Chapter VI: Brat

My Brat had been frozen in the spring of 1884, losing the toes of the right foot. When I got back to Fort French in the fall of 1886, his wound was still open, although he wore boots and walked without a limp. He was on light duty as orderly-room clerk.

Even before he joined the outfit, the boy had been in love with Got-Wet, the ridiculous half-breed flirt whose father, Bad Mouth, alias Shifty Lane, was trader at Writing-on-Stone beside Milk River. She would have none of the boy, yet would not let him go, and Brat's little heart was true. In a land where girls are scarce all hearts are faithful. By secret means of his own, Brat managed to keep watch on that lone trading post a hundred miles to the eastward. How he knew was none of my business, but my brother had been kept informed through the tedious catalogue of the girl's flirtations. Grain by grain that fowl had filled her crop, while Brat was tortured, haunted by dismal jealousies. And jealousy disclosed far more than her wiles could hide.

Especially Brat was jealous of two cow-hands who worked on a ranch about fifty miles north of Milk River, and so, being next-door neighbors to Got-Wet, had all the chance denied to an invalid lover a hundred miles away. Very bad characters, Brat moaned, were these his rivals, especially the elder, Low Lived Joe, who was in a smuggling partnership with old Shifty Lane, and had given the girl a black silk skirt, said to be of great value. Oh, a tremendous dog was Low Lived Joe, putting on awful side, the fop of local society, claiming to be engaged. Brat wailed at the very thought of that wealthy rival. As to the other cowboy, he was worse--the blue-eyed, curly-headed Alabama Kid, a Harvard graduate, no less, from whom the faithless Got-Wet had accepted a diamond engagement ring. When I chaffed him Brat was peevish, when I advised, he sulked, when I consoled him he kicked me on the shin with his bad foot.

While I was still new at Fort French, a complaint came in from one of our ex-policemen, the cock-eyed Honorable Barrington Beauclerc, rancher for whom these two cowboys were riding. Cock-eye wanted our help because the pair of scamps had run away, making off with his imported stud horse, Lightning, a notorious crock, which he thought could outrun Phoebus. Our troop detective, McBugjuice, traced the kidnaped stallion, and found him at Cheyenne, down in the left-hand bottom corner of Wyoming. Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid had sold the horse to a livery man, and vanished.

So Brat was quit of his rivals? Not a bit! Got-Wet had disappeared and the boy was frantic. To comfort him I told him he could kick my shins with his right foot as often as he pleased. He would not be comforted.

Now the best way to capture Miss Got-Wet's two scamp lovers, was to keep a very close watch on papa, for Mr. Shifty Lane's trading post was general headquarters for horse thieves, smugglers, whisky runners and every sort of thug along the border. Of course, it would never do to post a constable at Writing-on-Stone, for it is a rule in trapping never to sit on the bait. But only a dozen miles to the west was our outpost station of Slide-out, abandoned since the rebellion had drawn our men in from detachment. So Corporal Buckie, who knew the district better than his prayer-book, was posted to Slide-out, and asked to select a brace of constables. He selected me because I knew the country, also a man called Poggles, a genius with the banjo and a cracker jack at cooking.

As for me, I flatly declined to listen to Buckie's worries because Black Prince had been grabbed by a mere officer. Black Prince was quite the most famous horse who ever served in the outfit. In those far distant times of 1886 he was a rookie, claiming--quite untruthfully--to be a four-year-old, a bouncing infant made of whalebone and rubber, shying at clouds rather than shy at nothing, full of loving-kindness, light-hearted innocence and baby fun. Range horses are never black, but his spring coat was brown, deepening to brown-black, until in autumn one almost caught a blue glint on his flank.

That such a charger should be wasted on any mere inspector was an outrage. So Black Prince and I came to a little private arrangement between ourselves. Whenever Inspector "Blatherskite" sent his servant to saddle up, I put a burr under the saddle blanket. Thus, when "Blatherskite" mounted, there were always volcanic eruptions. The horse detested the very sight of "Blatherskite," and yet was always a perfect lamb with me. To own him I would have volunteered to stew in Suez. The day he broke "Blatherskite's" off collar-bone I cheeked the sergeant-major, knowing quite well that he would try to get even with me by some unholy act of malice. The chap, by the way, is doing well now as a parson.

Sure enough Sergeant-Major Samlet palmed off Black Prince on me, and said that if I got killed I should make a jolly good riddance. At that I looked so glum and near to tears that he felt he had done me the worst turn possible. Not daring to sit in the saddle because of the burr underneath I led Black Prince to the stable. I had got him!

