Man-Size by William MacLeod Raine (first color ebook reader txt) 📖

and the girl gravitated into each other's arms, as is the way with women who are fond of each other. The Indian is stolid, but Jessie had the habit of impetuosity, of letting her feelings sweep her into demonstration. Even the native women she loved were not proof against it.

McRae questioned Stokimatis.

Without waste of words the mother of Onistah told the story she had traveled hundreds of miles to tell.

Sleeping Dawn was not the child of her sister. When the attack had been made on the white trappers bound for Peace River, the mother of a baby had slipped the infant under an iron kettle. After the massacre her sister had found the wailing little atom of humanity. The Indian woman had recently lost her own child. She hid the babe and afterward was permitted to adopt it. When a few months later she died of smallpox, Stokimatis had inherited the care of the little one. She had named it Sleeping Dawn. Later, when the famine year came, she had sold the child to Angus McRae.

That was all she knew. But it was enough for Jessie. She did not know who her parents had been. She never would know, beyond the fact that they were Americans and that her mother had been a beautiful girl whose eyes laughed and danced. But this knowledge made a tremendous difference to her. She belonged to the ruling race and not to the métis, just as much as Win Beresford and Tom Morse did.

She tried to hide her joy, was indeed ashamed of it. For any expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father. None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations imposed upon her by race.

The heart in the girl sang a song of sunshine dancing on grass, of meadowlarks flinging out their carefree notes of joy. Through it like a golden thread ran for a motif little melodies that had to do with a man who had staggered into Fort Desolation out of the frozen North, sick and starved and perhaps wounded, but still indomitably captain of his soul.

CHAPTER XL "MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE"

Inspector MacLean was present in person when the two man-hunters of the North-West Mounted returned to Faraway. Their reception was in the nature of a pageant. Gayly dressed voyageurs and trappers, singing old river songs that had been handed down to them from their fathers, unharnessed the dogs and dragged the cariole into town. In it sat Beresford, still unfit for long and heavy mushing. Beside it slouched West, head down, hands tied behind his back, the eyes from the matted face sending sidling messages of hate at the capering crowd. At his heels moved Morse, grim and tireless, an unromantic figure of dominant efficiency.

Long before the worn travelers and their escort reached the village, Jessie could hear the gay lilt of the chantey that heralded their coming:

  "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre,
   Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

The girl hummed it herself, heart athrob with excitement. She found herself joining in the cheer of welcome that rose joyously when the cavalcade drew into sight. In her cheeks fluttered eager flags of greeting. Tears brimmed the soft eyes, so that she could hardly distinguish Tom Morse and Win Beresford, the one lean and gaunt and grim, the other pale and hollow-eyed from illness, but scattering smiles of largesse. For her heart was crying, in a paraphrase of the great parable, "He was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

Beresford caught sight of the Inspector's face and chuckled like a schoolboy caught in mischief. This gay procession, with its half-breeds in tri-colored woolen coats, its gay-plumed voyageurs suggesting gallant troubadours of old in slashed belts and tassels, was not quite the sort of return to set Inspector MacLean cheering. Externally, at least, he was a piece of military machinery. A trooper did his work, and that ended it. In the North-West Mounted it was not necessary to make a gala day of it because a constable brought in his man. If he didn't bring him in—well, that would be another and a sadder story for the officer who fell down on the assignment.

As soon as Beresford and Morse had disposed of their prisoner and shaken off their exuberant friends, they reported to the Inspector. He sat at a desk and listened dryly to their story. Not till they had finished did he make any comment.

"You'll have a week's furlough to recuperate, Constable Beresford. After that report to the Writing-on-Stone detachment for orders. Here's a voucher for your pay, Special Constable Morse. I'll say to you both that it was a difficult job well done." He hesitated a moment, then proceeded to free his mind. "As for this Roman triumph business—victory procession with prisoners chained to your chariot wheels—quite unnecessary, I call it."

Beresford explained, smilingly. "We really couldn't help it, sir. They were bound to make a Roman holiday out of us whether we wanted to or not. You know how excitable the French are. Had to have their little frolic out of it."

"Not the way the Mounted does business. You know that, Beresford. We don't want any fuss and feathers—any fol-de-rol—this mironton-ton-ton stuff. Damn it, sir, you liked it. I could see you eat it up. D'you s'pose I haven't eyes in my head?"

The veneer of sobriety Beresford imposed on his countenance refused to stay put.

MacLean fumed on. "Hmp! Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, eh? Very pretty. Very romantic, no doubt. But damned sentimental tommyrot, just the same."

"Yes, sir," agreed the constable, barking into a cough just in time to cut off a laugh.

"Get out!" ordered the Inspector, and there was the glimmer of a friendly smile in his own eyes. "And I'll expect you both to dine with me to-night. Six o'clock sharp. I'll hear that wonderful story in more detail. And take care of yourself, Beresford. You don't look strong yet. I'll make that week two or three if necessary."

"Thank you, sir."

"Hmp! Don't thank me. Earned it, didn't you? What are you hanging around for? Get out!"

