Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
Pretty Pierre, who had his patrol as gamester defined, made semi-annual
visits to Galbraith's Place. It occurred generally after the rounding-up
and branding seasons, when the cowboys and ranchmen were "flush" with
money. It was generally conceded that Monsieur Pierre would have made an
early excursion to a place where none is ever "ordered up," if he had not
been free with the money which he so plentifully won.
Card-playing was to him a science and a passion. He loved to win for
winning's sake. After that, money, as he himself put it, was only fit to
be spent for the good of the country, and that men should earn more.
Since he put his philosophy into instant and generous practice, active
and deadly prejudice against him did not have lengthened life.
The Mounted Police, or as they are more poetically called, the Riders of
the Plains, watched Galbraith's Place, not from any apprehension of
violent events, but because Galbraith was suspected of infringing the
prevailing law of Prohibition, and because for some years it had been a
tradition and a custom to keep an eye on Pierre.
As Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway looking abstractedly at the beacon,
her fingers smoothing her snowy apron the while, she was thinking thus to
herself: "Perhaps father is right. If that Prairie Star were only at
Vancouver or Winnipeg instead of here, our Val could be something, more
than a prairie-rider. He'd have been different, if father hadn't started
this tavern business. Not that our Val is bad. He isn't; but if he had
money he could buy a ranch,--or something."
Our Val, as Jen and her father called him, was a lad of twenty-two, one
year younger than Jen. He was prairie-rider, cattle-dealer, scout,
cowboy, happy-go-lucky vagrant,--a splendid Bohemian of the plains. As
Jen said, he was not bad; but he had a fiery, wandering spirit, touched
withal by the sunniest humour. He had never known any curb but Jen's love
and care. That had kept him within bounds so far. All men of the prairie
spoke well of him. The great new lands have codes and standards of morals
quite their own. One enthusiastic admirer of this youth said, in Jen's
hearing, "He's a Christian--Val Galbraith!" That was the western way of
announcing a man as having great civic and social virtues. Perhaps the
respect for Val Galbraith was deepened by the fact that there was no
broncho or cayuse that he could not tame to the saddle.
Jen turned her face from the flame and looked away from the oasis of
warmth it made, to where the light shaded away into darkness, a darkness
that was unbroken for many a score of miles to the north and west. She
sighed deeply and drew herself up with an aggressive motion as though she
was freeing herself of something. So she was. She was trying to shake off
a feeling of oppression. Ten minutes ago the gaslighted house behind her
had seemed like a prison. She felt that she must have air, space, and
freedom.
She would have liked a long ride on the buffalo-track. That, she felt,
would clear her mind. She was no romantic creature out of her sphere, no
exotic. She was country-born and bred, and her blood had been charged by
a prairie instinct passing through three generations. She was part of
this life. Her mind was free and strong, and her body was free and
healthy. While that freedom and health was genial, it revolted against
what was gross or irregular. She loved horses and dogs, she liked to take
a gun and ride away to the Poplar Hills in search of game, she found
pleasure in visiting the Indian Reservation, and talking to
Sun-in-the-North, the only good Indian chief she knew, or that anyone
else on the prairies knew. She loved all that was strong and untamed, all
that was panting with wild and glowing life. Splendidly developed, softly
sinewy, warmly bountiful, yet without the least physical over-luxuriance
or suggestiveness, Jen, with her tawny hair and dark-brown eyes, was a
growth of unrestrained, unconventional, and eloquent life. Like Nature
around her, glowing and fresh, yet glowing and hardy. There was, however,
just a strain of pensiveness in her, partly owing to the fact that there
were no women near her, that she had, virtually, lived her life as a
woman alone.
As she thus looked into the undefined horizon two things were happening:
a traveller was approaching Galbraith's Place from a point in that
horizon; and in the house behind her someone was singing. The traveller
sat erect upon his horse. He had not the free and lazy seat of the
ordinary prairie-rider. It was a cavalry seat, and a military manner. He
belonged to that handful of men who patrol a frontier of near a thousand
miles, and are the security of peace in three hundred thousand miles of
territory--the Riders of the Plains, the North-West Mounted Police.
