Part 1

THE REBELLION OF CONSTABLE KITT

A stirring and individual story of the Royal Canadian Mounted, by the recognized historian of that noted force.

By T. Morris Longstreth

Illustrated by W. O. Kling

Take this afternoon, when the boys were grousing at stables as per customary: you’d think this outfit was a disease nobody could get over too soon. I guess you gathered that the Mounted Police was run by a bunch of apes, didn’t you now? With old Frozen-face for the particular head baboon!

Well, all that jaw’s just a sign of health, showing they’ve still got an interest in living. I like to hear them shoot off their face, so long as the talk’s on the O C’s ways, where it can’t do much harm. But when they start bumping Frozen-face for merely acting as a sergeant-major should, I feel like wanting to tell them a thing or two.

I agree with them, of course, that Frozen-face is an old model. He joined up with this outfit when the West was a horse country and the price of oats was the overpowering topic. They tell me he was one of those hard seeds that nobody knew where he came from and nobody dared inquire. But he looked useful, with that map. Even a recruiting officer could see he could make an easy living robbing trains. He admitted right off that he could ride anything with hair, as the saying goes. And not like so many admitters, he made good. He didn’t shine up to anybody, though, even then, and you only got to know him by mistake.

I’ll not forget the day I first made that mistake. I’d just come down from the training depot at Regina, and I was probably the greenest article they ever crated out. Along with the handicaps usual to a recruit, I’d brought some special blemishes. One was a swelled head from winning a bunch of money at the races. Another was the idea I was all right with the girls. But the worst, in the sergeant-major’s estimation, was my views on horses. I didn’t love ’em, to be frank. I wanted my horsepower canned and ready to go when you let in the clutch. Valeting horses three or four hours a day in a cold stable had strained our relations; and when it came to the riding-school, there wasn’t a square yard of it I didn’t know by personal introduction, and there wasn’t a nag in it I couldn’t have said good-by to without tears. If I had to smell, I preferred to smell of oil and gasoline.

* * * * *

For that was my crime, gasoline--what with the race money and the girls, I’d developed a neat little taste in roadsters. But everybody did. Even the cheapest immigrant had a prairie Lincard in his shed; if you asked a girl out, she looked at your wheelbase before she looked at you. The date you could make with a horse and buggy wasn’t worth making.

But old Frozen-face had never been broke to women, I guess, and he wasn’t concerned with dates. His heart was sewed up in horseflesh. He was still living in the days of the poets when the hush of silence hung over the plains and you did the chores with Government mules. So when I arrived and didn’t fall down and worship horses whenever I saw one, it hurt him bad. The little feelin’ I had against the brutes must have shown in my face, or maybe he suspected it from the fact I didn’t have bowed legs. Anyway, being a good sergeant-major, he ordered me off on a horse patrol.

Now, you know sergeant-majors by this time, and how it’s easier to chum up with King George than with a good one. Why, even today I’d risk telling His Majesty his crown’s not on straight rather than suggest to an S. M. that I think he’s not perfect. It doesn’t go, not a little ways. So you can savvy what happened when I advised Frozen-face that I could accomplish his old patrol quicker and better on a motorcycle.

He didn’t speak, at first, so I went on to tell him where I could borrow one. Even then he didn’t speak the way an angry man should--for I saw he was angry; but after a long cold stare, he began one of the grandest choke-offs that ever ascended in a slow blue cloud.

* * * * *

“Is it possible, Constable Kitt,” he said, “is it possible that you’ve been on the strength here for a week? Have I grown so careless as all that? You arrived last Monday. On Tuesday you were observed to hurry through stables in order to get into trouble downtown. Strutting along Main Street, you were so engrossed with one of these modern, half-dressed, hand-painted, warmed-up apologies for women that you passed Inspector Tagget without saluting. On Thursday you again hurried through stables to engage in a game which is not only forbidden to members of this Force but is generally considered unwise for fools. You were reprimanded. Today I give you an order, and you venture to suggest that I do not know my business.

“Did they teach you no manners at Regina? Were you never told to express your regret at having to put your sergeant-major in his place? Having been in the Force only twenty-three years, I cannot boast of your ripeness of judgment nor your advanced methods. But I am still unhappily responsible for the discipline at this post. You, still more unhappily, are elected to obey the orders given you. Do you hear?” His eyes went a curious shade of green. “If I catch you shirking stables again, watch out. If you mention motorcycle to me once more, you wont even have time to watch. Unfortunately I’m not always in a good temper and I might resent your obvious efforts to improve the Force and educate me. That will do.”

