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Title: The Blackguard

Author: Roger Pocock

Release date: February 23, 2023 [eBook #70120]
                Most recently updated: March 14, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACKGUARD ***







  THE BLACKGUARD.



  BY

  ROGER POCOCK.



  WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
  LONDON, NEW YORK, & MELBOURNE.




THE BLACKGUARD



CHAPTER I

      "Think of your sins,
  What made you a soldier a-serving the Queen:
      God save the Queen,
  And God save the duffer who thinks of to-morrow.
  God save the man who remembers his sorrow,
  God save the man who can think of the past,
      Sundown at last:
Here's rest for the past, and here's hope for the morrow!"


That is exactly what the bugle said to a man who was sitting on the
edge of the bench-land in the evening calm.  He was a very big man,
dressed in a grey woollen undershirt, worn-out riding-breeches with a
two-inch yellow stripe down the legs, and jack-boots.  By his side
lay a broad grey slouch-hat, such as cowboys wear; on his knees a
bath-towel--dry; and in his neighbourhood lingered a faint aroma of
stables.  The man's bare arms were like the thighs of an average
sinner, his shoulders, thighs, breast, neck, all of gigantic strength
and beauty, a sight that would have appealed to any athlete as beyond
the loveliness of women.

The setting sun just touched his wavy, crisp, black hair with a
lustre of metal.  Again, his face, still, strong, silent, had an odd
suggestiveness of a bronze statue, that of something Greek but
uncanny, a faun, perhaps, or a satyr.  The hair, sweeping low over
his brows, might almost conceal incipient horns; his ears might have
been tufted; his features defying all the rules--stuck on anyhow; the
subtle devilry of his deep black eyes, the ugly fascination, the
whimsical dignity; the bearing lofty, defiant, almost magnificent;
and again, an air, indefinite enough, of sorrowful majesty;--how well
everything about the man fitted one name--the Blackguard.

That was La Mancha's name, by consent of the five troops of the
Mounted Police; and somehow the common use of it conveyed no sense of
reproach but rather of endearment.  From the Commissioner down to the
smallest recruit the whole five hundred were half-afraid of him,
except one man; yet no civilian ventured to speak ill of the
Blackguard, or he would have had his head punched.  To say bad things
about the Blackguard was to slight the Force.

And the one man who did not fear this latter-day satyr, who ruled him
as mind rules matter, was a certain little Corporal, who, with a neat
briar pipe well alight, was picking his dainty way over the
gravel--coming down from the camp in the evening calm.  This was
Corporal Dandy Irvine, with a sunburnt face, a neatly-pointed
moustache, the buttons of his scarlet jacket glowing like gold in the
light, whose clothes always fitted, whose forage-cap was correctly
poised on three hairs, whose boots and spurs were always brilliantly
polished.  And now he just touched the Blackguard to show that he was
present, and sat down beside him without any remarks whatever.  So,
for five minutes, the two looked gravely out over the valley like
Dignity and Impudence, both too lazy to speak.

They were looking across the Kootenay Valley--the upper Kootenay,
from a tongue of the bench-land made by the deep gulch of Wild Horse
Creek where it came down from the mountains.  At their backs rose the
huge timbered foothills of the Rocky Mountains; opposite, across the
vast Kootenay trench, rose the still mightier foothills of the
Selkirks, and high above the deepening purple of the forests soared
the clear cool azure of the snows up into the silence of those
sharp-cut Alps, reaching away forever and forever to north and south
against the roseate translucent afterglow.  Down yonder the river
wandered crimson through misty prairies, where the trees stood in
clusters pointing up, as the sentinel stars came one by one on guard.

"Dandy," said the Blackguard, without stirring, "lend me five
dollars."

Without comment the little Corporal took from his breast-pocket a
slender roll of notes, one of which he surrendered.

"Five dollars."  The Blackguard took the crisp paper, spreading it
out upon his knee.  "I was wondering whether there was anybody in the
world who cared five dollars for me.  Here, take it back--I don't
want it."

"Stick to it, Blackguard,--stick to it.  You've been fined a month's
pay every month since last December; and I guess you'll keep up the
motion every month till your time's out--stick to it."

"I'll keep up the motion," said the Blackguard vindictively.  "I'll
get drunk to-night.  They fine me because they can't spare me off
duty, and because they've jolly well proved that there isn't a
guard-house in the Territories strong enough to hold me over night."

The Corporal chuckled.  "How about number five cell at Regina?"

"Number five cell be ----.  It was nine months last time."

"Look here, La Mancha.  That nine months sticks in my gizzard.  I
ought to have been punished, not you."

"Take off your serge!"  By taking off the serge jacket which bore his
double chevron as corporal, Dandy could surrender the protection
given by his rank, and become a plain trooper like the Blackguard.
The summons was a challenge to fight.

"I'll keep on my serge," said Dandy; "you're too big, Blackguard."

"Then don't talk rot about number five cell.  Here's Pup La Mancha,
my brother, deserting, and you and me and that fool Pocock overtaking
him at Lane's stopping-place.  Suppose you let him go, Shifty Lane
reports you at headquarters.  Suppose you don't let him go, you get
my brother, the Pup, a year in the cells.  Suppose I let him escape
and take his place, I get nine months.  After all, what's nine
months?  I shall be blazing drunk to-night, and maybe get it again!"

"Why can't you behave yourself?"

"Why should I, Dandy?  Now you've got a mother, Dandy, who gets a
letter from you every week.

  "'Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
      Lead Thou me on.'

She's the kindly light, I suppose, but mine went out.  And you've got
a girl, Dandy, who believes you're a brass saint with a tin halo,
which you're not, and who loves you except when she happens to love
some other Johnny, which is all the same thing.  I've been in love,
too, with heaps of girls, two or three at a time generally, hating
each other like so many Antipopes.  I have a photograph-album--you've
seen it in my kit-bag--of all the girls I ever really loved, except a
small collection which got burnt up in a hotel fire.  I tried to be
good, more or less, for each of them, except when they liked me bad;
and even now I could be tolerably straight, with an occasional
holiday to let off steam, if I had somebody who cared."

"I care," said Dandy moodily.

"Oh, you don't count.  You're only a whiff, a spit, and a damn like a
Russian cigarette."

"But you have people--your family."

"Yes, I've got a brother in London, an awful snob,--also a sister."

"La Mancha, I saw the name in some paper--the Duke of--Duke of
Something--Spanish Ambassador to the Court of St. James'--but,
Blackguard!"--

"Well?"

"Is that your"--

"Yes, that's the Snob."

"But from what I saw he must be an awful bad lot."

The Blackguard's eyes flashed ominously.  "Drop that.  If you talk
bad about my people I'll have to chuck you into the river.  Then
you'll get wet."

"And you'll be sorry.  Are all your people such swells?"

For answer the Blackguard drew from beneath his undershirt a crucifix
which hung from a slender chain of gold about his neck.  "That's from
one of my relations,"--he kissed it reverently,--"Isabella--God bless
her--of Spain."

"Why, Blackguard, are you of the Blood-Royal--a prince?"

"Not quite that,--I suppose in English I should be Lord So-and-so.
Regimental Number 1107, Constable La Mancha, my lord--ahem--you are
charged with having, on the night of the 18th instant, been drunk,
and assaulted the guard; also with having, on the night of the same
instant, set the guard-room on fire; also with having, on the same
night, et cetera.--  Sounds well,--eh, Dandy?"

The Corporal laughed.  "We've been together four years now, and this
is the first time you told me a word about yourself.  We have lots of
gentlemen in the ranks--I suppose I'm a gentleman myself if it comes
to that, but"--

"A fat lot of use it is, eh?"

"That's so.  What were you doing all those years in England?"

"Military attaché at the Legation until I had my last big row with
the Snob.  You see, I met a woman at a Foreign Office reception--a
regular cat--and found her out for a she-spy in the secret service
of--let's say Russia.  When the Snob took to fooling around after
her, I warned him; but he only thought I was jealous, and called me
names.  So we had a row, and I gave him a black eye, Eton style.
Then I had to give him another to make it even.  After that, of
course, all was over between us.  I took some keys off him, plundered
the safe, told him what train I should catch, the name of the
steamer--gave him every chance if he wanted a public scandal.  He
didn't want a scandal--might have cost him his job, so now he's the
Ambassador and I'm the Blackguard.  That's all."

"Poor devil!"

"Yes, poor devil," yawned the Blackguard cheerfully, as he stood up
to stretch himself.  "Anything fresh?"

"Nothing much."  The Corporal was brushing some dead grass from his
breeches.  "There's a civilian at the officers' mess, came from
Golden City by the 'Duchess' and rode over from Windermere.  He's
bound for the Throne Mine."

The Blackguard looked across the valley and saw one glimmering light
far up on the mountains--the light of the Throne Mine.

"Well," he said, "I'm off to the canteen."

"Don't be a fool!  Come and play poker in my tent."

"What's the use?"  The Blackguard laid his hand on Dandy's shoulder.
"You're a good fellow.  I know jolly well what you mean, but I've got
a devil--Good-night--and an appointment with Mother Darkie."

Then the Corporal turned sorrowfully away.




CHAPTER II

    "Women and wine and war!
    War and wine and love!
  With a sword to wear, and a steed to ride,
  And a wench to love--give me nought beside,
  But a bottle or so at the eventide:
    Women and wine and war!

    Women and wine and war!
    War and wine and love!
  Oh, war's my trade, and wine's my play,
  Wine crown the night, and war the day--
  With a kiss or so in a casual way:
    Women and wine and war!

    Women and wine and war!
    War and wine and love!
  Here's a broken head, and a drunken spree,
  And the blue-eyed wench deserted me,
  Go! lecture the woman, and let me be:
    Women and wine and war!"


So sang the Blackguard, while all his riotous gang roared out the
chorus, and Mother Darkness, perched on the bar with my Lord of
Misrule's big arms about her waist, rocked to and fro, crying "Lordy!
Lordy!" at intervals.

"Boys," said the Blackguard, "who wouldn't be a soldier at fifty
cents a day and die for a living!"

"Shut yer jaw!  Can't you drink, Blackguard, without making speeches?
Why, the smell of a cork sets you off.  You'd talk the legs off a
brass monkey!"

"What I say is," shouted Mutiny Saunders, in hot argument with his
chum, Tribulation Jones,--"what I sez is, when a man's got an 'orse
and looks after that 'orse, and grooms that 'orse, and gits to like
'is 'orse, and some 'alf-breed hofficer wants to take that 'orse away
from 'im, and 'e bucks stiff-legged,--what I sez is, 'air on 'im!"

"Camp on 'is trail!" suggested Tribulation,--"make 'is life a burden
to 'im.  Oh, my Gawd, tear a bone out of 'im!  What do you say,
Blackguard?"

"Oh, keep it till the break of day.

  "'Women and wine and war!'

Eh, Mother Darkness?  Come and be Mrs. Blackguard.  Boys, celebrate
our nuptials, dance at our wedding, for Mother Darkness is to be
Queen of the May--and share my Government straight, and pay my debts,
and take in washing, and be my wife."

He kissed her ugly black face, while she rocked to and fro muttering
"Lordy!  Lordy!"

"I'll take a scarecrow in--I'll have a bally scarecrow for my wife!"
shouted Billy Boy out of a corner.  "Send round the poison,
Blackguard."

"Yes, and to the blazes with poverty.  Mother Darkness, my last
dollar for the drinks--for now I'm clean-busted."

So while the drinks went round once more the Blackguard snatched up
his guitar, and caught the lilt of some grand old Andalusian dance--

        "Sing with me,
        Carita;
        Dance with me,
        Carita,
  Let the mad world sing the lilt of our gladness!
        Dance with me,
        Carita;
        Merrilie,
        Carita,
  Let the glad earth catch the lilt of our madness!"


The log-cabin allowed but space to swing a cat, as the saying
is--although nobody had ever swung cats in it since its erection a
month ago.  Kept by a motherly negress, enterprising in the matter of
illicit whisky, this shanty served as a canteen for the camp, levied
half the available pay of D Troop, occasioned more trouble than all
the Red Indians in Kootenay, and generally played the very deuce with
public morals.  As to the men who sat on soap boxes and barrels round
the walls, or perched on the bar, giving cheek to Mother Darkness,
well, of course, they should have been in bed long ago, and certainly
they ought to have abstained from the trash which passed current at a
shilling a drink for whisky; but then--the shanty was by proclamation
"out of bounds"; to be found in it meant a heavy fine; to be caught
beyond the limits of the camp after "lights out" meant punishment,
and to drink illicit liquor was officially accounted worse than all
the deadly sins; so, according to the natural history of man, there
was every inducement for a roaring night.  And the men?  To the
stature and strength of an English Life Guardsman add the
intelligence, courage, and impudence of a Black Watch veteran, and
you have the prescription for a constable of the North-West Mounted
Police.  There is not in all the Empire a more splendid corps than
this widely-scattered regiment of irregular cavalry, in time of peace
hare-brained, half-mutinous, almost beyond the power of human
control; in many a time of instant danger approved for stern
endurance, utter loyalty, and headlong courage.  These men in the
shanty, waking the night with song and chorus, had each of them done
great deeds of arms, for which nobody in authority or otherwise had
given as much as a "Thank you."  The tale has been told at many a
camp fire, how a constable was sent once to track down a mad Indian
who had killed and eaten his children.  Months afterwards the Officer
Commanding at Fort Edmonton was interrupted in the midst of a muster
parade by a bearded civilian in rags, who walked up to him and halted
at three paces with a correct salute.

"What the deuce do you want?" said the Officer Commanding.

"Come to report, sir."

"Who the devil are you?"

"Constable Saunders, sir,--got my prisoner in the guard-room."

That was Mutiny Saunders, who had tracked his victim fearlessly into
goodness knows what awful recesses of the northern forest, who had
been struck off the strength of the Force as "missing," but who never
deigned to report himself alive until he carried out an almost
impossible order and vindicated the majesty of British Justice by
making the most extraordinary arrest in all the annals of the Empire.

Tribulation Jones, now arguing with Mutiny about a horse, was one of
the seventy-five men who took part in the "Poundmaker Racket," when
Crozier's Troop, confronted by thousands of armed Indians, charged,
rode them down, wheeled, charged again, scattered them and carried
off a necessary prisoner, and all without a single shot being fired.

Billy Boy, now howling out the chant of "Old King Cole," once drove a
team two hundred and ten miles in two days without killing his
horses, and in the darkest days of the North-West Rebellion carried
despatches right through the enemy's lines.

Mackinaw Bob, leaning back against the shanty wall very drunk, was
one of the thirty men who in Fort Walch defied for three days the
largest Indian army ever raised, to wit, the Sioux forces of Sitting
Bull, when they came to Canadian territory triumphant after the
massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry.

The Blackguard?  But the Blackguard's story is the purport of this
present writing.  He had taken up the bad old song called "Limerick,"
of many naughty verses, strung to an idiotic tune--

  "Ho, there was a non-com. at Macleod
  Who got so infernally proud
      That he busted his vest
      With the swell of his chest,
  And they bore him away in a shroud.

  Yah, there was a recruit at headquarters
  Who loved all the officers' daughters,
      But he couldn't choose which,
      So occasioned a hitch,
  And broke all the girls' hearts at headquarters."


"Boys, who's this Tenderfoot they've got at the officers' mess?"

"I found the duffer," said one of the boys just in from Windermere
patrol,--"he'd strayed like a something Maverick--didn't know who he
was or where he belonged to--lost his led horse with all his dunnage.
I rounded him up and headed him in towards camp.  His name's Ramsay."

"Is he any good?"

"No.  Puts on enough side for a Governor-General, called me my good
fellah--the blawsted Henglish jumped-up, copper-bottomed,
second-hand, brass-bound swine."

"Where is he going to sleep?"

"Colonel's tent, I guess, unless the old man turns up unexpected; but
he's still at the mess with a brandy-and-soda and two blanked
adjectived Inspectors.  I want to know what we've done that he should
be palmed off on a white man's camp instead of old Isadore's Reserve,
the rat-tailed, lop-eared, pigeon-livered son of a"--

"Boys, Providence has sent him here to be kicked, and shall we
dispute the wisdom of Providence?  I'll see to it, you fellows; and
now, unless somebody's got credit with my future wife for the drinks,
let us close the exercises by singing in a loud voice the words of
that venerable summons known as the 'General Salute.'"

So the boys took up the goodly measure to a strenuous accompaniment
of beaten pans in an uproar worthy of Pandemonium--

  "Now here comes the Gen-e-ral, all venom and spleen,
  And he rides like a sack, with a string round the middle, Oh
  His head's full of fea-thers, and his heart's all woe,
  So 'present' while the band plays 'God save the Queen!'"




CHAPTER III

  "Soldier, soldier, where are your breeches, pray?
    Soldier, soldier, get up and dust;
  Where the deuce have you hidden your brains away?
    Soldier, soldier, get up and dust.
  Busted the bugler?  Send him to hospital;
    Can't you shut up that confounded row?
  Show a leg, and no damned profanity--
    Get out and sweat for a shillin' a day."


When the bugle had concluded making these remarks, when the echoes of
the hills were calling back their greeting, the valley stirred under
its blanket of mist, the Alps blushed red to the sun's first kiss,
and the shadows of night ran to covert among the scented pines.  The
bugler was raking up a fire in front of the guard-tent with a view to
his morning coffee, the picket was lounging drowsily home from the
horse lines, and from every tent came sleepy execrations.

"Show a leg there!  Get a move on you!  Who the ---- told you to
tread on my legs!  Réveille!  Oh, give us a rest; who said Réveille?"

The bugler sounded "Dress!" and there was a further stirring as
though half the tents would be overthrown.  One by one the canvas
flaps were thrown open, as men came out with their towels in search
of tin basins generally mislaid.  Then, it seemed but a few minutes
afterwards, the bugler set the brazen tormentor to his lips to call
stables--

  "Oh, come to the stables and water your horses,
  And groom them a little and give them some hay,
  Groom them damned little and give them bad hay,
  Government grooming and Government hay;
  For if you don't do it the Colonel will know it,
  Then orderly-room--and the devil to pay."


