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Over the doorway was nailed a huge, prehistoric-looking buffalo-skull, bleached white with the years the time-honoured insignia of the R.N.W.M.P. being a buffalo-head, which is also stamped on the regimental badge and button. Dumping off the kit-bags, the two men drove round to the stable in the rear of the main dwelling, where they unhitched and put up the team.
The "Fort" was just about completed before things froze up narrow, small quarters constructed of rough logs, surrounded by a stockade but above its roof the Union Jack floated, and beneath it flashed the scarlet tunics, the buffalo-head buttons, the clanking spurs of as brave a band of men, "queened over" by as courageous a woman, as ever Gibraltar or the Throne Room knew.
Behind it was a small duplicate, which served as kitchen and store. A huge buffalo-head was nailed to a tree near by.
"Run back, you blessed little 'North-West, and tell mother not to be scared for the boys. We'll stand by her to a man. She'll never regret that ship's coming in," said the gallant soldier, slipping the boy to the ground. And to the credit of the men who wore buffalo-head buttons, she never did. And in all her Yukon years the major's wife had but one more heartache.
To her hand clung a little boy of ten, and about her hovered some twenty young fellows, gay in the scarlet tunics, the flashing buffalo-head buttons, that bespoke the soldierly uniform of the Canadian North-West Mounted Police. They were the first detachment bound for the Yukon, and were under her husband's command. She was the only woman in the "company."
Twenty beautiful, spirited horses, six hangdog-looking thieves, with a single exhausted horse in the rear, on which was mounted an alert, keen-eyed and very hungry young soldier who wore a scarlet tunic and buffalo-head buttons. Her voice ceased, and she looked down at her son. The child lay for a moment, wide-eyed and tense.
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