Chapter V: The Wumps

This job of writing puzzles me. I am like a merchant selling a pearl necklace: will you have my string or my pearls? My threadbare story is that of an obscure man, but illustrates a theme worthy of your attention. That is why I wumble most confusedly.

To make each chapter a coherent story, I have copied the great musical composers. They write a series of "movements," or moods of mental confusion to form a "symphony" or all-round muddle. So do I. The result should appeal to all men, but there is so much immoral wisdom in every woman, that I doubt if one of them will read my book.

Now I am coming to a chapter which will not stand symphonic treatment. It is a sort of footling intermezzo, and the best way to handle it is that of the songs without words. We will have a series of wumps, or songs without music.

_The Blackguard's Wump_

The Alpuxarras appear to have worried along without me as their marquis. The angels never seemed inclined to pay for my board as their missionary. The devil had not commissioned me as his real-estate agent, or any other business man engaged me for useful work. The police outfit was considered a last refuge for the destitute, but even in that I was not offered so much as a lance-corporal's chevron. Nobody would ever take me seriously.

One of our teamsters who spoke ancient Greek like a native said I was "the dead spit of Pan"; Buckie, to whom the proprieties, deportment and the conventions were all one God, averred me to be sub-human, a faun if only I could learn to behave half decently. I was anything but a gentleman, having, I remember, oiled his hair with birdlime while he slept, so that on waking he could not tear himself from the pillow. As to the other fellow, observing that I was lean, swart, weathered and grotesque, they urged me to pawn my face. Call even a dog by such a name as Blackguard, and you might as well hang him.

Even in those days I knew that I did not belong to the civilized world at all, and that only half of me was serving in the mounted police. That was the half of me which craved for the Burrows woman, and cut her adrift from Sarde without any intention of taking her for myself. Indeed, it was not that particular minx I cared for, but rather an impulse to chase anything in skirts. Low caste women always hunted me because I was the troop jester, the comedian, quick, vital, joyous, of brilliant moods, and blood red-hot with life.

Nobody knew the other half of me--the immortal part which worshiped the memory of Rain, the sacred woman of the Blackfeet, with a lasting growing spiritual homage; the spirit in me which for my mother's honor and Our Lady's glory defended women in the duels with Tail-Feathers and the long feud with Sarde. God made me a patrician pledged to chivalric service, wholly estranged from all material interest, from the ambitions of civilized men.

I was beginning to weary of the noise in camp and barracks, yearning even then at times for the remote hills, the uttermost solitudes. There were moments on lone patrols when I could sense the presence of shy immortal creatures, kin of forgotten gods. I kept silence lest I disturb sweet April watering her buds, or May as she tended her flowers, or June, setting immortal seeds in holy ground, while the big wind gods tumbled their clouds through the celestial heights to bring fresh rains for Eden. To me already the days were notes, the months were chords, the years were phrases of one brave melody sung by flying earth as she cleft the deeps of space, a singer in the choir of the spheres whose adoration fills eternity. I knew that I was a very little spirit which must be kept in tune, free from impurities.

_The Regimental Wump_

That peace which passeth all understanding goes up from the plains forever, filling the wide grass lands and the skies above. Because it passeth understanding it escapes the attention of the police retained in its service.

The summer cured our crisp grass into gold under a dome of azure, and across this floor of heaven groups of profane small creatures rode in important errands, bursting with an infinitesimal rage, exploding when they met with sudden cracklings of battle, one party following the other to various ambuscades and places of starvation within the shadows of the northern forest. Like bees and ants they seemed to have dim instincts, working upon some ordered plan of mutual destruction. And I was one of these.

We fought, we bickered through long delays, and fought again. A little Canadian army came very late, helped us most gallantly, sowed their dead, and went off home in triumph. We rode, we starved, we stamped out the last embers of revolt, hanged Riel the dreamer and tidied up the littered settlements. We settled back again to our routine of active service as officers of the peace. We saw the Canadian Pacific rails run clear from sea to sea, we heard the Canadian colonies awaken to find themselves a nation, we watched history casting her long shadows into the future.

We riders of the plains were as God made us, and oftentimes even worse. For a regiment is a thousand times more human than a man in childhood and in growth, in overstrain of war, and maladies of reaction, in pride of strength and languor of decay. Our regiment was more human than most, tremendously alive, enraged with the late rebellion as a breach of our great discipline of the peace, and frantic at the loss of our leaders, Sorrel Top and Paddy. We had a fit of nerves, with serio-comic mutinies, typhoid and an epidemic and desertion. Then came Larry, the new commissioner, a mere civilian to reign over us, who expelled our old hands if they dared so much as spit sidewise. And we were swamped under a heap of rookies--a sort of dirty animal, void of manners or morals.