This Rider of the Plains was Sergeant Thomas Gellatly, familiarly known
as Sergeant Tom. Far away as he was he could see that a woman was
standing in the tavern door. He guessed who it was, and his blood
quickened at the guessing. But reining his horse on the furthest edge of
the lighted circle, he said, debatingly: "I've little time enough to get
to the Rise, and the order was to go through, hand the information to
Inspector Jules, and be back within forty-eight hours. Is it flesh and
blood they think I am? Me that's just come back from a journey of a
hundred miles, and sent off again like this with but a taste of sleep and
little food, and Corporal Byng sittin' there at Fort Desire with a pipe
in his mouth and the fat on his back like a porpoise. It's famished I am
with hunger, and thirty miles yet to do; and she, standin' there with a
six months' welcome in her eye. . . . It's in the interest of Justice if
I halt at Galbraith's Place for half-an-hour, bedad! The blackguard hid
away there at Soldier's Knee will be arrested all the sooner; for horse
and man will be able the better to travel. I'm glad it's not me that has
to take him whoever he is. It's little I like leadin' a fellow-creature
towards the gallows, or puttin' a bullet into him if he won't come. . . .
Now what will we do, Larry, me boy?" this to the broncho--"Go on without
bite or sup, me achin' behind and empty before, and you laggin' in the
legs, or stay here for the slice of an hour and get some heart into us?
Stay here is it, me boy? then lave go me fut with your teeth and push on
to the Prairie Star there." So saying, Sergeant Tom, whose language in
soliloquy, or when excited, was more marked by a brogue than at other
times, rode away towards Galbraith's Place.
In the tavern at that moment, Pretty Pierrre was sitting on the
bar-counter, where temperance drinks were professedly sold, singing to
himself. His dress was singularly neat, if coarse, and his slouch hat was
worn with an air of jauntiness according well with his slight make and
almost girlish delicacy of complexion. He was puffing a cigarette, in the
breaks of the song. Peter Galbraith, tall, gaunt, and sombre-looking, sat
with his chair tilted back against the wall, rather nervously pulling at
the strips of bark of which the yielding chair-seat was made. He may or
may not have been listening to the song which had run through several
verses. Where it had come from, no one knew; no one cared to know. The
number of its verses were legion. Pierre had a sweet voice, of a
peculiarly penetrating quality; still it was low and well-modulated, like
the colour in his cheeks, which gave him his name.
These were the words he was singing as Sergeant Tom rode towards the
tavern:
"The hot blood leaps in his quivering breast
Voila! 'Tis his enemies near!
There's a chasm deep on the mountain crest
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
They follow him close and they follow him fast,
And he flies like a mountain deer;
Then a mad, wild leap and he's safe at last!
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
A cry and a leap and the danger's past
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"
At the close of the verse, Galbraith said: "I don't like that song. I--I
don't like it. You're not a father, Pierre."
"No, I am not a father. I have some virtue of that. I have spared the
world something, Pete Galbraith."
"You have the Devil's luck; your sins never get YOU into trouble."
A curious fire flashed in the half-breed's eyes, and he said, quietly:
"Yes, I have great luck; but I have my little troubles at times--at
times."
"They're different, though, from this trouble of Val's." There was
something like a fog in the old man's throat.
"Yes, Val was quite foolish, you see. If he had killed a white
man--Pretty Pierre, for instance--well, there would have been a show of
arrest, but he could escape. It was an Injin. The Government cherish the
Injin much in these days. The redskin must be protected. It must be shown
that at Ottawa there is justice. That is droll--quite. Eh, bien! Val will
not try to escape. He waits too long-near twenty-four hours. Then, it is
as you see. . . . You have not told her?" He nodded towards the door of
the sittingroom.
"Nothing. It'll come on Jen soon enough if he doesn't get away, and bad
enough if he does, and can't come back to us. She's fond of him--as fond
of him as a mother. Always was wiser than our Val or me, Jen was. More
sense than a judge, and proud but not too proud, Pierre--not too proud.
She knows the right thing to do, like the Scriptures; and she does it
too. . . . Where did you say he was hid?"
"In the Hollow at Soldier's Knee. He stayed too long at Moose Horn.
Injins carried the news on to Fort Desire. When Val started south for the
Border other Injins followed, and when a halt was made at Soldier's Knee
they pushed across country over to Fort Desire. You see, Val's horse give
out. I rode with him so far. My horse too was broke up. What was to be
done? Well, I knew a ranchman not far from Soldier's Knee. I told Val to
sleep, and I would go on and get the ranchman to send him a horse, while
I come on to you. Then he could push on to the Border. I saw the
ranchman, and he swore to send a horse to Val to-night. He will keep his
word. He knows Val. That was at noon to-day, and I am here, you see, and
you know all. The danger? Ah, my friend,--the Police Barracks at
Archangel's Rise! If word is sent down there from Fort Desire before Val
passes, they will have out a big patrol, and his chances,--well, you know
them, the Riders of the Plains. But Val, I think will have luck, and get
into Montana before they can stop him. I hope; yes."
