Add 45926 from ibiblio

6 files changed, 19237 insertions, 29059 deletions

diff --git a/45926/45926.txt b/45926-0.txt
index c87c07c..5513d89 100644
--- a/45926/45926.txt
+++ b/45926-0.txt
@@ -1,9027 +1,8641 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: Bulldog Carney

-

-Author: W. A. Fraser

-

-Release Date: June 10, 2014 [EBook #45926]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ASCII

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-By W. A. Fraser

-

-1919

-

-BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-

-

-

-I.--BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-|I've thought it over many ways and I'm going to tell this story as

-it happened, for I believe the reader will feel he is getting a true

-picture of things as they were but will not be again. A little padding

-up of the love interest, a little spilling of blood, would, perhaps,

-make it stronger technically, but would it lessen his faith that the

-curious thing happened? It's beyond me to know--I write it as it was.

-

-To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He was rather a diffident

-chap, never merging harmoniously into the western atmosphere; what saved

-him from rude knocks was the fact that he was lean of speech. He stood

-on the board sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly

-across a trench of black mud that represented the main street. He hated

-the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still more did he dislike

-the turmoil that was within the hotel.

-

-A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had ridden his buckskin

-cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's furtrading men, topping

-off their spree in town before the long trip to Great Slave Lake, were

-enthusiastically, vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy

-the Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin whistle.

-

-When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his way into the bar, the

-whistle had almost clattered to the floor from the piper's hand; then he

-gasped, so low that no one heard him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There

-was apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if he

-had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the Piper.

-A quick furtive look darting over the faces of his companions told him

-that no one else had recognized the horseman.

-

-Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin whistle groaned, "My God!

-a land of bums!" Three days he had waited to pick up a man to replace

-a member of his gang down at Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill

-through intercepting a plug of cold lead.

-

-Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and clambered to the

-board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp the muck from their boots.

-One of the two, Cayuse Gray, spoke:

-

-"This feller'll pull his freight with you, boss, if terms is right; he's

-a hell of a worker."

-

-Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen cognizance of the

-"feller": a shudder twitched his shoulders. He had never seen a more

-wolfish face set atop a man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the

-thin, vulpine sneak visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes

-peered boldly up from under shaggy brows that almost met a mop of black

-hair, the forehead was so low. It was a hungry face, as if its owner

-had a standing account against the world. But Cameron wanted a strong

-worker, and his business instinct found strength and endurance in that

-heavy-shouldered frame, and strong, wide-set legs.

-

-"What's your name?" he asked.

-

-"Jack Wolf," the man answered.

-

-The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker had named the thought

-that was in his mind.

-

-Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his cheek, spat, and added,

-"Jack the Wolf is what he gets most oftenest."

-

-"From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf retorted angrily.

-

-At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band tramped around the

-corner into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a circle, cut loose with brass

-and tambourine. As the wail from the instruments went up the men in the

-bar, led by Billy the Piper, swarmed out.

-

-A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the Salvation hymn:--=

-

-```"There are flies on you, and there're flies on

-

-````me,

-

-```But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."=

-

-This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they

-shouted in delight.

-

-A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood

-aghast at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.

-

-The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de

-Army bums, Miss," he jeered.

-

-The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking

-through the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping

-his lithe figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers

-with a grip that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!"

-he snarled; "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth--God and

-a woman. Apologize, you hound!"

-

-Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'

-ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.

-There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.

-Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer

-bottle hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,--the man on the

-buckskin,--but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's shoulder

-blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud of

-Jasper Avenue.

-

-A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its

-instruments and stole away.

-

-A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the

-sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He

-slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as

-the thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met

-his own. "Get down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,--I want you!" he

-commanded in sharp clicking tones.

-

-Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the

-Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red

-spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into

-the black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the

-half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind

-the rider.

-

-With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but

-as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot

-was to kill the breed.

-

-Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,

-and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out

-and barking vainly after the escaping man.

-

-Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river

-flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging

-from the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling

-the bank.

-

-"Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said

-in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"

-

-The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the

-Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"

-

-Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner

-answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to

-travel with me get busy."

-

-The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in

-a dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the

-halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean

-parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.

-

-The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down

-stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the

-hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of

-the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across

-the muddy old Saskatchewan.

-

-On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a

-grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;

-there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."

-

-At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away

-into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time

-being.

-

-Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The

-Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried

-down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail

-with a new mount.

-

-The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and

-profanity.

-

-Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck

-band, was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work

-at Fort Victor.

-

-Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From

-said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever

-slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman

-was king of the booze runners.

-

-"Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a

-thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof

-and copped the dough."

-

-"Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and

-pot at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that

-cuss did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho;

-but it was enough--the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set

-the pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd

-been lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever

-stacked up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when

-he's out to play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is

-my advice to you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy

-face through it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to

-the bar and said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real

-man."

-

-He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the

-others had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with

-admiration:

-

-"Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper

-calls him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged

-Mister Khaki-jacket--we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his

-nut, and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys

-what happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog

-Carney!" Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd

-give that cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as

-I do now."

-

-The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:

-the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a

-school teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went,

-constituting a floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary

-citizens.

-

-Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood,

-and not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there

-were seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating

-passion of moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made

-up for it in insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the

-old Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and

-found a subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.

-

-When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the

-little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who

-wandered in mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual

-nourishment.

-

-On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to

-Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile

-oaths, their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments

-were spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of

-life. Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling

-perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.

-

-Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the

-religious fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was

-that strange contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to

-lean eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack

-the Wolf and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the

-great sun swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes

-the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack

-slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked

-Bible to him.

-

-At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow

-gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first

-died away.

-

-As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst

-for moral betterment--insatiable. The missionary in a chat with Cameron

-explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners, had

-never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but

-the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of

-salvation, Fort Victor--Glory to God! The poor fellow's very wickedness

-was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord's

-vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.

-

-It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always

-being saved all over the world--regenerated, metamorphosed, and who was

-Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.

-

-At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of

-Wolf, became a high-powered machine.

-

-The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and

-became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited

-until this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon

-with, perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack

-the Wolf declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he

-affirmed, and should be taught respect for God's agents in a

-proper muscular manner. So the first time three French half-breeds,

-enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log schoolhouse and declared

-school was out, sending the teacher home with tears of shame in her

-blue eyes, Jack reestablished the dignity of the church by generously

-walloping the three backsliders.

-

-It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most

-ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the

-lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all

-of Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she

-had known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her

-negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when

-the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others

-were practically ignored.

-

-For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker

-and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.

-

-Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the

-only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:

-

-"I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk

-purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze

-fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue

-devils away."

-

-"You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was

-prejudiced myself at first."

-

-Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft

-of tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents

-in it, and put it back on his head:

-

-"You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss--first guesses about a

-feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder

-skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or

-twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."

-

-Cameron laughed.

-

-"'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'

-like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness

-that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a

-tin of powder; he'll throw back."

-

-"There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher,"

-Cameron said meditatively.

-

-This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as

-houses. She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers,

-'tain't nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her

-religion, that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an'

-such while he makes a stake workin' here."

-

-Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.

-

-Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some

-prairie chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he

-passed the shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This

-was careless, for train dogs were always prowling about for just such

-a chance for loot. He stepped through the door and took a peep into the

-other room. There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.

-

-"What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered

-surlily.

-

-"Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."

-

-"I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that

-tough bunch--swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all day; a

-man can't keep decent in that outfit."

-

-"Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive

-Scotch.

-

-"You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no

-square deal; you've treated me like a breed."

-

-This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look

-that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,

-enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.

-

-"You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the

-work. The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands,

-especially the women folks. You're a scoundrel."

-

-Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his

-blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel

-gun that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the

-triggers.

-

-"Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded.

-"If I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no

-good on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I

-did the deed."

-

-The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on

-the table.

-

-"Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of

-you. I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort

-Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."

-

-Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started

-out.

-

-"Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.

-

-"I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his

-shoulder, stalking on.

-

-Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the

-Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,

-Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean

-nothin'."

-

-Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote

-a note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was

-humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad

-record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him

-and the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more

-serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might

-crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right

-to stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.

-

-Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all

-time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her

-bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward

-boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to

-let him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police

-barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police

-had always persecuted her Jack.

-

-Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the

-neutral blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a

-new runway. He had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost

-reconciled to the loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.

-

-Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take

-him back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of

-horses to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here

-is shy a horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express--it's

-good enough for you."

-

-So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his

-shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very

-debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.

-

-He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want--Jack Wolf.

-They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River, with

-a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to

-explain."

-

-"He's gone."

-

-"Gone! When?"

-

-"Yesterday."

-

-The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon

-Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he

-asked.

-

-"I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his

-saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.

-

-Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look

-in his face.

-

-"I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be

-interned when there's business on."

-

-"The little school teacher?"

-

-"The little fool!"

-

-"You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"

-

-"I did."

-

-"Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."

-

-"How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'--had put

-the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for

-him; spun me the most glimmering tale--she's got a dime novel skinned

-four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog

-Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat.

-They persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to

-God, and has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two

-of them are to live happy ever after."

-

-"Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.

-

-"That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched

-up against her chest for years."

-

-Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby

-seemed inadequate.

-

-"What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.

-

-"About three o'clock."

-

-"Afoot?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot

-he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."

-

-"To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.

-

-"You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest

-skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail--no train for

-him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization

-for grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If

-you'll stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse

-I'll eat and pull out."

-

-In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll

-just not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much

-obliged. It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."

-

-Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,

-forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the

-south bank and disappeared.

-

-When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log

-shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The

-family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian

-bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some

-devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope

-hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.

-

-Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable

-horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort

-Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten

-trail that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on

-to Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was

-the old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to

-Winnipeg.

-

-The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where

-money was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was

-involved he could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The

-Winnipeg trail would be deserted--Jack knew that; a man could travel it

-the round of the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond

-he could leave it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and

-board a train at some small station. No notice would be taken of him,

-for trappers, prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative

-men, were always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent

-solitudes of the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.

-

-The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath

-would pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory

-of capturing his man single-handed. That was the _esprit de corps_ of

-these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, _par excellence_, large in

-conceit.

-

-A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his

-strong teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence

-in his ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted

-Policeman.

-

-He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,

-looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the

-old Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the

-railroad south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail

-running into Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was

-about ten miles east of that town.

-

-He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the

-Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,

-you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in,

-my brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."

-

-Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;

-where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever

-persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong

-prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding

-wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till

-he sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf

-went in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he

-asked how far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail--still

-toward Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the

-milk, but the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the

-one he had seen heading for Edmonton.

-

-For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice

-putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on

-the road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig

-coming from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it

-had passed. Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet

-in the black soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into

-a waggon here from behind. This accomplished he turned east across the

-prairie, reach-ing the old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned

-south.

-

-At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the

-smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod--toes in, and head

-hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints--hour after

-hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy

-springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.

-

-At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy

-gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick

-clump of saskatoon bushes.

-

-At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for

-his drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring

-beverage. On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.

-

-All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his

-veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper

-on his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning

-he would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about

-ten, and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east,

-or west, or south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to

-Edmonton; the police would spend two or three days searching all the

-shacks and Indian and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily

-outgoing train.

-

-There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him;

-but there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up

-against that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand

-the best he knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the

-train on some grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack

-where Montana Dick lived. Dick would know what was doing.

-

-Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg

-country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour;

-he was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into

-impassable country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west

-again. But for two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he

-realized now that he was covering miles which had to be made up when he

-swung west again.

-

-Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through

-which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring

-man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was

-being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it

-was simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie

-was closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a

-crouching wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was

-that he was tiring, perhaps.

-

-Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form--something _was_ on his

-trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian--gifted with the sixth

-sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a day's march

-away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to laugh it

-off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't down.

-

-The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the

-luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath

-trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad.

-His footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the

-heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles

-would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that

-his tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone.

-Being mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of

-darkness--would reach the railway and wire down the line.

-

-The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the

-ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back.

-On the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched

-to watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below

-them into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole

-mass of tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious

-background a horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the

-saddle, the docked tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the

-watcher that it was a policeman.

-

-When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the

-road where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the

-vast dome. Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant

-stopped, dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched

-the trail for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night,

-coming first over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of

-sombre hue. The trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be

-there, merged into the pattern till they were indiscernible.

-

-A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its

-sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,

-saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their

-nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose

-in circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill

-cranes flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks

-straight out behind, and soared away like kites.

-

-Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what

-the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would

-camp there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by

-the hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about

-three o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop

-along the southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise

-that Jack had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the

-southern end of the swamp and head for the railway.

-

-"I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can,

-if not--get him."

-

-He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;

-this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.

-

-The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,

-crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held

-between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs

-that might crack.

-

-If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to

-the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of

-the picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine,

-then the Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would

-throw up his hands.

-

-The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for

-then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his

-life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even

-if the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first

-shot meant not overmuch.

-

-So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears

-fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of

-discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in

-the pea vine and sweet-grass.

-

-Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug

-of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched

-with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.

-

-The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.

-

-The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the

-bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a

-narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen;

-not daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden

-somewhere and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the

-Wolf lay, just a gray mound against the gray turf.

-

-The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow

-lay down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He

-had not removed his pistol belt.

-

-The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to

-kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few

-feet and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering

-trick of a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when

-a man was cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain

-ahead of him, or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage

-was with him. Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down

-wind from them now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the

-wind shifted--no, he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary

-in the daylight, might give him his chance.

-

-Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the

-mosquito, had run his course.

-

-The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,

-slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the

-ducks would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from

-consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing

-him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but

-sprang to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again

-a great horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped

-silently and struck, thinking it a hare.

-

-Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the

-Wolf knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be

-thrown. He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse,

-his sides ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest,

-his muzzle on the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.

-

-Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his

-death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes

-sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a

-minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose

-tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed

-toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the

-lake for a drink.

-

-Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but

-the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It

-was a chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the

-hole when I play this hand."

-

-Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his

-horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something

-had to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short

-distance up a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding

-prairie. This seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered

-some dry poplar branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked

-stick he drove in the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.

-

-Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The

-Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the

-sleeves of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece

-of soap and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water

-to wash away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and

-heavy on his face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing

-and blowing water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was

-unheard.

-

-When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and

-turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police

-revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip

-to the buff--I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless

-you get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're

-told and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."

-

-Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.

-

-"Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf

-ordered. In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant

-Heath; then he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."

-

-In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of

-steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding,

-"Click these on."

-

-"I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat

-and your boots?"

-

-The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.

-I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you your choice of three ways:

-I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of

-these .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt

-on your back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare

-feet."

-

-"I don't walk on my pants."

-

-"That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into

-about four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."

-

-"I'll starve."

-

-"That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack

-Wolf would get a dinner--I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn

-police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook

-grub for two--bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."

-

-The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his

-wrists, and clad only in a shirt.

-

-When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket

-line and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the

-carbine strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.

-

-"I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three

-days; that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near

-steel, I ain't horse stealin', myself--I'm only borrowin'."

-

-When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly

-be pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning--a

-play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody

-that day. He said:

-

-"You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't

-you?"

-

-"We try to."

-

-"I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in

-a hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the

-honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'

-start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then

-you can get out in two days and be none the worse."

-

-"I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with

-a horse thief--with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."

-

-"You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf

-snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week

-askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,

-won't you?"

-

-"I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant

-objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect

-myself."

-

-The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want

-the death of a man on his hands--there was nothing in it. So he unlocked

-the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw

-them far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up

-by somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away

-harder."

-

-"Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.

-

-With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'

-mean unless it helps me out of a hole."

-

-Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles

-he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a

-horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.

-

-Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling

-hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie

-rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over

-higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;

-but there was no hurry.

-

-Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching

-a saddle on a buckskin horse.

-

-"Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin

-that I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with

-him."

-

-He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding

-screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen

-him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until

-Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands,

-for his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover

-and waited.

-

-Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked

-his ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of

-hoofs back on the tell-tale trail he had left.

-

-With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the

-startled animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in

-a shower.

-

-A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he

-recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half

-the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering

-like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.

-

-Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with

-a writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his

-spread mouth came a scream of terror--he knew.

-

-And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered--he had

-ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they

-were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low

-forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared

-from off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came

-back to him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two

-or three wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming

-quicksands.

-

-The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his

-feet up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head

-about he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's

-thin lips a smile hovered. He sneered:

-

-"You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at

-barracks?"

-

-Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,

-so he lied:

-

-"I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."

-

-Bulldog sneered. "Why should I--God doesn't love a sneaking police

-hound."

-

-The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now

-stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.

-

-"All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition--never mind, I'll

-save you first--there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty

-the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.

-"Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can

-get my cow-rope to you tie the two together."

-

-He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,

-seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking

-his cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on

-the tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous

-ooze. Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it

-at the first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back,

-looped the rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop

-over on your belly--look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing

-the Wolf to safe ground.

-

-The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his

-revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.

-

-A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was

-gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter

-commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take

-ten paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of

-cartridges.

-

-"Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his

-horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

-

-He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built

-a little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.

-

-When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand

-close to the fire so your pants dry too--I want that suit."

-

-The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney

-about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two

-hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of

-that coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for

-a chance to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his

-captor.

-

-"Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the

-pocket."

-

-When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,

-took from it two packets--one of papers, and another wrapped in strong

-paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with the

-other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say, you're

-some liar--even for a government hound; your name's not Phillips, it's

-Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at Golden. You're

-the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather Bulldog Carney in;

-you shot off your mouth all along the line that you were going to take

-him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred you'd tie him hoof

-and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you first, see? Turn you

-over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds; that's just what I'm

-going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you for the sake of that

-little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm Bulldog Carney.

-Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it over; then

-you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the police as

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-"D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it,

-Mister Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never

-live it down if you live to be a thousand--you've boasted too much."

-

-The Wolf had remained silent--waiting. He had an advantage if his captor

-did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at Edmonton by

-Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.

-

-"You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell

-them who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know

-me; perhaps some of them'll know you."

-

-A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.

-"Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over

-on the rail"--and he jerked his thumb toward the west--"where there's

-two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen

-either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since

-you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is

-wanted at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that

-brings him in."

-

-At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light--a flood of it. If this

-thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,

-he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at

-Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been

-in their clutches and escaped.

-

-But Jack must bluff--appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:

-"They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."

-

-Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't

-you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little

-pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band,

-the Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the

-farm?"

-

-As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp

-"Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.

-

-The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five

-seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and

-dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.

-

-"Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman

-to be toting. Is this police money?"

-

-The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money

-but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not

-a policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner

-of the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman

-on duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed

-it all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.

-

-"Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two

-hundred is my own," he answered.

-

-"I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government

-robbed me of my ranch--said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;

-it's coming to you."

-

-"If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty

-trick, what you say'll make good--I'll have to quit the Force; an' I

-want to get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two

-hundred."

-

-"I think you're lying--a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred ahead,

-not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or two,"

-Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he spun

-it in the air.

-

-"Heads!" the Wolf cried.

-

-The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the

-bills to their owner.

-

-"I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,

-you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you

-missed him, didn't you? Where's he--what's he done lately? He played me

-a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I

-never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd

-give you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down

-grudge against. What's his description--what does he look like?"

-

-"He's a tall slim chap--looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger blood

-in him," the Wolf lied.

-

-"I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about

-cooked--peel!"

-

-The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.

-

-"Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,

-toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.

-

-In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M.

-P., revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and

-lighted his pipe.

-

-When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want

-you to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you

-over to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen

-to you if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath--they'd laugh

-at you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and

-you'd sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet--see? I'm going to stay

-close to you till you're on that train."

-

-Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as

-Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for

-Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him--the policeman would see

-to that.

-

-"You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he

-asked.

-

-"You bet I am--I'd rather work this racket than go to my own wedding."

-

-"Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll

-just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give

-myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I

-only got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog

-Carney I won't come out as Sergeant Heath--I'll disappear as Mister

-Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened

-Sergeant Heath from me--I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever

-stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure

-bluff--for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's

-ready compliance.

-

-Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like

-that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire--then

-we'll pull out."

-

-As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he

-found a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.

-

-When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower

-end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode

-along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being

-helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.

-Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than

-that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily

-come by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had

-Carney to steal his labor--to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile

-after mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession

-of Jack.

-

-If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way

-so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too.

-The khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.

-

-They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for

-another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's

-waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd

-be peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there

-won't be no argument."

-

-In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of

-water, and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten

-miles from steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney

-had both the police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the

-ground, looped the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and

-said.

-

-"I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll

-sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you

-so much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and

-sleep light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it

-same's we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."

-

-Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.

-It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than

-once he had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the

-psychology of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what

-he had been told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering

-chap who had had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He

-determined to take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie

-awake.

-

-"We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a

-shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."

-

-He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back,

-saying, as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your

-handcuffs--thought you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"

-

-"They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf

-lied.

-

-Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite

-precision. When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his

-precautions had made all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by

-jerky nerves; so in five minutes he slept.

-

-The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the

-something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to

-play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to

-carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good

-thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the

-pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed

-clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the

-buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would

-sleep--not lie awake through fear over nothing.

-

-In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried

-grass a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the

-steady rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath;

-had he been lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his

-breathing to listen.

-

-The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he

-had lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked

-his hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that

-bound his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he

-waited. The buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the

-flowered carpet from his nostrils.

-

-Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his

-nostrils again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was

-heard the clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney,

-recognizing what had waked him, turned over and slept again.

-

-Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed

-through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the

-grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely

-lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief

-that had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck,

-and in one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his

-wrist. Now he had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other

-man helpless.

-

-Then he commenced his crawl.

-

-A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern

-sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with

-ghostly garments bush and shrub.

-

-Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and

-the Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney

-knew the sensitive wariness of his horse,--the scent of the stranger in

-his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part

-of the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended

-to drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had

-trailed it back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This

-was more a move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could

-work his way, creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get

-away with the horse.

-

-At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears

-cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was

-the scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his

-mind, that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about;

-or, perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious

-man he distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his

-prairie dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept

-into camp. He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head

-irritably. A vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay

-across Carney's foot and he stirred restlessly.

-

-The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,

-cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that

-even the watchful animal scarce detected it.

-

-He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot,

-or the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or

-the other--the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by

-any chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart

-pounding against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten

-feet, and he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch

-it from the holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.

-

-The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive.

-Sometimes he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but

-only to throw his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head,

-and exhale a whistling breath.

-

-Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard

-and he could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had

-wakened--just the steady breathing of a sleeping man.

-

-The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly

-had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his

-feet.

-

-Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another

-yard, and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested

-like a sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward

-the pistol stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was

-twisted about the two first fingers of his right.

-

-Yes, Carney slept.

-

-As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was

-seized in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the

-butt of Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over

-the eye and he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were

-riveting a boiler in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was

-boring a hole in his forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had

-wakened in a strange land. He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at

-a man who sat beside a camp fire smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a

-copper kettle hung and a scent of broiling bacon came to his nostrils.

-The man beside the fire took the pipe from his mouth and said: "I hoped

-I had cracked your skull, you swine. Where did you pick up that thug

-trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As you are troubled with insomnia

-we'll hit the trail again."

-

-With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead

-of the buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a

-strange, weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping

-waters.

-

-The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was

-wobbly on his legs--his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's

-leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung

-to his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the

-shifting sands.

-

-"Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.

-

-They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees

-in the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he

-collapsed like a jointed doll--he toppled head first into the mire and

-lay there.

-

-The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a

-man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping

-the mud from his face, and looking very all in.

-

-Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're

-soft, my bucko--I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered;

-"boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way

-of hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."

-

-He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten

-feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his

-side and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind

-and one in front.

-

-Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some

-trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together

-and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I _will_ have a sleep."

-

-The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would

-have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the

-soft stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the

-valley of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass

-touched his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.

-

-He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he

-saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite

-and pull out."

-

-The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front

-of the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of

-escape were good.

-

-At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against

-a sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to

-the left, in an hour they were close to the Post.

-

-Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up

-in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it

-was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his

-horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it,

-and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.

-

-He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the

-latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two

-constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating

-breakfast.

-

-"Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a

-prisoner, Bulldog Carney."

-

-The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at

-this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and

-laughed.

-

-"Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."

-

-The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my

-uniform--where's my horse? I've got you now--set me afoot to starve,

-would you, you damn thief--you murderer! Where's the five hundred

-dollars you stole from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"

-

-He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets

-from a gatling--it was a torrent.

-

-But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed

-the truth--the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it

-was amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept

-quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath

-the khaki coat.

-

-Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought

-that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of

-his evil luck should not escape.

-

-"_That's Bulldog Carney!_" he cried fiercely; "don't let him get away."

-

-Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.

-

-A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops."

-They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose

-small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.

-

-"I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I

-had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such

-a skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by

-one, into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led

-from the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as

-a cell. "I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack--you really should

-have been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the

-prairie somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so.

-Step in, boys, and you go first, Wolf."

-

-When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy

-wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the

-fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.

-

-A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through

-the mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:--

-

-Dear Miss Black:--

-

-I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No

-woman can afford to bet on even a _good_ man. Stick to the kids, for

-I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant

-Heath and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I

-wouldn't have known, and you'd have lost out.

-

-Yours delightedly,

-

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-

-

-

-II.--BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI

-

-|A day's trail north from where Idaho and Montana come together on the

-Canadian border, fumed and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature

-was a little bit of all right, for from the minute it trickled from

-a huge blue-green glacier up in the Selkirks till it fell into the

-Kootenay, it bucked its way over, under, and around rock-cliffs, and

-areas of stolid mountain sides that still held gigantic pine and cedar.

-

-It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the

-town of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of

-the yellow god.

-

-When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid,

-suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.

-

-One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside,

-looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.

-

-Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth

-and Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder;

-Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a

-gyroscope.

-

-Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with

-drill and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road--a free lance of

-adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream

-than win money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy

-anatomy, the calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve

-and sweet courage, the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would

-have perished tied to routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog"

-Carney, was an inspiration.

-

-He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border,

-mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and

-United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam

-the exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking

-Horse.

-

-The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred

-dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the

-hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put

-a gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again.

-When Seth threw up his hands declaring that the Little Widow was no

-good, those who had laughed told him that they had known it all the

-time.

-

-But what they didn't know was that the long drift in the mine now ran on

-until it was directly under the Gold Nugget hotel.

-

-It was Carney who had worked that out, and Seth and his hotel were

-established as a clearing station for the opium that was shipped in by

-train from Vancouver in tins labelled "Peaches," "Salmon," or any old

-thing. It was stored in the mine and taken from there by pack-train down

-to the border, and switched across at Bailey's Ferry, the U. S. customs

-officers at that point being nice lovable chaps; or sometimes it crossed

-the Kootenay in a small boat at night.

-

-Bulldog supervised that end of the business, bringing the heavy payments

-in gold back to Bucking Horse on a laden mule behind his buckskin; then

-the gold was expressed by train to the head office of this delightful

-trading company in Vancouver.

-

-This endeavor ran along smoothly, for the whole mining West was one

-gigantic union, standing "agin the government"--any old government, U.

-S. or Canadian.

-

-Carney's enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion;

-besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in

-looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him

-alone.

-

-The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one

-of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town

-would be its own custodian.

-

-One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his

-horse's heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung

-from either side of a pack saddle.

-

-Carney went straight to the little railway station, and expressed the

-gold to Vancouver, getting the agent's assurance that it would go out on

-the night train which went through at one o'clock. Then he rode back to

-the Gold Nugget and put his horse and mule in the stable.

-

-As he pushed open the front door of the hotel he figuratively stepped

-into a family row, a row so self-centered that the parties interested

-were unaware of his entrance.

-

-A small bar occupied one corner of the dim-lighted room, and behind this

-Seth Long leaned back against the bottle rack, with arms folded across

-his big chest, puffing at a thick cigar. Facing him, with elbows on the

-bar, a man was talking volubly, anger speeding up his vocalization.

-

-Beside the man stood Jeanette Holt, fire flashing from her black eyes,

-and her nostrils dilated with passion. She interrupted the voluble one:

-

-"Yes, Seth, I did slap this cheap affair, Jack Wolf, fair across the

-ugly mouth, and I'll do it again!"

-

-Seth tongued the cigar to one corner of his ample lips, and drawled:

-"That's a woman's privilege, Jack, if a feller's give her just cause for

-action You ain't got no kick comin', I reckon, 'cause this little woman

-ain't one to fly off the handle for nothin'."

-

-"Nothin', Seth? I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll

-figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I

-see--you're bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is

-stingin' you right here in your own nest."

-

-Biff!

-

-That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.

-

-The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned

-to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look

-that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an

-oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun.

-

-Bulldog Carney had stepped quickly across the room, and was now at his

-side, saying:

-

-"So you're here, Jack the Wolf, eh? I thought I had rid civilization of

-your ugly presence when I turned you over to the police at Hobbema for

-murdering your mate."

-

-"That was a trumped-up charge," the Wolf stammered.

-

-"Ah! I see--acquitted! I can guess it in once. Nobody saw you put that

-little round hole in the back of Alberta Bill's head--not even Bill; and

-he was dead and couldn't talk."

-

-Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold,

-searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You

-put your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or

-something will happen. I've got a proposition."

-

-The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his

-belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden

-rail, saying, surlily:

-

-"I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man

-that plays into the hands of the damn police."

-

-"You can cut out the rough stuff, Wolf, while there's a lady present."

-

-Carney deliberately turned his shoulder to the scowling man, and said,

-"How d'you do, Miss Holt?" touching his hat. Then he added, "Seth,

-locate a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."

-

-As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank

-as though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room,

-and addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square

-box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger--we're going to liquidate."

-

-The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack

-Wolf.

-

-"Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved

-a black bottle toward Bulldog.

-

-"The gents first," the latter intimated.

-

-The bottle was slid down to Cayuse, who filled his glass and passed it

-back to Wolf. The latter carried it irritably past him without filling

-his glass.

-

-"Help yourself, Wolf." It was a command, not an invitation, in Carney's

-voice.

-

-"I'm not drinkin'," Jack snarled.

-

-"Yes, you are. I've got a toast that's got to be unanimous."

-

-Seth, with a wink at Wolf, tipped the bottle and half filled the

-latter's glass, saying, "Be a sport, Jack."

-

-As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at

-Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.

-

-Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said: "Gents, we're going to

-drink to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to

-run across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long

-ever had--_Miss Jeanette_ Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor, but

-the Wolf did not touch his glass.

-

-"You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was

-deadly.

-

-The room had grown still. One, two, three, a wooden clock on the shelf

-behind the bar ticked off the seconds in the heavy quiet; and in a

-far corner the piping of a stray cricket sounded like the drool of a

-pfirrari.

-

-There was a click of a latch, a muffled scrape as the outer door pushed

-open. This seemed to break the holding spell of fear that was over the

-Wolf. "I'll see you in hell, Bulldog Carney, before I drink with you or

-a girl that----"

-

-The whisky that was in Carney's glass shot fair into the speaker's

-open mouth. As his hand jumped to his gun the wrist was seized with a

-loosening twist, and the heel of Bulldog's open right hand caught him

-under the chin with a force that fair lifted him from his feet to drop

-on the back of his head.

-

-A man wearing a brass-buttoned khaki jacket with blue trousers down

-which ran wide yellow stripes, darted from where he had stood at the

-door, put his hand on Bulldog's shoulder, and said:

-

-"You're under arrest in the Queen's name, Bulldog Carney!"

-

-Carney reached down and picked up the Wolf's gun that lay where it had

-fallen from his twisted hand, and passed it to Seth without comment.

-Then he looked the man in the khaki coat up and down and coolly asked.

-"Are you anybody in particular, stranger?"

-

-"I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."

-

-"You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke

-bank, the Mounted."

-

-"Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll

-entertain you for several days over in the pen."

-

-"On what grounds?"

-

-"You'll find out."

-

-"Yes, and now, declare yourself!"

-

-"We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in

-Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm

-here."

-

-"Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who

-stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.

-

-"I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."

-

-"Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand

-clasping his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the

-Sergeant, a faint smile lifting his tawny mustache.

-

-"You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a

-chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's

-a thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the

-line."

-

-"Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot

-to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia.

-You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which

-you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to

-let you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick

-you into the street; then they would have something on me--something

-because I'd mussed up the uniform."

-

-"Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go

-bail----"

-

-"I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."

-

-The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.

-

-Carney grinned.

-

-"Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go

-with you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all

-your own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even

-his duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance

-by insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter

-turned it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through

-Carney's arm, passed out.

-

-Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack

-divided by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a

-bunk; the other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door

-that carried a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small

-window safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this

-bull-pen, as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a

-candle. There was a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.

-

-"Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the

-bare interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you

-fellows are angular."

-

-"I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."

-

-"Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."

-

-The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain

-perhaps you'll drop some of that side."

-

-Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his

-pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your

-curtains, will it?"

-

-"It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."

-

-Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant

-Black went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer,

-Bulldog--I ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather

-irrelevantly, and with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read

-'Les Miserables,' Sergeant?"

-

-"I ain't read a paper in a month--I've been too busy."

-

-"It isn't a paper, it's a story."

-

-"I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."

-

-"This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney

-persisted.

-

-"Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come

-into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec--they're

-more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical

-voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a

-character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might

-discriminate over a great story."

-

-This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he

-do--how am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.

-

-"The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like

-yourself, and his mind was only capable of containing the one

-idea--duty. It was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."

-

-"You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the

-bangles on you and leave you in the dark."

-

-"If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can

-clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I

-meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."

-

-Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through

-the bars of the open window.

-

-Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough

-to know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight--a fight over nothing;

-and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.

-

-"It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs

-would hold anybody, and you know it."

-

-In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's

-gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to

-arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had

-locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well

-enough alone.

-

-"Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be

-sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."

-

-"Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me

-something to read."

-

-Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les

-Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple

-of magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.

-

-Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He

-could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then

-the Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire

-to Major Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came

-back. About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the

-floor, his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law

-had retired. A vagrant thought traversed his mind that the

-heavy-dispositioned, phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper

-once oblivious. However, that didn't matter, there was no necessity for

-escape.

-

-Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened

-by a noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of

-life he sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the

-sputtering candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew

-he had been wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening,

-no sound reached his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous

-breathings. He had guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper,

-one of Shakespeare's full-paunched kind.

-

-Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused

-to cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's

-presence. He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly

-associated with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth

-so much as over Jeanette.

-

-He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from

-the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a

-pebble tapping on iron.

-

-With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no

-tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window

-thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.

-

-A soft warm hand grasped his, and he felt the smooth sides of a folded

-paper. As he gave the hand a reassuring pressure, his knuckles were

-tapped gently by something hard. He transferred the paper to his other

-hand, and reaching out again, something was thrust into it, that when he

-lifted it within he found was a strong screw-driver.

-

-He crept back to his bunk, slipped the screwdriver between the blankets,

-and standing by the door listened for ten seconds; then a faint gurgling

-breath told him that Black slept.

-

-Making a hiding canopy of his blanket, he lighted his candle, unfolded

-the paper, and read:

-

-"Two planks, north end, fastened with screws. Below is tunnel that leads

-to the mine. Will meet you there. Come soon. Important."

-

-There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.

-

-He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen

-knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks

-nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the

-flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these

-heads were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the

-other room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked

-in the lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened.

-

-As if suddenly startled from sleep, Carney called out: "Who's that--what

-do you want?"

-

-The Sergeant peered in and answered, "Nothing! thought I heard you

-moving about. Are you all right, Carney?"

-

-He swept the pen with his candle, noted Carney's boots on the floor,

-and, satisfied, closed the door and went back to his bunk.

-

-This interruption rather pleased Carney; he felt that it was a somnolent

-sense of duty, responsibility, that had wakened Black. Now that he had

-investigated and found everything all right he would probably sleep

-soundly for hours.

-

-Carney waited ten minutes. The Sergeant's bunk had given a note of

-complaint as its occupant turned over; now it was still. Taking his

-boots in his hand he crept back to the end of the pen and rapidly,

-noiselessly, withdrew the screw-nails from both ends of two planks. Then

-he crept back to the door and listened; the other room was silent save

-for the same little sleep breathings he had heard before.

-

-With the screw-driver he lifted the planks, slipped through the opening,

-all in the dark, and drew the planks back into place over his head. He

-had to crouch in the little tunnel.

-

-Pulling on his boots, on hands and knees he crawled through the small

-tunnel for fifty yards. Then he came to stope timbers stood on end,

-and turning these to one side found himself in what he knew must be a

-cross-cut from the main drift that ran between the mine opening and the

-hotel.

-

-As he stood up in this he heard a faint whistle, and whispered,

-"Jeanette."

-

-The girl came forward in the dark, her hand touching his arm.

-

-"I'm so glad," she whispered. "We'd better stand here in the dark, for I

-have something serious to tell you."

-

-Then in a low tone the girl said:

-

-"The Wolf and Cayuse Braun are going to hold up the train to-night, just

-at the end of the trestle, and rob the express car."

-

-"Is Seth in it?"

-

-"Yes, he's standing in, but he isn't going to help on the job. The Wolf

-is going to board the train at the station, and enter the express car

-when the train is creeping over the trestle. He's got a bar and rope for

-fastening the door of the car behind the express car. When the engine

-reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and

-make him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the

-other cars are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and

-Cayuse will force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop

-off on the up-grade, half a mile beyond."

-

-"Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away

-with it, I believe."

-

-"I listened to them planning the whole thing out," Jeanette confessed,

-"and they didn't know I could hear them."

-

-"What about this little tunnel under the jail--that's a new one on me?"

-

-"Seth had it dug, pretending he was looking for gold; but the men

-who dug it didn't know that it led under the jail, and he finished it

-himself, fixed the planks, and all. You see when the police go away they

-leave the keys with Seth in case any sudden trouble comes up. Nobody

-knows about it but Seth."

-

-There was a tang of regret in Carney's voice as he said:

-

-"Seth is playing it pretty low down, Jeanette; he's practically stealing

-from his pals. I put twenty thousand in gold in to-night to go by

-that train, coke money; he knows it, and that's what these thieves are

-after."

-

-"Surely Seth wouldn't do that, Bulldog--steal from his partners!"

-

-"Well, not quite, Jeanette. He figures that the express company is

-responsible, will have to make good, and that my people will get their

-money back; but all the same, it's kind of like that--it's rotten!"

-

-"What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I--not on Seth--not while

-I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't

---well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's

-been different. I've stuck to him--you know, Bulldog, how straight I've

-been--but a thief!"

-

-"No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the

-girl's voice carried a tremble.

-

-"I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the

-police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your

-being arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to

-Seth and stop it?"

-

-"No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just

-hell. Besides, girl, I'm in jail."

-

-"But you're free now--you'll go away."

-

-"Let me think a minute, Jeanette."

-

-As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose

-flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and

-they saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse

-Braun.

-

-The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is

-going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while

-they pull the job off."

-

-The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into

-action, fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:

-

-"You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing--I will see what

-I can do."

-

-"And Seth--you won't----"

-

-"Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't

-bother your pretty little head about it."

-

-The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was

-trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a

-school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion:

-"Bulldog, do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it

-at all, wondered?"

-

-"Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to

-being the finest girl I ever knew."

-

-"But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"

-

-"No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those

-things. Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he

-shouldn't steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."

-

-"You mean that I'm like the gold?"

-

-"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well--you know what I mean,

-Jeanette."

-

-"But you like me?"

-

-"So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."

-

-"Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you--if I kissed

-you?".

-

-"Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to

-do what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself.

-Don't get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that

-way. I've kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you,

-being Seth's girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you

-untangle that--get what I mean?"

-

-"I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"

-

-There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's

-arm and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in

-a steadier voice: "Good night, man--I'm going back." Together they felt

-their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift,

-Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's

-nobody about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to

-the cellar you go ahead and clear the way for me."

-

-The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little

-store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out

-to the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a

-gun that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn

-the two bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out

-he avoided the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent

-Bucking Horse.

-

-A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten

-by the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden

-trestle looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint

-moonlight, its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half

-a mile from where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its

-tail coming back to the same side of the stream after traversing two

-short kinks. It looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to

-carry the huge Mogul engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train

-went over it at a snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's

-attention.

-

-And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what

-chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to

-his assistance.

-

-Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned,

-and no doubt would go through unless---- At this juncture of thought Carney

-chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping into

-the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub growth

-Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat--easy,

-my boy!"

-

-The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip--that there was no

-hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man

-talking to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and

-he, understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.

-

-Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over

-Carney's shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek;

-and sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's

-withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.

-

-They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no

-telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they

-trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.

-

-Presently Carney dropped the rein from over the horse's head to the

-ground, took his lariat from the saddle-horn, hung the two pack-bags

-over his shoulder, and whispering, "Wait here, Patsy boy," slipped

-through the brush and wormed his way cautiously to a huge boulder a

-hundred feet from the trestle. There he sat down, his back against the

-rock, and his eye on the blobs of yellow light that was Bucking Horse

-town. Presently from beyond the rock carried to his listening ears the

-clink of an iron-shod hoof against a stone, and he heard a suppressed,

-"Damn!"

-

-"Coming, I guess," he muttered to himself.

-

-The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came

-hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring

-yellow-red eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced

-his angry way down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the

-Mogul rocked in its swift glide down the curved grade; there was the

-screeching grind of airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as

-the compressed air seethed from opened valves at their release when the

-train stood at rest beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.

-

-He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's

-lantern gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of

-packages thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then

-the little green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the

-Mogul coughed as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at

-steel rails and slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping

-breaths; then came the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel

-as the heavy train careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the

-trestle were whining a protest like the twang of loose strings on a

-harp.

-

-Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far

-side of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man

-huddled in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand

-the barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.

-

-Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it

-was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.

-

-When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the

-steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried

-to Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the

-stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind

-the express car still on the trestle.

-

-Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open,

-and within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with

-hands above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a

-third was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them

-through the open door.

-

-Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance

-in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car

-and waited.

-

-He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the

-Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move

-I'll plug you!"

-

-The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal

-to Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps

-from the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a

-graceful sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the

-head of Jack the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the

-fall he was pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.

-

-The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless

-with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail

-end of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had

-bound him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.

-

-Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse.

-Of course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but

-shooting a man was something to be avoided.

-

-He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the

-express messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty

-thousand dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But

-Carney, having secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack

-bags astride the saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow

-mine. He had small fear that the two men would think of looking in that

-direction for the man who had robbed them; even if they did he had a

-good start for it would take time to untie the Wolf and get their one

-horse. Also he had the Wolf's guns.

-

-He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that

-ran off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of

-water, sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin,

-tied him, and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the

-small tunnel back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and,

-chuckling, fell into a virtuous sleep.

-

-He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully,

-"You're in luck, Bulldog."

-

-"Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."

-

-The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the

-sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and

-if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."

-

-"Thanks for your foresight, friend--that is, if you knew it was coming

-off. Tell me how your friend worked it."

-

-Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had

-finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would

-say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that

-I never have a companion in any little joke I put over."

-

-"I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an

-apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."

-

-He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and

-then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars

-for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."

-

-"Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to

-Lake Erie and start a bean farm."

-

-Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them

-two down."

-

-"No, thanks; I like it here."

-

-"I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog--set you free."

-

-"And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your

-arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram

-and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:

-

-"Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company

-offers two thousand."

-

-"Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.

-

-"What other one?"

-

-"The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."

-

-The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he

-admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta

-case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police

-before."

-

-"Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But

-I'm no sleuth for the official robber--he's fair game."

-

-"You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"

-

-"No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men--that's your job. But you

-can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that

-offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand,

-that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the

-gold I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if

-you'll oblige me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for

-breakfast."

-

-"I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."

-

-Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered.

-Her face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the

-policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the

-dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two

-under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.

-

-He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to

-arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish

-your breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this

-thing is investigated."

-

-The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant--why

-ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"

-

-The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do

-with it?"

-

-"Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when

-he escaped last night."

-

-The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened

-the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how

-you robbed the train!"

-

-At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ!

-Bulldog has snitched--he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out when

-he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And his

-horse was gone from the stable this morning!"

-

-As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of

-their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was

-out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a

-puff of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.

-

-As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that

-drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and

-he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.

-

-In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where

-he sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine

-chamber.

-

-With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol

-back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for

-a doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him

-upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.

-

-As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the

-shoulder; he'll be all right."

-

-"What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.

-

-"Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground--he can't talk;

-Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he

-hits the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave

-me five thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl,

-I'm going to put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he

-ever takes a notion to."

-

-Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.

-

-

-

-

-III.--OWNERS UP

-

-|Clatawa had put racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.

-

-You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and

-Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down

-with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"

-

-Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous

-thrills--a commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez

-Perces Indians, who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and

-were rich, would troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold

-pieces plugged into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black

-sausage, and bet the coins as though they were nickels.

-

-It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U.

-S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was

-a live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great

-luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

-

-Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a

-harem of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they

-named him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa

-found that men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed

-the gambling, and the racing, and the high living like any other

-creature of brains.

-

-He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some

-half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the

-great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the

-sires were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the

-colt, not being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big,

-upstanding bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's

-bellows and sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage,

-too, had not been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There

-was just one rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a

-thoroughbred, and until his measure was taken, until some other equine

-looked him in the eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man

-could just say what the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.

-

-At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez

-Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there

-was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron

-Jaw Blake declared.

-

-Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and

-

-Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to

-ameliorate the monotony.

-

-They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual,

-architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked

-but a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.

-

-Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush

-and pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with

-"Irish" Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt,

-more sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that

-"Fagan met death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic

-event had crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely

-"Death-on-the-trail."

-

-Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his

-upper jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen

-him with aptitude.

-

-Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of

-the bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a

-Siwash.

-

-So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman,

-wrote to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough

-to beat Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were

-specific, lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred,

-even a selling plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any

-cross-bred horse, no matter how good the latter apparently was, running

-in scrub races. He also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the

-Walla Walla races were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to

-Reilly to send him a tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and

-look the part of an able-bodied cow puncher.

-

-It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly--he just loved that sort

-of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the

-commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the

-_Maid of Palouse,_ what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony

-in charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of

-navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over

-the twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.

-

-The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron

-Jaw, Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities

-that lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black

-horse that he called Horned Toad.

-

-As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and

-instructed in the art of fool talk.

-

-Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and

-faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand

-dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a

-thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which

-Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.

-

-There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas

-

-Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great

-desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his

-fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the

-cows came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he

-drank: he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him.

-This was no piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads

-had declared for a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its

-hind legs and howl.

-

-Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll

-that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had

-a horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was

-never tired of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to

-Kamschatka; a spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any

-cayuse that had ever looked through a halter.

-

-But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd

-rush him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready

-to plunk down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had

-arrived.

-

-It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played

-against the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted

-into the game.

-

-A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face,

-rode up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to

-Walla Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town

-with the laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and,

-incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in

-earnest and had the mazuma.

-

-As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the

-cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of

-turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows

-of which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy

-individual, standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with

-Bacchanalian vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew

-chronologically the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided

-hair, who stood in the open door. He must have enlarged on the

-sophistication of her past life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath,

-called the declaimer a liar and a seven-times misplaced offspring.

-

-The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely

-over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.

-

-The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his

-imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved

-him. With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he

-would bring its lash down on the decolleted shoulders of the woman.

-

-At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door

-as though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread

-basket of the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.

-

-The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.

-

-But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled

-so neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into

-the little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers

-of steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte

-face, and a fist drove into his midriff.

-

-Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a

-grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner

-of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he

-contemplated a trip to dreamland.

-

-The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose

-gladsomeness swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man--you beaut!"

-She would have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes,

-so full of quiet aloofness, checked her.

-

-But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog,

-Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."

-

-He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You

-ride away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead

-booze-fighter!"

-

-The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for

-inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his

-shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.

-

-The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five

-feet of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting

-between wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not

-without derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.

-

-In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in

-astonishment:

-

-"Holy Gawd!"

-

-Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the

-buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a

-long-lost friend.

-

-Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet,

-mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.

-

-The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the

-inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.

-

-Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly--in full

-dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn--and asked: "Where the

-hell d'you get Waster?"

-

-A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a

-little cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask

-a man how he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was

-only a little wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so

-Carney smiled again, and answered by asking:

-

-"Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum

-of mine's name is Pat--Patsy boy, often enough."

-

-"Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I

-won the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."

-

-"Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.

-

-"Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be

-all right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout

-his friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie,

-whose breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by

-Counterfeit, he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported

-Australian, whose grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get

-that, sage-brush rider?"

-

-"I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."

-

-Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the

-chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.

-

-The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger

-levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you _ever_ took notice of them

-lop ears?"

-

-"Once--which was continuous."

-

-"And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"

-

-"Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."

-

-"Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like

-that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he

-was all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get

-that buckskin from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad,

-Australian?" This seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.

-

-"Go on, lad----"

-

-"Excuse me, sorry"--Molly was speaking--"this is Billy MacKay. My old

-school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to see

-what God's country could do for that busted chest."

-

-The little man was impatient over the switch to himself--the horse was

-the thing.

-

-"If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs--Gawd! what a horse Waster'd been.

-And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen

-him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say,

-Bulldog,--don't mind me, I like that name, it talks good,--Waster didn't

-need no blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip--I'd

-as lief hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear

-tryin'. Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till

-he threw a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and

-thirty-six pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at

-a mile and a quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and

-finished, fightin', on three legs. He was beat, of course; and

-Leatherhead was broke, and I never see Waster again. A trombone player

-in a beer garden would have known the little cuss with them hot-jointed

-knees couldn't pack weight, and would 've scratched him."

-

-Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You

-stand pat with me, kid--your heart is about human, I guess. What was

-that hostile person's game?"

-

-Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:

-

-"He comes here to-day, Bulldog--Well, you know----"

-

-Carney nodded placidly.

-

-"He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought--well, he was

-filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything

-he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get

-plumb Injun."

-

-"Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff,

-Slimy Red," Billy objected.

-

-"Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,--Billy knew him."

-

-"Knew him--huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed

-a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and

-laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in

-the ruck."

-

-"He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch

-guy that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped

-with.

-

-"I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein'

-a garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half

-an inch above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he

-says, 'I'll bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's

-a great sayin' with Slimy Red Smith--he was Slimy Red hisself. And

-politely, not givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests

-that me and Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best

-push on."

-

-"Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas

-person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."

-

-The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and

-with apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin'

-bullfrogs, Mr. Carney?"

-

-Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was

-twin brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.

-

-"Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."

-

-"Much of a storm?"

-

-"They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has

-got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."

-

-"Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's

-well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.

-

-"I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile

-lighting up his stern features.

-

-"Oh, you gentleman knight of the road--always the silver-tongued

-Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for

-a real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."

-

-The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;

-

-"It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but

-fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."

-

-"I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in

-the way of a cure."

-

-Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse

-first when it comes to grub--that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's

-bedded for the night."

-

-Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail

-upon which they had met at different times and in divers places.

-

-But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at

-sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of

-bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.

-

-"You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on

-the memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog

-were both in Denver.

-

-"Some time since," Carney replied.

-

-"D'you know about Clatawa?"

-

-"Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"

-

-"Clatawa's a horse."

-

-"I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.

-

-Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla

-Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast

-enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring

-that boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that

-is in a monetary way.

-

-Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique

-enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's

-chatter simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa

-disease, He pricked his ears.

-

-"What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding

-Dong?" he asked.

-

-A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.

-

-"Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.

-

-"Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.

-

-"Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds.

-He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too.

-He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him

-look big."

-

-Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against

-his stomach I thought it had gone clean through--it sank to the wrist;

-it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."

-

-"But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."

-

-"Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.

-

-"I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here,

-catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without

-givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they

-know you can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the

-Brooklyn Handicap together."

-

-"I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match,

-figures to get a big pull in the weights."

-

-"Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa;

-they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for

-the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"

-

-"Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably

-here on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones

-from the root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an

-ample pull in the weight."

-

-"Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into

-a meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several

-possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.

-

-Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.

-

-After a time Billy spoke.

-

-"It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red--he

-don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."

-

-"He sure ought," Molly corroborated.

-

-"Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause

-he never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel;

-and Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead

-pad; booze gets his."

-

-"Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once--Iron

-Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and

-Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're

-gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while

-they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been,

-'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."

-

-"Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the

-combination," Billy declared. "I was right."

-

-"And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some

-bad splits in bets," Molly added.

-

-"The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a

-bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake--I know his

-method of old--has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse and

-rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."

-

-"You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game,"

-Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard

-Iron Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."

-

-Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it,

-Billy--do we draw cards?"

-

-Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike!

-there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty

-at a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a

-stayer from Stayville; but he can't pack weight--don't forget that. If

-you rode him--let's see----"

-

-The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone

-and muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.

-

-"You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em

-rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy

-'ll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a

-hundred and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds.

-What chance?"

-

-"I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or

-a pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"

-

-"And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd

-bribe them to pull the horse."

-

-"What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot.

-"Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on

-pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had

-gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather

-want to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if

-he's about."

-

-"Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the

-figure that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths

-holding a look that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she

-whispered; "why do women like him--gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on

-the buckskin. "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin

-door, "you heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't

-you?"

-

-"Uh-huh!"

-

-"Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie

-to bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been

-gettin' it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I

-hadn't saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a

-money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't

-have to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and

-two."

-

-"That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over--I know her. But don't

-worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and no

-use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't

-tout off Molly that you're doing it."

-

-"I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney--you just listen now. I didn't

-spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say

-that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like

-goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."

-

-Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the

-package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid?

-Spring it; get it off your chest."

-

-Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot

-meditatively; then said:

-

-"Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most

-of the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and

-weight don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or

-a mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty

-well himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me

-ride him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse

-than Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on

-their form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in

-his eyes, gazed helplessly at Bulldog.

-

-"What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"

-

-"The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A

-match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows

-a couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block

-of city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big

-stake you've got to have the long green."

-

-"How much, Billy?"

-

-"Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally

-would stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."

-

-"I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires

-hot."

-

-"Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch

-weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but

-he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he

-can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."

-

-Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid

-gray eyes.

-

-"Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it

-owners up."

-

-"I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with

-only a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse

-eyeing him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the

-others, examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs.

-He pinched with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he

-squeezed the horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:

-

-"Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed,

-finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's

-got the slows."

-

-As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the

-buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and

-then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing

-back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air

-like the roll of a kettle-drum.

-

-"Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse

-down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that

-stride of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none.

-He'll do; he's had lots of work--he's in better condition than Ding

-Dong, 'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at

-the bar. I got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner

-Stakes' at Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if

-you make the match catch weights; it'll be a cinch--like gettin' money

-from home. But don't tell Molly."

-

-"We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.

-

-"Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself--how much are

-you goin' to bet?"

-

-"Five or ten thousand."

-

-"Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand--five hundred

-bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."

-

-"Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."

-

-Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding

-horse----"

-

-"What?"

-

-But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of

-Bulldog's gray eyes.

-

-"Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse,"

-Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a

-young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a

-man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came

-by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form

-of a bill of sale."

-

-Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar,

-paid in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay.

-Molly signed it as witness.

-

-"I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog

-declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend

-in town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of

-the gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.

-

-As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it,

-Billy--owners up?"

-

-"Gee! I get you."

-

-The little man had been mystified.

-

-"Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week

-away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin'

-to bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his

-neck for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can

-get a set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet

-is four pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr.

-Carney, and Waster 'll do his part."

-

-The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then

-he turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.

-

-"Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"

-

-"Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.

-

-"Shoot," she commanded.

-

-"Is he--was he--the man--Bessie told me something?"

-

-"There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney

-was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a

-woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake

-him if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man

-that knows him that'll try to put one over--'tain't healthy. He's got a

-temper as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts.

-He don't cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the

-sweetest you ever see, Billy."

-

-"Did she die, Molly?"

-

-"The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin'

-to the hound."

-

-Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home

-for the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.

-

-First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.

-

-When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon

-were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle

-on his buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was

-Sheriff of Shoshone County.

-

-The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed

-they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation

-varied in different places, and with different people, it stood

-strongest with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men

-of the West, were apt to judge men from their own experience.

-

-Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked

-his life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County

-of Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing

-on its records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing

-up of Bulldog Carney.

-

-Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of

-this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."

-

-"What, Bulldog--the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's face;

-it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had put

-many a practical joke over--he was kidding. Teddy laughed.

-

-"Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of

-them bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor

-as you've nerve--you're Irish."

-

-"There's also a note in that envelope"--Carney ignored the chaff--"that

-directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at

-Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I

-suddenly--well, if I didn't need it--see?"

-

-"I'll do that, Bulldog."

-

-"Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked

-casually.

-

-Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then

-he answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be

-there--lest I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was

-when I made that record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If

-you've got anything to settle, go ahead."

-

-Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up

-at the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."

-

-Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid

-face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then

-ventured:

-

-"If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the

-occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."

-

-Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might

-so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times

-as they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does

-that put any kink in your code?"

-

-"Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be

-there."

-

-Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post,

-he adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of

-his hand.

-

-As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and

-a group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man

-perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It

-wasn't Slimy Red--it was a tougher man.

-

-Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and

-behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.

-

-As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant

-in Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his

-coarse lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer.

-You seem conditioned. Know Carson?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's

-paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."

-

-Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was

-even the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.

-

-"How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held

-toward each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument

-once in a while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez

-Perces loose on you?"

-

-"Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder

-pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he

-calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"

-

-Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice

-babbling:

-

-"Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got

-anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber

-hose up his back holdin' his ribs."

-

-Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's

-snarled:

-

-"Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'--a hundred iron men?"

-

-"Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he

-comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess

-that's what gives him dreams."

-

-Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail

-across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table

-sat Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling

-height at his right hand.

-

-Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing

-from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy

-of the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he

-drew and what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the

-winnings were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had

-to be accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin'

-up a bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached;

-"it's too damn slow. I want action."

-

-He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel,

-bleating:

-

-"Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the

-thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock--as you old leatherheads make it, one

-A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the

-smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into

-one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled

-over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was

-number "13."

-

-"By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was

-as expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars

-over eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to

-Texas.

-

-The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a

-drink.

-

-It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play

-of the uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with

-apathetic interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the

-bag--it didn't mean anything.

-

-Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his

-opportunity.

-

-Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent

-chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play

-was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times--a man loaded with

-bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky

-Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money

-was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.

-

-Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They

-had arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that

-could be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently

-Texas should make a killing.

-

-Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the

-wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing

-the cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the

-merry-go-round plays on."

-

-"For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on

-to the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the

-croupier checked him:

-

-"Mind the limit, Mister."

-

-"When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.

-

-"Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the

-ivory discs from thirteen.

-

-The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way

-during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.

-

-"Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.

-

-Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no

-green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track--everybody's got a chance.

-Here! I'm goin' to cash in."

-

-He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier,

-stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."

-

-As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected

-little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands

-pushed them toward the winner. .

-

-Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:

-

-"I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long

-sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to

-the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says

-I got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that

-can outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a

-grasshopper's jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies--who's next?"

-

-A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will

-take your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."

-

-At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled,

-and seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe

-body, and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him

-like a rat.

-

-"You damn locoed fool!" he swore; "what d'you mean?--what d'you mean?"

-each query being emphasized by a vigorous shake.

-

-"He simply means," explained Carney, "that he's a cheap bluffer--a wind

-gambler. When he's called he quits. That's just what I thought."

-

-"Give him a chance, Blake," Death-on-the-trail interposed; "let go!"

-

-Iron Jaw pressed Texas back into his chair, saying:

-

-"You've got too much booze. If you want to bet on your horse sit there

-and cut out this Injun stuff." Snaky Dick had jumped to his feet,

-startled by the fact that Carney was about to break in on his preserve.

-Now he said: "If Texas is pinin' for a race Clatawa is waitin'--so is

-his backin'."

-

-Carney turned his gray eyes on the speaker: "There's a rule in this

-country, Snaky, that when two men have got a discussion on, others keep

-out. I've undertaken to call this jack rabbit's bluff, and he makes

-good, or takes his noisy organ away to play it outside of Walla Walla."

-

-Texas Sam had received a thumb in the rib from Iron Jaw that meant, "Go

-ahead," so he said, surlily: "There's my money on the table. Anybody can

-come in--the game's wide open."

-

-"That being so," Carney drawled, "there's a little buckskin horse tied

-to the post outside, that's carried me for three years around this land

-of delight, and he looks good to me."

-

-He unslung from his waist a leather roll, and dropped its snake-like

-body across the Texas coin, saying:

-

-"There's two thousand in twenties, and if this cheap-singing person sees

-the raise, it goes for a race at a mile-and-a-quarter between the little

-buckskin outside and this cow-hocked mule he sings about."

-

-"I want to see this damn buckskin," Texas objected.

-

-"You don't need to worry," Iron Jaw commented; "the horse is pretty nigh

-as well known as Bulldog."

-

-But Texas, having been born in a very nest of iniquity, having been

-stable boy, tout, half-mile-track ringer, and runner for a wire-tapping

-bunch, was naturally suspicious.

-

-"I don't match against an unknown," he objected; "let me lamp this

-Flyin' Dutchman of the Plains; it may be Salvator for all I know."

-

-"Let him get out the door," Carney sneered; "it will be good-bye--we'll

-never see him again."

-

-"And if we don't," Snaky Dick interposed, "I'll cover your money,

-Carney."

-

-Bulldog swung the gray eyes, and levelled them at the red-and-yellow

-streaked beads that did seeing duty in Snaky's face:

-

-"You ever hear about the gent who was kicked out of Paradise and told to

-go scoot along on his belly for butting in?" Then he followed the little

-crowd at Texas Sam's heels.

-

-In the yellow glare of the Del Monte lights the buckskin looked very

-little like a race horse. He stood about fifteen and a quarter hands,

-looking not much more than a pony, as, half asleep, he had relaxed his

-body; the lop ears hanging almost at right angles to his lean bony head

-suggested humor more than speed. He stood "over" on his front legs, a

-habit contracted when he favoured the weak knees. As he was a gelding

-his neck was thin, so far removed from a crest that it was almost

-ewe-like; his tremendous width of rump caused the hip bones to project,

-suggesting an archaic design of equine structure. The direct lamplight

-threw cavernous shadows all over his lean form.

-

-Texas Sam shot one rapid look of appraisement over the sleepy little

-horse; then he laughed.

-

-"Pinch me, Iron Jaw!" he cried; "am I ridin' on the tail board of an

-overland bus seein' things in the desert, and hearin' wings?"

-

-He pointed a forefinger at the buckskin. "Is that the lopin' jack-rabbit

-that runs for your money?" he queried of Carney.

-

-"That horse's name is Pat," Bulldog answered quietly, "and we've been

-pals so long that when any yapping coyote snaps at him I most naturally

-kick the brute out of the way. But that's the horse, Buckskin Pat,

-that my money says can outrun, for a mile-and-a-quarter, the horse you

-describe as a cow-hocked cow-pony, the same being, I take it, the horse

-you scooted away on when I palmed you on the mouth this morning."

-

-Texas Sam was naturally of a vicious temper, and this allusion caused

-him to flare up again, as Carney meant it to. But Iron Jaw whirled him

-around, saying:

-

-"Cut out the man end of it--let's get down to cases. We ain't had a live

-'hoss race for so long that I most forget what it looks like. If you two

-mean business come inside and put up your bets, gentlemen."

-

-Iron Jaw abrogated to himself the duty of Master of Ceremonies. First

-he set his croupier to work counting the gold of Texas Sam and Bulldog

-Carney. There were an even hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces in the belt

-Carney had thrown on the table.

-

-"You're shy on the raise," Iron Jaw remarked, winking at Texas.

-

-"I'll see his raise," the latter growled. "You've got more'n that of

-mine in your safe, Iron Jaw, so stack 'em up for me till they're level.

-I might as well win somethin' worth while--there won't be no fun in the

-race. That jack--that buckskin,"--he checked himself--"won't make me go

-fast enough to know I'm in the saddle."

-

-"You let me in that and I'll furnish the speed," Snaky Dick could not

-resist the temptation to clutch at the money he saw slipping away from

-him. "Make it a three-cornered sweep, Mr. Carney," he pleaded; "I'll

-ante."

-

-"It would be some race," Iron Jaw encouraged; "some race, boys. I've

-seen the little buckskin amble. I don't know nothin' about this Texas

-person's caravan, but Clatawa, for a sauce bottle that holds both warm

-and cold blood, ain't so slow--he ain't so slow, gents."

-

-The idea caught on; everybody in the saloon rose to the occasion. Yells

-of, "Make it a sweep! Let Clatawa in! Wake up old Walla Walla with

-something worth while!" came from many throats.

-

-Bulldog seemed to debate the matter, a smile twitching his drab

-mustache.

-

-"I've said it," Texas cried; "she's wide open. Anybody that's got a pet

-eagle he thinks can fly faster'n my cow-pony can run, can enter him.

-There ain't no one barred, and the limit's up where the pines point to."

-

-Snaky Dick had edged around the table till he stood close beside

-Bulldog, where he whispered: "Let me in, Carney; I've been layin' for

-this flannel-mouth. I don't want to see him get away with Walla Walla

-money. You save your stake with me, if I'm in."

-

-Carney pushed the little wizzen-face speaker away, saying:

-

-"Any kind of a talking bird can swing in on a winning if he's got a

-copper-riveted, cinch bet. But sport, as I understand it, gentlemen,

-consists in providing excitement, taking on long chances."

-

-"That's Bulldog talkin'," somebody interrupted; and they all cheered.

-

-"That being acknowledged," Carney resumed, "I feel like stealing candy

-from a blind kid when I crowd in on this Texas person. A yellow man

-wouldn't know how to own a real horse; that money on the table is, so

-to speak, mine now; but as Snaky Dick is panting to make it a real race,

-purely out of a kindly feeling for Walla Walla sports, I'm going to let

-him draw cards. Clatawa is welcome."

-

-"The drinks is on the house when I hear a wolf howl like that!" Snaggle

-Tooth yelled. "Crowd up, gentlemen--the drinks is on the house! Old

-Walla Walla is goin' to sit up and take notice; Bulldog is some live

-wire."

-

-Chairs were thrust back; men crowded the bar; liquors were tossed off.

-Sheriff Teddy the Leaper, who had come in, felt his arm touched by

-Carney, and inclining his head to a gentle pull at his coat-sleeve, he

-heard the latter whisper, "Stake holder for my sake." That was all.

-

-Then the crowd swarmed back to the table where the croupier had remained

-beside the mound of gold.

-

-"You give Jim, there, a receipt for a thousand, and he'll pass it out,"

-Iron Jaw told Texas.

-

-Jim the croupier took from the safe behind him rolls of twenty-dollar

-gold pieces and stood them up in Texas's pile. He removed a few coins,

-saying, "The pot is right, gentlemen; two thousand apiece."

-

-"Hold on," Snaky Dick cried; "it ain't called yet--I draw cards."

-

-"Not till you see the bet and the raise," Carney objected. "Nobody

-whispers his way into this game; it's for blood."

-

-"Give me a cheque book, Snaggle Tooth," Snaky pleaded.

-

-"Flimsies don't go," Carney objected.

-

-"Nothin' but the coin weighs in agin me," Texas agreed; "put up the

-dough-boys or keep out."

-

-Snaky was in despair. Here was just the softest spot in all the world,

-and without the cash he couldn't get in.

-

-"Will you cash my cheque?" he asked Iron Jaw.

-

-"If Baker'll O.K. it I figger you must have the stuff in his bank--it'll

-be good enough for me," Iron Jaw replied.

-

-There was a little parley between Snaky Dick, his associates, and Baker,

-who was a private banker. The cheque was made out, endorsed, and cashed

-from the gambling funds, Iron Jaw being a partner of Snaggle Tooth's in

-this commercial enterprise.

-

-When the pot was complete, six thousand on the table, Texas said:

-

-"We've got to have a stakeholder; put the money in Blake's hands--does

-that go?"

-

-Snaky Dick coughed, and hesitated. He had no suspicion that Iron Jaw had

-any interest with Texas Sam, but knowing the man as he did, he felt sure

-that before the race was run Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth would be in the

-game up to the eyes.

-

-The drawling voice of Carney broke the little hush that followed this

-request.

-

-"You're from the outside, Texas; you know all about your own horse,

-and that lets you out. The selecting of a stakeholder, and such, most

-properly belongs to Walla Walla, that is to say, such of us interested

-as more or less live here. The Sheriff of Shoshone, who is present, if

-he'll oblige, is the man that holds my money, and yours, too, unless you

-want to crawfish. Does that suit you, Snaky?"

-

-"It does," the latter answered cheerfully, for, fully believing that

-Clatawa was going to show a clean pair of heels to the other horses, he

-wanted the money where he could get it without gun-play.

-

-"That's settled, then," Carney said blithely, ignoring Texas completely.

-He turned to Teddy the Leaper: "Will you oblige, Sheriff?"

-

-The Sheriff was agreeable, saying that as soon as they had completed

-details they would take the money over to Baker's bank and lock it up

-in the safe, Baker promising to take charge of it, even if it were at

-night.

-

-"Just repeat the conditions of the match," the Sheriff said, and he drew

-from his pocket a note book and pencil.

-

-Carney seized the opportunity to say:

-

-"A three-cornered race between the buckskin gelding Pat, the black

-gelding Horned Toad, and the bay horse Clatawa at one mile and a

-quarter. The stake, two thousand dollars a corner; winner take all. To

-be run one week from to-day."

-

-"Is that right, gentlemen?" the Sheriff asked; "all agreed?"

-

-"Owners up--this is a gentleman's race," Texas snapped.

-

-"Satisfactory?" the Sheriff asked, his eyes on Carney.

-

-The latter nodded; and Iron Jaw winked at Snaggle Tooth.

-

-Snaky Dick could scarce credit his ears; surely the gods were looking

-with favor upon his fortunes; the other riders would be giving him many

-pounds in this self-accepted handicap.

-

-At Sheriff Teddy's suggestion the gold was carried over to Baker's bank,

-a stone building almost opposite the Del Monte; the bag containing it

-was sealed and placed in a big safe, Baker giving the Sheriff a receipt

-for six thousand dollars.

-

-Then they went back to the Del Monte for target practise at the bottle,

-each man implicated buying ammunition.

-

-At this time Carney had taken the buckskin to his stable, going back to

-the saloon.

-

-Snaggle Tooth made a short patriotic speech, the burden of which was

-that the saloon was full of men of eager habit who had not had a chance

-to sit into the game, and to ameliorate the condition of these mournful

-mavericks he would sell pools on the race, for the mere honorarium of

-five per cent.

-

-Fever was in the men's blood; if he had suggested twenty per cent it

-would have gone.

-

-Snaggle Tooth took up his position behind a faro table and called out:

-

-"The pool is open, with Clatawa, Horned Toad, and Pat in the box. What

-am I bid for first choice?"

-

-"Twenty dollars," a voice cried.

-

-"Thirty," another said.

-

-"Forty."

-

-"Fifty."

-

-A dry rasp that suggested an alkaline throat squeaked: "A hundred. Is

-this a horse race, or are we dribblin' into the plate at the synagogue?"

-

-"Sold!" Snaggle Tooth yapped, knowing well that excitement begat quick

-action. "Which cayuse do you favor, plunger?"

-

-"The range horse, Clatawa."

-

-The croupier at Snaggle Tooth's elbow took the bidder's live

-twenty-dollar gold pieces and passed him a slip with Clatawa's name on

-it.

-

-"A hundred dollars in the box and second choice for sale," Snaggle Tooth

-drawled, his prominent fang gleaming in the lamp light as he mouthed the

-words.

-

-Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty was bid like the quick popping of a

-machine gun; at seventy-five the bids hung fire, and the auctioneer,

-thumping the table with his bony fist, snapped, "Sold! Name your jack

-rabbit."

-

-"Horned Toad!" came from the bidder of the seventy-five.

-

-"A hundred and seventy-five in the box," Snaggle Tooth droned, "and the

-buckskin for sale. What about it, you pikers--what about it?"

-

-There seemed to be nothing about it, unless silence was something. The

-hush seemed to dampen the gambling spirit.

-

-"What!" yelped Snaggle Tooth; "two thousand golden bucks staked on the

-horse now, and no tinhorn with sand enough in his gizzard to open his

-trap. This is a race, not a funeral--who's dead? Bulldog, you laid even

-money; here's a hundred and seventy-five goin' a-beggin'. Ain't you got

-a chance?"

-

-"Ten dollars!" Carney bid as if driven into it.

-

-"Ten dollars, ten dollars bid for the buckskin; a hundred and

-seventy-five in the box, and ten dollars bid for the buckskin. Sold!"

-

-The first pool was followed by others, one after another: the roulette

-table, the keno game, and faro were in the discard--their tables were

-deserted.

-

-It soon became evident that Clatawa was a hot favorite; the public's

-money was all for the Walla Walla champion.

-

-Noting this, the Horned Toad trio hung back, bidding less. Clatawa

-was selling for a hundred, Horned Toad about fifty, and the buckskin

-sometimes knocked down at ten to Carney, or sometimes bid up to twenty

-by someone tempted by the odds.

-

-At last Carney slipped quietly away, having bought at least twenty

-pools that stood him between three and four thousand to a matter of two

-hundred.

-

-In the morning he rode the buckskin out to Molly's cottage and turned

-him over to Billy.

-

-The boy's voice trembled with delight when he was told of what had taken

-place.

-

-"Gee! now I will get well," he said; "I'll beat the bug out now--I'll

-have heart. You see, Mr. Carney, I got set down in California a year

-ago. It wasn't my fault; I was ridin' for Timberleg Harley, and he give

-the horse a bucket of water before the race; he didn't want to win--was

-lettin' the horse run for Sweeney, layin' for a big price later on.

-He had an interest in a book, and they took liberties with the horse's

-odds--he was favorite. He didn't dare tell me anything about it, the

-hound. When I found the horse couldn't raise a gallop, hangin' in my

-hands like a sea lion, I didn't ride him out, thinkin' he'd broke down.

-They had me up in the Judges' Stand, and sent for the books. It looked

-bad. Timberleg got off by swearin' I'd pulled the horse to let the other

-one win; swore that I stood in with the book that overlaid him. I was

-give the gate, and it just broke my heart. I was weak from wastin'

-anyway. And you can't beat the bug out if your heart's soft; the bug'll

-win--it's a hundred-to-one on him. First thing I'm goin' to give Waster

-a ball to clean him out, give him a bran mash, too. He must be like a

-currycomb inside, grass and hay and everything here is full of this damn

-cactus. A week ain't much to ready up a horse for a race, but he ain't

-got no fat to work off, and he knows the game. In a week he'll be as

-spry as a kitten. I'll just play with him. I'll bunk with him, too. If

-Slimy Red got wise to anything he'd slip him a twig of locoe, or put a

-sponge up his nose. Do you know what that thief did once, Mr. Carney? He

-was a moonlighter; he sneaked the favorite for a race that was to be

-run next day out of his stall at night and galloped him four miles with

-about a hundred and sixty in the saddle. That settled the favorite; he

-run his race same's if he was pullin' a hearse.

-

-"That's a good idea, Billy. There's half-a-dozen Slimy Reds in Walla

-Walla: it's a good idea, only I'll do the sleeping with the buckskin.

-I'd be lonesome away from him."

-

-The boy objected, but Carney was firm.

-

-Billy was not only a good rider, but he was a man of much brains. There

-was little of the art of training that he did not know, for his father

-had been a trainer before him--he had been brought up in a stable.

-

-Fortunately the buckskin's working life had left little to be desired in

-the way of conditioning; it was just that the sinews and muscles might

-have become case-hardened, more the muscles of endurance than activity.

-

-But then the race was over a distance, a mile-and-a-quarter, where the

-endurance of the thoroughbred would tell over Clatawa. Indeed, full of

-the contempt which a racing man has for a cold-blooded horse, Billy did

-not consider Clatawa in the race at all.

-

-"That part of it is just found money," he assured Carney. "Clatawa will

-go off with a burst of speed like those Texas half-milers, and he'll

-commence to die at the mile; he hasn't a chance."

-

-As to Ding Dong it was simply a question of whether the black had

-improved and Waster gone back enough, through being thrown out of

-training, to bring the two together. Anywhere near alike in condition

-Waster was a fourteen-pound better horse than Ding Dong. It might be

-that now, his legs sounder than they had ever been when he was racing,

-Waster might run the best mile-and-a-quarter of his life.

-

-Of course this might not be possible in a three-quarter sprint, for, at

-that terrific rate of going, running it from end to end at top speed,

-a certain nervous or muscular system would be called upon that had

-practically become atrophied through the more leisure ways of the trail

-work.

-

-The little man pondered over these many things just as a man of commerce

-might mentally canvas great markets, conveying his point of view to

-Carney generally. He would map out the race as they sat together in the

-evening.

-

-"Of course Snaky Dick will shoot out from the crack of the pistol, and

-try to open up a gap that'll break our hearts. He won't dare to

-pull Clatawa in behind; a cold-blooded horse's got the heart of a

-chicken--he'd quit. Slimy'll carry Ding Dong along at a rate he knows

-will leave him enough for a strong run home; but he'll think that he's

-only got Clatawa to beat and he'll pull out of his pace--he'll keep

-within strikin' distance of Clatawa. I'll let them go on. I know 'bout

-how fast Waster can run that mile-and-a-quarter from end to end. Don't

-you worry if you see me ten lengths out of it at the mile. Waster won

-all his races comin' through his horses from behind--'cause he's game.

-When Caltawa cracks, and I'm not up, Slimy'll stop ridin' he'll let

-his horse down thinkin' he's won. You'll see, Mr. Carney. If a

-quarter-of-a-mile from the finish post I'm within three lengths of Ding

-Dong and not drivin' him you can take all the money in sight. I'll tell

-you somethin' else, Mr. Carney; if I'm up with Ding Dong, and Slimy Red

-thinks I've got him, he'll try a foul."

-

-"Glad you mentioned it, little man," Carney remarked drily.

-

-The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had

-received the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short

-sprinting runs and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days

-before the race he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under

-full speed; rated as though he were in a race, the last half a topping

-gallop. He showed little distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later

-after he had been cooled out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.

-

-Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his

-trial over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly.

-Texas Sam and Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and

-sometimes gave them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the

-first peep of day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track,

-so he waited that morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast,

-thinking all the gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and

-covered the mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.

-

-The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of

-the town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street.

-The finish post was opposite the heart of the town.

-

-The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting

-jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.

-

-Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal

-laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it,

-for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like

-a tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that

-perhaps Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after

-they had won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover

-up in his case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay

-with his buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules.

-They hadn't guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against

-the black, and there he was; names didn't count--the horse was the

-thing.

-

-Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's

-active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode

-a punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for

-a chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race,

-and would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked

-to Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to

-Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.

-

-And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden

-shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking

-out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty

-pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon,

-the border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there

-was gold in the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good

-Presbyterians under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and

-spiritually, Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in

-death, a plug of lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling

-row, but the morrow would be soon enough to investigate; to-day was

-_the_ day--the day of the race; minor business was suspended.

-

-It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire

-for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but

-prowled in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four

-o'clock.

-

-One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."

-

-Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was

-a weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came

-from a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant

-fool; nobody had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant

-backing.

-

-The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's

-well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused,

-could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but

-what was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand?

-And yet when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the

-buckskin, a man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself,

-looking like a placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the

-Columbia, would say, diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would

-make good--one yellow eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet

-seriousness of this man who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.

-

-"Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he

-pointed to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed

-against some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the

-fatty laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:

-

-"Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your

-safe won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas

-brayin' ass have no more booze."

-

-"If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now

-because of Carney--sober he'd quit."

-

-"Carney won't turn a hair when we win."

-

-"Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a

-funnel--he's hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the

-finish for fear Bulldog'll grab him."

-

-"Look here, Snaggle, that coyote--hell! I know the breed of them

-outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin'

-in front--he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others

-when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand

-to kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff

-wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the

-horse that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by

-the throat."

-

-That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic

-town of Walla Walla.

-

-It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one

-confident that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked

-work, he could win.

-

-The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed

-judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was

-to fire the starting gun.

-

-It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs

-had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless

-of turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his

-joints, though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out

-unrooted earth and bow a tendon.

-

-An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would

-be settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed

-that first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even

-Lieutenant Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief

-Joseph, sat his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every

-inch a king in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture

-was Homeric, grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of

-gold worshipers.

-

-At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting,

-vociferating throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man,

-called:

-

-"Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"

-

-Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course

-where the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black

-points, and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead,

-ran down his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side,

-and a blanket covered his form.

-

-Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose

-blanket showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with

-the unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare.

-Beside him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.

-

-Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and

-beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the

-holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had

-shown.

-

-As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the

-flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far

-down the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if

-wondering where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it

-was a race--that he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The

-tight cinching of the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his

-shins, the sponging out of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he

-had had--all these touches had brought back to his memory the game his

-rich warm, thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the

-thrill of it.

-

-"Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings

-called, watch in hand.

-

-The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide,

-padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet.

-And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a

-pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown,

-monkeylike form.

-

-Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins

-ran through the steel rings of a martingale.

-

-At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this

-get-up for a supposed cow-pony.

-

-Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a

-slim lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting

-racing breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as

-if, by necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds

-of flesh.

-

-But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now

-the buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back

-a tiny matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the

-little figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to

-the saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.

-

-With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:

-

-"Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt?

-Get down!"

-

-He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him

-out of the saddle.

-

-His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown

-up in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his

-wind-pipe from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an

-oath of raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a

-gun, and heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:

-

-"You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now

-stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."

-

-Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side,

-their hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him,

-turned on them:

-

-"Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"

-

-Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin

-pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and

-said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into

-the face of Snaggle Tooth.

-

-But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call

-to chuck--don't forget."

-

-Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:

-

-"This match was for owners up."

-

-He beckoned forward the stakeholder:

-

-"Ain't that so, Sheriff--owners up?"

-

-"That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain,

-Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.

-

-"It was."

-

-"Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot--and that monkey up?" And Iron

-Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on

-Waster.

-

-Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out

-like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use

-any foul words when you speak to me--we're not good enough pals for

-that; if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat.

-Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the

-owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named

-Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has

-been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the

-horse's tail."

-

-Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney,

-knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.

-

-The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr.

-Carney?"

-

-"No, sir--let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a

-technicality, but on a horse."

-

-"Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"

-

-"I do," Carney answered.

-

-"Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"

-

-"He did."

-

-"Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.

-

-"Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing

-the sheriff.

-

-When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open,

-and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its

-date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and

-Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before

-the match was made.

-

-"It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it

-in the sheriff's hands--why didn't the boy keep it--it was his?"

-

-"Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney

-answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they

-would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game.

-And there was another reason."

-

-Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the

-Judge. It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his

-money, if the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy

-MacKay.

-

-When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little

-smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly

-Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."

-

-Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice

-as he said, quietly:

-

-"The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This

-paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to

-the post."

-

-A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla,

-and the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they

-grasped the idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own

-game; that the intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides,

-now they could see that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had

-started more than one whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the

-Clatawa people believing in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted

-that perhaps there was a job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa

-and one of them go on and win; though few would admit that Carney would

-be party to cold-decking the public.

-

-But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race

-to the finish, and the stakes represented real money.

-

-Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider

-of Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:

-

-"Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish

-waiting for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never

-ride again."

-

-"I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered

-abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.

-

-The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat

-in a choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth

-snapping from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating

-his excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that

-springy lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding.

-Indians and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the

-course, on their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight.

-Old Walla Walla had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was

-on in all its glory.

-

-After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course;

-they criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were

-being placed by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble;

-sometimes he reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought

-for his head. But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.

-

-Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that

-distance, as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an

-equine statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had

-taken long odds about him felt a depression.

-

-Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas,

-was keeping him on his toes--not letting him chill out; but, like the

-buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were

-old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the

-antics of Clatawa--the starter was the whole works.

-

-Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came

-back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line,

-and the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter,

-finger on trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his

-finger gripped spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of

-smoke, and a white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying

-start.

-

-The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.

-

-"Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.

-

-"Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.

-

-"They'll never catch him!--never catch him! He'll win off by himself!"

-was droned.

-

-Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them,

-galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone,

-as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the

-boy, his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either

-side of the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying,

-"Ste-a-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous

-sing-song through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the

-handicap of a strong wind that was blowing down the track.

-

-He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out

-in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the

-old Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful

-stride that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his

-horse. "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come

-back!"

-

-He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and

-trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own

-knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under

-2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he

-had cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it

-up, close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.

-

-He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.

-

-Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more

-flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild

-horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.

-

-The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for

-a little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let

-Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the

-white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high

-deer-like lope that was impressive.

-

-At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They

-could see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and

-Horned Toad was between the two.

-

-Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had

-forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.

-

-Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a

-hundred against him."

-

-"I'll take it," Carney declared.

-

-"I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.

-

-"You're on," came from Carney.

-

-And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.

-

-Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it

-seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the

-latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion

-lying along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were

-up. Surely a quirt had switched the air once.

-

-Yes, the Toad was creeping up--his rider was making his run; they could

-see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.

-

-Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he

-lost his whip--had he given up all idea of winning?

-

-They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.

-

-A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa

-was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back

-was playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse

-instead of helping him.

-

-And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.

-

-Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered

-tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now

-somebody cried:

-

-"God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him--lo-ook at him, men!"

-

-His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened

-their vision, and their owners gasped.

-

-Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced

-by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.

-

-And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths?

-It was two--it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the

-black's quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now

-their heads rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled

-for the lead: Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the

-flanks of his horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him

-home a winner.

-

-How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race

-won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out

-of stride; no flash of the whip to startle him--to break his heart; the

-brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of

-brains, was wise enough to sit still.

-

-They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin

-drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave,

-stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding

-in front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping

-straight as an arrow.

-

-"The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin

-wins--the buckskin wins!" became a clamor.

-

-Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse,

-from some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the

-buckskin; they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!"

-rose; it was an angry roar like caged animals at war.

-

-Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The

-buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled;

-his head shot down--almost to his knees he went: then he was galloping

-again, the two horses locked together.

