THIRTY DAYS IN IRONS!
It transpired, however, that before we reached Bat Perkins' cabin Mac
got an unexpected answer to one of the questions he intended to ask. As
we turned the corner of a rambling log house, which, from its
pretentiousness, I judged must house some Mounted Police dignitary, we
came face to face with a tall, keen-featured man in Police uniform, and
a girl. Even though Rutter had declared she would be at Walsh, I wasn't
prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a
wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some
subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to
indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there
could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite
the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and
unfathomable eyes that always met your own so frankly, she recognized
the pair of us; though MacRae in uniform must have puzzled her for an
instant.
"Gordon--and Sarge Flood! Where in the world did you come from?
And--and----" She stopped rather suddenly, a bit embarrassed. I knew
just as well as if she had spoken the words, that she had been on the
point of asking him what he was doing in the yellow-striped breeches and
scarlet jacket of a Mounted Policeman. Whatever had parted them, she
hadn't held it against him. There was an indefinable something in the
way she spoke his name and looked at him that told me there was still a
soft spot in her heart for the high-headed beggar by my side.
But MacRae--while I was wise to the fact that he was the only friend I
had in that country, and the sort of friend that sticks closer than a
brother, I experienced a sincere desire to beat him over the noodle with
my gun and thereby knock a little of the stiffness out of his
neck--simply saluted the officer, tipped his hat to her, and passed on.
I didn't _sabe_ the play, and when I saw the red flash up into her face
it made me hot, and there followed a few seconds when I took a very
uncharitable view of Mr. Gordon MacRae's distant manner.
The fellow with her, I noticed, seemed to draw himself up very stiff and
dignified when she stopped and spoke to us; and the look with which he
favored MacRae was a peculiar one. It was simply a vagrant expression,
but as it flitted over his face it lacked nothing in the way of
surprised disapproval; I might go farther and say it was malignant--the
kind of look that makes a man feel like reaching for a weapon. At least,
that's the impression it made on me.
"I might fire that question back at you, Miss Rowan," I replied. "We're
both a long way from the home range. I was here a day or two ago. How
did you manage to keep out of sight--or have you just got in?"
"Yesterday, only," she returned. "We--you remember old Mammy Thomas,
don't you?--came over from Benton with the Baker freight outfit. I
expect to meet dad here, in a few days."
Her last sentence froze the words that were all ready to slip off the
end of my tongue, and made my grouch against MacRae crystallize into a
feeling akin to anger. Why couldn't the beggar stand his ground and
deliver the ugly tidings himself? That bunch of cottonwoods with the
new-made grave close by the dead horses seemed to rise up between us,
and I became speechless. I hadn't the nerve to stand there and tell her
she'd never see her father again this side of the pearly gates. Not I.
That was a job for somebody who could put his arms around her and kiss
the tears away from her eyes. Unless I read her wrong, there was only
one man who could make it easier for her if he were by, and he was
walking away as if it were none of his concern.
Something of this must have shown in my face, for she was beginning to
regard me curiously. I gathered my scattered wits and started to make
some attempt at conversation, but the man with the shoulder-straps
forestalled me.
"Really, we must go, Miss Rowan, or we shall be late for luncheon," he
drawled. The insolent tone of him was like having one's face slapped,
and it didn't pass over Lyn's head by any means. I thought to myself
that if he had set out to entrench himself in her good graces, he was
taking the poorest of all methods to accomplish that desirable end.
"Just a moment, major," she said. "Are you going to be here any length
of time, Sarge?"
"A day or so," I responded shortly. I didn't feel overly cheerful
with all that bad news simmering in my brain-pan, and in addition
I had conceived a full-grown dislike for the "major" and his
I-am-superior-to-you attitude.
"Then come and see me this afternoon if you can. I'm staying with Mrs.
Stone. Don't forget, now--I have a thousand things I want to talk about.
Good-bye." And she smiled and turned away with the uniformed snob by her
side.
MacRae had loitered purposely, and I overtook him in a few rods.
"Well," I blurted out, as near angry as I ever got at MacRae in all the
years I'd known him, "you're a high-headed cuss, confound you! Is it a
part of your new philosophy of life to turn your back on every one that
you ever cared anything for?"
He shrugged his shoulders tolerantly. "What did you expect of me?"
"You might have--oh, well, I suppose you'll go your own gait,
regardless," I sputtered. "That's your privilege. But I don't see how
you had the nerve to pass _her_ up that way. Especially since that Stony
Crossing deal."
