The Luck of the Mounted by Ralph S. Kendall

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Kilbride uttered a startled oath. Shaken out of his habitual stern
composure he stared at the man before him in sheer amazement. "Good
God!" he cried, "The 'Jameson Raid!' . . . Now I know you,
man!--you're--you're--wait a bit! I've got it on the tip of my
tongue--Mor--Mor--Mordaunt, by gad! . . . that's what you called yourself
then. Ever since I sat with you on that case I've been turning it over
in my head where in ever I'd fore-gathered with you before. It was your
moustache which fooled me--you were clean-shaven then. . . Well,
Well! . . ."

He was silent awhile, overcome by the discovery. "Aye!" he resumed in an
altered voice, "I've got good cause to remember you, Mor--Gully, I mean.
You certainly saved my life that day . . . when we were lying in that
_donga_ together. I was hit pretty bad, and you stood 'em off. You were
a wonderful shot, I recollect. I saw you flop out six Doppers--one after
the other."

He turned to Slavin. "Sergeant!" he said quietly, "You'd better leave
the leg-irons on, but remove his handcuffs--for the time-being,
anyway. . . ." He addressed himself to the prisoner with a sort of sad
sternness. "It's little I can do for you now, Gully . . . but I can do
that, at least. . . ."

Slavin complied with his officer's request. Gully's huge chest heaved
once, and he bowed his head in silent acknowledgment of Kilbride's act of
leniency.

"All right! go ahead, Gully!" said the latter.

The prisoner took up his tale anew. "As I was saying--I left the Old
Country when I was sixteen. No need to drag in family troubles,
but . . . that's why. . . . Well! I hit for the States. Montana for a
start off, and it sure was a tough state in 'seventy-four, I can tell
you. That's where I first learned to handle a gun. I knocked around
between there and Wyoming and Arizona for about nine years, and during
that time I guess I tackled nearly every kind of job under the sun, but I
punched and rode for range outfits mostly.

"Then I was struck with a fancy to see the South, and I drifted to
Virginia. I'd been there about two years, working as an overseer on a
tobacco plantation, when I got a letter from our family's solicitor
recalling me home. My eldest brother had died, and the estate had passed
on to me. Where, Inspector?--why, it was at Castle Brompton, a quiet
little country town in Worcestershire.

"Well! I'd had a pretty rough training--living the life of a roustabout
for so many years, and I guess I kind of ran amuck when I struck home. I
played ducks and drakes with the estate, and the end of it was . . . I
got heavily involved in debt. There seemed nothing for it but to
up-anchor, and to sea again in my shirt. So, my fancy next took me to
Shanghai, where I obtained a poorly-paid Civil Service job--in the
Customs. I stuck that for about a year, and then I pulled
out--disgusted. The next place I landed up in was, if anything,
worse--the Gold Coast. From there I drifted to the Belgian Congo. I was
there for nearly two years doing--well! perhaps it's best for me not to
enter into details--we'll call it 'rubber.' It's a cruel country
that--one that a man doesn't exactly stay in for his health, anyway; for
a bad dose of fever nearly fixed me. It made me fed up with the climate
and--the life. So I pulled out of it and went down country to the
Transvaal. That's how I came to get mixed up in 'The Raid,' Inspector.
I was in Jo'burg at the time it was framed up, so I threw in my lot with
the rest of you.

"Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to go back to the States and the
range life again. I was properly fed up with Africa. So--back I went
there--to Montana again. I punched for one or two cow-outfits awhile,
and then came a time when a deputation of citizens came and put it up to
me if I'd take on the office of Deputy-Sheriff for ---- County, where I
happened to be working. I suppose the fact of my being a little more
handy with a gun than most had impressed some of them. Things were
running wild there just then, and for awhile I tell you, I was up against
a rather dirty proposition. I and my guns certainly worked overtime for
a stretch, till I got matters more or less ship-shape. I had the backing
of the best people in the community luckily, and eventually I won out.

"Then--when the inevitable reaction set in with the peaceable times that
followed, somehow I managed to get in bad with some of them. They had no
more use for me or my guns. I was like a fish out of water. I decided
to pull out, for a strange hankering to see England and my old home again
came over me. So I resigned my office and headed back to the Old
Country. . . ."

At this point in his narrative, Gully dropped his head in his hands and
rocked wearily awhile ere continuing haltingly: "It was the mistake of my
life--ever going back--to a civilized country. For a time I strove to
conduct myself as a law-abiding British citizen--to conform to the new
order of things, but--I had been amongst the rough stuff too long. I was
out of my sphere entirely.