-

-Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.

-

-The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.

-

-Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front.

-Their speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped,

-and the boy pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still

-tangled in the martingale of Horned Toad.

-

-Men closed in frantically. A man--it was Oregon--twisted Carney's gun

-skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."

-

-He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to

-battle back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and

-Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring

-devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings

-packed in a barrel.

-

-Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!"

-and a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of

-a guarding circle.

-

-Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad,

-trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then

-a woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:

-

-"Back, you cowards--you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room--give

-him air!"

-

-Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a

-battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's

-side.

-

-"Don't lift him--he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put

-his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back--give him air!" she

-commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her shoulders

-a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated with red

-froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and Molly,

-sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.

-

-"Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't

-speak," she admonished.

-

-She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the

-ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough

-the red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.

-

-The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the

-circle about the lad and Molly.

-

-The judge's voice was heard saying:

-

-"The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong

-condemnation in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have

-disqualified him: it was a deliberate foul."

-

-The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the

-barracks for protection.

-

-"Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy

-will be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.

-

-"You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips

-touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot

-tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of

-cupidity and guile.

-

-

-

-

-IV.--THE GOLD WOLF

-

-|All day long Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the

-odd imprint of that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle,

-riding a trail that winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs

-monotonously similar, the hush of the everlasting hills holding in

-subjection man's soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting

-up towards God's dome pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces

-a comatose condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little

-beyond the recognition of trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird,

-the sudden roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the

-harp of a giant pine.

-

-And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history

-of the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the

-hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails

-denting the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the

-miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by

-a strange perversity, haunted Carney.

-

-The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills,

-leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small

-fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for

-the town of Bucking Horse.

-

-Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the

-ford of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave

-yawned in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had

-melted into its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might

-have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the

-Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort

-of fear left the trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards

-beyond.

-

-In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge

-dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from

-strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black

-bristles on his back erect in challenge.

-

-The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in

-daylight was unusual.

-

-Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the

-saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's

-feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.

-

-The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes

-just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the

-movement.

-

-Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the

-usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.

-

-A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The

-sudden apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest,

-either in man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a

-wolf meant little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive

-away.

-

-High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered

-feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion

-catching vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far

-west, a flaming sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the

-twisted valley a chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons;

-the giant ferns hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with

-the death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad

-berries that gleamed like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling,

-frothing stream that still held the green tint of its glacier birth.

-

-Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail

-almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now

-back to the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the

-bright and happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed

-and bantered with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West;

-the ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had

-won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard--where the

-dice might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the

-thrower take a fall.

-

-But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow

-environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the

-mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung

-his heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes

-one ear was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond,

-the now glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur,

-the other ear held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of

-pursuit.

-

-Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his

-saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the

-back trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest

-had developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his

-trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of

-tumbling forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms;

-bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.

-

-The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would

-go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.

-

-Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty

-feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall;

-and, when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of

-relief, clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.

-

-"I wonder--by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand,

-slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.

-

-"I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin;

-"something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of

-the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his

-chin, thinking--thinking aloud.

-

-"There are tracks, Patsy boy--moccasins; but we've lost our

-gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy--gone over the

-cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down.

-By gad! two of them!"

-

-Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering;

-cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off.

-The inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that

-carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.

-

-Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the

-buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the

-snaffle against his bridle teeth.

-

-At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're

-quite right, pal--it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of

-old grannies imagining things."

-

-But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a

-compelling inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge

-to camp for the night.

-

-Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the

-trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a

-wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the

-dog-wolf's mate--a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.

-

-"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by

-with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."

-

-As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his

-challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling

-yelp.

-

-"By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.

-

-Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again

-muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl--it's

-different."

-

-Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering

-was soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of

-velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning,

-pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they

-push on.

-

-Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good

-dope for a sleep."

-

-So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped

-in an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in

-reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs

-with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round

-had waited for his partner to dismount.

-

-It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at

-all the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He

-did not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich

-he spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.

-

-Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a

-curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away

-from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer,

-heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when

-deep sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to

-consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him

-to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border

-of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the

-crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting

-of his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching

-the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that

-there was something--not close, but hovering there beyond.

-

-The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of

-discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a

-spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.

-

-But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning

-devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with

-his delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the

-compass; but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there,

-watching.

-

-After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had

-yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.

-

-Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that

-was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky

-told that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond

-the Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the

-plains.

-

-The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his

-broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little

-fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he

-considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a

-nothing.

-

-Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to

-the left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the

-trail running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping

-the Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now

-Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.

-

-There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a

-morbid disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had

-happened to that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the

-weird fancies of the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the

-trail was earthed, holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked

-ahead of the buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was

-imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but

-they were not the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that

-a man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not

-an inturned left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly

-broken. His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step

-of a pack pony.

-

-The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried

-to shake it off--it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a

-prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for

-gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.

-

-Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same

-cayuse tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had

-travelled both up and down the trail.

-

-Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the

-mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay.

-And there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the

-Bucking Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned,

-for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.

-

-This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in

-a troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation

-of the West--those mounted men had ridden after somebody--had trailed

-somebody who was wanted quick.

-

-This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally

-the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the

-cliff, the hovering oppression of the night--everything.

-

-Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes

-humming an Irish ballad of Mangin's.

-

-It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse

-was in a ferment.

-

-Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters

-of unrest seethed.

-

-A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's

-brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through

-the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were

-afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered

-men.

-

-Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of

-opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth

-Long, were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for

-stringing him up _tout de suite_. The times were propitious for this

-entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at

-Fort Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping

-of the mob.

-

-Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is

-what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand

-on his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:

-

-"This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains,

-and my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a

-pretty poor sport."

-

-"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.

-

-"He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one

-the best of it--first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when he

-starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,

-isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure

-themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and

-they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."

-

-Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a

-quiet thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was

-wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could

-have stood up against that plank bar and declared himself without being

-called quick.

-

-"You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've

-got to say," Kootenay growled.

-

-"That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the

-trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being

-fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."

-

-With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles

-behind the bar.

-

-Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the

-dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt

-hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog

-that she loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for

-help. He had just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had

-been hurled at him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry--Harry the

-waster, the no-good, the gambler--had been found to be the man who had

-murdered returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they

-were going to string him up.

-

-And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her

-side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had

-brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed

-her way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded

-and begged for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely

-hopeless it had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".

-

-It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the

-magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable.

-Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played

-the card of reason.

-

-For the two or three gun men--Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver

-Ike--Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun; he could

-deal with those three toughs if necessary.

-

-"Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they

-had drunk.

-

-The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the

-narrative.

-

-Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had

-mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would

-have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place

-later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse--nobody had seen him.

-

-Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the

-bodies had been devoured by wolves.

-

-"And wolves don't eat gold--not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck,"

-Kootenay Jim yelped.

-

-"Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly,

-"That's your food, Jim."

-

-"Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a

-threat.

-

-"Just what the words convey--you sort them out, Kootenay."

-

-But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game,

-Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin'

-in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou

-Dave--here he is sittin' right here--he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot

-Johnson--that is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."

-

-"Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice,

-"and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big

-clean-up of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse

-till I creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good

-many years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."

-

-Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave

-finds his mate at the foot of a cliff."

-

-Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun,

-thinking something was going to happen.

-

-"I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog,"

-Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks

-of 'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me--I guess I was

-gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em

-tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many

-years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit

-of fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage

-like, as if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind

-staggers, or somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up

-thinkin' it out, 'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited

-any, Fourteen-foot'd pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see

-some wolf tracks--dang near as big as a steer's they was--and I figger

-Fourteen-foot's had a set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and

-lammed hell's delight out of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm

-follerin' the cayuse's trail agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all

-at onct it jumps me that the big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger

-Johnson's got mussed up a bit with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's

-the dang wolf tracks agen. And some moccasin feet has been passin'

-along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts out just same's if he'd spread his

-wings and gone up in the air--they just ain't."

-

-"Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff,"

-Miner Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously

-at a black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.

-

-"I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's

-Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that

-if two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and

-show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out

-just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide--'tain't natural. I tell you,

-boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me--that's what he is, when I goes back."

-

-Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight

-for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.

-

-"Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his

-back what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no

-sign of the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse

-tracks most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for

-Kootenay. And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks

-it's Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."

-

-"And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog,"

-Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted,

-cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse,

-with lots of gold."

-

-"That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.

-

-"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.

-

-"No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and

-you got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in

-your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the

-circumstantial evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."

-

-"I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores

-might get you in wrong."

-

-"You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's

-got to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear

-his story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair

-warning, boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm

-going to denounce you; not one of you will get away--_not one!_"

-

-"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but

-swing he will."

-

-Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police

-barracks. He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what

-might be called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had

-bought the cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He

-refused to say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had

-killed nobody, had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing

-about the murder..

-

-Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was

-innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned,

-a minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him

-from being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men--there was no

-doubt whatever about that in his mind.

-

-"I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking

-you've got the right man."

-

-"That's what we figgered," Graham declared.

-

-"But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure

-don't want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that

-you caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's

-cayuse?"

-

-"Caribou says it is," Graham answered.

-

-"And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.

-

-"He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured

-viciously.

-

-"Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.

-

-"Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.

-

-"I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that

-poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm

-going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."

-

-His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion

-had gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that,

-convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would

-check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing

-even Carney to their side.

-

-So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the

-stable yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request,

-led up and down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay

-at every step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He

-studied them intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for

-that goblined hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like

-imprints, that, though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way

-of a cayuse, neither was like the curious goblined track that had so

-fastened on his fancy out in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.

-

-And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen

-on the newer trail.

-

-He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is

-Johnson's pack horse?"

-

-"There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity.

-"When I see my boots I don't _think_ they're mine, I just most natur'ly

-figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see

-him in a wild herd."

-

-"And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that

-Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."

-

-A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:

-

-"That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over.

-Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."

-

-"Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There

-isn't more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good

-many thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the

-same color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar

-as so many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new

-moon, or a flapjack."

-

-He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"

-

-"I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same

-place it's restin' now--it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."

-

-"That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's

-brand, how can he swear to the beast?"

-

-"And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was

-his hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay

-cackled.

-

-"Johnson wouldn't say so--he'd know better. His cayuse had a club foot,

-an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles

-back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track,

-and sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."

-

-The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did

-you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse--what his travellers was like?"

-

-"I never looked at his feet--there wasn't no reason to; I was minin'."

-

-"There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you

-got any of Johnson's belongings--a coat?"

-

-"We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the

-wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store

-clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw,

-and from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass,

-saying, as he examined the coat:

-

-"This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that

-cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's

-generally a difference in the hair."

-

-Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in

-the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many

-different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed

-through the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing

-in the yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let

-it run like a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse

-considerable attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat

-warp, and on this cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.

-

-When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had

-not been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.

-

-These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not

-Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence

-to connect Harry Holt with the murder.

-

-Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that

-Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a

-technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas

-Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.

-

-"We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the

-trail and see what Bulldog seen."

-

-Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and

-go back."

-

-But Carney objected.

-

-When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of

-derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand

-in the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to

-gain time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're

-bein' buffaloed--we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered

-man's hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some

-hawse hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks

-back on the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we

-was a damn lot of tender-feet."

-

-This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none

-whatever upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:

-

-"I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because

-I'm going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for

-if he does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm

-trailing. But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever

-devil, and will make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that

-you hold Holt till I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse

-with a club foot, for there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the

-wolves got him too."

-

-They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim

-and his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering

-together as they drank.

-

-As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:

-

-"We're bein' flim-flammed--played for a lot of kids. There ain't been

-a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has

-been murdered on the trail, and who done it--somebody. Caribou's mate

-was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here,

-was bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits.

-And 'cause his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card

-trick with hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."

-

-"You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother

-wouldn't tell you where he got the gold--he'd let you hang him first;

-but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get

-out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds,

-Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you

-down for insulting me."

-

-"That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates

-and you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and

-Kootenay whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his

-gun clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt,

-incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's

-hand was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their

-backs to the bar.

-

-No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five

-seconds. Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a

-trigger--no one spoke.

-

-It was Carney who broke the silence:

-

-"Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the

-doctor--I guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."

-

-A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension

-slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.

-

-Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left,

-followed Jeanette out of the room.

-

-As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men,

-his wrists bound behind his back, said:

-

-"My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's

-safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to

-kill Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the

-gold come from."

-

-"Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed

-any gold--what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold from

-your safe?"

-

-"I ain't looked--I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron

-box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I

-wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I

-guess she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."

-

-"I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette

-didn't know I was going to take it."

-

-"But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a

-frame-up?" Graham asked.

-

-"I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in

-wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."

-

-"Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man,

-and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find

-on Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."

-

-"That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out

-with."

-

-Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he

-would have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off

-a passing train and lynched him; it would have been a _quid pro quo._

-He felt that he was being cheated by the superior cleverness of Bulldog

-Carney. He had seen miners beaten out of their just gold claims by

-professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the microscopic evidence of the

-hairs, the intoed hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was honest

-in his conviction that the cayuse was Johnson's, and feared that the man

-who had killed his friend would slip through their fingers.

-

-"It's just like this, boys," he said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together

-so long that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was comin' back a day

-afore he hit camp--I'd feel it, same's I turned back on the trail there

-and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There wasn't no reason to

-look over that cliff only ol' Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's

-a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there murdered him when he wasn't

-lookin'. And if you chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish

-I'll get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he won't never get away.

-If you boys is just a pack of coyotes that howls good and plenty till

-somebody calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away with your tails between

-your legs for fear you'll be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn

-this murderer loose right now--you don't need to worry what'll happen to

-him. I'll be too danged lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's

-comin' to me. Turn him loose--take the hobbles off him. You fellers

-go home and pull your blankets over your heads so's you won't see no

-ghosts."

-

-Carney's sharp gray eyes watched the old fanatic's every move; he let

-him talk till he had exhausted himself with his passionate words; then

-he said:

-

-"Caribou, you're some man. You'd go through a whole tribe of Indians for

-a chum. You believe you're right, and that's just what I'm trying to do

-in this, find out who is right--we don't want to wrong anybody. You

-can come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you the club-footed

-tracks; I'll let you help me get the right man."

-

-The old chap turned his humpy shoulders, and looked at Carney out of

-bleary, weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he shrilled:

-

-"I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you

-had a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the

-rings on a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack

-rabbit ain't goin' to get away--and he ain't; you can bet your soul

-on that, Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that

-Wie-sah-ke-chack, the Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream,

-club-footed tracks, and when we come back the man that killed my chum,

-old Fourteen-foot, would be down somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd

-get him off."

-

-It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from

-that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days

-of respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any

-information to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the

-murderer.

-

-Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the

-shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he

-had brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on

-Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got

-pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a

-man does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and

-a gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as

-well as by the fall of a card.

-

-But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be

-foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark

-without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's

-life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning,

-when it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to

-the stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way

-to the tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left

-the horse and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about

-for a time, generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that

-he was camped for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom

-he had confided, knew different.

-

-Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth,

-unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the

-other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.

-

-Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the

-foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."

-

-"Why, Bulldog?"

-

-"Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a

-sling because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much

-about women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."

-

-"But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."

-

-"Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You

-clamber up the stairs quick."

-

-"My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would

-stand for Harry yourself."

-

-"If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."

-

-"That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a

-mob of angry men, because he's _my_ brother."

-

-"You called the turn, Jeanette."

-

-"And all I can do, all I can say is, _thank you_. Is that all?"

-

-"That's all, girl. It's more than enough."

-

-He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an

-earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:

-

-"When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending--then you'll

-hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start backing

-the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll bring

-in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave--I'll

-get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if

-Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."

-

-Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone

-watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift,

-lighted candle in hand.

-

-Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a

-back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs

-of light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch

-of his heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.

-

-It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten

-robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie

-down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself

-in his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin--they were like two

-men in a huge bed.

-

-All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and

-eating a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that

-the murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's

-Bridge his stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning

-miners was still there he felt certain that he would get him.

-

-There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men

-were known to have been murdered.

-

-A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime

-of that sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite--careless,

-possessed of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all

-desperadoes that way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves,

-it generally had been so easy.

-

-Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer;

-indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the

-ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was

-any suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a

-posse would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would

-have ample knowledge of their approach.

-

-To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in

-this killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like

-a gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold,

-probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more

-than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once

-started, the devilish murder lust.

-

-Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality,

-and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be

-watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had

-met him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day

-and ridden on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the

-murderer would let him pass without action. It was only returning miners

-he was interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were

-still there he would get him.

-

-His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where

-the murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood

-of the cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been

-found, and go forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered

-the ground. He felt that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere

-between that point and the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was

-the home of this trail devil.

-

-The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of

-the wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog--that is, a creature that was

-half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train

-dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's

-mind that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild

-pair; they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour

-his victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not

-impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull

-down a white man quick enough if he were helpless.

-

-However, the man was the thing.

-

-The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the

-west when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge,

-and, fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of

-the spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.

-

-Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck

-said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy--stand steady."

-

-Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound

-the rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a

-dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect

-himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless

-he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a

-boxer.

-

-Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the

-imprint of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had.

-There were the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.

-

-Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to

-where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps

-the evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth,

-and then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If

-the murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show

-himself at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might

-have been on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the

-cave for water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do

-Carney had not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes

-of finding out something that was conclusive.

-

-If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly

-be there.

-

-That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and

-eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood

-at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a

-little turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake

-of leaves and brush.

-

-As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron,

-and the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing

-force that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring

-noises in his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.

-

-His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was

-smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to

-splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in

-the legs of his strong riding boots.

-

-As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening

-stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave

-hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting

-to the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.

-

-The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he

-could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could

-crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was

-fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a

-man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of

-loose log.

-

-The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole

-vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed

-before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be

-killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might

-protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even

-could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with

-a pretense of helping him.

-

-Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:

-

-"Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered,

-Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."

-

-Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm

-projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.

-

-"Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.

-

-Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that

-the offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that

-he would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting.

-Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.

-

-"There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered;

-"you can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be

-torn to pieces by the wolves."

-

-Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he

-said: "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I

-ain't invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've

-been a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good

-'nough friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a

-gun on you. You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain

-things, I'll spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess

-you'll keep your word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."

-

-The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as

-absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the

-gun.

-

-"You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me

-out, and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."

-

-"You mean you won't give up the gun?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em

-knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off

-there in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake

-up. You think it over, Bulldog, I'm----"

-

-The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance

-down the valley.

-

-"D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down.

-"They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their

-meat. You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your

-buckskin; he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when

-I come back what you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry--they're

-hungry; and I guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."

-

-Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling

-through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he

-travelled.

-

-Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would

-tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have

-raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of

-being a loser, whether man or horse won.

-

-From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head

-go up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see,

-beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree

-to tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.

-

-Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his

-gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark

-he would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be

-a chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second

-purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that

-there was a battle on.

-

-Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly

-approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was

-shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.

-

-Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the

-bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist

-an ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in

-a hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward

-the buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.

-

-Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that

-meant--a little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head,

-or seize him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump

-to the man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as

-a warning to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the

-ground.

-

-Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a

-sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance,

-he sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels

-by the narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet

-missed, and Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.

-

-Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right

-hand, and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the

-loop swishing through the air, and at the first cast it went over the

-buckskin's head.

-

-Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that

-always brought the buckskin to his side.

-

-Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at

-the well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through

-Jack's sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The

-buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal

-at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as

-though he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body

-struck rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a

-cork, for the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.

-

-Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a

-slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as

-the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.

-

-"Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing

-forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long

-arm, to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against

-his master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all

-right--don't worry."

-

-Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead,

-answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat--i'm glad you're here.

-It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled the

-horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant nerves

-to Carney's brain.

-

-In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows

-that had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he

-could build a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the

-darkness they would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a

-target when the light fell on their snarling faces.

-

-Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of

-dead branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold

-the leaves. There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver

-parchment-like bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from

-about his limbs, then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly

-to his free knee and built a little mound of sticks and bark against the

-birch log. Then he put his hand in a pocket for matches--every pocket;

-he had not one match; they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the

-trail. He looked longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree;

-Jack would have matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the

-means to a fire. But matches in New York were about as accessible as any

-that might be in the dead man's pockets.

-

-Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically

-impossible, and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant.

-As if Fate resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped

-man's mind a magical inspiration--a vital grievance. His mind, acute

-because of his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his

-cognizance, for a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he

-could heat the steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring

-were thin, depending upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for

-strength. If he could heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper

-would leave it as a spirit forsakes a body, and the spring would bend

-like cardboard.

-

-"And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the

-body. "But you've got them----"

-

-He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he

-unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he

-could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.

-

-Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the

-thrower's legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney--it was some

-test.

-

-Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out

-I'll get him yet, Patsy."

-

-Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off

-the head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form

-and earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face

-that carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.

-

-He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching

-slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the

-man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from

-his hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim

-form of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving

-him the grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope

-and dropped his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the

-man--he was gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic

-twist of the rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin,

-and gently, vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold.

-Then, hand over hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without

-ceremony, searched it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin

-in a pocket of Jack's shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had

-been torn from its belt during the owner's rough voyage.

-

-The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the

-clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on

-us; they can't beat us, old pard."

-

-He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs,

-one pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.

-

-The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his

-wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat

-as it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with

-the fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the

-black moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating

-jaws.

-

-Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically

-forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection

-of a spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes

-watching him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the

-birch log.

-

-The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a

-terrible struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which

-seemed to bite into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting

-Jack's battle; and Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise,

-that his legs had been made almost useless in that drag by the horse.

-

-Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting

-his fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost

-shattering the bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp

-of the belt, and Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:

-

-"Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log,

-with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."

-

-"I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.

-

-"Don't need you--I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be

-under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you

-now--my leg is on fire."

-

-Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in

-his hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.

-

-When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop

-about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.

-

-The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the

-twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down

-from the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and

-soon it was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the

-trap, he placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip

-of steel went down like paper. He was free.

-

-At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as

-if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released

-veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged

-the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves

-hovered beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.

-

-When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle

-rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line

-from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"

-

-"I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."

-

-"Take your choice--get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you

-for the wolves," Carney snapped.

-

-Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his

-feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket

-line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:

-

-"Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through

-you--this sore leg's got me peeved."

-

-At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags

-of gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also

-foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he

-had not expected to find--the cayuse that had belonged to Fourteen-foot

-Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack out his

-wealth.

-

-Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through

-the night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted,

-he started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot

-Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's

-belly. Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.

-

-And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the

-enterprising man of the bear trap.

-

-

-

-

-V.--SEVEN BLUE DOVES

-

-|They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney

-felt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was

-overtired--that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had

-seen in a month, for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse,

-the little, old, worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on

-the Canadian side of the border.

-

-From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not

-habitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a

-risk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve--gave

-him a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But

-to-night there was a scent of evil in the room.

-

-A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high

-stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But

-Sergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such

-times the key of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel,

-the Gold Nugget. And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the

-police shack rather than in a room of the hotel.

-

-Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling

-that everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction

-that some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was

-in his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new

-sensation to Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it.

-His steel-gray eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the

-green on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with its

-substructure of nerve, he possessed it _in excelsis_.

-

-He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched

-hand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from

-the top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without

-catch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started

-with. He had not lost anything to speak of--and here was the hitch,

-the enigma of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been

-deliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had been

-called when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice

-he had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been

-done simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger

-had lost heavily.

-

-Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a

-card was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs;

-his mind, so to speak, was all thumbs.

-

-Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.

-

-He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity

-delicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous

-quality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath

-the large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He

-was hard to place. He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage.

-He was somewhat of a promoter--of restless activity. He was in Bucking

-Horse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If

-he had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of the

-unrest that hung so evilly over the game.

-

-Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget

-Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of

-compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in

-mine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made

-on the "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird,

-for its stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not

-confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of

-a hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were

-querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught

-Carney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair

-of gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The

-gloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers

-who wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve the

-sensitiveness of their finger tips. He also had known gamblers who,

-ostensibly, had a reputable occupation.

-

-If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to

-eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult

-to allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed--too well dressed for

-unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the

-fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank

-somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was

-almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody

-and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.

-Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold

-mine up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him.

-That was what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with

-Tacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when they

-returned.

-

-Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy

-grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste

-boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals,

-Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth

-face, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he

-changed, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."

-

-It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for

-finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all;

-the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had

-laboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's

-the use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win

-little."

-

-Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them

-over the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there

-was no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of

-the cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple:

-seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross

-hatched and sprayed with leaves.

-

-Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves'

-wings were all alike--almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an

-artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth

-part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right

-wing of the second dove to the left.

-

-It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to

-memorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing.

-And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew

-the system. Who was it?

-

-Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for

-that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a

-super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable

-of this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.

-

-Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent

-conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser.

-The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had

-played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth

-would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney,

-for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck,

-or knew something.

-

-Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite

-that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting

-of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the

-West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to

-accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even

-cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped

-his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his

-cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one

-into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the

-discard, and said, "I'm out!"

-

-Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in

-his pocket.

-

-At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card was

-missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.

-

-A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.

-

-The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.

-

-"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"

-

-Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his

-pocket.

-

-From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves'

-wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had

-realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had

-answered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.

-

-This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long ride

-to-day."

-

-He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."

-

-He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up,

-yawning.

-

-"I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man.

-To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game--don't know what's the

-matter with me."

-

-"I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right

-now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn

-another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me.

-I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time

-there's been hell."

-

-The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly

-gave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to

-quit. The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."

-

-Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:

-

-"I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't

-like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now,

-or I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."

-

-Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from

-Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a

-game of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd

-better just put the game off till to-morrow night."

-

-"We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if

-he wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start

-fresh. Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."

-

-"I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle

-now; besides I want another sensation--this bottle's dry," Hadley

-advised.

-

-"I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as

-he rose.

-

-In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a

-bottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.

-

-Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the

-accounts.

-

-Hadley was twelve hundred loser.

-

-He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth,

-and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips,

-"Here, banker, put that back in your pocket--you're responsible. There's

-forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probably

-forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."

-

-Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."

-

-Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred

-dollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been

-pallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any

-game bigger than checkers."

-

-Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards--the blue-doved cards

-and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.

-

-Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently

-whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves.

-The red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and

-Carney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving

-himself from further interest.

-

-Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having

-found it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked,

-"Now, who's in?"

-

-"I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness;

-"then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred

-on the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot."

-Curiously this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but

-inflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:

-

-"You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you

-sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."

-

-"I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to

-cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."

-

-Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to

-his lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a

-little pile in front of him.

-

-Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other

-direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a

-most depressed mood; he admitted this.

-

-"There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I

-knew you felt it--that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on

-the night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some

-claims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess

-I've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when

-I hear the click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while,

-generally, it's not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm

-trying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind

-of close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may--hell! don't

-think me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."

-

-Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged

-into the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding

-with Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the

-dining-room to a seat at a little table.

-

-"Where's Seth?" she asked.

-

-"Over at the police shack."

-

-"Poker?"

-

-Carney nodded.

-

-"Mr. Hadley there?"

-

-Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"

-

-"I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre--if he

-has any--is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her

-dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you

-playing?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not

-for ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was

-over--why?"

-

-"Tired."

-

-Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth

-cheating?"

-

-"Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"

-

-"I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or

-three days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."

-

-"What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought

-Seth those cards?"

-

-"I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have

-played together once or twice."

-

-"They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell

-you absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess.

-There was a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This

-Shipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He

-and Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too

-gratuitous to be genuine."

-

-"You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win

-Hadley's money--he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"

-

-"I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got

-to give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in

-my pocket, and that will be enough."

-

-"But if he divides with Shipley?"

-

-"Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the

-conspiracy will be proven."

-

-"Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back,

-there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added,

-patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that

-stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him--the moral aspect, I mean;

-but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil

-in a man--petty larceny, sneak thieving--that pours sand into a woman's

-soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd be

-quite satisfied--quite."

-

-"You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven--and you are the other

-six, Jeanette."

-

-As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that

-had to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after

-he had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul

-full of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.

-

-Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or

-drink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death

-of someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if

-that man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had

-confidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of

-knowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed

-when they were forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains.

-That would be a matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of

-how he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked

-pack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like

-counting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.

-

-He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him

-sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with

-known remembrances of the noise.

-

-"Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"

-

-He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow

-had flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the

-police shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot

-and someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him

-to precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his

-waist.

-

-In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over

-the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced

-the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.

-

-"What's wrong, Jeanette--was it a shot?"

-

-"Yes! I've looked into Seth's room--he's not there!"

-

-Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there

-was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:

-"Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed

-a finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he

-tapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back

-to Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all

-right--they're still playing. I'll go over to the shack."

-

-"I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt

-so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened--I

-know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and

-manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a

-slab of bacon, _a la_ fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.

-

-As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window

-of the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they

-were not playing at the table.

-

-He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he

-knew was a dead man--Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor where

-he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood,

-just over the heart.

-

-There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table

-from where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The

-red-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered

-into a pack.

-

-Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing

-the interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress,

-unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.

-

-Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his

-outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges

-from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.

-

-Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been

-held close.

-

-Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning

-top, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged

-Seth's gun to make it appear suicide?

-

-Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder

-governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the

-coat where Seth had put the discarded pack--it was gone. He felt the

-other pocket--the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table

-and all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket

-of the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money--there

-was no wallet.

-

-At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his

-eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a

-stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.

-

-The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the

-night in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin

-light, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face

-to appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or

-imbecile-tinged by horror.

-

-"My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I--I----"

-

-"Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.

-

-In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing

-to the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back

-into his belt.

-

-"What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with

-intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.

-

-"Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the

-question.

-

-Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his

-wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared

-figure on the floor.

-

-"I went for a walk," he answered.

-

-"Why--when?" Carney snapped imperiously.

-

-"I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to

-Cranford's house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."

-

-"Why to Cranford's house?"

-

-Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp

-cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now

-fierce.

-

-"Well,"--Shipley coughed--"I didn't like the looks of the game to-night;

-that ace being shy---- Didn't you feel there was something not on the

-level?"

-

-"I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been

-in the gray eyes was in the voice now.

-

-"I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd

-lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."

-

-"What did Cranford say?"

-

-"I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I--I

-thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and----"

-

-Shipley hesitated.

-

-"Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"And you didn't see either of them again?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained

-shirt.

-

-Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten

-minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley--have

-you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"

-

-"Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up

-Hadley."

-

-As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the

-lock.

-

-When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar

-and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he

-gave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled

-in one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley--sound asleep, or

-pretending to be.

-

-When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet

-blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he

-mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep--where's Seth?"

-

-"What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness

-of his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.

-

-"I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy--had a

-little too much of it."

-

-"Where did you leave Seth--how long ago?"

-

-"Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy

-up for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning--throw out the empty

-bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I

-came on to go to bed and----" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his

-memory of his progress was still befogged--"when I got here I remembered

-that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to be

-sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."

-

-"Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"

-

-Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap

-the whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.

-

-"I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter

-between two men."

-

-Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with

-startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered--do you know that?"

-

-"What--what--what're you saying?"

-

-Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping

-fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.

-

-"Seth--murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners

-pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that;

-I'm a tenderfoot, but----"

-

-"Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has

-been shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want

-from you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong

-man--do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man

-with a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.

-

-"My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police

-shack, and I don't know anything more about him."

-

-There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through

-the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where

-he said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."

-

-"I know--I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he

-pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:

-

-"I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and

-I want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to

-hide anything--I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-He came back to the room with the girl and said:

-

-"I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes,

-gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room--it will be better."

-

-Then he was gone.

-

-In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the

-hotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make

-certain, through medical examination, that Seth was dead.

-

-Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.

-

-Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies

-in canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the

-apparent consistencies.

-

-Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be

-considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed

-with suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared

-of guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a

-claim as any of them to the title of assassin.

-

-In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.

-

-When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:

-

-"Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action.

-I'd advise you gentlemen to remain _in statu quo_, if I might use the

-term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll

-agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a

-large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and

-as each one of you will be more or less under suspicion--I'm speaking

-now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual,

-the law, will do--it would be as well for each of you to submit to a

-search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's

-expedient."

-

-To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley

-with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no

-trace of the wallet.

-

-Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they

-found.

-

-No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered

-in Shipley's hip pocket.

-

-The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown

-ominously--there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.

-

-"There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on

-Shipley's face.

-

-"Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty

-chamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't

-explode."

-

-With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an

-indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned

-for a long time, or a recent discharge.

-

-"I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.

-

-Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating,

-apologetic way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it

-out: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing

-over the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will

-certainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice

-to himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has

-not lately been discharged."

-

-Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this.

-But the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should--I

-clean forgot it."

-

-Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six

-lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost

-its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward

-the light, looked through the barrel.

-

-"As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice;

-"I'm glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the

-cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.

-

-Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night--we'll only

-obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the

-morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet,

-if I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our

-ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they

-heard the shot."

-

-"A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a

-drunken miner, or an Indian playing brave."

-

-It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out

-of the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the

-Scotchman's herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was

-being done.

-

-Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.

-

-The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he

-puffed vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the

-platoon of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.

-

-"I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and

-passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding,

-"Would you mind joining?"

-

-"I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law--a wee bit of it is very

-fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."

-

-The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid

-red handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:

-

-"Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and

-to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now, _ad interim_

-(the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you,

-Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil.

-And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette--perhaps it's

-just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog, has

-it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man that

-killed Seth?"

-

-Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could

-see that the latter was in deadly earnest.

-

-"Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's

-because I know you devilish well--you're too big for such small-brained

-acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the way of a

-brick mason--facts are the bricks that make the structure."

-

-"But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth,

-who was more or less a friend?"

-

-"All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over

-strained friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't

-you remember what that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when

-Jeanette's brother was near lynched?"

-

-Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:

-

-"You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"

-

-"Aye."

-

-Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.

-

-"The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks

-for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending

-over the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And

-I noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."

-

-Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he

-drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"

-

-"There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us

-to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while

-he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off

-by yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."

-

-"And that swine, Shipley--do you suppose he thought of that, too?"

-

-"I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see,

-Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and

-he took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed

-Seth, and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty

-shell; and if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you,

-knowing that the clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the

-examination as you had had the opportunity to put it right. I don't like

-the incident, nor the man's spirit, but it proves nothing for or against

-him. I expect he's clever enough to know that the last man seen with a

-murdered man is, _de facto_, the slayer."

-

-"As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was

-killed with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night--he always

-was a damn fool--and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing

-way, and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only

-heard one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said:

-"One doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's

-evil, but I fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot

-that wakened me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the

-police shack."

-

-"That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog--in the

-eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."

-

-Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the

-writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went

-up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had

-sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:

-

-"Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there

-was considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder

-was discovered--these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot

-Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper

-hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark

-corner till things had quieted down before going to his room."

-

-"Hadley isn't the kind to commit murder."

-

-"To-night he was another kind of man--he was pretty drunk; and the man

-that's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls--he has

-lost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough to

-make him a bit cautious."

-

-"But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he's

-got a devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like his

-face--' it's avariciously vicious--he's greedy. But the law can't hang

-a man for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist's

-point of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of the

-attached possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute,

-canny Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certain

-the Doctor suspected Shipley.

-

-"I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "for

-you're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man can

-do it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we can

-follow up before the trail gets cold?"

-

-"There is, Doctor. There was a pack of marked cards in Seth's pocket,

-and they're gone."

-

-"The man that has that pack is the murderer," Dr. Anderson declared

-emphatically.

-

-"He is."

-

-"And the wallet."

-

-"Yes."

-

-Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidently

-belonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibility

-that Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latter

-do all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising the

-bet when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.

-

-Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "Either

-Shipley or somebody was in collusion with Seth, you think?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"If we could get that man--?"

-

-"Look here, Doctor," and Carney put his hand on the other's knee,

-"whoever has got that money will not try to take it out over the

-railroad, for it was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."

-

-"I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; a

-search. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"

-

-"He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail to

-Montana or Idaho."

-

-"My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody may

-be headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley--I mean, anybody--he may

-have a colleague to take the money down over the border."

-

-"Yes, the money; he'll not try to handle it in Canada for fear of being

-trapped on the numbers."

-

-"So you might not get the murderer after all," Anderson said,

-meditatively; "just an accomplice who wouldn't squeal."

-

-"No; not with the money alone on him we wouldn't have just what I want,

-but when we get a man with the marked pack in his pocket that's the

-murderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like a

-man will cling to an old pocket-knife; they're the tools of his trade,

-so to speak. And here in the mountains he could not handily come by

-another pack, perhaps."

-

-"I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the marked

-cards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just have

-the money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."

-

-Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to the

-door at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, and

-lowering his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square of

-you. I'm clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of the

-law, but for a good woman's sake I've got to get the murderer."

-

-"It would be commendable, Carney, if you can."

-

-"Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope."

-

-"I comprehend," and Dr. Anderson nodded his head.

-

-"I've got a man--'Oregon' he's known as--down at Big Horn Crossing; he's

-there for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell 'Oregon' to

-search every man that rides the border trail going south."

-

-"I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog--I'll

-look it up with the town clerk."

-

-Carney laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle of honest amusement.

-

-Piqued, the Doctor said irritably, "You're thinking, Bulldog, that the

-little town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representing

-authority, eh?"

-

-"No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authority

-for everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first and

-explain afterwards; and when he gets the right man he'll bring him in.

-First, I'm going to make a cast around the police shack with a lantern.

-Even by its light I may pick up some information. I'll get Jeanette to

-stake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskin

-and be back in three days."

-

-"I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there might

-be some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."

-

-Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneeling

-down, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black earth

-around the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for he

-skirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to the

-ground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracks

-of a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some time

-there; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe prints

-almost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks as

-if somebody had dropped from the window.

-

-Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. He

-could shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from his

-pocket--it was really an old letter--and with his pocket-knife cut it

-to fit a footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the front

-door, and with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints,

-following them a piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood up

-and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown of

-reflection, ending by starting off at a fast pace that carried him to

-the edge of the little town.

-

-In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in his

-hand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were different

-boot tracks, and the one--the latest, he judged, for they topped the

-others--was toeing away from the shack.

-

-He straightened up and knocked on the door.

-

-There was no answer. He knocked again loudly; no answer. He shook the

-door by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet:

-there was no sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on it

-and called, "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shack

-convinced him that Cranford had gone--perhaps, as he had intimated, to

-Bald Rock.

-

-He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those heading

-away from the shack. The paper did not seem to fit--not quite; in fact,

-the other track was closer to the paper gauge.

-

-Back at the hotel he related to Dr. Anderson the result of his trailing.

-

-When he spoke of Cranford's absence from the shack, the Doctor

-involuntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I was

-thinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving from

-Cranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involves

-Cranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, on

-the quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments on

-a mine,--they're threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds or

-something."

-

-"You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-away

-game the better."

-

-"Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search for

-Cranford, and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Black

-comes--likely to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, of

-course, the verdict will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you've

-gone to hurry in Sergeant Black."

-

-When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette was

-waiting for him in the little front sitting room.

-

-With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible ending

-to it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in its

-absolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was no

-affection, no pretense of it. She was like a niece, or even a daughter,

-to Seth; their relationship had been practically on that basis.

-Her father had been a partner of Long in some of his enterprises,

-enterprises that had never been much of anything beyond final failure.

-When his partner had died Seth had assumed charge of the girl. It was

-perhaps the one redeeming feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.

-

-Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knew

-so well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.

-

-Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; the

-desirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of her

-evidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhat

-nebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nor

-did he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for two

-or three days and would be supposed to have gone after the Mounted

-Policeman.

-

-He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explained

-how much depended upon the discovery of its present possessor.

-

-Second Part

-

-It was within an hour of daybreak when Carney, astride his buckskin,

-slipped quietly out of Bucking Horse, and took the trail that skirted

-the tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but that

-didn't matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could go

-without sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, as

-the buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a brief

-half hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.

-

-When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were several

-tracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were called

-bronchos, the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But they

-were cold trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamer

-wings, stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dew

-sparkled on the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.

-

-It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of a

-pony that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earth

-where the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.

-

-Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he was

-on. It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot,

-and had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to the

-cross trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracks

-turned to the right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that the

-rider was not associated with the murder. With that start he would be

-heading for across the border; he would not make for a Canadian town

-where he would be in touch with the wires.

-

-Along the border trail there were no fresh tracks.

-

-It was toward evening when Carney passed through the Valley of the

-Grizzley's Bridge--past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot Johnson

-had been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been caught

-in the bear trap.

-

-The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; he

-clattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eager

-hasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lop

-ears weaving back and forth in apprehension.

-

-Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of

-the cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,

-camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding

-walls of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled

-along an obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer

-sense of perception.

-

-At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch of

-breakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one had

-passed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail while

-the horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretched

-between them: and there were no fresh tracks.

-

-At two o'clock he came to the little log shack just this side of the U.

-S. border where Oregon kept his solitary ward. Nobody had passed, Oregon

-advised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were to

-search any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the marked

-cards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.

-

-Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to his

-superior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, was

-opium running. That was his office, to drift across the line casually,

-back and forth, as a prospector, and keep posted as to customs officers;

-who they were, where the kind-hearted ones were, and where the fanatical

-ones were; for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally,

-five miles within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his way

-out, leaving twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of a

-tyrannical customs department.

-

-At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp the

-hand of his lieutenant.

-

-"I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down the

-valley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way of

-weather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit of

-lead that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as if

-somebody'd fresh plugged me."

-

-Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through which

-wandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a glorious

-oriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden light

-that hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of the

-hills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, and

-emerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where the

-gaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoon

-bushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloom

-preserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.

-

-And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry,

-was hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest that

-zigzagged and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the design

-of some giant cubist.

-

-Carney laughed and swung his gloved hand in a semicircle of derision.

-

-"It's purty," Oregon said, "it's purty, but I've seen a purty woman, all

-smilin' too, break out in a hell of a temper afore you could say

-'hands up.' My hip don't never make no mistakes, 'cause it ain't got no

-fancies. It's a-comin'. You ride like hell, Carney; it's a-comin'. Say,

-Bulldog, look at that," and Oregon's long, lean, not over-clean finger

-pointed to the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that the

-Old Man of the Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs of

-his--see the white of that eye? And he ain't takin' in no purty scenery,

-he's lookin' over his shoulder down off there," and Oregon stretched a

-long arm toward the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains of

-ice, the glaciers.

-

-"It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if they

-run on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to death

-once in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd been

-good always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out if

-you got caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snow

-hell'ry. The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twenty

-feet deep, and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself what

-gener'ly happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal by

-gettin' him into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nice

-little silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains.

-Good-bye, Bulldog, and ride like hell--the buckskin won't mind; let him

-run the show--he knows, the clever little cuss."

-

-Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in the

-heat of the squeeze they got in Oregon's bear-trap of a paw.

-

-The trail here was like a prairie road for the valley was flat, and the

-buckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at a

-sharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croaking

-bellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave him

-alone. Let him run things hisself!"

-

-Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the old

-man was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wide

-places of earth had tutored him to the varying moods of the elements;

-that his super-sense was akin to the subtle understanding of animals.

-So he rode late into the night, sometimes sleeping in the saddle, as

-the buckskin, with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down dale

-and along the brink of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. He

-camped beneath a giant pine whose fallen cones and needles had spread

-a luxurious mattress, and whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in the

-air, a perfume that was like a balm of life.

-

-Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot might

-slip by in the night.

-

-He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleep

-with a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. His

-eyes opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtered

-down into the gloomed valley from a paling sky. A day was being born;

-the night was dying.

-

-An appalling hush was in the air; the valley was as devoid of sound as

-though the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself had

-been sucked out from between the hills, leaving a void.

-

-The buckskin was up and picking at the tender shoots of a young birch.

-It had been a half-whinnying snort from the horse that had wakened

-Carney, for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop ears

-cocked as though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness,

-watched for something that was creeping stealthily over the mountains

-from the west.

-

-Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though it

-had been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon's

-croak came back:

-

-"He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"

-

-Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a corner

-of his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pot

-his tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickered

-and swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up in

-the giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. The

-gray of the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed again

-as though night had fled backwards before the thing that was in the

-mountains to the west.

-

-The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in a

-bitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neck

-of a stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he were

-famished, or ate to save them from a thief.

-

-In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head were

-playing a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze darted

-here and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far across

-the valley, from somewhere in the rocky caverns of the mighty hills,

-came the heavy moans of genii. It was hardly a noise, it was a great

-oppression, a manifestation of turmoil, of the turmoil of God's majesty,

-His creation in travail.

-

-Carney quaffed the scalding tea, and raced with the buckskin in the

-eating of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling blood

-told him that the temperature was going down, down, down. The day

-before he had ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; now

-a vagrant thought flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the Gold

-Nugget.

-

-He saddled the buckskin, and the horse, at the pinch of the cinch,

-turned from his oats that were only half eaten, and held up his head for

-the bit.

-

-Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and the

-buckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps.

-It wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needles

-stabbed at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filled

-with indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; it

-seemed to penetrate the horse's lungs, for he gave a snorting cough.

-

-And now the full orchestra of the hills was filling the valleys and the

-canyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of Squaw

-Mountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its many

-throats into unearthly dirge.

-

-Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that had

-thrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberating

-music seemed to carry as refrain the words of Oregon: "Ride like hell,

-Carney! Ride like hell!"

-

-And, as if the command were within the buckskin's knowing, he raced

-where the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over the

-stones and shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.

-

-In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that drove

-into the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when he

-murdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could make

-that he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter it

-too.

-

-In the thought of saving his life the buckskin occupied a dual place;

-that's what Oregon had said; he had no right to jeopardize the gallant

-little steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stout

-heart.

-

-He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though he

-spoke aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo and

-reverberation than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fret

-yourself tired, old sport; we'll make it--the cave."

-

-The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, had

-in his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.

-

-Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had taken

-visible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley the

-towering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozen

-ridges above his eyes; his breath floated away in little clouds of ice;

-the buckskin coat of the horse had turned to gray.

-

-Sometimes at the turn of a cliff was a false lull as if the storm had

-been stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen north

-swung again and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.

-

-And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objects

-were being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; it

-was more difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; a

-chill was suggesting indifference--why fight?

-

-The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was

-spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold;

-it was like a winding sheet.

-

-Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the

-merciless snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.

-

-To the man direction was lost--it was like being above the clouds; but

-the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting,

-making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter,

-meant death; the buckskin knew it; but he was tiring.

-

-Carney unslung his picket line, put the loop around his chest below his

-arms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, and

-slipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on the

-rump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went on

-again, the weight off his back being a relief.

-

-The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping over

-him in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest that

-preluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now the

-exertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.

-

-Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours away

-the cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. It

-scarce mattered; to draw forth his watch and look was a waste of energy,

-the vital energy that weighed against his death; an ounce of it wasted

-was folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.

-

-Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when he

-himself was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little hero

-that had fought his battles ever since they had been together. The

-buckskin's flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of a

-bellows; his withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean and

-small--scarce mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting sea

-of snow.

-

-But the cave must be near. Carney found himself repeating these words:

-"The cave is near, the cave is near, Patsy; on, boy--the cave is near."

-His mind dwelt on the wood that he had left in the cave when he took

-Jack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a bright

-fire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would make

-it. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always won

-out on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?

-

-He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling that

-it was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mental

-stamina. If he kept up his courage he would win out, as he always had.

-It was just Excelsior and Success, just----

-

-There was a swirl of oblivion; he had flown through space and collided

-with another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he was

-alone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds.

-There was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passing

-under an anesthetic--Nirvana.

-

-Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of the

-beyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking from

-a dream--it was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back to

-consciousness. He struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legs

-were; at the bottom of them were leaden-soled diver's boots. His

-brain, not more than half clearing at that, he realized that he and the

-buckskin had slid from a treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozen

-feet; the snow, unwittingly kind, catching them in a lap of feathery

-softness. But for the gallant horse he would have lain there, never to

-rise again of his own volition.

-

-They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were

-going forward. Oregon's command was working out--"Let the buckskin have

-his own way."

-

-If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone

-around in a circle--in fact, Carney once had done so--and the cold would

-have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more life-sapping; but

-here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it was like surf

-rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and horse.

-

-Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man

-battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged

-senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact

-that they still held on toward the cave.

-

-Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream--or was this the

-real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party--that they

-were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.

-

-Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a

-dream--he was waking.

-

-When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight

-played on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him

-something stamped on the stone floor.

-

-He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung

-head.

-

-"How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and

-coming to his side.

-

-Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And

-now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he

-was in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.

-

-He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.

-

-"Some horse, that, Stranger." The man's voice that had sounded thinly

-sinister had a humanized tone as he said this.

-

-Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried to

-answer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You're

-makin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Try

-this dope."

-

-He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; it

-was like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.

-

-"Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd a

-horse neigh--it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted out

-to sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd his

-bell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers--'twan't more'n 'bout

-ten yards at that--and there's that danged rat of yours, and he won't

-come in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow; he

-seemed to know that if he pulled too hard he'd break your danged neck.

-Then we got you in--that's all. Some horse!"

-

-This and the warmth and the tonic tea brought Carney up to date. He held

-out his hand.

-

-But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turned

-surlily to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't done

-nothin'; you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' you

-through. I went out after my own bronch."

-

-"But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had met

-many men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to an

-unknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside became

-like outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness--every man was

-an enemy till he proved himself.

-

-The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close together

-each side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look of

-distrust.

-

-"I ain't never knowed but one man was _all right_, and the Mounted

-Police hounded him till he give up."

-

-The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward the

-horse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Are

-you him, or are you a hawse thief?"

-

-"How do you know the horse?"

-

-"I got reason a-plenty to know him. He cleaned me out in Walla

-Walla when he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark that

-cold-decked us boys with this ringer."

-

-Now Bulldog knew why the aversion.

-

-"I'm Carney," he 'admitted; "but it was the gamblers put up the job; I

-just beat them out."

-

-"Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.

-

-"Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed that

-the other hung with peculiar intensity on his answer.

-

-"How long was you fightin' that blizzard?"

-

-"Since daylight--when I broke camp." Carney looked at his watch; it was

-three o'clock. "How long have I been here?"

-

-"A couple of hours. Was you runnin' booze or hop, Bulldog?"

-

-Carney started. Perhaps the cave man was conveying a covert threat,

-an intimation that he might inform on him. "Don't let's talk shop," he

-answered.

-

-"I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an

-ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills

-trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the

-mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her

-out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to

-see me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."

-

-The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing

-thought--_food!_ He, himself, had about one day's supply--had he it? He

-turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been tossed

-by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon and

-bannock were gone!

-

-Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"

-

-"All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's

-cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon,

-about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom

-a round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to

-Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his

-blankets.

-

-A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of

-habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been--the pigskin

-pocket was empty.

-

-The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip.

-"Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was

-gone."

-

-Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun.

-He ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit--when the time came

-he would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the

-other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin

-in his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This

-fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his

-bacon and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have

-worked out and the oats remain.

-

-He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear

-outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the

-swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate

-to their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at

-least fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which

-the trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he

-had no food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week

-with two men eating it.

-

-He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a

-fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind

-might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the

-snow with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.

-

-Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged--he was hungry

-only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.

-

-He lay down, and had slept two hours when he was wakened by the sweet

-perfume of frying pork.

-

-Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. He

-watched the cook turn it over and over with the point of his hunting

-knife, cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vital

-fat. When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point of

-his knife and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparing

-that well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.

-

-Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just beside

-the fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray of

-his opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney's

-mind before he fell asleep.

-

-"I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'm

-goin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anyways

-you was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up to

-me to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be a

-damn fool to do it--I'd be just playin' agin myself."

-

-Then he spat in the fire and held the pan over its blaze to warm the

-slimy mixture.

-

-Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case for

-himself continued: "We may be bottled up here for a week, or a month.

-Two men ain't got no chanct on that grub-pile, no chanct."

-

-"Why don't you eat it then?" and Carney sat up. "I could, 'cause it's

-mine; but I got a proposition to make--you can take it or leave it."

-

-"Spit it out."

-

-"It's just this"--the fox eyes shifted uneasily to the little buckskin,

-and then back to Carney's face--"I'll share this grub if, when it's

-gone, you cut in with the bronch."

-

-Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; his

-features were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush.

-The proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had asked

-him to slit the throat of a brother for a cannibalistic orgy.

-

-"It's only ord'nary hawse sense," Dave added when Carney did not speak;

-"kept in the snow that meat'd last us a month. Feelin's don't count when

-a man's playin' fer his life, and that's what we're doin'."

-

-"I don't dispute the sense of your proposition, my kind friend," Carney

-said in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll think

-it over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, of

-course, if I don't get out he'd starve to death anyway."

-

-"Take your time," and the owner of the pan pulled it between his legs,

-ate the slice of bacon, and with a tin spoon lapped up the glutinous

-mess.

-

-Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger that

-were now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other man

-had a gun, and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store of

-provisions were gone--perhaps before that. And Carney was determined

-to make the discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on the

-dictator, the lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing the

-little buckskin that had saved his life--bah! the very idea of it made

-his fingers twitch for a grasp of the other's windpipe.

-

-For a long time Carney sat moodily turning over in his mind something;

-and the other man, having lighted his pipe, sat back against the wall of

-the cave smoking.

-

-At last Carney spoke. "There's a way out of this."

-

-"Yes, if a chinook blows up Kettlebelly Valley--there ain't no other

-way. The manna days is all gone by."

-

-"There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the Lost

-Ledge Mine."

-

-"She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a few

-stringers of gold--they soon petered out."

-

-"When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot of

-heavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools,

-and, what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes back

-there. I could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and make

-Bucking Horse in three or four days. He wore them down in the Cour

-d'Alene."

-

-"If you had the grub," Dave snapped; "where're you goin' to get that?"

-

-"Half of what you've got would keep me up that long on short rations."

-

-"And what about me--where do I come in on givin' you half my grub?"

-

-"The other half would keep you alive till I could bring a rescue party

-on snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering this

-proposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind to

-do a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you--your bronch agin half

-my chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronch

-is mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till a

-chinook blows up."

-

-From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, and

-slid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.

-

-Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cards

-winged _seven blue doves_. It was the pack that had been stolen from

-Seth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murderer

-of Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the same

-slight variation of the wings. In a second Carney had mastered himself.

-

-"I guess it's fair," he said hesitatingly; "let me think it over--I'm

-fond of that little cuss, but I guess a man's life comes first."

-

-He sat looking into the fire thinking, and if Dave had been a mind

-reader the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter was

-thinking, "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in my

-pocket."

-

-Then he spoke, shifting closer to the blanket on which the other sat:

-

-"I'll cut!"

-

-"Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.

-

-Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he

-turned it up--it was the ace of diamonds.

-

-"Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of

-spades, adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."

-

-"Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.

-

-Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the

-blanket in a tenuous stream.

-

-Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of

-them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a

-gambler's eagerness.

-

-Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his

-knees and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a

-little to the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the

-pack. If he turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the

-minute he turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been

-double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's

-face; perhaps--once a killer always a killer--he would not hesitate but

-would kill.

-

-So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace,

-while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.

-

-"Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you----"

-

-Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split

-second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.

-

-"Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.

-

-Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left

-hand, but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from

-the shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked

-from its pigskin pocket by Carney.

-

-Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick,

-or I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"

-

-Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."

-

-"You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."

-

-Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.

-

-Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he

-should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding

-had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a

-foreboding look.

-

-Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:

-

-"You're Tacoma Jack--you're the man that staked Seth Long to this marked

-pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to

-Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."

-

-He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when

-you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went

-with you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he

-had taken the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth.

-When the game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the

-window, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money

-was too much, and you plugged him."

-

-"It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about

-it."

-

-"You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and

-Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough

-not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see

-you, but jumped from the back window."

-

-Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks

-in the mud.

-

-"I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He

-held it up.

-

-"It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own

-hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"

-

-Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea

-type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity

-even with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying

-twenty feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in

-fact with him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been

-a Mounted Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that

-he give up his life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private

-individual, trying to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high

-regard for--Jeanette Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man.

-Bringing in the stolen money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might

-be said that he, himself, had taken these two things and returned them.

-

-Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves

-had combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had

-been killed--it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.

-

-Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:

-

-"They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his

-cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie--Seth's as dead's a

-herrin'!"

-

-"How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.

-

-The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said

-so yourself."

-

-"Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make

-your get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you,

-Tacoma Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."

-

-The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was

-driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking

-Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do

-to carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could

-make half a mile of that trail.

-

-Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma,

-when you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I

-didn't value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a

-damn whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab

-of bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little

-flour I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most

-with snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a

-dogtrain and a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance;

-it's like filling a bob-tailed flush--but I'm going to let you draw.

-If the chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back

-you'll get away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got

-to clear a good woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the

-cards with a forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession

-here in my noteboook that you killed Seth Long."

-

-"I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap--I didn't kill him!" %

-

-"As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I

-take the money, your gun, your boots, and _all the grub_."

-

-As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank

-lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.

-

-"Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and

-you bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make

-a cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the

-chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence.

-Carney broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide

-quick, for I'm going to hobble you."

-

-Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If

-Carney took the food--and he would--he had no chance. The alternative

-was his only hope.

-

-"I'll sign--I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just

-how it happened."

-

-"You write it yourself--I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I

-forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."

-

-He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.

-

-When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye

-on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma

-Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had

-pulled his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and

-in the struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.

-

-Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may

-be true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If

-you're laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog

-Carney, forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make

-me plug you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll

-turn you loose."

-

-Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and

-Tacoma, placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney

-proceeded to cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon.

-Then he rubbed down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the

-horse, gave him a feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite

-side of the fire from Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for

-the minute you start anything you lose your bet on the chinook."

-

-In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in

-through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had

-all but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had

-huddled to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft

-and balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.

-

-Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy

-snow and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath

-the weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses

-of snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing

-sun. Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet,

-gnarled faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged

-with snow-water.

-

-A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against

-a cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of

-the white mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a

-cow-bell. It was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell

-that Carney had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the

-little buckskin.

-

-Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping

-out from above his blanket--they were like rat eyes.

-

-"You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."

-

-Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his

-heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to

-Bucking Horse.

-

-"The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the

-chinook, don't I?"

-

-"You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his

-word."

-

-"Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled

-into Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my

-hand dif'rent--p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that

-when I drug you in out of the blizzard."

-

-Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was

-just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite

-from an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog--I'd be kind

-of lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."

-

-"If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is

-waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket

-that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck

-you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting

-you."

-

-

-

-

-VI.--EVIL SPIRITS

-

-|The Rockies, their towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid

-with blue and green, the glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion

-Range, and the Vermillion looked down upon the sienna prairie in which

-was Fort Calbert, as Marathon might have looked down upon the sea.

-

-In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality

-of Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the

-surrounding boxlike structures of the town.

-

-In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon

-which was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was

-an occasion.

-

-Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was

-that a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the

-importation of five gallons.

-

-Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table

-possible.

-

-Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in

-some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested

-attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;

-they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an

-eagle.

-

-Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot

-transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was

-always that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste

-shell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West

-as a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."

-

-A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end

-of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty

-idea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."

-

-"The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is

-supposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has

-remitted," Harden explained to Carney.

-

-"Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.

-

-His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from

-the roadway; it was a weird drool--the droning, hoarse note of a tug's

-whistle.

-

-Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'!

-Oh, heavens! it makes me homesick."

-

-Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy

-little Thames tug.

-

-Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.

-Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun

-lay like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of

-one that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A

-dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River

-cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken

-bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.

-

-The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust

-and sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature--an armadillo. He

-turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look,

-upon the six.

-

-"It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert

-declared solemnly.

-

-"Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O

-Gabriel--there's vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our

-hearts and we'll set you happy."

-

-The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent

-proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat

-blast. He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.

-

-But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight

-figure and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of

-buckskin and leather chapps, turned back into the bar.

-

-"Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the

-unresisting guest to a chair.

-

-The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a

-keg; the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He

-shoved out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava

-that darkened their pale contours.

-

-Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the

-prodigal was the fated calf--it was full.

-

-The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window,

-threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.

-

-"Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the

-stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest

-floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it

-wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."

-

-FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened,

-started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at

-dinner.

-

-The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and

-sat down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as

-he asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"

-

-The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is

-outside: we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."

-

-"By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess;

-and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes

-that were thought hard, had gone blue.

-

-"Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us

-twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."

-

-At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics

-showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their

-shoulders.

-

-"Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where

-the regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join

-up."

-

-The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for

-this I'll have to run you all in."

-

-Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added:

-"Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."

-

-"Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert

-bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."

-

-"Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.

-

-When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to

-have troubled you."

-

-As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast

-of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.

-

-"Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret

-standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."

-

-"Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor

-law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to

-be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against

-the police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when

-they're putting down crime."

-

-"The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed

-man who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant

-in the force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence.

-Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."

-

-The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent

-restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of

-this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."

-

-"Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed

-eagerly.

-

-Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.

-

-"You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he

-will have the handling of it, I fancy--a carload."

-

-FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if

-playing poker.

-

-"Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.

-

-"I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a

-jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."

-

-"Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything

-of that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck

-with the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two

-weeks. The police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."

-

-The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped

-it gently on the table.

-

-"You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.

-

-"I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I

-have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was

-a rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer

-crop--a splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan,

-standing. Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."

-

-"The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the

-little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his

-glass.

-

-"By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen--about the whisky: While I was waiting

-for an audience with the Polica _Ogema_ I heard, through an open door,

-a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general statement was

-that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for delivery at

-Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car here."

-

-"Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.

-

-"I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I

-suppose----"

-

-The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of

-merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why

-FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a

-joy!"

-

-The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the

-little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm _very_ glad to have met you,

-sir." Then he was gone.

-

-"I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name--you didn't

-introduce me?"

-

-"That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.

-

-"Oh, I say!" the other gasped.

-

-"Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert

-answered.

-

-The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then

-he related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from

-An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three

-counties--Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."

-

-In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.

-

-From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent

-a telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of

-message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening

-he had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.

-

-Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway

-station for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform

-from morning till night.

-

-On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the

-prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras

-was numbered 6100.

-

-Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major

-had received was reliable, evidently.

-

-The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through

-freight--not for Fort Calbert.

-

-Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry

-smile hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the

-amiable Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.

-

-"Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the

-discussion.

-

-It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty

-force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:

-the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued

-an order.

-

-Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused

-to do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters,

-from his superior officer.

-

-Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for

-long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.

-

-"How do you know?" the station agent retorted.

-

-"Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.

-

-Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he

-jumped:

-

-"I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;

-"Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario--they have

-use for it down that way."

-

-"It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you

-something on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if

-I get the evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though

-I never set eyes on you."

-

-Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a

-get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet

-of ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A

-carload of whisky is simply preposterous."

-

-This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought.

-He could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not

-break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take

-it on himself.

-

-"Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to

-come down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how

-to act. We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I

-don't want to get you into trouble."

-

-A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he

-admired brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also

-well known. He turned to the station master saying:

-

-"I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the

-proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."

-

-Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train

-was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."

-

-Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and

-would back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also

-expected of a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they

-didn't encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.

-

-"Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the

-conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got

-somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job

-as brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."

-

-Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the

-Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the

-seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."

-

-So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile

-crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the

-caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.

-

-An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually

-the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty

-souls, for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload

-of whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed,

-of course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an

-attraction like a funeral.

-

-EVIL SPIRITS

-

-At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a

-written order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a

-heavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.

-

-The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a

-defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a

-game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and

-in his speech there was the savor of London fog.

-

-"What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he

-addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do

-so now!"

-

-"You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.

-

-"My word! we're always doing that, always--that's what we're here for,

-to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."

-

-There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened

-on Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major,

-a procession headed for the car of interest.

-

-The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,

-the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak

-barrels.

-

-The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of

-astonishment over this exhibit.

-

-At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,

-turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take

-this stuff to the fort."

-

-The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing

-this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too

-greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."

-

-"Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"

-the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at

-Carney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men

-bring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be

-destroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."

-

-One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on

-end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge.

-At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup

-fluttered up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.

-

-"Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,

-Major."

-

-A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the

-turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped

-their dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of

-appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat

-man! Him damn good; break him more!"

-

-"Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.

-

-This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled

-waters--literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.

-

-The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste

-these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.

-

-The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in

-his objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've

-roped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights

-answering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will

-want to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods.

-The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why I

-side-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take

-responsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't none

-too well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."

-

-"And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have

-to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.

-

-Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels

-of sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas,

-beans--in fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered

-grocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.

-

-The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been

-wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.

-

-He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert

-were several small places on the line where there were neither police

-nor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the

-station master, saying:

-

-"Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky

-cut off? I believe it's on that train."

-

-"How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside

-my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,

-and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try

-to cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages

-back in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the

-Superintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole

-thing to your Commissioner at Regina."

-

-Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the

-broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H.

-B. Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of

-something for nothing.

-

-The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.

-

-Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,

-as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;

-Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on

-you yet, old top."

-

-"Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."

-

-The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair.

-He would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was

-handicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of

-contention everybody's hand would be against the force--the very train

-men, if they could get away with it.

-

-Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained

-groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through

-with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was

-sent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars--one of goods and one of

-whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John

-Ross was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper

-in the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither

-car would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,

-either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not

-matter.

-

-Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were

-going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot

-through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the

-suspected car.

-

-Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a

-consultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen

-from the position of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game;

-besides, which was almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.

-

-"Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool

-kind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to

-round him up, for we haven't got a thing on him--not a thing. He's so

-well liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin

-Hood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped

-your hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll

-be run into the plains--there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of

-it, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this

-law, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."

-

-The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major

-to send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of

-this consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."

-

-So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.

-

-Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was

-accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten

-dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot

-of whisky as it was being run the following night.

-

-The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the

-Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened

-breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the

-ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the

-trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert

-itself.

-

-This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still

-wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information

-to the Major.

-

-"We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will

-sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."

-

-When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,

-Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates,

-and, skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the

-southwest.

-

-At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of

-a little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses

-had been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern

-fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide

-was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the

-cut-bank to the stream.

-

-They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had

-hung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed

-ridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and

-a sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the

-belly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a

-penciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock.

-The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the

-night passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the

-solemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thought

-that they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man to

-whom odds meant little or nothing.

-

-As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted

-his body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad,

-man, you suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin',

-there might be killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if

-he is a whisky runner."

-

-Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,

-with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt;

-he just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray

-cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."

-

-"Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't

-wait for a better chance."

-

-"We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the

-slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and

-it was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,

-Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the

-Force."

-

-"Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank

-us to spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this

-outfit?"

-

-"Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort

-Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and

-not be there."

-

-But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's

-no sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."

-

-Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the

-sandy wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy,

-slipping, sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being

-shoved along the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull

-thump of an axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of

-muffled hoofs.

-

-The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over

-the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of

-Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:

-

-"Halt! hands up--you are covered! If you move we fire!"

-

-At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of

-light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank

-the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable

-figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther--that was all.

-That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,

-Reggie.

-

-It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,

-the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.

-

-Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane

-exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."

-

-But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep

-out of the light; it may be a blind."

-

-Soon McBane's voice was heard from the cut-bank: "All clear, Sergeant."

-

-Then Sergeant Jerry, stepping into the open, examined the exhibit.

-Instead of carrying concealed weapons Reggie had a fair load of

-concealed spirits; he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought some

-nebulous answers about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and that

-he was bringing in the goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature was

-sorely taxed.

-

-"I'm gettin' fed up on these damned tricks of Bulldog's," he growled,

-"for that's what it is."

-

-"I'm not sure," McBane objected; "this ninny may ha' blabbed, and yon

-breed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."

-

-However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached and

-escorted in to barracks.

-

-Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain had

-imbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortune

-of the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; or

-he may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.

-

-In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usual

-sacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presence

-of the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in a

-gurgling libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Then

-the empty tins were tossed disdainfully into the coulee.

-

-Back in the Fort Major Kane said: "This was all a blind, Sergeant Platt;

-none of the stuff will come down this way--they'll run it up among the

-miners and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of the

-patrol up about the Pass."

-

-In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; and

-by the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. that

-the few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk--half were in the

-guard room.

-

-The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBane

-didn't know.

-

-In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the scene

-of the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed.

-He had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturated

-earth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick as

-if spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick went

-through, suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sand

-flying. A foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neat

-crosshatching of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that was

-supported by a tub; a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odor

-that struck the Superintendent's nostrils was not suds--it was whisky.

-

-He yanked the tub out of the cavity and kicked it into the coulee. Then

-he stood up and mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils!

-the cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's put

-them up to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just a

-blind, the tip from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's a

-game to put my men on the blink while he runs that carload."

-

-Rage swirled in the Major's heart as he turned toward the Fort; but

-before he had reached the gates his sense--and the little man had

-lots of it--laid embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to his

-quarters to sit on the verandah and curse softly to himself.

-

-He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mounted

-from the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not come

-into the Territories to be pitted against the social desires of the

-white inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but here

-this very thing took up more than half their time and energy. And it

-was a losing game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pitted

-against every one of his force.

-

-There were rumors that it was soon to be changed--the trade

-legitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With a

-small army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision against

-them, it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from the

-half-breeds who were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.

-

-To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after day

-across the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain,

-was an exhilarating game--it was something to stimulate the _espirit de

-corps;_ a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, full

-reward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like an

-ordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle of

-whisky, only to have him up before the magistrate for a small fine was,

-to say the least, disquieting; it made his men half ashamed of their

-mission.

-

-Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carney

-himself--big; and the Major would have given, right there, a half-year's

-pay to have bagged Bulldog, and so, perhaps have broken up the ring.

-

-But determined as the force was, the British law was greater still.

-Without absolute, convicting evidence Carney would have been acquitted,

-and the Major perhaps censured for making a mistake.

-

-At headquarters was a fixed edict: "Take no position from which you will

-have to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."

-

-As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart at

-the quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, loved

-his duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under the

-strain of service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streak

-showed--then he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, you

-hound!" he would snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got to

-be kept clean."

-

-Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annual

-report that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller at

-Ottawa."

-

-Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guard

-house--it was "The Stirrup Cup."

-

-"God, _England!_" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing," he

-muttered.

-

-How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly human

-those who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, a

-constable at sixty cents a day! They were all like that--not of noble

-family, but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles of

-restraint all over the world. That was largely why they were in the

-Mounted; certainly not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how,

-even in his bitterness of set-awry-authority, could the incident of the

-tub be a heinous crime on their part.

-

-"By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the

-verandah, crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them

-and shoot Carney--damn him! he's at the bottom of it."

-

-The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down

-behind the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and

-the blond giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort

-Calbert for a breather over the prairie.

-

-As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling

-"pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust

-to the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that

-seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.

-

-"A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in

-the town--he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."

-

-The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the

-familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider

-yanked his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the

-saddle in exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and

-the flanks of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.

-

-"Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.

-

-FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical

-shatterment that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel

-to his bay's flank and moved slowly along the trail.

-

-Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his

-message.

-

-"All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the

-Victoria, feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."

-

-"What'll I do, boss, when I wake up--how long'll I sleep?"

-

-"As long as you like--a week if you want."

-

-"What'll I do then--don't you need me?"

-

-"No, play with your toes if you like."

-

-Lathy George pulled his reeling cayuse together, and pushed on. Carney

-gave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got to

-go back to town," Carney said.

-

-"I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessness

-is like a painted sky above a painted ocean--it gives me the lonely

-willies."

-

-"There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over his

-shoulder.

-

-"It's always back there, or over yonder--never here when there's any

-hell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one long

-plaintive sabbath."

-

-"I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carney

-continued.

-

-"Me, too--if there's action there."

-

-"Hardly, my dear boy; it's purely a matter of diplomacy."

-

-"Absolutely, Bulldog; that's why you're going. You're going to kiss

-somebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a good

-cigar for you'--you love it. What's happened?"

-

-"The Stonies are on the war-path."

-

-"Ugly devils--part Sioux. They're hunters--blood letters--first cousins

-to the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for the

-Wood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came into

-their hands."

-

-"Yes, they're peppery devils. In the Frog Lake massacre one of them,

-Itcka, killed a white man or two and was hanged for it."

-

-"What started them now?" FitzHerbert asked. "Whisky."

-

-FitzHerbert stole a glance at Carney's stolid face; then he whistled;

-Carney's word had been like a gasp of confession, for, undoubtedly, the

-liquor was from the car.

-

-"How did they make the haul?" he asked.

-

-"The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a new

-regulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fall

-hunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under Chief

-Standing Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his mates

-in the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up to

-the lumber camps."

-

-"Great! that combination--lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would be

-as if sheol had opened a chute--there'll be murder."

-

-"I know Standing Bear; he made me a blood brother of his. I did him a

-bit of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and the

-old fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for the

-Stoney had peppered a couple of silly bullets into the brute's shoulder.

-I happened to get in a lucky shot and stopped the silver-tip when he was

-about to shampoo old Standing Bear."

-

-"Yes, I heard about that--you and your little buckskin. Say, Bulldog,

-that little devil must have the pluck of a lion--they say he carried you

-right up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"

-

-"That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are

-good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the

-reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know

-what the Sergeant is, Fitz--he'll stack up against that tribe alone;

-if they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the

-lumberjacks--their squaws will be along, and you know what that

-means--Jerry stands a mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it

-will be sort of my fault."

-

-"It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and

-we'll play rugby with those devilish _nichies_ if they don't act like

-gentlemen."

-

-Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all

-about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz--not

-a chance. It would be a fight--your hot heads would start it--and after

-the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the red

-spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets. These

-Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains; first

-thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."

-

-EVIL SPIRITS

-

-"How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just

-because you feel that it's your fault?"

-

-"No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt

-we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind

-they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know

-the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them;

-but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile--some of them will

-feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got

-sense and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole

-tribe was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect--do you see, Fitz?"

-

-They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea:

-"Let me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my

-eyes, and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the

-west wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them

-back again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied;

-my insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."

-

-"Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me.

-While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed

-Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell

-would break loose."

-

-"You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got

-the cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've

-seen you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not

-lose caste over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old

-boy! I rather fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this

-will be good-bye."

-

-It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy

-gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,

-threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a

-long graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow

-chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping

-over Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned

-prairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity

-the turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze

-over the plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere

-so peaceful that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a

-phantasmagoria. There was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the

-sleepy air, and off to the south glinted against the horizon the peeping

-red eyes of a prairie fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a

-shore-held city.

-

-The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie

-uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his

-instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy

-suffling pace of a cayuse.

-

-Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle

-night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind

-slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean

-to the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.

-

-Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for

-his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his

-wits against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better

-than remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by

-action, by strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds;

-but the thing ahead--drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust

-back into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of

-the ashes of regret.

-

-Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden

-this suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the

-danger, the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game

-with Fate that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit

-himself against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of

-the Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and

-inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all

-depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken;

-he must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain

-there with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the

-Ferryman at the crossing of the Styx.

-

-He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental

-traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf

-fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound

-that was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.

-

-The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the

-saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over

-his head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a

-little gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five

-paces to one side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold

-converse with the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of

-a hold-up; sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.

-

-As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated

-into staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and

-Carney muttered: "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding

-hell-bent-for-leather."

-

-Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he

-topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse

-saw the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for

-a crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his

-rider, in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to

-his feet a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of

-steel was touching his cheek.

-

-"By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."

-

-Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy--just a

-precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"

-

-"I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney

-nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row;

-dey s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."

-

-"Where?"

-

-"Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."

-

-"Where's the Sergeant?"

-

-"I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by

-_le bon Dieu_ dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees

-reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."

-

-"All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the

-Superintendent that Bulldog Carney----"

-

-"Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the

-Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.

-

-"Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the

-fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."

-

-The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying,

-as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog,

-dat's me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."

-

-Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to

-the help of jerry Platt.

-

-Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after

-mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded

-brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching

-the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy

-ground swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky

-line, looking like the escarpments of a fort.

-

-The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley,

-at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on

-Yellowstone Creek.

-

-The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North

-Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep.

-It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.

-

-Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning

-"tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated

-at intervals by a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi,

-hi-yi, hi-yi!"

-

-Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the

-well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom--it was the gambling

-note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground

-in a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one

-of their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop,

-ceasing his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the

-heat of a fire.

-

-Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off,

-picketed the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he

-drifted into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth

-time of the yellow streak--I'll tackle them then."

-

-The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when

-Carney opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down

-the mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold

-climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted

-to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose,

-and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning--we'll eat

-afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo grass,

-I see from your tummy."

-

-The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two

-or three gunshots came down the valley.

-

-As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was

-nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt--that

-part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on

-and play his hand alone against the Stonies.

-

-As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that

-was like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it

-skirted the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of

-pearl tints and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn

-rocks. From beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad

-slopes the haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding

-into a valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning

-tom-toms. As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the

-smoke-stained tepees of the Stonies.

-

-At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping,

-snarling dogs--the pack-dogs of the Indians.

-

-At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration;

-but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay

-police horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry

-Platt, all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.

-

-Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks

-swarmed in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of

-them, still groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of

-them raced for their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two

-or three had rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they

-saw the policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.

-

-Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant

-just as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short

-of the camp.

-

-Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left

-arm was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's

-face, that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn

-and haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many

-had said would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold,

-tired fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness,

-as he called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are

-you doing here--collecting?"

-

-"Came to give you a hand, Jerry."

-

-"A hand, Bulldog?"

-

-"That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"--he

-swept an arm toward the tepees--"and I've ridden all night to help bust

-this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."

-

-"Not much--just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks

-potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm

-pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if

-they're here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the

-reserve."

-

-"They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."

-

-"I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal

-McBane will get a promotion--he's next in line to Jerry Platt."

-

-"Good stuff, Jerry, I'll----"

-

-"Pss-s-ing!"

-

-Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining

-moan of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of

-white smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.

-

-"That's bluff," Jerry grunted.

-

-"We've got to move in, Jerry--if we hesitate, after that, they'll buzz

-like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him moving.

-I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I know

-Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But I'm

-in it to the finish, boy."

-

-"Thanks, Bulldog"--they were moving along at a steady walk of the horses

-toward the tepees--"but you know our way--you've got to stand a lot of

-dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll make me wish you

-hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known as having lost

-our heads. D'you get it?"

-

-"I'm on, Jerry."

-

-Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on

-its moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to

-represent a hugetoothed grizzly.

-

-But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The

-old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies--it was

-a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,

-vociferous creatures.

-

-A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some

-circus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen

-don't slip from a tepee."

-

-Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking

-Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken

-gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship,

-and the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.

-

-Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted

-much with the tribe.

-

-"Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.

-

-"Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant

-with a sweep of the eagle wing.

-

-"We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.

-

-"Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."

-

-"Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white

-men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White

-Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat

-soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat

-that Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."

-

-At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a

-clamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi,

-yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their

-ponies, driving them with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance.

-Half-a-dozen times the lean racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the

-two white men.

-

-Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible

-by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the

-buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.

-

-Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun

-back into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll

-cover that stain with your blood."

-

-The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in

-groups, either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the

-two white men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and

-gravel, and bits of turf.

-

-The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.

-

-"We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with

-solemn dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time

-of our hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when

-the payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know

-not."

-

-"They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the

-homes of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail

-is open, Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you

-remain."

-

-"Chief, we are blood brothers--was it not so spoken?"

-

-"Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."

-

-"And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift

-Standing Bear would hear the words of his brother."

-

-"Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."

-

-"Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good

-of Standing Bear and his Braves."

-

-"What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"

-

-"That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two

-_moneas_, the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the

-squaws to load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the

-reserve."

-

-Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in

-rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.

-

-A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.

-

-"My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief

-declared.

-

-"Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old

-outcast buffalo bull--and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"

-

-The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running

-Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.

-

-"If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat

-asks him to deliver the two evil _moneas _" Carney added.

-

-Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes

-swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the

-braves.

-

-In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation,

-saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the

-two men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out

-something I mean to do?"

-

-"Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes.

-If they start shooting, go to it--then we'll fight to the finish."

-

-The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to

-strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."

-

-Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat

-make?"

-

-Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his

-tepee as a sign to the others.

-

-"And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of

-the Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the

-Redcoat do?" the Chief asked haughtily.

-

-But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear,

-his blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White

-Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet

-followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the

-tumult, for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.

-

-"Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he

-said to Carney.

-

-One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat

-their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was

-tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And

-Jerry, as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient--

-but it _must_ be.

-

-"The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with

-his lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket,

-Jerry, and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his

-tepee. The authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't

-obey I'm going to pull his shack down. Does that go?"

-

-"It does, and the Lord be with us."

-

-Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice

-in solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.

-

-The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf

-that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.

-

-"Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."

-

-"Go back on the trail, Bulldog."

-

-Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from

-Carney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of

-a snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of

-the rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to

-earth like a pricked balloon.

-

-This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid

-shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians

-stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the

-knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take

-the awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with

-the great nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill

-a Redcoat on duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a

-tribesman, meant the dreaded punishment of hanging.

-

-The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.

-

-From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted

-white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up

-gazing about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the

-hand of the other was a vicious knife.

-

-Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his

-bay forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You

-are under arrest--hands up!"

-

-As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report

-was echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped

-to his side, his pistol clattering to earth.

-

-Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying,

-sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your

-companion."

-

-The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed

-Indians.

-

-One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn

-Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them

-on his mate's wrists and his own.

-

-Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of

-events.

-

-"Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they

-are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."

-

-The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see

-that the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.

-

-"If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he said

-magnanimously; "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribe

-will go from here up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to the

-reserve would bring hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies on

-the ground. Ask the Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may go

-quickly, and the evil be at an end."

-

-Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, he

-advised, for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid in

-a stock of meat for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distinct

-hardship.

-

-"You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'll

-stay with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from the

-lumberjacks."

-

-"They must destroy any whisky they have," Jerry declared.

-

-This the Chief agreed to do.

-

-In half an hour the tepees were all down, packed on the poled travois,

-blankets and bundles were strapped to the backs of the dogs, and in a

-struggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.

-

-Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenly

-over the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breed

-scout.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-***** This file should be named 45926.txt or 45926.zip *****

-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

-        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/9/2/45926/

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

-will be renamed.

-

-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,

-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project

-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you

-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do

-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is

-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

-redistribution.

-

-

-

-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

-

-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

-

-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at

-  www.gutenberg.org/license.

-

-

-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic works

-

-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all

-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

-

-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be

-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few

-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See

-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

-

-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the

-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an

-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

-

-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in

-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check

-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning

-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

-States.

-

-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

-

-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

-copied or distributed:

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the

-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

-1.E.9.

-

-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked

-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

-

-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

-

-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm License.

-

-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or

-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version

-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other

-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

-

-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

-

-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

-that

-

-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is

-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments

-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to

-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

-

-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-     License.  You must require such a user to return or

-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

-     of receipt of the work.

-

-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the

-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

-

-1.F.

-

-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

-your equipment.

-

-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

-DAMAGE.

-

-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you

-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with

-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy

-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

-opportunities to fix the problem.

-

-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER

-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

-

-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any

-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

-

-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

-

-

-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists

-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

-people in all walks of life.

-

-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's

-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

-Foundation

-

-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification

-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

-

-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809

-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email

-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the

-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

-

-For additional contact information:

-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby

-     Chief Executive and Director

-     gbnewby@pglaf.org

-

-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations

-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

-status with the IRS.

-

-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations

-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To

-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

-approach us with offers to donate.

-

-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

-

-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other

-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.

-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-

-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.

