CHAPTER I
THE SWEETWATER FORD
After relaxing its iron grip a little so that we hoped for spring, winter had once more closed down on the broad Canadian prairie, and the lonely outpost was swept by icy draughts, when, one bitter night, Sergeant Mackay, laying down his pipe, thrust fresh billets into the crackling stove. It already glowed with a dull redness, and the light that beat out through its opened front glinted upon the carbines, belts, and stirrups hung about the rough log walls.
"'Tis for the rebuking of evildoers an' the keeping of the peace we're sent here to patrol the wilderness, an' if we're frozen stiff in the saddle 'tis no more than our duty," said the sergeant, while his eyes twinkled whimsically. "But a man with lands an' cattle shows a distressful want o' judgment by sleeping in a snow bank when he might be sitting snug in a club at Montreal. 'Tis a matter o' wonder to me that ye are whiles so deficient in common sense, Rancher Ormesby. Still, I'm no' denying ye showed a little when ye brought that whisky. 'Tis allowable to interpret the regulations with discretion in bitter weather – an' here's a safe ride to ye!"
A brighter beam that shot out called up the speaker's rugged face and gaunt figure from the shadows. Although his lean, hard fingers closed somewhat affectionately on a flask instead of on the bridle or carbine they were used to, his profession was stamped on him, for Allan Mackay was as fine a sample of non-commissioned cavalry officer as ever patrolled the desolate marches of Western Canada – which implies a good deal to those who know the Northwest troopers. He was also, as I knew, a man acquainted with sorrow, who united the shrewdness of Solomon with a childish simplicity and hid beneath his grim exterior a vein of eccentric chivalry which on occasion led him into trouble. The blaze further touched the face of a young English lad sitting in a corner of the room.
"Some of us were sent here for our sins, and some came for our health when the temperature of our birthplaces grew a trifle high," he said. "I don't know that anybody except Rancher Ormesby ever rode with us for pleasure. Yet I'm open to admit the life has its compensations; and Sergeant Mackay has given me many as good a run as I ever had with – that is, I mean any man who must earn his bread might well find work he would take less kindly to."
The lad's momentary embarrassment was not lost on his officer, who chuckled somewhat dryly as he glanced at him. "I'm asking no questions, an' ye are not called on to testify against yourself," he said. "Maybe ye rode fox-hunting on a hundred-guinea horse, an' maybe ye did not; but ye showed a bit knowledge o' a beast, an' that was enough for me. Meantime ye're Trooper Cotton, an' I'll see ye do your duty. To some, the old country – God bless her – is a hard stepmother, an' ye're no' the first she has turned the cold shoulder on and sent out to me."
The worthy sergeant was apt to grow tiresome when he launched out into his reminiscences, and, seeing that Trooper Cotton did not appreciate the turn the conversation was taking, I broke in: "But you're forgetting the outlaw, Mackay; and I'm not here for either health or pleasure. I want to recover the mare I gave five hundred dollars for, and that ought to excuse my company. What has the fellow who borrowed her done?"
"Fired on a mortgage money-lender down in Assiniboia," was the answer. "Maybe he was badly treated, for ye'll mind that the man who takes blood money, as yon Lane has done, is first cousin to Judas Iscariot; but that's no' my business. It is not allowable to shoot one's creditors in the Canadian Dominion. What I'm wondering is where he is now; an' that will be either striking north for the barrens or west for British Columbia. It will be boot and saddle when Pete comes in, and meantime we'll consider what routes would best fit him!"
Mackay knew every bluff and ravine seaming a hundred miles of prairie; and another silent man, rising from his bunk, stood beside myself and Cotton as the sergeant traced lines across the table. Each represented an alternative route the fugitive might take, and the places where the hard forefinger paused marked a risky ford or lake on which the ice was yielding. Mackay spent some time over it, as much for his own edification as for ours, but I was interested, for I greatly desired to recover the blood mare stolen from me.
I was then five-and-twenty, fairly stalwart and tall of stature, and seldom regretted that after a good education in England I had gone out to Western Canada to assist a relative in raising cattle. The old man was slow and cautious, but he taught me my business well before he died suddenly and left me his possessions. Adding my small patrimony, I made larger profits by taking heavier risks, and, for fortune had favored me, and youth is no handicap in the Colonies, my homestead was one of the finest in that section of the country. Save for occasional risks of frost-bite and wild rides through blinding snow, the life had been toilsome rather than eventful; but the day which, while we talked in the outpost, was speeding westward across the pines of Quebec and the lakes of Ontario to gild the Rockies' peaks was to mark a turning-point in my history.
