The patriarchal decree
of the government was a good deal of a joke on the plains,
anyway--except when you were caught defying it! Then Piegan Smith set
the keg on the ground by the fire where everybody could help himself as
he took the notion, and I laid down by a wagon while dinner was being
cooked.
After six weeks of hard saddle-work, it struck me just right to lie
there in the shade with a cool breeze fanning my face, and before long I
was headed smoothly for the Dreamland pastures. I hadn't dozed very long
when somebody scattered my drowsiness with an angry yelp, and I raised
up on one elbow to see what was the trouble.
Most of the hunters were bunched on one side of the fire, and they were
looking pretty sour at a thin, trim-looking Mounted Policeman who was
standing with his back to me, holding the whisky-keg up to his nose. A
little way off stood his horse, bridle-reins dragging, surveying the
little group with his ears pricked up as if he, too, could smell the
whisky. The trooper sniffed a moment and set the keg down.
"Gentlemen," he asked, in a soft, drawly voice that had a mighty
familiar note that puzzled me, "have you a permit to have whisky in your
possession?"
Nobody said a word. There was really nothing they could say. He had them
dead to rights, for it was smuggled whisky, and they knew that policeman
was simply asking as a matter of form, and that his next move would be
to empty the refreshments on the ground; if they got rusty about it he
_might_ haze the whole bunch of us into Fort Walsh--and that meant each
of us contributing a big, fat fine to the Queen's exchequer.
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