| THE
commander’s wife stood on the deck of the “North
Star” looking at the receding city of Vancouver
as if to photograph within her eyes and heart every
detail of its wonderful beauty—its clustering,
sisterly houses, its holly hedges, its ivied walls,
its emerald lawns, its teeming streets and towering
spires. She seemed to realize that this was the end
of the civilized trail; that henceforth, for many years,
her sight would know only the unbroken line of icy ridge
and sky of the northernmost outposts of the great Dominion.
To her hand clung a little boy of ten, and about her
hovered some twenty young fellows, gay in the scarlet
tunics, the flashing buffalo-head buttons, that bespoke
the soldierly uniform of the Canadian North-West Mounted
Police. They were the first detachment bound for the
Yukon, and were under her husband’s command.
She was the only woman in the
“company.” The major had purposely selected
unmarried men for his staff, for in the early nineties
the Arctic was no place for a woman. But when the Government
[Page 204] at Ottawa saw fit to commission
Major Lysle to face the frozen North, and with a handful
of men build and garrison a fort at the rim of the Polar
Seas, Mrs. Lysle quietly remarked, “I shall accompany
you, so shall the boy,” and the major blessed
her in his heart, for had she not so decided, it would
mean absolute separation from wife and child for from
three to five years, as in those days no railways, no
telegraph lines, stretched their pulsing fingers into
the Klondyke. One mail went in, one mail came out, each
year—that was all.
“It’s good-bye,
Graham lad,” said one of the scarlet-coated soldiers,
tossing the little boy to his back. “Look your
longest at those paved streets, and the green, green
things. There’ll be months of just snow away up
there,” and he nodded towards the north.
“Oh, but father says it
won’t be lonely at all up there,” asserted
the child. “He says I’ll grow terribly
big in a few years; that people always grow in the North,
and maybe I’ll soon be able to wear buffalo buttons
and have stripes on my sleeve like you;” and the
childish fingers traced the outline of the sergeant’s
chevrons.
“I hope, dear, that you
shall do all that, soon,” said Mrs. Lysle; “but
first you must win those stripes, my boy, and if you
win them as the sergeant did, mother shall be very proud
of you.” [Page 205]
At which, the said sergeant
hastily set the boy down, and, with confusion written
all over his strong young face, made some excuse to
disappear, for no man in the world is as shy or modest
of his deeds of valor as is a North-West “Mounted.”
“Won’t you tell
me, mother, how Sergeant Black got those stripes on
his sleeve?” begged the boy.
“Perhaps to-night, son,
when you are in bed—just before mother says good-night—we’ll
see. But look! there is the city, fading, fading.”
Then after a short silence: “There, Graham, it
has gone.”
“But isn’t that
it ’way over there, mother?” persisted the
boy. “I see the sun shining on the roofs.”
Mrs. Lysle shook her head. “No,
dearie; that is the snow on the mountain peaks. The
city has—gone.”
But far into the twilight she
yet stood watching the purple sea, the dove-gray coast.
Her world was with her—the man she had chosen
for her life partner, and the little boy that belonged
to them both—but there are times even in the life
of a wife and mother when her soul rebels at cutting
herself off from her womenkind, and all that environment
of social life among women means, even if the act itself
is voluntary on her part. It was a relief, then, from
her rather sombre [Page 206] musing
at the ship’s rail, when the major lightly placed
both hands on her shoulders and said, “Grahamie
has toddled off to the stateroom. The sea air is weighting
down his eyelids.”
“Sea air?” laughed
Mrs. Lysle. “Don’t you believe it, Horace.
The young monkey has been just scampering about the
deck with the men until his little legs are tired out.
I’m half afraid our ‘Mounted’ boys
bid fair to spoil him. I’ll go to him, for I promised
him a story to-night.”
“Which you would rather
perish than not tell him, if you promised,” smiled
the major. “You govern that boy the same way I
do my men, eh, dear?”
“It’s the only way
to govern boys or soldiers,” she laughed back
from the head of the companion-way. “Then both
boy and soldier will keep their promises to you.”
