[Transcriber's note: Unusual or non-standard spellings are as
printed.]
SPIRIT-OF-IRON
HARWOOD STEELE
"_He is a living link with the Empire's great traditions, with the
blood of British heroes in his veins ... the personification of the
best type of British officer, whose soul is in his corps, who thinks
only of the steep and narrow path of Duty ... the embodiment, in one
individuality, of the entire North-West Mounted Police ... the
embodiment of Western Canada. Out there, they call him by the name
the Indians gave him--Manitou-pewabic--a tribute to his personality,
for the phrase means 'Spirit-of-Iron.' Surely this is the spirit
which has made, not only the man, but the Force to which he belongs
and the country which is its environment--Spirit-of-Iron!_"
--BOOK IV., CHAP. V., 2.
SPIRIT-OF-IRON
(Manitou-pewabic)
AN AUTHENTIC NOVEL OF
THE NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE
By HARWOOD STEELE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with George H. Doran Company
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
SPIRIT-OF-IRON. III
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
TO
THE NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE
"ORIGINALS" OF 1874,
THE ADVANCE SCOUTS OF THE ARMY OF
WESTERN CANADIAN CIVILIZATION
FOREWORD
"Spirit-of-Iron" is an attempt to present fact in the form of
romantic fiction. It portrays the development of North-Western
Canada in the pioneer period, the main events of which, with one or
two exceptions, have been closely followed.
The characters are types. Hector Adair is intended to represent the
ideal Mounted Police officer in particular and the ideal British
officer generally. He is not to be identified with any historical
figure connected with the Force. The plan, here employed, of
symbolizing and tracing the development of a country through the
development of an individual such as Hector is, I think, new. The
politician, Welland, similarly, is a type, and has no definite
connection with any famous politician of real life. The men of the
Police--the Marquis, Sergeant Kellett and others--are also types,
true to the extraordinary calibre of the Force. The remaining
characters--whom the reader may identify if--and as--he chooses, all
had their originals in the old Canadian North-West.
Practically every incident and episode of the story had its origin in
fact. The arrest of Wild Horse, the Whitewash Bill man-hunt, the
holding of Hopeful Pass and innumerable minor incidents all occurred,
though not necessarily in the circumstances described, while the
details of the dangerous plot confronting Hector in Book IV are
drawn, almost line for line, from a great if obscure page in the more
recent history of the Mounted Police in the North. Hector's long
struggle with Welland is not based on any particular conflict of this
kind in real life, but that such things occur, in Canada as
elsewhere, any man acquainted with the Services and politics can
vouch for. Finally, the locale of each episode is not necessarily to
be identified with any particular point in our North-West.
The word "Royal" is everywhere omitted from the title of the Force
because the honourary distinction of "Royal" was not theirs when the
events covered in this novel took place.
I have described the book as "An Authentic Novel of the North-West
Mounted Police" because I wish to emphasize that it endeavours to
present the Force as it was and is and not as portrayed by
well-meaning but ignorant writers of the "red love, two-gun" variety,
and it is my hope that, through this book, the reader may obtain a
clearer conception of the marvellous devotion to duty, the high
idealism, the splendid efficiency which have made the Mounted Police
famous than any to be derived from these inaccurate romances.
HARWOOD STEELE.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: _On the Anvil_
BOOK TWO: _Spirit-of-Iron_
BOOK THREE: _The Clash_
BOOK FOUR: _Coup-de-Grâce_
BOOK ONE: _On the Anvil_
Chapter I
I
The time had come for the North-West Mounted Police to say goodbye to
Lower Fort Garry, the home of the Force since its inception some
months before.
In the clear spring dawn, the scarlet-coated column fell in, ranging
behind it a long tail of ox-carts and wagons. Sergeant-Major
Whittaker, of 'J' Division, a straight-backed, dapper, sinewy little
man with a pair of fierce moustaches, called the roll. The
Regimental Sergeant-Major, trotting over to the bearded
Assistant-Commissioner, reported all ready to march. Orders cracked
down the line. With a shout, a thunder of hoofs and the roll of
heavy wheels, the cavalcade surged into motion.