Mac took a dozen steps before he answered me.
"You don't understand the lay of things, Sarge," he said, rather
hesitatingly. "If I have the situation sized up right, Lyn is
practically alone here, and things are going to look pretty black to her
when she learns what has happened. Hank never had anything much to do
with his people. I doubt if Lyn has even a speaking acquaintance with
her nearest kin. She has friends in the South--plenty of them who'd be
more than glad to do as much for her as you or I. But we're a long way
from the Canadian River, now. And so if she has made friends among the
official set here, it's up to me to stand back--until that _cache_ is
found, anyway."
"Then you're not going to try and see her, and tell her about this thing
yourself?" I asked.
"I can't," he replied impatiently. "You'll have to do that, Sarge. Hang
it, can't you see where I stand? The mere fact that Lessard was taking
her about shows that these officers' women have received her with open
arms. They form a clique as exclusive as a quarantined smallpox patient,
and a 'non-com' like myself is barred out, until I win a pair of
shoulder-straps; when my rank would make me socially possible. Meantime,
I'm a sergeant, and if Lyn went to picking friends out of the ranks, I'm
not sure they wouldn't drop her like a hot potato. Sounds rotten, but
that's their style; and you've been through the mill at home enough to
know what it is to be knifed socially. It's different with you; you're
an American citizen, a countryman of hers. You understand?"
"Yes," I answered tartly. "But I don't understand how you can stomach
this sort of existence. What is there in it? Where is the profit or
satisfaction in this kind of thing, for you? Will the man in the ranks
get credit for taming the Northwest when his work is done? Why the devil
don't you quit the job? Cut loose and be a free agent again."
"It is a temptation, the way things have come up in the last day or
two," he mused. "I'd like to be foot-loose, so I could work it out
without any string attached to me. But there are only two ways I could
get out of the Force, and neither is open. I might desert, which would
be a dirty way to sneak out of a thing I went into deliberately; or, if
they were minded to allow me, I could buy my discharge--and I haven't
the price. Besides, I like the game and I don't know that I want to quit
it. The life isn't so bad. It's your rabidly independent point of view.
A man that can't obey orders is not likely to climb to a position where
he can give them. What the dickens would become of the cow-outfits," he
challenged, "if every stockhand refused to take orders from the foreman
and owners? Do you stand on your dignity when La Pere tells you to do
certain things in a certain way?"
I shrugged my shoulders. There was just enough truth in his words to
make them hard to confute, and, anyway, I was not in the mood for that
sort of argument. But I was very sure that I would rather be a
forty-dollar-a-month cowpuncher than a sergeant in the Mounted Police.
"That fellow with her is the big gun here, is he?" I reverted to Lyn and
her affairs.
"Yes," Mac answered shortly, "that was Lessard."
By this time we had come to the last cabin in the row. A whitewashed
fence enclosed a diminutive yard, and as we turned in the gate Bat
Perkins appeared in the doorway, both hands thrust deep in his trousers
pockets and a pipe sagging down one corner of his wide mouth. He was
rudely jovial in his greeting, as most of his type were. His wit was
labored, but his welcome was none the less genuine.
"I seen yuh ride in, Mac," he grinned, "an' I told the old woman t'
turn herself loose on the beefsteak an' spuds, for here comes that
hungry-lookin' jasper from Pend d' Oreille."
I was duly made acquainted with Bat, and later with his wife, who, if
she did have a trace of Indian blood in her, could certainly qualify as
the patron saint of hungry men. Good cooks were a scarce article on the
frontier then. Bat, I learned, was attached to the Force in a civilian
capacity.
We ate, smoked a cigarette apiece, and then it was time for us to
"repawt." So we betook ourselves to the seat of the mighty, to unload
our troubles on the men who directed the destinies of the turbulent
Northwest and see what they could do toward alleviating them.
This time the orderly passed us in without delay, and once more we faced
the man of rank, who, after taking our measure with a deliberate stare,
ordered MacRae to state his business.
As Mac related the unvarnished tale of the banked fire in the canyon,
the hold-up, and the double murder, a slight sound caused me to turn my
head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure
of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face.
When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind
the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that
we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the
door shut behind him and strode into the room.
"I'll take charge of this, Captain Dobson," he brusquely informed the
red-faced numskull.
Taking his stand at the end of the desk, he made MacRae reiterate in
detail the grim happenings of that night. That over, he quizzed me for a
few minutes. Then he turned loose on MacRae with a battery of questions.
