Sinners Twain: a Romance of the Great Lone Land

Front matter

SINNERS TWAIN B Y THE SAME A UTHOR THE DEVILS PLAYGROUND A STORY OP THE WILD NORTH-WEST Crown Svo, Cloth, 6s. A few brief Extracts from the earliest Reviews. Tlie Literary World. — "It possesses the reality of a tale spoken from the life. . . . The final catastrophe is worked up with great pathos and energy. The people are all pleasant to meet, and there is a breath of fresh air through the book refreshing to the inhabitant of towns." The Whitehall Review. — " We congratulate the author on his descriptive power and force of imagery and imagination. . . . Artistically delineated. . . . Excellent and graphic pictures." The Dundee Advertiser. — "A novel of notable merit. . . . The scenes are real istically painted. . . .This fascinating novel. . . . Beautifully natural. We lay it aside with unusual satisfaction, so strong is its interest and so marked its powers."

The Daily Chronicle. — " His description of the blizzard is so vivid and graphic that it makes one shiver and turn up one's coat collar even as one reads by the fire side." Tlu Clasgo-.; Herald.—" Thoroughly acceptable. ... Mr. Mackie has very skilfully made use of certain diabolic aspects of nature in the Wild West as a back ground to the human passion with which he deals." Weekly Times and Echo.— ■" Powerfully Vritten story--" The Sun.—" A most readable story- • . . The characters are very' cleverly sketched and contrasted ; ... the story is one that once begun you cannot leave unfinished." The Star.—" By no means a commonplace novel. The characters and the incidents described are as much out ofthe usual run as is the title ofthe book." Glasfoiu Weekly Citizen.—" It keeps the reader interested from the first pa-e to the last. ' r * The Speaker.—" A delightful story- . - . holding the reader breathless from paee to page. r & The Daily toj.-"A charming variation on the familiar theme . . . admirably described. 3 World.—" Handles his fire and his blizzard with a picturesque vigour."

Aberdeen Free Press.-" A fresh, original, and vigorous writer. ... The volume should take its place among the best books of what appears to be an unusually prolific season. It is vigorously written, and the plot is out of the beaten track . should become deservedly popular.' The Toronto Mail.—" Described with vividness and truth. ... All admirablv and truthfully drawn. lul> TheMoniHfPostr-" Vivid pictures . . . graphic description . . . and a variety of startling incident. . .. To these attractions must be added those of a well-conceive J plot, and some remarkably good character sketches." l "ra The Daily Telegraph.-" There is both originality and vigour in the develoo ments which arise in the course of the narrat ve ... the graphic DortnvTl nf tf. natural conditions of Canadian life." t.rapmc portraj al of the London : T. FISHER UNWIN Sinners Twain a Eomance of THE GREAT LONE LAND BY JOHN MACKIE AUTHOR OF "THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND" gunbott T. FISHER UNWIN ' PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCXCV CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The Girl And The Smuggler

She was a prairie flower, truly, although there were some who would have called her a rare exotic. For the climate of the Canadian North-West is not par ticularly conducive to female loveliness : it is healthful but trying : the sun's dry passionate kiss in summer, and the Ice-king's breath in winter, have a tendency to roughen and rob the fairest and softest cheek of its bloom. But then, perhaps, on this the south-western slope of the Cypress Hills, just across from the Sweet Grass Hills in Montana, and towards the foot-hills of the Rockies, a little more immunity from such ravages is granted. For here, on the illimitable stretches of coullee-scarred prairie, the soft warm winds from the Pacific Ocean find their way, having wandered through the passes of the Rocky Mountains, to temper the chill breath of the frozen North.

