Chapter III (1)

The hunters pursued their way, swinging grandly along on their snow-shoes, as they made for the Wild Hawk Woods. It would seem as if Malbrouck was testing Gregory's strength and stride, for the march that day was a long and hard one. He was equal to the test, and even Big Moccasin, the chief, grunted sound approval. But every day brought out new capacities for endurance and larger resources; so that Malbrouck, who had known the clash of civilisation with barbarian battle, and deeds both dour and doughty, and who loved a man of might, regarded this youth with increasing favour. By simple processes he drew from Gregory his aims and ambitions, and found the real courage and power behind the front of irony--the language of manhood and culture which was crusted by free and easy idioms. Now and then they saw moose-tracks, but they were some days out before they came to a moose-yard--a spot hoof-beaten by the moose; his home, from which he strays, and to which he returns at times like a repentant prodigal. Now the sport began. The dog-trains were put out of view, and Big Moccasin and another Indian went off immediately to explore the country round about. A few hours, and word was brought that there was a small herd feeding not far away. Together they crept stealthily within range of the cattle. Gregory Thorne's blood leaped as he saw the noble quarry, with their wide-spread horns, sniffing the air, in which they had detected something unusual. Their leader, a colossal beast, stamped with his forefoot, and threw back his head with a snort.

"The first shot belongs to you, Mr. Thorne," said Malbrouck. "In the shoulder, you know. You have him in good line. I'll take the heifer."

Gregory showed all the coolness of an old hunter, though his lips twitched slightly with excitement. He took a short but steady aim, and fired. The beast plunged forward and then fell on his knees. The others broke away. Malbrouck fired and killed a heifer, and then all ran in pursuit as the moose made for the woods.

Gregory, in the pride of his first slaughter, sprang away towards the wounded leader, which, sunk to the earth, was shaking its great horns to and fro. When at close range, he raised his gun to fire again, but the moose rose suddenly, and with a wild bellowing sound rushed at Gregory, who knew full well that a straight stroke from those hoofs would end his moose-hunting days. He fired, but to no effect. He could not, like a toreador, jump aside, for those mighty horns would sweep too wide a space. He dropped on his knees swiftly, and as the great antlers almost touched him, and he could feel the roaring breath of the mad creature in his face, he slipped a cartridge in, and fired as he swung round; but at that instant a dark body bore him down. He was aware of grasping those sweeping horns, conscious of a blow which tore the flesh from his chest; and then his knife--how came it in his hand?--with the instinct of the true hunter. He plunged it once, twice, past a foaming mouth, into that firm body, and then both fell together; each having fought valiantly after his kind.

Gregory dragged himself from beneath the still heaving body, and stretched to his feet; but a blindness came, and the next knowledge he had was of brandy being poured slowly between his teeth, and of a voice coming through endless distances: "A fighter, a born fighter," it said. "The pluck of Lucifer--good boy!"

Then the voice left those humming spaces of infinity, and said: "Tilt him this way a little, Big Moccasin. There, press firmly, so. Now the band steady--together--tighter--now the withes--a little higher up--cut them here." There was a slight pause, and then: "There, that's as good as an army surgeon could do it. He'll be as sound as a bell in two weeks. Eh, well, how do you feel now? Better? That's right! Like to be on your feet, would you? Wait. Here, a sup of this. There you are.... Well?"

"Well," said the young man, faintly, "he was a beauty."

Malbrouck looked at him a moment, thoughtfully, and then said: "Yes, he was a beauty."

"I want a dozen more like him, and then I shall be able to drop 'em as neat as, you do."

"H'm! the order is large. I'm afraid we shall have to fill it at some other time;" and Malbrouck smiled a little grimly.

"What! only one moose to take back to the Height of Land, to--" something in the eye of the other stopped him.

"To? Yes, to"? and now the eye had a suggestion of humour.

"To show I'm not a tenderfoot."

"Yes, to show you're not a tenderfoot. I fancy that will be hardly necessary. Oh, you will be up, eh? Well!"

"Well, I'm a tottering imbecile. What's the matter with my legs?--my prophetic soul, it hurts! Oh, I see; that's where the old warrior's hoof caught me sideways. Now, I'll tell you what, I'm going to have another moose to take back to Marigold Lake."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I'm going to take back a young, live moose."

"A significant ambition. For what?--a sacrifice to the gods you have offended in your classic existence?"

"Both. A peace-offering, and a sacrifice to--a goddess."

"Young man," said the other, the light of a smile playing on his lips, "'Prosperity be thy page!' Big Moccasin, what of this young live moose?"

The Indian shook his head doubtfully.

"But I tell you I shall have that live moose, if I have to stay here to see it grow."

And Malbrouck liked his pluck, and wished him good luck. And the good luck came. They travelled back slowly to the Height of Land, making a circuit. For a week they saw no more moose; but meanwhile Gregory's hurt quickly healed. They had now left only eight days in which to get back to Dog Ear River and Marigold Lake. If the young moose was to come it must come soon. It came soon.

They chanced upon a moose-yard, and while the Indians were beating the woods, Malbrouck and Gregory watched.

Soon a cow and a young moose came swinging down to the embankment. Malbrouck whispered: "Now if you must have your live moose, here's a lasso. I'll bring down the cow. The young one's horns are not large. Remember, no pulling. I'll do that. Keep your broken chest and bad arm safe. Now!"