At that the troop fell in, each man with his curry-comb and brush,
some in canvas jackets, some without, one or two in deer-skin coats,
all with long boots, and otherwise compromising their civilian
appearance with traces of uniform, except the Orderly Sergeant, who
wore correct undress.  He had to bring parade to attention and call
the roll, then, after a smart numbering off, to give the "Fours
right, quick march!" which sent the column briskly away to the horse
lines.  Half an hour sufficed to water horses, clean up bedding,
groom and feed, then the beasts were left in charge of a picket
detailed to herd them to pasture for the day.  The parade was
dismissed, and the men strolled home to their tents thinking audibly
on the subject of breakfast.

"Constable La Mancha," the Orderly Sergeant had been consulting his
notes.

"Well?"

"Consider yourself under arrest."

"Kiss my socks!" said the Blackguard.  "Why, what have I done?" he
continued innocently.

"Done?  You'll find out soon enough."

"Yes, Sergeant--but which charge in particular--I've got to prepare
my defence."

"Oh, give us a rest!  Get off to breakfast,--I'm busy."

"'Twas ever thus!" said the Blackguard sorrowfully.  "Thank goodness,
the Colonel's away."  But even as he turned abruptly towards the
tents a mounted man coming up from behind barely avoided riding over
him.  "What d'you think you're doing?" cried the Blackguard angrily.
The rider swerved gracefully clear with a touch of the rein, a
hard-featured, clear-eyed veteran, grey with long service, sitting
his horse with an easy dignity, dressed in rough frontier clothes,
weary, travel-stained--the Colonel himself.

La Mancha saluted in haste, startling the horse into a succession of
desperate plunges.  "Just like my luck!" groaned the Blackguard, and
would have gone on towards the camp fires of his mess, but the
Colonel, alighting now before his tent on the far side of the parade
ground, called to him, "La Mancha!"

"Yes, sir!" the Blackguard ran to the tent.

"Just take my horse to the lines, unsaddle, give him a rub down, then
water, and send my servant."

So the Blackguard was busy, and cursing until long after the
breakfast bugle; but the Colonel, refreshed by a wash and a hasty
change into uniform, made his way to the table set under an awning
for the officers' mess.

"Good-morning, gentlemen."

His kindly grey eyes had noted a civilian sitting with his two
officers at breakfast, a handsome English youngster, neatly built but
small, perhaps twenty years old, to judge by the light down of an
incipient moustache; unused to the world, as might be known from the
awkward self-consciousness of manners; very green, to judge by the
ridiculous bourgeois attempt at a riding costume.

The two Inspectors had risen, big Fraser Gaye, late of Carrington's
Horse in South Africa, and little Gunby, from the Kingston Military
School.

"Good hunting, sir?" asked the one, but the other was kicking the
Englishman furtively to make him stand up.  "Good-morning, sir;" he
was kicking strenuously, his face reddened with the exertion,--"let
me present Mr. Ramsay."

"You're welcome, Mr. Ramsay.  Glad to see you;--sit down."

The Colonel had taken a chair at the head of the table, observant of
Mr. Ramsay, and smiling with inward laughter.  "Why," he wondered,
"must a green youngster try to hide his ignorance with a cloak of
affectation?  He's speechless still with a sort of stage fright, so
he pretends a lofty reserved indifference."  "No," the Colonel turned
suddenly upon Fraser Gaye, talking to give his guest a chance of
cooling off, "the hunting was not very good.  June is a bad month
when one has to respect the game laws.  Do you know what game is
always in season, Mr. Ramsay?"

The Colonel's winning smile meant, as his subalterns knew, the advent
of his very oldest joke.  "No?" for Mr. Ramsay was still speechless.
"Ah, the kind of sport I speak of is out of date where you come from.
Man is the one game animal never out of season in the West."

"Man?"  Mr. Ramsay had found his tongue at last; so while the Mess
Orderly was laying breakfast before him, the Colonel went on
reassured--

"Yes.  My Division has been sent across the Rockies here into British
Columbia because the Kootenay tribes have been a little restive.
There was a medicine man from somewhere in Idaho at the bottom of all
the trouble, and he being an American subject, I was not willing to
risk the loquacity of the newspapers yonder.  To arrest him meant
worry and red tape without end."

"What, sir?" the senior Subaltern spoke anxiously.  "Have you"--

"No," the Colonel smiled over his coffee cup, "I went as a civilian;
as a civilian I herded him like a steer across the Tobacco Plains,
and left him in gaol under a bogus charge in United States territory.
That's my hunting, gentlemen."

The Colonel had given his guest time enough to shake off any
embarrassment; indeed, the youngster had by this time helped himself
uninvited to a second rasher of bacon, put on an air of assured
worldliness, and was evidently trying to assume the easy
devil-may-care freedom of manners which he supposed to be
characteristic of the Far West.

"A little more bacon?" said the Colonel gracefully, with a wink
towards his senior Inspector.

"Oh--ah--thanks--yes--I mean I've helped myself."  The Tenderfoot was
blushing to the roots of his hair.

"I hope my young gentlemen have been entertaining you properly?"
continued the Colonel, at which the junior Inspector burst out
laughing.

"We've tried, sir."  Mr. Fraser Gaye met an inquiring glance from the
Colonel.  "We gave this gentleman your tent, with some of our
bedding; but when he tried to turn in last night he fell foul of one
of the Quartermaster's sheep lashed to the cot.  Mr. Ramsay says he
was kicked half-way across the parade ground."

"I must say," the Colonel tried to be grave, "I had some misgivings
when I met La Mancha just now.  He wore that eager-child innocence of
expression which always means some fresh outrage.  I promise you, Mr.
Ramsay, that he shall have occasion to repent."

"Aw--I wouldn't be hard on him, don't you know.  I'm sure it was
only"--

The Englishman was genuine now, so that despite his airs and graces
the Colonel liked him.  Even the mess waiter, standing with a wooden
face behind, allowed a glance to escape of intelligent appreciation,
and the senior Inspector, noting it, was glad that news of this plea
for mercy would reach the troop.

The Colonel changed the subject.  "Well, Mr. Ramsay, how do you like
our mountains?"

Again the Tenderfoot fell into needless embarrassment, until little
Gunby came to his relief.

"Mr. Ramsay turned up last night, sir, on horseback."  The Subaltern
could not refrain from grinning at the remembrance.  "He's got
business up at the Throne Camp, so I took the liberty of promising"--

"A man to show him the way, eh?  Quite right.  Mr. Ramsay is welcome.
Who's Orderly Officer?  Oh!  Then Mr. Fraser Gaye will detail a good
man--and now"--

The Colonel rose, seeming scarcely to have taken more than a cup of
coffee, and with a glance drew the senior Subaltern to his own tent,
where he received a full report of events during his late absence.

"Get rid of that young fool," was his last instruction before closing
the interview.  "If you let him stay in camp another day I shall have
to punish half the men for practical jokes.  Get rid of him before
noon."

  "Come to your mother, my love,
  Come to your mother, my boy."
                      _Defaulters Call_.


"Regimental Number 1107, Constable la Mancha," the Colonel read from
a sheet of blue foolscap, "you are charged with having, on the night
of the 2nd instant, been drunk."

The Blackguard nodded.

"You are further charged with having, on the same instant, acted
contrary to the discipline of the Force, in that you did cruelly
ill-treat an animal--namely, a sheep."

The Blackguard nodded.

"You are further charged with having used insulting and abusive
language to the Sergeant of the Guard."

The Blackguard smiled.  "I told him to"--

"Silence!" said the Sergeant-Major quietly.

The Colonel laid down the charge-sheet with a gesture of weariness.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

"It's all correct, sir."

"You have no excuse or apology?"

"None, sir."

"Constable la Mancha, are you aware that your defaulter sheet is
notoriously the blackest in the Force?"

The Blackguard answered with a smile of innocent frankness which
would have disarmed a grizzly bear.

"In four months from now your time expires, otherwise, for continuous
misbehaviour, I should be compelled to recommend your discharge.  I
cannot have my whole division demoralised by one"--he was going to
say "blackguard!"  "Consider this matter.  Fined one month's pay."

The Blackguard saluted.

"Thank you, sir."

"Right about turn," said the Sergeant-Major, "quick march."

Then the Colonel chuckled.  Presently he looked up at the senior
Inspector.

"Have you seen to Mr. Ramsay?"

"I'm afraid, sir, that I have only one duty man available who knows
the trail."

"You mean La Mancha?  Hum!--I wish we had a dozen men as useful.
Well, never mind the rules--he's safer occupied."

The Inspector spoke to the Orderly Sergeant, who left the tent
saluting.

"Blackguard," he said, overtaking the culprit, "got a job for you.
Saddle your horse and Polly.  You're to take that Tenderfoot up to
the Throne Mine.  Report before lights out to-morrow, and see you
don't 'mislay him' anywhere."




CHAPTER IV

An hour later, when the sun was high in the heavens, Mr. Ramsay,
attended by a "common soldier," set out in state westward for the
Selkirk Mountains.  The Englishman's feelings were mixed, firstly
with admiration for the common soldier's ease in the saddle, for his
coal-black charger, standing sixteen hands, clumsy as a dray-horse,
the one weight-carrying animal in D Division, for the belt weighed
down at one side with a ponderous service revolver, and glittering
all across his back with twenty cartridges of burnished brass like a
serpent of golden fire.  His second feeling was pride at being sent
out with such an escort, for the Blackguard on horseback was
magnificent.  His third feeling was poignant humiliation over what
had passed when, in presence of a dozen grinning troopers, he had
tried to mount the gentle brown mare at the lines.

"If you will mount on the off side," was La Mancha's stinging
comment, "she'll kick off your head to begin with."

Then somebody had made a remark about his riding-breeches, which came
from the most expensive tailor in London.  "Why, you idiot, they're
for swimming.  Don't you see the baggy parts blow like footballs to
keep the duffer afloat?"  He had not caught some further remarks
about his leggings, but a chill went up his back at the thought of
it.  All across the continent he had looked in vain for such baggy
riding-breeches, such leather leggings, such loud-checked tweed as
his tailor had insisted upon in Conduit Street.  Such things were not
worn in Canada.

But now, away from the atmosphere of that camp, in which he had
scarcely dared to breathe, away from the troopers who had looked upon
him as a sort of penny toy, and the officers who had failed to see
how much he needed rest after yesterday's ride, Mr. Ramsay felt that
he must shake off his diffidence.

They had reached the river, and, as the Blackguard slacked rein in
mid-stream to let the big horse drink, Mr. Ramsay did the same, not
observing that he had halted his animal so far forward that the water
went down muddy and foul for the other.  The Blackguard favoured him
with a glance of some virulence, and went on a little.  On the far
bank there was more humiliation--dismounting to recinch the saddles
after the western custom, the shortening of his own stirrup leathers,
then the mounting, this time a little better done.

"Blackguard," said Mr. Ramsay, meaning to be distantly affable, as
became their social relations; but the soldier looked round to favour
him with a prolonged stare.  Then, drawing a deep breath--

"If you want to call me, don't trouble to speak, just whistle--so"--

At the whistle a dog came leaping out from some bushes by the river.
"Why, it's Powder!  Come along, then, dear old chap!"

So for some time, while they paced slowly over the meadows and
climbed the high bench beyond, the common soldier and the dog made
perfect company, while the Tenderfoot rode behind full of bitterness.

"My good man," he said at last, irritably, drawing abreast, "the day
before yesterday I left Windermere on horseback--I'd never been on
the back of a horse in all my life."

"So I see;" said the Blackguard, glancing over the other with
scorching criticism.

"I was frightened to death, but whatever you think of me I can keep
my cowardice to myself."

"So I observe.  Sure sign of a thoroughbred!" said the Blackguard
gravely.  "Now, if you pick up Powder by the tail, he won't let out a
whimper."

Mr. Ramsay looked at the animal, which was piebald red and white like
a cow, exhibited in its person symptoms of about eighteen different
kinds of dog, and had not the slightest vestige of a tail, not even a
bud.  The Tenderfoot tried to be freezingly polite.

"Fit for the Dogs' Home, I should think."

"No," said the Blackguard, "he's very rare--thoroughbred of his
kind--the only known specimen.  He's getting sick of this expedition
already.  Go you home, Powder!"

Powder, assuming an expression of disdain, hopped off languidly on
three legs.

"He's official dog to D Troop," explained the Blackguard; "draws his
rations out of the hindquarters of every civilian dog within ten
miles."

Mr. Ramsay took a case from his pocket, and with much gravity and
puppyish affectation drew out a cigar, which, with vigorous balancing
in the saddle, he managed to light, throwing the flaming match beside
the trail.

The Blackguard, greatly amused, pulled up, dismounted, quenched an
incipient fire with his foot, then, swinging easily into the saddle,
remarked upon certain penalties for setting the country alight.

Mr. Ramsay maintained a scornful silence.  Neither this, nor the
distant affability, nor the freezing politeness had been quite a
success, but there was still a trace of condescension in his voice
when he remarked experimentally upon the shot-gun slung in place of a
carbine on the horn of La Mancha's saddle.

"Ah, my good fellow, what kind of shooting do you expect?"

"Side-hill hens," the Blackguard waxed serious.

"What are they?  We have none at home."

"Oh, in this mountain country the prairie chickens have one leg
shorter than the other, so that they can graze along the slopes."

"But then, they could only go one way!  It sounds like nonsense."

"Quite true, though; they keep to the right.  I'll show you their
notice-boards presently.  Then higher up we may get a few chiffons,
or a brace of fichus."

"I never heard of your local game.  Very inferior sport, I should
suppose."

"Yes.  The chiffon is only a four-legged bird--grows fur and teeth."

"Of course, you mean it's an animal?"

"No--plain bird.  And the fichu is more curious still.  We only get
hen birds now, because the cock birds are all extinct."

"Aw--nonsense!  How could they breed?"

"They don't," said the Blackguard sorrowfully.

By this time Mr. Ramsay was full of misgivings, but gaining the top
of the bench-land, the Blackguard led off at a trot which soon shook
not only misgivings out of the Tenderfoot, but also several vital
organs, and even one or two distinctly profane remarks when he lost
the cigar.  He was so sore after yesterday's travelling that every
jerk spelt agony, and nothing but courage withheld him from crying
aloud.

"Sore tail, eh?" said La Mancha at last, and, loosing rein, let his
horse break into a fresh pace, the delightfully easy canter known in
the west as a "lope."  "Is that better?"

"Haw!  I could keep this up all day.  You need not consider me."

So they went on across the gently rolling grass land, past many a
graceful thorp of pines and bluff of tremulous aspen, through meadow
lands ablaze with big yellow daisies and swaying acres bright with
golden rod.  The air was rich with perfume from the woods, where
unseen birds rang out ecstatic songs; canaries flaunted their
gorgeous hues from branch to branch, and humming-birds whirring each
like an emerald in his mist of wings over the blossoms of rich
scented briar.  Great gardens of wild roses mile by mile, steeped
with intoxicating perfume, then cedars towering out of the dreamy
heat, then of a sudden they entered a green twilight of forest, cool,
still, mysterious, like some ghostly sea where coral red along the
misty aisles great trees went up into a cloud of leaves.  So the
Blackguard drew rein as though it were irreverent to canter into
church, and mile after mile the trail went upward into the shadow,
steeper and steeper as they neared the hills.

Suddenly the green gloaming parted ahead, framing the blue haze of an
abrupt mountain; then, as though out of some submarine cavern, the
riders came into an open glade at the very base of the Selkirk range,
where the afternoon sun half-blinded them.  On either hand steep
wooded heights shot up into mid-sky--between them a winding meadow
barred just ahead with a great snake fence, save where there came
forth a rumbling stream, milk-white because it had sprung full-grown
from the mills of the gods--from the far-away glacier of the Throne.

The Blackguard let out a long "halloo," answered at once by a rifle
shot; and the Tenderfoot was just in time to see a whiff of blue
smoke against the big snake fence.

"Two cowboys in camp," explained the Blackguard as they rode forward;
"they've made the fence to corrall old General Buster's bulls."

"Aw--a pretty rough lot, I suppose."

"Be civil, or they'll eat you," the Blackguard grinned; "they always
shoot at sight unless you halloo their password.  That's why I
yelped.  They're cannibals too.  Have you much money on you?  Well,
it's too late to save it now--so hope for the best."

Thus prejudiced against the cowboys, Mr. Ramsay found their
appearance displeasing.  Both men wore blue shirts with large pearl
buttons arranged in a shield pattern on the breast, and heavy leather
"chaparejos" leggings, suspended from a revolver belt; one pair with
leather fringes all down the outer seam, the other completely faced
with the hairy black bearskin.  Black Bear was a swarthy Mexican,
ominously scowling, and adorned with large gold earrings; Leather,
who answered to the uncouth name Arrapahoe Bill, was a lengthy hard
fair sinner, whose tawny hair curled down well over his neck.

"Ho-la, the blackguard!" was Black Bear's greeting, followed by a
torrent in guttural Spanish, while the horses were being rapidly
unsaddled and turned loose to graze within the fence.  As to
Arrapahoe Bill, one glance at the Tenderfoot's baggy breeches reduced
him to ominous silence.

"Well, Bill--how's tricks?" said the Blackguard afterwards, lying at
ease before the tent, while he watched the Mexican's cookery of
coffee and venison.

"Tricks?" growled Arrapahoe Bill, pointing at Mr. Ramsay,--"where did
you get _that_?"

"Oh, let me introduce you,--this is Mr. Ramsay from--Clapham
Junction."

"How do?" said the cowboy stiffly.

"Come, Bill," the Blackguard seemed amused, "a cheerful specimen you
are, you confounded old grizzly.  Wake up and be civil."

"Mistah Ramsay from Clapham Junction," said the cowboy with
difficulty, as though his tongue was stiff, "there ain't no civility
whar I come from, but white men are always welcome, sah, among
gentlemen."

"I am not, as you suppose, from Clapham Junction," said the
Tenderfoot, thinking thus to mitigate the situation, "but--thanks all
the same," he added lamely.

"Mistah Ramsay," continued the Blackguard, with a malicious grin, "is
an English capitalist going up to see the Throne Mine."

"Huh!" the Mexican chuckled with a snarling laugh, "the outfit of the
Throne Mine is gone _loco_."

"That means," explained La Mancha, "that the people at the Throne are
lunatics."

"Really?"

"All yesterday they fire off guns--they have a _fiesta_.  Then
followed another torrent of guttural Spanish.