-

-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project

-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily

-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

-

-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

-

-     www.gutenberg.org

-

-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

-

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45926 ***
+
+BULLDOG CARNEY
+
+By W. A. Fraser
+
+1919
+
+BULLDOG CARNEY
+
+
+
+
+I.--BULLDOG CARNEY
+
+|I've thought it over many ways and I'm going to tell this story as
+it happened, for I believe the reader will feel he is getting a true
+picture of things as they were but will not be again. A little padding
+up of the love interest, a little spilling of blood, would, perhaps,
+make it stronger technically, but would it lessen his faith that the
+curious thing happened? It's beyond me to know--I write it as it was.
+
+To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He was rather a diffident
+chap, never merging harmoniously into the western atmosphere; what saved
+him from rude knocks was the fact that he was lean of speech. He stood
+on the board sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly
+across a trench of black mud that represented the main street. He hated
+the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still more did he dislike
+the turmoil that was within the hotel.
+
+A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had ridden his buckskin
+cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's furtrading men, topping
+off their spree in town before the long trip to Great Slave Lake, were
+enthusiastically, vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy
+the Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin whistle.
+
+When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his way into the bar, the
+whistle had almost clattered to the floor from the piper's hand; then he
+gasped, so low that no one heard him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There
+was apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if he
+had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the Piper.
+A quick furtive look darting over the faces of his companions told him
+that no one else had recognized the horseman.
+
+Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin whistle groaned, "My God!
+a land of bums!" Three days he had waited to pick up a man to replace
+a member of his gang down at Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill
+through intercepting a plug of cold lead.
+
+Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and clambered to the
+board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp the muck from their boots.
+One of the two, Cayuse Gray, spoke:
+
+"This feller'll pull his freight with you, boss, if terms is right; he's
+a hell of a worker."
+
+Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen cognizance of the
+"feller": a shudder twitched his shoulders. He had never seen a more
+wolfish face set atop a man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the
+thin, vulpine sneak visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes
+peered boldly up from under shaggy brows that almost met a mop of black
+hair, the forehead was so low. It was a hungry face, as if its owner
+had a standing account against the world. But Cameron wanted a strong
+worker, and his business instinct found strength and endurance in that
+heavy-shouldered frame, and strong, wide-set legs.
+
+"What's your name?" he asked.
+
+"Jack Wolf," the man answered.
+
+The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker had named the thought
+that was in his mind.
+
+Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his cheek, spat, and added,
+"Jack the Wolf is what he gets most oftenest."
+
+"From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf retorted angrily.
+
+At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band tramped around the
+corner into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a circle, cut loose with brass
+and tambourine. As the wail from the instruments went up the men in the
+bar, led by Billy the Piper, swarmed out.
+
+A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the Salvation hymn:--=
+
+```"There are flies on you, and there're flies on
+
+````me,
+
+```But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."=
+
+This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they
+shouted in delight.
+
+A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood
+aghast at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.
+
+The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de
+Army bums, Miss," he jeered.
+
+The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking
+through the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping
+his lithe figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers
+with a grip that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!"
+he snarled; "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth--God and
+a woman. Apologize, you hound!"
+
+Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'
+ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.
+There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.
+Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer
+bottle hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,--the man on the
+buckskin,--but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's shoulder
+blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud of
+Jasper Avenue.
+
+A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its
+instruments and stole away.
+
+A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the
+sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He
+slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as
+the thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met
+his own. "Get down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,--I want you!" he
+commanded in sharp clicking tones.
+
+Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the
+Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red
+spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into
+the black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the
+half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind
+the rider.
+
+With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but
+as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot
+was to kill the breed.
+
+Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,
+and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out
+and barking vainly after the escaping man.
+
+Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river
+flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging
+from the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling
+the bank.
+
+"Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said
+in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"
+
+The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the
+Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"
+
+Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner
+answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to
+travel with me get busy."
+
+The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in
+a dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the
+halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean
+parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.
+
+The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down
+stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the
+hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of
+the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across
+the muddy old Saskatchewan.
+
+On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a
+grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;
+there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."
+
+At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away
+into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time
+being.
+
+Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The
+Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried
+down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail
+with a new mount.
+
+The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and
+profanity.
+
+Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck
+band, was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work
+at Fort Victor.
+
+Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From
+said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever
+slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman
+was king of the booze runners.
+
+"Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a
+thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof
+and copped the dough."
+
+"Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and
+pot at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that
+cuss did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho;
+but it was enough--the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set
+the pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd
+been lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever
+stacked up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when
+he's out to play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is
+my advice to you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy
+face through it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to
+the bar and said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real
+man."
+
+He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the
+others had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with
+admiration:
+
+"Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper
+calls him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged
+Mister Khaki-jacket--we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his
+nut, and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys
+what happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog
+Carney!" Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd
+give that cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as
+I do now."
+
+The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:
+the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a
+school teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went,
+constituting a floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary
+citizens.
+
+Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood,
+and not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there
+were seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating
+passion of moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made
+up for it in insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the
+old Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and
+found a subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.
+
+When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the
+little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who
+wandered in mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual
+nourishment.
+
+On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to
+Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile
+oaths, their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments
+were spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of
+life. Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling
+perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.
+
+Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the
+religious fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was
+that strange contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to
+lean eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack
+the Wolf and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the
+great sun swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes
+the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack
+slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked
+Bible to him.
+
+At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow
+gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first
+died away.
+
+As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst
+for moral betterment--insatiable. The missionary in a chat with Cameron
+explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners, had
+never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but
+the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of
+salvation, Fort Victor--Glory to God! The poor fellow's very wickedness
+was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord's
+vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.
+
+It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always
+being saved all over the world--regenerated, metamorphosed, and who was
+Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.
+
+At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of
+Wolf, became a high-powered machine.
+
+The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and
+became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited
+until this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon
+with, perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack
+the Wolf declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he
+affirmed, and should be taught respect for God's agents in a
+proper muscular manner. So the first time three French half-breeds,
+enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log schoolhouse and declared
+school was out, sending the teacher home with tears of shame in her
+blue eyes, Jack reestablished the dignity of the church by generously
+walloping the three backsliders.
+
+It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most
+ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the
+lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all
+of Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she
+had known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her
+negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when
+the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others
+were practically ignored.
+
+For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker
+and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.
+
+Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the
+only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:
+
+"I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk
+purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze
+fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue
+devils away."
+
+"You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was
+prejudiced myself at first."
+
+Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft
+of tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents
+in it, and put it back on his head:
+
+"You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss--first guesses about a
+feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder
+skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or
+twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."
+
+Cameron laughed.
+
+"'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'
+like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness
+that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a
+tin of powder; he'll throw back."
+
+"There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher,"
+Cameron said meditatively.
+
+This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as
+houses. She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers,
+'tain't nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her
+religion, that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an'
+such while he makes a stake workin' here."
+
+Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.
+
+Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some
+prairie chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he
+passed the shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This
+was careless, for train dogs were always prowling about for just such
+a chance for loot. He stepped through the door and took a peep into the
+other room. There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.
+
+"What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered
+surlily.
+
+"Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."
+
+"I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that
+tough bunch--swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all day; a
+man can't keep decent in that outfit."
+
+"Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive
+Scotch.
+
+"You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no
+square deal; you've treated me like a breed."
+
+This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look
+that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,
+enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.
+
+"You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the
+work. The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands,
+especially the women folks. You're a scoundrel."
+
+Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his
+blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel
+gun that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the
+triggers.
+
+"Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded.
+"If I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no
+good on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I
+did the deed."
+
+The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on
+the table.
+
+"Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of
+you. I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort
+Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."
+
+Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started
+out.
+
+"Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.
+
+"I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his
+shoulder, stalking on.
+
+Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the
+Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,
+Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean
+nothin'."
+
+Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote
+a note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was
+humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad
+record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him
+and the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more
+serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might
+crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right
+to stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.
+
+Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all
+time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her
+bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward
+boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to
+let him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police
+barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police
+had always persecuted her Jack.
+
+Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the
+neutral blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a
+new runway. He had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost
+reconciled to the loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.
+
+Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take
+him back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of
+horses to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here
+is shy a horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express--it's
+good enough for you."
+
+So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his
+shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very
+debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.
+
+He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want--Jack Wolf.
+They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River, with
+a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to
+explain."
+
+"He's gone."
+
+"Gone! When?"
+
+"Yesterday."
+
+The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon
+Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he
+asked.
+
+"I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his
+saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.
+
+Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look
+in his face.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be
+interned when there's business on."
+
+"The little school teacher?"
+
+"The little fool!"
+
+"You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."
+
+"How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'--had put
+the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for
+him; spun me the most glimmering tale--she's got a dime novel skinned
+four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog
+Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat.
+They persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to
+God, and has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two
+of them are to live happy ever after."
+
+"Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.
+
+"That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched
+up against her chest for years."
+
+Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby
+seemed inadequate.
+
+"What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.
+
+"About three o'clock."
+
+"Afoot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot
+he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."
+
+"To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.
+
+"You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest
+skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail--no train for
+him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization
+for grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If
+you'll stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse
+I'll eat and pull out."
+
+In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll
+just not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much
+obliged. It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."
+
+Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,
+forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the
+south bank and disappeared.
+
+When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log
+shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The
+family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian
+bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some
+devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope
+hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.
+
+Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable
+horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort
+Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten
+trail that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on
+to Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was
+the old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to
+Winnipeg.
+
+The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where
+money was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was
+involved he could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The
+Winnipeg trail would be deserted--Jack knew that; a man could travel it
+the round of the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond
+he could leave it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and
+board a train at some small station. No notice would be taken of him,
+for trappers, prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative
+men, were always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent
+solitudes of the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.
+
+The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath
+would pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory
+of capturing his man single-handed. That was the _esprit de corps_ of
+these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, _par excellence_, large in
+conceit.
+
+A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his
+strong teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence
+in his ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted
+Policeman.
+
+He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,
+looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the
+old Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the
+railroad south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail
+running into Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was
+about ten miles east of that town.
+
+He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the
+Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,
+you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in,
+my brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."
+
+Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;
+where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever
+persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong
+prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding
+wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till
+he sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf
+went in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he
+asked how far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail--still
+toward Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the
+milk, but the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the
+one he had seen heading for Edmonton.
+
+For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice
+putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on
+the road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig
+coming from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it
+had passed. Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet
+in the black soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into
+a waggon here from behind. This accomplished he turned east across the
+prairie, reach-ing the old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned
+south.
+
+At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the
+smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod--toes in, and head
+hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints--hour after
+hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy
+springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.
+
+At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy
+gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick
+clump of saskatoon bushes.
+
+At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for
+his drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring
+beverage. On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.
+
+All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his
+veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper
+on his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning
+he would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about
+ten, and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east,
+or west, or south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to
+Edmonton; the police would spend two or three days searching all the
+shacks and Indian and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily
+outgoing train.
+
+There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him;
+but there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up
+against that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand
+the best he knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the
+train on some grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack
+where Montana Dick lived. Dick would know what was doing.
+
+Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg
+country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour;
+he was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into
+impassable country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west
+again. But for two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he
+realized now that he was covering miles which had to be made up when he
+swung west again.
+
+Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through
+which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring
+man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was
+being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it
+was simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie
+was closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a
+crouching wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was
+that he was tiring, perhaps.
+
+Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form--something _was_ on his
+trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian--gifted with the sixth
+sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a day's march
+away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to laugh it
+off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't down.
+
+The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the
+luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath
+trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad.
+His footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the
+heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles
+would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that
+his tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone.
+Being mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of
+darkness--would reach the railway and wire down the line.
+
+The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the
+ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back.
+On the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched
+to watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below
+them into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole
+mass of tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious
+background a horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the
+saddle, the docked tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the
+watcher that it was a policeman.
+
+When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the
+road where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the
+vast dome. Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant
+stopped, dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched
+the trail for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night,
+coming first over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of
+sombre hue. The trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be
+there, merged into the pattern till they were indiscernible.
+
+A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its
+sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,
+saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their
+nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose
+in circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill
+cranes flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks
+straight out behind, and soared away like kites.
+
+Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what
+the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would
+camp there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by
+the hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about
+three o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop
+along the southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise
+that Jack had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the
+southern end of the swamp and head for the railway.
+
+"I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can,
+if not--get him."
+
+He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;
+this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.
+
+The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,
+crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held
+between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs
+that might crack.
+
+If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to
+the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of
+the picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine,
+then the Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would
+throw up his hands.
+
+The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for
+then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his
+life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even
+if the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first
+shot meant not overmuch.
+
+So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears
+fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of
+discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in
+the pea vine and sweet-grass.
+
+Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug
+of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched
+with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.
+
+The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.
+
+The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the
+bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a
+narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen;
+not daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden
+somewhere and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the
+Wolf lay, just a gray mound against the gray turf.
+
+The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow
+lay down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He
+had not removed his pistol belt.
+
+The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to
+kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few
+feet and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering
+trick of a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when
+a man was cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain
+ahead of him, or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage
+was with him. Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down
+wind from them now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the
+wind shifted--no, he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary
+in the daylight, might give him his chance.
+
+Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the
+mosquito, had run his course.
+
+The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,
+slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the
+ducks would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from
+consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing
+him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but
+sprang to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again
+a great horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped
+silently and struck, thinking it a hare.
+
+Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the
+Wolf knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be
+thrown. He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse,
+his sides ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest,
+his muzzle on the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.
+
+Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his
+death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes
+sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a
+minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose
+tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed
+toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the
+lake for a drink.
+
+Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but
+the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It
+was a chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the
+hole when I play this hand."
+
+Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his
+horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something
+had to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short
+distance up a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding
+prairie. This seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered
+some dry poplar branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked
+stick he drove in the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.
+
+Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The
+Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the
+sleeves of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece
+of soap and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water
+to wash away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and
+heavy on his face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing
+and blowing water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was
+unheard.
+
+When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and
+turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police
+revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip
+to the buff--I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless
+you get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're
+told and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."
+
+Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.
+
+"Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf
+ordered. In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant
+Heath; then he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."
+
+In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of
+steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding,
+"Click these on."
+
+"I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat
+and your boots?"
+
+The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.
+I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you your choice of three ways:
+I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of
+these .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt
+on your back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare
+feet."
+
+"I don't walk on my pants."
+
+"That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into
+about four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."
+
+"I'll starve."
+
+"That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack
+Wolf would get a dinner--I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn
+police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook
+grub for two--bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."
+
+The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his
+wrists, and clad only in a shirt.
+
+When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket
+line and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the
+carbine strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.
+
+"I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three
+days; that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near
+steel, I ain't horse stealin', myself--I'm only borrowin'."
+
+When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly
+be pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning--a
+play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody
+that day. He said:
+
+"You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't
+you?"
+
+"We try to."
+
+"I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in
+a hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the
+honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'
+start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then
+you can get out in two days and be none the worse."
+
+"I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with
+a horse thief--with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."
+
+"You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf
+snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week
+askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,
+won't you?"
+
+"I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant
+objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect
+myself."
+
+The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want
+the death of a man on his hands--there was nothing in it. So he unlocked
+the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw
+them far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up
+by somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away
+harder."
+
+"Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.
+
+With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'
+mean unless it helps me out of a hole."
+
+Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles
+he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a
+horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.
+
+Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling
+hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie
+rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over
+higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;
+but there was no hurry.
+
+Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching
+a saddle on a buckskin horse.
+
+"Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin
+that I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with
+him."
+
+He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding
+screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen
+him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until
+Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands,
+for his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover
+and waited.
+
+Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked
+his ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of
+hoofs back on the tell-tale trail he had left.
+
+With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the
+startled animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in
+a shower.
+
+A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he
+recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half
+the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering
+like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.
+
+Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with
+a writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his
+spread mouth came a scream of terror--he knew.
+
+And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered--he had
+ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they
+were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low
+forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared
+from off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came
+back to him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two
+or three wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming
+quicksands.
+
+The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his
+feet up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head
+about he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's
+thin lips a smile hovered. He sneered:
+
+"You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at
+barracks?"
+
+Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,
+so he lied:
+
+"I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."
+
+Bulldog sneered. "Why should I--God doesn't love a sneaking police
+hound."
+
+The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now
+stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.
+
+"All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition--never mind, I'll
+save you first--there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty
+the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.
+"Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can
+get my cow-rope to you tie the two together."
+
+He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,
+seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking
+his cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on
+the tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous
+ooze. Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it
+at the first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back,
+looped the rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop
+over on your belly--look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing
+the Wolf to safe ground.
+
+The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his
+revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.
+
+A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was
+gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter
+commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take
+ten paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of
+cartridges.
+
+"Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his
+horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.
+
+He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built
+a little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.
+
+When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand
+close to the fire so your pants dry too--I want that suit."
+
+The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney
+about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two
+hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of
+that coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for
+a chance to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his
+captor.
+
+"Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the
+pocket."
+
+When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,
+took from it two packets--one of papers, and another wrapped in strong
+paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with the
+other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say, you're
+some liar--even for a government hound; your name's not Phillips, it's
+Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at Golden. You're
+the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather Bulldog Carney in;
+you shot off your mouth all along the line that you were going to take
+him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred you'd tie him hoof
+and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you first, see? Turn you
+over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds; that's just what I'm
+going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you for the sake of that
+little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm Bulldog Carney.
+Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it over; then
+you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the police as
+Bulldog Carney.
+
+"D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it,
+Mister Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never
+live it down if you live to be a thousand--you've boasted too much."
+
+The Wolf had remained silent--waiting. He had an advantage if his captor
+did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at Edmonton by
+Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.
+
+"You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell
+them who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know
+me; perhaps some of them'll know you."
+
+A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.
+"Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over
+on the rail"--and he jerked his thumb toward the west--"where there's
+two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen
+either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since
+you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is
+wanted at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that
+brings him in."
+
+At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light--a flood of it. If this
+thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,
+he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at
+Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been
+in their clutches and escaped.
+
+But Jack must bluff--appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:
+"They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."
+
+Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't
+you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little
+pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band,
+the Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the
+farm?"
+
+As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp
+"Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.
+
+The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five
+seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and
+dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.
+
+"Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman
+to be toting. Is this police money?"
+
+The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money
+but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not
+a policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner
+of the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman
+on duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed
+it all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.
+
+"Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two
+hundred is my own," he answered.
+
+"I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government
+robbed me of my ranch--said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;
+it's coming to you."
+
+"If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty
+trick, what you say'll make good--I'll have to quit the Force; an' I
+want to get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two
+hundred."
+
+"I think you're lying--a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred ahead,
+not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or two,"
+Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he spun
+it in the air.
+
+"Heads!" the Wolf cried.
+
+The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the
+bills to their owner.
+
+"I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,
+you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you
+missed him, didn't you? Where's he--what's he done lately? He played me
+a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I
+never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd
+give you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down
+grudge against. What's his description--what does he look like?"
+
+"He's a tall slim chap--looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger blood
+in him," the Wolf lied.
+
+"I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about
+cooked--peel!"
+
+The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.
+
+"Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,
+toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.
+
+In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M.
+P., revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and
+lighted his pipe.
+
+When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want
+you to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you
+over to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen
+to you if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath--they'd laugh
+at you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and
+you'd sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet--see? I'm going to stay
+close to you till you're on that train."
+
+Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as
+Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for
+Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him--the policeman would see
+to that.
+
+"You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he
+asked.
+
+"You bet I am--I'd rather work this racket than go to my own wedding."
+
+"Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll
+just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give
+myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I
+only got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog
+Carney I won't come out as Sergeant Heath--I'll disappear as Mister
+Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened
+Sergeant Heath from me--I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever
+stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure
+bluff--for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's
+ready compliance.
+
+Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like
+that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire--then
+we'll pull out."
+
+As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he
+found a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.
+
+When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower
+end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode
+along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being
+helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.
+Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than
+that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily
+come by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had
+Carney to steal his labor--to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile
+after mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession
+of Jack.
+
+If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way
+so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too.
+The khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.
+
+They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for
+another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's
+waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd
+be peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there
+won't be no argument."
+
+In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of
+water, and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten
+miles from steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney
+had both the police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the
+ground, looped the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and
+said.
+
+"I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll
+sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you
+so much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and
+sleep light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it
+same's we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."
+
+Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.
+It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than
+once he had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the
+psychology of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what
+he had been told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering
+chap who had had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He
+determined to take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie
+awake.
+
+"We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a
+shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."
+
+He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back,
+saying, as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your
+handcuffs--thought you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"
+
+"They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf
+lied.
+
+Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite
+precision. When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his
+precautions had made all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by
+jerky nerves; so in five minutes he slept.
+
+The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the
+something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to
+play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to
+carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good
+thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the
+pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed
+clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the
+buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would
+sleep--not lie awake through fear over nothing.
+
+In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried
+grass a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the
+steady rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath;
+had he been lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his
+breathing to listen.
+
+The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he
+had lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked
+his hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that
+bound his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he
+waited. The buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the
+flowered carpet from his nostrils.
+
+Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his
+nostrils again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was
+heard the clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney,
+recognizing what had waked him, turned over and slept again.
+
+Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed
+through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the
+grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely
+lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief
+that had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck,
+and in one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his
+wrist. Now he had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other
+man helpless.
+
+Then he commenced his crawl.
+
+A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern
+sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with
+ghostly garments bush and shrub.
+
+Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and
+the Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney
+knew the sensitive wariness of his horse,--the scent of the stranger in
+his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part
+of the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended
+to drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had
+trailed it back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This
+was more a move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could
+work his way, creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get
+away with the horse.
+
+At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears
+cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was
+the scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his
+mind, that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about;
+or, perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious
+man he distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his
+prairie dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept
+into camp. He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head
+irritably. A vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay
+across Carney's foot and he stirred restlessly.
+
+The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,
+cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that
+even the watchful animal scarce detected it.
+
+He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot,
+or the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or
+the other--the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by
+any chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart
+pounding against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten
+feet, and he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch
+it from the holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.
+
+The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive.
+Sometimes he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but
+only to throw his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head,
+and exhale a whistling breath.
+
+Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard
+and he could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had
+wakened--just the steady breathing of a sleeping man.
+
+The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly
+had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his
+feet.
+
+Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another
+yard, and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested
+like a sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward
+the pistol stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was
+twisted about the two first fingers of his right.
+
+Yes, Carney slept.
+
+As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was
+seized in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the
+butt of Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over
+the eye and he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were
+riveting a boiler in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was
+boring a hole in his forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had
+wakened in a strange land. He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at
+a man who sat beside a camp fire smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a
+copper kettle hung and a scent of broiling bacon came to his nostrils.
+The man beside the fire took the pipe from his mouth and said: "I hoped
+I had cracked your skull, you swine. Where did you pick up that thug
+trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As you are troubled with insomnia
+we'll hit the trail again."
+
+With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead
+of the buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a
+strange, weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping
+waters.
+
+The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was
+wobbly on his legs--his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's
+leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung
+to his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the
+shifting sands.
+
+"Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.
+
+They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees
+in the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he
+collapsed like a jointed doll--he toppled head first into the mire and
+lay there.
+
+The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a
+man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping
+the mud from his face, and looking very all in.
+
+Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're
+soft, my bucko--I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered;
+"boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way
+of hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."
+
+He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten
+feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his
+side and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind
+and one in front.
+
+Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some
+trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together
+and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I _will_ have a sleep."
+
+The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would
+have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the
+soft stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the
+valley of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass
+touched his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.
+
+He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he
+saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite
+and pull out."
+
+The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front
+of the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of
+escape were good.
+
+At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against
+a sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to
+the left, in an hour they were close to the Post.
+
+Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up
+in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it
+was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his
+horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it,
+and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.
+
+He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the
+latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two
+constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating
+breakfast.
+
+"Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a
+prisoner, Bulldog Carney."
+
+The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at
+this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and
+laughed.
+
+"Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."
+
+The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my
+uniform--where's my horse? I've got you now--set me afoot to starve,
+would you, you damn thief--you murderer! Where's the five hundred
+dollars you stole from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"
+
+He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets
+from a gatling--it was a torrent.
+
+But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed
+the truth--the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it
+was amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept
+quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath
+the khaki coat.
+
+Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought
+that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of
+his evil luck should not escape.
+
+"_That's Bulldog Carney!_" he cried fiercely; "don't let him get away."
+
+Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.
+
+A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops."
+They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose
+small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.
+
+"I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I
+had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such
+a skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by
+one, into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led
+from the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as
+a cell. "I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack--you really should
+have been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the
+prairie somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so.
+Step in, boys, and you go first, Wolf."
+
+When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy
+wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the
+fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.
+
+A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through
+the mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:--
+
+Dear Miss Black:--
+
+I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No
+woman can afford to bet on even a _good_ man. Stick to the kids, for
+I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant
+Heath and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I
+wouldn't have known, and you'd have lost out.
+
+Yours delightedly,
+
+Bulldog Carney.
+
+
+
+
+II.--BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI
+
+|A day's trail north from where Idaho and Montana come together on the
+Canadian border, fumed and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature
+was a little bit of all right, for from the minute it trickled from
+a huge blue-green glacier up in the Selkirks till it fell into the
+Kootenay, it bucked its way over, under, and around rock-cliffs, and
+areas of stolid mountain sides that still held gigantic pine and cedar.
+
+It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the
+town of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of
+the yellow god.
+
+When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid,
+suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.
+
+One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside,
+looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.
+
+Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth
+and Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder;
+Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a
+gyroscope.
+
+Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with
+drill and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road--a free lance of
+adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream
+than win money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy
+anatomy, the calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve
+and sweet courage, the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would
+have perished tied to routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog"
+Carney, was an inspiration.
+
+He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border,
+mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and
+United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam
+the exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking
+Horse.
+
+The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred
+dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the
+hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put
+a gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again.
+When Seth threw up his hands declaring that the Little Widow was no
+good, those who had laughed told him that they had known it all the
+time.
+
+But what they didn't know was that the long drift in the mine now ran on
+until it was directly under the Gold Nugget hotel.
+
+It was Carney who had worked that out, and Seth and his hotel were
+established as a clearing station for the opium that was shipped in by
+train from Vancouver in tins labelled "Peaches," "Salmon," or any old
+thing. It was stored in the mine and taken from there by pack-train down
+to the border, and switched across at Bailey's Ferry, the U. S. customs
+officers at that point being nice lovable chaps; or sometimes it crossed
+the Kootenay in a small boat at night.
+
+Bulldog supervised that end of the business, bringing the heavy payments
+in gold back to Bucking Horse on a laden mule behind his buckskin; then
+the gold was expressed by train to the head office of this delightful
+trading company in Vancouver.
+
+This endeavor ran along smoothly, for the whole mining West was one
+gigantic union, standing "agin the government"--any old government, U.
+S. or Canadian.
+
+Carney's enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion;
+besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in
+looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him
+alone.
+
+The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one
+of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town
+would be its own custodian.
+
+One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his
+horse's heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung
+from either side of a pack saddle.
+
+Carney went straight to the little railway station, and expressed the
+gold to Vancouver, getting the agent's assurance that it would go out on
+the night train which went through at one o'clock. Then he rode back to
+the Gold Nugget and put his horse and mule in the stable.
+
+As he pushed open the front door of the hotel he figuratively stepped
+into a family row, a row so self-centered that the parties interested
+were unaware of his entrance.
+
+A small bar occupied one corner of the dim-lighted room, and behind this
+Seth Long leaned back against the bottle rack, with arms folded across
+his big chest, puffing at a thick cigar. Facing him, with elbows on the
+bar, a man was talking volubly, anger speeding up his vocalization.
+
+Beside the man stood Jeanette Holt, fire flashing from her black eyes,
+and her nostrils dilated with passion. She interrupted the voluble one:
+
+"Yes, Seth, I did slap this cheap affair, Jack Wolf, fair across the
+ugly mouth, and I'll do it again!"
+
+Seth tongued the cigar to one corner of his ample lips, and drawled:
+"That's a woman's privilege, Jack, if a feller's give her just cause for
+action You ain't got no kick comin', I reckon, 'cause this little woman
+ain't one to fly off the handle for nothin'."
+
+"Nothin', Seth? I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll
+figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I
+see--you're bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is
+stingin' you right here in your own nest."
+
+Biff!
+
+That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.
+
+The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned
+to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look
+that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an
+oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun.
+
+Bulldog Carney had stepped quickly across the room, and was now at his
+side, saying:
+
+"So you're here, Jack the Wolf, eh? I thought I had rid civilization of
+your ugly presence when I turned you over to the police at Hobbema for
+murdering your mate."
+
+"That was a trumped-up charge," the Wolf stammered.
+
+"Ah! I see--acquitted! I can guess it in once. Nobody saw you put that
+little round hole in the back of Alberta Bill's head--not even Bill; and
+he was dead and couldn't talk."
+
+Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold,
+searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You
+put your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or
+something will happen. I've got a proposition."
+
+The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his
+belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden
+rail, saying, surlily:
+
+"I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man
+that plays into the hands of the damn police."
+
+"You can cut out the rough stuff, Wolf, while there's a lady present."
+
+Carney deliberately turned his shoulder to the scowling man, and said,
+"How d'you do, Miss Holt?" touching his hat. Then he added, "Seth,
+locate a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."
+
+As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank
+as though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room,
+and addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square
+box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger--we're going to liquidate."
+
+The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack
+Wolf.
+
+"Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved
+a black bottle toward Bulldog.
+
+"The gents first," the latter intimated.
+
+The bottle was slid down to Cayuse, who filled his glass and passed it
+back to Wolf. The latter carried it irritably past him without filling
+his glass.
+
+"Help yourself, Wolf." It was a command, not an invitation, in Carney's
+voice.
+
+"I'm not drinkin'," Jack snarled.
+
+"Yes, you are. I've got a toast that's got to be unanimous."
+
+Seth, with a wink at Wolf, tipped the bottle and half filled the
+latter's glass, saying, "Be a sport, Jack."
+
+As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at
+Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.
+
+Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said: "Gents, we're going to
+drink to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to
+run across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long
+ever had--_Miss Jeanette_ Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor, but
+the Wolf did not touch his glass.
+
+"You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was
+deadly.
+
+The room had grown still. One, two, three, a wooden clock on the shelf
+behind the bar ticked off the seconds in the heavy quiet; and in a
+far corner the piping of a stray cricket sounded like the drool of a
+pfirrari.
+
+There was a click of a latch, a muffled scrape as the outer door pushed
+open. This seemed to break the holding spell of fear that was over the
+Wolf. "I'll see you in hell, Bulldog Carney, before I drink with you or
+a girl that----"
+
+The whisky that was in Carney's glass shot fair into the speaker's
+open mouth. As his hand jumped to his gun the wrist was seized with a
+loosening twist, and the heel of Bulldog's open right hand caught him
+under the chin with a force that fair lifted him from his feet to drop
+on the back of his head.
+
+A man wearing a brass-buttoned khaki jacket with blue trousers down
+which ran wide yellow stripes, darted from where he had stood at the
+door, put his hand on Bulldog's shoulder, and said:
+
+"You're under arrest in the Queen's name, Bulldog Carney!"
+
+Carney reached down and picked up the Wolf's gun that lay where it had
+fallen from his twisted hand, and passed it to Seth without comment.
+Then he looked the man in the khaki coat up and down and coolly asked.
+"Are you anybody in particular, stranger?"
+
+"I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."
+
+"You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke
+bank, the Mounted."
+
+"Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll
+entertain you for several days over in the pen."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"You'll find out."
+
+"Yes, and now, declare yourself!"
+
+"We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in
+Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm
+here."
+
+"Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who
+stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.
+
+"I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."
+
+"Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand
+clasping his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the
+Sergeant, a faint smile lifting his tawny mustache.
+
+"You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a
+chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's
+a thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the
+line."
+
+"Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot
+to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia.
+You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which
+you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to
+let you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick
+you into the street; then they would have something on me--something
+because I'd mussed up the uniform."
+
+"Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go
+bail----"
+
+"I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."
+
+The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.
+
+Carney grinned.
+
+"Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go
+with you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all
+your own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even
+his duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance
+by insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter
+turned it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through
+Carney's arm, passed out.
+
+Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack
+divided by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a
+bunk; the other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door
+that carried a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small
+window safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this
+bull-pen, as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a
+candle. There was a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.
+
+"Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the
+bare interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you
+fellows are angular."
+
+"I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."
+
+"Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."
+
+The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain
+perhaps you'll drop some of that side."
+
+Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his
+pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your
+curtains, will it?"
+
+"It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."
+
+Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant
+Black went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer,
+Bulldog--I ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather
+irrelevantly, and with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read
+'Les Miserables,' Sergeant?"
+
+"I ain't read a paper in a month--I've been too busy."
+
+"It isn't a paper, it's a story."
+
+"I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."
+
+"This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney
+persisted.
+
+"Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come
+into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec--they're
+more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical
+voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a
+character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might
+discriminate over a great story."
+
+This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he
+do--how am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.
+
+"The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like
+yourself, and his mind was only capable of containing the one
+idea--duty. It was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."
+
+"You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the
+bangles on you and leave you in the dark."
+
+"If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can
+clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I
+meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."
+
+Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through
+the bars of the open window.
+
+Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough
+to know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight--a fight over nothing;
+and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.
+
+"It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs
+would hold anybody, and you know it."
+
+In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's
+gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to
+arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had
+locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well
+enough alone.
+
+"Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be
+sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."
+
+"Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me
+something to read."
+
+Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les
+Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple
+of magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.
+
+Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He
+could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then
+the Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire
+to Major Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came
+back. About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the
+floor, his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law
+had retired. A vagrant thought traversed his mind that the
+heavy-dispositioned, phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper
+once oblivious. However, that didn't matter, there was no necessity for
+escape.
+
+Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened
+by a noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of
+life he sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the
+sputtering candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew
+he had been wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening,
+no sound reached his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous
+breathings. He had guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper,
+one of Shakespeare's full-paunched kind.
+
+Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused
+to cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's
+presence. He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly
+associated with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth
+so much as over Jeanette.
+
+He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from
+the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a
+pebble tapping on iron.
+
+With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no
+tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window
+thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.
+
+A soft warm hand grasped his, and he felt the smooth sides of a folded
+paper. As he gave the hand a reassuring pressure, his knuckles were
+tapped gently by something hard. He transferred the paper to his other
+hand, and reaching out again, something was thrust into it, that when he
+lifted it within he found was a strong screw-driver.
+
+He crept back to his bunk, slipped the screwdriver between the blankets,
+and standing by the door listened for ten seconds; then a faint gurgling
+breath told him that Black slept.
+
+Making a hiding canopy of his blanket, he lighted his candle, unfolded
+the paper, and read:
+
+"Two planks, north end, fastened with screws. Below is tunnel that leads
+to the mine. Will meet you there. Come soon. Important."
+
+There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.
+
+He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen
+knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks
+nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the
+flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these
+heads were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the
+other room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked
+in the lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened.
+
+As if suddenly startled from sleep, Carney called out: "Who's that--what
+do you want?"
+
+The Sergeant peered in and answered, "Nothing! thought I heard you
+moving about. Are you all right, Carney?"
+
+He swept the pen with his candle, noted Carney's boots on the floor,
+and, satisfied, closed the door and went back to his bunk.
+
+This interruption rather pleased Carney; he felt that it was a somnolent
+sense of duty, responsibility, that had wakened Black. Now that he had
+investigated and found everything all right he would probably sleep
+soundly for hours.
+
+Carney waited ten minutes. The Sergeant's bunk had given a note of
+complaint as its occupant turned over; now it was still. Taking his
+boots in his hand he crept back to the end of the pen and rapidly,
+noiselessly, withdrew the screw-nails from both ends of two planks. Then
+he crept back to the door and listened; the other room was silent save
+for the same little sleep breathings he had heard before.
+
+With the screw-driver he lifted the planks, slipped through the opening,
+all in the dark, and drew the planks back into place over his head. He
+had to crouch in the little tunnel.
+
+Pulling on his boots, on hands and knees he crawled through the small
+tunnel for fifty yards. Then he came to stope timbers stood on end,
+and turning these to one side found himself in what he knew must be a
+cross-cut from the main drift that ran between the mine opening and the
+hotel.
+
+As he stood up in this he heard a faint whistle, and whispered,
+"Jeanette."
+
+The girl came forward in the dark, her hand touching his arm.
+
+"I'm so glad," she whispered. "We'd better stand here in the dark, for I
+have something serious to tell you."
+
+Then in a low tone the girl said:
+
+"The Wolf and Cayuse Braun are going to hold up the train to-night, just
+at the end of the trestle, and rob the express car."
+
+"Is Seth in it?"
+
+"Yes, he's standing in, but he isn't going to help on the job. The Wolf
+is going to board the train at the station, and enter the express car
+when the train is creeping over the trestle. He's got a bar and rope for
+fastening the door of the car behind the express car. When the engine
+reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and
+make him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the
+other cars are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and
+Cayuse will force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop
+off on the up-grade, half a mile beyond."
+
+"Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away
+with it, I believe."
+
+"I listened to them planning the whole thing out," Jeanette confessed,
+"and they didn't know I could hear them."
+
+"What about this little tunnel under the jail--that's a new one on me?"
+
+"Seth had it dug, pretending he was looking for gold; but the men
+who dug it didn't know that it led under the jail, and he finished it
+himself, fixed the planks, and all. You see when the police go away they
+leave the keys with Seth in case any sudden trouble comes up. Nobody
+knows about it but Seth."
+
+There was a tang of regret in Carney's voice as he said:
+
+"Seth is playing it pretty low down, Jeanette; he's practically stealing
+from his pals. I put twenty thousand in gold in to-night to go by
+that train, coke money; he knows it, and that's what these thieves are
+after."
+
+"Surely Seth wouldn't do that, Bulldog--steal from his partners!"
+
+"Well, not quite, Jeanette. He figures that the express company is
+responsible, will have to make good, and that my people will get their
+money back; but all the same, it's kind of like that--it's rotten!"
+
+"What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I--not on Seth--not while
+I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't
+--well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's
+been different. I've stuck to him--you know, Bulldog, how straight I've
+been--but a thief!"
+
+"No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the
+girl's voice carried a tremble.
+
+"I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the
+police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your
+being arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to
+Seth and stop it?"
+
+"No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just
+hell. Besides, girl, I'm in jail."
+
+"But you're free now--you'll go away."
+
+"Let me think a minute, Jeanette."
+
+As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose
+flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and
+they saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse
+Braun.
+
+The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is
+going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while
+they pull the job off."
+
+The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into
+action, fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:
+
+"You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing--I will see what
+I can do."
+
+"And Seth--you won't----"
+
+"Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't
+bother your pretty little head about it."
+
+The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was
+trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a
+school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion:
+"Bulldog, do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it
+at all, wondered?"
+
+"Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to
+being the finest girl I ever knew."
+
+"But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"
+
+"No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those
+things. Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he
+shouldn't steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."
+
+"You mean that I'm like the gold?"
+
+"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well--you know what I mean,
+Jeanette."
+
+"But you like me?"
+
+"So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."
+
+"Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you--if I kissed
+you?".
+
+"Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to
+do what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself.
+Don't get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that
+way. I've kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you,
+being Seth's girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you
+untangle that--get what I mean?"
+
+"I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"
+
+There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's
+arm and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in
+a steadier voice: "Good night, man--I'm going back." Together they felt
+their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift,
+Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's
+nobody about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to
+the cellar you go ahead and clear the way for me."
+
+The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little
+store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out
+to the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a
+gun that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn
+the two bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out
+he avoided the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent
+Bucking Horse.
+
+A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten
+by the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden
+trestle looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint
+moonlight, its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half
+a mile from where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its
+tail coming back to the same side of the stream after traversing two
+short kinks. It looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to
+carry the huge Mogul engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train
+went over it at a snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's
+attention.
+
+And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what
+chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to
+his assistance.
+
+Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned,
+and no doubt would go through unless---- At this juncture of thought Carney
+chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping into
+the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub growth
+Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat--easy,
+my boy!"
+
+The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip--that there was no
+hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man
+talking to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and
+he, understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.
+
+Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over
+Carney's shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek;
+and sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's
+withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.
+
+They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no
+telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they
+trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.
+
+Presently Carney dropped the rein from over the horse's head to the
+ground, took his lariat from the saddle-horn, hung the two pack-bags
+over his shoulder, and whispering, "Wait here, Patsy boy," slipped
+through the brush and wormed his way cautiously to a huge boulder a
+hundred feet from the trestle. There he sat down, his back against the
+rock, and his eye on the blobs of yellow light that was Bucking Horse
+town. Presently from beyond the rock carried to his listening ears the
+clink of an iron-shod hoof against a stone, and he heard a suppressed,
+"Damn!"
+
+"Coming, I guess," he muttered to himself.
+
+The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came
+hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring
+yellow-red eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced
+his angry way down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the
+Mogul rocked in its swift glide down the curved grade; there was the
+screeching grind of airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as
+the compressed air seethed from opened valves at their release when the
+train stood at rest beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.
+
+He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's
+lantern gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of
+packages thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then
+the little green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the
+Mogul coughed as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at
+steel rails and slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping
+breaths; then came the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel
+as the heavy train careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the
+trestle were whining a protest like the twang of loose strings on a
+harp.
+
+Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far
+side of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man
+huddled in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand
+the barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.
+
+Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it
+was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.
+
+When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the
+steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried
+to Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the
+stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind
+the express car still on the trestle.
+
+Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open,
+and within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with
+hands above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a
+third was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them
+through the open door.
+
+Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance
+in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car
+and waited.
+
+He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the
+Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move
+I'll plug you!"
+
+The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal
+to Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps
+from the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a
+graceful sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the
+head of Jack the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the
+fall he was pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.
+
+The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless
+with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail
+end of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had
+bound him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.
+
+Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse.
+Of course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but
+shooting a man was something to be avoided.
+
+He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the
+express messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty
+thousand dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But
+Carney, having secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack
+bags astride the saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow
+mine. He had small fear that the two men would think of looking in that
+direction for the man who had robbed them; even if they did he had a
+good start for it would take time to untie the Wolf and get their one
+horse. Also he had the Wolf's guns.
+
+He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that
+ran off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of
+water, sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin,
+tied him, and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the
+small tunnel back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and,
+chuckling, fell into a virtuous sleep.
+
+He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully,
+"You're in luck, Bulldog."
+
+"Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."
+
+The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the
+sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and
+if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."
+
+"Thanks for your foresight, friend--that is, if you knew it was coming
+off. Tell me how your friend worked it."
+
+Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had
+finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would
+say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that
+I never have a companion in any little joke I put over."
+
+"I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an
+apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."
+
+He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and
+then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars
+for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."
+
+"Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to
+Lake Erie and start a bean farm."
+
+Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them
+two down."
+
+"No, thanks; I like it here."
+
+"I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog--set you free."
+
+"And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your
+arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram
+and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:
+
+"Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company
+offers two thousand."
+
+"Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.
+
+"What other one?"
+
+"The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."
+
+The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he
+admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta
+case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police
+before."
+
+"Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But
+I'm no sleuth for the official robber--he's fair game."
+
+"You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"
+
+"No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men--that's your job. But you
+can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that
+offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand,
+that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the
+gold I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if
+you'll oblige me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for
+breakfast."
+
+"I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."
+
+Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered.
+Her face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the
+policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the
+dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two
+under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.
+
+He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to
+arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish
+your breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this
+thing is investigated."
+
+The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant--why
+ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"
+
+The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do
+with it?"
+
+"Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when
+he escaped last night."
+
+The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened
+the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how
+you robbed the train!"
+
+At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ!
+Bulldog has snitched--he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out when
+he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And his
+horse was gone from the stable this morning!"
+
+As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of
+their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was
+out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a
+puff of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.
+
+As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that
+drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and
+he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.
+
+In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where
+he sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine
+chamber.
+
+With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol
+back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for
+a doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him
+upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.
+
+As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the
+shoulder; he'll be all right."
+
+"What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.
+
+"Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground--he can't talk;
+Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he
+hits the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave
+me five thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl,
+I'm going to put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he
+ever takes a notion to."
+
+Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.
+
+
+
+
+III.--OWNERS UP
+
+|Clatawa had put racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.
+
+You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and
+Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down
+with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"
+
+Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous
+thrills--a commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez
+Perces Indians, who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and
+were rich, would troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold
+pieces plugged into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black
+sausage, and bet the coins as though they were nickels.
+
+It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U.
+S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was
+a live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great
+luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
+
+Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a
+harem of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they
+named him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa
+found that men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed
+the gambling, and the racing, and the high living like any other
+creature of brains.
+
+He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some
+half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the
+great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the
+sires were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the
+colt, not being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big,
+upstanding bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's
+bellows and sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage,
+too, had not been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There
+was just one rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a
+thoroughbred, and until his measure was taken, until some other equine
+looked him in the eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man
+could just say what the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.
+
+At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez
+Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there
+was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron
+Jaw Blake declared.
+
+Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and
+
+Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to
+ameliorate the monotony.
+
+They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual,
+architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked
+but a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.
+
+Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush
+and pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with
+"Irish" Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt,
+more sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that
+"Fagan met death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic
+event had crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely
+"Death-on-the-trail."
+
+Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his
+upper jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen
+him with aptitude.
+
+Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of
+the bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a
+Siwash.
+
+So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman,
+wrote to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough
+to beat Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were
+specific, lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred,
+even a selling plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any
+cross-bred horse, no matter how good the latter apparently was, running
+in scrub races. He also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the
+Walla Walla races were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to
+Reilly to send him a tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and
+look the part of an able-bodied cow puncher.
+
+It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly--he just loved that sort
+of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the
+commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the
+_Maid of Palouse,_ what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony
+in charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of
+navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over
+the twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.
+
+The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron
+Jaw, Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities
+that lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black
+horse that he called Horned Toad.
+
+As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and
+instructed in the art of fool talk.
+
+Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and
+faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand
+dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a
+thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which
+Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.
+
+There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas
+
+Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great
+desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his
+fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the
+cows came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he
+drank: he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him.
+This was no piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads
+had declared for a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its
+hind legs and howl.
+
+Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll
+that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had
+a horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was
+never tired of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to
+Kamschatka; a spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any
+cayuse that had ever looked through a halter.
+
+But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd
+rush him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready
+to plunk down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had
+arrived.
+
+It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played
+against the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted
+into the game.
+
+A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face,
+rode up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to
+Walla Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town
+with the laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and,
+incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in
+earnest and had the mazuma.
+
+As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the
+cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of
+turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows
+of which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy
+individual, standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with
+Bacchanalian vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew
+chronologically the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided
+hair, who stood in the open door. He must have enlarged on the
+sophistication of her past life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath,
+called the declaimer a liar and a seven-times misplaced offspring.
+
+The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely
+over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.
+
+The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his
+imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved
+him. With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he
+would bring its lash down on the décolletéd shoulders of the woman.
+
+At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door
+as though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread
+basket of the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.
+
+The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.
+
+But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled
+so neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into
+the little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers
+of steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte
+face, and a fist drove into his midriff.
+
+Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a
+grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner
+of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he
+contemplated a trip to dreamland.
+
+The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose
+gladsomeness swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man--you beaut!"
+She would have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes,
+so full of quiet aloofness, checked her.
+
+But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog,
+Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."
+
+He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You
+ride away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead
+booze-fighter!"
+
+The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for
+inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his
+shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.
+
+The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five
+feet of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting
+between wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not
+without derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.
+
+In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in
+astonishment:
+
+"Holy Gawd!"
+
+Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the
+buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a
+long-lost friend.
+
+Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet,
+mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.
+
+The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the
+inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.
+
+Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly--in full
+dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn--and asked: "Where the
+hell d'you get Waster?"
+
+A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a
+little cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask
+a man how he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was
+only a little wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so
+Carney smiled again, and answered by asking:
+
+"Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum
+of mine's name is Pat--Patsy boy, often enough."
+
+"Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I
+won the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."
+
+"Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.
+
+"Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be
+all right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout
+his friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie,
+whose breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by
+Counterfeit, he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported
+Australian, whose grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get
+that, sage-brush rider?"
+
+"I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."
+
+Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the
+chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.
+
+The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger
+levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you _ever_ took notice of them
+lop ears?"
+
+"Once--which was continuous."
+
+"And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"
+
+"Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."
+
+"Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like
+that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he
+was all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get
+that buckskin from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad,
+Australian?" This seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.
+
+"Go on, lad----"
+
+"Excuse me, sorry"--Molly was speaking--"this is Billy MacKay. My old
+school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to see
+what God's country could do for that busted chest."
+
+The little man was impatient over the switch to himself--the horse was
+the thing.
+
+"If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs--Gawd! what a horse Waster'd been.
+And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen
+him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say,
+Bulldog,--don't mind me, I like that name, it talks good,--Waster didn't
+need no blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip--I'd
+as lief hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear
+tryin'. Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till
+he threw a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and
+thirty-six pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at
+a mile and a quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and
+finished, fightin', on three legs. He was beat, of course; and
+Leatherhead was broke, and I never see Waster again. A trombone player
+in a beer garden would have known the little cuss with them hot-jointed
+knees couldn't pack weight, and would 've scratched him."
+
+Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You
+stand pat with me, kid--your heart is about human, I guess. What was
+that hostile person's game?"
+
+Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:
+
+"He comes here to-day, Bulldog--Well, you know----"
+
+Carney nodded placidly.
+
+"He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought--well, he was
+filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything
+he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get
+plumb Injun."
+
+"Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff,
+Slimy Red," Billy objected.
+
+"Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,--Billy knew him."
+
+"Knew him--huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed
+a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and
+laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in
+the ruck."
+
+"He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch
+guy that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped
+with.
+
+"I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein'
+a garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half
+an inch above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he
+says, 'I'll bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's
+a great sayin' with Slimy Red Smith--he was Slimy Red hisself. And
+politely, not givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests
+that me and Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best
+push on."
+
+"Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas
+person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."
+
+The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and
+with apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin'
+bullfrogs, Mr. Carney?"
+
+Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was
+twin brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.
+
+"Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."
+
+"Much of a storm?"
+
+"They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has
+got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."
+
+"Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's
+well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.
+
+"I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile
+lighting up his stern features.
+
+"Oh, you gentleman knight of the road--always the silver-tongued
+Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for
+a real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."
+
+The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;
+
+"It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but
+fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."
+
+"I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in
+the way of a cure."
+
+Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse
+first when it comes to grub--that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's
+bedded for the night."
+
+Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail
+upon which they had met at different times and in divers places.
+
+But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at
+sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of
+bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.
+
+"You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on
+the memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog
+were both in Denver.
+
+"Some time since," Carney replied.
+
+"D'you know about Clatawa?"
+
+"Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"
+
+"Clatawa's a horse."
+
+"I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.
+
+Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla
+Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast
+enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring
+that boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that
+is in a monetary way.
+
+Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique
+enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's
+chatter simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa
+disease, He pricked his ears.
+
+"What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding
+Dong?" he asked.
+
+A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.
+
+"Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.
+
+"Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds.
+He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too.
+He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him
+look big."
+
+Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against
+his stomach I thought it had gone clean through--it sank to the wrist;
+it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."
+
+"But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."
+
+"Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.
+
+"I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here,
+catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without
+givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they
+know you can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the
+Brooklyn Handicap together."
+
+"I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match,
+figures to get a big pull in the weights."
+
+"Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa;
+they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for
+the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"
+
+"Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably
+here on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones
+from the root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an
+ample pull in the weight."
+
+"Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into
+a meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several
+possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.
+
+Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.
+
+After a time Billy spoke.
+
+"It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red--he
+don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."
+
+"He sure ought," Molly corroborated.
+
+"Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause
+he never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel;
+and Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead
+pad; booze gets his."
+
+"Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once--Iron
+Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and
+Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're
+gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while
+they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been,
+'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."
+
+"Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the
+combination," Billy declared. "I was right."
+
+"And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some
+bad splits in bets," Molly added.
+
+"The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a
+bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake--I know his
+method of old--has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse and
+rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."
+
+"You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game,"
+Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard
+Iron Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."
+
+Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it,
+Billy--do we draw cards?"
+
+Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike!
+there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty
+at a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a
+stayer from Stayville; but he can't pack weight--don't forget that. If
+you rode him--let's see----"
+
+The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone
+and muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.
+
+"You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em
+rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy
+'ll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a
+hundred and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds.
+What chance?"
+
+"I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or
+a pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"
+
+"And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd
+bribe them to pull the horse."
+
+"What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot.
+"Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on
+pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had
+gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather
+want to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if
+he's about."
+
+"Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the
+figure that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths
+holding a look that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she
+whispered; "why do women like him--gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on
+the buckskin. "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin
+door, "you heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't
+you?"
+
+"Uh-huh!"
+
+"Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie
+to bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been
+gettin' it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I
+hadn't saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a
+money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't
+have to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and
+two."
+
+"That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over--I know her. But don't
+worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and no
+use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't
+tout off Molly that you're doing it."
+
+"I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney--you just listen now. I didn't
+spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say
+that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like
+goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."
+
+Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the
+package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid?
+Spring it; get it off your chest."
+
+Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot
+meditatively; then said:
+
+"Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most
+of the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and
+weight don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or
+a mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty
+well himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me
+ride him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse
+than Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on
+their form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in
+his eyes, gazed helplessly at Bulldog.
+
+"What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"
+
+"The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A
+match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows
+a couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block
+of city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big
+stake you've got to have the long green."
+
+"How much, Billy?"
+
+"Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally
+would stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."
+
+"I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires
+hot."
+
+"Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch
+weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but
+he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he
+can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."
+
+Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid
+gray eyes.
+
+"Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it
+owners up."
+
+"I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with
+only a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse
+eyeing him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the
+others, examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs.
+He pinched with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he
+squeezed the horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:
+
+"Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed,
+finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's
+got the slows."
+
+As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the
+buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and
+then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing
+back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air
+like the roll of a kettle-drum.
+
+"Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse
+down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that
+stride of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none.
+He'll do; he's had lots of work--he's in better condition than Ding
+Dong, 'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at
+the bar. I got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner
+Stakes' at Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if
+you make the match catch weights; it'll be a cinch--like gettin' money
+from home. But don't tell Molly."
+
+"We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.
+
+"Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself--how much are
+you goin' to bet?"
+
+"Five or ten thousand."
+
+"Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand--five hundred
+bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."
+
+"Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."
+
+Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding
+horse----"
+
+"What?"
+
+But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of
+Bulldog's gray eyes.
+
+"Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse,"
+Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a
+young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a
+man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came
+by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form
+of a bill of sale."
+
+Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar,
+paid in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay.
+Molly signed it as witness.
+
+"I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog
+declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend
+in town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of
+the gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.
+
+As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it,
+Billy--owners up?"
+
+"Gee! I get you."
+
+The little man had been mystified.
+
+"Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week
+away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin'
+to bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his
+neck for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can
+get a set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet
+is four pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr.
+Carney, and Waster 'll do his part."
+
+The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then
+he turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.
+
+"Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"
+
+"Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.
+
+"Shoot," she commanded.
+
+"Is he--was he--the man--Bessie told me something?"
+
+"There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney
+was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a
+woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake
+him if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man
+that knows him that'll try to put one over--'tain't healthy. He's got a
+temper as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts.
+He don't cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the
+sweetest you ever see, Billy."
+
+"Did she die, Molly?"
+
+"The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin'
+to the hound."
+
+Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home
+for the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.
+
+First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.
+
+When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon
+were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle
+on his buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was
+Sheriff of Shoshone County.
+
+The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed
+they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation
+varied in different places, and with different people, it stood
+strongest with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men
+of the West, were apt to judge men from their own experience.
+
+Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked
+his life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County
+of Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing
+on its records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing
+up of Bulldog Carney.
+
+Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of
+this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."
+
+"What, Bulldog--the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's face;
+it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had put
+many a practical joke over--he was kidding. Teddy laughed.
+
+"Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of
+them bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor
+as you've nerve--you're Irish."
+
+"There's also a note in that envelope"--Carney ignored the chaff--"that
+directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at
+Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I
+suddenly--well, if I didn't need it--see?"
+
+"I'll do that, Bulldog."
+
+"Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked
+casually.
+
+Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then
+he answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be
+there--lest I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was
+when I made that record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If
+you've got anything to settle, go ahead."
+
+Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up
+at the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."
+
+Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid
+face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then
+ventured:
+
+"If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the
+occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."
+
+Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might
+so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times
+as they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does
+that put any kink in your code?"
+
+"Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be
+there."
+
+Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post,
+he adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of
+his hand.
+
+As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and
+a group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man
+perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It
+wasn't Slimy Red--it was a tougher man.
+
+Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and
+behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.
+
+As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant
+in Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his
+coarse lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer.
+You seem conditioned. Know Carson?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's
+paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."
+
+Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was
+even the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.
+
+"How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held
+toward each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument
+once in a while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez
+Perces loose on you?"
+
+"Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder
+pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he
+calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"
+
+Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice
+babbling:
+
+"Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got
+anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber
+hose up his back holdin' his ribs."
+
+Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's
+snarled:
+
+"Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'--a hundred iron men?"
+
+"Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he
+comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess
+that's what gives him dreams."
+
+Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail
+across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table
+sat Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling
+height at his right hand.
+
+Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing
+from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy
+of the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he
+drew and what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the
+winnings were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had
+to be accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin'
+up a bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached;
+"it's too damn slow. I want action."
+
+He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel,
+bleating:
+
+"Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the
+thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock--as you old leatherheads make it, one
+A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the
+smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into
+one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled
+over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was
+number "13."
+
+"By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was
+as expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars
+over eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to
+Texas.
+
+The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a
+drink.
+
+It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play
+of the uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with
+apathetic interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the
+bag--it didn't mean anything.
+
+Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his
+opportunity.
+
+Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent
+chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play
+was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times--a man loaded with
+bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky
+Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money
+was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.
+
+Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They
+had arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that
+could be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently
+Texas should make a killing.
+
+Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the
+wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing
+the cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the
+merry-go-round plays on."
+
+"For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on
+to the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the
+croupier checked him:
+
+"Mind the limit, Mister."
+
+"When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.
+
+"Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the
+ivory discs from thirteen.
+
+The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way
+during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.
+
+"Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.
+
+Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no
+green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track--everybody's got a chance.
+Here! I'm goin' to cash in."
+
+He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier,
+stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."
+
+As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected
+little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands
+pushed them toward the winner. .
+
+Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:
+
+"I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long
+sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to
+the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says
+I got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that
+can outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a
+grasshopper's jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies--who's next?"
+
+A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will
+take your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."
+
+At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled,
+and seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe
+body, and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him
+like a rat.
+
+"You damn locoed fool!" he swore; "what d'you mean?--what d'you mean?"
+each query being emphasized by a vigorous shake.
+
+"He simply means," explained Carney, "that he's a cheap bluffer--a wind
+gambler. When he's called he quits. That's just what I thought."
+
+"Give him a chance, Blake," Death-on-the-trail interposed; "let go!"
+
+Iron Jaw pressed Texas back into his chair, saying:
+
+"You've got too much booze. If you want to bet on your horse sit there
+and cut out this Injun stuff." Snaky Dick had jumped to his feet,
+startled by the fact that Carney was about to break in on his preserve.
+Now he said: "If Texas is pinin' for a race Clatawa is waitin'--so is
+his backin'."
+
+Carney turned his gray eyes on the speaker: "There's a rule in this
+country, Snaky, that when two men have got a discussion on, others keep
+out. I've undertaken to call this jack rabbit's bluff, and he makes
+good, or takes his noisy organ away to play it outside of Walla Walla."
+
+Texas Sam had received a thumb in the rib from Iron Jaw that meant, "Go
+ahead," so he said, surlily: "There's my money on the table. Anybody can
+come in--the game's wide open."
+
+"That being so," Carney drawled, "there's a little buckskin horse tied
+to the post outside, that's carried me for three years around this land
+of delight, and he looks good to me."
+
+He unslung from his waist a leather roll, and dropped its snake-like
+body across the Texas coin, saying:
+
+"There's two thousand in twenties, and if this cheap-singing person sees
+the raise, it goes for a race at a mile-and-a-quarter between the little
+buckskin outside and this cow-hocked mule he sings about."
+
+"I want to see this damn buckskin," Texas objected.
+
+"You don't need to worry," Iron Jaw commented; "the horse is pretty nigh
+as well known as Bulldog."
+
+But Texas, having been born in a very nest of iniquity, having been
+stable boy, tout, half-mile-track ringer, and runner for a wire-tapping
+bunch, was naturally suspicious.
+
+"I don't match against an unknown," he objected; "let me lamp this
+Flyin' Dutchman of the Plains; it may be Salvator for all I know."
+
+"Let him get out the door," Carney sneered; "it will be good-bye--we'll
+never see him again."
+
+"And if we don't," Snaky Dick interposed, "I'll cover your money,
+Carney."
+
+Bulldog swung the gray eyes, and levelled them at the red-and-yellow
+streaked beads that did seeing duty in Snaky's face:
+
+"You ever hear about the gent who was kicked out of Paradise and told to
+go scoot along on his belly for butting in?" Then he followed the little
+crowd at Texas Sam's heels.
+
+In the yellow glare of the Del Monte lights the buckskin looked very
+little like a race horse. He stood about fifteen and a quarter hands,
+looking not much more than a pony, as, half asleep, he had relaxed his
+body; the lop ears hanging almost at right angles to his lean bony head
+suggested humor more than speed. He stood "over" on his front legs, a
+habit contracted when he favoured the weak knees. As he was a gelding
+his neck was thin, so far removed from a crest that it was almost
+ewe-like; his tremendous width of rump caused the hip bones to project,
+suggesting an archaic design of equine structure. The direct lamplight
+threw cavernous shadows all over his lean form.
+
+Texas Sam shot one rapid look of appraisement over the sleepy little
+horse; then he laughed.
+
+"Pinch me, Iron Jaw!" he cried; "am I ridin' on the tail board of an
+overland bus seein' things in the desert, and hearin' wings?"
+
+He pointed a forefinger at the buckskin. "Is that the lopin' jack-rabbit
+that runs for your money?" he queried of Carney.
+
+"That horse's name is Pat," Bulldog answered quietly, "and we've been
+pals so long that when any yapping coyote snaps at him I most naturally
+kick the brute out of the way. But that's the horse, Buckskin Pat,
+that my money says can outrun, for a mile-and-a-quarter, the horse you
+describe as a cow-hocked cow-pony, the same being, I take it, the horse
+you scooted away on when I palmed you on the mouth this morning."
+
+Texas Sam was naturally of a vicious temper, and this allusion caused
+him to flare up again, as Carney meant it to. But Iron Jaw whirled him
+around, saying:
+
+"Cut out the man end of it--let's get down to cases. We ain't had a live
+'hoss race for so long that I most forget what it looks like. If you two
+mean business come inside and put up your bets, gentlemen."
+
+Iron Jaw abrogated to himself the duty of Master of Ceremonies. First
+he set his croupier to work counting the gold of Texas Sam and Bulldog
+Carney. There were an even hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces in the belt
+Carney had thrown on the table.
+
+"You're shy on the raise," Iron Jaw remarked, winking at Texas.
+
+"I'll see his raise," the latter growled. "You've got more'n that of
+mine in your safe, Iron Jaw, so stack 'em up for me till they're level.
+I might as well win somethin' worth while--there won't be no fun in the
+race. That jack--that buckskin,"--he checked himself--"won't make me go
+fast enough to know I'm in the saddle."
+
+"You let me in that and I'll furnish the speed," Snaky Dick could not
+resist the temptation to clutch at the money he saw slipping away from
+him. "Make it a three-cornered sweep, Mr. Carney," he pleaded; "I'll
+ante."
+
+"It would be some race," Iron Jaw encouraged; "some race, boys. I've
+seen the little buckskin amble. I don't know nothin' about this Texas
+person's caravan, but Clatawa, for a sauce bottle that holds both warm
+and cold blood, ain't so slow--he ain't so slow, gents."
+
+The idea caught on; everybody in the saloon rose to the occasion. Yells
+of, "Make it a sweep! Let Clatawa in! Wake up old Walla Walla with
+something worth while!" came from many throats.
+
+Bulldog seemed to debate the matter, a smile twitching his drab
+mustache.
+
+"I've said it," Texas cried; "she's wide open. Anybody that's got a pet
+eagle he thinks can fly faster'n my cow-pony can run, can enter him.
+There ain't no one barred, and the limit's up where the pines point to."
+
+Snaky Dick had edged around the table till he stood close beside
+Bulldog, where he whispered: "Let me in, Carney; I've been layin' for
+this flannel-mouth. I don't want to see him get away with Walla Walla
+money. You save your stake with me, if I'm in."
+
+Carney pushed the little wizzen-face speaker away, saying:
+
+"Any kind of a talking bird can swing in on a winning if he's got a
+copper-riveted, cinch bet. But sport, as I understand it, gentlemen,
+consists in providing excitement, taking on long chances."
+
+"That's Bulldog talkin'," somebody interrupted; and they all cheered.
+
+"That being acknowledged," Carney resumed, "I feel like stealing candy
+from a blind kid when I crowd in on this Texas person. A yellow man
+wouldn't know how to own a real horse; that money on the table is, so
+to speak, mine now; but as Snaky Dick is panting to make it a real race,
+purely out of a kindly feeling for Walla Walla sports, I'm going to let
+him draw cards. Clatawa is welcome."
+
+"The drinks is on the house when I hear a wolf howl like that!" Snaggle
+Tooth yelled. "Crowd up, gentlemen--the drinks is on the house! Old
+Walla Walla is goin' to sit up and take notice; Bulldog is some live
+wire."
+
+Chairs were thrust back; men crowded the bar; liquors were tossed off.
+Sheriff Teddy the Leaper, who had come in, felt his arm touched by
+Carney, and inclining his head to a gentle pull at his coat-sleeve, he
+heard the latter whisper, "Stake holder for my sake." That was all.
+
+Then the crowd swarmed back to the table where the croupier had remained
+beside the mound of gold.
+
+"You give Jim, there, a receipt for a thousand, and he'll pass it out,"
+Iron Jaw told Texas.
+
+Jim the croupier took from the safe behind him rolls of twenty-dollar
+gold pieces and stood them up in Texas's pile. He removed a few coins,
+saying, "The pot is right, gentlemen; two thousand apiece."
+
+"Hold on," Snaky Dick cried; "it ain't called yet--I draw cards."
+
+"Not till you see the bet and the raise," Carney objected. "Nobody
+whispers his way into this game; it's for blood."
+
+"Give me a cheque book, Snaggle Tooth," Snaky pleaded.
+
+"Flimsies don't go," Carney objected.
+
+"Nothin' but the coin weighs in agin me," Texas agreed; "put up the
+dough-boys or keep out."
+
+Snaky was in despair. Here was just the softest spot in all the world,
+and without the cash he couldn't get in.
+
+"Will you cash my cheque?" he asked Iron Jaw.
+
+"If Baker'll O.K. it I figger you must have the stuff in his bank--it'll
+be good enough for me," Iron Jaw replied.
+
+There was a little parley between Snaky Dick, his associates, and Baker,
+who was a private banker. The cheque was made out, endorsed, and cashed
+from the gambling funds, Iron Jaw being a partner of Snaggle Tooth's in
+this commercial enterprise.
+
+When the pot was complete, six thousand on the table, Texas said:
+
+"We've got to have a stakeholder; put the money in Blake's hands--does
+that go?"
+
+Snaky Dick coughed, and hesitated. He had no suspicion that Iron Jaw had
+any interest with Texas Sam, but knowing the man as he did, he felt sure
+that before the race was run Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth would be in the
+game up to the eyes.
+
+The drawling voice of Carney broke the little hush that followed this
+request.
+
+"You're from the outside, Texas; you know all about your own horse,
+and that lets you out. The selecting of a stakeholder, and such, most
+properly belongs to Walla Walla, that is to say, such of us interested
+as more or less live here. The Sheriff of Shoshone, who is present, if
+he'll oblige, is the man that holds my money, and yours, too, unless you
+want to crawfish. Does that suit you, Snaky?"
+
+"It does," the latter answered cheerfully, for, fully believing that
+Clatawa was going to show a clean pair of heels to the other horses, he
+wanted the money where he could get it without gun-play.
+
+"That's settled, then," Carney said blithely, ignoring Texas completely.
+He turned to Teddy the Leaper: "Will you oblige, Sheriff?"
+
+The Sheriff was agreeable, saying that as soon as they had completed
+details they would take the money over to Baker's bank and lock it up
+in the safe, Baker promising to take charge of it, even if it were at
+night.
+
+"Just repeat the conditions of the match," the Sheriff said, and he drew
+from his pocket a note book and pencil.
+
+Carney seized the opportunity to say:
+
+"A three-cornered race between the buckskin gelding Pat, the black
+gelding Horned Toad, and the bay horse Clatawa at one mile and a
+quarter. The stake, two thousand dollars a corner; winner take all. To
+be run one week from to-day."
+
+"Is that right, gentlemen?" the Sheriff asked; "all agreed?"
+
+"Owners up--this is a gentleman's race," Texas snapped.
+
+"Satisfactory?" the Sheriff asked, his eyes on Carney.
+
+The latter nodded; and Iron Jaw winked at Snaggle Tooth.
+
+Snaky Dick could scarce credit his ears; surely the gods were looking
+with favor upon his fortunes; the other riders would be giving him many
+pounds in this self-accepted handicap.
+
+At Sheriff Teddy's suggestion the gold was carried over to Baker's bank,
+a stone building almost opposite the Del Monte; the bag containing it
+was sealed and placed in a big safe, Baker giving the Sheriff a receipt
+for six thousand dollars.
+
+Then they went back to the Del Monte for target practise at the bottle,
+each man implicated buying ammunition.
+
+At this time Carney had taken the buckskin to his stable, going back to
+the saloon.
+
+Snaggle Tooth made a short patriotic speech, the burden of which was
+that the saloon was full of men of eager habit who had not had a chance
+to sit into the game, and to ameliorate the condition of these mournful
+mavericks he would sell pools on the race, for the mere honorarium of
+five per cent.
+
+Fever was in the men's blood; if he had suggested twenty per cent it
+would have gone.
+
+Snaggle Tooth took up his position behind a faro table and called out:
+
+"The pool is open, with Clatawa, Horned Toad, and Pat in the box. What
+am I bid for first choice?"
+
+"Twenty dollars," a voice cried.
+
+"Thirty," another said.
+
+"Forty."
+
+"Fifty."
+
+A dry rasp that suggested an alkaline throat squeaked: "A hundred. Is
+this a horse race, or are we dribblin' into the plate at the synagogue?"
+
+"Sold!" Snaggle Tooth yapped, knowing well that excitement begat quick
+action. "Which cayuse do you favor, plunger?"
+
+"The range horse, Clatawa."
+
+The croupier at Snaggle Tooth's elbow took the bidder's live
+twenty-dollar gold pieces and passed him a slip with Clatawa's name on
+it.
+
+"A hundred dollars in the box and second choice for sale," Snaggle Tooth
+drawled, his prominent fang gleaming in the lamp light as he mouthed the
+words.
+
+Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty was bid like the quick popping of a
+machine gun; at seventy-five the bids hung fire, and the auctioneer,
+thumping the table with his bony fist, snapped, "Sold! Name your jack
+rabbit."
+
+"Horned Toad!" came from the bidder of the seventy-five.
+
+"A hundred and seventy-five in the box," Snaggle Tooth droned, "and the
+buckskin for sale. What about it, you pikers--what about it?"
+
+There seemed to be nothing about it, unless silence was something. The
+hush seemed to dampen the gambling spirit.
+
+"What!" yelped Snaggle Tooth; "two thousand golden bucks staked on the
+horse now, and no tinhorn with sand enough in his gizzard to open his
+trap. This is a race, not a funeral--who's dead? Bulldog, you laid even
+money; here's a hundred and seventy-five goin' a-beggin'. Ain't you got
+a chance?"
+
+"Ten dollars!" Carney bid as if driven into it.
+
+"Ten dollars, ten dollars bid for the buckskin; a hundred and
+seventy-five in the box, and ten dollars bid for the buckskin. Sold!"
+
+The first pool was followed by others, one after another: the roulette
+table, the keno game, and faro were in the discard--their tables were
+deserted.
+
+It soon became evident that Clatawa was a hot favorite; the public's
+money was all for the Walla Walla champion.
+
+Noting this, the Horned Toad trio hung back, bidding less. Clatawa
+was selling for a hundred, Horned Toad about fifty, and the buckskin
+sometimes knocked down at ten to Carney, or sometimes bid up to twenty
+by someone tempted by the odds.
+
+At last Carney slipped quietly away, having bought at least twenty
+pools that stood him between three and four thousand to a matter of two
+hundred.
+
+In the morning he rode the buckskin out to Molly's cottage and turned
+him over to Billy.
+
+The boy's voice trembled with delight when he was told of what had taken
+place.
+
+"Gee! now I will get well," he said; "I'll beat the bug out now--I'll
+have heart. You see, Mr. Carney, I got set down in California a year
+ago. It wasn't my fault; I was ridin' for Timberleg Harley, and he give
+the horse a bucket of water before the race; he didn't want to win--was
+lettin' the horse run for Sweeney, layin' for a big price later on.
+He had an interest in a book, and they took liberties with the horse's
+odds--he was favorite. He didn't dare tell me anything about it, the
+hound. When I found the horse couldn't raise a gallop, hangin' in my
+hands like a sea lion, I didn't ride him out, thinkin' he'd broke down.
+They had me up in the Judges' Stand, and sent for the books. It looked
+bad. Timberleg got off by swearin' I'd pulled the horse to let the other
+one win; swore that I stood in with the book that overlaid him. I was
+give the gate, and it just broke my heart. I was weak from wastin'
+anyway. And you can't beat the bug out if your heart's soft; the bug'll
+win--it's a hundred-to-one on him. First thing I'm goin' to give Waster
+a ball to clean him out, give him a bran mash, too. He must be like a
+currycomb inside, grass and hay and everything here is full of this damn
+cactus. A week ain't much to ready up a horse for a race, but he ain't
+got no fat to work off, and he knows the game. In a week he'll be as
+spry as a kitten. I'll just play with him. I'll bunk with him, too. If
+Slimy Red got wise to anything he'd slip him a twig of locoe, or put a
+sponge up his nose. Do you know what that thief did once, Mr. Carney? He
+was a moonlighter; he sneaked the favorite for a race that was to be
+run next day out of his stall at night and galloped him four miles with
+about a hundred and sixty in the saddle. That settled the favorite; he
+run his race same's if he was pullin' a hearse.
+
+"That's a good idea, Billy. There's half-a-dozen Slimy Reds in Walla
+Walla: it's a good idea, only I'll do the sleeping with the buckskin.
+I'd be lonesome away from him."
+
+The boy objected, but Carney was firm.
+
+Billy was not only a good rider, but he was a man of much brains. There
+was little of the art of training that he did not know, for his father
+had been a trainer before him--he had been brought up in a stable.
+
+Fortunately the buckskin's working life had left little to be desired in
+the way of conditioning; it was just that the sinews and muscles might
+have become case-hardened, more the muscles of endurance than activity.
+
+But then the race was over a distance, a mile-and-a-quarter, where the
+endurance of the thoroughbred would tell over Clatawa. Indeed, full of
+the contempt which a racing man has for a cold-blooded horse, Billy did
+not consider Clatawa in the race at all.
+
+"That part of it is just found money," he assured Carney. "Clatawa will
+go off with a burst of speed like those Texas half-milers, and he'll
+commence to die at the mile; he hasn't a chance."
+
+As to Ding Dong it was simply a question of whether the black had
+improved and Waster gone back enough, through being thrown out of
+training, to bring the two together. Anywhere near alike in condition
+Waster was a fourteen-pound better horse than Ding Dong. It might be
+that now, his legs sounder than they had ever been when he was racing,
+Waster might run the best mile-and-a-quarter of his life.
+
+Of course this might not be possible in a three-quarter sprint, for, at
+that terrific rate of going, running it from end to end at top speed,
+a certain nervous or muscular system would be called upon that had
+practically become atrophied through the more leisure ways of the trail
+work.
+
+The little man pondered over these many things just as a man of commerce
+might mentally canvas great markets, conveying his point of view to
+Carney generally. He would map out the race as they sat together in the
+evening.
+
+"Of course Snaky Dick will shoot out from the crack of the pistol, and
+try to open up a gap that'll break our hearts. He won't dare to
+pull Clatawa in behind; a cold-blooded horse's got the heart of a
+chicken--he'd quit. Slimy'll carry Ding Dong along at a rate he knows
+will leave him enough for a strong run home; but he'll think that he's
+only got Clatawa to beat and he'll pull out of his pace--he'll keep
+within strikin' distance of Clatawa. I'll let them go on. I know 'bout
+how fast Waster can run that mile-and-a-quarter from end to end. Don't
+you worry if you see me ten lengths out of it at the mile. Waster won
+all his races comin' through his horses from behind--'cause he's game.
+When Caltawa cracks, and I'm not up, Slimy'll stop ridin' he'll let
+his horse down thinkin' he's won. You'll see, Mr. Carney. If a
+quarter-of-a-mile from the finish post I'm within three lengths of Ding
+Dong and not drivin' him you can take all the money in sight. I'll tell
+you somethin' else, Mr. Carney; if I'm up with Ding Dong, and Slimy Red
+thinks I've got him, he'll try a foul."
+
+"Glad you mentioned it, little man," Carney remarked drily.
+
+The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had
+received the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short
+sprinting runs and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days
+before the race he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under
+full speed; rated as though he were in a race, the last half a topping
+gallop. He showed little distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later
+after he had been cooled out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.
+
+Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his
+trial over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly.
+Texas Sam and Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and
+sometimes gave them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the
+first peep of day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track,
+so he waited that morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast,
+thinking all the gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and
+covered the mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.
+
+The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of
+the town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street.
+The finish post was opposite the heart of the town.
+
+The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting
+jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.
+
+Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal
+laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it,
+for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like
+a tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that
+perhaps Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after
+they had won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover
+up in his case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay
+with his buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules.
+They hadn't guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against
+the black, and there he was; names didn't count--the horse was the
+thing.
+
+Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's
+active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode
+a punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for
+a chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race,
+and would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked
+to Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to
+Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.
+
+And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden
+shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking
+out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty
+pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon,
+the border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there
+was gold in the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good
+Presbyterians under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and
+spiritually, Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in
+death, a plug of lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling
+row, but the morrow would be soon enough to investigate; to-day was
+_the_ day--the day of the race; minor business was suspended.
+
+It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire
+for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but
+prowled in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four
+o'clock.
+
+One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."
+
+Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was
+a weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came
+from a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant
+fool; nobody had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant
+backing.
+
+The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's
+well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused,
+could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but
+what was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand?
+And yet when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the
+buckskin, a man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself,
+looking like a placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the
+Columbia, would say, diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would
+make good--one yellow eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet
+seriousness of this man who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.
+
+"Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he
+pointed to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed
+against some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the
+fatty laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:
+
+"Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your
+safe won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas
+brayin' ass have no more booze."
+
+"If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now
+because of Carney--sober he'd quit."
+
+"Carney won't turn a hair when we win."
+
+"Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a
+funnel--he's hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the
+finish for fear Bulldog'll grab him."
+
+"Look here, Snaggle, that coyote--hell! I know the breed of them
+outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin'
+in front--he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others
+when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand
+to kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff
+wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the
+horse that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by
+the throat."
+
+That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic
+town of Walla Walla.
+
+It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one
+confident that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked
+work, he could win.
+
+The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed
+judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was
+to fire the starting gun.
+
+It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs
+had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless
+of turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his
+joints, though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out
+unrooted earth and bow a tendon.
+
+An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would
+be settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed
+that first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even
+Lieutenant Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief
+Joseph, sat his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every
+inch a king in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture
+was Homeric, grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of
+gold worshipers.
+
+At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting,
+vociferating throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man,
+called:
+
+"Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"
+
+Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course
+where the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black
+points, and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead,
+ran down his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side,
+and a blanket covered his form.
+
+Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose
+blanket showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with
+the unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare.
+Beside him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.
+
+Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and
+beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the
+holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had
+shown.
+
+As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the
+flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far
+down the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if
+wondering where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it
+was a race--that he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The
+tight cinching of the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his
+shins, the sponging out of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he
+had had--all these touches had brought back to his memory the game his
+rich warm, thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the
+thrill of it.
+
+"Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings
+called, watch in hand.
+
+The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide,
+padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet.
+And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a
+pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown,
+monkeylike form.
+
+Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins
+ran through the steel rings of a martingale.
+
+At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this
+get-up for a supposed cow-pony.
+
+Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a
+slim lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting
+racing breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as
+if, by necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds
+of flesh.
+
+But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now
+the buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back
+a tiny matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the
+little figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to
+the saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.
+
+With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:
+
+"Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt?
+Get down!"
+
+He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him
+out of the saddle.
+
+His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown
+up in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his
+wind-pipe from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an
+oath of raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a
+gun, and heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:
+
+"You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now
+stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."
+
+Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side,
+their hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him,
+turned on them:
+
+"Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"
+
+Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin
+pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and
+said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into
+the face of Snaggle Tooth.
+
+But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call
+to chuck--don't forget."
+
+Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:
+
+"This match was for owners up."
+
+He beckoned forward the stakeholder:
+
+"Ain't that so, Sheriff--owners up?"
+
+"That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain,
+Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.
+
+"It was."
+
+"Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot--and that monkey up?" And Iron
+Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on
+Waster.
+
+Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out
+like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use
+any foul words when you speak to me--we're not good enough pals for
+that; if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat.
+Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the
+owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named
+Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has
+been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the
+horse's tail."
+
+Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney,
+knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.
+
+The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr.
+Carney?"
+
+"No, sir--let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a
+technicality, but on a horse."
+
+"Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"
+
+"I do," Carney answered.
+
+"Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.
+
+"Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing
+the sheriff.
+
+When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open,
+and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its
+date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and
+Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before
+the match was made.
+
+"It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it
+in the sheriff's hands--why didn't the boy keep it--it was his?"
+
+"Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney
+answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they
+would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game.
+And there was another reason."
+
+Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the
+Judge. It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his
+money, if the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy
+MacKay.
+
+When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little
+smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly
+Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."
+
+Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice
+as he said, quietly:
+
+"The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This
+paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to
+the post."
+
+A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla,
+and the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they
+grasped the idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own
+game; that the intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides,
+now they could see that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had
+started more than one whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the
+Clatawa people believing in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted
+that perhaps there was a job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa
+and one of them go on and win; though few would admit that Carney would
+be party to cold-decking the public.
+
+But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race
+to the finish, and the stakes represented real money.
+
+Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider
+of Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:
+
+"Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish
+waiting for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never
+ride again."
+
+"I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered
+abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.
+
+The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat
+in a choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth
+snapping from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating
+his excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that
+springy lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding.
+Indians and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the
+course, on their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight.
+Old Walla Walla had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was
+on in all its glory.
+
+After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course;
+they criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were
+being placed by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble;
+sometimes he reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought
+for his head. But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.
+
+Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that
+distance, as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an
+equine statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had
+taken long odds about him felt a depression.
+
+Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas,
+was keeping him on his toes--not letting him chill out; but, like the
+buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were
+old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the
+antics of Clatawa--the starter was the whole works.
+
+Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came
+back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line,
+and the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter,
+finger on trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his
+finger gripped spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of
+smoke, and a white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying
+start.
+
+The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.
+
+"Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.
+
+"Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.
+
+"They'll never catch him!--never catch him! He'll win off by himself!"
+was droned.
+
+Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them,
+galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone,
+as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the
+boy, his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either
+side of the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying,
+"Ste-a-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous
+sing-song through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the
+handicap of a strong wind that was blowing down the track.
+
+He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out
+in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the
+old Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful
+stride that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his
+horse. "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come
+back!"
+
+He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and
+trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own
+knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under
+2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he
+had cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it
+up, close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.
+
+He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.
+
+Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more
+flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild
+horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.
+
+The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for
+a little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let
+Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the
+white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high
+deer-like lope that was impressive.
+
+At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They
+could see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and
+Horned Toad was between the two.
+
+Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had
+forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.
+
+Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a
+hundred against him."
+
+"I'll take it," Carney declared.
+
+"I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.
+
+"You're on," came from Carney.
+
+And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.
+
+Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it
+seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the
+latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion
+lying along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were
+up. Surely a quirt had switched the air once.
+
+Yes, the Toad was creeping up--his rider was making his run; they could
+see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.
+
+Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he
+lost his whip--had he given up all idea of winning?
+
+They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.
+
+A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa
+was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back
+was playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse
+instead of helping him.
+
+And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.
+
+Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered
+tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now
+somebody cried:
+
+"God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him--lo-ook at him, men!"
+
+His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened
+their vision, and their owners gasped.
+
+Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced
+by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.
+
+And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths?
+It was two--it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the
+black's quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now
+their heads rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled
+for the lead: Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the
+flanks of his horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him
+home a winner.
+
+How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race
+won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out
+of stride; no flash of the whip to startle him--to break his heart; the
+brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of
+brains, was wise enough to sit still.
+
+They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin
+drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave,
+stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding
+in front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping
+straight as an arrow.
+
+"The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin
+wins--the buckskin wins!" became a clamor.
+
+Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse,
+from some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the
+buckskin; they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!"
+rose; it was an angry roar like caged animals at war.
+
+Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The
+buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled;
+his head shot down--almost to his knees he went: then he was galloping
+again, the two horses locked together.
+
+Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.
+
+The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.
+
+Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front.
+Their speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped,
+and the boy pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still
+tangled in the martingale of Horned Toad.
+
+Men closed in frantically. A man--it was Oregon--twisted Carney's gun
+skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."
+
+He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to
+battle back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and
+Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring
+devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings
+packed in a barrel.
+
+Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!"
+and a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of
+a guarding circle.
+
+Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad,
+trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then
+a woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:
+
+"Back, you cowards--you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room--give
+him air!"
+
+Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a
+battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's
+side.
+
+"Don't lift him--he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put
+his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back--give him air!" she
+commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her shoulders
+a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated with red
+froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and Molly,
+sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.
+
+"Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't
+speak," she admonished.
+
+She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the
+ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough
+the red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.
+
+The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the
+circle about the lad and Molly.
+
+The judge's voice was heard saying:
+
+"The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong
+condemnation in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have
+disqualified him: it was a deliberate foul."
+
+The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the
+barracks for protection.
+
+"Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy
+will be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.
+
+"You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips
+touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot
+tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of
+cupidity and guile.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--THE GOLD WOLF
+
+|All day long Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the
+odd imprint of that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle,
+riding a trail that winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs
+monotonously similar, the hush of the everlasting hills holding in
+subjection man's soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting
+up towards God's dome pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces
+a comatose condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little
+beyond the recognition of trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird,
+the sudden roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the
+harp of a giant pine.
+
+And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history
+of the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the
+hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails
+denting the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the
+miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by
+a strange perversity, haunted Carney.
+
+The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills,
+leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small
+fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for
+the town of Bucking Horse.
+
+Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the
+ford of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave
+yawned in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had
+melted into its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might
+have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the
+Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort
+of fear left the trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards
+beyond.
+
+In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge
+dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from
+strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black
+bristles on his back erect in challenge.
+
+The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in
+daylight was unusual.
+
+Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the
+saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's
+feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.
+
+The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes
+just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the
+movement.
+
+Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the
+usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.
+
+A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The
+sudden apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest,
+either in man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a
+wolf meant little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive
+away.
+
+High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered
+feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion
+catching vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far
+west, a flaming sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the
+twisted valley a chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons;
+the giant ferns hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with
+the death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad
+berries that gleamed like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling,
+frothing stream that still held the green tint of its glacier birth.
+
+Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail
+almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now
+back to the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the
+bright and happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed
+and bantered with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West;
+the ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had
+won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard--where the
+dice might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the
+thrower take a fall.
+
+But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow
+environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the
+mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung
+his heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes
+one ear was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond,
+the now glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur,
+the other ear held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of
+pursuit.
+
+Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his
+saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the
+back trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest
+had developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his
+trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of
+tumbling forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms;
+bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.
+
+The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would
+go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.
+
+Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty
+feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall;
+and, when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of
+relief, clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.
+
+"I wonder--by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand,
+slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.
+
+"I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin;
+"something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of
+the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his
+chin, thinking--thinking aloud.
+
+"There are tracks, Patsy boy--moccasins; but we've lost our
+gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy--gone over the
+cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down.
+By gad! two of them!"
+
+Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering;
+cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off.
+The inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that
+carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.
+
+Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the
+buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the
+snaffle against his bridle teeth.
+
+At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're
+quite right, pal--it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of
+old grannies imagining things."
+
+But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a
+compelling inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge
+to camp for the night.
+
+Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the
+trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a
+wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the
+dog-wolf's mate--a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.
+
+"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by
+with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."
+
+As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his
+challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling
+yelp.
+
+"By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.
+
+Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again
+muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl--it's
+different."
+
+Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering
+was soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of
+velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning,
+pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they
+push on.
+
+Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good
+dope for a sleep."
+
+So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped
+in an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in
+reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs
+with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round
+had waited for his partner to dismount.
+
+It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at
+all the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He
+did not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich
+he spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.
+
+Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a
+curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away
+from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer,
+heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when
+deep sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to
+consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him
+to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border
+of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the
+crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting
+of his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching
+the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that
+there was something--not close, but hovering there beyond.
+
+The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of
+discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a
+spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.
+
+But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning
+devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with
+his delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the
+compass; but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there,
+watching.
+
+After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had
+yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.
+
+Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that
+was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky
+told that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond
+the Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the
+plains.
+
+The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his
+broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little
+fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he
+considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a
+nothing.
+
+Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to
+the left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the
+trail running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping
+the Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now
+Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.
+
+There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a
+morbid disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had
+happened to that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the
+weird fancies of the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the
+trail was earthed, holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked
+ahead of the buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was
+imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but
+they were not the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that
+a man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not
+an inturned left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly
+broken. His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step
+of a pack pony.
+
+The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried
+to shake it off--it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a
+prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for
+gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.
+
+Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same
+cayuse tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had
+travelled both up and down the trail.
+
+Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the
+mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay.
+And there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the
+Bucking Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned,
+for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.
+
+This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in
+a troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation
+of the West--those mounted men had ridden after somebody--had trailed
+somebody who was wanted quick.
+
+This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally
+the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the
+cliff, the hovering oppression of the night--everything.
+
+Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes
+humming an Irish ballad of Mangin's.
+
+It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse
+was in a ferment.
+
+Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters
+of unrest seethed.
+
+A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's
+brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through
+the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were
+afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered
+men.
+
+Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of
+opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth
+Long, were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for
+stringing him up _tout de suite_. The times were propitious for this
+entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at
+Fort Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping
+of the mob.
+
+Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is
+what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand
+on his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:
+
+"This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains,
+and my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a
+pretty poor sport."
+
+"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.
+
+"He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one
+the best of it--first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when he
+starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,
+isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure
+themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and
+they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."
+
+Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a
+quiet thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was
+wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could
+have stood up against that plank bar and declared himself without being
+called quick.
+
+"You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've
+got to say," Kootenay growled.
+
+"That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the
+trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being
+fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."
+
+With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles
+behind the bar.
+
+Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the
+dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt
+hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog
+that she loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for
+help. He had just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had
+been hurled at him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry--Harry the
+waster, the no-good, the gambler--had been found to be the man who had
+murdered returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they
+were going to string him up.
+
+And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her
+side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had
+brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed
+her way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded
+and begged for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely
+hopeless it had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".
+
+It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the
+magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable.
+Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played
+the card of reason.
+
+For the two or three gun men--Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver
+Ike--Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun; he could
+deal with those three toughs if necessary.
+
+"Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they
+had drunk.
+
+The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the
+narrative.
+
+Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had
+mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would
+have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place
+later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse--nobody had seen him.
+
+Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the
+bodies had been devoured by wolves.
+
+"And wolves don't eat gold--not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck,"
+Kootenay Jim yelped.
+
+"Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly,
+"That's your food, Jim."
+
+"Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a
+threat.
+
+"Just what the words convey--you sort them out, Kootenay."
+
+But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game,
+Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin'
+in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou
+Dave--here he is sittin' right here--he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot
+Johnson--that is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."
+
+"Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice,
+"and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big
+clean-up of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse
+till I creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good
+many years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."
+
+Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave
+finds his mate at the foot of a cliff."
+
+Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun,
+thinking something was going to happen.
+
+"I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog,"
+Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks
+of 'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me--I guess I was
+gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em
+tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many
+years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit
+of fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage
+like, as if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind
+staggers, or somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up
+thinkin' it out, 'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited
+any, Fourteen-foot'd pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see
+some wolf tracks--dang near as big as a steer's they was--and I figger
+Fourteen-foot's had a set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and
+lammed hell's delight out of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm
+follerin' the cayuse's trail agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all
+at onct it jumps me that the big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger
+Johnson's got mussed up a bit with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's
+the dang wolf tracks agen. And some moccasin feet has been passin'
+along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts out just same's if he'd spread his
+wings and gone up in the air--they just ain't."
+
+"Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff,"
+Miner Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously
+at a black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.
+
+"I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's
+Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that
+if two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and
+show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out
+just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide--'tain't natural. I tell you,
+boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me--that's what he is, when I goes back."
+
+Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight
+for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.
+
+"Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his
+back what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no
+sign of the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse
+tracks most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for
+Kootenay. And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks
+it's Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."
+
+"And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog,"
+Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted,
+cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse,
+with lots of gold."
+
+"That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.
+
+"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.
+
+"No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and
+you got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in
+your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the
+circumstantial evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."
+
+"I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores
+might get you in wrong."
+
+"You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's
+got to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear
+his story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair
+warning, boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm
+going to denounce you; not one of you will get away--_not one!_"
+
+"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but
+swing he will."
+
+Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police
+barracks. He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what
+might be called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had
+bought the cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He
+refused to say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had
+killed nobody, had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing
+about the murder..
+
+Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was
+innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned,
+a minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him
+from being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men--there was no
+doubt whatever about that in his mind.
+
+"I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking
+you've got the right man."
+
+"That's what we figgered," Graham declared.
+
+"But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure
+don't want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that
+you caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's
+cayuse?"
+
+"Caribou says it is," Graham answered.
+
+"And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.
+
+"He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured
+viciously.
+
+"Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.
+
+"Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.
+
+"I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that
+poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm
+going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."
+
+His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion
+had gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that,
+convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would
+check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing
+even Carney to their side.
+
+So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the
+stable yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request,
+led up and down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay
+at every step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He
+studied them intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for
+that goblined hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like
+imprints, that, though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way
+of a cayuse, neither was like the curious goblined track that had so
+fastened on his fancy out in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.
+
+And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen
+on the newer trail.
+
+He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is
+Johnson's pack horse?"
+
+"There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity.
+"When I see my boots I don't _think_ they're mine, I just most natur'ly
+figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see
+him in a wild herd."
+
+"And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that
+Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."
+
+A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:
+
+"That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over.
+Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."
+
+"Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There
+isn't more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good
+many thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the
+same color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar
+as so many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new
+moon, or a flapjack."
+
+He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"
+
+"I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same
+place it's restin' now--it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."
+
+"That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's
+brand, how can he swear to the beast?"
+
+"And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was
+his hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay
+cackled.
+
+"Johnson wouldn't say so--he'd know better. His cayuse had a club foot,
+an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles
+back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track,
+and sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."
+
+The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did
+you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse--what his travellers was like?"
+
+"I never looked at his feet--there wasn't no reason to; I was minin'."
+
+"There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you
+got any of Johnson's belongings--a coat?"
+
+"We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the
+wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store
+clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw,
+and from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass,
+saying, as he examined the coat:
+
+"This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that
+cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's
+generally a difference in the hair."
+
+Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in
+the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many
+different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed
+through the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing
+in the yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let
+it run like a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse
+considerable attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat
+warp, and on this cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.
+
+When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had
+not been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.
+
+These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not
+Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence
+to connect Harry Holt with the murder.
+
+Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that
+Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a
+technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas
+Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.
+
+"We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the
+trail and see what Bulldog seen."
+
+Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and
+go back."
+
+But Carney objected.
+
+When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of
+derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand
+in the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to
+gain time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're
+bein' buffaloed--we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered
+man's hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some
+hawse hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks
+back on the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we
+was a damn lot of tender-feet."
+
+This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none
+whatever upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:
+
+"I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because
+I'm going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for
+if he does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm
+trailing. But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever
+devil, and will make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that
+you hold Holt till I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse
+with a club foot, for there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the
+wolves got him too."
+
+They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim
+and his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering
+together as they drank.
+
+As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:
+
+"We're bein' flim-flammed--played for a lot of kids. There ain't been
+a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has
+been murdered on the trail, and who done it--somebody. Caribou's mate
+was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here,
+was bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits.
+And 'cause his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card
+trick with hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."
+
+"You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother
+wouldn't tell you where he got the gold--he'd let you hang him first;
+but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get
+out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds,
+Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you
+down for insulting me."
+
+"That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates
+and you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and
+Kootenay whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his
+gun clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt,
+incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's
+hand was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their
+backs to the bar.
+
+No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five
+seconds. Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a
+trigger--no one spoke.
+
+It was Carney who broke the silence:
+
+"Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the
+doctor--I guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."
+
+A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension
+slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.
+
+Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left,
+followed Jeanette out of the room.
+
+As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men,
+his wrists bound behind his back, said:
+
+"My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's
+safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to
+kill Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the
+gold come from."
+
+"Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed
+any gold--what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold from
+your safe?"
+
+"I ain't looked--I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron
+box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I
+wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I
+guess she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."
+
+"I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette
+didn't know I was going to take it."
+
+"But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a
+frame-up?" Graham asked.
+
+"I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in
+wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."
+
+"Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man,
+and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find
+on Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."
+
+"That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out
+with."
+
+Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he
+would have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off
+a passing train and lynched him; it would have been a _quid pro quo._
+He felt that he was being cheated by the superior cleverness of Bulldog
+Carney. He had seen miners beaten out of their just gold claims by
+professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the microscopic evidence of the
+hairs, the intoed hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was honest
+in his conviction that the cayuse was Johnson's, and feared that the man
+who had killed his friend would slip through their fingers.
+
+"It's just like this, boys," he said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together
+so long that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was comin' back a day
+afore he hit camp--I'd feel it, same's I turned back on the trail there
+and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There wasn't no reason to
+look over that cliff only ol' Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's
+a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there murdered him when he wasn't
+lookin'. And if you chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish
+I'll get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he won't never get away.
+If you boys is just a pack of coyotes that howls good and plenty till
+somebody calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away with your tails between
+your legs for fear you'll be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn
+this murderer loose right now--you don't need to worry what'll happen to
+him. I'll be too danged lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's
+comin' to me. Turn him loose--take the hobbles off him. You fellers
+go home and pull your blankets over your heads so's you won't see no
+ghosts."
+
+Carney's sharp gray eyes watched the old fanatic's every move; he let
+him talk till he had exhausted himself with his passionate words; then
+he said:
+
+"Caribou, you're some man. You'd go through a whole tribe of Indians for
+a chum. You believe you're right, and that's just what I'm trying to do
+in this, find out who is right--we don't want to wrong anybody. You
+can come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you the club-footed
+tracks; I'll let you help me get the right man."
+
+The old chap turned his humpy shoulders, and looked at Carney out of
+bleary, weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he shrilled:
+
+"I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you
+had a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the
+rings on a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack
+rabbit ain't goin' to get away--and he ain't; you can bet your soul
+on that, Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that
+Wie-sah-ke-chack, the Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream,
+club-footed tracks, and when we come back the man that killed my chum,
+old Fourteen-foot, would be down somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd
+get him off."
+
+It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from
+that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days
+of respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any
+information to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the
+murderer.
+
+Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the
+shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he
+had brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on
+Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got
+pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a
+man does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and
+a gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as
+well as by the fall of a card.
+
+But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be
+foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark
+without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's
+life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning,
+when it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to
+the stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way
+to the tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left
+the horse and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about
+for a time, generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that
+he was camped for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom
+he had confided, knew different.
+
+Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth,
+unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the
+other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.
+
+Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the
+foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."
+
+"Why, Bulldog?"
+
+"Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a
+sling because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much
+about women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."
+
+"But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."
+
+"Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You
+clamber up the stairs quick."
+
+"My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would
+stand for Harry yourself."
+
+"If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."
+
+"That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a
+mob of angry men, because he's _my_ brother."
+
+"You called the turn, Jeanette."
+
+"And all I can do, all I can say is, _thank you_. Is that all?"
+
+"That's all, girl. It's more than enough."
+
+He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an
+earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:
+
+"When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending--then you'll
+hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start backing
+the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll bring
+in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave--I'll
+get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if
+Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."
+
+Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone
+watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift,
+lighted candle in hand.
+
+Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a
+back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs
+of light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch
+of his heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.
+
+It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten
+robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie
+down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself
+in his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin--they were like two
+men in a huge bed.
+
+All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and
+eating a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that
+the murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's
+Bridge his stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning
+miners was still there he felt certain that he would get him.
+
+There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men
+were known to have been murdered.
+
+A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime
+of that sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite--careless,
+possessed of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all
+desperadoes that way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves,
+it generally had been so easy.
+
+Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer;
+indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the
+ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was
+any suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a
+posse would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would
+have ample knowledge of their approach.
+
+To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in
+this killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like
+a gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold,
+probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more
+than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once
+started, the devilish murder lust.
+
+Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality,
+and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be
+watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had
+met him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day
+and ridden on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the
+murderer would let him pass without action. It was only returning miners
+he was interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were
+still there he would get him.
+
+His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where
+the murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood
+of the cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been
+found, and go forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered
+the ground. He felt that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere
+between that point and the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was
+the home of this trail devil.
+
+The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of
+the wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog--that is, a creature that was
+half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train
+dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's
+mind that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild
+pair; they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour
+his victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not
+impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull
+down a white man quick enough if he were helpless.
+
+However, the man was the thing.
+
+The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the
+west when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge,
+and, fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of
+the spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.
+
+Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck
+said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy--stand steady."
+
+Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound
+the rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a
+dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect
+himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless
+he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a
+boxer.
+
+Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the
+imprint of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had.
+There were the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.
+
+Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to
+where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps
+the evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth,
+and then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If
+the murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show
+himself at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might
+have been on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the
+cave for water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do
+Carney had not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes
+of finding out something that was conclusive.
+
+If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly
+be there.
+
+That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and
+eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood
+at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a
+little turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake
+of leaves and brush.
+
+As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron,
+and the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing
+force that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring
+noises in his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.
+
+His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was
+smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to
+splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in
+the legs of his strong riding boots.
+
+As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening
+stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave
+hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting
+to the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.
+
+The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he
+could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could
+crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was
+fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a
+man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of
+loose log.
+
+The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole
+vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed
+before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be
+killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might
+protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even
+could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with
+a pretense of helping him.
+
+Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:
+
+"Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered,
+Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."
+
+Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm
+projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.
+
+"Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.
+
+Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that
+the offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that
+he would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting.
+Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.
+
+"There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered;
+"you can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be
+torn to pieces by the wolves."
+
+Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he
+said: "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I
+ain't invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've
+been a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good
+'nough friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a
+gun on you. You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain
+things, I'll spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess
+you'll keep your word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."
+
+The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as
+absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the
+gun.
+
+"You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me
+out, and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."
+
+"You mean you won't give up the gun?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em
+knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off
+there in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake
+up. You think it over, Bulldog, I'm----"
+
+The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance
+down the valley.
+
+"D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down.
+"They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their
+meat. You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your
+buckskin; he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when
+I come back what you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry--they're
+hungry; and I guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."
+
+Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling
+through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he
+travelled.
+
+Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would
+tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have
+raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of
+being a loser, whether man or horse won.
+
+From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head
+go up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see,
+beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree
+to tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.
+
+Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his
+gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark
+he would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be
+a chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second
+purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that
+there was a battle on.
+
+Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly
+approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was
+shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.
+
+Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the
+bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist
+an ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in
+a hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward
+the buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.
+
+Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that
+meant--a little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head,
+or seize him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump
+to the man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as
+a warning to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the
+ground.
+
+Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a
+sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance,
+he sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels
+by the narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet
+missed, and Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.
+
+Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right
+hand, and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the
+loop swishing through the air, and at the first cast it went over the
+buckskin's head.
+
+Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that
+always brought the buckskin to his side.
+
+Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at
+the well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through
+Jack's sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The
+buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal
+at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as
+though he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body
+struck rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a
+cork, for the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.
+
+Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a
+slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as
+the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.
+
+"Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing
+forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long
+arm, to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against
+his master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all
+right--don't worry."
+
+Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead,
+answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat--i'm glad you're here.
+It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled the
+horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant nerves
+to Carney's brain.
+
+In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows
+that had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he
+could build a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the
+darkness they would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a
+target when the light fell on their snarling faces.
+
+Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of
+dead branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold
+the leaves. There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver
+parchment-like bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from
+about his limbs, then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly
+to his free knee and built a little mound of sticks and bark against the
+birch log. Then he put his hand in a pocket for matches--every pocket;
+he had not one match; they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the
+trail. He looked longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree;
+Jack would have matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the
+means to a fire. But matches in New York were about as accessible as any
+that might be in the dead man's pockets.
+
+Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically
+impossible, and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant.
+As if Fate resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped
+man's mind a magical inspiration--a vital grievance. His mind, acute
+because of his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his
+cognizance, for a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he
+could heat the steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring
+were thin, depending upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for
+strength. If he could heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper
+would leave it as a spirit forsakes a body, and the spring would bend
+like cardboard.
+
+"And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the
+body. "But you've got them----"
+
+He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he
+unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he
+could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.
+
+Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the
+thrower's legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney--it was some
+test.
+
+Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out
+I'll get him yet, Patsy."
+
+Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off
+the head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form
+and earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face
+that carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.
+
+He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching
+slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the
+man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from
+his hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim
+form of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving
+him the grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope
+and dropped his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the
+man--he was gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic
+twist of the rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin,
+and gently, vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold.
+Then, hand over hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without
+ceremony, searched it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin
+in a pocket of Jack's shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had
+been torn from its belt during the owner's rough voyage.
+
+The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the
+clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on
+us; they can't beat us, old pard."
+
+He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs,
+one pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.
+
+The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his
+wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat
+as it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with
+the fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the
+black moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating
+jaws.
+
+Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically
+forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection
+of a spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes
+watching him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the
+birch log.
+
+The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a
+terrible struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which
+seemed to bite into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting
+Jack's battle; and Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise,
+that his legs had been made almost useless in that drag by the horse.
+
+Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting
+his fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost
+shattering the bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp
+of the belt, and Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:
+
+"Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log,
+with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."
+
+"I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.
+
+"Don't need you--I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be
+under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you
+now--my leg is on fire."
+
+Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in
+his hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.
+
+When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop
+about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.
+
+The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the
+twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down
+from the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and
+soon it was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the
+trap, he placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip
+of steel went down like paper. He was free.
+
+At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as
+if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released
+veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged
+the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves
+hovered beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.
+
+When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle
+rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line
+from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"
+
+"I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."
+
+"Take your choice--get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you
+for the wolves," Carney snapped.
+
+Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his
+feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket
+line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:
+
+"Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through
+you--this sore leg's got me peeved."
+
+At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags
+of gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also
+foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he
+had not expected to find--the cayuse that had belonged to Fourteen-foot
+Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack out his
+wealth.
+
+Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through
+the night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted,
+he started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot
+Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's
+belly. Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.
+
+And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the
+enterprising man of the bear trap.
+
+
+
+
+V.--SEVEN BLUE DOVES
+
+|They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney
+felt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was
+overtired--that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had
+seen in a month, for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse,
+the little, old, worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on
+the Canadian side of the border.
+
+From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not
+habitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a
+risk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve--gave
+him a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But
+to-night there was a scent of evil in the room.
+
+A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high
+stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But
+Sergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such
+times the key of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel,
+the Gold Nugget. And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the
+police shack rather than in a room of the hotel.
+
+Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling
+that everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction
+that some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was
+in his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new
+sensation to Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it.
+His steel-gray eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the
+green on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with its
+substructure of nerve, he possessed it _in excelsis_.
+
+He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched
+hand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from
+the top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without
+catch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started
+with. He had not lost anything to speak of--and here was the hitch,
+the enigma of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been
+deliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had been
+called when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice
+he had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been
+done simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger
+had lost heavily.
+
+Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a
+card was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs;
+his mind, so to speak, was all thumbs.
+
+Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.
+
+He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity
+delicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous
+quality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath
+the large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He
+was hard to place. He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage.
+He was somewhat of a promoter--of restless activity. He was in Bucking
+Horse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If
+he had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of the
+unrest that hung so evilly over the game.
+
+Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget
+Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of
+compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in
+mine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made
+on the "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird,
+for its stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not
+confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of
+a hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were
+querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught
+Carney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair
+of gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The
+gloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers
+who wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve the
+sensitiveness of their finger tips. He also had known gamblers who,
+ostensibly, had a reputable occupation.
+
+If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to
+eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult
+to allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed--too well dressed for
+unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the
+fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank
+somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was
+almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody
+and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.
+Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold
+mine up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him.
+That was what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with
+Tacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when they
+returned.
+
+Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy
+grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste
+boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals,
+Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth
+face, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he
+changed, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."
+
+It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for
+finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all;
+the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had
+laboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's
+the use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win
+little."
+
+Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them
+over the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there
+was no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of
+the cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple:
+seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross
+hatched and sprayed with leaves.
+
+Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves'
+wings were all alike--almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an
+artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth
+part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right
+wing of the second dove to the left.
+
+It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to
+memorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing.
+And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew
+the system. Who was it?
+
+Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for
+that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a
+super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable
+of this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.
+
+Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent
+conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser.
+The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had
+played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth
+would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney,
+for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck,
+or knew something.
+
+Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite
+that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting
+of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the
+West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to
+accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even
+cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped
+his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his
+cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one
+into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the
+discard, and said, "I'm out!"
+
+Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in
+his pocket.
+
+At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card was
+missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.
+
+A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.
+
+The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.
+
+"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"
+
+Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his
+pocket.
+
+From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves'
+wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had
+realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had
+answered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.
+
+This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long ride
+to-day."
+
+He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."
+
+He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up,
+yawning.
+
+"I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man.
+To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game--don't know what's the
+matter with me."
+
+"I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right
+now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn
+another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me.
+I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time
+there's been hell."
+
+The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly
+gave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to
+quit. The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."
+
+Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:
+
+"I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't
+like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now,
+or I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."
+
+Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from
+Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a
+game of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd
+better just put the game off till to-morrow night."
+
+"We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if
+he wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start
+fresh. Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."
+
+"I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle
+now; besides I want another sensation--this bottle's dry," Hadley
+advised.
+
+"I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as
+he rose.
+
+In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a
+bottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.
+
+Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the
+accounts.
+
+Hadley was twelve hundred loser.
+
+He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth,
+and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips,
+"Here, banker, put that back in your pocket--you're responsible. There's
+forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probably
+forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."
+
+Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."
+
+Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred
+dollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been
+pallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any
+game bigger than checkers."
+
+Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards--the blue-doved cards
+and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.
+
+Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently
+whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves.
+The red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and
+Carney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving
+himself from further interest.
+
+Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having
+found it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked,
+"Now, who's in?"
+
+"I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness;
+"then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred
+on the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot."
+Curiously this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but
+inflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:
+
+"You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you
+sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."
+
+"I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to
+cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."
+
+Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to
+his lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a
+little pile in front of him.
+
+Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other
+direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a
+most depressed mood; he admitted this.
+
+"There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I
+knew you felt it--that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on
+the night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some
+claims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess
+I've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when
+I hear the click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while,
+generally, it's not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm
+trying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind
+of close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may--hell! don't
+think me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."
+
+Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged
+into the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding
+with Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the
+dining-room to a seat at a little table.
+
+"Where's Seth?" she asked.
+
+"Over at the police shack."
+
+"Poker?"
+
+Carney nodded.
+
+"Mr. Hadley there?"
+
+Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"
+
+"I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre--if he
+has any--is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her
+dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you
+playing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not
+for ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was
+over--why?"
+
+"Tired."
+
+Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth
+cheating?"
+
+"Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"
+
+"I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or
+three days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."
+
+"What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought
+Seth those cards?"
+
+"I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have
+played together once or twice."
+
+"They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell
+you absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess.
+There was a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This
+Shipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He
+and Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too
+gratuitous to be genuine."
+
+"You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win
+Hadley's money--he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"
+
+"I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got
+to give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in
+my pocket, and that will be enough."
+
+"But if he divides with Shipley?"
+
+"Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the
+conspiracy will be proven."
+
+"Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back,
+there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added,
+patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that
+stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him--the moral aspect, I mean;
+but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil
+in a man--petty larceny, sneak thieving--that pours sand into a woman's
+soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd be
+quite satisfied--quite."
+
+"You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven--and you are the other
+six, Jeanette."
+
+As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that
+had to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after
+he had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul
+full of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.
+
+Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or
+drink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death
+of someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if
+that man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had
+confidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of
+knowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed
+when they were forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains.
+That would be a matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of
+how he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked
+pack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like
+counting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.
+
+He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him
+sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with
+known remembrances of the noise.
+
+"Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"
+
+He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow
+had flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the
+police shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot
+and someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him
+to precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his
+waist.
+
+In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over
+the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced
+the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.
+
+"What's wrong, Jeanette--was it a shot?"
+
+"Yes! I've looked into Seth's room--he's not there!"
+
+Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there
+was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:
+"Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed
+a finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he
+tapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back
+to Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all
+right--they're still playing. I'll go over to the shack."
+
+"I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt
+so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened--I
+know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and
+manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a
+slab of bacon, _à la_ fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.
+
+As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window
+of the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they
+were not playing at the table.
+
+He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he
+knew was a dead man--Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor where
+he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood,
+just over the heart.
+
+There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table
+from where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The
+red-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered
+into a pack.
+
+Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing
+the interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress,
+unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.
+
+Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his
+outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges
+from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.
+
+Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been
+held close.
+
+Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning
+top, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged
+Seth's gun to make it appear suicide?
+
+Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder
+governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the
+coat where Seth had put the discarded pack--it was gone. He felt the
+other pocket--the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table
+and all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket
+of the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money--there
+was no wallet.
+
+At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his
+eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a
+stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.
+
+The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the
+night in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin
+light, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face
+to appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or
+imbecile-tinged by horror.
+
+"My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I--I----"
+
+"Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.
+
+In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing
+to the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back
+into his belt.
+
+"What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with
+intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.
+
+"Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the
+question.
+
+Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his
+wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared
+figure on the floor.
+
+"I went for a walk," he answered.
+
+"Why--when?" Carney snapped imperiously.
+
+"I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to
+Cranford's house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."
+
+"Why to Cranford's house?"
+
+Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp
+cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now
+fierce.
+
+"Well,"--Shipley coughed--"I didn't like the looks of the game to-night;
+that ace being shy---- Didn't you feel there was something not on the
+level?"
+
+"I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been
+in the gray eyes was in the voice now.
+
+"I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd
+lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."
+
+"What did Cranford say?"
+
+"I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I--I
+thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and----"
+
+Shipley hesitated.
+
+"Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you didn't see either of them again?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained
+shirt.
+
+Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten
+minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley--have
+you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"
+
+"Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up
+Hadley."
+
+As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the
+lock.
+
+When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar
+and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he
+gave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled
+in one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley--sound asleep, or
+pretending to be.
+
+When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet
+blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he
+mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep--where's Seth?"
+
+"What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness
+of his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.
+
+"I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy--had a
+little too much of it."
+
+"Where did you leave Seth--how long ago?"
+
+"Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy
+up for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning--throw out the empty
+bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I
+came on to go to bed and----" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his
+memory of his progress was still befogged--"when I got here I remembered
+that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to be
+sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."
+
+"Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"
+
+Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap
+the whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.
+
+"I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter
+between two men."
+
+Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with
+startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered--do you know that?"
+
+"What--what--what're you saying?"
+
+Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping
+fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.
+
+"Seth--murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners
+pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that;
+I'm a tenderfoot, but----"
+
+"Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has
+been shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want
+from you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong
+man--do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man
+with a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.
+
+"My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police
+shack, and I don't know anything more about him."
+
+There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through
+the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where
+he said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."
+
+"I know--I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he
+pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:
+
+"I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and
+I want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to
+hide anything--I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He came back to the room with the girl and said:
+
+"I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes,
+gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room--it will be better."
+
+Then he was gone.
+
+In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the
+hotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make
+certain, through medical examination, that Seth was dead.
+
+Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.
+
+Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies
+in canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the
+apparent consistencies.
+
+Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be
+considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed
+with suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared
+of guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a
+claim as any of them to the title of assassin.
+
+In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.
+
+When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:
+
+"Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action.
+I'd advise you gentlemen to remain _in statu quo_, if I might use the
+term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll
+agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a
+large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and
+as each one of you will be more or less under suspicion--I'm speaking
+now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual,
+the law, will do--it would be as well for each of you to submit to a
+search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's
+expedient."
+
+To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley
+with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no
+trace of the wallet.
+
+Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they
+found.
+
+No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered
+in Shipley's hip pocket.
+
+The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown
+ominously--there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.
+
+"There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on
+Shipley's face.
+
+"Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty
+chamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't
+explode."
+
+With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an
+indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned
+for a long time, or a recent discharge.
+
+"I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.
+
+Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating,
+apologetic way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it
+out: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing
+over the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will
+certainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice
+to himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has
+not lately been discharged."
+
+Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this.
+But the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should--I
+clean forgot it."
+
+Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six
+lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost
+its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward
+the light, looked through the barrel.
+
+"As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice;
+"I'm glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the
+cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.
+
+Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night--we'll only
+obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the
+morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet,
+if I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our
+ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they
+heard the shot."
+
+"A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a
+drunken miner, or an Indian playing brave."
+
+It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out
+of the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the
+Scotchman's herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was
+being done.
+
+Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.
+
+The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he
+puffed vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the
+platoon of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.
+
+"I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and
+passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding,
+"Would you mind joining?"
+
+"I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law--a wee bit of it is very
+fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."
+
+The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid
+red handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:
+
+"Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and
+to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now, _ad interim_
+(the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you,
+Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil.
+And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette--perhaps it's
+just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog, has
+it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man that
+killed Seth?"
+
+Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could
+see that the latter was in deadly earnest.
+
+"Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's
+because I know you devilish well--you're too big for such small-brained
+acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the way of a
+brick mason--facts are the bricks that make the structure."
+
+"But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth,
+who was more or less a friend?"
+
+"All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over
+strained friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't
+you remember what that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when
+Jeanette's brother was near lynched?"
+
+Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:
+
+"You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.
+
+"The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks
+for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending
+over the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And
+I noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."
+
+Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he
+drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"
+
+"There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us
+to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while
+he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off
+by yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."
+
+"And that swine, Shipley--do you suppose he thought of that, too?"
+
+"I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see,
+Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and
+he took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed
+Seth, and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty
+shell; and if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you,
+knowing that the clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the
+examination as you had had the opportunity to put it right. I don't like
+the incident, nor the man's spirit, but it proves nothing for or against
+him. I expect he's clever enough to know that the last man seen with a
+murdered man is, _de facto_, the slayer."
+
+"As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was
+killed with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night--he always
+was a damn fool--and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing
+way, and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only
+heard one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said:
+"One doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's
+evil, but I fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot
+that wakened me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the
+police shack."
+
+"That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog--in the
+eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."
+
+Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the
+writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went
+up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had
+sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:
+
+"Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there
+was considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder
+was discovered--these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot
+Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper
+hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark
+corner till things had quieted down before going to his room."
+
+"Hadley isn't the kind to commit murder."
+
+"To-night he was another kind of man--he was pretty drunk; and the man
+that's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls--he has
+lost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough to
+make him a bit cautious."
+
+"But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he's
+got a devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like his
+face--' it's avariciously vicious--he's greedy. But the law can't hang
+a man for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist's
+point of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of the
+attached possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute,
+canny Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certain
+the Doctor suspected Shipley.
+
+"I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "for
+you're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man can
+do it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we can
+follow up before the trail gets cold?"
+
+"There is, Doctor. There was a pack of marked cards in Seth's pocket,
+and they're gone."
+
+"The man that has that pack is the murderer," Dr. Anderson declared
+emphatically.
+
+"He is."
+
+"And the wallet."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidently
+belonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibility
+that Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latter
+do all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising the
+bet when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.
+
+Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "Either
+Shipley or somebody was in collusion with Seth, you think?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If we could get that man--?"
+
+"Look here, Doctor," and Carney put his hand on the other's knee,
+"whoever has got that money will not try to take it out over the
+railroad, for it was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."
+
+"I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; a
+search. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"
+
+"He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail to
+Montana or Idaho."
+
+"My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody may
+be headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley--I mean, anybody--he may
+have a colleague to take the money down over the border."
+
+"Yes, the money; he'll not try to handle it in Canada for fear of being
+trapped on the numbers."
+
+"So you might not get the murderer after all," Anderson said,
+meditatively; "just an accomplice who wouldn't squeal."
+
+"No; not with the money alone on him we wouldn't have just what I want,
+but when we get a man with the marked pack in his pocket that's the
+murderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like a
+man will cling to an old pocket-knife; they're the tools of his trade,
+so to speak. And here in the mountains he could not handily come by
+another pack, perhaps."
+
+"I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the marked
+cards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just have
+the money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."
+
+Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to the
+door at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, and
+lowering his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square of
+you. I'm clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of the
+law, but for a good woman's sake I've got to get the murderer."
+
+"It would be commendable, Carney, if you can."
+
+"Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope."
+
+"I comprehend," and Dr. Anderson nodded his head.
+
+"I've got a man--'Oregon' he's known as--down at Big Horn Crossing; he's
+there for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell 'Oregon' to
+search every man that rides the border trail going south."
+
+"I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog--I'll
+look it up with the town clerk."
+
+Carney laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle of honest amusement.
+
+Piqued, the Doctor said irritably, "You're thinking, Bulldog, that the
+little town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representing
+authority, eh?"
+
+"No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authority
+for everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first and
+explain afterwards; and when he gets the right man he'll bring him in.
+First, I'm going to make a cast around the police shack with a lantern.
+Even by its light I may pick up some information. I'll get Jeanette to
+stake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskin
+and be back in three days."
+
+"I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there might
+be some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."
+
+Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneeling
+down, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black earth
+around the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for he
+skirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to the
+ground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracks
+of a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some time
+there; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe prints
+almost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks as
+if somebody had dropped from the window.
+
+Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. He
+could shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from his
+pocket--it was really an old letter--and with his pocket-knife cut it
+to fit a footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the front
+door, and with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints,
+following them a piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood up
+and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown of
+reflection, ending by starting off at a fast pace that carried him to
+the edge of the little town.
+
+In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in his
+hand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were different
+boot tracks, and the one--the latest, he judged, for they topped the
+others--was toeing away from the shack.
+
+He straightened up and knocked on the door.
+
+There was no answer. He knocked again loudly; no answer. He shook the
+door by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet:
+there was no sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on it
+and called, "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shack
+convinced him that Cranford had gone--perhaps, as he had intimated, to
+Bald Rock.
+
+He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those heading
+away from the shack. The paper did not seem to fit--not quite; in fact,
+the other track was closer to the paper gauge.
+
+Back at the hotel he related to Dr. Anderson the result of his trailing.
+
+When he spoke of Cranford's absence from the shack, the Doctor
+involuntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I was
+thinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving from
+Cranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involves
+Cranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, on
+the quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments on
+a mine,--they're threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds or
+something."
+
+"You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-away
+game the better."
+
+"Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search for
+Cranford, and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Black
+comes--likely to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, of
+course, the verdict will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you've
+gone to hurry in Sergeant Black."
+
+When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette was
+waiting for him in the little front sitting room.
+
+With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible ending
+to it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in its
+absolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was no
+affection, no pretense of it. She was like a niece, or even a daughter,
+to Seth; their relationship had been practically on that basis.
+Her father had been a partner of Long in some of his enterprises,
+enterprises that had never been much of anything beyond final failure.
+When his partner had died Seth had assumed charge of the girl. It was
+perhaps the one redeeming feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.
+
+Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knew
+so well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.
+
+Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; the
+desirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of her
+evidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhat
+nebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nor
+did he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for two
+or three days and would be supposed to have gone after the Mounted
+Policeman.
+
+He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explained
+how much depended upon the discovery of its present possessor.
+
+Second Part
+
+It was within an hour of daybreak when Carney, astride his buckskin,
+slipped quietly out of Bucking Horse, and took the trail that skirted
+the tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but that
+didn't matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could go
+without sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, as
+the buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a brief
+half hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.
+
+When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were several
+tracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were called
+bronchos, the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But they
+were cold trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamer
+wings, stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dew
+sparkled on the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.
+
+It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of a
+pony that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earth
+where the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.
+
+Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he was
+on. It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot,
+and had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to the
+cross trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracks
+turned to the right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that the
+rider was not associated with the murder. With that start he would be
+heading for across the border; he would not make for a Canadian town
+where he would be in touch with the wires.
+
+Along the border trail there were no fresh tracks.
+
+It was toward evening when Carney passed through the Valley of the
+Grizzley's Bridge--past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot Johnson
+had been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been caught
+in the bear trap.
+
+The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; he
+clattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eager
+hasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lop
+ears weaving back and forth in apprehension.
+
+Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of
+the cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,
+camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding
+walls of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled
+along an obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer
+sense of perception.
+
+At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch of
+breakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one had
+passed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail while
+the horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretched
+between them: and there were no fresh tracks.
+
+At two o'clock he came to the little log shack just this side of the U.
+S. border where Oregon kept his solitary ward. Nobody had passed, Oregon
+advised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were to
+search any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the marked
+cards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.
+
+Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to his
+superior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, was
+opium running. That was his office, to drift across the line casually,
+back and forth, as a prospector, and keep posted as to customs officers;
+who they were, where the kind-hearted ones were, and where the fanatical
+ones were; for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally,
+five miles within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his way
+out, leaving twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of a
+tyrannical customs department.
+
+At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp the
+hand of his lieutenant.
+
+"I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down the
+valley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way of
+weather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit of
+lead that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as if
+somebody'd fresh plugged me."
+
+Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through which
+wandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a glorious
+oriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden light
+that hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of the
+hills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, and
+emerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where the
+gaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoon
+bushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloom
+preserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.
+
+And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry,
+was hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest that
+zigzagged and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the design
+of some giant cubist.
+
+Carney laughed and swung his gloved hand in a semicircle of derision.
+
+"It's purty," Oregon said, "it's purty, but I've seen a purty woman, all
+smilin' too, break out in a hell of a temper afore you could say
+'hands up.' My hip don't never make no mistakes, 'cause it ain't got no
+fancies. It's a-comin'. You ride like hell, Carney; it's a-comin'. Say,
+Bulldog, look at that," and Oregon's long, lean, not over-clean finger
+pointed to the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that the
+Old Man of the Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs of
+his--see the white of that eye? And he ain't takin' in no purty scenery,
+he's lookin' over his shoulder down off there," and Oregon stretched a
+long arm toward the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains of
+ice, the glaciers.
+
+"It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if they
+run on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to death
+once in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd been
+good always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out if
+you got caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snow
+hell'ry. The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twenty
+feet deep, and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself what
+gener'ly happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal by
+gettin' him into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nice
+little silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains.
+Good-bye, Bulldog, and ride like hell--the buckskin won't mind; let him
+run the show--he knows, the clever little cuss."
+
+Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in the
+heat of the squeeze they got in Oregon's bear-trap of a paw.
+
+The trail here was like a prairie road for the valley was flat, and the
+buckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at a
+sharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croaking
+bellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave him
+alone. Let him run things hisself!"
+
+Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the old
+man was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wide
+places of earth had tutored him to the varying moods of the elements;
+that his super-sense was akin to the subtle understanding of animals.
+So he rode late into the night, sometimes sleeping in the saddle, as
+the buckskin, with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down dale
+and along the brink of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. He
+camped beneath a giant pine whose fallen cones and needles had spread
+a luxurious mattress, and whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in the
+air, a perfume that was like a balm of life.
+
+Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot might
+slip by in the night.
+
+He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleep
+with a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. His
+eyes opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtered
+down into the gloomed valley from a paling sky. A day was being born;
+the night was dying.
+
+An appalling hush was in the air; the valley was as devoid of sound as
+though the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself had
+been sucked out from between the hills, leaving a void.
+
+The buckskin was up and picking at the tender shoots of a young birch.
+It had been a half-whinnying snort from the horse that had wakened
+Carney, for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop ears
+cocked as though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness,
+watched for something that was creeping stealthily over the mountains
+from the west.
+
+Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though it
+had been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon's
+croak came back:
+
+"He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"
+
+Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a corner
+of his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pot
+his tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickered
+and swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up in
+the giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. The
+gray of the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed again
+as though night had fled backwards before the thing that was in the
+mountains to the west.
+
+The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in a
+bitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neck
+of a stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he were
+famished, or ate to save them from a thief.
+
+In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head were
+playing a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze darted
+here and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far across
+the valley, from somewhere in the rocky caverns of the mighty hills,
+came the heavy moans of genii. It was hardly a noise, it was a great
+oppression, a manifestation of turmoil, of the turmoil of God's majesty,
+His creation in travail.
+
+Carney quaffed the scalding tea, and raced with the buckskin in the
+eating of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling blood
+told him that the temperature was going down, down, down. The day
+before he had ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; now
+a vagrant thought flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the Gold
+Nugget.
+
+He saddled the buckskin, and the horse, at the pinch of the cinch,
+turned from his oats that were only half eaten, and held up his head for
+the bit.
+
+Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and the
+buckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps.
+It wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needles
+stabbed at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filled
+with indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; it
+seemed to penetrate the horse's lungs, for he gave a snorting cough.
+
+And now the full orchestra of the hills was filling the valleys and the
+canyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of Squaw
+Mountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its many
+throats into unearthly dirge.
+
+Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that had
+thrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberating
+music seemed to carry as refrain the words of Oregon: "Ride like hell,
+Carney! Ride like hell!"
+
+And, as if the command were within the buckskin's knowing, he raced
+where the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over the
+stones and shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.
+
+In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that drove
+into the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when he
+murdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could make
+that he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter it
+too.
+
+In the thought of saving his life the buckskin occupied a dual place;
+that's what Oregon had said; he had no right to jeopardize the gallant
+little steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stout
+heart.
+
+He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though he
+spoke aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo and
+reverberation than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fret
+yourself tired, old sport; we'll make it--the cave."
+
+The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, had
+in his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.
+
+Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had taken
+visible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley the
+towering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozen
+ridges above his eyes; his breath floated away in little clouds of ice;
+the buckskin coat of the horse had turned to gray.
+
+Sometimes at the turn of a cliff was a false lull as if the storm had
+been stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen north
+swung again and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.
+
+And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objects
+were being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; it
+was more difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; a
+chill was suggesting indifference--why fight?
+
+The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was
+spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold;
+it was like a winding sheet.
+
+Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the
+merciless snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.
+
+To the man direction was lost--it was like being above the clouds; but
+the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting,
+making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter,
+meant death; the buckskin knew it; but he was tiring.
+
+Carney unslung his picket line, put the loop around his chest below his
+arms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, and
+slipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on the
+rump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went on
+again, the weight off his back being a relief.
+
+The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping over
+him in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest that
+preluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now the
+exertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.
+
+Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours away
+the cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. It
+scarce mattered; to draw forth his watch and look was a waste of energy,
+the vital energy that weighed against his death; an ounce of it wasted
+was folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.
+
+Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when he
+himself was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little hero
+that had fought his battles ever since they had been together. The
+buckskin's flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of a
+bellows; his withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean and
+small--scarce mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting sea
+of snow.
+
+But the cave must be near. Carney found himself repeating these words:
+"The cave is near, the cave is near, Patsy; on, boy--the cave is near."
+His mind dwelt on the wood that he had left in the cave when he took
+Jack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a bright
+fire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would make
+it. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always won
+out on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?
+
+He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling that
+it was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mental
+stamina. If he kept up his courage he would win out, as he always had.
+It was just Excelsior and Success, just----
+
+There was a swirl of oblivion; he had flown through space and collided
+with another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he was
+alone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds.
+There was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passing
+under an anesthetic--Nirvana.
+
+Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of the
+beyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking from
+a dream--it was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back to
+consciousness. He struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legs
+were; at the bottom of them were leaden-soled diver's boots. His
+brain, not more than half clearing at that, he realized that he and the
+buckskin had slid from a treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozen
+feet; the snow, unwittingly kind, catching them in a lap of feathery
+softness. But for the gallant horse he would have lain there, never to
+rise again of his own volition.
+
+They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were
+going forward. Oregon's command was working out--"Let the buckskin have
+his own way."
+
+If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone
+around in a circle--in fact, Carney once had done so--and the cold would
+have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more life-sapping; but
+here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it was like surf
+rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and horse.
+
+Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man
+battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged
+senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact
+that they still held on toward the cave.
+
+Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream--or was this the
+real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party--that they
+were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.
+
+Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a
+dream--he was waking.
+
+When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight
+played on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him
+something stamped on the stone floor.
+
+He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung
+head.
+
+"How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and
+coming to his side.
+
+Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And
+now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he
+was in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.
+
+He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.
+
+"Some horse, that, Stranger." The man's voice that had sounded thinly
+sinister had a humanized tone as he said this.
+
+Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried to
+answer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You're
+makin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Try
+this dope."
+
+He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; it
+was like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.
+
+"Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd a
+horse neigh--it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted out
+to sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd his
+bell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers--'twan't more'n 'bout
+ten yards at that--and there's that danged rat of yours, and he won't
+come in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow; he
+seemed to know that if he pulled too hard he'd break your danged neck.
+Then we got you in--that's all. Some horse!"
+
+This and the warmth and the tonic tea brought Carney up to date. He held
+out his hand.
+
+But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turned
+surlily to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't done
+nothin'; you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' you
+through. I went out after my own bronch."
+
+"But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had met
+many men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to an
+unknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside became
+like outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness--every man was
+an enemy till he proved himself.
+
+The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close together
+each side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look of
+distrust.
+
+"I ain't never knowed but one man was _all right_, and the Mounted
+Police hounded him till he give up."
+
+The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward the
+horse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Are
+you him, or are you a hawse thief?"
+
+"How do you know the horse?"
+
+"I got reason a-plenty to know him. He cleaned me out in Walla
+Walla when he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark that
+cold-decked us boys with this ringer."
+
+Now Bulldog knew why the aversion.
+
+"I'm Carney," he 'admitted; "but it was the gamblers put up the job; I
+just beat them out."
+
+"Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.
+
+"Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed that
+the other hung with peculiar intensity on his answer.
+
+"How long was you fightin' that blizzard?"
+
+"Since daylight--when I broke camp." Carney looked at his watch; it was
+three o'clock. "How long have I been here?"
+
+"A couple of hours. Was you runnin' booze or hop, Bulldog?"
+
+Carney started. Perhaps the cave man was conveying a covert threat,
+an intimation that he might inform on him. "Don't let's talk shop," he
+answered.
+
+"I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an
+ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills
+trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the
+mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her
+out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to
+see me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."
+
+The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing
+thought--_food!_ He, himself, had about one day's supply--had he it? He
+turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been tossed
+by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon and
+bannock were gone!
+
+Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"
+
+"All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's
+cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon,
+about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom
+a round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to
+Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his
+blankets.
+
+A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of
+habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been--the pigskin
+pocket was empty.
+
+The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip.
+"Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was
+gone."
+
+Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun.
+He ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit--when the time came
+he would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the
+other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin
+in his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This
+fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his
+bacon and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have
+worked out and the oats remain.
+
+He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear
+outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the
+swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate
+to their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at
+least fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which
+the trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he
+had no food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week
+with two men eating it.
+
+He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a
+fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind
+might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the
+snow with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.
+
+Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged--he was hungry
+only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.
+
+He lay down, and had slept two hours when he was wakened by the sweet
+perfume of frying pork.
+
+Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. He
+watched the cook turn it over and over with the point of his hunting
+knife, cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vital
+fat. When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point of
+his knife and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparing
+that well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.
+
+Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just beside
+the fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray of
+his opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney's
+mind before he fell asleep.
+
+"I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'm
+goin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anyways
+you was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up to
+me to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be a
+damn fool to do it--I'd be just playin' agin myself."
+
+Then he spat in the fire and held the pan over its blaze to warm the
+slimy mixture.
+
+Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case for
+himself continued: "We may be bottled up here for a week, or a month.
+Two men ain't got no chanct on that grub-pile, no chanct."
+
+"Why don't you eat it then?" and Carney sat up. "I could, 'cause it's
+mine; but I got a proposition to make--you can take it or leave it."
+
+"Spit it out."
+
+"It's just this"--the fox eyes shifted uneasily to the little buckskin,
+and then back to Carney's face--"I'll share this grub if, when it's
+gone, you cut in with the bronch."
+
+Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; his
+features were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush.
+The proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had asked
+him to slit the throat of a brother for a cannibalistic orgy.
+
+"It's only ord'nary hawse sense," Dave added when Carney did not speak;
+"kept in the snow that meat'd last us a month. Feelin's don't count when
+a man's playin' fer his life, and that's what we're doin'."
+
+"I don't dispute the sense of your proposition, my kind friend," Carney
+said in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll think
+it over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, of
+course, if I don't get out he'd starve to death anyway."
+
+"Take your time," and the owner of the pan pulled it between his legs,
+ate the slice of bacon, and with a tin spoon lapped up the glutinous
+mess.
+
+Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger that
+were now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other man
+had a gun, and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store of
+provisions were gone--perhaps before that. And Carney was determined
+to make the discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on the
+dictator, the lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing the
+little buckskin that had saved his life--bah! the very idea of it made
+his fingers twitch for a grasp of the other's windpipe.
+
+For a long time Carney sat moodily turning over in his mind something;
+and the other man, having lighted his pipe, sat back against the wall of
+the cave smoking.
+
+At last Carney spoke. "There's a way out of this."
+
+"Yes, if a chinook blows up Kettlebelly Valley--there ain't no other
+way. The manna days is all gone by."
+
+"There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the Lost
+Ledge Mine."
+
+"She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a few
+stringers of gold--they soon petered out."
+
+"When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot of
+heavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools,
+and, what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes back
+there. I could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and make
+Bucking Horse in three or four days. He wore them down in the Cour
+d'Alene."
+
+"If you had the grub," Dave snapped; "where're you goin' to get that?"
+
+"Half of what you've got would keep me up that long on short rations."
+
+"And what about me--where do I come in on givin' you half my grub?"
+
+"The other half would keep you alive till I could bring a rescue party
+on snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering this
+proposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind to
+do a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you--your bronch agin half
+my chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronch
+is mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till a
+chinook blows up."
+
+From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, and
+slid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.
+
+Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cards
+winged _seven blue doves_. It was the pack that had been stolen from
+Seth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murderer
+of Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the same
+slight variation of the wings. In a second Carney had mastered himself.
+
+"I guess it's fair," he said hesitatingly; "let me think it over--I'm
+fond of that little cuss, but I guess a man's life comes first."
+
+He sat looking into the fire thinking, and if Dave had been a mind
+reader the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter was
+thinking, "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in my
+pocket."
+
+Then he spoke, shifting closer to the blanket on which the other sat:
+
+"I'll cut!"
+
+"Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.
+
+Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he
+turned it up--it was the ace of diamonds.
+
+"Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of
+spades, adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."
+
+"Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.
+
+Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the
+blanket in a tenuous stream.
+
+Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of
+them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a
+gambler's eagerness.
+
+Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his
+knees and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a
+little to the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the
+pack. If he turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the
+minute he turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been
+double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's
+face; perhaps--once a killer always a killer--he would not hesitate but
+would kill.
+
+So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace,
+while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.
+
+"Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you----"
+
+Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split
+second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.
+
+"Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.
+
+Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left
+hand, but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from
+the shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked
+from its pigskin pocket by Carney.
+
+Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick,
+or I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"
+
+Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."
+
+"You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."
+
+Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.
+
+Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he
+should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding
+had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a
+foreboding look.
+
+Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:
+
+"You're Tacoma Jack--you're the man that staked Seth Long to this marked
+pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to
+Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."
+
+He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when
+you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went
+with you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he
+had taken the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth.
+When the game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the
+window, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money
+was too much, and you plugged him."
+
+"It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about
+it."
+
+"You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and
+Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough
+not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see
+you, but jumped from the back window."
+
+Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks
+in the mud.
+
+"I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He
+held it up.
+
+"It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own
+hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"
+
+Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea
+type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity
+even with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying
+twenty feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in
+fact with him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been
+a Mounted Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that
+he give up his life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private
+individual, trying to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high
+regard for--Jeanette Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man.
+Bringing in the stolen money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might
+be said that he, himself, had taken these two things and returned them.
+
+Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves
+had combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had
+been killed--it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.
+
+Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:
+
+"They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his
+cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie--Seth's as dead's a
+herrin'!"
+
+"How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.
+
+The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said
+so yourself."
+
+"Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make
+your get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you,
+Tacoma Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."
+
+The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was
+driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking
+Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do
+to carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could
+make half a mile of that trail.
+
+Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma,
+when you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I
+didn't value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a
+damn whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab
+of bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little
+flour I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most
+with snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a
+dogtrain and a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance;
+it's like filling a bob-tailed flush--but I'm going to let you draw.
+If the chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back
+you'll get away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got
+to clear a good woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the
+cards with a forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession
+here in my noteboook that you killed Seth Long."
+
+"I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap--I didn't kill him!" %
+
+"As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I
+take the money, your gun, your boots, and _all the grub_."
+
+As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank
+lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.
+
+"Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and
+you bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make
+a cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the
+chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence.
+Carney broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide
+quick, for I'm going to hobble you."
+
+Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If
+Carney took the food--and he would--he had no chance. The alternative
+was his only hope.
+
+"I'll sign--I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just
+how it happened."
+
+"You write it yourself--I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I
+forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."
+
+He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.
+
+When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye
+on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma
+Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had
+pulled his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and
+in the struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.
+
+Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may
+be true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If
+you're laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog
+Carney, forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make
+me plug you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll
+turn you loose."
+
+Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and
+Tacoma, placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney
+proceeded to cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon.
+Then he rubbed down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the
+horse, gave him a feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite
+side of the fire from Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for
+the minute you start anything you lose your bet on the chinook."
+
+In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in
+through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had
+all but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had
+huddled to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft
+and balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.
+
+Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy
+snow and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath
+the weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses
+of snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing
+sun. Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet,
+gnarled faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged
+with snow-water.
+
+A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against
+a cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of
+the white mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a
+cow-bell. It was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell
+that Carney had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the
+little buckskin.
+
+Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping
+out from above his blanket--they were like rat eyes.
+
+"You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."
+
+Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his
+heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to
+Bucking Horse.
+
+"The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the
+chinook, don't I?"
+
+"You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his
+word."
+
+"Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled
+into Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my
+hand dif'rent--p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that
+when I drug you in out of the blizzard."
+
+Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was
+just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite
+from an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog--I'd be kind
+of lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."
+
+"If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is
+waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket
+that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck
+you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting
+you."
+
+
+
+
+VI.--EVIL SPIRITS
+
+|The Rockies, their towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid
+with blue and green, the glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion
+Range, and the Vermillion looked down upon the sienna prairie in which
+was Fort Calbert, as Marathon might have looked down upon the sea.
+
+In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality
+of Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the
+surrounding boxlike structures of the town.
+
+In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon
+which was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was
+an occasion.
+
+Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was
+that a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the
+importation of five gallons.
+
+Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table
+possible.
+
+Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in
+some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested
+attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;
+they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an
+eagle.
+
+Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot
+transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was
+always that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste
+shell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West
+as a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."
+
+A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end
+of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty
+idea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."
+
+"The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is
+supposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has
+remitted," Harden explained to Carney.
+
+"Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.
+
+His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from
+the roadway; it was a weird drool--the droning, hoarse note of a tug's
+whistle.
+
+Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'!
+Oh, heavens! it makes me homesick."
+
+Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy
+little Thames tug.
+
+Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.
+Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun
+lay like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of
+one that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A
+dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River
+cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken
+bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.
+
+The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust
+and sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature--an armadillo. He
+turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look,
+upon the six.
+
+"It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert
+declared solemnly.
+
+"Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O
+Gabriel--there's vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our
+hearts and we'll set you happy."
+
+The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent
+proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat
+blast. He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.
+
+But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight
+figure and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of
+buckskin and leather chapps, turned back into the bar.
+
+"Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the
+unresisting guest to a chair.
+
+The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a
+keg; the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He
+shoved out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava
+that darkened their pale contours.
+
+Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the
+prodigal was the fated calf--it was full.
+
+The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window,
+threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.
+
+"Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the
+stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest
+floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it
+wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."
+
+FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened,
+started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at
+dinner.
+
+The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and
+sat down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as
+he asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"
+
+The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is
+outside: we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."
+
+"By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess;
+and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes
+that were thought hard, had gone blue.
+
+"Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us
+twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."
+
+At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics
+showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their
+shoulders.
+
+"Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where
+the regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join
+up."
+
+The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for
+this I'll have to run you all in."
+
+Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added:
+"Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."
+
+"Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert
+bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."
+
+"Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.
+
+When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to
+have troubled you."
+
+As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast
+of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.
+
+"Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret
+standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."
+
+"Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor
+law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to
+be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against
+the police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when
+they're putting down crime."
+
+"The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed
+man who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant
+in the force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence.
+Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."
+
+The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent
+restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of
+this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."
+
+"Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed
+eagerly.
+
+Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.
+
+"You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he
+will have the handling of it, I fancy--a carload."
+
+FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if
+playing poker.
+
+"Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.
+
+"I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a
+jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."
+
+"Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything
+of that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck
+with the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two
+weeks. The police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."
+
+The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped
+it gently on the table.
+
+"You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.
+
+"I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I
+have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was
+a rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer
+crop--a splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan,
+standing. Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."
+
+"The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the
+little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his
+glass.
+
+"By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen--about the whisky: While I was waiting
+for an audience with the Polica _Ogema_ I heard, through an open door,
+a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general statement was
+that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for delivery at
+Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car here."
+
+"Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.
+
+"I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I
+suppose----"
+
+The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of
+merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why
+FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a
+joy!"
+
+The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the
+little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm _very_ glad to have met you,
+sir." Then he was gone.
+
+"I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name--you didn't
+introduce me?"
+
+"That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.
+
+"Oh, I say!" the other gasped.
+
+"Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert
+answered.
+
+The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then
+he related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from
+An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three
+counties--Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."
+
+In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.
+
+From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent
+a telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of
+message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening
+he had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.
+
+Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway
+station for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform
+from morning till night.
+
+On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the
+prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras
+was numbered 6100.
+
+Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major
+had received was reliable, evidently.
+
+The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through
+freight--not for Fort Calbert.
+
+Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry
+smile hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the
+amiable Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.
+
+"Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the
+discussion.
+
+It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty
+force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:
+the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued
+an order.
+
+Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused
+to do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters,
+from his superior officer.
+
+Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for
+long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.
+
+"How do you know?" the station agent retorted.
+
+"Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.
+
+Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he
+jumped:
+
+"I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;
+"Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario--they have
+use for it down that way."
+
+"It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you
+something on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if
+I get the evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though
+I never set eyes on you."
+
+Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a
+get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet
+of ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A
+carload of whisky is simply preposterous."
+
+This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought.
+He could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not
+break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take
+it on himself.
+
+"Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to
+come down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how
+to act. We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I
+don't want to get you into trouble."
+
+A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he
+admired brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also
+well known. He turned to the station master saying:
+
+"I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the
+proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."
+
+Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train
+was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."
+
+Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and
+would back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also
+expected of a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they
+didn't encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.
+
+"Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the
+conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got
+somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job
+as brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."
+
+Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the
+Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the
+seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."
+
+So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile
+crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the
+caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.
+
+An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually
+the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty
+souls, for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload
+of whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed,
+of course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an
+attraction like a funeral.
+
+EVIL SPIRITS
+
+At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a
+written order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a
+heavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.
+
+The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a
+defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a
+game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and
+in his speech there was the savor of London fog.
+
+"What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he
+addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do
+so now!"
+
+"You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.
+
+"My word! we're always doing that, always--that's what we're here for,
+to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."
+
+There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened
+on Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major,
+a procession headed for the car of interest.
+
+The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,
+the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak
+barrels.
+
+The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at
+Bulldog Carney.
+
+It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of
+astonishment over this exhibit.
+
+At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,
+turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take
+this stuff to the fort."
+
+The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing
+this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too
+greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."
+
+"Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"
+the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at
+Carney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men
+bring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be
+destroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."
+
+One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on
+end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge.
+At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup
+fluttered up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.
+
+"Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,
+Major."
+
+A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the
+turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped
+their dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of
+appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat
+man! Him damn good; break him more!"
+
+"Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.
+
+This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled
+waters--literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.
+
+The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste
+these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.
+
+The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in
+his objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've
+roped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights
+answering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will
+want to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods.
+The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why I
+side-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take
+responsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't none
+too well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."
+
+"And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have
+to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.
+
+Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels
+of sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas,
+beans--in fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered
+grocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.
+
+The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been
+wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.
+
+He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert
+were several small places on the line where there were neither police
+nor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the
+station master, saying:
+
+"Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky
+cut off? I believe it's on that train."
+
+"How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside
+my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,
+and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try
+to cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages
+back in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the
+Superintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole
+thing to your Commissioner at Regina."
+
+Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the
+broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H.
+B. Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of
+something for nothing.
+
+The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.
+
+Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,
+as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;
+Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on
+you yet, old top."
+
+"Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."
+
+The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair.
+He would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was
+handicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of
+contention everybody's hand would be against the force--the very train
+men, if they could get away with it.
+
+Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained
+groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through
+with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was
+sent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars--one of goods and one of
+whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John
+Ross was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper
+in the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither
+car would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,
+either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not
+matter.
+
+Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were
+going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot
+through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the
+suspected car.
+
+Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a
+consultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen
+from the position of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game;
+besides, which was almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.
+
+"Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool
+kind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to
+round him up, for we haven't got a thing on him--not a thing. He's so
+well liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin
+Hood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped
+your hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll
+be run into the plains--there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of
+it, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this
+law, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."
+
+The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major
+to send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of
+this consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."
+
+So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.
+
+Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was
+accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten
+dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot
+of whisky as it was being run the following night.
+
+The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the
+Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened
+breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the
+ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the
+trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert
+itself.
+
+This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still
+wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information
+to the Major.
+
+"We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will
+sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."
+
+When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,
+Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates,
+and, skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the
+southwest.
+
+At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of
+a little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses
+had been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern
+fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide
+was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the
+cut-bank to the stream.
+
+They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had
+hung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed
+ridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and
+a sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the
+belly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a
+penciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock.
+The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the
+night passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the
+solemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thought
+that they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man to
+whom odds meant little or nothing.
+
+As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted
+his body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad,
+man, you suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin',
+there might be killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if
+he is a whisky runner."
+
+Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,
+with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt;
+he just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray
+cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."
+
+"Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't
+wait for a better chance."
+
+"We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the
+slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and
+it was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,
+Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the
+Force."
+
+"Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank
+us to spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this
+outfit?"
+
+"Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort
+Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and
+not be there."
+
+But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's
+no sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."
+
+Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the
+sandy wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy,
+slipping, sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being
+shoved along the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull
+thump of an axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of
+muffled hoofs.
+
+The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over
+the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of
+Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:
+
+"Halt! hands up--you are covered! If you move we fire!"
+
+At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of
+light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank
+the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable
+figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther--that was all.
+That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,
+Reggie.
+
+It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,
+the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.
+
+Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane
+exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."
+
+But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep
+out of the light; it may be a blind."
+
+Soon McBane's voice was heard from the cut-bank: "All clear, Sergeant."
+
+Then Sergeant Jerry, stepping into the open, examined the exhibit.
+Instead of carrying concealed weapons Reggie had a fair load of
+concealed spirits; he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought some
+nebulous answers about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and that
+he was bringing in the goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature was
+sorely taxed.
+
+"I'm gettin' fed up on these damned tricks of Bulldog's," he growled,
+"for that's what it is."
+
+"I'm not sure," McBane objected; "this ninny may ha' blabbed, and yon
+breed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."
+
+However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached and
+escorted in to barracks.
+
+Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain had
+imbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortune
+of the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; or
+he may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.
+
+In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usual
+sacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presence
+of the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in a
+gurgling libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Then
+the empty tins were tossed disdainfully into the coulee.
+
+Back in the Fort Major Kane said: "This was all a blind, Sergeant Platt;
+none of the stuff will come down this way--they'll run it up among the
+miners and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of the
+patrol up about the Pass."
+
+In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; and
+by the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. that
+the few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk--half were in the
+guard room.
+
+The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBane
+didn't know.
+
+In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the scene
+of the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed.
+He had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturated
+earth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick as
+if spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick went
+through, suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sand
+flying. A foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neat
+crosshatching of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that was
+supported by a tub; a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odor
+that struck the Superintendent's nostrils was not suds--it was whisky.
+
+He yanked the tub out of the cavity and kicked it into the coulee. Then
+he stood up and mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils!
+the cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's put
+them up to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just a
+blind, the tip from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's a
+game to put my men on the blink while he runs that carload."
+
+Rage swirled in the Major's heart as he turned toward the Fort; but
+before he had reached the gates his sense--and the little man had
+lots of it--laid embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to his
+quarters to sit on the verandah and curse softly to himself.
+
+He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mounted
+from the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not come
+into the Territories to be pitted against the social desires of the
+white inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but here
+this very thing took up more than half their time and energy. And it
+was a losing game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pitted
+against every one of his force.
+
+There were rumors that it was soon to be changed--the trade
+legitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With a
+small army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision against
+them, it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from the
+half-breeds who were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.
+
+To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after day
+across the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain,
+was an exhilarating game--it was something to stimulate the _espirit de
+corps;_ a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, full
+reward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like an
+ordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle of
+whisky, only to have him up before the magistrate for a small fine was,
+to say the least, disquieting; it made his men half ashamed of their
+mission.
+
+Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carney
+himself--big; and the Major would have given, right there, a half-year's
+pay to have bagged Bulldog, and so, perhaps have broken up the ring.
+
+But determined as the force was, the British law was greater still.
+Without absolute, convicting evidence Carney would have been acquitted,
+and the Major perhaps censured for making a mistake.
+
+At headquarters was a fixed edict: "Take no position from which you will
+have to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."
+
+As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart at
+the quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, loved
+his duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under the
+strain of service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streak
+showed--then he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, you
+hound!" he would snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got to
+be kept clean."
+
+Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annual
+report that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller at
+Ottawa."
+
+Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guard
+house--it was "The Stirrup Cup."
+
+"God, _England!_" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing," he
+muttered.
+
+How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly human
+those who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, a
+constable at sixty cents a day! They were all like that--not of noble
+family, but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles of
+restraint all over the world. That was largely why they were in the
+Mounted; certainly not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how,
+even in his bitterness of set-awry-authority, could the incident of the
+tub be a heinous crime on their part.
+
+"By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the
+verandah, crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them
+and shoot Carney--damn him! he's at the bottom of it."
+
+The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down
+behind the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and
+the blond giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort
+Calbert for a breather over the prairie.
+
+As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling
+"pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust
+to the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that
+seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.
+
+"A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in
+the town--he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."
+
+The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the
+familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider
+yanked his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the
+saddle in exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and
+the flanks of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.
+
+"Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.
+
+FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical
+shatterment that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel
+to his bay's flank and moved slowly along the trail.
+
+Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his
+message.
+
+"All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the
+Victoria, feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."
+
+"What'll I do, boss, when I wake up--how long'll I sleep?"
+
+"As long as you like--a week if you want."
+
+"What'll I do then--don't you need me?"
+
+"No, play with your toes if you like."
+
+Lathy George pulled his reeling cayuse together, and pushed on. Carney
+gave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got to
+go back to town," Carney said.
+
+"I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessness
+is like a painted sky above a painted ocean--it gives me the lonely
+willies."
+
+"There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over his
+shoulder.
+
+"It's always back there, or over yonder--never here when there's any
+hell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one long
+plaintive sabbath."
+
+"I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carney
+continued.
+
+"Me, too--if there's action there."
+
+"Hardly, my dear boy; it's purely a matter of diplomacy."
+
+"Absolutely, Bulldog; that's why you're going. You're going to kiss
+somebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a good
+cigar for you'--you love it. What's happened?"
+
+"The Stonies are on the war-path."
+
+"Ugly devils--part Sioux. They're hunters--blood letters--first cousins
+to the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for the
+Wood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came into
+their hands."
+
+"Yes, they're peppery devils. In the Frog Lake massacre one of them,
+Itcka, killed a white man or two and was hanged for it."
+
+"What started them now?" FitzHerbert asked. "Whisky."
+
+FitzHerbert stole a glance at Carney's stolid face; then he whistled;
+Carney's word had been like a gasp of confession, for, undoubtedly, the
+liquor was from the car.
+
+"How did they make the haul?" he asked.
+
+"The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a new
+regulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fall
+hunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under Chief
+Standing Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his mates
+in the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up to
+the lumber camps."
+
+"Great! that combination--lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would be
+as if sheol had opened a chute--there'll be murder."
+
+"I know Standing Bear; he made me a blood brother of his. I did him a
+bit of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and the
+old fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for the
+Stoney had peppered a couple of silly bullets into the brute's shoulder.
+I happened to get in a lucky shot and stopped the silver-tip when he was
+about to shampoo old Standing Bear."
+
+"Yes, I heard about that--you and your little buckskin. Say, Bulldog,
+that little devil must have the pluck of a lion--they say he carried you
+right up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"
+
+"That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are
+good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the
+reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know
+what the Sergeant is, Fitz--he'll stack up against that tribe alone;
+if they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the
+lumberjacks--their squaws will be along, and you know what that
+means--Jerry stands a mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it
+will be sort of my fault."
+
+"It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and
+we'll play rugby with those devilish _nichies_ if they don't act like
+gentlemen."
+
+Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all
+about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz--not
+a chance. It would be a fight--your hot heads would start it--and after
+the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the red
+spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets. These
+Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains; first
+thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."
+
+EVIL SPIRITS
+
+"How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just
+because you feel that it's your fault?"
+
+"No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt
+we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind
+they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know
+the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them;
+but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile--some of them will
+feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got
+sense and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole
+tribe was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect--do you see, Fitz?"
+
+They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea:
+"Let me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my
+eyes, and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the
+west wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them
+back again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied;
+my insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."
+
+"Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me.
+While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed
+Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell
+would break loose."
+
+"You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got
+the cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've
+seen you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not
+lose caste over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old
+boy! I rather fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this
+will be good-bye."
+
+It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy
+gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,
+threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a
+long graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow
+chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping
+over Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned
+prairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity
+the turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze
+over the plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere
+so peaceful that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a
+phantasmagoria. There was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the
+sleepy air, and off to the south glinted against the horizon the peeping
+red eyes of a prairie fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a
+shore-held city.
+
+The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie
+uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his
+instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy
+suffling pace of a cayuse.
+
+Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle
+night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind
+slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean
+to the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.
+
+Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for
+his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his
+wits against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better
+than remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by
+action, by strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds;
+but the thing ahead--drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust
+back into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of
+the ashes of regret.
+
+Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden
+this suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the
+danger, the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game
+with Fate that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit
+himself against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of
+the Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and
+inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all
+depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken;
+he must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain
+there with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the
+Ferryman at the crossing of the Styx.
+
+He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental
+traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf
+fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound
+that was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.
+
+The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the
+saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over
+his head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a
+little gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five
+paces to one side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold
+converse with the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of
+a hold-up; sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.
+
+As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated
+into staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and
+Carney muttered: "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding
+hell-bent-for-leather."
+
+Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he
+topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse
+saw the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for
+a crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his
+rider, in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to
+his feet a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of
+steel was touching his cheek.
+
+"By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."
+
+Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy--just a
+precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"
+
+"I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney
+nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row;
+dey s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."
+
+"Where's the Sergeant?"
+
+"I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by
+_le bon Dieu_ dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees
+reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."
+
+"All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the
+Superintendent that Bulldog Carney----"
+
+"Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the
+Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.
+
+"Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the
+fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."
+
+The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying,
+as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog,
+dat's me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."
+
+Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to
+the help of jerry Platt.
+
+Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after
+mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded
+brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching
+the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy
+ground swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky
+line, looking like the escarpments of a fort.
+
+The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley,
+at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on
+Yellowstone Creek.
+
+The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North
+Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep.
+It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.
+
+Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning
+"tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated
+at intervals by a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi,
+hi-yi, hi-yi!"
+
+Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the
+well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom--it was the gambling
+note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground
+in a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one
+of their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop,
+ceasing his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the
+heat of a fire.
+
+Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off,
+picketed the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he
+drifted into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth
+time of the yellow streak--I'll tackle them then."
+
+The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when
+Carney opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down
+the mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold
+climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted
+to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose,
+and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning--we'll eat
+afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo grass,
+I see from your tummy."
+
+The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two
+or three gunshots came down the valley.
+
+As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was
+nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt--that
+part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on
+and play his hand alone against the Stonies.
+
+As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that
+was like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it
+skirted the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of
+pearl tints and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn
+rocks. From beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad
+slopes the haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding
+into a valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning
+tom-toms. As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the
+smoke-stained tepees of the Stonies.
+
+At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping,
+snarling dogs--the pack-dogs of the Indians.
+
+At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration;
+but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay
+police horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry
+Platt, all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.
+
+Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks
+swarmed in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of
+them, still groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of
+them raced for their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two
+or three had rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they
+saw the policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.
+
+Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant
+just as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short
+of the camp.
+
+Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left
+arm was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's
+face, that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn
+and haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many
+had said would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold,
+tired fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness,
+as he called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are
+you doing here--collecting?"
+
+"Came to give you a hand, Jerry."
+
+"A hand, Bulldog?"
+
+"That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"--he
+swept an arm toward the tepees--"and I've ridden all night to help bust
+this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."
+
+"Not much--just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks
+potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm
+pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if
+they're here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the
+reserve."
+
+"They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."
+
+"I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal
+McBane will get a promotion--he's next in line to Jerry Platt."
+
+"Good stuff, Jerry, I'll----"
+
+"Pss-s-ing!"
+
+Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining
+moan of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of
+white smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.
+
+"That's bluff," Jerry grunted.
+
+"We've got to move in, Jerry--if we hesitate, after that, they'll buzz
+like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him moving.
+I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I know
+Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But I'm
+in it to the finish, boy."
+
+"Thanks, Bulldog"--they were moving along at a steady walk of the horses
+toward the tepees--"but you know our way--you've got to stand a lot of
+dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll make me wish you
+hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known as having lost
+our heads. D'you get it?"
+
+"I'm on, Jerry."
+
+Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on
+its moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to
+represent a hugetoothed grizzly.
+
+But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The
+old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies--it was
+a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,
+vociferous creatures.
+
+A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some
+circus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen
+don't slip from a tepee."
+
+Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking
+Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken
+gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship,
+and the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.
+
+Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted
+much with the tribe.
+
+"Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.
+
+"Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant
+with a sweep of the eagle wing.
+
+"We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.
+
+"Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."
+
+"Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white
+men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White
+Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat
+soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat
+that Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."
+
+At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a
+clamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi,
+yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their
+ponies, driving them with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance.
+Half-a-dozen times the lean racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the
+two white men.
+
+Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible
+by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the
+buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.
+
+Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun
+back into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll
+cover that stain with your blood."
+
+The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in
+groups, either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the
+two white men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and
+gravel, and bits of turf.
+
+The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.
+
+"We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with
+solemn dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time
+of our hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when
+the payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know
+not."
+
+"They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the
+homes of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail
+is open, Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you
+remain."
+
+"Chief, we are blood brothers--was it not so spoken?"
+
+"Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."
+
+"And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift
+Standing Bear would hear the words of his brother."
+
+"Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."
+
+"Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good
+of Standing Bear and his Braves."
+
+"What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"
+
+"That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two
+_moneas_, the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the
+squaws to load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the
+reserve."
+
+Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in
+rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.
+
+A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.
+
+"My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief
+declared.
+
+"Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old
+outcast buffalo bull--and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"
+
+The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running
+Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.
+
+"If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat
+asks him to deliver the two evil _moneas _" Carney added.
+
+Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes
+swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the
+braves.
+
+In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation,
+saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the
+two men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out
+something I mean to do?"
+
+"Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes.
+If they start shooting, go to it--then we'll fight to the finish."
+
+The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to
+strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."
+
+Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat
+make?"
+
+Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his
+tepee as a sign to the others.
+
+"And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of
+the Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the
+Redcoat do?" the Chief asked haughtily.
+
+But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear,
+his blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White
+Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet
+followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the
+tumult, for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.
+
+"Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he
+said to Carney.
+
+One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat
+their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was
+tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And
+Jerry, as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient--
+but it _must_ be.
+
+"The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with
+his lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket,
+Jerry, and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his
+tepee. The authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't
+obey I'm going to pull his shack down. Does that go?"
+
+"It does, and the Lord be with us."
+
+Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice
+in solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.
+
+The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf
+that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.
+
+"Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."
+
+"Go back on the trail, Bulldog."
+
+Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from
+Carney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of
+a snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of
+the rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to
+earth like a pricked balloon.
+
+This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid
+shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians
+stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the
+knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take
+the awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with
+the great nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill
+a Redcoat on duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a
+tribesman, meant the dreaded punishment of hanging.
+
+The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.
+
+From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted
+white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up
+gazing about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the
+hand of the other was a vicious knife.
+
+Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his
+bay forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You
+are under arrest--hands up!"
+
+As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report
+was echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped
+to his side, his pistol clattering to earth.
+
+Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying,
+sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your
+companion."
+
+The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed
+Indians.
+
+One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn
+Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them
+on his mate's wrists and his own.
+
+Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of
+events.
+
+"Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they
+are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."
+
+The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see
+that the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.
+
+"If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he said
+magnanimously; "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribe
+will go from here up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to the
+reserve would bring hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies on
+the ground. Ask the Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may go
+quickly, and the evil be at an end."
+
+Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, he
+advised, for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid in
+a stock of meat for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distinct
+hardship.
+
+"You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'll
+stay with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from the
+lumberjacks."
+
+"They must destroy any whisky they have," Jerry declared.
+
+This the Chief agreed to do.
+
+In half an hour the tepees were all down, packed on the poled travois,
+blankets and bundles were strapped to the backs of the dogs, and in a
+struggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.
+
+Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenly
+over the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breed
+scout.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45926 ***
diff --git a/45926/45926-h/45926-h.htm b/45926-h/45926-h.htm
index 0c9e02d..fb9f789 100644
--- a/45926/45926-h/45926-h.htm
+++ b/45926-h/45926-h.htm
@@ -1,11005 +1,10596 @@
-<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

