Pierre And His People | Page 8

had a dread of Pierre, and, only the night before, she had determined to
make one last great effort to save Aleck, and if he would not be
saved--strange that, thinking it all over again, as she watched the figure
on horseback coming nearer, her mind should swerve to what she had
heard of Sergeant Fones's expected promotion. Then she fell to
wondering if anyone had ever given him a real Christmas present; if he
had any friends at all; if life meant anything more to him than carrying
the law of the land across his saddle. Again he suddenly came to her in
a new thought, free from apprehension, and as the champion of her
cause to defeat the half-breed and his gang, and save Aleck from
present danger or future perils.
She was such a woman as prairies nurture; in spirit broad and
thoughtful and full of energy; not so deep as the mountain woman, not
so imaginative, but with more persistency, more daring. Youth to her
was a warmth, a glory. She hated excess and lawlessness, but she could
understand it. She felt sometimes as if she must go far away into the
unpeopled spaces, and shriek out her soul to the stars from the fulness
of too much life. She supposed men had feelings of that kind too, but
that they fell to playing cards and drinking instead of crying to the stars.
Still, she preferred her way.
Once, Sergeant Fones, on leaving the house, said grimly after his
fashion: "Not Mab but Ariadne--excuse a soldier's bluntness.....
Good-bye!" and with a brusque salute he had ridden away. What he
meant she did not know and could not ask. The thought instantly came
to her mind: Not Sergeant Fones; but who? She wondered if Ariadne
was born on the prairie. What knew she of the girl who helped Theseus,
her lover, to slay the Minotaur? What guessed she of the Slopes of
Naxos? How old was Ariadne? Twenty? For that was Mab's age. Was
Ariadne beautiful? She ran her fingers loosely through her short brown
hair, waving softly about her Greek-shaped head, and reasoned that
Ariadne must have been presentable, or Sergeant Fones would not have

made the comparison. She hoped Ariadne could ride well, for she
could.
But how white the world looked this morning, and how proud and
brilliant the sky! Nothing in the plane of vision but waves of snow
stretching to the Cypress Hills; far to the left a solitary house, with its
tin roof flashing back the sun, and to the right the Big Divide. It was an
old- fashioned winter, not one in which bare ground and sharp winds
make life outdoors inhospitable. Snow is hospitable-clean, impacted
snow; restful and silent. But there was one spot in the area of white, on
which Mab's eyes were fixed now, with something different in them
from what had been there. Again it was a memory with which Sergeant
Fones was associated. One day in the summer just past she had
watched him and his company put away to rest under the cool sod,
where many another lay in silent company, a prairie wanderer, some
outcast from a better life gone by. Afterwards, in her home, she saw the
Sergeant stand at the window, looking out towards the spot where the
waves in the sea of grass were more regular and greener than elsewhere,
and were surmounted by a high cross. She said to him--for she of all
was never shy of his stern ways:
"Why is the grass always greenest there, Sergeant Fones?"
He knew what she meant, and slowly said: "It is the Barracks of the
Free."
She had no views of life save those of duty and work and natural joy
and loving a ne'er-do-weel, and she said: "I do not understand that."
And the Sergeant replied: "'Free among the Dead like unto them that
are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance.'"
But Mab said again: "I do not understand that either."
The Sergeant did not at once reply. He stepped to the door and gave a
short command to some one without, and in a moment his company
was mounted in line; handsome, dashing fellows; one the son of an
English nobleman, one the brother of an eminent Canadian politician,
one related to a celebrated English dramatist. He ran his eye along the
line, then turned to Mab, raised his cap with machine-like precision,
and said: "No, I suppose you do not understand that. Keep Aleck
Windsor from Pretty Pierre and his gang. Good-bye."
Then he mounted and rode away. Every other man in the company
looked back to where the girl stood in the doorway; he did not. Private

Gellatly said, with a shake of the