"One day, in a hotel at Leeds, I got into a violent quarrel with a
man--fellow of the name of Hammond. It was over a woman. He insulted
me--in front of a crowd of men at that--and finally he struck me.
Hitherto I'd taken no back-down from any man living, and I guess I forgot
myself then and kind of ran amuck--fancied I was back in Montana again.
Consequence was--I threw down on him in front of this crowd and shot him
dead.

"Of course I was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree;
but as it was adduced at my trial that I'd received a certain amount of
provocation, I was sent down for fifteen years. I'd done little over six
months of my time in Barmsworth Prison when I and two of my fellow
convicts framed up a scheme to escape. It takes too long to go into
details how we worked it. I made my get-away, though I had to abolish a
poor devil of a warder in doing so. The other two lost out. One got
shot and the other was caught some days later--as I read in the papers.

"Well! I managed to reach the States again, and eventually came over
this side of the line. As I had been convicted and sentenced under the
alias which I had adopted while in England--my real name never coming
out--I resumed my name of Gully again when I settled down here. My
relatives, what few I possess, have never known of my conviction and
imprisonment. All the time I was in England on my second trip I was
clean-shaven, but on returning to the States I let my moustache grow once
more. As you said, Kilbride--it is a very effectual disguise. Will one
of you give me a drink, please? My mouth's pretty dry with all this
talking."

Yorke got up and brought him a glass of water, and he drank it down with
a murmur of thanks.

"Now!" he said, continuing his narrative: "I'm coming to the worst part
of all. You'll all wonder I've not gone mad--brooding; but I've got to
go through with it. When I settled down here I honestly did struggle
hard to live down my past and start afresh with a clean sheet. I
borrowed some money from an old ex-sheriff friend of mine in
Montana--which loan, by the way, I have paid all back--every cent--and
bought"--he gazed gloomily at Kilbride--"what was my home. But
somehow . . . Fate seems to have dogged me and tripped me up in the end.
Until last January everything was going well with me. As Slavin and
Yorke here can testify . . . I was conducting myself fairly and squarely
with all men.

"Then--one day Yorke brought that Blake and Moran case up in front of me.
Both of these men I'd met before, but they didn't recognize me again--not
absolutely. I usually contrived to keep pretty clear of them for reasons
which will appear obvious later. I'm coming to that. Moran I recognised
as a former Montana tough who used to hang around Havre--bronco-buster,
cow-puncher, and tin-horn by turns. Many a time I've caught him sizing
me up, in Cow Run and elsewhere--mighty hard, too, but he never seemed to
be sure of me. Once he did chance a feeler, but I just twirled my
moustache, a la Lord Tomnoddy, and bluffed him to a finish.

"Larry Blake"--a ruthless gleam flickered momentarily in Gully's
deep-set, shadowy eyes--"Larry Blake, I recognized as the son of the
Governor of Barmsworth Prison--old Gavin Blake. Sometimes this young
fellow used to come around with his father, when the old gentleman was
making his daily tour of inspection. I well remember the first time I
saw him--young Larry. I was chipping stone in the quarry, amongst a
gang, with a ball and chain on. I'd been in about two months then. The
Governor was showing some visitors around, and his son was with him.
They were staring at us like people do at wild animals in a show. I was
pointed out to them, and my recent crime mentioned. I remember young
Blake eying me with especial interest. He came out to Canada and hit
these parts about two years after I'd located here.

"Well! now and again when we'd run across each other I'd find him looking
at me in a queer, vague fashion, too; but I felt safe enough with him;
like I did with Moran--until this case came up. After it was over, he
and I happened to be alone, and, in a round-about way, he began asking me
questions. He did it so clumsily, though, that my suspicions were
aroused at once. Of course I bluffed him--or thought I had--easily for
the moment, but one day I happened to be in the Post Office getting my
mail when, amongst a bunch of letters on the counter I saw one addressed
to 'Gavin Blake, Esq., Governor of Barmsworth Prison, England.' Old
Kelly, the postmaster, having his back to me at the time, fumbling around
the pigeon-holes, I promptly annexed this letter and slipped it into my
pocket.

"When I opened it up my suspicions were verified. Young Blake wrote to
his father that he'd come across a man whom he could almost swear to as
being one of the three convicts who'd broken out of Barmsworth some years
back. He asked what steps he'd better take in the case--if the original
warrant issued for me could be forwarded to the Mounted Police, and so
on. He said his intentions were to try and gain further evidence, and in
the meantime to confide in no one about his suspicions until he received
definite instructions what steps to take.

