# The Affair of Ahjeek, the Otter

"Not even that," answered Jock, dropping for an instant into broad Scotch; "he's juist a puir benighted heathen that's lookit lang at as much of the warld as his black een could cover, and said to himsel': 'Yon's mine, as it was ma faether's before me.' And mind you," he added reflectively, "he was pairfectly richt. I often wonner what I would feel like maself gin some stranger in a red coat and tight breeches sauntered up to ma hoose and said to me: 'Git oot of this, because the king, your great faether across the seas, has sold the whole thing to a friend of his for reasons which you wouldna understand if I telt you.'"
THE AFFAIR OF AHJEEK, THE OTTER
By ALAN SULLIVAN
THE immediate cause of Jock MacTier's deserting the Longniddrie coalpits on the Firth of Forth, and taking the trek to Canada that resulted in his joining the Mounted Police, need not be recounted here. It has nothing to do with this story. But it is written that after he became Trooper MacTier at Fort McMurray, a runner came in from the Hudson Bay post on Lesser Slave Lake, and handed Jock's Inspector a hastily written letter. It came from the Factor, and was entirely devoted to the news that Ahjeek, the Otter, chief of a wandering tribe of Blackfeet, had descended from his camp on the slopes of Hunter's Peak, and, swooping into the Smoky River country, had hastened back forthwith, carrying with him forty head of horses, the property of a perfectly harmless band of Piegans. Ahjeek, it was reported, had with him not less than sixty fighting men.
While the Inspector sat wrinkling his brows, Trooper MacTier came into the office on some matter of minor business, and stood at stiff attention. Glancing over the top of the letter, the officer's eyes rested musingly on the best man in his command. Jock's body was a tough, springy mass which seemed devised by Nature for just such arduous work as fell to his lot. He was not over five feet six, and such was his extraordinary width that he appeared even shorter. His legs, bowed from boyhood, were of the natural curve for horsemanship. His arms, extraordinarily long, hung so that without stooping he could touch his knees, a physical characteristic endowing him with an amazing and prehensile grip that ere this had often stood him in good stead. His closely-cropped brown hair seemed strangely vivid against the copper of his skin, but it was, after all, the deep-set eyes of Trooper MacTier that set forth his indomitable soul. He possessed the long, unwinking stare of the hawk, and added to this a grey wintriness that suggested the colour of the sea dashing against a bleak and frost-bitten shore. There was a pause. Once again the Inspector's glance fell on the letter, and the name of MacTier seemed to be written between the lines.
"Sit down," he said shortly. "Read this and tell me what you think."
The slightest surprise dawned in Jock's face. One was not usually asked to sit in this office. He took the letter silently and, reading it slowly, committed every word to memory. Then he looked up.
"I know Ahjeek," he said quietly. "I met him at Fort St. John last winter. You'll find it in my report. He's a bad Indian."
The Inspector nodded. "I know him, too," he answered crisply. "His record goes back twenty years, but we've never caught him yet. We're sure he's a thief, but so far I haven't had the men to go about the job as I wanted."
The big trooper sat up a little straighter. "You've got one now, sir."
"Have I? Who?" There was a note of amusement in the voice.
"Me," answered Jock calmly. "If you're wanting Ahjeek, I'll get him."
A little silence fell in the office. "But I can only give you one man; that's Charles Munroe."
"He's a good man," came back Jock steadily, "and plenty as well."
The other had risen and was walking up and down the narrow room. "Look here, MacTier," he said at length, "I really can't allow this. If I could give you four others, or even three, we might take a chance, and then the odds are that blood would be shed and trouble follow on every slope of the Rockies. No, no; I admire your pluck, but it's out of the question. The best thing we can do is to send out for some reinforcements. If Ahjeek wasn't so tricky, it would be different, and—hang it all, man, I can't lose you! I don't mind saying that."
Jock, who had also risen and was standing at attention, only surveyed his superior with passionless eyes. "I'm telling you, sir, that if you want Ahjeek I'll have him here in two months. Please let me go, sir, for the honour of the force."
This was the irresistible appeal that finally gained assent. Turning it all over in his mind, the Inspector felt strangely and inwardly convinced that such was the nameless force and courage of Trooper MacTier that the hazardous patrol would somehow return triumphant. He was conscious, too, of how greatly the reputation of the Mounted Police was enhanced by just such daring exploits, in which law, authority, discipline, and unfailing courage faced terrific odds time after time and emerged victorious. One did not talk much about these things in the force, but one felt them, nevertheless.
