r born and brought up in wide spaces of the far Northwest
this is especially the case.

It is not surprising, therefore, that McCuaig, fresh from his
thirty-five years of life in the Athabasca wilds, should find the
routine of military discipline extremely irksome and the niceties of
military etiquette as from a private to an officer not only foolish
but degrading both to officer and man. Under the patient shepherding of
Barry's father, he had endured much without protest or complaint, but,
with the advent of Sergeant Major McFetteridge, with his rigid military
discipline and his strict insistence upon etiquette, McCuaig passed
into a new atmosphere. To the freeborn and freebred recruit from the
Athabasca plains, the stiff and somewhat exaggerated military bearing
of the sergeant major was at first a source of quiet amusement, later of
perplexity, and finally of annoyance. For McFetteridge and his minutiae
of military discipline McCuaig held only contempt. To him, the whole
business was a piece of silly nonsense unworthy of serious men.

It was inevitable that the sergeant major should sooner or later
discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider
the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was
also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special
fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private.

It took McCuaig some days to discover that in these frequent fatigues
and special duties, he was undergoing punishment, but once made, the
discovery wrought in him a cold and silent rage, which drove him to
an undue and quite unwonted devotion to the canteen, which in turn
transformed the reserved, self-controlled man of the wilds into a
demonstrative, disorderly and quarrelsome "rookie" aching for trouble.

Under these circumstances, an outburst was inevitable. Corporal Ferry,
in charge of the canteen, furnished the occasion.

"No more for you, McCuaig. You've got more aboard now than you can
carry."

To the injury of being denied another beer was added the insult
of suggesting his inability to carry what he had. This to a man of
McCuaig's experience in every bar and camp and roadhouse from Edmonton
to the Arctic circle, was not to be endured.

He leaned over the improvised bar, until his face almost touched the
corporal's.

"What?" he ejaculated, but in the single expletive there darted out
such concentrated fury, that the little