-

-<!DOCTYPE html

-   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

-   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >

-

-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">

-  <head>

-    <title>

-      Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-    </title>

-    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">

-

-    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}

-    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }

-    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }

-    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}

-    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }

-    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}

-    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}

-    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}

-    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}

-    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}

-    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}

-    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}

-    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}

-    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }

-    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }

-    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}

-    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}

-    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;

-               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;

-               text-align: right;}

-    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;

-               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;

-               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;

-               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}

-    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}

-    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }

-    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}

-

-</style>

-  </head>

-  <body>

-

-

-<pre>

-

-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: Bulldog Carney

-

-Author: W. A. Fraser

-

-Release Date: June 10, 2014 [EBook #45926]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-

-

-

-

-</pre>

-

-    <div style="height: 8em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h1>

-      BULLDOG CARNEY

-    </h1>

-    <h2>

-      By W. A. Fraser

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <h4>

-      1919

-    </h4>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <h1>

-      BULLDOG CARNEY

-    </h1>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <b>CONTENTS</b>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III.&mdash;OWNERS UP </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV.&mdash;THE GOLD WOLF </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V.&mdash;SEVEN BLUE DOVES </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI.&mdash;EVIL SPIRITS </a>

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      I.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve thought it

-      over many ways and I'm going to tell this story as it happened, for I

-      believe the reader will feel he is getting a true picture of things as

-      they were but will not be again. A little padding up of the love interest,

-      a little spilling of blood, would, perhaps, make it stronger technically,

-      but would it lessen his faith that the curious thing happened? It's beyond

-      me to know&mdash;I write it as it was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He was rather a diffident

-      chap, never merging harmoniously into the western atmosphere; what saved

-      him from rude knocks was the fact that he was lean of speech. He stood on

-      the board sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly

-      across a trench of black mud that represented the main street. He hated

-      the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still more did he dislike

-      the turmoil that was within the hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had ridden his buckskin

-      cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's furtrading men, topping off

-      their spree in town before the long trip to Great Slave Lake, were

-      enthusiastically, vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy the

-      Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin whistle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his way into the bar, the

-      whistle had almost clattered to the floor from the piper's hand; then he

-      gasped, so low that no one heard him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There

-      was apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if he

-      had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the Piper. A

-      quick furtive look darting over the faces of his companions told him that

-      no one else had recognized the horseman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin whistle groaned, "My God! a

-      land of bums!" Three days he had waited to pick up a man to replace a

-      member of his gang down at Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill

-      through intercepting a plug of cold lead.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and clambered to the

-      board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp the muck from their boots. One

-      of the two, Cayuse Gray, spoke:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "This feller'll pull his freight with you, boss, if terms is right; he's a

-      hell of a worker."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen cognizance of the "feller":

-      a shudder twitched his shoulders. He had never seen a more wolfish face

-      set atop a man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the thin, vulpine sneak

-      visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes peered boldly up from

-      under shaggy brows that almost met a mop of black hair, the forehead was

-      so low. It was a hungry face, as if its owner had a standing account

-      against the world. But Cameron wanted a strong worker, and his business

-      instinct found strength and endurance in that heavy-shouldered frame, and

-      strong, wide-set legs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's your name?" he asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Jack Wolf," the man answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker had named the thought

-      that was in his mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his cheek, spat, and added,

-      "Jack the Wolf is what he gets most oftenest."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf retorted angrily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band tramped around the corner

-      into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a circle, cut loose with brass and

-      tambourine. As the wail from the instruments went up the men in the bar,

-      led by Billy the Piper, swarmed out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the Salvation hymn:&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      "There are flies on you, and there're flies on

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent20">

-      me,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they

-      shouted in delight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood aghast

-      at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de

-      Army bums, Miss," he jeered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking through

-      the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping his lithe

-      figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers with a grip

-      that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!" he snarled;

-      "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth&mdash;God and a woman.

-      Apologize, you hound!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'

-      ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.

-      There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.

-      Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer bottle

-      hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,&mdash;the man on the

-      buckskin,&mdash;but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's

-      shoulder blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud

-      of Jasper Avenue.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its

-      instruments and stole away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the

-      sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He

-      slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as the

-      thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met his own. "Get

-      down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,&mdash;I want you!" he commanded in

-      sharp clicking tones.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the

-      Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red

-      spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into the

-      black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the

-      half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind the

-      rider.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but

-      as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot

-      was to kill the breed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,

-      and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out

-      and barking vainly after the escaping man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river

-      flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging from

-      the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling the bank.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said

-      in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the

-      Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner

-      answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to

-      travel with me get busy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in a

-      dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the

-      halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean

-      parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down

-      stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the

-      hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of

-      the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across

-      the muddy old Saskatchewan.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a

-      grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;

-      there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away

-      into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time

-      being.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The

-      Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried

-      down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail with

-      a new mount.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and

-      profanity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck band,

-      was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work at Fort

-      Victor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From

-      said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever

-      slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman

-      was king of the booze runners.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a

-      thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof

-      and copped the dough."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and pot

-      at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that cuss

-      did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho; but it

-      was enough&mdash;the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set the

-      pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd been

-      lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever stacked

-      up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when he's out to

-      play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is my advice to

-      you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy face through

-      it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to the bar and

-      said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real man."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the others

-      had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with admiration:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper calls

-      him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged Mister

-      Khaki-jacket&mdash;we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his nut,

-      and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys what

-      happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog Carney!"

-      Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd give that

-      cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as I do now."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:

-      the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a school

-      teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went, constituting a

-      floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary citizens.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood, and

-      not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there were

-      seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating passion of

-      moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made up for it in

-      insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the old

-      Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and found a

-      subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the

-      little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who wandered in

-      mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual nourishment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to Fort

-      Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile oaths,

-      their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments were

-      spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of life.

