Читать книгу All Else Is Folly - Peregrine Acland - Страница 13

Out in western Canada, in the days before the war, there was no sweeter sound to Falcon than the music made by twenty score of horses’ hooves as they rhythmically thudded on the soft and sandy soil. Then he, rising and falling in his saddle as he rode behind the horses, would swirl his long lass’ rope until the knotted end flicked the rearmost of those rounded rumps and stung them to a good, sharp trot. Day after day they trotted, a long line of horses following the wagons as these moved about on the roundup … day after day under blue skies and a sun that scorched even Falcon’s leathery face as he, rising and falling in his saddle, sniffed the smell of hot saddle-leather … while the white dust that was kicked up by the horses choked his nostrils.

Often they passed old, dried-up buffalo-wallows, and he thought of the age that had passed. And sometimes he saw far off, the slowly rising arms of the big black cranes that were working on the irrigation ditch that would one day run right through the middle of the ranch and that would turn that quarter of a million acres of yellow grass and grey alkali into a thousand farms where binders would clack through the tall wheat. And he thought of the age that was passing.…

It made him sad, with the sort of sadness that a young man feels who is so strong and so healthy that he is sorry for all things that aren’t as live and vigorous as he. It was good, riding there, to feel the pony pulsing hard between his knees…. It was good, swinging his rope.… It was good, as the twilight fell on the endless yellow meadows, to drive the long string of horses down some narrow trail that wound through a rocky coulee, down to the broad, brown sweep of the river … a long line of horses trotting to the tinkle of the lead-horse’s bell.

The ranch where Falcon was wrangling horses, that summer when the war broke out, was in Southern Alberta, just north of the little cow-town of Whoopee. Falcon was in Whoopee the night when he heard about the war.

The town was a long street of wooden houses that looked like giant packing boxes tumbled out in a row. The packing-boxes faced on the rusted rails of a bankrupt railroad — one of those monuments to private enterprise which embody a long tale of courage, initiative and graft.

While it was unquestionable that no action in the life of that railroad so befitted it as its death, nevertheless, even as the worst scoundrel may leave a sorely bereaved widow who weeps for her lost supporter, so the defunct railroad left a sorely bereaved town. The “City of Whoopee,” as it dared to call itself in the too early day of its glory, was cut off from the outside world when the last train puffed away down the tracks of the Whoopee and Big Jaw Railroad. With the railroad went the telegraph operator. Telephones were a luxury as yet unknown even to the most opulent citizen of Whoopee. And with the decline of transportation and communication came the collapse of industry and commerce.

Half the packing boxes were empty on this particular evening. Yet although the town was — or at least at the time seemed — moribund, there was one institution in it that was not merely an unconscionable time a-dying, but that still showed signs of a robustious activity. This institution could be found — and regularly was found every evening by visitors from the neighbouring ranches — beneath a sign which read:

“HOTEL WHOOPEE — MIKE MURPHY, PROP.”

On this August evening, as the sun plunged its bloated purple face into the coolness of night, there came billowing through the half-open windows of the hotel barroom the singing of a harsh-voiced chorus that rose up, at the end of each verse, to a shout.

* * *

As he lay, helpless, with his back on the bar-room floor, Alexander Falcon damned the face that grinned drunkenly down at him. He damned the reek of whisky which that face, barely twelve inches above his own, breathed into his nostrils. He damned the great hands that held down his shoulders. He damned, with the most extravagant flourishes of his imagination, the knee that dug into the pit of his stomach.

He damned loud. He damned long. And as he cursed, he laughed.

Tum-tum-tumtitum.… Tum-tum-tumtitum.

The beating on the wood floor hammered in his ears.

“The harlots of Jerusalem — the harlots of Jerusalem.”

A score of voices bellowed to the stamping of their heels. Drunken heels. Spurred heels. Stamping on the floor. Up the room and down again. Across the room and back again. All around the bar-room floor.…

Tum-tum-tumtitum.… Tum-tum-tumtitum.

“The harlots of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

The harlots of Jerusalem — the pride of all the na — tions.”

Falcon had a thought; an inspiration. His right leg was free. He lifted his spurred right heel. Swiftly, firmly, hard, he drove the spur into his enemy’s rump.

Rage, anguish, bellowed from the face above. One of the ham-like hands that held Falcon’s shoulders sprang back to console the injured buttock.

Falcon wrenched himself free, leaped to his feet.

