CAESAR--"Let me have men about me that are fat--
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."
The five constables that Mr. Mercier sent down to Megantic put up in the
village hotel.
Within an hour Donald had received the following note:--
"Dear Donald,--Action at last. Five men from Quebec after you. Keep away
from Marsden for a day or so. I don't think there is much to fear.
They would not know you, I believe, if they met you, and they are so
frightened by the stories they have heard about you, that I don't
believe they would dare to arrest you, even if they found you. However,
as well be on the safe side. Go into the woods a little bit"
The people soon knew that an attempt was to be made to arrest Donald.
The young men gathered in the hotel round the constables, and told
blood-curdling stories of his dare-devilism in the North-West. The
constables were fat, phlegmatic, and anything but heroic. What they had
been accustomed to was an unexciting and steady beat in the drowsy old
city of Quebec, and small but unfailingly regular drinks of whiskey
_blanc_. This duty was new. Worst of all, it was perilous. This
Morrison--he might shoot at sight. True, they were armed with rifles and
revolvers; but they had heard that he was a dead shot. Perhaps he
might shoot first. That would, to say the least, be awkward, perhaps
dangerous, perhaps even fatal. No, they had not much stomach for the
work, and the people, perceiving this, encouraged their fears. In a very
short time Donald became a combination of Italian brigand, Dick Turpin,
and Wild West Cowboy, as these latter are depicted in the dime stories.
Whenever, therefore, the officers took their walks abroad, they stepped
very gingerly as they approached the village of Marsden. It never
occurred to them to enter Donald's home. They might have found him
half-a-dozen times a day. They never once crossed the threshold of the
woods.
Did not this terrible character know every tangled path, and might he
not open fire upon them without being seen?
The country roads are really white lines through the green of the woods.
One morning the constables left the hotel, primed with a little whiskey.
They took the road to Marsden. The woods skirted the narrow way on
either side. The summer was now well advanced, and the foliage was so
thick as to form an impenetrable lacery.
"We have been here a month now," said the officer in charge, in French,
"and we have accomplished nothing. I shall ask to be relieved at once.
The people will not help us. How could we ever find a man in these
woods? He might be here this moment," pointing to the trees at his
right, "yet what chance would we have of taking him?"
With one accord, the four subordinates answered "None."
"Suppose he were here," and the officer halted on his step, "how--What is
that? Did you hear anything?"
"Yes," said one of the constables timorously, "I heard a noise in the
brushwood."
"Suppose it were Morrison?"
And they looked at each other apprehensively.
"We will return," said the officer. "It is probably a bear. If I thought
it were Morrison, I would enter the wood," he said valorously. When they
were gone, a brown face peeped out. It was Donald. "They're scared," he
said to himself, laughing. "Not much danger from _them_. I don't believe
they would know me. I'll test it."
He laid down his rifle at the foot of a tree, looked to his pistols, and
walked rapidly in the direction the constables had taken. Overtaking
them, he pushed his way through the brushwood, in advance of them, and
then, at a bend in the road which hid him from view, he leaped out upon
the road, turned, and met the party. He walked straight up to them,
looked them in the eye, and passed on. They did not know him; or, if, as
was alleged against them afterwards, they knew him, they were afraid to
arrest him. The statement that Donald carried his audacity so far as to
enter the hotel, and drink with them, he himself laughingly denied to
his friends.
The opposition papers jeered at the failure of the expedition. Ridicule
is the most powerful of weapons. Man is not half so humorous as the dog
or the elephant. With the latter it is an instinct. With the former it
is an acquirement. Still, the perception of humor is fairly general.
Don't argue with your opponent, Kill him with ridicule. Laughter is
deadly. When the people laugh at a Government it can put its spare
collar and shirt in its red handkerchief, and retire to the privacy of
its family. Mr. Mercier is sensitive to ridicule.
Mr. Mercier withdrew that expedition, and offered $3,000 reward for the
capture of Morrison!