Down came the cow with a plunge into the yard-dead. The lasso, too, was over the horns of the calf, and in an instant Malbrouck was swinging away with it over the snow. It was making for the trees--exactly what Malbrouck desired. He deftly threw the rope round a sapling, but not too taut, lest the moose's horns should be injured. The plucky animal now turned on him. He sprang behind a tree, and at that instant he heard the thud of hoofs behind him. He turned to see a huge bull-moose bounding towards him. He was between two fires, and quite unarmed. Those hoofs had murder in them. But at the instant a rifle shot rang out, and he only caught the forward rush of the antlers as the beast fell.

The young moose now had ceased its struggles, and came forward to the dead bull with that hollow sound of mourning peculiar to its kind. Though it afterwards struggled once or twice to be free, it became docile and was easily taught, when its anger and fear were over.

And Gregory Thorne had his live moose. He had also, by that splendid shot, achieved with one arm, saved Malbrouck from peril, perhaps from death.

They drew up before the house at Marigold Lake on the afternoon of the day before Christmas, a triumphal procession. The moose was driven, a peaceful captive with a wreath of cedar leaves around its neck--the humourous conception of Gregory Thorne. Malbrouck had announced their coming by a blast from his horn, and Margaret was standing in the doorway wrapped in furs, which may have come originally from Hudson's Bay, but which had been deftly re-manufactured in Regent Street.

Astonishment, pleasure, beamed in her eyes. She clapped her hands gaily, and cried: "Welcome, welcome, merry-men all!" She kissed her father; she called to her mother to come and see; then she said to Gregory, with arch raillery, as she held out her hand: "Oh, companion of hunters, comest thou like Jacques in Arden from dropping the trustful tear upon the prey of others, or bringest thou quarry of thine own? Art thou a warrior sated with spoil, master of the sports, spectator of the fight, Prince, or Pistol? Answer, what art thou?"

And he, with a touch of his old insolence, though with something of irony too, for he had hoped for a different fashion of greeting, said:

"All, lady, all! The Olympian all! The player of many parts. I am Touchstone, Jacques, and yet Orlando too."

"And yet Orlando too, my daughter," said Malbrouck, gravely. "He saved your father from the hoofs of a moose bent on sacrifice. Had your father his eye, his nerve, his power to shoot with one arm a bull moose at long range, so!--he would not refuse to be called a great hunter, but wear the title gladly."

Margaret Malbrouck's face became anxious instantly. "He saved you from danger--from injury, father"? she slowly said, and looked earnestly at Gregory; "but why to shoot with one arm only?"

"Because in a fight of his own with a moose--a hand-to-hand fight--he had a bad moment with the hoofs of the beast."

And this young man, who had a reputation for insolence, blushed, so that the paleness which the girl now noticed in his face was banished; and to turn the subject he interposed:

"Here is the live moose that I said I should bring. Now say that he's a beauty, please. Your father and I--"

But Malbrouck interrupted:

"He lassoed it with his one arm, Margaret. He was determined to do it himself, because, being a superstitious gentleman, as well as a hunter, he had some foolish notion that this capture would propitiate a goddess whom he imagined required offerings of the kind."

"It is the privilege of the gods to be merciful," she said. "This peace-offering should propitiate the angriest, cruellest goddess in the universe; and for one who was neither angry nor really cruel--well, she should be satisfied.... altogether satisfied," she added, as she put her cheek against the warm fur of the captive's neck, and let it feel her hand with its lips.

There was silence for a minute, and then with his old gay spirit all returned, and as if to give an air not too serious to the situation, Gregory, remembering his Euripides, said:

"........let the steer bleed,
And the rich altars, as they pay their vows,
Breathe incense to the gods: for me, I rise
To better life, and grateful own the blessing."

"A pagan thought for a Christmas Eve," she said to him, with her fingers feeling for the folds of silken flesh in the throat of the moose; "but wounded men must be humoured. And, mother dear, here are our Argonauts returned; and--and now I think I will go."

With a quick kiss on her father's cheek--not so quick but he caught the tear that ran through her happy smile--she vanished into the house.

That night there was gladness in this home. Mirth sprang to the lips of the men like foam on a beaker of wine, so that the evening ran towards midnight swiftly. All the tale of the hunt was given by Malbrouck to joyful ears; for the mother lived again her youth in the sunrise of this romance which was being sped before her eyes; and the father, knowing that in this world there is nothing so good as courage, nothing so base as the shifting eye, looked on the young man, and was satisfied, and told his story well;--told it as a brave man would tell it, bluntly as to deeds done, warmly as to the pleasures of good sport, directly as to all. In the eye of the young man there had come the glance of larger life, of a new-developed manhood. When he felt that dun body crashing on him, and his life closing with its strength, and ran the good knife home, there flashed through his mind how much life meant to the dying, how much it ought to mean to the living; and then this girl, this Margaret, swam before his eyes--and he had been graver since.

