The Luck of the Mounted Part 7

"Fwhat yez know 'bout that?" Slavin forked viciously at the bacon he was frying. "Blarney my sowl! an' him not up for 'Shtables' at all! . . ."

"_With ev'rything that pretty is:-- My lady sweet, arise! arise!

My lady sweet, arise!_"

"My lady shweet!"--Slavin snorted unutterable things.

Yawning, the object of his remarks sauntered into the kitchen just then, and, deeming the occasion now to be a fitting one, the sergeant introduced his two subordinates to each other.

Yorke, with a bleak nod and handshake, swept the junior constable with a swiftly appraising glance. As frigidly was his salutation returned.

Redmond remarked the regular features, suggestive rather of the ancient Norman type, the thin, curved, defiant nostrils and dark, arching eyebrows. The face, with its indefinable stamp of birth and breeding was handsome enough in its patrician mould, but marred somewhat by the lines of cynicism, or dissipation, round the sombre, reckless eyes and intolerant mouth. He had a cool, clear voice and a whimsical, devil-may-care sort of manner that was apparently natural to him, as was also a certain languid grace of movement. He possessed an irritating mannerism of continually elevating his chin and dilating his curved nostrils disdainfully in a sort of soundless sniff. Beyond a slight flush he showed little trace of his previous night's dissipation.

"Where do you hail from?" he enquired of George with casual interest over the mess-table later.

"Ontario," replied George laconically, "my people are farmers down there."

For a moment Yorke's arched brows lifted in puzzled surprise--came a repet.i.tion of his offensive sniffing mannerism; and he stared pointedly away again. It was difficult to be more insulting in dumb show.

George, mindful of his promise to Slavin, groaned inwardly. "I am going to hate this fellow" he thought.

The sergeant, from the head of the table, kept a keen watch upon the pair.

"An' fwhat?" came his soft brogue, by way of diversion, "an' fwhat made yu' take on th' Force?"

"Oh, I don't know!" Wearily, George shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leant back in his chair. "Old man's pretty well fixed--now.

He's a member of the legislature for ---- County. I was at McGill for some terms--medicine." A hopeless note crept into his tones. "I fell down on my exams . . . ran amuck with the wrong bunch an' all that--an'--an' . . . kind of made a mess of things I guess. . . . Went broke--came West. . . . That's why. . . ."

With a forlorn sort of forced grin he gazed back at his interlocutor.

Yorke, unheeding the conversation, continued his breakfast as if he were alone.

"H-mm!" grunted Slavin, summing up the situation with native simplicity, "That's ut, eh?--but, for all ye have th' s.p.a.che an' manners av a ginthleman--ranker somehow--somehow I mis...o...b.. ye're a way-back waster like Misther Yorkey here!"

That hardened "ginthleman," absently sipping his coffee, flung a faintly-derisive, patient smile at his accuser. A perfect understanding seemed to exist between the two men. Redmond, musing upon the pathetically-sordid drama he had witnessed not so many hours since, relapsed into a reverie of speculation.

The silence was suddenly broken by the sharp trill of the telephone.

Slavin arose lethargically from the mess-table and answered it.

"Hullo! yis! Slavin shpeakin'! Fwat?--all right Nick! I'll sind a man shortly an' vag um! So long! Oh, hold on, Nick! . . . May th' divil niver know ye're dead till ye're tu hours in Hivin! Fwhat?--Oh, thank yez! Same tu yez! Well! . . . so long!"

"Hobo worryin' Nick Lee at Cow Run. Scared av fire in th'

livery-shtable. Go yu', Yorkey!" He eyed George a moment in curious speculation. "Yu' had betther go along tu, Ridmond! Exercise yez ha.r.s.e an'"--he lit his pipe noisily--"learn th' lay av th' thrails." He turned to the senior constable. "If ye can lay hould av th' J.P. there, get this shtiff committed an' let Ridmond take thrain wid um tu th' Post.

Yu' return wid th' ha.r.s.es!"

"Why can't Redmond nip down there on a way-freight and do the whole thing?" said Yorke, a trifle sulkily. "It seems rot sending two men mounted for one blooming hobo."

"Eyah!" murmured Slavin with suspicious mildness, "'tis th' long toime since I have used me shtripes tu give men undher me wan ordher twice."

Yorke flashed a slightly apprehensive glance at his superior's face.

Then, without another word, he reached for his side-arms, bridle, and fur-coat. He knew his man.

Redmond followed suit and they adjourned to the stable.

"I saw that beggar yesterday--on my way up," remarked George, ill-advisedly.