“Blast you, Alec!” the other roared as he, too, struggled up. “I’ll rub your nose in the dirt for that. You bastard! You ripped the seat out of my pants.”

Cud Browne, the big bronc’ twister, laughed as he thundered. Laughed at his own plight. A bare-seated Berseker going into battle.

He lunged at Falcon.

But young Falcon, fresh from college in the East, had learned his rough-and-tumble in better places than bar-rooms.

As Cud Browne hurled himself at him, Falcon swung his body from the waist to one side. Left one leg in Cud’s way. Caught him by the back of the shoulders as he stumbled by like a mad bull. Swung him over his hip to the floor.

The cowboys stopped their square dance to cheer.

Falcon stopped scrapping to bow.

One moment too long.

Heels over head he went, back to the floor.

“Cowboys in town! Yip! Yip!” chortled Browne as he bounced his bare buttocks on Falcon’s belly.

“Ugh! Ugh!” grunted Alec.

With Browne’s hand gripping his nose, rubbing the back of his head in a beer puddle, Alexander Falcon meditated on the vanity of lust for adventure. Why wasn’t he at this moment at home, sitting in a large leather chair in a cool corner of his father’s library in the East, reading about the lovers of Oraly in George Moore’s “Memoirs of My Dead Life,” instead of …

“Have a heart, Cud,” he protested.

Cud said:

“You gotta buy me a new pair of pants.”

Before Falcon could promise anything, they were startled by the sound of hoof-beats. Not on the ground outside. On the floor. It must be somewhere on the floor of that one-story building. It seemed in their very ears.

Then came shouts.

A tremendous sound of ripping and tearing.

A colossal crash.

The floor on which they lay heaved.

More shouts.

The frightened whinnying of a horse.

Still more uproarious shouting.

Then —

Crack — crack — crack!

Above all the stupendous hubbub a forty-five barked out.

One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — eight shots.

It must be a pair of forty-fives talking closely together.

Now, the sound of one man cheering!

The two wrestlers disentangled themselves, leaped to their feet. The other cowboys were crowding pell-mell out of the bar-room, like a mob of steers trying to squeeze through the gate of a corral. Falcon and Cud Browne followed after. All were heading for the main hall of the hotel, towards the shouting and the shooting.

As Falcon jostled with the others, pushing through the long, dark corridor that led from the barroom to the main hall, he was able to distinguish the cries that alternated with the shots.

“More like Texas every day!”

Crack!

“Cowboys in town!”

Bang!

“More like Texas every day!”

Crack!

Browne said: “That’s Gyp Callahan shouting. What put him on the war-path?”

But as the crowd of cowboys burst into the main hall, they, for a moment, could see no sign of Callahan.

Before them stood only the red-faced, furious hotel proprietor.

“Hey, Murphy, what have you done to Callahan?” Cud Browne, at the back, shouted threateningly over the heads of the cowboys as he shoved his way forward.

“What have I done to Callahan?” Murphy, the red-faced hotel proprietor, stuttered with rage. “What has Callahan done to me?”

Then Falcon and Browne, breaking through to the front of the crowd, saw Callahan … all that was left of him.

In the centre, not of the floor but of an enormous hole in the middle of the floor, was the head of Callahan.

A yard in front was the head of his horse.

“More like Texas every day!” roared the head of Callahan.

Click! click! went his now empty forty-fives as he aimed them at the ceiling.

A door slammed. Spurs jingled. A voice thundered:

“Who’s been doing all this shooting?”

The cowboys turned their heads. A tall constable of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police had just closed the main door of the hotel behind him.

“Constable Brazenose,” whispered Cud Browne to Falcon.

Falcon looked at Constable Brazenose. He thought he had seen him before, a month ago. Eagle nose, spaniel eyes, and a most magnificent moustache, double corkscrewed, so that each end of it described a complete circle before shooting off into a formidable waxed point. Both his moustachios and his eyebrows were of that distinguished but rarely encountered colour — jet black. Last time Falcon had seen Constable Brazenose, those moustachios and eyebrows had been a comfortable, everyday brown.

“What is he like?” whispered Falcon.

“We call him ‘Wild Willie,’” said Browne.

“This fellow Callahan ought to be placed under arrest.” Murphy, the red-faced hotel proprietor, talked loud and fast to the constable. “He rode his horse right into my hotel — right through the doorway there …”

“More like Texas every day!” shouted the bleary-eyed Callahan.