-      Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling

-      perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the religious

-      fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was that strange

-      contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to lean

-      eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack the Wolf

-      and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the great sun

-      swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes the

-      full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack

-      slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked Bible

-      to him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow gone

-      agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first died

-      away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst

-      for moral betterment&mdash;insatiable. The missionary in a chat with

-      Cameron explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners,

-      had never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but

-      the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of

-      salvation, Fort Victor&mdash;Glory to God! The poor fellow's very

-      wickedness was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the

-      Lord's vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always

-      being saved all over the world&mdash;regenerated, metamorphosed, and who

-      was Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of

-      Wolf, became a high-powered machine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and

-      became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited until

-      this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon with,

-      perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack the Wolf

-      declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he affirmed, and

-      should be taught respect for God's agents in a proper muscular manner. So

-      the first time three French half-breeds, enthusiastically drunk, invaded

-      the little log schoolhouse and declared school was out, sending the

-      teacher home with tears of shame in her blue eyes, Jack reestablished the

-      dignity of the church by generously walloping the three backsliders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most

-      ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the

-      lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all of

-      Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she had

-      known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her

-      negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when the

-      business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others were

-      practically ignored.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker

-      and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the

-      only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk

-      purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze

-      fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue

-      devils away."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was

-      prejudiced myself at first."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft of

-      tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents in it,

-      and put it back on his head:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss&mdash;first guesses about

-      a feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder

-      skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or

-      twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'

-      like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness

-      that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a

-      tin of powder; he'll throw back."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher," Cameron

-      said meditatively.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as houses.

-      She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers, 'tain't

-      nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her religion,

-      that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an' such while he

-      makes a stake workin' here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some prairie

-      chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he passed the

-      shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This was careless,

-      for train dogs were always prowling about for just such a chance for loot.

-      He stepped through the door and took a peep into the other room. There sat

-      the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered

-      surlily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that

-      tough bunch&mdash;swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all

-      day; a man can't keep decent in that outfit."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive

-      Scotch.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no

-      square deal; you've treated me like a breed."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look

-      that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,

-      enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the work.

-      The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands, especially

-      the women folks. You're a scoundrel."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his

-      blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel gun

-      that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the

-      triggers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded. "If

-      I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no good

-      on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I did the

-      deed."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on

-      the table.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of you.

-      I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort

-      Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his

-      shoulder, stalking on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the

-      Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,

-      Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean

-      nothin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote a

-      note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was

-      humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad

-      record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him and

-      the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more

-      serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might

-      crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right to

-      stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all

-      time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her

-      bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward

-      boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to let

-      him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police

-      barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police

-      had always persecuted her Jack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the neutral

-      blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a new runway. He

-      had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost reconciled to the

-      loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take him

-      back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of horses

-      to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here is shy a

-      horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express&mdash;it's good

-      enough for you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his

-      shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very

-      debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want&mdash;Jack

-      Wolf. They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River,

-      with a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to

-      explain."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He's gone."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Gone! When?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yesterday."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon

-      Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he

-      asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his

-      saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look in

-      his face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be

-      interned when there's business on."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The little school teacher?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The little fool!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I did."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'&mdash;had

-      put the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for

-      him; spun me the most glimmering tale&mdash;she's got a dime novel skinned

-      four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog

-      Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat. They

-      persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to God, and

-      has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two of them are

-      to live happy ever after."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched up

-      against her chest for years."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby

-      seemed inadequate.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "About three o'clock."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Afoot?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot

-      he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest

-      skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail&mdash;no train for

-      him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization for

-      grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If you'll

-      stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse I'll eat

-      and pull out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll just

-      not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much obliged.

-      It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,

-      forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the

-      south bank and disappeared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log

-      shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The

-      family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian

-      bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some

-      devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope

-      hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable

-      horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort

-      Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten trail

-      that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on to

-      Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was the

-      old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to

-      Winnipeg.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where money

-      was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was involved he

-      could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The Winnipeg trail

-      would be deserted&mdash;Jack knew that; a man could travel it the round of

-      the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond he could leave

-      it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and board a train at

-      some small station. No notice would be taken of him, for trappers,

-      prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative men, were

-      always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent solitudes of

-      the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath would

-      pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory of

-      capturing his man single-handed. That was the <i>esprit de corps</i> of

-      these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, <i>par excellence</i>, large

-      in conceit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his strong

-      teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence in his

-      ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted Policeman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,

-      looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the old

-      Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the railroad

-      south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail running into

-      Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was about ten miles

-      east of that town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the

-      Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,

-      you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in, my

-      brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;

-      where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever

-      persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong

-      prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding

-      wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till he

-      sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf went

-      in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he asked how

-      far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail&mdash;still toward

-      Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the milk, but

-      the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the one he had

-      seen heading for Edmonton.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice

-      putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on the

-      road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig coming

-      from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it had passed.

-      Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet in the black

-      soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into a waggon here from

-      behind. This accomplished he turned east across the prairie, reach-ing the

-      old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned south.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the

-      smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod&mdash;toes in, and

-      head hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints&mdash;hour after

-      hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy

-      springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy

-      gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick

-      clump of saskatoon bushes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for his

-      drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring beverage.

-      On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his

-      veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper on

-      his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning he

-      would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about ten,

-      and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east, or west, or

-      south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to Edmonton; the

-      police would spend two or three days searching all the shacks and Indian

-      and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily outgoing train.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him; but

-      there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up against

-      that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand the best he

-      knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the train on some

-      grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack where Montana Dick

-      lived. Dick would know what was doing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg

-      country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour; he

-      was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into impassable

-      country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west again. But for

-      two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he realized now that

-      he was covering miles which had to be made up when he swung west again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through

-      which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring

-      man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was

-      being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it was

-      simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie was

-      closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a crouching

-      wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was that he was

-      tiring, perhaps.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form&mdash;something <i>was</i>

-      on his trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian&mdash;gifted with

-      the sixth sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a

-      day's march away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to

-      laugh it off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't

-      down.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the

-      luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath

-      trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad. His

-      footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the

-      heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles

-      would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that his

-      tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone. Being

-      mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of darkness&mdash;would

-      reach the railway and wire down the line.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the

-      ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back. On

-      the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched to

-      watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below them

-      into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole mass of

-      tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious background a

-      horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the saddle, the docked

-      tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the watcher that it was a

-      policeman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the road

-      where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the vast dome.

-      Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant stopped,

-      dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched the trail

-      for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night, coming first

-      over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of sombre hue. The

-      trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be there, merged into

-      the pattern till they were indiscernible.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its

-      sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,

-      saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their

-      nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose in

-      circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill cranes

-      flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks straight

-      out behind, and soared away like kites.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what

-      the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would camp

-      there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by the

-      hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about three

-      o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop along the

-      southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise that Jack

-      had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the southern end of

-      the swamp and head for the railway.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can, if

-      not&mdash;get him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;

-      this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,

-      crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held

-      between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs that

-      might crack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to

-      the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of the

-      picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine, then the

-      Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would throw up his

-      hands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for

-      then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his

-      life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even if

-      the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first shot

-      meant not overmuch.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears

-      fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of

-      discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in the

-      pea vine and sweet-grass.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug

-      of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched

-      with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the

-      bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a

-      narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen; not

-      daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden somewhere

-      and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the Wolf lay,

-      just a gray mound against the gray turf.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow lay

-      down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He had

-      not removed his pistol belt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to

-      kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few feet

-      and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering trick of

-      a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when a man was

-      cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain ahead of him,

-      or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage was with him.

-      Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down wind from them

-      now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the wind shifted&mdash;no,

-      he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary in the daylight,

-      might give him his chance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the

-      mosquito, had run his course.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,

-      slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the ducks

-      would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from

-      consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing

-      him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but sprang

-      to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again a great

-      horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped silently and

-      struck, thinking it a hare.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the Wolf

-      knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be thrown.

-      He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse, his sides

-      ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest, his muzzle on

-      the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his

-      death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes

-      sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a

-      minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose

-      tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed

-      toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the

-      lake for a drink.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but

-      the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It was a

-      chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the hole

-      when I play this hand."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his

-      horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something had

-      to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short distance up

-      a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding prairie. This

-      seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered some dry poplar

-      branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked stick he drove in

-      the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The

-      Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the sleeves

-      of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece of soap

-      and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water to wash

-      away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and heavy on his

-      face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing and blowing

-      water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was unheard.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and

-      turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police

-      revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip to

-      the buff&mdash;I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless you

-      get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're told

-      and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf ordered.

-      In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant Heath; then

-      he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of

-      steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding, "Click

-      these on."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat

-      and your boots?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.

-      I'll tell you what I'll do&mdash;I'll give you your choice of three ways:

-      I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of these

-      .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt on your

-      back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare feet."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't walk on my pants."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into about

-      four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll starve."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack

-      Wolf would get a dinner&mdash;I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn

-      police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook grub

-      for two&mdash;bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his

-      wrists, and clad only in a shirt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket line

-      and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the carbine

-      strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three days;

-      that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near steel, I

-      ain't horse stealin', myself&mdash;I'm only borrowin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly be

-      pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning&mdash;a

-      play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody

-      that day. He said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't you?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We try to."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in a

-      hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the

-      honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'

-      start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then you

-      can get out in two days and be none the worse."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with a

-      horse thief&mdash;with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf

-      snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week

-      askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,

-      won't you?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant

-      objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect

-      myself."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want the

-      death of a man on his hands&mdash;there was nothing in it. So he unlocked

-      the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw them

-      far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up by

-      somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away

-      harder."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'

-      mean unless it helps me out of a hole."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles

-      he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a

-      horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling

-      hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie

-      rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over

-      higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;

-      but there was no hurry.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching a

-      saddle on a buckskin horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin that

-      I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding

-      screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen

-      him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until

-      Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands, for

-      his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover and

-      waited.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked his

-      ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of hoofs

-      back on the tell-tale trail he had left.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the startled

-      animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in a shower.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he

-      recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half

-      the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering

-      like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with a

-      writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his

-      spread mouth came a scream of terror&mdash;he knew.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered&mdash;he had

-      ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they

-      were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low

-      forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared from

-      off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came back to

-      him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two or three

-      wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming quicksands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his feet

-      up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head about

-      he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's thin

-      lips a smile hovered. He sneered:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at

-      barracks?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,

-      so he lied:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog sneered. "Why should I&mdash;God doesn't love a sneaking police

-      hound."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now

-      stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition&mdash;never mind, I'll

-      save you first&mdash;there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty

-      the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.

-      "Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can get

-      my cow-rope to you tie the two together."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,

-      seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking his

-      cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on the

-      tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous ooze.

-      Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it at the

-      first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back, looped the

-      rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop over on your

-      belly&mdash;look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing the Wolf to

-      safe ground.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his

-      revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was

-      gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter

-      commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take ten

-      paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of cartridges.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his

-      horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built a

-      little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand

-      close to the fire so your pants dry too&mdash;I want that suit."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney

-      about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two

-      hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of that

-      coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for a chance

-      to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his captor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the

-      pocket."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,

-      took from it two packets&mdash;one of papers, and another wrapped in

-      strong paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with

-      the other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say,

-      you're some liar&mdash;even for a government hound; your name's not

-      Phillips, it's Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at

-      Golden. You're the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather

-      Bulldog Carney in; you shot off your mouth all along the line that you

-      were going to take him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred

-      you'd tie him hoof and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you

-      first, see? Turn you over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds;

-      that's just what I'm going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you

-      for the sake of that little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm

-      Bulldog Carney. Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it

-      over; then you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the

-      police as Bulldog Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it, Mister

-      Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never live it

-      down if you live to be a thousand&mdash;you've boasted too much."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf had remained silent&mdash;waiting. He had an advantage if his

-      captor did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at

-      Edmonton by Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell them

-      who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know me;

-      perhaps some of them'll know you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.

-      "Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over on

-      the rail"&mdash;and he jerked his thumb toward the west&mdash;"where

-      there's two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen

-      either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since

-      you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is wanted

-      at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that brings him

-      in."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light&mdash;a flood of it. If

-      this thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,

-      he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at

-      Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been in

-      their clutches and escaped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Jack must bluff&mdash;appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:

-      "They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't

-      you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little

-      pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band, the

-      Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the farm?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp

-      "Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five

-      seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and

-      dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman to

-      be toting. Is this police money?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money

-      but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not a

-      policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner of

-      the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman on

-      duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed it

-      all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two

-      hundred is my own," he answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government

-      robbed me of my ranch&mdash;said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;

-      it's coming to you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty trick,

-      what you say'll make good&mdash;I'll have to quit the Force; an' I want to

-      get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two hundred."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I think you're lying&mdash;a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred

-      ahead, not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or

-      two," Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he

-      spun it in the air.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Heads!" the Wolf cried.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the

-      bills to their owner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,

-      you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you

-      missed him, didn't you? Where's he&mdash;what's he done lately? He played

-      me a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I

-      never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd give

-      you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down grudge

-      against. What's his description&mdash;what does he look like?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He's a tall slim chap&mdash;looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger

-      blood in him," the Wolf lied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about cooked&mdash;peel!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,

-      toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M. P.,

-      revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and lighted

-      his pipe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want you

-      to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you over

-      to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen to you

-      if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath&mdash;they'd laugh at

-      you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and you'd

-      sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet&mdash;see? I'm going to stay

-      close to you till you're on that train."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as

-      Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for

-      Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him&mdash;the policeman would

-      see to that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You bet I am&mdash;I'd rather work this racket than go to my own

-      wedding."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll

-      just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give

-      myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I only

-      got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog Carney

-      I won't come out as Sergeant Heath&mdash;I'll disappear as Mister

-      Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened

-      Sergeant Heath from me&mdash;I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever

-      stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure

-      bluff&mdash;for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's

-      ready compliance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like

-      that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire&mdash;then

-      we'll pull out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he found

-      a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower

-      end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode

-      along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being

-      helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.

-      Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than

-      that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily come

-      by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had Carney to

-      steal his labor&mdash;to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile after

-      mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession of

-      Jack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way

-      so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too. The

-      khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for

-      another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's

-      waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd be

-      peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there won't

-      be no argument."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of water,

-      and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten miles from

-      steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney had both the

-      police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the ground, looped

-      the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll

-      sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you so

-      much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and sleep

-      light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it same's

-      we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.

-      It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than once he

-      had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the psychology

-      of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what he had been

-      told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering chap who had

-      had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He determined to

-      take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie awake.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a

-      shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back, saying,

-      as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your handcuffs&mdash;thought

-      you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf

-      lied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite precision.

-      When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his precautions had made

-      all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by jerky nerves; so in five

-      minutes he slept.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the

-      something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to

-      play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to

-      carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good

-      thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the

-      pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed

-      clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the

-      buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would

-      sleep&mdash;not lie awake through fear over nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried grass

-      a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the steady

-      rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath; had he been

-      lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his breathing to

-      listen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he had

-      lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked his

-      hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that bound

-      his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he waited. The

-      buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the flowered

-      carpet from his nostrils.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his nostrils

-      again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was heard the

-      clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney, recognizing what

-      had waked him, turned over and slept again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed

-      through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the

-      grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely

-      lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief that

-      had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck, and in

-      one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his wrist. Now he

-      had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other man helpless.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he commenced his crawl.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern

-      sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with

-      ghostly garments bush and shrub.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and the

-      Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney knew

-      the sensitive wariness of his horse,&mdash;the scent of the stranger in

-      his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part of

-      the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended to

-      drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had trailed it

-      back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This was more a

-      move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could work his way,

-      creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get away with the

-      horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears

-      cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was the

-      scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his mind,

-      that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about; or,

-      perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious man he

-      distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his prairie

-      dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept into camp.

-      He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head irritably. A

-      vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay across Carney's foot

-      and he stirred restlessly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,

-      cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that

-      even the watchful animal scarce detected it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot, or

-      the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or the

-      other&mdash;the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by any

-      chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart pounding

-      against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten feet, and

-      he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch it from the

-      holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive. Sometimes

-      he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but only to throw

-      his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head, and exhale a

-      whistling breath.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard and he

-      could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had wakened&mdash;just

-      the steady breathing of a sleeping man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly

-      had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his

-      feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another yard,

-      and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested like a

-      sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward the pistol

-      stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was twisted

-      about the two first fingers of his right.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yes, Carney slept.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was seized

-      in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the butt of

-      Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over the eye and

-      he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were riveting a boiler

-      in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was boring a hole in his

-      forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had wakened in a strange land.

-      He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at a man who sat beside a camp fire

-      smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a copper kettle hung and a scent of

-      broiling bacon came to his nostrils. The man beside the fire took the pipe

-      from his mouth and said: "I hoped I had cracked your skull, you swine.

-      Where did you pick up that thug trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As

-      you are troubled with insomnia we'll hit the trail again."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead of the

-      buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a strange,

-      weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping waters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was

-      wobbly on his legs&mdash;his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's

-      leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung to

-      his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the

-      shifting sands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees in

-      the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he

-      collapsed like a jointed doll&mdash;he toppled head first into the mire

-      and lay there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a

-      man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping the

-      mud from his face, and looking very all in.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're soft,

-      my bucko&mdash;I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered;

-      "boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way of

-      hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten

-      feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his side

-      and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind and one

-      in front.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some

-      trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together

-      and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I <i>will</i> have a

-      sleep."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would

-      have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the soft

-      stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the valley

-      of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass touched

-      his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he

-      saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite

-      and pull out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front of

-      the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of escape

-      were good.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against a

-      sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to the

-      left, in an hour they were close to the Post.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up

-      in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it

-      was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his

-      horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it,

-      and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the

-      latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two

-      constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating

-      breakfast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a

-      prisoner, Bulldog Carney."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at

-      this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and

-      laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my uniform&mdash;where's

-      my horse? I've got you now&mdash;set me afoot to starve, would you, you

-      damn thief&mdash;you murderer! Where's the five hundred dollars you stole

-      from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets from

-      a gatling&mdash;it was a torrent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed the

-      truth&mdash;the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it was

-      amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept

-      quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath

-      the khaki coat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought

-      that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of

-      his evil luck should not escape.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "<i>That's Bulldog Carney!</i>" he cried fiercely; "don't let him get

-      away."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops."

-      They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose

-      small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I

-      had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such a

-      skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by one,

-      into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led from the

-      room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as a cell. "I

-      see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack&mdash;you really should have

-      been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the prairie

-      somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so. Step in,

-      boys, and you go first, Wolf."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy

-      wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the fire

-      arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through the

-      mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dear Miss Black:&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No

-      woman can afford to bet on even a <i>good</i> man. Stick to the kids, for

-      I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant Heath

-      and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I wouldn't have

-      known, and you'd have lost out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yours delightedly,

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      II.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> day's trail north

-      from where Idaho and Montana come together on the Canadian border, fumed

-      and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature was a little bit of all

-      right, for from the minute it trickled from a huge blue-green glacier up

-      in the Selkirks till it fell into the Kootenay, it bucked its way over,

-      under, and around rock-cliffs, and areas of stolid mountain sides that

-      still held gigantic pine and cedar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the town

-      of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of the

-      yellow god.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid,

-      suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside,

-      looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth and

-      Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder;

-      Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a

-      gyroscope.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with drill

-      and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road&mdash;a free lance of

-      adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream than win

-      money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy anatomy, the

-      calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve and sweet courage,

-      the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would have perished tied to

-      routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog" Carney, was an

-      inspiration.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border,

-      mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and

-      United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam the

-      exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking

-      Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred

-      dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the

-      hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put a

-      gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again. When

-      Seth threw up his hands declaring that the Little Widow was no good, those

-      who had laughed told him that they had known it all the time.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But what they didn't know was that the long drift in the mine now ran on

-      until it was directly under the Gold Nugget hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was Carney who had worked that out, and Seth and his hotel were

-      established as a clearing station for the opium that was shipped in by

-      train from Vancouver in tins labelled "Peaches," "Salmon," or any old

-      thing. It was stored in the mine and taken from there by pack-train down

-      to the border, and switched across at Bailey's Ferry, the U. S. customs

-      officers at that point being nice lovable chaps; or sometimes it crossed

-      the Kootenay in a small boat at night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog supervised that end of the business, bringing the heavy payments

-      in gold back to Bucking Horse on a laden mule behind his buckskin; then

-      the gold was expressed by train to the head office of this delightful

-      trading company in Vancouver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This endeavor ran along smoothly, for the whole mining West was one

-      gigantic union, standing "agin the government"&mdash;any old government,

-      U. S. or Canadian.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion;

-      besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in

-      looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him

-      alone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one

-      of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town

-      would be its own custodian.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his horse's

-      heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung from

-      either side of a pack saddle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney went straight to the little railway station, and expressed the gold

-      to Vancouver, getting the agent's assurance that it would go out on the

-      night train which went through at one o'clock. Then he rode back to the

-      Gold Nugget and put his horse and mule in the stable.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he pushed open the front door of the hotel he figuratively stepped into

-      a family row, a row so self-centered that the parties interested were

-      unaware of his entrance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A small bar occupied one corner of the dim-lighted room, and behind this

-      Seth Long leaned back against the bottle rack, with arms folded across his

-      big chest, puffing at a thick cigar. Facing him, with elbows on the bar, a

-      man was talking volubly, anger speeding up his vocalization.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Beside the man stood Jeanette Holt, fire flashing from her black eyes, and

-      her nostrils dilated with passion. She interrupted the voluble one:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, Seth, I did slap this cheap affair, Jack Wolf, fair across the ugly

-      mouth, and I'll do it again!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth tongued the cigar to one corner of his ample lips, and drawled:

-      "That's a woman's privilege, Jack, if a feller's give her just cause for

-      action You ain't got no kick comin', I reckon, 'cause this little woman

-      ain't one to fly off the handle for nothin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Nothin', Seth? I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll

-      figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I see&mdash;you're

-      bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is stingin' you

-      right here in your own nest."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Biff!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned

-      to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look

-      that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an

-      oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog Carney had stepped quickly across the room, and was now at his

-      side, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "So you're here, Jack the Wolf, eh? I thought I had rid civilization of

-      your ugly presence when I turned you over to the police at Hobbema for

-      murdering your mate."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That was a trumped-up charge," the Wolf stammered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ah! I see&mdash;acquitted! I can guess it in once. Nobody saw you put

-      that little round hole in the back of Alberta Bill's head&mdash;not even

-      Bill; and he was dead and couldn't talk."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold,

-      searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You put

-      your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or

-      something will happen. I've got a proposition."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his

-      belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden

-      rail, saying, surlily:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man

-      that plays into the hands of the damn police."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You can cut out the rough stuff, Wolf, while there's a lady present."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney deliberately turned his shoulder to the scowling man, and said,

-      "How d'you do, Miss Holt?" touching his hat. Then he added, "Seth, locate

-      a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank as

-      though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room, and

-      addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square

-      box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger&mdash;we're going to liquidate."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack Wolf.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved a

-      black bottle toward Bulldog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The gents first," the latter intimated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The bottle was slid down to Cayuse, who filled his glass and passed it

-      back to Wolf. The latter carried it irritably past him without filling his

-      glass.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Help yourself, Wolf." It was a command, not an invitation, in Carney's

-      voice.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm not drinkin'," Jack snarled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, you are. I've got a toast that's got to be unanimous."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth, with a wink at Wolf, tipped the bottle and half filled the latter's

-      glass, saying, "Be a sport, Jack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at

-      Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said: "Gents, we're going to drink

-      to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to run

-      across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long ever

-      had&mdash;<i>Miss Jeanette</i> Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor,

-      but the Wolf did not touch his glass.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was

-      deadly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The room had grown still. One, two, three, a wooden clock on the shelf

-      behind the bar ticked off the seconds in the heavy quiet; and in a far

-      corner the piping of a stray cricket sounded like the drool of a pfirrari.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a click of a latch, a muffled scrape as the outer door pushed

-      open. This seemed to break the holding spell of fear that was over the

-      Wolf. "I'll see you in hell, Bulldog Carney, before I drink with you or a

-      girl that&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The whisky that was in Carney's glass shot fair into the speaker's open

-      mouth. As his hand jumped to his gun the wrist was seized with a loosening

-      twist, and the heel of Bulldog's open right hand caught him under the chin

-      with a force that fair lifted him from his feet to drop on the back of his

-      head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A man wearing a brass-buttoned khaki jacket with blue trousers down which

-      ran wide yellow stripes, darted from where he had stood at the door, put

-      his hand on Bulldog's shoulder, and said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're under arrest in the Queen's name, Bulldog Carney!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney reached down and picked up the Wolf's gun that lay where it had

-      fallen from his twisted hand, and passed it to Seth without comment. Then

-      he looked the man in the khaki coat up and down and coolly asked. "Are you

-      anybody in particular, stranger?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke

-      bank, the Mounted."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll entertain

-      you for several days over in the pen."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "On what grounds?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You'll find out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, and now, declare yourself!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in

-      Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm

-      here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who

-      stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand clasping

-      his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the Sergeant, a faint

-      smile lifting his tawny mustache.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a

-      chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's a

-      thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the

-      line."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot

-      to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia.

-      You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which

-      you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to let

-      you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick you

-      into the street; then they would have something on me&mdash;something

-      because I'd mussed up the uniform."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go bail&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney grinned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go with

-      you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all your

-      own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even his

-      duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance by

-      insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter turned

-      it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through Carney's

-      arm, passed out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack divided

-      by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a bunk; the

-      other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door that carried

-      a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small window

-      safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this bull-pen,

-      as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a candle. There was

-      a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the bare

-      interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you

-      fellows are angular."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain

-      perhaps you'll drop some of that side."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his

-      pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your

-      curtains, will it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant Black

-      went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer, Bulldog&mdash;I

-      ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather irrelevantly, and

-      with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read 'Les Miserables,'

-      Sergeant?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't read a paper in a month&mdash;I've been too busy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It isn't a paper, it's a story."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney

-      persisted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come

-      into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec&mdash;they're

-      more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical

-      voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a

-      character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might

-      discriminate over a great story."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he do&mdash;how

-      am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like yourself,

-      and his mind was only capable of containing the one idea&mdash;duty. It

-      was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the

-      bangles on you and leave you in the dark."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can

-      clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I

-      meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through

-      the bars of the open window.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough to

-      know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight&mdash;a fight over nothing;

-      and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs

-      would hold anybody, and you know it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's

-      gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to

-      arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had

-      locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well

-      enough alone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be

-      sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me

-      something to read."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les

-      Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple of

-      magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He

-      could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then the

-      Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire to Major

-      Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came back.

-      About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the floor,

-      his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law had retired. A

-      vagrant thought traversed his mind that the heavy-dispositioned,

-      phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper once oblivious. However,

-      that didn't matter, there was no necessity for escape.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened by a

-      noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of life he

-      sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the sputtering

-      candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew he had been

-      wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening, no sound reached

-      his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous breathings. He had

-      guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper, one of Shakespeare's

-      full-paunched kind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused to

-      cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's presence.

-      He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly associated

-      with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth so much as

-      over Jeanette.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from

-      the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a

-      pebble tapping on iron.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no

-      tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window

-      thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A soft warm hand grasped his, and he felt the smooth sides of a folded

-      paper. As he gave the hand a reassuring pressure, his knuckles were tapped

-      gently by something hard. He transferred the paper to his other hand, and

-      reaching out again, something was thrust into it, that when he lifted it

-      within he found was a strong screw-driver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He crept back to his bunk, slipped the screwdriver between the blankets,

-      and standing by the door listened for ten seconds; then a faint gurgling

-      breath told him that Black slept.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Making a hiding canopy of his blanket, he lighted his candle, unfolded the

-      paper, and read:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Two planks, north end, fastened with screws. Below is tunnel that leads

-      to the mine. Will meet you there. Come soon. Important."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen

-      knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks

-      nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the

-      flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these heads

-      were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the other

-      room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked in the

-      lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As if suddenly startled from sleep, Carney called out: "Who's that&mdash;what

-      do you want?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant peered in and answered, "Nothing! thought I heard you moving

-      about. Are you all right, Carney?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He swept the pen with his candle, noted Carney's boots on the floor, and,

-      satisfied, closed the door and went back to his bunk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This interruption rather pleased Carney; he felt that it was a somnolent

-      sense of duty, responsibility, that had wakened Black. Now that he had

-      investigated and found everything all right he would probably sleep

-      soundly for hours.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney waited ten minutes. The Sergeant's bunk had given a note of

-      complaint as its occupant turned over; now it was still. Taking his boots

-      in his hand he crept back to the end of the pen and rapidly, noiselessly,

-      withdrew the screw-nails from both ends of two planks. Then he crept back

-      to the door and listened; the other room was silent save for the same

-      little sleep breathings he had heard before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With the screw-driver he lifted the planks, slipped through the opening,

-      all in the dark, and drew the planks back into place over his head. He had

-      to crouch in the little tunnel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Pulling on his boots, on hands and knees he crawled through the small

-      tunnel for fifty yards. Then he came to stope timbers stood on end, and

-      turning these to one side found himself in what he knew must be a

-      cross-cut from the main drift that ran between the mine opening and the

-      hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he stood up in this he heard a faint whistle, and whispered,

-      "Jeanette."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The girl came forward in the dark, her hand touching his arm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm so glad," she whispered. "We'd better stand here in the dark, for I

-      have something serious to tell you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then in a low tone the girl said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The Wolf and Cayuse Braun are going to hold up the train to-night, just

-      at the end of the trestle, and rob the express car."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is Seth in it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, he's standing in, but he isn't going to help on the job. The Wolf is

-      going to board the train at the station, and enter the express car when

-      the train is creeping over the trestle. He's got a bar and rope for

-      fastening the door of the car behind the express car. When the engine

-      reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and make

-      him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the other cars

-      are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and Cayuse will

-      force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop off on the

-      up-grade, half a mile beyond."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away

-      with it, I believe."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I listened to them planning the whole thing out," Jeanette confessed,

-      "and they didn't know I could hear them."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What about this little tunnel under the jail&mdash;that's a new one on

-      me?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Seth had it dug, pretending he was looking for gold; but the men who dug

-      it didn't know that it led under the jail, and he finished it himself,

-      fixed the planks, and all. You see when the police go away they leave the

-      keys with Seth in case any sudden trouble comes up. Nobody knows about it

-      but Seth."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a tang of regret in Carney's voice as he said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Seth is playing it pretty low down, Jeanette; he's practically stealing

-      from his pals. I put twenty thousand in gold in to-night to go by that

-      train, coke money; he knows it, and that's what these thieves are after."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Surely Seth wouldn't do that, Bulldog&mdash;steal from his partners!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, not quite, Jeanette. He figures that the express company is

-      responsible, will have to make good, and that my people will get their

-      money back; but all the same, it's kind of like that&mdash;it's rotten!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I&mdash;not on Seth&mdash;not

-      while I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't

-      &mdash;well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's

-      been different. I've stuck to him&mdash;you know, Bulldog, how straight

-      I've been&mdash;but a thief!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the girl's

-      voice carried a tremble.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the

-      police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your being

-      arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to Seth and

-      stop it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just hell.

-      Besides, girl, I'm in jail."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But you're free now&mdash;you'll go away."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Let me think a minute, Jeanette."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose

-      flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and they

-      saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse Braun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is

-      going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while they

-      pull the job off."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into action,

-      fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing&mdash;I will see

-      what I can do."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And Seth&mdash;you won't&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't

-      bother your pretty little head about it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was

-      trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a

-      school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion: "Bulldog,

-      do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it at all,

-      wondered?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to being

-      the finest girl I ever knew."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those things.

-      Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he shouldn't

-      steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You mean that I'm like the gold?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well&mdash;you know what I

-      mean, Jeanette."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But you like me?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you&mdash;if I kissed

-      you?".

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to do

-      what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself. Don't

-      get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that way. I've

-      kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you, being Seth's

-      girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you untangle that&mdash;get

-      what I mean?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's arm

-      and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in a

-      steadier voice: "Good night, man&mdash;I'm going back." Together they felt

-      their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift,

-      Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's nobody

-      about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to the cellar

-      you go ahead and clear the way for me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little

-      store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out to

-      the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a gun

-      that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn the two

-      bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out he avoided

-      the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent Bucking

-      Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten by

-      the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden trestle

-      looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint moonlight,

-      its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half a mile from

-      where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its tail coming

-      back to the same side of the stream after traversing two short kinks. It

-      looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to carry the huge Mogul

-      engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train went over it at a

-      snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's attention.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what

-      chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to

-      his assistance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned, and

-      no doubt would go through unless&mdash;&mdash; At this juncture of thought

-      Carney chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping

-      into the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub

-      growth Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat&mdash;easy,

-      my boy!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip&mdash;that there was no

-      hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man talking

-      to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and he,

-      understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over Carney's

-      shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek; and

-      sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's

-      withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no

-      telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they

-      trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently Carney dropped the rein from over the horse's head to the

-      ground, took his lariat from the saddle-horn, hung the two pack-bags over

-      his shoulder, and whispering, "Wait here, Patsy boy," slipped through the

-      brush and wormed his way cautiously to a huge boulder a hundred feet from

-      the trestle. There he sat down, his back against the rock, and his eye on

-      the blobs of yellow light that was Bucking Horse town. Presently from

-      beyond the rock carried to his listening ears the clink of an iron-shod

-      hoof against a stone, and he heard a suppressed, "Damn!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Coming, I guess," he muttered to himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came

-      hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring yellow-red

-      eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced his angry way

-      down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the Mogul rocked in its

-      swift glide down the curved grade; there was the screeching grind of

-      airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as the compressed air

-      seethed from opened valves at their release when the train stood at rest

-      beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's lantern

-      gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of packages

-      thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then the little

-      green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the Mogul coughed

-      as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at steel rails and

-      slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping breaths; then came

-      the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel as the heavy train

-      careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the trestle were whining a

-      protest like the twang of loose strings on a harp.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far side

-      of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man huddled

-      in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand the

-      barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it

-      was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the

-      steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried to

-      Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the

-      stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind

-      the express car still on the trestle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open, and

-      within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with hands

-      above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a third

-      was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them through

-      the open door.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance

-      in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car

-      and waited.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the

-      Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move

-      I'll plug you!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal to

-      Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps from

-      the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a graceful

-      sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the head of Jack

-      the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the fall he was

-      pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless

-      with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail end

-      of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had bound

-      him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse. Of

-      course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but

-      shooting a man was something to be avoided.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the express

-      messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty thousand

-      dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But Carney, having

-      secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack bags astride the

-      saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow mine. He had small

-      fear that the two men would think of looking in that direction for the man

-      who had robbed them; even if they did he had a good start for it would

-      take time to untie the Wolf and get their one horse. Also he had the

-      Wolf's guns.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that ran

-      off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of water,

-      sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin, tied him,

-      and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the small tunnel

-      back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and, chuckling, fell

-      into a virtuous sleep.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully, "You're

-      in luck, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the

-      sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and

-      if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Thanks for your foresight, friend&mdash;that is, if you knew it was

-      coming off. Tell me how your friend worked it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had

-      finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would

-      say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that I

-      never have a companion in any little joke I put over."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an

-      apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and

-      then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars

-      for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to

-      Lake Erie and start a bean farm."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them

-      two down."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, thanks; I like it here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog&mdash;set you free."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your

-      arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram

-      and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company

-      offers two thousand."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What other one?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he

-      admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta

-      case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police

-      before."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But I'm

-      no sleuth for the official robber&mdash;he's fair game."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men&mdash;that's your job. But

-      you can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that

-      offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand,

-      that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the gold

-      I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if you'll oblige

-      me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for breakfast."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered. Her

-      face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the

-      policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the

-      dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two

-      under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to

-      arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish your

-      breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this thing

-      is investigated."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant&mdash;why

-      ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do

-      with it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when

-      he escaped last night."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened

-      the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how

-      you robbed the train!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ!

-      Bulldog has snitched&mdash;he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out

-      when he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And

-      his horse was gone from the stable this morning!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of

-      their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was

-      out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a puff

-      of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that

-      drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and

-      he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where he

-      sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine chamber.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol

-      back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for a

-      doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him

-      upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the

-      shoulder; he'll be all right."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground&mdash;he can't talk;

-      Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he hits

-      the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave me five

-      thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl, I'm going to

-      put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he ever takes a

-      notion to."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      III.&mdash;OWNERS UP

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span> latawa had put

-      racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and

-      Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down

-      with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous thrills&mdash;a

-      commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez Perces Indians,

-      who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and were rich, would

-      troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold pieces plugged

-      into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black sausage, and bet

-      the coins as though they were nickels.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U.

-      S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was a

-      live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great

-      luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a harem

-      of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they named

-      him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa found that

-      men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed the gambling,

-      and the racing, and the high living like any other creature of brains.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some

-      half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the

-      great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the sires

-      were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the colt, not

-      being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big, upstanding

-      bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's bellows and

-      sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage, too, had not

-      been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There was just one

-      rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a thoroughbred,

-      and until his measure was taken, until some other equine looked him in the

-      eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man could just say what

-      the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez

-      Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there

-      was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron Jaw

-      Blake declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to

-      ameliorate the monotony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual,

-      architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked but

-      a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush and

-      pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with "Irish"

-      Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt, more

-      sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that "Fagan met

-      death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic event had

-      crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely

-      "Death-on-the-trail."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his upper

-      jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen him with

-      aptitude.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of the

-      bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a

-      Siwash.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman, wrote

-      to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough to beat

-      Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were specific,

-      lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred, even a selling

-      plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any cross-bred horse,

-      no matter how good the latter apparently was, running in scrub races. He

-      also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the Walla Walla races

-      were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to Reilly to send him a

-      tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and look the part of an

-      able-bodied cow puncher.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly&mdash;he just loved that sort

-      of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the

-      commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the <i>Maid

-      of Palouse,</i> what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony in

-      charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of

-      navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over the

-      twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron Jaw,

-      Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities that

-      lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black horse

-      that he called Horned Toad.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and

-      instructed in the art of fool talk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and

-      faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand

-      dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a

-      thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which

-      Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great

-      desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his

-      fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the cows

-      came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he drank:

-      he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him. This was no

-      piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads had declared for

-      a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its hind legs and howl.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll

-      that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had a

-      horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was never tired

-      of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to Kamschatka; a

-      spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any cayuse that had

-      ever looked through a halter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd rush

-      him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready to plunk

-      down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had arrived.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played against

-      the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted into the

-      game.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face, rode

-      up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to Walla

-      Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town with the

-      laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and,

-      incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in

-      earnest and had the mazuma.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the

-      cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of

-      turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows of

-      which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy individual,

-      standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with Bacchanalian

-      vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew chronologically

-      the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided hair, who stood in

-      the open door. He must have enlarged on the sophistication of her past

-      life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath, called the declaimer a liar

-      and a seven-times misplaced offspring.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely

-      over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his

-      imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved him.

-      With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he would

-      bring its lash down on the décolletéd shoulders of the woman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door as

-      though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread basket of

-      the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled so

-      neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into the

-      little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers of

-      steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte face,

-      and a fist drove into his midriff.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a

-      grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner

-      of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he

-      contemplated a trip to dreamland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose gladsomeness

-      swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man&mdash;you beaut!" She would

-      have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes, so full of

-      quiet aloofness, checked her.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog,

-      Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You ride

-      away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead

-      booze-fighter!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for

-      inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his

-      shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five feet

-      of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting between

-      wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not without

-      derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in

-      astonishment:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Holy Gawd!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the

-      buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a

-      long-lost friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet,

-      mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the

-      inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly&mdash;in full

-      dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn&mdash;and asked: "Where

-      the hell d'you get Waster?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a little

-      cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask a man how

-      he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was only a little

-      wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so Carney smiled

-      again, and answered by asking:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum

-      of mine's name is Pat&mdash;Patsy boy, often enough."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I won

-      the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be all

-      right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout his

-      friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie, whose

-      breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by Counterfeit,

-      he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported Australian, whose

-      grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get that, sage-brush

-      rider?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the

-      chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger

-      levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you <i>ever</i> took notice of them

-      lop ears?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Once&mdash;which was continuous."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like

-      that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he was

-      all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get that buckskin

-      from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad, Australian?" This

-      seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Go on, lad&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Excuse me, sorry"&mdash;Molly was speaking&mdash;"this is Billy MacKay.

-      My old school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to

-      see what God's country could do for that busted chest."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man was impatient over the switch to himself&mdash;the horse

-      was the thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs&mdash;Gawd! what a horse Waster'd

-      been. And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen

-      him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say, Bulldog,&mdash;don't

-      mind me, I like that name, it talks good,&mdash;Waster didn't need no

-      blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip&mdash;I'd as lief

-      hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear tryin'.

-      Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till he threw

-      a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and thirty-six

-      pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at a mile and a

-      quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and finished, fightin',

-      on three legs. He was beat, of course; and Leatherhead was broke, and I

-      never see Waster again. A trombone player in a beer garden would have

-      known the little cuss with them hot-jointed knees couldn't pack weight,

-      and would 've scratched him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You

-      stand pat with me, kid&mdash;your heart is about human, I guess. What was

-      that hostile person's game?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He comes here to-day, Bulldog&mdash;Well, you know&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney nodded placidly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought&mdash;well, he was

-      filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything

-      he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get plumb

-      Injun."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff, Slimy

-      Red," Billy objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,&mdash;Billy knew him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Knew him&mdash;huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed

-      a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and

-      laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in

-      the ruck."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch guy

-      that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped with.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein' a

-      garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half an inch

-      above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he says, 'I'll

-      bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's a great sayin'

-      with Slimy Red Smith&mdash;he was Slimy Red hisself. And politely, not

-      givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests that me and

-      Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best push on."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas

-      person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and with

-      apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin' bullfrogs,

-      Mr. Carney?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was twin

-      brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Much of a storm?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has

-      got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's

-      well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile

-      lighting up his stern features.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, you gentleman knight of the road&mdash;always the silver-tongued

-      Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for a

-      real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but

-      fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in

-      the way of a cure."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse

-      first when it comes to grub&mdash;that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's

-      bedded for the night."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail upon

-      which they had met at different times and in divers places.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at

-      sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of

-      bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on the

-      memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog were

-      both in Denver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Some time since," Carney replied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "D'you know about Clatawa?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Clatawa's a horse."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla

-      Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast

-      enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring that

-      boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that is in a

-      monetary way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique

-      enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's chatter

-      simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa disease,

-      He pricked his ears.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding

-      Dong?" he asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds.

-      He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too.

-      He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him

-      look big."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against

-      his stomach I thought it had gone clean through&mdash;it sank to the

-      wrist; it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here,

-      catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without

-      givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they know you

-      can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the Brooklyn

-      Handicap together."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match,

-      figures to get a big pull in the weights."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa;

-      they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for

-      the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably here

-      on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones from the

-      root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an ample pull in

-      the weight."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into a

-      meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several

-      possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After a time Billy spoke.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red&mdash;he

-      don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He sure ought," Molly corroborated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause he

-      never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel; and

-      Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead pad;

-      booze gets his."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once&mdash;Iron

-      Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and

-      Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're

-      gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while

-      they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been,

-      'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the

-      combination," Billy declared. "I was right."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some bad

-      splits in bets," Molly added.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a

-      bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake&mdash;I know

-      his method of old&mdash;has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse

-      and rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game,"

-      Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard Iron

-      Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it,

-      Billy&mdash;do we draw cards?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike!

-      there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty at

-      a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a stayer

-      from Stayville; but he can't pack weight&mdash;don't forget that. If you

-      rode him&mdash;let's see&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone and

-      muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em

-      rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy

-      'll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a hundred

-      and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds. What

-      chance?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or a

-      pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd bribe

-      them to pull the horse."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot.

-      "Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on

-      pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had

-      gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather want

-      to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if he's

-      about."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the figure

-      that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths holding a look

-      that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she whispered; "why do

-      women like him&mdash;gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on the buckskin.

-      "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin door, "you

-      heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't you?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Uh-huh!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie to

-      bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been gettin'

-      it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I hadn't

-      saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a

-      money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't have

-      to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and two."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over&mdash;I know her. But

-      don't worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and

-      no use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't

-      tout off Molly that you're doing it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney&mdash;you just listen now. I

-      didn't spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say

-      that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like

-      goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the

-      package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid?

-      Spring it; get it off your chest."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot meditatively;

-      then said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most of

-      the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and weight

-      don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or a

-      mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty well

-      himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me ride

-      him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse than

-      Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on their

-      form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in his eyes,

-      gazed helplessly at Bulldog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A

-      match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows a

-      couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block of

-      city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big stake

-      you've got to have the long green."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How much, Billy?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally would

-      stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires hot."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch

-      weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but

-      he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he

-      can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid

-      gray eyes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it owners

-      up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with only

-      a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse eyeing

-      him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the others,

-      examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs. He pinched

-      with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he squeezed the

-      horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed,

-      finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's

-      got the slows."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the

-      buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and

-      then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing

-      back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air like

-      the roll of a kettle-drum.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse

-      down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that stride

-      of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none. He'll do;

-      he's had lots of work&mdash;he's in better condition than Ding Dong,

-      'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at the bar. I

-      got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner Stakes' at

-      Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if you make the

-      match catch weights; it'll be a cinch&mdash;like gettin' money from home.

-      But don't tell Molly."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself&mdash;how much

-      are you goin' to bet?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Five or ten thousand."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand&mdash;five hundred

-      bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding

-      horse&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of

-      Bulldog's gray eyes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse,"

-      Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a

-      young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a

-      man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came

-      by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form of

-      a bill of sale."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar, paid

-      in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay. Molly

-      signed it as witness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog

-      declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend in

-      town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of the

-      gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it, Billy&mdash;owners

-      up?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Gee! I get you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man had been mystified.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week

-      away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin' to

-      bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his neck

-      for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can get a

-      set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet is four

-      pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr. Carney, and

-      Waster 'll do his part."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then he

-      turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Shoot," she commanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is he&mdash;was he&mdash;the man&mdash;Bessie told me something?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney

-      was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a

-      woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake him

-      if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man that knows

-      him that'll try to put one over&mdash;'tain't healthy. He's got a temper

-      as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts. He don't

-      cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the sweetest you

-      ever see, Billy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Did she die, Molly?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin'

-      to the hound."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home for

-      the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon

-      were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle on his

-      buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was Sheriff of

-      Shoshone County.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed

-      they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation

-      varied in different places, and with different people, it stood strongest

-      with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men of the West,

-      were apt to judge men from their own experience.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked his

-      life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County of

-      Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing on its

-      records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing up of

-      Bulldog Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of

-      this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What, Bulldog&mdash;the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's

-      face; it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had

-      put many a practical joke over&mdash;he was kidding. Teddy laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of them

-      bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor as

-      you've nerve&mdash;you're Irish."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's also a note in that envelope"&mdash;Carney ignored the chaff&mdash;"that

-      directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at

-      Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I

-      suddenly&mdash;well, if I didn't need it&mdash;see?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll do that, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked

-      casually.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then he

-      answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be there&mdash;lest

-      I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was when I made that

-      record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If you've got anything

-      to settle, go ahead."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up at

-      the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid

-      face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then

-      ventured:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the

-      occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might

-      so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times as

-      they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does that

-      put any kink in your code?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be

-      there."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post, he

-      adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of his

-      hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and a

-      group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man

-      perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It

-      wasn't Slimy Red&mdash;it was a tougher man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and

-      behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant in

-      Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his coarse

-      lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer. You seem

-      conditioned. Know Carson?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's

-      paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was even

-      the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held toward

-      each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument once in a

-      while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez Perces loose on

-      you?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder

-      pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he

-      calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice

-      babbling:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got

-      anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber hose

-      up his back holdin' his ribs."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's

-      snarled:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'&mdash;a hundred iron men?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he

-      comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess

-      that's what gives him dreams."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail

-      across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table sat

-      Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling height

-      at his right hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing

-      from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy of

-      the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he drew and

-      what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the winnings

-      were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had to be

-      accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin' up a

-      bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached; "it's

-      too damn slow. I want action."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel,

-      bleating:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the

-      thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock&mdash;as you old leatherheads make it, one

-      A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the

-      smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into

-      one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled

-      over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was

-      number "13."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was as

-      expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars over

-      eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to Texas.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a drink.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play of the

-      uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with apathetic

-      interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the bag&mdash;it

-      didn't mean anything.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his

-      opportunity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent

-      chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play

-      was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times&mdash;a man loaded

-      with bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky

-      Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money

-      was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They had

-      arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that could

-      be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently Texas

-      should make a killing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the

-      wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing the

-      cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the merry-go-round

-      plays on."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on to

-      the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the

-      croupier checked him:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Mind the limit, Mister."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the ivory

-      discs from thirteen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way

-      during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no

-      green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track&mdash;everybody's got a chance.

-      Here! I'm goin' to cash in."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier,

-      stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected

-      little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands pushed

-      them toward the winner. .

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long

-      sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to

-      the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says I

-      got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that can

-      outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a grasshopper's

-      jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies&mdash;who's next?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will take

-      your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled, and

-      seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe body,

-      and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him like a

-      rat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You damn locoed fool!" he swore; "what d'you mean?&mdash;what d'you

-      mean?" each query being emphasized by a vigorous shake.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He simply means," explained Carney, "that he's a cheap bluffer&mdash;a

-      wind gambler. When he's called he quits. That's just what I thought."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Give him a chance, Blake," Death-on-the-trail interposed; "let go!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw pressed Texas back into his chair, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You've got too much booze. If you want to bet on your horse sit there and

-      cut out this Injun stuff." Snaky Dick had jumped to his feet, startled by

-      the fact that Carney was about to break in on his preserve. Now he said:

-      "If Texas is pinin' for a race Clatawa is waitin'&mdash;so is his

-      backin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney turned his gray eyes on the speaker: "There's a rule in this

-      country, Snaky, that when two men have got a discussion on, others keep

-      out. I've undertaken to call this jack rabbit's bluff, and he makes good,

-      or takes his noisy organ away to play it outside of Walla Walla."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas Sam had received a thumb in the rib from Iron Jaw that meant, "Go

-      ahead," so he said, surlily: "There's my money on the table. Anybody can

-      come in&mdash;the game's wide open."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That being so," Carney drawled, "there's a little buckskin horse tied to

-      the post outside, that's carried me for three years around this land of

-      delight, and he looks good to me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He unslung from his waist a leather roll, and dropped its snake-like body

-      across the Texas coin, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's two thousand in twenties, and if this cheap-singing person sees

-      the raise, it goes for a race at a mile-and-a-quarter between the little

-      buckskin outside and this cow-hocked mule he sings about."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I want to see this damn buckskin," Texas objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You don't need to worry," Iron Jaw commented; "the horse is pretty nigh

-      as well known as Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Texas, having been born in a very nest of iniquity, having been stable

-      boy, tout, half-mile-track ringer, and runner for a wire-tapping bunch,

-      was naturally suspicious.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't match against an unknown," he objected; "let me lamp this Flyin'

-      Dutchman of the Plains; it may be Salvator for all I know."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Let him get out the door," Carney sneered; "it will be good-bye&mdash;we'll

-      never see him again."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And if we don't," Snaky Dick interposed, "I'll cover your money, Carney."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog swung the gray eyes, and levelled them at the red-and-yellow

-      streaked beads that did seeing duty in Snaky's face:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You ever hear about the gent who was kicked out of Paradise and told to

-      go scoot along on his belly for butting in?" Then he followed the little

-      crowd at Texas Sam's heels.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the yellow glare of the Del Monte lights the buckskin looked very

-      little like a race horse. He stood about fifteen and a quarter hands,

-      looking not much more than a pony, as, half asleep, he had relaxed his

-      body; the lop ears hanging almost at right angles to his lean bony head

-      suggested humor more than speed. He stood "over" on his front legs, a

-      habit contracted when he favoured the weak knees. As he was a gelding his

-      neck was thin, so far removed from a crest that it was almost ewe-like;

-      his tremendous width of rump caused the hip bones to project, suggesting

-      an archaic design of equine structure. The direct lamplight threw

-      cavernous shadows all over his lean form.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas Sam shot one rapid look of appraisement over the sleepy little

-      horse; then he laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Pinch me, Iron Jaw!" he cried; "am I ridin' on the tail board of an

-      overland bus seein' things in the desert, and hearin' wings?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He pointed a forefinger at the buckskin. "Is that the lopin' jack-rabbit

-      that runs for your money?" he queried of Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That horse's name is Pat," Bulldog answered quietly, "and we've been pals

-      so long that when any yapping coyote snaps at him I most naturally kick

-      the brute out of the way. But that's the horse, Buckskin Pat, that my

-      money says can outrun, for a mile-and-a-quarter, the horse you describe as

-      a cow-hocked cow-pony, the same being, I take it, the horse you scooted

-      away on when I palmed you on the mouth this morning."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas Sam was naturally of a vicious temper, and this allusion caused him

-      to flare up again, as Carney meant it to. But Iron Jaw whirled him around,

-      saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Cut out the man end of it&mdash;let's get down to cases. We ain't had a

-      live 'hoss race for so long that I most forget what it looks like. If you

-      two mean business come inside and put up your bets, gentlemen."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw abrogated to himself the duty of Master of Ceremonies. First he

-      set his croupier to work counting the gold of Texas Sam and Bulldog

-      Carney. There were an even hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces in the belt

-      Carney had thrown on the table.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're shy on the raise," Iron Jaw remarked, winking at Texas.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll see his raise," the latter growled. "You've got more'n that of mine

-      in your safe, Iron Jaw, so stack 'em up for me till they're level. I might

-      as well win somethin' worth while&mdash;there won't be no fun in the race.

-      That jack&mdash;that buckskin,"&mdash;he checked himself&mdash;"won't make

-      me go fast enough to know I'm in the saddle."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You let me in that and I'll furnish the speed," Snaky Dick could not

-      resist the temptation to clutch at the money he saw slipping away from

-      him. "Make it a three-cornered sweep, Mr. Carney," he pleaded; "I'll

-      ante."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It would be some race," Iron Jaw encouraged; "some race, boys. I've seen

-      the little buckskin amble. I don't know nothin' about this Texas person's

-      caravan, but Clatawa, for a sauce bottle that holds both warm and cold

-      blood, ain't so slow&mdash;he ain't so slow, gents."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The idea caught on; everybody in the saloon rose to the occasion. Yells

-      of, "Make it a sweep! Let Clatawa in! Wake up old Walla Walla with

-      something worth while!" came from many throats.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog seemed to debate the matter, a smile twitching his drab mustache.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've said it," Texas cried; "she's wide open. Anybody that's got a pet

-      eagle he thinks can fly faster'n my cow-pony can run, can enter him. There

-      ain't no one barred, and the limit's up where the pines point to."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky Dick had edged around the table till he stood close beside Bulldog,

-      where he whispered: "Let me in, Carney; I've been layin' for this

-      flannel-mouth. I don't want to see him get away with Walla Walla money.

-      You save your stake with me, if I'm in."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney pushed the little wizzen-face speaker away, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Any kind of a talking bird can swing in on a winning if he's got a

-      copper-riveted, cinch bet. But sport, as I understand it, gentlemen,

-      consists in providing excitement, taking on long chances."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's Bulldog talkin'," somebody interrupted; and they all cheered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That being acknowledged," Carney resumed, "I feel like stealing candy

-      from a blind kid when I crowd in on this Texas person. A yellow man

-      wouldn't know how to own a real horse; that money on the table is, so to

-      speak, mine now; but as Snaky Dick is panting to make it a real race,

-      purely out of a kindly feeling for Walla Walla sports, I'm going to let

-      him draw cards. Clatawa is welcome."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The drinks is on the house when I hear a wolf howl like that!" Snaggle

-      Tooth yelled. "Crowd up, gentlemen&mdash;the drinks is on the house! Old

-      Walla Walla is goin' to sit up and take notice; Bulldog is some live

-      wire."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Chairs were thrust back; men crowded the bar; liquors were tossed off.

-      Sheriff Teddy the Leaper, who had come in, felt his arm touched by Carney,

-      and inclining his head to a gentle pull at his coat-sleeve, he heard the

-      latter whisper, "Stake holder for my sake." That was all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the crowd swarmed back to the table where the croupier had remained

-      beside the mound of gold.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You give Jim, there, a receipt for a thousand, and he'll pass it out,"

-      Iron Jaw told Texas.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jim the croupier took from the safe behind him rolls of twenty-dollar gold

-      pieces and stood them up in Texas's pile. He removed a few coins, saying,

-      "The pot is right, gentlemen; two thousand apiece."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hold on," Snaky Dick cried; "it ain't called yet&mdash;I draw cards."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not till you see the bet and the raise," Carney objected. "Nobody

-      whispers his way into this game; it's for blood."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Give me a cheque book, Snaggle Tooth," Snaky pleaded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Flimsies don't go," Carney objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Nothin' but the coin weighs in agin me," Texas agreed; "put up the

-      dough-boys or keep out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky was in despair. Here was just the softest spot in all the world, and

-      without the cash he couldn't get in.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Will you cash my cheque?" he asked Iron Jaw.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If Baker'll O.K. it I figger you must have the stuff in his bank&mdash;it'll

-      be good enough for me," Iron Jaw replied.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a little parley between Snaky Dick, his associates, and Baker,

-      who was a private banker. The cheque was made out, endorsed, and cashed

-      from the gambling funds, Iron Jaw being a partner of Snaggle Tooth's in

-      this commercial enterprise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the pot was complete, six thousand on the table, Texas said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We've got to have a stakeholder; put the money in Blake's hands&mdash;does

-      that go?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky Dick coughed, and hesitated. He had no suspicion that Iron Jaw had

-      any interest with Texas Sam, but knowing the man as he did, he felt sure

-      that before the race was run Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth would be in the

-      game up to the eyes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The drawling voice of Carney broke the little hush that followed this

-      request.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're from the outside, Texas; you know all about your own horse, and

-      that lets you out. The selecting of a stakeholder, and such, most properly

-      belongs to Walla Walla, that is to say, such of us interested as more or

-      less live here. The Sheriff of Shoshone, who is present, if he'll oblige,

-      is the man that holds my money, and yours, too, unless you want to

-      crawfish. Does that suit you, Snaky?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It does," the latter answered cheerfully, for, fully believing that

-      Clatawa was going to show a clean pair of heels to the other horses, he

-      wanted the money where he could get it without gun-play.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's settled, then," Carney said blithely, ignoring Texas completely.

-      He turned to Teddy the Leaper: "Will you oblige, Sheriff?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sheriff was agreeable, saying that as soon as they had completed

-      details they would take the money over to Baker's bank and lock it up in

-      the safe, Baker promising to take charge of it, even if it were at night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Just repeat the conditions of the match," the Sheriff said, and he drew

-      from his pocket a note book and pencil.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney seized the opportunity to say:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A three-cornered race between the buckskin gelding Pat, the black gelding

-      Horned Toad, and the bay horse Clatawa at one mile and a quarter. The

-      stake, two thousand dollars a corner; winner take all. To be run one week

-      from to-day."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is that right, gentlemen?" the Sheriff asked; "all agreed?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Owners up&mdash;this is a gentleman's race," Texas snapped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Satisfactory?" the Sheriff asked, his eyes on Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The latter nodded; and Iron Jaw winked at Snaggle Tooth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaky Dick could scarce credit his ears; surely the gods were looking with

-      favor upon his fortunes; the other riders would be giving him many pounds

-      in this self-accepted handicap.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Sheriff Teddy's suggestion the gold was carried over to Baker's bank, a

-      stone building almost opposite the Del Monte; the bag containing it was

-      sealed and placed in a big safe, Baker giving the Sheriff a receipt for

-      six thousand dollars.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then they went back to the Del Monte for target practise at the bottle,

-      each man implicated buying ammunition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At this time Carney had taken the buckskin to his stable, going back to

-      the saloon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaggle Tooth made a short patriotic speech, the burden of which was that

-      the saloon was full of men of eager habit who had not had a chance to sit

-      into the game, and to ameliorate the condition of these mournful mavericks

-      he would sell pools on the race, for the mere honorarium of five per cent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fever was in the men's blood; if he had suggested twenty per cent it would

-      have gone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaggle Tooth took up his position behind a faro table and called out:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The pool is open, with Clatawa, Horned Toad, and Pat in the box. What am

-      I bid for first choice?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Twenty dollars," a voice cried.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Thirty," another said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Forty."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Fifty."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A dry rasp that suggested an alkaline throat squeaked: "A hundred. Is this

-      a horse race, or are we dribblin' into the plate at the synagogue?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sold!" Snaggle Tooth yapped, knowing well that excitement begat quick

-      action. "Which cayuse do you favor, plunger?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The range horse, Clatawa."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The croupier at Snaggle Tooth's elbow took the bidder's live twenty-dollar

-      gold pieces and passed him a slip with Clatawa's name on it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A hundred dollars in the box and second choice for sale," Snaggle Tooth

-      drawled, his prominent fang gleaming in the lamp light as he mouthed the

-      words.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty was bid like the quick popping of a

-      machine gun; at seventy-five the bids hung fire, and the auctioneer,

-      thumping the table with his bony fist, snapped, "Sold! Name your jack

-      rabbit."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Horned Toad!" came from the bidder of the seventy-five.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A hundred and seventy-five in the box," Snaggle Tooth droned, "and the

-      buckskin for sale. What about it, you pikers&mdash;what about it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There seemed to be nothing about it, unless silence was something. The

-      hush seemed to dampen the gambling spirit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What!" yelped Snaggle Tooth; "two thousand golden bucks staked on the

-      horse now, and no tinhorn with sand enough in his gizzard to open his

-      trap. This is a race, not a funeral&mdash;who's dead? Bulldog, you laid

-      even money; here's a hundred and seventy-five goin' a-beggin'. Ain't you

-      got a chance?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ten dollars!" Carney bid as if driven into it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ten dollars, ten dollars bid for the buckskin; a hundred and seventy-five

-      in the box, and ten dollars bid for the buckskin. Sold!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The first pool was followed by others, one after another: the roulette

-      table, the keno game, and faro were in the discard&mdash;their tables were

-      deserted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It soon became evident that Clatawa was a hot favorite; the public's money

-      was all for the Walla Walla champion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Noting this, the Horned Toad trio hung back, bidding less. Clatawa was

-      selling for a hundred, Horned Toad about fifty, and the buckskin sometimes

-      knocked down at ten to Carney, or sometimes bid up to twenty by someone

-      tempted by the odds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last Carney slipped quietly away, having bought at least twenty pools

-      that stood him between three and four thousand to a matter of two hundred.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the morning he rode the buckskin out to Molly's cottage and turned him

-      over to Billy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The boy's voice trembled with delight when he was told of what had taken

-      place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Gee! now I will get well," he said; "I'll beat the bug out now&mdash;I'll

-      have heart. You see, Mr. Carney, I got set down in California a year ago.

-      It wasn't my fault; I was ridin' for Timberleg Harley, and he give the

-      horse a bucket of water before the race; he didn't want to win&mdash;was

-      lettin' the horse run for Sweeney, layin' for a big price later on. He had

-      an interest in a book, and they took liberties with the horse's odds&mdash;he

-      was favorite. He didn't dare tell me anything about it, the hound. When I

-      found the horse couldn't raise a gallop, hangin' in my hands like a sea

-      lion, I didn't ride him out, thinkin' he'd broke down. They had me up in

-      the Judges' Stand, and sent for the books. It looked bad. Timberleg got

-      off by swearin' I'd pulled the horse to let the other one win; swore that

-      I stood in with the book that overlaid him. I was give the gate, and it

-      just broke my heart. I was weak from wastin' anyway. And you can't beat

-      the bug out if your heart's soft; the bug'll win&mdash;it's a

-      hundred-to-one on him. First thing I'm goin' to give Waster a ball to

-      clean him out, give him a bran mash, too. He must be like a currycomb

-      inside, grass and hay and everything here is full of this damn cactus. A

-      week ain't much to ready up a horse for a race, but he ain't got no fat to

-      work off, and he knows the game. In a week he'll be as spry as a kitten.

-      I'll just play with him. I'll bunk with him, too. If Slimy Red got wise to

-      anything he'd slip him a twig of locoe, or put a sponge up his nose. Do

-      you know what that thief did once, Mr. Carney? He was a moonlighter; he

-      sneaked the favorite for a race that was to be run next day out of his

-      stall at night and galloped him four miles with about a hundred and sixty

-      in the saddle. That settled the favorite; he run his race same's if he was

-      pullin' a hearse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's a good idea, Billy. There's half-a-dozen Slimy Reds in Walla

-      Walla: it's a good idea, only I'll do the sleeping with the buckskin. I'd

-      be lonesome away from him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The boy objected, but Carney was firm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Billy was not only a good rider, but he was a man of much brains. There

-      was little of the art of training that he did not know, for his father had

-      been a trainer before him&mdash;he had been brought up in a stable.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fortunately the buckskin's working life had left little to be desired in

-      the way of conditioning; it was just that the sinews and muscles might

-      have become case-hardened, more the muscles of endurance than activity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But then the race was over a distance, a mile-and-a-quarter, where the

-      endurance of the thoroughbred would tell over Clatawa. Indeed, full of the

-      contempt which a racing man has for a cold-blooded horse, Billy did not

-      consider Clatawa in the race at all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That part of it is just found money," he assured Carney. "Clatawa will go

-      off with a burst of speed like those Texas half-milers, and he'll commence

-      to die at the mile; he hasn't a chance."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As to Ding Dong it was simply a question of whether the black had improved

-      and Waster gone back enough, through being thrown out of training, to

-      bring the two together. Anywhere near alike in condition Waster was a

-      fourteen-pound better horse than Ding Dong. It might be that now, his legs

-      sounder than they had ever been when he was racing, Waster might run the

-      best mile-and-a-quarter of his life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course this might not be possible in a three-quarter sprint, for, at

-      that terrific rate of going, running it from end to end at top speed, a

-      certain nervous or muscular system would be called upon that had

-      practically become atrophied through the more leisure ways of the trail

-      work.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man pondered over these many things just as a man of commerce

-      might mentally canvas great markets, conveying his point of view to Carney

-      generally. He would map out the race as they sat together in the evening.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Of course Snaky Dick will shoot out from the crack of the pistol, and try

-      to open up a gap that'll break our hearts. He won't dare to pull Clatawa

-      in behind; a cold-blooded horse's got the heart of a chicken&mdash;he'd

-      quit. Slimy'll carry Ding Dong along at a rate he knows will leave him

-      enough for a strong run home; but he'll think that he's only got Clatawa

-      to beat and he'll pull out of his pace&mdash;he'll keep within strikin'

-      distance of Clatawa. I'll let them go on. I know 'bout how fast Waster can

-      run that mile-and-a-quarter from end to end. Don't you worry if you see me

-      ten lengths out of it at the mile. Waster won all his races comin' through

-      his horses from behind&mdash;'cause he's game. When Caltawa cracks, and

-      I'm not up, Slimy'll stop ridin' he'll let his horse down thinkin' he's

-      won. You'll see, Mr. Carney. If a quarter-of-a-mile from the finish post

-      I'm within three lengths of Ding Dong and not drivin' him you can take all

-      the money in sight. I'll tell you somethin' else, Mr. Carney; if I'm up

-      with Ding Dong, and Slimy Red thinks I've got him, he'll try a foul."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Glad you mentioned it, little man," Carney remarked drily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had received

-      the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short sprinting runs

-      and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days before the race

-      he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under full speed; rated as

-      though he were in a race, the last half a topping gallop. He showed little

-      distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later after he had been cooled

-      out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his trial

-      over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly. Texas Sam and

-      Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and sometimes gave

-      them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the first peep of

-      day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track, so he waited that

-      morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast, thinking all the

-      gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and covered the

-      mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of the

-      town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street. The

-      finish post was opposite the heart of the town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting

-      jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal

-      laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it,

-      for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like a

-      tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that perhaps

-      Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after they had

-      won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover up in his

-      case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay with his

-      buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules. They hadn't

-      guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against the black, and

-      there he was; names didn't count&mdash;the horse was the thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's

-      active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode a

-      punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for a

-      chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race, and

-      would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked to

-      Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to

-      Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden

-      shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking

-      out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty

-      pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon, the

-      border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there was gold in

-      the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good Presbyterians

-      under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and spiritually,

-      Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in death, a plug of

-      lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling row, but the morrow

-      would be soon enough to investigate; to-day was <i>the</i> day&mdash;the

-      day of the race; minor business was suspended.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire

-      for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but prowled

-      in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four o'clock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was a

-      weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came from

-      a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant fool; nobody

-      had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant backing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's

-      well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused,

-      could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but what

-      was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand? And yet

-      when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the buckskin, a

-      man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself, looking like a

-      placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the Columbia, would say,

-      diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would make good&mdash;one yellow

-      eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet seriousness of this man

-      who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he pointed

-      to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed against

-      some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the fatty

-      laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your safe

-      won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas brayin' ass

-      have no more booze."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now

-      because of Carney&mdash;sober he'd quit."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Carney won't turn a hair when we win."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a funnel&mdash;he's

-      hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the finish for fear

-      Bulldog'll grab him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Look here, Snaggle, that coyote&mdash;hell! I know the breed of them

-      outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin' in

-      front&mdash;he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others

-      when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand to

-      kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff

-      wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the horse

-      that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by the

-      throat."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic

-      town of Walla Walla.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one confident

-      that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked work, he

-      could win.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed

-      judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was

-      to fire the starting gun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs

-      had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless of

-      turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his joints,

-      though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out unrooted earth

-      and bow a tendon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would be

-      settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed that

-      first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even Lieutenant

-      Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief Joseph, sat

-      his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every inch a king

-      in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture was Homeric,

-      grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of gold worshipers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting, vociferating

-      throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man, called:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course where

-      the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black points,

-      and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead, ran down

-      his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side, and a

-      blanket covered his form.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose blanket

-      showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with the

-      unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare. Beside

-      him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and

-      beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the

-      holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had

-      shown.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the

-      flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far down

-      the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if wondering

-      where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it was a race&mdash;that

-      he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The tight cinching of

-      the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his shins, the sponging out

-      of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he had had&mdash;all these

-      touches had brought back to his memory the game his rich warm,

-      thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the thrill of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings called,

-      watch in hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide,

-      padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet.

-      And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a

-      pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown,

-      monkeylike form.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins ran

-      through the steel rings of a martingale.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this

-      get-up for a supposed cow-pony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a slim

-      lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting racing

-      breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as if, by

-      necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds of flesh.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now the

-      buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back a tiny

-      matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the little

-      figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to the

-      saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt?

-      Get down!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him

-      out of the saddle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown up

-      in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his wind-pipe

-      from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an oath of

-      raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a gun, and

-      heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now

-      stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side, their

-      hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him, turned

-      on them:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin

-      pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and

-      said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into

-      the face of Snaggle Tooth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call

-      to chuck&mdash;don't forget."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "This match was for owners up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He beckoned forward the stakeholder:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ain't that so, Sheriff&mdash;owners up?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain,

-      Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It was."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot&mdash;and that monkey up?" And

-      Iron Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on

-      Waster.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out

-      like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use any

-      foul words when you speak to me&mdash;we're not good enough pals for that;

-      if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat.

-      Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the

-      owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named

-      Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has

-      been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the

-      horse's tail."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney,

-      knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr.

-      Carney?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, sir&mdash;let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a

-      technicality, but on a horse."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I do," Carney answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He did."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing

-      the sheriff.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open,

-      and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its

-      date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and

-      Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before

-      the match was made.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it in

-      the sheriff's hands&mdash;why didn't the boy keep it&mdash;it was his?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney

-      answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they

-      would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game. And

-      there was another reason."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the Judge.

-      It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his money, if

-      the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy MacKay.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little

-      smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly

-      Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice as

-      he said, quietly:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This

-      paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to

-      the post."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla, and

-      the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they grasped the

-      idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own game; that the

-      intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides, now they could see

-      that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had started more than one

-      whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the Clatawa people believing

-      in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted that perhaps there was a

-      job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa and one of them go on and

-      win; though few would admit that Carney would be party to cold-decking the

-      public.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race to

-      the finish, and the stakes represented real money.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider of

-      Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish waiting

-      for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never ride

-      again."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered

-      abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat in a

-      choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth snapping

-      from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating his

-      excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that springy

-      lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding. Indians

-      and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the course, on

-      their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight. Old Walla Walla

-      had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was on in all its

-      glory.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course; they

-      criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were being placed

-      by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble; sometimes he

-      reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought for his head.

-      But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that distance,

-      as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an equine

-      statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had taken

-      long odds about him felt a depression.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas, was

-      keeping him on his toes&mdash;not letting him chill out; but, like the

-      buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were

-      old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the

-      antics of Clatawa&mdash;the starter was the whole works.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came

-      back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line, and

-      the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter, finger on

-      trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his finger gripped

-      spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of smoke, and a

-      white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying start.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They'll never catch him!&mdash;never catch him! He'll win off by

-      himself!" was droned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them,

-      galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone,

-      as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the boy,

-      his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either side of

-      the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying, "Ste-a-dy

-      boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous sing-song

-      through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the handicap of a

-      strong wind that was blowing down the track.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out

-      in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the old

-      Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful stride

-      that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his horse.

-      "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come back!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and

-      trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own

-      knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under

-      2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he had

-      cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it up,

-      close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more

-      flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild

-      horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for a

-      little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let

-      Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the

-      white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high deer-like

-      lope that was impressive.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They could

-      see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and Horned Toad

-      was between the two.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had

-      forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a

-      hundred against him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll take it," Carney declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're on," came from Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it

-      seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the

-      latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion lying

-      along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were up.

-      Surely a quirt had switched the air once.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yes, the Toad was creeping up&mdash;his rider was making his run; they

-      could see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he lost

-      his whip&mdash;had he given up all idea of winning?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa

-      was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back was

-      playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse

-      instead of helping him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered

-      tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now

-      somebody cried:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him&mdash;lo-ook at him, men!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened their

-      vision, and their owners gasped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced

-      by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths? It was

-      two&mdash;it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the black's

-      quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now their heads

-      rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled for the lead:

-      Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the flanks of his

-      horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him home a winner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race

-      won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out of

-      stride; no flash of the whip to startle him&mdash;to break his heart; the

-      brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of

-      brains, was wise enough to sit still.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin

-      drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave,

-      stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding in

-      front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping straight

-      as an arrow.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin wins&mdash;the

-      buckskin wins!" became a clamor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse, from

-      some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the buckskin;

-      they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!" rose; it was

-      an angry roar like caged animals at war.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The

-      buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled;

-      his head shot down&mdash;almost to his knees he went: then he was

-      galloping again, the two horses locked together.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front. Their

-      speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped, and the boy

-      pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still tangled in the

-      martingale of Horned Toad.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Men closed in frantically. A man&mdash;it was Oregon&mdash;twisted

-      Carney's gun skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to battle

-      back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and

-      Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring

-      devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings packed

-      in a barrel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!" and

-      a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of a

-      guarding circle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad,

-      trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then a

-      woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Back, you cowards&mdash;you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room&mdash;give

-      him air!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a

-      battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's

-      side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't lift him&mdash;he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put

-      his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back&mdash;give him air!"

-      she commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her

-      shoulders a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated

-      with red froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and

-      Molly, sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't

-      speak," she admonished.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the

-      ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough the

-      red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the

-      circle about the lad and Molly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The judge's voice was heard saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong condemnation

-      in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have disqualified

-      him: it was a deliberate foul."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the

-      barracks for protection.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy will

-      be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips

-      touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot

-      tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of

-      cupidity and guile.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      IV.&mdash;THE GOLD WOLF

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll day long

-      Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the odd imprint of

-      that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle, riding a trail that

-      winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs monotonously similar,

-      the hush of the everlasting hills holding in subjection man's soul, the

-      towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting up towards God's dome

-      pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces a comatose condition of

-      mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little beyond the recognition of

-      trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird, the sudden roar of a

-      cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the harp of a giant pine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history of

-      the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the hoof's

-      imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails denting

-      the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the miner's boot

-      seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by a strange

-      perversity, haunted Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills,

-      leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small fortune

-      in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for the town of

-      Bucking Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the ford

-      of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave yawned

-      in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had melted into

-      its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might have been a

-      bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the Valley of the

-      Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort of fear left the

-      trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards beyond.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge

-      dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from

-      strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black

-      bristles on his back erect in challenge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in

-      daylight was unusual.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the

-      saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's

-      feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes

-      just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the

-      movement.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the

-      usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The sudden

-      apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest, either in

-      man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a wolf meant

-      little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered

-      feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion catching

-      vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far west, a flaming

-      sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the twisted valley a

-      chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons; the giant ferns

-      hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with the death dew. A

-      reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad berries that gleamed

-      like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling, frothing stream that

-      still held the green tint of its glacier birth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail

-      almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now back to

-      the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the bright and

-      happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed and bantered

-      with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West; the

-      ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had won,

-      or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard&mdash;where the dice

-      might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the thrower

-      take a fall.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow

-      environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the

-      mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung his

-      heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes one ear

-      was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond, the now

-      glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur, the other ear

-      held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of pursuit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his

-      saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the back

-      trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest had

-      developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his trail,

-      man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of tumbling

-      forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms; bushes

-      that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would

-      go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty

-      feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall; and,

-      when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of relief,

-      clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I wonder&mdash;by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand,

-      slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin;

-      "something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of the

-      horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his chin,

-      thinking&mdash;thinking aloud.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There are tracks, Patsy boy&mdash;moccasins; but we've lost our

-      gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy&mdash;gone over the

-      cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down. By

-      gad! two of them!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering;

-      cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off. The

-      inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that

-      carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the

-      buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the

-      snaffle against his bridle teeth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're

-      quite right, pal&mdash;it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of

-      old grannies imagining things."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a compelling

-      inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge to camp for

-      the night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the

-      trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a wolf;

-      and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the

-      dog-wolf's mate&mdash;a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by

-      with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his

-      challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling

-      yelp.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again

-      muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl&mdash;it's

-      different."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering was

-      soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of

-      velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning,

-      pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they push

-      on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good

-      dope for a sleep."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped in

-      an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in

-      reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs

-      with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round

-      had waited for his partner to dismount.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at all

-      the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He did

-      not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich he

-      spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a

-      curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away

-      from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer,

-      heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when deep

-      sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to

-      consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him

-      to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border

-      of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the

-      crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting of

-      his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching the

-      moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that there

-      was something&mdash;not close, but hovering there beyond.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of

-      discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a

-      spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning

-      devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with his

-      delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the compass;

-      but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there, watching.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had

-      yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that

-      was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky told

-      that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond the

-      Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the plains.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his

-      broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little

-      fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he

-      considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a

-      nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to the

-      left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the trail

-      running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping the

-      Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now Carney

-      saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a morbid

-      disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had happened to

-      that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the weird fancies of

-      the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the trail was earthed,

-      holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked ahead of the

-      buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was imprinted a

-      moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but they were not

-      the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that a man had

-      dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not an inturned

-      left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly broken. His

-      stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step of a pack

-      pony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried to

-      shake it off&mdash;it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a

-      prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for

-      gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same cayuse

-      tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had travelled

-      both up and down the trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the

-      mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay. And

-      there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the Bucking

-      Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned, for the hoof

-      prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in a

-      troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation of the

-      West&mdash;those mounted men had ridden after somebody&mdash;had trailed

-      somebody who was wanted quick.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally the

-      goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the

-      cliff, the hovering oppression of the night&mdash;everything.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes humming

-      an Irish ballad of Mangin's.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse

-      was in a ferment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters

-      of unrest seethed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's

-      brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through

-      the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were

-      afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of

-      opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth Long,

-      were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for

-      stringing him up <i>tout de suite</i>. The times were propitious for this

-      entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at Fort

-      Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping of the

-      mob.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is

-      what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand on

-      his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains, and

-      my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a pretty

-      poor sport."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one

-      the best of it&mdash;first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when

-      he starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,

-      isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure

-      themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and

-      they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a quiet

-      thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was wording

-      a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could have stood

-      up against that plank bar and declared himself without being called quick.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've

-      got to say," Kootenay growled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the

-      trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being

-      fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles behind

-      the bar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the

-      dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt hot

-      tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog that she

-      loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for help. He had

-      just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had been hurled at

-      him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry&mdash;Harry the waster, the

-      no-good, the gambler&mdash;had been found to be the man who had murdered

-      returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they were going to

-      string him up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her

-      side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had

-      brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed her

-      way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded and begged

-      for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely hopeless it

-      had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the

-      magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable.

-      Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played the

-      card of reason.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For the two or three gun men&mdash;Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and

-      Denver Ike&mdash;Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun;

-      he could deal with those three toughs if necessary.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they had

-      drunk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the

-      narrative.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had

-      mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would

-      have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place

-      later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse&mdash;nobody had seen him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the

-      bodies had been devoured by wolves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And wolves don't eat gold&mdash;not what you'd notice, as a steady

-      chuck," Kootenay Jim yelped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly,

-      "That's your food, Jim."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a threat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Just what the words convey&mdash;you sort them out, Kootenay."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game,

-      Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin' in their

-      winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou Dave&mdash;here

-      he is sittin' right here&mdash;he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot Johnson&mdash;that

-      is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice,

-      "and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big clean-up

-      of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse till I

-      creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good many

-      years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave finds

-      his mate at the foot of a cliff."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun,

-      thinking something was going to happen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog,"

-      Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks of

-      'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me&mdash;I guess I was

-      gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em

-      tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many

-      years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit of

-      fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage like, as

-      if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind staggers, or

-      somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up thinkin' it out,

-      'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited any, Fourteen-foot'd

-      pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see some wolf tracks&mdash;dang

-      near as big as a steer's they was&mdash;and I figger Fourteen-foot's had a

-      set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and lammed hell's delight out

-      of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm follerin' the cayuse's trail

-      agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all at onct it jumps me that the

-      big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger Johnson's got mussed up a bit

-      with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's the dang wolf tracks agen. And

-      some moccasin feet has been passin' along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts

-      out just same's if he'd spread his wings and gone up in the air&mdash;they

-      just ain't."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff," Miner

-      Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously at a

-      black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's

-      Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that if

-      two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and

-      show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out

-      just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide&mdash;'tain't natural. I tell you,

-      boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me&mdash;that's what he is, when I goes

-      back."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight

-      for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his back

-      what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no sign of

-      the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse tracks

-      most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for Kootenay.

-      And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks it's

-      Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog,"

-      Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted,

-      cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse, with

-      lots of gold."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and you

-      got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in your pocket.

-      You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the circumstantial

-      evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores might

-      get you in wrong."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's got

-      to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear his

-      story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair warning,

-      boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm going to

-      denounce you; not one of you will get away&mdash;<i>not one!</i>"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but

-      swing he will."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police barracks.

-      He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what might be

-      called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had bought the

-      cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He refused to

-      say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had killed nobody,

-      had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing about the murder..

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was

-      innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned, a

-      minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him from

-      being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men&mdash;there was no

-      doubt whatever about that in his mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking

-      you've got the right man."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's what we figgered," Graham declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure don't

-      want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that you

-      caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's cayuse?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Caribou says it is," Graham answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured

-      viciously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that

-      poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm

-      going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion had

-      gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that,

-      convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would

-      check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing even

-      Carney to their side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the stable

-      yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request, led up and

-      down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay at every

-      step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He studied them

-      intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for that goblined

-      hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like imprints, that,

-      though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way of a cayuse, neither

-      was like the curious goblined track that had so fastened on his fancy out

-      in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen

-      on the newer trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is Johnson's

-      pack horse?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity. "When

-      I see my boots I don't <i>think</i> they're mine, I just most natur'ly

-      figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see

-      him in a wild herd."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that

-      Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over.

-      Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There isn't

-      more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good many

-      thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the same

-      color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar as so

-      many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new moon,

-      or a flapjack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same

-      place it's restin' now&mdash;it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's

-      brand, how can he swear to the beast?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was his

-      hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay cackled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Johnson wouldn't say so&mdash;he'd know better. His cayuse had a club

-      foot, an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles

-      back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track, and

-      sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did

-      you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse&mdash;what his travellers was

-      like?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I never looked at his feet&mdash;there wasn't no reason to; I was

-      minin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you got

-      any of Johnson's belongings&mdash;a coat?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the

-      wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store

-      clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw, and

-      from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass, saying, as

-      he examined the coat:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that

-      cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's

-      generally a difference in the hair."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in

-      the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many

-      different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed through

-      the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing in the

-      yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let it run like

-      a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse considerable

-      attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat warp, and on this

-      cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had not

-      been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not

-      Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence

-      to connect Harry Holt with the murder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that

-      Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a

-      technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas

-      Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the trail

-      and see what Bulldog seen."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and go

-      back."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Carney objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of

-      derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand in

-      the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to gain

-      time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're bein'

-      buffaloed&mdash;we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered man's

-      hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some hawse

-      hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks back on

-      the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we was a

-      damn lot of tender-feet."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none whatever

-      upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because I'm

-      going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for if he

-      does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm trailing.

-      But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever devil, and will

-      make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that you hold Holt till

-      I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse with a club foot, for

-      there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the wolves got him too."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim and

-      his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering together

-      as they drank.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We're bein' flim-flammed&mdash;played for a lot of kids. There ain't been

-      a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has

-      been murdered on the trail, and who done it&mdash;somebody. Caribou's mate

-      was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here, was

-      bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits. And 'cause

-      his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card trick with

-      hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother

-      wouldn't tell you where he got the gold&mdash;he'd let you hang him first;

-      but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get

-      out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds,

-      Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you down

-      for insulting me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates and

-      you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and Kootenay

-      whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his gun

-      clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt,

-      incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's hand

-      was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their backs to

-      the bar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five seconds.