He knew, as truly as if she had told him, that she could never mate with any man who was a loiterer on God's highway, who could live life without some sincerity in his aims. It all came to him again in this room, so austere in its appointments, yet so gracious, so full of the spirit of humanity without a note of ennui, or the rust of careless deeds. As this thought grew he looked at the face of the girl, then at the faces of the father and mother, and the memory of his boast came back--that he would win the stake he laid, to know the story of John and Audrey Malbrouck before this coming Christmas morning. With a faint smile at his own past insolent self, he glanced at the clock. It was eleven. "I have lost my bet," he unconsciously said aloud.

He was roused by John Malbrouck remarking: "Yes, you have lost your bet? Well, what was it? The youth, the childlike quality in him," flushed his face deeply, and then, with a sudden burst of frankness, he said:

"I did not know that I had spoken. As for the bet, I deserve to be thrashed for ever having made it; but, duffer as I am, I want you to know that I'm something worse than duffer. The first time I met you I made a bet that I should know your history before Christmas Day. I haven't a word to say for myself. I'm contemptible. I beg your pardon; for your history is none of my business. I was really interested; that's all; but your lives, I believe it, as if it was in the Bible, have been great--yes, that's the word! and I'm a better chap for having known you, though, perhaps, I've known you all along, because, you see, I've--I've been friends with your daughter--and-well, really I haven't anything else to say, except that I hope you'll forgive me, and let me know you always."

Malbrouck regarded him for a moment with a grave smile, and then looked toward his wife. Both turned their glances quickly upon Margaret, whose eyes were on the fire. The look upon her face was very gentle; something new and beautiful had come to reign there.

A moment, and Malbrouck spoke: "You did what was youthful and curious, but not wrong; and you shall not lose your hazard. I--"

"No, do not tell me," Gregory interrupted; "only let me be pardoned."

"As I said, lad, you shall not lose your hazard. I will tell you the brief tale of two lives."

"But, I beg of you! For the instant I forgot. I have more to confess." And Gregory told them in substance what Pretty Pierre had disclosed to him in the Rocky Mountains.

When he had finished, Malbrouck said: "My tale then is briefer still: I was a common soldier, English and humble by my mother, French and noble through my father--noble, but poor. In Burmah, at an outbreak among the natives, I rescued my colonel from immediate and horrible death, though he died in my arms from the injuries he received. His daughter too, it was my fortune, through God's Providence, to save from great danger. She became my wife. You remember that song you sang the day we first met you?

"It brought her father back to mind painfully. When we came to England her people--her mother--would not receive me. For myself I did not care; for my wife, that was another matter. She loved me and preferred to go with me anywhere; to a new country, preferably. We came to Canada.

"We were forgotten in England. Time moves so fast, even if the records in red-books stand. Our daughter went to her grandmother to be brought up and educated in England--though it was a sore trial to us both--that she might fill nobly that place in life for which she is destined. With all she learned she did not forget us. We were happy save in her absence. We are happy now; not because she is mistress of Holwood and Marchurst--for her grandmother and another is dead--but because such as she is our daughter, and--"

He said no more. Margaret was beside him, and her fingers were on his lips.

Gregory came to his feet suddenly, and with a troubled face.

"Mistress of Holwood and Marchurst!" he said; and his mind ran over his own great deficiencies, and the list of eligible and anxious suitors that Park Lane could muster. He had never thought of her in the light of a great heiress.

But he looked down at her as she knelt at her father's knee, her eyes upturned to his, and the tide of his fear retreated; for he saw in them the same look she had given him when she leaned her cheek against the moose's neck that afternoon.

When the clock struck twelve upon a moment's pleasant silence, John Malbrouck said to Gregory Thorne:

"Yes, you have won your Christmas hazard, my boy."

But a softer voice than his whispered: "Are you--content--Gregory?"

The Spirits of Christmas-tide, whose paths lie north as well as south, smiled as they wrote his answer on their tablets; for they knew, as the man said, that he would always be content, and--which is more in the sight of angels--that the woman would be content also.

A PRAIRIE VAGABOND

Little Hammer was not a success. He was a disappointment to the missionaries; the officials of the Hudson's Bay Company said he was "no good;" the Mounted Police kept an eye on him; the Crees and Blackfeet would have nothing to do with him; and the half-breeds were profane regarding him. But Little Hammer was oblivious to any depreciation of his merits, and would not be suppressed. He loved the Hudson's Bay Company's Post at Yellow Quill with an unwavering love; he ranged the half-breed hospitality of Red Deer River, regardless of it being thrown at him as he in turn threw it at his dog; he saluted Sergeant Gellatly with a familiar How! whenever he saw him; he borrowed tabac of the half-breed women, and, strange to say, paid it back--with other tabac got by daily petition, until his prayer was granted, at the H. B. C. Post. He knew neither shame nor defeat, but where women were concerned he kept his word, and was singularly humble. It was a woman that induced him to be baptised. The day after the ceremony he begged "the loan of a dollar for the love of God" from the missionary; and being refused, straightway, and for the only time it was known of him, delivered a rumbling torrent of half-breed profanity, mixed with the unusual oaths of the barracks. Then he walked away with great humility. There was no swagger about Little Hammer. He was simply unquenchable and continuous. He sometimes got drunk; but on such occasions he sat down, or lay down, in the most convenient place, and, like Caesar beside Pompey's statue, wrapped his mantle about his face and forgot the world. He was a vagabond Indian, abandoned yet self-contained, outcast yet gregarious. No social ostracism unnerved him, no threats of the H. B. C. officials moved him; and when in the winter of 187 he was driven from one place to another, starving and homeless, and came at last emaciated and nearly dead to the Post at Yellow Quill, he asked for food and shelter as if it were his right, and not as a mendicant.

