Читать книгу A Man of Two Countries - Alice Harriman - Страница 5

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"I beheld the westward marches

Of the … nations,

Restless, struggling, toiling, striving."

—Longfellow

Philip Danvers, heading a small party of horsemen, galloped around the corner of a warehouse and pulled up on the levee at Bismarck as the mate of the Far West bellowed, "Let 'er go!"

"Hold on!" he shouted, leaping from his mount.

"Why in blazes!" The mate's impatience flared luridly as he ordered the gang-plank replaced. His heat ignited the smouldering resentment of the passengers, and they, too, exploded.

"We're loaded to the guards now!" yelled one.

"Yeh can't come aboard!" threatened another.

"Haven't yeh got a full passenger list a'ready, Captain?" demanded a blustering, heavy-set man with beetling eyebrows, as he pushed himself angrily through the crowding men to the deck-rail.

"Can't help it if I have, Burroughs," retorted the autocrat of the river-boat. "These troopers are recruits for the North West Mounted Police——"

"The hell yeh say!"

Philip Danvers noted the unfriendly eye, and realized that this burly fellow dominated even the captain.

"Their passage was engaged three months ago," went on the officer.

"It's nothing to me," affirmed Burroughs, reddening in his effort to regain his surface amenity.

The young trooper, superintending the loading of the horses, resented the manifest unfriendliness toward the English recruits. A dreary rain added discomfort, and the passengers growled at the slow progress hitherto made against the spring floods of the turbulent Missouri and this prolonged delay at Bismarck.

As he went up the gang-plank and walked along the deck, bits of conversation came to him.

"He looks like an officer," said one, with a jerk of his thumb in his direction.

"An officer! Where? D'yeh mean the dark-haired one?" The voice was that of Burroughs again, and as Danvers met his insolent eye an instant antagonism flashed between the roughly dressed frontiersman and the lean-flanked, broad-shouldered English youth.

"Hello! 'F there ain't Toe String Joe!" continued Burroughs, recognizing the last to come on board, as the line was cast off and the steamer backed into the stream. "What you doin' here, Joe?"

"I met up with these here Britishers when they came in on the train from the East, an' I'm goin' t' enlist," admitted the shambling Joe, his breath confirming his appearance. "Where you been?"

"Back to the States to get my outfit. I'm goin' ter start in fer myself up to Fort Macleod. So you've decided to be a damned Britisher, eh?" Burroughs reverted to Joe's statement. "Yeh'll have to take the oath of allegiance fer three years of enlistment. Did yeh know that?" He closed one eye, as if speculating how this might further his own interests. "You'll make a fine police, Joe, you will!" he jeered in conclusion.

"You goin' to Fort Macleod?" questioned Joe. "You'll git no trade in Canada!"

"Don't yeh ever think it!" returned Burroughs, with a look that Danvers sub-consciously noted.

Beyond the crowd he saw a child, held by a man with a scarred face. His involuntary look of amazement changed the pensiveness of her delicate face to animation, and she returned his smile. This unexpected exchange of friendship restored his self-respect and his anger evaporated. He recalled the childhood spent in English lanes with his only sister. He beckoned enticingly, and soon she came near, shy and lovely.

"What's your name, little girl?"

"Winifred."

"That's a pretty name," said the young trooper. "Are you going to Fort Benton with your papa?"

"No. Papa's dead—and—mamma. That's my brother," indicating the man who had held her. "He came to get me. His name is Charlie."

"Dear little girl!" thought Philip Danvers, as the child ran to brotherly arms.

"Howdy!" Charlie gave unconventional greeting as he took a bench near by.

"I've been getting acquainted with your sister," explained the Englishman.

"Glad of it. Winnie's afraid of most o' the men, an' there aren't more'n three white women up the river. I've had to bring her back with me, and I don't know much about children. But there's one good old lady at Benton," the frontiersman proceeded, cheerfully. "She'll look after her. You see, I'm away most of the time. I'm a freighter between the head of navigation and the Whoop Up Country—Fort Macleod."

"Oh!"

"I got the contract to haul the supplies for the North West Mounted Police this spring. I'll be in Fort Macleod 'most as soon as you, I reckon. What is it, Winnie?" he questioned, as the child drew shrinking closer to him.