"A birthday party," explained La Mancha.  "'Ware petticoats!  It
seems that they've got a woman up there--the Burrows girl, they call
her; arrived since I was this way before."

"Perhaps," suggested the Tenderfoot stiffly, "Mr. Burrows has a niece
or a daughter."

"Anyway, she's a good-looking piece, by all accounts.  Wish I'd been
up there for the birthday,--I like girls."

"Come, Mr. Tenderfoot."  Arrapahoe Bill was cleaning his sheath knife
by stabbing it into the earth.  "Soldier, the kettle's a-boil.  Sling
in that coffee."

The soldier slung coffee and sugar into the camp kettle, let it boil
a minute, then served the scalding stuff into four tin cups.
Meanwhile Black Bear was busy filling four tin plates with a stew of
reindeer.  So the meal commenced, for three ravenous frontiersmen and
one doubtful Britisher who had never before tasted venison, nor knew
what manner of beast had furnished it.

"More girl deer," said the Black Bear in his dubious English.

"More what?"  The Tenderfoot cast a glance of extreme suspicion at
the stew.

"Dear girl, he means," explained the Blackguard,--"dear little Indian
girl shot yesterday."

The Englishman, ghastly white, got up, clutching his breast with both
hands, and walked away with great dignity into the woods.

"'Ware rattlesnakes!" shouted Arrapahoe Bill, with a grim chuckle;
and then, knowing that the victim of this awful jest was beyond all
fear of snakes, the three men laughed.  Yet even while the Blackguard
relished the flavour of the joke came its bitter aftertaste, which
froze the grin on his face and made him follow Mr. Ramsay.

"Look here," he said, coming to where his charge leaned shaking
against a tree, "don't be a fool!  That dish, my Emerald, was
venison, the meat of the cariboo, of the reindeer.  You know what
venison is?"

The Englishman turned slowly, looking over his shoulder with a glance
of scorn and rage.  "I know what you are," he said in a low even
voice,--"I know what you are now."

"A blackguard, yes, I know.  And yet--and yet--you needn't make such
a fuss about it."

The Englishman turned full upon him, quite quiet, though the sweat
stood upon his forehead in white drops.  "I am a Tenderfoot--you
laugh at me--think I'm afraid of you. I don't know your ways here,
but I've read of them in books.  There is one thing in common between
us two.  Will you fight?"

"No,--you're too small."

"I don't mean with fists.  Go and borrow for me a revolver from
those friends of yours--you have your own."

"You're a brave man," said the Blackguard, bantering, "but you see,
my dear fellow, I can't fight, because my business is to keep you out
of mischief."

"You needn't try to shuffle out of it now--fetch that revolver."

"Little stranger, I am a dead shot, I have killed men--worse
luck--before now; while you never fired a gun in all your life."

"I choose your own weapons, you coward!"

"Little man, over all this country, from sea to sea, there's a
flag"--the Blackguard took off his hat--"which does not allow any
nonsense.  We're not in the United States just now.  I beg your
pardon, I, Don José Santa Maria Sebastian Iago las Morẽnas de
la Mancha, otherwise known as the Blackguard, beg your pardon.  Come,
don't be a silly ass!"

It was not what La Mancha said, nor the grace with which he spoke,
the certain scornful simplicity as of a great aristocrat, which moved
the Englishman.  Rather it was the wonderful tender light in the
man's eyes.

Ramsay's hand went out instinctively, and the two men were friends.




CHAPTER V

"Do you know my side of life--London?" asked the Tenderfoot
haughtily, as he followed La Mancha by a corkscrew trail up the lower
foothills.

"Rather," said the Blackguard,--"the mare's a great pal of mine."

"The _Lord_ Mayor, I suppose, you mean?"

"No, the grey mare--horse's old woman, you know.  Besides, I know the
place well.  The Grand Trunk passes through it; there's quite a
station."

"Why, hundreds of lines go to London."

"Well, I don't know about hundreds.  There's the Grand Trunk, and
perhaps they carry a line of portmanteaux or hat-boxes.  But I always
take the Grand Trunk.  More commodious.  Besides, one has to have a
lot of clothes for a big place like London; it has ten thousand
people."

"Five millions, you mean."

"Oh, come off; there are not that number in the whole of Ontario, or
Canada, for that matter."

"London, Ontario?  But I was talking of the real London."

"I see; another place, I suppose, of the same name--called after it,
most likely.  Oh yes, I know, of course."

The Tenderfoot raged furiously.

"All right, keep on your shirt," said the Blackguard; "I'll be quite
serious if you like.  Yes, I know Town--lots of relations there."

"What name?" asked the Tenderfoot innocently.  "Where do they live?"

"All over the place--different branches of the family, you know, but
you can always tell them by their coat-of-arms--the Medici arms,
three golden globes and a side door.  They're mostly uncles."

In spite of himself, Mr. Ramsay laughed.  "I know them.  What made
you say I came from Clapham Junction?"

"Where do you live, then?"

"Balham."

"I was only two miles wrong, my friend; it's written on you."

"Written on me?"

"Yes, it will rub off in time, that brand of the respectable suburbs.
Good old southern suburbs!"

"I don't see what you mean, but you know your London."

"Yes, Tenderfoot, but not _your_ London.  Mine was the jolly old
London of dress rehearsals, actors' dressing-rooms, suppers at
Salviati's, a brake for the Derby, Tattersall's,  Lord's, Sunday at
Richmond, Monday with the Vagabonds, at the House, in the Night Club,
in the Row, in Mayfair, in Whitechapel, on the River, in the Bucket
Shop, up the Spout, or the deuce knows where."

"I never saw that London," said the Tenderfoot gravely.

"What was your London, then?"

"Oh, the City, the City all day, and for my sins Exeter Hall, because
my father's that sort of man; and in the evenings, parlour games,
lawn tennis, parties,--my mother's that kind of woman; lecturing on
minerals at the Polytechnics, debating at the mock Parliament,
slumming in Southwark.  Lord, how sick I was of it all--oh, how sick
and tired!  But now these woods, this life, if I could only
understand,--meeting men, real men like you, with bodies instead of
only souls."

"Poor little beggar!  Yet I suppose there were things you liked even
in your London?"

"Yes, cycling, boating, the debates, the lecturing, thinking,
reading, finding out things.  After all, it's a wonderful place, the
centre of everything, the middle of the whole world."

"Give me the outside edge," said the Blackguard, "the jumping-off
place where you look out into the dark occasionally, and catch a
glimpse of heaven or hell through the window."

"That sounds like poetry."

"And it feels like life.  I've never read a book, but I've lived--you
bet, I've lived!  Great gods, it's better than books; it's better
than London, as you'll see when you get to live.  You don't
understand things yet.  You don't know what it is to be in danger, to
feel your heart jump with excitement, to feel your blood dance at the
order to fire, to kill men, to be shot at.  I used to like a bull
feast once in Spain, but that's tame; to fight in our
insurrections--that was better.  Even a dead nation must have a
little fun, and so, because we're not strong enough to fight our
neighbours, we have comical insurrections among ourselves.  We are
quite bloodthirsty, and some people really get hurt.  But there's not
even that these last few years.  Poor old Spain!  Once she was
mistress of the earth, once we Spaniards lived for war and wine and
love, and had it all until we were satisfied.  Now there are one or
two live Spaniards like me, but to live as our fathers lived we have
to serve under another flag.

"When you wake up, when you've forgotten all about that infernal old
Balham, you'll see that there's another London, the centre of the
Empire, which has stolen the fire from heaven that once belonged to
Spain.  We're making that Empire, we cowboys and miners, magistrates
and mounted police of the frontier,--making the new empire in
Australia, in Canada, in Africa, in India.  That's what it means, the
frontier which you've been trying, after your little Balham way, to
live in these last few days."  Then the Blackguard relapsed into a
shamefaced chuckle.  "By Jove, I didn't think I had it in me.  I'm
going to preach to the boys when I get back to camp.  I'll make 'em
sit up, and if they laugh I'll punch their heads till they're sick."

The hillside was clothed beneath the pines with a dense wet jungle of
rotting deadfall, fruit bushes gorgeous with blossom, and the immense
leaves poised on viciously barbed stems of the devil-club.  After
climbing for a very long time, the riders came to the brow of this
lowest spur of the mountains, from whence the trail wound on through
big timber for many a weary mile, gently rising save where there was
an occasional abrupt slope to be surmounted.  The top of the ridge
was a gigantic stairway, and it was sundown before the Tenderfoot and
his guide came to the base of the upper foothills.

"I say," said the Tenderfoot, as they breathed their horses before
breasting the zig-zag trail up this mountain,--"I've been too much
ashamed to say anything, but will these people at the Throne mind my
coming without any luggage?"

"They won't mind, if you don't."

"I set off from Windermere driving a pack-horse in front of me."

"I see, and the horse went back to Windermere?  They'll send it along
with the mail or our next patrol.  I'll tell Grab-a-root, the
Quartermaster."

"I say, you've rum names in this country--Grab-a-root, Dandy, Mutiny,
Tribulation, Arrapahoe Bill, The Blackguard.  Does everybody have a
nickname?"

"No; only men who are pretty well liked--or hated."

"Have I one?"

"Oh, you're only a Tenderfoot,--you don't count."

The youngster sighed.  "They called me Charlie at home; but here--I
see now."

"Poor old Charlie!"

"And Mr. Burrows up yonder?"

"The Lunatic, eh?  We must be getting on."

"Is it very far?" the lad sighed pitifully.

"A mile or two.  Come on."

The big timber insensibly gave place to pines scattering up the slope
of ever-lessening girth and stature, sharp, slender cones, black like
funeral torches.  It seemed ten weary miles to the top of this upper
foothill.  The summit was a desolate moor, streaked with snow in its
hollows, stony, with patches of grassy swamp and scattered torches
twisted in uncouth torture, very small, yet looming monstrous against
the waning light.  Ahead was a stony ridge speckled with juniper
bushes, and on its brow two spots like jutting rocks.

"Look," said the Blackguard, pointing to a tiny glimmer under one of
these spots; "they're lighting their lamp at the Throne."




CHAPTER VI

THE Burrows girl was sitting on a soap box outside the Throne cabin.
Supper was over, the dishes were just washed up, her uncle sat within
reading a book of mathematics, so the Burrows girl could enjoy the
cool solitude of the hills watching the afterglow.  She knew she was
ruddy, sunburned, and freckled; she also knew that the effect was
rather becoming, that week by week her dainty beauty was budding
steadily with considerable prospect of real loveliness,--all of which
gave very good cause for contentment.  As yet man had not appeared in
her paradise, because so far a month's observation had convinced her
that none of the neighbouring prospectors were sufficiently young to
count.  At school she had been three times in love with men seen
distantly in church or street, but these had all gone blindly by, and
were probably fools.  Now, according to all her text-books, which
were mostly novels, to every maid there comes in time a man.  This
man takes himself seriously as a lord of creation, but is really not
at all so formidable as he looks, being a vulnerable creature, prone
to make an ass of himself on the smallest provocation from a woman.
The greater the lord of creation, the more abject his enslavement,
the more complete the conquest.  There was one story about a young
lad, called Una, leading a growling lion around with a string.

"I want my lion to be very growly indeed," said the Burrows girl to
the stars; whereat the stars, seeing two young men toiling painfully
up the trail, began to wink.

"Why," said the Burrows girl, "there's something moving yonder.  Two
men, I declare, on horseback, coming up to the cabin.  Uncle!" she
called,--"Uncle!"

"Well, my dear?"  An elderly man in a velveteen jacket came lounging
to the door and stood against the lamplight.

"Visitors, Uncle!  Oh, bother!" continued the Burrows girl fretfully;
"they'll be wanting supper."

"The duties of hospitality," said the man sententiously, "must"--

"Oh, drat the duties!  You never have to wash up."  Then, to appease
him: "I don't want any company, Uncle--except you.  I wonder who are
they?  Not prospectors, anyway.  The big one looks like a soldier."

"Mounted police."

"And the little one?" she spoke under her breath.  "'In this style
three and sixpence,'--I've seen lots like him; but the big one is
'positively thrown away at a guinea.'"

"Good evening, gentlemen."

"Same to you," said the big man, reining up close before the cabin.
"I had orders to deliver this package with the talking end up."

"Mr. Burrows, I think," said the little man, drawing nearer.  "My
name's Ramsay, and my father asked me to deliver this letter of
introduction."

"What!  From Augustus Ramsay & Co.?  This is indeed fortunate.
Welcome; most heartily welcome, Mr. Ramsay.  Let me present to you my
niece, Miss Violet."

For some minutes the Blackguard sat his horse impatient, holding
Ramsay's rein while compliments flew thick--Balham compliments,
bourgeois civilities.  He was the "common soldier" once more,
Ramsay's soldier-servant from the Burrows' point of view.  Then the
girl came to him, rather ashamed, he thought, asked him to "get
down," hoped he was not very tired, led him off to a shed which
served for a stable, showed him the water-hole, the oats, the
lantern, the compressed hay, and finally ran off to light up her
kitchen stove for a second supper.

"She's almost a lady," thought the Blackguard, while he groomed and
watered and fed the exhausted horses.

Within the cabin Mr. Burrows was holding forth while his niece laid
the table.  From his talk one would have supposed that he spoke from
some rostrum, possibly from a throne.

"Look at me," he said majestically,--"do I look like a fool?"

The Tenderfoot blushed.

"Answer this.  Does my appearance suggest insanity?"

The Tenderfoot went on blushing.

"These ignorant prospectors have given forth to the whole
neighbourhood that because my methods of mining differ from theirs, I
am nothing better than a lunatic."

"I should think that you would treat them with silent contempt."

"I do, young man,--I do treat them with silent contempt.  Why, only
the other day I asked one of them what he meant by----; but, pshaw, I
can afford to overlook what they mean.  After all, these prospectors
only reflect the greater world outside, which ever has resented
improvements, and looked upon the inventor as a public enemy.  It was
thus with Galileo, Watt, Stephenson, Faraday--contempt,
disparagement, starvation, while they lived; then, when they died of
want, a commemorative statue.  For my part, I desire no statue which
commemorates rather the littleness of the living than the greatness
of the dead.  I overlook such small considerations; they are beneath
my notice.  What did you say, Violet?  Supper?  Ah!--a second supper.
This mountain air has the advantage of being conducive to a second
supper.  I entirely approve of mountain air.  Draw up, young man, to
the table."

So they began to eat bacon and beans, the Lunatic discoursing
monotonously, the Tenderfoot exchanging first flirtation signals with
the Burrows girl, as she waited on them, while the Blackguard just
outside splashed cumbrously over a tin basin and a model brickbat of
scrubbing soap.

"Ah!"  Mr. Burrows sighed over his second helping, which left
seemingly but a scanty remainder for the big hungry man outside.
"These considerations of diet, my young friend,"--and so on.

With a last wrench at the roller towel, which he had puffed over and
blown into with great satisfaction, the Blackguard rolled down the
sleeves of his grey undershirt, wished inwardly that he had brought a
jacket, since he was to be the guest of a woman, and strode with
loud-clanking spurs across the doorstep.

"Ah, Constable," said Lunatic Burrows indifferently, "I had
forgotten.  I hope Miss Burrows has reserved some supper for you in
the kitchen."

The Blackguard's face looked black and threatening as he drew up his
shoulders, his head almost touching the beams.  "I only came in," he
said haughtily, "to tell this youngster not to trouble about the
horses--I've seen to them."

"I've kept your supper in the oven," said Miss Burrows anxiously.
"You'll forgive us for beginning without you?"

La Mancha bowed stiffly, but his eyes were tender at once when he saw
the girl's real courtesy.

"I hope you'll excuse me, Miss Burrows.  Fact is, I have friends at
the Tough Nut Claim who want me to stay over night."  Then he turned
to her Uncle: "You needn't disturb yourself, Burrows."

"Oh yes--certainly--very proper, I'm sure.  Your friends at the Tough
Nut will"--

"For shame, Uncle," cried the girl indignantly; and the Tenderfoot
stood up.

"I hope you'll excuse me too, Mr. Burrows, if I say good-night.  I'm
going with my friend."

Mr. Burrows turned to him in speechless astonishment, but the
Blackguard came at once to the rescue.  "Sit down again, youngster,"
he said gently; "we'll make a man of you yet.  Good-night, Miss
Burrows; good-night, youngster; so-long, Burrows,--see you again in
the morning."

Then he turned on his heel and walked out.

"I think it's too bad," said the girl; "I never felt so shamed in all
my life."

"Ah, well, you see," drawled Lunatic Burrows, with a sigh of relief.
"A few more beans, Mr. Ramsay--just a few more."

"Who is he?" asked the girl.

"Why, that's Mr. La Mancha."

"La Mancha--is that the Blackguard?"  Miss Burrows went to the door,
looking out into the clear starlight on the hills.  "I've heard of
him.  They say he's a tremendous swell.  What a splendid man!"

"A swell?" drawled Mr. Burrows, awakening as though from some dream.
"Dear, dear, you really ought to have warned me.  It's all your
fault, Violet.  How was I to know?  Run after him--bring him back at
once."

Miss Violet turned her back on him, and went off to the kitchen.




CHAPTER VII

Just behind the Burrows' cabin the ground fell away with startling
abruptness.  There were just two or three juniper bushes and a patch
of dirty snow, then the rough edge--then space.  One looked down
almost terrified into a blue mist; and full three thousand feet below
were the tops of big pine trees in another climate--almost in another
world.  Opposite there rose another granite precipice, smooth, grey,
gigantic, the valley between reaching away on the right, round a
bend, to the meadow where Arrapahoe Bill and Black Bear guarded their
bulls.

On the left was the head of the gorge, with its glacier breaking over
a cliff, and the broken river, roaring down the wall, fell into a
lake deep blue as the very sky.  This was the Throne glacier, the
seat of what seemed like a chair, with the lake at its feet, the
enormous cliffs on either side for arms, the back an Alp, ice-clad,
but splintering upward into needle spires, now touched with the
roseate glow of sunrise.

