Chapter 5. The Ancient Sacrifice

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_ CHAPTER V. THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE

The moon was riding high in the cloudless blue of the heavens, tricked out with faintly shining stars, when they rode into the "corral" that surrounded the ranch stable. A horse stood tethered at the gate.

"Hello, a visitor!" cried Cameron. "A Police horse!" his eyes falling upon the shining accouterments.

"A Policeman!" echoed Mandy, a sudden foreboding at her heart. "What can he want?"

"Me, likely," replied her husband with a laugh, "though I can't think for which of my crimes it is. It's Inspector Dickson, by his horse. You know him, Mandy, my very best friend."

"What does he want, Allan?" said Mandy, anxiety in her voice.

"Want? Any one of a thousand things. You run in and see while I put up the ponies."

"I don't like it," said Mandy, walking with him toward the stable. "Do you know, I feel there is something--I have felt all day a kind of dread that--"

"Nonsense, Mandy! You're not that style of girl. Run away into the house."

But still Mandy waited beside him.

"We've had a great day, Allan," she said again. "Many great days, and this, one of the best. Whatever comes nothing can take those happy days from us." She put her arms about his neck and drew him toward her. "I don't know why, Allan, I know it's foolish, but I'm afraid," she whispered, "I'm afraid."

"Now, Mandy," said her husband, with his arms round about her, "don't say you're going to get like other girls, hysterical and that sort of thing. You are just over-tired. We've had a big day, but an exhausting day, an exciting day. What with that Piegan and the wolf business and all, you are done right up. So am I and--by Jove! That reminds me, I am dead famished."

No better word could he have spoken.

"You poor boy," she cried. "I'll have supper ready by the time you come in. I am silly, but now it's all over. I shall go in and face the Inspector and dare him to arrest you, no matter what you have done."

"That's more like the thing! That's more like my girl. I shall be with you in a very few minutes. He can't take us both, can he? Run in and smile at him."

Mandy found the Inspector in the cozy ranch kitchen, calmly smoking his pipe, and deep in the London Graphic. As she touched the latch he sprang to his feet and saluted in his best style.

"Never heard you ride up, Mrs. Cameron, I assure you. You must think me rather cool to sit tight here and ignore your coming."

"I am very glad to see you, Inspector Dickson, and Allan will be delighted. He is putting up your horse. You will of course stay the night with us."

"Oh, that's awfully kind, but I really can't, you know. I shall tell Cameron." He took his hat from the peg.

"We should be delighted if you could stay with us. We see very few people and you have not been very neighborly, now confess."

"I have not been, and to my sorrow and loss. If any man had told me that I should have been just five weeks to a day within a few hours' ride of my friend Cameron, not to speak of his charming wife, without visiting him, well I should have--well, no matter--to my joy I am here to-night. But I can't stay this trip. We are rather hard worked just now, to tell the truth."

"Hard worked?" she asked.

"Yes. Patrol work rather heavy. But I must stop Cameron in his hospitable design," he added, as he passed out of the door.

It was a full half hour before the men returned, to find supper spread and Mandy waiting. It was a large and cheerful apartment that did both for kitchen and living room. The sides were made of logs hewn smooth, plastered and whitewashed. The oak joists and planking above were stained brown. At one end of the kitchen two doors led to as many rooms, at the other a large stone fireplace, with a great slab for mantelpiece. On this slab stood bits of china bric-a-brac, and what not, relics abandoned by the gallant and chivalrous Fraser for the bride and her house furnishing. The prints, too, upon the wall, hunting scenes of the old land, sea-scenes, moorland and wild cattle, with many useful and ornamental bits of furniture, had all been handed over with true Highland generosity by the outgoing owner.

In the fireplace, for the night had a touch of frost in it, a log fire blazed and sparked, lending to the whole scene an altogether delightful air of comfort.

"I say, this does look jolly!" cried the Inspector as he entered. "Cameron, you lucky dog, do you really imagine you know how jolly well off you are, coddled thus in the lap of comfort and surrounded with all the enervating luxuries of an effete and forgotten civilization? Come now, own up, you are beginning to take this thing as a matter of course."

