The Hunted Outlaw, or, Donald Morrison, the Canadian Rob Roy Part 7

The people soon knew that an attempt was to be made to arrest Donald.

The young men gathered in the hotel round the constables, and told blood-curdling stories of his dare-devilism in the North-West. The constables were fat, phlegmatic, and anything but heroic. What they had been accustomed to was an unexciting and steady beat in the drowsy old city of Quebec, and small but unfailingly regular drinks of whiskey _blanc_. This duty was new. Worst of all, it was perilous. This Morrison--he might shoot at sight. True, they were armed with rifles and revolvers; but they had heard that he was a dead shot. Perhaps he might shoot first. That would, to say the least, be awkward, perhaps dangerous, perhaps even fatal. No, they had not much stomach for the work, and the people, perceiving this, encouraged their fears. In a very short time Donald became a combination of Italian brigand, d.i.c.k Turpin, and Wild West Cowboy, as these latter are depicted in the dime stories.

Whenever, therefore, the officers took their walks abroad, they stepped very gingerly as they approached the village of Marsden. It never occurred to them to enter Donald's home. They might have found him half-a-dozen times a day. They never once crossed the threshold of the woods.

Did not this terrible character know every tangled path, and might he not open fire upon them without being seen?

The country roads are really white lines through the green of the woods.

One morning the constables left the hotel, primed with a little whiskey.

They took the road to Marsden. The woods skirted the narrow way on either side. The summer was now well advanced, and the foliage was so thick as to form an impenetrable lacery.

"We have been here a month now," said the officer in charge, in French, "and we have accomplished nothing. I shall ask to be relieved at once.

The people will not help us. How could we ever find a man in these woods? He might be here this moment," pointing to the trees at his right, "yet what chance would we have of taking him?"

With one accord, the four subordinates answered "None."

"Suppose he were here," and the officer halted on his step, "how--What is that? Did you hear anything?"

"Yes," said one of the constables timorously, "I heard a noise in the brushwood."

"Suppose it were Morrison?"

And they looked at each other apprehensively.

"We will return," said the officer. "It is probably a bear. If I thought it were Morrison, I would enter the wood," he said valorously. When they were gone, a brown face peeped out. It was Donald. "They're scared," he said to himself, laughing. "Not much danger from _them_. I don't believe they would know me. I'll test it."

He laid down his rifle at the foot of a tree, looked to his pistols, and walked rapidly in the direction the constables had taken. Overtaking them, he pushed his way through the brushwood, in advance of them, and then, at a bend in the road which hid him from view, he leaped out upon the road, turned, and met the party. He walked straight up to them, looked them in the eye, and pa.s.sed on. They did not know him; or, if, as was alleged against them afterwards, they knew him, they were afraid to arrest him. The statement that Donald carried his audacity so far as to enter the hotel, and drink with them, he himself laughingly denied to his friends.

The opposition papers jeered at the failure of the expedition. Ridicule is the most powerful of weapons. Man is not half so humorous as the dog or the elephant. With the latter it is an instinct. With the former it is an acquirement. Still, the perception of humor is fairly general.

Don't argue with your opponent, Kill him with ridicule. Laughter is deadly. When the people laugh at a Government it can put its spare collar and s.h.i.+rt in its red handkerchief, and retire to the privacy of its family. Mr. Mercier is sensitive to ridicule.

Mr. Mercier withdrew that expedition, and offered $3,000 reward for the capture of Morrison!

CHAPTER XXV. PROOF AGAINST BRIBES!

"A man's a man for a' that."

It was now that Donald was to prove that integrity which for ages has been so n.o.ble an attribute of the Highlander.

To many of the villagers $3,000 would have been a fortune. But if Donald spent more of his time in the woods now than formerly, it was not that he doubted the honor of the poorest peasant in the county. He well knew that there was not a man or woman who would have accepted the reward if it were to save them from starvation. He had no fear on that score. He became more reserved in his movements, because his friends informed him that since the offer of the reward, several suspicious-looking individuals from Montreal, pretending to be commercial travellers, had been seen loitering in the village. He therefore drew farther into the woods, and avoided his father's house, either going to the houses of his friends for food, or having it brought to him. If danger seemed pressing, he pa.s.sed the night in the woods, his rifle close to his side; but ordinarily, during this time he slept at the homes of his friends.