A man, for instance, might tramp to Coronation Gulf in midwinter, arrest a murderous Husky, and march him back through hundreds of miles of ice and snow, and all that would be said among inside circles was that it was good work and the sort of thing that held the force together.
But Ahjeek, reflected the Inspector, was in a class by himself. Year after year he had matched his crafty brain against the law, and year after year he had come out, not perhaps altogether clear, but at any rate unscathed so far as concerned his freedom and possessions. The force knew what Ahjeek was up to, but in the North neither white man nor red is convicted without fair trial and evidence, and thus it was that the tepees of Ahjeek's tribe still peered out over the flattening plain from the wooded flanks of Hunter's Peak.
By noon next day the two troopers were thirty miles on their way. Thirty-six hours later they crossed the divide between Athabasca and Peace River waters, till, travelling steadily, they came, at the end of the week, to a shallow ford through which they splashed to the western bank of the Little Smoky River. The plan of campaign had been carefully thought out. It was MacTier's purpose to strike the Piegan lodges, there collect all the information procurable, and, heading due west, hit the slopes of the Rockies at Beaver Mountain, which, as all the world knows, lies thirty miles due south of Hunter's Peak. Ahjeek, he argued, would expect punishment, if punishment he expected at all, either from due east or from Fort St. John, a hundred miles north-east on the Peace River. That it should come along the slope of the mountains from due south would be unanticipated. They talked this over time and again, till it seemed at last unassailable.
"You'll understand," said Jock, fixing his eyes on the ragged horizon that now lifted brokenly in the west, "that there'll be no shooting if we can help it. If that starts, we're done. I take it that at the bottom Ahjeek is a coward, for a man who's a thief is most always a coward, too. The thing is, as I make it, to manœuvre him, if possible, into acknowledging he's a coward, then his spirit will snap and that will be the end of it."
Munroe trotted on with covert glances at the man whose great body rose and dipped so smoothly beside him. He did not know much about Ahjeek himself; it was sufficient that MacTier knew. Such was the position Jock held in his comrade's eyes. In the back of his head Munroe had long since decided that this time, at least, it was a chance that either of them returned, but he had concluded that he would sooner die in company with this big trooper than with any man he had ever seen, and comforted himself that in any case they would not die alone. This would be a whale of a fight, and, for one, he was loath to miss it. He grinned silently when Jock prophesied that there would be no shooting.
"You're figuring on walking right up to Ahjeek and saying: 'Come here—I want you!' What do you take him for—a schoolboy?"
"Not even that," answered Jock, dropping for an instant into broad Scotch; "he's juist a puir benighted heathen that's lookit lang at as much of the warld as his black een could cover, and said to himsel': 'Yon's mine, as it was ma faether's before me.' And mind you," he added reflectively, "he was pairfectly richt. I often wonner what I would feel like maself gin some stranger in a red coat and tight breeches sauntered up to ma hoose and said to me: 'Git oot of this, because the king, your great faether across the seas, has sold the whole thing to a friend of his for reasons which you wouldna understand if I telt you.'"
Munroe looked up with unaccustomed surprise. "I never thought of that."
"There are too many who never think of it"—Jock was once more the Canadian trooper—"but that's why we're here as much as anything else. The country is pestered with crooks who are looking for something for nothing, and the reason we're going after Ahjeek is that he's playing tricks which the white man has taught him. And that"—his voice lifted a little—"is why there'll be no shooting."
To this Munroe made no reply, but for days it moved ceaselessly in his brain. He was getting new ideas of Trooper MacTier.
It fell on an evening in the middle of the fourth week out that Jock, halting on the summit of a little ridge, stared due north. They had struck Beaver Mountain, according to schedule, and, dipping into the lower land that stretched almost to the base of Hunter's Peak, were now not more than thirty miles from their destination. It being midsummer, the sun was setting well into the north, and already the lofty peaks of the Rockies were steeped in its departing rays. These jagged summits cast their league-long shadows down the eastern slope, but through rift, ravine, and valley still poured a lingering glory. It was all stupendous, supremely magnificent, unutterably lonely, a place of height, space, and silence, in which a world of jumbled crag and plain seemed to have been left in haphazard magnificence like a titanic playground from which its prodigious children had just de- parted. For the hundredth time Jock drank it all in, till, raising a brown hand, he pointed to a vast spur that dipped gently to the alluvial land beneath.