"I don't like that man," asserted Winifred, as Robert Burroughs passed.

"You mustn't say that, Winnie," reproved Charlie. "Burroughs"—addressing Philip—"Sweet Oil Bob, we call him, is goin' to start a new tradin' post at Macleod. He's clerked at Fort Benton till he knows more about the profits of an Injun tradin' post than any man on the river! Yeh'll likely see quite a little o' him. Most of the Canadian traders 'd rather he stayed this side o' the line."

"Surely there are other American traders in this Whoop Up Country, as you call it."

"Not so many—no. But Sweet Oil Bob is shrewd, an' the Canadians are afraid he'll get the biggest share o' the Injun trade. You know how it is."

Before Danvers could answer, his attention was caught by:

"The ambition of my life is to sit on the supreme bench of some State," spoken by a fair-haired young man as he passed with a taller, older one. "Montana will be a State, some day," the would-be judge went on, eagerly boyish.

"Hello, Doc," called Charlie, as he sighted the elder pedestrian. "Stop a minute."

Before the invitation was accepted the physician gave impetus to the other's desire.

"Hope your hopes, Latimer. Honorable and honest endeavor will reach the most exalted position." Then he put out his hand to the child, who clasped it affectionately.

"Well, Charlie," he smiled genially at the English lad as well as on his former river travelers. "How goes it?"

"All right," returned Charlie, amiably. "So Latimer wants to dabble in territorial politics, eh?"

"I didn't say so," flushed the embryonic lawyer. "I said I'd like to be a judge on the supreme bench, some day. I'm going to settle in Montana, and——"

"What do you think about politics?" suddenly quizzed Charlie, turning to Danvers.

"I'd not risk losing your friendship," smiled Philip, "by stating what an Englishman's opinion of American politics are."

"Better not," laughed the doctor, with a keen glance of appraisal.

"I'll admit they're rotten," Latimer hastened to add. "But I'd love to play the game. No political affiliations should bias my decision."

"Bet you'll be glad to get home, Doc." Charlie changed the subject, so foreign to his out-of-door interests. "You can't keep the doctor away from Fort Benton," he explained to the two strangers. "He thinks she's got a big future, don't you, Doc?"

"To be sure! To be sure!" corroborated the physician, as his arm went around the little girl. "Fort Benton will be a second St. Louis! Mark my words, Latimer." He turned to his companion, whose charm of manner appealed unconsciously to the reserved Danvers.

"I hope your predictions may prove correct, since I am to set up a law office there," replied Latimer. "And you?" He turned to include Philip Danvers in a smile which the lonely Englishman never forgot.

"He an' I 's for Fort Macleod," explained Scar Faced Charlie, before Philip could speak. These ready frontiersmen had a way of taking the words out of his mouth.

"He's for the Mounted Police, yeh know, an' I'm freightin' in the supplies. An' what d'yeh think, Doc? Toe String Joe says he's goin' to enlist when we get to Fort Benton. Burroughs won't mind havin' him in the Force."

"Isn't it unusual for Canadian troopers to come through the United States?" inquired Arthur Latimer.

This time it was the doctor who answered the question directed toward the silent Danvers.

"The first companies marched overland from Winnipeg two years ago, when the North West Mounted Police was organized, and a tough time they had. They were six months making it, what with hostile Indians and one thing and another, and at last they got lost in an awful snowstorm (winter set in early that year), and they nearly died of cold and starvation—most of their horses did. An Indian brought word to one of the trading posts. Remember that rescue, Charlie?" He turned for corroboration to the freighter, but continued, without waiting for an answer that was quite unnecessary to prod the reminiscent doctor.

"Fort Macleod is only two hundred miles north of Fort Benton," he concluded, "and I understand the recruits will hereafter be taken into the Whoop Up Country by way of the Missouri."

The blue eyes of the lawyer instinctively sought the dark ones of the young trooper in a bond of subtle feeling at this recital of pioneer life. It was all in the future for them.

"We came from Ottawa by rail to Bismarck," explained Danvers at the unspoken question, "and brought our horses."

"They are a civil force under military discipline," added the doctor to Latimer's questioning eyes.