You might think it would. I went out smoking hot, with those words burned on.

“He’ll see,” I said bitterly to a girl I’d met the day before. “That scrawny buzzard’ll see if motors wont run his horses out of business.”

“Mercy, Ed, what a rough way to talk of my uncle!” she said.

“That bird your uncle! He don’t look it, with that face.”

“I like Uncle Howard,” Rena went on. “He’s so interesting. He’s a living contradiction.”

“I’ll say he is!”

“Listen till I tell you, Ed. You’ve only heard his growl. He’s strict like that because he’s so wrapped up in the Force. Really he is--the way his superiors were strict with _him_. Anything else, he thinks, would show that the Force is going down, and that’d kill him. He’s in love with it, but naturally he’s got to hide all that. It’s just his way, Ed.”

“It’s a hell of a way to show you’re in love,” I said, still sulking.

“You talk just like a little boy.”

“Well, isn’t it? That crankcase never knew what love is.”

“Wrong again,” she said quietly. “He was in love with Mother once. But she chose Dad.”

“Congratulations.”

“There’s no use talking to you, Edward Kitt.”

“Right. That cuckoo’s talked enough for the family. If he’s got the Force so close to his warm heart, why can’t he tell when progress goes dusting by? How about that bunch of customs-beaters, the Duff gang? Why did they give Sergeant Geary the dust? Because you can’t catch an eight-cylinder car with a one-cylinder horse. Now, can you?”

“A garageful of cars wouldn’t have caught the Duff gang that time, Ed. They jumped back across the border too soon.”

“Isn’t that what I’m telling you? Men like them with a reward on their heads wont wait. There’s a poster on our bulletin-board in barracks with their pictures, and every time I see it I wish I’d been after them with that bus I had at Regina. I hate to see the outfit thrown down by dopers simply because we’re too slow.”

“You do love it, don’t you, Ed?”

“Next best to a certain girl somewhere.”

“You should love it ahead of any girl.”

“Hypocrite!”

* * * * *

For that she smacks me, most agreeable, on the cheek, and runs away, but I could see I’d made a dent; and believe me, that girl Rena was worth starting for. She was sound, with just enough style to raise a nice breeze. She didn’t have to shoot a fellow to get his money, but she didn’t want his money--a new one on me. She made you feel like a spring morning to go with her. Lots of times I couldn’t work for making plans, and I’d be all uneasy until I was with her, and then I was uneasy. A hell of a nice feeling, you understand, though uncomfortable; and it made all other girls and women seem like last year’s. I just naturally had to tour in her direction....

One day I was down emptying ashes for the Inspector’s wife, a gabby lot if I do have no right to remark it, when she says:

“Do you know anything about cars? My husband’s wont start. Nobody around here seems to understand it. You’d think the Government would have more self-respect than to send us a thing like that.”

Well, she didn’t know what she was doing for me. The moment I stretched out under that pile of junk, I was as happy as a tourist asking questions. It wasn’t a car, rightly speaking, but a warning, and it sounded like a stone-crusher in action. You couldn’t have sold it for its tires, but it ran, after I’d nursed it along, and you bet I had to give it some expensive tryouts, with Rena in to tell me the names of the stars. Those were happy times, with dusk on the plains and glory overhead, but I don’t think they helped Frozen-face’s temper when he found out. Of course he couldn’t come down on me very heavy, seeing as I was doing a favor for the Inspector, but being a good sergeant-major, as I said, he had other ways of putting on the brakes. It occurred to him to find out if I knew anything about his other hobby, the constables’ manual.

Perhaps you haven’t looked into that little testament of ours. It’s a terror. It’s a book they’ve made up so that we constables can compete with the law on its home grounds. It’s hot with the latest news on warrants and arrests and summary convictions and exciting things like that. But the real smacker is the chapter on giving evidence. Now, slovenly riding was one thing that Frozen-face hated good and hard, but no worse than to see a buck constable ball up a perfectly good case by giving faulty evidence. That was one of his bad dreams, and he took good care that we shouldn’t furnish him with that nightmare. The day he discovered I didn’t know the difference between a summons and a subpoena was another milestone of misunderstanding between us. My temper was pretty well shot, too, when I came out of that interview, only I had to keep it to myself. I’d have asked for a transfer that afternoon but for one little circumstance, which was Rena. I found out I had, sometime in the past, ceased to be a free man. I couldn’t break away!

* * * * *

A few evenings later, just at “lights out,” my chum Draughty Macklin tells me there’s a boy wants to see me out by the corral.

“What the high do I want with a boy out there?” I asked him.

