Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police Part 70

"Oh, I am so glad!"

"Thank you," said Cameron.

"I mean I am so glad to see you. They told us you would be coming to join us. And now they are gone. What a pity! They will be so disappointed."

"Who, pray, will be thus blighted?"

"Oh, the doctor I mean, and--and"--here her eyes danced mischievously--"the other nurse, of course. But you will be going west?"

"No, south, to-day, and in a few minutes. Here comes the Inspector. May I present him?"

The little nurse's snapping eyes glowed with pleasure as they ran over the tall figure of the Inspector and rested upon his fine clean-cut face. The Inspector had just made his farewell to the Sergeant preparatory to an immediate departure, but it was a full half hour before they rose from the dainty tea table where the little nurse had made them afternoon tea from her own dainty tea set.

"It makes me think of home," said the Inspector with a sigh as he bent over the little nurse's hand in grat.i.tude. "My first real afternoon tea in ten years."

"Poor man!" said the nurse. "Come again."

"Ah, if I could!"

"But YOU are coming?" said the little nurse to Cameron as he held her hand in farewell. "I heard the doctor say you were coming and we are quite wild with impatience over it."

Cameron looked at the Inspector.

"I had thought of keeping Cameron at Macleod," said the latter. "But now I can hardly have the heart to do so."

"Oh, you needn't look at me so," said the little nurse with a saucy toss of her head. "He wouldn't bother himself about me, but--but--there is another. No, I won't tell him." And she laughed gaily.

Cameron stood mystified.

"Another? There is old Martin of course, but there is no other."

The little nurse laughed, this time scornfully.

"Old Martin indeed! He is making a shameless pretence of ignorance, Inspector d.i.c.kson."

"Disgraceful bluff I call it," cried the Inspector.

"Who can it be?" said Cameron. "I really don't know any nurse. Of course it can't be--Mandy--Miss Haley?" He laughed a loud laugh almost of derision as he made the suggestion.

"Ah, he's got it!" cried the nurse, clapping her hands. "As if he ever doubted."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Cameron. "You don't mean to tell me that Mandy--What is poor Mandy doing here? Cooking?"

"Cooking indeed!" exclaimed the nurse. "Cooking indeed! Just let the men in this camp, from John here," indicating the Chinaman at the rear of the tent, "to the Sergeant yonder, hear you by the faintest tone indicate anything but adoration for Nurse Haley, and you will need the whole Police Force to deliver you from their fury."

"Good Heavens!" said Cameron in an undertone. "A nurse! With those hands!" He shuddered. "I mean, of course--you know--she's awfully good-hearted and all that, but as a nurse you know she is impossible."

The little nurse laughed long and joyously.

"Oh, this is fun! I wish Dr. Martin could hear you. You forget, Sir, that for a year and a half she has had the benefit of my example and tuition."

"Think of that, Cameron!" murmured the Inspector reproachfully. But Cameron only shook his head.

"Good-bye!" he said. "No, I don't think I pine for mountain scenery.

Remember me to Martin and to Man--to Nurse Haley."

"Good-bye!" said the little nurse. "I have a good mind to tell them what you said. I may. Just wait, though. Some day you will very humbly beg my pardon for that slight upon my a.s.sistant."

"Slight? Believe me, I mean none. I would be an awful cad if I did.

But--well, you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy is, she is in many ways impossible."

"Do I?" Again the joyous laugh pealed out. "Well, well, come back and see." And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the trail.

"Jolly little girl," said the Inspector, as they turned from the railway tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail. "But who is this other?"

"Oh," said Cameron impatiently, "I feel like a beastly cad. She's the daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a good simple-hearted girl, but awfully--well--crude, you know. And yet--"

Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played a trick upon him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that sunny autumn day looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and, remembering the eyes, he forgot his speech.

"Ah, yes," said the Inspector. "I understand."

"No, you don't," said Cameron almost rudely. "You would have to see her first. By Jove!" He broke into a laugh. "It is a joke with a vengeance,"

and relapsed into silence that lasted for some miles.

That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of the second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.

"We've had no luck this trip," growled the Inspector, for now they were facing toward home.

"Listen!" said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply. Down the pa.s.s the faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.

"Sun-dance," said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally allowed himself. "Piegans."

"Where?" said Cameron.

"In the sun-dance canyon," answered the Inspector. "I believe in my soul we shall see something now. Must be two miles off. Come on."

Though late in December the ground was still unfrozen and the new-made government trail gave soft footing to their horses. And so without fear of detection they loped briskly along till they began to hear rising above the throb of the tom-tom the weird chant of the Indian sun-dancers.

"They are right down in the canyon," said the Inspector. "I know the spot well. We can see them from the top. This is their most sacred place and there is doubtless something big going on."

They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through the scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover without impeding very materially their progress. Within a hundred yards of the top they tied their horses in the thicket and climbed the slight ascent.

Crawling on hands and knees to the lip of the canyon, they looked down upon a scene seldom witnessed by the eyes of white men. The canyon was a long narrow valley, whose rocky sides, covered with underbrush, rose some sixty feet from a little plain about fifty yards wide. The little plain was filled with the Indian encampment. At one end a huge fire blazed. At the other, and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in a semicircle, reaching from side to side of the canyon, and in front of the lodges were a ma.s.s of Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers, beating time, some with tom-toms, others with their hands, to the weirdly monotonous chant, that rose and fell in response to the gesticulations of one who appeared to be their leader. In the centre of the plain stood a post and round this two circles of dancers leaped and swayed. In the outer circle the men, with clubs and rifles in their hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their glorious deeds in the war or in the chase. The inner circle presented a ghastly and horrid spectacle. It was composed of younger men, naked and painted, some of whom were held to the top of the post by long thongs of buffalo hide attached to skewers thrust through the muscles of the breast or back.

Upon these thongs they swayed and threw themselves in frantic attempts to break free. With others the skewers were attached by thongs to buffalo skulls, stones or heavy blocks of wood, which, as they danced and leaped, tore at the bleeding flesh. Round and round the post the naked painted Indians leaped, lurching and swaying from side to side in their desperate efforts to drag themselves free from those tearing skewers, while round them from the dancing circle and from the ma.s.s of Indians squatted on the ground rose the weird, maddening, savage chant to the accompaniment of their beating hands and throbbing drums.

"This is a big dance," said the Inspector, subduing his voice to an undertone, though in the din there was little chance of his being heard.

"See! many braves have been made already," he added, pointing to a place on one side of the fire where a number of forms could be seen, some lying flat, some rolling upon the earth, but all apparently more or less in a stupor.

Madder and madder grew the drums, higher and higher rose the chant.

Now and then an older warrior from the squatting circle would fling his blanket aside and, waving his rifle high in the air, would join with loud cries and wild gesticulations the outer circle of dancers.