But Cameron stood with his back to the light, busying himself with his fishing tackle and fish, and ignoring the Inspector's cheerful chatter. And thus he remained without a word while the Inspector talked on in a voluble flow of small talk quite unusual with him.

Throughout the supper Cameron remained silent, rallying spasmodically with gay banter to the Inspector's chatter, or answering at random, but always falling silent again, and altogether was so unlike himself that Mandy fell to wondering, then became watchful, then anxious. At length the Inspector himself fell silent, as if perceiving the uselessness of further pretense.

"What is it, Allan?" said Mandy quietly, when silence had fallen upon them all. "You might as well let me know."

"Tell her, for God's sake," said her husband to the Inspector.

"What is it?" inquired Mandy.

The Inspector handed her a letter.

"From Superintendent Strong to my Chief," he said.

She took it and as she read her face went now white with fear, now red with indignation. At length she flung the letter down.

"What a man he is to be sure!" she cried scornfully. "And what nonsense is this he writes. With all his men and officers he must come for my husband! What is HE doing? And all the others? It's just his own stupid stubbornness. He always did object to our marriage."

The Inspector was silent. Cameron was silent too. His boyish face, for he was but a lad, seemed to have grown old in those few minutes. The Inspector wore an ashamed look, as if detected in a crime.

"And because he is not clever enough to catch this man they must come for my husband to do it for them. He is not a Policeman. He has nothing to do with the Force."

And still the Inspector sat silent, as if convicted of both crime and folly.

At length Cameron spoke.

"It is quite impossible, Inspector. I can't do it. You quite see how impossible it is."

"Most certainly you can't," eagerly agreed the Inspector. "I knew from the first it was a piece of--sheer absurdity--in fact brutal inhumanity. I told the Commissioner so."

"It isn't as if I was really needed, you know. The Superintendent's idea is, as you say, quite absurd."

The Inspector gravely nodded.

"You don't think for a moment," continued Cameron, "there is any need--any real need I mean--for me to--" Cameron's voice died away.

The Inspector hesitated and cleared his throat. "Well--of course, we are desperately short-handed, you know. Every man is overworked. Every reserve has to be closely patroled. Every trail ought to be watched. Runners are coming in every day. We ought to have a thousand men instead of five hundred, this very minute. Of course one can never tell. The chances are this will all blow over."

"Certainly," said Cameron. "We've heard these rumors for the past year."

"Of course," agreed the Inspector cheerfully.

"But if it does not," asked Mandy, suddenly facing the Inspector, "what then?"

"If it does not?"

"If it does not?" she insisted.

The Inspector appeared to turn the matter over in his mind.

"Well," he said slowly and thoughtfully, "if it does not there will be a deuce of an ugly time."

"What do you mean?"

The Inspector shrugged his shoulders. But Mandy waited, her eyes fixed on his face demanding answer.

"Well, there are some hundreds of settlers and their families scattered over this country, and we can hardly protect them all. But," he added cheerfully, as if dismissing the subject, "we have a trick of worrying through."

Mandy shuddered. One phrase in the Superintendent's letter to the Commissioner which she had just read kept hammering upon her brain, "Cameron is the man and the only man for the job."

They turned the talk to other things, but the subject would not be dismissed. Like the ghost at the feast it kept ever returning. The Inspector retailed the most recent rumors, and together he and his host weighed their worth. The Inspector disclosed the Commissioner's plans as far as he knew them. These, too, were discussed with approval or condemnation. The consequences of an Indian uprising were hinted at, but quickly dropped. The probabilities of such an uprising were touched upon and pronounced somewhat slight.

But somehow to the woman listening as in a maze this pronouncement and all the reassuring talk rang hollow. She sat staring at the Inspector with eyes that saw him not. What she did see was a picture out of an old book of Indian war days which she had read when a child, a smoking cabin, with mangled forms of women and children lying in the blackened embers. By degrees, slow, painful, but relentlessly progressive, certain impressions, at first vague and passionately resisted, were wrought into convictions in her soul. First, the Inspector, in spite of his light talk, was undeniably anxious, and in this anxiety her husband shared. Then, the Force was clearly inadequate to the duty required of it. At this her indignation burned. Why should it be that a Government should ask of brave men what they must know to be impossible? Hard upon this conviction came the words of the Superintendent, "Cameron is the man and the only man for the job." Finally, the Inspector was apologizing for her husband. It roused a hot resentment in her to hear him. That thing she could not and would not bear. Never should it be said that her husband had needed a friend to apologize for him.