That evening I bought at the Hudson's Bay store a black silk shirt, and a silk scarf of ruby and orange very broadly striped. These, with my old shaps and glittering cartridge belt made the right colors for my heaven-born horse as I rode out with Buckie on the trail to Slide-out. Poggles drove the team with our supplies, and we made the eighty-eight miles in a couple of easy days.

So we began to keep house in the old 'dobe shacks at Slide-out, Corporal Buckie to give counsel on all proprieties, Poggles to make our hearts glad with the sauce-pan and the banjo, and me in a purring mood with my tail up--the happiest household that ever was or could be. Rich Mixed was the officer commanding.

In that life of the lone outposts each constable by turns was cook for the week, and had charge of the station, leaving the other fellows free for patrols which visited every settler in the district. To save the people from infection among their livestock, to preserve the game for their use, to succor them in storm, drought or famine, guard them from thieves, advise them in difficulties, assemble them to fight range fires and entertain them without charge in camp or quarters, to make aliens into citizens, to lay the foundations of the state--such was the work of police out on the frontier.

To this little outpost of Slide-out Buckie had been attached in his rookie days, when he brought me, dressed in blushes and a vest, to my enlistment. From here he had flirted with Got-Wet, and lured away his rival, my dear Brat, to be another coyote at Fort French. On the strength of all that Buckie was most paternal, and a 'dobe shack may house much dearer memories than any palace.

We had not been so very long at Slide-out when the massive detective, Sergeant Ithuriel McBugjuice came ramping down upon us, reined his portly cart horse, and in a double basso-profound roar, "How, Buckie!" he shouted; "How, Don Coyote! Hurroar, young Poggles, what's there to eat? Great Jehoshaphat! I'm absolutely starving. Bai jove, yaas!"

We fed roast antelope to the dying man until we thought he would burst, with powerful coffee, and a heap of slapjacks, and finished him off with apple dumplings. He whispered hoarsely that he felt much betteh, yaas, able to sit up, bai jove--er and take a little nourishment. He had news from the Cheyenne sheriff, a propah sportman, yaas; Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid were heading northward indeed--ah.

Now I had seen myself that very day tracks of two unknown horsemen with a pack pony shod on the fore heading northward from Shifty Lane's trading post on the trail to Cock-eye Beauclerc's. Here then were the wicked cowboys who had stolen Cock-eye's stallion. Detective Sergeant Ithuriel F. McBugjuice ordered us all to bed for a rapid sleep, bai gingah!

At midnight Poggles and Rich Mixed, who were to remain in charge at Slide-out, awakened us for tea and ah--refreshments. By one o'clock A.M., Buckie and I helped hoist the ponderous detective on to his roomy chargah. On through that starry night we slung long miles behind us, then shivering in the dawn chill, let our horses graze until there was light enough for reading tracks. We seemed to breathe the pale fine gold of the East like some divine draught which gives perpetual youth, to stand upon a floor of living gold as wide as heaven, to wait for the sun as though God were about to rise. Then, looking back, I saw the Rocky Mountains, angels of clear flame, kneel on a wall of tenderest violet. No poet's dream brings me so near to Heaven as the plains at daybreak.

We had been waiting on a ripple of the prairie for light enough to read a little winding trail. Before the sun rose, we saw. Two shod horses, attended by a pack pony shod only on the fore, traveling swiftly, by night, and blundering through sage-brush, had passed on the way to Beauclerc's. We followed, rolling our tails for Hand Creek which we made by half past ten. The ranch was empty.

Here the signs read clear. Poor little Cock-eye Beauclerc had been surprised in bed, and tied up after a sharp tussle. His monocle lay smashed, a pathetic relic. His basket of good, old family plate had been emptied, and the young robbers had gone off south by east at a lope. Afterward the captive Beauclerc had cut loose from the rope which lashed him to his bed, had crossed to the stable, left his lantern burning, and taken his buckboard with a lame old mare, heading for Medicine Hat. He would get help from our detachment there. We cooked a meal, fed our horses, left a note for Cock-eye, and hit the trail again directed for home. So long as our hairies thought they were going home they would give us of their best. So long as we did not alarm our little jail-birds they would head for Lane's. Birds of that feather flocked to Lane by instinct. Our job was to get there first.