Yorke stared. "The h.e.l.l you did! . . . why didn't you vag him then?" he retorted irritably.

Bursting with silent wrath at the "choke-off," with difficulty Redmond held his peace. In silence they saddled up and leading the horses out prepared to mount. Yorke swung up on the splendid, mettled black--"Parson." He had an ideal cavalry seat, and as with an easy grace he gently controlled his impatient horse, with an inscrutable, mask-like countenance he watched Redmond and the sorrel "Fox."

With toe in the leather-covered stirrup the latter reached for the saddle-horn. Poor George! fuming inwardly over one humiliation caused him shortly to be the recipient of another. Too late to his preoccupied mind came Slavin's warning of the day before.

Like a flash the sorrel whirled to the "off-side" and Redmond, swung off his balance, revolved into s.p.a.ce and was pitched on his hands and knees in the snow. Fortunately his foot had slipped clear of the stirrup. In this somewhat ignominious position dizzily he heard Yorke's mocking tones:

"What are the odds on Fox, bookie? . . . I'd like a few of those dollars when you've quite finished picking them all up."

With an almost superhuman effort the young fellow controlled himself once more as he arose. Not lightly had he given a promise. Silently he dusted the snow from his uniform and strode over to where the sorrel awaited him. The horse had made no attempt to run away; apparently being an old hand at the game. It now stood eying its dupe, with Lord knows what mirth tickling its equine brain.

Slipping the "nigh" rein through the saddle-fork, then back to the cheek-strap again, George snubbed Fox's head towards him, making it impossible for the horse to whirl to the "off" as before. Warily and quietly he then swung into the saddle and the two men set off.

A few yards from the front of the detachment Yorke suddenly pulled up and, dismounting, felt around in the snow at the base of a well-remembered telephone-pole. It was Redmond's hour to jeer now, if he had been mindful to do so. But another usurped that privilege.

A queer choking sound made them both turn round. Slavin, his grim face registering unholy mirth, lounged in the doorway.

"Fwhat ye lukkin for, Yorkey?"

"Oh, nothing!" came that gentleman's answer.

"Ye'll find ut in th' bottle thin."

Insult was added to injury by the sergeant casually plucking that article from it's "rist" and chucking it over.

Yorke's face was a study. "Oh!" cried he dismally, "what wit! . . . give three rousing cheers!" . . . He mounted once more. "Well! there's no denying you are one h.e.l.l of a sergeant!"

That worthy one grinned at him tolerantly. "Get yez gone!" he spat back, "an' du not linger tu play c.r.a.ps on th' thrail either--th' tu av yez!"

Long and grimly, with his bald head sunk between his huge shoulders, he gazed after the departing riders. "Eyah! 'tis best so!" he murmured softly, "a showdown--wid no ould shtiff av a non-com like meself tu b.u.t.t in. . . . An', onless I am mistuk that same will come this very morn, from th' luks av things. . . . Sind th' young wan is as handy wid his dhooks as Brankley sez he is! . . . Thin--an' on'y thin will there be peace in th' fam'ly."

He re-lit his pipe and, shading his eyes from the snow-glare focussed them on two rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng black specks. "I wud that I cud see ut!"

he sighed, plaintively, "I wud that I cud see ut!"

It was a glorious day, sunny and clear, with the temperature sufficiently low to prevent the hard-packed snow from balling up the horses' feet.

The trail ran fairly level along a lower shelf of the timber-lined foothills, which on their right hand sloped gradually to the banks of the Bow River in a series of rolling "downs." Sharply outlined against the blue ether the Sou' Western chain of the mighty "Rockies" reared their rosily-white peaks in all their morning glory--silent guardians of the winter landscape.

Deep down in his soul young Redmond harboured a silent, dreamy adoration for the beauty of such scenes as this. Under different conditions he would have enjoyed this ride immensely. But now--with his mind a seething bitter chaos consequent upon his companion's incomprehensible behavior towards him, he rode in a sort of brooding reverie. Yorke was equally morose. Not a word had fallen from their lips since they left the detachment.

Right under the horses' noses a big white jack-rabbit suddenly darted across the snow-banked ruts of the well-worn trail, pursuing its leaping erratic course towards a patch of brush on the river side.

Simultaneously the animals s.h.i.+ed, with an inward trend, cannoning their respective riders together. Yorke reined away sharply and glared.

"Get over'" he said curtly, "don't crowd me!"

He spoke as a Cossack hetman might to his sotnia, and, at his tone and att.i.tude, something snapped within Redmond. To his already overflowing cup of resentment it was the last straw. His promise to Slavin he flung to the winds, and it was replaced with vindictive but cool purpose.