"Smoke," he said quietly, and, hitching his shoulder, reached for his binoculars.
Munroe, a little breathless, took out his own glasses, and there, in pygmy distinction, lay the tiny and conical tepees of Ahjeek's camp. In this amazing atmosphere they showed up quite clearly, like pin-pointed and miniature cones bathed for a moment in the mellow gleam of sunset. They were too distant to reveal either motion or life, but faintly above them hung a gossamer film of smoke, fed constantly by a number of fine and delicate columns that climbed upward and dissolved imperceptibly. It was all as though the two troopers were staring at another planet on which for the first time had been discerned something that spoke of unsuspected life.
Jock peered long, and ran his eye toward lower ground. "They're 'most a day off yet, and I'm thinking we'll camp here in a gully where we can make a bit fire. There'll be no fire for us in the morning, you understand."
Munroe nodded, and they turned downhill till in a little glade, well watered and well sheltered, the horses were unsaddled and hobbled. The feed was good—a thick, sweet, luxuriant grass that, Jock reflected cynically, should keep the Piegan ponies in fine condition for the return trip. Before lighting a fire, the troopers made a careful survey of the place, and, finding neither sign nor trail, awakened a tiny blaze which they fed meagrely with perfectly dry and smokeless wood. This done, they stretched themselves beside it and, after a sparing meal, fell instantly asleep.
About midnight Jock awakened with the uncanny feeling that somewhere in the bush he had heard a step. Lying quite motionless, he strained his ears till from a little distance there came the faintest possible crackle of underbrush. His sixth sense warned him that it was no animal—the sound had in a curious way too much conscious deliberation for that—and when he turned, it ceased abruptly. Remaining perfectly motionless, he argued now that, whoever or whatever it was, he himself was within its range of vision, and at that his hand stole out and drew his short carbine slowly toward him. Just then the moon slipped from behind a cloud and cast a cold, bright ray full on the prone figure of his companion.
"Munroe!" he whispered under his breath. "Munroe! Don't sit up, but just crawl over here."
The trooper stirred uneasily in his sleep and stretched his stiff limbs.
"Munroe!" signalled Jock again. "We're watched! Slide over here!"
Something in the voice filtered into the half-conscious brain, and, with a grunt, the trooper raised himself on his elbow and blinked sleepily around. As he did so, his face came clear in the moonlight, and in that single instant a rifle barked on the other side of the glade. Munroe jerked his head back, struggled to his feet, and, spinning quickly, collapsed in a heap. Once again the moon was obscured, and friendly darkness covered them both.
On hands and knees Jock crawled swiftly forward. "Are ye hit bad, Munroe?"
"They've got me this time, old man; it's my left breast, I think." The voice was half choked.
Jock's fingers travelled over him cautiously till they came to a ragged hole in the left shoulder. "Thank God for that!" he said to himself. Then aloud: "No, man, they haven't got you, but three inches lower would have made all the difference. Now lie still, and I'll plug it up."
Munroe groaned while the skilful hands opened his shirt and felt for the wound. The bullet had gone clean through him, just missing the left ventricle and smashing the lower edge of the shoulder-blade in its passage out. Blood was flowing freely, but, as the other man quickly concluded, this was cleansing, and Munroe could spare a good deal of blood without missing it. The bullet was fired at too short a range to expand, and this, he realised, was Munroe's salvation. Plugging the wound, he drew the helpless man clear of the glade and into the cover of the nearest timber. This done, he sat rigid, his rifle across his knees, and waited for dawn.
It was a long night. Munroe lay quietly, sighing a little as the pain took him, but breathing without difficulty. Beside him, Jock's thoughts turned to the coming day. His job was to arrest Ahjeek and bring him back, and with him forty Piegan ponies. This was still his job, and nothing that had happened could alter it.
The thing that puzzled him most was what to do with Munroe while he was arresting Ahjeek. Their horses would be, of course, stolen—he was already resigned to that—and the only way out that he could see was to carry Munroe to Ahjeek's camp. Thirty miles alone and on foot would have been nothing, but thirty miles for Munroe was a different matter. It did not occur to him that there was any particular difficulty about carrying Munroe thirty miles if the wounded man could only stand it. And at this his brain halted altogether, and for the next three hours he kept an interminable and untiring watch. For himself he had no fear whatever.