"If I could do anything, Pierre! Can't we--"
The half-breed interrupted: "No, we can't do anything, Galbraith. I have
done all. The ranchman knows me. He will keep his word, by the Great
Heaven!" It would seem as if Pierre had reasons for relying on the
ranchman other than ordinary prairie courtesy to law-breakers.
"Pierre, tell me the whole story over, slow and plain. It don't seem
nateral to think of it; but if you go over it again, perhaps I can get
the thing more reas'nable in my mind. No, it ain't nateral to me,
Pierre--our Val running away." The old man leaned forward and put his
elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
"Eh, well, it was an Injin. So much. It was in self-defence--a little,
but of course to prove that. There is the difficulty. You see, they were
all drinking, and the Injin--he was a chief---proposed--he proposed that
Val should sell him his sister, Jen Galbraith, to be the chief's squaw.
He would give him a cayuse. Val's blood came up quick--quite quick. You
know Val. He said between his teeth: 'Look out, Snow Devil, you Injin
dog, or I'll have your heart. Do you think a white girl is like a redskin
woman, to be sold as you sell your wives and daughters to the squaw-men
and white loafers, you reptile?' Then the Injin said an ugly word about
Val's sister, and Val shot him dead like lightning.... Yes, that is good
to swear, Galbraith. You are not the only one that curses the law in this
world. It is not Justice that fills the gaols, but Law."
The old man rose and walked up and down the room in a shuffling kind of
way. His best days were done, the spring of his life was gone, and the
step was that of a man who had little more of activity and force with
which to turn the halting wheels of life. His face was not altogether
good, yet it was not evil. There was a sinister droop to the eyelids, a
suggestion of cruelty about the mouth; but there was more of good-nature
and passive strength than either in the general expression. One could see
that some genial influence had dominated what was inherently cruel and
sinister in him. Still the sinister predisposition was there.
"He can't never come here, Pierre, can he"? he asked, despairingly.
"No, he can't come here, Galbraith. And look: if the Riders of the Plains
should stop here to-night, or to-morrow, you will be cool--cool, eh?"
"Yes, I will be quite cool, Pierre." Then he seemed to think of something
else and looked up half-curiously, half-inquiringly at the half-breed.
Pierre saw this. He whistled quietly to himself for a little, and then
called the old man over to where he sat. Leaning slightly forward he made
his reply to the look that had been bent upon him. He touched Galbraith's
breast lightly with his delicate fingers, and said: "I have not much love
for the world, Pete Galbraith, and not much love for men and women
altogether; they are fools--nearly all. Some men--you know--treat me
well. They drink with me--much. They would make life a hell for me if I
was poor--shoot me, perhaps, quick!--if--if I didn't shoot first. They
would wipe me with their feet. They would spoil Pretty Pierre." This he
said with a grim kind of humour and scorn, refined in its suppressed
force. Fastidious as he was in appearance, Pierre was not vain. He had
been created with a sense of refinement that reduced the grossness of his
life; but he did not trade on it; he simply accepted it and lived it
naturally after his kind. He was not good at heart, and he never
pretended to be so. He continued: "No, I have not much love; but Val,
well, I think of him some. His tongue is straight; he makes no lies. His
heart is fire; his arms are strong; he has no fear. He does not love
Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him. He does not think of me like
the rest. So much the more when his trouble comes I help him. I help him
to the death if he needs me. To make him my friend--that is good. Eh?
Perhaps. You see, Galbraith?"
The old man nodded thoughtfully, and after a little pause said: "I have
killed Injins myself;" and he made a motion of his head backward,
suggestive of the past.
With a shrug of his shoulders the other replied "Yes, so have
I--sometimes. But the government was different then, and there were no
Riders of the Plains." His white teeth showed menacingly under his slight
moustache. Then there was another pause. Pierre was watching the other.
"What's that you're doing, Galbraith?"
"Rubbin' laudanum on my gums for this toothache. Have to use it for
nuralgy, too."
Galbraith put the little vial back in his waistcoat pocket, and presently
said: "What will you have to drink, Pretty Pierre?" That was his way of
showing gratitude.
"I am reform. I will take coffee, if Jen Galbraith will make some. Too
much broke glass inside is not good. Yes."
Galbraith went into the sitting-room to ask Jen to make the coffee.
Pierre, still sitting on the bar-counter, sang to himself a verse of a
rough-and-ready, satirical prairie ballad:
"The Riders of the Plains, my boys, are twenty thousand strong
Oh, Lordy, don't they make the prairies howl!
'Tis their lot to smile on virtue and to collar what is wrong,
And to intercept the happy flowin' bowl.