“Shut up, will you? You’re going to be put where you won’t talk so much,” shouted Murphy. Then, turning again to the policeman: “This new pine flooring was never meant to bear the weight of horses. You can see for yourself what a mess he’s made. Crashed right through into my cellar.…”

“More like Texas every day!” thundered Callahan.

“And then, look at those holes he shot in the roof. He ought to know he can’t get away with that stuff up here in Alberta …”

“More like Tex —”

“Callahan!” Constable Brazenose addressed the head that stuck out of the floor, “I’ll have to arrest you on three charges.”

Cud Browne shoved himself in front of the constable. “What’s that about arresting Callahan?”

The constable glared at Browne. “What business is that of yours?”

“It’s the business of all of us.” The bronc’ twister waved his hand towards the other cowboys. “We’re all in the same party — crew of the Bar Ninety-Nine. Having a little drink.”

“I don’t mind your having a little drink,” cut in Murphy, “but …”

“No, I guess you don’t mind our having a little drink,” snorted Browne. “That’s where your profit comes in. Have you figured, Mister Murphy, what will happen to you and to your hotel if you have Callahan arrested?”

“What do you mean?” asked Brazenose boldly.

Cud Browne stepped closer, smiled into Brazenose’s face.

“I mean,” he said quietly, “you’d better forget about arresting Callahan. You’d better come along and have a little drink.”

“I’m not afraid of Callahan,” blustered Brazenose.

“No? We all know you, Wild Willie. Reg’lar hellraiser, ain’t you? If you gotta fight, try me.… Just a few friendly wallops,” Browne said. Then to Murphy he called, “Don’t worry about your floor, Mike, we’ll pay the damages. Come on in and have a little drink.… Come on, Brazenose.”

* * *

Oscar Wilde was guilty of an understatement, Falcon thought to himself as he leaned against the bar, when he said that life was an imitation of literature. It would have been much nearer the truth, this evening at any rate, to say that life is a burlesque of a penny shocker.

Here he had come two thousand miles in search of adventure. And all he had found was this.… The cowboys in their dark woolen shirts, old waistcoats, baggy corduroy trousers, didn’t look very different from farm hands. Of course there were, for distinction, the big floppy felt hats, the high-heeled riding boots, the large-roweled spurs. And the cowboys were more lithe in their movements than farmers. Still, these were hardly the trappings, this was hardly the atmosphere — he sniffed the smell of stale beer which was all around him — for romance.

“Have a beer, Alec?” The little weazened foreman, a human walnut, with two short, very bowed legs attached, addressed him.

“If you’ll allow me, Mr. Bent” — Falcon spoke with the elaborate courtesy of the slightly inebriated — “I’ll stick to my simple regimen of whisky and water.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Mr. Bent. “Here, boy, two whiskies. Long. And make it snappy.”

“You don’t drink very often, Mr. Bent.”

“You’ve never seen me drink before, Alec. My wife made me swear off drinking on the first day of August nineteen four. I swore off for ten years. Now I can have a drink again.”

“Is this the first of August, then?”

“No. I thought it was, but it isn’t. You know how we lose track of dates on the range. The hotel man says it’s the fourth.”

“Oh, well, one day’s as good as another to get drunk on.”

Falcon wondered if Baldy Bent would get drunk. The cowboys said he used to be a “bad actor” when drunk. He had shot four or five men in the old days, in the Southwest. And before he married and “settled down” he had served five years in the penitentiary.

“You said the other day, Mr. Bent, that I had started too late. How early should I have started if I was to become a real horseman?”

“That’s hard to say, Alec. I’ve been in the saddle since I was five years old. That’s over half a century ago now — down in the old Texas Panhandle. I guess you’ve got to be born to it.”

Bent rambled along in his high, thin voice. Told stories of bringing vast herds, forty years ago, up the Long Trail that wound its way from Mexico to Montana and then up north through the rolling plains of Alberta. A six months’ trip. A long, hard voyage in the saddle.

Bent talked and Alexander Falcon dreamed. There had been, thought Falcon, adventures enough in the West in the old days, but there was little left now of romance. Yet there were some colourful characters among these men around him.