Morning leaped over the world, but as yet Jock stirred not at all. It was only after wood, glade, and mountain were bathed in a tenuous light that he pushed slowly forward from the friendly timber, and, after searching glances, set out on what he realised was a hopeless hunt for the two horses. In half an hour he came back, his face grim, but more determined than ever. Munroe was sitting up, with a faint patch of colour in his cheeks. He was weak, though perfectly conscious and in surprisingly little pain. Such was the perfect condition of his body and blood that already Nature had set to work to rebuild the havoc of the night, but whatever aid she offered, Munroe would yet be a helpless man for weeks to come.
Jock ate slowly, talking cheerfully while his great jaws champed at his food. Presently he got up, stretched arms and legs, and gulped in a gust of air. "It's about time we were starting, Munroe, if you'll just finish that tea. Lap it up, man; there's plenty more."
Munroe's eyes rounded. "Starting—where for?"
"For Ahjeek's camp," grunted Jock. "Man, you're forgetting that you're a member of the North-West Mounted Police."
The eyes of the wounded man rounded with amazement. "You mean," he asked slowly, "you're going to leave me here?"
"Did I say anything like that?" responded the big trooper tartly. "We're starting for Ahjeek's camp now," he repeated, "you and I. Can't you understand plain English?" He picked up something that looked like a strap, long and wide. "You'll just climb into this on my back. It's a new-fangled tumpline, made out of our belts and a few things that every man can spare and still look like a soldier. And, what's more, since you'll be facing south, you'll carry your carbine across your knees and attend to anything there may be on that side of you, and I'll look after the rest." He glanced quizzically at his own contrivance. "Yon flat place is where you sit, and that bar will take the weight of your feet; and as for your head, I'm figuring that the back of it will fit into the nape of my heck, and if you're not comfortable, may God forgive me, but I can't help it. It's a queer-looking thing, I admit, but it's fashioned for the honour of the force. Get up, man, and rest as easy as you can."
Then began that amazing march, the tale of which was repeated for many a year from the Selkirks even across to Hudson Bay, and from Coronation Gulf to the boundary. Munroe, grunting with pain, balanced himself precariously against the broad back, his carbine across his knees, the blood oozing irregularly from the jagged hole in his shoulder. With fingers crooked to the trigger, his gaze roved ceaselessly, as the great body of the giant bore him steadily onward. Hour after hour tramped Jock, his vast lungs breathing deeply, the muscles of his legs springing like whipcord, his lips compressed, his jaw jutting out like a rocky promontory. What vast reserve of strength he then called on he never could tell, but only knew that as the hours dragged out there was in him some extraordinary reservoir of power which he felt would be equal to his prodigious task.
He knew, too, as did also Munroe, that they were not alone; that from behind rocks, trees and shrubs there peered at him black and beady eyes, and that, paralleling his arduous progress, there moved with him the noiseless footsteps of the scouts of Ahjeek the Otter. It was true that long before this they might have killed him had they so desired. In a way it puzzled the giant that they did not kill him. After a while he put this out of his mind, concluding only that the appointed time had not quite arrived. Of one thing he was quite sure, and this was that neither he nor Munroe would live to be tortured. There were ways of taking care of that. But in all this medley of conjecture, the actual truth never once dawned on him, and the truth was, after all, very simple.
One hears at times of rare instances in which the spirit of man rises to such heights of valour that there spreads from it a strange and overpowering influence which dominates friend and enemy alike. So it was with Trooper MacTier, as he plunged steadily forward toward the distant tepees of Ahjeek, the horse thief. Into the wondering brains of the scouts who dogged him so persistently there penetrated a mysterious awe. They had seen brave deeds and heard brave tales, and around their own camp fire circled the life-histories of their own dark-skinned heroes; but never, so far as memory could retrace, had they heard of anything like this. It was grotesque that this single man, mighty though he was, should imagine that in his solitary body lay the power to bring Ahjeek to justice. That was evident and undeniable; but there remained, nevertheless, in his indomitable progress, something so grim and inflexible, so fixed and valiant, that he seemed more of a god than of a trooper, more of a spirit in human form than a bloodstained officer of the law. And the rest was for Ahjeek to say.
At noon Jock deposited Munroe gently on the turf, bathed his wound, and cared for him as for a child. Again at four o'clock he tended him; and ere the sun had dipped behind the western shoulder of Hunter's Peak, he strode up into the long grass of the little knoll on which lifted the tepees of Ahjeek, his inanimate burden still balanced against those mighty shoulders.
