shooting off into a formidable waxed point. Both his moustachios and his eyebrows were of that distinguished but rarely encountered colour — jet black. Last time Falcon had seen Constable Brazenose, those moustachios and eyebrows had been a comfortable, everyday brown.
“What is he like?” whispered Falcon.
“We call him ‘Wild Willie,’” said Browne.
“This fellow Callahan ought to be placed under arrest.” Murphy, the red-faced hotel proprietor, talked loud and fast to the constable. “He rode his horse right into my hotel — right through the doorway there …”
“More like Texas every day!” shouted the bleary-eyed Callahan.
“Shut up, will you? You’re going to be put where you won’t talk so much,” shouted Murphy. Then, turning again to the policeman: “This new pine flooring was never meant to bear the weight of horses. You can see for yourself what a mess he’s made. Crashed right through into my cellar.…”
“More like Texas every day!” thundered Callahan.
“And then, look at those holes he shot in the roof. He ought to know he can’t get away with that stuff up here in Alberta …”
“More like Tex —”
“Callahan!” Constable Brazenose addressed the head that stuck out of the floor, “I’ll have to arrest you on three charges.”
Cud Browne shoved himself in front of the constable. “What’s that about arresting Callahan?”
The constable glared at Browne. “What business is that of yours?”
“It’s the business of all of us.” The bronc’ twister waved his hand towards the other cowboys. “We’re all in the same party — crew of the Bar Ninety-Nine. Having a little drink.”
“I don’t mind your having a little drink,” cut in Murphy, “but …”
“No, I guess you don’t mind our having a little drink,” snorted Browne. “That’s where your profit comes in. Have you figured, Mister Murphy, what will happen to you and to your hotel if you have Callahan arrested?”
“What do you mean?” asked Brazenose boldly.
Cud Browne stepped closer, smiled into Brazenose’s face.
“I mean,” he said quietly, “you’d better forget about arresting Callahan. You’d better come along and have a little drink.”
“I’m not afraid of Callahan,” blustered Brazenose.
“No? We all know you, Wild Willie. Reg’lar hellraiser, ain’t you? If you gotta fight, try me.… Just a few friendly wallops,” Browne said. Then to Murphy he called, “Don’t worry about your floor, Mike, we’ll pay the damages. Come on in and have a little drink.… Come on, Brazenose.”
* * *
Oscar Wilde was guilty of an understatement, Falcon thought to himself as he leaned against the bar, when he said that life was an imitation of literature. It would have been much nearer the truth, this evening at any rate, to say that life is a burlesque of a penny shocker.
Here he had come two thousand miles in search of adventure. And all he had found was this.… The cowboys in their dark woolen shirts, old waistcoats, baggy corduroy trousers, didn’t look very different from farm hands. Of course there were, for distinction, the big floppy felt hats, the high-heeled riding boots, the large-roweled spurs. And the cowboys were more lithe in their movements than farmers. Still, these were hardly the trappings, this was hardly the atmosphere — he sniffed the smell of stale beer which was all around him — for romance.
“Have a beer, Alec?” The little weazened foreman, a human walnut, with two short, very bowed legs attached, addressed him.
“If you’ll allow me, Mr. Bent” — Falcon spoke with the elaborate courtesy of the slightly inebriated — “I’ll stick to my simple regimen of whisky and water.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Mr. Bent. “Here, boy, two whiskies. Long. And make it snappy.”
“You don’t drink very often, Mr. Bent.”
“You’ve never seen me drink before, Alec. My wife made me swear off drinking on the first day of August nineteen four. I swore off for ten years. Now I can have a drink again.”
“Is this the first of August, then?”
“No. I thought it was, but it isn’t. You know how we lose track of dates on the range. The hotel man says it’s the fourth.”
“Oh, well, one day’s as good as another to get drunk on.”
Falcon wondered if Baldy Bent would get drunk. The cowboys said he used to be a “bad actor” when drunk. He had shot four or five men in the old days, in the Southwest. And before he married and “settled down” he had served five years in the penitentiary.
“You said the other day, Mr. Bent, that I had started too late. How early should I have started if I was to become a real horseman?”
“That’s hard to say, Alec. I’ve been in the saddle since I was five years old. That’s over half a century ago now — down in the old Texas Panhandle. I guess you’ve got to be born to it.”
Bent rambled along in his high, thin voice. Told stories of bringing vast herds, forty years ago, up the Long Trail that wound its way from Mexico to Montana and then up north through the rolling plains of Alberta. A six months’ trip. A long, hard voyage in the saddle.
Bent talked and Alexander Falcon dreamed. There had been, thought Falcon, adventures enough in the West in the old days, but there was little left now of romance. Yet there were some colourful characters among these men around him.
Cud Browne would have served for a hero of his boyhood. The blue-eyed, fair-haired Cud stood six feet one, weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, was strong, gentle and courteous. He talked little except when drunk. Probably he had little to say. He knew, indeed, nothing about anything in the world except horses, cattle, whores. He didn’t “break” horses in the old-fashioned way. Horseflesh was too valuable for that now, and Cud was too good a horseman. He “gentled” the colts. He had chances enough to show boldness as well as skill when he rode the mean, older horses — horses notorious for bad habits, whom nobody else could ride. He had only been thrown once in the whole summer. That was when he had ridden Snake-eye in another man’s saddle with stirrup lengths too short. Even then he had lit on his feet standing. He had followed Snake-eye as that crazy buckskin plunged around the corral, caught the bridle reins and then “gentled” him, changed the stirrup lengths, rode him back to camp.
Beside Cud Browne lounged Long Harry, the cook — a good horseman in his day, but he had given up riding the range for the more profitable occupation of tending the stove. Long Harry stood second in the outfit to nobody but the foreman, Bent.
That animated piece of old saddle-leather, as Falcon knew well, stood second to none. Bent would talk as an equal to Colonel Carson, the owner. Always Bent spoke of “our cattle,” “our range.” For if Colonel Carson had supplied the money and the business judgment, hadn’t he, Bent, supplied the skill in handling cattle, horses, men? Hadn’t they built up
