The horses were bought up from the rear, bucking, fighting, breaking
away, or falling in their traces as the teamsters took them in charge.
Then the enemy charged, the rear guard held them back, and confusion
verged towards panic under a galling fire. La Mancha, with Red for his
off man, was lucky enough to get a team away unharmed, but, as his horses
plunged through breast-high drifts, he heard the outcry of two wounded
men. Their sleigh, with one horse killed, and the other dying, had been
abandoned.
“All right, Gilchrist!” he called. “Keep your hair on, Smith!” then swung
his team about—“Drive on!” yelled Inspector Sarde, jumping directly in
his path.
For answer the Blackguard drove straight over him to the rescue. In
another moment willing helpers had carried the wounded men to la Mancha’s
sleigh, and half a dozen jumped in to defend them, as the teamsters swung
away towards the trail.
When he had tailed in with the retreat he turned, “What became of Sarde
the Coward?” he called back over his shoulder.
“In your sleigh, constable!” answered the officer. “Sergeant, put this
man under arrest.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant saluted. “Constable la Mancha,” he called, “for
charging an officer with cowardice in the field, consider yourself under
arrest.”
The charge was made, and only la Mancha could withdraw that now. Sarde
looked from face to face and all eyes accused him; all these men were
witnesses against him on a charge of cowardice in the field. He set his
teeth.
“Sergeant,” he said, “when we reach the Fort you will put this constable
under close arrest.”
The Blackguard was singing gaily as he drove, singing in vengeful
triumph, forgetting the dozen or so of his comrades whose bodies lay on
the bloody snow, abandoned. Then he remembered and was silent, while the
crackle of musketry dwindled away astern, as the men of the rear guard
fell back. Only the lope of the horses, the creaking of the runners,
and occasional sobbing gasps of a hurt man in the sleigh, disturbed the
silence of the wilderness. La Mancha handed the reins to his off man:
“Take the team, Red; I want—”
He took a letter from his pocket, and sat, all humped up, reading
gloomily.
Eight miles away the fellows down in the Fort were waiting for news, the
news of victory. Red’s heart, as he drove, was aching; his face burned
with shame as he thought of the Outfit thrashed—the Greatest Regiment on
Earth disgraced—the dead left in the field, the sleighs full of wounded
men in their agony—then the settlements! What could save the far-strung,
lonely settlements now from being sacked and burned, the men tortured to
death, the women—the children! He dared not think of them at the mercy
of Red Indian tribes at war. And Buck was dead; poor old Buck, who had
rooked him last night at cribbage—dead!
“Dearest,” the Blackguard read, “I can’t bear him any longer. Meet me
behind the stockade at dusk. Your poor Polly.”
Who the deuce was Polly? What had he to tell her anyway from Buck? He
put away Buck’s letter, and drove on, climbing the hillocks, swishing
down the hollows among lakes and groves, until the deep valley of the
Saskatchewan opened ahead, and far down beside the river he saw the old
Hudson’s Bay Company’s post, Fort Carlton, where the Union Jack flamed
out above the stockade, and the garrison waited for news of victory.
Away to the right, upon the eastern trail, a string of loaded sleighs was
sweeping down long slopes toward the Fort, covered by mounted men with
all the glitter and pageantry of war—the reinforcement which had come too
late—B Troop, triumphant after a tremendous forced march to the rescue.
The Blackguard grunted his disparagement, and spoke to his off man:
“Who’s poor Polly?”
Red laughed: “Sarde’s wife, of course.”
The Blackguard whistled softly. “So she’s poor Polly—oh, you sly dog! Oh,
Buck!”