They've a notion, that in glory, when we wicked ones have chains
They will all be major-generals--and that!
They're a lovely band of pilgrims are the Riders of the Plains
Will some sinner please to pass around the hat?"
As he reached the last two lines of the verse the door opened and
Sergeant Tom entered. Pretty Pierre did not stop singing. His eyes simply
grew a little brighter, his cheek flushed ever so slightly, and there was
an increase of vigour in the closing notes.
Sergeant Tom smiled a little grimly, then he nodded and said: "Been at it
ever since, Pretty Pierre? You were singing the same song on the same
spot when I passed here six months ago."
"Eh, Sergeant Tom, it is you? What brings you so far from your straw-bed
at Fort Desire?" From underneath his hat-brim Pierre scanned the face of
the trooper closely.
"Business. Not to smile on virtue, but to collar what is wrong. I guess
you ought to be ready by this time to go into quarters, Pierre. You've
had a long innings."
"Not yet, Sergeant Tom, though I love the Irish, and your company would
make me happy. But I am so innocent, and the world--it cannot spare me
yet. But I think you come to smile on virtue, all the same, Sergeant Tom.
She is beautiful is Jen Galbraith. Ah, that makes your eye bright--so!
You Riders of the Plains, you do two things at one time. You make this
hour someone happy, and that hour someone unhappy. In one hand the soft
glove of kindness, in the other, voila! the cold glove of steel. We
cannot all be great like that, Sergeant Tom."
"Not great, but clever. Voila, the Pretty Pierre! In one hand he holds
the soft paper, the pictures that deceive--kings, queens, and knaves; in
the other, pictures in gold and silver--money won from the pockets of
fools. And so, as you say, 'bien,' and we each have our way, bedad!"
Sergeant Tom noticed that the half-breed's eyes nearly closed, as if to
hide the malevolence that was in them. He would not have been surprised
to see a pistol drawn. But he was quite fearless, and if it was not his
duty to provoke a difficulty, his fighting nature would not shrink from
giving as good as he got. Besides, so far as that nature permitted, he
hated Pretty Pierre. He knew the ruin that this gambler had caused here
and there in the West, and he was glad that Fort Desire, at any rate,
knew him less than it did formerly.
Just then Peter Galbraith entered with the coffee, followed by Jen. When
the old man saw his visitor he stood still with sudden fear; but catching
a warning look from the eye of the half-breed, he made an effort to be
steady, and said: "Well, Jen, if it isn't Sergeant Tom! And what brings
you down here, Sergeant Tom? After some scalawag that's broke the law?"
Sergeant Tom had not noticed the blanched anxiety in the father's face;
for his eyes were seeking those of the daughter. He answered the question
as he advanced towards Jen: "Yes and no, Galbraith; I'm only takin'
orders to those who will be after some scalawag by daylight in the
mornin', or before. The hand of a traveller to you, Miss Jen."
Her eyes replied to his in one language; her lips spoke another. "And who
is the law-breaker, Sergeant Tom"? she said, as she took his hand.
Galbraith's eyes strained towards the soldier till the reply came: "And I
don't know that; not wan o' me. I'd ridden in to Fort Desire from another
duty, a matter of a hundred miles, whin the major says to me, 'There's
murder been done at Moose Horn. Take these orders down to Archangel's
Rise, and deliver them and be back here within forty-eight hours.' And
here I am on the way, and, if I wasn't ready to drop for want of a bite
and sup, I'd be movin' away from here to the south at this moment."
Galbraith was trembling with excitement. Pierre warned him by a look, and
almost immediately afterward gave him a reassuring nod, as if an
important and favourable idea had occurred to him.
Jen, looking at the Sergeant's handsome face, said: "It's six months to a
day since you were here, Sergeant Tom."
"What an almanac you are, Miss!"
Pretty Pierre sipping his coffee here interrupted musingly: "But her
almanac is not always so reliable. So I think. When was I here last,
Ma'm'selle?"
With something like menace in her eyes Jen replied: "You were here six
months ago to-day, when you won thirty dollars from our Val; and then
again, just thirty days after that."
"Ah, so! You remember with a difference."
A moment after, Sergeant Tom being occupied in talking to Jen, Pierre
whispered to Peter Galbraith: "His horse--then the laudanum!"
Galbraith was puzzled for a moment, but soon nodded significantly, and
the sinister droop to his eyes became more marked. He turned to the
Sergeant and said, "Your horse must be fed as well as yourself, Sergeant
Tom. I'll look after the beast, and Jen will take care of you. There's
some fresh coffee, isn't there, Jen?"