In the rear of the column rode Constable Hector Adair.
II
A fine, big, handsome fellow, Hector, a splendid specimen of what the
Province of Ontario could produce when it tried, and looking every
inch what he was--the son of a hardy soldier-father, that Colonel
Adair who had been one of the pioneers of old Blenheim County, at
home, and who, before that, had served under the Iron Duke himself in
the Peninsula and at Waterloo. This young giant's broad shoulders
and deep chest would have been the envy of many heavy dragoons, and
he was six feet tall. His face, bronzed, with straight nose, strong
chin, firm mouth and steel-grey eyes, had in it a great power and yet
an idealism unspoilt by contact with the rotten side of Life. Men--a
keen observer felt--though knowing him still a boy--he was actually
twenty--would regard him as a man, fear him intensely and follow him
anywhere. Women would thrill at his physique, linger over his brown
hair, know him a man, regard him as a boy and love him with a love
largely maternal.
More than this, he looked the soldier-born. No finer school for the
making of men ever existed than the old, partially developed Upper
Canada where Hector had first seen the light and spent his childhood.
It had been rough, crude and half civilized but also vigorous and
strong. Its immense forests, its rapid streams, its solitudes
possessed by dangerous wild animals, had given him resource,
self-reliance, endurance, courage. The most ordinary affairs of
life--a visit to the nearest settlement, the routine journey to
church or school--tested the quality of many a grown man. The barest
necessities were won only by the hardest of hard work. Even the
pastimes of the district round about demanded much pluck and stamina.
Blue blood went without luxuries and handled axe or plough. Men were
men there, boys were men in miniature, and women were worthy of their
sons and husbands--more could not be said in praise of them.
Altogether, the natural environment which had been Hector's as a boy
could not help but develop in him the first requisite of the born
soldier--true manhood. And the sports to be enjoyed in Blenheim
county--shooting, fishing, big game hunting in the heart of the great
wildernesses--had made him a giant at last, with a heart that nothing
shook and no nerves whatever.
If all this were not enough, Hector's boyhood associates had been of
a character which must inevitably have shaped him into what he was.
Take the Colonel, who, coming out to Canada to occupy land under one
of the earliest settlement schemes, had built up prosperity for
himself and constructed Silvercrest, his fine estate, from the
trackless wild. The Colonel, from the first, had intended that his
son should have a Commission in the Army and carry on the fighting
traditions of a martial family. He believed, besides, in King
Solomon's adage concerning the rod and the spoiled child, considered
that boys should be seldom seen and never heard and held other ideas
equally as uncomfortable.
The Colonel had not been able to spare much time to Hector, but, such
as it was, it was well spent. He had not only thrashed him when he
needed it, but had educated him. Knowing that the little country
school could give his son only a rudimentary education, he expended
an hour or so a day in teaching Hector many things in literature,
geography, history and mathematics--particularly literature. By
great effort, labouriously bringing many of the books all the way
from England, the Colonel had formed a fine library at Silvercrest.
The old classics were there, with later and contemporary
writers--Scott, Coleridge, Dickens and Alfred Tennyson, the handsome
lion of the Old Land. Father and son had toiled most studiously over
these treasures and it was worth something to see the small,
brown-haired boy struggling with the heroes of Greece under the stern
eye of his white-haired parent. Hector had the run of the room and
on rainy days all the giants of romance and chivalry took full
possession of that book-lined haven in the wilderness. Such passages
as this rang like far trumpets in his ears:
_I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King as if he were
Their conscience and their conscience as their King;
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honour his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her...._
These stirring lines, from the beginning, had filled him with strange
longings and given him a great ideal.
Besides these more general things, much of the Colonel's teaching had
been devoted to building up the boy into that splendid product, 'an
officer and a gentleman.'