One night, shortly after his reception and restoration, he was sitting in the store silently smoking the Company's tabac. Sergeant Gellatly entered. Little Hammer rose, offered his hand, and muttered, "How!"

The Sergeant thrust his hand aside, and said sharply: "Whin I take y'r hand, Little Hammer, it'll be to put a grip an y'r wrists that'll stay there till y'are in quarters out of which y'll come nayther winter nor summer. Put that in y'r pipe and smoke it, y' scamp!"

Little Hammer had a bad time at the Post that night. Lounging half-breeds reviled him; the H. B. C. officials rebuked him; and travellers who were coming and going shared in the derision, as foolish people do where one is brow-beaten by many. At last a trapper entered, whom seeing, Little Hammer drew his blanket up about his head. The trapper sat down very near Little Hammer, and began to smoke. He laid his plug-tabac and his knife on the counter beside him. Little Hammer reached over and took the knife, putting it swiftly within his blanket. The trapper saw the act, and, turning sharply on the Indian, called him a thief. Little Hammer chuckled strangely and said nothing; but his eyes peered sharply above the blanket. A laugh went round the store. In an instant the trapper, with a loud oath, caught at the Indian's throat; but as the blanket dropped back he gave a startled cry. There was the flash of a knife, and he fell back dead. Little Hammer stood above him, smiling, for a moment, and then, turning to Sergeant Gellatly, held out his arms silently for the handcuffs.

The next day two men were lost on the prairies. One was Sergeant Gellatly; the other was Little Hammer. The horses they rode travelled so close that the leg of the Indian crowded the leg of the white man; and the wilder the storm grew, the closer still they rode. A 'poudre' day, with its steely air and fatal frost, was an ill thing in the world; but these entangling blasts, these wild curtains of snow, were desolating even unto death. The sun above was smothered; the earth beneath was trackless; the compass stood for loss all round.

What could Sergeant Gellatly expect, riding with a murderer on his left hand: a heathen that had sent a knife through the heart of one of the lords of the North? What should the gods do but frown, or the elements be at, but howling on their path? What should one hope for but that vengeance should be taken out of the hands of mortals, and be delivered to the angry spirits?

But if the gods were angry at the Indian, why should Sergeant Gellatly only sway to and fro, and now laugh recklessly, and now fall sleepily forward on the neck of his horse; while the Indian rode straight, and neither wavered nor wandered in mind, but at last slipped from his horse and walked beside the other? It was at this moment that the soldier heard, "Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly," called through the blast; and he thought it came from the skies, or from some other world. "Me darlin'," he said, "have y' come to me?" But the voice called again: "Sergeant Gellatly, keep awake! keep awake! You sleep, you die; that's it. Holy. Yes. How!" Then he knew that it was Little Hammer calling in his ear, and shaking him; that the Indian was dragging him from his horse ... his revolver, where was it? he had forgotten... he nodded... nodded. But Little Hammer said: "Walk, hell! you walk, yes;" and Little Hammer struck him again and again; but one arm of the Indian was under his shoulder and around him, and the voice was anxious and kind. Slowly it came to him that Little Hammer was keeping him alive against the will of the spirits--but why should they strike him instead of the Indian? Was there any sun in the world? Had there ever been? or fire or heat anywhere, or anything but wind and snow in all God's universe?... Yes, there were bells ringing--soft bells of a village church; and there was incense burning--most sweet it was! and the coals in the censer--how beautiful, how comforting! He laughed with joy again, and he forgot how cold, how maliciously cold, he had been; he forgot how dreadful that hour was before he became warm; when he was pierced by myriad needles through the body, and there was an incredible aching at his heart.

And yet something kept thundering on his body, and a harsh voice shrieked at him, and there were many lights dancing over his shut eyes; and then curtains of darkness were dropped, and centuries of oblivion came; and then--then his eyes opened to a comforting silence, and some one was putting brandy between his teeth, and after a time he heard a voice say: "'Bien,' you see he was a murderer, but he save his captor. 'Voila,' such a heathen! But you will, all the same, bring him to justice--you call it that? But we shall see."

Then some one replied, and the words passed through an outer web of darkness and an inner haze of dreams. "The feet of Little Hammer were like wood on the floor when you brought the two in, Pretty Pierre--and lucky for them you found them.... The thing would read right in a book, but it's not according to the run of things up here, not by a damned sight!"

"Private Bradshaw," said the first voice again, "you do not know Little Hammer, nor that story of him. You wait for the trial. I have something to say. You think Little Hammer care for the prison, the rope?--Ah, when a man wait five years to kill--so! and it is done, he is glad sometimes when it is all over. Sergeant Gellatly there will wish he went to sleep forever in the snow, if Little Hammer come to the rope. Yes, I think."

And Sergeant Gellatly's brain was so numbed that he did not grasp the meaning of the words, though he said them over and over again.... Was he dead? No, for his body was beating, beating... well, it didn't matter... nothing mattered... he was sinking to forgetfulness... sinking.

