II

From the day they left Washington Jim put his life and his fate in his

wife’s hands. He meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and

strong in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair

chance of fulfilling her purpose. There had been many pour parlers as

to what Jim should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because

it meant capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital

was limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an

active brain which must not be deprived of stimulants--stimulants of a

different sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it.

There was the law. But Jim would have to become a citizen of Canada,

change his flag, and where they meant to go--to the outskirts--there

would be few opportunities for the law; and with not enough to do there

would be danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in many ways,

but Jim had not the professional knowledge necessary; his railway

experience with his father had only been financial. Above all else he

must have responsibility, discipline, and strict order in his life.

“Something that will be good for my natural vanity, and knock the

nonsense out of me,” Jim agreed, as they drew farther and farther away

from Washington and the past, and nearer and nearer to the Far North and

their future. Never did two more honest souls put their hands in each

other’s, and set forth upon the thorniest path to a goal which was their

hearts’ desire. Since they had become one, there had come into Sally’s

face that illumination which belongs only to souls possessed of an idea

greater than themselves, outside themselves--saints, patriots; faces

which have been washed in the salt tears dropped for others’ sorrows,

and lighted by the fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the

high-spirited, the radiant, the sweetly wilful, the provoking, to

concentrate herself upon this narrow theme--to reconquer the lost

paradise of one vexed mortal soul!

What did Jim’s life mean?--It was only one in the millions coming and

going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she

cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself

upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of

influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could

all have been hers, as John Appleton and Jim’s father had said. She

might have moved in well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure,

lived a life where all would be made easy, where she would be shielded

at every turn, and her beauty would be flattered by luxury into a

constant glow. She was not so primitive, so unintellectual, as not to

have thought of this, else her decision would have had less importance;

she would have been no more than an infatuated emotional woman with a

touch of second class drama in her nature. She had thought of it all,

and she had made her choice. The easier course was the course for meaner

souls, and she had not one vein of thin blood nor a small idea in her

whole nature. She had a heart and mind for great issues. She believed

that Jim had a great brain, and would and could accomplish great things.

She knew that he had in him the strain of hereditary instinct--his

mother’s father had ended a brief life in a drunken duel on the

Mississippi, and Jim’s boyhood had never had discipline or direction,

or any strenuous order. He might never acquire order, and the power that

order and habit and the daily iteration of necessary thoughts and acts

bring; but the prospect did not appal her. She had taken the risk with

her eyes wide open; had set her own life and happiness in the hazard.

But Jim must be saved, must be what his talents, his genius, entitled

him to be. And the long game must have the long thought.

So, as they drew into the great Saskatchewan Valley, her hand in his,

and hope in his eyes, and such a look of confidence and pride in her as

brought back his old strong beauty of face, and smoothed the careworn

lines of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private he must

join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated riders of the plains,

and work his way up through every stage of responsibility, beginning at

the foot of the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed that

he would agree with her proposal; but her hands clasped his a little

more firmly and solicitously--there was a faint, womanly fear at her

heart--as she asked him if he would do it. The life meant more than

occasional separation; it meant that there would be periods when she

would not be with him; and there was great danger in that; but she knew

that the risks must be taken, and he must not be wholly reliant on her

presence for his moral strength.

His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared

presently, and he said with a dry laugh: “Well, I guess they must make

me a sergeant pretty quick. I’m a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!”

She laughed, too; then a moment afterwards, womanlike, wondered if she

was right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she

was not self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman

in all the North.

It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed

that; for, when it came to the point, and she saw the conditions in

which the privates lived, and realised that Jim must be one of them and

clean out the stables, and groom his horse and the officers’ horses,

and fetch and carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she

was making her remedy needlessly heroical. So she went to see the

Commissioner, who was on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the

post, and, as better men than he had done in more knowing circles,

he fell under her spell. If she had asked for a lieutenancy, he would

probably have corrupted some member of Parliament into securing it for

Jim.

But Jim was made a sergeant, and the Commissioner and the captain of the

troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did

not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here

and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and

both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed

pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed

truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By and

by they begin to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that,

they began to swear by him, not at him.

In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian

than Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To

non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very

wide open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere

among them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all

understood Sally from the beginning, and after a little they were glad

enough to be permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little

house near the barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions,

and, as men had done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They

noticed, however, that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds

of soft drinks from citric acid, sarsaparilla and the like, and had one

special drink of her own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no

spirits were to be had. They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop

of liquor, and by and by, one way or another, they got a glimmer of the

real truth, before it became known who he really was or anything of his

story. And the interest in the two, and in Jim’s reformation, spread

through the country, while Jim gained reputation as the smartest man in

the force.

They were on the outskirts of civilisation; as Jim used to say, “One

step ahead of the procession.” Jim’s duty was to guard the columns of

settlement and progress, and to see that every man got his own rights

and not more than his rights; that justice should be the plumb-line of

march and settlement. His principle was embodied in certain words which

he quoted once to Sally from the prophet Amos: “And the Lord said unto

me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline.”

On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family increased by one. It

was a girl, and they called her Nancy, after Jim’s mother. It was the

anniversary of their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what

fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only Sally and

himself knew. And she knew as well as he, and always saw the storm

coming before it broke--a restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry,

eager, helpless look, and afterwards an agony of longing, a feverish

desire to break away and get the thrilling thing which would still the

demon within him.

There had been moments when his doom seemed certain--he knew and she

knew that if he once got drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one

occasion, after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad with desire,

but even as he seized the flask that was offered to him by his only

enemy, the captain of B Troop, at the next station eastward, there

came a sudden call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon the

war-path. It saved him; it broke the spell. He had to mount and away,

with the antidote and stimulant of responsibility driving him on.

Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle

for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from

the rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and

hilarity were common. Suddenly--more suddenly than it had ever come,

the demon of his thirst had Jim by the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the

grey-stubble head, who loved him more than his sour heart had loved

anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for the physical

assault he must make upon his superior officer, if he raised a glass to

his lips, when salvation came once again. An accident had occurred far

down on the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office had

that very day been stricken down with pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair

the manager had sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them,

for the Riders of the Plains were a sort of court of appeal for every

trouble in the Far North.

Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out of curiosity he

had learned telegraphy when a boy, as he had learned many things, and,

arrived at the scene of the accident, he sent messages and received

them--by sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to the

amazement and pride of the troop. Then, between caring for the injured

in the accident, against the coming of the relief train, and nursing

the sick operator through the dark moments of his dangerous illness,

he passed a crisis of his own disease triumphantly; but not the last

crisis.

So the first and so the second and third years passed in safety.