COCKNEY'S MYSTERIOUS RIDE
Long after midnight of the short summer night, Cockney Aikens and his
wife drove up to the Provincial Hotel, the team in a lather but Pink
Eye with lots of the devil left. Mary climbed down and pounded up
the night clerk, and Cockney, given the stable key, took the team
back himself.
As he emerged from the lane leading to the stables, a Mounted
Policeman, riding in late from patrol, pulled up before him and
stooped to see his face.
"What's on at this hour, Cockney?"
The big rancher straightened furiously.
"Say! Some day I want to get somewhere where a bunch of interfering
red-coats aren't dogging my steps."
The Policeman laughed. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble doing that in
this country."
"Then I'll go back home, where a man's his own boss."
"It didn't seem to suit you so well when you were there."
"What do you mean?" Cockney's tone was almost a bellow.
"Sh-h!" soothed the Policeman. "Everyone's in bed but ourselves. I
suppose if you'd liked England so well you'd have stayed there. No
one in Canada sent for you, did they?"
Cockney wheeled about and stalked up the Provincial steps, the
Policeman watching him until the door closed behind him.
Cockney Aikens hated the Mounted Police. In all his life nothing had
so roused the depths of hatred usually dormant in his big body. If
one came within sight he swore beneath his breath--or aloud,
according to the company. He thought and spoke the worst of them,
and his unqualified dislike was unwilling to accord them any credit,
would grant no conceivable purpose they fulfilled. On the trail he
passed them without so much as nodding, and the very few patrols that
wandered at long intervals to the vicinity of the H-Lazy Z avoided
the sullen hospitality of its owner.
The cause of this settled hatred was as simple and unreasonable as
that which lay at the root of most of Cockney's emotions.
Early in his career in the Medicine Hat district, when he was "going
the pace" more recklessly than since his marriage, one of his
uncontrolled orgies of drinking and gambling had brought him hard
against the red-coats, and he had learned what a ruthless wall they
are for wrong-doers to butt against.
Medicine Hat was not a wild town, as cow-towns go. Drinking that
threw a man on the street in a condition dangerous to himself or
others was discouraged with a firm hand, but gambling, so long as it
kept under cover, was winked at by the town policeman as the least
objectionable of the many vices common to a section that lived
largely on its nerve.
Whether there was more in it than that for the policeman was open to
question. Poker, and other card games of less skill and more
manipulation, were available to anyone who knew the ropes. A daring
stranger to town had reported to a local friend, who happened to be
an usher in the Methodist Church, that the town policeman himself had
directed him to a game in progress--but this was challenged when it
came up before the town council. One resort, the basement under a
barber shop on Toronto Street, was Cockney's favourite den; and, with
the gambling instincts of the Englishman, and copious additions
developed within himself, his evenings in the fetid atmosphere of
smoke and whisky were times of fever to more than himself.
One night, unlucky, urged to stake more than he had ready money to
meet, he emerged from the den in a vile temper, convinced that the
cards had been stacked but unable to prove it before a crowd of
blood-suckers frankly hostile to him. At the moment the town
policeman happened to be on his rounds in that quarter, and in sheer
wantonness, Cockney banged his helmet into the roadway; and when the
policeman seemed to show resentment, he was tossed after his helmet.
But a Western policeman, town or Mounted, faces such contingencies
with the donning of his uniform, and Mason returned to the attack
with drawn baton. Mason, baton and all, proved scarcely exercise for
big Cockney Aikens.
Unfortunately two Mounted Policemen, attracted by the crowd that had
trickled up from nowhere, arrived on the scene.
It was a brave struggle while it lasted, and four bodies ached from
it for several days, but it ended with Cockney securely locked in the
cells. _In the cells!_ The big fellow came to himself and cried
like a child.
