame the rebels,
and say the snipers got me, see? We have our revolvers, and so--"
What more could he want?
"Constable," he played up another excuse. "I hold Her Majesty's
commission. You forget yourself."
"Ah! Let us be calm. José Maria Sebastian Sant Iago de la Mancha y
O'Brien consents to waive the difference of rank." I raised my hat
and bowed. "Come, Sarde, we know that you're a coward and dueling is
forbidden and all that, but never mind. For once you shall behave
exactly like a man. Brace up!" I struck him hard and harder across
the face. "You--really--must--understand. At fifteen paces we turn,
and as I give the word we fire, and keep on firing. No? Now don't
disappoint me, please, I beg you. Have you no inside? Are you an
empty pretense? _Nombre de Dios_! What have you done with your
manhood?"
"I've told you already that officers can't possibly fight with--"
"With me, señor? Haven't I explained? The Marquis de las Alpuxarras
consents to waive the difference of rank, and meet a peasant. You
scrambled skunk, take your gun! I insist. I command! Now you're
armed, and at the word I shoot. I step back ten paces and at the
word three, I fire. One! Two!--"
_Sangre de Cristo_! The beastly cad fired at "Two," and there was I
clutching a burning pain in my gun arm above the elbow.
"What the devil do you mean," I asked him, "by firing before I gave
the word, eh? I'll smack your beastly head!"
He fired twice more while I rushed him. Then, with a swinging
left-hander, I got the point of his chin, and he went down.
A gentleman must always think for others before he thinks for
himself, but Sarde being attended to, I had time to look around.
Sergeant-Major Dann had been first to see that glare in the surgery
window, and Buckie reminded him of the hay left round the stove-pipe.
At the head of the hospital stairs they found Baugh, the heroic
orderly, fighting the flames with a sack and getting badly burned.
The sergeant-major picked up Sergeant Gilchrist and ran with him
down-stairs. Chatter McNabb jeered at Buckie's attempt to do as much
for him, and shot as he was through the lungs, made his own way out
of the building. Buckie found the hospital orderly with his face
apparently burned off, in the act of falling among the flames. He
dragged Baugh down the stairs.
The bugle was crying the terrible monotone of the "General assembly."
But while the work of rescue blocked the stairway, the fire leaped
from room to room, and before the brigade could form for organized
work the whole gate-house was in flames, barring the only exit from
the fort. The conflagration was spreading through old dry wooden
buildings and the garrison was trapped beyond all hope of escape.
Through cracks in the palisade I could see the impending death of the
whole garrison, but I was crazy with pain and rapidly losing
strength, while every stroke I clove with the ax made me scream with
agony. Then in a sudden rage with Sarde, I turned round and kicked
him.
"Who told you to lie down, you dirty dog? Get up! Don't you see the
damned fort's on fire? And you, a Canuck with an ax, letting the
outfit burn to death! Get up!"
He scrambled up, dazed, leaning against the wall, and peered stupidly
through a slit while I kicked him savagely from behind. What was the
good of moccasins? I needed boots!
"Get to it," I howled, "you blithering disgrace, and I'll forgive you
for shooting me, you cad, and let you off the charge of cowardice.
Strike, you whelp of sin! Strike, and I'll let you stay in the
force, my bleeding hero. Harder! Harder! Sick 'im! Bite 'im!
Tear 'im and eat 'im!"
In Canadian hands the quivering haft and gleaming blade of an ax ring
out wild music to its whirl, its bite, its rending and swirl of
splinters.
"Go it, you cripple!" I yelled. Then from within I heard the quick
live clamor of a second ax and a third.
The fire, with gathering strength at frightful speed, now roared
along the buildings round the square, flames leaping high through
crashing roofs to light the jammed confusion of sleighs and rearing
horses, while the whole mass were driven scorched against this
northern wall. But the call of Sarde's ax had roused the whole of
our ax-men to help, hewing a gap through the wall; its tall posts
reeled and fell one by one, the breach was widening, at last there
was room, and the sleighs began to file past me. I had swooned by
that time with the loss of blood, but somebody with a handkerchief
and a gun made a rough tourniquet, which stopped the spurting blood
until Doctor Miller came. They put me into the last sleigh as it
left the abandoned fort.