So, for hours, for weeks--it might have been for years--and then he woke, clear and knowing, to "the unnatural, intolerable day"--it was that to him, with Little Hammer in prison. It was March when his memory and vigour vanished; it was May when he grasped the full remembrance of himself, and of that fight for life on the prairie: of the hands that smote him that he should not sleep; of Little Hammer the slayer, who had driven death back discomfited, and brought his captor safe to where his own captivity and punishment awaited him.

When Sergeant Gellatly appeared in court at the trial he refused to bear witness against Little Hammer. "D' ye think--does wan av y' think--that I'll speak a word agin the man--haythen or no haythen--that pulled me out of me tomb and put me betune the barrack quilts? Here's the stripes aff me arm, and to gaol I'll go; but for what wint before I clapt the iron on his wrists, good or avil, divil a word will I say. An' here's me left hand, and there's me right fut, and an eye of me too, that I'd part with, for the cause of him that's done a trick that your honour wouldn't do--an' no shame to y' aither--an' y'd been where Little Hammer was with me."

His honour did not reply immediately, but he looked meditatively at Little Hammer before he said quietly,--"Perhaps not, perhaps not."

And Little Hammer, thinking he was expected to speak, drew his blanket up closely about him and grunted, "How!"

Pretty Pierre, the notorious half-breed, was then called. He kissed the Book, making the sign of the Cross swiftly as he did so, and unheeding the ironical, if hesitating, laughter in the court. Then he said: "'Bien,' I will tell you the story-the whole truth. I was in the Stony Plains. Little Hammer was 'good Injin' then.... Yes, sacre! it is a fool who smiles at that. I have kissed the Book. Dam!... He would be chief soon when old Two Tails die. He was proud, then, Little Hammer. He go not to the Post for drink; he sell not next year's furs for this year's rations; he shoot straight."

Here Little Hammer stood up and said: "There is too much talk. Let me be. It is all done. The sun is set--I care not--I have killed him;" and then he drew his blanket about his face and sat down.

But Pierre continued: "Yes, you killed him-quick, after five years--that is so; but you will not speak to say why. Then, I will speak. The Injins say Little Hammer will be great man; he will bring the tribes together; and all the time Little Hammer was strong and silent and wise. Then Brigley the trapper--well, he was a thief and coward. He come to Little Hammer and say, 'I am hungry and tired.' Little Hammer give him food and sleep. He go away. 'Bien,' he come back and say,--'It is far to go; I have no horse.' So Little Hammer give him a horse too. Then he come back once again in the night when Little Hammer was away, and before morning he go; but when Little Hammer return, there lay his bride--only an Injin girl, but his bride-dead! You see? Eh? No? Well, the Captain at the Post he says it was the same as Lucrece.--I say it was like hell. It is not much to kill or to die--that is in the game; but that other, 'mon Dieu!' Little Hammer, you see how he hide his head: not because he kill the Tarquin, that Brigley, but because he is a poor 'vaurien' now, and he once was happy and had a wife.... What would you do, judge honourable? ... Little Hammer, I shake your hand--so--How!"

But Little Hammer made no reply.

The judge sentenced Little Hammer to one month in gaol. He might have made it one thousand months--it would have been the same; for when, on the last morning of that month, they opened the door to set him free, he was gone. That is, the Little Hammer whom the high gods knew was gone; though an ill-nourished, self-strangled body was upright by the wall. The vagabond had paid his penalty, but desired no more of earth.

Upon the door was scratched the one word: How!

SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON

Between Archangel's Rise and Pardon's Drive there was but one house. It was a tavern, and it was known as Galbraith's Place. There was no man in the Western Territories to whom it was not familiar. There was no traveller who crossed the lonely waste but was glad of it, and would go twenty miles out of his way to rest a night on a corn-husk bed which Jen Galbraith's hands had filled, to eat a meal that she had prepared, and to hear Peter Galbraith's tales of early days on the plains, when buffalo were like clouds on the horizon, when Indians were many and hostile, and when men called the great western prairie a wedge of the American desert.

It was night on the prairie. Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway of the tavern sitting-room and watched a mighty beacon of flame rising before her, a hundred yards away. Every night this beacon made a circle of light on the prairie, and Galbraith's Place was in the centre of the circle. Summer and winter it burned from dusk to daylight. No hand fed it but that of Nature. It never failed; it was a cruse that was never empty. Upon Jen Galbraith it had a weird influence. It grew to be to her a kind of spiritual companion, though, perhaps, she would not so have named it. This flaming gas, bubbling up from the depths of the earth on the lonely plains, was to her a mysterious presence grateful to her; the receiver of her thoughts, the daily necessity in her life. It filled her too with a kind of awe; for, when it burned, she seemed not herself alone, but another self of her whom she could not quite understand. Yet she was no mere dreamer. Upon her practical strength of body and mind had come that rugged poetical sense, which touches all who live the life of mountain and prairie. She showed it in her speech; it had a measured cadence. She expressed it in her body; it had a free and rhythmic movement. And not Jen alone, but many another dweller on the prairie, looked upon it with a superstitious reverence akin to worship. A blizzard could not quench it. A gale of wind only fed its strength. A rain-storm made a mist about it, in which it was enshrined like a god. Peter Galbraith could not fully understand his daughter's fascination for this Prairie Star, as the North-West people called it. It was not without its natural influence upon him; but he regarded it most as a comfortable advertisement, and he lamented every day that this never-failing gas well was not near a large population, and he still its owner. He was one of that large family in the earth who would turn the best things in their lives into merchandise. As it was, it brought much grist to his mill; for he was not averse to the exercise of the insinuating pleasures of euchre and poker in his tavern; and the hospitality which ranchmen, cowboys, and travellers sought at his hand was often prolonged, and also remunerative to him.