There is no mystery about these Chinook winds ; they come from sleeping southern seas where perpetual summer reigns ; no wonder before their breath the snow melts like magic. But still the Red man, in this quarter of the Great Lone Land, regards them with a superstitious awe. However, it is only because their influence possibly kept Marie St. Denis' complexion — which was as pure and velvety as the skin of a peach — from withering, that these Chinook winds are mentioned at all. She leant against the doorway of the long, ram bling log house, with its sod roof, ornamented by in numerable elk antlers, and watched her father as he converted a wand of willow into a hoop on which he meant to stretch the skin of a beaver. But before we describe the daughter — an excusable tendency — it would be as well to say a few words about the father — age before beauty is only justice.

He was a widower, middle-aged, of good physique, and with a pleasing expression on his face ; his long hair was, perhaps, prematurely grey, and his skin was tanned by the sun and wind until it was brown as a berry. His figure was not an unpicturesque one, suggesting, as it did, that of the old French trapper or voyageur. He wore an unplucked beaver cap, a buckskin shirt flowered and fringed, and a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots of the orthodox pattern. He was a typical old-timer ; he was hunter, trapper, and rancher. In fact, like most men in that country where a picturesque past is fast vanishing, he was anything that would enable him to earn a few dollars, and here, perhaps, lay the mischief. For, mark ! these were the days of Prohibition (only in '92 it ceased to exist) in the Territories, and rumour had it that Gabriel St. Denis was not above running a cargo of liquor from across the lines into Canada on an odd occasion.

It was a paying, if a wrong, thing to do ; besides, there was an indisputable sentiment amongst many that there was no disgrace in so doing ; indeed, Gabriel was continually telling himself that what might be a crime need not necessarily be a sin. The anti-Prohibitionists said that the laws prohibiting liquor in the country were made for a time when there were ten Indians to every white man ; but now that state of affairs was reversed. Why, they said, should the white population be saddled with a law that was meant for Indians, who were now in a minority? Gabriel did not smuggle liquor for In dians, nor yet retail it. Neither did he introduce into Her Majesty's Dominion what was often felici tously termed "forty-rod," "coffin-varnish," or "tangle foot," but sound, wholesome rye whiskey. The country was crying out against the abuses that the law engendered ; the Mounted Police, and the very judges of the land, found it difficult to reconcile their real sentiments regarding Prohibition, and what was to them their evident straight course of duty.

It was wonderful, however, how elastic the interpreta tion of the law had become — gutta-percha or india rubber was nowhere compared to it There is a case on record when the judge on the bench, while trying a whiskey-smuggling case, said : " I have known the accused for a very long time now, and he is a very decent fellow ; he is not responsible for what his servants do ; therefore I dismiss the case," or words to that effect. Then there was an adjournment for refreshments — of a prohibited nature — in which all parties interested participated, the judge, the accused, and the Mounted Police themselves. They were all jolly good fellows, especially the accused. But let us get back to an infinitely more interesting subject — the girl. Marie, as has been said, was watching her father as he tied the ends of the long willow wand together.

The house was situated just on the edge of a thick clump of cotton-wood trees, and just where the coullee ran out into the prairie. It was well shel tered from the north, east, and west winds. A creek flowed feebly past, and there was a large corral and garden on either side. It was, altogether, a snug and beautiful little spot. One could appreciate such a haven when the blizzards were raging, or when, in the deathly stillness of the long winter nights, the thermometer registered from io° to 300 below zero ; when the snow-obliterated creek was a solid-channel of ice, and when the intense coldness was a deadly, palpable thing — a thing that caught one's breath and froze it as it issued from the lips. Upon the girl's face there was a strangely uneasy look, while her eyes seemed to follow the course of Many Berries Creek as, fringed and marked with a straggling growth of trees, it zig-zagged and wandered away over the far-stretching and sun-dried prairie, until it was lost in the misty and uncertain distance.

