CHAPTER IX
COCKNEY'S MYSTERIOUS RIDE
Long after midnight of the short summer night, Cockney Aikens and his wife drove up to the Provincial Hotel, the team in a lather but Pink Eye with lots of the devil left. Mary climbed down and pounded up the night clerk, and Cockney, given the stable key, took the team back himself.
As he emerged from the lane leading to the stables, a Mounted Policeman, riding in late from patrol, pulled up before him and stooped to see his face.
"What's on at this hour, Cockney?"
The big rancher straightened furiously.
"Say! Some day I want to get somewhere where a bunch of interfering red-coats aren't dogging my steps."
The Policeman laughed. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble doing that in this country."
"Then I'll go back home, where a man's his own boss."
"It didn't seem to suit you so well when you were there."
"What do you mean?" Cockney's tone was almost a bellow.
"Sh-h!" soothed the Policeman. "Everyone's in bed but ourselves. I suppose if you'd liked England so well you'd have stayed there. No one in Canada sent for you, did they?"
Cockney wheeled about and stalked up the Provincial steps, the Policeman watching him until the door closed behind him.
Cockney Aikens hated the Mounted Police. In all his life nothing had so roused the depths of hatred usually dormant in his big body. If one came within sight he swore beneath his breath—or aloud, according to the company. He thought and spoke the worst of them, and his unqualified dislike was unwilling to accord them any credit, would grant no conceivable purpose they fulfilled. On the trail he passed them without so much as nodding, and the very few patrols that wandered at long intervals to the vicinity of the H-Lazy Z avoided the sullen hospitality of its owner.
The cause of this settled hatred was as simple and unreasonable as that which lay at the root of most of Cockney's emotions.
Early in his career in the Medicine Hat district, when he was "going the pace" more recklessly than since his marriage, one of his uncontrolled orgies of drinking and gambling had brought him hard against the red-coats, and he had learned what a ruthless wall they are for wrong-doers to butt against.
Medicine Hat was not a wild town, as cow-towns go. Drinking that threw a man on the street in a condition dangerous to himself or others was discouraged with a firm hand, but gambling, so long as it kept under cover, was winked at by the town policeman as the least objectionable of the many vices common to a section that lived largely on its nerve.
Whether there was more in it than that for the policeman was open to question. Poker, and other card games of less skill and more manipulation, were available to anyone who knew the ropes. A daring stranger to town had reported to a local friend, who happened to be an usher in the Methodist Church, that the town policeman himself had directed him to a game in progress—but this was challenged when it came up before the town council. One resort, the basement under a barber shop on Toronto Street, was Cockney's favourite den; and, with the gambling instincts of the Englishman, and copious additions developed within himself, his evenings in the fetid atmosphere of smoke and whisky were times of fever to more than himself.
One night, unlucky, urged to stake more than he had ready money to meet, he emerged from the den in a vile temper, convinced that the cards had been stacked but unable to prove it before a crowd of blood-suckers frankly hostile to him. At the moment the town policeman happened to be on his rounds in that quarter, and in sheer wantonness, Cockney banged his helmet into the roadway; and when the policeman seemed to show resentment, he was tossed after his helmet. But a Western policeman, town or Mounted, faces such contingencies with the donning of his uniform, and Mason returned to the attack with drawn baton. Mason, baton and all, proved scarcely exercise for big Cockney Aikens.
Unfortunately two Mounted Policemen, attracted by the crowd that had trickled up from nowhere, arrived on the scene.
It was a brave struggle while it lasted, and four bodies ached from it for several days, but it ended with Cockney securely locked in the cells. In the cells! The big fellow came to himself and cried like a child.
But his shame was only commencing. Next morning the scene of his disgrace was transferred to the police court, where Cockney, with bowed head, scarcely heard the sentence of fifty dollars or thirty days. He realised it when he discovered that his account at the bank was drained to the last ten dollars to pay the fine, owing to heavy recent drafts thereon in settlement of his winter accounts and the purchase of new stock for the ranch.
And there remained unpaid his gambling losses of the previous night.
That was most terrible of all. When that afternoon he slunk from town with forty dollars of gambling debts recognised only in IOU's, his shame was complete.
In his mind the Mounted Police were entirely to blame. Before they interfered he was having only an exhilarating frolic with Mason. It was that strange hold of one of the red-coats—it almost broke his neck, and twisted his arm so that it still ached—that did the thing.
And so, with the capacity for stubborn hatred that required much rousing but defied conciliation, he never forgave them. They had besmirched his honour—for four months he was ashamed to show himself in the den under the barber shop—and nothing could remove the stain. He would grind his teeth and swear that if a Mounted Policeman were dying at his feet for a glass of water he would not stoop to give it to him.
When Cockney entered their bedroom in the hotel he was too angry to speak. Mary was waiting for him, thoughtfully rocking in an old rocker that was supposed to make cosy a room that had outlasted its decorations and furnishings years ago. He glanced at her swiftly, but whatever she had in mind, his sullen mood seemed to alter it.
The clerk knocked and enquired if anything was wanted.
"Yes," cried Cockney, "a big whisky—straight."
His wife studied him anxiously as she went about preparing to retire. The hideous life that would be hers for the next few days was commencing earlier than usual. Yet she was thankful to be there to look after him.
Me seized the glass when it was handed through the crack of the door, stared at it a second, and placed it on the washstand untouched.
"I'll be away for a few days," he told Mary casually, as he washed. "You'd better sleep in; it's been a stiff day for you."
"You've had seventy miles of Pink Eye to hold," she reminded him. "You need the rest more than I do."
He laughed bitterly. "Rest? There's no rest for me now for—maybe for months. I'll be back about—about Saturday, I think."
She knew the folly of asking questions, but she noticed that the whisky was not touched.
She seemed to have been asleep only a few minutes when she felt him lean over and gently kiss her. She did not open her eyes until he was fully dressed in his ranch clothes.
"Don't worry," he muttered, seeing she was awake; and went out on tiptoe. Though it was broad daylight, no one was yet stirring about the hotel.
When she awakened later and realised how thoughtlessly in her weariness she had let him go without trying to wring from him his destination, she dressed hurriedly and went to the stables. Pink Eye was gone—Pink Eye, like his master, untirable. It made her thoughtful, and with thought came a sigh that deepened the lines about her eyes.
On Saturday he returned. He rode quietly into the stable yard, handed his horse to the ostler, and sought his room. He was clear-eyed, but heavy with fatigue. Without undressing he dropped to the bed and was asleep before Mary could draw the curtains.
Out in the stable Pink Eye was as weary as his master.
Mary Aikens went into the streets, and in the post office heard the latest gossip—a new case of cattle-thieving off toward Irvine. For hours she walked up and down the streets with a terrible ache at her heart.
That night her husband sent her to a show in the "opera house," while he broke loose up in the Toronto Street den and lined the pockets of the usual sharpers on the look-out for reckless fools. Through a wretched performance she sat without grasping even its general idea, miserable, lonely, trembling with indecision. On her return to the hotel she borrowed a railway time-table from the hotel clerk and took it to her room. For a long time she sat rocking, staring into space, her face pale, her little fists clenched in the fight she was making, and at last carried the time-table down unopened.
She hungered to get away from it all, to sink her streaming eyes in a mother's lap, to feel about her arms that sympathised without questioning. But her pride, and a curious feeling about Jim, kept her to the duty she had undertaken when she stood beside Jim Aikens at the altar.