The regiment was still painfully young, fighting the tyrant Larry, who was destined to be our best friend, and even to inherit the dear title of Sorrel Top. His godless rookies grew into the men who finally tamed the plains for settlement, the leaders in the conquest of the North, the officers of superb Canadian regiments in South Africa, with a deal more to be proud of than mere millionaires.

The floor of Heaven was of gold in autumn, like unto fine glass in winter, and paved with starry flowers in spring. Where our horses trampled there is peace, where we lay down to rest there grows the golden wheat, and where we sowed our dead a nation lives.

_Buckie's Wump_

In the fall of '86 our camp was at the breezy edge of the plains overlooking the ford of Battle River. Out on the flat beyond was pestilence-ridden Battleford, where D Troop was down with typhoid, losing a man a day. Our F Troop detachment had come from Prince Albert to take over the D Troop patrols. Our men were away close-herding the beaten sullen tribes of the Cree nation, and helping the burned-out settlers. I was in charge of the two or three men left behind in camp, and we had orders not to go near stricken Battleford. We sat in camp and watched the funerals.

At sunrise and at sunset we rode and led our horses down to the ford for water and those big four-footed babies had us bareback, so there was lots of fun. One morning young Hairy, on leaving the water, walked under the ferry cable, which scraped me off his back into a pool of dust. Then he turned round to grin and while I was reproaching him with my quirt, there came from across the river sounds of lamentation. There was Buckie, oh, yes, Corporal Buckie, if you please, of D Troop, in his Sunday best, while Rich Mixed, wet from the river, leaped all over him spoiling his pretty clothes. With his forage cap poised on three hairs, his glowing scarlet and his gleaming boots, Buckie was being absolutely ruined while he denounced my dog.

I rode across to the rescue, leading Mrs. Bond, and Buckie made the passage on her broad buttocks. Since goodness knows when, I had not seen my chum, so we spent the whole morning together among the wild flowers up on the hill near camp between the torrid sun and a jovial wind. And Buckie brought forth documents--his little official soul did dearly love a document--all lettered, and scheduled in a rubber band. To wit, viz:--

A. Ululations from Brat, at Fort French. Got-Wet was haunting
him, and my little brother moaned for me to keep him out of
mischief. But I never answered letters.

B. Copy. Confidential report, obtained, it seems, by art magic,
from Inspector Sarde to the commissioner at regimental
headquarters. He had the honor to submit that the Blackguard was
an undesirable character, and needed watching. He had the honor
to be, sir, your obedient servant

C. Proceedings of Buckie. Took on as orderly-room clerk to Sam,
superintendent commanding D Division, and the greatest man on
earth. Showed Sam the above mentioned confidential report, with
further evidences of a private enmity. Sam was furious, and
pitched Buckie out of the office.

D. Copy of letter from Sam requesting commission to transfer
Reg. No. 1107, Const, la Mancha, J. and Reg. No. 128, Const la
Mancha, Pedro, to D Division.

E. Copy of General Order No. 12,578,901, transferring Brat and
me to Sam's troop from the 21st instant.

F. Copy of General Orders transferring Wormy's troop to Battle
ford, and Sam's own, D Division, to Fort French!

So Brat and Buckie and I were to serve together under Sam, the greatest of all Canadian soldiers, at Fort French, the happiest post on the plains, delivered from Sarde's malice. But when in my impulsive Dago way, I tried to kiss Corporal Buckie, he ran and I gave chase for a full mile. Then he wanted to fight!

A few days later we marched from Battleford upon a glorious ride of seven hundred miles across the plains, a troop of pink and white invalids, just barely convalescent, very limp in the saddle, rather self-conscious in full uniform. We swung in haughty silence past the F Troop camp where my late comrades mourned their fate in old brown overalls. And C Troop came ramping in from their great journey, lean, hard, tanned, their eyes aflash, grinning disdainfully at our troop of patients. They had scarcely a trace of uniform among them, but rode in buckskin shirts and cowboy shaps, attended by their herd of looted ponies.

The meeting of the three troops, in perfect silence, the dusty, windy, sunny splendor of that frontier pageant, makes my heart ache as I remember now. The delight of the eyes and the pride of life are gone. And where I sowed in the sands I did not reap fish.