Then her eyes rested on the three peaks of the Sweet Grass Hills that loomed up from their opaline setting like volcanic islands surrounded by a vaporous, shipless sea; and, figuratively, in this wild region they were islands, for between them and Gabriel St. Denis' house (only a year or two ago) there was no human life, only, perhaps, a small band of wandering Blood, Sioux or Piegan Indians on the hunt, or some less innocent amusement. She was a truly remarkable looking girl this daughter of Gabriel's, for there never were two people who could agree as to the colour of her eyes or hair. Some said her eyes were hazel, some said blue, and some said brown. The truth was, they seemed to change colour with every mood that showed on her mobile face. There was always a limpid depth in them, which, with the fresh colour of her face, and her red lips, indicated a healthful, buoyant nature.

Her hair was, indeed, of that colour which Georgione and Titian gave to their Venetian women, "brown in the shade, golden in the sun." Her figure was finely moulded, and, perhaps, the dead plainness and flowing lines of her neat dress only showed it to a better advantage. Her shapely, proud head was well poised upon that beautifully rounded neck which sculptors love to create — for, alas, it is so seldom found. But she was, perhaps, a girl no longer, for she stood on the mystic threshold of womanhood, and there was that inscrutable look in her eyes as of one who listens. From her small hands and feet, to her dimpled, resolute chin and low, broad forehead, there was no tame or commonplace feature. Had she lived in London, or Paris, or any other great city, artists would have discovered her, have made her famous, and worshipped her ; and women would have paid her truer homage still, for they would have said all manner of false and spiteful things regarding her, and have heartily hated her.

But she was only " that girl of old St. Denis'," who lived like a recluse some twenty miles distant from his nearest neighbour on the prairie of the Canadian North-West. She was an anomaly : like a golden room in a wooden house. She ought to have been without a heartache (how much after all does a man know about that complex thing a woman's heart ?) ; but, as it was, the girl dreamed her dreams, and wove the romances of a coming womanhood amid what seemed such uncongenial surroundings for a bright young life. Perhaps, that subtle spirit of solitude which settles down over that great lone prairie land with the blood-red sunsets, had tinged her with somewhat of that pensiveness which occasionally seemed to haunt her face. And now Gabriel spoke, in a somewhat embar rassed manner it must be confessed ; he did not look up at the pretty picture before him, but wound another piece of string round the joint of the hoop — a quite unnecessary thing to do — with an apparent concentration of purpose that was utterly wasted.

" Oh, by the way, little un', I was nigh forgettin' to tell ye, that I'll be gwin away for a week or ten days to Benton to git some necess'ries I can't git y'ere. I s'pose, now, ye won't mind bein' left alone for thet time ? You've got old Jeannette, you know, and I'll fetch you a present from Benton — some of these yere books ye can't git on this side without givin' ever so much for " " Oh, Dad ! " It was almost like the cry of a wounded animal ; but still she did not withdraw her eyes from the vague, blue line of the uneven horizon : only, all at once, the light had gone out of them, and there was an apprehensive, piteous look there instead. She had clasped her hands together in front of her in voluntarily, and then, as if ashamed at having been betrayed even into this momentary expression of feeling, she caught at and plucked nervously the leaves of some creeping plant that clambered up the doorway of the house.

It could be easily seen that she felt ashamed and humiliated by what she had to say to her father. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, then a droop about the corners of her mouth ; but she recovered herself in another minute with a visible effort, and continued — " Dad, didn't you tell me that you would not go across there any more ? Cannot we live without your having to go there ? Some day the Mounted Police will be running across you as you come back, and not only take your horses and waggons, but will fine you besides ever so many hundreds of dollars, and then what will you have gained in the end ? Oh, Dad," and there was a world of entreaty and self-deprecation in that soft voice of hers, " it is not for me to preach to you, but if you only knew how miserable this thing makes me I don't think you would do it.

Besides, how do you think — though I don't care so much about myself after all — I can go into Medicine Hat, and hold up my head, knowing that everybody is pointing to me and saying, ' There goes Marie St. Denis, the .' " But she only bit her lips and left unfinished what she had begun. " There's hardly a soul in the ' Hat,' barring the parsons," interrupted Gabriel, hotly, but somewhat shamefacedly it must be confessed, and without lifting his head, " thinks any the worse of a man for bein' in th' whiskey bizness. No one thinks any thin' about it ; and the jedges ain't so very hard upon a man for smugglin' now. I believe if there was license in the country there'd be less hypocrisy an' hard drinkin' — it's a foolish law — an injuist law." " But it's the law," she persisted, " and I can't bear to see you break it.