[Illustration: "His two hands came out, palms up, and stretched gradually towards Trooper MacTier."]
[Illustration: "It was the peace sign of the prairie ... even Ahijeek, however double-faced would never dare to misuse this ancient and universal token"]
Ere this the scouts had dropped behind; for during the last hour he had been within clear sight of the camp. Moving steadily on, he entered the great, green circle around which the tall and pointed tepees were dotted irregularly. It struck him at once that the camp was strangely quiet. Of men, women, children, horses, and dogs he saw none. There were only the swaying pencils of silver smoke that rose from the tiny fire in front of each tepee, and the mysterious hush which in these solitudes heralds the oncoming of night. But still Jock knew that his slightest motion was observed and studied by hundreds of curious eyes. Presently he kneeled, and, twisting, lifted Munroe's stiff body, laying him gently in the grass. At this Monroe smiled wearily and fell instantly asleep, after which Jock heaved himself up, and, staring at the biggest tepee of all, called aloud in the Blackfoot tongue:
"Ahjeek, I would speak to Ahjeek."
For answer there was only the crackle of the brushwood fire.
"Ahjeek," repeated Jock, with a lift in his voice, "I have that which I would say."
The deerskin curtain hanging across the door of the biggest tepee was pushed slowly aside, and Ahjeek the Otter stood framed against the dark interior. He wore a long leather coat embroidered with quills and fringed with bright and multi-coloured beads. On his head was the great head-dress of a chief, topped with eagle feathers and hanging almost to his waist. His legs were encased in buckskin. From beneath the eagle feathers his coal-black eyes gleamed frostily. The face was smooth and cruel, the lips tight, and on the dusky features there rested a baffling expression of triumphant resentment. He stepped forward till the mellow sunlight fell full on his tall, straight body.
"I am Ahjeek of the Blackfeet." He glanced at the slumbering form of Munroe, then stared straight into the grey orbs of Trooper MacTier. "Let my brother speak."
"It is late," answered Jock evenly, "and before I speak it is well to eat and to care for this man who"—he hesitated—"is sick."
Ahjeek smiled grimly. "It is well said, and there is much time to talk." And, turning, he waved a hand.
At this there began a buzz in the other lodges. Other deerskin doors were cast aside, and the men of Ahjeek's tribe stepped out. These were fighting men, wearing no garb of peace. Naked to the waist, their bodies were painted with every well-known emblem of war. They came one by one, till, glancing round the circle, Jock counted over sixty. At that the blood flew to his temples. He was glad that Munroe was asleep.
Ahjeek motioned to a tepee standing a little apart from the others. "Take it, and put the sick man there. Eat and sleep, and to-morrow we will talk. It is not well," he added meaningly, "to try the body when the belly is empty."
In spite of himself, Jock's pulse slowed. The only interpretation he could find was that to-morrow there would be torture, and that Ahjeek knew by long experience that the man who was well fed has a stronger lease of life than the man who is hungry. But no sign of this was reflected in his steady eyes.
For hours that night he sat motionless beside Munroe, every instinct tense and alert. The air was as still as death. He heard once the neigh of a pony, and after that the muffled thunder of hoofs that dwindled into the distance. The Piegan ponies, he concluded, were being moved a little farther away. At midnight, yielding to a suspense that could be no longer endured, he took off his boots and, lifting a corner of the lodge door, peered out into the purple gloom. He could see only the ring of conical tepees, a star-sprinkled sky, and the loom of Hunter's Peak as it lifted magnificently to the west. Quite automatically he balanced the chance of their joint escape, then stepped slowly forward and, standing erect, drew in great, noiseless gulps of cool, sweet air. At this moment came a smooth voice from beside him:
"My brother cannot sleep. Or does he walk by night, like the black bear and wolverine?" Ahjeek chuckled softly in the darkness.
Day broke with recurrent splendour over the camp. Again rose in front of each lodge a tiny pencil of smoke, while there swarmed over the grass-covered central space men, women, children, and dogs, stretching their supple bodies in the blazing sun.
The night had gone hardly with Trooper MacTier. He had taken the precaution to tie his carbine, as also that of Munroe, to his wrist, lest swarthy hands should creep beneath the lodge walls and search for that which they prized above all else. Twice in the shadows he had felt a gentle tug, and each time, as he jerked the weapons quickly back, there had come through the deerskin walls a grunt of disgust. Morning found him more weary than he dared admit, but there seemed to have settled over him a curious glaze of fatigue, through which no further exhaustion could attack his powerful frame. Munroe had slept fitfully, mumbling at times snatches of long-forgotten things which had carried Trooper MacTier six thousand miles from the flanks of Hunter's Peak and revived within him that which he would fain forget.