"I guess the devil must have got a good grip on me again after I'd read
that letter. It seemed no use trying to redeem the past with outsiders
like young Blake making it their business to butt in and lay one by the
heels. Anyway, like Satan at prayers, I didn't feel like being coolly
sacrificed when my years of honest effort were drawing near their reward
in the shape of a fairly prosperous ranch--just at the whim of a lazy,
profligate young busy-body.

"From that hour Larry Blake was practically--'gone up.' I'd deliberately
made up my mind to put him out of business on the first convenient
opportunity that presented itself. That opportunity came on the night he
was fighting with Moran in the hotel. I thought I could kill two birds
with one stone. I'll admit it was a devilish idea, but I was desperate.
Of course things didn't shape out as I'd planned--Moran's alibi for
instance, or that hobo, Drinkwater.

"I know to you it will only appear sheer nonsense on my part ever to
start in attempting to justify my--my abolishment of him. But this--what
I am going to tell you--is the absolute truth of what happened. In the
first place--when he spotted me bringing Moran's horse into the stable
that night--although I was mad and man-handled the poor devil at the
time--I felt fairly easy in my mind later, thinking he would drift out of
town next day, after the manner of his kind. But when he was brought up
in front of me afterwards, I realized the serious predicament I was in."

He turned to Slavin. "Sergeant!" he went on: "I'll admit I was feeling
pretty queer when you were examining that man--especially about the
smelling of drink business. I'd slipped him a snort of whiskey after
you'd gone down to Doctor Cox's to get those papers signed. I told him
to keep his mouth shut if he was questioned about any horse or man--and
that I'd get him off if he obeyed my instructions. Of course he didn't
know what all this was for. He had no opportunity of knowing--never did
know, though I fancy he thought it was a case of horse-stealing. Anyway,
my promises and the drink made him my ally at once. Only human nature
for him to side with me against the Police. As you know, Sergeant, you
can get more definite results from that class of man by a drink bribe
than by all the threats and promises in the world.

"My original intention in taking him out to my place was to slip him
twenty dollars or so, and head him adrift westward, and so out of things.
But after we got home and I put the proposition up to him, the beggar
began to assert himself and get bold and saucy--tried to blackmail me for
an unheard of amount--threatening he'd go and tell you everything if I
didn't come across, and all that. Finally I lost my temper with him and
gave him a good slap across the face. He happened to be outside the
house bucking wood at the time, and, when I hit him, he came for me with
the axe. I only jumped back just in time, as he struck. I threw down on
him and put him out of business right-away then, realizing I was up
against it."

Gully halted for a space and leaned his head in his hands. "God!" he
muttered presently, "what nights I've had! I've killed many men in my
time, but those two--I hated framing up all that business on you fellows
next day--those tracks and the bill-folder, and all that useless chasing
for a week, but it seemed to me to be the only plausible bluff I could
run on you, under the circumstances. Now, are there any more things you
don't understand? Any questions you'd like to ask me?"

"Yes!" queried Slavin. "How did you get to Calgary that night--after
you'd missed the nine-thirty eastbound. Jump a freight, or what? You
were seen to get on the train. . . ."

"I know that," said Gully slowly, "I did it for a blind. I walked
through the coaches and slipped out again at the far end of the
platform--in the dark. No! I didn't jump a freight, Sergeant. I was
tempted to; but on second thoughts the idea made me feel kind of uneasy.
Perhaps you'll be dubious of this, but, as a fact, I took a
'tie-pass'--walked it all the way to Calgary on the track. I was about
done when I made Shagnappi Point, beating my passage through all that
snow. I bought a new pair of cow-puncher's boots while I was in town.
You remember I was wearing them when I returned. I had the overshoes
wrapped up as a parcel and packed them back to the ranch and burnt
them--and Drinkwater's boots."

"How about that Savage automatic?" said Yorke, "the one you shot those
dogs with yesterday? We've got your Luger, but where's the Savage gun?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Gully wearily, "of course I had two guns. I never
used to pack the Luger around--afterwards, well! . . . for obvious
reasons. You'll probably find the Savage in the cellar at my
place--that's if it isn't buried, like I nearly was."

There was a long silence, broken only by the scratch, scratch, of the
inspector's pen, as he rapidly indited a formal statement for the
prisoner to sign. Once during its composition he halted for a brief
space and, leaning back in his chair, gazed long with a sort of dreary
sternness at the huge, unkempt figure before him.

