THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD

By

ROGER POCOCK

Author of A MAN IN THE OPEN, CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE, ETC

Good people, since God alone, can make you wise and kind, the jester's province is merely to amuse you

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1915 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I The Glamour of Youth II The Age of Knighthood III The Swing of Events IV The Passions of War V The Wumps VI Brat VII A Ship Without a Rudder VIII Mr. Rams IX The Sacrifice X The Ordeal by Torture XI The Soul of La Mancha XII Inspector Buckie's Narrative

THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD

CHAPTER I THE GLAMOUR OF YOUTH

I

I, José de la Mancha y O'Brien, was born on the ninth day of November, 1865, in Spain, of an Irish mother and a Spanish sire. Ten years later my parents entered the service of God, my father from a battle-field, my mother living in a convent.

With my brother, Don Pedro, the Brat, then eight years old, I was sent away from Spain to Tita, a fat Irish aunt, whose highly poisonous husband, Uncle Tito, was English, and lived in London. From their house, when he was old enough, I took the Brat to my school where I attended to his morals with a small strap. I had been busy for several terms explaining to the other chaps at school that they were heretics and doomed to hell, and as my skin was not large enough to hold the lickings they supplied me, they paid the balance to my little brother. He spoke as yet but very broken English and could not understand why he should share with me the glories of an early martyrdom. He shunned me.

Yet, when in 1883 I went to college, the Brat was not content to be left alone. Indeed he ran from school, and when I next heard from him, was in America, where he had gone to work for a man called Lane. When the summer vacation left me free, Aunt Tita supplied me with money and sent me off to collect my Brat. I was to bring him home and place him at a private school in Oxford where I could always keep him out of mischief. Thus I set out, determined to tear the Brat's hide off over his ears when I caught him. Perhaps he expected as much and was ungrateful, for when in due course I arrived in Winnipeg—from whence his letter appeared to have been posted—I could find no trace of my brother or of any man called Lane in Manitoba. There the search ended in bitter disappointment.

When I had lost my brother, with nothing left in all the world to love, a dog adopted me. Rich Mixed was named after a biscuit box containing twenty-seven distinct species of biscuits. You will realize that a dog must be of the noblest pedigree who had twenty-seven quarterings on his coat of arms and showed unmistakable descent from every possible kind of thoroughbred from daschund to great Dane. I loved him dearly and was consoled for my brother's loss.

Since I could not take Brat home, and would not return without him, I had no use for the remaining funds. Most of the cash was disposed of at a race-meeting where the wrong horses won. The rest of it merely dispersed.

At that time, a laundress pursued me with a bundle of my washing and a bill I could not pay. To dispose of this poor widow, I despatched her with a note to the Presbyterian minister. My letter accused him of deserting one whom he had sworn always to love and cherish. Mrs. Minister appears to have been morbid, for she put the police after me for attempting to levy blackmail. I could not safely remain in Winnipeg.

And yet I had not then the means for flight until I thought of Tito's dressing-case, a gift from His late Catholic Majesty to my fat uncle. It proved good enough to pay for a farewell dinner, at which I consulted my friends on the idea of flight from the city. Then just as they began to give me good advice, the police became obnoxious. I fled with my advisers in a cab beyond the city limits, and there we found a bad house where wine was plentiful. At the door we left cabby crowned with a chaplet of ham frill and crooning lullaby songs to his aged horse. Indoors we drank more wine than we could carry. Later in the evening Rich Mixed and I set forth to find my brother. We had no place to go to, and no money, so we did not get very far before I fell asleep out on the starlit prairie.

Once Rich Mixed woke me up to hear a terrible wailing close beside us, a wolf-howl, but for its human throb a thing beyond all anguish of the beasts, heartrending desolation keening star-high, while its faint echoes throbbed on the horizon. The huskies at the mission gave tongue in answer, the tame dogs bayed in distant Winnipeg. For some time Rich Mixed and I lay listening, while above us the star-blaze drowned in depths of the vast sky.

Again I woke, feeling the frosty crispness of the grass, breathing delicious air scented with perfume of roses. The green dawn widened, edged at the sky-line with clear topaz light. There, in the electric air of the Great Plains, life was all delight, up from the perfumed ground to those immensities of aerial splendor heralding the sun. I had never felt so well, or half so happy. And I had been drunk. Is the reader shocked? Why? If we poor moths were horrified by candles, our wings would not get burned.

