camwyn | SCARY NINJA MOUNTIE!!!!

I swear to God, on my laser-reconstructed corneas, that I am NOT MAKING THIS MAN UP.

Lester Dent did that.

"What d'you know about him?"
"Not ver' much, M'sieu Ferrick. De Eskimos call heem a tongak, a spirit from de other worl'. Dey more scared of heem den of hell. De talk t'rough de north ees that hees do many wonderful t'ings. Dey say hees run down en' catch de caribou, jus' like de loup- de wolf. Dey say hees wheep one whole tribe of bad Indians, jus' wit' hees two bare hands. Dey say hees no can be killed. Hees man of magic!"
-"Snow Ghost" - p. 137 of Scarlet Riders

He was a man of mystery, this Silver Corporal. His ways were strange, the things he did even stranger. He hadn't been in the Northland long. But men who walked outside the law were beginning to curse the mention of his name, and shake in their moccasins when they heard he was in their vicinity. And sometimes they were seized with a wildmadness on days when the wind went whispering across the snow and through the spruces and made sounds like the phantom Mountie's wee, small voice.
-"Death Cache", p. 208 of Scarlet Riders

He never had a name, only a title. He existed in two stories, only one of which ever saw publication in the pages of proper magazines. He came into existence a little before Doc Savage, and his stories stopped being written when the Man of Bronze caught on.

He belted on no firearm, but he did produce an object... He shook this in his hand. It seemed to come alive. It crawled along his arms and over his hands. It ran out into the teeth of the gale, snapping taut with a serpentine hiss.
A white rope! It was braided of some hard stuff that looked like violin strings. It had the springy quality of a rod of whale-bone.
No ordinary lass rope, this! It tapered a little, somewhat like a bullwhip, but not as much. One end was fitted with a honda in the usual fashion. The other end, the smaller, terminated in a double-edged blade of steel, honed to a razor sharpness.
As though possessed of invisible wings, this blade sped out in the Arctic twilight. It traveled faster and faster, until the eye could no logner follow it. Fully thirty feet distant, a spruce bough thick as a man's arm parted as though by magic- and the strange white rope with its fang of steel was back and coiled around the little policeman's arm before the bough had hardly jumped away in the gale.
It smacked of wizardry. But many things about the Silver Corporal smacked of that.
-"Snow Ghost", p. 145 of Scarlet Riders

One thought he saw something, lifted his gun. But there was a swishing sound, and a thin white snake seemed to strike from behind a boulder, a snake fanged with a razor-sharp sliver of glistening steel. The stroke ended with a chuck! The half-breed man bleated in agony- for his right hand was suddenly hanging to his arm by only a hinge of hide.
-"Death Cache", p. 207 of Scarlet Riders

He could climb like a squirrel and jump like Bob Beamon. He could vanish into a snowdrift with ease that not even a weasel could match. Even so much as the tiniest careless glance to one side while watching him would drop him from sight- sometimes, even in his uniform. His rope could cut throats at fifteen paces, could all but silently slice men in half- or could simply wrap around a man's arm and crack the bones without breaking the skin in the slightest. Those who set out to ensnare him almost inevitably died in traps of their own making.

The Silver Corporal saw the blue-black snout of a rifle crawl from behind a tree. He moved so quickly that he seemed to vanish momentarily and reappear a couple of yards from where he had stood. The rifle coughed a bullet that missed him.
Hunkering down, he sped to the nearest snowdrift and went into it headfirst, as a diver enters water.
-"Death Cache", p. 209 of Scarlet Riders

The gunman heard. He whirled. He saw the Silver Corporal. His automatic rifle stuttered.
But the bullets only made zonging sounds through empty space and banged about in the spruces beyond. For the Silver Corporal was gone! Headfirst into a drift, he had vanished, so swiftly that it seemed nothing less than magic.
The gunman dropped two cartridge clips before he got a third home. He shook as from the ague. He remembered what the other breed had muttered about this strnage little silver-haired man being immune from death. Terror got him. Whirling, he ran. He looked back.
The Silver Corporal had appeared like a diminutive genie, two-score feet from where he had disappeared.
--"Snow Ghost", p. 139 of Scarlet Riders

He came from Wyoming and took to the frozen North as naturally as if he had been born there. He spoke little and saw much. He was a little afraid of women, and spoke to them as little as possible- not hard, given the population of northern Canada. Silver-eyed, silver-haired, and all but impervious to the cold, he was not unkillable- he was merely very, very good at staying alive.

His only name was his title: the Silver Corporal. An entire culture feared him more than Hell, and for good reason.

He was a ninja Mountie.

*cuddles her copy of Scarlet Riders very close indeed* Thank you, Lester Dent.