Could he give a description of the men? Would he be able to identify
them? Why did he not exercise more precaution when investigating
anything so suspicious as a concealed fire? Why this, why that? Why
didn't he send a trooper to report at once instead of wasting time in
going to Stony Crossing? And a dozen more.
With every word his thin-lipped mouth drew into harder lines, and the
cold, domineering tone, weighted heavy with sneering emphasis, grated on
me till I wanted to reach over and slap his handsome, smooth-shaven
face. But MacRae stood at "attention" and took his medicine dumbly. He
had to. He was in the presence, and answering the catechism, of a
superior officer, and his superior officer by virtue of a commission
from the Canadian government could insult his manhood and lash him
unmercifully with a viperish tongue, and if he dared to resent it by
word or deed there was the guardhouse and the shame of irons--for
discipline must be maintained at any cost! I thanked the star of destiny
then and there that no Mounted Police officer had a string attached to
me, by which he could force me to speak or be silent at his will. It was
a dirty piece of business on Lessard's part. Even Dobson eyed him
wonderingly.
"Why, damn it!" Lessard finally burst out, "you've handled this like a
green one, fresh from over the water. You are held up; this man is
robbed of ten thousand dollars; another man is murdered under your very
nose--and then you waste thirty-six hours blundering around the country
to satisfy your infernal curiosity. It's incredible, in a man of your
frontier experience, under any hypothesis except that you stood in with
the outlaws and held back to assure their escape!"
At first MacRae had looked puzzled, at a loss. Then under the lash of
Lessard's bitter tongue the dull red stole up into his weather-browned
cheeks, glowed there an instant and receded, leaving his face white
under the tan. His left hand was at its old, familiar trick--fingers
shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the
knuckles and wrist--a never-failing sign that internally he was close to
the boiling-point, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface. And
when Lessard flung out that last unthinkable accusation, the explosion
came.
"You lie, you----!" MacRae spoke in a cold impersonal tone, and only the
flat strained note betrayed his feeling; but the term applied to Lessard
was one to make a man's ears burn; it was the range-riders' gauntlet
thrown squarely in an enemy's face. "You lie when you say that, and you
know you lie. I don't know your object, but I call your bluff--you--you
blasted insect!"
Lessard, if he had been blind till then, saw what was patent to me--that
he had gone a bit too far, that the man he had baited so savagely was
primed to kill him if he made a crooked move. MacRae leaned forward, his
gray eyes twin coals, the thumb of his right hand hooked suggestively in
the cartridge-belt, close by the protruding handle of his six-shooter.
They were a well-matched pair; iron-nerved, both of them, the sort of
men to face sudden death open-eyed and unafraid.
A full minute they glared at each other across the desk corner. Then
Lessard, without moving a muscle or altering his steady gaze, spoke to
Dobson.
"Call the orderly," he said quietly.
Dobson, mouth agape, struck a little bell on the desk and the orderly
stepped in from the outer room.
"Orderly, disarm Sergeant MacRae."
Lessard uttered the command evenly, without a jarring note, his tone
almost a duplicate of MacRae's. He was a good judge of men, that
eagle-faced major; he knew that the slightest move with hostile intent
would mean a smoking gun. MacRae would have shot him dead in his tracks
if he'd tried to reach a weapon. But a man who is really game--which no
one who knew him could deny MacRae--won't, _can't_ shoot down another
unless that other shows _fight_; and a knowledge of that gun-fighters'
trait saved Major Lessard's hide from being thoroughly punctured that
day.
The orderly, a rather shaky orderly if the truth be told (I think he
must have listened through the keyhole!) stepped up to Mac.
"Give me your side-arms, sergeant," he said, nervously.
MacRae looked from one to the other, and for a breath I was as nervous
as the trooper. It was touch and go, just then, and if he'd gone the
wrong way it's altogether likely that I'd have felt called upon to back
his play, and there would have been a horrible mix-up in that two by
four room. But he didn't. Just smiled, a sardonic sort of grimace, and
unbuckled his belt and handed it over without a word. He'd begun to
cool.
"Reduced to the ranks--thirty days in irons--solitary confinement!"
Lessard snapped the words out with a wolfish satisfaction.
"Keep a close mouth, Sarge," MacRae spoke in Spanish with his eyes bent
on the floor, "and don't quit the country till I get out." Then he
turned at the orderly's command and marched out of the room.
When I again turned to Lessard he still stood at the end of the desk,
industriously paring his fingernails. An amused smile wrinkled the
corners of his mouth.