The Shagganappi | Page 4

that the college would do well
to treat him properly? None other than His Excellency Lord Mortimer,
Governor-General of 'this Canada of ours.' Now, Locke, will you act
good and pretty, and take your bread and milk like a nice little
tootsy-wootsy and allow the Indian to stay?"
"Whew!" bellowed Locke, "I guess I'm it, fellows."
"Just found it out, eh?" answered Cop; then, as the first bell clanged
throughout the building and hustling was in order, he proceeded to
explain that as he passed the library door on his way to the baths,

Professor Warwick called him in and introduced him to the tall, lithe
Westerner, who had wonderfully easy manners, a skin like a
tan-colored glove, and whose English was more attractive than marred
by a strong accent that sounded "Frenchy."
"When he found that I was heading for the baths he asked to come,
too," rattled Cop; "been on the train over three days and nights coming
from Winnipeg; said he felt grimy, so I took him along. Jingo, you
should see his clothes--silk socks, silk shirt, top-coat lined with mink,
an otter collar--must have cost hundreds. Says I, 'Well, pal, your
governor must be well fixed.' Says he, 'My father is a trapper and trades
with the Hudson's Bay Company. He trapped all these minks, and my
other clothes--oh, we buy those at the H.B.C. in Winnipeg.' Wouldn't
that phase you, fellows? But I forgot his clothes when I saw him strip.
Jiminy Christmas! I never saw such a body. I'm in bully training, but
I'm a cow compared to 'Shag.'"
"What a rum name!" said Locke, still a little resentful.
"Found out all about that, too," went on Cop. "Seems he has a whole
string of names to choose from. Heard him tell the Head that his first
name is 'Fire-Flint,' and his last name is 'Larocque.' Seemed to kind of
take the Head where he is weakest.
"'If you don't like it,' says the Indian, with a dead-quiet, plumb-straight
look at the Head, 'you may call me what the people up along the Red
River call me; I'm known there as the Shagganappi--Shag, if you want
to cut off part of the word. The other boys may call me Shag if they
want to.' Say, fellows, I liked him right there and then. He may chum
up with me all he likes, for all his silk socks and shirts."
"What did the Head say?" asked little Johnnie Miller.
"Said he liked the name Shag," replied Cop. "'Then I'm Shag to you, sir,
and the others here,' speaks up his Indian nibs. Then he and I struck for
the tubs, then they took him to get his room, and I came up here."
As Cop finished speaking the chapel bell sounded and all four boys

scrambled down to prayers. As they entered the little sanctuary, one of
the masters standing irresolute near the door, beckoned to Cop.
"Billings," he whispered, "Will you please go and ask Larocque if he
cares to come to prayers? He's in room 17; you met him this morning, I
believe."
"Certainly, sir," replied Cop, dashing up the nearest stairway.
"Entrez," replied an even voice to Cop's unusually respectful knock.
Then the voice rapidly corrected itself, "Enter, come in," it said in
English.
"How about prayers?" asked Cop. "Perhaps you're tired and don't care
to come?"
"I'll go," replied the Indian, and followed noiselessly where Billings
led.
They entered just as Professor Warwick was beginning prayers, and
although the eighty or so boys present were fairly exemplary, none
could resist furtive looks at the newcomer, who walked up the little
aisle beside Billings with a peculiarly silent dignity and
half-indifference that could not possibly be assumed. How most of
them envied him that manner! They recalled their own shyness and
strangeness on the first day of their arrival; how they stumbled over
their own feet that first morning at prayers; how they hated being stared
at and spoken of as "the new boy." How could this Indian come among
them as if he had been born and bred in their midst? But they never
knew that Larocque's wonderful self-possession was the outcome of his
momentary real indifference; his thoughts were far away from the little
college chapel, for the last time he had knelt in a sanctuary was at the
old, old cathedral at St. Boniface, whose twin towers arose under the
blue of a Manitoba sky, whose foundations stood where the historic
Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet, about whose bells one of America's
sweetest singers, Whittier, had written lines that have endeared his
name to every worshipper that bends the knee in that prairie sanctuary.
The lines were drifting through his mind now. They were the first
words of English poetry he