As they talked, the steamboat came to a series of rapids, and Danvers and Latimer went to the prow to watch the warping of the boat over the obstruction. Burroughs stood near, and took no pains to lower his voice as he remarked to the mate: "Jes' watch my smoke. I'm goin' to twist the lion's tail."

"Meanin' the feller with the black hair?" The mate looked critically at Danvers. "Better leave him alone, Burroughs," he advised. "Yeh've been achin' to git at him ever since yeh set eyes on him. What's eatin' yeh?"

"Yeh talk too much with yer mouth," flung back Burroughs, as he moved toward the Englishman. "Ever been up the river before?" he demanded of Danvers.

"No." Philip barely glanced away from the lusty roustabouts working the donkey engines.

"Are yeh a 'non-com' or a commissioned officer?"

The young recruit turned stiffly, surprised at the persistence.

"Neither," he answered, laconically, returning to the survey of the swearing, sweating crew. Several bystanders laughed, and the mate remarked:

"You'll git nothin' outer that pilgrim that's enlightenin', Bob. He's too clost mouthed."

"Some say 'neether' an' some say 'nayther,' but 'nyther' is right," sneered Burroughs, "fer the Prince o' Wales says 'nyther.'"

Danvers, disdaining to notice the cheap wit, watched the brilliant sunshine struggling through the lessening rain as it danced from eddy to sand-bar, from rapids to half-submerged snags. The boiling river whitened as the steamboat labored to deeper water above the rapids. The islands, flushed with the fresh growth of a Northern spring, and the newly formed shore-line where the capricious Missouri had recently undermined a stretch of bank, gave character to the scene, as did the delicately virent leaves of swirling willow, quaking aspens and cottonwoods loosened from their place on shore to float in midstream.

A party of yelling Crees attracted their attention, and the stranger's indifference gave a combative twist to Burroughs' remark:

"Them's Canadian Injuns."

Something in his tone made the men draw nearer. Was it a sneer? A slur on all things English? A challenge to resent the statement, and resenting, to show one's mettle? Frontiersmen on the upper Missouri fought at a word in the early seventies. No need for cause. Men had been shot for less animus than Burroughs displayed.

"A fight?" asked Scar Faced Charlie, drawn from the cabin.

"No; a prayer-meeting," Toe String Joe gave facetious answer.

"Run back to our stateroom, Winnie," said Charlie, as he glanced at Burroughs' face. "What's the matter?" he inquired as she obeyed.

"Search me." Joe still acted as fourth dimension. "Bob and Danvers seem to hate each other on sight."

Burroughs moved nearer the quiet trooper.

"The Mounted Police think they're goin' to stop whiskey sellin' to the Injuns," he began. "But they can't. I know——" A meaning wink at his friends implied disloyalty even in the Force.

The baited youth faced the trader, his countenance darkening. But his hand unclasped as he started for the cabin with Latimer. Why notice this loud talk? Why debase himself by fighting this unknown bully? His bearing voiced his thoughts. The expectant crowd looked noncommittally at the tall smokestacks, at the snags. Burroughs laughed noisily.

"'The widdy at Windsor' 's got another pretty!" he taunted. Hate flared suddenly from his deep-set eyes; he could not have analyzed its cause. "Jes' cut loose from home an' mammy," he continued, intemperately. "Perhaps he's the queen's latest favorite, boys. We all know what women are!"

What was it? A crash of thunder? A living bolt of fire? Something threw the intervening men violently to the deck. The stripling who had accepted the traditional shilling brushed the crowd aside and knocked down the slanderer of all women—and of his queen!

"Take that back!" Philip breathed, not shouted, as one less angry might have done. "You will not? You shall!"

Burroughs sprang to his feet instantly and returned the blow valiantly. He did not draw his Colt's as frontiersmen were prone to do, for he thought that a knock-down fight would show that a man must not stand too much on dignity on the upper Missouri. Besides, the lad was English, therefore to be punished.

At once the trifling affair widened into a promiscuous scrimmage of recruits against civilians. In the excitement Winifred, frightened at the uproar, came searching for her brother, just as Danvers again delivered a blow that sent Burroughs reeling against the deck railing. It was not strong enough to withstand the collision and the aggressor in the fight barely kept his balance as the wood broke. But Winifred, pushed forward by the struggling men, clutched at the air and dropped into the whirling yellow river far below.