I am sure we can manage to live without you doing this thing. My wants are not many, and they can be made fewer. You need not take me into Medicine Hat this winter ; and I have lots of good clothes. You know I can make lots of money if you will let me. Look at all those moccasins I have made, and sewed with silk and beadwork, and those beaver caps and mitts. There are shops in town would only be too glad to get them, and I could work lots more. I am sure there is no necessity for you to run any risks for my sake." And now there was a pleading, wistful look in her eyes as she spoke ; there was entreaty in every delicate feature of her face ; there was a suppressed pathos in her soft and modulated voice. As her name denoted, she was of French descent on her father's side, but her mother had been a Scots woman.

Perhaps it was to this fact that the girl owed somewhat of her complex nature, that quick, sympathetic turn of mind : the lively imagination and light-heartedness of the French, alongside the deep-rooted religious instincts and stable, thoughtful nature of the Scotch. Though Gabriel could talk French — and Marie, too, for the matter of that — there was nothing in their speech that would have led a stranger to suppose so. Gabriel's father, when the former was a mere child, had left the French settlements and pushed out West, and circumstances having thrown the son nearly all his life amongst the English-speaking population, he had contracted that nondesCript form of speech peculiar to the Western man and the frontiersman. Gabriel surreptitiously unloosed the double string that converted the willow into a hoop, and made a show of being annoyed as the ends flew asunder.

That he was uneasy, and fighting out a battle within himself, there could be little doubt. He nerved him self, however, and laughed in a hard, brusque way, very unlike his real self, as he replied — " ' Ough ! Ough ! ' as the Niche says, and what nonsense is it talking about now, 'bout working moccasin, fur caps, and mitts, just as if it were a squaw or a breed, and hevin' to sell them, too. Now, look 'e y'ere, Marie. I don't 'xactly know what I've bin doin' to put sich notions in yere head ; I'm sure you's allus had all the money you's iver wanted to. In fact, I kin hardly iver git ye to tek any. Why, my child, instead of bein' a beggar, as ye seem to think, I've a matter of ten thousan' dollars laid by, an' only want to mek a little more so's to help us leave this played-out country — for since the buffalo's gone I've no more use for it — an' then we'll strike the trail an' go 'way down south into Uncle Sam's country, and tek some nice farm where ye'll hev lots o' comp'ny, and won't be boxed up yere as ye' re now.

I've bin thinkin' of late it's hardly the spryest kin' o* life for a young gal." Poor man, it had hardly dawned upon him that she was now no longer a "young gal." He loved her with all the silent and conserved force of an undemonstrative nature, and, perhaps, love is slow to observe change. And then, her mother having died when she was but a child, and Gabriel having wisely sent her to the convent at Prince Albert, on the Saskatchewan, to be educated, he had, doubtless, seen too little of her. He was a good-hearted man, and considering the nomadic, frontier life he had led as trapper and buffalo hunter in the far West, since he had left his old home in Ontario, and since the death of his wife, was doubtless an exemplary man as compared with most of his kind. When he had taken his daughter from the convent of Prince Albert he had honestly intended to do his duty by his child, and so he had, according to his own lights.

He had taken her some forty miles south of the Canadian Pacific Railway, to the south-western slope of the Cypress Hills, into this lonely but beautiful country, and started a ranche. But his progress in acquiring what his heart was set upon, a sufficient sum of money to take up a good improved farm in one of the settled and sunny Southern States, was slow ; and then the temptation to make money easily and quickly presented itself. It was by running cargoes of liquor into Canada from across the lines. In other words, by smuggling. For a long time he resisted the temptation ; but when he found how public sentiment ran, and that the law prohibiting liquor was looked upon by many as an iniquitous one, he regarded the project with less disfavour. " He who doubts is doomed " may apply to various phases of moral philosophy.