Jen nodded an affirmative. Galbraith knew that the Sergeant would trust
no one to feed his horse but himself, and the offer therefore was made
with design.
Sergeant Tom replied instantly: "No, I'll do it if someone will show me
the grass pile."
Pierre slipped quietly from the counter, and said, "I know the way,
Galbraith. I will show."
Jen turned to the sitting-room, and Sergeant Tom moved to the tavern
door, followed by Pierre, who, as he passed Galbraith, touched the old
man's waistcoat pocket, and said: "Thirty drops in the coffee."
Then he passed out, singing softly:
"And he sleepeth so well, and he sleepeth so long
The fight it was hard, my dear;
And his foes were many and swift and strong
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"
There was danger ahead for Sergeant Thomas Gellatly. Galbraith followed
his daughter to the sitting-room. She went to the kitchen and brought
bread, and cold venison, and prairie fowl, and stewed dried apples--the
stay and luxury of all rural Canadian homes. The coffee-pot was then
placed on the table. Then the old man said: "Better give him some of that
old cheese, Jen, hadn't you? It's in the cellar." He wanted to be rid of
her for a few moments. "S'pose I had," and Jen vanished.
Now was Galbraith's chance. He took the vial of laudanum from his pocket,
and opened the coffee-pot. It was half full. This would not suit. Someone
else--Jen--might drink the coffee also! Yet it had to be done. Sergeant
Tom should not go on. Inspector Jules and his Riders of the Plains must
not be put upon the track of Val. Twelve hours would make all the
difference. Pour out a cup of coffee?--Yes, of course, that would do. It
was poured out quickly, and then thirty drops of laudanum were carefully
counted into it. Hark, they are coming back!--Just in time. Sergeant Tom
and Pierre enter from outside, and then Jen from the kitchen. Galbraith
is pouring another cup of coffee as they enter, and he says: "Just to be
sociable I'm goin' to have a cup of coffee with you, Sergeant Tom. How
you Riders of the Plains get waited on hand and foot!" Did some warning
flash through Sergeant Tom's mind or body, some mental shock or some
physical chill? For he distinctly shivered, though he was not cold. He
seemed suddenly oppressed with a sense of danger. But his eyes fell on
Jen, and the hesitation, for which he did not then try to account,
passed. Jen, clear-faced and true, invited him to sit and eat, and he,
starting half-abstractedly, responded to her "Draw nigh, Sergeant Tom,"
and sat down. Commonplace as the words were, they thrilled him, for he
thought of a table of his own in a home of his own, and the same words
spoken everyday, but without the "Sergeant,"--simply "Tom."
He ate heartily and sipped his coffee slowly, talking meanwhile to Jen
and Galbraith. Pretty Pierre watched them all. Presently the gambler
said: "Let us go and have our game of euchre, Galbraith. Ma'm'selle can
well take care of Sergeant Tom."
Galbraith drank the rest of his coffee, rose, and passed with Pierre into
the bar-room. Then the halfbreed said to him, "You were careful--thirty
drops?"
"Yes, thirty drops." The latent cruelty of the old man's nature was
awake.
"That is right. It is sleep; not death. He will sleep so sound for half a
day, perhaps eighteen hours, and then!--Val will have a long start."
In the sitting-room Sergeant Tom was saying: "Where is your brother, Miss
Galbraith?" He had no idea that the order in his pocket was for the
arrest of that brother. He merely asked the question to start the talk.
He and Jen had met but five or six times; but the impression left on the
minds of both was pleasant--ineradicable. Yet, as Sergeant Tom often
asked himself during the past six months, why should he think of her? The
life he led was one of severe endurance, and harshness, and austerity.
Into it there could not possibly enter anything of home. He was but a
noncommissioned officer of the Mounted Police, and beyond that he had
nothing. Ireland had not been kind to him. He had left her inhospitable
shores, and after years of absence he had but a couple of hundred dollars
laid up--enough to purchase his discharge and something over, but nothing
with which to start a home. Ranching required capital. No, it couldn't be
thought of; and yet he had thought of it, try as he would not to do so.
And she? There was that about this man who had lived life on two
continents, in whose blood ran the warm and chivalrous Celtic fire, which
appealed to her. His physical manhood was noble, if rugged; his
disposition genial and free, if schooled, but not entirely, to that
reserve which his occupation made necessary--a reserve he would have been
more careful to maintain, in speaking of his mission a short time back in
the bar-room, if Jen had not been there. She called out the frankest part
of him; she opened the doors of his nature; she attracted confidence as
the sun does the sunflower.