Through sleep itself, and from the very moment of awaking, I was disturbed by the noise of the middle night, those agonized and desolating howls. Who howled? And what the deuce was it howling about? To see about that I got up, stretching myself and feeling rather dizzy, as though from running in circles. Then I lurched forward, tripped and sat down with a bang on a grave mound. The place was full of graves!

And as I fell the mournful wailing in the twilight changed at mid-howl into a funny chuckle. Then a soft voice said to me, "So. You come!"

I looked up, and saw Rain.

You may remember Tennyson's words, about the Woman you, and I, and all true men have loved:

"As I beheld her, ere she knew my heart, My first, last love, the idol of my youth, The darling of my manhood, and alas Now the most blessed memory of mine age."

The wilderness has always been to me a visible expression of that great Holy Trinity, of Power, Love and Truth, which we call God.

In Rain, the glamour of God's wilderness had taken human form as a red Indian girl with youth's delicious gravity of bearing, the childlike purity of the untainted savage, hale strength, athletic grace and eyes derisive. Sorrow had made her at that time aloof, remote from the world I lived in as a Madonna set above an altar, and yet her smile seemed to make fun of me. I looked up at her with reverence, with wonder, and if I loved, the love I offered to her was sacred, not profane. Yet if I seemed to worship, she would ridicule, so I had to pretend as a boy does to a girl. "Oh, don't mind me," I stuttered. "Please go on with that howl!"

"Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," she answered. "My dream, he say you come."

"So I have come," said I.

Years afterward, when I had learned her language, Rain told me in Blackfoot the whole story of the adventure, which led her to that meeting with me there on the plains at dawn.

She was a Blackfoot, of the Piegan or southern tribe, which settled in Montana, and her father was Brings-down-the-Sun, a war chief and a priest. In the winter before we met, the Piegan chiefs came to her father's lodge. At their request, he opened the sacred bundle of the Buffalo Mystery, whose ancient and solemn ritual engaged them for a day and a night in prayer. Afterward, they held a meeting of the council, to discuss the manifest wasting away of the bison herds on which the people depended for their food.

For years, the Stone-hearts (white men) had been slaughtering bison by millions for their hides, leaving the meat to rot. Now the last herds were surrounded by hungry tribes, and the end was in sight when the people must die of famine. So the chiefs sat in council.

Flat Tail had been told by his dream that all the buffaloes were hidden in a cave. Iron Shirt believed that the Stone-hearts were hiding the main herd in the country beyond the World-Spine (the Rocky Mountains). But Brings-down-the-Sun spoke of an Ojibway from the far East, who told him about the Man-it-o-ba or Land of the Great Spirit near to the lodge where the Sun God lived, from whence he rose each morning to cross the sky. "I am going," he told the council, "to this Land of God, and there I will open again my sacred bundle. I will speak to the Sun Spirit about our herds of bison, and How they are being wasted by the Stone-Hearts. I will pray that hearts of stone may be changed to flesh and blood lest all the people die."

So taking his daughter, Rain, to serve him in the ritual, Brings-down-the-Sun set out from their home beside the World-Spine, and traveled eastward for a thousand miles, crossing the plains to Manitoba, which was the Land of God. There at the sunrise making his prayer, he died, passing the threshold of God's house into the presence.

Rain showed me the hole where the Stone-hearts had buried her father. The ground spirits would catch him there, so she had torn up the earth and taken out the body. She had built a scaffold, where now her dead lay robed and armed in majesty, facing the sunrise. She had shot her father's horse so that its ghost might carry his shadow to the Sand Hills.

And afterward she had prayed.

"Oh, great Above-Medicine Person, Spirit in the Sun, I pray to you!

"All you Above Spirits and Under Spirits carry my prayer to the Sun!

"And all you holy Animals, wiser and stronger than I, have pity! Pray for me.

"I have made sacrifice of my jewels, and my long braids of hair. Great Sun God, take my father's shadow to the Sand Hills, that he may be with our dead."

The Seven Persons, our stars of the Great Bear, were pointing to the earth; the Lost Children, our Pleiades, were sleepy on their way to bed, when Rain felt the spirit leaving her father's body to ride the Wolf Trail, the milky way which leads to the hereafter.