As we slowed down to climb the Prince Albert hill, I looked back at
that red splendor which had been Fort Carlton. Across the meadow, on
snow that glowed like blood, some one was running, a woman who lugged
a bundle and brandished an umbrella while her big bustle wagged from
side to side. The sleigh was stopped and Mrs. Sarde climbed in.
So the long night retreat began, and as we gained the rim of the
plains, we saw the first vedettes of the astounded rebels commence
their swoop for plunder on what was left of Carlton. Thus ended the
busiest hour in my life, for trouble rains on those already wet.
IV
At dusk on the eve of Palm Sunday our sleighs drew into Prince
Albert. For three days and three nights our people had not slept,
but there was still no rest because a first-class panic broke out
among the settlers at the fort of refuge. The doctor had to find
some sort of shelter for the wounded men, and the only place free
from slush within the Prince Albert stockade consisted of a stack of
up-edged planks. He laid us there, and dressed our wounds while the
panic raged all round us with deafening clamor of screaming men,
sobbing women, children in hysterics, a hammering which they mistook
for musketry, and the alarms of the church bell overhead.
My turn came last, for Sarde had given me only a trifling flesh wound
through the upper arm. "Is it hurting?" asked Doctor Miller.
It was.
"That's healthy granulation," said he. "Does you good. Serves you
right. I'm going to sit with you and have a pipe, or else I'll be
asleep in another minute. Got a match?"
His face was long, lean, whimsical, his speech a gentle drawl aching
with humor. All of us loved him and the memory of that unhappy
gentleman shines down the years just like a ray of light.
"And now, my boy," said he, stuffing his clinical thermometer under
my tongue, "I'm going to feel your conscience, if you've got one."
He had me gagged with that infernal instrument.
"Inspector Sarde," said he, "rode with me a-ways on the trail
confessing all your sins. You don't seem to get on with my brother
officer to any great extent. Wall, sonny, you've both got a
temperature and you've both got clinical thermometers in your mouths
to allay the heat. Nothing like a thermometer for a hot patient.
The day a soldier marries, seems to me, he hangs up all his weapons,
and swaps a little drill for bloody war. You're in jolly good luck
it wasn't you she married. You ought to be sorry for Mr. Sarde, not
hit him because he's down."
I nodded.
"Quite so. But he keeps his temper and everything else he gets. You
give yourself and all you've got, away. I like a fool, too. But why
bring a false charge of cowardice?"
I took the thermometer out of my mouth to say I withdrew the charge.
He clapped it back again and told me to shut up.
"Do you think," he asked, "that it's your solemn duty as a buck
policeman to interfere between your superior officer--and the devil?"
I shook my head.
"And why wear moccasins when you kick an officer? Need boots."
My toes were still hurting.
"Mr. Sarde was hurt," said the doctor. "I should feel hurt if you
kicked me. That's only natural. I'd shoot you, too, or
operate--which is much the same thing. You see, my dear boy, even
the commissioner might object to having his troopers kicking his
officers, and his officers shooting his troopers when both should be
shooting rebels. If he finds out, he'll kick Mr. Sarde out of the
force, and have you shot for mutiny. Serve you both dam' well right.
"I don't mind that at all, but what if these bally civilians get to
know too much? Scandals in our outfit--there's the rub. Scandals in
our outfit! Won't do. The civvies will get too happy. It isn't
good for 'em. They oughtn't to be encouraged. Just look at them,
screeching with fright, as if there were no hereafter. Did you ever
see such a howling disgrace to the whites!"
"Let's see," he whipped the thermometer out of my mouth, "I guess
you've been pinked by a rebel sniper, eh?"