"My God!" groaned Charlie, springing after her. But his leap was preceded by that of Philip Danvers.

The alarm was given; the engines reversed. As the roustabouts jumped to lower the boats the men pressed forward, but the mate beat them back and got the crew to work.

Nowhere could the soft curls be seen. Charlie, nearly drawn into the revolving paddles, was taken into the boat. Presently the watchers saw Winifred's little red dress caught on an uprooted sapling. Tree and child were in the center of the current. While so much debris stayed near the shore or drifted on the shallow sand-bars, this one tree with its human freight hurried on.

"Save her! Save her!" sobbed Scar Faced Charlie, kept by force from jumping again into the stream. "Let me go!" he roared.

"No, Charlie," said the mate firmly. "We're goin' to pick up yer sister an' Danvers. No need fer yeh to risk yer life again. That English lad is goin' to turn the trick."

Philip swam on, strongly, while vociferous ejaculations reached him.

"That feller's got sand!" he heard Joe say, as he dexterously avoided a whirlpool and dodged a snag.

"He's a fool!"

"He'll drown, an' the girl, too!"

"It's caught—he'll overtake her!"

A devilfish-like snag held tree and burden. With a burst of speed Philip swam alongside. Winifred? Thank God! Still alive, although unconscious; face white, eyes closed. As he grasped her, her eyes opened.

After the excitement, the shouts and the cursings, the crashing of wood and the fighting, quiet reigned on the Far West.

Robert Burroughs, sitting in the long northern twilight, rubbed his sore muscles while Scar Faced Charlie and the doctor paced the deck.

"Danvers did a big thing. He saved my sister's life. I'll never forget it. If the time ever comes I'll do as much for him," declared Charlie.

"Perhaps you may," mused the doctor. "We can never tell what the future holds. Perhaps you'll not save his life, but life isn't everything. He may ask you to do something that you won't want to do."

The grating of the steamer on a sand-bar interrupted him.

Brought into high relief by the rising moon, the lead-man stationed forward called:

"Four feet scant—four feet—by the lead five n' a half! No bottom!" Then came:

"Three—t-h-r-e-e—f-e-e-t—scant!" Again the boat scraped the sand.

As the pilot shouted down the tube to the engineers to pile on more steam Charlie reverted to the rescue.

"Danvers looked pretty well used up when he was brought aboard. But darned if he yipped. He was all for lookin' after Winnie."

"I like the lad," nodded the doctor approvingly. "He has the gift of silence. Shakespeare says: 'Give thy thoughts no tongue.'"

In their next turn they saw Burroughs.

"It'll never do for you to locate at Macleod, Bob, 'f you're goin' to aggravate every recruit you don't happen to like," suggested Charlie, with the privilege of friendship.

"I was a fool!" Burroughs confessed. "But somehow that youngster——"

"You an' he'll always be like two bull buffalo in a herd," said Charlie, wisely.

"I'll do him yet," snarled Burroughs, as he rose to go to the cabin.

The passengers on the Far West rose early. Danvers stood watching the slow sun uplift from the gently undulating prairie. He threw back his head, his lungs expanded as though he could not get enough of the air. He did not know why, but he suddenly felt himself a part of the country—felt that this great, open country was his. The banks of the Missouri were not high and he had an unobstructed view of the vast, grassy sea rolling uncounted miles away to where the sky came down to the edge of the world.

The song of the meadow lark, sweet and incessant as it balanced on a rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects; the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight, rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed, green-grassed land. The blue-green of the ocean had not so fascinated as the mysticism of this broad view. He was glad to be alive, and anxious to be in the riot of life on the plains, where trappers, traders and soldiers moved in the strenuous game of making a new world.

His abounding vitality had recouped itself after the strain of yesterday and he forgot its unpleasantness in the glorious morning; yet at the sight of Burroughs coming from his cabin, the sunlight dulled and involuntarily he felt himself grow tense.

"I didn't mean a damn thing," began Burroughs awkwardly.

"That's all right," broke in Philip, as uncomfortable as the other.

