A Romany of the Snows Part 36

"Treasure-trove," humbly answered the stricken officer.

"That's it, and in a month, Mr. Martin, I'll be asking the chief of your department to dinner."

Meanwhile Lafarge saw how near he had been to losing a wife and a fortune. Arrived off Isle of Day; Tarboe told Mr. Martin and his men that if they said "treasure-trove" till they left the island their live would not be worth "a tinker's d.a.m.n." When they had sworn, he took them to Angel Point, fed then royally, gave them excellent liquor to drink, and sent them in a fis.h.i.+ng-smack with Bissonnette to Quebec where, arriving, they told strange tales.

Bissonnette bore a letter to a certain banker in Quebec, who already had done business with Tarboe, and next midnight Tarboe himself, with Gobal, Lafarge, Bissonnette, and another, came knocking at the banker's door, each carrying a keg on his shoulder and armed to the teeth. And, what was singular two stalwart police-officers walked behind with comfortable and approving looks.

A month afterwards Lafarge and Joan were married in the parish church at Isle of Days, and it was said that Mr. Martin, who, for some strange reason, was allowed to retain his position in the customs, sent a present. The wedding ended with a sensation, for just as the benediction was p.r.o.nounced a loud report was heard beneath the floor of the church.

There was great commotion, but Tarboe whispered in the curb's ear, and he blus.h.i.+ng, announced that it was the bursting of a barrel. A few minutes afterwards the people of the parish knew the old hiding-place of Tarboe's contraband, and, though the cure rebuked them, they roared with laughter at the knowledge.

"So droll, so droll, our Tarboe there!" they shouted, for already they began to look upon him as their Seigneur.

In time the cure forgave him also.

Tarboe seldom left Isle of Days, save when he went to visit his daughter, in St. Louis Street, Quebec, not far from the Parliament House, where Orvay Lafarge is a member of the Ministry. The ex-smuggler was a member of the a.s.sembly for three months, but after defeating his own party on a question of tariff, he gave a portrait of himself to the Chamber, and threw his seat into the hands of his son-in-law. At the Belle Chatelaine, where he often goes, he sometimes asks Bissonnette to play "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose."

ROMANY OF THE SNOWS

I

When old Throng the trader, trembling with sickness and misery, got on his knees to Captain Halby and groaned, "She didn't want to go; they dragged her off; you'll fetch her back, won't ye?--she always had a fancy for you, cap'n," Pierre shrugged a shoulder and said:

"But you stole her when she was in her rock-a-by, my Throng--you and your Manette."

"Like a match she was--no bigger," continued the old man. "Lord, how that stepmother bully-ragged her, and her father didn't care a darn.

He'd half a dozen others--Manette and me hadn't none. We took her and used her like as if she was an angel, and we brought her off up here.

Haven't we set store by her? Wasn't it 'cause we was lonely an' loved her we took her? Hasn't everybody stood up and said there wasn't anyone like her in the North? Ain't I done fair by her always--ain't I? An'

now, when this cough 's eatin' my life out, and Manette 's gone, and there ain't a soul but Duc the trapper to put a blister on to me, them brutes ride up from over the border, call theirselves her brothers, an'

drag her off!"

He was still on his knees. Pierre reached over and lightly kicked a moccasined foot.

"Get up, Jim Throng," he said. "Holy! do you think the law moves because an old man cries? Is it in the statutes?--that's what the law says. Does it come within the act? Is it a trespa.s.s--an a.s.sault and battery?--a breach of the peace?--a misdemeanour? Victoria--So and So: that's how the law talks. Get on your knees to Father Corraine, not to Captain Halby, Jimmy Throng."

Pierre spoke in a half-sinister, ironical way, for between him and Captain Halby's Riders of the Plains there was no good feeling. More than once he had come into conflict with them, more than once had they laid their hands on him--and taken them off again in due time. He had foiled them as to men they wanted; he had defied them--but he had helped them too, when it seemed right to him; he had sided with them once or twice when to do so was perilous to himself. He had sneered at them, he did not like them, nor they him. The sum of it was, he thought them brave--and stupid; and he knew that the law erred as often as it set things right.

The Trader got up and stood between the two men, coughing much, his face straining, his eyes bloodshot, as he looked anxiously from Pierre to Halby. He was the sad wreck of a strong man. Nothing looked strong about him now save his head, which, with its long grey hair, seemed badly balanced by the thin neck, through which the terrible cough was hacking.

"Only half a lung left," he stammered, as soon as he could speak, "an'

Duc can't fix the boneset, camomile, and whisky, as she could. An' he waters the whisky--curse-his-soul!" The last three words were spoken through another spasm of coughing. "An' the blister--how he mucks the blister!"

Pierre sat back on the table, laughing noiselessly, his white teeth s.h.i.+ning. Halby, with one foot on a bench, was picking at the fur on his sleeve thoughtfully. His face was a little drawn, his lips were tight-pressed, and his eyes had a light of excitement. Presently he straightened himself, and, after a half-malicious look at Pierre, he said to Throng:

"Where are they, do you say?"

"They're at"--the old man coughed hard--"at Fort O'Battle."

"What are they doing there?"

"Waitin' till spring, when they'll fetch their cattle up an' settle there."

"They want--Lydia--to keep house for them?" The old man writhed.

"Yes, G.o.d's sake, that's it! An' they want Liddy to marry a devil called Borotte, with a thousand cattle or so--Pito the courier told me yesterday. Pito saw her, an' he said she was white like a sheet, an'

called out to him as he went by. Only half a lung I got, an' her boneset and camomile 'd save it for a bit, mebbe--mebbe!"

"It's clear," said Halby, "that they trespa.s.sed, and they haven't proved their right to her."

"Tonnerre, what a thinker!" said Pierre, mocking. Halby did not notice.

His was a solid sense of responsibility.

"She is of age?" he half asked, half mused.

"She's twenty-one," answered the old man, with difficulty.

"Old enough to set the world right," suggested Pierre, still mocking.

"She was forced away, she regarded you as her natural protector, she believed you her father: they broke the law," said the soldier.

"There was Moses, and Solomon, and Caesar, and Socrates, and now...!"

murmured Pierre in a.s.sumed abstraction.

A red spot burned on Halby's high cheekbone for a minute, but he persistently kept his temper.

"I'm expected elsewhere," he said at last. "I'm only one man, yet I wish I could go to-day--even alone. But--"

"But you have a heart," said Pierre. "How wonderful--a heart! And there's the half a lung, and the boneset and camomile tea, and the blister, and the girl with an eye like a spot of rainbow, and the sacred law in a Remington rifle! Well, well! And to do it in the early morning--to wait in the shelter of the trees till some go to look after the horses, then enter the house, arrest those inside, and lay low for the rest."

Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. Here was raillery and good advice all in a piece.

"It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's trouble and I should go down, who's to tell the truth? Two could do it; but one--no, it isn't wise, though it would look smart enough."

"Who said to go alone?" asked Pierre, scrawling on the table with a burnt match.

"I have no men."

Pierre looked up at the wall.

"Throng has a good Snider there," he said. "Bos.h.!.+ Throng can't go."

The old man coughed and strained.

"If it wasn't--only-half a lung, and I could carry the boneset 'long with us."

Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, and, taking him by the arms, pushed him gently into a chair. "Sit down; don't be a fool, Throng," he said. Then he turned to Halby: "You're a magistrate--make me a special constable; I'll go, monsieur le capitaine--of no company."