In the King's Service

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

IN THE KING'S
SERVICE

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

HE was young and English, but neither to an uncomfortable extent. He realised that the ways of Western Canada were not the ways of rural England, and he was quick to learn the ways of the new land. He called himself Richard Croft. He worked for a summer with one Frink, a farmer with a thousand acres in wheat, for a winter in a mountain lumber camp, another summer with Frink, and his second winter for a storekeeper in a prairie town. Then he enlisted in the Mounted Police. He did this without any difficulty, for his record in the West was good, all his employers spoke or wrote highly of him, and he was in the pink of physical condition. So he became a member of that small and heroic Force where merit alone counts, and yet where virtue is largely its own reward.

Croft satisfied his officers and comrades in the Force, even as he had satisfied his employers and companions in agricultural and mercantile life. His manner was reserved but cheerful. He was capable and willing. Within twelve months of joining he was promoted to the rank of corporal and sent to a small new post far to the north. His new commanding officer was an inspector named Wentworth, a man of thirty-four years of age, who had graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada, and served through the South African War as a subaltern, and for a time as a captain, in a regiment of mounted infantry.

Richard Croft's duties took him north and south and east and west. Throughout the summer and autumn he made his rounds by canoe and on foot. The population of the country was scant and scattered, and he and his comrades had to travel many miles to keep in touch with it. It was made up of a few Indian villages, a few mining camps, a few small trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, scattered trappers and prospectors, and very occasional parties of explorers and sportsmen from the outside world. Lumbermen and ranchers had not yet reached so far into the northern wilds. Corporal Croft's rounds took him away from the post sometimes for two weeks, at others for three. So he saw but little of his commanding officer.

Winter set in early. One day in December, Croft returned to the post and made his report.

"Do you know Big Trade Sabatis, the breed?" asked Wentworth.

"Yes, sir," replied Croft.

"We want him," said the Inspector. "He shot a couple of men over on Shining Hill three weeks ago. One of them died immediately; but the other lived, and at last managed to crawl as far as Bartlett's. Peter Bartlett brought in the news yesterday. I've sent Howard north, Trent west, and Scott and Jones to the south and sou'-east. I want you to go east, as far as Beaver Lake, anyway. I've saved that route for you because it is the likeliest. Take the dogs and provisions to last you to Beaver. Re-provision there. If you pick up any sort of scent, or ghost of a scent, follow it, no matter where it leads to or how far."

"Very good, sir. May I ask the name of the dead man?"

"James Tinker. See about the dogs and sledge to-night."

"With your permission, sir, I should like to start in an hour from now. I could easily make twenty-five miles by midnight."

"Very good. Come in before you go."

Corporal Croft saluted and retired. He was back in the office fifty minutes later, ready to set out in search of Big Trade Sabatis, the murderer. Wentworth gave him his final instructions. He saluted and turned toward the door.

"And good luck to you, Corporal," said the Inspector.

Croft turned back, saluted again, and then retired.

Croft travelled fast and reached Beaver Lake in six days. On the way he had neither seen nor heard anything of Sabatis, but at the lake he was more successful. He learned from Mack, the trader, that a party of sportsmen, with their guides and dogs, had stopped there just ten days before, southward-bound for the railway and civilisation by way of Hollow Lake, Fort Smith, and Big Horn. They had been in since September, hunting musk-ox far to the north. Big Trade Sabatis was with them.

"Are you sure of that?" asked Croft.

"Swear to it," said Mack. "I know that breed right enough. He was hangin' round here two years ago, an' bought a gun off me, an' I collected the bill this time. He tried to keep his ugly face hidden. I noticed that, an' thought it was because of the bill. I got the money, anyhow, an' like enough it's some of what he took off Tinker after he'd killed 'im."

"Very likely. Who were the musk-ox hunters?"

"Two Englishmen and one New Yorker. Hanged if I ain't forgot their names! No, Derrydimple was one of them. I remember that because it strikes me as bein' a darned queer name, even for an Englishman."

They were seated in the store, close to the square sheet-iron stove. Croft turned on his stool and took his pipe from the counter behind him. It slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor, and he had to stoop and reach after it.

"Derrydimple?" he queried.

"Sure thing. Beats hell, don't it?"

"A very good name. What was his Christian name?"

"Darn' if I know."

"What did he look like?"

"Kind of like his name—fat face, yellow moustaches, mulish."

"And about fifty years of age?"

"Thereabouts, Corporal. So ye're acquainted with him?"

"I once knew a man by that name. Now, are you positive that you are not making any mistake in saying that Big Trade Sabatis was a member of the party?"

