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Page 13
They had now reached the top of the grade where the trail swung due east,
and faced a dazzling sun and cutting wind which whipped the blood to
their cheeks and made their eyes water.
"Behould our counthry eshtate!" said Sergeant Slavin grandiloquently,
with an airy wave of his arm, "beyant that big pile av shtones on th'
road-allowance."
He chirped to his team which broke into an even, fast trot, and presently
they drew up outside a building typical in its outside appearance of the
usual range Mounted Police detachment. It was a fairly large dwelling,
roughly but substantially-built of squared logs, painted in customary
fashion, with the walls--white, and the shingled roof--red. A
strongly-guyed flagstaff jutting out from one gable, and copies of the
"Game" and "Fire Acts" tacked on the door gave the abode an unmistakable
official aspect. Over the doorway was nailed a huge, prehistoric-looking
buffalo-skull, bleached white with the years--the time-honoured insignia
of the R.N.W.M.P. being a buffalo-head, which is also stamped on the
regimental badge and button.
Dumping off the kit-bags, the two men drove round to the stable in the
rear of the main dwelling, where they unhitched and put up the team. The
sergeant led the way into the house. Passing through a small store-house
and kitchen they emerged into the living room. On a miniature scale it
was a replica of one of the Post barrack-rooms, except that the table
boasted a tartan-rugged covering, that two or three easy chairs were
scattered around, and some calfskin mats partially covered the painted
hardwood floor. The walls, for the most part were adorned with many
unframed copies of pictures from the brush of that great Western artist,
Charles Russell, and black and white sketches cut from various
illustrated papers. Three corners of the room contained cots, one of
which the sergeant assigned to Redmond. The room, with its big stove, in
a way looked comfortable enough, and was regimentally neat and clean and
homelike.
George peered into the front room beyond which bore quite a judicial
aspect. At one end of it a small dais supported a severe-looking
arm-chair and a long flat desk, on which were piled foolscap, blank legal
forms, law-books, and the Bible. In front was a long, form-like bench,
with a back to it. At the rear of the room were two strongly-built
cells, with barred doors. Around the walls were scattered a double row
of small chairs and, on a big, green-baize-covered board next the cells
hung a brightly burnished assortment of handcuffs and leg-irons.
"'Tis here we hould coort," Slavin informed him, "whin we have any
shtiffs tu be thried."
Opening the front door George lugged in his bedding and kit-bags and,
depositing them on his cot, flung off his fur coat, cap, and serge.
Slavin divested himself likewise and, as the burly, bull-necked man stood
there, slowly filling his pipe, Redmond was able to scan the face and
massive proportions of his superior more closely.
Standing well over six feet, for the presentment of vast, though
perchance clumsy, gorilla-like strength, George reflected with slight awe
that he had never seen the man's equal. His wide-spreading shoulders
were more rounded than square; his deep, arching chest, powerful, stocky
nether limbs and disproportionately long, huge-biceped arms seeming to
fit him as an exponent of the mat rather than the gloves. Truly a
daunting figure to meet in a close-quarter, rough-and-tumble encounter!
thought Redmond. The top of his head was completely bald; his thick,
straight black brows indicating that what little close-cropped iron-gray
hair remained must originally have been coal-black in colour. His
Irish-blue eyes, alternately dreamy and twinklingly alert, were deeply
set in a high-cheeked-boned, bronzed face, with a long upper-lipped,
grimly-humorous mouth. Its expression in repose gave subtle warning that
its owner possessed in a marked degree the strongly melancholic,
emotional, and choleric temperament of his race. There was no
moroseness--no hardness in it, but rather the taciturnity that invariably
settles upon the face of those dwellers of the range who, perforce, live
much alone with their thoughts. Sheathed in mail and armed, that face
and bulky figure to some imaginations might have found its prototype in
some huge, grim, war-worn "man-at-arms" of mediaeval times. Redmond
judged him to be somewhere in his forties; forty-two was his exact age as
he ascertained later.
In curious contrast to his somewhat formidable exterior seemed his mild,
gentle, soft-brogued voice. And with speech, his taciturn face relaxed
insensibly into an almost genial expression, George noted.
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