Cud Browne would have served for a hero of his boyhood. The blue-eyed, fair-haired Cud stood six feet one, weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, was strong, gentle and courteous. He talked little except when drunk. Probably he had little to say. He knew, indeed, nothing about anything in the world except horses, cattle, whores. He didn’t “break” horses in the old-fashioned way. Horseflesh was too valuable for that now, and Cud was too good a horseman. He “gentled” the colts. He had chances enough to show boldness as well as skill when he rode the mean, older horses — horses notorious for bad habits, whom nobody else could ride. He had only been thrown once in the whole summer. That was when he had ridden Snake-eye in another man’s saddle with stirrup lengths too short. Even then he had lit on his feet standing. He had followed Snake-eye as that crazy buckskin plunged around the corral, caught the bridle reins and then “gentled” him, changed the stirrup lengths, rode him back to camp.

Beside Cud Browne lounged Long Harry, the cook — a good horseman in his day, but he had given up riding the range for the more profitable occupation of tending the stove. Long Harry stood second in the outfit to nobody but the foreman, Bent.

That animated piece of old saddle-leather, as Falcon knew well, stood second to none. Bent would talk as an equal to Colonel Carson, the owner. Always Bent spoke of “our cattle,” “our range.” For if Colonel Carson had supplied the money and the business judgment, hadn’t he, Bent, supplied the skill in handling cattle, horses, men? Hadn’t they built up the Bar Ninety-Nine between them?

Falcon wondered why Colonel Carson hadn’t joined them yet. He was to have driven the thirty miles from Lethbridge that day, bringing the ranch mail and news of the outside world. Something unforeseen must have delayed him.…

Falcon didn’t give more than half an ear to old Bent’s stories of his youth. He had heard them all a dozen times before. Besides, most of them weren’t true.

Bent at last, satiated with the relation of his Odyssey, came back to the point from which he had started.

“No, Alec, you didn’t begin early enough to become a real cow-puncher. You’re tanned and you’re tough, but you don’t look like a cow-puncher. Why, look at your hands! They show you’ve never done any real work — leastways not with your hands.”

Falcon protested. In the spring, when he had come out from college, he had done as much straight spadework, digging for the dipping-vat, as anyone in the crew. When he had been out before, he had done all the axe-work in camp, hauling driftwood from the river or from tumbledown corrals and chopping it up and splitting it for the cook. For the last four winters he had boxed in the University gymnasium. For the last two summers he had pulled an oar in an eight-oared shell. And that was a great deal harder on the hands than cow-punching. He invited Bent to look at the callouses on his palms.

“It’s not only your hands that show you’re no cow puncher,” Bent went on, stubbornly. “It’s your eyes. A cow-puncher’s always looking out to see what he can see. Half the time you’re looking inside your own head.”

“Have another whisky with me, won’t you?” Falcon wanted to change the conversation. He wasn’t annoyed with Bent: he was annoyed with himself. Brought up amongst books, he wished to develop, not in the direction for which his early environment fitted him, but as an adventurer, a man of action.…

He was a fool, he reflected, to wish to live like an Elizabethan in the twentieth century. You couldn’t be an Elizabethan in the twentieth century even if you were far better fitted for the part than it was his fortune to be. The big adventures were all over. Cow-punching had its fascinating moments, but there was little real adventure to it. The imagination, of course, could always weave about it something of the atmosphere of romance.…

“And when the white, sky-sweeping wings of dawn

Had brushed the gloom from silver mountain-spires,

He had caught his horse and thrown the saddle on

And given rein to his youth’s wild desires;

Then, while his heart leaped with the hoof-beats’ run,

His spirit rose like the young ardent sun.”

He wouldn’t be much of a poet either, he feared, judging by that stuff. He could imagine his former college instructor picking holes in it.… Allerdyce, that huge, lumbering scholar with the searching eye for beauty and the generous appetite for smut: “‘Silver mountain-spires,’ indeed! Trite! Mid-Victorian! Side-whiskered! Your silver spires are worthless except as phallic symbols. And as for ‘his youth’s wild desires.’ … Really now!”

Falcon saw himself as one of those who could neither mount Pegasus nor leave that difficult steed alone. It was such a plight as he got himself into once six years ago, when, as a youngster of seventeen, he tried to vault to the back of a much less fiery charger, his own top horse, Nigger Baby. Left hand on Nigger Baby’s neck, right hand on the horn of the saddle, he had leaped clear from the ground, chaps, spurs and all, with never a thought of stirrups. The way he saw one of the cowboys do. But he wasn’t as quick as the cowboy, and Nigger Baby was too quick. That little black streak bolted the moment Falcon’s feet left the ground. He, halfway into the saddle, held on hard. Hands gripping neck and horn, right foot just over the cantle, his body hanging halfway to the ground. He cursed as he heard the cowboys laughing. Then as, desperate, he pulled himself at last into the saddle, got a knee grip, found his stirrups, the laughter turned to cheers — grinning cheers, but none the less laudatory. “Ride him, cowboy!” “Well done, Wild Easterner!”