-      Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a trigger&mdash;no

-      one spoke.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was Carney who broke the silence:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the doctor&mdash;I

-      guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension

-      slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left, followed

-      Jeanette out of the room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men, his

-      wrists bound behind his back, said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's

-      safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to kill

-      Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the gold

-      come from."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed

-      any gold&mdash;what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold

-      from your safe?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't looked&mdash;I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron

-      box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I

-      wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I guess

-      she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette didn't

-      know I was going to take it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a

-      frame-up?" Graham asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in

-      wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man,

-      and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find on

-      Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out

-      with."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he would

-      have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off a

-      passing train and lynched him; it would have been a <i>quid pro quo.</i>

-      He felt that he was being cheated by the superior cleverness of Bulldog

-      Carney. He had seen miners beaten out of their just gold claims by

-      professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the microscopic evidence of the

-      hairs, the intoed hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was honest in

-      his conviction that the cayuse was Johnson's, and feared that the man who

-      had killed his friend would slip through their fingers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's just like this, boys," he said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together

-      so long that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was comin' back a day

-      afore he hit camp&mdash;I'd feel it, same's I turned back on the trail

-      there and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There wasn't no reason to

-      look over that cliff only ol' Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's

-      a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there murdered him when he wasn't

-      lookin'. And if you chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish I'll

-      get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he won't never get away. If you

-      boys is just a pack of coyotes that howls good and plenty till somebody

-      calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away with your tails between your legs

-      for fear you'll be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn this murderer

-      loose right now&mdash;you don't need to worry what'll happen to him. I'll

-      be too danged lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's comin' to

-      me. Turn him loose&mdash;take the hobbles off him. You fellers go home and

-      pull your blankets over your heads so's you won't see no ghosts."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's sharp gray eyes watched the old fanatic's every move; he let him

-      talk till he had exhausted himself with his passionate words; then he

-      said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Caribou, you're some man. You'd go through a whole tribe of Indians for a

-      chum. You believe you're right, and that's just what I'm trying to do in

-      this, find out who is right&mdash;we don't want to wrong anybody. You can

-      come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you the club-footed tracks;

-      I'll let you help me get the right man."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The old chap turned his humpy shoulders, and looked at Carney out of

-      bleary, weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he shrilled:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you had

-      a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the rings on

-      a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack rabbit

-      ain't goin' to get away&mdash;and he ain't; you can bet your soul on that,

-      Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that Wie-sah-ke-chack, the

-      Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream, club-footed tracks, and when we

-      come back the man that killed my chum, old Fourteen-foot, would be down

-      somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd get him off."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from

-      that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days of

-      respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any information

-      to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the murderer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the

-      shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he had

-      brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on

-      Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got

-      pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a man

-      does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and a

-      gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as well

-      as by the fall of a card.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be

-      foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark

-      without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's

-      life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning, when

-      it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to the

-      stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way to the

-      tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left the horse

-      and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about for a time,

-      generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that he was camped

-      for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom he had confided,

-      knew different.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth,

-      unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the

-      other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the

-      foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why, Bulldog?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a sling

-      because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much about

-      women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You

-      clamber up the stairs quick."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would stand

-      for Harry yourself."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a

-      mob of angry men, because he's <i>my</i> brother."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You called the turn, Jeanette."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And all I can do, all I can say is, <i>thank you</i>. Is that all?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's all, girl. It's more than enough."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an

-      earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending&mdash;then

-      you'll hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start

-      backing the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll

-      bring in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave&mdash;I'll

-      get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if

-      Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone

-      watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift,

-      lighted candle in hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a

-      back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs of

-      light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch of his

-      heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten

-      robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie

-      down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself in

-      his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin&mdash;they were like two

-      men in a huge bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and eating

-      a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that the

-      murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge his

-      stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning miners was

-      still there he felt certain that he would get him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men

-      were known to have been murdered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime of that

-      sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite&mdash;careless, possessed

-      of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all desperadoes that

-      way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves, it generally had

-      been so easy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer;

-      indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the

-      ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was any

-      suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a posse

-      would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would have

-      ample knowledge of their approach.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in this

-      killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like a

-      gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold,

-      probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more

-      than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once

-      started, the devilish murder lust.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality,

-      and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be

-      watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had met

-      him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day and ridden

-      on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the murderer would

-      let him pass without action. It was only returning miners he was

-      interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were still

-      there he would get him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where the

-      murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood of the

-      cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been found, and go

-      forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered the ground. He felt

-      that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere between that point and

-      the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was the home of this trail

-      devil.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of the

-      wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog&mdash;that is, a creature that was

-      half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train

-      dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's mind

-      that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild pair;

-      they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour his

-      victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not

-      impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull down

-      a white man quick enough if he were helpless.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, the man was the thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the west

-      when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, and,

-      fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of the

-      spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck

-      said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy&mdash;stand steady."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound the

-      rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a

-      dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect

-      himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless

-      he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a

-      boxer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the imprint

-      of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had. There were

-      the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to

-      where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps the

-      evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth, and

-      then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If the

-      murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show himself

-      at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might have been

-      on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the cave for

-      water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do Carney had

-      not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes of finding out

-      something that was conclusive.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly be

-      there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and

-      eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood

-      at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a little

-      turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake of leaves

-      and brush.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron, and

-      the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing force

-      that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring noises in

-      his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was

-      smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to

-      splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in

-      the legs of his strong riding boots.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening

-      stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave

-      hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting to

-      the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he

-      could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could

-      crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was

-      fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a

-      man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of

-      loose log.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole

-      vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed

-      before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be

-      killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might

-      protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even

-      could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with a

-      pretense of helping him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered,

-      Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm

-      projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that the

-      offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that he

-      would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting.

-      Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered; "you

-      can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be torn to

-      pieces by the wolves."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he said:

-      "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I ain't

-      invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've been

-      a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good 'nough

-      friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a gun on you.

-      You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain things, I'll

-      spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess you'll keep your

-      word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as

-      absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the gun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me out,

-      and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You mean you won't give up the gun?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em

-      knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off there

-      in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake up. You

-      think it over, Bulldog, I'm&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance

-      down the valley.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down.

-      "They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their meat.

-      You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your buckskin;

-      he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when I come back what

-      you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry&mdash;they're hungry; and I

-      guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling

-      through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he

-      travelled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would

-      tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have

-      raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of

-      being a loser, whether man or horse won.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head go

-      up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see,

-      beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree to

-      tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his

-      gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark he

-      would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be a

-      chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second

-      purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that

-      there was a battle on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly

-      approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was

-      shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the

-      bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist an

-      ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in a

-      hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward the

-      buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that meant&mdash;a

-      little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head, or seize

-      him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump to the

-      man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as a warning

-      to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the ground.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a

-      sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance, he

-      sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels by the

-      narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet missed, and

-      Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right hand,

-      and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the loop swishing

-      through the air, and at the first cast it went over the buckskin's head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that

-      always brought the buckskin to his side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at the

-      well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through Jack's

-      sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The

-      buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal

-      at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as though

-      he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body struck

-      rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a cork, for

-      the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a

-      slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as

-      the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing

-      forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long arm,

-      to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against his

-      master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all right&mdash;don't

-      worry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead,

-      answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat&mdash;i'm glad you're

-      here. It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled

-      the horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant

-      nerves to Carney's brain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows that

-      had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he could build

-      a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the darkness they

-      would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a target when the

-      light fell on their snarling faces.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of dead

-      branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold the leaves.

-      There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver parchment-like

-      bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from about his limbs,

-      then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly to his free knee and

-      built a little mound of sticks and bark against the birch log. Then he put

-      his hand in a pocket for matches&mdash;every pocket; he had not one match;

-      they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the trail. He looked

-      longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree; Jack would have

-      matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the means to a fire. But

-      matches in New York were about as accessible as any that might be in the

-      dead man's pockets.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically impossible,

-      and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant. As if Fate

-      resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped man's mind a

-      magical inspiration&mdash;a vital grievance. His mind, acute because of

-      his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his cognizance, for

-      a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he could heat the

-      steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring were thin, depending

-      upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for strength. If he could

-      heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper would leave it as a spirit

-      forsakes a body, and the spring would bend like cardboard.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the

-      body. "But you've got them&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he

-      unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he

-      could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the thrower's

-      legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney&mdash;it was some test.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out I'll

-      get him yet, Patsy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off the

-      head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form and

-      earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face that

-      carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching

-      slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the

-      man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from his

-      hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim form

-      of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving him the

-      grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope and dropped

-      his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the man&mdash;he was

-      gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic twist of the

-      rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin, and gently,

-      vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold. Then, hand over

-      hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without ceremony, searched

-      it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin in a pocket of Jack's

-      shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had been torn from its belt

-      during the owner's rough voyage.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the

-      clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on

-      us; they can't beat us, old pard."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs, one

-      pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his

-      wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat as

-      it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with the

-      fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the black

-      moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating jaws.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically

-      forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection of a

-      spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes watching

-      him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the birch log.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a terrible

-      struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which seemed to bite

-      into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting Jack's battle; and

-      Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise, that his legs had been

-      made almost useless in that drag by the horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting his

-      fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost shattering the

-      bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp of the belt, and

-      Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log,

-      with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't need you&mdash;I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be

-      under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you

-      now&mdash;my leg is on fire."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in his

-      hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop

-      about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the

-      twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down from

-      the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and soon it

-      was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the trap, he

-      placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip of steel

-      went down like paper. He was free.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as

-      if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released

-      veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged

-      the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves hovered

-      beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle

-      rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line

-      from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Take your choice&mdash;get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you

-      for the wolves," Carney snapped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his

-      feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket

-      line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through you&mdash;this

-      sore leg's got me peeved."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags of

-      gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also

-      foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he

-      had not expected to find&mdash;the cayuse that had belonged to

-      Fourteen-foot Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack

-      out his wealth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through the

-      night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted, he

-      started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot

-      Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's belly.

-      Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the

-      enterprising man of the bear trap.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      V.&mdash;SEVEN BLUE DOVES

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey had not been

-      playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney felt there was

-      something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was overtired&mdash;that

-      he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had seen in a month,

-      for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse, the little, old,

-      worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on the Canadian side of

-      the border.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not habitual

-      with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a risk, a high

-      stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve&mdash;gave him a

-      concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But to-night there

-      was a scent of evil in the room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high

-      stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But Sergeant

-      Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such times the key

-      of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel, the Gold Nugget.

-      And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the police shack

-      rather than in a room of the hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling that

-      everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction that some

-      one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was in his hand;

-      that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new sensation to

-      Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it. His steel-gray

-      eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the green on a forest

-      tree. And as to the science of the game, with its substructure of nerve,

-      he possessed it <i>in excelsis</i>.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched hand

-      after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from the top;

-      that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without catch or

-      trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started with. He

-      had not lost anything to speak of&mdash;and here was the hitch, the enigma

-      of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been deliberately

-      laid down when he had raised; another time he had been called when a raise

-      would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice he had been raised

-      out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been done simply to keep

-      him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger had lost heavily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a card

-      was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs; his mind,

-      so to speak, was all thumbs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity delicately

-      balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous quality of spring

-      steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath the large dome of

-      his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He was hard to place.

-      He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage. He was somewhat of a

-      promoter&mdash;of restless activity. He was in Bucking Horse on some sort

-      of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If he had been a gambler

-      Carney would have considered him the author of the unrest that hung so

-      evilly over the game.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget

-      Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of

-      compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in mine

-      shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made on the

-      "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird, for its

-      stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not

-      confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of a

-      hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were

-      querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught Carney's

-      eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair of gloves. The

-      fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The gloves were the

-      disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers who wore kid coverings

-      on their hands habitually to preserve the sensitiveness of their finger

-      tips. He also had known gamblers who, ostensibly, had a reputable

-      occupation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to

-      eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult to

-      allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed&mdash;too well dressed for

-      unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the

-      fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank

-      somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was

-      almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody

-      and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.

-      Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold mine

-      up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him. That was

-      what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with Tacoma, and

-      if it were as represented, make the first payment when they returned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy

-      grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste

-      boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals, Carney

-      was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth face, the

-      boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he changed, muttering

-      inwardly, "Too much class."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for

-      finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all; the

-      drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had laboriously

-      built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's the use? If

-      there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win little."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them over

-      the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there was no

-      mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of the

-      cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple: seven

-      blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross hatched

-      and sprayed with leaves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves' wings

-      were all alike&mdash;almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an

-      artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth part

-      of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right wing of

-      the second dove to the left.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to memorize

-      the whole system, but it was there&mdash;which was the main thing. And the

-      next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew the system.

-      Who was it?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for that, and

-      Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a super-crook,

-      hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable of this

-      interesting chicanery&mdash;but he had lost.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent

-      conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser. The

-      man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had played a

-      forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth would have

-      been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney, for Shipley

-      had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck, or knew

-      something.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite that

-      he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting of

-      trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the West

-      there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to accuse men

-      of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even cowards drew and

-      shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and dropped

-      it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his cards, ran them

-      together on the very edge of the table, dropped one into the handkerchief,

-      placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the discard, and said, "I'm

-      out!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in his

-      pocket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy&mdash;a card

-      was missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his

-      pocket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves' wings

-      he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had realized that

-      it would have led to other things. Now the query had answered itself&mdash;they

-      were Seth's, evidently.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired&mdash;I've had a long ride

-      to-day."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up,

-      yawning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man.

-      To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game&mdash;don't know what's

-      the matter with me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right

-      now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn

-      another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me.

-      I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time

-      there's been hell."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly gave

-      place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to quit.

-      The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't

-      like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now, or

-      I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from

-      Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a game

-      of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd better

-      just put the game off till to-morrow night."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if he

-      wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start fresh.

-      Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle now;

-      besides I want another sensation&mdash;this bottle's dry," Hadley advised.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as he

-      rose.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a bottle

-      of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the

-      accounts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hadley was twelve hundred loser.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth,

-      and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips,

-      "Here, banker, put that back in your pocket&mdash;you're responsible.

-      There's forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll

-      probably forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred dollars,

-      saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been pallbearer at a

-      funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any game bigger than

-      checkers."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards&mdash;the blue-doved cards

-      and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently

-      whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves. The

-      red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and Carney

-      washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving himself

-      from further interest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having found

-      it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked, "Now, who's

-      in?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness;

-      "then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred on

-      the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot." Curiously

-      this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but inflamed Seth. He

-      turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you

-      sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to

-      cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to his

-      lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a little

-      pile in front of him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other

-      direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a

-      most depressed mood; he admitted this.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I knew

-      you felt it&mdash;that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on the

-      night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some claims,

-      but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess I've got

-      the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when I hear the

-      click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while, generally, it's

-      not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm trying to put

-      something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind of close to the

-      wind, financially. That two hundred may&mdash;hell! don't think me a

-      squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged into

-      the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding with

-      Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the dining-room

-      to a seat at a little table.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where's Seth?" she asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Over at the police shack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Poker?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney nodded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Mr. Hadley there?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre&mdash;if

-      he has any&mdash;is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her

-      dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you

-      playing?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not for

-      ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was over&mdash;why?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Tired."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth

-      cheating?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or three

-      days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought Seth

-      those cards?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have

-      played together once or twice."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell you

-      absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess. There was

-      a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This Shipley acted

-      very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He and Seth had

-      some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too gratuitous to

-      be genuine."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win Hadley's

-      money&mdash;he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got to

-      give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in my

-      pocket, and that will be enough."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But if he divides with Shipley?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the

-      conspiracy will be proven."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back,

-      there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added,

-      patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that

-      stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him&mdash;the moral aspect, I

-      mean; but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil

-      in a man&mdash;petty larceny, sneak thieving&mdash;that pours sand into a

-      woman's soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd

-      be quite satisfied&mdash;quite."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven&mdash;and you are the other

-      six, Jeanette."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that had

-      to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after he had

-      turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul full of

-      the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or drink

-      with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death of

-      someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if that man

-      were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had confidence in

-      him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of knowing how

-      completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed when they were

-      forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains. That would be a

-      matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of how he would return

-      the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked pack, was not yet

-      solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like counting sheep, led

-      Carney off into the halls of slumber.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him

-      sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with

-      known remembrances of the noise.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow had

-      flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the police

-      shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot and

-      someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him to

-      precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his

-      waist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over

-      the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced

-      the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's wrong, Jeanette&mdash;was it a shot?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes! I've looked into Seth's room&mdash;he's not there!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there

-      was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:

-      "Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed a

-      finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he tapped

-      on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back to Jeanette

-      whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all right&mdash;they're

-      still playing. I'll go over to the shack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt

-      so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened&mdash;I

-      know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and

-      manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a slab

-      of bacon, <i>à la</i> fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window of

-      the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they were not

-      playing at the table.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he

-      knew was a dead man&mdash;Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor

-      where he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood,

-      just over the heart.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table from

-      where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The red-backed

-      cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered into a pack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing the

-      interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress,

-      unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his

-      outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges

-      from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been

-      held close.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning top,

-      queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged Seth's gun

-      to make it appear suicide?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder

-      governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the coat

-      where Seth had put the discarded pack&mdash;it was gone. He felt the other

-      pocket&mdash;the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table and

-      all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket of the

-      coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money&mdash;there was

-      no wallet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his

-      eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a

-      stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the night

-      in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin light,

-      or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face to appear

-      grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or imbecile-tinged

-      by horror.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing to

-      the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back into his

-      belt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with

-      intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the question.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his

-      wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared

-      figure on the floor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I went for a walk," he answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why&mdash;when?" Carney snapped imperiously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to Cranford's

-      house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why to Cranford's house?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp

-      cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now

-      fierce.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well,"&mdash;Shipley coughed&mdash;"I didn't like the looks of the game

-      to-night; that ace being shy&mdash;&mdash; Didn't you feel there was

-      something not on the level?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been in

-      the gray eyes was in the voice now.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd

-      lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What did Cranford say?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I&mdash;I

-      thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley hesitated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And you didn't see either of them again?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained shirt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten

-      minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley&mdash;have

-      you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up Hadley."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the lock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar

-      and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he gave

-      a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled in one

-      of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley&mdash;sound asleep, or

-      pretending to be.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet

-      blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he

-      mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep&mdash;where's Seth?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness of

-      his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy&mdash;had a

-      little too much of it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where did you leave Seth&mdash;how long ago?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy up for

-      fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning&mdash;throw out the empty

-      bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I came

-      on to go to bed and&mdash;&mdash;" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his

-      memory of his progress was still befogged&mdash;"when I got here I

-      remembered that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's

-      to be sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap the

-      whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter

-      between two men."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with

-      startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered&mdash;do you know

-      that?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What&mdash;what&mdash;what're you saying?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping

-      fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Seth&mdash;murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners

-      pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that;

-      I'm a tenderfoot, but&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has been

-      shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want from

-      you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong man&mdash;do

-      you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man with a

-      hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police

-      shack, and I don't know anything more about him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through

-      the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where he

-      said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I know&mdash;I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he

-      pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and I

-      want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to

-      hide anything&mdash;I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He came back to the room with the girl and said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes,

-      gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room&mdash;it will be

-      better."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he was gone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the hotel

-      Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make certain,

-      through medical examination, that Seth was dead.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies in

-      canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the apparent

-      consistencies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be

-      considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed with

-      suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared of guilt.

-      So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a claim as any

-      of them to the title of assassin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action.

-      I'd advise you gentlemen to remain <i>in statu quo</i>, if I might use the

-      term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll

-      agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a

-      large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and as

-      each one of you will be more or less under suspicion&mdash;I'm speaking

-      now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual, the

-      law, will do&mdash;it would be as well for each of you to submit to a

-      search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's

-      expedient."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley

-      with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no

-      trace of the wallet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they

-      found.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered in

-      Shipley's hip pocket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown

-      ominously&mdash;there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on

-      Shipley's face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty chamber,

-      so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't explode."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an

-      indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned for

-      a long time, or a recent discharge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating, apologetic

-      way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it out: "Mr.

-      Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing over the dead man

-      with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will certainly be brought up

-      at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice to himself, should let the

-      Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has not lately been discharged."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this. But

-      the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should&mdash;I

-      clean forgot it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six

-      lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost

-      its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward the

-      light, looked through the barrel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice; "I'm

-      glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the

-      cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night&mdash;we'll only

-      obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the

-      morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet, if

-      I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our

-      ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they

-      heard the shot."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a drunken

-      miner, or an Indian playing brave."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out of

-      the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the Scotchman's

-      herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was being done.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he puffed

-      vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the platoon

-      of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and

-      passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding,

-      "Would you mind joining?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law&mdash;a wee bit of it is

-      very fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid red

-      handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and

-      to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now, <i>ad interim</i>

-      (the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you,

-      Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil.

-      And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette&mdash;perhaps

-      it's just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog,

-      has it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man

-      that killed Seth?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could

-      see that the latter was in deadly earnest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's

-      because I know you devilish well&mdash;you're too big for such

-      small-brained acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the

-      way of a brick mason&mdash;facts are the bricks that make the structure."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth,

-      who was more or less a friend?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over strained

-      friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't you remember what

-      that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when Jeanette's brother was

-      near lynched?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Aye."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks

-      for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending over

-      the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And I

-      noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he

-      drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us

-      to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while

-      he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off by

-      yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And that swine, Shipley&mdash;do you suppose he thought of that, too?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see,

-      Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and he

-      took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed Seth,

-      and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty shell; and

-      if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you, knowing that the

-      clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the examination as you had had

-      the opportunity to put it right. I don't like the incident, nor the man's

-      spirit, but it proves nothing for or against him. I expect he's clever

-      enough to know that the last man seen with a murdered man is, <i>de facto</i>,

-      the slayer."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was killed

-      with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night&mdash;he always was a

-      damn fool&mdash;and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing way,

-      and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only heard

-      one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said: "One

-      doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's evil, but I

-      fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot that wakened

-      me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the police shack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog&mdash;in

-      the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the

-      writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went

-      up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had

-      sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there was

-      considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder was

-      discovered&mdash;these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot

-      Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper

-      hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark corner

-      till things had quieted down before going to his room."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hadley isn't the kind to commit murder."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "To-night he was another kind of man&mdash;he was pretty drunk; and the

-      man that's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls&mdash;he

-      has lost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough

-      to make him a bit cautious."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he's got a

-      devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like his face&mdash;'

-      it's avariciously vicious&mdash;he's greedy. But the law can't hang a man

-      for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist's point

-      of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of the attached

-      possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute, canny

-      Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certain the

-      Doctor suspected Shipley.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "for

-      you're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man can

-      do it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we can

-      follow up before the trail gets cold?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There is, Doctor. There was a pack of marked cards in Seth's pocket, and

-      they're gone."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The man that has that pack is the murderer," Dr. Anderson declared

-      emphatically.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He is."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And the wallet."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidently

-      belonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibility

-      that Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latter do

-      all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising the bet

-      when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "Either

-      Shipley or somebody was in collusion with Seth, you think?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If we could get that man&mdash;?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Look here, Doctor," and Carney put his hand on the other's knee, "whoever

-      has got that money will not try to take it out over the railroad, for it

-      was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; a

-      search. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail to Montana

-      or Idaho."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody may be

-      headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley&mdash;I mean, anybody&mdash;he

-      may have a colleague to take the money down over the border."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, the money; he'll not try to handle it in Canada for fear of being

-      trapped on the numbers."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "So you might not get the murderer after all," Anderson said,

-      meditatively; "just an accomplice who wouldn't squeal."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No; not with the money alone on him we wouldn't have just what I want,

-      but when we get a man with the marked pack in his pocket that's the

-      murderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like a

-      man will cling to an old pocket-knife; they're the tools of his trade, so

-      to speak. And here in the mountains he could not handily come by another

-      pack, perhaps."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the marked

-      cards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just have

-      the money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to the door

-      at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, and lowering

-      his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square of you. I'm

-      clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of the law, but for a

-      good woman's sake I've got to get the murderer."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It would be commendable, Carney, if you can."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I comprehend," and Dr. Anderson nodded his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've got a man&mdash;'Oregon' he's known as&mdash;down at Big Horn

-      Crossing; he's there for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell

-      'Oregon' to search every man that rides the border trail going south."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog&mdash;I'll

-      look it up with the town clerk."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle of honest amusement.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Piqued, the Doctor said irritably, "You're thinking, Bulldog, that the

-      little town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representing

-      authority, eh?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authority

-      for everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first and

-      explain afterwards; and when he gets the right man he'll bring him in.

-      First, I'm going to make a cast around the police shack with a lantern.

-      Even by its light I may pick up some information. I'll get Jeanette to

-      stake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskin

-      and be back in three days."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there might

-      be some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneeling

-      down, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black earth

-      around the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for he

-      skirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to the

-      ground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracks of

-      a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some time

-      there; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe prints

-      almost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks as if

-      somebody had dropped from the window.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. He could

-      shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from his pocket&mdash;it

-      was really an old letter&mdash;and with his pocket-knife cut it to fit a

-      footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the front door, and

-      with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints, following them a

-      piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood up and rubbed his chin

-      thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown of reflection, ending by

-      starting off at a fast pace that carried him to the edge of the little

-      town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in his

-      hand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were different

-      boot tracks, and the one&mdash;the latest, he judged, for they topped the

-      others&mdash;was toeing away from the shack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He straightened up and knocked on the door.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was no answer. He knocked again loudly; no answer. He shook the door

-      by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet: there was no

-      sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on it and called,

-      "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shack convinced him

-      that Cranford had gone&mdash;perhaps, as he had intimated, to Bald Rock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those heading

-      away from the shack. The paper did not seem to fit&mdash;not quite; in

-      fact, the other track was closer to the paper gauge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Back at the hotel he related to Dr. Anderson the result of his trailing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he spoke of Cranford's absence from the shack, the Doctor

-      involuntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I was

-      thinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving from

-      Cranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involves

-      Cranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, on the

-      quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments on a mine,&mdash;they're

-      threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds or something."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-away

-      game the better."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search for Cranford,

-      and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Black comes&mdash;likely

-      to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, of course, the verdict

-      will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you've gone to hurry in

-      Sergeant Black."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette was

-      waiting for him in the little front sitting room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible ending to

-      it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in its

-      absolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was no

-      affection, no pretense of it. She was like a niece, or even a daughter, to

-      Seth; their relationship had been practically on that basis. Her father

-      had been a partner of Long in some of his enterprises, enterprises that

-      had never been much of anything beyond final failure. When his partner had

-      died Seth had assumed charge of the girl. It was perhaps the one redeeming

-      feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knew so

-      well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; the

-      desirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of her

-      evidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhat

-      nebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nor did

-      he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for two or three

-      days and would be supposed to have gone after the Mounted Policeman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explained how

-      much depended upon the discovery of its present possessor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Second Part

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was within an hour of daybreak when Carney, astride his buckskin,

-      slipped quietly out of Bucking Horse, and took the trail that skirted the

-      tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but that didn't

-      matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could go without

-      sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, as the

-      buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a brief half

-      hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were several

-      tracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were called bronchos,

-      the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But they were cold

-      trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamer wings,

-      stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dew sparkled on

-      the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of a pony

-      that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earth where

-      the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he was on.

-      It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot, and

-      had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to the cross

-      trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracks turned to the

-      right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that the rider was not

-      associated with the murder. With that start he would be heading for across

-      the border; he would not make for a Canadian town where he would be in

-      touch with the wires.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Along the border trail there were no fresh tracks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was toward evening when Carney passed through the Valley of the

-      Grizzley's Bridge&mdash;past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot

-      Johnson had been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been

-      caught in the bear trap.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; he

-      clattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eager

-      hasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lop

-      ears weaving back and forth in apprehension.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of the

-      cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,

-      camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding walls

-      of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled along an

-      obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer sense of

-      perception.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch of

-      breakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one had

-      passed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail while

-      the horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretched between

-      them: and there were no fresh tracks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At two o'clock he came to the little log shack just this side of the U. S.

-      border where Oregon kept his solitary ward. Nobody had passed, Oregon

-      advised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were to

-      search any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the marked

-      cards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to his

-      superior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, was opium

-      running. That was his office, to drift across the line casually, back and

-      forth, as a prospector, and keep posted as to customs officers; who they

-      were, where the kind-hearted ones were, and where the fanatical ones were;

-      for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally, five miles

-      within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his way out, leaving

-      twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of a tyrannical

-      customs department.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp the

-      hand of his lieutenant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down the

-      valley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way of

-      weather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit of lead

-      that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as if somebody'd

-      fresh plugged me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through which

-      wandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a glorious

-      oriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden light

-      that hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of the

-      hills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, and

-      emerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where the

-      gaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoon

-      bushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloom

-      preserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry, was

-      hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest that zigzagged

-      and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the design of some giant

-      cubist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed and swung his gloved hand in a semicircle of derision.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's purty," Oregon said, "it's purty, but I've seen a purty woman, all

-      smilin' too, break out in a hell of a temper afore you could say 'hands

-      up.' My hip don't never make no mistakes, 'cause it ain't got no fancies.

-      It's a-comin'. You ride like hell, Carney; it's a-comin'. Say, Bulldog,

-      look at that," and Oregon's long, lean, not over-clean finger pointed to

-      the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that the Old Man of the

-      Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs of his&mdash;see the

-      white of that eye? And he ain't takin' in no purty scenery, he's lookin'

-      over his shoulder down off there," and Oregon stretched a long arm toward

-      the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains of ice, the

-      glaciers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if they

-      run on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to death

-      once in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd been good

-      always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out if you got

-      caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snow hell'ry.

-      The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twenty feet deep,

-      and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself what gener'ly

-      happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal by gettin' him

-      into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nice little

-      silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains. Good-bye,

-      Bulldog, and ride like hell&mdash;the buckskin won't mind; let him run the

-      show&mdash;he knows, the clever little cuss."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in the

-      heat of the squeeze they got in Oregon's bear-trap of a paw.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The trail here was like a prairie road for the valley was flat, and the

-      buckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at a

-      sharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croaking

-      bellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave him

-      alone. Let him run things hisself!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the old man

-      was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wide places

-      of earth had tutored him to the varying moods of the elements; that his

-      super-sense was akin to the subtle understanding of animals. So he rode

-      late into the night, sometimes sleeping in the saddle, as the buckskin,

-      with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down dale and along the brink

-      of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. He camped beneath a giant

-      pine whose fallen cones and needles had spread a luxurious mattress, and

-      whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in the air, a perfume that was like

-      a balm of life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot might

-      slip by in the night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleep with

-      a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. His eyes

-      opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtered down

-      into the gloomed valley from a paling sky. A day was being born; the night

-      was dying.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      An appalling hush was in the air; the valley was as devoid of sound as

-      though the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself had been

-      sucked out from between the hills, leaving a void.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin was up and picking at the tender shoots of a young birch. It

-      had been a half-whinnying snort from the horse that had wakened Carney,

-      for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop ears cocked as

-      though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness, watched for

-      something that was creeping stealthily over the mountains from the west.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though it

-      had been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon's

-      croak came back:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a corner of

-      his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pot his

-      tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickered and

-      swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up in the

-      giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. The gray of

-      the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed again as though night

-      had fled backwards before the thing that was in the mountains to the west.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in a

-      bitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neck of a

-      stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he were famished,

-      or ate to save them from a thief.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head were

-      playing a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze darted here

-      and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far across the

-      valley, from somewhere in the rocky caverns of the mighty hills, came the

-      heavy moans of genii. It was hardly a noise, it was a great oppression, a

-      manifestation of turmoil, of the turmoil of God's majesty, His creation in

-      travail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney quaffed the scalding tea, and raced with the buckskin in the eating

-      of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling blood told him

-      that the temperature was going down, down, down. The day before he had

-      ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; now a vagrant thought

-      flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the Gold Nugget.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He saddled the buckskin, and the horse, at the pinch of the cinch, turned

-      from his oats that were only half eaten, and held up his head for the bit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and the

-      buckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps. It

-      wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needles stabbed

-      at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filled with

-      indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; it seemed to

-      penetrate the horse's lungs, for he gave a snorting cough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now the full orchestra of the hills was filling the valleys and the

-      canyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of Squaw

-      Mountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its many

-      throats into unearthly dirge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that had

-      thrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberating music

-      seemed to carry as refrain the words of Oregon: "Ride like hell, Carney!

-      Ride like hell!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And, as if the command were within the buckskin's knowing, he raced where

-      the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over the stones and

-      shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that drove into

-      the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when he

-      murdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could make

-      that he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter it too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the thought of saving his life the buckskin occupied a dual place;

-      that's what Oregon had said; he had no right to jeopardize the gallant

-      little steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stout

-      heart.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though he spoke

-      aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo and reverberation

-      than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fret yourself tired,

-      old sport; we'll make it&mdash;the cave."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, had in

-      his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had taken

-      visible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley the

-      towering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozen ridges

-      above his eyes; his breath floated away in little clouds of ice; the

-      buckskin coat of the horse had turned to gray.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sometimes at the turn of a cliff was a false lull as if the storm had been

-      stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen north swung again

-      and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objects were

-      being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; it was more

-      difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; a chill was

-      suggesting indifference&mdash;why fight?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was

-      spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold; it

-      was like a winding sheet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the merciless

-      snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To the man direction was lost&mdash;it was like being above the clouds;

-      but the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting,

-      making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter, meant

-      death; the buckskin knew it; but he was tiring.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney unslung his picket line, put the loop around his chest below his

-      arms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, and

-      slipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on the

-      rump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went on

-      again, the weight off his back being a relief.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping over him

-      in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest that

-      preluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now the

-      exertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours away

-      the cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. It

-      scarce mattered; to draw forth his watch and look was a waste of energy,

-      the vital energy that weighed against his death; an ounce of it wasted was

-      folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when he himself

-      was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little hero that had

-      fought his battles ever since they had been together. The buckskin's

-      flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of a bellows; his

-      withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean and small&mdash;scarce

-      mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting sea of snow.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the cave must be near. Carney found himself repeating these words:

-      "The cave is near, the cave is near, Patsy; on, boy&mdash;the cave is

-      near." His mind dwelt on the wood that he had left in the cave when he

-      took Jack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a bright

-      fire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would make

-      it. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always won

-      out on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling that it

-      was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mental

-      stamina. If he kept up his courage he would win out, as he always had. It

-      was just Excelsior and Success, just&mdash;&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a swirl of oblivion; he had flown through space and collided

-      with another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he was

-      alone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds. There

-      was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passing under an

-      anesthetic&mdash;Nirvana.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of the

-      beyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking from a dream&mdash;it

-      was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back to consciousness. He

-      struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legs were; at the bottom of

-      them were leaden-soled diver's boots. His brain, not more than half

-      clearing at that, he realized that he and the buckskin had slid from a

-      treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozen feet; the snow, unwittingly

-      kind, catching them in a lap of feathery softness. But for the gallant

-      horse he would have lain there, never to rise again of his own volition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were

-      going forward. Oregon's command was working out&mdash;"Let the buckskin

-      have his own way."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone

-      around in a circle&mdash;in fact, Carney once had done so&mdash;and the

-      cold would have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more

-      life-sapping; but here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it

-      was like surf rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and

-      horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man

-      battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged

-      senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact

-      that they still held on toward the cave.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream&mdash;or was this

-      the real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party&mdash;that

-      they were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a dream&mdash;he

-      was waking.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight played

-      on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him something

-      stamped on the stone floor.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung

-      head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and

-      coming to his side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And

-      now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he was

-      in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Some horse, that, Stranger." The man's voice that had sounded thinly

-      sinister had a humanized tone as he said this.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried to

-      answer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You're

-      makin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Try

-      this dope."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; it was

-      like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd a

-      horse neigh&mdash;it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted

-      out to sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd his

-      bell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers&mdash;'twan't more'n

-      'bout ten yards at that&mdash;and there's that danged rat of yours, and he

-      won't come in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow;

-      he seemed to know that if he pulled too hard he'd break your danged neck.

-      Then we got you in&mdash;that's all. Some horse!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This and the warmth and the tonic tea brought Carney up to date. He held

-      out his hand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turned surlily

-      to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't done nothin';

-      you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' you through. I

-      went out after my own bronch."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had met

-      many men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to an

-      unknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside became like

-      outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness&mdash;every man was an

-      enemy till he proved himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close together

-      each side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look of

-      distrust.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't never knowed but one man was <i>all right</i>, and the Mounted

-      Police hounded him till he give up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward the

-      horse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Are

-      you him, or are you a hawse thief?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How do you know the horse?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I got reason a-plenty to know him. He cleaned me out in Walla Walla when

-      he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark that cold-decked us

-      boys with this ringer."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now Bulldog knew why the aversion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm Carney," he 'admitted; "but it was the gamblers put up the job; I

-      just beat them out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed that

-      the other hung with peculiar intensity on his answer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How long was you fightin' that blizzard?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Since daylight&mdash;when I broke camp." Carney looked at his watch; it

-      was three o'clock. "How long have I been here?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A couple of hours. Was you runnin' booze or hop, Bulldog?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney started. Perhaps the cave man was conveying a covert threat, an

-      intimation that he might inform on him. "Don't let's talk shop," he

-      answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an

-      ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills

-      trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the

-      mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her

-      out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to see

-      me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing

-      thought&mdash;<i>food!</i> He, himself, had about one day's supply&mdash;had

-      he it? He turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been

-      tossed by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon

-      and bannock were gone!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's

-      cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon,

-      about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom a

-      round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to

-      Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his

-      blankets.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of

-      habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been&mdash;the

-      pigskin pocket was empty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip.

-      "Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was gone."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun. He

-      ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit&mdash;when the time came he

-      would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the

-      other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin in

-      his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This

-      fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his bacon

-      and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have worked out

-      and the oats remain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear

-      outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the

-      swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate to

-      their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at least

-      fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which the

-      trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he had no

-      food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week with two men

-      eating it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a

-      fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind

-      might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the snow

-      with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged&mdash;he was hungry

-      only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He lay down, and had slept two hours when he was wakened by the sweet

-      perfume of frying pork.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. He watched

-      the cook turn it over and over with the point of his hunting knife,

-      cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vital fat.

-      When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point of his knife

-      and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparing that

-      well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just beside the

-      fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray of his

-      opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney's mind

-      before he fell asleep.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'm

-      goin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anyways

-      you was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up to me

-      to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be a damn

-      fool to do it&mdash;I'd be just playin' agin myself."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he spat in the fire and held the pan over its blaze to warm the slimy

-      mixture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case for himself

-      continued: "We may be bottled up here for a week, or a month. Two men

-      ain't got no chanct on that grub-pile, no chanct."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why don't you eat it then?" and Carney sat up. "I could, 'cause it's

-      mine; but I got a proposition to make&mdash;you can take it or leave it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Spit it out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's just this"&mdash;the fox eyes shifted uneasily to the little

-      buckskin, and then back to Carney's face&mdash;"I'll share this grub if,

-      when it's gone, you cut in with the bronch."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; his

-      features were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush. The

-      proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had asked him to

-      slit the throat of a brother for a cannibalistic orgy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's only ord'nary hawse sense," Dave added when Carney did not speak;

-      "kept in the snow that meat'd last us a month. Feelin's don't count when a

-      man's playin' fer his life, and that's what we're doin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't dispute the sense of your proposition, my kind friend," Carney

-      said in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll think it

-      over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, of course,

-      if I don't get out he'd starve to death anyway."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Take your time," and the owner of the pan pulled it between his legs, ate

-      the slice of bacon, and with a tin spoon lapped up the glutinous mess.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger that were

-      now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other man had a gun,

-      and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store of provisions

-      were gone&mdash;perhaps before that. And Carney was determined to make the

-      discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on the dictator, the

-      lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing the little buckskin

-      that had saved his life&mdash;bah! the very idea of it made his fingers

-      twitch for a grasp of the other's windpipe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For a long time Carney sat moodily turning over in his mind something; and

-      the other man, having lighted his pipe, sat back against the wall of the

-      cave smoking.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last Carney spoke. "There's a way out of this."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, if a chinook blows up Kettlebelly Valley&mdash;there ain't no other

-      way. The manna days is all gone by."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the Lost

-      Ledge Mine."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a few

-      stringers of gold&mdash;they soon petered out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot of

-      heavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools, and,

-      what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes back there. I

-      could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and make Bucking Horse

-      in three or four days. He wore them down in the Cour d'Alene."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If you had the grub," Dave snapped; "where're you goin' to get that?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Half of what you've got would keep me up that long on short rations."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And what about me&mdash;where do I come in on givin' you half my grub?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The other half would keep you alive till I could bring a rescue party on

-      snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering this

-      proposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind to do

-      a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you&mdash;your bronch agin half

-      my chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronch is

-      mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till a chinook

-      blows up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, and

-      slid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cards

-      winged <i>seven blue doves</i>. It was the pack that had been stolen from

-      Seth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murderer of

-      Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the same

-      slight variation of the wings. In a second Carney had mastered himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I guess it's fair," he said hesitatingly; "let me think it over&mdash;I'm

-      fond of that little cuss, but I guess a man's life comes first."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He sat looking into the fire thinking, and if Dave had been a mind reader

-      the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter was thinking,

-      "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in my pocket."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he spoke, shifting closer to the blanket on which the other sat:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll cut!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he

-      turned it up&mdash;it was the ace of diamonds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of spades,

-      adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the

-      blanket in a tenuous stream.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of

-      them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a

-      gambler's eagerness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his knees

-      and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a little to

-      the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the pack. If he

-      turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the minute he

-      turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been

-      double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's

-      face; perhaps&mdash;once a killer always a killer&mdash;he would not

-      hesitate but would kill.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace,

-      while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split

-      second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left hand,

-      but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from the

-      shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked from its

-      pigskin pocket by Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick, or

-      I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he

-      should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding

-      had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a

-      foreboding look.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're Tacoma Jack&mdash;you're the man that staked Seth Long to this

-      marked pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to

-      Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when

-      you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went with

-      you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he had taken

-      the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth. When the

-      game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the window, and

-      when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money was too much,

-      and you plugged him."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about

-      it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and

-      Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough

-      not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see you,

-      but jumped from the back window."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks in

-      the mud.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He held

-      it up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own

-      hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea

-      type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity even

-      with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying twenty

-      feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in fact with

-      him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been a Mounted

-      Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that he give up his

-      life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private individual, trying

-      to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high regard for&mdash;Jeanette

-      Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man. Bringing in the stolen

-      money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might be said that he, himself,

-      had taken these two things and returned them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves had

-      combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had been

-      killed&mdash;it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his

-      cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie&mdash;Seth's as dead's a

-      herrin'!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said so

-      yourself."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make your

-      get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you, Tacoma

-      Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was

-      driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking

-      Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do to

-      carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could make

-      half a mile of that trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma, when

-      you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I didn't

-      value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a damn

-      whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab of

-      bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little flour

-      I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most with

-      snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a dogtrain and

-      a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance; it's like

-      filling a bob-tailed flush&mdash;but I'm going to let you draw. If the

-      chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back you'll get

-      away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got to clear a good

-      woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the cards with a

-      forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession here in my

-      noteboook that you killed Seth Long."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap&mdash;I didn't kill him!" %

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I take

-      the money, your gun, your boots, and <i>all the grub</i>."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank

-      lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and you

-      bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make a

-      cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the

-      chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence. Carney

-      broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide quick, for

-      I'm going to hobble you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If Carney

-      took the food&mdash;and he would&mdash;he had no chance. The alternative

-      was his only hope.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll sign&mdash;I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just

-      how it happened."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You write it yourself&mdash;I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I

-      forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye

-      on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma

-      Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had pulled

-      his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and in the

-      struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may be

-      true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If you're

-      laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog Carney,

-      forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make me plug

-      you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll turn you

-      loose."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and Tacoma,

-      placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney proceeded to

-      cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon. Then he rubbed

-      down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the horse, gave him a

-      feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite side of the fire from

-      Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for the minute you start

-      anything you lose your bet on the chinook."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in

-      through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had all

-      but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had huddled

-      to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft and

-      balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy snow

-      and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath the

-      weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses of

-      snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing sun.

-      Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet, gnarled

-      faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged with

-      snow-water.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against a

-      cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of the white

-      mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a cow-bell. It

-      was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell that Carney

-      had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the little

-      buckskin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping

-      out from above his blanket&mdash;they were like rat eyes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his

-      heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to Bucking

-      Horse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the chinook,

-      don't I?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his

-      word."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled into

-      Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my hand

-      dif'rent&mdash;p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that

-      when I drug you in out of the blizzard."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was

-      just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite from

-      an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog&mdash;I'd be kind of

-      lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is

-      waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket

-      that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck

-      you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      VI.&mdash;EVIL SPIRITS

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Rockies, their

-      towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid with blue and green, the

-      glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion Range, and the Vermillion

-      looked down upon the sienna prairie in which was Fort Calbert, as Marathon

-      might have looked down upon the sea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality of

-      Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the surrounding

-      boxlike structures of the town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon which

-      was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was an

-      occasion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was that

-      a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the

-      importation of five gallons.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table possible.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in

-      some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested

-      attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;

-      they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an eagle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot

-      transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was always

-      that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste shell, an

-      effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West as a St.

-      Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end

-      of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty idea

-      that the old gent will want to see that ranch."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is supposed

-      to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has remitted,"

-      Harden explained to Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from the

-      roadway; it was a weird drool&mdash;the droning, hoarse note of a tug's

-      whistle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'! Oh,

-      heavens! it makes me homesick."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy

-      little Thames tug.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.

-      Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun lay

-      like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of one

-      that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A

-      dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River

-      cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken

-      bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust and

-      sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature&mdash;an armadillo. He

-      turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look, upon

-      the six.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert

-      declared solemnly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O Gabriel&mdash;there's

-      vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our hearts and we'll set

-      you happy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent

-      proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat blast.

-      He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight figure

-      and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of buckskin and

-      leather chapps, turned back into the bar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the unresisting

-      guest to a chair.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a keg;

-      the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He shoved

-      out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava that

-      darkened their pale contours.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the prodigal

-      was the fated calf&mdash;it was full.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window,

-      threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the

-      stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest

-      floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it

-      wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened,

-      started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at

-      dinner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and sat

-      down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as he

-      asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is outside:

-      we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess;

-      and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes that

-      were thought hard, had gone blue.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us

-      twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics

-      showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their

-      shoulders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where the

-      regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join up."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for this

-      I'll have to run you all in."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added:

-      "Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert

-      bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to

-      have troubled you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast

-      of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret

-      standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor

-      law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to

-      be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against the

-      police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when

-      they're putting down crime."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed man

-      who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant in the

-      force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence.

-      Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent

-      restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of

-      this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed

-      eagerly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he will

-      have the handling of it, I fancy&mdash;a carload."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if

-      playing poker.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a

-      jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything of

-      that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck with

-      the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two weeks. The

-      police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped

-      it gently on the table.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I

-      have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was a

-      rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer crop&mdash;a

-      splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan, standing.

-      Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the

-      little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his glass.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen&mdash;about the whisky: While I was

-      waiting for an audience with the Polica <i>Ogema</i> I heard, through an

-      open door, a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general

-      statement was that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for

-      delivery at Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car

-      here."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I suppose&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of

-      merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why

-      FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a

-      joy!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the

-      little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm <i>very</i> glad to have met

-      you, sir." Then he was gone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name&mdash;you

-      didn't introduce me?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, I say!" the other gasped.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then he

-      related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from

-      An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three

-      counties&mdash;Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent a

-      telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of

-      message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening he

-      had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway station

-      for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform from morning

-      till night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the

-      prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras was

-      numbered 6100.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major

-      had received was reliable, evidently.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through freight&mdash;not

-      for Fort Calbert.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry smile

-      hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the amiable

-      Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the

-      discussion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty

-      force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:

-      the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued an

-      order.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused to

-      do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters, from

-      his superior officer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for

-      long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How do you know?" the station agent retorted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he jumped:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;

-      "Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario&mdash;they

-      have use for it down that way."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you something

-      on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if I get the

-      evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though I never set

-      eyes on you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a

-      get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet of

-      ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A

-      carload of whisky is simply preposterous."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought. He

-      could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not

-      break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take

-      it on himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to come

-      down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how to act.

-      We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I don't want

-      to get you into trouble."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he admired

-      brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also well

-      known. He turned to the station master saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the

-      proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train

-      was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and would

-      back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also expected of

-      a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they didn't

-      encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the

-      conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got

-      somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job as

-      brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the

-      Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the

-      seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile

-      crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the

-      caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually

-      the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty souls,

-      for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload of

-      whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed, of

-      course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an

-      attraction like a funeral.

-    </p>

-    <h3>

-      EVIL SPIRITS

-    </h3>

-    <p>

-      At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a written

-      order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a heavy police

-      wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a

-      defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a

-      game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and

-      in his speech there was the savor of London fog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he

-      addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do so

-      now!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My word! we're always doing that, always&mdash;that's what we're here

-      for, to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened on

-      Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major, a

-      procession headed for the car of interest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,

-      the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak

-      barrels.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at

-      Bulldog Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of

-      astonishment over this exhibit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,

-      turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take

-      this stuff to the fort."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing

-      this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too

-      greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"

-      the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at Carney.

-      "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men bring a

-      sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be destroyed;

-      the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on

-      end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge. At

-      the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup fluttered

-      up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,

-      Major."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the

-      turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped their

-      dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of

-      appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat

-      man! Him damn good; break him more!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled

-      waters&mdash;literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste

-      these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in his

-      objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've roped

-      something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights answering

-      correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will want to know

-      what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods. The Superintendent

-      of the Western Division will want to know why I side-track freight billed

-      through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take responsibility, but you've given

-      me a big lot of work, and I ain't none too well paid as it is. Somebody's

-      doublecrossed you."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have

-      to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels of

-      sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas, beans&mdash;in

-      fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered grocery store

-      rather than the duplicate of a barroom.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been

-      wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert were

-      several small places on the line where there were neither police nor men

-      who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the station

-      master, saying:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky cut

-      off? I believe it's on that train."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside

-      my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,

-      and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try to

-      cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages back

-      in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the Superintendent

-      of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole thing to your

-      Commissioner at Regina."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the

-      broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H. B.

-      Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of

-      something for nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,

-      as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;

-      Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on you

-      yet, old top."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair. He

-      would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was handicapped

-      by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of contention everybody's

-      hand would be against the force&mdash;the very train men, if they could

-      get away with it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained

-      groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through

-      with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was sent

-      that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars&mdash;one of goods and one of

-      whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John Ross

-      was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper in the

-      next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither car

-      would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,

-      either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not

-      matter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were

-      going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot

-      through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the suspected

-      car.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a consultation.

-      Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen from the position

-      of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game; besides, which was

-      almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool kind

-      that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to round him

-      up, for we haven't got a thing on him&mdash;not a thing. He's so well

-      liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin Hood used

-      to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped your hands

-      on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll be run into

-      the plains&mdash;there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of it, and

-      swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this law, sir.

-      They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major to

-      send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of this

-      consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was

-      accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten

-      dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot of

-      whisky as it was being run the following night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the

-      Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened

-      breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the

-      ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the

-      trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert

-      itself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still

-      wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information to

-      the Major.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will

-      sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,

-      Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates, and,

-      skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the southwest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of a

-      little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses had

-      been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern

-      fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide

-      was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the

-      cut-bank to the stream.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had hung

-      in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed ridge

-      of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and a sombre

-      gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the belly of the

-      valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a penciled line of

-      silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock. The stillness was

-      oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the night passed; no animal

-      of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the solemn hush; nobody spoke;

-      in each one's mind was the unworded thought that they waited for a man

-      that was known to be without fear, a man to whom odds meant little or

-      nothing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted his

-      body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad, man, you

-      suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin', there might be

-      killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if he is a whisky

-      runner."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,

-      with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt; he

-      just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray

-      cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't

-      wait for a better chance."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the

-      slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and it

-      was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,

-      Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the

-      Force."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank us to

-      spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this outfit?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort

-      Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and

-      not be there."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's no

-      sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the sandy

-      wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy, slipping,

-      sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being shoved along

-      the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull thump of an

-      axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of muffled hoofs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over

-      the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of

-      Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Halt! hands up&mdash;you are covered! If you move we fire!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of

-      light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank

-      the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable

-      figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther&mdash;that was all.

-      That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,

-      Reggie.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,

-      the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane

-      exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep

-      out of the light; it may be a blind."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Soon McBane's voice was heard from the cut-bank: "All clear, Sergeant."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Sergeant Jerry, stepping into the open, examined the exhibit. Instead

-      of carrying concealed weapons Reggie had a fair load of concealed spirits;

-      he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought some nebulous answers

-      about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and that he was bringing in the

-      goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature was sorely taxed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm gettin' fed up on these damned tricks of Bulldog's," he growled, "for

-      that's what it is."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm not sure," McBane objected; "this ninny may ha' blabbed, and yon

-      breed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached and escorted

-      in to barracks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain had

-      imbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortune

-      of the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; or he

-      may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usual

-      sacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presence of

-      the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in a gurgling

-      libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Then the empty

-      tins were tossed disdainfully into the coulee.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Back in the Fort Major Kane said: "This was all a blind, Sergeant Platt;

-      none of the stuff will come down this way&mdash;they'll run it up among

-      the miners and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of

-      the patrol up about the Pass."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; and

-      by the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. that

-      the few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk&mdash;half were in the

-      guard room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBane

-      didn't know.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the scene

-      of the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed. He

-      had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturated

-      earth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick as if

-      spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick went through,

-      suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sand flying. A

-      foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neat crosshatching

-      of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that was supported by a tub;

-      a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odor that struck the

-      Superintendent's nostrils was not suds&mdash;it was whisky.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He yanked the tub out of the cavity and kicked it into the coulee. Then he

-      stood up and mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils! the

-      cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's put them up

-      to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just a blind, the tip

-      from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's a game to put my

-      men on the blink while he runs that carload."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Rage swirled in the Major's heart as he turned toward the Fort; but before

-      he had reached the gates his sense&mdash;and the little man had lots of it&mdash;laid

-      embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to his quarters to sit on

-      the verandah and curse softly to himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mounted from

-      the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not come into the

-      Territories to be pitted against the social desires of the white

-      inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but here this very

-      thing took up more than half their time and energy. And it was a losing

-      game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pitted against every

-      one of his force.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were rumors that it was soon to be changed&mdash;the trade

-      legitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With a small

-      army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision against them,

-      it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from the half-breeds who

-      were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after day across

-      the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain, was an

-      exhilarating game&mdash;it was something to stimulate the <i>espirit de

-      corps;</i> a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, full

-      reward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like an

-      ordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle of

-      whisky, only to have him up before the magistrate for a small fine was, to

-      say the least, disquieting; it made his men half ashamed of their mission.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carney

-      himself&mdash;big; and the Major would have given, right there, a

-      half-year's pay to have bagged Bulldog, and so, perhaps have broken up the

-      ring.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But determined as the force was, the British law was greater still.

-      Without absolute, convicting evidence Carney would have been acquitted,

-      and the Major perhaps censured for making a mistake.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At headquarters was a fixed edict: "Take no position from which you will

-      have to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart at

-      the quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, loved his

-      duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under the strain of

-      service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streak showed&mdash;then

-      he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, you hound!" he would

-      snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got to be kept clean."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annual

-      report that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller at

-      Ottawa."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guard house&mdash;it

-      was "The Stirrup Cup."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "God, <i>England!</i>" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing,"

-      he muttered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly human those

-      who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, a constable

-      at sixty cents a day! They were all like that&mdash;not of noble family,

-      but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles of restraint all

-      over the world. That was largely why they were in the Mounted; certainly

-      not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how, even in his bitterness

-      of set-awry-authority, could the incident of the tub be a heinous crime on

-      their part.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the verandah,

-      crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them and shoot

-      Carney&mdash;damn him! he's at the bottom of it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down behind

-      the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and the blond

-      giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort Calbert for a

-      breather over the prairie.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling

-      "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust to

-      the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that

-      seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in

-      the town&mdash;he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the

-      familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider yanked

-      his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the saddle in

-      exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and the flanks

-      of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical shatterment

-      that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel to his bay's

-      flank and moved slowly along the trail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his

-      message.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the Victoria,

-      feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What'll I do, boss, when I wake up&mdash;how long'll I sleep?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "As long as you like&mdash;a week if you want."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What'll I do then&mdash;don't you need me?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, play with your toes if you like."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Lathy George pulled his reeling cayuse together, and pushed on. Carney

-      gave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got to go

-      back to town," Carney said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessness is like

-      a painted sky above a painted ocean&mdash;it gives me the lonely willies."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over his

-      shoulder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's always back there, or over yonder&mdash;never here when there's any

-      hell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one long

-      plaintive sabbath."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carney

-      continued.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Me, too&mdash;if there's action there."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Hardly, my dear boy; it's purely a matter of diplomacy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Absolutely, Bulldog; that's why you're going. You're going to kiss

-      somebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a good

-      cigar for you'&mdash;you love it. What's happened?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The Stonies are on the war-path."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ugly devils&mdash;part Sioux. They're hunters&mdash;blood letters&mdash;first

-      cousins to the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for

-      the Wood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came into

-      their hands."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, they're peppery devils. In the Frog Lake massacre one of them,

-      Itcka, killed a white man or two and was hanged for it."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What started them now?" FitzHerbert asked. "Whisky."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      FitzHerbert stole a glance at Carney's stolid face; then he whistled;

-      Carney's word had been like a gasp of confession, for, undoubtedly, the

-      liquor was from the car.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "How did they make the haul?" he asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a new

-      regulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fall

-      hunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under Chief

-      Standing Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his mates in

-      the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up to the

-      lumber camps."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Great! that combination&mdash;lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would

-      be as if sheol had opened a chute&mdash;there'll be murder."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I know Standing Bear; he made me a blood brother of his. I did him a bit

-      of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and the old

-      fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for the Stoney had

-      peppered a couple of silly bullets into the brute's shoulder. I happened

-      to get in a lucky shot and stopped the silver-tip when he was about to

-      shampoo old Standing Bear."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes, I heard about that&mdash;you and your little buckskin. Say, Bulldog,

-      that little devil must have the pluck of a lion&mdash;they say he carried

-      you right up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are

-      good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the

-      reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know what

-      the Sergeant is, Fitz&mdash;he'll stack up against that tribe alone; if

-      they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the lumberjacks&mdash;their

-      squaws will be along, and you know what that means&mdash;Jerry stands a

-      mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it will be sort of my

-      fault."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and

-      we'll play rugby with those devilish <i>nichies</i> if they don't act like

-      gentlemen."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all

-      about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz&mdash;not

-      a chance. It would be a fight&mdash;your hot heads would start it&mdash;and

-      after the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the

-      red spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets.

-      These Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains;

-      first thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."

-    </p>

-    <h3>

-      EVIL SPIRITS

-    </h3>

-    <p>

-      "How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just

-      because you feel that it's your fault?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt

-      we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind

-      they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know

-      the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them;

-      but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile&mdash;some of them will

-      feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got sense

-      and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole tribe

-      was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect&mdash;do you see, Fitz?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea: "Let

-      me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my eyes,

-      and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the west

-      wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them back

-      again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied; my

-      insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me.

-      While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed

-      Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell would

-      break loose."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got the

-      cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've seen

-      you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not lose caste

-      over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old boy! I rather

-      fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this will be good-bye."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy

-      gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,

-      threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a long

-      graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow

-      chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping over

-      Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned prairie

-      above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity the

-      turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze over the

-      plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere so peaceful

-      that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a phantasmagoria. There

-      was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the sleepy air, and off to

-      the south glinted against the horizon the peeping red eyes of a prairie

-      fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a shore-held city.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie

-      uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his

-      instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy

-      suffling pace of a cayuse.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle

-      night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind

-      slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean to

-      the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for

-      his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his wits

-      against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better than

-      remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by action, by

-      strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds; but the

-      thing ahead&mdash;drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust back

-      into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of the

-      ashes of regret.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden this

-      suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the danger,

-      the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game with Fate

-      that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit himself

-      against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of the

-      Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and

-      inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all

-      depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken; he

-      must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain there

-      with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the Ferryman at

-      the crossing of the Styx.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental

-      traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf

-      fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound that

-      was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the

-      saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over his

-      head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a little

-      gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five paces to one

-      side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold converse with

-      the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of a hold-up;

-      sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated into

-      staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and Carney muttered:

-      "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding hell-bent-for-leather."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he

-      topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse saw

-      the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for a

-      crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his rider,

-      in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to his feet

-      a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of steel was

-      touching his cheek.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy&mdash;just

-      a precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney

-      nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row; dey

-      s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Where's the Sergeant?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by <i>le

-      bon Dieu</i> dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees

-      reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the

-      Superintendent that Bulldog Carney&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the

-      Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the

-      fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying,

-      as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog, dat's

-      me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to the

-      help of jerry Platt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after

-      mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded

-      brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching

-      the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy ground

-      swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky line,

-      looking like the escarpments of a fort.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley,

-      at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on

-      Yellowstone Creek.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North

-      Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep.

-      It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning "tump-tump,

-      tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated at intervals by

-      a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the

-      well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom&mdash;it was the gambling

-      note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground in

-      a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one of

-      their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop, ceasing

-      his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the heat of a

-      fire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off, picketed

-      the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he drifted

-      into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth time of

-      the yellow streak&mdash;I'll tackle them then."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when Carney

-      opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down the

-      mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold

-      climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted

-      to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose,

-      and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning&mdash;we'll

-      eat afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo

-      grass, I see from your tummy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two or

-      three gunshots came down the valley.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was

-      nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt&mdash;that

-      part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on

-      and play his hand alone against the Stonies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that was

-      like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it skirted

-      the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of pearl tints

-      and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn rocks. From

-      beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad slopes the

-      haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding into a

-      valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning tom-toms.

-      As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the smoke-stained

-      tepees of the Stonies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping,

-      snarling dogs&mdash;the pack-dogs of the Indians.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration;

-      but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay police

-      horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry Platt,

-      all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks swarmed

-      in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of them, still

-      groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of them raced for

-      their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two or three had

-      rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they saw the

-      policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant just

-      as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short of the

-      camp.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left arm

-      was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's face,

-      that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn and

-      haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many had said

-      would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold, tired

-      fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness, as he

-      called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are you doing

-      here&mdash;collecting?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Came to give you a hand, Jerry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "A hand, Bulldog?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"&mdash;he

-      swept an arm toward the tepees&mdash;"and I've ridden all night to help

-      bust this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not much&mdash;just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks

-      potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm

-      pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if they're

-      here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the reserve."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal McBane

-      will get a promotion&mdash;he's next in line to Jerry Platt."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Good stuff, Jerry, I'll&mdash;&mdash;"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Pss-s-ing!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining moan

-      of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of white

-      smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That's bluff," Jerry grunted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We've got to move in, Jerry&mdash;if we hesitate, after that, they'll

-      buzz like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him

-      moving. I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I

-      know Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But

-      I'm in it to the finish, boy."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Thanks, Bulldog"&mdash;they were moving along at a steady walk of the

-      horses toward the tepees&mdash;"but you know our way&mdash;you've got to

-      stand a lot of dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll

-      make me wish you hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known

-      as having lost our heads. D'you get it?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "I'm on, Jerry."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on its

-      moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to represent

-      a hugetoothed grizzly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The

-      old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies&mdash;it was

-      a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,

-      vociferous creatures.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some circus,

-      Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen don't slip

-      from a tepee."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking

-      Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken

-      gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship, and

-      the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted

-      much with the tribe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant with

-      a sweep of the eagle wing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white

-      men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White

-      Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat

-      soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat that

-      Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a clamor

-      of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi, yi-hi!" rose

-      from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their ponies, driving them

-      with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance. Half-a-dozen times the lean

-      racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the two white men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible

-      by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the

-      buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun back

-      into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll cover

-      that stain with your blood."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in groups,

-      either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the two white

-      men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and gravel, and

-      bits of turf.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with solemn

-      dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time of our

-      hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when the

-      payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know not."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the homes

-      of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail is open,

-      Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you remain."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Chief, we are blood brothers&mdash;was it not so spoken?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift Standing

-      Bear would hear the words of his brother."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good of

-      Standing Bear and his Braves."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two <i>moneas</i>,

-      the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the squaws to

-      load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the reserve."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in

-      rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old

-      outcast buffalo bull&mdash;and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running

-      Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat asks

-      him to deliver the two evil <i>moneas </i>" Carney added.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes

-      swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the

-      braves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation,

-      saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the two

-      men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out

-      something I mean to do?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes. If

-      they start shooting, go to it&mdash;then we'll fight to the finish."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to

-      strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat

-      make?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his

-      tepee as a sign to the others.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of the

-      Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the Redcoat

-      do?" the Chief asked haughtily.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear, his

-      blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White

-      Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet

-      followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the tumult,

-      for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he

-      said to Carney.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat

-      their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was

-      tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And Jerry,

-      as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient&mdash; but

-      it <i>must</i> be.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with his

-      lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket, Jerry,

-      and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his tepee. The

-      authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't obey I'm going

-      to pull his shack down. Does that go?"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "It does, and the Lord be with us."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice in

-      solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf

-      that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Go back on the trail, Bulldog."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from Carney's

-      right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of a snake; the

-      noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of the rein the little

-      buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to earth like a pricked

-      balloon.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid

-      shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians

-      stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the

-      knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take the

-      awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with the great

-      nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill a Redcoat on

-      duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a tribesman, meant

-      the dreaded punishment of hanging.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted

-      white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up gazing

-      about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the hand of the

-      other was a vicious knife.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his bay

-      forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You are

-      under arrest&mdash;hands up!"

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report was

-      echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped to

-      his side, his pistol clattering to earth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying,

-      sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your

-      companion."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed

-      Indians.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn

-      Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them on

-      his mate's wrists and his own.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of

-      events.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they

-      are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see that

-      the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he said magnanimously;

-      "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribe will go from here

-      up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to the reserve would bring

-      hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies on the ground. Ask the

-      Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may go quickly, and the evil be

-      at an end."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, he advised,

-      for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid in a stock of meat

-      for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distinct hardship.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'll stay

-      with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from the

-      lumberjacks."

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      "They must destroy any whisky they have," Jerry declared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This the Chief agreed to do.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In half an hour the tepees were all down, packed on the poled travois,

-      blankets and bundles were strapped to the backs of the dogs, and in a

-      struggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenly over

-      the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breed scout.

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 6em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-***** This file should be named 45926-h.htm or 45926-h.zip *****

-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

-        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/9/2/45926/

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

-will be renamed.

-

-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,

-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project

-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you

-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do

-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is

-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

-redistribution.

-

-

-

-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

-

-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

-

-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at

-  www.gutenberg.org/license.

-

-

-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic works

-

-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all

-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

-

-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be

-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few

-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See

-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

-

-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the

-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an

-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

-

-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in

-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check

-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning

-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

-States.

-

-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

-

-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

-copied or distributed:

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the

-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

-1.E.9.

-

-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked

-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

-

-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

-

-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm License.

-

-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or

-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version

-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other

-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

-

-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

-

-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

-that

-

-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is

-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments

-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to

-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

-

-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-     License.  You must require such a user to return or

-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

-     of receipt of the work.

-

-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the

-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

-

-1.F.

-

-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

-your equipment.

-

-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

-DAMAGE.

-

-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you

-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with

-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy

-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

-opportunities to fix the problem.

-

-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER

-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

-

-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any

-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

-

-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

-

-

-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists

-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

-people in all walks of life.

-

-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's

-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

-Foundation

-

-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification

-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

-

-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809

-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email

-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the

-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

-

-For additional contact information:

-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby

-     Chief Executive and Director

-     gbnewby@pglaf.org

-

-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations

-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

-status with the IRS.

-

-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations

-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To

-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

-approach us with offers to donate.

-

-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

-

-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other

-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.

-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-

-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.