All along the westward sky glimmered the awakening summits of the
Selkirks; eastwards, across the Kootenay trench, the Rocky Mountains
hung like a belt of azure mist against the sunrise; but La Mancha,
sitting on the verge of that huge precipice behind the cabins, took
no thought of the day or of the morrow.  A little wreath of smoke
rose straight up from his pipe into the thin air, and the awful
magnificence of the Alps had no existence for him while he thought of
a woman.  Her face was before him in a dream--the face of a sweet
maid, bright with impudence, a wholesome nut-brown maiden innocent.
Her innocence made the Blackguard want to protect her; the frank
brown eyes made him desirous of study, that in their depths he might
see what it was to be good.  The Blackguard had tasted all the joys
of life, save this one thing--purity.  The aftertaste of pleasure was
sour upon his lips, but happiness seemed yet ever so far away.  "If I
were only good," he said to his pipe, "but I'm not; wherefore she
would find me out, then hate me."  So he sat at the edge of the
cliff, perched like a fly on a wall, until presently there came
another fly stealing up softly behind; a female fly this, full as her
little body could hold of wanton mischief, to wit, the Burrows girl,
who clapped her dainty hands over both La Mancha's eyes.

"You must be Love," laughed the Blackguard, "blinding a chap like
that.  What nice soft fingers--Um!  Get away, you minx, or I'll kiss
you."

"Ugh!" said the minx, suddenly releasing him.

"Now, sit down here, Impudence, and tell me who taught you your
manners."

"I couldn't help it," she said in justification.

"My Uncle is talking that poor boy to death in the cabin.  Oh! so
grave, so solemn; I wanted to scream; I got desperate!  So I came
out."

"Sit down, Impudence."

Impudence sat down a yard off, blushing hotly, her childlike face
full of reproach that she had been led astray from last night's fine
ideals.  So this was the way she was playing the part of a grown
woman.  Pretty chance there was if she behaved as it schoolgirl of
being Una with a growly Burrow!

"Miss Burrows," said the Blackguard, "ain't you ashamed of yourself?
You've interrupted the most serious thoughts, you've rumpled my hair,
you've put out my pipe, you've damaged my complexion.  Nice sort of
girl you are!"

She looked at his wicked bronzed face--his complexion, indeed!  Then
she laughed, not knowing that every note of her happiness went
through the man like an arrow.

"Do you know, young lady, that I'm dangerous, that I'm a bad lot,
that your mother, if you have one, would be afraid to see you sitting
near me, eh?"

"You needn't be conceited about it, anyway."

It was evidently no use trying to warn her--she did not believe in
evil, this sweet maid, but trusted herself in his bad company--ay,
and trusted him.

Clever women had played with him--had played with fire, but the wise
ladies had been badly burned.  Her defenceless littleness was not
like their strong towers.  They incited to attack, she to defence.
"Little woman," he said, "it's time for me to be going."

"Oh, but the sun's only just up, and I must make amends for my
Uncle's manners.  I am going to make him apologise to you--I am
indeed.  He shall go down on his bended knees.  You must stay for
dinner."

"But if I am not back in camp by noon I shall be put under arrest,
then awful things will happen."

"What kind of things?"

"They'll clip my ears like a dog, they'll chain me up, and give me
bones to gnaw.  It isn't as if I had a good character.  A man with a
good character can get drunk whenever he likes, smash things, punch
people's heads, have a good time; but me--I'm the Blackguard, so if I
look crossways at the Colonel's tent it's mutiny."

"Ha, ha!--how I'd like to see you gnawing bones!"

"I'll kiss you unless you're civil."

"You daren't!"

"Eh?"  The Blackguard sprang up as she fled like the wind before him
along the edge of the cliff; but then she turned, laughing over her
shoulder--the little flirt, at which he drew himself up, saluting as
though she were the Queen.  "I forgot," said the Blackguard
regretfully.

"What?" asked the girl in fearless innocence.

"Why, that my horse is whinnying for me.  He just loves to be saddled
up and ridden all day.  Come, make friends with the Devil while I
saddle him."




CHAPTER VIII

The Tenderfoot must see the Blackguard a mile or so on his way, but
La Mancha took him by a new route which sloped down quickly into the
timber.  The boy's heart beat high because the Blackguard treated him
now as an equal, almost as a chum, and this, which he would have
disdained yesterday morning, seemed a great condescension to-day.  In
his heart of hearts Mr. Ramsay felt a new thing--a craving for the
rough frontier life, for the romance of savagery.  A real Britisher
is never thoroughly civilised; inside the veneer of the university
lurks the schoolboy barbarian, blessed with the hereditary instinct
of clenched fists, which gives world-mastery to the Dominant Race,
that blood-thirst of the Vikings, that chivalry of the Middle Ages,
that headlong courage of the sea heroes who took to water in the
great days of Elizabeth, that masterfulness which afterwards created
the most glorious empire the world has ever seen.  Britain is not in
Fleet Street, or Mayfair, or the City, but at heart a rough race of
conquerors and rulers.  So this Tenderfoot from Balham, awakening in
one short day, shook off the garments of conventionalism, worshipping
the Blackguard because he was brave and strong, hung furtively a pace
behind him as they walked, that he might gloat upon a pair of big
rowelled spurs, a glittering cartridge belt, and a big sheathed
revolver.  That is the way of an English lad since the very
beginning, and that must be the way until the time when we fall to
rise no more.

"Why don't we ride?" he asked, for the Blackguard was leading both
horses, tied head to tail.

"Because horses weren't built to carry a weight down hill.  Their
knees are weak."

Said the Tenderfoot fatuously, "But you're a Spaniard, they say."

"And what of that?"

"I thought Spaniards were always beastly cruel."

Yesterday the Blackguard would have struck any man living for saying
as much.  Now he grinned.

"You're improving, Charlie.  You'll be getting damaged presently for
cheek.  If I were all Spaniard I'd ride down here at a gallop.  I'd
ride over you to begin with, just to see the blood squirting.  As it
is, the Spanish end of me isn't over safe to fool with, though the
English end of me rather fancies your confounded impudence."

"So you're half English?"

"My mother was English."

"Oh!"

Presently the Blackguard asked a question, watching narrowly what the
effect would be.  "I suppose, Charlie, you'll be flirting with Miss
Burrows up yonder?"

The lad blushed hotly.

"I thought so, Charlie.  Halt; look me square in the eyes, if you
can.  The Spanish end of me wanted to ride you down just now; it got
jealous, but the English end of me thinks it only common decency to
warn you.  I may be flirting with that girl myself,--I suppose
because I oughtn't to think of her on a regular month's fine of my
pay and Government rations.  You needn't look like a frost-bitten
chipmunk,--the betting is ten to one on you, because you're a
presentable candidate, and I'm not, worse luck.  The betting is a
hundred to one on you, because you've got the field all to yourself,
you brat.  Besides that, you're good-looking in a way, with those
infernally frank blue eyes, while I look like the very devil.  We've
each got to take our chance, and when she makes her choice, the devil
take the hindmost.  You understand?"

"But it's not that way at all."  Mr. Ramsay was blushing.  "She's an
awfully nice girl--but--fact is," he drew himself up, and added with
slow magnificence, "I'm not a marrying man."

The Blackguard laughed.  "Well, let's drop that and get down to the
Tough Nut Claim before dinner-time.  By the way, when you meet these
prospectors, take care not to let them suspect why you came to this
country, because, if they think you represent money in London,
they'll make it a point of honour to sell you a wild-cat claim."

"Why did you bring me this way?"

"When that cad Burrows has talked you blind you'll need a friend or
so to lead you about.  Come on, we'll have dinner at the Claim."

Among the torchlike pines they came to a little log-cabin, with a
door and window in front, shaded by an extension of the ridge roof,
and at the back a chimney of sticks wattled over with clay.  Just
beyond, a cutting had been made into the hill, this being the
entrance to a tunnel, the waste rock from which had been spread out
into a terrace, or dump, littered with heaps of silver-bearing lead,
all glittering in the sunlight.  From within the tunnel came the
steady clang of a sledge-hammer beating a bar of steel into live
rock; but the Blackguard tethered his horses to a stump, and the two
men sat down in a rough smithy.

"What's this?" Mr. Ramsay sniffed disdainfully.  "It looks like some
blacksmith's shop."

"It is," said La Mancha, lighting his pipe.  "They use it for
sharpening the points of the drills.  Look here, youngster, for fear
of trouble when you meet these prospectors, I'm going to give you a
dose of etiquette.

"If you meet a westerner, call him 'my good man.'

"When you dine with him, criticise the food, ask how much there's to
pay, and look on while he washes up.

"Always make him keep his distance, and, if he won't take the hint,
talk about your big relations--your friend, the Duchess of Balham,
and so forth.

"When you light your cigar, don't offer him one first.

"Afterwards, when you meet, give him your finger-tips to shake, or
don't even notice him.

"Always"--

"Stop," cried the Tenderfoot, hot with rage and shame.  "Do you think
I'm such an awful cad as that?"

"You were yesterday, my buck, when you left camp.

"For instance, just now you set off to walk this way with me because
you were too uneasy to say good-bye.  You thought you ought to offer
me a tip, but you didn't dare."

"Suppose I had?" asked the other sulkily.

"I'd have thrashed you to a jelly.  I always over-exert myself when I
lose my temper."

For a minute or so the Blackguard watched a gaily-striped squirrel, a
"chipmunk," which was playing with some nut-shells by the forge.
"Cheep," said La Mancha, with a queer click of the tongue.

"Cheep," responded the animal, still busy.

"Cheep," said La Mancha again, whereupon the dainty little beast sat
on end, with furry tail coiled Up its furry back, and looked from one
to the other to see which spoke.

"Cheep," said La Mancha, at which the chipmunk glanced derisively at
the Englishman's riding-breeches, then ran up the big man's boot and
perched on his knee.

"How's the nut business, eh, little man?"

"Cheep, cheep," clicked the chipmunk; then, disdaining any further
overtures of friendship, scuttled off to play again with his
nut-shells.

Mr. Ramsay sat in high dudgeon, brooding over his wrongs, much to the
Blackguard's amusement as he smoked peacefully until the prospectors
should be ready to knock off work at the dinner-hour.  The clang of
the sledge-hammer had ceased, a willowy man in long boots and a muddy
complexion crossed from the tunnel to the cabin, the dinner smoke
began to float up from the chimney, from within the tunnel came a
sound of tapping, then thumping, then silence.

"Tamping in the charges," muttered La Mancha; "there'll be blasting
soon.  Cheer up, Charlie; Long Leslie saw us when he went to the
cabin, or he wouldn't have made a dinner fire on a hot day like this."

Mr. Ramsay disdained to answer, so La Mancha smoked peacefully,
watching the chipmunk at play.

A second muddy man came running from the tunnel, dodging behind the
ore bank, yelling "Look out!"  A volley of stones came flying out
after him; a dull explosion shook the hillside.

"All right?" called the second muddy man, now eagerly examining the
fragments just thrown out.  "I'll be with you, Blackguard, in a
jiffy."

Mr. Ramsay had picked up a yellow object from the bench beside him,
something which might have been a very big stick of barley sugar, yet
felt rather like wax.

"Give that to me," said the Blackguard; then, seeing that the other
resented his tone of command, he made a rapid grab at the stick.

Indignant because of the treatment he received at the hands of a man
who had unconsciously flattered him into a feeling of equality and
friendship, the Tenderfoot swung the yellow stick over his head with
a rapid aim at the squirrel.

"Take care," said the Blackguard,--"that's dynamite."

It was too late.  The stick had already flown from the youngster's
hand, was swirling across the smithy.  Then a red flower seemed to
bud in the air, which became a gigantic blossom growing-- filling all
the world, scorching hot.

* * * * * *

The Blackguard opened one eye, then the other, lazily observant of
the two prospectors, who were lifting away the ruins of their smithy.

"How's that Tenderfoot?  Is he dead?"

Shorty answered, with a gulp in his throat, "So, you're alive?
That's good."

"But the Tenderfoot?"

"Oh, we got him out all right."

Shorty was wrenching at a small beam which lay across La Mancha's
shoulder.

"No bones broken; but he hasn't woke up.  Here, that takes the weight
off you.  How do you feel?"

"Middling," said the Blackguard, closing his eyes again.  "Are the
horses all right?"

"Only scared."

"Ride up, one of you; fetch the Burrows girl with some tintacks and
the family gum-pot.  Right arm broken above the elbow.  Just like my
confounded luck.  They'll fine me another month's pay
for--breaking--leave."  And then he fainted.

* * * * * *

The Blackguard groaned as he woke up.  "Beg pardon, didn't mean to,"
he said; then opening his eyes, "Are you the Burrows girl, or a
Christmas-card angel?"

Miss Violet's eyes were red as she bent over him, holding a
half-empty flask.

"If you're a woman," he said, "please kiss me."

She did.

"Thanks.  You're a very nice girl.  Do you know how to do what you're
told?"

She nodded, trying to smile, which was difficult, because her lips
would curl the wrong way.  "Then," he said, "take two sticks of wood,
cover them all over with cotton wool, bind it down even with
bandages, then strap them on either side of my arm, while Shorty and
Long Leslie pull the bones out straight.  Understand?"

"I'm awfully frightened," whispered Miss Violet.

"Be frightened afterwards, not now.  I always come to grief whenever
I try to be good.  I promise I won't ever do it again; but be quick,
my dear, and while you're making the splints get somebody to pour
cold water on the swelling."

"How's that silly ass?" he asked tenderly, while the work went
forward; and it was the Tenderfoot who answered tearfully, "The silly
ass is ashamed."




CHAPTER IX

"Sir,--I have the honour to inform you that Mr. Ramsay has been
delivered in good condition at the Throne Mine.  I regret to add that
he has broken my left arm with a stick of dynamite which he threw at
a chipmunk, now deceased.  I will report to-morrow.

  "I have the honour to be, Sir,
     Your obedient servant,
        JOSÉ LAS MORẼNAN DE LA MANCHA,
                Constable.

  "The Officer Commanding,
      Wild Horse Creek,
          Kootenay, B.C."


This letter, written with pain and difficulty on a piece of wrapping
paper, was put, by the Blackguard's directions, into one of the
saddle-bags of Mr. Ramsay's horse.

"Make her head fast by a check-rein to the horn of the saddle," he
said.  "Bash the animal on the hindquarters, then turn her loose on
the down trail Since she can't feed until the check-rein's
unfastened, she'll go straight to camp, unless she's a born fool."

He was sitting in front of the log-cabin, his arm in splints and a
sling, while the prospectors.  Long Leslie and Shorty, followed these
instructions as to the horse.  When the mare was gone, to the extreme
disgust of La Mancha's huge black charger, he looked from one to the
other of the two miners.

"Prospectors' luck," he said regretfully.  "Your chipmunk, now
demised, had a nibble of flour a day, while I eat by the bushel."

"I guess we can stand it," said Shorty; "you needn't growl till
you're told."

"Prospectors' luck," said Long Leslie wistfully, "brings a jolly good
fellow to remind us we're still alive.  It's your turn, Shorty, to
wash up--I'm going to smoke."  So he sat down beside the Blackguard,
not the less enjoying his after-supper pipe because his partner must
do the dirty work of the day.  "We've been getting lonesome these
last few months," he said,--"since the Lunatic came."

"He's a cad!" said the Blackguard.

"It's not so much that, although a Chinaman would be better company.
Shorty doesn't mind, he's used to it; but I get thinking, and
thinking.  What does it all amount to--this life?"

"It's jolly good fun while it lasts."

"For you--yes.  I used to say the same in my college days, but now--
Do you know, Miss Burrows talked with me to-day for the first time.
Before that her greetings were like mine to a horse when I stroke its
nose.  I'm not thirty yet, but from her point of view I don't count."

"I think," said the Blackguard, "that the symptoms demand a pill.
How is our tongue?--our pulse?  Um!--ah!--we shall get over it.  But
seriously, why don't you scratch up a fight with somebody--say, with
Shorty?  That would do you a world of good."

"You're a rare good sort, Blackguard, but you don't seem to
understand.  This Tough Nut Claim is as good as claims go--nine feet
of passable wet ores running a steady average of thirty-five dollars
a ton; but until we get shipping facilities it might as well be at
the North Pole.  There'll be a railroad through the valley in, say,
ten years.  Suppose we sell out then at fifty thousand--I shall be
forty then, and the only reading matter meanwhile is the _New York
Police Gazette_, with a number of the _Century_ perhaps once in six
months.  It isn't good enough."

"By George, when a prospector gets the blues he's worse than an old
soldier.  Go on, if it does you good."

"I should have been all right but for Burrows yonder, with plenty of
cariboo, not a few grizzlies; and these summits would knock the spots
out of the Alpine Club.  But the Lunatic, as we call him, has put us
all out of date.  It's all very well sneering at new ideas, but his
methods are further above our heads than American quartz-mining is
above the fuddling of the old Spanish colonists.  They had ladder
shafts, buckets for pumping, an arastra for milling; we have common
sense tunnelling, and send sorted ores to the smelter.  Burrows
sneers at our fissure veins, and quarries the bare country granite.
Of course, I knew all along that whole mountain ranges run a dollar
and a half to the ton, but I didn't care while milling cost two
dollars a ton.  This man is a heaven-born genius, who can mine, mill,
and render his gold into ingots for only a dollar a ton."

The Blackguard whistled.  "If that's true," he said, "the man's got a
corner on gold--why, it's awful!"

"Archimedes said that he could capsize the planet if he had leverage.
This man has leverage; capitalise his idea, get the place in the
Sierras where there are the best conditions of labour, power,
freighting, gradients, and a seaport; then turn him loose because he
has the philosopher's stone which can transmute whole ranges of
mountains into gold."

"He's such a cad, too," said the Blackguard.  "But how did you find
him out?"

"Worked in his mill last winter until he sacked me for calling him a
maniac.  I did that to draw him out, and once he started bragging in
self-defence I had the key to his machinery.  He has two rotary fans
which get up a small cyclone between them.  Into that cyclone he
throws scraps of rock, and the dust of sharp-edged granite crystals
cuts the stones to powder before they have time to drop.  He put in a
crowbar once, and I actually saw that inch-thick steel shattered into
dust."

"Seems to me," said the Blackguard, "that my Tenderfoot is in for
something good."

"So I suspected, but would capitalists send out a young fool like
that?"

"Oh, I don't know.  He's full of ignorance and bliss, but he learns
quickly, doesn't get scared, keeps his mouth shut.  Besides, he's
honest."

