Pierre And His People | Page 6

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.
No one would have accused Sergeant Fones of having a heart. Men of
keen discernment would have seen in him the little Bismarck of the
Mounted Police. His name carried farther on the Cypress Hills Patrol
than any other; and yet his officers could never say that he exceeded his
duty or enlarged upon the orders he received. He had no sympathy with
crime. Others of the force might wink at it; but his mind appeared to sit
severely upright upon the cold platform of Penalty, in beholding
breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as
the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly
put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of
the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He
was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the
sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty
worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted on by
the force known as Sergeant Fones. Some people, like Old Brown
Windsor, spoke hardly and openly of this force. There were three
people who never did--Pretty Pierre, Young Aleck, and Mab Humphrey.
Pierre hated him; Young Aleck admired in him a quality lying dormant
in himself--decision; Mab Humphrey spoke unkindly of no one.
Besides--but no!
What was Sergeant Fones's country? No one knew. Where had he come
from? No one asked him more than once. He could talk French with

Pierre, --a kind of French that sometimes made the undertone of red in
the Frenchman's cheeks darker. He had been heard to speak German to
a German prisoner, and once, when a gang of Italians were making
trouble on a line of railway under construction, he arrested the leader,
and, in a few swift, sharp words in the language of the rioters, settled
the business. He had no accent that betrayed his nationality.
He had been recommended for a commission. The officer in command
had hinted that the Sergeant might get a Christmas present. The officer
had further said: "And