In the middle of the grassy space sat Ahjeek, an hour later, and opposite him and a few feet distant squatted MacTier. In front of every lodge rested a group so motionless as to appear carved out of stone. Between the lodges and around the two central figures stretched a circle of fighting men, the sun glinting on their ruddy shoulders, their knees covered with bright and gaudy blankets. There was no sound save a whisper of wind as it loitered down the shaggy flanks of Hunter's Peak, and those strange voices which, infinitely distant, seem to be the communications of spirits that tenant the lonely places of the earth.
Ahjeek rested, his black eyes cloudy with intense thought, his smooth face without line or expression. There was in all this something that appealed amazingly to his untamed soul. From hundreds of miles across the prairie this fool of a white man had marched into his very arms. He was a trooper, that was true, but so far Ahjeek, such was his skill in deception, had had no difficulty in dealing with troopers. It began to appear that this was his opportunity to close his career with utter contentment, and slip down to the boundary and across into a country where he reckoned troopers would bother him no longer.
"My friend has said that he would speak with me," he began coolly, and at his words a sigh ran round the copper-coloured circle.
"I have come a long way to speak," said Jock, "and my words are slow because the Blackfoot tongue is hard for my mouth."
"My friend is a wise man," answered Ahjeek; "his tongue is clever. Speak—I have ears."
"A word came to the chief of the troopers at Fort McMurray from our friends the Piegans in the Smoky River country that many horses had been lost. They thought also that perhaps the men of Ahjeek had found them. This is the thing that the chief of the troopers told me, and I, his servant, bring it to you."
"I had not known there were Piegans on the Smoky River," said Ahjeek, with the ghost of a smile, "and why should the men of my tribe find the horses? Are there not Crees and Yellowknives between Hunter's Peak and Fort McMurray? My friend has come too far with a foolish question."
"It is not the habit of the men who wear my coat to ask foolish questions. Perhaps my brother does not understand?"
"Have I not said that my friend's tongue is clever?" replied Ahjeek. "And is he not strong as well? There are not many who can carry a sick man thirty miles, and not open his wound."
"But of the horses of the Piegans my brother has not heard? I thought perhaps that the bird which flies by night might have whispered in his ear where the horses are, and that he would lend me his braves to drive them home again."
Again Ahjeek smiled. "The white man has strange dreams. Perhaps he, too, is sick."
A curious grunt ran around the circle. Every word was being caught by the fighting men, weighed, balanced, and endowed with its own particular meaning. They knew now that Ahjeek was slowly coming round to the thing that lay in the back of his cruel brain. Sixty pairs of beady eyes peered through narrow lids at Trooper MacTier, while sixty merciless brains calculated how long that gigantic frame would withstand the horrors they had designed for it. It was agreed in camp that the women should do the torturing. In such affairs their touch was the more artistic.
But in the very moment in which he was encircled by these devilish intentions, it came to Jock very quietly and very mysteriously that neither he nor Munroe was meant to die just yet. Why he felt this it was impossible to explain, nor did he ever imagine that it was just one of those baffling communications which destiny vouchsafes to the minds of men in moments when reason and life are in the balance.
"I am not sick," he said evenly, "nor have I the thoughts of a sick man. Ahjeek is perhaps forgetful and does not remember how a certain chief of the Yellowknives, who forgot many things about horses, remembered them suddenly when it was too late." He leaned forward. "I speak a true word, Ahjeek."
The lips of the Blackfoot twitched ever so slightly. "It is well that my brother speaks while there is time."
At this Jock nodded as though it aroused other memories. "Can my brother remember when the troopers of the king that lives across the bitter water grew weary in their questions or their running to and fro? It is not long"—here he waved a hand toward the far-stretching plain—"since the buffalo covered the country like a black blanket, and the lodges of my brothers were pitched wherever there was sweet grass and water for their horses. To-day the buffalo have gone like a tale that is told, and only sometimes in a journey does one find the lodges of the Blackfeet. In their place have come the wagons of the white men with strange customs and a strange tongue. My brother, perhaps, has seen this?" He paused and glanced shrewdly into Ahjeek's.
The Blackfoot did not stir, but his eyes had taken on a new intensity as he, too, peered at the horizon. "So far it is truth. What then?" he demanded.