"Gully," he said slowly, "whatever in God's name put it into your head to
stand off the Police in the way you did? Shooting those two poor chaps
and nearly putting the kibosh on five others! Whatever did you hope to
gain by it? You must have known it was absolutely impossible for you to
make your get-away from us. Why, man! we had you cornered like a wolf in
a trap. It was worse than silly and useless and cruel for you to act in
the way you did!"

"Oh, my God! I don't know!" moaned Gully, rocking despondently with his
head in his hands. "I must have gone clean mad for the time
being. . . ." He gazed gloomily at Slavin and Yorke, muttering half to
himself: "What little things do trip a man up in the end! The best laid
schemes o' mice and men! But for my shooting those cursed dogs yesterday
you'd never, never have suspected me. The whole thing would just have
been filed and forgotten in time--would just have remained one of those
unfathomable mysteries. Directly after I'd thrown down on those curs I
realized what a d----d bad break I'd made--what my momentary loss of
temper was going to cost me. I could tell by the way you all looked at
me what was in your minds. . . ."

"Yes, but how about that fishing expedition of ours, Gully?" said Yorke.
"You seem to have forgotten that." And he related the story of Redmond's
dive.

"Ah!" retorted Gully, bitterly. "And yet you might have got snagged a
hundred times there and only just cursed and snapped your line and reeled
in, thinking it was a log or something. . . . Well, as I was saying, I
realized the jig was up after that dog business, and directly I got home
I began making preparations for my get-away last night. If you'd all
only have come half an hour later than you did--That's what made me so
mad--just another half hour later, mind you, and I would have been
away--en route for the Coast by the night train."

Presently Kilbride threw aside his pen and straightened up. "Now,
listen, Gully!" he said. And he read out the confession that he had
composed from the main facts of the prisoner's remarkable statement.

"Yes!" muttered Gully thoughtfully, as the inspector finished. "Yes,
that will do, Kilbride. Give me the pen, please, and I will sign
it. . . ."

He proceeded to affix his signature, continuing with a sort of deadly
composure: "I have endorsed and executed many death-warrants in my
time--in my capacity of Deputy-Sheriff--I little thought that some day I
might be called upon to sign my own . . . which this document virtually
is. . . ."

He reared himself up to his huge, gaunt height, and with a sweeping
glance at his captors added: "Nothing remains for me now I imagine, but
to shake hands with--Radcliffe.[1] . . ."

And his dreadful voice died away like a single grim note of a great,
deep-toned bell, tolled perchance in some prison-yard.

"_Eshcorrt_! Get ready!" boomed out Sergeant Slavin's harsh command.
The party was on the station platform. Yorke and McSporran fell in
briskly on either side of their heavily-manacled prisoner, and stood
watching the distant lights of the oncoming east-bound train as it
rounded the Davidsburg bend.

One last despairing glance Gully cast about him at the all familiar
surroundings, then he raised his fettered hands on high and lifted up his
great voice:

"I have striven! I have striven!--and now!--Oh! there is no God! Bear
witness there is no God! No God! . . ." he cried to the heavens.

The wild, harsh, dreadful blasphemy rang far and wide out into the night,
floating over the nearby river and finally dying away a ghastly murmur up
among the timber-lined spurs of Crag Canon.

And a huge, gaunt lobo wolf, lying at the crest of the draw, flung up his
gray head and howled back his awful note--seemingly in echo: "There is
no God! no God!"

[1] Note by Author--Canada's official executioner at this period.

CHAPTER XVI

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to,
but it ain't much use to try--"
"Never say that," said the Surgeon,
as he smothered down a sigh:
"Chuck a brace, for it won't do, man,
for a soldier to say die!"
"What you say don't make no diffrunce, Doctor,
an'--you wouldn't lie. . . ."
"THE OLD SERGEANT"

"Git there! Come a-Haw-r-r, then! Whoa!" With a flourish, Constable
Miles Sloan, the Regimental Teamster, swung the leaders of his splendid
four-in-hand and pulled up at the front entrance of the Holy Cross
Hospital. Slewing around on his high box-seat he addressed himself to
the drag's occupants, Slavin and Yorke.

"I don't know whether they will let you see him, or not," he remarked
doubtfully, "he's a pretty sick man."

"We will chance ut, anyway," mumbled Slavin, as he and Yorke climbed out
of the rig. "Ye'd best wait awhile, Miles! We shan't be long."

Quietly--very quietly, Sister Marthe opened the door of room Number
Fifty-six, and with list-slippered noiselessness stepped out into the
corridor.