The major watched her go below,
then said to himself, “She’s right—she’s
always right. She was right to come north, and bring
him, too. But I am a coward, for I daren’t tell
her she’ll have to part from him, or from me,
some day. He will have to be sent to the front again;
he can’t grow up unlearned, untaught, and there
are no schools in our Arctic world, and she must go
with him, or stay with me; but I can’t tell her.
Yes, I’m a coward.” But Major Lysle was
the only person in all the world who would have thought
or said so. [Page 207]
“And will you tell me
how Sergeant Black won his stripes, mother, before I
go to sleep?” begged Graham.
“Yes, little ‘North-West,’”
she replied, using the pet name the men in barracks
frequently called the child. “It’s just
a wee story of one man fighting it out alone—just
alone, single-handed—with no reinforcements but
his own courage, his own self-reliance.”
“That’s what father
says, isn’t it, mother, to just do things yourself?”
asked the boy.
“That’s it, dear,
and that is what Sergeant Black did. He was only corporal
then, and he was dispatched from headquarters to arrest
some desperate horse thieves who were trying to drive
a magnificent bunch of animals across the boundary line
into the United States, and then sell them. These men
were breaking two laws. They had not only stolen the
horses, but were trying to evade the American Customs.
Your father always called them “The Rapparees,’
for they were Irish, and fighters, and known from the
Red River to the Rockies as plunderers and desperadoes.
There was some trouble to the north at the same time;
barracks was pretty well thinned; not a man could be
spared to help him. But when Corporal Black got his
instructions and listened to the commanding officer
say, ‘If that detachment returns from the Qu’Appelle
Valley within twenty-four hours,
I’ll order them out to assist [Page 208]
you, corporal,’ the plucky little soldier just
stood erect, clicked his heels together, saluted, and
replied, ‘I can do it alone, sir.’
“‘I notice you don’t
say you think you can do it alone,’ remarked
the officer dryly. He was a lenient man and often conversed
with his men.
“‘It is not my place
to think, sir. I’ve just got to do,’
replied the corporal, and saluting again, he was gone.
“All that night he galloped
up the prairie trail on the track of the thieves, and
just before daybreak he sighted them, entrenched in
a coulee, where their campfires made no glow, and the
neighing horses could not be heard. There were six men
all told, busying themselves getting breakfast and staking
the animals preparatory to hiding through the day hours,
and getting across the boundary line the next night.
Both men and beasts were wearied with the long journey,
but Corporal Black is the sort of man that never
wearies in either brain or body. He never hesitated
a second. Jerking his rat-skin cap down, covering his
face as much as possible, he rode silently around to
the south of the encampment, clutched a revolver in
each hand, and rode within earshot, then said four words:
“‘Stand, or I fire!’
If a cyclone had swooped down on them, the thieves could
not have been more astounded. But they stood, and stood
yards away from their own guns. Then they demanded to
know who he was, for of course they thought [Page
209] him a thief like themselves, probably
following them to capture their spoil. Then Corporal
Black unbuttoned his great-coat and flung it wide open,
displaying the brilliant scarlet tunic of our own dear
Mounted Police. They needed no other reply. At the point
of his revolver he ordered them to unstake the horses.
Then not one man was allowed to mount, but, breakfastless
and frenzied, they were compelled to walk before him,
driving the stolen animals ahead, mile upon mile, league
after league.
“Father says it was a
strange-looking procession that trudged into barracks.
Twenty beautiful, spirited horses, six hangdog-looking
thieves, with a single exhausted horse in the rear,
on which was mounted an alert, keen-eyed and very hungry
young soldier who wore a scarlet tunic and buffalo-head
buttons. The next day Corporal Black had another stripe
on his sleeve.”*
Her voice ceased, and she looked
down at her son. The child lay for a moment, wide-eyed
and tense. Then some indescribable quality seemed to
make him momentarily too large, too tall, for the narrow
ship’s berth. Then:
“And he fought it out
alone, mother, just alone—single-handed?”