Just then the doctor, with Joe and Charlie, came on the upper deck.

"What 'd I tell you, Charlie?" triumphantly asked the physician, as he saw the trader and trooper shaking hands.

"What 'd you tell us?" repeated the man with the scarred face, in doubt, as Burroughs moved away and Danvers turned toward the prow of the boat staring, with eyes that saw not, into the western unknown.

"Didn't I tell you that Bob would do the right thing?" asked the charitable surgeon impatiently, unconscious that he had voiced no such sentiment.

The three looked at the river and at the long lances of light streaming from the East, then at the English youth, abstracted, aloof.

"Perhaps yeh did," assented Joe, easily. "But I know one thing. It'll stick in Bob's crop that he craw-fished——." A nod indicated his meaning. "Somehow Danvers strikes me as a stuck-up Britisher."

"A man shouldn't be damned for his look or his manner," exploded the doctor, although he recognized the truth of the criticism. "He's young and self-conscious. A year or two in the Whoop Up Country will season him and be the making of him."

"He'll not always stay in the Whoop Up Country," Charlie said, presciently. "I wish I could do something for him," he added. "He'll make his mark—somehow—somewhere."

"Prophesying, eh?" smiled the doctor. "All right; we'll see."

The light-draft, flat-bottomed Far West made slow progress. The dead and broken snags, the "sawyers" of river parlance, fast in the sand-bars, seemed waiting to impale the steamboat. The lead-man called unceasingly from his position. One bluff yielded to another, a flat succeeded to a grove where wild roses burst into riotous bloom, and over all lay the enchantment of the gay, palpitant, young summer.

The journey was monotonous until, with a bend of the river, they sighted another steamer, the Fontenelle, stuck fast on Spread Eagle Bar—the worst bar of the Missouri. Among the passengers at the rail Philip Danvers saw—could it be? a woman—a white woman, young and beautiful. What could be her mission in that far country which seemed so vast to the young Englishman that each day's journey put years of civilization behind him?

The girl on the Fontenelle was evidently enjoying the situation, and Danvers discovered at once that she was holding court on her own boat as well as commanding tribute from the Far West. The men about him stared eagerly at the slender, imperious figure, while Burroughs procured a glass from the mate and feasted his eyes.

"I'm goin' to see her at closer range," he declared, and soon had persuaded the captain to let him have a rowboat.

Philip and Latimer, by this time good friends, watched the trader go on board and disappear into the cabin.

"The nerve of that man amazes me!" declared Latimer. "What can he be thinking of?"

"Of the girl, and the first chance at Fort Benton!" answered the doctor, who joined the two in time to catch the remark. "If you'd known Bob Burroughs as long as I have at Fort Benton, you wouldn't be surprised at anything. He's determined to win, wherever you put him, and he'll make money easy enough."

"But his eagerness and offensiveness——" began Danvers.

"It isn't so much ignorance," explained the doctor, always ready to give credit wherever due. "He can talk English well enough when he thinks there is any occasion. He's one of the self-made sort, you know. But he doesn't estimate men correctly—puts them all a little too low—and that's where he's going to lose the game."

When Burroughs came back he was met with a fusillade of questions.

"Who is she, Bob?"

"Major Thornhill's daughter, Eva Thornhill."

"Didn't know he had a daughter," quoth Joe. "He never tol' me——"

This created a laugh, as Joe meant it should.

"The major hasn't been so social since he was stationed at Fort Benton, as to tell us his family affairs," reminded Charlie.

"Bob's thinkin' o' that girl," surmised the mate, openly, as Burroughs looked longingly toward the Fontenelle.

The boats, obstructed by the bar, were delayed the better part of two days, and came to feel quite neighborly. The enamoured Burroughs made another call, but he came back with a grievance.

"She wanted to know who the fellow was with the complexion like a girl's. I told her that if she meant Danvers," here he turned toward the object of his comment, "that he was nothin' but a private in the Canadian North West Mounted Police. She wasn't interested then," maliciously.

"Army girls don't look at anything under a lieutenant, you bet!" seconded Toe String Joe. "She probably won't even take any notice of me!"

