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The Patrol Of The Cypress Hills
by
“I do not remember quite who said it. Well, ‘mon ami,’ perhaps I lie; perhaps. Sometimes we dream things, and these dreams are true. You call it a lie–‘bien!’ Sergeant Fones, he dreams perhaps Old Aleck sells whisky against the law to men you call whisky runners, sometimes to Indians and half-breeds–halfbreeds like Pretty Pierre. That was a dream of Sergeant Fones; but you see he believes it true. It is good sport, eh? Will you not take–what is it?–a silent partner? Yes; a silent partner, Old Aleck. Pretty Pierre has spare time, a little, to make money for his friends and for himself, eh?”
When did not Pierre have time to spare? He was a gambler. Unlike the majority of half-breeds, he had a pronounced French manner, nonchalant and debonair.
The Indian in him gave him coolness and nerve. His cheeks had a tinge of delicate red under their whiteness, like those of a woman. That was why he was called Pretty Pierre. The country had, however, felt a kind of weird menace in the name. It was used to snakes whose rattle gave notice of approach or signal of danger. But Pretty Pierre was like the death-adder, small and beautiful, silent and deadly. At one time he had made a secret of his trade, or thought he was doing so. In those days he was often to be seen at David Humphrey’s home, and often in talk with Mab Humphrey; but it was there one night that the man who was ha’sh gave him his true character, with much candour and no comment.
Afterwards Pierre was not seen at Humphrey’s ranch. Men prophesied that he would have revenge some day on Sergeant Fones; but he did not show anything on which this opinion could be based. He took no umbrage at being called Pretty Pierre the gambler. But for all that he was possessed of a devil.
Young Aleck had inherited some money through his dead mother from his grandfather, a Hudson’s Bay factor. He had been in the East for some years, and when he came back he brought his “little pile” and an impressionable heart with him. The former Pretty Pierre and his friends set about to win; the latter, Mab Humphrey won without the trying. Yet Mab gave Young Aleck as much as he gave her. More. Because her love sprang from a simple, earnest, and uncontaminated life. Her purity and affection were being played against Pierre’s designs and Young Aleck’s weakness. With Aleck cards and liquor went together. Pierre seldom drank.
But what of Sergeant Fones? If the man that knew him best–the Commandant–had been asked for his history, the reply would have been: “Five years in the Service, rigid disciplinarian, best non-commissioned officer on the Patrol of the Cypress Hills.” That was all the Commandant knew.
A soldier-policeman’s life on the frontier is rough, solitary, and severe. Active duty and responsibility are all that make it endurable. To few is it fascinating. A free and thoughtful nature would, however, find much in it, in spite of great hardships, to give interest and even pleasure. The sense of breadth and vastness, and the inspiration of pure air could be a very gospel of strength, beauty, and courage, to such an one–for a time. But was Sergeant Fones such an one? The Commandant’s scornful reply to a question of the kind would have been: “He is the best soldier on the Patrol.”
And so with hard gallops here and there after the refugees of crime or misfortune, or both, who fled before them like deer among the passes of the hills, and, like deer at bay, often fought like demons to the death; with border watchings, and protection and care and vigilance of the Indians; with hurried marches at sunrise, the thermometer at fifty degrees below zero often in winter, and open camps beneath the stars, and no camp at all, as often as not, winter and summer; with rough barrack fun and parade and drill and guard of prisoners; and with chances now and then to pay homage to a woman’s face, the Mounted Force grew full of the Spirit of the West and became brown, valiant, and hardy, with wind and weather. Perhaps some of them longed to touch, oftener than they did, the hands of children, and to consider more the faces of women,–for hearts are hearts even under a belted coat of red on the Fiftieth Parallel,–but men of nerve do not blazon their feelings.