Something made La Mancha look round, and there in the twilight,
coming down out of the woods, were Miss Burrows and Mr. Ramsay,
hand-in-hand.

The infantile innocence of their faces made him laugh: the willowy
prospector, rather than embarrass any approaching fun, dodged into
the shanty; so, when the enraptured couple stood before him, the
Blackguard sat alone.

"We thought we ought to tell you first," the Tenderfoot simpered,
blushing hotly all over,--"we are engaged."

"Oh!" said the Blackguard gravely, "since when?"

"Why, ever so long ago," Miss Burrows sighed, "this afternoon.  Won't
you congratulate us?"

"Next week," said the Blackguard, "if you are still of the same mind,
you shall receive my blessing.  Have you told Mr. Burrows?"

"No, he was too busy--but we thought that you would"--  Then the
girl's face flushed with a sudden indignation.  "You said he would,
Charlie, but he doesn't--he's a beast!"

"I know," said the Blackguard; "that is the nature of the animal.  Do
you think, my dear, that this young man is worthy of you?"

"I don't know," pondered the little flirt, coyly enough; but, perhaps
to prove his ardour, dropped Mr. Ramsay's hand.

"Do you know, my dear,"--the Blackguard was quite paternal,--"you are
going to be very beautiful?  How can I commend this young gentleman's
suit while I love you myself?  I am jealous of my young rival."  This
because the rival was very justly indignant.  "He is young, he is
very good-looking, and quite, oh, quite respectable.  Now, I'm
neither young, nor good, nor beautiful, and I'm not a bit
respectable, so I can speak without damaging his prospects.  I have
no chance whatever, but"--he bowed gracefully--"I love you, my dear,
very much."

The girl raised one eye to look at him, then lowered both out of
shyness, then pouted towards Mr. Ramsay with her forefinger pressed
to her lips as though considering; then, seeing that her fiancé stood
stupefied, she thought that she owed him a lesson, and ran for the
woods.

Mr. Ramsay would have given chase at once.

"One moment," said the Blackguard, smiling in his saturnine way,
while a twinge of pain from his arm made him draw up stiffly.  "Young
man, you don't let the grass grow underfoot; you needn't be in such a
hurry--she'll wait for you, and you have weeks and months to make up
for this minute.  About that shanty you knocked down this morning?"

"Well?  It's no business of yours--I mean, forgive me for talking
like that."

"I forgive you," said the Blackguard blandly.  "Don't you think you
owe these gentlemen some apology--some compensation?"

"But I daren't offer money."

"You've too much sense.  Look here.  Burrows keeps a sort of store to
supply the prospectors hereabouts.  I daresay he'd sell you a couple
of Winchester rifles, with a case or so of ammunition, eh?"

"Oh, thanks--what a relief!  And they won't be angry?"

"Not very.  Now, young man, keep your eye on Miss Violet, because, if
I can, I mean to cut you out.  I've not much chance, but it's fair to
give you warning.  Now you may run away."




CHAPTER X

On the following evening the Blackguard, white with pain, rode on his
great black charger into camp, reported huskily to the Orderly
Sergeant, and straightway fell out of the saddle, having fainted.

The Colonel was deeply touched when he heard of this.  "Indeed," he
said to the Sergeant-Major, "that ride down from the Throne is one of
the pluckiest things I ever heard of.  How many men have I who would
not make a broken arm excuse for a month of bilking?"

"He's the best man in D Division, sir, with all his crazy whims."

"When he's fit for light duty," said the Colonel, "find La Mancha an
easy billet with staff pay.  I'd make him a corporal if he'd only
keep straight.  Tell him I say so."

The Colonel was a very fine gentleman.

"You can tell him from me," said the Blackguard roughly, "that his
butter's been standing too long in the sun to suit my teeth.  He can
go to blazes and have the devil for corporal."

But the Sergeant-Major only smiled under his grey moustache, knowing
that this from the Blackguard meant gratitude; so, with consent of
the Hospital Sergeant, La Mancha was given charge of all the horses,
with sevenpence-half-penny extra per day for nominal services.

Half the troop was out on patrol, or detachment, as usual; discipline
at headquarters had relaxed for the summer, and the men left in camp
found leisure during the long hot days for no end of lazy swimming
down in the river.  The Mooyie patrol would come clattering in at
sundown; the Windermere patrol would ride out in the cool forenoon;
the Weekly Mail arrived and departed on Wednesday; small detachments
turned up now and again with Indians, or white desperadoes carefully
shackled.  So all the men waxed brown, fat, and disorderly, having
more good meat than they could swallow, fishing, shooting, and
occasionally some stirring bout with a horse-thief or murderer at
bay.  Golden days, starlit nights in the open, a rousing gallop down
the meadows, a bath in the river, a cool pipe by the camp fire, with
a paradise to live in, the brotherhood of the West for a human
interest: such was the life of D Troop all that glorious summer.
Officers and men had fought shoulder-to-shoulder through the red-hot
excitement of the war only two years ago; they had buried their dead,
avenged them with slaughter--and that was a bond of blood between
them still.

Long years have passed since 1887, the living are scattered now
across the world, but when two old comrades meet, perchance to fight
side-by-side again in Rhodesia, or one to help the other out of
trouble on some beach in the Southern Seas, or to dine together at a
white table in the parish of St. James', dressed up like ridiculous
waiters, the bond of blood is strong between us still.  The news told
then of the old troop begets no laughter: A. deserted; B. shot
himself; C. died of typhoid; D., of bad liquor; E. has disappeared;
F. is supposed to have fallen at the Yalu; G. was found frozen to
death in a coal-shed at Medicine Hat; but for the rest, spirits are
calling across the deep from all the continents and all the oceans,
and the glass that was lifted for the toast of the good old times
falls shattered because some strange remembered voice comes from
among the candles, "Well, here's luck!"

But although everything at Wild Horse Creek remained pretty much as
before, the Blackguard was entirely changed since his trip to the
Throne.  Mother Darkness was alleged to be meditating an action for
breach of promise; word went by the patrols up to Golden, down to the
United States boundary, that La Mancha was "on the make."  Corporal
Dandy Irvine, on detachment at Windermere, sent down a box of cigars
for thankoffering.  The Colonel, in private correspondence with a
friend at Fort Saskatchewan, sent the news as of more interest than
even his record of trout.  So the tale spread among the Mounted
Police, from the Saskatchewan to the boundary, from the foothills to
Manitoba, over five hundred thousand square miles of the Great
Plains, that the Blackguard had "got religion."

The announcement was made by La Mancha himself down at the
bathing-place.  "Yes, boys, I've got religion; I've sworn off getting
drunk, I'm far too good to live.  If any son of a gun corrupts my
morals by saying cuss words in my presence, I'll tear off his hide
from scalp to heels, and roll him in salt for a"--

"Why, dammit!" said Mutiny, spluttering up after a dive.

"Mutiny," answered the Blackguard, "the word 'dammit' is profane
language.  Come out and have your eyes bunged up, you"--

"See you in ---- first!" said Mutiny blandly, upon which the
Blackguard, half-dressed after his bath, forgetting that his left arm
was broken, walked into the river, gave chase, captured his prey,
grabbed him by his red hair, and ducked him until he nearly choked,
making remarks the while which are quite impossible to repeat.

"How can I be meek and gentle," he said afterwards, "when you fellows
disturb my peace of mind by using vulgar language?  Any man who
doesn't want to behave like a Methodist minister at a tea-party has
got to fight me first."

Two or three tried, but as La Mancha with one hand was equal to any
able-bodied pugilist in D Troop, there set in a tyranny more ruthless
than that of the Commissioner at headquarters during the setting-up
drills.  Only the Blackguard and the Sergeant-Major could relieve
their feelings, except under pain of dire chastisement, and before
pay-day any man who wanted to tell an improper story found it
expedient to resort to the canteen.

Now, it so happened that a regulation English Curate missionising in
the neighbourhood, being grieved at the spiritual destitution of the
Mounted Police, had offered to hold an open-air service monthly at
Wild Horse Creek.  So the Colonel, to encourage the young man,
ordered a church-parade.  One or two, including La Mancha, got out of
it by being for the time Roman Catholic, others found it impossible
to neglect staff duties such as cooking, the rest had their names put
on the sick-list.  The Colonel thereupon commanded that sick and
cripples, cooks and Catholics, should, at the sound of the bugle,
attend his parade on pain of being cast into prison.

This brought about a mass-meeting, at which it was proposed by the
Blackguard, and seconded by all hands, that any son of a sea-cook who
sang, responded, contributed, or otherwise assisted during the
church-parade should afterwards be chastised with belts.

The service was a duet between the Parson and the Colonel.

Afterwards the regulation Curate, mounted in deep dejection upon a
mule, was riding away to an afternoon service elsewhere when he was
waylaid in a lonely place by the Blackguard.

"Good-morning, Padre."

The Curate, responding to a military salute, drew rein.  "Can I be of
service to you?"

"If you can spare me a moment."

The Curate dismounted, and, letting his mule graze at the end of the
rein, sat down by La Mancha's side.  "I have heard, Mr. La Mancha,
that you are a Roman Catholic."

"So have I.  Now at the canteen we ask for Scotch, but we only get
hell smoke.  It isn't good, but it gets there all the same.  I want
to sample your religion."

"It was freely offered to you this morning, though."

"No, it was rammed down our throats, so I didn't quite catch the
flavour."

"You mean, the parade was compulsory."

"Yes; if it had been left to our choice the only men absent would
have been the cook and the herder, but your performance this morning
disagreed with us.  We called it an insult to Pater-Noster, and any
man who took part in that would have been thrashed within an inch of
his life."

"I think you were right," said the Curate.  "Believe me, Mr. La
Mancha, I shall never, so long as I live, forget this lesson.  The
next service shall be free."

"Then we shall read you the second lesson, Padre."

"Which is?"

"That we haven't had a chance of going to church for months.  Hand
round the hat and I promise you there won't be any buttons.  Another
thing, cover your reading-desk with the Union Jack and there'll be no
whispering."

"Why?"

"Because a year after the Rebellion, when we had memorial
church-parades for the dead, the order was, 'Side arms and the flag
on the table.'  The boys will remember."

"This is wonderful!  And now, my dear fellow, since you've helped me
so much, how can I help you?"

La Mancha looked across the valley, then slowly raised his eyes up to
the Throne Mine; but what he said or what the Curate answered belongs
to themselves and to the Almighty.




CHAPTER XI

One of the Blackguard's endearing traits had always been his
generosity--boundless in that when he had nothing of his own to give
he lent and gave things that were not his own, causing thereby much
internecine strife.  The only time he had ever been known to be
worsted in fair fight was after lending to an intending deserter the
shot-gun which he had borrowed from Buckeye Blossom, heavy-weight
champion of Medicine Hat.  But now he had got religion, and had
fought two pitched battles for the right to read his Bible.  Not that
the boys cared much what was his choice of literature, it being all
the same to the crowd whether he amused himself with the Bible, or a
dictionary, or the _New York Police Gazette_, provided that he kept
it to himself; but the Blackguard, for want of practice in the art,
found it convenient to read like a schoolboy, aloud.  Hence the
pitched battles, which resulted in undisturbed readings from the
Gospels, mingled with a running commentary, so naive, so quaint, and
so exceedingly funny, that the audience waxed daily in numbers,
until, for peace and quiet, the reader betook himself to the shelter
of the woods.  Here he read daily, expounding the Scriptures to an
audience of disdainful squirrels and song-birds.

But to return to the matter of his generosity.

The immediate outcome of his queer religion was that the Blackguard
became more avaricious than Shylock.  When his chum, Dandy Irvine,
sent him that box of cigars from Windermere, instead of giving them
all away to his friends, he sold them two for a shilling.  Some
brought cash, with which, and a little credit, he bought a further
supply; but for the most part the boys accepted the trading as a
joke, running up accounts which they imagined to be purely
fictitious.  Then pay-day came, when the Blackguard was able for the
first time to partially release his left arm, when, also for the
first time, he had staff-pay not hypothecated by any previous fine.
After the parade he went to all his debtors.

"Little Murphy, you owe me one dollar for cigars."

"Oh, come off," said little Murphy innocently.  "What game do you
think you're playing at?"

"Pay or fight," said the Blackguard.

Murphy paid, also all the others, big and little, when the Blackguard
went about smiling grimly upon his customers.  But if he was ruthless
in exacting cash or black eyes, La Mancha was punctilious as to the
payment of his own debts--in cigars.  He became wholesale dealer to
the sergeants' mess and the canteen, imported pipes, dealt in
shot-guns, ornamental revolvers, books, and musical instruments.  His
mouth organs, tin whistles, and concertinas became a far worse
nuisance in the valley than ever the Indians had been, but even these
had comparatively little to say compared with La Mancha's pigs.
Possibly the story of Daniel led to the cornet, concertina, Jews'
harp, mouth organ, penny whistle, oboe, and all kinds of music; by La
Mancha's own confession, the matter of the Gadarene swine suggested a
litter of pigs, bought cheap from a rancher, raised on the cook's
hitherto misapplied slops, and ultimately sold at a handsome profit
to the Quartermaster.  All this was a matter of time, but under
enormous disadvantages, despite the delay and inconvenience caused by
almost incessant travelling on duty, the Blackguard was reputed long
before autumn to be the richest man in D Troop.

But to return to a much earlier date.  When the Tenderfoot's luggage
was brought over from Windermere, Dandy Irvine, who was then at
headquarters, volunteered its safe delivery at the Throne Mine in
consideration of leave for hunting between Saturday and Monday.  It
was then that the Blackguard wrote his first letter to Miss Violet
Burrows.  Letter-writing in camp is always a serious matter, because
the needful materials must be borrowed or improvised.  When a recruit
first joins, he is apt to write mainly to frighten his mother with
the assumption of mythical surroundings borrowed from inexpensive
fiction, thus:--


"DEAR MOTHER,--

"I write in the saddle, on the summit of the Rocky Mountains,
surrounded by hostile Indians, a sword in one hand and a revolver in
the other."  [Then the young imagination flags.] "There is no news,
but please write soon,--and send some money, as washing is awfully
expensive.

"YOUR LOVING SON."


But a hardened sinner like the Blackguard writes seldom or never,
finding the pen awkward after shovel, axe, and gun; so the epistle to
Miss Burrows, of course a strictly private communication, was
delivered painfully, tongue in cheek, head askew, with a perhaps too
copious discharge of ink.

Miss Violet read it with such a disdainful tilt of her little pert
nose that the blotted characters were well-nigh out of range.  She
was sitting during the Sunday rest at the cliff edge, with Dandy
Irvine on one side and Mr. Ramsay, jealously observant, on the other.
"Humph," she looked sideways at the glowing scarlet of Dandy's serge
jacket, then at his shining boots and glittering spurs, "he came up
here," she said, "in an undershirt and one of those flappy hats.
Besides, he was all dusty."

"But then, you see," explained the Blackguard's champion, "he can
afford to please himself as to appearances.  If I were a great
aristocrat I might do the same."

"A great what?"

"Don't you know?  His brother is a Duke, Ambassador from Spain to the
Court of St. James'; La Mancha's cousins are mostly emperors, kings,
and grand dukes; the Cid was one of his ancestors, not to mention
Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second.  Of course, he's only a Don,
which means 'My lord,' but"--

"There," cried Miss Violet.  "Oh, won't I give my Uncle beans--I'll
teach him!"

"You must not neglect your filial duties, Miss Burrows; you must
bring him up in the way he should go; it's your duty."

"Tell me some more."

"I will.  Who let him leave the mountain before his arm was properly
set?  When he got back to camp he just managed to report to the
Orderly Sergeant, then rolled off his horse in a dead swoon.  You
ought to have kept him here for a month."

Miss Burrows turned upon the Tenderfoot in withering scorn.  "Your
fault entirely!"

After that the Tenderfoot sulked.

"Tell me some more," said the lady.

"Well, two years ago, when we had our first scrapping match with the
half-breeds, we got an awful thrashing.  You've heard of Duck Lake
Fight?"

"Sit up and listen."  Miss Violet brought the Tenderfoot to attention
with a very small pebble, which missed.  "Oh, this is awfully
jolly,--do go on!"

"There were ninety-four of us, police and civilians, caught in a trap
by three hundred and sixty rebels.  They were all round us under
cover in a sort of horseshoe position, with a detachment stealing
quietly through the bush to cut off our rear.  We police unharnessed,
drew up the sleighs in line by way of shelter, with one seven-pounder
on the right, all in a mortal funk.  Joe McKay, our half-breed
interpreter, rode forward with Crozier to meet an Indian who came out
with a white rag to talk.  We thought they would argue all day, but
suddenly the Indian made a grab at McKay's rifle; and Joe drew his
revolver and riddled him.  Then Crozier gave the order to fire, but
Joe Howe, in charge of the gun, yelled out, 'You're right in our way,
sir!'

"'Never mind me!' said Crozier.  Then the rifles began to crackle on
both sides, and our thirty-five civilians were detached off up a lane
on the right.  One of the police boys was sent to recall them,
because the snow was waist-deep when once they got off the trail.
The way was a sort of lane, with a fence on the left, bush on the
right shutting off all view of the main crowd, and a log-house at the
end full of loop-holes pouring out a most awful fire.  You see, the
half-breeds had filled that little house with all their crack
marksmen, while our boys had nothing to aim at but logs and smoke.
Men were falling thick, the snow was too deep for a charge, and there
was no particular use for getting to that house anyway.  At last,
what was left of the party fell back, fighting hard, leaving their
dead in the snow.  But one of them wasn't dead, only wounded, and
that was the policeman who had followed the civilians out of shelter.
He saw the half-breeds swarming down from the cabin, Indians swinging
their clubbed rifles to make sure of those who were down by cracking
skulls.  I guess that policeman was too far gone to care; he watched
them lazily through a sort of haze, forgetting all about the full
revolver slung on his belt.  Of course, there were no white men left
in sight, but Indians and half-breeds were swarming out from cover as
our whole outfit, police and civilian, harnessed their teams for the
retreat.  But one of the police remembered having seen his own chum
go out after the fools' charge of civilians, and never come back.
Any other man would have tried his best to forget, but this chap
broke away through the bush, waded in deep snow to where his chum lay
among the dead, fired a few revolver shots to keep back the Indians,
slung the wounded man over his shoulder, and brought him back to the
main road just as the last sleigh was passing under cover of the
rear-guard."

