Читать книгу Downey of the Mounted - James B. Hendryx - Страница 13

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“I, Cameron Downey, solemnly swear that I will faithfully, diligently, and impartially execute and perform the duties required of me as a member of the Royal North-West Mounted Police Force, and will well and truly obey and perform all lawful orders and instructions which I shall receive as such, without fear, favour, or affection of or toward any person. So help me, God.”

GRAVELY and solemnly young Cameron Downey repeated the words that inducted him into the Service. A silence followed, broken by the voice of the Commissioner: “It has given me unusual pleasure to administer this oath. The name of Cameron Downey is no new name to me. For many years I have known your grandfather as one of the best men in the North. Your name appears with credit in Sergeant Costello’s report of the capture of the Yorkton bank robbers, some seven years ago. And, in the matter of application, Inspector Costello has referred to you in the highest terms, as have the president of the bank and others of your townspeople. Experience has taught me that native blood in men, and horses, and dogs has a marked advantage over imported blood. There will be times when the demands of duty will call forth every atom of your strength—mental, moral, and physical—and the man who builds up a reserve of strength, is the man who goes to the top.”

Two hours later, spick and span in his new uniform, “Regimental Number 0750, Cameron Downey,” as he was entered upon the records, reported for duty in the “awkward squad,” the youngest and the proudest recruit of them all.

Thanks to a high order of intelligence, an insatiable ambition to learn, and the fragmentary, but efficient coaching of Sergeant (now Inspector) Costello during the years that had elapsed since the Yorkton incident, young Downey easily outstripped the other recruits, who were satisfied to absorb what they might of police education through the regular channels of drill, lectures, and practice of the regular curriculum.

There was much to learn. Cavalry drill of high order, care of horses and dogs in health and in sickness, carbine and revolver practice, instruction in the duties of constables, in the Criminal Code procedure, the laws of the different Provinces, cooking, first aid, and a thousand and one tricks of the trail and bits of information that make for the efficient policing of a rapidly developing frontier.

Cameron Downey was learning his trade.

Proficiency in the saddle worked him rapidly into Number One Ride, and his scores with carbine and revolver won the appreciation of his superiors. “Likeliest lad in the bunch,” observed Inspector Church one day to the Commissioner as the two watched Number One Ride conclude its drill.

“You mean?”

“Young Downey. Make a good man if he don’t get spoiled. The boys all like him, too—all but——”

“Grandson of old Cameron Downey of Fort Chipewyan. That breed won’t spoil. You were saying the men all like him except——?”

“Number 0687, Crossley. Been in the awkward squad longer than any of ’em. No. Crossley don’t like him.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I’d noticed it when they were in the awkward together—nothing I could lay hold of. Just now and then a little sly thing, but, I noticed. Then, a couple of weeks ago I happened to be passing through the stables just before inspection. Downey was putting a velvet finish on his mount. Shortly afterward, I stood near the stable door, and, inside, I heard someone accuse someone of befouling his horse. The voice was quiet and low—but, the words bit like a steel point drill. Then the other voice, sneering, it was, and thick, gave him the lie, and an obscene name thrown in. There wasn’t anything else said, but there were some funny sounds——”

“Funny sounds, Inspector?”

“Yes, sir, that is, they sounded funny to me. Sort of like this,” he paused and smote, in rapid staccato, his open palm with his fist—“and the sounds were sort of mixed with other sounds—like quick breathing, and a heavy grunt or two, and then a sound sort of between a howl and a yelp, and a sound like someone had dropped a sack of oats on the floor. It was inspection time, and I moved on. A little later when they showed up for drill, I noticed a dampish stain on the flank of Downey’s mount, and Crossley worried through the drill with one eye swelled shut and sort of turning black.”

“You mean, young Downey attacked him?” The Commissioner’s voice was stern, though possibly his lips trembled ever so slightly at the corners, as his keen eyes searched the Inspector’s face. It is also possible that the lid of the Inspector’s left eye flickered ever so lightly as he replied: “I couldn’t say, sir. I really couldn’t say.”

A full year’s instruction would seem a short time indeed to turn out an officer competent to perform the duties of a constable of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, when one considers that this mere handful of men efficiently police a territory reaching from Hudson Bay to the Alaskan frontier, and from the international boundary to the shores of the Arctic, and beyond;—considers also that the provinces are rapidly being settled by a heterogeneous hodge-podge of aliens, good, bad, and worse; and that the vast northern reach of this territory is thinly peopled by savages, Indian, and Eskimo, who understand no word of the white man’s tongue, and have no comprehension of his laws. And yet, a constable, whose duties involve from time to time those of cavalryman, sheriff, attorney, coroner, surgeon, veterinarian, detective, scout, and explorer, is fortunate if he gets six months’ instruction before assuming his active duty! Truly, a marvelous performance, and doubly so when one considers that from the very nature of these duties, the constable is thrown a great deal of the time upon his own initiative, far removed from the advice and counsel of his superiors. Yet, year by year the feat is accomplished. Year by year a squad of capable and efficient young men go into the North to take the place of the squad of capable and efficient old men whose work is behind them. And, year by year the morale, the esprit de corps, remains at the same high level that has marked the force from its inception.

Cameron Downey spent four months at Regina barracks. Then, one autumn day, he returned from his Saturday ride across the golden prairie, to find orders awaiting him to report for duty at Prince Albert.

It was with beating heart and high resolve that, a few hours later, with his neatly packed kit beside him, he settled back in his seat in the car and watched the lights of Regina twinkle and fade in the distance. It was the day he had looked forward to for—years and years. He was a full-fledged policeman, now—the rest had been merely a matter of schooling. The lights of Regina disappeared, and save for the tiny flash from an occasional settler’s shanty, the world into which his train was rushing was a mysterious black void. Vaguely, the boy wondered what of life the black void held for him.