But his shame was only commencing. Next morning the scene of his
disgrace was transferred to the police court, where Cockney, with
bowed head, scarcely heard the sentence of fifty dollars or thirty
days. He realised it when he discovered that his account at the bank
was drained to the last ten dollars to pay the fine, owing to heavy
recent drafts thereon in settlement of his winter accounts and the
purchase of new stock for the ranch.
_And there remained unpaid his gambling losses of the previous night._
That was most terrible of all. When that afternoon he slunk from
town with forty dollars of gambling debts recognised only in IOU's,
his shame was complete.
In his mind the Mounted Police were entirely to blame. Before they
interfered he was having only an exhilarating frolic with Mason. It
was that strange hold of one of the red-coats--it almost broke his
neck, and twisted his arm so that it still ached--that did the thing.
And so, with the capacity for stubborn hatred that required much
rousing but defied conciliation, he never forgave them. They had
besmirched his honour--for four months he was ashamed to show himself
in the den under the barber shop--and nothing could remove the stain.
He would grind his teeth and swear that if a Mounted Policeman were
dying at his feet for a glass of water he would not stoop to give it
to him.
When Cockney entered their bedroom in the hotel he was too angry to
speak. Mary was waiting for him, thoughtfully rocking in an old
rocker that was supposed to make cosy a room that had outlasted its
decorations and furnishings years ago. He glanced at her swiftly,
but whatever she had in mind, his sullen mood seemed to alter it.
The clerk knocked and enquired if anything was wanted.
"Yes," cried Cockney, "a big whisky--straight."
His wife studied him anxiously as she went about preparing to retire.
The hideous life that would be hers for the next few days was
commencing earlier than usual. Yet she was thankful to be there to
look after him.
Me seized the glass when it was handed through the crack of the door,
stared at it a second, and placed it on the washstand untouched.
"I'll be away for a few days," he told Mary casually, as he washed.
"You'd better sleep in; it's been a stiff day for you."
"You've had seventy miles of Pink Eye to hold," she reminded him.
"You need the rest more than I do."
He laughed bitterly. "Rest? There's no rest for me now for--maybe
for months. I'll be back about--about Saturday, I think."
She knew the folly of asking questions, but she noticed that the
whisky was not touched.
She seemed to have been asleep only a few minutes when she felt him
lean over and gently kiss her. She did not open her eyes until he
was fully dressed in his ranch clothes.
"Don't worry," he muttered, seeing she was awake; and went out on
tiptoe. Though it was broad daylight, no one was yet stirring about
the hotel.
When she awakened later and realised how thoughtlessly in her
weariness she had let him go without trying to wring from him his
destination, she dressed hurriedly and went to the stables. Pink Eye
was gone--Pink Eye, like his master, untirable. It made her
thoughtful, and with thought came a sigh that deepened the lines
about her eyes.
On Saturday he returned. He rode quietly into the stable yard,
handed his horse to the ostler, and sought his room. He was
clear-eyed, but heavy with fatigue. Without undressing he dropped to
the bed and was asleep before Mary could draw the curtains.
Out in the stable Pink Eye was as weary as his master.
Mary Aikens went into the streets, and in the post office heard the
latest gossip--a new case of cattle-thieving off toward Irvine. For
hours she walked up and down the streets with a terrible ache at her
heart.
That night her husband sent her to a show in the "opera house," while
he broke loose up in the Toronto Street den and lined the pockets of
the usual sharpers on the look-out for reckless fools. Through a
wretched performance she sat without grasping even its general idea,
miserable, lonely, trembling with indecision. On her return to the
hotel she borrowed a railway time-table from the hotel clerk and took
it to her room. For a long time she sat rocking, staring into space,
her face pale, her little fists clenched in the fight she was making,
and at last carried the time-table down unopened.
She hungered to get away from it all, to sink her streaming eyes in a
mother's lap, to feel about her arms that sympathised without
questioning. But her pride, and a curious feeling about Jim, kept
her to the duty she had undertaken when she stood beside Jim Aikens
at the altar.