"What a hero!" cried the Tenderfoot.  "Yes; that was the Blackguard,
and the wounded man was _me_."


"Charlie," said Miss Violet after that interview, "why are you only a
Tenderfoot?"

"You're always flinging that in my face.  How can I help it?"

"Don't be cross.  A Romeo by any other name would--.  No, a quotation
is worse than a rat-trap.  But there is something wrong with you; I
know there is.  You don't wear pretty clothes like Mr. Irvine, you
don't write me beautiful blotty love-letters like the Blackguard."

"How can"--

"Now, there you are again, flying at me like a sitting hen when I
poke too hard.  I took you to worship me on approval--you don't
suit--you're too horrid; I shall give you a month's notice--so there!
Now, as to giving you a 'character.'  Of course, I don't want to be
hard--so you be very good this month and--I'll see about it."




CHAPTER XII

Mr. Burrows was gravely disturbed.  Sufficient had been his
responsibility ever since a dying sister bequeathed to him the
guardianship of her child.  At first he had not taken the matter very
seriously.  The girl was at school, doubtless being well cared for,
but presently, although every dollar he could raise was needed for
costly mining machinery, he had to pay her tuition fees.  Then the
Lady Superintendent wrote, hinting deftly that her pupil had reached
an age when the chaperon might have a more desirable influence than a
teacher.  He never read between the lines, he was too little a man of
the world to realise that a paying pupil would not be unacceptable to
any lady superintendent so long as the young person was docile.  The
young person in question was anything but docile, as Mr. Burrows
found to his grief when Miss Violet came to rule himself and his mine
with a rod of iron.  Certainly she cost less at a time of straitened
means than his late Chinese cook; but then, she was such a nuisance.
He loved her not at all, his affections being wholly devoted to
certain patented steel fans in a cylinder.  Unlike the steel fans,
she set his will at naught, ignored his rules, his regulations, his
beautifully machine-made precepts, distracted him with interruptions,
pulled his ear, demanded new frocks which were quite beyond his
means, and finally, to crown her misdemeanours, fell in love.  His
cylinder never fell in love, or, if it conceived so indelicate a line
of action, would certainly refrain from two several and concurrent
flirtations.

Miss Violet seemed bound by no rules, subject to no conceivable laws,
therefore, like that nonsensical abstraction, Religion, she was
beyond the pale of reasonable study.  Not being acquainted with the
factors of the love problem, or dealing in the abstruse mathematics
of whims, Mr. Burrows blandly ignored the whole subject for six
weeks; consequently, when circumstances compelled him to bring to
bear the forces of his intellect, he was just six weeks too late.  So
far as he could see, which was not quite to the end of his nose, he
then found the facts somewhat as follows.

Miss Violet was in love, but whether with young Ramsay, or with that
big policeman, or with both at once, was a matter of no moment.
Inasmuch as Mr. Burrows had reached the age of fifty without loving
anybody better than himself, Miss Violet's behaviour was at once
ridiculous and unnatural.  She was only nineteen, a child fresh from
school, her vocation in life to cook his meals, make his bed, keep
her tongue from chatter and her fingers from his ears.  (The fact
that his ears were large and seductively ugly could not palliate the
young woman's mania for stroking them.)  In short, Miss Violet had no
right to love, and, as to marrying, her duty was to himself.  Almost
with tears in his eyes he pictured the loneliness to which she would
selfishly consign him if she married.  She should not marry--it would
not be good for her.

Then there was the big policeman, who never failed to spend his
Sundays hard by at the Tough Nut Claim.  Mr. Burrows, priding himself
on his powers of observation, found something furtive, something
underhand and dishonourable in the way that policeman avoided his own
hospitality.  He had written to the Officer Commanding at Wild Horse
Creek, protesting on behalf of the "mining population" against weekly
visits of a disreputable character to the Throne Mining Camp.  This
took effect upon the Colonel, who counted any disparagement of his
men as a personal affront to himself, and, pending the chastisement
of the writer, saw that La Mancha never asked in vain for Sunday's
leave.

And, last element of the love problem, Mr. Ramsay, who should have
been making an exhaustive study of mine and mill for his father's
firm, spent the time sulking about the hills.  A workhouse pauper who
has dropped a penny down a grating could not have looked more forlorn.

So two months went by.  Miss Violet very demure, like a kitten after
its first mouse; the Blackguard spending every Saturday and Sunday
night in the saddle to snatch brief hours for courtship; the
Tenderfoot perched in desolate places brooding on suicide.

Then of a sudden Mr. Ramsay became demurely expectant, and Miss
Violet unnaturally gay.  Some new absurdity was in the wind, so Mr.
Burrows, with the gingerly air of one broaching a gift of untasted
wine, had a few words with his niece.

"Come here, Violet."

"Yes, Uncle."

"What does all this mean?"

"Nothing, Uncle."

"That policeman did not come to the Tough Nut Claim on Sunday."

"Didn't he, Uncle?"

"Why didn't he come?"

"I'm sure I don't know.  He doesn't belong to me.  Do you want him
very much, Uncle?"

"Want him?  Of course, I don't want him.  What should I want him for?
Now, answer me this--what are your intentions with regard to Mr.
Ramsay?"

"I was just thinking about that."  She perched on the table beside
him.  "The saucepan's too small, you see.  Would you like him
poached?"

Since there was but little change to be got out of Miss Violet, Mr.
Burrows went off fuming and fussing in search of his guest, who was
discovered in a state of innocent bliss, fishing with rod and line
from the edge of the great precipice.

"What are you doing?"

"Hush, you'll disturb the swallows.  One of them pecked my worm."

"Haw--ah--indeed."  Mr. Burrows sat down on the next rock, grunting.
"Mister Ramsay, I know that these matters are delicate, and require
to be dealt with by a man of tact."

"Indeed they do--they won't even look at a fly."

"I am not alluding to birds, Mr. Ramsay.  May I ask what your
intentions are with regard to my niece?"

"Eh?"  Mr. Ramsay glanced at the other sideways.  "I say, would you
mind very much if I were to--to pay my addresses to Miss Violet?"

"Certainly not, my dear Mr. Ramsay.  The human affection always meets
with my warmest approbation--the--in fact, my very warmest
approbation.  Let me shake you by the hand."

"I wouldn't, if I were you--fact is--worms, you know.  I hope you're
not sitting on any of them?"

Mr. Burrows' approbation of the human affections was suddenly
mitigated; he jumped up with a sudden but strictly philosophical
remark--but seeing that this matter of the worms was a false alarm,
he breathed more freely, and, grunting again, sat down.

"No, that's all right!" the Tenderfoot felt very much relieved.  "You
haven't spoilt one of them.  I ought to tell you, though,--you were
so busy I didn't like to mention it before,--that we're engaged."

"Since when, my dear young friend?"

"Oh, months ago--it must be supper time.  Why don't they bite?  I
love her desperately."

"Your sentiments do you justice.  The alliance between our families
will do much, my young friend, to strengthen the material bonds which
are about to so closely unite my interests to those of your respected
father.  The brilliant future in store for the Burrows-Ramsay Mining
& Milling Syndicate Limited"--

"By George," cried the Tenderfoot joyfully, while the rod jerked in
his hand, "I've got a bite!"




CHAPTER XIII

Down by the American boundary a stream called Eagle Creek has cut a
ravine two hundred feet deep in the plateau at the base of the
Rockies, carving the banks into a medley of grotesque and isolated
mounds strewn with boulders, nearly void of grass, whose eccentric
shapes give the view from the bottom a most singular and impressive
contour.  The stream itself had dwindled under the autumn heat,
leaving only a string of miry ponds, whose stagnant waters fed the
few fruit-laden shrubs upon their margins, and beside them was half
an acre left of pleasant grass.  Here were round patches, traces of
camp-fires, by which many travellers in that lonely way had been wont
to rest.  How waggons got down the trail to the bottom without
accident is one of the many wonders of the West.

The sun was set behind the Selkirks, the wind was sinking, the air
had a blue dryness blown from some forest fire; heavy, sultry enough
to make all nature sulk.  Foxes were dodging about from cover to
cover, a crane stood melancholy in the untroubled water, meditating
on one leg, hopeless of even a desultory minnow by way of supper.  A
cloud of dust arose behind the southern boundary of the ravine, the
crane flapped sorrowfully away, hearing a distant tramp of horses,
and presently a mounted man in bright cavalry uniform rode to the
edge of the hills, standing out against the deepening sky a beautiful
silhouette, motionless as a statue.  Then, two by two, came twenty
mounted men, each with a rifle poised on the horn of his Mexican
saddle, and many a glittering point of brass and steel about his
harness.  At a word of command they dismounted to advance, leading
their horses down the slope; while behind them appeared five waggons,
each carrying two men, and a rear-guard of two, who lingered a bit to
be clear of the dust which arose in clouds from the groaning wheels
of the transport.  Some of these riders wore canvas clothes adorned
with brass buttons, some buckskin suits, or blue flannel shirts, or
old red jackets, according to the pleasure of the wearers.  All had
riding-boots, spurs, leather belts carrying a row of brass
cartridges, and big revolvers with a lanyard buckled to the butts,
and passing over one shoulder.

Reaching the level land at the bottom, the mounted men formed up in
line, and the waggons drew up behind them, forty feet apart; a rope
was stretched along the waggon line, then, leaving his saddle at the
dismounting point, each trooper had made his horse fast to the rope
before ever the teams were unharnessed.  Meanwhile three men from the
transport had selected a spot by some bushes where an iron bar was
set on uprights five feet apart; and, before the sound of axes had
ceased in the bush behind, three full camp kettles swung over a
roaring fire.  A bell tent was pitched for the officer in command,
Inspector Fraser Gaye; the horses were watered, groomed, fed with a
liberal ration of oats; then, at a last merry call from the bugle,
there was a general dash to the waggons for plates and cups, and
knives were whipped from belt or bootleg, ready for an astonishing
slaughter of fried pork and hard tack, mitigated with lashings of
scalding tea.  The meal was followed by an uplifting of delicate grey
smoke toward the clouds, and a lively fire of chaff in most of the
British and American dialects.

At times the whole crowd would turn upon one or two who dared to
converse in their native French-Canadian patois, "A wuss Nitchie!
Can't you talk white?  Get away back to your reserve, or behave like
a white man, you mongrel!"

But all this was silenced presently, because the horses must be
hobbled, or picketed out for the night, and a guard of three men was
detailed to watch by turns until sunrise.  Blankets were being spread
out along the saddle line, and in and under the waggons; first post
sounded, last post sounded, then the third of the bugle melodies.

"That's all, boys.  Dream of the girls you've lost.  Lights--out!"

So the last sad notes echoed away along the sterile hills, and there
was silence under the starlight.

The horses were pulling at the grass, or roving about with a quick,
sharp clank of the hobbles, the man on duty gliding ghostlike among
them, speaking to one or another lest they should fear him in the
silence.  All seemed well with the tired beasts, so the "picket"
strolled back to the dying fire, drank a little tea, lit his pipe,
and stood thinking.  His body seemed gigantic against the light, his
face borrowed something of satanic dignity from the glare, the light
glimmered upon the points of his harness, while he kicked lazily the
backs of smouldering logs till the flames leaped up again.  Poor
Blackguard!  His thoughts were bitter that night; memories of the
innocent-seeming child he had grown to love, and still trusted
lovingly, until under the girl's frank laugh he had seen the woman's
flirting.  She was a woman--playing fast and loose--Miss Violet the
Vixen, irresponsible.  The Blackguard's heart was too great for her
understanding, a wonderful spirit of passionate tenderness,
compassionate forgiveness, and large tolerance.  The surface of him
was all humour and quaint devilry, the depth of him hid much love and
curious wisdom.  She had tried to play with him the game of cat and
mouse; so, smiling inly at her mistake, he had gone away, sending no
word or giving any sign.  When the cat wanted her mouse again, when
she longed for him and could not do without him, she would send him a
sign.  If not--the Blackguard sighed over his pipe.

Perhaps he had been good through these summer months to no purpose; a
lot of genuine religion had very likely, it seemed, been wasted,
desperate efforts after wealth and respectability all thrown away.
In that case, a couple of weeks hence, when his five years expired,
he would spend the money he had made and saved in giving the "boys" a
lively night or two, then re-enlist and be as bad as he pleased.  But
yet, if she would send a sign.

He looked up, hearing the crackle of a twig.

"Halt--who goes there?" he cried.

"All right!" came a shaky voice out of the darkness.

"Advance, and be recognised!"

"Eh?"

"Advance, or I fire!"

"Oh, give us a rest."

These were the war challenges, and the Blackguard had only used them
to scare an evident stranger who did not know enough to say "Friend."

"All right," he said.  "Advance, and be damned.  Who are you?"

"Hello, Blackguard!  The very man I want--I'm Long Leslie."

"Sit down, old chap.  Help yourself from the tea kettle.  Well, how
are things?"

"I'm fencing for General Buster," said Leslie,--"got to earn our
winter grub at the Tough Nut."

"How's the claim?"

"Ripping.  Came on a splendid pay streak up at the hanging wall.
These contact propositions are always worth assessments, anyway.
Shorty and me are both working at Buster's, and when I heard your
bugle calls I thought I'd stroll over.  Come up from Tobacco Plains?"

"Yes, bound north again."

"I guessed you were with this outfit."

"Thanks, old man."

"I hear that Arrapahoe Bill is in trouble up at the bull pasture on
Throne Creek."

"What's the old tough gaoled for this time?"

"Not that.  He seems to have been having a scrapping match with a
grizzly bear, but I haven't heard if he'll live."

"Poor devil!  Any other news?"

"Oh yes, that Tenderfoot of yours is making the fur fly."

"What fur?--the Burrows girl?"

"Yes; they're to be married before the month end, according to the
Lunatic.  By the way, I've got something of yours.  She asked me to
hand it over if I met you.  Here."

A Mounted Police button dropped into La Mancha's hand, but he said
nothing.

"The bush fires are bad this fall on the upper Kootenay."

"Yes, and on the Mooyie.  Bitt's was burned out last week."

"Serve him right for a good-for-nothing greaser.  Well, I must be
getting home.  Long day to-morrow.  Kind regards to the boys.
Good-night, old chap."

"Good-night."

When the time came the Blackguard kicked his relief awake, and the
relief in due course kicked another chap whose turn was the morning
watch.  The stars were doing a very poor business that night on
account of the pungent dry smoke from burning woods, but when they
gave up their half-hearted twinkling as a bad job, the dawn mist
rising from the meadow was cool and ghostlike as usual; full of
dream-faces, if one could only have seen them, ghosts of nice
children, pretty girls, and respectable parents, who had come to call
on the Mounted Police while they were off duty.

Startling all the echoes, making the keen ear tremble, waking the
summer world, and losing coherence in the distant hills, reveille
rang out clear and sharp, a burst of triumphant, unexpected
music--and the night was gone.

Then, to successive bugle calls, blankets were rolled, waggons
loaded, the horses carefully tended, breakfast was eaten, and almost
before the sun had lighted the deep ravine the mounted party began to
toil up the hillside, and the waggons followed groaning across the
meadow.




CHAPTER XIV

Miss Violet and the Tenderfoot were sitting on a bench in front of
the cabin, she peeling potatoes, he watching her.

"Go on," she said wearily.

"And then we shall have a house in Park Lane."

"We had that before--next door to the Duke of Something."

"Yes, in the ground just above; I forget the number.  I shall have a
private hansom to drive down to Board Meetings in the City; and when
I come home tired in the evening you shall entertain all the
millionaires we do business with.  We shall get tremendous
investments over the dinner-table.  Won't it be jolly?"

She yawned.  "Yes, I suppose so.  What will you do with my Uncle?"

"Oh, he shall be our general agent in South Africa."

"That's a long way off, and perhaps he'll get wrecked coming home.  I
like that part.  He shall have a large memorial window."

"Yes, a huge one, or say a dozen in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Of course,
I shall be a great benefactor to all sorts of things, and they'll put
your picture in the _Sketch_ as the great philanthropist's wife; of
course, with an interview."

"An interview all about you, I suppose?"

"No, about my great gifts to the Polytechnics, my College for
Commercial Travellers, my County Council work."

"Then you can write the beastly thing yourself; so there!"

"I intend to be a very great man," said the Tenderfoot dreamily.  "Of
course, you must never interrupt me in the evenings when I'm busy
dictating letters to my secretaries."

"What shall I do then?"

"Oh, I don't know.  You'll have lots of things to manage--servants,
dinner-parties, and"--

She dropped her potatoes and kicked over the pail, scattering its
contents broadcast.

"Pick them up," she said.

He picked them up.

The little lady sat with her elbows on her knees, her face in her
hands, sniffing at the acridness of raw potatoes, staring gloomily
the while out into the Sunday stillness of the afternoon.  "I wish I
was dead," she said miserably, addressing the Rocky Mountains over
the way.

"But why?"  He sat up on his haunches, the pail in one hand, an
earthy vegetable in the other, staring horrified.  "You shouldn't say
such things.  It's wicked.  I won't have you say such things.  I
forbid it."

"You won't?" muttered Miss Violet vindictively; then gazing down at
him with portentous emphasis she said--

"Damn!"

"Oh, I say!"

"Yes, you say.  It's always you--'I'll this, or I'll that.  It's my
wish--I--I--I.'  You're made of I's.  There's nothing else in you but
'I.'  Now, you listen to what little me says--I hate you, and if I
marry you I'll make you as miserable as I am, you toad."

"My dear, I love you."

"No, you don't--you only love yourself; but I've got to marry you to
get away from my Uncle.  He gets on my nerves.  Go away!"

Mr. Ramsay stared.

"Go away!"

Mr. Ramsay went mournfully away down towards the mill, where Mr.
Burrows was saying his Sunday afternoon prayers to the steel
cylinder.  Half-way, among the trees, and just out of sight from the
cabin, was a big wooden flume carrying water-power for a plant of
turbines which turned the Burrows' generators, which actuated the
fans, which ground the stone, which held the gold, which was to pay
for the Park Lane house--for that is the stuff which dreams are made
of.  Mr. Ramsay sat down on the flume feeling very miserable.

But he felt worse than miserable presently when he saw a horseman
ride up to the mill whom he recognised to his utter disgust as the
Blackguard.