His thoughts drifted backward, touching the highlights of his life. It seemed a long, long time ago—that moonlight night beside the old Johnson ford, and the two weeks’ camping trip that followed. And, a long time ago, that day when the whole town turned out to pay its last respects to his mother. He was sixteen, then, and never to his dying day will he forget that ride in the carriage with his father and the minister. The first carriage behind the hearse, it was, and a grim and silent ride. He remembered watching the long line of carriages and buggies, and wagons—even a sulky or two, as they slowly turned the corner at the foot of the hill. Every wheeled vehicle in the town had been pressed into service, for the wife of Angus Downey had been beloved by the entire community. Even old Doug Campbell, the drunken drayman, was there—his superannuated roan pony and skinny white mule, hitched to the lopsided dray, brought up the rear of the long procession. It was Doug whose voice, thick and shaken with animal-like sobs, had broken in on the words of the minister as the body was being lowered into the grave: “God ha’ mercy—a gude woman, theer—” and was escorted out of earshot by some of the men, followed by the glares of the scandalized community.

There were no highlights on the next three years, during which he stuck grimly to the store, working like a slave with never a word of commendation or comment from his father. For, after the death of his wife, Angus Downey relapsed into a dour silence that was broken only by the necessary conversation of business. “Stingy with his words as he is with his pennies,” some one had said—and spoke truly.

Then came that other day, when he and the minister rode once again to the cemetery in the carriage. The body of Angus Downey was in the hearse ahead, and, following the carriage was one other vehicle—a three-seated spring wagon in which rode the pall-bearers. At the corner, the minister noted that the boy’s eyes turned back, as they had turned that other day to watch the long procession. “ ’Tis cauld an’ raw, an’ muddy,” he observed. “Folks fear the lung fever.”

Cammie nodded. He remembered that that other day had been colder and muddier.

At the grave, the minister preached at length concerning the extreme improbability of a rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven. The Downey will, opened the day previous, had, it seems, made no provision for the church. The March wind soughed and swirled among the rattling branches of the cottonwood trees, the voice of the preacher droned on, Cammie, collar upturned and hands deep in pockets, made patterns in the mud with his new rubbers, and the pall-bearers, collars upturned and hands deep in pockets, watched two coyotes caper on a distant skyline.

At last, the ordeal was over and the vehicles headed for town, the horses’ feet making dismal sucking sounds, and the wheels dropping into chuck holes to rise jerkily, shedding great chunks of mud from their spokes and felloes. It was a dreary ride, during the course of which the minister made several pointed offers to accept a large donation in behalf of his work, while Cameron answered nothing, but stared out across the sodden prairie, his eyes on the Touchwood Hills.

He remembered that life had seemed a drab thing as his glance shifted from the hills to the ugly little town with its mud-churned streets and its wooden buildings huddled in the middle of the ugly prairie, beside the parallel rails that narrowed and disappeared in the distance. He hated the town. He didn’t want to go back to the store. For three days the door had been locked. Idly he had turned the key over and over in his pocket. He would like to drop the key into the mud and never, never unlock that door again. He didn’t want to go back to the house across the street, where he knew the widow MacFarlane, who had kept house for them since the death of his mother, would be waiting to recount, gasp by gasp, the last illness of his father, his mother, her own two lamented husbands, and a goodly spattering of a defunct progeny. He didn’t like Mrs. MacFarlane. He didn’t want to hear Mrs. MacFarlane talk—about anything. He would get rid of Mrs. MacFarlane and do his own cooking, and make his own bed, and sweep the floors, and——

Then, the carriage stopped in front of the livery stable, and he stepped out to find Banker Warring waiting for him on the sidewalk. Banker Warring had been one of the pall-bearers, and, as the boy reached his side, the man linked his arm through his and led the way to the bank. It was after hours, and, unlocking the door, he took the boy into his private office. “Take off your coat an’ sit down. That raw wind sure does get to a man’s bones. Mama wants I should bring you home to supper this evenin’, but it’s early yet, an’ I didn’t know but what there’d be some things we could kind of talk over together. Mind you, I don’t want to pry into your affairs. It’s none of my business, an’ I won’t get mad if you tell me so. But, the fact is, you’re on your own, now, as they say. I know Angus wasn’t much of a hand to talk an’ maybe you an’ him hadn’t sort of planned things out—for the future, I mean.”

The boy shook his head: “No,” he answered. “We hardly ever talked about—anything.”

For an hour or more they talked, and then the boy accompanied the banker home to supper. Next morning he opened the store as usual, and, during the next three years, he operated the establishment, first with the aid of one clerk, then two, then three, and in those three years made more money than had his father in the ten years preceding. Then he sold out to Bjone, banked his money with Mr. Warring, and, on his twenty-second birthday, showed up at Regina barracks.

Thus, the sequence of events that had shaped his life arranged itself in the boy’s mind as the train roared through the darkness. And, now, he was actually reporting for duty! He took out his manual and began to read. He almost knew it by heart and as his eyes traveled the familiar pages, he heard scraps of conversation from across the aisle where a drummer and a man, evidently a ranchman, were seated together: “——finest outfit of police in the hull world——” “But, he’s just a kid——” “Huh—kid, eh! If you know’d ’em like I do, you’d ruther have a hull regiment of soldiers after you than that one kid. They work mostly alone—an one’s enough. The worst desperado in the world looks jest the same to ’em as an old lady with a lap full of knittin’. Them boys goes out an’ gets their men every time, an’ don’t you fergit it! I’ll tell you, mister, them red coats means somethin’!” The train stopped, the rancher got off, and with a vast pride in his heart, the boy read on, and on, aware, now and then, of the interested glance of the drummer.