"She'd heard, through the captain, about the 'hero' who saved Charlie's sister, and she wanted to know all about it," sneered Burroughs.

"Did you tell her how the railin' happened to break?" insinuated Charlie.

Philip Danvers remembered the fling. However, what did it matter what Miss Thornhill thought of him or his position? He would probably never meet her. Yet as the Far West followed the Fontenelle up the river, he watched the girl's face turned, seemingly, toward him; and as the first steamer disappeared around a bend, the alluring eyes seemed like will-o'-the-wisps drawing him on. As he turned, other eyes, soft and affectionate, were upraised to his, and a child's hand crept into his with mute sympathy.

And thus by following the endless turn and twist of the erratic Missouri; warping over rapids and sticking on sand-bars; running by banks undermined by the flood; shaving here a shore and hugging there a bar; after the tie-ups to clean the boilers, or to get wood, or to wait for the high winds to abate; after perils by water and danger from roving Indians, the Far West swung around the last curve of the river and behold—Fort Benton. The passengers cheered; the crowds on the levees answered, while fluttering flags blossomed from boat and adobe fort and trading posts as wild roses blossom in spring.

"Whew!" whistled the doctor, wiping his forehead as he joined Philip and Latimer on the prow of the steamer. "It's warm. Here we are, at last. I wish," turning to Danvers, "that you were going to stay here. Latimer and I will miss you."

"Indeed we shall!" echoed the young lawyer. "Here we've just gotten to be friends and you must leave us. But you must write, old boy, and if I don't make a success of the law business at Fort Benton, I'll run up to Fort Macleod and make you a visit, while I look over the situation."

The Americanism of the phrase "law business" struck oddly on British ears, as lacking in dignity. Philip thought of "doctor business," "artist business," and wondered if Americans spoke thus of all professions. Latimer changed the subject.

"Is this all there is to Fort Benton?" with a wave of his hand.

"Sure," answered the doctor, offended, "what did you expect—a St. Louis?"

"N-o," hesitated the lawyer, divided between a desire to gird at the doctor, or to soothe his civic pride. "But I'll confess I expected a town somewhat larger, for the port of entry of the territory of Montana."

"Thirty years from now Fort Benton will be a second St. Louis," affirmed the doctor, oracularly. "The river traffic will be enormous by that time."

The physician's faith in the ultimate settlement of the Northwest and Fort Benton's consequent growth was shared, Danvers knew, by many another enthusiast; but as he looked back, mentally, over the lonely, wind-swept miles through which the Missouri flowed, uninhabited save by a few adventurers, trappers and Indians, the prediction seemed preposterous.

"So the town looks small to you, eh?" asked the doctor, returning to Latimer's comment. "But let me tell you, Fort Benton does the business! Our boats bring in the year's supply for the mining camps, for the Indian agencies, for the military posts and for the Canadian Mounted Police. No other town in the West has its future."

The three were silent for a time. The little town was very attractive, nestling in the bend of the Missouri and protected by the bluffs in their springtime tints.

Several stern-wheelers, many mackinaws, and smaller boats lay along the water front.

The Fontenelle, first to arrive, was discharging her cargo. Danvers, boy-like, took a certain pride in knowing that even the Canadians, through the establishment of the North West Mounted Police and their immediate needs, were adding to the prosperity of this Northwestern center. Much sectional talk among the passengers had strengthened his opinion that Americans were unfair and unjust to their brothers of a common language, though when it came to business, he noticed that the loudest talkers were the most anxious to secure Canadian trade.

The longer Philip looked at Fort Benton the more he was attracted. Decisions about places are as intuitive as convictions about people. One place is liked, another disliked, and no logical reason can be given for either. Fort Benton, that blue and golden day, touched his heart so deeply that the sentiment never left him. Others might see only a raw, rough frontier trading post; but for the trooper, the glamour of the West was mingled with the faint, curling smoke dissolving into the clear atmosphere. He had been right in his strong impulse to cross the seas! Never had he been more sure.

By this time the steamer had cautiously nosed its way to its moorings and tied up to a snubbing post. An officer from Fort Macleod came on board to look after his recruits, and in the bustle of landing Philip saw Scar Faced Charlie and little Winifred but a moment. Soon the doctor and Latimer disappeared around the end of a long warehouse on their way to the hotel, after a promise to look him up on the morrow.