"Not likely. Didn't I collect twenty-five dollars off him?"

"Let me have the money—the exact coins or paper he paid over to you; we may need it to help prove the case against him. I'll give you a receipt for it."

Corporal Croft bought food for himself and his dogs, and rested for five hours. Then he set out at a sharp pace on the long trail which led to the railway and civilisation by way of Hollow Lake, Fort Smith, and Big Horn. He believed that the sportsmen would take their own time for the journey, being masters of time and freshly provisioned. He calculated on their making short stages between each day's belated sunrise and early sunset. Perhaps they would even make camp for a day or two now and again, to fish through the ice of some shrouded, nameless lake or take toll of fresh meat from some moose yard. He hoped to overtake them somewhere between Fort Smith and Big Horn, if he suffered no accident. So he travelled as hard and fast as he safely could without injury to himself and the dogs.

The sportsmen had progressed even more slowly than Croft had expected them to, and he came up with them about thirty miles south of Hollow Lake. They were in camp when he found them, though the sun was still well up above the west. He made the arrest swiftly and without difficulty, and had the cuffs on Sabatis before the others realised what was happening. Sabatis had not resisted. Even when the irons were on his wrists he seemed unconcerned. He continued to sit and gaze heavy-eyed at the fire, with his head thrust forward and his shoulders hunched; but among the other members of the party there was sudden and high excitement. Questions were hurled at Croft, which Croft answered briefly and to the point. Derrydimple asked most of the questions, staring fixedly at the Corporal all the while.

It was Croft's intention to return with his prisoner by the way along which he had followed him. Croft's responsibility in the affair would end when he handed the murderer over to Inspector Wentworth. From Wentworth's station the prisoner would be sent south and west to the nearest town and the nearest judge for trial. So Croft overhauled the abundant supplies of the sportsmen and took enough of flour and bacon for himself and Big Trade Sabatis, and of frozen fish for his dogs, to last them back to Beaver Lake. He took these things politely but firmly, in the King's name, and gave Derrydimple a receipt for them.

Mr. Derrydimple passed the receipt over to one of his friends.

"I'll accompany you and the prisoner, Corporal Croft," he said.

"I think not, sir," replied Croft.

"How do you mean to stop me?"

"I have the authority to stop you or anyone else who takes a whim into his head to travel along with me when I am in charge of a prisoner. Your company would be very agreeable, sir, but I am engaged on an important duty, and cannot allow anything to interfere with it."

"But I have no intention of interfering with you in your duty."

[Illustration: "Big Trade Sabatis stumbled on his rackets and pitched face forward to the snow."]

"It can't be done, sir. Sorry, but there you have it."

"Are you quite sure that it can't be done, John Radley?"

Everyone gaped at Derrydimple. No one looked more bewildered than Corporal Croft,

"This fellow who calls himself Corporal Croft, is no other than John Radley," continued Derrydimple, turning to his friends. "He used to be a clerk in my London office until he robbed me of two hundred pounds about five years ago."

Then everyone stared at the Corporal. The expression of bewilderment left the Corporal's face, and some of his colour went with it. The muscles of his jaws hardened. He produced a note-book and pencil from an inner pocket.

"I must ask you to repeat that," he said.

Derrydimple repeated it, and Croft wrote it down.

"If what you say is a fact," said the American sportsman to Derrydimple, "we may as well take this fellow along with us and hand him and his prisoner together over to the authorities."

"If you contemplate interfering with me, on this man's wild charge, I advise you to change your mind," said Croft. "What would happen to you, even if you succeeded in overpowering me and freeing Big Trade Sabatis? The freeing of the murderer is what you are aiming at, I suppose. I warn you, one and all, to think five or six times before starting everything."

"Don't touch him," said Derrydimple. "A thief he is, but for the time being he is an officer of the law engaged in his duty."

"Do you seriously make this charge against me?" asked Croft, tapping his finger on the note-book.

"In all seriousness."

"Then you will have to return with me, after all. Inspector Wentworth must hear it."

"That suits me."

"Very good. We'll breakfast early and start at sunrise."

Croft spent the evening apart from the sportsmen, thinking hard. He kept an eye on Big Trade Sabatis, who sat hunched forward close to the fire, silent and motionless.

