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Page 84
And so they parted, on a hard hand-grip. And to Jan Jim Willis gave a
grim, appraising sort of a stare, and (spoken very gruffly) these words:
"Well, so long, Jan! The cards is yours, all right, an' I guess you take
the chips!"
He did not touch the big hound as he spoke. But then, despite their long
and close association, he never had touched Jan in the way of a caress.
XXXVII
BACK TO REGINA
Long before Sergeant Dick Vaughan--he was always spoken of thus, by both
his names--arrived at the R.N.W.M.P. headquarters in Regina news was
received there of his strange single-handed journey from the Great Slave
Lake, of the mad murderer, the mad dogs, of the sergeant's own toil in
the traces, and of his being tracked down by Jan.
The surgeon in Edmonton who attended to Dick's badly wounded and
poisoned neck and right thumb happened to be a man with a strong sense
of the picturesque and a quite journalistic faculty for visualizing
incidents of a romantic or adventurous nature.
An _Edmonton Bulletin_ reporter, in quest of a "story" for his paper,
had the good luck to corner the surgeon in his consulting-room. The
result took the form of promotion for that reporter, following upon
publication in the _Bulletin_ of a many-headed three-column article
which was quoted and reproduced all up and down America. Summaries of
the "story" were cabled to Europe. Snap-shots of Dick and Jan were
obtained by enterprising pressmen in Edmonton, and distributed quite
profitably for their owners to the ends of all the earth. Many months
afterward extracts and curiously garbled versions of this northland
Odyssey cropped up in the news-sheets of Siam, the Philippines,
Mauritius, Paraguay, and all manner of odd places.
Their London morning newspaper presented the matter at some length to
the Nuthill household and to Dr. Vaughan in Sussex, while Dick and Jim
Willis, five or six thousand miles away, were choosing a rifle to have
Jan's name inscribed upon it.
As a fact, the subject-matter of the story was sufficiently striking in
character, for in a temperature of fifty below zero, with no other help
than a little undersized husky bitch can give, it is no small matter for
one man to drag a laden sled for twelve days while looking after a
maniac who has come very near to killing him.
To this was added the romantic recovery of the famous "R.N.W.M.P.
bloodhound," as Jan was called; and that aspect of the business brought
special joy to the newspaper writers. To some extent also, no doubt, it
colored Dick's addition to R.N.W.M.P. records, and caused that addition
to figure more strikingly than it might otherwise have done in the
archives of the corps.
A quaint thing about it all was the fact that every one else knew more
about it than the two men most concerned, for it happened that neither
Dick Vaughan nor Jim Willis had ever cultivated the newspaper habit.
Willis was hugely startled and embarrassed, hundreds of miles away in
Vancouver, to find himself suddenly famous.
In Edmonton Dick Vaughan presented a very stern front to the
snap-shooters because he conceived the idea that he and Jan were being
guyed in some way. By the reporters he was presently given up as
hopeless, because he simply declined to tell them anything. Their
inquiries touched his professional pride as a disciplined man, and they
were told that Dick could have nothing whatever to say to them with
regard to his official duties. But his innocence made surprisingly
little difference in the long run. The surgeon's story was real
journalistic treasure-trove, the richest possible kind of mine for
ingenious writers to delve in; and after all the most determined
reticence in no way affects the working of cameras.
Withal, the welcome prepared for Dick and Jan at Regina station was
hardly less than alarming for one of the two men in Canada and the
United States who had not read the newspapers.
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