"Hello, Burrows!"  La Mancha's big voice rang out through the woods.
"Want a word with you, Burrows.  Come out and talk like a white man.
You won't?--ah, well, I'll talk while you keep your mouth shut.  Are
you in charge of Miss Violet Burrows?  You are, eh?  All right, I'm
paying my addresses to Miss Violet, and if she'll have me I'm going
to marry her.  D'you hear?  Yes, marry her.  I didn't ask for your
consent--I only ask favours from gentlemen.  All right, Burrows, be
good to yourself."

So, having propitiated her guardian, La Mancha turned his horse
uphill to propose to the lady.

Meanwhile Mr. Ramsay was considerably ahead, out of sight, running
through the trees for dear life, determined to get the lady out of
his reach.

"Violet," he cried hysterically, coming up before the cabin, "come
with me--there's a great big cariboo grazing up on the spur."  He ran
into the cabin, snatching up his rifle.  "Come--by the back
way--quick!"

"You saw a cariboo?" said Miss Violet calmly.  "You were down in the
timber and you saw him up on the spur?"

"Come quick!" he cried in an ecstacy of excitement.  But she would
not move from her seat.  Then the Blackguard emerged from the timber,
riding steadily up the slope.

"I see," said Miss Violet.  "Be quick, Charlie, or you'll lose your
cariboo; I'll stay here."

Mad with excitement, Mr. Ramsay seized her forcibly by the wrists,
and half dragged, half carried her into the cabin.

"You shan't meet him," he cried.  "You shan't!--you shan't!"

Flushed with a sudden rage, Miss Violet wrenched herself loose,
struck him violently across the face, then ran out of the cabin and
breathless down the hill.

When the Blackguard jumped from his horse at the sight of her, she,
scarce knowing what she did, flung herself into his arms.

"My love," he said gently, "what's the matter?--poor little woman,
who frightened you?"

She was crying like a frightened child, clinging to him, swaying to
and fro, while the big sobs shook her little body.

Then suddenly she stopped short, and looked up in his face very much
surprised.

"What was I doing?" she said.

"Breaking my heart with your trouble--poor little woman.  Tell me who
hurt you, and I'll kill him at once.  Why, your wrists are all
bruised and red.  Who dared to touch you?"

But she would not say.

"Then I won't bully you by asking questions, dear.  I love you too
much for that.  I came the first moment I could when I got the
button."

"What button?" she asked with the frankest innocence.

"What button!" he laughed.  "A little bit of brass that said 'Come
back'--that said 'I love you, Blackguard, though you are a bad lot.'"

"You are, you know."

"I was until I loved you, dear; but now--by the mercy that is in
love--I'm good again.  Do you know what is the loveliest thing God
ever made?--Laughter and tears mixed up in a woman's face.  And
you've confessed you love me!"

"Don't be silly."

"That means, don't wait," and so he kissed her on the lips.

"I don't think I quite love you, after all; you've never put on your
uniform yet when you've come to see me.  I suppose I'm not worth all
that trouble, though."

"I will next time," he said,--"for our wedding-day."

"Our what?"

"Sit down and I'll tell you."

"Won't your horse run away?"

"Who could run away when you're in sight, Violet?"

"That's quite nice.  They say things like that in a novel."

She sat down beside him, and they two watched the black horse
smelling the local grass with an air of disparagement.

"It's very silly of you to marry a Blackguard, Violet."

"I never said I would."

"They only say it in books.  In life they mean it.  Do you know, I've
nothing to marry on but three pigs, a few boxes of cigars, one
hundred dollars, and the chance of a job breaking horses?  Now, I
suppose you could do much better than that, eh?"

"A house in Park Lane," she said, "and dinners for City people in the
evenings; but I mustn't interrupt him while he's busy."

Her hand stole into his, and he kissed it after the manner, perhaps,
of the Spanish Court.  Then he thought--after the manner of the
Blackguard--that lips were not so cold, and more responsive.

They were.

"Do you know," she said, half frightened, "that this moss is very
damp?"

"My lips are still very dry."

At that she sprang up, laughing.  "Catch me," she cried; "catch me,"
and she ran for the woods.




CHAPTER XV

Since the Blackguard's time had nearly expired, the Colonel sent for
him.

"Sit down, La Mancha; I want a few words with you."

"Thank you, sir."  The Blackguard removed his forage cap, and sat
down on a camp-stool just within the tent.

"The Sergeant-Major tells me that you do not wish to 'take on' again.
We have served together some years now, La Mancha."

"And jolly good years they were, sir."

The Colonel smiled.  "Well, I don't grudge them--we've had a good
mistress to serve, besides fine work to do for her, breaking in this
rough young country; but perhaps it's just as well to think of the
future."

"I hear, sir, that you've bought a big ranche near Macleod."

"Yes, I hope to serve as a citizen for the rest of my time.  If ever
you come that way I can promise you a welcome."

"Thank you, Colonel; I shall remember that."

"You see, La Mancha, all my best men have left me one by one.  Two of
them fell during the Rebellion, one shot himself, Peters died of
mountain fever at Battleford, Buster Joe is ranching in Montana,
Jones the Less writes to me from London, where he is doing well,
and--but you know.  One can't take such an interest in the
recruits--shave-tails, you call them, and so forth; and now that
things are settling tamely down, we're not so necessary as we were.
New times, new manners--I don't blame you for taking your freedom.
What are your plans, La Mancha?"

"First, I'm going to marry."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, sir, the Burrows girl up at the Throne.  At first I hope to do
something at breaking horses, then take land down the valley.  Her
life won't be rougher than it is now."

The Colonel smiled, because at last he knew the secret of La Mancha's
reformation.

"May I congratulate you?  I do most heartily, for I'm told that she's
the nicest and prettiest girl in Kootenay."

"Will you come to the wedding, sir, on the twenty-fifth, at the
Mission?  The Padre says he'll be ready for me at noon."

"I would like to come very much," said the Colonel; "but among other
details--mind I know you well--have you the young lady's consent?"

"She says I'm not half good enough for her--that looks all right,
sir,--eh?"

The Colonel laughed.  "I'll be there if I can."

"And give the bride away, sir?"

"But how about Burrows?"

"Hang Burrows--he'll have take a back seat."

"One thing more, La Mancha.  In this particularly risky business has
it occurred to you that you ought to have steady employment?"

"I'll have to turn 'road agent' otherwise."

"Rather than that, I'll give you a note to my friend General Buster,
who, I know, is looking out for a good man.  Ride down and see
to-morrow, and while you're about it take a two weeks' furlough up to
the date of your discharge.  Why, that's the twenty-fifth, your
wedding-day!"

"It's awfully good of you, sir."

"Don't mention it.  I'll send you the letter by the Orderly Corporal.
Ask him to step this way."

"Oh, you poor devils," said the Blackguard, lying at ease on his
blankets, to half a dozen men at work in the tent cleaning their
accoutrements for to-morrow's muster parade.  "Sweat, you poor
workers; ram your button-sticks down your throats for coolness."

One of the boys heaved a boot brush at him, which he caught deftly.
"Now I'm richer," he said "by a brush.  Gentlemen, this brush of
solid squat root, bristled out of the Quartermaster's private beard,
heavy with valuable blacking,--how much am I offered for this brush?"

"Damn you and your brush."

"One damn for the brush.  Gentlemen, I am offered one for this
priceless object of virtue--one damn I am offered,--going at
one--going--going--positively thrown away!" and he flung it at the
owner's head, making a bull's-eye.

The victim had not time to be resentful, but, wiping his eye with the
back of the brush, went on polishing his boot-tops vindictively.

"Lick, spit and polish," laughed the Blackguard.  "Every day has its
dog; but I'm a free nigger to-morrow.  No more parades, no more
pack-drill, no more guards, no more cells, no more 'fatigues' save
this bed-fatigue, which suits my temperament.  I'm a free wolf, and
it's my night to howl; I come from Bitter Creek--the higher up the
worse the waters--and I'm from the source.  Go it, you pigeon-livered
shave-tails; clean your harness, you poor-souled recruities, you
pemmican-eaters, you ravenous pie-biters, you ring-tailed snorters.
This is my song of victory after five years without beer--five years
h--l without benefit of clergy, five years everybody's dog on
Government rations!

"The Blackguard was taken young and raised on hard tack, was full of
skilly, beans, and sow-belly; sweated on parade, rode
hell-for-leather after horse-thieves; but now he's going to have a
good time being alive, and don't you forget it!"

By this time missiles were flying at him from all directions, but the
Blackguard wriggled away, rolled out under the flap of the tent, and
went off to chaff Dandy Irvine.

"Look here, Dandy," he burst into the next tent, but his chum was not
there.

"Not there.  Lord, how I shall miss him," thought the Blackguard,
strolling miserably towards the river.  "Ah, there he is, sitting
just where we sat the night before I turned good.  What a fool I was
to do it."

He sat down beside the little Corporal.

"Did the Colonel give you a letter for me?"

"Yes--here it is.  You have two weeks' leave from to-night."

La Mancha told him all that the Colonel had said.

"You're in luck, old chap."

"Now, don't you get mawkish," said the Blackguard roughly.  "The
Colonel was bad enough, but I won't stand any rot from you.  After
all these years,--ye gods, what a wrench it is!  I'm as weak as a
kitten, and all my bones feel sick.  Come over to the lines--I'm
going to take my horse these last two weeks, whether they like it or
not."

"There'll be an awful row," said Dandy anxiously.

"So much the better.  Trouble and I are twins, but I'll have my
horse."

"I guess I can stand the racket," said Dandy, as they walked to the
lines.

Last post was sounding while La Mancha saddled, and in the midst of
his work he turned on Dandy.

"Don't look at me like that!  It's all your fault for making me turn
respectable.  It's against Nature.  What would the civilians think if
all of you turned into brass-mounted saints like me?  Why, they would
be sending their sons into the Force for convent training, and
adulterate the grandest cavalry in the world.  There"--he loosed his
horse and flung himself into the saddle.  "Cut it short," for Dandy
could not let go his hand.  "Say good-bye to the boys for me.
Good-night--good-bye, and be hanged to you."

So he rode out of the camp at a headlong gallop; but half a mile away
drew rein, for "Lights out" was sounding.  He took off his hat, and
brushed his sleeve across his eyes, because there seemed to be a mist
between him and the tents, while through his mind there swept the
music of an old-time song which belongs to the Mounted Police--

  "The sentry challenged at the open gate,
  Who pass'd him by, because the hour was late--
    'Halt!  Who goes there?'--'A friend'--'All's well.'
    'A friend, old chap!'--a friend's farewell,
      And I had pass'd the gate.
    And then the long last notes were shed,
    The echoing call's last notes were dead--
  And sounded sadly as I stood without
  Those last sad notes of all: 'Lights out!'  'Lights out!

  Good-bye, you fellows!  We have side by side
  Watch'd history's lengthen'd shadows past us glide,
    And worn the scarlet, laughed at pain,
    And buried comrades lowly lain,
      And let the long years glide;
    And toil and hardship have we borne,
    And followed where the flag had gone--
  But all the echoes answ'ring round about
  Have bidden you to sleep: 'Lights out!'  'Lights out''

  And never more for me the helmet's flash,
  The trumpet's summons--Oh, the crumbling ash
    Of life is hope's fruition: Fall
    The wither'd friendships, and they all
      Are sleeping!  Fast away
    The fabrics of our lives decay,
    And change unseen and melt away--
  Ay, perish like the accents of a call,
  Like those last notes of all: 'Lights out!'  'Lights out!'"




CHAPTER XVI

The Blackguard was a terror to evil-minded horses, heavy enough when
he chose to almost break their backs, strong enough to inflict most
merciless punishment, alert to outwit all manner of devilry, because
he had the gift of seeing things from the horse point of view.  When
they submitted, he could be gentle enough, but that they had to find
out by surrendering first to his mastery.  He had a wonderful way of
disarming the fears and winning the confidence of frightened colts,
so that, while the dangerous animals feared him, the gentler beasts
found him the best of friends.  There is no doubt that from the very
start he was the best "buck hero" ever known in Kootenay.  Too heavy
for a cowboy, he was an excellent teamster, a fairly good hand with
an axe, so that General Buster's only misgiving was the fear of
losing him.

But he was not happy--a big tree hauled out by the roots cannot be
expected to have a very joyful time just at first.  Besides that, a
thirty years' habit of being bad is stronger than a four months'
habit of being good.  It seemed now that to be virtuous was to lose
all the fun.  He would drift a little, and haul up with a jerk; he
would rebuke with hard fists some champion of the cowboys; then,
thinking that he had done something wrong, look up the Selkirk
foothills as though he hoped for further guidance from the Throne.
From the skin outwards this Blackguard was an epitome of hardened
wickedness, inwardly like a big child.  After being thirty years or
so without a soul, he was bewildered with the new possession which
had delicate little sympathies to be exercised, a kindliness toward
men and beasts past all restraint, a weakness for Miss Violet Burrows
far stronger than himself.  So far as he could see, with limited
powers of introspection, his internal anatomy consisted of love and
whims.  In his bewilderment he wrote to the Padre describing these
symptoms, a letter which was received by the Curate with howls of
laughter.

If the Blackguard's troubles were comic in the valley, Miss Violet's
were tragic upon the mountain.  Mr. Burrows had begun to fancy
himself as a disciplinarian, confined Miss Violet to the house, and
explained his views at great length every evening.

"I will have no more of this nonsense.  Your business, Mr. Ramsay, is
mining machinery, not the perpetration of matrimony.  Matrimony, sir,
is a nuisance--early matrimony an utter absurdity.  I have always
disapproved of"--

"I may mention," said the Tenderfoot, bristling, "that with your
consent I am engaged to Miss Violet."

"Booh!" said Miss Violet softly all to herself, looking out upon
these lords of creation from behind the sitting-room door.  So far as
Mr. Burrows knew, the wicked girl was locked up for the night in her
own chamber, but then, Mr. Burrows knew very little about anything
human, nor did he perceive the elementary facts about a woman.  It
never occurred to Miss Violet that she was other than very sleepy
until he turned the key for her safe keeping.  Then she became
wide-awake, tried the door, poked about in the lock with a bent
hairpin, and to her utter astonishment found that she could release
the bolt.  So, dressed like an angel in fluttering white, with bare
pink feet and mane of streaming hair, she crept across the
sitting-room, wondered what the men were plotting in the verandah,
and took her station in the shadow behind the door.  She stood on one
leg timorously, thus leaving only five toes to be preyed upon by
imaginary mice, the other foot being curled up because it was cold.
Then, when the Tenderfoot announced himself to her Uncle as still
engaged to be married, Miss Violet whispered "Booh!"

"Moreover," continued Mr. Ramsay loftily, "my immediate marriage was
included in the terms of our agreement as to the mine."

"How dare you dictate to me?"

"You'll see how I dare.  Look here, Burrows, your accounts, as I
showed you to-day, are all botched up."

Mr. Burrows calmed down partially.  "Bah! a trifling oversight like
that is not of the slightest consequence.  Besides, I would have you
realise that I am no mere accountant."

"So I'm writing to the firm at home.  They'll turn loose a mere
actuary over there."

Mr. Burrows gasped.  "To the best of my knowledge and belief"--

"You submit a false balance-sheet backed by an affidavit,--which is
perjury in London, Burrows, perjury."

"Bosh!  Of course, I must look over the figures before they are
actually sent off."

"No, you don't," muttered Mr. Ramsay, who was not half such a fool as
he looked.

"What do you say?"

"Oh, nothing.  Have you another cigar with you?"

"Here; let me light it for you."

There was a pause for the ceremony.

"Yes," continued Mr. Burrows, "there is, as you say, much room for
discussion on both sides.  I cannot disguise from you my own anxiety
as to the fate of my niece should this disreputable character
succeed, as you anticipate, in"--

"A runaway match?"  Mr. Ramsay pressed home his advantage.  "Of
course, you sneered and sneered, although I've warned you again and
again that his plans are well-nigh completed.  This must be
prevented, Mr. Burrows."

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, this experimental mill of yours has got to be wrecked and
abandoned anyway.  On that the firm insists, and your excuses for
delay are getting too thin, Burrows,--altogether too thin."

Mr. Burrows groaned.

"This business of yours, Burrows, must be reported as an utter
failure, or we shall find the new ground held at fancy prices.  We
could have the mill burned to-night by accident, the wedding
to-morrow at the Mission; then, you see, Miss Violet would be safe
from the Blackguard."

Miss Violet had heard enough, in all conscience, yet for a moment she
could not move.  Her curled-up foot went boldly down among the
imaginary mice upon the floor, for this was more exciting even than
live rats.  She shivered a little, partly in compliment to the autumn
chill, but more with cold fright.  Then her growing resentment made
the warm blood race through her veins.  She flushed with indignation,
and in another minute, boiling over with rage, would have rushed out
upon her enemies.  But no; on second thoughts, she had a man to do
her fighting, a big brave man, whose wickedness would be turned
toward her adversaries, whose love toward herself.

"Blackguard," she whispered into the air,--"dear true Blackguard, you
might be ever so bad, but you're not a coward like this Charlie."

Silently she crept across the room, in breathless terror unlocked the
back door of the cabin and looked out.  The chill struck her
instantly.  She glanced doubtfully at her bare feet, then, because
she could hardly feel respectable even by starlight no better dressed
than one of the angels, she stole to her bedroom for clothes.  There
panic seized her, so, grabbing up a cloak and a pair of slippers, she
fled out into the solitude of the hills.  Across the open she ran
from cover to cover, from rock to rock, stopping at times, holding
her breath as she looked back, lest some crackling twig should betray
her.  One slipper was lost already in a morass, but she went on, her
poor bare foot bleeding with a cut from some stone.  Her long hair
caught among the branches when she had gained the wood, and all the
shadows of the trees were full of awful eyes, of staring spectres, of
nameless beasts who would spring out upon her if she looked.  Down
the long hills she fled, stumbling, falling, tearing her cloak,
suffering agonies from thorns and stones, and greater agonies from
things unseen.  And so the poor child came sobbing to the Tough Nut
cabin.  The good prospectors would take a message for her; they need
not see her, because she would hide, and when she had roused them
with her cries would speak to them out of the very deep shadows.