All day we rode on the floor of an invisible ocean, looking up at the keels of the cloud-fleet on its surface, in belts of sudden light and racing shadow. Then as the sun shone level, we cut the trail from Slide-out to Writing-on-Stone, having covered in all some ninety miles with only six to go.

"By the Great Horn Spoon!" roared bull-faced McBugjuice, "look at that, eh, what!"

Buckie and I dismounted to kneel in the trail and read sign.

"A white man," said Dandy in his best official manner, stating all that was really obvious at a mile. "Afoot," said he; "that's strange. Heading for Lane's too. Who can it be, afoot! Long boots," he crawled past me, jostling for room, "police heels. Load on the off shoulder--dead weary, too. Here's the right foot--"

"Damn that Brat," said I, for in the deeply indented right track there was no sign of the toes. Here was my wretched brother, a hundred miles from duty, limping across the plains with an open wound. The blasted Brat needed a feeding teat and a bib. I swore I would tear his hide off, and stretch the dirty pelt for a drum-head. So we rode on with His Obesity, the sergeant detective, burbling in the rear.

From the moment we turned eastward away from home our three horses said they were seriously unwell, dead lame, with symptoms of giving up the ghost; and ninety miles at a happy gait is nothing compared with six at an exhausted crawl. So we were bone-weary and sick of life when we made Lane's at dusk. There were no signs of our jailbirds as we trailed down into the Milk River coulée. They had not yet arrived.

But my Brat would be at the house, and arrested for deserting unless I warned him. I whipped out my gun and rolled it while Black Prince, Buckie and the sergeant threw hysterics.

"Don't shoot!" cried Buckie, when my gun was emptied, "we want them thieves!"

"Dam' cheek, shootin' no ordahs. Damme!" roared the sergeant when I had sheathed my gun.

When we reached the house there was Lane, lounging in the only doorway, and hailing us.

"How, Shermogonish! (Welcome, soldiers.) After deserters, eh? Well, now, I allus aim to oblige you police gents. Got one for yous right here." He jerked his thumb back. "Which he shorely tried to get away when he heerd them shots."

My Brat was caught in Shifty's trap all right, and feeling very sick I led the three horses away to stable them. But Buckie came running behind, and whispered to me, "We'll see to your brother. Don't worry about that. You want to keep your eye skinned watching Shifty. See he don't signal them horse thieves."

When I got back from the stable I found my brother sitting on the door-step.

"Hullo, Brat!" said I. "Deserting?"

Brat was weak with the pain of his wound, slack with fatigue and looked very frail for such a life as ours. I was always rough and ugly, lacking his patrician fineness, the grand air, the gentle grace, envious a little of his large, soft, brilliant eyes, his amazing charm of manner. He gave to our majestic Spanish a sweeter resonance. He pleaded with me for help, for sympathy, telling me why he came to Lane's afoot. Did I think, he asked me, that nobody but myself had the right to rescue a woman?

There was a bench by the door, with a basin, soap and a towel, so while Brat told me his trouble, I stripped to the waist and got comfy. Then I called Buckie and talked with him in whispers lest Lane should overhear.

"Buckie, my Brat says that this horse thief, Low Lived Joe, kidnaped Lane's girl and sold her."

"Got-Wet?"

"Yes. Down in Wyoming. She's a white slave at Cheyenne. She wants to be rescued."

The detective sergeant had joined us, and broke in with a hoarse stage whisper audible for miles.

"Ought to have got a pass, eh, what?"

"Refused," said Brat, "Sam wouldn't let me go."

"Long walk, by thundah. Thousand miles--more, to Cheyenne. Ought to have stolen a horse, eh? Damme! Yaas."

"It's too late now," said Brat.

"Shouldn't get caught. Desertion. Looks dam' bad. Can't be done--no, damme. Got to arrest you. Can't have this Lane person reporting me--neglect of duty. Yaas."

Brat looked up at the big whole-hearted ruffian. "Lane would report you, and Sam would break you, Sergeant. I'm not going to run away, to have you smashed. Is there no way, Sergeant?"

Ithuriel F. McBugjuice scratched his head and his piggy eyes narrowed to slits. "It's like--er--your blasted cheek," he said out loud. "Does Shifty Lane know? Eh, what?"

"Know what?" came Lane's rasping voice from the house. "Know what?"

"That your daughtah, young Got-Wet, blast your soul, has been kidnaped by Low Lived Joe, confound you, and sold for a white slave, you--er--jumped up swine, and you stand there gulping as if you liked getting half shares in the price of your girl, you toad! Yaas! damme!"