Pretty Pierre, who had his patrol as gamester defined, made semi-annual visits to Galbraith's Place. It occurred generally after the rounding-up and branding seasons, when the cowboys and ranchmen were "flush" with money. It was generally conceded that Monsieur Pierre would have made an early excursion to a place where none is ever "ordered up," if he had not been free with the money which he so plentifully won.

Card-playing was to him a science and a passion. He loved to win for winning's sake. After that, money, as he himself put it, was only fit to be spent for the good of the country, and that men should earn more. Since he put his philosophy into instant and generous practice, active and deadly prejudice against him did not have lengthened life.

The Mounted Police, or as they are more poetically called, the Riders of the Plains, watched Galbraith's Place, not from any apprehension of violent events, but because Galbraith was suspected of infringing the prevailing law of Prohibition, and because for some years it had been a tradition and a custom to keep an eye on Pierre.

As Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway looking abstractedly at the beacon, her fingers smoothing her snowy apron the while, she was thinking thus to herself: "Perhaps father is right. If that Prairie Star were only at Vancouver or Winnipeg instead of here, our Val could be something, more than a prairie-rider. He'd have been different, if father hadn't started this tavern business. Not that our Val is bad. He isn't; but if he had money he could buy a ranch,--or something."

Our Val, as Jen and her father called him, was a lad of twenty-two, one year younger than Jen. He was prairie-rider, cattle-dealer, scout, cowboy, happy-go-lucky vagrant,--a splendid Bohemian of the plains. As Jen said, he was not bad; but he had a fiery, wandering spirit, touched withal by the sunniest humour. He had never known any curb but Jen's love and care. That had kept him within bounds so far. All men of the prairie spoke well of him. The great new lands have codes and standards of morals quite their own. One enthusiastic admirer of this youth said, in Jen's hearing, "He's a Christian--Val Galbraith!" That was the western way of announcing a man as having great civic and social virtues. Perhaps the respect for Val Galbraith was deepened by the fact that there was no broncho or cayuse that he could not tame to the saddle.

Jen turned her face from the flame and looked away from the oasis of warmth it made, to where the light shaded away into darkness, a darkness that was unbroken for many a score of miles to the north and west. She sighed deeply and drew herself up with an aggressive motion as though she was freeing herself of something. So she was. She was trying to shake off a feeling of oppression. Ten minutes ago the gaslighted house behind her had seemed like a prison. She felt that she must have air, space, and freedom.

She would have liked a long ride on the buffalo-track. That, she felt, would clear her mind. She was no romantic creature out of her sphere, no exotic. She was country-born and bred, and her blood had been charged by a prairie instinct passing through three generations. She was part of this life. Her mind was free and strong, and her body was free and healthy. While that freedom and health was genial, it revolted against what was gross or irregular. She loved horses and dogs, she liked to take a gun and ride away to the Poplar Hills in search of game, she found pleasure in visiting the Indian Reservation, and talking to Sun-in-the-North, the only good Indian chief she knew, or that anyone else on the prairies knew. She loved all that was strong and untamed, all that was panting with wild and glowing life. Splendidly developed, softly sinewy, warmly bountiful, yet without the least physical over-luxuriance or suggestiveness, Jen, with her tawny hair and dark-brown eyes, was a growth of unrestrained, unconventional, and eloquent life. Like Nature around her, glowing and fresh, yet glowing and hardy. There was, however, just a strain of pensiveness in her, partly owing to the fact that there were no women near her, that she had, virtually, lived her life as a woman alone.

As she thus looked into the undefined horizon two things were happening: a traveller was approaching Galbraith's Place from a point in that horizon; and in the house behind her someone was singing. The traveller sat erect upon his horse. He had not the free and lazy seat of the ordinary prairie-rider. It was a cavalry seat, and a military manner. He belonged to that handful of men who patrol a frontier of near a thousand miles, and are the security of peace in three hundred thousand miles of territory--the Riders of the Plains, the North-West Mounted Police.

This Rider of the Plains was Sergeant Thomas Gellatly, familiarly known as Sergeant Tom. Far away as he was he could see that a woman was standing in the tavern door. He guessed who it was, and his blood quickened at the guessing. But reining his horse on the furthest edge of the lighted circle, he said, debatingly: "I've little time enough to get to the Rise, and the order was to go through, hand the information to Inspector Jules, and be back within forty-eight hours. Is it flesh and blood they think I am? Me that's just come back from a journey of a hundred miles, and sent off again like this with but a taste of sleep and little food, and Corporal Byng sittin' there at Fort Desire with a pipe in his mouth and the fat on his back like a porpoise. It's famished I am with hunger, and thirty miles yet to do; and she, standin' there with a six months' welcome in her eye.... It's in the interest of Justice if I halt at Galbraith's Place for half-an-hour, bedad! The blackguard hid away there at Soldier's Knee will be arrested all the sooner; for horse and man will be able the better to travel. I'm glad it's not me that has to take him whoever he is. It's little I like leadin' a fellow-creature towards the gallows, or puttin' a bullet into him if he won't come.... Now what will we do, Larry, me boy?" this to the broncho--"Go on without bite or sup, me achin' behind and empty before, and you laggin' in the legs, or stay here for the slice of an hour and get some heart into us? Stay here is it, me boy? then lave go me fut with your teeth and push on to the Prairie Star there." So saying, Sergeant Tom, whose language in soliloquy, or when excited, was more marked by a brogue than at other times, rode away towards Galbraith's Place.