Then there was his mother--a sweet, gentle, dainty woman, of
marvellous housekeeping ability. From her, Hector had learned such
of those fine, old-fashioned principles as the Colonel had been too
busy to teach. Hector's little sister, Nora--his constant companion
in his boyhood doings, rendering him profound homage and devotion and
regarding him as a demigod, the mover of mountains, the achiever of
impossibilities--had done much to make him chivalrous. His cousins
Hugh and Allen, boys of his own age who lived close by, could not be
said to have much influenced him, except to make him one of the most
reckless lads and finest sportsmen in the county, though from his
older cousin, John, he had learnt all he knew of woodcraft and
athletics.
But the men on his father's farm had done more to make a soldier out
of Hector than even the Colonel. They were all veterans of many
campaigns, or at least members of the local militia--none but these
were granted work at Silvercrest. Grey old, lean old Sergeant
Pierce, the Colonel's right-hand man, had marched with the 28th, the
Colonel's own Regiment, from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees. Corporal
Hardwick, late of the 95th, had served in the Kaffir Wars and
accompanied the 'Green Jackets' in the attack on the Sevastapol
Ovens. Private Toombs had aided the 57th--the famous 'Die-hards'--in
suppressing the 'Sepoy Rebellion.' 'Maintop' MacEachern, senior
naval representative, a lean, white-whiskered old sea-dog, had been a
powder-monkey under Broke when the _Shannon_ took the _Chesapeake_.
And 'Long Dick' Masters, the 'daddy' of the whole crowd, barring
Sergeant Pierce, and so tall that he could give even the Sergeant a
couple of inches, had long ago led the rush of the York Volunteers at
Queenston Heights.
The influence of such men on a youngster's development was inevitably
potent. Thanks to them, Silvercrest had overflowed with Service
tradition. As a small boy, Hector had been allowed to form them into
a little company, which, under the Sergeant's supervision, he drilled
with unflagging zeal, until he was as efficient as the smartest
instructor in the smartest regiment of the Guards. They told him
yarns of a hundred fights and fields. They sang him marvellous
choruses--'Ranzo,' 'We'll Fight the Greeks and Romans on the High
Seas-O,' 'The Bold Soldier Boy' and many others--which in their day
had startled the French outposts in Spain or enlivened the fo'c's'le
of the _Victory_. They gave him such formulæ as this, which he had
from Sergeant Pierce: 'Don't knuckle down to a bully. Don't start
the trouble but take on anything that breathes if there's good
reason. Stand up to your man like a soldier, even if you know you're
licked, and fight--d'you see, little master?--till the last shot's
fired.' And, between them, they drove him wild to serve the Queen.
No wonder, then, that he rode out today in the midst of the Mounted
Police.
But why was he only a ranker--when the Colonel, from the first, had
trained him for a Commission?
Of this--a word later.
III
So the years of Hector's boyhood had been passed in an atmosphere of
idealistic tradition.
His first attempt at soldiering in earnest was made when he was
twelve years old--with the Fenian raids on the Niagara Peninsula.
The Blenheim Rangers, one of Upper Canada's finest militia regiments,
being called out on this occasion to defend the frontier, Hector
yearned to march away with them. He thought, poor youngster, that he
might be allowed to serve as a bugler or a drummer, for he was big
and strong for his age. Born, as Maintop put it, with a sword in his
hand and epaulettes on his shoulders, accustomed all his life to hear
of 'sallies and retires, of trenches, tents' and such matters, his
daily course shaped with the idea that he was eventually to have a
Commission, this was only natural. The Colonel, equally naturally,
refused point-blank to let him go. And--again of course--Hector took
the law into his own hands and ran away.
All was confusion and anxiety at Silvercrest during the following
three days and a hue and cry sought Hector over half Upper Canada.
