Part 26 (1/2)

”I'm going to live so that youngster will never regret what he's done.

That's about the only reward I can give him.”

The nurse looked up gravely. ”If I have estimated that boy right,” she said, ”I think that's about the only reward he would care to have.”

That was a great night at the ranch. Most delicious things to eat and drink awaited Con after his long isolation, and Mr. and Mrs. Clark welcomed him as if he had been a son instead of a nephew. The range riders came in, each one getting him to tell of his antics with the sulphur and shovel of coals, over which they roared with laughter.

Banty's delight at having his comrade back from danger knew no bounds, and when The Eena appeared Banty flung an arm about Con's shoulders, exclaiming: ”Isn't this old chap a splendid King Georgeman, Eena?”

The old hunter replied with much self-satisfaction: ”Maybe now you not think old Indian saying so queer. Did I not say, me, that narrow, thin--what you name it,--nostril, shows man that is brave, man that has no fear? Me sabe now. He _not_ 'bally.'”

Gun-Shy Billy

”No, sir! Not for me,” Bert Hooper was saying. ”I won't join the crowd if Billy is going. Do you fellows suppose I'm going to have my holiday all spoiled, and not get any game, all because you want Billy? _He's_ no good on a hunting trip. I tell you he's gun-shy.”

”That's so,” said another boy. ”I've seen him stop his ears with his fingers when Bert shot his gun off--more than once, too.”

”Ought to be named 'Gussie,'” said Bert. ”A great big fellow like Billy, _scared of a gun_! He must be sixteen, and large for his age at that.

He's worse than that dog I had last year--don't you remember, boys? He'd follow us for miles through the bush, raise game, point a partridge all right, and the second we shot a gun off--no more dog. All you'd see was a white-and-tan streak with its tail curled under it, making for home.”

”Well,” said Tommy McLean, a boy who never spoke until all the rest had thrashed a subject out, ”I'd rather see a fellow gun-shy than see him a bally idiot with fire-arms. I know when I got my gun, I got a lesson with it. Father gave it to me himself, when I was fourteen, last year.

I never saw him look so serious as when he put it in my hands and said, 'Tom,' (he always calls me Tom, not Tommy, when he's in earnest)--'Tom,'

he said, 'a gun is a good thing in the right hands, a bad thing in the wrong. A boy that is careless with a gun is worse than a born idiot; a boy that in play points a gun, loaded or unloaded, at any person, place, or thing, should be, and often does, land in prison. A gun is made for three things only: the first, to shoot animals and birds for food alone, not for sport; the second, to defend one's life from the attack of wild beasts; the third, to shoot the tar out of the enemy when you are fighting as a soldier for your sovereign and your flag.'”

”Bully for Tommy's father!” yelled Bert. ”I hate being lectured, but that sounds like good common sporting sense, and we'll all try to stick by it on this hunting trip.”

They were a nice lot of boys, all jolly, st.u.r.dy, manly chaps, who, however, seldom included Billy Jackson in their outings, for every holiday seemed to find him too busy to join them. For notwithstanding his unfortunate fear of a gunshot, Billy had always been a great lover of a uniform. As a youngster he would follow the soldiers every parade day, not for the glory of marching in step to the music of the band, but for the chance it gave him to throw back his shoulders, puff out his small chest, and blow on his tin pipe-whistle in adoring imitation of the bugler. He thought there was nothing in the world so important as the bugler. Billy thought it did not matter that the s.h.i.+ning little ”trumpet” merely voiced an officer's commands. The fact always remained that at the clear, steady notes the soldiers wheeled to do his bidding; that the bugler was a power for courage or cowardice, whichever way a boy was built.

Then, as he grew older, he, too, began to practise on a bugle. He would sit out on the little side verandah, early and late, tooting every regimental call he could remember, until the time came when his perseverance met with reward. He actually found himself installed as bugler to the little regiment of smartly-uniformed men that was the pride of the gay Ontario city that Billy called home.

Then it was that the other boys never got Billy on a holiday. When Victoria Day came the soldiers always went ”into camp” for three days, strict military discipline reigned, and Billy must be with his company.

When Dominion Day arrived the regiment always visited some distant city to a.s.sist in some important patriotic celebration. Thanksgiving Day always found them in the thick of annual drill, and there was sure to be a ”sham battle” at which poor Billy had to toot the commands, his eyes blinking and the nerves chasing themselves up and down his back, while the blank cartridges peppered away harmlessly, and the field-pieces roared innocently past his ears.

”The boys” usually came with throngs of citizens to see the ”sham fights.” They would range themselves on a slope of hills, as near as possible to the ”battlefield,” and often above the bellowing guns, above the colonel's command, above his own shrill bugle calls, Billy could hear Bert Hooper and Tommy McLean egging him on, sometimes with jeers, sometimes with admiration, telling him to ”Look up plucky now, Billy, and don't stop your ears with your fingers!” He used to be astonished at himself that he cared so little whether they teased or cheered. He seemed to care for nothing in all the world but the Colonel's voice and his bugle.

Then the day came when he knew there was something greater than the colonel to be obeyed, something dearer than his bugle to be proud of.

For many weeks the newspapers had teemed with little else but news of the South African War. Nothing was talked of in all Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but the battles, the hards.h.i.+ps, the privations, of the gallant British regiments in the far-off enemy's country. Then came the cry, wrung from England's heart to her colonies, ”Come over and help us!”

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, sprang to their feet like obedient children, ready and anxious to fight and die for their mother at her first call.

Billy and his father faced each other--one was sixteen, the other forty.

They did not stand looking at each other as father and son, but as man and man.

”Billy,” said his father, ”you don't remember your mother; she died while you were still a baby. If she were living, I would not hint of this to you, but--_I_ go to South Africa with the very first Canadian contingent. You are the best bugler in Canada. What do _you_ want to do?”

For an instant Billy was speechless. His nerves shook with a boy's first fear of battle. His old gun-shyness had him in its grip. Then his heart swelled with the pride aroused by his father's words; he raised his head, his chin, his eyes, and suddenly his look caught a picture hanging in its deep gold frame on the wall. It was a picture of a little old gray-haired woman--a sad-faced old woman dressed in black and wearing a widow's cap. It was a picture of Queen Victoria.