" It is all for Marie," he said to himself ; rather illogically, it must be confessed, and to conciliate his by no means dormant moral sense. And surely the girl was too young to associate any very serious breach of morality with such proceed ings. His first few ventures were successful, and paid him well. He began to think, with many in the North-West, that thus to contravene the law was neither a sin nor a crime. Then, later on, it became not so much a matter of conscience with him as his daughter's peace of mind ; for, of course, he could not expect to keep such a traffic concealed from her ; but up till now she had not seemed to take it so very seriously. He had acquired what to many in that country was wealth, but he wanted just another five or six hundred dollars and then he would quit the trade, and " strike the trail," as he termed it.

There was no other woman within twenty miles of them save the old French half-breed, Jeannette, who assisted in the household duties, and, truly, she was a never-failing source of entertainment. For in the long winter nights when King Frost held everything in his deadly grip outside, and the stove hummed with a cheery sound, many were the wonderful legends and tales told of the days when the old French voyageurs penetrated far into the heart of the great Unknown with their canoes ; of the battles with the Indians ; of the solemn councils ; of the im mense herds of buffalo that stretched from horizon to horizon, and a hundred picturesque features of the Great Lone Land now fast passing away. Indeed, Marie was an exemplary daughter, and never once complained of dulness. The height of her dissipation was occasionally accompanying her father into Medicine Hat, or " The Hat," as this remarkable example in nomenclature was termed, and to skate with the little crowd on the Saskat chewan of an afternoon, or to have a glimpse of those wonderful cars, which stopped there for half an hour, on that great world's highway, the Canadian Pacific Railway, with their wonderfully assorted loads of human beings.

Her wants were few and simple ; she was content when she saw her father attending to his more legitimate duties, and looking happy and contented. Perhaps Gabriel was troubled with a consciousness that he had not altogether done his duty by her. Anyhow, he had never heard her express herself so strongly as she did now. " Why, Marie," he ventured at length, and without looking up, " what has made ye become so perticklar all of a suddin ? I remimbers the time when ye used to laugh when ye he'rd of the way we'd give the p'lice the slip." Then he continued in a somewhat lower tone, and not without a certain twinkle in his eye, " And p'rhaps some o' th' p'lice themsel's 'er not so very perticklar as to whether they catch us or not — surely that sergeant, who comes over now an' agen from Willow Creek, has not bin putin' eny nonsense into yer head ?

" To do the man justice, as has been said he only looked upon her as a child, and did not dream for an instant that what he said would have the slightest significance for her. He was tying the end of the hoop together again, and did not see her face as he spoke. She had started slightly, and, indeed, her face had paled for an instant before the warm blood had mounted into it. Her lips had closed on each other, and her eyes had looked fixedly away down the creek bottom as if they were watching the flight of a covey of prairie chickens. At length she spoke. " I hardly understand you, dad, when you talk about some one putting nonsense into my head. You forget the sergeant is a gentleman, and it was not difficult to see that last time he was here he meant well by you, for, you remember, he mentioned, as if by accident, something about that extra patrol along the boundary line which they had begun.

It wasn't difficult to see he felt miserably ill at ease lest we should guess the motives that led him to speak of it. For, of course, he meant it as a warning to you, which few men would have done, otherwise he would have told you in a very different fashion. As for the corruption — there is only one name for it — you hint at, I am sure he is above anything like that." And now that maidenly spirit of reserve, as she spoke, had entirely left her ; she held her head almost proudly, and there was a fuller touch of colour in her cheek. There was that air of nobility about her that glorifies a beautiful woman when she is championing the absent. Not that the absent was anything to her : for loyalty in a noble-minded woman is a comprehensive and catholic virtue. "Yes, Marie," said Gabriel, who still did not seem to notice her aroused interest, " I dropped as to how 'e meant it.