When eventually he was brought back, a dishevelled, unhappy little
figure, the Colonel found he had not the heart to punish him as he
deserved. He could only gently reprove him and promise that, in any
future emergency, provided the authorities would have him, he would
be allowed to go.
Though Hector's share in the repulse of the Fenian raids was thus
brought to nought, the attempt had at least shown that the spirit of
soldiering was strong within him.
The Colonel's promise was tested and Hector's second opportunity came
with the expedition sent to crush the rebellion on the Red River.
The boy was then sixteen and already of fine physique. John, who had
a Commission in one of the regiments, requested and, to Hector's
rapture, received permission to enlist him in his company. But again
Fate stepped in, cruelly. Hector got as far as Toronto, where the
expedition was assembling, when a telegram recalled him. His adored
little sister, Nora, always delicate, was dying of pneumonia caught
in a summer storm. Hector reached home in time to hold her dead body
in his arms. He was heart-broken. Grown pale and stooped and
haggard in a night, his father made him a piteous appeal.
"Hector," he had said, "I want you to give up this idea of going to
Fort Garry. It would have been different had--had Nora lived. But
your mother needs you now. She can't lose her two babies at once.
Everything can be arranged. My friends in the Rifles will give you
your discharge. I hate to disappoint you a second time, boy. I'm
asking you to make a big sacrifice."
And Hector--with a great effort of real courage--had answered quietly,
"Of course, in that case, sir--I'll not go."
So he moved a step nearer true manhood.
IV
At Toronto, while waiting to go to Red River, Hector had a strange
experience--an isolated thing, as incongruous as a wreath of flowers
in the mouth of a cannon. He had not, at that time, the perception
to realize that it was the first shadow of things to come, sent to
open his eyes to his dawning power.
One evening, walking by himself, he struck up an acquaintance with a
young fellow named George Harris. Afterwards, they saw each other
frequently. Hector enjoyed George's company, because he was
refreshingly unlike any other boy he had ever met, an amazing
complexity, made up of many extremes. He had odd fits of melancholy,
when he said nothing, alternating with bursts of liveliness, when he
chattered away for hours on any subject. Though he neither smoked
nor drank, he could swear with marvellous fluency--like a schoolboy
in the role of man-about-town. Possessed of an extraordinary eye for
a well-dressed woman or a handsome man, he yet hated Hector to look
at either. He had rooms in town, but persistently refused to ask
Hector into them. No persuasion would induce him to go out except at
night. Altogether, he was a curious fellow.
Then came the revelation. The childish side of George's character
showed itself one evening in enthusiastic declarations that he wished
he was a soldier. Hector agreed it was a fine life. That fairly
launched George. Real soldiering did not appeal to him. It was the
glamour of display--the great reviews, the bands, the gleaming
scarlet.
Quite carried away, he halted in the street, clasped his hands and
exclaimed ecstatically:
"Oh, I love to hear the jingling of the spurs!"
Instantly Hector's suspicions, till then stupidly dormant, had flamed
up. He glanced around the dark street. No-one was in sight. They
were in the bright glow of a lamp.
Sending George's hat spinning, he caught him by the wrists in a
fierce grip. And--a mass of fair hair came tumbling down the
captive's shoulders--a pretty face, distorted with alarm, sprang into
view--
A girl! All the moods and caprices were instantly explained. A girl!
Hector's heart beat furiously. He held her tight.
"Let me go!" she gasped, struggling. "You're hurting me. We'll be
seen! Let me go!"
Hector flamed into frightened rage--he was very young and knew
nothing of women.
"Who are you?" he panted. "What do you mean by it? Supposing we'd
been caught like this? You fool--you fool!--"
"Let me go!" she begged.
"Answer me, will you?" he stormed.
Realizing that this was a woman several years older than himself, he
became suddenly conscious of his helplessness in her hands and felt
something not far from terror seize him.
"What am I to think of you?"
"Shut up!" White, with agonized tears in her eyes, she looked
defiantly into his face. "I won't have you talk to me like this.