"With the white man came a new law," went on Trooper MacTier, with deepening voice, "the law that is the same for all prairie people, whether they be white or red. It has been carried north to the place where the bitter waters turn into stone in winter-time, and south to the country of the Longknives. This law has many servants, and from it there is no escape. It has happened that some men with black hearts, who were also fools, have tortured and slain the servants of the king and of the law, and, being like children, thought they could run away and hide. But," concluded Jock his eves hardening, "they only ran like a child, and not far. I have spoken."
Ahjeek's brown hand was slowly raised and laid for an instant against his smooth cheek, at which a whisper ran like the wind round the circle of fighting men. The copper-coloured shoulders stiffened a little, and the lean bodies bent intently forward. Noting this, Jock's heart quickened in his breast. For a fraction of a second he hesitated, then, lifting his great bulk, walked deliberately out toward the edge of the circle. Ahjeek and sixty others stared at him curiously and with just such eyes as those which regard the caged animal twisting ceaselessly behind his iron bars.
"What is it?" asked Ahjeek coldly. "Is the white man afraid?"
For answer Jock stooped and, with inconceivable swiftness, jerked the gaudy blanket from the knees of the fighting man nearest him. Underneath, resting on the crossed legs, lay a short carbine, the sawed-off rifle of the buffalo hunter. So quickly was it done that the grim ranks sat as though petrified. A silence followed, in which the trooper laughed shortly and squatted once more in the centre of the grassy plot.
"You are answered, Ahjeek," he said coldly. "Once more I ask: Will you return the horses of the Piegans? They are not far away."
Ahjeek laughed oat. "Your words are the words of a man who has lost his reason. Is this the end of my friend's message?"
Again Jock shook his head. "I would that you looked into my eyes, Ahjeek."
The Blackfoot stared, and as Jock caught the beady pupils of those cold, black orbs, he flung into his returning gaze the whole strength of his being. There streamed from him an imperious command that slowly began to pierce that cruel exterior. So dominant was this trooper, so poised and concentrated his superb determination, that before its visual expression Ahjeek for the very first time quailed and shrank. This contest was remote from anything on which he had ever reckoned. Gradually there slipped from his sight the ring of fighting men, the pointed lodges, the great bulk of Hunter's Peak itself, till there remained only the consciousness of two grey pinpoints of light that were boring steadily into his very soul. Then there came to him the voice of Trooper MacTier:
"My throat, Ahjeek! Look at my throat!"
The Blackfoot's eyes shifted, as though mesmerised, to the top button of the scarlet tunic. What was there, he dumbly wondered, about that particular button?
"My breast, Ahjeek! Look at my breast!" The voice, imperious and insistent, seemed to drift out of the very heart of the hills. Again the eyes drooped to the broad expanse of the trooper's massive chest.
"My pocket, Ahjeek! Look at my pocket!"
For the third time the black eyes shifted, and as they rested on the corner of the tunic pocket a chill spread slowly through the hot blood that up to this instant had pulsed so triumphantly. From that corner there projected very slightly a small ring of blue-grey steel. Behind this, an inch of shimmering metal melted into MacTier's mighty grip. So fascinating was it, so charged with significant power, that for the very first time that day Ahjeek's lips moved without words. A thousand voices were shouting at him that his life swayed in the balance. The trooper had not stirred, and now his voice came in again, cold as death itself:
"It is not well that my brother should move even his finger. If he is indeed wise—and many men have told me of his wisdom—he will say nothing until he has heard the last word of the law of the prairie. It is not good that any man should die while he is yet young, and his eye bright, and his knees strong, but the law is greater than life. It does not matter if I myself should not any more see the sun, for behind me there will come others, and yet others, and so long as water runs from Hunter's Peak to the Peace River there will be found men who will speak for the law. Think, Ahjeek, there is no place on the mountain or on the prairie which can hide you. There is no man that may give you shelter and find sleep for himself, unless," he added quietly, "the horses of the Piegans are found, and Ahjeek thinks well to ride with me to the chief of the troopers and lay his hand in the chief's hand and swear by his fathers to obey the law. I have spoken."
Once more there fell silence. The fighting men had turned into graven images, and seemed to be a part of the very earth itself. Munroe, waking from his uneasy sleep, had gained the door of his tepee, and was staring at the two with pain-racked gaze. Jock dared scarcely to breathe while the pendulum of life quivered ere it swung. Then, jerkily, Ahjeek's voice sounded again, ragged with uncertainty, and as he spoke a thrill ran through Trooper MacTier.