In the tavern at that moment, Pretty Pierrre was sitting on the bar-counter, where temperance drinks were professedly sold, singing to himself. His dress was singularly neat, if coarse, and his slouch hat was worn with an air of jauntiness according well with his slight make and almost girlish delicacy of complexion. He was puffing a cigarette, in the breaks of the song. Peter Galbraith, tall, gaunt, and sombre-looking, sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, rather nervously pulling at the strips of bark of which the yielding chair-seat was made. He may or may not have been listening to the song which had run through several verses. Where it had come from, no one knew; no one cared to know. The number of its verses were legion. Pierre had a sweet voice, of a peculiarly penetrating quality; still it was low and well-modulated, like the colour in his cheeks, which gave him his name.

These were the words he was singing as Sergeant Tom rode towards the tavern:

"The hot blood leaps in his quivering breast
Voila! 'Tis his enemies near!
There's a chasm deep on the mountain crest
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
They follow him close and they follow him fast,
And he flies like a mountain deer;
Then a mad, wild leap and he's safe at last!
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
A cry and a leap and the danger's past
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"

At the close of the verse, Galbraith said: "I don't like that song. I--I don't like it. You're not a father, Pierre."

"No, I am not a father. I have some virtue of that. I have spared the world something, Pete Galbraith."

"You have the Devil's luck; your sins never get YOU into trouble."

A curious fire flashed in the half-breed's eyes, and he said, quietly: "Yes, I have great luck; but I have my little troubles at times--at times."

"They're different, though, from this trouble of Val's." There was something like a fog in the old man's throat.

"Yes, Val was quite foolish, you see. If he had killed a white man--Pretty Pierre, for instance--well, there would have been a show of arrest, but he could escape. It was an Injin. The Government cherish the Injin much in these days. The redskin must be protected. It must be shown that at Ottawa there is justice. That is droll--quite. Eh, bien! Val will not try to escape. He waits too long-near twenty-four hours. Then, it is as you see.... You have not told her?" He nodded towards the door of the sittingroom.

"Nothing. It'll come on Jen soon enough if he doesn't get away, and bad enough if he does, and can't come back to us. She's fond of him--as fond of him as a mother. Always was wiser than our Val or me, Jen was. More sense than a judge, and proud but not too proud, Pierre--not too proud. She knows the right thing to do, like the Scriptures; and she does it too.... Where did you say he was hid?"

"In the Hollow at Soldier's Knee. He stayed too long at Moose Horn. Injins carried the news on to Fort Desire. When Val started south for the Border other Injins followed, and when a halt was made at Soldier's Knee they pushed across country over to Fort Desire. You see, Val's horse give out. I rode with him so far. My horse too was broke up. What was to be done? Well, I knew a ranchman not far from Soldier's Knee. I told Val to sleep, and I would go on and get the ranchman to send him a horse, while I come on to you. Then he could push on to the Border. I saw the ranchman, and he swore to send a horse to Val to-night. He will keep his word. He knows Val. That was at noon to-day, and I am here, you see, and you know all. The danger? Ah, my friend,--the Police Barracks at Archangel's Rise! If word is sent down there from Fort Desire before Val passes, they will have out a big patrol, and his chances,--well, you know them, the Riders of the Plains. But Val, I think will have luck, and get into Montana before they can stop him. I hope; yes."

"If I could do anything, Pierre! Can't we--"

The half-breed interrupted: "No, we can't do anything, Galbraith. I have done all. The ranchman knows me. He will keep his word, by the Great Heaven!" It would seem as if Pierre had reasons for relying on the ranchman other than ordinary prairie courtesy to law-breakers.

"Pierre, tell me the whole story over, slow and plain. It don't seem nateral to think of it; but if you go over it again, perhaps I can get the thing more reas'nable in my mind. No, it ain't nateral to me, Pierre--our Val running away." The old man leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

"Eh, well, it was an Injin. So much. It was in self-defence--a little, but of course to prove that. There is the difficulty. You see, they were all drinking, and the Injin--he was a chief---proposed--he proposed that Val should sell him his sister, Jen Galbraith, to be the chief's squaw. He would give him a cayuse. Val's blood came up quick--quite quick. You know Val. He said between his teeth: 'Look out, Snow Devil, you Injin dog, or I'll have your heart. Do you think a white girl is like a redskin woman, to be sold as you sell your wives and daughters to the squaw-men and white loafers, you reptile?' Then the Injin said an ugly word about Val's sister, and Val shot him dead like lightning.... Yes, that is good to swear, Galbraith. You are not the only one that curses the law in this world. It is not Justice that fills the gaols, but Law."