"Oh, Mon Dieu!" she ejaculated, startled at the sudden apparition of two
scarlet-coated figures standing motionless outside the door, "Oh,
m'sieurs, 'ow you fright me!" and the expressive eyes under the white
coif and the shoulders and supple hands of the French-Canadian
Nursing-Sister made great play.

Yorke saluted her with grave courtesy. "Sister," he said anxiously, "how
is Constable Redmond doing? Can we see him?"

She glanced irresolutely a moment at the handsome, imploring countenance
of the speaker, and then her gaze flickered to his huge companion. The
silent, wistful appeal she read in the latter's grim, cadaverous face
decided her.

"_Eheu_!" she said softly, "'e is a ver' seeck man . . . but come then,
m'sieurs, if you wish it!"

Cautiously they tip-toed into the room behind her.

Yes! They decided, he was a "seeck" man all right! So sick that he
could not raise his flushed, hollow-cheeked young face from the pillow to
salute his comrades with his customary impious bonhomie. Now, gabbling
away to himself in the throes of delirium, ever his feverish eyes stared
beyond the hospital-walls westwards to Davidsburg.

With his brow contracted with an expression of vague worry, he was living
over and over again the memorable night in which he had gotten his wound.

"Slavin!--Yorkey!" he kept repeating, in tones of such yearning entreaty
that moved those individuals more than they cared to show. Yes, they
were both of them there, standing by the side of his cot; but the poor
sufferer's unseeing eyes betrayed no recognition.

The deep sorrow that oppressed Slavin and Yorke just then those worthies
rarely--if ever--alluded to afterwards. Passing the love of women is the
unspoken, indefinable spirit of true comradeship that exists between some
men.

For one brief, soul-baring moment the comrades stared at each other,
their self-conscious faces reflecting mutually their inmost feelings;
then Yorke turned to Sister Marthe.

"What does the Doctor say?" he whispered anxiously.

The nurse was about to make answer when the door was softly opened and
that gentleman entered the room, accompanied by Captain Bargrave and
Inspector Kilbride.

Involuntarily, from long habit of discipline, Slavin and Yorke, stiffened
to "attention" in the presence of their superiors, until, with a kindly,
yet withal slightly imperious gesture, the O.C. mutely signified them
to relax their formal attitude. The Regimental Surgeon, Dr. Sampson, a
tall, gray-moustached, pleasant-faced man, nodded to them familiarly and
proceeded to make minute examination of his patient's wound. From time
to time he questioned and issued low-voiced instructions to Sister
Marthe. Perfectly motionless, the grave-eyed quartette of policemen
stood grouped around the cot, silently awaiting the physician's verdict.

Throughout, poor Redmond had continued to toss and rave incessantly.
Much of his babbling was incoherent and fragmentary--breaking off short
in the middle of a sentence or dying away in a mumbling, indistinct
murmur. At intervals though, his voice rang out with startling clearness.

"Ah-a-a! Here he is!" he cried out suddenly, "Gully!"--all eyes were
centred on the flushed, unquiet face and restless hands. There seemed a
curious, morbid fascination in watching the workings of that
sub-conscious mind. "No use, Gully! You can't make it from there!"--the
twitching hands made a motion as of levelling a carbine--"No use, man!
I've got you covered. . . . You' better give in! . . ."

He paused for a space, panting feverishly, then his eyes became wilder
and his speech more rapid.

"No! no! Gully!" he gasped out imploringly, "it's Yorkey, I tell you--oh,
don't pick off Yorkey! . . . Drink? . . ."--the unnaturally bright eyes
stared unseeingly at the motionless figure of the O.C., standing at the
foot of the cot--"Not so much--now--since--looking after him. . . . Not
a bad chap. . . . We fought once. . . . Yes, Sir! . . . had--hell of a
fight! . . . Pax? . . . sure!--bless you!--buried ruddy hatchet--auld
lang syne--Slavin. . . . St. Agnes' Eve! . . . How he sings--! Oh,
shut up, Yorkey!--Sings, I tell you--! Hark! . . . that's him singin'
now--Listen! . . . What? . . . it's Stevenson's 'Requiem'. . . . Burke!
Burke! . . . the ----'s always singin' that . . . goes--"

And the weak, fretful voice shrilled up in a quavering falsetto--

"_Under the wide--and--starry sky
Dig--the grave, and--let me--lie;
Glad did I--live, and--gladly die,
And I laid--me down with--a w----_"

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