and liquor went together. Pierre seldom
drank.

But what of Sergeant Fones? If the man that knew him best--the
Commandant--had been asked for his history, the reply would have been:
"Five years in the Service, rigid disciplinarian, best non-commissioned
officer on the Patrol of the Cypress Hills." That was all the Commandant
knew.

A soldier-policeman's life on the frontier is rough, solitary, and
severe. Active duty and responsibility are all that make it endurable.
To few is it fascinating. A free and thoughtful nature would, however,
find much in it, in spite of great hardships, to give interest and even
pleasure. The sense of breadth and vastness, and the inspiration of pure
air could be a very gospel of strength, beauty, and courage, to such an
one--for a time. But was Sergeant Fones such an one? The Commandant's
scornful reply to a question of the kind would have been: "He is the
best soldier on the Patrol."

And so with hard gallops here and there after the refugees of crime or
misfortune, or both, who fled before them like deer among the passes of
the hills, and, like deer at bay, often fought like demons to the death;
with border watchings, and protection and care and vigilance of the
Indians; with hurried marches at sunrise, the thermometer at fifty
degrees below zero often in winter, and open camps beneath the stars,
and no camp at all, as often as not, winter and summer; with rough
barrack fun and parade and drill and guard of prisoners; and with
chances now and then to pay homage to a woman's face, the Mounted Force
grew full of the Spirit of the West and became brown, valiant, and
hardy, with wind and weather. Perhaps some of them longed to touch,
oftener than they did, the hands of children, and to consider more the
faces of women,--for hearts are hearts even under a belted coat of
red on the Fiftieth Parallel,--but men of nerve do not blazon their
feelings.

No one would have accused Sergeant Fones of having a heart. Men of keen
discernment would have seen in him the little Bismarck of the Mounted
Police. His name carried farther on the Cypress Hills Patrol than any
other; and yet his officers could never say that he exceeded his duty
or enlarged upon the orders he received. He had no sympathy with crime.
Others of the force might wink at it; but his mind appeared to sit
severely upright upon the cold platform of Penalty, in beholding
breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unju