“Yes, Grahamie,”
she said, softly. [Page 210]
“Fought alone!”
he said almost to himself. Then aloud: “Thank
you, mother, for telling me that story. Perhaps some
day I’ll have to fight it out alone, and when
I do, I’ll try to remember Sergeant Black. Good-night,
mother.”
“Good-night, my boy.”
*
*
* *
*
*
The
long, long winter was doing its worst, and that was
unspeakable in its dreariness and its misery. The “Fort”
was just about completed before things froze up—narrow,
small quarters constructed of rough logs, surrounded
by a stockade—but above its roof the Union Jack
floated, and beneath it flashed the scarlet tunics,
the buffalo-head buttons, the clanking spurs of as brave
a band of men, “queened over” by as courageous
a woman, as ever Gilbraltar or the Throne Room knew.
As
time went on the major’s wife began to find herself
“Mother o’ the Men” (as an old Klondyker
named her), as well as of her own boy. Those blizzard-blown,
snow-hardened, ice-toughened soldiers went to her for
everything—sympathy, assistance, advice—for
in that lonely outpost military lines were less strictly
drawn, and she could oftentimes do for the men what
would be considered amazingly unofficial, were those
little humane kindnesses done in barracks at Regina
or MacLeod or Calgary. She nursed the men through every
illness, preparing the food [Page 211]
herself for the invalids. She attended to many a frozen
face and foot and finger. She smoothed out their differences,
inspirited them when they grew discouraged, talked to
them of their own people, so that their home ties should
not be entirely severed because they could write letters
or receive them but once a year. But there were days
when the sight of a woman’s face would have been
a glimpse of paradise to her, days when she almost wildly
regretted her boy had not been a girl—just a little
sweet-voiced girl, a thing of her own sex and kind.
But it always seemed at these moments that Grahamie
would providentially rush in to her with some glad story
of sport or adventure, and she would snatch him tightly
in her arms and say, “No, no, boy of mine, I don’t
want even a girlie, if I may only keep you.” And
once when her thoughts had been more than usually traitorous
in wishing he had been a girl, the child seemed to divine
some idea of her struggle; for a moment his firm little
fingers caught her hand encouragingly, and he said in
a whisper, “Are you fighting it out alone, mother—just
single-handed?”
“Just single-handed, dearest,”
she replied.
Then he scampered away, but
paused to call back gravely, “Remember Sergeant
Black, mother.”
“Yes, Grahamie, I’ll
try to,” she replied brightly. At that moment
he was the lesser child of the two. [Page 212]
And so the winter crept slowly
on, and the brief, brilliant summer flitted in, then
out, like a golden dream. The second snows were upon
the little fort, the second Christmas, the second long,
long weeks and months of the new year. An unspoken horror
was staring them all in the face: navigation did not
open when expected, and supplies were running low, pitifully
low. The smoked and dried meats, the canned things,
flour, sealed lard, oatmeal, hard-tack, dried fruits—everything
was slowly but inevitably giving out day upon day. Before
and behind them stretched hummocks of trailless snow.
Not an Indian, not a dog
train, not even a wild animal,
had set foot in that waste for weeks. In early March
the major’s wife had hidden a single package of
gelatine, a single tin of dried beef, and a single half
pound of cornstarch. “If sickness comes to my
boys” (she did not say boy), “I shall at
least have saved these,” she told herself, in
justification of her act. “A sick man cannot live
on beans.” But now they were down to beans—just
beans and lard boiled together. Then a day dawned when
there was not even a spoonful of lard left. “Beans
straight!”—it was the death knell, for beans
straight—beans without grease—kill the strongest
man in a brief span of days. Oh, that the ice bridges
would melt, the seas open, the ships come!
But that night the men at mess
had beans with unlimited grease, its peculiar flavor
peppered and [Page 213] spiced out
of it. Life, life was to be theirs even yet! What had
renewed it?
But one of the men had caught
something on his fork and extracted it from the food
on his plate. It was an overlooked wick. The
major’s wife had begun to boil up the tallow candles.*
But the cheer that shook that rough log roof came right
from hearts that blessed her, and brought her to the
door of the men’s mess-room. The men were on their
feet instantly. “A light has broken upon us, or
rather within us, Mrs. Lysle!” cried
a self-selected spokesman.