“I don’t give a fried potato what you want; I’m just telling you,” says Draughty.

I couldn’t figure it, so I dragged my boots on again and sneaked out, and I was in a fair rage by the time I noticed a slender chap standing in the shadow by the gate. “What the hell--” I began.

“It’s Rena, Ed,” she said, “and don’t swear so! I’ve risked coming here to tell you something serious.”

It was Rena, all right, dolled out in her brother’s clothes. “Why this rig?” I asked.

“Because I had to see you, and if you were caught with a girl, it would go even harder with you than it is going.”

“What do you mean, ‘is going?’”

“I’m worried, Ed. You see, you don’t seem to know where you stand. I heard somebody saying that he’d heard Uncle Howard telling a person, no matter who, that he was tired of having Regina send him brick-heads who didn’t know the first thing about court procedure, and that he was going to shoot them back with you heading the column. I couldn’t bear that to happen, Ed.”

That sent me cold, and I said: “What in blazes does he want? How can I memorize his blooming manual if he keeps me riding circus ponies all day?”

“Now you’re just making excuses, Ed.”

“You’re starting to sound like a bum sergeant-major yourself.”

“Listen, Ed: You’ve _got_ to learn that manual, and if you can’t do it yourself, you’ve got to be taught.”

“You’ve doped it. I’ll wire Vancouver for a teacher in the morning.”

“Silly boy, why do you make it so hard for me? I could teach you.”

“That’s service,” I said, still sarcastic, “especially when you and me are poison if seen together.”

“We needn’t be seen,” she said, very low. “Draughty Macklin is stable orderly, isn’t he? And there’s a light always in the little room, isn’t there? And if you can come down tonight, you can come other nights, can’t you? Besides--”

Oh, she knew her powers all right, and how a chap was lost if he got within a length of her. I was only hard starting, anyway, because I hadn’t thought of it first. “I expect you’ll find me terrible dumb,” I told her.

“I know how dumb you are,” she said, and left me there like a light blown out.

* * * * *

The plan ran smoother than I thought. You might suppose that girl had been studying the statutes since she could dress herself. “Now, Ed, tell me again, what is a writ of habeas corpus?” And I, naturally knowing nothing about it, would try bluffing. But you couldn’t bluff her any better than a sergeant-major, and before long I could tune in on any chapter she said.

The joke came one day when I put a J. P. straight to the effect that a dying declaration couldn’t be used as a deposition. This miracle got to Frozen-face’s ears. He said something very decent to me, being square at heart, and when I broke the news to Rena, she let me almost kiss her. Only almost, though, for our meetings had been as cold and businesslike as a cash-register. She sure didn’t let her feelings double-cross her, but I was like one of these Indian kids in the agency Sunday-school, jammed with mischief but afraid to show it.

We had been going for weeks and were well along to the back cover when the inevitable knock developed. We’d got careless, and one night I forgot to fix the shutter over the window, and I was just shooting to Rena the fine points of a coroner’s inquest, when the door opened and who should it be but that walking icicle, old Frozen-face himself. The lamp flared, and he didn’t see everything at once, but he recognized me and said, “Rolling the bones again, Kitt?” and his voice was so fake pleasant you might almost have forgot to worry.

Rena dragged up a little laugh from somewhere and said: “You guessed just right, Uncle Howard. We _are_ gambling. We’ve been taking a chance that Mr. Kitt would learn his manual before you found us out.”

“But we didn’t quite make the grade,” I added for company’s sake.

* * * * *

He paid no attention to the remarks, but stood over us, quiet as a drum before you wallop it, staring down at her pretty boyishness. He couldn’t seem to take it in that it was his niece there. When he did speak, it wasn’t loud. “Is it actually you here, Rena, with this--this--big noise?”

“Yes, Uncle Howard. We’ve been studying.”

“Studying what?”

“The manual, I told you, Uncle Howard.” Her voice lost its steadiness.

“Don’t Uncle Howard me!”--sternly.

“But don’t you understand?”

“Only too well.” And he meant his tone to hurt.

I was on my feet now. “Don’t you talk to her that way, sir,” I cut in. “It’s as she says, and we’ve been on the square. She’s kept me on the square.”

“The guardroom for you,” he threw at me. He was furious.

“If you punish Mr. Kitt for studying his manual,” cried Rena, “I’ll--”

“You’ll leave the stable, certainly.” And he took her by the arm.

I felt as if I’d caught fire, I was that mad. I started after them, ready to knock him over, though it would take some knocking. I didn’t think a little more insubordination would matter much. But she threw me a look that said “Leave him to me,” so plain I stopped still. It was one of those looks a fellow can get only once, for it gave the show away. I knew then she was my girl, even if miles ahead of anything a chap like me should hope for.