"Yes, sir. Shot by a rebel."
"And Mr. Sarde is a good officer?"
"Hero of Carlton!"
"And at Duck Lake fight you misunderstood Mr. Sarde's order to turn
back after wounded men, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"So long as you're left alone you don't bring any charges, and so
long as you behave he brings no charges, eh?"
"Please tell him, sir, that I think he's a disgrace to the force, and
I'll get him pitched out if I can. But it won't be by any dirty
trick or by giving the outfit away."
"What makes you hate him, lad?"
"Instinct. He's poison."
"Why?"
"Well, sir, compare him with old Sorrel Top, or Paddy, or the great
Sam himself, or dear old Wormy, or young Perry, or dammit, even Paper
Collar Johnny."
"Canadians all. Mr. Sarde is Canadian, too."
"The others are gentlemen. A cad with a commission is an outrage.
He means well, but he doesn't set me a good example, sir; he's bad
for my morals; he makes me peevish. What have I done that this
bounder should come to reign over me?"
The dear man held up his thermometer as a threat.
"When the patient," he chuckled, "gets full of repartee, poor charity
takes wings. I'm off to torture a wounded volunteer, and after me
comes the parson. Beware of doctors, Blackguard." He gave me my pet
name!
Next day the wounded were moved to Miss Baker's house--to be haunted
by an angel. I used to nip out of bed and help her while she
threatened to turn me into the horse corral. To that house came Mrs.
Sarde secretly, with a pudding. I like chocolate shapes. She
threatened widowhood and overdressed the part. She told me in stage
whispers how she had crawled and crouched behind the corner of the
stockade at Carlton, with creepy gestures in the shuddering gloom, to
hear me reading the gospel to poor Sarde. She made me tell her all I
had heard, and more, about Happy Bill, the converted railroad stoker,
how he wasn't exactly a parson, and his monkey business not precisely
a marriage. Oh, she was great as the outraged wife, betrayed but
calm, trapped in a bogus marriage, but chock-full of respectability,
a helpless prey. Fact is, the woman was having the time of her life,
reeking adventure like a born adventuress. She clawed the air, she
capsized my pudding, she spouted melodrama drivel about her marriage
lines and bloody doom. This way lies madness! Gimme the dagger!
She had a fat part to play in real melodrama, pleased all to pieces,
having paroxysms of rage and grief, with one eye cocked at my shaving
glass. Then she was washed away in floods of tears, while I taught
her how to do coyote howls, until at last she looked up with a grin
as if to say, "How's that, umpire?"
Only he is fortunate with women of whom they take no notice. I was
not fortunate. They always noticed me, to my undoing. Of course,
they made me pay, at every gate, their toll of kisses on the hell
road. Here was the puss complete who, when I called her a shammy
little liar, avowed me to be the only man who really understood.
Because I denied her I was the only man she ever wanted. She knew
that I liked pussies, that no puss could be too fluffy--and let me
see her at her fluffiest. She wanted to get rid of Sarde that she
might marry me. I told her kittens were all very well to play with,
but not much use to keep, because they always degenerated into cats.
My ears should select my woman, not my eyes.
Oh, she was very fair, and most alluring, catching at my senses,
tearing at my heart--a foul temptation to my body. And I was
twenty-one years young in those days. I took her by the shoulders
from behind, kissed her upon the neck--a much less tempting place
than the lips I craved for--and bundled her out of the house to sulk
in the horse corral while I devoured her pudding.
It was after the war was over, some time about September, that the
Sardes were transferred again to Fort Qu'Appelle. And there the
woman went stalking for Happy Bill. She thought herself no end of a
scout when she found him. Then she paid five dollars to be told by a
real live lawyer in his legal jargon that she was not a married lady.
Her next act was to write a declaration of her woes and "pin it to
Sarde's bosom with a dagger"--which means, I suppose, that she left a
letter for him on the dressing-table before she robbed his cash-box,
and streaked off home to uncle. She used to write me most inviting
letters.