But when she called and called there was no answer; when at last she
dared come nearer, creeping up with many a start of sudden fright,
she saw a padlock glimmering on the door.  The cabin was empty, the
prospectors were away.

"Shorty!" she cried.  "Oh, Long Leslie, where are you?  Help!  Help!"

The silence sank down heavily upon the woods, all the spaces of the
hills lay in a breathless slumber, from the black sky dead Alps
looked down like ghosts, and the stars were so far away.

"What shall I do, dearest?  How shall I bring you to me.  Oh, my
love, my love!"

She sank down sobbing upon the ground, the ground which was all
covered with gleaming pine chips left by the miners' axes, the chips
which they always used to kindle fires.  To kindle fires?  She looked
up, wiping the tears away with her long hair.  They used these
scented chips to kindle fires, and she would kindle such a blaze that
night that the news of it should go forth all over the valley.  Then
the Blackguard would come to see what was the matter.

So she set off along the hillside, racked with miserable cold, with
bitter pain, the tears dried stiff upon her cheeks, and dragged
herself to the mill, the mill which was to be burned in any case.
There should be no doubt as to the mill.  She opened the lower door,
the office door--there upon the table were papers.  He had been
working there all day--had been very tired--had forgotten this once
to put them into the safe.  There was a bunch of matches beside them,
and on the ground outside bushels of chips to make the fire burn up,
and in the corner of the office a five-gallon can of lamp oil.  So
she piled up her fuel against the outer wall.

That night there was a blaze upon the mountains, the mill and the
woods were all afire.  So news went out along the valley.




CHAPTER XVII

The Blackguard, coming to the mill at high noon, found it a
smouldering ruin, and the woods above a smoking waste, full of
charred trunks.  Going round by way of the Tough Nut Claim, he gained
the upper moorland, wrapped in a choking dry mist, out of which rose
the Throne cabins, gaunt, spectral, desolate.  The doors were locked,
the windows barred hastily across with a few rough planks, the stable
empty.  Down the hills he rode, his black horse lathered with sweat,
his face haggard as he followed the trail of three riders.  Ramsay
had led, Miss Violet followed, Burrows taking the rear, all down the
swaying curves of the steep places, and along the sinuous path
through heavy timber.  They had not stayed to even pack their
clothes; they had not watered their horses at the spring; they had
moved before daybreak, to judge by the blundering course, and Miss
Violet had left here and there tokens, as though he needed any
further incentive, shreds of white among fallen leaves, torn from a
handkerchief.

At last the Blackguard drew rein at the foot of the mountains.  He
looked towards the camp where lay Arrapahoe Bill, tended by the
Mexican, recovering from an interview with a grizzly bear; he looked
along the trail toward the Mission, whither, to judge by the scraps
of cambric, Miss Violet had been carried much against her will; and
he looked across the valley to where the tents of the Mounted Police
encampment glimmered white in the afternoon sun.  It was useless to
trouble the cowboys, useless to ride to the Mission unless he had
some sort of authority for interference; better to get help from the
camp.  Trusting that the Padre would have sense enough to delay the
travellers, he set off at a hand-gallop for Wild Horse Creek.

By mid-afternoon he gained the camp, an hour later rode out again on
a fresh horse, accompanied by Dandy Irvine.  Both men were armed,
both in uniform, for they rode this time on Her Majesty's service.

"Do you know," said Dandy, while they splashed across the ford, "that
this was to have been your wedding-day?"

"Was to have been?  It is my wedding-day."

"Do you know that the Colonel went off alone this morning, bound for
the Mission?"

"To give the bride away," said the Blackguard, grinning.  "I knew he
would keep his promise."

Gaining the top of the bench-land, they rode off at a canter across
the valley, through meadows scathed with an early frost, by poplar
bush, where the leaves hung sere and yellow, or fluttered dead to
earth.  The wind was keen from the north, the sky was overcast with
wintry cloud, and distant woods loomed faint in a bluish haze.

"How do you know," asked Dandy, "that they fired the mill?  It might
have been accident."

"I'm not quite blind," answered the Blackguard.  "There was a
five-gallon can of kerosene lying outside the ruins."

"Well?"

"It was empty."

"What of that?"

"It was new, without a dint from being knocked about, or any dirt
from having been used for filling lamps.  Whoever burned the mill
poured five gallons of oil over the kindlings, then chucked the empty
can out through the door."

"What else?"

"Beside the can lay a half-burned torch of paper, thrown away as the
blessed incendiary ran for his blessed life."

"Did you keep the torch and can?"

"Left them untouched for evidence.  D'ye take me for a two-months'
rootie?"

"No; but I'm just about half sorry for the great inventor."

Night had fallen when the two policemen rode up to the Mission-house.
Within, Miss Burrows, the Colonel, and the Curate were playing an
innocent game of cards; without, in the porch, sat Mr. Burrows and
the Tenderfoot disputing hotly, but they brought their discussion to
an abrupt close at the sight of Mounted Police.

"Good-evening, Mr. Irvine," said Burrows easily, as the Corporal
dismounted, handing his rein to La Mancha.  "You'll find your
commanding officer inside the house, playing with my niece a game
called animal grab."

The Tenderfoot was staring hard at La Mancha as he led the horses
away.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Burrows,"--the Corporal produced two blue documents
from his breast-pocket,--"the game I have come to play here is called
human grab.  You, Mr. Burrows, and you, Mr. Ramsay, are my prisoners."

"What?"

Dandy Irvine presented the warrants, but the violent expostulations
of the prisoners brought the Curate and the Colonel hurriedly to the
door.

"What's all this?" said the Colonel.  "Why, Corporal Irvine, surely
you've made some mistake?"

Dandy saluted.  "Will you look at the warrants, sir?"

The Colonel took one, glanced at it by the lamplight within, and
handed it back to Corporal Irvine.  "This is very serious, Mr.
Burrows,--a charge of arson cannot be lightly passed over, and
Corporal Irvine has only carried out his orders."

The prisoners were loudly protesting their innocence, Mr. Burrows
declaiming on points of law and usage; Mr. Ramsay almost in tears;
but the Colonel required their silence.

"Are you alone, Irvine?"

"No, sir.  Constable La Mancha is with me.  He has taken the horses
round to the corrall."

"Go, then, tell him to saddle the prisoners' horses and my own.  I
will be responsible till you return.  Padre," he turned to the
Curate, "may Miss Burrows remain as your guest?"

Constable La Mancha was at the back door embracing Miss Burrows when
Dandy called him away.  "Come, none of that," he said briefly; "I
want you at the stables."

"All right, Corporal,"--La Mancha went on embracing Miss
Burrows,--"be with you in a minute."

"Don't cry, dear, there's nothing to frighten you; but I had to get
your Uncle out of the way."

"But he's innocent!" she cried.  "You ought to take me to prison for
burning the mill.  It was me."

"The deuce!"

"You know, dear, I had to make some sort of signal."

"To bring me, eh?  Well, I don't object to signalling--at least, not
very much.  Now, after we've gone, you make it all right with the
Padre.  Tell him the whole story, and get him up very early in the
morning.  I'll be back by sunrise for the wedding."

"By sunrise?" she blushed hotly; "I never said I'd marry you, though."

"No, I was much too big a blackguard, but now it's different, Miss
Violet, quite different, you minx.  I never burned my Uncle's mill.
I was never half so wicked."

She laughed with delight at her own wickedness.

"Kiss me," he said, and that she did right heartily.

"Come, Blackguard," Dandy was quivering with impatience.  "You fool,
you're spoiling the whole game.  Hurry up!"

So La Mancha was dragged away to the stables, where in due course the
prisoners' horses were saddled, also the Colonel's grey charger.
Then came the champing of horses' bits, the mounting of men,
farewells, and the filing-off of a solemn procession into the night.
But Miss Violet was left behind for safe keeping, who, with her
humble confession, her tears, and a very few smiles, softened the
Padre's heart.




CHAPTER XVIII

Great was the stir and turmoil at Wild Horse Creek.  Long before
daylight, while all the gear was stiff with a rime of frost, tents
were struck, kit bags loaded, blankets rolled; and after breakfast
these, together with the Quartermaster's stores, mess kit, nosebags,
and all the equipments of a summer camp, were bestowed upon the
transport waggons.  At noon the troop was to march on the first short
stage of a journey across the Rocky Mountains by the Crow's Nest Pass
to the winter station, the divisional headquarters on the Great
Plains.

But the wheels of routine were jarred long before mid-day.  The
Colonel had, as a magistrate, to hear the charge of incendiarism
brought against the prisoners, Burrows and Ramsay.  Moreover,
Regimental Number 1107, Constable La Mancha, on the expiration of his
term of service, was to "turn in" his kit, to receive his discharge,
and to be struck off the strength of the Force.  But neither could
the arson case be examined for lack of the chief witness, nor could
La Mancha be discharged until he had surrendered his horse, arms,
accoutrements, and clothing.  And the Blackguard was absent without
leave.

The Colonel was furious, reviled the Sergeant-Major, placed the
Corporal of the Guard under arrest, also the picket for permitting La
Mancha's midnight defection; the Sergeant-Major hurt the cook's
feelings by the tone in which he ordered the unpacking of camp
equipment for dinner; the men waited comfortless beside their horses;
and all with one accord reviled the Blackguard.  But when the culprit
rode in at noon, accompanied by a lady whom he blandly presented to
the Sergeant-Major as the Señora La Mancha, D Troop changed its mind,
greeting the Blackguard with three rousing cheers.  From the Colonel
to the troop dog all realised that the presence of a lady in camp had
changed the situation, particularly as the lady was obviously
attractive--a maid so sweetly shy that everything must be done to set
her at ease, to smooth the roughness of her surroundings, to show D
Troop on its best behaviour.

Leaving his wife in charge of Dandy Irvine, as the most presentable
man in the division, La Mancha went about the camp raking up
ill-conditioned rags and worn-out garments to represent his kit,
which was to be delivered over to the authorities, together with his
arms and accoutrements.  At another time the Quartermaster would have
asked what scarecrow had been robbed, now he received the whole mess
of rubbish with his blandest smile.  Changing into his cowboy
equipment, the Blackguard gave away his Government clothes to all who
would accept them as his parting gift, reserving only a fine buffalo
overcoat, a set of blankets, and some underwear for future use.

The Colonel hastily, sitting as magistrate, found means to discharge
his prisoners on the ground of insufficient evidence.  Then the
Sergeant-Major presented La Mancha's discharge, filled in with the
obvious falsehood that his character and behaviour were both, and had
always been, "very good."

"Now, La Mancha," said the Colonel, "besides your pay you are
entitled to transport and sustenance to your place of
enlistment--Winnipeg.  Will you have cash or a requisition?"

"Cash, sir."

The Colonel wrote out a cheque to cover the costs of this imaginary
journey of twelve hundred miles, a second cheque for La Mancha's pay
up to date, and a third in lieu of a wedding present from the
officers of the division.

Dinner followed, Dandy and all the non-commissioned officers fighting
among themselves for the right to serve the Señora La Mancha, who sat
in state upon a buffalo coat near their camp fire, all smiles and
blushes.  This was her wedding breakfast, served under the frosty
blue sky by a swarm of soldiers, who one and all would have offered
with the beef and bread their hearts and hands, but for the prior
claims of their comrade.

Meanwhile the Blackguard, respectfully declining invitations from the
Officers' and Sergeants' Messes, dined for the last time with the
troop, and afterwards, when pipes were lit before the saddling,
accepted a wedding present from D Division which would materially
help in his provision for married life.

Only Mr. Burrows and Mr. Ramsay, discharged from their arrest and
welcomed by the Officers' Mess, were discontented with the wintry
sunlight, the dry bright wind, the scent of the dying summer.
Outwitted by the Blackguard, humiliated in their summary treatment by
the law, their grievance received hilariously as a huge joke, they
were only too glad to excuse themselves with a plea of pressing
business at the Throne, while their crestfallen departure after
dinner provoked the troop to a burst of ironical cheering.

But the Blackguard and his Señora, mounted on horses lent by the
Sergeant-Major, rode out with the troop on its first stage down the
valley, an adventure which Violet La Mancha will ever remember as the
most delightful thing in her life.  Indeed, it was a sight to stir
one's blood, that march of frontier cavalry, to see the big bronzed
men sitting their horses with careless grace, the tough, wiry
bronchos walking sedately after a canter, the transport lumbering
briskly in the midst, and all down the long double line of riders the
gleam of blue rifle barrels, a glitter of belts, a glow of scarlet.

The valley reached away on every side in all its loveliness of bush
and prairie, on either side hung white Alps above the misty blue of
distant forest, and over all were soft little clouds like herds of
driven sheep, while the sun raced westward to his setting through dim
immensities of sky.

"See," said the Blackguard proudly to his wife, "yonder, right at the
foot of the hills, I've built a cabin for you of great big logs, and
the chinks are all filled in with moss to make it cosy.  The hearth
is in the snuggest corner, and all the furniture is made with an axe
of clean red cedar, smelling ever so fresh, like pencils.  You can
look out among the pine trees down to the creek, which is full of
trout for our supper, and I've chopped away the bush, so that when we
sit by the door after sundown we can see right away across the valley
to the great high peaks above the Crow's Nest Pass.  Will you be
contented, little one?"

"Yes, I shall always be content, because I have you, my great big
Blackguard--and I love you."




CHAPTER XIX

Deep lay the snow in Kootenay.  All across the prairies the great
drifts were like ocean rollers frozen,--against the clumps of timber
they were heaped like winter surf, around the cabin curled over to
windward like a breaking wave.  One could stand upon the comb of that
wave, so solid was it; indeed, the Señora La Mancha had chosen the
point of vantage from whence to search the trail for some sign of her
husband's coming, because he was late afield after stray cattle, and
it was long past supper time.  Grey clouds were trailing across the
moon, casting shadows down which might have been moving men or beasts
among the timber; but when the light shone clear again on glittering
frosty pines and dead white drifts, it left an aching emptiness as
far as the eye could reach against the intense cold, for it was 30
degrees below zero Fahrenheit.  The little Señora was guarded by a
robe of beaver skins from her bed, but her head was uncovered, so
that the moonlight caught her hair with an icy lustre, and her
congealed breath was wafted back, filming over her rosy face with
hoar frost.  Despite her anxiety for the Blackguard, who might well
have been delayed by a serious accident, she felt with every breath
the racy intoxicating freshness of the air; so, when a frost-bite
stabbed the tip of one ear like a red-hot needle, she only took some
powdery snow in her mittened hand to rub the white place red again.
After all, a frost-bite is nothing more serious than a sneeze in the
hardy West, so Violet La Mancha danced a little dance on the
snowdrift, then, warm again to her finger-tips, awaited her husband's
coming.

He came at last, galloping up the trail with a lusty yell or so by
way of greeting, and, waving her handkerchief in response, the
housewife fled indoors to serve a steaming supper.  Ten minutes
afterwards, when he came floundering in from the stable, and shook
the snow from his clothes like a big rough dog, he found the beef and
tea set out on the table.

"Feed the brute," said he.  "The Wolf could gobble up Mrs. Wolf for
an after-thought.  Wough, but it's cold,--and you should have heard
me cursing the runaway steers."

"That's good, letting off the fireworks where they do no harm, in the
open.  Why, some men keep all that for the little wife.  Sit down,
Blackguard, we've got a lovely stew, and three real onions in it.
Oh, I've been ever so lonely!"

"Serve you jolly well right for being a cowboy's wife.  Lonely, you
minx, you'd be lonelier still if I hadn't caught you in time three
months ago."

"Three months! three whole big months flown like a dream.  Only
think!  You've cheated me out of three long months of my life, you
darling.  Now pull those nasty icicles off your moustache, or how can
I possibly kiss you?"

"Sweet little lover; we've spent three months in heaven, and only had
fresh meat once in all that time."

"Love and fresh meat, 'that's what men are made of.'"

So they supped merrily, and washed up afterwards, both talking at
once, and all the time of cattle and domestic details mixed; and then
she filled and lit his pipe, he growling amiably of her manifest
incompetence in these arts, she being a woman.

"Has the mail come?" he asked.

"Yes; only one wretched paper."

"Give me the wretched paper."

He read a little, while she set a bucket to peel potatoes, using hot
water lest the ice should form under her knife.

"Here," he said, "I'm sleepy with the heat of that confounded stove.
You take the paper.  I'll keep awake best if I peel the potatoes for
you."

She looked up, tears swimming in her eyes, "When I was up at the
Throne, Mr. Ramsay liked to watch me peeling potatoes."

"What a cad!  Well, he gets his deserts--wealth from the Burrows'
inventions beyond the very dreams of avarice, and much good may it do
him."

"And I have a log-cabin, a nest to keep warm for my big true
Blackguard, and thanks to say on my knees to God for love.  What does
it matter all this stuff in the paper?"  She laid it on her lap,
watching his comic clumsiness at the peeling.  "The world outside
doesn't matter one little bit to us."

"Read anyway," he said, grinning, "or you'll drop into poetry next."

"'Horrible Murder,'" she read, yawning.  "Oh, I wish it was bedtime.
'Suicide of a Vegetarian.'  'Fuss, Box, & Co. in Bankruptcy.'  'The
Railroad Horror.'  Hello, here, under the Cavalry heading, there's
Dandy Irvine--Sergeant Irvine--got a commission.  They've made him an
Inspector."

"Good old Dandy!  We'll drink his health next time I can buy the
ingredients."

"I don't want ingredients," she said, pouting; "he's such a little
dear, and you can never keep tidy, however I dust you and scrub.
Must I read any more?  Well, here's the British Empire column.
'London, February 6--Death of the Spanish Ambassador.  We regret to
say,'"--

The Blackguard whistled softly.

"Well," she looked up, "what's the matter?  Did you know him?"

"Why, that's the Snob."

"The what?"

"My brother.  I asked him once whether he'd have a long life or his
habits.  He had the habits, and I hope he enjoyed them.  Poor Snob, I
guess he's left me the reversion of his debts."  The Blackguard
finished peeling the last potato, and handed over the pan.  "Will
your Grace be pleased to put these potatoes away?"

"What do you mean?"

"Only, my little wife, that you are a Duchess now."

"A Duchess?  What nonsense!"  Coming across to his chair, she kissed
him tenderly upon the forehead.  "I'm nothing," she said, with a gay
little laugh, "but Mrs. Blackguard."



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