But Pegasus was a tougher horse to ride than Nigger Baby. He would never make that seat. Better count on mounting a good prose hack. And, even that, not blooded.

Old Bent chuckled, then said:

“Looks as if Murphy had forgotten about closing time.”

Falcon glanced at the clock. It was past eleven, the hour for clearing out the bar-room and locking up the doors. But nobody paid any attention to the clock, not even Constable Brazenose.

Everybody that Falcon could see in that big barroom was drunk. Roaring drunk. Singing drunk. Dancing drunk. The same wheezy old gramophone, to which earlier in the evening the cowboys had chanted “The Harlots of Jerusalem,” was now squeaking out “The Merry Widow.”

Constable Brazenose was waltzing with Vic Fleming. Both were very grave, with a far-away look in their eyes. Gyp Callahan, not knowing how to waltz, was doing an Indian war dance for the approval of Cud Browne. Big Bob from Mexico stood behind the bar serving drinks. Mike Murphy, the red-faced hotel proprietor, was now the soul of geniality, he was so drunk. He wouldn’t take in anymore coin. His thick red paw shoved it back with a lordly sweep.

As Falcon raised another tall glass of whisky and soda to his lips, overcame Long Harry, the cook.

“You’ve had enough for a young fella,” shouted the cook. He shot up a long leg and booted Falcon’s glass — whisky, soda and all — to the ceiling.

Down came a shower of broken glass and dripping soda. But not on Falcon. On Brazenose, the waltzing policeman, just then bumping Falcon’s elbow as his partner, Vic Fleming, reversed. It spattered him. Drenched him. Stained his smart tunic.

Brazenose wheeled round, fiery-eyed, alert to seize the cause of his annoyance. Described immediately Callahan, paralyzed by laughter in the midst of his war dance, one leg still in the air.…

“Damn you, Callahan!” Brazenose commenced. “This time …”

“Just a moment, Mr. Wild Willie.” Cud Browne swayed in front of him. “If you want to play with anybody, why don’t you play with me? … Look a’ here.”

Cud lurched over to one of the two new bar-room doors. Bright new yellow pinewood. He heaved his shoulder.… The door was shattered.

Brazenose looked at him. Should he arrest him? It would be rough work. Regulations of the Royal Mounted said you mustn’t pull a gun when making an arrest unless the offender had drawn arms first. But even if he had been free to draw his six-shooter, he would have found it ticklish work to arrest Cud Browne. A bad man from Montana had tried to pull a gun on the unarmed Browne. The bad man had gone to hospital with a broken jaw.

So Brazenose looked at Cud. Looked long. Twisted his waxed moustachios meditatively. Said nothing.

Callahan walked up. “Look a’ here, Brazenose. See that other door? Watch me smash it.”

Brazenose looked at Callahan. Callahan wasn’t as big as Cud. He wasn’t as big as Brazenose. This was too damned much.

“Stop that, Callahan! Stop, or I’ll put you under …”

But Callahan laughed in his face.

He walked across the room, laughing.

He laughed as he smashed the door.

Brazenose was after him. “This is too damned much. This is too damned much,” he repeated. “Callahan, you asked for it, and by God you’ll get it!”

“Keep away from me,” bellowed Callahan, “or by the living Jesus I’ll knock you through that window.”

“Don’t you do it, Callahan. I wanna punch him a bit myself,” thundered Cud Browne. “I guess they wouldn’t soak me more’n twenty-five bucks for smashing that guy’s face. And it’d be worth it. Here’s my money right here. It’d be worth it. Keep away from me, you fellows. Leave go of my arms, Alec. Lemme smash his face in. Just twenty-five bucks for smashing in the face of a mounted policeman. Him a policeman!” He spat on the floor.

“Who the hell wants to punch that bronco’s face?” squeaked little old Bent, so drunk now he could stand only by leaning against the bar. His voice rose to a shrill, venomous shriek. “What I say is, why the hell don’t we shoot the guts out of the son of a bitch …”

Vic Fleming and Falcon jumped on the old foreman as he shoved his right claw into his trouser’s pocket.

“Cut it, Baldy,” said Vic quietly; “you can’t get away with that stuff.”