I stood there entertaining a lot of thoughts and not noticing it was minutes before Frozen-face came striding back. But he was as changed as if she’d been reading him the law. He didn’t even smoke at the nostrils. I stood to attention, out of habit, but not because I was feeling respectful, and he says: “So this is how you come to know about dying declarations!”

“Yes, sir, she coached me in that.”

“Remarkable!”

“For the good of the Force, sir.”

“Oh, clearly!”

“Well, didn’t it work that way?” My heat was rising.

“Clearly, I said. How long have you been at it?”

I couldn’t think quick enough to suit him. Just one date stood out, and I was fool enough to spout that: “Since the Duff gang got away the last time, sir.”

He turned his stare on me. “You’ve got the nerve of Judas!”

“Why do you call me that?” And then the temper boiled: “You’d better mind what you call me! Have I ever sold the outfit? Have I ever given it away--to a herd of horses? I know I’m just a buck constable, and you think you made the Force; but maybe you aren’t the only one thinking for its good. You and your damned horses! Would that gang have thumbed noses at us if we’d been burning after them in a twin six? But no, we’ve got to stick to the geegees. Who’s Judas now? I suppose you’ll throw me in the clink, you’re that blind and unjust, but I’d sooner that than let you get away with something I don’t deserve.”

* * * * *

It wasn’t the way to still the ruffled waters, but as he didn’t say anything, I went right on: “And one more thing: Whatever you do to me, you needn’t bring her into it. You can get back at me enough without that.”

Lord, the water was boiling in my radiator. I was just reaching to wipe the sweat out of my eyes when he surprised me cold. He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped me as if he was going to shake the lights out of me, but that wasn’t in his mind. No. He looked straight into me, and I had to notice his eyes, the first time I’d got a close look at them in my life. They were stern all right, but the eyes of a white man. You can’t pick up eyes like that. You have to grow ’em, slow, by looking at a lot of life and looking at it square. They held me to a standstill, those eyes, and when he spoke, it might have been my dad.

[Illustration: He gripped my shoulder. “If I thought you believed I was that sort,” he said, “I’d knock it out of you if it cost me my rank.”]

“Do you think I’m that sort?” he said. I couldn’t make a sound, and he went on: “If I thought you believed I was that sort, I’d knock it out of you if it cost me my rank! It’s a good thing for both of us, Constable Kitt, that there are no witnesses tonight. If you ever get your stripes, you’ll realize what you’ve said. But I provoked it, unwittingly, and I propose to consider it unsaid. You will remain confined to barracks. Now pick up that book and get to bed.”

So of course I went, but not to sleep. “If you ever get your stripes,” he had said. Then he didn’t class me with the dirt I supposed. And that glimpse of the real Frozen-face--you couldn’t dismiss a surprise like that by turning over! I saw that I’d have to size him up all over again, and maybe cut down my own proportions a bit. You wouldn’t want to be less white than somebody else. After I’d hit on that, I fell asleep.

* * * * *

But the next day was long. To have our meeting-time come and know I wasn’t going to sit by Rena, nor see her, didn’t help any, but the bean-spiller was a note I got that evening, saying:

They’ve found out and are furious. I’m to visit Aunt Jennie in Macleod for a long time. They’re going to try and have you transferred. I’m too low to cry. I never knew what it was to be lonely before. But be good, Ed dear. Don’t tear anything, for the Force’s sake. And do study a little more on Indictable Offenses. I’m so anxious for you to get along fast. You’ll be one of the officers some day. Please write tonight in our time.

That note didn’t lead me to any shrine of peace, believe me. Maybe I might be an officer some day, about ninety years off, and in the meantime who would hoist Rena into the seat beside him and tread on the gas? For she wasn’t theft-proof, not a bit. I never saw a worse chance to grow an old maid. When the first week went by and she wasn’t engaged, it surprised me.

That week was no heaven. I did try my darnedest to please Frozen-face, which pretty well took up the day. But that left the nights. I didn’t feel like rushing anyone else, and the stars were flat without her to show me their good points. I began to see how that girl was miles ahead of any uniform. When no letter came for two days, I was half sick. I fancied her walking out with our men in Macleod--with Corporal Gadshill, the speed-king with the ladies. Or I imagined her Aunt Jennie giving parties. Or why didn’t I get word? Perhaps you’ve never been a fool over women and can’t hear what I’m saying, but by the tenth day I wasn’t hitting at all.