The captain was ordering his men, and presently Burroughs sauntered near.

"Well, here we are! I wonder 'f I'll see Miss Thornhill again?" As Danvers made no reply. Burroughs smiled heavily. "I'll see yeh agin. Likely I'll pull m' freight soon after you do and we'll meet at Macleod."

"G'bow thar! ye cussed, Texas horned toad! Haw, thar! ye bull-headed son of a gun, pull ahead! Whoa! Haw! Ye long-horned, mackerel-back cross between a shanghai rooster an' a mud-hen, I'll skin ye alive in about a minute!" The pop of a bull-whip followed like a pistol shot.

These vibrating adjurations, rending the balmy Sunday air, would have amazed and shocked the citizens of a more cultured community, but served in Fort Benton merely to start Scar Faced Charlie's bull-team, loaded almost beyond hauling.

Charlie's shouts, delivered in the vernacular which he avoided when his small kin was near, waked Philip Danvers, and soon he was outside the walls of the 'dobe fort which Major Thornhill had courteously placed at the service of the Canadian officer and his recruits. He called to the driver and fell into step beside the bull-team heading for the western bluffs, while the bull-whacker told him that little Winifred was being cared for by "a real nice old lady."

As he returned to town, after a pleasant good-by, he turned more than once to note the slow, swinging plod of the bulls. Finally he walked more briskly, and, finding the doctor and Latimer, they sought the levees, where the bustle and hustle of the frontier town were most apparent. Early as it was, the river-front was thronged with river-men, American and English soldiers; traders, busy, preoccupied and alert; clerks, examining and checking off goods; bull-whackers and mule-skinners; wolfers and trappers, half-breeds and Indians, gamblers and squaws—all constantly shifting and reforming into kaleidoscopic groups and jovial comradeship.

Everywhere he encountered the covert hostility toward the English, but it was not until late in the afternoon that it became openly manifest.

"Hi there!" a staggering man hiccoughed as he turned to follow Philip and his American friends.

"Go slow, so's folks c'n take yeh in. I'm goin' to kick yeh off'n the face of the earth," he continued, prodding uncertainly at Danvers. "Stop, I tell yeh! Why do I want yeh to walk slow? 'Cos (hic) I want to wipe the road up with yer English hide. Yeh think yeh're all ri', but yeh ain't. Yeh look's if yeh owned the town, an' yeh're walk's convincin', yeh——"

"That's Wild Cat Bill," said the kindly man of drugs, seeking to remove the sting whose effect Danvers only partially succeeded in concealing, as they outdistanced the drunken man. "He's ostensibly a wolfer, a man who kills wolves by scattering poisoned buffalo meat on the prairies in winter, you know," he interjected, "and then makes his rounds later to gather up the dead wolves which have feasted not wisely, but too well. He's a great friend of Sweet Oil Bob's."

Before Danvers had time to speak they passed Burroughs in close conversation with Toe String Joe.

"Those three! Bob and Joe and Bill!" snorted the doctor contemptuously. "You'll likely see considerable of Bob's friends if he goes to Macleod. He might be 'most anything he liked—he's clever enough, but unscrupulous. He's crafty enough to get the most of his work done by his confreres. He can speak English as well as I can, but he thinks bad grammar will give him a stand-in with the frontiersmen. And it's easy for a man to live on a lower level. He'll be sorry some day to find himself out of practice, when the right girl comes along."

"Here he comes—he's behind us," warned Latimer.

As Burroughs passed them he threw a glance of triumph that was unexplainable until a corner turned brought to view Major Thornhill, also walking abroad, accompanied by his daughter. Burroughs, smooth, ingratiating, joined them as if by appointment.

After Philip retired that night the monotone of the soldiers' talk merged into confused and indistinct recollections of his first Sunday at Fort Benton. Eva Thornhill's scornful yet inviting face seemed drawing him through deep waters, to be replaced by the face of the child Winifred, terror-stricken as when she was in the river. Then came the memory of the even-song at home, threading its sweetly haunting way through the wild shouts of a frontier town that continued joyously its night of revelry, until, at last, he fell asleep.