“Hell!” squealed the little old foreman. “I shot five men in the old days, between Texas and Montana. And he’s no policeman. The real old Mounted were a pretty good crowd.… By God.… What the hell’s that?”

Violent shouting.… Tremendous oaths.… An immense shattering of glass.… Silence.

Turning his back on the broken window, Callahan threw out his chest and looked round the bar-room with a bleary grin of satisfaction. He said: “That’s the safest place for him to-night. That pup oughta be thankful I put him in his kennel.”

One of the broken doors crashed. Through it strode a big, black-bearded man of forty, in Norfolk jacket and riding-breeches.

“What’s all this?” the newcomer demanded. “What are you boys up to?”

“We just had a party with Constable Brazenose, Colonel,” Callahan chuckled. As he spoke, he took a tall whisky that someone had left on the bar.

“Where’s Brazenose now?” snapped Colonel Carson.

Callahan grinned. He helped himself to another whisky as he answered: “Gone t’ bye-bye through the window.”

Colonel Carson stormed:

“You’ve all been behaving like fools. Callahan, you’ll get into trouble. Cut for the border.”

“Li’ hell I’ll cut for borrer!” Callahan gulped down another whisky — the third since his fight, besides a dozen taken earlier. The excitement over, the alcohol showed its power. He leaned his back against the wall. His knees wobbled. Slowly, very slowly, he slid towards the floor. He hit it, at last, with a thump.

Colonel Carson looked at Callahan and the rest, amused. His anger had quieted — anger caused less by the racket of the barroom squabble than by the interruption to him who had come with great news.

In his deep, mellow voice, the Colonel commenced:

“If you boys want fighting …”

In that room, that night, the reverberation of his words was like the booming of a bell.

As Colonel Carson told of the monster to which the world had given birth, Alexander Falcon grew suddenly sober, alert. It was only half of him that joined in the cowboys’ drunken cheering. The other half was seeing visions, planning.…

Canada would be in it, he felt sure. He saw the streets of Toronto, Montreal, jammed with excited crowds. He would go East. He would go over with his own crowd. He would go now. Not that he was a patriot. Not that he was an Imperialist. He didn’t give a damn about the British Empire or any other empire. He was a Republican. He was a Socialist. Hadn’t he started a Social Democratic party at the University? But he was weary of talking about Utopia, reading Fabian pamphlets, debating Revisionism versus Marxism.… Here was something definite to be done — a tangible evil, he imagined, to be attacked.… There was seduction, too, in the glamour of it.… “Fighting in the Low Countries.”… Seduction in the very phrase.

Vividly there leaped in his mind pictures of the Highland militia regiment which his great-uncle had founded, in which his father — until prevented by heart trouble — had served. He imagined that regiment parading now!

He recalled his last sight of it in the Armouries.

The vast building rocked to the tread of two thousand feet. Black rifle barrels gleamed above khaki jackets. Dark kilts swayed above naked knees. Officers with black Glengarry tails falling on broad brown shoulders held bright, drawn swords at the carry. Thundered commands rose high above the skirling of the pipes, the throbbing of the drums, the pounding of the marching feet.

Falcon’s pulse quickened. His guts tensed. His mind blurred.

War-lust surged through him.

The pipes! The pipes!

“Come, fill up my cup; come, fill up my can;

Come, saddle your horses and call up your men;

Come, open the West Port and let me gang free;

And it’s room … for the bonnets … of Bonny Dundee.”

Would Colonel Carson allow him, help him, to get to the railroad, to go East, now, to-night? But as he looked at that stalwart figure he knew the answer. Carson, graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and of Oxford, classical scholar turned Wyoming rancher, had gone to the Spanish American War, then to the Philippines in quest of adventure. He had there won his majority, his colonelcy, but first, in hand-to-hand fighting with the Philipinos, he had received those knife-cuts about the chin and throat whose scars were now covered with that square black beard. Carson had, of course, turned American. He had remained American, although he was back now, most of the time, under the British flag, devoting more of his attention to his new ranch in Alberta than to its parent in Wyoming. But whether he called himself American or British, there could be no doubt, Falcon felt, of his answer.

Falcon explained very briefly his wishes.

Colonel Carson assented. Knowing something of the reality in which Falcon saw only romance, he assented a little sadly. There must be so many other young men tonight, young university men, active in mind, liberal in spirit, eager to swear away their lives.…

“Probably,” he said, smiling at the thought, “it will be over long before you get there. Such a great war can hardly last three months.”