"And if I do this thing?"
"There will be good-will between the Blackfeet and the Piegans, and your tribe will grow stronger. You will be friends with all men, and with the Piegans there will be hunting and feasting and giving in marriage. Your young braves will not look behind them while they journey, and your old men will sit in comfort in their lodges and tell tales of Ahjeek, the chief, who, remembering many things, learned the wisdom of the law that knows no change. I have spoken."
For a full minute Ahjeek waited till, with nerve-shaking slowness, his two hands came out, palms up, and stretched gradually towards Trooper MacTier. It was the peace sign of the prairie, the symbol of the open heart and the friend, the sign-manual known from Coronation Gulf to the Yellowstone, to break which was a thing for ever damned and despicable. Even Ahjeek, however double-faced, would never dare to misuse this ancient and universal token.
"It is well said," he answered under his breath; "the horses of the Piegans shall be found, and I will journey beside you."
And so it was. Once again out of the depths of danger and despair the great heart of Jock MacTier had lifted itself triumphantly.
Now, of what followed during the next few days, of the rapid healing of Munroe's wound, of the feasting, hunting, and sleeping, of the tales that were repeated in the lodges of Ahjeek's camp, of the sudden and marvellous appearance of the Piegan horses, fat as butter, and herded by a dozen fighting men, it is not necessary to write; but of the talks between Ahjeek and Trooper MacTier, during which a new interpretation of the white man's law drifted into that copper-covered soul, it may be well to speak.
Through them all Jock was chiefly conscious that he was dealing with a man whose ancestry was immeasurably ancient, reaching far back through countless years in which these dusky tribes roamed the prairie, free as air and kings of all that they beheld. With this large in his mind, Jock understood the fierce resentment that burned in Ahjeek's breast at the ceaseless encroachment of his territory. It was true, too, that what the Indian had learned from the white man was mostly not to the credit of either. How natural it was that he should discern in trapper, trader, and explorer only those who wanted something for nothing, and who plunged carelessly ahead, however they might violate that most dear to the free peoples of the West. Ahjeek was, as well, curiously like a child. He responded to childish arguments, was moved by things simple and elemental, and was puzzled over much that had drummed itself into the white man's brain.
So it happened that in these talks Trooper MacTier betrayed a high and noble interpretation of his duty. Gently, but with unvarying firmness, he brought Ahjeek to admit that the way of the transgressor is, even on the slopes of the Rockies, a way of discomfort and unending anxiety. Thus it was that a fortnight later they set their faces toward the east and began the return patrol.
It was a curious journey, during which Ahjeek, moved by strange admiration of this incomprehensible trooper, initiated him into many things that were hidden from most white men. Night after night they camped on the flower-strewn earth, while over them lifted the vast canopy of sky, jewelled with stars, tender with the whispers of wandering winds.
Jock's report was, like all the Mounted Police records, brief to a degree—so brief that it is worth repeating:
"According to instructions. Troopers MacTier and Munroe proceeded on a patrol from Fort McMurray to Hunter's Peak on the slopes of the Rockies. Trooper MacTier was in charge. The purpose of the patrol was to recover certain horses said to have been stolen by Ahjeek the Blackfoot from the Piegans, in the territory between Wapiti and Smoky Rivers. Leaving Fort McMurray on August the fifth, the patrol arrived at the Piegan camp on August the twenty-fifth, where details of the horses were procured. Continuing thence the following day, the patrol entered Ahjeek's camp on September the third, Trooper Munroe having in the meantime been shot through the shoulder from ambush.
"Ahjeek the Blackfoot was induced to return the stolen property, with which, in company with Troopers MacTier and Munroe, he arrived at the Piegan camp two weeks later. Proceeding thence, the patrol reached Fort McMurray on October the fifth, Trooper Munroe being by that time completely recovered."
To this was subjoined a memorandum signed by the Inspector:
"Trooper MacTier has since the above date been promoted to sergeant."
That is all there was to it, except that Munroe, however Jock imposed silence upon him, could not remain entirely voiceless. As for Jock himself, he consistently refused to say anything, except that once, when driven into a corner by an insistent and admiring questioner, he got very red in the face and, in evident and extreme discomfort, blurted: "Man, man, can ye no hold your jaw? 'Twas nothing at all, and whatever it might be 'twas for the honour of the force."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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