Now an owl hooted. Bullock thought he smelled the faint odor of skunk. Or was it the animal’s only predator, the great horned owl? He’d read somewhere how many of these stuffed birds in museums still reeked of skunk after a hundred years on display.
Applause from inside signaled the end of Riddles’ routine. In a moment the standup comic came out through the fire doors and strode off purposefully down a path through the trees in the direction of the highway.
From behind the window curtains Bullock now heard the commissioner welcome the teapots, describing them as the stout red line in Canada’s war against crime. Wasn’t this the same speech he’d delivered the year before? When Bullock heard enough to determine it was, he decided to follow Riddles and get him to explain the telegraph joke.
As he walked down the path, Bullock suddenly smiled to himself. “No, I was a liar back there,” he thought. “The great horned owl isn’t the skunk’s only predator. We mustn’t forget Arthur McAdoo.”
Many predicted a great future on the Force for the young, articulate, and personable Constable McAdoo. But as the years went by and he was passed over for promotion he turned bitter and made himself the first and only Grand Skunk Master of the Retro Lodge. The members were said to dine on a favorite dish of the NWMPs, skunk simmered in three changes of water and then roasted over a campfire. One of the Skunk Master’s jobs was to catch the creatures. He was good at it and wore a cape made of their fur.
As it happened, Bullock had been court bailiff for the trial of McAdoo and the Retro ringleaders after the buffalo-head incident, meaning when the guilty verdict was pronounced his job was to take each man’s Stetson and break its brim over his knee. The others didn’t care. Their hearts were with the pillbox. But when Bullock broke McAdoo’s Stetson he saw hatred in the man’s eyes, hatred for him and for the Force. As a boy, bet on it, McAdoo had dreamed of being a Mountie, too. A sad ending to a sad story.
Afterward, McAdoo returned to Alberta to work at his father’s lunch counter before striking out on his own with a drive-in he called Stripey’s Skunk-on-a-Stick. The last Bullock heard, he’d changed the name to a more upscale Mr. Stripey’s House of Skabobs and was selling franchises across the Prairie Provinces.
Bullock still hadn’t caught up with Riddles. He lengthened his stride. At last, as he hurried around a turn, he saw the man ahead of him on the path. “Wait up,” he called out.
Riddles swung around in surprise.
“I give up on the telegraph being faster than the mails in intelligence,” said Bullock, hoping the man would laugh and explain the joke to him.
Instead Riddles said, “You’re following me, Bullock. Who the hell do you think you are?”
Bullock blinked. Then, smiling at his own slowness, he waited for him to say “Answer” and finish his new riddle.
From the now distant pavilion the band struck up “Dancing in the Dark,” meaning the commissioner had said his piece, the lights had been turned off, the window curtains opened, and everyone was dancing by candles and moon- shine.
Just then, three men appeared on the path behind Riddles. Two wore security detail IDs. The third, to Bullock’s amazement, was the Skunk Master himself, Arthur McAdoo, in smelly pontificals which now included a Stetson with a broken brim that gave him an Australian air. He had gray hair now and walked with a gouty limp.
“Good work, men,” said Bullock, thinking security’d caught McAdoo up to some mischief. Then he saw their pillbox hats. And all three were armed with shoulder missile launchers. In fact, each security man carried an extra. One passed Riddles his spare.
“What’s going on here?” Bullock demanded.
“Well, if it isn’t Maynard Bullock, the scourge of the litterbugs,” said McAdoo, referring to the public-interest TV spots Bullock and Winnie did for the “Don’t Dump on Canada” campaign where Winnie wore a special ferrule on his peg leg for spindling trash. “Don’t worry. We aren’t littering. Just a little nipping in the bud.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we don’t like what we see coming down the road, these teapot Mounties, this runting of the Force.” He slapped his missile launcher. “We won’t let that happen.” McAdoo signaled the others to move past Bullock.
“Over my dead body,” announced Bullock and stood in the middle of the path with folded arms, the traditional challenge to a good old Mountie stare-down. He’d practiced it in the bathroom mirror many, many times, one man against a mob of troublemakers. He was sure the men in front of him had practiced it, too. He stared. They stared back. Three against one.
Ex-Mountie McAdoo didn’t even try the stare-down. He stepped out of the line of fire and said, “You get the scenario, Maynard. Teapot Mountie boy meets teapot Mountie girl. Wedding bells followed by blessed events. Remember, Mountie children get special consideration at the Mountie Academy. So today it’s short and stout. Tomorrow, heredity tells us, it’s going to be squat and roly-poly.”
Bullock didn’t answer. He focused on the stare-down. A few minutes into it, sweat broke out on his brow. He cranked his stare up a notch and saw Riddles touch fingertips to his temples. Bullock felt a headache coming on, too. But he jacked up his stare again.
Somewhere a great horned owl hooted. McAdoo’s cape seemed to stir at the sound. The smell made Bullock’s eyes water. He stared on through the tears and knew he was winning when Riddles asked, “Anybody got an aspirin?”
Then Bullock heard a step behind him on the path. Reinforcements! Without turning he said, “You’re just in time. These guys mean to destroy the dance pavilion and everybody in it.”
“Sorry, Maynard,” came Preston Armstrong’s voice. “I’m with them.”
Bullock broke off the stare-down and swung around. His first thought was “By Godfrey, who’s tending the pop counter?” Then he saw Armstrong’s gesturing automatic and raised his hands.
“These men are my lodge brothers,” said Armstrong. “Yes, I’ve eaten roast skunk. Frankly, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. But I’ve sworn my oath to obey the Skunk Master. The teapots got to go.”
“Good man,” said McAdoo.
Armstrong handed the Skunk Master his automatic and went over to get a missile launcher from the other security man.
As Riddles tied Bullock’s hands behind his back, McAdoo looked up at the broken brim of his Stetson then down at the automatic. “I should shoot you here and now, Maynard. But that’d alert the pavilion.” He stuffed the handgun in his belt. “Besides, I’ve got other plans for you.”
“Come off it,” said Bullock. “You can’t kill the Mountie brass and everybody else just to get rid of the teapots.”
“He’s got a point there, sir,” said Armstrong.
McAdoo shook his head. “Nothing’s going to happen to the brass, at least not for now. That’s where Operation Trip Wire comes in.”
At the height of the Cold War, the United States feared a Russian sneak attack by land through Canada, either down through Alaska and British Columbia or from some secret Russian base in Greenland through Ontario or Quebec. So Canada agreed that in the event of such an attack the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would stand shoulder to shoulder in their assigned places, weapons at the ready, facing northward waiting for the Russian tanks and troop carriers to emerge from the trees heading south. Die they might, but at least they would delay the invaders long enough for the U.S. to get its defenses up and running. Canada had given its word. Why? Because it knew that if Mexico ever tried to invade Canada by land, the United States would do the same for Canada.