-

-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project

-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily

-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

-

-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

-

-     www.gutenberg.org

-

-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

-

-

-

-</pre>

-

-  </body>

-</html>

+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45926 ***</div>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      BULLDOG CARNEY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By W. A. Fraser
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      1919
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      BULLDOG CARNEY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III.&mdash;OWNERS UP </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV.&mdash;THE GOLD WOLF </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V.&mdash;SEVEN BLUE DOVES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI.&mdash;EVIL SPIRITS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve thought it
+      over many ways and I'm going to tell this story as it happened, for I
+      believe the reader will feel he is getting a true picture of things as
+      they were but will not be again. A little padding up of the love interest,
+      a little spilling of blood, would, perhaps, make it stronger technically,
+      but would it lessen his faith that the curious thing happened? It's beyond
+      me to know&mdash;I write it as it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He was rather a diffident
+      chap, never merging harmoniously into the western atmosphere; what saved
+      him from rude knocks was the fact that he was lean of speech. He stood on
+      the board sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly
+      across a trench of black mud that represented the main street. He hated
+      the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still more did he dislike
+      the turmoil that was within the hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had ridden his buckskin
+      cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's furtrading men, topping off
+      their spree in town before the long trip to Great Slave Lake, were
+      enthusiastically, vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy the
+      Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his way into the bar, the
+      whistle had almost clattered to the floor from the piper's hand; then he
+      gasped, so low that no one heard him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There
+      was apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if he
+      had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the Piper. A
+      quick furtive look darting over the faces of his companions told him that
+      no one else had recognized the horseman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin whistle groaned, "My God! a
+      land of bums!" Three days he had waited to pick up a man to replace a
+      member of his gang down at Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill
+      through intercepting a plug of cold lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and clambered to the
+      board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp the muck from their boots. One
+      of the two, Cayuse Gray, spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This feller'll pull his freight with you, boss, if terms is right; he's a
+      hell of a worker."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen cognizance of the "feller":
+      a shudder twitched his shoulders. He had never seen a more wolfish face
+      set atop a man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the thin, vulpine sneak
+      visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes peered boldly up from
+      under shaggy brows that almost met a mop of black hair, the forehead was
+      so low. It was a hungry face, as if its owner had a standing account
+      against the world. But Cameron wanted a strong worker, and his business
+      instinct found strength and endurance in that heavy-shouldered frame, and
+      strong, wide-set legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's your name?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jack Wolf," the man answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker had named the thought
+      that was in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his cheek, spat, and added,
+      "Jack the Wolf is what he gets most oftenest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf retorted angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band tramped around the corner
+      into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a circle, cut loose with brass and
+      tambourine. As the wail from the instruments went up the men in the bar,
+      led by Billy the Piper, swarmed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the Salvation hymn:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      "There are flies on you, and there're flies on
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent20">
+      me,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they
+      shouted in delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood aghast
+      at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de
+      Army bums, Miss," he jeered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking through
+      the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping his lithe
+      figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers with a grip
+      that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!" he snarled;
+      "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth&mdash;God and a woman.
+      Apologize, you hound!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'
+      ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.
+      There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.
+      Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer bottle
+      hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,&mdash;the man on the
+      buckskin,&mdash;but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's
+      shoulder blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud
+      of Jasper Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its
+      instruments and stole away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the
+      sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He
+      slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as the
+      thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met his own. "Get
+      down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,&mdash;I want you!" he commanded in
+      sharp clicking tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the
+      Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red
+      spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into the
+      black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the
+      half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind the
+      rider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but
+      as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot
+      was to kill the breed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,
+      and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out
+      and barking vainly after the escaping man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river
+      flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging from
+      the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said
+      in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the
+      Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner
+      answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to
+      travel with me get busy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in a
+      dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the
+      halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean
+      parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down
+      stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the
+      hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of
+      the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across
+      the muddy old Saskatchewan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a
+      grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;
+      there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away
+      into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time
+      being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The
+      Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried
+      down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail with
+      a new mount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and
+      profanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck band,
+      was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work at Fort
+      Victor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From
+      said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever
+      slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman
+      was king of the booze runners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a
+      thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof
+      and copped the dough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and pot
+      at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that cuss
+      did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho; but it
+      was enough&mdash;the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set the
+      pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd been
+      lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever stacked
+      up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when he's out to
+      play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is my advice to
+      you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy face through
+      it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to the bar and
+      said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the others
+      had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with admiration:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper calls
+      him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged Mister
+      Khaki-jacket&mdash;we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his nut,
+      and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys what
+      happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog Carney!"
+      Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd give that
+      cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as I do now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:
+      the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a school
+      teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went, constituting a
+      floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood, and
+      not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there were
+      seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating passion of
+      moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made up for it in
+      insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the old
+      Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and found a
+      subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the
+      little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who wandered in
+      mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual nourishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to Fort
+      Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile oaths,
+      their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments were
+      spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of life.
+      Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling
+      perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the religious
+      fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was that strange
+      contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to lean
+      eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack the Wolf
+      and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the great sun
+      swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes the
+      full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack
+      slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked Bible
+      to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow gone
+      agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first died
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst
+      for moral betterment&mdash;insatiable. The missionary in a chat with
+      Cameron explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners,
+      had never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but
+      the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of
+      salvation, Fort Victor&mdash;Glory to God! The poor fellow's very
+      wickedness was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the
+      Lord's vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always
+      being saved all over the world&mdash;regenerated, metamorphosed, and who
+      was Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of
+      Wolf, became a high-powered machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and
+      became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited until
+      this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon with,
+      perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack the Wolf
+      declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he affirmed, and
+      should be taught respect for God's agents in a proper muscular manner. So
+      the first time three French half-breeds, enthusiastically drunk, invaded
+      the little log schoolhouse and declared school was out, sending the
+      teacher home with tears of shame in her blue eyes, Jack reestablished the
+      dignity of the church by generously walloping the three backsliders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most
+      ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the
+      lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all of
+      Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she had
+      known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her
+      negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when the
+      business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others were
+      practically ignored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker
+      and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the
+      only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk
+      purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze
+      fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue
+      devils away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was
+      prejudiced myself at first."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft of
+      tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents in it,
+      and put it back on his head:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss&mdash;first guesses about
+      a feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder
+      skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or
+      twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'
+      like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness
+      that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a
+      tin of powder; he'll throw back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher," Cameron
+      said meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as houses.
+      She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers, 'tain't
+      nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her religion,
+      that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an' such while he
+      makes a stake workin' here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some prairie
+      chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he passed the
+      shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This was careless,
+      for train dogs were always prowling about for just such a chance for loot.
+      He stepped through the door and took a peep into the other room. There sat
+      the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered
+      surlily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that
+      tough bunch&mdash;swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all
+      day; a man can't keep decent in that outfit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive
+      Scotch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no
+      square deal; you've treated me like a breed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look
+      that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,
+      enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the work.
+      The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands, especially
+      the women folks. You're a scoundrel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his
+      blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel gun
+      that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the
+      triggers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded. "If
+      I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no good
+      on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I did the
+      deed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of you.
+      I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort
+      Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his
+      shoulder, stalking on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the
+      Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,
+      Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean
+      nothin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote a
+      note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was
+      humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad
+      record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him and
+      the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more
+      serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might
+      crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right to
+      stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all
+      time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her
+      bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward
+      boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to let
+      him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police
+      barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police
+      had always persecuted her Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the neutral
+      blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a new runway. He
+      had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost reconciled to the
+      loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take him
+      back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of horses
+      to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here is shy a
+      horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express&mdash;it's good
+      enough for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his
+      shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very
+      debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want&mdash;Jack
+      Wolf. They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River,
+      with a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to
+      explain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gone! When?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon
+      Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his
+      saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look in
+      his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be
+      interned when there's business on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The little school teacher?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The little fool!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'&mdash;had
+      put the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for
+      him; spun me the most glimmering tale&mdash;she's got a dime novel skinned
+      four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog
+      Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat. They
+      persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to God, and
+      has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two of them are
+      to live happy ever after."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched up
+      against her chest for years."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby
+      seemed inadequate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About three o'clock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Afoot?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot
+      he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest
+      skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail&mdash;no train for
+      him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization for
+      grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If you'll
+      stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse I'll eat
+      and pull out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll just
+      not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much obliged.
+      It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,
+      forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the
+      south bank and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log
+      shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The
+      family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian
+      bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some
+      devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope
+      hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable
+      horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort
+      Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten trail
+      that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on to
+      Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was the
+      old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to
+      Winnipeg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where money
+      was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was involved he
+      could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The Winnipeg trail
+      would be deserted&mdash;Jack knew that; a man could travel it the round of
+      the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond he could leave
+      it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and board a train at
+      some small station. No notice would be taken of him, for trappers,
+      prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative men, were
+      always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent solitudes of
+      the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath would
+      pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory of
+      capturing his man single-handed. That was the <i>esprit de corps</i> of
+      these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, <i>par excellence</i>, large
+      in conceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his strong
+      teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence in his
+      ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted Policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,
+      looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the old
+      Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the railroad
+      south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail running into
+      Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was about ten miles
+      east of that town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the
+      Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,
+      you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in, my
+      brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;
+      where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever
+      persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong
+      prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding
+      wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till he
+      sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf went
+      in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he asked how
+      far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail&mdash;still toward
+      Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the milk, but
+      the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the one he had
+      seen heading for Edmonton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice
+      putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on the
+      road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig coming
+      from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it had passed.
+      Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet in the black
+      soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into a waggon here from
+      behind. This accomplished he turned east across the prairie, reach-ing the
+      old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the
+      smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod&mdash;toes in, and
+      head hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints&mdash;hour after
+      hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy
+      springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy
+      gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick
+      clump of saskatoon bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for his
+      drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring beverage.
+      On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his
+      veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper on
+      his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning he
+      would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about ten,
+      and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east, or west, or
+      south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to Edmonton; the
+      police would spend two or three days searching all the shacks and Indian
+      and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily outgoing train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him; but
+      there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up against
+      that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand the best he
+      knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the train on some
+      grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack where Montana Dick
+      lived. Dick would know what was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg
+      country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour; he
+      was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into impassable
+      country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west again. But for
+      two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he realized now that
+      he was covering miles which had to be made up when he swung west again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through
+      which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring
+      man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was
+      being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it was
+      simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie was
+      closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a crouching
+      wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was that he was
+      tiring, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form&mdash;something <i>was</i>
+      on his trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian&mdash;gifted with
+      the sixth sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a
+      day's march away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to
+      laugh it off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the
+      luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath
+      trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad. His
+      footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the
+      heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles
+      would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that his
+      tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone. Being
+      mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of darkness&mdash;would
+      reach the railway and wire down the line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the
+      ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back. On
+      the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched to
+      watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below them
+      into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole mass of
+      tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious background a
+      horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the saddle, the docked
+      tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the watcher that it was a
+      policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the road
+      where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the vast dome.
+      Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant stopped,
+      dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched the trail
+      for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night, coming first
+      over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of sombre hue. The
+      trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be there, merged into
+      the pattern till they were indiscernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its
+      sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,
+      saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their
+      nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose in
+      circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill cranes
+      flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks straight
+      out behind, and soared away like kites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what
+      the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would camp
+      there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by the
+      hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about three
+      o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop along the
+      southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise that Jack
+      had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the southern end of
+      the swamp and head for the railway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can, if
+      not&mdash;get him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;
+      this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,
+      crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held
+      between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs that
+      might crack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to
+      the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of the
+      picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine, then the
+      Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would throw up his
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for
+      then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his
+      life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even if
+      the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first shot
+      meant not overmuch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears
+      fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of
+      discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in the
+      pea vine and sweet-grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug
+      of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched
+      with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the
+      bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a
+      narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen; not
+      daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden somewhere
+      and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the Wolf lay,
+      just a gray mound against the gray turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow lay
+      down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He had
+      not removed his pistol belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to
+      kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few feet
+      and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering trick of
+      a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when a man was
+      cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain ahead of him,
+      or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage was with him.
+      Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down wind from them
+      now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the wind shifted&mdash;no,
+      he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary in the daylight,
+      might give him his chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the
+      mosquito, had run his course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,
+      slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the ducks
+      would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from
+      consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing
+      him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but sprang
+      to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again a great
+      horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped silently and
+      struck, thinking it a hare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the Wolf
+      knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be thrown.
+      He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse, his sides
+      ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest, his muzzle on
+      the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his
+      death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes
+      sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a
+      minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose
+      tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed
+      toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the
+      lake for a drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but
+      the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It was a
+      chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the hole
+      when I play this hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his
+      horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something had
+      to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short distance up
+      a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding prairie. This
+      seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered some dry poplar
+      branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked stick he drove in
+      the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The
+      Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the sleeves
+      of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece of soap
+      and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water to wash
+      away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and heavy on his
+      face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing and blowing
+      water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was unheard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and
+      turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police
+      revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip to
+      the buff&mdash;I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless you
+      get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're told
+      and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf ordered.
+      In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant Heath; then
+      he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of
+      steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding, "Click
+      these on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat
+      and your boots?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.
+      I'll tell you what I'll do&mdash;I'll give you your choice of three ways:
+      I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of these
+      .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt on your
+      back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare feet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't walk on my pants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into about
+      four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll starve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack
+      Wolf would get a dinner&mdash;I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn
+      police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook grub
+      for two&mdash;bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his
+      wrists, and clad only in a shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket line
+      and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the carbine
+      strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three days;
+      that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near steel, I
+      ain't horse stealin', myself&mdash;I'm only borrowin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly be
+      pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning&mdash;a
+      play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody
+      that day. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We try to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in a
+      hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the
+      honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'
+      start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then you
+      can get out in two days and be none the worse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with a
+      horse thief&mdash;with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf
+      snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week
+      askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,
+      won't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant
+      objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect
+      myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want the
+      death of a man on his hands&mdash;there was nothing in it. So he unlocked
+      the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw them
+      far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up by
+      somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away
+      harder."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'
+      mean unless it helps me out of a hole."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles
+      he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a
+      horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling
+      hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie
+      rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over
+      higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;
+      but there was no hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching a
+      saddle on a buckskin horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin that
+      I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding
+      screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen
+      him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until
+      Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands, for
+      his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover and
+      waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked his
+      ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of hoofs
+      back on the tell-tale trail he had left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the startled
+      animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in a shower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he
+      recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half
+      the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering
+      like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with a
+      writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his
+      spread mouth came a scream of terror&mdash;he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered&mdash;he had
+      ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they
+      were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low
+      forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared from
+      off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came back to
+      him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two or three
+      wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming quicksands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his feet
+      up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head about
+      he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's thin
+      lips a smile hovered. He sneered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at
+      barracks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,
+      so he lied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog sneered. "Why should I&mdash;God doesn't love a sneaking police
+      hound."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now
+      stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition&mdash;never mind, I'll
+      save you first&mdash;there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty
+      the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.
+      "Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can get
+      my cow-rope to you tie the two together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,
+      seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking his
+      cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on the
+      tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous ooze.
+      Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it at the
+      first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back, looped the
+      rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop over on your
+      belly&mdash;look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing the Wolf to
+      safe ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his
+      revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was
+      gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter
+      commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take ten
+      paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of cartridges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his
+      horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built a
+      little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand
+      close to the fire so your pants dry too&mdash;I want that suit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney
+      about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two
+      hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of that
+      coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for a chance
+      to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his captor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the
+      pocket."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,
+      took from it two packets&mdash;one of papers, and another wrapped in
+      strong paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with
+      the other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say,
+      you're some liar&mdash;even for a government hound; your name's not
+      Phillips, it's Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at
+      Golden. You're the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather
+      Bulldog Carney in; you shot off your mouth all along the line that you
+      were going to take him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred
+      you'd tie him hoof and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you
+      first, see? Turn you over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds;
+      that's just what I'm going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you
+      for the sake of that little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm
+      Bulldog Carney. Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it
+      over; then you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the
+      police as Bulldog Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it, Mister
+      Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never live it
+      down if you live to be a thousand&mdash;you've boasted too much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf had remained silent&mdash;waiting. He had an advantage if his
+      captor did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at
+      Edmonton by Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell them
+      who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know me;
+      perhaps some of them'll know you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.
+      "Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over on
+      the rail"&mdash;and he jerked his thumb toward the west&mdash;"where
+      there's two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen
+      either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since
+      you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is wanted
+      at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that brings him
+      in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light&mdash;a flood of it. If
+      this thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,
+      he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at
+      Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been in
+      their clutches and escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jack must bluff&mdash;appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:
+      "They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't
+      you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little
+      pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band, the
+      Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the farm?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp
+      "Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five
+      seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and
+      dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman to
+      be toting. Is this police money?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money
+      but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not a
+      policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner of
+      the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman on
+      duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed it
+      all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two
+      hundred is my own," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government
+      robbed me of my ranch&mdash;said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;
+      it's coming to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty trick,
+      what you say'll make good&mdash;I'll have to quit the Force; an' I want to
+      get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two hundred."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you're lying&mdash;a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred
+      ahead, not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or
+      two," Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he
+      spun it in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heads!" the Wolf cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the
+      bills to their owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,
+      you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you
+      missed him, didn't you? Where's he&mdash;what's he done lately? He played
+      me a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I
+      never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd give
+      you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down grudge
+      against. What's his description&mdash;what does he look like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a tall slim chap&mdash;looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger
+      blood in him," the Wolf lied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about cooked&mdash;peel!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,
+      toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M. P.,
+      revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and lighted
+      his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want you
+      to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you over
+      to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen to you
+      if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath&mdash;they'd laugh at
+      you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and you'd
+      sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet&mdash;see? I'm going to stay
+      close to you till you're on that train."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as
+      Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for
+      Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him&mdash;the policeman would
+      see to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You bet I am&mdash;I'd rather work this racket than go to my own
+      wedding."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll
+      just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give
+      myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I only
+      got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog Carney
+      I won't come out as Sergeant Heath&mdash;I'll disappear as Mister
+      Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened
+      Sergeant Heath from me&mdash;I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever
+      stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure
+      bluff&mdash;for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's
+      ready compliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like
+      that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire&mdash;then
+      we'll pull out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he found
+      a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower
+      end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode
+      along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being
+      helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.
+      Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than
+      that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily come
+      by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had Carney to
+      steal his labor&mdash;to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile after
+      mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession of
+      Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way
+      so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too. The
+      khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for
+      another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's
+      waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd be
+      peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there won't
+      be no argument."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of water,
+      and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten miles from
+      steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney had both the
+      police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the ground, looped
+      the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll
+      sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you so
+      much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and sleep
+      light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it same's
+      we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.
+      It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than once he
+      had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the psychology
+      of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what he had been
+      told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering chap who had
+      had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He determined to
+      take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie awake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a
+      shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back, saying,
+      as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your handcuffs&mdash;thought
+      you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf
+      lied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite precision.
+      When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his precautions had made
+      all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by jerky nerves; so in five
+      minutes he slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the
+      something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to
+      play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to
+      carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good
+      thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the
+      pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed
+      clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the
+      buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would
+      sleep&mdash;not lie awake through fear over nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried grass
+      a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the steady
+      rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath; had he been
+      lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his breathing to
+      listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he had
+      lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked his
+      hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that bound
+      his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he waited. The
+      buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the flowered
+      carpet from his nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his nostrils
+      again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was heard the
+      clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney, recognizing what
+      had waked him, turned over and slept again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed
+      through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the
+      grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely
+      lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief that
+      had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck, and in
+      one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his wrist. Now he
+      had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other man helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he commenced his crawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern
+      sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with
+      ghostly garments bush and shrub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and the
+      Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney knew
+      the sensitive wariness of his horse,&mdash;the scent of the stranger in
+      his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part of
+      the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended to
+      drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had trailed it
+      back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This was more a
+      move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could work his way,
+      creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get away with the
+      horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears
+      cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was the
+      scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his mind,
+      that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about; or,
+      perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious man he
+      distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his prairie
+      dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept into camp.
+      He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head irritably. A
+      vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay across Carney's foot
+      and he stirred restlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,
+      cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that
+      even the watchful animal scarce detected it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot, or
+      the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or the
+      other&mdash;the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by any
+      chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart pounding
+      against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten feet, and
+      he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch it from the
+      holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive. Sometimes
+      he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but only to throw
+      his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head, and exhale a
+      whistling breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard and he
+      could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had wakened&mdash;just
+      the steady breathing of a sleeping man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly
+      had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another yard,
+      and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested like a
+      sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward the pistol
+      stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was twisted
+      about the two first fingers of his right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Carney slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was seized
+      in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the butt of
+      Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over the eye and
+      he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were riveting a boiler
+      in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was boring a hole in his
+      forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had wakened in a strange land.
+      He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at a man who sat beside a camp fire
+      smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a copper kettle hung and a scent of
+      broiling bacon came to his nostrils. The man beside the fire took the pipe
+      from his mouth and said: "I hoped I had cracked your skull, you swine.
+      Where did you pick up that thug trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As
+      you are troubled with insomnia we'll hit the trail again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead of the
+      buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a strange,
+      weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was
+      wobbly on his legs&mdash;his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's
+      leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung to
+      his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the
+      shifting sands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees in
+      the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he
+      collapsed like a jointed doll&mdash;he toppled head first into the mire
+      and lay there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a
+      man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping the
+      mud from his face, and looking very all in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're soft,
+      my bucko&mdash;I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered;
+      "boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way of
+      hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten
+      feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his side
+      and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind and one
+      in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some
+      trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together
+      and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I <i>will</i> have a
+      sleep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would
+      have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the soft
+      stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the valley
+      of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass touched
+      his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he
+      saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite
+      and pull out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front of
+      the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of escape
+      were good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against a
+      sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to the
+      left, in an hour they were close to the Post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up
+      in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it
+      was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his
+      horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it,
+      and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the
+      latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two
+      constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating
+      breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a
+      prisoner, Bulldog Carney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at
+      this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my uniform&mdash;where's
+      my horse? I've got you now&mdash;set me afoot to starve, would you, you
+      damn thief&mdash;you murderer! Where's the five hundred dollars you stole
+      from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets from
+      a gatling&mdash;it was a torrent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed the
+      truth&mdash;the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it was
+      amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept
+      quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath
+      the khaki coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought
+      that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of
+      his evil luck should not escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>That's Bulldog Carney!</i>" he cried fiercely; "don't let him get
+      away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops."
+      They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose
+      small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I
+      had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such a
+      skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by one,
+      into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led from the
+      room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as a cell. "I
+      see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack&mdash;you really should have
+      been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the prairie
+      somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so. Step in,
+      boys, and you go first, Wolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy
+      wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the fire
+      arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through the
+      mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear Miss Black:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No
+      woman can afford to bet on even a <i>good</i> man. Stick to the kids, for
+      I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant Heath
+      and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I wouldn't have
+      known, and you'd have lost out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours delightedly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.&mdash;BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> day's trail north
+      from where Idaho and Montana come together on the Canadian border, fumed
+      and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature was a little bit of all
+      right, for from the minute it trickled from a huge blue-green glacier up
+      in the Selkirks till it fell into the Kootenay, it bucked its way over,
+      under, and around rock-cliffs, and areas of stolid mountain sides that
+      still held gigantic pine and cedar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the town
+      of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of the
+      yellow god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid,
+      suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside,
+      looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth and
+      Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder;
+      Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a
+      gyroscope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with drill
+      and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road&mdash;a free lance of
+      adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream than win
+      money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy anatomy, the
+      calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve and sweet courage,
+      the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would have perished tied to
+      routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog" Carney, was an
+      inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border,
+      mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and
+      United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam the
+      exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking
+      Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred
+      dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the
+      hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put a
+      gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again. When
+      Seth threw up his hands declaring that the Little Widow was no good, those
+      who had laughed told him that they had known it all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what they didn't know was that the long drift in the mine now ran on
+      until it was directly under the Gold Nugget hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Carney who had worked that out, and Seth and his hotel were
+      established as a clearing station for the opium that was shipped in by
+      train from Vancouver in tins labelled "Peaches," "Salmon," or any old
+      thing. It was stored in the mine and taken from there by pack-train down
+      to the border, and switched across at Bailey's Ferry, the U. S. customs
+      officers at that point being nice lovable chaps; or sometimes it crossed
+      the Kootenay in a small boat at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog supervised that end of the business, bringing the heavy payments
+      in gold back to Bucking Horse on a laden mule behind his buckskin; then
+      the gold was expressed by train to the head office of this delightful
+      trading company in Vancouver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This endeavor ran along smoothly, for the whole mining West was one
+      gigantic union, standing "agin the government"&mdash;any old government,
+      U. S. or Canadian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion;
+      besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in
+      looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one
+      of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town
+      would be its own custodian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his horse's
+      heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung from
+      either side of a pack saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney went straight to the little railway station, and expressed the gold
+      to Vancouver, getting the agent's assurance that it would go out on the
+      night train which went through at one o'clock. Then he rode back to the
+      Gold Nugget and put his horse and mule in the stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he pushed open the front door of the hotel he figuratively stepped into
+      a family row, a row so self-centered that the parties interested were
+      unaware of his entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small bar occupied one corner of the dim-lighted room, and behind this
+      Seth Long leaned back against the bottle rack, with arms folded across his
+      big chest, puffing at a thick cigar. Facing him, with elbows on the bar, a
+      man was talking volubly, anger speeding up his vocalization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beside the man stood Jeanette Holt, fire flashing from her black eyes, and
+      her nostrils dilated with passion. She interrupted the voluble one:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Seth, I did slap this cheap affair, Jack Wolf, fair across the ugly
+      mouth, and I'll do it again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth tongued the cigar to one corner of his ample lips, and drawled:
+      "That's a woman's privilege, Jack, if a feller's give her just cause for
+      action You ain't got no kick comin', I reckon, 'cause this little woman
+      ain't one to fly off the handle for nothin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothin', Seth? I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll
+      figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I see&mdash;you're
+      bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is stingin' you
+      right here in your own nest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Biff!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned
+      to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look
+      that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an
+      oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog Carney had stepped quickly across the room, and was now at his
+      side, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you're here, Jack the Wolf, eh? I thought I had rid civilization of
+      your ugly presence when I turned you over to the police at Hobbema for
+      murdering your mate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was a trumped-up charge," the Wolf stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! I see&mdash;acquitted! I can guess it in once. Nobody saw you put
+      that little round hole in the back of Alberta Bill's head&mdash;not even
+      Bill; and he was dead and couldn't talk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold,
+      searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You put
+      your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or
+      something will happen. I've got a proposition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his
+      belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden
+      rail, saying, surlily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man
+      that plays into the hands of the damn police."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can cut out the rough stuff, Wolf, while there's a lady present."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney deliberately turned his shoulder to the scowling man, and said,
+      "How d'you do, Miss Holt?" touching his hat. Then he added, "Seth, locate
+      a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank as
+      though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room, and
+      addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square
+      box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger&mdash;we're going to liquidate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack Wolf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved a
+      black bottle toward Bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The gents first," the latter intimated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bottle was slid down to Cayuse, who filled his glass and passed it
+      back to Wolf. The latter carried it irritably past him without filling his
+      glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Help yourself, Wolf." It was a command, not an invitation, in Carney's
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not drinkin'," Jack snarled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, you are. I've got a toast that's got to be unanimous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth, with a wink at Wolf, tipped the bottle and half filled the latter's
+      glass, saying, "Be a sport, Jack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at
+      Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said: "Gents, we're going to drink
+      to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to run
+      across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long ever
+      had&mdash;<i>Miss Jeanette</i> Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor,
+      but the Wolf did not touch his glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was
+      deadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room had grown still. One, two, three, a wooden clock on the shelf
+      behind the bar ticked off the seconds in the heavy quiet; and in a far
+      corner the piping of a stray cricket sounded like the drool of a pfirrari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a click of a latch, a muffled scrape as the outer door pushed
+      open. This seemed to break the holding spell of fear that was over the
+      Wolf. "I'll see you in hell, Bulldog Carney, before I drink with you or a
+      girl that&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whisky that was in Carney's glass shot fair into the speaker's open
+      mouth. As his hand jumped to his gun the wrist was seized with a loosening
+      twist, and the heel of Bulldog's open right hand caught him under the chin
+      with a force that fair lifted him from his feet to drop on the back of his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man wearing a brass-buttoned khaki jacket with blue trousers down which
+      ran wide yellow stripes, darted from where he had stood at the door, put
+      his hand on Bulldog's shoulder, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're under arrest in the Queen's name, Bulldog Carney!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney reached down and picked up the Wolf's gun that lay where it had
+      fallen from his twisted hand, and passed it to Seth without comment. Then
+      he looked the man in the khaki coat up and down and coolly asked. "Are you
+      anybody in particular, stranger?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke
+      bank, the Mounted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll entertain
+      you for several days over in the pen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On what grounds?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll find out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and now, declare yourself!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in
+      Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who
+      stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand clasping
+      his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the Sergeant, a faint
+      smile lifting his tawny mustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a
+      chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's a
+      thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the
+      line."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot
+      to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia.
+      You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which
+      you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to let
+      you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick you
+      into the street; then they would have something on me&mdash;something
+      because I'd mussed up the uniform."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go bail&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go with
+      you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all your
+      own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even his
+      duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance by
+      insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter turned
+      it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through Carney's
+      arm, passed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack divided
+      by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a bunk; the
+      other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door that carried
+      a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small window
+      safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this bull-pen,
+      as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a candle. There was
+      a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the bare
+      interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you
+      fellows are angular."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain
+      perhaps you'll drop some of that side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his
+      pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your
+      curtains, will it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant Black
+      went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer, Bulldog&mdash;I
+      ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather irrelevantly, and
+      with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read 'Les Miserables,'
+      Sergeant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't read a paper in a month&mdash;I've been too busy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It isn't a paper, it's a story."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney
+      persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come
+      into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec&mdash;they're
+      more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical
+      voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a
+      character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might
+      discriminate over a great story."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he do&mdash;how
+      am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like yourself,
+      and his mind was only capable of containing the one idea&mdash;duty. It
+      was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the
+      bangles on you and leave you in the dark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can
+      clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I
+      meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through
+      the bars of the open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough to
+      know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight&mdash;a fight over nothing;
+      and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs
+      would hold anybody, and you know it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's
+      gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to
+      arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had
+      locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well
+      enough alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be
+      sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me
+      something to read."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les
+      Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple of
+      magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He
+      could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then the
+      Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire to Major
+      Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came back.
+      About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the floor,
+      his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law had retired. A
+      vagrant thought traversed his mind that the heavy-dispositioned,
+      phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper once oblivious. However,
+      that didn't matter, there was no necessity for escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened by a
+      noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of life he
+      sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the sputtering
+      candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew he had been
+      wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening, no sound reached
+      his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous breathings. He had
+      guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper, one of Shakespeare's
+      full-paunched kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused to
+      cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's presence.
+      He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly associated
+      with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth so much as
+      over Jeanette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from
+      the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a
+      pebble tapping on iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no
+      tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window
+      thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A soft warm hand grasped his, and he felt the smooth sides of a folded
+      paper. As he gave the hand a reassuring pressure, his knuckles were tapped
+      gently by something hard. He transferred the paper to his other hand, and
+      reaching out again, something was thrust into it, that when he lifted it
+      within he found was a strong screw-driver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crept back to his bunk, slipped the screwdriver between the blankets,
+      and standing by the door listened for ten seconds; then a faint gurgling
+      breath told him that Black slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Making a hiding canopy of his blanket, he lighted his candle, unfolded the
+      paper, and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two planks, north end, fastened with screws. Below is tunnel that leads
+      to the mine. Will meet you there. Come soon. Important."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen
+      knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks
+      nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the
+      flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these heads
+      were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the other
+      room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked in the
+      lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if suddenly startled from sleep, Carney called out: "Who's that&mdash;what
+      do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant peered in and answered, "Nothing! thought I heard you moving
+      about. Are you all right, Carney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swept the pen with his candle, noted Carney's boots on the floor, and,
+      satisfied, closed the door and went back to his bunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This interruption rather pleased Carney; he felt that it was a somnolent
+      sense of duty, responsibility, that had wakened Black. Now that he had
+      investigated and found everything all right he would probably sleep
+      soundly for hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney waited ten minutes. The Sergeant's bunk had given a note of
+      complaint as its occupant turned over; now it was still. Taking his boots
+      in his hand he crept back to the end of the pen and rapidly, noiselessly,
+      withdrew the screw-nails from both ends of two planks. Then he crept back
+      to the door and listened; the other room was silent save for the same
+      little sleep breathings he had heard before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the screw-driver he lifted the planks, slipped through the opening,
+      all in the dark, and drew the planks back into place over his head. He had
+      to crouch in the little tunnel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pulling on his boots, on hands and knees he crawled through the small
+      tunnel for fifty yards. Then he came to stope timbers stood on end, and
+      turning these to one side found himself in what he knew must be a
+      cross-cut from the main drift that ran between the mine opening and the
+      hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stood up in this he heard a faint whistle, and whispered,
+      "Jeanette."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came forward in the dark, her hand touching his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm so glad," she whispered. "We'd better stand here in the dark, for I
+      have something serious to tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in a low tone the girl said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Wolf and Cayuse Braun are going to hold up the train to-night, just
+      at the end of the trestle, and rob the express car."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is Seth in it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, he's standing in, but he isn't going to help on the job. The Wolf is
+      going to board the train at the station, and enter the express car when
+      the train is creeping over the trestle. He's got a bar and rope for
+      fastening the door of the car behind the express car. When the engine
+      reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and make
+      him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the other cars
+      are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and Cayuse will
+      force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop off on the
+      up-grade, half a mile beyond."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away
+      with it, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I listened to them planning the whole thing out," Jeanette confessed,
+      "and they didn't know I could hear them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What about this little tunnel under the jail&mdash;that's a new one on
+      me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth had it dug, pretending he was looking for gold; but the men who dug
+      it didn't know that it led under the jail, and he finished it himself,
+      fixed the planks, and all. You see when the police go away they leave the
+      keys with Seth in case any sudden trouble comes up. Nobody knows about it
+      but Seth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a tang of regret in Carney's voice as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth is playing it pretty low down, Jeanette; he's practically stealing
+      from his pals. I put twenty thousand in gold in to-night to go by that
+      train, coke money; he knows it, and that's what these thieves are after."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Surely Seth wouldn't do that, Bulldog&mdash;steal from his partners!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, not quite, Jeanette. He figures that the express company is
+      responsible, will have to make good, and that my people will get their
+      money back; but all the same, it's kind of like that&mdash;it's rotten!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I&mdash;not on Seth&mdash;not
+      while I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't
+      &mdash;well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's
+      been different. I've stuck to him&mdash;you know, Bulldog, how straight
+      I've been&mdash;but a thief!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the girl's
+      voice carried a tremble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the
+      police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your being
+      arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to Seth and
+      stop it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just hell.
+      Besides, girl, I'm in jail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you're free now&mdash;you'll go away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me think a minute, Jeanette."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose
+      flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and they
+      saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse Braun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is
+      going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while they
+      pull the job off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into action,
+      fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing&mdash;I will see
+      what I can do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Seth&mdash;you won't&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't
+      bother your pretty little head about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was
+      trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a
+      school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion: "Bulldog,
+      do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it at all,
+      wondered?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to being
+      the finest girl I ever knew."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those things.
+      Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he shouldn't
+      steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean that I'm like the gold?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well&mdash;you know what I
+      mean, Jeanette."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you like me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you&mdash;if I kissed
+      you?".
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to do
+      what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself. Don't
+      get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that way. I've
+      kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you, being Seth's
+      girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you untangle that&mdash;get
+      what I mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's arm
+      and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in a
+      steadier voice: "Good night, man&mdash;I'm going back." Together they felt
+      their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift,
+      Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's nobody
+      about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to the cellar
+      you go ahead and clear the way for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little
+      store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out to
+      the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a gun
+      that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn the two
+      bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out he avoided
+      the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent Bucking
+      Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten by
+      the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden trestle
+      looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint moonlight,
+      its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half a mile from
+      where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its tail coming
+      back to the same side of the stream after traversing two short kinks. It
+      looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to carry the huge Mogul
+      engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train went over it at a
+      snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what
+      chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to
+      his assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned, and
+      no doubt would go through unless&mdash;&mdash; At this juncture of thought
+      Carney chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping
+      into the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub
+      growth Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat&mdash;easy,
+      my boy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip&mdash;that there was no
+      hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man talking
+      to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and he,
+      understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over Carney's
+      shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek; and
+      sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's
+      withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no
+      telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they
+      trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Carney dropped the rein from over the horse's head to the
+      ground, took his lariat from the saddle-horn, hung the two pack-bags over
+      his shoulder, and whispering, "Wait here, Patsy boy," slipped through the
+      brush and wormed his way cautiously to a huge boulder a hundred feet from
+      the trestle. There he sat down, his back against the rock, and his eye on
+      the blobs of yellow light that was Bucking Horse town. Presently from
+      beyond the rock carried to his listening ears the clink of an iron-shod
+      hoof against a stone, and he heard a suppressed, "Damn!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Coming, I guess," he muttered to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came
+      hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring yellow-red
+      eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced his angry way
+      down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the Mogul rocked in its
+      swift glide down the curved grade; there was the screeching grind of
+      airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as the compressed air
+      seethed from opened valves at their release when the train stood at rest
+      beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's lantern
+      gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of packages
+      thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then the little
+      green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the Mogul coughed
+      as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at steel rails and
+      slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping breaths; then came
+      the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel as the heavy train
+      careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the trestle were whining a
+      protest like the twang of loose strings on a harp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far side
+      of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man huddled
+      in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand the
+      barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it
+      was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the
+      steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried to
+      Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the
+      stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind
+      the express car still on the trestle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open, and
+      within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with hands
+      above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a third
+      was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them through
+      the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance
+      in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car
+      and waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the
+      Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move
+      I'll plug you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal to
+      Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps from
+      the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a graceful
+      sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the head of Jack
+      the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the fall he was
+      pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless
+      with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail end
+      of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had bound
+      him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse. Of
+      course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but
+      shooting a man was something to be avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the express
+      messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty thousand
+      dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But Carney, having
+      secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack bags astride the
+      saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow mine. He had small
+      fear that the two men would think of looking in that direction for the man
+      who had robbed them; even if they did he had a good start for it would
+      take time to untie the Wolf and get their one horse. Also he had the
+      Wolf's guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that ran
+      off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of water,
+      sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin, tied him,
+      and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the small tunnel
+      back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and, chuckling, fell
+      into a virtuous sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully, "You're
+      in luck, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the
+      sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and
+      if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thanks for your foresight, friend&mdash;that is, if you knew it was
+      coming off. Tell me how your friend worked it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had
+      finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would
+      say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that I
+      never have a companion in any little joke I put over."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an
+      apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and
+      then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars
+      for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to
+      Lake Erie and start a bean farm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them
+      two down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, thanks; I like it here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog&mdash;set you free."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your
+      arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram
+      and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company
+      offers two thousand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What other one?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he
+      admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta
+      case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police
+      before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But I'm
+      no sleuth for the official robber&mdash;he's fair game."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men&mdash;that's your job. But
+      you can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that
+      offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand,
+      that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the gold
+      I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if you'll oblige
+      me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered. Her
+      face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the
+      policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the
+      dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two
+      under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to
+      arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish your
+      breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this thing
+      is investigated."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant&mdash;why
+      ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do
+      with it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when
+      he escaped last night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened
+      the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how
+      you robbed the train!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ!
+      Bulldog has snitched&mdash;he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out
+      when he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And
+      his horse was gone from the stable this morning!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of
+      their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was
+      out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a puff
+      of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that
+      drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and
+      he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where he
+      sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol
+      back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for a
+      doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him
+      upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the
+      shoulder; he'll be all right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground&mdash;he can't talk;
+      Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he hits
+      the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave me five
+      thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl, I'm going to
+      put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he ever takes a
+      notion to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III.&mdash;OWNERS UP
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span> latawa had put
+      racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and
+      Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down
+      with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous thrills&mdash;a
+      commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez Perces Indians,
+      who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and were rich, would
+      troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold pieces plugged
+      into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black sausage, and bet
+      the coins as though they were nickels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U.
+      S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was a
+      live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great
+      luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a harem
+      of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they named
+      him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa found that
+      men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed the gambling,
+      and the racing, and the high living like any other creature of brains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some
+      half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the
+      great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the sires
+      were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the colt, not
+      being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big, upstanding
+      bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's bellows and
+      sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage, too, had not
+      been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There was just one
+      rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a thoroughbred,
+      and until his measure was taken, until some other equine looked him in the
+      eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man could just say what
+      the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez
+      Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there
+      was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron Jaw
+      Blake declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to
+      ameliorate the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual,
+      architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked but
+      a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush and
+      pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with "Irish"
+      Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt, more
+      sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that "Fagan met
+      death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic event had
+      crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely
+      "Death-on-the-trail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his upper
+      jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen him with
+      aptitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of the
+      bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a
+      Siwash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman, wrote
+      to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough to beat
+      Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were specific,
+      lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred, even a selling
+      plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any cross-bred horse,
+      no matter how good the latter apparently was, running in scrub races. He
+      also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the Walla Walla races
+      were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to Reilly to send him a
+      tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and look the part of an
+      able-bodied cow puncher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly&mdash;he just loved that sort
+      of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the
+      commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the <i>Maid
+      of Palouse,</i> what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony in
+      charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of
+      navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over the
+      twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron Jaw,
+      Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities that
+      lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black horse
+      that he called Horned Toad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and
+      instructed in the art of fool talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and
+      faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand
+      dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a
+      thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which
+      Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great
+      desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his
+      fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the cows
+      came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he drank:
+      he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him. This was no
+      piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads had declared for
+      a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its hind legs and howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll
+      that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had a
+      horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was never tired
+      of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to Kamschatka; a
+      spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any cayuse that had
+      ever looked through a halter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd rush
+      him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready to plunk
+      down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played against
+      the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted into the
+      game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face, rode
+      up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to Walla
+      Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town with the
+      laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and,
+      incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in
+      earnest and had the mazuma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the
+      cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of
+      turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows of
+      which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy individual,
+      standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with Bacchanalian
+      vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew chronologically
+      the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided hair, who stood in
+      the open door. He must have enlarged on the sophistication of her past
+      life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath, called the declaimer a liar
+      and a seven-times misplaced offspring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely
+      over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his
+      imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved him.
+      With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he would
+      bring its lash down on the décolletéd shoulders of the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door as
+      though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread basket of
+      the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled so
+      neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into the
+      little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers of
+      steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte face,
+      and a fist drove into his midriff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a
+      grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner
+      of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he
+      contemplated a trip to dreamland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose gladsomeness
+      swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man&mdash;you beaut!" She would
+      have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes, so full of
+      quiet aloofness, checked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog,
+      Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You ride
+      away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead
+      booze-fighter!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for
+      inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his
+      shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five feet
+      of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting between
+      wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not without
+      derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in
+      astonishment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Holy Gawd!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the
+      buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a
+      long-lost friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet,
+      mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the
+      inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly&mdash;in full
+      dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn&mdash;and asked: "Where
+      the hell d'you get Waster?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a little
+      cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask a man how
+      he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was only a little
+      wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so Carney smiled
+      again, and answered by asking:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum
+      of mine's name is Pat&mdash;Patsy boy, often enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I won
+      the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be all
+      right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout his
+      friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie, whose
+      breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by Counterfeit,
+      he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported Australian, whose
+      grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get that, sage-brush
+      rider?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the
+      chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger
+      levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you <i>ever</i> took notice of them
+      lop ears?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Once&mdash;which was continuous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like
+      that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he was
+      all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get that buckskin
+      from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad, Australian?" This
+      seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on, lad&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Excuse me, sorry"&mdash;Molly was speaking&mdash;"this is Billy MacKay.
+      My old school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to
+      see what God's country could do for that busted chest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man was impatient over the switch to himself&mdash;the horse
+      was the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs&mdash;Gawd! what a horse Waster'd
+      been. And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen
+      him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say, Bulldog,&mdash;don't
+      mind me, I like that name, it talks good,&mdash;Waster didn't need no
+      blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip&mdash;I'd as lief
+      hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear tryin'.
+      Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till he threw
+      a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and thirty-six
+      pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at a mile and a
+      quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and finished, fightin',
+      on three legs. He was beat, of course; and Leatherhead was broke, and I
+      never see Waster again. A trombone player in a beer garden would have
+      known the little cuss with them hot-jointed knees couldn't pack weight,
+      and would 've scratched him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You
+      stand pat with me, kid&mdash;your heart is about human, I guess. What was
+      that hostile person's game?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He comes here to-day, Bulldog&mdash;Well, you know&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney nodded placidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought&mdash;well, he was
+      filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything
+      he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get plumb
+      Injun."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff, Slimy
+      Red," Billy objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,&mdash;Billy knew him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Knew him&mdash;huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed
+      a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and
+      laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in
+      the ruck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch guy
+      that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein' a
+      garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half an inch
+      above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he says, 'I'll
+      bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's a great sayin'
+      with Slimy Red Smith&mdash;he was Slimy Red hisself. And politely, not
+      givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests that me and
+      Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best push on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas
+      person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and with
+      apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin' bullfrogs,
+      Mr. Carney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was twin
+      brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Much of a storm?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has
+      got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's
+      well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile
+      lighting up his stern features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, you gentleman knight of the road&mdash;always the silver-tongued
+      Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for a
+      real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but
+      fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in
+      the way of a cure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse
+      first when it comes to grub&mdash;that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's
+      bedded for the night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail upon
+      which they had met at different times and in divers places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at
+      sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of
+      bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on the
+      memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog were
+      both in Denver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some time since," Carney replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you know about Clatawa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Clatawa's a horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla
+      Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast
+      enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring that
+      boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that is in a
+      monetary way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique
+      enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's chatter
+      simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa disease,
+      He pricked his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding
+      Dong?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds.
+      He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too.
+      He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him
+      look big."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against
+      his stomach I thought it had gone clean through&mdash;it sank to the
+      wrist; it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here,
+      catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without
+      givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they know you
+      can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the Brooklyn
+      Handicap together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match,
+      figures to get a big pull in the weights."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa;
+      they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for
+      the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably here
+      on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones from the
+      root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an ample pull in
+      the weight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into a
+      meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several
+      possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time Billy spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red&mdash;he
+      don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He sure ought," Molly corroborated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause he
+      never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel; and
+      Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead pad;
+      booze gets his."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once&mdash;Iron
+      Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and
+      Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're
+      gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while
+      they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been,
+      'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the
+      combination," Billy declared. "I was right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some bad
+      splits in bets," Molly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a
+      bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake&mdash;I know
+      his method of old&mdash;has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse
+      and rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game,"
+      Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard Iron
+      Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it,
+      Billy&mdash;do we draw cards?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike!
+      there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty at
+      a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a stayer
+      from Stayville; but he can't pack weight&mdash;don't forget that. If you
+      rode him&mdash;let's see&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone and
+      muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em
+      rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy
+      'll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a hundred
+      and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds. What
+      chance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or a
+      pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd bribe
+      them to pull the horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot.
+      "Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on
+      pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had
+      gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather want
+      to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if he's
+      about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the figure
+      that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths holding a look
+      that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she whispered; "why do
+      women like him&mdash;gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on the buckskin.
+      "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin door, "you
+      heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uh-huh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie to
+      bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been gettin'
+      it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I hadn't
+      saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a
+      money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't have
+      to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and two."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over&mdash;I know her. But
+      don't worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and
+      no use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't
+      tout off Molly that you're doing it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney&mdash;you just listen now. I
+      didn't spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say
+      that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like
+      goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the
+      package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid?
+      Spring it; get it off your chest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot meditatively;
+      then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most of
+      the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and weight
+      don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or a
+      mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty well
+      himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me ride
+      him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse than
+      Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on their
+      form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in his eyes,
+      gazed helplessly at Bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A
+      match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows a
+      couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block of
+      city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big stake
+      you've got to have the long green."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much, Billy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally would
+      stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires hot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch
+      weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but
+      he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he
+      can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid
+      gray eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it owners
+      up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with only
+      a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse eyeing
+      him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the others,
+      examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs. He pinched
+      with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he squeezed the
+      horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed,
+      finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's
+      got the slows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the
+      buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and
+      then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing
+      back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air like
+      the roll of a kettle-drum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse
+      down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that stride
+      of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none. He'll do;
+      he's had lots of work&mdash;he's in better condition than Ding Dong,
+      'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at the bar. I
+      got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner Stakes' at
+      Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if you make the
+      match catch weights; it'll be a cinch&mdash;like gettin' money from home.
+      But don't tell Molly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself&mdash;how much
+      are you goin' to bet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five or ten thousand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand&mdash;five hundred
+      bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding
+      horse&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of
+      Bulldog's gray eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse,"
+      Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a
+      young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a
+      man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came
+      by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form of
+      a bill of sale."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar, paid
+      in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay. Molly
+      signed it as witness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog
+      declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend in
+      town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of the
+      gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it, Billy&mdash;owners
+      up?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gee! I get you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man had been mystified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week
+      away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin' to
+      bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his neck
+      for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can get a
+      set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet is four
+      pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr. Carney, and
+      Waster 'll do his part."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then he
+      turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shoot," she commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he&mdash;was he&mdash;the man&mdash;Bessie told me something?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney
+      was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a
+      woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake him
+      if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man that knows
+      him that'll try to put one over&mdash;'tain't healthy. He's got a temper
+      as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts. He don't
+      cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the sweetest you
+      ever see, Billy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did she die, Molly?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin'
+      to the hound."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home for
+      the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon
+      were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle on his
+      buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was Sheriff of
+      Shoshone County.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed
+      they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation
+      varied in different places, and with different people, it stood strongest
+      with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men of the West,
+      were apt to judge men from their own experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked his
+      life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County of
+      Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing on its
+      records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing up of
+      Bulldog Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of
+      this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, Bulldog&mdash;the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's
+      face; it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had
+      put many a practical joke over&mdash;he was kidding. Teddy laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of them
+      bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor as
+      you've nerve&mdash;you're Irish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's also a note in that envelope"&mdash;Carney ignored the chaff&mdash;"that
+      directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at
+      Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I
+      suddenly&mdash;well, if I didn't need it&mdash;see?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll do that, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked
+      casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then he
+      answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be there&mdash;lest
+      I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was when I made that
+      record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If you've got anything
+      to settle, go ahead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up at
+      the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid
+      face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then
+      ventured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the
+      occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might
+      so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times as
+      they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does that
+      put any kink in your code?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be
+      there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post, he
+      adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and a
+      group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man
+      perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It
+      wasn't Slimy Red&mdash;it was a tougher man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and
+      behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant in
+      Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his coarse
+      lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer. You seem
+      conditioned. Know Carson?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's
+      paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was even
+      the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held toward
+      each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument once in a
+      while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez Perces loose on
+      you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder
+      pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he
+      calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice
+      babbling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got
+      anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber hose
+      up his back holdin' his ribs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's
+      snarled:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'&mdash;a hundred iron men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he
+      comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess
+      that's what gives him dreams."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail
+      across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table sat
+      Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling height
+      at his right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing
+      from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy of
+      the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he drew and
+      what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the winnings
+      were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had to be
+      accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin' up a
+      bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached; "it's
+      too damn slow. I want action."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel,
+      bleating:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the
+      thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock&mdash;as you old leatherheads make it, one
+      A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the
+      smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into
+      one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled
+      over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was
+      number "13."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was as
+      expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars over
+      eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to Texas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play of the
+      uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with apathetic
+      interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the bag&mdash;it
+      didn't mean anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his
+      opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent
+      chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play
+      was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times&mdash;a man loaded
+      with bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky
+      Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money
+      was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They had
+      arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that could
+      be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently Texas
+      should make a killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the
+      wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing the
+      cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the merry-go-round
+      plays on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on to
+      the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the
+      croupier checked him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mind the limit, Mister."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the ivory
+      discs from thirteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way
+      during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no
+      green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track&mdash;everybody's got a chance.
+      Here! I'm goin' to cash in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier,
+      stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected
+      little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands pushed
+      them toward the winner. .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long
+      sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to
+      the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says I
+      got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that can
+      outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a grasshopper's
+      jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies&mdash;who's next?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will take
+      your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled, and
+      seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe body,
+      and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him like a
+      rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You damn locoed fool!" he swore; "what d'you mean?&mdash;what d'you
+      mean?" each query being emphasized by a vigorous shake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He simply means," explained Carney, "that he's a cheap bluffer&mdash;a
+      wind gambler. When he's called he quits. That's just what I thought."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give him a chance, Blake," Death-on-the-trail interposed; "let go!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw pressed Texas back into his chair, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've got too much booze. If you want to bet on your horse sit there and
+      cut out this Injun stuff." Snaky Dick had jumped to his feet, startled by
+      the fact that Carney was about to break in on his preserve. Now he said:
+      "If Texas is pinin' for a race Clatawa is waitin'&mdash;so is his
+      backin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney turned his gray eyes on the speaker: "There's a rule in this
+      country, Snaky, that when two men have got a discussion on, others keep
+      out. I've undertaken to call this jack rabbit's bluff, and he makes good,
+      or takes his noisy organ away to play it outside of Walla Walla."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas Sam had received a thumb in the rib from Iron Jaw that meant, "Go
+      ahead," so he said, surlily: "There's my money on the table. Anybody can
+      come in&mdash;the game's wide open."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That being so," Carney drawled, "there's a little buckskin horse tied to
+      the post outside, that's carried me for three years around this land of
+      delight, and he looks good to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He unslung from his waist a leather roll, and dropped its snake-like body
+      across the Texas coin, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's two thousand in twenties, and if this cheap-singing person sees
+      the raise, it goes for a race at a mile-and-a-quarter between the little
+      buckskin outside and this cow-hocked mule he sings about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to see this damn buckskin," Texas objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't need to worry," Iron Jaw commented; "the horse is pretty nigh
+      as well known as Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Texas, having been born in a very nest of iniquity, having been stable
+      boy, tout, half-mile-track ringer, and runner for a wire-tapping bunch,
+      was naturally suspicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't match against an unknown," he objected; "let me lamp this Flyin'
+      Dutchman of the Plains; it may be Salvator for all I know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let him get out the door," Carney sneered; "it will be good-bye&mdash;we'll
+      never see him again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if we don't," Snaky Dick interposed, "I'll cover your money, Carney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog swung the gray eyes, and levelled them at the red-and-yellow
+      streaked beads that did seeing duty in Snaky's face:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ever hear about the gent who was kicked out of Paradise and told to
+      go scoot along on his belly for butting in?" Then he followed the little
+      crowd at Texas Sam's heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the yellow glare of the Del Monte lights the buckskin looked very
+      little like a race horse. He stood about fifteen and a quarter hands,
+      looking not much more than a pony, as, half asleep, he had relaxed his
+      body; the lop ears hanging almost at right angles to his lean bony head
+      suggested humor more than speed. He stood "over" on his front legs, a
+      habit contracted when he favoured the weak knees. As he was a gelding his
+      neck was thin, so far removed from a crest that it was almost ewe-like;
+      his tremendous width of rump caused the hip bones to project, suggesting
+      an archaic design of equine structure. The direct lamplight threw
+      cavernous shadows all over his lean form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas Sam shot one rapid look of appraisement over the sleepy little
+      horse; then he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pinch me, Iron Jaw!" he cried; "am I ridin' on the tail board of an
+      overland bus seein' things in the desert, and hearin' wings?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed a forefinger at the buckskin. "Is that the lopin' jack-rabbit
+      that runs for your money?" he queried of Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That horse's name is Pat," Bulldog answered quietly, "and we've been pals
+      so long that when any yapping coyote snaps at him I most naturally kick
+      the brute out of the way. But that's the horse, Buckskin Pat, that my
+      money says can outrun, for a mile-and-a-quarter, the horse you describe as
+      a cow-hocked cow-pony, the same being, I take it, the horse you scooted
+      away on when I palmed you on the mouth this morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas Sam was naturally of a vicious temper, and this allusion caused him
+      to flare up again, as Carney meant it to. But Iron Jaw whirled him around,
+      saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cut out the man end of it&mdash;let's get down to cases. We ain't had a
+      live 'hoss race for so long that I most forget what it looks like. If you
+      two mean business come inside and put up your bets, gentlemen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw abrogated to himself the duty of Master of Ceremonies. First he
+      set his croupier to work counting the gold of Texas Sam and Bulldog
+      Carney. There were an even hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces in the belt
+      Carney had thrown on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're shy on the raise," Iron Jaw remarked, winking at Texas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see his raise," the latter growled. "You've got more'n that of mine
+      in your safe, Iron Jaw, so stack 'em up for me till they're level. I might
+      as well win somethin' worth while&mdash;there won't be no fun in the race.
+      That jack&mdash;that buckskin,"&mdash;he checked himself&mdash;"won't make
+      me go fast enough to know I'm in the saddle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You let me in that and I'll furnish the speed," Snaky Dick could not
+      resist the temptation to clutch at the money he saw slipping away from
+      him. "Make it a three-cornered sweep, Mr. Carney," he pleaded; "I'll
+      ante."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would be some race," Iron Jaw encouraged; "some race, boys. I've seen
+      the little buckskin amble. I don't know nothin' about this Texas person's
+      caravan, but Clatawa, for a sauce bottle that holds both warm and cold
+      blood, ain't so slow&mdash;he ain't so slow, gents."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea caught on; everybody in the saloon rose to the occasion. Yells
+      of, "Make it a sweep! Let Clatawa in! Wake up old Walla Walla with
+      something worth while!" came from many throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog seemed to debate the matter, a smile twitching his drab mustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've said it," Texas cried; "she's wide open. Anybody that's got a pet
+      eagle he thinks can fly faster'n my cow-pony can run, can enter him. There
+      ain't no one barred, and the limit's up where the pines point to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky Dick had edged around the table till he stood close beside Bulldog,
+      where he whispered: "Let me in, Carney; I've been layin' for this
+      flannel-mouth. I don't want to see him get away with Walla Walla money.
+      You save your stake with me, if I'm in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney pushed the little wizzen-face speaker away, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any kind of a talking bird can swing in on a winning if he's got a
+      copper-riveted, cinch bet. But sport, as I understand it, gentlemen,
+      consists in providing excitement, taking on long chances."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Bulldog talkin'," somebody interrupted; and they all cheered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That being acknowledged," Carney resumed, "I feel like stealing candy
+      from a blind kid when I crowd in on this Texas person. A yellow man
+      wouldn't know how to own a real horse; that money on the table is, so to
+      speak, mine now; but as Snaky Dick is panting to make it a real race,
+      purely out of a kindly feeling for Walla Walla sports, I'm going to let
+      him draw cards. Clatawa is welcome."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The drinks is on the house when I hear a wolf howl like that!" Snaggle
+      Tooth yelled. "Crowd up, gentlemen&mdash;the drinks is on the house! Old
+      Walla Walla is goin' to sit up and take notice; Bulldog is some live
+      wire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chairs were thrust back; men crowded the bar; liquors were tossed off.
+      Sheriff Teddy the Leaper, who had come in, felt his arm touched by Carney,
+      and inclining his head to a gentle pull at his coat-sleeve, he heard the
+      latter whisper, "Stake holder for my sake." That was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the crowd swarmed back to the table where the croupier had remained
+      beside the mound of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You give Jim, there, a receipt for a thousand, and he'll pass it out,"
+      Iron Jaw told Texas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim the croupier took from the safe behind him rolls of twenty-dollar gold
+      pieces and stood them up in Texas's pile. He removed a few coins, saying,
+      "The pot is right, gentlemen; two thousand apiece."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold on," Snaky Dick cried; "it ain't called yet&mdash;I draw cards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not till you see the bet and the raise," Carney objected. "Nobody
+      whispers his way into this game; it's for blood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me a cheque book, Snaggle Tooth," Snaky pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Flimsies don't go," Carney objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothin' but the coin weighs in agin me," Texas agreed; "put up the
+      dough-boys or keep out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky was in despair. Here was just the softest spot in all the world, and
+      without the cash he couldn't get in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you cash my cheque?" he asked Iron Jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Baker'll O.K. it I figger you must have the stuff in his bank&mdash;it'll
+      be good enough for me," Iron Jaw replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little parley between Snaky Dick, his associates, and Baker,
+      who was a private banker. The cheque was made out, endorsed, and cashed
+      from the gambling funds, Iron Jaw being a partner of Snaggle Tooth's in
+      this commercial enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the pot was complete, six thousand on the table, Texas said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We've got to have a stakeholder; put the money in Blake's hands&mdash;does
+      that go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky Dick coughed, and hesitated. He had no suspicion that Iron Jaw had
+      any interest with Texas Sam, but knowing the man as he did, he felt sure
+      that before the race was run Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth would be in the
+      game up to the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drawling voice of Carney broke the little hush that followed this
+      request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're from the outside, Texas; you know all about your own horse, and
+      that lets you out. The selecting of a stakeholder, and such, most properly
+      belongs to Walla Walla, that is to say, such of us interested as more or
+      less live here. The Sheriff of Shoshone, who is present, if he'll oblige,
+      is the man that holds my money, and yours, too, unless you want to
+      crawfish. Does that suit you, Snaky?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does," the latter answered cheerfully, for, fully believing that
+      Clatawa was going to show a clean pair of heels to the other horses, he
+      wanted the money where he could get it without gun-play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's settled, then," Carney said blithely, ignoring Texas completely.
+      He turned to Teddy the Leaper: "Will you oblige, Sheriff?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sheriff was agreeable, saying that as soon as they had completed
+      details they would take the money over to Baker's bank and lock it up in
+      the safe, Baker promising to take charge of it, even if it were at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just repeat the conditions of the match," the Sheriff said, and he drew
+      from his pocket a note book and pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney seized the opportunity to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A three-cornered race between the buckskin gelding Pat, the black gelding
+      Horned Toad, and the bay horse Clatawa at one mile and a quarter. The
+      stake, two thousand dollars a corner; winner take all. To be run one week
+      from to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that right, gentlemen?" the Sheriff asked; "all agreed?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Owners up&mdash;this is a gentleman's race," Texas snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Satisfactory?" the Sheriff asked, his eyes on Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter nodded; and Iron Jaw winked at Snaggle Tooth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaky Dick could scarce credit his ears; surely the gods were looking with
+      favor upon his fortunes; the other riders would be giving him many pounds
+      in this self-accepted handicap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Sheriff Teddy's suggestion the gold was carried over to Baker's bank, a
+      stone building almost opposite the Del Monte; the bag containing it was
+      sealed and placed in a big safe, Baker giving the Sheriff a receipt for
+      six thousand dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they went back to the Del Monte for target practise at the bottle,
+      each man implicated buying ammunition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time Carney had taken the buckskin to his stable, going back to
+      the saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaggle Tooth made a short patriotic speech, the burden of which was that
+      the saloon was full of men of eager habit who had not had a chance to sit
+      into the game, and to ameliorate the condition of these mournful mavericks
+      he would sell pools on the race, for the mere honorarium of five per cent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fever was in the men's blood; if he had suggested twenty per cent it would
+      have gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaggle Tooth took up his position behind a faro table and called out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The pool is open, with Clatawa, Horned Toad, and Pat in the box. What am
+      I bid for first choice?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty dollars," a voice cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thirty," another said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fifty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dry rasp that suggested an alkaline throat squeaked: "A hundred. Is this
+      a horse race, or are we dribblin' into the plate at the synagogue?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sold!" Snaggle Tooth yapped, knowing well that excitement begat quick
+      action. "Which cayuse do you favor, plunger?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The range horse, Clatawa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The croupier at Snaggle Tooth's elbow took the bidder's live twenty-dollar
+      gold pieces and passed him a slip with Clatawa's name on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred dollars in the box and second choice for sale," Snaggle Tooth
+      drawled, his prominent fang gleaming in the lamp light as he mouthed the
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty was bid like the quick popping of a
+      machine gun; at seventy-five the bids hung fire, and the auctioneer,
+      thumping the table with his bony fist, snapped, "Sold! Name your jack
+      rabbit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Horned Toad!" came from the bidder of the seventy-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred and seventy-five in the box," Snaggle Tooth droned, "and the
+      buckskin for sale. What about it, you pikers&mdash;what about it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be nothing about it, unless silence was something. The
+      hush seemed to dampen the gambling spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" yelped Snaggle Tooth; "two thousand golden bucks staked on the
+      horse now, and no tinhorn with sand enough in his gizzard to open his
+      trap. This is a race, not a funeral&mdash;who's dead? Bulldog, you laid
+      even money; here's a hundred and seventy-five goin' a-beggin'. Ain't you
+      got a chance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten dollars!" Carney bid as if driven into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten dollars, ten dollars bid for the buckskin; a hundred and seventy-five
+      in the box, and ten dollars bid for the buckskin. Sold!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first pool was followed by others, one after another: the roulette
+      table, the keno game, and faro were in the discard&mdash;their tables were
+      deserted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It soon became evident that Clatawa was a hot favorite; the public's money
+      was all for the Walla Walla champion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noting this, the Horned Toad trio hung back, bidding less. Clatawa was
+      selling for a hundred, Horned Toad about fifty, and the buckskin sometimes
+      knocked down at ten to Carney, or sometimes bid up to twenty by someone
+      tempted by the odds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Carney slipped quietly away, having bought at least twenty pools
+      that stood him between three and four thousand to a matter of two hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning he rode the buckskin out to Molly's cottage and turned him
+      over to Billy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's voice trembled with delight when he was told of what had taken
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gee! now I will get well," he said; "I'll beat the bug out now&mdash;I'll
+      have heart. You see, Mr. Carney, I got set down in California a year ago.
+      It wasn't my fault; I was ridin' for Timberleg Harley, and he give the
+      horse a bucket of water before the race; he didn't want to win&mdash;was
+      lettin' the horse run for Sweeney, layin' for a big price later on. He had
+      an interest in a book, and they took liberties with the horse's odds&mdash;he
+      was favorite. He didn't dare tell me anything about it, the hound. When I
+      found the horse couldn't raise a gallop, hangin' in my hands like a sea
+      lion, I didn't ride him out, thinkin' he'd broke down. They had me up in
+      the Judges' Stand, and sent for the books. It looked bad. Timberleg got
+      off by swearin' I'd pulled the horse to let the other one win; swore that
+      I stood in with the book that overlaid him. I was give the gate, and it
+      just broke my heart. I was weak from wastin' anyway. And you can't beat
+      the bug out if your heart's soft; the bug'll win&mdash;it's a
+      hundred-to-one on him. First thing I'm goin' to give Waster a ball to
+      clean him out, give him a bran mash, too. He must be like a currycomb
+      inside, grass and hay and everything here is full of this damn cactus. A
+      week ain't much to ready up a horse for a race, but he ain't got no fat to
+      work off, and he knows the game. In a week he'll be as spry as a kitten.
+      I'll just play with him. I'll bunk with him, too. If Slimy Red got wise to
+      anything he'd slip him a twig of locoe, or put a sponge up his nose. Do
+      you know what that thief did once, Mr. Carney? He was a moonlighter; he
+      sneaked the favorite for a race that was to be run next day out of his
+      stall at night and galloped him four miles with about a hundred and sixty
+      in the saddle. That settled the favorite; he run his race same's if he was
+      pullin' a hearse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's a good idea, Billy. There's half-a-dozen Slimy Reds in Walla
+      Walla: it's a good idea, only I'll do the sleeping with the buckskin. I'd
+      be lonesome away from him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy objected, but Carney was firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was not only a good rider, but he was a man of much brains. There
+      was little of the art of training that he did not know, for his father had
+      been a trainer before him&mdash;he had been brought up in a stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately the buckskin's working life had left little to be desired in
+      the way of conditioning; it was just that the sinews and muscles might
+      have become case-hardened, more the muscles of endurance than activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But then the race was over a distance, a mile-and-a-quarter, where the
+      endurance of the thoroughbred would tell over Clatawa. Indeed, full of the
+      contempt which a racing man has for a cold-blooded horse, Billy did not
+      consider Clatawa in the race at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That part of it is just found money," he assured Carney. "Clatawa will go
+      off with a burst of speed like those Texas half-milers, and he'll commence
+      to die at the mile; he hasn't a chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to Ding Dong it was simply a question of whether the black had improved
+      and Waster gone back enough, through being thrown out of training, to
+      bring the two together. Anywhere near alike in condition Waster was a
+      fourteen-pound better horse than Ding Dong. It might be that now, his legs
+      sounder than they had ever been when he was racing, Waster might run the
+      best mile-and-a-quarter of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course this might not be possible in a three-quarter sprint, for, at
+      that terrific rate of going, running it from end to end at top speed, a
+      certain nervous or muscular system would be called upon that had
+      practically become atrophied through the more leisure ways of the trail
+      work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man pondered over these many things just as a man of commerce
+      might mentally canvas great markets, conveying his point of view to Carney
+      generally. He would map out the race as they sat together in the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course Snaky Dick will shoot out from the crack of the pistol, and try
+      to open up a gap that'll break our hearts. He won't dare to pull Clatawa
+      in behind; a cold-blooded horse's got the heart of a chicken&mdash;he'd
+      quit. Slimy'll carry Ding Dong along at a rate he knows will leave him
+      enough for a strong run home; but he'll think that he's only got Clatawa
+      to beat and he'll pull out of his pace&mdash;he'll keep within strikin'
+      distance of Clatawa. I'll let them go on. I know 'bout how fast Waster can
+      run that mile-and-a-quarter from end to end. Don't you worry if you see me
+      ten lengths out of it at the mile. Waster won all his races comin' through
+      his horses from behind&mdash;'cause he's game. When Caltawa cracks, and
+      I'm not up, Slimy'll stop ridin' he'll let his horse down thinkin' he's
+      won. You'll see, Mr. Carney. If a quarter-of-a-mile from the finish post
+      I'm within three lengths of Ding Dong and not drivin' him you can take all
+      the money in sight. I'll tell you somethin' else, Mr. Carney; if I'm up
+      with Ding Dong, and Slimy Red thinks I've got him, he'll try a foul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad you mentioned it, little man," Carney remarked drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had received
+      the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short sprinting runs
+      and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days before the race
+      he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under full speed; rated as
+      though he were in a race, the last half a topping gallop. He showed little
+      distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later after he had been cooled
+      out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his trial
+      over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly. Texas Sam and
+      Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and sometimes gave
+      them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the first peep of
+      day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track, so he waited that
+      morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast, thinking all the
+      gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and covered the
+      mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of the
+      town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street. The
+      finish post was opposite the heart of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting
+      jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal
+      laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it,
+      for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like a
+      tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that perhaps
+      Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after they had
+      won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover up in his
+      case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay with his
+      buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules. They hadn't
+      guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against the black, and
+      there he was; names didn't count&mdash;the horse was the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's
+      active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode a
+      punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for a
+      chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race, and
+      would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked to
+      Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to
+      Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden
+      shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking
+      out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty
+      pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon, the
+      border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there was gold in
+      the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good Presbyterians
+      under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and spiritually,
+      Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in death, a plug of
+      lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling row, but the morrow
+      would be soon enough to investigate; to-day was <i>the</i> day&mdash;the
+      day of the race; minor business was suspended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire
+      for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but prowled
+      in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was a
+      weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came from
+      a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant fool; nobody
+      had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant backing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's
+      well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused,
+      could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but what
+      was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand? And yet
+      when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the buckskin, a
+      man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself, looking like a
+      placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the Columbia, would say,
+      diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would make good&mdash;one yellow
+      eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet seriousness of this man
+      who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he pointed
+      to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed against
+      some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the fatty
+      laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your safe
+      won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas brayin' ass
+      have no more booze."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now
+      because of Carney&mdash;sober he'd quit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carney won't turn a hair when we win."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a funnel&mdash;he's
+      hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the finish for fear
+      Bulldog'll grab him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Snaggle, that coyote&mdash;hell! I know the breed of them
+      outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin' in
+      front&mdash;he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others
+      when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand to
+      kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff
+      wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the horse
+      that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by the
+      throat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic
+      town of Walla Walla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one confident
+      that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked work, he
+      could win.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed
+      judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was
+      to fire the starting gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs
+      had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless of
+      turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his joints,
+      though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out unrooted earth
+      and bow a tendon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would be
+      settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed that
+      first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even Lieutenant
+      Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief Joseph, sat
+      his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every inch a king
+      in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture was Homeric,
+      grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of gold worshipers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting, vociferating
+      throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man, called:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course where
+      the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black points,
+      and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead, ran down
+      his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side, and a
+      blanket covered his form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose blanket
+      showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with the
+      unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare. Beside
+      him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and
+      beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the
+      holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had
+      shown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the
+      flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far down
+      the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if wondering
+      where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it was a race&mdash;that
+      he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The tight cinching of
+      the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his shins, the sponging out
+      of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he had had&mdash;all these
+      touches had brought back to his memory the game his rich warm,
+      thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the thrill of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings called,
+      watch in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide,
+      padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet.
+      And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a
+      pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown,
+      monkeylike form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins ran
+      through the steel rings of a martingale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this
+      get-up for a supposed cow-pony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a slim
+      lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting racing
+      breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as if, by
+      necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds of flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now the
+      buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back a tiny
+      matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the little
+      figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to the
+      saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt?
+      Get down!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him
+      out of the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown up
+      in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his wind-pipe
+      from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an oath of
+      raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a gun, and
+      heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now
+      stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side, their
+      hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him, turned
+      on them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin
+      pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and
+      said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into
+      the face of Snaggle Tooth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call
+      to chuck&mdash;don't forget."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This match was for owners up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He beckoned forward the stakeholder:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't that so, Sheriff&mdash;owners up?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain,
+      Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot&mdash;and that monkey up?" And
+      Iron Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on
+      Waster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out
+      like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use any
+      foul words when you speak to me&mdash;we're not good enough pals for that;
+      if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat.
+      Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the
+      owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named
+      Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has
+      been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the
+      horse's tail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney,
+      knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr.
+      Carney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir&mdash;let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a
+      technicality, but on a horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," Carney answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing
+      the sheriff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open,
+      and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its
+      date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and
+      Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before
+      the match was made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it in
+      the sheriff's hands&mdash;why didn't the boy keep it&mdash;it was his?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney
+      answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they
+      would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game. And
+      there was another reason."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the Judge.
+      It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his money, if
+      the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy MacKay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little
+      smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly
+      Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice as
+      he said, quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This
+      paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to
+      the post."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla, and
+      the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they grasped the
+      idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own game; that the
+      intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides, now they could see
+      that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had started more than one
+      whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the Clatawa people believing
+      in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted that perhaps there was a
+      job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa and one of them go on and
+      win; though few would admit that Carney would be party to cold-decking the
+      public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race to
+      the finish, and the stakes represented real money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider of
+      Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish waiting
+      for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never ride
+      again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered
+      abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat in a
+      choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth snapping
+      from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating his
+      excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that springy
+      lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding. Indians
+      and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the course, on
+      their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight. Old Walla Walla
+      had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was on in all its
+      glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course; they
+      criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were being placed
+      by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble; sometimes he
+      reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought for his head.
+      But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that distance,
+      as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an equine
+      statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had taken
+      long odds about him felt a depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas, was
+      keeping him on his toes&mdash;not letting him chill out; but, like the
+      buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were
+      old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the
+      antics of Clatawa&mdash;the starter was the whole works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came
+      back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line, and
+      the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter, finger on
+      trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his finger gripped
+      spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of smoke, and a
+      white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They'll never catch him!&mdash;never catch him! He'll win off by
+      himself!" was droned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them,
+      galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone,
+      as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the boy,
+      his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either side of
+      the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying, "Ste-a-dy
+      boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous sing-song
+      through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the handicap of a
+      strong wind that was blowing down the track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out
+      in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the old
+      Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful stride
+      that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his horse.
+      "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come back!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and
+      trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own
+      knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under
+      2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he had
+      cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it up,
+      close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more
+      flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild
+      horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for a
+      little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let
+      Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the
+      white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high deer-like
+      lope that was impressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They could
+      see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and Horned Toad
+      was between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had
+      forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a
+      hundred against him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take it," Carney declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're on," came from Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it
+      seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the
+      latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion lying
+      along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were up.
+      Surely a quirt had switched the air once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, the Toad was creeping up&mdash;his rider was making his run; they
+      could see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he lost
+      his whip&mdash;had he given up all idea of winning?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa
+      was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back was
+      playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse
+      instead of helping him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered
+      tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now
+      somebody cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him&mdash;lo-ook at him, men!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened their
+      vision, and their owners gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced
+      by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths? It was
+      two&mdash;it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the black's
+      quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now their heads
+      rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled for the lead:
+      Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the flanks of his
+      horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him home a winner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race
+      won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out of
+      stride; no flash of the whip to startle him&mdash;to break his heart; the
+      brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of
+      brains, was wise enough to sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin
+      drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave,
+      stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding in
+      front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping straight
+      as an arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin wins&mdash;the
+      buckskin wins!" became a clamor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse, from
+      some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the buckskin;
+      they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!" rose; it was
+      an angry roar like caged animals at war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The
+      buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled;
+      his head shot down&mdash;almost to his knees he went: then he was
+      galloping again, the two horses locked together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front. Their
+      speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped, and the boy
+      pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still tangled in the
+      martingale of Horned Toad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men closed in frantically. A man&mdash;it was Oregon&mdash;twisted
+      Carney's gun skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to battle
+      back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and
+      Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring
+      devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings packed
+      in a barrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!" and
+      a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of a
+      guarding circle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad,
+      trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then a
+      woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Back, you cowards&mdash;you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room&mdash;give
+      him air!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a
+      battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't lift him&mdash;he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put
+      his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back&mdash;give him air!"
+      she commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her
+      shoulders a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated
+      with red froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and
+      Molly, sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't
+      speak," she admonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the
+      ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough the
+      red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the
+      circle about the lad and Molly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judge's voice was heard saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong condemnation
+      in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have disqualified
+      him: it was a deliberate foul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the
+      barracks for protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy will
+      be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips
+      touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot
+      tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of
+      cupidity and guile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV.&mdash;THE GOLD WOLF
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll day long
+      Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the odd imprint of
+      that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle, riding a trail that
+      winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs monotonously similar,
+      the hush of the everlasting hills holding in subjection man's soul, the
+      towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting up towards God's dome
+      pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces a comatose condition of
+      mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little beyond the recognition of
+      trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird, the sudden roar of a
+      cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the harp of a giant pine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history of
+      the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the hoof's
+      imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails denting
+      the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the miner's boot
+      seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by a strange
+      perversity, haunted Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills,
+      leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small fortune
+      in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for the town of
+      Bucking Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the ford
+      of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave yawned
+      in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had melted into
+      its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might have been a
+      bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the Valley of the
+      Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort of fear left the
+      trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge
+      dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from
+      strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black
+      bristles on his back erect in challenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in
+      daylight was unusual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the
+      saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's
+      feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes
+      just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the
+      movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the
+      usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The sudden
+      apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest, either in
+      man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a wolf meant
+      little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered
+      feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion catching
+      vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far west, a flaming
+      sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the twisted valley a
+      chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons; the giant ferns
+      hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with the death dew. A
+      reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad berries that gleamed
+      like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling, frothing stream that
+      still held the green tint of its glacier birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail
+      almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now back to
+      the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the bright and
+      happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed and bantered
+      with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West; the
+      ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had won,
+      or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard&mdash;where the dice
+      might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the thrower
+      take a fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow
+      environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the
+      mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung his
+      heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes one ear
+      was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond, the now
+      glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur, the other ear
+      held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his
+      saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the back
+      trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest had
+      developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his trail,
+      man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of tumbling
+      forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms; bushes
+      that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would
+      go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty
+      feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall; and,
+      when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of relief,
+      clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder&mdash;by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand,
+      slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin;
+      "something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of the
+      horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his chin,
+      thinking&mdash;thinking aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are tracks, Patsy boy&mdash;moccasins; but we've lost our
+      gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy&mdash;gone over the
+      cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down. By
+      gad! two of them!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering;
+      cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off. The
+      inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that
+      carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the
+      buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the
+      snaffle against his bridle teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're
+      quite right, pal&mdash;it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of
+      old grannies imagining things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a compelling
+      inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge to camp for
+      the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the
+      trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a wolf;
+      and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the
+      dog-wolf's mate&mdash;a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by
+      with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his
+      challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling
+      yelp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again
+      muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl&mdash;it's
+      different."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering was
+      soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of
+      velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning,
+      pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they push
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good
+      dope for a sleep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped in
+      an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in
+      reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs
+      with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round
+      had waited for his partner to dismount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at all
+      the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He did
+      not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich he
+      spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a
+      curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away
+      from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer,
+      heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when deep
+      sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to
+      consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him
+      to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border
+      of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the
+      crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting of
+      his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching the
+      moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that there
+      was something&mdash;not close, but hovering there beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of
+      discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a
+      spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning
+      devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with his
+      delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the compass;
+      but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there, watching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had
+      yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that
+      was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky told
+      that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond the
+      Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the plains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his
+      broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little
+      fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he
+      considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to the
+      left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the trail
+      running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping the
+      Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now Carney
+      saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a morbid
+      disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had happened to
+      that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the weird fancies of
+      the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the trail was earthed,
+      holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked ahead of the
+      buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was imprinted a
+      moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but they were not
+      the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that a man had
+      dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not an inturned
+      left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly broken. His
+      stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step of a pack
+      pony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried to
+      shake it off&mdash;it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a
+      prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for
+      gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same cayuse
+      tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had travelled
+      both up and down the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the
+      mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay. And
+      there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the Bucking
+      Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned, for the hoof
+      prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in a
+      troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation of the
+      West&mdash;those mounted men had ridden after somebody&mdash;had trailed
+      somebody who was wanted quick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally the
+      goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the
+      cliff, the hovering oppression of the night&mdash;everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes humming
+      an Irish ballad of Mangin's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse
+      was in a ferment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters
+      of unrest seethed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's
+      brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through
+      the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were
+      afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of
+      opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth Long,
+      were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for
+      stringing him up <i>tout de suite</i>. The times were propitious for this
+      entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at Fort
+      Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping of the
+      mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is
+      what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand on
+      his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains, and
+      my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a pretty
+      poor sport."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one
+      the best of it&mdash;first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when
+      he starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,
+      isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure
+      themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and
+      they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a quiet
+      thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was wording
+      a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could have stood
+      up against that plank bar and declared himself without being called quick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've
+      got to say," Kootenay growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the
+      trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being
+      fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles behind
+      the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the
+      dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt hot
+      tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog that she
+      loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for help. He had
+      just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had been hurled at
+      him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry&mdash;Harry the waster, the
+      no-good, the gambler&mdash;had been found to be the man who had murdered
+      returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they were going to
+      string him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her
+      side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had
+      brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed her
+      way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded and begged
+      for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely hopeless it
+      had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the
+      magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable.
+      Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played the
+      card of reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the two or three gun men&mdash;Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and
+      Denver Ike&mdash;Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun;
+      he could deal with those three toughs if necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they had
+      drunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the
+      narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had
+      mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would
+      have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place
+      later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse&mdash;nobody had seen him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the
+      bodies had been devoured by wolves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And wolves don't eat gold&mdash;not what you'd notice, as a steady
+      chuck," Kootenay Jim yelped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly,
+      "That's your food, Jim."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just what the words convey&mdash;you sort them out, Kootenay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game,
+      Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin' in their
+      winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou Dave&mdash;here
+      he is sittin' right here&mdash;he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot Johnson&mdash;that
+      is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice,
+      "and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big clean-up
+      of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse till I
+      creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good many
+      years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave finds
+      his mate at the foot of a cliff."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun,
+      thinking something was going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog,"
+      Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks of
+      'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me&mdash;I guess I was
+      gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em
+      tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many
+      years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit of
+      fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage like, as
+      if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind staggers, or
+      somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up thinkin' it out,
+      'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited any, Fourteen-foot'd
+      pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see some wolf tracks&mdash;dang
+      near as big as a steer's they was&mdash;and I figger Fourteen-foot's had a
+      set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and lammed hell's delight out
+      of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm follerin' the cayuse's trail
+      agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all at onct it jumps me that the
+      big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger Johnson's got mussed up a bit
+      with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's the dang wolf tracks agen. And
+      some moccasin feet has been passin' along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts
+      out just same's if he'd spread his wings and gone up in the air&mdash;they
+      just ain't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff," Miner
+      Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously at a
+      black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's
+      Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that if
+      two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and
+      show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out
+      just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide&mdash;'tain't natural. I tell you,
+      boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me&mdash;that's what he is, when I goes
+      back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight
+      for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his back
+      what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no sign of
+      the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse tracks
+      most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for Kootenay.
+      And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks it's
+      Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog,"
+      Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted,
+      cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse, with
+      lots of gold."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and you
+      got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in your pocket.
+      You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the circumstantial
+      evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores might
+      get you in wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's got
+      to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear his
+      story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair warning,
+      boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm going to
+      denounce you; not one of you will get away&mdash;<i>not one!</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but
+      swing he will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police barracks.
+      He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what might be
+      called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had bought the
+      cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He refused to
+      say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had killed nobody,
+      had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing about the murder..
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was
+      innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned, a
+      minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him from
+      being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men&mdash;there was no
+      doubt whatever about that in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking
+      you've got the right man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's what we figgered," Graham declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure don't
+      want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that you
+      caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's cayuse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Caribou says it is," Graham answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured
+      viciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that
+      poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm
+      going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion had
+      gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that,
+      convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would
+      check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing even
+      Carney to their side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the stable
+      yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request, led up and
+      down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay at every
+      step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He studied them
+      intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for that goblined
+      hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like imprints, that,
+      though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way of a cayuse, neither
+      was like the curious goblined track that had so fastened on his fancy out
+      in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen
+      on the newer trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is Johnson's
+      pack horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity. "When
+      I see my boots I don't <i>think</i> they're mine, I just most natur'ly
+      figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see
+      him in a wild herd."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that
+      Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over.
+      Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There isn't
+      more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good many
+      thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the same
+      color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar as so
+      many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new moon,
+      or a flapjack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same
+      place it's restin' now&mdash;it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's
+      brand, how can he swear to the beast?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was his
+      hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay cackled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Johnson wouldn't say so&mdash;he'd know better. His cayuse had a club
+      foot, an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles
+      back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track, and
+      sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did
+      you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse&mdash;what his travellers was
+      like?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never looked at his feet&mdash;there wasn't no reason to; I was
+      minin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you got
+      any of Johnson's belongings&mdash;a coat?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the
+      wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store
+      clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw, and
+      from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass, saying, as
+      he examined the coat:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that
+      cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's
+      generally a difference in the hair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in
+      the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many
+      different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed through
+      the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing in the
+      yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let it run like
+      a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse considerable
+      attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat warp, and on this
+      cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had not
+      been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not
+      Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence
+      to connect Harry Holt with the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that
+      Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a
+      technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas
+      Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the trail
+      and see what Bulldog seen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and go
+      back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Carney objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of
+      derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand in
+      the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to gain
+      time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're bein'
+      buffaloed&mdash;we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered man's
+      hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some hawse
+      hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks back on
+      the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we was a
+      damn lot of tender-feet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none whatever
+      upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because I'm
+      going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for if he
+      does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm trailing.
+      But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever devil, and will
+      make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that you hold Holt till
+      I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse with a club foot, for
+      there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the wolves got him too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim and
+      his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering together
+      as they drank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We're bein' flim-flammed&mdash;played for a lot of kids. There ain't been
+      a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has
+      been murdered on the trail, and who done it&mdash;somebody. Caribou's mate
+      was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here, was
+      bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits. And 'cause
+      his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card trick with
+      hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother
+      wouldn't tell you where he got the gold&mdash;he'd let you hang him first;
+      but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get
+      out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds,
+      Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you down
+      for insulting me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates and
+      you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and Kootenay
+      whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his gun
+      clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt,
+      incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's hand
+      was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their backs to
+      the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five seconds.
+      Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a trigger&mdash;no
+      one spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Carney who broke the silence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the doctor&mdash;I
+      guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension
+      slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left, followed
+      Jeanette out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men, his
+      wrists bound behind his back, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's
+      safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to kill
+      Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the gold
+      come from."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed
+      any gold&mdash;what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold
+      from your safe?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't looked&mdash;I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron
+      box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I
+      wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I guess
+      she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette didn't
+      know I was going to take it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a
+      frame-up?" Graham asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in
+      wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man,
+      and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find on
+      Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out
+      with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he would
+      have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off a
+      passing train and lynched him; it would have been a <i>quid pro quo.</i>
+      He felt that he was being cheated by the superior cleverness of Bulldog
+      Carney. He had seen miners beaten out of their just gold claims by
+      professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the microscopic evidence of the
+      hairs, the intoed hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was honest in
+      his conviction that the cayuse was Johnson's, and feared that the man who
+      had killed his friend would slip through their fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's just like this, boys," he said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together
+      so long that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was comin' back a day
+      afore he hit camp&mdash;I'd feel it, same's I turned back on the trail
+      there and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There wasn't no reason to
+      look over that cliff only ol' Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's
+      a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there murdered him when he wasn't
+      lookin'. And if you chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish I'll
+      get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he won't never get away. If you
+      boys is just a pack of coyotes that howls good and plenty till somebody
+      calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away with your tails between your legs
+      for fear you'll be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn this murderer
+      loose right now&mdash;you don't need to worry what'll happen to him. I'll
+      be too danged lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's comin' to
+      me. Turn him loose&mdash;take the hobbles off him. You fellers go home and
+      pull your blankets over your heads so's you won't see no ghosts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's sharp gray eyes watched the old fanatic's every move; he let him
+      talk till he had exhausted himself with his passionate words; then he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Caribou, you're some man. You'd go through a whole tribe of Indians for a
+      chum. You believe you're right, and that's just what I'm trying to do in
+      this, find out who is right&mdash;we don't want to wrong anybody. You can
+      come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you the club-footed tracks;
+      I'll let you help me get the right man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old chap turned his humpy shoulders, and looked at Carney out of
+      bleary, weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he shrilled:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you had
+      a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the rings on
+      a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack rabbit
+      ain't goin' to get away&mdash;and he ain't; you can bet your soul on that,
+      Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that Wie-sah-ke-chack, the
+      Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream, club-footed tracks, and when we
+      come back the man that killed my chum, old Fourteen-foot, would be down
+      somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd get him off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from
+      that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days of
+      respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any information
+      to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the
+      shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he had
+      brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on
+      Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got
+      pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a man
+      does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and a
+      gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as well
+      as by the fall of a card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be
+      foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark
+      without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's
+      life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning, when
+      it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to the
+      stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way to the
+      tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left the horse
+      and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about for a time,
+      generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that he was camped
+      for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom he had confided,
+      knew different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth,
+      unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the
+      other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the
+      foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Bulldog?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a sling
+      because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much about
+      women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You
+      clamber up the stairs quick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would stand
+      for Harry yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a
+      mob of angry men, because he's <i>my</i> brother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You called the turn, Jeanette."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And all I can do, all I can say is, <i>thank you</i>. Is that all?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's all, girl. It's more than enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an
+      earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending&mdash;then
+      you'll hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start
+      backing the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll
+      bring in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave&mdash;I'll
+      get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if
+      Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone
+      watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift,
+      lighted candle in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a
+      back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs of
+      light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch of his
+      heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten
+      robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie
+      down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself in
+      his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin&mdash;they were like two
+      men in a huge bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and eating
+      a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that the
+      murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge his
+      stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning miners was
+      still there he felt certain that he would get him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men
+      were known to have been murdered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime of that
+      sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite&mdash;careless, possessed
+      of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all desperadoes that
+      way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves, it generally had
+      been so easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer;
+      indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the
+      ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was any
+      suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a posse
+      would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would have
+      ample knowledge of their approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in this
+      killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like a
+      gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold,
+      probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more
+      than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once
+      started, the devilish murder lust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality,
+      and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be
+      watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had met
+      him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day and ridden
+      on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the murderer would
+      let him pass without action. It was only returning miners he was
+      interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were still
+      there he would get him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where the
+      murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood of the
+      cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been found, and go
+      forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered the ground. He felt
+      that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere between that point and
+      the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was the home of this trail
+      devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of the
+      wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog&mdash;that is, a creature that was
+      half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train
+      dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's mind
+      that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild pair;
+      they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour his
+      victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not
+      impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull down
+      a white man quick enough if he were helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the man was the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the west
+      when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, and,
+      fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of the
+      spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck
+      said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy&mdash;stand steady."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound the
+      rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a
+      dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect
+      himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless
+      he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a
+      boxer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the imprint
+      of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had. There were
+      the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to
+      where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps the
+      evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth, and
+      then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If the
+      murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show himself
+      at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might have been
+      on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the cave for
+      water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do Carney had
+      not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes of finding out
+      something that was conclusive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly be
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and
+      eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood
+      at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a little
+      turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake of leaves
+      and brush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron, and
+      the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing force
+      that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring noises in
+      his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was
+      smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to
+      splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in
+      the legs of his strong riding boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening
+      stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave
+      hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting to
+      the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he
+      could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could
+      crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was
+      fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a
+      man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of
+      loose log.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole
+      vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed
+      before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be
+      killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might
+      protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even
+      could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with a
+      pretense of helping him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered,
+      Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm
+      projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that the
+      offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that he
+      would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting.
+      Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered; "you
+      can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be torn to
+      pieces by the wolves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he said:
+      "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I ain't
+      invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've been
+      a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good 'nough
+      friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a gun on you.
+      You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain things, I'll
+      spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess you'll keep your
+      word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as
+      absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me out,
+      and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean you won't give up the gun?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em
+      knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off there
+      in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake up. You
+      think it over, Bulldog, I'm&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance
+      down the valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down.
+      "They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their meat.
+      You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your buckskin;
+      he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when I come back what
+      you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry&mdash;they're hungry; and I
+      guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling
+      through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he
+      travelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would
+      tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have
+      raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of
+      being a loser, whether man or horse won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head go
+      up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see,
+      beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree to
+      tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his
+      gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark he
+      would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be a
+      chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second
+      purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that
+      there was a battle on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly
+      approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was
+      shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the
+      bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist an
+      ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in a
+      hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward the
+      buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that meant&mdash;a
+      little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head, or seize
+      him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump to the
+      man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as a warning
+      to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a
+      sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance, he
+      sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels by the
+      narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet missed, and
+      Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right hand,
+      and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the loop swishing
+      through the air, and at the first cast it went over the buckskin's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that
+      always brought the buckskin to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at the
+      well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through Jack's
+      sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The
+      buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal
+      at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as though
+      he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body struck
+      rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a cork, for
+      the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a
+      slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as
+      the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing
+      forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long arm,
+      to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against his
+      master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all right&mdash;don't
+      worry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead,
+      answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat&mdash;i'm glad you're
+      here. It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled
+      the horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant
+      nerves to Carney's brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows that
+      had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he could build
+      a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the darkness they
+      would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a target when the
+      light fell on their snarling faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of dead
+      branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold the leaves.
+      There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver parchment-like
+      bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from about his limbs,
+      then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly to his free knee and
+      built a little mound of sticks and bark against the birch log. Then he put
+      his hand in a pocket for matches&mdash;every pocket; he had not one match;
+      they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the trail. He looked
+      longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree; Jack would have
+      matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the means to a fire. But
+      matches in New York were about as accessible as any that might be in the
+      dead man's pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically impossible,
+      and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant. As if Fate
+      resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped man's mind a
+      magical inspiration&mdash;a vital grievance. His mind, acute because of
+      his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his cognizance, for
+      a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he could heat the
+      steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring were thin, depending
+      upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for strength. If he could
+      heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper would leave it as a spirit
+      forsakes a body, and the spring would bend like cardboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the
+      body. "But you've got them&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he
+      unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he
+      could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the thrower's
+      legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney&mdash;it was some test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out I'll
+      get him yet, Patsy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off the
+      head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form and
+      earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face that
+      carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching
+      slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the
+      man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from his
+      hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim form
+      of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving him the
+      grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope and dropped
+      his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the man&mdash;he was
+      gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic twist of the
+      rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin, and gently,
+      vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold. Then, hand over
+      hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without ceremony, searched
+      it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin in a pocket of Jack's
+      shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had been torn from its belt
+      during the owner's rough voyage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the
+      clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on
+      us; they can't beat us, old pard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs, one
+      pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his
+      wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat as
+      it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with the
+      fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the black
+      moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating jaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically
+      forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection of a
+      spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes watching
+      him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the birch log.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a terrible
+      struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which seemed to bite
+      into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting Jack's battle; and
+      Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise, that his legs had been
+      made almost useless in that drag by the horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting his
+      fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost shattering the
+      bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp of the belt, and
+      Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log,
+      with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't need you&mdash;I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be
+      under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you
+      now&mdash;my leg is on fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in his
+      hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop
+      about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the
+      twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down from
+      the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and soon it
+      was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the trap, he
+      placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip of steel
+      went down like paper. He was free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as
+      if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released
+      veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged
+      the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves hovered
+      beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle
+      rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line
+      from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take your choice&mdash;get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you
+      for the wolves," Carney snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his
+      feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket
+      line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through you&mdash;this
+      sore leg's got me peeved."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags of
+      gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also
+      foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he
+      had not expected to find&mdash;the cayuse that had belonged to
+      Fourteen-foot Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack
+      out his wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through the
+      night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted, he
+      started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot
+      Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's belly.
+      Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the
+      enterprising man of the bear trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V.&mdash;SEVEN BLUE DOVES
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey had not been
+      playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney felt there was
+      something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was overtired&mdash;that
+      he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had seen in a month,
+      for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse, the little, old,
+      worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on the Canadian side of
+      the border.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not habitual
+      with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a risk, a high
+      stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve&mdash;gave him a
+      concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But to-night there
+      was a scent of evil in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high
+      stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But Sergeant
+      Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such times the key
+      of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel, the Gold Nugget.
+      And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the police shack
+      rather than in a room of the hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling that
+      everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction that some
+      one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was in his hand;
+      that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new sensation to
+      Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it. His steel-gray
+      eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the green on a forest
+      tree. And as to the science of the game, with its substructure of nerve,
+      he possessed it <i>in excelsis</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched hand
+      after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from the top;
+      that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without catch or
+      trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started with. He
+      had not lost anything to speak of&mdash;and here was the hitch, the enigma
+      of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been deliberately
+      laid down when he had raised; another time he had been called when a raise
+      would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice he had been raised
+      out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been done simply to keep
+      him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger had lost heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a card
+      was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs; his mind,
+      so to speak, was all thumbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity delicately
+      balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous quality of spring
+      steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath the large dome of
+      his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He was hard to place.
+      He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage. He was somewhat of a
+      promoter&mdash;of restless activity. He was in Bucking Horse on some sort
+      of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If he had been a gambler
+      Carney would have considered him the author of the unrest that hung so
+      evilly over the game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget
+      Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of
+      compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in mine
+      shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made on the
+      "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird, for its
+      stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not
+      confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of a
+      hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were
+      querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught Carney's
+      eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair of gloves. The
+      fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The gloves were the
+      disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers who wore kid coverings
+      on their hands habitually to preserve the sensitiveness of their finger
+      tips. He also had known gamblers who, ostensibly, had a reputable
+      occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to
+      eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult to
+      allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed&mdash;too well dressed for
+      unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the
+      fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank
+      somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was
+      almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody
+      and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.
+      Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold mine
+      up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him. That was
+      what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with Tacoma, and
+      if it were as represented, make the first payment when they returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy
+      grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste
+      boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals, Carney
+      was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth face, the
+      boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he changed, muttering
+      inwardly, "Too much class."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for
+      finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all; the
+      drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had laboriously
+      built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's the use? If
+      there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them over
+      the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there was no
+      mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of the
+      cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple: seven
+      blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross hatched
+      and sprayed with leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves' wings
+      were all alike&mdash;almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an
+      artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth part
+      of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right wing of
+      the second dove to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to memorize
+      the whole system, but it was there&mdash;which was the main thing. And the
+      next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew the system.
+      Who was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for that, and
+      Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a super-crook,
+      hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable of this
+      interesting chicanery&mdash;but he had lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent
+      conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser. The
+      man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had played a
+      forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth would have
+      been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney, for Shipley
+      had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck, or knew
+      something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite that
+      he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting of
+      trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the West
+      there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to accuse men
+      of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even cowards drew and
+      shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and dropped
+      it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his cards, ran them
+      together on the very edge of the table, dropped one into the handkerchief,
+      placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the discard, and said, "I'm
+      out!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in his
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy&mdash;a card
+      was missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves' wings
+      he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had realized that
+      it would have led to other things. Now the query had answered itself&mdash;they
+      were Seth's, evidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired&mdash;I've had a long ride
+      to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up,
+      yawning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man.
+      To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game&mdash;don't know what's
+      the matter with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right
+      now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn
+      another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me.
+      I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time
+      there's been hell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly gave
+      place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to quit.
+      The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't
+      like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now, or
+      I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from
+      Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a game
+      of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd better
+      just put the game off till to-morrow night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if he
+      wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start fresh.
+      Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle now;
+      besides I want another sensation&mdash;this bottle's dry," Hadley advised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as he
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a bottle
+      of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the
+      accounts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hadley was twelve hundred loser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth,
+      and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips,
+      "Here, banker, put that back in your pocket&mdash;you're responsible.
+      There's forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll
+      probably forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred dollars,
+      saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been pallbearer at a
+      funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any game bigger than
+      checkers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards&mdash;the blue-doved cards
+      and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently
+      whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves. The
+      red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and Carney
+      washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving himself
+      from further interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having found
+      it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked, "Now, who's
+      in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness;
+      "then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred on
+      the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot." Curiously
+      this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but inflamed Seth. He
+      turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you
+      sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to
+      cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to his
+      lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a little
+      pile in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other
+      direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a
+      most depressed mood; he admitted this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I knew
+      you felt it&mdash;that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on the
+      night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some claims,
+      but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess I've got
+      the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when I hear the
+      click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while, generally, it's
+      not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm trying to put
+      something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind of close to the
+      wind, financially. That two hundred may&mdash;hell! don't think me a
+      squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged into
+      the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding with
+      Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the dining-room
+      to a seat at a little table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's Seth?" she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Over at the police shack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poker?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Hadley there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre&mdash;if
+      he has any&mdash;is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her
+      dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you
+      playing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not for
+      ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was over&mdash;why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tired."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth
+      cheating?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or three
+      days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought Seth
+      those cards?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have
+      played together once or twice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell you
+      absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess. There was
+      a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This Shipley acted
+      very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He and Seth had
+      some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too gratuitous to
+      be genuine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win Hadley's
+      money&mdash;he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got to
+      give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in my
+      pocket, and that will be enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But if he divides with Shipley?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the
+      conspiracy will be proven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back,
+      there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added,
+      patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that
+      stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him&mdash;the moral aspect, I
+      mean; but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil
+      in a man&mdash;petty larceny, sneak thieving&mdash;that pours sand into a
+      woman's soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd
+      be quite satisfied&mdash;quite."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven&mdash;and you are the other
+      six, Jeanette."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that had
+      to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after he had
+      turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul full of
+      the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or drink
+      with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death of
+      someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if that man
+      were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had confidence in
+      him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of knowing how
+      completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed when they were
+      forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains. That would be a
+      matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of how he would return
+      the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked pack, was not yet
+      solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like counting sheep, led
+      Carney off into the halls of slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him
+      sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with
+      known remembrances of the noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow had
+      flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the police
+      shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot and
+      someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him to
+      precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his
+      waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over
+      the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced
+      the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's wrong, Jeanette&mdash;was it a shot?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes! I've looked into Seth's room&mdash;he's not there!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there
+      was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:
+      "Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed a
+      finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he tapped
+      on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back to Jeanette
+      whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all right&mdash;they're
+      still playing. I'll go over to the shack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt
+      so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened&mdash;I
+      know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and
+      manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a slab
+      of bacon, <i>à la</i> fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window of
+      the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they were not
+      playing at the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he
+      knew was a dead man&mdash;Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor
+      where he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood,
+      just over the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table from
+      where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The red-backed
+      cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered into a pack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing the
+      interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress,
+      unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his
+      outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges
+      from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been
+      held close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning top,
+      queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged Seth's gun
+      to make it appear suicide?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder
+      governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the coat
+      where Seth had put the discarded pack&mdash;it was gone. He felt the other
+      pocket&mdash;the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table and
+      all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket of the
+      coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money&mdash;there was
+      no wallet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his
+      eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a
+      stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the night
+      in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin light,
+      or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face to appear
+      grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or imbecile-tinged
+      by horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing to
+      the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back into his
+      belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with
+      intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his
+      wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared
+      figure on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I went for a walk," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why&mdash;when?" Carney snapped imperiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to Cranford's
+      house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why to Cranford's house?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp
+      cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now
+      fierce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,"&mdash;Shipley coughed&mdash;"I didn't like the looks of the game
+      to-night; that ace being shy&mdash;&mdash; Didn't you feel there was
+      something not on the level?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been in
+      the gray eyes was in the voice now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd
+      lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did Cranford say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I&mdash;I
+      thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you didn't see either of them again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten
+      minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley&mdash;have
+      you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up Hadley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the lock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar
+      and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he gave
+      a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled in one
+      of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley&mdash;sound asleep, or
+      pretending to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet
+      blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he
+      mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep&mdash;where's Seth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness of
+      his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy&mdash;had a
+      little too much of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you leave Seth&mdash;how long ago?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy up for
+      fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning&mdash;throw out the empty
+      bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I came
+      on to go to bed and&mdash;&mdash;" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his
+      memory of his progress was still befogged&mdash;"when I got here I
+      remembered that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's
+      to be sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap the
+      whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter
+      between two men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with
+      startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered&mdash;do you know
+      that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What&mdash;what&mdash;what're you saying?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping
+      fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth&mdash;murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners
+      pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that;
+      I'm a tenderfoot, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has been
+      shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want from
+      you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong man&mdash;do
+      you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man with a
+      hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police
+      shack, and I don't know anything more about him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through
+      the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where he
+      said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know&mdash;I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he
+      pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and I
+      want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to
+      hide anything&mdash;I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came back to the room with the girl and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes,
+      gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room&mdash;it will be
+      better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the hotel
+      Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make certain,
+      through medical examination, that Seth was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies in
+      canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the apparent
+      consistencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be
+      considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed with
+      suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared of guilt.
+      So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a claim as any
+      of them to the title of assassin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action.
+      I'd advise you gentlemen to remain <i>in statu quo</i>, if I might use the
+      term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll
+      agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a
+      large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and as
+      each one of you will be more or less under suspicion&mdash;I'm speaking
+      now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual, the
+      law, will do&mdash;it would be as well for each of you to submit to a
+      search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's
+      expedient."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley
+      with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no
+      trace of the wallet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they
+      found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered in
+      Shipley's hip pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown
+      ominously&mdash;there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on
+      Shipley's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty chamber,
+      so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't explode."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an
+      indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned for
+      a long time, or a recent discharge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating, apologetic
+      way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it out: "Mr.
+      Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing over the dead man
+      with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will certainly be brought up
+      at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice to himself, should let the
+      Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has not lately been discharged."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this. But
+      the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should&mdash;I
+      clean forgot it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six
+      lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost
+      its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward the
+      light, looked through the barrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice; "I'm
+      glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the
+      cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night&mdash;we'll only
+      obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the
+      morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet, if
+      I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our
+      ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they
+      heard the shot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a drunken
+      miner, or an Indian playing brave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out of
+      the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the Scotchman's
+      herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was being done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he puffed
+      vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the platoon
+      of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and
+      passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding,
+      "Would you mind joining?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law&mdash;a wee bit of it is
+      very fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid red
+      handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and
+      to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now, <i>ad interim</i>
+      (the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you,
+      Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil.
+      And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette&mdash;perhaps
+      it's just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog,
+      has it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man
+      that killed Seth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could
+      see that the latter was in deadly earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's
+      because I know you devilish well&mdash;you're too big for such
+      small-brained acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the
+      way of a brick mason&mdash;facts are the bricks that make the structure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth,
+      who was more or less a friend?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over strained
+      friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't you remember what
+      that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when Jeanette's brother was
+      near lynched?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks
+      for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending over
+      the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And I
+      noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he
+      drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us
+      to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while
+      he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off by
+      yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And that swine, Shipley&mdash;do you suppose he thought of that, too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see,
+      Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and he
+      took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed Seth,
+      and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty shell; and
+      if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you, knowing that the
+      clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the examination as you had had
+      the opportunity to put it right. I don't like the incident, nor the man's
+      spirit, but it proves nothing for or against him. I expect he's clever
+      enough to know that the last man seen with a murdered man is, <i>de facto</i>,
+      the slayer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was killed
+      with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night&mdash;he always was a
+      damn fool&mdash;and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing way,
+      and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only heard
+      one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said: "One
+      doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's evil, but I
+      fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot that wakened
+      me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the police shack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog&mdash;in
+      the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the
+      writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went
+      up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had
+      sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there was
+      considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder was
+      discovered&mdash;these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot
+      Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper
+      hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark corner
+      till things had quieted down before going to his room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hadley isn't the kind to commit murder."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-night he was another kind of man&mdash;he was pretty drunk; and the
+      man that's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls&mdash;he
+      has lost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough
+      to make him a bit cautious."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he's got a
+      devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like his face&mdash;'
+      it's avariciously vicious&mdash;he's greedy. But the law can't hang a man
+      for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist's point
+      of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of the attached
+      possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute, canny
+      Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certain the
+      Doctor suspected Shipley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "for
+      you're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man can
+      do it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we can
+      follow up before the trail gets cold?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is, Doctor. There was a pack of marked cards in Seth's pocket, and
+      they're gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man that has that pack is the murderer," Dr. Anderson declared
+      emphatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the wallet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidently
+      belonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibility
+      that Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latter do
+      all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising the bet
+      when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "Either
+      Shipley or somebody was in collusion with Seth, you think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If we could get that man&mdash;?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Doctor," and Carney put his hand on the other's knee, "whoever
+      has got that money will not try to take it out over the railroad, for it
+      was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; a
+      search. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail to Montana
+      or Idaho."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody may be
+      headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley&mdash;I mean, anybody&mdash;he
+      may have a colleague to take the money down over the border."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, the money; he'll not try to handle it in Canada for fear of being
+      trapped on the numbers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you might not get the murderer after all," Anderson said,
+      meditatively; "just an accomplice who wouldn't squeal."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No; not with the money alone on him we wouldn't have just what I want,
+      but when we get a man with the marked pack in his pocket that's the
+      murderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like a
+      man will cling to an old pocket-knife; they're the tools of his trade, so
+      to speak. And here in the mountains he could not handily come by another
+      pack, perhaps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the marked
+      cards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just have
+      the money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to the door
+      at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, and lowering
+      his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square of you. I'm
+      clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of the law, but for a
+      good woman's sake I've got to get the murderer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would be commendable, Carney, if you can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I comprehend," and Dr. Anderson nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've got a man&mdash;'Oregon' he's known as&mdash;down at Big Horn
+      Crossing; he's there for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell
+      'Oregon' to search every man that rides the border trail going south."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog&mdash;I'll
+      look it up with the town clerk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle of honest amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Piqued, the Doctor said irritably, "You're thinking, Bulldog, that the
+      little town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representing
+      authority, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authority
+      for everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first and
+      explain afterwards; and when he gets the right man he'll bring him in.
+      First, I'm going to make a cast around the police shack with a lantern.
+      Even by its light I may pick up some information. I'll get Jeanette to
+      stake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskin
+      and be back in three days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there might
+      be some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneeling
+      down, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black earth
+      around the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for he
+      skirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to the
+      ground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracks of
+      a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some time
+      there; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe prints
+      almost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks as if
+      somebody had dropped from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. He could
+      shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from his pocket&mdash;it
+      was really an old letter&mdash;and with his pocket-knife cut it to fit a
+      footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the front door, and
+      with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints, following them a
+      piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood up and rubbed his chin
+      thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown of reflection, ending by
+      starting off at a fast pace that carried him to the edge of the little
+      town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in his
+      hand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were different
+      boot tracks, and the one&mdash;the latest, he judged, for they topped the
+      others&mdash;was toeing away from the shack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He straightened up and knocked on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer. He knocked again loudly; no answer. He shook the door
+      by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet: there was no
+      sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on it and called,
+      "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shack convinced him
+      that Cranford had gone&mdash;perhaps, as he had intimated, to Bald Rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those heading
+      away from the shack. The paper did not seem to fit&mdash;not quite; in
+      fact, the other track was closer to the paper gauge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back at the hotel he related to Dr. Anderson the result of his trailing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he spoke of Cranford's absence from the shack, the Doctor
+      involuntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I was
+      thinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving from
+      Cranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involves
+      Cranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, on the
+      quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments on a mine,&mdash;they're
+      threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds or something."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-away
+      game the better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search for Cranford,
+      and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Black comes&mdash;likely
+      to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, of course, the verdict
+      will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you've gone to hurry in
+      Sergeant Black."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette was
+      waiting for him in the little front sitting room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible ending to
+      it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in its
+      absolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was no
+      affection, no pretense of it. She was like a niece, or even a daughter, to
+      Seth; their relationship had been practically on that basis. Her father
+      had been a partner of Long in some of his enterprises, enterprises that
+      had never been much of anything beyond final failure. When his partner had
+      died Seth had assumed charge of the girl. It was perhaps the one redeeming
+      feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knew so
+      well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; the
+      desirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of her
+      evidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhat
+      nebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nor did
+      he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for two or three
+      days and would be supposed to have gone after the Mounted Policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explained how
+      much depended upon the discovery of its present possessor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Second Part
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was within an hour of daybreak when Carney, astride his buckskin,
+      slipped quietly out of Bucking Horse, and took the trail that skirted the
+      tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but that didn't
+      matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could go without
+      sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, as the
+      buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a brief half
+      hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were several
+      tracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were called bronchos,
+      the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But they were cold
+      trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamer wings,
+      stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dew sparkled on
+      the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of a pony
+      that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earth where
+      the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he was on.
+      It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot, and
+      had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to the cross
+      trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracks turned to the
+      right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that the rider was not
+      associated with the murder. With that start he would be heading for across
+      the border; he would not make for a Canadian town where he would be in
+      touch with the wires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the border trail there were no fresh tracks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was toward evening when Carney passed through the Valley of the
+      Grizzley's Bridge&mdash;past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot
+      Johnson had been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been
+      caught in the bear trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; he
+      clattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eager
+      hasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lop
+      ears weaving back and forth in apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of the
+      cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,
+      camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding walls
+      of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled along an
+      obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer sense of
+      perception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch of
+      breakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one had
+      passed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail while
+      the horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretched between
+      them: and there were no fresh tracks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At two o'clock he came to the little log shack just this side of the U. S.
+      border where Oregon kept his solitary ward. Nobody had passed, Oregon
+      advised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were to
+      search any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the marked
+      cards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to his
+      superior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, was opium
+      running. That was his office, to drift across the line casually, back and
+      forth, as a prospector, and keep posted as to customs officers; who they
+      were, where the kind-hearted ones were, and where the fanatical ones were;
+      for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally, five miles
+      within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his way out, leaving
+      twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of a tyrannical
+      customs department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp the
+      hand of his lieutenant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down the
+      valley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way of
+      weather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit of lead
+      that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as if somebody'd
+      fresh plugged me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through which
+      wandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a glorious
+      oriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden light
+      that hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of the
+      hills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, and
+      emerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where the
+      gaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoon
+      bushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloom
+      preserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry, was
+      hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest that zigzagged
+      and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the design of some giant
+      cubist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed and swung his gloved hand in a semicircle of derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's purty," Oregon said, "it's purty, but I've seen a purty woman, all
+      smilin' too, break out in a hell of a temper afore you could say 'hands
+      up.' My hip don't never make no mistakes, 'cause it ain't got no fancies.
+      It's a-comin'. You ride like hell, Carney; it's a-comin'. Say, Bulldog,
+      look at that," and Oregon's long, lean, not over-clean finger pointed to
+      the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that the Old Man of the
+      Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs of his&mdash;see the
+      white of that eye? And he ain't takin' in no purty scenery, he's lookin'
+      over his shoulder down off there," and Oregon stretched a long arm toward
+      the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains of ice, the
+      glaciers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if they
+      run on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to death
+      once in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd been good
+      always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out if you got
+      caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snow hell'ry.
+      The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twenty feet deep,
+      and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself what gener'ly
+      happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal by gettin' him
+      into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nice little
+      silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains. Good-bye,
+      Bulldog, and ride like hell&mdash;the buckskin won't mind; let him run the
+      show&mdash;he knows, the clever little cuss."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in the
+      heat of the squeeze they got in Oregon's bear-trap of a paw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trail here was like a prairie road for the valley was flat, and the
+      buckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at a
+      sharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croaking
+      bellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave him
+      alone. Let him run things hisself!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the old man
+      was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wide places
+      of earth had tutored him to the varying moods of the elements; that his
+      super-sense was akin to the subtle understanding of animals. So he rode
+      late into the night, sometimes sleeping in the saddle, as the buckskin,
+      with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down dale and along the brink
+      of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. He camped beneath a giant
+      pine whose fallen cones and needles had spread a luxurious mattress, and
+      whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in the air, a perfume that was like
+      a balm of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot might
+      slip by in the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleep with
+      a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. His eyes
+      opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtered down
+      into the gloomed valley from a paling sky. A day was being born; the night
+      was dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An appalling hush was in the air; the valley was as devoid of sound as
+      though the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself had been
+      sucked out from between the hills, leaving a void.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin was up and picking at the tender shoots of a young birch. It
+      had been a half-whinnying snort from the horse that had wakened Carney,
+      for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop ears cocked as
+      though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness, watched for
+      something that was creeping stealthily over the mountains from the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though it
+      had been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon's
+      croak came back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a corner of
+      his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pot his
+      tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickered and
+      swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up in the
+      giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. The gray of
+      the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed again as though night
+      had fled backwards before the thing that was in the mountains to the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in a
+      bitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neck of a
+      stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he were famished,
+      or ate to save them from a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head were
+      playing a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze darted here
+      and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far across the
+      valley, from somewhere in the rocky caverns of the mighty hills, came the
+      heavy moans of genii. It was hardly a noise, it was a great oppression, a
+      manifestation of turmoil, of the turmoil of God's majesty, His creation in
+      travail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney quaffed the scalding tea, and raced with the buckskin in the eating
+      of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling blood told him
+      that the temperature was going down, down, down. The day before he had
+      ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; now a vagrant thought
+      flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the Gold Nugget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saddled the buckskin, and the horse, at the pinch of the cinch, turned
+      from his oats that were only half eaten, and held up his head for the bit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and the
+      buckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps. It
+      wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needles stabbed
+      at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filled with
+      indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; it seemed to
+      penetrate the horse's lungs, for he gave a snorting cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the full orchestra of the hills was filling the valleys and the
+      canyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of Squaw
+      Mountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its many
+      throats into unearthly dirge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that had
+      thrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberating music
+      seemed to carry as refrain the words of Oregon: "Ride like hell, Carney!
+      Ride like hell!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as if the command were within the buckskin's knowing, he raced where
+      the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over the stones and
+      shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that drove into
+      the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when he
+      murdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could make
+      that he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter it too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the thought of saving his life the buckskin occupied a dual place;
+      that's what Oregon had said; he had no right to jeopardize the gallant
+      little steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stout
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though he spoke
+      aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo and reverberation
+      than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fret yourself tired,
+      old sport; we'll make it&mdash;the cave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, had in
+      his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had taken
+      visible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley the
+      towering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozen ridges
+      above his eyes; his breath floated away in little clouds of ice; the
+      buckskin coat of the horse had turned to gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes at the turn of a cliff was a false lull as if the storm had been
+      stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen north swung again
+      and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objects were
+      being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; it was more
+      difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; a chill was
+      suggesting indifference&mdash;why fight?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was
+      spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold; it
+      was like a winding sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the merciless
+      snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the man direction was lost&mdash;it was like being above the clouds;
+      but the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting,
+      making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter, meant
+      death; the buckskin knew it; but he was tiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney unslung his picket line, put the loop around his chest below his
+      arms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, and
+      slipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on the
+      rump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went on
+      again, the weight off his back being a relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping over him
+      in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest that
+      preluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now the
+      exertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours away
+      the cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. It
+      scarce mattered; to draw forth his watch and look was a waste of energy,
+      the vital energy that weighed against his death; an ounce of it wasted was
+      folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when he himself
+      was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little hero that had
+      fought his battles ever since they had been together. The buckskin's
+      flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of a bellows; his
+      withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean and small&mdash;scarce
+      mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting sea of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cave must be near. Carney found himself repeating these words:
+      "The cave is near, the cave is near, Patsy; on, boy&mdash;the cave is
+      near." His mind dwelt on the wood that he had left in the cave when he
+      took Jack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a bright
+      fire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would make
+      it. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always won
+      out on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling that it
+      was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mental
+      stamina. If he kept up his courage he would win out, as he always had. It
+      was just Excelsior and Success, just&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a swirl of oblivion; he had flown through space and collided
+      with another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he was
+      alone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds. There
+      was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passing under an
+      anesthetic&mdash;Nirvana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of the
+      beyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking from a dream&mdash;it
+      was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back to consciousness. He
+      struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legs were; at the bottom of
+      them were leaden-soled diver's boots. His brain, not more than half
+      clearing at that, he realized that he and the buckskin had slid from a
+      treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozen feet; the snow, unwittingly
+      kind, catching them in a lap of feathery softness. But for the gallant
+      horse he would have lain there, never to rise again of his own volition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were
+      going forward. Oregon's command was working out&mdash;"Let the buckskin
+      have his own way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone
+      around in a circle&mdash;in fact, Carney once had done so&mdash;and the
+      cold would have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more
+      life-sapping; but here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it
+      was like surf rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and
+      horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man
+      battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged
+      senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact
+      that they still held on toward the cave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream&mdash;or was this
+      the real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party&mdash;that
+      they were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a dream&mdash;he
+      was waking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight played
+      on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him something
+      stamped on the stone floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and
+      coming to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And
+      now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he was
+      in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some horse, that, Stranger." The man's voice that had sounded thinly
+      sinister had a humanized tone as he said this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried to
+      answer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You're
+      makin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Try
+      this dope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; it was
+      like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd a
+      horse neigh&mdash;it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted
+      out to sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd his
+      bell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers&mdash;'twan't more'n
+      'bout ten yards at that&mdash;and there's that danged rat of yours, and he
+      won't come in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow;
+      he seemed to know that if he pulled too hard he'd break your danged neck.
+      Then we got you in&mdash;that's all. Some horse!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This and the warmth and the tonic tea brought Carney up to date. He held
+      out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turned surlily
+      to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't done nothin';
+      you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' you through. I
+      went out after my own bronch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had met
+      many men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to an
+      unknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside became like
+      outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness&mdash;every man was an
+      enemy till he proved himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close together
+      each side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look of
+      distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't never knowed but one man was <i>all right</i>, and the Mounted
+      Police hounded him till he give up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward the
+      horse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Are
+      you him, or are you a hawse thief?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know the horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got reason a-plenty to know him. He cleaned me out in Walla Walla when
+      he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark that cold-decked us
+      boys with this ringer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Bulldog knew why the aversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm Carney," he 'admitted; "but it was the gamblers put up the job; I
+      just beat them out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed that
+      the other hung with peculiar intensity on his answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long was you fightin' that blizzard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since daylight&mdash;when I broke camp." Carney looked at his watch; it
+      was three o'clock. "How long have I been here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A couple of hours. Was you runnin' booze or hop, Bulldog?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney started. Perhaps the cave man was conveying a covert threat, an
+      intimation that he might inform on him. "Don't let's talk shop," he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an
+      ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills
+      trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the
+      mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her
+      out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to see
+      me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing
+      thought&mdash;<i>food!</i> He, himself, had about one day's supply&mdash;had
+      he it? He turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been
+      tossed by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon
+      and bannock were gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's
+      cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon,
+      about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom a
+      round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to
+      Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his
+      blankets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of
+      habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been&mdash;the
+      pigskin pocket was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip.
+      "Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun. He
+      ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit&mdash;when the time came he
+      would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the
+      other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin in
+      his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This
+      fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his bacon
+      and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have worked out
+      and the oats remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear
+      outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the
+      swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate to
+      their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at least
+      fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which the
+      trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he had no
+      food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week with two men
+      eating it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a
+      fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind
+      might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the snow
+      with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged&mdash;he was hungry
+      only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay down, and had slept two hours when he was wakened by the sweet
+      perfume of frying pork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. He watched
+      the cook turn it over and over with the point of his hunting knife,
+      cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vital fat.
+      When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point of his knife
+      and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparing that
+      well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just beside the
+      fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray of his
+      opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney's mind
+      before he fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'm
+      goin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anyways
+      you was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up to me
+      to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be a damn
+      fool to do it&mdash;I'd be just playin' agin myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he spat in the fire and held the pan over its blaze to warm the slimy
+      mixture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case for himself
+      continued: "We may be bottled up here for a week, or a month. Two men
+      ain't got no chanct on that grub-pile, no chanct."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you eat it then?" and Carney sat up. "I could, 'cause it's
+      mine; but I got a proposition to make&mdash;you can take it or leave it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Spit it out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's just this"&mdash;the fox eyes shifted uneasily to the little
+      buckskin, and then back to Carney's face&mdash;"I'll share this grub if,
+      when it's gone, you cut in with the bronch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; his
+      features were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush. The
+      proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had asked him to
+      slit the throat of a brother for a cannibalistic orgy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's only ord'nary hawse sense," Dave added when Carney did not speak;
+      "kept in the snow that meat'd last us a month. Feelin's don't count when a
+      man's playin' fer his life, and that's what we're doin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't dispute the sense of your proposition, my kind friend," Carney
+      said in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll think it
+      over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, of course,
+      if I don't get out he'd starve to death anyway."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take your time," and the owner of the pan pulled it between his legs, ate
+      the slice of bacon, and with a tin spoon lapped up the glutinous mess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger that were
+      now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other man had a gun,
+      and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store of provisions
+      were gone&mdash;perhaps before that. And Carney was determined to make the
+      discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on the dictator, the
+      lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing the little buckskin
+      that had saved his life&mdash;bah! the very idea of it made his fingers
+      twitch for a grasp of the other's windpipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time Carney sat moodily turning over in his mind something; and
+      the other man, having lighted his pipe, sat back against the wall of the
+      cave smoking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Carney spoke. "There's a way out of this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, if a chinook blows up Kettlebelly Valley&mdash;there ain't no other
+      way. The manna days is all gone by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the Lost
+      Ledge Mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a few
+      stringers of gold&mdash;they soon petered out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot of
+      heavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools, and,
+      what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes back there. I
+      could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and make Bucking Horse
+      in three or four days. He wore them down in the Cour d'Alene."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you had the grub," Dave snapped; "where're you goin' to get that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Half of what you've got would keep me up that long on short rations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what about me&mdash;where do I come in on givin' you half my grub?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The other half would keep you alive till I could bring a rescue party on
+      snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering this
+      proposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind to do
+      a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you&mdash;your bronch agin half
+      my chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronch is
+      mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till a chinook
+      blows up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, and
+      slid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cards
+      winged <i>seven blue doves</i>. It was the pack that had been stolen from
+      Seth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murderer of
+      Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the same
+      slight variation of the wings. In a second Carney had mastered himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess it's fair," he said hesitatingly; "let me think it over&mdash;I'm
+      fond of that little cuss, but I guess a man's life comes first."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat looking into the fire thinking, and if Dave had been a mind reader
+      the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter was thinking,
+      "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in my pocket."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he spoke, shifting closer to the blanket on which the other sat:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll cut!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he
+      turned it up&mdash;it was the ace of diamonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of spades,
+      adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the
+      blanket in a tenuous stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of
+      them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a
+      gambler's eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his knees
+      and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a little to
+      the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the pack. If he
+      turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the minute he
+      turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been
+      double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's
+      face; perhaps&mdash;once a killer always a killer&mdash;he would not
+      hesitate but would kill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace,
+      while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split
+      second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left hand,
+      but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from the
+      shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked from its
+      pigskin pocket by Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick, or
+      I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he
+      should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding
+      had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a
+      foreboding look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're Tacoma Jack&mdash;you're the man that staked Seth Long to this
+      marked pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to
+      Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when
+      you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went with
+      you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he had taken
+      the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth. When the
+      game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the window, and
+      when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money was too much,
+      and you plugged him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and
+      Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough
+      not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see you,
+      but jumped from the back window."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks in
+      the mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He held
+      it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own
+      hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea
+      type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity even
+      with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying twenty
+      feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in fact with
+      him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been a Mounted
+      Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that he give up his
+      life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private individual, trying
+      to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high regard for&mdash;Jeanette
+      Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man. Bringing in the stolen
+      money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might be said that he, himself,
+      had taken these two things and returned them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves had
+      combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had been
+      killed&mdash;it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his
+      cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie&mdash;Seth's as dead's a
+      herrin'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said so
+      yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make your
+      get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you, Tacoma
+      Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was
+      driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking
+      Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do to
+      carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could make
+      half a mile of that trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma, when
+      you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I didn't
+      value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a damn
+      whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab of
+      bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little flour
+      I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most with
+      snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a dogtrain and
+      a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance; it's like
+      filling a bob-tailed flush&mdash;but I'm going to let you draw. If the
+      chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back you'll get
+      away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got to clear a good
+      woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the cards with a
+      forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession here in my
+      noteboook that you killed Seth Long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap&mdash;I didn't kill him!" %
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I take
+      the money, your gun, your boots, and <i>all the grub</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank
+      lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and you
+      bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make a
+      cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the
+      chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence. Carney
+      broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide quick, for
+      I'm going to hobble you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If Carney
+      took the food&mdash;and he would&mdash;he had no chance. The alternative
+      was his only hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll sign&mdash;I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just
+      how it happened."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You write it yourself&mdash;I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I
+      forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye
+      on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma
+      Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had pulled
+      his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and in the
+      struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may be
+      true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If you're
+      laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog Carney,
+      forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make me plug
+      you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll turn you
+      loose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and Tacoma,
+      placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney proceeded to
+      cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon. Then he rubbed
+      down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the horse, gave him a
+      feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite side of the fire from
+      Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for the minute you start
+      anything you lose your bet on the chinook."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in
+      through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had all
+      but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had huddled
+      to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft and
+      balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy snow
+      and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath the
+      weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses of
+      snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing sun.
+      Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet, gnarled
+      faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged with
+      snow-water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against a
+      cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of the white
+      mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a cow-bell. It
+      was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell that Carney
+      had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the little
+      buckskin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping
+      out from above his blanket&mdash;they were like rat eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his
+      heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to Bucking
+      Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the chinook,
+      don't I?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his
+      word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled into
+      Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my hand
+      dif'rent&mdash;p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that
+      when I drug you in out of the blizzard."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was
+      just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite from
+      an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog&mdash;I'd be kind of
+      lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is
+      waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket
+      that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck
+      you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI.&mdash;EVIL SPIRITS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he Rockies, their
+      towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid with blue and green, the
+      glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion Range, and the Vermillion
+      looked down upon the sienna prairie in which was Fort Calbert, as Marathon
+      might have looked down upon the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality of
+      Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the surrounding
+      boxlike structures of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon which
+      was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was an
+      occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was that
+      a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the
+      importation of five gallons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in
+      some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested
+      attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;
+      they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an eagle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot
+      transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was always
+      that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste shell, an
+      effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West as a St.
+      Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end
+      of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty idea
+      that the old gent will want to see that ranch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is supposed
+      to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has remitted,"
+      Harden explained to Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from the
+      roadway; it was a weird drool&mdash;the droning, hoarse note of a tug's
+      whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'! Oh,
+      heavens! it makes me homesick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy
+      little Thames tug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.
+      Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun lay
+      like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of one
+      that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A
+      dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River
+      cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken
+      bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust and
+      sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature&mdash;an armadillo. He
+      turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look, upon
+      the six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert
+      declared solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O Gabriel&mdash;there's
+      vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our hearts and we'll set
+      you happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent
+      proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat blast.
+      He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight figure
+      and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of buckskin and
+      leather chapps, turned back into the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the unresisting
+      guest to a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a keg;
+      the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He shoved
+      out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava that
+      darkened their pale contours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the prodigal
+      was the fated calf&mdash;it was full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window,
+      threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the
+      stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest
+      floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it
+      wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened,
+      started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at
+      dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and sat
+      down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as he
+      asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is outside:
+      we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess;
+      and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes that
+      were thought hard, had gone blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us
+      twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics
+      showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where the
+      regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for this
+      I'll have to run you all in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added:
+      "Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert
+      bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to
+      have troubled you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast
+      of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret
+      standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor
+      law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to
+      be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against the
+      police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when
+      they're putting down crime."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed man
+      who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant in the
+      force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence.
+      Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent
+      restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of
+      this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he will
+      have the handling of it, I fancy&mdash;a carload."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if
+      playing poker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a
+      jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything of
+      that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck with
+      the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two weeks. The
+      police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped
+      it gently on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I
+      have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was a
+      rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer crop&mdash;a
+      splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan, standing.
+      Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the
+      little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen&mdash;about the whisky: While I was
+      waiting for an audience with the Polica <i>Ogema</i> I heard, through an
+      open door, a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general
+      statement was that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for
+      delivery at Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I suppose&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of
+      merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why
+      FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a
+      joy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the
+      little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm <i>very</i> glad to have met
+      you, sir." Then he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name&mdash;you
+      didn't introduce me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, I say!" the other gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then he
+      related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from
+      An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three
+      counties&mdash;Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent a
+      telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of
+      message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening he
+      had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway station
+      for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform from morning
+      till night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the
+      prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras was
+      numbered 6100.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major
+      had received was reliable, evidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through freight&mdash;not
+      for Fort Calbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry smile
+      hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the amiable
+      Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the
+      discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty
+      force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:
+      the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued an
+      order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused to
+      do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters, from
+      his superior officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for
+      long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know?" the station agent retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he jumped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;
+      "Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario&mdash;they
+      have use for it down that way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you something
+      on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if I get the
+      evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though I never set
+      eyes on you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a
+      get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet of
+      ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A
+      carload of whisky is simply preposterous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought. He
+      could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not
+      break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take
+      it on himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to come
+      down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how to act.
+      We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I don't want
+      to get you into trouble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he admired
+      brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also well
+      known. He turned to the station master saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the
+      proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train
+      was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and would
+      back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also expected of
+      a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they didn't
+      encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the
+      conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got
+      somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job as
+      brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the
+      Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the
+      seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile
+      crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the
+      caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually
+      the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty souls,
+      for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload of
+      whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed, of
+      course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an
+      attraction like a funeral.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      EVIL SPIRITS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a written
+      order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a heavy police
+      wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a
+      defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a
+      game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and
+      in his speech there was the savor of London fog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he
+      addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do so
+      now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My word! we're always doing that, always&mdash;that's what we're here
+      for, to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened on
+      Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major, a
+      procession headed for the car of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,
+      the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak
+      barrels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at
+      Bulldog Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of
+      astonishment over this exhibit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,
+      turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take
+      this stuff to the fort."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing
+      this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too
+      greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"
+      the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at Carney.
+      "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men bring a
+      sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be destroyed;
+      the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on
+      end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge. At
+      the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup fluttered
+      up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,
+      Major."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the
+      turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped their
+      dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of
+      appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat
+      man! Him damn good; break him more!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled
+      waters&mdash;literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste
+      these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in his
+      objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've roped
+      something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights answering
+      correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will want to know
+      what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods. The Superintendent
+      of the Western Division will want to know why I side-track freight billed
+      through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take responsibility, but you've given
+      me a big lot of work, and I ain't none too well paid as it is. Somebody's
+      doublecrossed you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have
+      to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels of
+      sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas, beans&mdash;in
+      fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered grocery store
+      rather than the duplicate of a barroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been
+      wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert were
+      several small places on the line where there were neither police nor men
+      who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the station
+      master, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky cut
+      off? I believe it's on that train."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside
+      my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,
+      and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try to
+      cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages back
+      in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the Superintendent
+      of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole thing to your
+      Commissioner at Regina."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the
+      broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H. B.
+      Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of
+      something for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,
+      as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;
+      Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on you
+      yet, old top."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair. He
+      would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was handicapped
+      by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of contention everybody's
+      hand would be against the force&mdash;the very train men, if they could
+      get away with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained
+      groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through
+      with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was sent
+      that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars&mdash;one of goods and one of
+      whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John Ross
+      was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper in the
+      next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither car
+      would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,
+      either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not
+      matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were
+      going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot
+      through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the suspected
+      car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a consultation.
+      Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen from the position
+      of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game; besides, which was
+      almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool kind
+      that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to round him
+      up, for we haven't got a thing on him&mdash;not a thing. He's so well
+      liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin Hood used
+      to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped your hands
+      on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll be run into
+      the plains&mdash;there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of it, and
+      swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this law, sir.
+      They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major to
+      send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of this
+      consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was
+      accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten
+      dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot of
+      whisky as it was being run the following night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the
+      Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened
+      breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the
+      ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the
+      trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still
+      wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information to
+      the Major.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will
+      sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,
+      Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates, and,
+      skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the southwest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of a
+      little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses had
+      been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern
+      fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide
+      was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the
+      cut-bank to the stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had hung
+      in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed ridge
+      of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and a sombre
+      gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the belly of the
+      valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a penciled line of
+      silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock. The stillness was
+      oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the night passed; no animal
+      of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the solemn hush; nobody spoke;
+      in each one's mind was the unworded thought that they waited for a man
+      that was known to be without fear, a man to whom odds meant little or
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted his
+      body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad, man, you
+      suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin', there might be
+      killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if he is a whisky
+      runner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,
+      with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt; he
+      just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray
+      cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't
+      wait for a better chance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the
+      slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and it
+      was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,
+      Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the
+      Force."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank us to
+      spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this outfit?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort
+      Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and
+      not be there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's no
+      sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the sandy
+      wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy, slipping,
+      sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being shoved along
+      the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull thump of an
+      axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of muffled hoofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over
+      the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of
+      Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Halt! hands up&mdash;you are covered! If you move we fire!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of
+      light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank
+      the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable
+      figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther&mdash;that was all.
+      That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,
+      Reggie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,
+      the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane
+      exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep
+      out of the light; it may be a blind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon McBane's voice was heard from the cut-bank: "All clear, Sergeant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Sergeant Jerry, stepping into the open, examined the exhibit. Instead
+      of carrying concealed weapons Reggie had a fair load of concealed spirits;
+      he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought some nebulous answers
+      about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and that he was bringing in the
+      goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature was sorely taxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm gettin' fed up on these damned tricks of Bulldog's," he growled, "for
+      that's what it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm not sure," McBane objected; "this ninny may ha' blabbed, and yon
+      breed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached and escorted
+      in to barracks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain had
+      imbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortune
+      of the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; or he
+      may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usual
+      sacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presence of
+      the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in a gurgling
+      libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Then the empty
+      tins were tossed disdainfully into the coulee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back in the Fort Major Kane said: "This was all a blind, Sergeant Platt;
+      none of the stuff will come down this way&mdash;they'll run it up among
+      the miners and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of
+      the patrol up about the Pass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; and
+      by the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. that
+      the few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk&mdash;half were in the
+      guard room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBane
+      didn't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the scene
+      of the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed. He
+      had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturated
+      earth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick as if
+      spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick went through,
+      suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sand flying. A
+      foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neat crosshatching
+      of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that was supported by a tub;
+      a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odor that struck the
+      Superintendent's nostrils was not suds&mdash;it was whisky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yanked the tub out of the cavity and kicked it into the coulee. Then he
+      stood up and mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils! the
+      cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's put them up
+      to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just a blind, the tip
+      from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's a game to put my
+      men on the blink while he runs that carload."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rage swirled in the Major's heart as he turned toward the Fort; but before
+      he had reached the gates his sense&mdash;and the little man had lots of it&mdash;laid
+      embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to his quarters to sit on
+      the verandah and curse softly to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mounted from
+      the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not come into the
+      Territories to be pitted against the social desires of the white
+      inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but here this very
+      thing took up more than half their time and energy. And it was a losing
+      game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pitted against every
+      one of his force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were rumors that it was soon to be changed&mdash;the trade
+      legitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With a small
+      army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision against them,
+      it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from the half-breeds who
+      were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after day across
+      the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain, was an
+      exhilarating game&mdash;it was something to stimulate the <i>espirit de
+      corps;</i> a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, full
+      reward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like an
+      ordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle of
+      whisky, only to have him up before the magistrate for a small fine was, to
+      say the least, disquieting; it made his men half ashamed of their mission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carney
+      himself&mdash;big; and the Major would have given, right there, a
+      half-year's pay to have bagged Bulldog, and so, perhaps have broken up the
+      ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But determined as the force was, the British law was greater still.
+      Without absolute, convicting evidence Carney would have been acquitted,
+      and the Major perhaps censured for making a mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At headquarters was a fixed edict: "Take no position from which you will
+      have to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart at
+      the quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, loved his
+      duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under the strain of
+      service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streak showed&mdash;then
+      he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, you hound!" he would
+      snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got to be kept clean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annual
+      report that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller at
+      Ottawa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guard house&mdash;it
+      was "The Stirrup Cup."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "God, <i>England!</i>" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing,"
+      he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly human those
+      who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, a constable
+      at sixty cents a day! They were all like that&mdash;not of noble family,
+      but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles of restraint all
+      over the world. That was largely why they were in the Mounted; certainly
+      not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how, even in his bitterness
+      of set-awry-authority, could the incident of the tub be a heinous crime on
+      their part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the verandah,
+      crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them and shoot
+      Carney&mdash;damn him! he's at the bottom of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down behind
+      the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and the blond
+      giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort Calbert for a
+      breather over the prairie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling
+      "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust to
+      the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that
+      seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in
+      the town&mdash;he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the
+      familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider yanked
+      his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the saddle in
+      exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and the flanks
+      of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical shatterment
+      that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel to his bay's
+      flank and moved slowly along the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his
+      message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the Victoria,
+      feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What'll I do, boss, when I wake up&mdash;how long'll I sleep?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As long as you like&mdash;a week if you want."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What'll I do then&mdash;don't you need me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, play with your toes if you like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lathy George pulled his reeling cayuse together, and pushed on. Carney
+      gave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got to go
+      back to town," Carney said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessness is like
+      a painted sky above a painted ocean&mdash;it gives me the lonely willies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over his
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's always back there, or over yonder&mdash;never here when there's any
+      hell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one long
+      plaintive sabbath."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carney
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Me, too&mdash;if there's action there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hardly, my dear boy; it's purely a matter of diplomacy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Absolutely, Bulldog; that's why you're going. You're going to kiss
+      somebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a good
+      cigar for you'&mdash;you love it. What's happened?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Stonies are on the war-path."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ugly devils&mdash;part Sioux. They're hunters&mdash;blood letters&mdash;first
+      cousins to the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for
+      the Wood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came into
+      their hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, they're peppery devils. In the Frog Lake massacre one of them,
+      Itcka, killed a white man or two and was hanged for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What started them now?" FitzHerbert asked. "Whisky."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FitzHerbert stole a glance at Carney's stolid face; then he whistled;
+      Carney's word had been like a gasp of confession, for, undoubtedly, the
+      liquor was from the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How did they make the haul?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a new
+      regulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fall
+      hunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under Chief
+      Standing Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his mates in
+      the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up to the
+      lumber camps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Great! that combination&mdash;lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would
+      be as if sheol had opened a chute&mdash;there'll be murder."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know Standing Bear; he made me a blood brother of his. I did him a bit
+      of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and the old
+      fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for the Stoney had
+      peppered a couple of silly bullets into the brute's shoulder. I happened
+      to get in a lucky shot and stopped the silver-tip when he was about to
+      shampoo old Standing Bear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I heard about that&mdash;you and your little buckskin. Say, Bulldog,
+      that little devil must have the pluck of a lion&mdash;they say he carried
+      you right up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are
+      good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the
+      reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know what
+      the Sergeant is, Fitz&mdash;he'll stack up against that tribe alone; if
+      they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the lumberjacks&mdash;their
+      squaws will be along, and you know what that means&mdash;Jerry stands a
+      mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it will be sort of my
+      fault."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and
+      we'll play rugby with those devilish <i>nichies</i> if they don't act like
+      gentlemen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all
+      about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz&mdash;not
+      a chance. It would be a fight&mdash;your hot heads would start it&mdash;and
+      after the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the
+      red spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets.
+      These Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains;
+      first thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      EVIL SPIRITS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      "How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just
+      because you feel that it's your fault?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt
+      we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind
+      they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know
+      the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them;
+      but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile&mdash;some of them will
+      feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got sense
+      and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole tribe
+      was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect&mdash;do you see, Fitz?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea: "Let
+      me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my eyes,
+      and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the west
+      wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them back
+      again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied; my
+      insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me.
+      While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed
+      Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell would
+      break loose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got the
+      cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've seen
+      you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not lose caste
+      over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old boy! I rather
+      fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this will be good-bye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy
+      gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,
+      threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a long
+      graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow
+      chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping over
+      Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned prairie
+      above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity the
+      turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze over the
+      plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere so peaceful
+      that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a phantasmagoria. There
+      was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the sleepy air, and off to
+      the south glinted against the horizon the peeping red eyes of a prairie
+      fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a shore-held city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie
+      uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his
+      instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy
+      suffling pace of a cayuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle
+      night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind
+      slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean to
+      the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for
+      his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his wits
+      against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better than
+      remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by action, by
+      strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds; but the
+      thing ahead&mdash;drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust back
+      into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of the
+      ashes of regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden this
+      suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the danger,
+      the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game with Fate
+      that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit himself
+      against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of the
+      Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and
+      inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all
+      depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken; he
+      must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain there
+      with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the Ferryman at
+      the crossing of the Styx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental
+      traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf
+      fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound that
+      was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the
+      saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over his
+      head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a little
+      gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five paces to one
+      side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold converse with
+      the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of a hold-up;
+      sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated into
+      staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and Carney muttered:
+      "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding hell-bent-for-leather."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he
+      topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse saw
+      the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for a
+      crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his rider,
+      in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to his feet
+      a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of steel was
+      touching his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy&mdash;just
+      a precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney
+      nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row; dey
+      s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's the Sergeant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by <i>le
+      bon Dieu</i> dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees
+      reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the
+      Superintendent that Bulldog Carney&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the
+      Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the
+      fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying,
+      as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog, dat's
+      me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to the
+      help of jerry Platt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after
+      mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded
+      brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching
+      the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy ground
+      swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky line,
+      looking like the escarpments of a fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley,
+      at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on
+      Yellowstone Creek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North
+      Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep.
+      It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning "tump-tump,
+      tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated at intervals by
+      a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-yi!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the
+      well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom&mdash;it was the gambling
+      note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground in
+      a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one of
+      their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop, ceasing
+      his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the heat of a
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off, picketed
+      the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he drifted
+      into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth time of
+      the yellow streak&mdash;I'll tackle them then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when Carney
+      opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down the
+      mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold
+      climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted
+      to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose,
+      and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning&mdash;we'll
+      eat afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo
+      grass, I see from your tummy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two or
+      three gunshots came down the valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was
+      nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt&mdash;that
+      part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on
+      and play his hand alone against the Stonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that was
+      like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it skirted
+      the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of pearl tints
+      and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn rocks. From
+      beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad slopes the
+      haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding into a
+      valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning tom-toms.
+      As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the smoke-stained
+      tepees of the Stonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping,
+      snarling dogs&mdash;the pack-dogs of the Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration;
+      but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay police
+      horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry Platt,
+      all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks swarmed
+      in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of them, still
+      groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of them raced for
+      their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two or three had
+      rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they saw the
+      policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant just
+      as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short of the
+      camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left arm
+      was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's face,
+      that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn and
+      haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many had said
+      would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold, tired
+      fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness, as he
+      called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are you doing
+      here&mdash;collecting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Came to give you a hand, Jerry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hand, Bulldog?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"&mdash;he
+      swept an arm toward the tepees&mdash;"and I've ridden all night to help
+      bust this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not much&mdash;just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks
+      potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm
+      pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if they're
+      here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the reserve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal McBane
+      will get a promotion&mdash;he's next in line to Jerry Platt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good stuff, Jerry, I'll&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pss-s-ing!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining moan
+      of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of white
+      smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's bluff," Jerry grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We've got to move in, Jerry&mdash;if we hesitate, after that, they'll
+      buzz like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him
+      moving. I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I
+      know Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But
+      I'm in it to the finish, boy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thanks, Bulldog"&mdash;they were moving along at a steady walk of the
+      horses toward the tepees&mdash;"but you know our way&mdash;you've got to
+      stand a lot of dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll
+      make me wish you hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known
+      as having lost our heads. D'you get it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm on, Jerry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on its
+      moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to represent
+      a hugetoothed grizzly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The
+      old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies&mdash;it was
+      a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,
+      vociferous creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some circus,
+      Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen don't slip
+      from a tepee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking
+      Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken
+      gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship, and
+      the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted
+      much with the tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant with
+      a sweep of the eagle wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white
+      men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White
+      Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat
+      soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat that
+      Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a clamor
+      of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi, yi-hi!" rose
+      from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their ponies, driving them
+      with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance. Half-a-dozen times the lean
+      racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the two white men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible
+      by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the
+      buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun back
+      into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll cover
+      that stain with your blood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in groups,
+      either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the two white
+      men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and gravel, and
+      bits of turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with solemn
+      dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time of our
+      hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when the
+      payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the homes
+      of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail is open,
+      Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you remain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chief, we are blood brothers&mdash;was it not so spoken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift Standing
+      Bear would hear the words of his brother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good of
+      Standing Bear and his Braves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two <i>moneas</i>,
+      the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the squaws to
+      load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the reserve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in
+      rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old
+      outcast buffalo bull&mdash;and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running
+      Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat asks
+      him to deliver the two evil <i>moneas </i>" Carney added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes
+      swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the
+      braves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation,
+      saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the two
+      men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out
+      something I mean to do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes. If
+      they start shooting, go to it&mdash;then we'll fight to the finish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to
+      strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat
+      make?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his
+      tepee as a sign to the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of the
+      Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the Redcoat
+      do?" the Chief asked haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear, his
+      blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White
+      Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet
+      followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the tumult,
+      for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he
+      said to Carney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat
+      their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was
+      tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And Jerry,
+      as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient&mdash; but
+      it <i>must</i> be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with his
+      lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket, Jerry,
+      and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his tepee. The
+      authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't obey I'm going
+      to pull his shack down. Does that go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does, and the Lord be with us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice in
+      solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf
+      that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go back on the trail, Bulldog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from Carney's
+      right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of a snake; the
+      noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of the rein the little
+      buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to earth like a pricked
+      balloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid
+      shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians
+      stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the
+      knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take the
+      awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with the great
+      nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill a Redcoat on
+      duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a tribesman, meant
+      the dreaded punishment of hanging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted
+      white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up gazing
+      about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the hand of the
+      other was a vicious knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his bay
+      forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You are
+      under arrest&mdash;hands up!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report was
+      echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped to
+      his side, his pistol clattering to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying,
+      sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your
+      companion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed
+      Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn
+      Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them on
+      his mate's wrists and his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of
+      events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they
+      are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see that
+      the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he said magnanimously;
+      "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribe will go from here
+      up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to the reserve would bring
+      hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies on the ground. Ask the
+      Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may go quickly, and the evil be
+      at an end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, he advised,
+      for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid in a stock of meat
+      for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distinct hardship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'll stay
+      with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from the
+      lumberjacks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They must destroy any whisky they have," Jerry declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This the Chief agreed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half an hour the tepees were all down, packed on the poled travois,
+      blankets and bundles were strapped to the backs of the dogs, and in a
+      struggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenly over
+      the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breed scout.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45926 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/45926/45926-8.txt b/45926/45926-8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index a73466f..0000000
--- a/45926/45926-8.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,9027 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: Bulldog Carney