Constable Beresford had his revenge. As he passed the window, Inspector MacLean heard him singing. The words that drifted to the commissioned office! were familiar.

  "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre,
   Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

MacLean smiled at the irrepressible youngster. Like most people, he responded to the charm of Winthrop Beresford. He could forgive him a touch of debonair impudence if necessary.

It happened that his heart was just now very warm toward both these young fellows. They had come through hell and had upheld the best traditions of the Force. Between the lines of the story they had told he gathered that they had shaved the edge of disaster a dozen times. But they had stuck to their guns like soldiers. They had fought it out week after week, hanging to their man with bulldog pluck. And when at last they were found almost starving in camp, they were dividing their last rabbit with the fellow they were bringing out to be hanged.

The Inspector walked to the window and looked down the street after them. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. The rhythmic motion of them might have suggested, if there had been anybody present to observe, that his mind was running on the old river song.

  "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre,
  Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

CHAPTER XLI SENSE AND NONSENSE

Beresford speaking, to an audience of one, who listened with soft dark eyes aglow and sparkling.

"He's the best scout ever came over the border, Jessie. Trusty as steel, stands the gaff without whining, backs his friends to the limit, and plays the game out till the last card's dealt and the last trick lost. Tom Morse is a man in fifty thousand."

"I know another," she murmured. "Every word you've said is true for him too."

"He's a wonder, that other." admitted the soldier dryly. "But we're talking about Tom now. I tell you that iron man dragged West and me out of the Barrens by the scruff of our necks. Wouldn't give up. Wouldn't quit. The yellow in West came out half a dozen times. When the ten-day blizzard caught us, he lay down and yelped like a cur. I wouldn't have given a plugged six-pence for our chances. But Tom went out into it, during a little lull, and brought back with him a timber wolf. How he found it, how he killed it, Heaven alone knows. He was coated with ice from head to foot. That wolf kept us and the dogs alive for a week. Each day, when the howling of the blizzard died down a bit, Tom made West go down with him to the creek and get wood. It must have been a terrible hour. They'd come back so done up, so frozen, they could hardly stagger in with their jags of pine for the fire. I never heard the man complain—not once. He stood up to it the way Tom Sayers used to."

The girl felt a warm current of life prickling swiftly through her. "I love to hear you talk so generously of him."

"Of my rival?" he said, smiling. "How else can I talk? The scoundrel has been heaping on me those coals of fire we read about. I haven't told you half of it—how he nursed me like a woman and looked after me so that I wouldn't take cold, how he used to tuck me up in the sled with a hot stone at my feet and make short days' runs in order not to wear out my strength. By Jove, it was a deucedly unfair advantage he took of me."

"Is he your rival?" she asked.

"Isn't he?"

"In business?"

"How demure Miss McRae is," he commented. "Observe those long eyelashes flutter down to the soft cheeks."

"In what book did you read that?" she wanted to know.

"In that book of suffering known as experience," he sighed, eyes dancing.

"If you're trying to tell me that you're in love with some girl—"

"Haven't I been trying to tell you for a year?"

Her eyes flashed a challenge at him. "Take care, sir. First thing you know you'll be on thin ice. You might break through."

"And if I did—"

"Of course I'd snap you up before you could bat an eye. Is there a girl living that wouldn't? And I'm almost an old maid. Don't forget that. I'm to gather rosebuds while I may, because time's flying so fast, some poet says."

"Time stands still for you, my dear," he bowed, with a gay imitation of the grand manner.

"Thank you." Her smile mocked him. She had flirted a good deal with this young man and understood him very well. He had no intention whatever of giving up the gay hazards of life for any adventure so enduring as matrimony. Moreover, he knew she knew it. "But let's stick to the subject. While you're proposing—"

"How you help a fellow along!" he laughed. "Am I proposing?"

"Of course you are. But I haven't found out yet whether it's for yourself or Mr. Morse."

"A good suggestion—novel, too. For us both, let's say. You take your choice." He flung out a hand in a gay debonair gesture.

"You've told his merits, but I don't think I ever heard yours mentioned," she countered. "If you'd recite them, please."

"It's a subject I can do only slight justice." He bowed again.
"Sergeant Beresford, at your service, of the North-West Mounted."

"Sergeant! Since when?"

"Since yesterday. Promoted for meritorious conduct in the line of duty. My pay is increased to one dollar and a quarter a day. In case happily your choice falls on me, don't squander it on silks and satins, on trips to Paris and London—"

"If I choose you, it won't be for your wealth," she assured him.

"Reassured, fair lady. I proceed with the inventory of Sergeant Beresford's equipment as a future husband. Fond, but, alas! fickle. A family black sheep, or if not black, at least striped. Likely not to plague you long, if he's sent on many more jobs like the last. Said to be good-tempered, but not docile. Kind, as men go, but a ne'er-do-well, a prodigal, a waster. Something whispers in my ear that he'll make a better friend than a husband."

"A twin fairy is whispering the same in my ear," the girl nodded. "At least