He's a chap as'll do his duty, an' I gives him credit for thet same, and I'll give him a wide berth. But there's Jeannette. Now I'se jist a goin' to run th' horses into th' c'ral, for it'll soon be dark. I hope it won't snow afore I git back, but it's gettin' late in the Fall. I must start to-morrow, honey. I guess I'll be back in less'n ten days' time. I'll just give ye a call on my way back to the Hat and see thet ye're all snug. The p'lice were yere on Monday, so I don' s'pose they'll be back for 'nother fortnight, an' by thet time I'll be yere agen. Come, Marie," and, suddenly throwing away the hoop, he put his arm round her and drew her into the house. Then he reappeared with his bridle over his arm to fetch the horses up. He had been anxious to put an end to the conversation ; it was a much more unpleasant one for him than he had cared to admit.

And now the profound and solemn stillness that broods over that vast and lonely rolling prairie seemed to deepen. The prairie chickens and other birds had drunk at the feebly flowing creek, and had gone back to the sheltering edge of the scrub for the night. The great cinnamon bear which at this season of the year leaves the sheltering pine forests, and wanders down the coullee and creek bottoms to fossick out roots, and feast on the luscious wild berries, rose from his lair amid the thick, long grass and thicker under growth, and came boldly out on to the bare hillside to have a look around. A keen black frost set in ; one could hear the crackle of the growing covering of ice on the beaver dam, and the more startling rending ofthe dead cotton-wood trees up the coullee as Jack Frost squeezed them in his icy grip.

The stars gleamed out more sharply and clearly in the dusk of the heavens, and towards the Arctic circle the Aurora- Borealis, that " Dance of the Spirits " as the Indians call it, suddenly burst into life and light, its quivering shafts of pearly and silvery fire darting from one side to another, crossing and recrossing : creating a living halo and glory around the throne of the great Ice king. Now the log house and other buildings showed black as jet against it. From the little uncurtained windows poured mellow streams of light into the cold, crisp air, and showed right cheerily indeed. It was a cozy and pretty picture truly, this tiny speck of civilisation in the lonely wilderness, when these unwinking eyes of fire looked out boldly into the gloom, as if rejoicing over the fuller life within.

Chapter II

A NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE PARTY. TEN days after the conversation narrated in the preceding chapter, and about a couple of miles or so above St. Denis' ranche, up the coullee, four men are grouped together under a peculiarly formed water worn cliff of yellow sandstone. They are seated in what was once the bed of the creek. But that prince of engineers, the beaver, had constructed a large dam just above them, and diverted the course ofthe stream. In Canada, beavers sometimes convert meadows into lakes, swamp homesteads, change the course of all important creeks, and it is no uncommon sight to see a bridge left high and dry, like some stranded leviathan, rendered quite unnecessary by these arch practical jokers. The most important individual in the party referred to, not only in his own eyes, but by virtue of rank, was a commissioned officer of Mounted Police.

His eyes were dark, and his whole facial expression might be summed up in three words — red, round, and vulgar. Indeed, he enjoyed the sobriquet of " Pudding-face Jamie," from the supposed resemblance of the facial features aforesaid to that popular but homely article of diet. He had at one time been a private holding some subordinate "staff job" in the force, but, having the necessary influence at his back, had secured a commission. Those of his old chums in the force, who had expected that when Jamie became an officer he would at least have some consideration for his old comrades, were grievously disappointed ; for, true to the old adage regarding the putting of a beggar on horseback, when he tasted power he rode rough-shod over the unfortunates under him. Fortunately, most of his brother officers (the exception being those drawn from his own substratum of society) were gentlemen by birth and education, splendid all-round, good-hearted fellows as one could wish to meet, so they, providentially, kept such characters as Jamie in check, and saved many a gently-nurtured youth from a martyrdom of petty but galling annoyances.