The old man rose and walked up and down the room in a shuffling kind of way. His best days were done, the spring of his life was gone, and the step was that of a man who had little more of activity and force with which to turn the halting wheels of life. His face was not altogether good, yet it was not evil. There was a sinister droop to the eyelids, a suggestion of cruelty about the mouth; but there was more of good-nature and passive strength than either in the general expression. One could see that some genial influence had dominated what was inherently cruel and sinister in him. Still the sinister predisposition was there.

"He can't never come here, Pierre, can he"? he asked, despairingly.

"No, he can't come here, Galbraith. And look: if the Riders of the Plains should stop here to-night, or to-morrow, you will be cool--cool, eh?"

"Yes, I will be quite cool, Pierre." Then he seemed to think of something else and looked up half-curiously, half-inquiringly at the half-breed.

Pierre saw this. He whistled quietly to himself for a little, and then called the old man over to where he sat. Leaning slightly forward he made his reply to the look that had been bent upon him. He touched Galbraith's breast lightly with his delicate fingers, and said: "I have not much love for the world, Pete Galbraith, and not much love for men and women altogether; they are fools--nearly all. Some men--you know--treat me well. They drink with me--much. They would make life a hell for me if I was poor--shoot me, perhaps, quick!--if--if I didn't shoot first. They would wipe me with their feet. They would spoil Pretty Pierre." This he said with a grim kind of humour and scorn, refined in its suppressed force. Fastidious as he was in appearance, Pierre was not vain. He had been created with a sense of refinement that reduced the grossness of his life; but he did not trade on it; he simply accepted it and lived it naturally after his kind. He was not good at heart, and he never pretended to be so. He continued: "No, I have not much love; but Val, well, I think of him some. His tongue is straight; he makes no lies. His heart is fire; his arms are strong; he has no fear. He does not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him. He does not think of me like the rest. So much the more when his trouble comes I help him. I help him to the death if he needs me. To make him my friend--that is good. Eh? Perhaps. You see, Galbraith?"

The old man nodded thoughtfully, and after a little pause said: "I have killed Injins myself;" and he made a motion of his head backward, suggestive of the past.

With a shrug of his shoulders the other replied "Yes, so have I--sometimes. But the government was different then, and there were no Riders of the Plains." His white teeth showed menacingly under his slight moustache. Then there was another pause. Pierre was watching the other.

"What's that you're doing, Galbraith?"

"Rubbin' laudanum on my gums for this toothache. Have to use it for nuralgy, too."

Galbraith put the little vial back in his waistcoat pocket, and presently said: "What will you have to drink, Pretty Pierre?" That was his way of showing gratitude.

"I am reform. I will take coffee, if Jen Galbraith will make some. Too much broke glass inside is not good. Yes."

Galbraith went into the sitting-room to ask Jen to make the coffee. Pierre, still sitting on the bar-counter, sang to himself a verse of a rough-and-ready, satirical prairie ballad:

"The Riders of the Plains, my boys, are twenty thousand strong
Oh, Lordy, don't they make the prairies howl!
'Tis their lot to smile on virtue and to collar what is wrong,
And to intercept the happy flowin' bowl.

They've a notion, that in glory, when we wicked ones have chains
They will all be major-generals--and that!
They're a lovely band of pilgrims are the Riders of the Plains
Will some sinner please to pass around the hat?"

As he reached the last two lines of the verse the door opened and Sergeant Tom entered. Pretty Pierre did not stop singing. His eyes simply grew a little brighter, his cheek flushed ever so slightly, and there was an increase of vigour in the closing notes.

Sergeant Tom smiled a little grimly, then he nodded and said: "Been at it ever since, Pretty Pierre? You were singing the same song on the same spot when I passed here six months ago."

"Eh, Sergeant Tom, it is you? What brings you so far from your straw-bed at Fort Desire?" From underneath his hat-brim Pierre scanned the face of the trooper closely.

"Business. Not to smile on virtue, but to collar what is wrong. I guess you ought to be ready by this time to go into quarters, Pierre. You've had a long innings."

"Not yet, Sergeant Tom, though I love the Irish, and your company would make me happy. But I am so innocent, and the world--it cannot spare me yet. But I think you come to smile on virtue, all the same, Sergeant Tom. She is beautiful is Jen Galbraith. Ah, that makes your eye bright--so! You Riders of the Plains, you do two things at one time. You make this hour someone happy, and that hour someone unhappy. In one hand the soft glove of kindness, in the other, voila! the cold glove of steel. We cannot all be great like that, Sergeant Tom."

"Not great, but clever. Voila, the Pretty Pierre! In one hand he holds the soft paper, the pictures that deceive--kings, queens, and knaves; in the other, pictures in gold and silver--money won from the pockets of fools. And so, as you say, 'bien,' and we each have our way, bedad!"

Sergeant Tom noticed that the half-breed's eyes nearly closed, as if to hide the malevolence that was in them. He would not have been surprised to see a pistol drawn. But he was quite fearless, and if it was not his duty to provoke a difficulty, his fighting nature would not shrink from giving as good as he got. Besides, so far as that nature permitted, he hated Pretty Pierre. He knew the ruin that this gambler had caused here and there in the West, and he was glad that Fort Desire, at any rate, knew him less than it did formerly.