driven the thirty miles from Lethbridge that day, bringing the ranch mail and news of the outside world. Something unforeseen must have delayed him.…
Falcon didn’t give more than half an ear to old Bent’s stories of his youth. He had heard them all a dozen times before. Besides, most of them weren’t true.
Bent at last, satiated with the relation of his Odyssey, came back to the point from which he had started.
“No, Alec, you didn’t begin early enough to become a real cow-puncher. You’re tanned and you’re tough, but you don’t look like a cow-puncher. Why, look at your hands! They show you’ve never done any real work — leastways not with your hands.”
Falcon protested. In the spring, when he had come out from college, he had done as much straight spadework, digging for the dipping-vat, as anyone in the crew. When he had been out before, he had done all the axe-work in camp, hauling driftwood from the river or from tumbledown corrals and chopping it up and splitting it for the cook. For the last four winters he had boxed in the University gymnasium. For the last two summers he had pulled an oar in an eight-oared shell. And that was a great deal harder on the hands than cow-punching. He invited Bent to look at the callouses on his palms.
“It’s not only your hands that show you’re no cow puncher,” Bent went on, stubbornly. “It’s your eyes. A cow-puncher’s always looking out to see what he can see. Half the time you’re looking inside your own head.”
“Have another whisky with me, won’t you?” Falcon wanted to change the conversation. He wasn’t annoyed with Bent: he was annoyed with himself. Brought up amongst books, he wished to develop, not in the direction for which his early environment fitted him, but as an adventurer, a man of action.…
He was a fool, he reflected, to wish to live like an Elizabethan in the twentieth century. You couldn’t be an Elizabethan in the twentieth century even if you were far better fitted for the part than it was his fortune to be. The big adventures were all over. Cow-punching had its fascinating moments, but there was little real adventure to it. The imagination, of course, could always weave about it something of the atmosphere of romance.…
“And when the white, sky-sweeping wings of dawn
Had brushed the gloom from silver mountain-spires,
He had caught his horse and thrown the saddle on
And given rein to his youth’s wild desires;
Then, while his heart leaped with the hoof-beats’ run,
His spirit rose like the young ardent sun.”
He wouldn’t be much of a poet either, he feared, judging by that stuff. He could imagine his former college instructor picking holes in it.… Allerdyce, that huge, lumbering scholar with the searching eye for beauty and the generous appetite for smut: “‘Silver mountain-spires,’ indeed! Trite! Mid-Victorian! Side-whiskered! Your silver spires are worthless except as phallic symbols. And as for ‘his youth’s wild desires.’ … Really now!”
Falcon saw himself as one of those who could neither mount Pegasus nor leave that difficult steed alone. It was such a plight as he got himself into once six years ago, when, as a youngster of seventeen, he tried to vault to the back of a much less fiery charger, his own top horse, Nigger Baby. Left hand on Nigger Baby’s neck, right hand on the horn of the saddle, he had leaped clear from the ground, chaps, spurs and all, with never a thought of stirrups. The way he saw one of the cowboys do. But he wasn’t as quick as the cowboy, and Nigger Baby was too quick. That little black streak bolted the moment Falcon’s feet left the ground. He, halfway into the saddle, held on hard. Hands gripping neck and horn, right foot just over the cantle, his body hanging halfway to the ground. He cursed as he heard the cowboys laughing. Then as, desperate, he pulled himself at last into the saddle, got a knee grip, found his stirrups, the laughter turned to cheers — grinning cheers, but none the less laudatory. “Ride him, cowboy!” “Well done, Wild Easterner!”
But Pegasus was a tougher horse to ride than Nigger Baby. He would never make that seat. Better count on mounting a good prose hack. And, even that, not blooded.
Old Bent chuckled, then said:
“Looks as if Murphy had forgotten about closing time.”
Falcon glanced at the clock. It was past eleven, the hour for clearing out the bar-room and locking up the doors. But nobody paid any attention to the clock, not even Constable Brazenose.
Everybody that Falcon could see in that big barroom was drunk. Roaring drunk. Singing drunk. Dancing drunk. The same wheezy old gramophone, to which earlier in the evening the cowboys had chanted “The Harlots of Jerusalem,” was now squeaking out “The Merry Widow.”
Constable Brazenose was waltzing with Vic Fleming. Both were very grave, with a far-away look in their eyes. Gyp Callahan, not knowing how to waltz, was doing an Indian war dance for the approval of Cud Browne. Big Bob from Mexico stood behind the bar serving drinks. Mike Murphy, the red-faced hotel proprietor, was now the soul of geniality, he was so drunk. He wouldn’t take in anymore coin. His thick red paw shoved it back with a lordly sweep.
As Falcon raised another tall glass of whisky and soda to his lips, overcame Long Harry, the cook.
“You’ve had enough for a young fella,” shouted the cook. He shot up a long leg and booted Falcon’s glass — whisky, soda and all — to the ceiling.
Down came a shower of broken glass and dripping soda. But not on Falcon. On Brazenose, the waltzing policeman, just then bumping Falcon’s elbow as his partner, Vic Fleming, reversed. It spattered him. Drenched him. Stained his smart tunic.
Brazenose wheeled round, fiery-eyed, alert to seize the cause of his annoyance. Described immediately Callahan, paralyzed by laughter in the midst of his war dance, one leg still in the air.…
“Damn you, Callahan!” Brazenose commenced. “This time …”
“Just a moment, Mr. Wild Willie.” Cud Browne swayed in front of him. “If you want to play with anybody, why don’t you play with me? … Look a’ here.”
Cud lurched over to one of the two new bar-room doors. Bright new yellow pinewood. He heaved his shoulder.… The door was shattered.
Brazenose looked at him. Should he arrest him? It would be rough work. Regulations of the Royal Mounted said you mustn’t pull a gun when making an arrest unless the offender had drawn arms first. But even if he had been free to draw his six-shooter, he would have found it ticklish work to arrest Cud Browne. A bad man from Montana had tried to pull a gun on the unarmed Browne. The bad man had gone to hospital with a broken jaw.
So Brazenose looked at Cud. Looked long. Twisted his waxed moustachios meditatively. Said nothing.
Callahan walked up. “Look a’ here, Brazenose. See that other door? Watch me smash it.”
Brazenose looked at Callahan. Callahan wasn’t as big as Cud. He wasn’t as big as Brazenose. This was too damned much.
“Stop that, Callahan! Stop, or I’ll put you under …”
But Callahan laughed in his face.
He walked across the room, laughing.
He laughed as he smashed the door.
Brazenose