The arrival of every stranger was known to him. Faithful friends noted down their description, and these notes either reached him at a given rendezvous in the woods, or at the houses where he pa.s.sed the night.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE REWARD FAILS.

Time pa.s.sed on. Donald was still at large. The reward had failed.

Private detectives from Montreal, who had remained in the district for weeks, returned in disgust, confessing that Morrison's capture was impossible so long as he had friends to inform him of every movement, and the woods to retreat to.

At the police headquarters in Montreal various schemes were discussed.

Chief Hughes was of opinion that thirty resolute men, skilfully directed, could accomplish the capture.

It was now the fall, and if action were not speedily taken, the winter woods, filled with snow, would soon mock all effort of authority.

The press kept up the public interest in the case. Morrison had been seen drinking at the hotel in Lake Megantic. He had attended a dance in Marsden. He had driven publicly with the Mayor of Gould, with his rifle slung from his shoulder. He went to church every Sunday, and he had taken the sacrament. All this according to the press. Did the Mercier Government, then, confess that it had abdicated its functions? Was this Scotland in the Seventeenth Century, and this Morrison a romantic Rob Roy, with a poetic halo round his picturesque head, or was it America in the Nineteenth, with the lightning express, the phonograph, and Pinkerton's bureau, and this criminal one of a vulgar type in whose crime sentiment had no place?

Did the Government intend to allow this man to defy the law? If it did, was this not putting a premium upon crime? If it did not, what steps did it intend to take to secure his arrest? Thus far the newspapers.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE GOVERNMENT TAKES OFF ITS COAT.

The winter had pa.s.sed. The first expedition had failed. The reward had failed, for the people, sincerely regretting the tragedy, and anxious that Donald should give himself up, scorned to betray the man who had trusted in their honor.

Donald had spent the winter in comparative security. Anxiety had made him thin, but he was as firmly fixed as ever in his determination to hold out. He knew that as long as his friends remained faithful to him he could never be taken. His mind did not seem to travel beyond that.

"He would never be taken." He was urged in vain to escape to the States.

He was urged in vain to give himself up. To the promise that his friends would see that he received a fair trial, he would answer bitterly: "Promises are easy now because they have not to be kept. How would it be when, behind iron bars, and hope cut off, they _could_ not be kept?"

Mr. Mercier felt that if the Government was not to suffer serious loss of _prestige_, it must adopt heroic measures.

Mr. Mercier obtained from the city of Montreal the loan of fifteen picked men. He placed these in the immediate charge of High Constable Bissonnette. Major Dugas, a police magistrate, a skilled lawyer, and a gallant officer, who, in 1885, had promptly responded to the call of duty in the North-West, he placed in supreme command of this expedition, to which he said dramatically, "Arrest Morrison!"

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE HUNTED OUTLAW.

The expedition arrived in Stornaway upon a raw morning in April.

Donald knew all that could be learned within an hour.

"I must be careful now," he said. "Well, if they can follow me through the woods on snowshoes, they're welcome to begin the pursuit."

Major Dugas' capacity was largely magisterial. He had the supreme direction of the men, indeed, but the carrying out of the movements was to be entrusted to the High Constable. The men had been carefully chosen. They were armed with rifles and revolvers, and their orders were to shoot Morrison, if, when accosted, he should refuse to surrender.

Major Dugas' plan was eminently politic. He first wanted to conciliate the people, and then induce them to bring such pressure upon Donald as would induce him to surrender upon being promised a fair trial. "This,"

said the Major to the leading men of the place, with whom he placed himself in communication the first day of his arrival, "is the wisest way to end the affair. The Government is in earnest. Morrison must be arrested. No matter how long it takes, this must be accomplished. Let the people come to the a.s.sistance of the law, let them refuse to harbor Morrison, and the thing is done. But should they fail to do this, then, however disagreeable it may be to me, I must arrest all suspected of helping him in any way."

At first the people were sullen. They resented the incursion of an armed force. Among the party was Sergeant Clarke, who brought his bagpipes with him. There may be some people who have a prejudice against the bagpipes. This proceeds from defective musical education. Sergeant Clarke's bagpipes proved a potent factor in securing the personal goodwill of the people. He played "Auld Scottish airs," and many of the old men, mellowed with whiskey, wept in the bar-room of the little hotel at Stornaway. The courtesy of Major Dugas, and the civil bearing of the men, told upon the people, but nevertheless they did not abate one jot of what they called their loyalty to Donald.