All Else Is Folly. Peregrine Acland
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Falcon’s glass — whisky, soda and all — to the ceiling.
Down came a shower of broken glass and dripping soda. But not on Falcon. On Brazenose, the waltzing policeman, just then bumping Falcon’s elbow as his partner, Vic Fleming, reversed. It spattered him. Drenched him. Stained his smart tunic.
Brazenose wheeled round, fiery-eyed, alert to seize the cause of his annoyance. Described immediately Callahan, paralyzed by laughter in the midst of his war dance, one leg still in the air.…
“Damn you, Callahan!” Brazenose commenced. “This time …”
“Just a moment, Mr. Wild Willie.” Cud Browne swayed in front of him. “If you want to play with anybody, why don’t you play with me? … Look a’ here.”
Cud lurched over to one of the two new bar-room doors. Bright new yellow pinewood. He heaved his shoulder.… The door was shattered.
Brazenose looked at him. Should he arrest him? It would be rough work. Regulations of the Royal Mounted said you mustn’t pull a gun when making an arrest unless the offender had drawn arms first. But even if he had been free to draw his six-shooter, he would have found it ticklish work to arrest Cud Browne. A bad man from Montana had tried to pull a gun on the unarmed Browne. The bad man had gone to hospital with a broken jaw.
So Brazenose looked at Cud. Looked long. Twisted his waxed moustachios meditatively. Said nothing.
Callahan walked up. “Look a’ here, Brazenose. See that other door? Watch me smash it.”
Brazenose looked at Callahan. Callahan wasn’t as big as Cud. He wasn’t as big as Brazenose. This was too damned much.
“Stop that, Callahan! Stop, or I’ll put you under …”
But Callahan laughed in his face.
He walked across the room, laughing.
He laughed as he smashed the door.
Brazenose was after him. “This is too damned much. This is too damned much,” he repeated. “Callahan, you asked for it, and by God you’ll get it!”
“Keep away from me,” bellowed Callahan, “or by the living Jesus I’ll knock you through that window.”
“Don’t you do it, Callahan. I wanna punch him a bit myself,” thundered Cud Browne. “I guess they wouldn’t soak me more’n twenty-five bucks for smashing that guy’s face. And it’d be worth it. Here’s my money right here. It’d be worth it. Keep away from me, you fellows. Leave go of my arms, Alec. Lemme smash his face in. Just twenty-five bucks for smashing in the face of a mounted policeman. Him a policeman!” He spat on the floor.
“Who the hell wants to punch that bronco’s face?” squeaked little old Bent, so drunk now he could stand only by leaning against the bar. His voice rose to a shrill, venomous shriek. “What I say is, why the hell don’t we shoot the guts out of the son of a bitch …”
Vic Fleming and Falcon jumped on the old foreman as he shoved his right claw into his trouser’s pocket.
“Cut it, Baldy,” said Vic quietly; “you can’t get away with that stuff.”
“Hell!” squealed the little old foreman. “I shot five men in the old days, between Texas and Montana. And he’s no policeman. The real old Mounted were a pretty good crowd.… By God.… What the hell’s that?”
Violent shouting.… Tremendous oaths.… An immense shattering of glass.… Silence.
Turning his back on the broken window, Callahan threw out his chest and looked round the bar-room with a bleary grin of satisfaction. He said: “That’s the safest place for him to-night. That pup oughta be thankful I put him in his kennel.”
One of the broken doors crashed. Through it strode a big, black-bearded man of forty, in Norfolk jacket and riding-breeches.
“What’s all this?” the newcomer demanded. “What are you boys up to?”
“We just had a party with Constable Brazenose, Colonel,” Callahan chuckled. As he spoke, he took a tall whisky that someone had left on the bar.
“Where’s Brazenose now?” snapped Colonel Carson.
Callahan grinned. He helped himself to another whisky as he answered: “Gone t’ bye-bye through the window.”
Colonel Carson stormed:
“You’ve all been behaving like fools. Callahan, you’ll get into trouble. Cut for the border.”
“Li’ hell I’ll cut for borrer!” Callahan gulped down another whisky — the third since his fight, besides a dozen taken earlier. The excitement over, the alcohol showed its power. He leaned his back against the wall. His knees wobbled. Slowly, very slowly, he slid towards the floor. He hit it, at last, with a thump.
Colonel Carson looked at Callahan and the rest, amused. His anger had quieted — anger caused less by the racket of the barroom squabble than by the interruption to him who had come with great news.
In his deep, mellow voice, the Colonel commenced:
“If you boys want fighting …”
In that room, that night, the reverberation of his words was like the booming of a bell.
As Colonel Carson told of the monster to which the world had given birth, Alexander Falcon grew suddenly sober, alert. It was only half of him that joined in the cowboys’ drunken cheering. The other half was seeing visions, planning.…
Canada would be in it, he felt sure. He saw the streets of Toronto, Montreal, jammed with excited crowds. He would go East. He would go over with his own crowd. He would go now. Not that he was a patriot. Not that he was an Imperialist. He didn’t give a damn about the British Empire or any other empire. He was a Republican. He was a Socialist. Hadn’t he started a Social Democratic party at the University? But he was weary of talking about Utopia, reading Fabian pamphlets, debating Revisionism versus Marxism.… Here was something definite to be done — a tangible evil, he imagined, to be attacked.… There was seduction, too, in the glamour of it.… “Fighting in the Low Countries.”… Seduction in the very phrase.
Vividly there leaped in his mind pictures of the Highland militia regiment which his great-uncle had founded, in which his father — until prevented by heart trouble — had served. He imagined that regiment parading now!
He recalled his last sight of it in the Armouries.
The vast building rocked to the tread of two thousand feet. Black rifle barrels gleamed above khaki jackets. Dark kilts swayed above naked knees. Officers with black Glengarry tails falling on broad brown shoulders held bright, drawn swords at the carry. Thundered commands rose high above the skirling of the pipes, the throbbing of the drums, the pounding of the marching feet.
Falcon’s pulse quickened. His guts tensed. His mind blurred.
War-lust surged through him.
The pipes! The pipes!
“Come, fill up my cup; come, fill up my can;
Come, saddle your horses and call up your men;
Come, open the West Port and let me gang free;
And it’s room … for the bonnets … of Bonny Dundee.”
Would Colonel Carson allow him, help him, to get to the railroad, to go East, now, to-night? But as he looked at that stalwart figure he knew the answer. Carson, graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and of Oxford, classical scholar turned Wyoming rancher, had gone to the Spanish American War, then to the Philippines in quest of adventure. He had there won his majority, his colonelcy, but first, in hand-to-hand fighting with the Philipinos, he had received those knife-cuts about the chin and throat whose scars were now covered with that square black beard. Carson had, of course, turned American. He had remained American, although he was back now, most of the time, under the British flag, devoting more of his attention