As these convictions grew in clearness she found herself brought suddenly and sharply to face the issue. With a swift contraction of the heart she realized that she must send her husband on this perilous duty. Ah! Could she do it? It was as if a cold hand were steadily squeezing drop by drop the life-blood from her heart. In contrast, and as if with one flash of light, the long happy days of the last six months passed before her mind. How could she give him up? Her breathing came in short gasps, her lips became dry, her eyes fixed and staring. She was fighting for what was dearer to her than life. Suddenly she flung her hands to her face and groaned aloud.

"What is it, Mandy?" cried her husband, starting from his place.

His words seemed to recall her. The agonizing agitation passed from her and a great quiet fell upon her soul. The struggle was done. She had made the ancient sacrifice demanded of women since ever the first man went forth to war. It remained only to complete with fitting ritual this ancient sacrifice. She rose from her seat and faced her husband.

"Allan," she said, and her voice was of indescribable sweetness, "you must go."

Her husband took her in his arms without a word, then brokenly he said:

"My girl! My own brave girl! I knew you must send me."

"Yes," she replied, gazing into his face with a wan smile, "I knew it too, because I knew you would expect me to."

The Inspector had risen from his chair at her first cry and was standing with bent head, as if in the presence of a scene too sacred to witness. Then he came to her, and, with old time and courtly grace of the fine gentleman he was, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.

"Dear lady," he said, "for such as you brave men would gladly give their lives."

"Give their lives!" cried Mandy. "I would much rather they would save them. But," she added, her voice taking a practical tone, "sit down and let us talk. Now what's the work and what's the plan?"

The men glanced at each other in silent admiration of this woman who, without moan or murmur, could surrender her heart's dearest treasure for her country's good. This was a spirit of their own type.

They sat down before the fire and discussed the business before them. But as they discussed ever and again Mandy would find her mind wandering back over the past happy days. Ever and again a word would recall her, but only for a brief moment and soon she was far away again.

A phrase of the Inspector, however, arrested and held her.

"He's really a fine looking Indian, in short a kind of aristocrat among the Indians," he was saying.

"An aristocrat?" she exclaimed, remembering her own word about the Indian Chief they had met that very evening. "Why, that is like our Chief, Allan."

"By Jove! You're right!" exclaimed her husband. "What's your man like, again? Describe him, Inspector."

The Inspector described him in detail.

"The very man we saw to-night!" cried Mandy, and gave her description of the "Big Chief."

When she had finished the Inspector sat looking into the fire.

"Among the Piegans, too," he mused. "That fits in. There was a big powwow the other day in the Sun Dance Canyon. The Piegans' is the nearest reserve, and a lot of them were there. The Superintendent says he is somewhere along the Sun Dance."

"Inspector," said Allan, with sudden determination, "we will drop in on the Piegans to-morrow morning by sun-up."

Mandy started. This pace was more rapid than she had expected, but, having made the sacrifice, there was with her no word of recall.

The Inspector pondered the suggestion.

"Well," he said, "it would do no harm to reconnoiter at any rate. But we can't afford to make any false move, and we can't afford to fail."

"Fail!" said Cameron quietly. "We won't fail. We'll get him." And the lines in his face reminded his wife of how he looked that night three years before when he cowed the great bully Perkins into submission at her father's door.

Long they sat and planned. As the Inspector said, there must be no failure; hence the plan must provide for every possible contingency. By far the keenest of the three in mental activity was Mandy. By a curious psychological process the Indian Chief, who an hour before had awakened in her admiration and a certain romantic interest, had in a single moment become an object of loathing, almost of hatred. That he should be in this land planning for her people, for innocent and defenseless women and children, the horrors of massacre filled her with a fierce anger. But a deeper analysis would doubtless have revealed a personal element in her anger and loathing. The Indian had become the enemy for whose capture and for whose destruction her husband was now enlisted. Deep down in her quiet, strong, self-controlled nature there burned a passion in which mingled the primitive animal instincts of the female, mate for mate, and mother for offspring. Already her mind had leaped forward to the moment when this cunning, powerful plotter would be at death-grips with her husband and she not there to help. With intensity of purpose and relentlessness of determination she focused the powers of her forceful and practical mind upon the problem engaging their thought.