“Illuminating, isn’t
it, boys?” She laughed, then turned away, for
the cheers and tears were very close together.
Then one day when even starving
stomachs almost revolted at the continued coarse mixture,
a ribbon of blue proclaimed the open sea, and, into
those waters swept the longed-for ship. Yet, strangely
enough, that night the “Mother o’ the Men”
wept a storm of tears, the only tears she had yielded
to in those long five years. For with its blessing of
food the ship had her hold bursting with liquors and
wines, the hideous commerce that invades the pioneer
places of the earth. Should the already weakened, ill-fed
and scurvy-threatened garrison break into those supplies,
all the labor and patience and mothering of this courageous
woman would be useless, for after a bean diet in the
Northern latitudes, [Page 214] whiskey
is deadly to brain and body, and the victim maddens
or dies.
“You are crying, mother,
and the ship here at last!” said Grahamie’s
voice at her shoulder. “Crying when we are all
so happy.”
“Mother is a little upset,
dear. You must try to forget you ever saw her eyes wet.”
“I’ll forget,”
said the boy with a finality she could not question.
“The ship is so full of good things, mother. We’ll
think of that, and—forget, won’t we?”
he added.
“All the things
in the ship are not good, Grahamie, boy. If they were,
mother would not cry,” she said.
“I see,” he said,
but stole from her side with a strained, puzzled look
in his young eyes.
Outside he was met by a laughing,
joyous dozen of men. One swung the child to his shoulder,
shouting, “Hurrah, little ‘North-West’!
Hurrah! we are all coming to pay tribute to your mother.
Look at the dainties we have got for her from the ship!”
“I’m afraid you
can’t see mother just now,” said the boy.
“Mother is a little upset. You see, the ship is
so full of good things—but then, all
the things in the ship are not good. If they were, mother
would not cry.” In the last words he unconsciously
imitated his mother’s voice.
A profound silence enveloped
the men. Then one spoke. “She’ll never have
cause to cry about anything I do, boys.”
[Page 215]
“Nor I!” “Nor!”
“Nor I!” rang out voice after voice.
“Run back, you blessed
little ‘North-West,’ and tell mother not
to be scared for the boys. We’ll stand by her
to a man. She’ll never regret that ship’s
coming in,’ said the gallant soldier, slipping
the boy to the ground. And to the credit of the men
who wore buffalo-head buttons, she never did.
And in all her Yukon years the
major’s wife had but one more heartache. That
agonizing winter had taught her many things, but the
bitterest knowledge to come to her was the fact that
her boy must be sent “to the front.” To
be sure, he was growing up the pet of all the police;
he was becoming manlier, sturdier, more self-reliant
every day. But education he must have, and
another winter of such deprivation and horror he was
too young, too tender, to endure. It was then that the
battle arose in her heart. The boy was to be sent to
college. Was it her place to accompany him to the distant
South-east, to live by herself alone in the college
town, just to be near him and watch over his young life,
or was it here with her pioneer soldier husband, and
his little isolated garrison of “boys” whom
she had mothered for two years?
The inevitable day came when
she had to shut her teeth and watch Grahamie go aboard
the southward-bound vessel alone, in the care of a policeman
who was returning on sick leave[Page 216]—to
watch him stand at the rail, his little face growing
dimmer and more shadowy as the sea widened between them—watch
him through tearless, courageous eyes, then turn away
with the hopelessness of knowing that for one entire
endless year she must wait for word of his arrival.*
But his last brave good-bye words rang through her ears
every day of that eternal year: “We’ll remember
Sergeant Black, won’t we, mother? And we’ll
each fight it out alone, single-handed, and maybe they’ll
give us a chevron for our sleeves when it’s over.”
