The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Luck of the Mounted, by Ralph S. Kendall

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Title: The Luck of the Mounted
A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police

Author: Ralph S. Kendall

Release Date: May 30, 2005 [eBook #15940]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LUCK OF THE MOUNTED***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE LUCK OF THE MOUNTED

A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police

by

SERGEANT RALPH S. KENDALL

Ex-Member of the R.N.W.M.P.

Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York

1920

This truest of stories confirms beyond doubt,
That truest of adages--"Murder will out!"
In vain may the blood-spiller "double" and fly,
In vain even witchcraft and sorcery try:
Although for a time he may 'scape, by-and-by
He'll be sure to be caught by a Hue and a Cry!
--THE INGOLDSBY LEGEND

TO

MY OLD COMRADES

PRESENT, AND EX-MEMBERS OF THE

R.N.W.M. POLICE

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED WITH EVERY KIND THOUGHT

CHAPTER I

_O sing us a song of days that are gone--
Of men and happenings--of war and peace;
We love to yarn of "th' times that was"
As our hair grows gray, and our years increase.
So--revert we again to our ancient lays--
Fill we our pipes, and our glasses raise--
"Salue! to those stirring, bygone days!"
Cry the old non-coms of the Mounted Police._
MEMORIES

All day long the blizzard had raged, in one continuous squalling moaning
roar--the fine-spun snow swirling and drifting about the
barrack-buildings and grounds of the old Mounted Police Post of L.
Division. Whirraru!-ee!--thrumm-mm! hummed the biting nor'easter through
the cross-tree rigging of the towering flag-pole in the centre of the
wind-swept square, while the slapping flag-halyards kept up an infernal
"devil's tattoo." With snow-bound roof from which hung huge icicles,
like walrus-tusks, the big main building loomed up, ghostly and
indistinct, amidst the whirling, white-wreathed world, save where, from
the lighted windows broad streamers of rad