I saw the trader turning gray with horror. Rage would come next against the partner who had so betrayed him. So our detective would use Shifty Lane for the capture of Low Lived Joe. The trader made no sound, no comment, but turned away, bent down and looking very old, to collapse in his rawhide chair beside the stove. His squaw came out and beckoned that supper was ready.

After supper it was my job to unsaddle, water, feed and bed the horses, but I had a sort of muddled feeling about Low Lived Joe and his partner, the Kid. They were coming, and we wanted to see them come, but if they found police horses with banged tails in the stables they would quit coming and pass the house severally by instead of leaving cards. Moreover, they might be in need of remounts, and borrow our horses, leaving us all afoot. So I tied the horses to the fence behind the house, and made them comfy there. As for the saddles, I lugged them into the house.

And if I was any judge of blackguards, old Shifty needed watching. So I sat in the doorway for my evening pipe, trying to keep awake. From where I squatted I could see the lamp-lit living-room, as well as the moonlit yard. Lane and his squaw took the lamp with them into the little inner room where they slept, pulling its doors to, until the latch caught on its hasp with a click. The moon poured treasure of silver light into the living-room of that evil house.

McBugjuice lugged over his saddle and spread his cloak and blanket across the inner door. On the sneck he hung his serge, his waistcoat, and his boots which would fall on his head and wake him if any one tried to get out of the bedroom. In his elephantine way he had a certain slyness--that detective. He turned to my brother, who sat crouched beside the stove.

"Ah, here you are, Brat. Share my bed, eh, what?"

My brother hobbled across to thank him for his kindness.

"Promise not to run, eh?" He was belting on his side-arms for the night. Brat glanced at me, and I made "Don't" in the sign talk.

The fat detective grunted dismally, then took his hand-cuffs from the pocket of his vest, put the key back in the pocket and shackled Brat's right wrist to his own left. So they turned in--"Indeed, ah! Doosed chilly, eh, what?"

Meanwhile, the ever-dutiful Buckie fussed around in the yard, taking ostentatious precautions by way of setting me a good example. He passed the loop of his rope around a plank of the stable door, stretched its fifty-foot length to a point abreast of the house, then made the rope-end fast to the collar strap of his cloak, and lay down in his blanket with the cloak pulled over him. The only things left in the closely-guarded stable were my cloak and blanket, but when I said so, he was most ungrateful. He told me he was a corporal and my superior officer, with more to the same effect. He flounced across my outstretched legs in the doorway to get inside the house and bed down warm by the stove. But, however funny, he was never vulgar, never used coarse language to relieve harsh feelings like a common trooper. He continued to set me a good example and teach me official language, until his muttered declamation tailed off into a snore. I strolled across to take his telltale rope off the stable door, lest it should warn the robbers.

On my way to the stable, I noticed that Shifty had his lamp alight behind a red blind in his bedroom window--a danger-signal that. When I came back from a good-night talk with the horses, that lamp was still alight, but the red blind was gone. Shifty had signaled, "All clear. Police gone away, come in!"

As far as Shifty knew, the robbers would come, would find police horses with banged tails in the stable, and be on their guard as they approached the house. He never really loved the police. We should be caught asleep, in the dark house, at a disadvantage, shooting at one another by mistake.

Haste is a fool's passion, so I sat in the doorway to think.

Surely those robbers would find no sign of police until they were safely trapped inside the house. I could hear Shifty Lane fussing about in his bedroom--just like a bottled bee. I was very drowsy.

Still, in my little Dago way, I went on plotting against the whites. The robbers must have been watching from some hill until they thought it safe to approach. Now they would come, and I had barely time for the next move in my game. I slipped into the moonlit room, took the key of the handcuffs from the detective's vest pocket, unshackled my Brat, aroused him and told him to clear out and rescue Got-Wet. I had to take him by the shoulders and run him out of the house.

When he was gone, I slipped the handcuff over my own wrist, but left the key in its lock, then drew the whole of the detective's blanket over me. Being thin, I needed the blanket more than he did. And being cold, he would wake up as I intended.

Brat stole back, waited until I snored, then roused up Buckie, who grumped at him most wrathfully. Poor Brat was smoking a cigarette, quite ostentatiously at his ease, while, by the glow from the stove, I could see the big tears trickling down his face. He hawked, coughed and sniffed, getting control of his voice before he could speak without blubbering. "Corporal," he began very stiffly, "we're comparative strangers, eh?"