Oh, I know I've run the risk of ruining myself and hurting you, but I
don't care--no, I don't! I'm just as straight as--as--" She
mastered herself with an effort. "Listen! Do you think I'd have
dressed myself up like this otherwise? Gone to all this trouble?
And taken these chances? And kept you out of my rooms? You bet I
wouldn't! I'd have dressed myself up to kill and stopped you on the
street. But a--a straight girl can't do that! So I had to do this.
It was the only way. Oh, can't you see?"
"Had to! The only way!"
Bitter scorn lashed her.
"Yes, it was," she said. Suddenly she dropped her voice and turned
her face to his. "I saw you out walking several times. I had to
know you. Hector, don't you understand?"
He was dazed. He clung to her wrists.
"You fool--" she went on, with a strange little laugh. "You are the
fool, funny, silly boy! Don't you see--I'm mad about you, Hector?"
This frightened him more than ever.
"The devil you are!" he ground out. "Who are you, anyway? What am I
going to do to you?"
Desperately humiliated, she fought to escape. He held her strongly.
She gasped and prayed for release but he would not listen.
"Hector," she had implored, at last, "if you're a gentleman--if
you've any sense of chivalry--!"
Any sense of chivalry? She had struck the right note.
He let her go--watched her run away until the night swallowed her.
Then, in a sort of stupour, he picked up his swagger stick and walked
back to his quarters....
Nothing in his experience, before or since, had so closely resembled
a 'love affair.'
V
Strangely enough, it was to his father's death that Hector eventually
owed his opportunity to achieve the life for which he had been
trained since birth--life in the service of the Queen; and the
realization of his boyhood dreams of chivalry.
To this, too, he owed the fact that, when eventually he donned the
scarlet tunic, that tunic was, not the gold-laced vestment of an
officer, but the plain coat of a ranker, in the Mounted Police.
The status under which he entered the Service was a heavy
disappointment. His early enlistments in the militia or the Rifles
for the Red River had been merely preliminary canters regarded at the
time as useful training for the future Commission. Hector was not
ashamed of his ranker's uniform. He knew the true worth of the man
who carries the rifle and pack. Though the sword points the way, the
bayonet must follow--or there can be no victory. But the high heart
aspires to the sword rather than the bayonet. It is not always easy
to follow. It is always difficult to lead. He wished to lead--had
been trained and moulded for leadership. To have to relinquish
leadership or give up the Service altogether had been a terrible blow
to him--how terrible only those who come of Service blood and have
lived for years in a Service atmosphere can really appreciate.
For to such as these--to such as Hector--the Army is no machine, no
hide-bound association of slaves marching in the lockstep of brutal
discipline; nor is it a great dramatic society devoted to meaningless
ritual and pompous display. At its worst, it is not the raving
monster of ignorant fancy, revelling in sacrifice and blood. But it
is something so wonderful that no pen on earth can picture it. It is
a glorious brotherhood, a religion giving and demanding much of its
votaries--demanding dauntless devotion, iron endurance, inflexible
loyalty to God, King, division, battalion--giving the knowledge of
work well done and petty selfishness voluntarily set aside for the
good of the common cause. To such as these there is marvellous music
in the wild voice of the bugle--hallowed by sacred memories and
age-old traditions--and the majestic dignity and power in the mere
sight of a brigade presenting arms will bring a lump to their
throats, while the Colours, tattered, stained with the blood of
heroes, emblazoned with the names of great victories, have about them
something almost divine. They have one mistress--these Service
men--one mother, one sister, whose honour is in their hands and for
whom they will die without a murmur. She watches them, rewards them,
punishes them, loves them, guards them, from the 'Reveille' of their
first morning to the 'Last Post' and three rounds blank of the last
night of all. She is fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as
an army with banners. They call her The Regiment.