The three sportsmen sat late at the other fire, two of them trying to dissuade the third from his intention of accompanying Corporal Croft. They explained to him that, right or wrong in naming the policeman John Radley, he was sure to be wrong in making the backward journey; for if Croft were not Radley, then his labour and time would be wasted, and if Croft and Radley were really one, then he would place himself in grave danger by going with the fellow. They advised him to let Croft and the prisoner go their way unaccompanied. From Big Horn he could telegraph his charge against the Corporal to the headquarters of the Force, or even to Ottawa.

Derrydimple accepted nothing of their advice, and remained unmoved by their arguments. He asked them sneeringly if they could tell him where the devil this Croft-Radley person would be by the time they had reached Big Horn and sent a wire to Ottawa. And he said that he, for one, was not afraid of the Corporal. He, for one, was not afraid to do his duty by himself and the public. He was so ponderously and sneeringly unpleasant about it that the American sportsman at last told him that he could go straight back as far as he liked, and beat out his petrified brains against the North Pole, for all he cared.

Shortly after sunrise next morning, Corporal Croft, Henry Derrydimple, and Big Trade Sabatis set out on the backward journey. The others continued on their southward way a few hours later. When Derrydimple had said that he was not afraid of Croft, he had spoken the truth. He understood the Corporal's character well enough to feel sure that his life was safe with him. He believed that he would have nothing to guard against during the long journey except frequent attempts on the Corporal's part to give him the slip.

Big Trade Sabatis led the procession along the beaten trail. Croft went next, then the dogs and the loaded sled, followed by Derrydimple. Croft spoke to the prisoner several times, but the half-breed neither spoke nor turned his head in answer. When Croft called a halt at noon, Big Trade Sabatis stumbled on his rackets and pitched face forward to the snow. He continued to lie there, limp and sprawled, until Croft turned him over and raised him to a sitting posture.

"What's the matter with you?" asked the Corporal.

"Sick," replied Sabatis, in a weary voice.

"He has seemed to be off his feed for the last three or four days," said Derrydimple.

After the midday meal, Croft removed all the provisions from the toboggan except the frozen fish for the dogs, and made it up into two packs. All the afternoon he and Derrydimple carried the packs, and Big Trade Sabatis drove behind the dogs. And so it was the next day and the next.

"He is seriously ill," said Croft at sundown of the third day. "We'll have to stop travelling for a while and give him a chance to recover."

"I agree with you," said Derrydimple. "I feel a trifle off colour myself. I have a splitting headache."

Croft and Derrydimple constructed a lean-to shelter of poles and spruce boughs in the heart of a grove of spruces, and made a roaring fire across the front of it. Big Trade Sabatis was quite out of his head by this time. Croft put him to bed in a sleeping-bag, and dosed him with quinine and hot brandy and water. The half-breed showed no improvement next morning, and the English sportsman still had his headache. Croft cut firewood, added another thickness of boughs to the roof of the lean-to, and then slung his cased rifle on his shoulder.

"I'm going to look for fresh meat," he said to Derrydimple. "Do you feel like coming along with me, or will you stay here?"

"I'm with you," said the other, picking up his rifle. "How far do you expect to go?"

Croft was of the opinion that they would find a moose yard within a few miles of the camp, to the north-west, as he had noticed plenty of fresh tracks on his way out. He said so, and he also said that he would take the dogs along, as it would not be safe to leave both the dogs and the provisions behind with no one to guard the latter.

They found the moose yard within eight miles of camp, killed a young bull, and had the carcase in camp by sundown.

Derrydimple could not raise his head next morning. As for Big Trade Sabatis, he had at last developed a symptom of the disease that gripped him that the Corporal recognised. Sabatis had smallpox, beyond the shadow of doubt. Croft fought off the chill of horror that numbed him for a moment, and set to work to build another shelter on the other side of the fire. Having felled and trimmed the poles and fastened them in place, he went to work at thatching the roof with boughs. He was thus employed when Derrydimple called to him. He went across to the other lean-to, axe in hand, puffing his pipe vigorously. The sportsman looked at him.

"Not gone yet," said Derrydimple.

"Gone! What do you mean? Where do you expect me to go to?"

"Anywhere. Now is your chance, and you are a fool not to take it."

"I see what you mean. Don't worry about that. I'm not looking for a chance to run away from you."

"You ran away from me once."

"So you seem to think. Well, when you want me, all you have to do is to call. I'll not be out of earshot."

"It is not possible that I'm mistaken," mumbled Derrydimple.

Croft went back to his work on the new shelter. He had it completed half an hour later. He returned to the sportsman.

"Come across to the other side of the fire," he said. "I have a new place for you there."

"A new place?" queried Derrydimple. "What is the matter with this?"

"We must let Big Trade have this all to himself, for he is a very sick man," replied the Corporal.