"Oh, give us a rest!"

"But I want this to be private--off duty--see? You and my brother are chums."

"Get to hell!"

"My brother loosed me!"

"Well, what of that?"

"He has taken my place--shackled himself to the sergeant. He'll get a year's hard labor and dismissed from the force!"

"Serve him right!"

The youngster's voice broke beyond all control. "A La Mancha," he wailed, "_the_ La Mancha disgracefully expelled! He'll shoot himself as sure as-- We've got to save him before the sergeant wakes. Got-Wet can go to blazes!"

My medicine was working famously.

It is only on looking back that one sees events in their sequence, their ordered movement toward the inevitable end. I changed places with Brat, expecting to be in irons for half an hour or so, until we went on duty to catch the robbers. Brat, being a gentleman, could not possibly leave me in the lurch to save a dozen Got-Wets. My only idea was to show him his own heart. I never dreamed of the far-away years to come when I should owe my life to Brat's lifelong gratitude.

Meanwhile, he had Buckie roused to a royal rage, fully alert, vindictively chucking wood into the stove. The stove was opposite to the open door, its glare would light the room for our job of trapping robbers. It would lure the robbers in with hopes of a rousing supper, and blind their eyes as they entered. Yes, my scheme worked to perfection. Buckie was rousing the detective, who sat up drawling, "Have I the bleedin' rats, or am I sobah?" Then he saw me, and asked what the deuce I was playing at. I told him the robbers were coming, so he had better loose me. He unlocked the handcuffs--indeed, ah!

Log walls, hewn planks, black beams hotly aglow with restless, flickering lights from the stove; cool still moonbeams raining to sapphire pools upon the floor; the silence, like some great visitant angel of the plains folding his wings in the doorway; our hearts beating like drums as we stood listening: then the soft pulsation of horses quivered underfoot, a quick, deep, throbbing chord of hoof-beats from the bridge, a trampling close at hand, the tinkle of a spur.

A youngster clattered in with trailing spurs, dragging a sack which crashed and rattled over the doorstep. "Rouse out!" he shouted. "On yer banglers, Shifty! Where's yer squaw? There's antelope venison coming!"

The door swung to behind him, Buckie whipped the gun from his slung holster, McBugjuice whispered, "Shut your mouth or I'll drop you!" and I clapped the handcuffs on Alabama Kid, while Brat dragged off the sack load of Beauclerc's plate.

Then a gunshot rang sharp outside, we heard a choking cough, and something fell through the door, shoving it wide open. Low Lived Joe lay dead in the pool of moonlight.

With a flying leap, I smashed through the inner door into the bedroom, and caught old Shifty climbing through the window from whence he had shot his partner. I took the smoking rifle, and led him back to the main room, where he crouched in his rawhide chair shaking all over, muttering, staring. The red glare from the stove was upon him as he faced that dread figure asprawl in the moonlit doorway. "'Twas me as done that," he kept saying with an air of surprise. "Me shorely 'as done that--'cause he sold my darter, Got-Wet, I done that."

His old squaw had followed us out of the bedroom, wrapped in a gray blanket, her gray hair streaming, her gray face cold as death, and in a dead voice, without emotion or even interest, she spoke across the room to me in Blackfoot.

"I lay aside the silence of fifty snows. It is the time for speaking. I speak to you, Charging Buffalo, and you must tell these Stone-hearts all my words."

I promised.

"My man, Bad Mouth, sitting there by the firelight, let that poor boy (Alabama Kid) run up a heap of debt. And the dead man there threatened him. Those two bad men drove the boy to stealing. They made him into a thief. The boy has done no wrong, and he is clean. Let him go."

"Mother," said I, when that was translated, "we thank you for words which will save the boy from prison."

She turned to my Brat. "Warrior," she said, and I translated phrase by phrase, "you loved my daughter, Got-Wet. The dead man there was her lover. She made him run away with her. Then she deserted him. He was too slow to keep her company on the way she went to shame. Think no more of my daughter, who laughs at you always.

"You, Bad Mouth," she spoke to her own man, "I am no longer your woman to be dragged down into shame. I am a daughter of those who do not lie, or cheat, or betray. I go to the camps of my people."

So, in the end, the Alabama Kid was acquitted, and is a wealthy rancher. Lane died in prison. His woman went to her people and lived in honor. As to my Brat, he was punished for breaking barracks, and promoted to the rank of corporal for his help in breaking up a gang of criminals.