But that night when the barracks
was wrapped in gloom over the loss of its boy chum,
the surgeon appeared in the men’s quarters. “Hello,
boys!” he said, none too cheerfully. “Dull
doings, I say. I’m busy enough, though, keeping
an eye on Madam, the major’s lady. She’s
so deadly quiet, so self-controlled, I’m just
a little afraid. I wish something would happen to—well,
make her less calm.”
“I’ll ‘happen,’
doctor,” chirped up a genial-looking young chap
named O’Keefe. “I’ll get sick and
threaten to die. You say it’s serious; she’ll
be all interest and medicine spoons, and making me jelly
inside an hour.”
The surgeon eyed him sternly,
then: “O’Keefe,” he said, “you’re
the cleverest man I ever came across in the force, and
I’ve been in it eleven [Page 217]
years. But man alive! what have you been doing to yourself?
Overwork, no food—why, man, you’re sick;
look as if you had fever and a touch of pneumonia. You’re
a very sick man. Go to bed at once—at once, I
say!”
O’Keefe looked the surgeon
in the eye, winked meaningly, and O’Keefe turned
in, although it was but early afternoon. At six o’clock
an orderly stood at the door of the major’s quarters.
Mrs. Lysle was standing on the steps, her eyes fixed
on the far horizon across which a ship had melted away.
“Beg pardon, madam,”
said the orderly, saluting, “but young O’Keefe
is very ill. We have had the surgeon, but the—the—pain’s
getting worse. He’s just yelling with agony.”
“I’ll go at once,
orderly. I should have been told before,” she
replied; and burying her own heartache, she hurried
to the men’s quarters. Her anxious eyes sought
the surgeon’s. “Oh, doctor!” she said,
“this poor fellow much be looked after. What can
I do to help?”
“Everything, Mrs. Lysle,”
gruffed the surgeon with a professional air. “He
is very ill. He must be kept wrapped in hot linseed
poultices and—”
“Oh, I say, doctor,”
remonstrated poor O’Keefe, “I’m not
that bad.”
“You’re a very sick
man,” scowled the surgeon. “Now, Mrs. Lysle
has graciously offered to help nurse you. She’ll
see that you have hot fomentations [Page 218]
every half hour. I’ll drop in twice a day to see
how you are getting along.” And with that miserable
prospect before him, poor O’Keefe watched the
surgeon disappear.
“I simply had
to order those half-hour fomentations, old man,”
apologized the surgeon that night. “You see, she
must be kept busy—just kept at it every minute
we can make her do so. Do you think you can stand it?”
“Of course I can,”
fumed the victim. “But for goodness’ sake,
don’t put me on sick rations! I’ll die,
sure, if you do.”
“I’ve ordered you
the best commissariat boasts—heaps of meat, butter,
even eggs, my boy. Think of it—eggs—you
lucky young Turk!” laughed the surgeon.
Then followed nights and days
of torture. The “boys” would line up to
the “sick-room” four times daily and blandly
ask how he was.
“How am I?”
young O’Keefe would bellow. “How am
I? I’m well and strong enough to brain every one
of you fellows, surgeon included, when I get out of
this!”
“But when are
you going to get out? When will you be out of danger?”
they would chuckle.
“Just when I see that
haunted look go out of her eyes, and not till then!”
he would roar.
And he kept his word. He was
really weak when he got up, and pretended to be weaker,
but the lines of acute self-control had left Mrs. Lysle’s
[Page 219] face, the suffering had
gone from her eyes, the day the noble O’Keefe
took his first solid meal in her presence.
Even the major never discovered
that worthy bit of deception. But a year later, when
the mail went out, the surgeon sent the entire story
to Graham, who, in writing to his mother the following
year, perplexed her greatly by saying:
“. . . . But there are
three men in the force I love better than anyone in
the world except you, mother. The first, of course,
is father, the others, Sergeant Black and Private O’Keefe.”
“Why O’Keefe?”
she asked herself.
But loyal little “North-West”
never told her. [Page 220]
*
The foregoing story is an actual occurrence. The author
had the honor of knowing personally the North-West Mounted
Policeman who achieved his rank through this action.
[back]
* Fact. [back]
* Fact. [back]
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