A place in this great brotherhood belongs to every soldier. But the
officer is the High Priest of the order. It is for him to guide and
encourage his men, to rally the broken line, halt the retreat, give
fresh life to the failing charge and gather the spears into his
breast to make a place for them to follow. Rob a boy trained for
leadership of his birthright and he loses everything he considers
worth while. Cut him off from The Regiment and--break his heart.
The Colonel had succumbed to a stroke. His fatal illness had not
come suddenly. From the day of Nora's death, it had begun. Nora
seemed to have taken away the Colonel's vigour with her. But the
decline was not solely on her account. For years, though Hector had
not known it till too late, the Colonel had laboured under a heavy
financial burden--notes endorsed--bad harvests--family honour--the
old, old story.
To this state of affairs, above everything, the change of plans for
Hector's future had been due. The old gentleman had torn his heart
out when he told his son that he must give up the idea of a Regular
Commission or even of enlisting because it had become his duty to go
into business and redeem the family fortune.
The hideous truth had revealed itself by slow degrees after the
Colonel's death, when it was seen that practically nothing was left
for Hector and his mother, that Silvercrest and everything in it must
go, that Hector would have to get some kind of work at once and that
Mrs. Adair must transfer herself to John's, for the time at least.
Came into Hector's hands, at this crisis, a clipping, like the blast
of a trumpet sounding specially for him.
'Recruiting for New Police Force Commences,' said the headlines of
the clipping. 'Officers in City.'
There followed a description of the measures which were about to
enforce the new North-West Mounted Police Act. It seemed that three
hundred men 'who should be mounted as the Government should from time
to time direct,' were being assembled for duty as military
constabulary in the North-West Territories. 'No person shall be
appointed to the Police Force unless he be of sound constitution,
active and able-bodied, able to ride, of good character, able to read
and write either the English or French language and between the ages
of 18 and 40 years.' This extract had shown Hector that he could
easily qualify.
The clipping came from a Toronto paper and was dated August, 1873.
Here was his chance. It was 'now or never.' Fate or Destiny had
placed that item in his hands, for a purpose, and that purpose must
be fulfilled. Then and there, Hector had resolved to accept the
chance....
There was in the dining-room at Silvercrest, carved in stone above
the fireplace, a crest and motto, the coat-of-arms of the Colonel's
branch of the Adair family. Hector, in the old days, had eagerly
gained from his father a full knowledge of the meaning of every
device and had even become capable, in time, of reciting every
syllable of the heraldic language describing the coat-of-arms. This
had been placed upon the shield to commemorate the gallantry of an
Adair at Bannockburn; that to symbolize the endurance of another at
Sluys. The history of the family was written in the design. And it
bore not one vestige of dishonour.
"Remember, Hector," the Colonel had often said fiercely, "the shield
is clean. Mind you keep it so!"
Beneath the clean shield was the motto, consisting of two words only,
but in these words also might be read the story of a mighty line:
'Strong.--Steadfast.'
All that 'Strong' can mean, all that 'Steadfast' can imply,, the
Adairs had always been. Woe betide the luckless wight who should be
the first to deviate from it!
'Strong! Steadfast!'
Strong and steadfast Hector would have to be if he was to maintain
the honour of the Adairs in the times before him. His feet were on
the sunset trail. At its end was Life, swift and fierce and
terrible. Years and years of battling through wild winters and
blazing summers, on barren mountains, lifeless prairies, and
death-dominated rivers lay before him and in that Western land the
hands of many men--merciless Indians, murderous horse-thieves,
gamblers, whiskey-traders and desperadoes--would be against
him--against him and his comrades of the Police. He knew it. He
knew that the Force would be but a handful scattered over a vast
wilderness which it must protect and eventually free from the
domination of innumerable enemies. He knew the greatness of the task
to be achieved before the Flag could wave in security from sea to
sea. Here was a wonderful opportunity, a real fight to win, a
splendid objective. It should have frightened him. Instead he
welcomed it. He was as fitted for the work before him as any man
could be.
'Strong. Steadfast.'