"What's the matter with him?" demanded the other.

"I'm not a doctor, worse luck. He has some sort of fever, I imagine."

Derrydimple was satisfied with that. He staggered across to his new quarters, clinging to Croft's arm. Croft bedded him down comfortably, and dosed him with quinine for lack of anything else to dose him with. Then he went out and fumigated himself in the smoke of the fire. He slept that night, and for many nights afterward, in a trench in the snow. He never entered either one shelter or the other without having his pipe strongly burning between his teeth. He never went under cover at all, except to attend to one or the other of the sick men. He always kept one end of the long fire between the shelters crackling and spitting with branches of green cedar. The camp was as smoky as a well-conducted camp should be in fly time.

Big Trade Sabatis died. Croft said nothing about it to Derrydimple, but straightway chopped a grave deep into snow and frozen earth and buried the murderer. Then he burned the shelter beneath which the half-breed had died, and that made more smoke and came within an ace of setting the forest afire.

"What is the matter with me?" asked Derrydimple one morning. "What is the matter with my face?"

"Chicken-pox," said the Corporal, with the smoke of his pipe like a veil before his face.

"Chicken-pox!" repeated the sick man weakly. "I had it when I was a little chap at school."

"Well, you have it again, and this time it's a man's-size dose," returned the Corporal.

II.

Two remarkable things happened during the next two weeks. Corporal Croft escaped contamination, and Derrydimple won past the crisis of the disease and began to recover.

Croft was seated by the fire one day, when the sportsman called to him.

"Do you want more broth?" asked Croft, taking a smoky kettle from the fire.

"Yes, please; and I want to speak to you," called the other.

His voice was weak, but it held a tremble of excitement. Croft deliberately filled and lit his pipe. Then he poured some of the hot moose-meat broth from the kettle into a tin mug and went over to the lean-to. The front of the shelter was hung with blankets. He drew one of the blankets aside and slipped within. The interior of the shelter was in dim twilight. Derrydimple was sitting upright in his sleeping-bag. He took the broth and sipped it.

"What about Big Trade Sabatis?" he asked.

"He died some time ago," replied Croft. "I have kept it from you until now because I didn't want to weaken you with fright."

"I have been admiring myself in the case of my watch," said the sportsman. "I'm not nice to look at, but I realise that I'm lucky to be alive. Smallpox, hey?"

"Undoubtedly," replied Croft. "I couldn't leave you to go for a doctor, so I pulled through the best way I knew how. I don't know of any sort of doctor within three hundred miles of us."

"You'd better get into the open air," said the other. "No sense in taking risks even now."

Derrydimple was a strong man, and so made a swift recovery; but when he was at last permitted to leave his shelter, he showed a sadly pitted face to the sunshine. Croft built a new lean-to—the third of his construction since the half-breed's illness had forced him into camp—and set fire to number two. The two men sat side by side on a log, in the sting of the bitter smoke, and watched the shelter burn down to the snow.

"Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg your pardon?" asked Derrydimple suddenly.

"What for?" asked Croft, gazing fixedly at the trampled snow between his feet.

"For my mistake, and for that mad charge I made against you."

"Do you withdraw the charge, then?"

"Absolutely! Utterly! I am sick with shame at the thought of it!"

Croft drew his note-book from a pocket and tore out a certain page, which he crumpled in his hand and tossed into the fire.

"So you no longer charge me with being John Radley?" he queried.

"God forbid!" exclaimed the other.

"But if I should tell you that you had been right?"

"I should be forced to believe that the terrible experience you have gone through had affected your mind."

"But I want to tell you about Radley. He needed that money. His mother had to be sent south. He tried to borrow the money, as you know. Failing in everything else, he took it. When he reached his home with it, he found that his mother was dead. In a panic of grief and fear he fled the country. That is the truth about John Radley."

"I believe you. I don't blame Radley. Let us forget it, Corporal, for Heaven's sake! Let us forget and forgive—forget Radley and forgive me. Will you shake hands?"

They shook hands.

"Will you accept a position from me," continued the sportsman—"a position of trust, with a large salary attached to it?"

Croft did not answer immediately. He sat with his elbow on his knees, gazing fixedly at the smouldering ruins of the hut in which life and death had fought so recently. But his eyes did not see the blackened snow and up-crawling threads of azure smoke. They saw London—London in sunshine and in shadow, in fog and in the light of white lamps. Longing pinched his heart.

"No," he said, "I'll stick to the Force. There is something about being a member of the Force that protects a man from panic—from any sort of fear of himself or others."