And there was Morning Star. "Dear Morning Star," she pleaded, "don't give long life to me, for I am all alone."

She threw herself upon the upturned soil. "Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I'm all alone, and oh, so frightened. And you, dear Beaver Woman, my Dream Helper, can't you send me help? Oh, send a man to take me to my people."

The Piegan camp was a thousand miles away. What chance had she of escaping death among the hostile tribes between, or outrage at the hands of the Stone-hearts?

It was then she lifted up her voice in the Indian death-wail, and so continued mourning until I came in the gray of dawn, sent by her secret helper in answer to her prayer.

I saw the rifled grave, the scaffold and her dead. "The people," said I, "who run this graveyard will be so pleased!"

"You think so? My old man, he seeks the Mán-it-ou, but the Black Robe," she pointed to the Mission of St. Boniface, "the sacred man, he say 'The King of God is within you.' So my old man," this with a great gesture sweeping toward the skies, "he go seek!"

Rain's talk was a compound of charm, French half-breed patois, two or three English words, and the sign language. But, as we Spaniards have it, she was sympática, her eyes, her smile, expressing all she felt, and I have found love a great interpreter.

Her blanket, fallen wide apart, disclosed a beautiful tunic of white antelope skin, set with the teeth of elk, which tinkled softly.

"You little duck!" I whispered. That was profane love, but it really couldn't be helped.

"K'ya!" She drew back, folding the blanket across her breast. "Boy-drunk-in-the-morning, you métis, es?"

"Half-breed!" said I, not at all pleased. "No. Español."

"Why you come?"

"Well, you see, my little brother, Brat, was at school."

"All same mission?"

"Yes, a place called Eton, mission school for half-breeds. He ran away to be a pirate, and I ran after him to keep him out of mischief."

"Meescheef? I not understand. You catchum?"

"No, he's with a man called Shifty Lane."

"Bad Mouth, I know him. He dog-faced man." She darted forked fingers from her mouth, the sign of snake tongue, meaning that Lane was a liar.

"You come," she pleaded, "I take you to Dog-Face Lane. My dream, he say I take you."

"That's awfully decent of you."

Day filled the sky, but as yet there was neither sunlight nor shadow, only a clear fine radiance full of hushed fussiness of birds, a growing blaze of color from goldenrod and prairie sunflower, and fresh wild perfume.

Some little devil possessed me at that moment, for I flung my arms about the girl, only to find I held an empty blanket, while at arms' length the jolly little beggar stood flushed and panting, while she mocked me. Had I plenty scalps? Was my lodge red with meat? How many horses had I to buy Rain? "Oh, Little-boy-drunk-in-the-morning, the quick fox catchum trap!"

Ah, me! I never could withhold the tribute due to women, which every citizen must pay to her sovereign power. So long I pleaded mercy that the sun burned the sky-line, and the whole east was one vast glory before she would consent to be my mother. A girl who chaffs is irresistible.

"Swear!" she said. "You touch me, you go hell plenty quick."

"I swear I love you."

"You love as the wind, eh? Too many."

"I'm frightfully nice when I'm kissed."

"Maybe so. Now you catchum horse."

My horse? I had no horse.

"You poor?" she asked.

"I'm all I've got," I told her.

"S'pose," said Rain gaily, "I make 'um Indian man?"

"What! You'll make me an Indian? Oh, what a lark! Come on!"

She led me through an aspen grove, all tremulous green and silver, and in her little teepee, Rich Mixed and I had breakfast. Then she left us to watch a copper pot of herbs which simmered on the fire, and slid away to her father's burial scaffold. There, with some quaint apology to the Sun God, she took back her braids of hair and sacrificed instead the tip of her left little finger. When she returned to the teepee, she showed me her bandaged hand, and said she had cut her finger, but at the time I felt more interested in my cigarette, the last. Then, while I sat with a shaving mirror before me, she wove her braids of hair into my black thatch, so that the long plaits came down in front of my shoulders almost to the waist. I was delighted, especially when she set at the back of my head one straight-up eagle plume.