With mind whetted to its keenest she listened to the men as they made and unmade their plans. In ordinary circumstances the procedure of arrest would have been extremely simple. The Inspector and Cameron would have ridden into the Piegan camp, and, demanding their man, would have quietly and without even a show of violence carried him off. It would have been like things they had each of them done single-handed within the past year.

"When once we make a start, you see, Mrs. Cameron, we never turn back. We could not afford to," said the Inspector. There was no suspicion of boasting in the Inspector's voice. He was simply enunciating the traditional code of the Police. "And if we should hesitate with this man or fail to land him every Indian in these territories would have it within a week and our prestige would receive a shock. We dare not exhibit any sign of nerves. On the other hand we dare not make any movement in force. In short, anything unusual must be avoided."

"I quite see," replied Mandy with keen appreciation of the delicacy of the situation.

"So that I fancy the simpler the plan the better. Cameron will ride into the Piegan camp inquiring about his cattle, as, fortunately for the present situation, he has cause enough to in quite an ordinary way. I drop in on my regular patrol looking up a cattle-thief in quite the ordinary way. Seeing this strange chief, I arrest him on suspicion. Cameron backs me up. The thing is done. Luckily Trotting Wolf, who is the Head Chief now of the Piegans, has a fairly thorough respect for the Police, and unless things have gone much farther in his band than I think he will not resist. He is, after all, rather harmless."

"I don't like your plan at all, Inspector," said Mandy promptly. "The moment you suggest arrest that moment the younger men will be up. They are just back from a big brave-making powwow, you say. They are all worked up, and keen for a chance to prove that they are braves in more than in name. You give them the very opportunity you wish to avoid. Now hear my plan," she continued, her voice eager, keen, hard, in the intensity of her purpose. "I ride into camp to-morrow morning to see the sick boy. I promised I would and I really want to. I find him in a fever, for a fever he certainly will have. I dress his wounded ankle and discover he must have some medicine. I get old Copperhead to ride back with me for it. You wait here and arrest him without trouble."

The two men looked at each other, then at her, with a gentle admiring pity. The plan was simplicity itself and undoubtedly eliminated the elements of danger which the Inspector's possessed. It had, however, one fatal defect.

"Fine, Mandy!" said her husband, reaching across the table and patting her hand that lay clenched upon the cloth. "But it won't do."

"And why not, pray?" she demanded.

"We do not use our women as decoys in this country, nor do we expose them to dangers we men dare not face."

"Allan," cried his wife with angry impatience, "you miss the whole point. For a woman to ride into the Piegan camp, especially on this errand of mercy, involves her in no danger. And what possible danger would there be in having the old villain ride back with me for medicine? And as to the decoy business," here she shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, "do you think I care a bit for that? Isn't he planning to kill women and children in this country? And--and--won't he do his best to kill you?" she panted. "Isn't it right for me to prevent him? Prevent him! To me he is like a snake. I would--would--gladly kill him--myself." As she spoke these words her eyes were indeed, in Sergeant Ferry's words, "like little blue flames."

But the men remained utterly unmoved. To their manhood the plan was repugnant, and in spite of Mandy's arguments and entreaties was rejected.

"It is the better plan, Mrs. Cameron," said the Inspector kindly, "but we cannot, you must see we cannot, adopt it."

"You mean you will not," cried Mandy indignantly, "just because you are stupid stubborn men!" And she proceeded to argue the matter all over again with convincing logic, but with the same result. There are propositions which do not lend themselves to the arbitrament of logic with men. When the safety of their women is at stake they refuse to discuss chances. In such a case they may be stupid, but they are quite immovable.

Blocked by this immovable stupidity, Mandy yielded her ground, but only to attempt a flank movement.

