Raw Gold | Page 3

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close to the line, and inaugurated a small-sized distillery. Others, with
less skill but just as much ambition, delivered it in four-horse loads to
the traders, who in turn "boot-legged" it to whosoever would buy.
Some of them got rich at it, too; which wasn't strange, when you
consider that everybody had a big thirst and plenty of money to gratify
it. I've seen barrels of moonshine whisky, so new and rank that two
drinks of it would make a jack-rabbit spit in a bull-dog's face, sold on
the quiet for six and seven dollars a quart--and a twenty-dollar gold
piece was small money for a gallon.
All this, of course, was strictly against the peace and dignity of the
powers that were, and so the red-coated men rode the high divides with
their eagle eye peeled for any one who looked like a whisky-runner.
And whenever they did locate a man with the contraband in his
possession, that gentleman was due to have his outfit confiscated and

get a chance to ponder the error of his ways in the seclusion of a
Mounted Police guardhouse if he didn't make an exceedingly fast
getaway.
We all took a drink when these buffalo-hunters produced the "red-eye."
So far as the right or wrong of having contraband whisky was
concerned, I don't think any one gave it a second thought. 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.

"You know the law," he continued, in that same mild tone. "Where is
your authority to have this stuff?"
Then the clash almost came. If old Piegan Smith hadn't been sampling
the contents of that keg so industriously he would never have made a
break. For a hot-tempered, lawless sort of an old reprobate, he had good
judgment, which a man surely needed if he wanted to live out his
allotted span in the vicinity of the forty-ninth parallel those troubled
days. But he'd put enough of the fiery stuff under his belt to make him
touchy as a parlor-match, and when the trooper, getting no answer,
flipped the keg over on its side and the whisky trickled out among the
grass-roots, Piegan forgot that he was in an alien land where the law is
upheld to the last, least letter and the arm of it is long and unrelenting.
"Here's my authority, yuh blasted runt," he yelled, and jerked his
six-shooter to a level with the policeman's breast. "Back off from that
keg, or I'll hang your hide to dry on my wagon-wheel in a holy
minute!"
CHAPTER II.
A REMINISCENT HOUR.
The policeman's shoulders stiffened, and he put one foot on the keg. He
made no other move; but if ever a man's back was eloquent of
determination, his was. From where I lay I could see the fingers of his
left hand shut tight over his thumb, pressing till the knuckles were
white and the cords in the back of his hand stood out in little ridges. I'd
seen that before, and I recalled with a start when and