My dress suit, which last night had astonished Winnipeg, seemed no longer congruous. Rain bade me take it off, showing me the juice from her pot of herbs, also a breech clout, at which I shied a little. Still it was not long before I stripped, to play at red Indians with the brown juice and the clout, until Rain came back to see. She opened a trunk of parfleche (arrow-proof hide) to show me her father's clothes, then squatting by the fire she burned sweet grass for incense to cleanse us both.

To me, the dressing-up was a joke; to her, a sacred rite, the putting on of manliness and honor. With each new garment, she recited prayers: as I put on the buckskin leggings and war-shirt, with their delicious perfume of wood smoke, the parfleche-soled moccasins, from which the Blackfoot nation takes its name, and the broad belt studded with brass carpet tacks. Then she gave me a painted robe of buffalo cow-skin, and showed me how to carry myself with the medicine-iron, a .45-70 Winchester.

Perhaps I should mention that Rich Mixed flew at and bit this Indian, before he realized that the person inside was me. But I had never been so pleased.

Let me confess most humbly to an unusual strength and grace of body, the carriage of a gentleman, and a most lamentable face: the pinched forehead and strong features of an Indian, the pointed ears, the devilish eyes and brows, and wide flexible mouth of a faun. In civilized clothing, I had been grotesque; but there was mystery in the Indian dress, which made me for the first time real and natural. I had always a passionate sick craving for all things beautiful, a fierce delight in color, line, proportion, harmony, and now with the change of dress was no longer hideous. I had come to my own, and while Rain struck camp, ran yelling with delight to round up her herd of ponies.

At this point, I should pause to be sententious with sentimental comment on all the blessings I had left behind me:

Item. My worthy aunt, damp with many tears, but much relieved. She had hopefully predicted my untimely end.

Item. My pernicious uncle, who in due time appeared before a judge in Chambers asking leave to presume my brother's death and mine, so that his wife might have our heritage.

Item. My prospects. Mine was the only kind of education which can be guaranteed to turn out drunken wasters.

Item. Winnipeg. This city was supported at the time by the single industry of cheating in real estate. I had been offered employment as a cheat.

Item. The House of the Red Lamp, where my guests of the night before awaited me.

II

Any reader who hates geography had better skip this passage. It is a dull subject, only introduced when the writer wants to show off. That should be enough to choke off the skipping reader, and so I may safely divulge to the gentle reader that I allude to the geography of love.

Rain led be along the boundary trail, which follows the main divide between the land of boyhood and the domain of manhood. It is a narrow trail, no wider than a tight rope, so we fell off on both sides. Rain's adopted son was too old, you see, for motherly caresses, too young for the other kind. And Rain herself set me a bad example. She never could hit the motherly attitude without exaggerating, but was usually about a hundred years old before breakfast, and lapsed to five at the first cup of coffee. Then I would waste time being her affectionate infant son when it was my manly duty to murder a rabbit for supper. I was never traceable of a frosty morning, when mother sent me off to my bath in an ice-filled slough. That daily bathing in all weathers is a most gruesome habit of the Blackfeet, whereas I like being warm. An adopted child, too, ought not to cuddle mother while she is cooking, yet when she clouted me, I would take offense. And how could Rain howl of an evening for her poor father, while I sang ribald songs, such as "Obediah! Obediah! Oh, be damned!"

I fancied myself as an Indian warrior, and expected Rain to admire me in the part. Play up? Of course I did. Had I been rigid English, forcing the world to fit me, too proud to make a fool of myself, too austere to see the fun, but I am not. I am human, Spaniard with a touch of Irish, fluid to fit my surroundings. I riotously overplayed so wild a burlesque redskin that Rain would laugh, ache, sob and have hysterics.

We played at the hand talk, until we could converse. We played at the Blackfoot language, until I understood when she didn't gabble. I learned my roping, packing, tracking and sign quicker than she could teach me. Yet what was the use of Rain playing the teacher, when her pupil would chase her round the camp-fire, then rumple her with infant hugs and kisses as a reward for having been too good. In vain, she reminded me of my oath that I would go to hell if ever again I touched her.

"Me Injun now," said I. "White man's hell too full: no room for Injun."

She could not teach me the craft of warriors, and my ideas of finding water led always to dry camps. I liked a nice big fire in the evening, and by day delighted in riding along the sky-line firing off my gun—in that land the Crees, Dakotas, Grosventres and Absarokas collected scalps as you do postage stamps.