"Let me go with you on your reconnoitering expedition," she pleaded. "Rather, let US go, Allan, you and I together, to see the boy. I am really sorry for that boy. He can't help his father, can he?"

"Quite true," said the Inspector gravely.

"Let us go and find out all we can and next day make your attempt. Besides, Allan," she cried under a sudden inspiration of memory, "you can't possibly go. You forget your sister arrives at Calgary this week. You must meet her."

"By Jove! Is that so? I had forgotten," said Cameron, turning to study the calendar on the wall, a gorgeous work of art produced out of the surplus revenues of a Life Insurance Company. "Let's see," he calculated. "This week? Three days will take us in. We are still all right. We have five. That gives us two days clear for this job. I feel like making this try, Mandy," he continued earnestly. "We have this chap practically within our grasp. He will be off guard. The Piegans are not yet worked up to the point of resistance. Ten days from now our man may be we can't tell where."

Mandy remained silent. The ritual of her sacrifice was not yet complete.

"I think you are right, Allan," at length she said slowly with a twisted smile. "I'm afraid you are right. It's hard not to be in it, though. But," she added, as if moved by a sudden thought, "I may be in it yet."

"You will certainly be with us in spirit, Mandy," he replied, patting the firm brown hand that lay upon the table.

"Yes, truly, and in our hearts," added the Inspector with a bow.

But Mandy made no reply. Already she was turning over in her mind a half-formed plan which she had no intention of sharing with these men, who, after the manner of their kind, would doubtless block it.

Early morning found Cameron and the Inspector on the trail toward the Piegan Reserve, riding easily, for they knew not what lay before them nor what demand they might have to make upon their horses that day. The Inspector rode a strongly built, stocky horse of no great speed but good for an all-day run. Cameron's horse was a broncho, an unlovely brute, awkward and ginger-colored--his name was Ginger--sad-eyed and wicked-looking, but short-coupled and with flat, rangy legs that promised speed. For his sad-eyed, awkward broncho Cameron professed a deep affection and defended him stoutly against the Inspector's jibes.

"You can't kill him," he declared. "He'll go till he drops, and then twelve miles more. He isn't beautiful to look at and his manners are nothing to boast of, but he will hang upon the fence the handsome skin of that cob of yours."

When still five or six miles from camp they separated.

"The old boy may, of course, be gone," said the Inspector as he was parting from his friend. "By Superintendent Strong's report he seems to be continually on the move."

"I rather think his son will hold him for a day or two," replied Cameron. "Now you give me a full half hour. I shall look in upon the boy, you know. But don't be longer. I don't as a rule linger among these Piegan gentry, you know, and a lengthened stay would certainly arouse suspicion."

Cameron's way lay along the high plateau, from which a descent could be made by a trail leading straight south into the Piegan camp. The Inspector's course carried him in a long detour to the left, by which he should enter from the eastern end the valley in which lay the Indian camp. Cameron's trail at the first took him through thick timber, then, as it approached the level floor of the valley, through country that became more open. The trees were larger and with less undergrowth between them. In the valley itself a few stubble fields with fences sadly in need of repair gave evidence of the partial success of the attempts of the farm instructor to initiate the Piegans into the science and art of agriculture. A few scattering log houses, which the Indians had been induced by the Government to build for themselves, could be seen here and there among the trees. But during the long summer days, and indeed until driven from the open by the blizzards of winter, not one of these children of the free air and open sky could be persuaded to enter the dismal shelter afforded by the log houses. They much preferred the flimsy teepee or tent. And small wonder. Their methods of sanitation did not comport with a permanent dwelling. When the teepee grew foul, which their habits made inevitable, a simple and satisfactory remedy was discovered in a shift to another camp-ground. Not so with the log houses, whose foul corners, littered with the accumulated filth of a winter's occupation, became fertile breeding places for the germs of disease and death. Irregularly strewn upon the grassy plain in the valley bottom some two dozen teepees marked the Piegan summer headquarters. Above the camp rose the smoke of their camp-fires, for it was still early and their morning meal was yet in preparation. _

Read next: Chapter 6. The Illusive Copperhead

Read previous: Chapter 4. The Big Chief

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