-

-Author: W. A. Fraser

-

-Release Date: June 10, 2014 [EBook #45926]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-By W. A. Fraser

-

-1919

-

-BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-

-

-

-I.--BULLDOG CARNEY

-

-|I've thought it over many ways and I'm going to tell this story as

-it happened, for I believe the reader will feel he is getting a true

-picture of things as they were but will not be again. A little padding

-up of the love interest, a little spilling of blood, would, perhaps,

-make it stronger technically, but would it lessen his faith that the

-curious thing happened? It's beyond me to know--I write it as it was.

-

-To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He was rather a diffident

-chap, never merging harmoniously into the western atmosphere; what saved

-him from rude knocks was the fact that he was lean of speech. He stood

-on the board sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly

-across a trench of black mud that represented the main street. He hated

-the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still more did he dislike

-the turmoil that was within the hotel.

-

-A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had ridden his buckskin

-cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's furtrading men, topping

-off their spree in town before the long trip to Great Slave Lake, were

-enthusiastically, vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy

-the Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin whistle.

-

-When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his way into the bar, the

-whistle had almost clattered to the floor from the piper's hand; then he

-gasped, so low that no one heard him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There

-was apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if he

-had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the Piper.

-A quick furtive look darting over the faces of his companions told him

-that no one else had recognized the horseman.

-

-Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin whistle groaned, "My God!

-a land of bums!" Three days he had waited to pick up a man to replace

-a member of his gang down at Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill

-through intercepting a plug of cold lead.

-

-Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and clambered to the

-board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp the muck from their boots.

-One of the two, Cayuse Gray, spoke:

-

-"This feller'll pull his freight with you, boss, if terms is right; he's

-a hell of a worker."

-

-Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen cognizance of the

-"feller": a shudder twitched his shoulders. He had never seen a more

-wolfish face set atop a man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the

-thin, vulpine sneak visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes

-peered boldly up from under shaggy brows that almost met a mop of black

-hair, the forehead was so low. It was a hungry face, as if its owner

-had a standing account against the world. But Cameron wanted a strong

-worker, and his business instinct found strength and endurance in that

-heavy-shouldered frame, and strong, wide-set legs.

-

-"What's your name?" he asked.

-

-"Jack Wolf," the man answered.

-

-The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker had named the thought

-that was in his mind.

-

-Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his cheek, spat, and added,

-"Jack the Wolf is what he gets most oftenest."

-

-"From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf retorted angrily.

-

-At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band tramped around the

-corner into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a circle, cut loose with brass

-and tambourine. As the wail from the instruments went up the men in the

-bar, led by Billy the Piper, swarmed out.

-

-A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the Salvation hymn:--=

-

-```"There are flies on you, and there're flies on

-

-````me,

-

-```But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."=

-

-This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they

-shouted in delight.

-

-A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood

-aghast at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.

-

-The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de

-Army bums, Miss," he jeered.

-

-The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking

-through the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping

-his lithe figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers

-with a grip that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!"

-he snarled; "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth--God and

-a woman. Apologize, you hound!"

-

-Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'

-ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.

-There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.

-Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer

-bottle hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,--the man on the

-buckskin,--but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's shoulder

-blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud of

-Jasper Avenue.

-

-A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its

-instruments and stole away.

-

-A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the

-sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He

-slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as

-the thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met

-his own. "Get down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,--I want you!" he

-commanded in sharp clicking tones.

-

-Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the

-Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red

-spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into

-the black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the

-half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind

-the rider.

-

-With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but

-as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot

-was to kill the breed.

-

-Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,

-and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out

-and barking vainly after the escaping man.

-

-Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river

-flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging

-from the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling

-the bank.

-

-"Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said

-in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"

-

-The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the

-Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"

-

-Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner

-answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to

-travel with me get busy."

-

-The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in

-a dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the

-halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean

-parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.

-

-The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down

-stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the

-hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of

-the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across

-the muddy old Saskatchewan.

-

-On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a

-grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;

-there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."

-

-At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away

-into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time

-being.

-

-Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The

-Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried

-down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail

-with a new mount.

-

-The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and

-profanity.

-

-Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck

-band, was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work

-at Fort Victor.

-

-Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From

-said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever

-slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman

-was king of the booze runners.

-

-"Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a

-thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof

-and copped the dough."

-

-"Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and

-pot at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that

-cuss did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho;

-but it was enough--the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set

-the pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd

-been lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever

-stacked up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when

-he's out to play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is

-my advice to you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy

-face through it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to

-the bar and said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real

-man."

-

-He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the

-others had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with

-admiration:

-

-"Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper

-calls him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged

-Mister Khaki-jacket--we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his

-nut, and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys

-what happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog

-Carney!" Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd

-give that cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as

-I do now."

-

-The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:

-the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a

-school teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went,

-constituting a floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary

-citizens.

-

-Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood,

-and not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there

-were seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating

-passion of moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made

-up for it in insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the

-old Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and

-found a subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.

-

-When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the

-little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who

-wandered in mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual

-nourishment.

-

-On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to

-Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile

-oaths, their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments

-were spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of

-life. Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling

-perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.

-

-Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the

-religious fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was

-that strange contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to

-lean eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack

-the Wolf and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the

-great sun swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes

-the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack

-slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked

-Bible to him.

-

-At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow

-gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first

-died away.

-

-As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst

-for moral betterment--insatiable. The missionary in a chat with Cameron

-explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners, had

-never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but

-the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of

-salvation, Fort Victor--Glory to God! The poor fellow's very wickedness

-was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord's

-vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.

-

-It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always

-being saved all over the world--regenerated, metamorphosed, and who was

-Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.

-

-At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of

-Wolf, became a high-powered machine.

-

-The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and

-became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited

-until this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon

-with, perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack

-the Wolf declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he

-affirmed, and should be taught respect for God's agents in a

-proper muscular manner. So the first time three French half-breeds,

-enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log schoolhouse and declared

-school was out, sending the teacher home with tears of shame in her

-blue eyes, Jack reestablished the dignity of the church by generously

-walloping the three backsliders.

-

-It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most

-ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the

-lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all

-of Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she

-had known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her

-negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when

-the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others

-were practically ignored.

-

-For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker

-and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.

-

-Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the

-only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:

-

-"I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk

-purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze

-fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue

-devils away."

-

-"You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was

-prejudiced myself at first."

-

-Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft

-of tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents

-in it, and put it back on his head:

-

-"You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss--first guesses about a

-feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder

-skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or

-twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."

-

-Cameron laughed.

-

-"'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'

-like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness

-that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a

-tin of powder; he'll throw back."

-

-"There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher,"

-Cameron said meditatively.

-

-This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as

-houses. She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers,

-'tain't nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her

-religion, that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an'

-such while he makes a stake workin' here."

-

-Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.

-

-Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some

-prairie chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he

-passed the shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This

-was careless, for train dogs were always prowling about for just such

-a chance for loot. He stepped through the door and took a peep into the

-other room. There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.

-

-"What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered

-surlily.

-

-"Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."

-

-"I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that

-tough bunch--swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all day; a

-man can't keep decent in that outfit."

-

-"Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive

-Scotch.

-

-"You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no

-square deal; you've treated me like a breed."

-

-This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look

-that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,

-enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.

-

-"You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the

-work. The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands,

-especially the women folks. You're a scoundrel."

-

-Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his

-blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel

-gun that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the

-triggers.

-

-"Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded.

-"If I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no

-good on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I

-did the deed."

-

-The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on

-the table.

-

-"Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of

-you. I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort

-Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."

-

-Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started

-out.

-

-"Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.

-

-"I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his

-shoulder, stalking on.

-

-Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the

-Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,

-Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean

-nothin'."

-

-Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote

-a note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was

-humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad

-record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him

-and the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more

-serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might

-crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right

-to stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.

-

-Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all

-time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her

-bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward

-boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to

-let him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police

-barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police

-had always persecuted her Jack.

-

-Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the

-neutral blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a

-new runway. He had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost

-reconciled to the loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.

-

-Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take

-him back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of

-horses to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here

-is shy a horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express--it's

-good enough for you."

-

-So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his

-shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very

-debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.

-

-He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want--Jack Wolf.

-They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River, with

-a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to

-explain."

-

-"He's gone."

-

-"Gone! When?"

-

-"Yesterday."

-

-The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon

-Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he

-asked.

-

-"I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his

-saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.

-

-Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look

-in his face.

-

-"I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be

-interned when there's business on."

-

-"The little school teacher?"

-

-"The little fool!"

-

-"You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"

-

-"I did."

-

-"Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."

-

-"How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'--had put

-the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for

-him; spun me the most glimmering tale--she's got a dime novel skinned

-four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog

-Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat.

-They persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to

-God, and has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two

-of them are to live happy ever after."

-

-"Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.

-

-"That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched

-up against her chest for years."

-

-Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby

-seemed inadequate.

-

-"What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.

-

-"About three o'clock."

-

-"Afoot?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot

-he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."

-

-"To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.

-

-"You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest

-skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail--no train for

-him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization

-for grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If

-you'll stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse

-I'll eat and pull out."

-

-In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll

-just not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much

-obliged. It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."

-

-Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,

-forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the

-south bank and disappeared.

-

-When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log

-shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The

-family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian

-bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some

-devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope

-hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.

-

-Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable

-horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort

-Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten

-trail that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on

-to Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was

-the old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to

-Winnipeg.

-

-The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where

-money was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was

-involved he could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The

-Winnipeg trail would be deserted--Jack knew that; a man could travel it

-the round of the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond

-he could leave it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and

-board a train at some small station. No notice would be taken of him,

-for trappers, prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative

-men, were always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent

-solitudes of the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.

-

-The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath

-would pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory

-of capturing his man single-handed. That was the _esprit de corps_ of

-these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, _par excellence_, large in

-conceit.

-

-A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his

-strong teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence

-in his ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted

-Policeman.

-

-He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,

-looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the

-old Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the

-railroad south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail

-running into Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was

-about ten miles east of that town.

-

-He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the

-Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,

-you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in,

-my brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."

-

-Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;

-where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever

-persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong

-prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding

-wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till

-he sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf

-went in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he

-asked how far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail--still

-toward Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the

-milk, but the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the

-one he had seen heading for Edmonton.

-

-For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice

-putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on

-the road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig

-coming from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it

-had passed. Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet

-in the black soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into

-a waggon here from behind. This accomplished he turned east across the

-prairie, reach-ing the old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned

-south.

-

-At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the

-smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod--toes in, and head

-hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints--hour after

-hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy

-springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.

-

-At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy

-gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick

-clump of saskatoon bushes.

-

-At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for

-his drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring

-beverage. On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.

-

-All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his

-veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper

-on his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning

-he would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about

-ten, and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east,

-or west, or south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to

-Edmonton; the police would spend two or three days searching all the

-shacks and Indian and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily

-outgoing train.

-

-There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him;

-but there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up

-against that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand

-the best he knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the

-train on some grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack

-where Montana Dick lived. Dick would know what was doing.

-

-Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg

-country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour;

-he was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into

-impassable country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west

-again. But for two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he

-realized now that he was covering miles which had to be made up when he

-swung west again.

-

-Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through

-which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring

-man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was

-being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it

-was simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie

-was closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a

-crouching wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was

-that he was tiring, perhaps.

-

-Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form--something _was_ on his

-trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian--gifted with the sixth

-sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a day's march

-away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to laugh it

-off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't down.

-

-The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the

-luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath

-trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad.

-His footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the

-heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles

-would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that

-his tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone.

-Being mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of

-darkness--would reach the railway and wire down the line.

-

-The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the

-ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back.

-On the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched

-to watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below

-them into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole

-mass of tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious

-background a horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the

-saddle, the docked tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the

-watcher that it was a policeman.

-

-When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the

-road where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the

-vast dome. Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant

-stopped, dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched

-the trail for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night,

-coming first over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of

-sombre hue. The trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be

-there, merged into the pattern till they were indiscernible.

-

-A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its

-sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,

-saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their

-nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose

-in circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill

-cranes flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks

-straight out behind, and soared away like kites.

-

-Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what

-the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would

-camp there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by

-the hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about

-three o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop

-along the southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise

-that Jack had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the

-southern end of the swamp and head for the railway.

-

-"I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can,

-if not--get him."

-

-He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;

-this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.

-

-The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,

-crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held

-between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs

-that might crack.

-

-If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to

-the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of

-the picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine,

-then the Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would

-throw up his hands.

-

-The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for

-then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his

-life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even

-if the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first

-shot meant not overmuch.

-

-So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears

-fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of

-discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in

-the pea vine and sweet-grass.

-

-Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug

-of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched

-with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.

-

-The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.

-

-The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the

-bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a

-narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen;

-not daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden

-somewhere and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the

-Wolf lay, just a gray mound against the gray turf.

-

-The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow

-lay down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He

-had not removed his pistol belt.

-

-The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to

-kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few

-feet and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering

-trick of a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when

-a man was cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain

-ahead of him, or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage

-was with him. Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down

-wind from them now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the

-wind shifted--no, he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary

-in the daylight, might give him his chance.

-

-Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the

-mosquito, had run his course.

-

-The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,

-slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the

-ducks would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from

-consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing

-him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but

-sprang to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again

-a great horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped

-silently and struck, thinking it a hare.

-

-Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the

-Wolf knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be

-thrown. He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse,

-his sides ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest,

-his muzzle on the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.

-

-Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his

-death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes

-sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a

-minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose

-tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed

-toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the

-lake for a drink.

-

-Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but

-the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It

-was a chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the

-hole when I play this hand."

-

-Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his

-horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something

-had to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short

-distance up a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding

-prairie. This seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered

-some dry poplar branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked

-stick he drove in the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.

-

-Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The

-Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the

-sleeves of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece

-of soap and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water

-to wash away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and

-heavy on his face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing

-and blowing water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was

-unheard.

-

-When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and

-turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police

-revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip

-to the buff--I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless

-you get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're

-told and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."

-

-Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.

-

-"Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf

-ordered. In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant

-Heath; then he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."

-

-In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of

-steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding,

-"Click these on."

-

-"I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat

-and your boots?"

-

-The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.

-I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you your choice of three ways:

-I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of

-these .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt

-on your back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare

-feet."

-

-"I don't walk on my pants."

-

-"That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into

-about four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."

-

-"I'll starve."

-

-"That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack

-Wolf would get a dinner--I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn

-police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook

-grub for two--bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."

-

-The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his

-wrists, and clad only in a shirt.

-

-When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket

-line and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the

-carbine strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.

-

-"I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three

-days; that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near

-steel, I ain't horse stealin', myself--I'm only borrowin'."

-

-When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly

-be pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning--a

-play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody

-that day. He said:

-

-"You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't

-you?"

-

-"We try to."

-

-"I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in

-a hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the

-honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'

-start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then

-you can get out in two days and be none the worse."

-

-"I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with

-a horse thief--with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."

-

-"You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf

-snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week

-askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,

-won't you?"

-

-"I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant

-objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect

-myself."

-

-The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want

-the death of a man on his hands--there was nothing in it. So he unlocked

-the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw

-them far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up

-by somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away

-harder."

-

-"Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.

-

-With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'

-mean unless it helps me out of a hole."

-

-Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles

-he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a

-horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.

-

-Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling

-hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie

-rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over

-higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;

-but there was no hurry.

-

-Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching

-a saddle on a buckskin horse.

-

-"Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin

-that I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with

-him."

-

-He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding

-screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen

-him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until

-Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands,

-for his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover

-and waited.

-

-Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked

-his ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of

-hoofs back on the tell-tale trail he had left.

-

-With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the

-startled animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in

-a shower.

-

-A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he

-recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half

-the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering

-like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.

-

-Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with

-a writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his

-spread mouth came a scream of terror--he knew.

-

-And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered--he had

-ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they

-were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low

-forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared

-from off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came

-back to him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two

-or three wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming

-quicksands.

-

-The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his

-feet up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head

-about he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's

-thin lips a smile hovered. He sneered:

-

-"You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at

-barracks?"

-

-Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,

-so he lied:

-

-"I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."

-

-Bulldog sneered. "Why should I--God doesn't love a sneaking police

-hound."

-

-The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now

-stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.

-

-"All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition--never mind, I'll

-save you first--there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty

-the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.

-"Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can

-get my cow-rope to you tie the two together."

-

-He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,

-seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking

-his cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on

-the tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous

-ooze. Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it

-at the first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back,

-looped the rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop

-over on your belly--look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing

-the Wolf to safe ground.

-

-The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his

-revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.

-

-A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was

-gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter

-commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take

-ten paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of

-cartridges.

-

-"Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his

-horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

-

-He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built

-a little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.

-

-When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand

-close to the fire so your pants dry too--I want that suit."

-

-The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney

-about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two

-hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of

-that coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for

-a chance to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his

-captor.

-

-"Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the

-pocket."

-

-When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,

-took from it two packets--one of papers, and another wrapped in strong

-paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with the

-other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say, you're

-some liar--even for a government hound; your name's not Phillips, it's

-Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at Golden. You're

-the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather Bulldog Carney in;

-you shot off your mouth all along the line that you were going to take

-him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred you'd tie him hoof

-and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you first, see? Turn you

-over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds; that's just what I'm

-going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you for the sake of that

-little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm Bulldog Carney.

-Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it over; then

-you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the police as

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-"D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it,

-Mister Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never

-live it down if you live to be a thousand--you've boasted too much."

-

-The Wolf had remained silent--waiting. He had an advantage if his captor

-did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at Edmonton by

-Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.

-

-"You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell

-them who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know

-me; perhaps some of them'll know you."

-

-A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.

-"Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over

-on the rail"--and he jerked his thumb toward the west--"where there's

-two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen

-either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since

-you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is

-wanted at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that

-brings him in."

-

-At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light--a flood of it. If this

-thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,

-he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at

-Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been

-in their clutches and escaped.

-

-But Jack must bluff--appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:

-"They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."

-

-Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't

-you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little

-pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band,

-the Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the

-farm?"

-

-As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp

-"Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.

-

-The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five

-seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and

-dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.

-

-"Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman

-to be toting. Is this police money?"

-

-The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money

-but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not

-a policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner

-of the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman

-on duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed

-it all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.

-

-"Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two

-hundred is my own," he answered.

-

-"I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government

-robbed me of my ranch--said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;

-it's coming to you."

-

-"If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty

-trick, what you say'll make good--I'll have to quit the Force; an' I

-want to get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two

-hundred."

-

-"I think you're lying--a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred ahead,

-not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or two,"

-Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he spun

-it in the air.

-

-"Heads!" the Wolf cried.

-

-The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the

-bills to their owner.

-

-"I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,

-you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you

-missed him, didn't you? Where's he--what's he done lately? He played me

-a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I

-never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd

-give you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down

-grudge against. What's his description--what does he look like?"

-

-"He's a tall slim chap--looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger blood

-in him," the Wolf lied.

-

-"I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about

-cooked--peel!"

-

-The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.

-

-"Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,

-toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.

-

-In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M.

-P., revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and

-lighted his pipe.

-

-When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want

-you to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you

-over to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen

-to you if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath--they'd laugh

-at you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and

-you'd sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet--see? I'm going to stay

-close to you till you're on that train."

-

-Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as

-Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for

-Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him--the policeman would see

-to that.

-

-"You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he

-asked.

-

-"You bet I am--I'd rather work this racket than go to my own wedding."

-

-"Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll

-just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give

-myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I

-only got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog

-Carney I won't come out as Sergeant Heath--I'll disappear as Mister

-Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened

-Sergeant Heath from me--I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever

-stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure

-bluff--for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's

-ready compliance.

-

-Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like

-that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire--then

-we'll pull out."

-

-As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he

-found a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.

-

-When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower

-end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode

-along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being

-helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.

-Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than

-that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily

-come by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had

-Carney to steal his labor--to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile

-after mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession

-of Jack.

-

-If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way

-so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too.

-The khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.

-

-They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for

-another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's

-waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd

-be peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there

-won't be no argument."

-

-In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of

-water, and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten

-miles from steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney

-had both the police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the

-ground, looped the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and

-said.

-

-"I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll

-sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you

-so much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and

-sleep light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it

-same's we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."

-

-Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.

-It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than

-once he had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the

-psychology of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what

-he had been told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering

-chap who had had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He

-determined to take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie

-awake.

-

-"We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a

-shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."

-

-He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back,

-saying, as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your

-handcuffs--thought you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"

-

-"They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf

-lied.

-

-Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite

-precision. When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his

-precautions had made all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by

-jerky nerves; so in five minutes he slept.

-

-The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the

-something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to

-play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to

-carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good

-thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the

-pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed

-clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the

-buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would

-sleep--not lie awake through fear over nothing.

-

-In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried

-grass a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the

-steady rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath;

-had he been lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his

-breathing to listen.

-

-The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he

-had lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked

-his hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that

-bound his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he

-waited. The buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the

-flowered carpet from his nostrils.

-

-Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his

-nostrils again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was

-heard the clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney,

-recognizing what had waked him, turned over and slept again.

-

-Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed

-through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the

-grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely

-lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief

-that had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck,

-and in one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his

-wrist. Now he had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other

-man helpless.

-

-Then he commenced his crawl.

-

-A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern

-sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with

-ghostly garments bush and shrub.

-

-Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and

-the Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney

-knew the sensitive wariness of his horse,--the scent of the stranger in

-his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part

-of the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended

-to drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had

-trailed it back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This

-was more a move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could

-work his way, creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get

-away with the horse.

-

-At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears

-cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was

-the scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his

-mind, that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about;

-or, perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious

-man he distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his

-prairie dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept

-into camp. He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head

-irritably. A vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay

-across Carney's foot and he stirred restlessly.

-

-The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,

-cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that

-even the watchful animal scarce detected it.

-

-He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot,

-or the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or

-the other--the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by

-any chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart

-pounding against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten

-feet, and he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch

-it from the holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.

-

-The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive.

-Sometimes he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but

-only to throw his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head,

-and exhale a whistling breath.

-

-Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard

-and he could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had

-wakened--just the steady breathing of a sleeping man.

-

-The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly

-had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his

-feet.

-

-Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another

-yard, and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested

-like a sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward

-the pistol stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was

-twisted about the two first fingers of his right.

-

-Yes, Carney slept.

-

-As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was

-seized in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the

-butt of Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over

-the eye and he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were

-riveting a boiler in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was

-boring a hole in his forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had

-wakened in a strange land. He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at

-a man who sat beside a camp fire smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a

-copper kettle hung and a scent of broiling bacon came to his nostrils.

-The man beside the fire took the pipe from his mouth and said: "I hoped

-I had cracked your skull, you swine. Where did you pick up that thug

-trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As you are troubled with insomnia

-we'll hit the trail again."

-

-With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead

-of the buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a

-strange, weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping

-waters.

-

-The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was

-wobbly on his legs--his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's

-leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung

-to his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the

-shifting sands.

-

-"Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.

-

-They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees

-in the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he

-collapsed like a jointed doll--he toppled head first into the mire and

-lay there.

-

-The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a

-man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping

-the mud from his face, and looking very all in.

-

-Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're

-soft, my bucko--I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered;

-"boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way

-of hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."

-

-He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten

-feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his

-side and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind

-and one in front.

-

-Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some

-trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together

-and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I _will_ have a sleep."

-

-The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would

-have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the

-soft stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the

-valley of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass

-touched his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.

-

-He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he

-saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite

-and pull out."

-

-The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front

-of the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of

-escape were good.

-

-At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against

-a sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to

-the left, in an hour they were close to the Post.

-

-Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up

-in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it

-was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his

-horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it,

-and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.

-

-He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the

-latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two

-constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating

-breakfast.

-

-"Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a

-prisoner, Bulldog Carney."

-

-The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at

-this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and

-laughed.

-

-"Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."

-

-The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my

-uniform--where's my horse? I've got you now--set me afoot to starve,

-would you, you damn thief--you murderer! Where's the five hundred

-dollars you stole from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"

-

-He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets

-from a gatling--it was a torrent.

-

-But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed

-the truth--the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it

-was amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept

-quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath

-the khaki coat.

-

-Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought

-that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of

-his evil luck should not escape.

-

-"_That's Bulldog Carney!_" he cried fiercely; "don't let him get away."

-

-Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.

-

-A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops."

-They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose

-small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.

-

-"I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I

-had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such

-a skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by

-one, into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led

-from the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as

-a cell. "I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack--you really should

-have been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the

-prairie somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so.

-Step in, boys, and you go first, Wolf."

-

-When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy

-wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the

-fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.

-

-A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through

-the mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:--

-

-Dear Miss Black:--

-

-I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No

-woman can afford to bet on even a _good_ man. Stick to the kids, for

-I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant

-Heath and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I

-wouldn't have known, and you'd have lost out.

-

-Yours delightedly,

-

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-

-

-

-II.--BULLDOG CARNEY'S ALIBI

-

-|A day's trail north from where Idaho and Montana come together on the

-Canadian border, fumed and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature

-was a little bit of all right, for from the minute it trickled from

-a huge blue-green glacier up in the Selkirks till it fell into the

-Kootenay, it bucked its way over, under, and around rock-cliffs, and

-areas of stolid mountain sides that still held gigantic pine and cedar.

-

-It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the

-town of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of

-the yellow god.

-

-When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid,

-suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.

-

-One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside,

-looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.

-

-Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth

-and Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder;

-Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a

-gyroscope.

-

-Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with

-drill and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road--a free lance of

-adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream

-than win money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy

-anatomy, the calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve

-and sweet courage, the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would

-have perished tied to routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog"

-Carney, was an inspiration.

-

-He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border,

-mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and

-United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam

-the exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking

-Horse.

-

-The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred

-dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the

-hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put

-a gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again.

-When Seth threw up his hands declaring that the Little Widow was no

-good, those who had laughed told him that they had known it all the

-time.

-

-But what they didn't know was that the long drift in the mine now ran on

-until it was directly under the Gold Nugget hotel.

-

-It was Carney who had worked that out, and Seth and his hotel were

-established as a clearing station for the opium that was shipped in by

-train from Vancouver in tins labelled "Peaches," "Salmon," or any old

-thing. It was stored in the mine and taken from there by pack-train down

-to the border, and switched across at Bailey's Ferry, the U. S. customs

-officers at that point being nice lovable chaps; or sometimes it crossed

-the Kootenay in a small boat at night.

-

-Bulldog supervised that end of the business, bringing the heavy payments

-in gold back to Bucking Horse on a laden mule behind his buckskin; then

-the gold was expressed by train to the head office of this delightful

-trading company in Vancouver.

-

-This endeavor ran along smoothly, for the whole mining West was one

-gigantic union, standing "agin the government"--any old government, U.

-S. or Canadian.

-

-Carney's enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion;

-besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in

-looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him

-alone.

-

-The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one

-of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town

-would be its own custodian.

-

-One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his

-horse's heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung

-from either side of a pack saddle.

-

-Carney went straight to the little railway station, and expressed the

-gold to Vancouver, getting the agent's assurance that it would go out on

-the night train which went through at one o'clock. Then he rode back to

-the Gold Nugget and put his horse and mule in the stable.

-

-As he pushed open the front door of the hotel he figuratively stepped

-into a family row, a row so self-centered that the parties interested

-were unaware of his entrance.

-

-A small bar occupied one corner of the dim-lighted room, and behind this

-Seth Long leaned back against the bottle rack, with arms folded across

-his big chest, puffing at a thick cigar. Facing him, with elbows on the

-bar, a man was talking volubly, anger speeding up his vocalization.

-

-Beside the man stood Jeanette Holt, fire flashing from her black eyes,

-and her nostrils dilated with passion. She interrupted the voluble one:

-

-"Yes, Seth, I did slap this cheap affair, Jack Wolf, fair across the

-ugly mouth, and I'll do it again!"

-

-Seth tongued the cigar to one corner of his ample lips, and drawled:

-"That's a woman's privilege, Jack, if a feller's give her just cause for

-action You ain't got no kick comin', I reckon, 'cause this little woman

-ain't one to fly off the handle for nothin'."

-

-"Nothin', Seth? I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll

-figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I

-see--you're bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is

-stingin' you right here in your own nest."

-

-Biff!

-

-That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.

-

-The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned

-to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look

-that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an

-oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun.

-

-Bulldog Carney had stepped quickly across the room, and was now at his

-side, saying:

-

-"So you're here, Jack the Wolf, eh? I thought I had rid civilization of

-your ugly presence when I turned you over to the police at Hobbema for

-murdering your mate."

-

-"That was a trumped-up charge," the Wolf stammered.

-

-"Ah! I see--acquitted! I can guess it in once. Nobody saw you put that

-little round hole in the back of Alberta Bill's head--not even Bill; and

-he was dead and couldn't talk."

-

-Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold,

-searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You

-put your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or

-something will happen. I've got a proposition."

-

-The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his

-belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden

-rail, saying, surlily:

-

-"I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man

-that plays into the hands of the damn police."

-

-"You can cut out the rough stuff, Wolf, while there's a lady present."

-

-Carney deliberately turned his shoulder to the scowling man, and said,

-"How d'you do, Miss Holt?" touching his hat. Then he added, "Seth,

-locate a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."

-

-As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank

-as though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room,

-and addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square

-box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger--we're going to liquidate."

-

-The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack

-Wolf.

-

-"Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved

-a black bottle toward Bulldog.

-

-"The gents first," the latter intimated.

-

-The bottle was slid down to Cayuse, who filled his glass and passed it

-back to Wolf. The latter carried it irritably past him without filling

-his glass.

-

-"Help yourself, Wolf." It was a command, not an invitation, in Carney's

-voice.

-

-"I'm not drinkin'," Jack snarled.

-

-"Yes, you are. I've got a toast that's got to be unanimous."

-

-Seth, with a wink at Wolf, tipped the bottle and half filled the

-latter's glass, saying, "Be a sport, Jack."

-

-As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at

-Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.

-

-Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said: "Gents, we're going to

-drink to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to

-run across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long

-ever had--_Miss Jeanette_ Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor, but

-the Wolf did not touch his glass.

-

-"You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was

-deadly.

-

-The room had grown still. One, two, three, a wooden clock on the shelf

-behind the bar ticked off the seconds in the heavy quiet; and in a

-far corner the piping of a stray cricket sounded like the drool of a

-pfirrari.

-

-There was a click of a latch, a muffled scrape as the outer door pushed

-open. This seemed to break the holding spell of fear that was over the

-Wolf. "I'll see you in hell, Bulldog Carney, before I drink with you or

-a girl that----"

-

-The whisky that was in Carney's glass shot fair into the speaker's

-open mouth. As his hand jumped to his gun the wrist was seized with a

-loosening twist, and the heel of Bulldog's open right hand caught him

-under the chin with a force that fair lifted him from his feet to drop

-on the back of his head.

-

-A man wearing a brass-buttoned khaki jacket with blue trousers down

-which ran wide yellow stripes, darted from where he had stood at the

-door, put his hand on Bulldog's shoulder, and said:

-

-"You're under arrest in the Queen's name, Bulldog Carney!"

-

-Carney reached down and picked up the Wolf's gun that lay where it had

-fallen from his twisted hand, and passed it to Seth without comment.

-Then he looked the man in the khaki coat up and down and coolly asked.

-"Are you anybody in particular, stranger?"

-

-"I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."

-

-"You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke

-bank, the Mounted."

-

-"Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll

-entertain you for several days over in the pen."

-

-"On what grounds?"

-

-"You'll find out."

-

-"Yes, and now, declare yourself!"

-

-"We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in

-Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm

-here."

-

-"Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who

-stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.

-

-"I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."

-

-"Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand

-clasping his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the

-Sergeant, a faint smile lifting his tawny mustache.

-

-"You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a

-chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's

-a thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the

-line."

-

-"Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot

-to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia.

-You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which

-you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to

-let you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick

-you into the street; then they would have something on me--something

-because I'd mussed up the uniform."

-

-"Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go

-bail----"

-

-"I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."

-

-The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.

-

-Carney grinned.

-

-"Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go

-with you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all

-your own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even

-his duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance

-by insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter

-turned it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through

-Carney's arm, passed out.

-

-Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack

-divided by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a

-bunk; the other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door

-that carried a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small

-window safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this

-bull-pen, as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a

-candle. There was a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.

-

-"Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the

-bare interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you

-fellows are angular."

-

-"I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."

-

-"Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."

-

-The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain

-perhaps you'll drop some of that side."

-

-Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his

-pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your

-curtains, will it?"

-

-"It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."

-

-Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant

-Black went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer,

-Bulldog--I ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather

-irrelevantly, and with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read

-'Les Miserables,' Sergeant?"

-

-"I ain't read a paper in a month--I've been too busy."

-

-"It isn't a paper, it's a story."

-

-"I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."

-

-"This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney

-persisted.

-

-"Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come

-into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec--they're

-more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical

-voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a

-character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might

-discriminate over a great story."

-

-This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he

-do--how am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.

-

-"The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like

-yourself, and his mind was only capable of containing the one

-idea--duty. It was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."

-

-"You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the

-bangles on you and leave you in the dark."

-

-"If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can

-clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I

-meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."

-

-Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through

-the bars of the open window.

-

-Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough

-to know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight--a fight over nothing;

-and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.

-

-"It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs

-would hold anybody, and you know it."

-

-In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's

-gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to

-arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had

-locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well

-enough alone.

-

-"Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be

-sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."

-

-"Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me

-something to read."

-

-Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les

-Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple

-of magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.

-

-Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He

-could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then

-the Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire

-to Major Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came

-back. About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the

-floor, his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law

-had retired. A vagrant thought traversed his mind that the

-heavy-dispositioned, phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper

-once oblivious. However, that didn't matter, there was no necessity for

-escape.

-

-Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened

-by a noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of

-life he sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the

-sputtering candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew

-he had been wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening,

-no sound reached his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous

-breathings. He had guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper,

-one of Shakespeare's full-paunched kind.

-

-Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused

-to cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's

-presence. He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly

-associated with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth

-so much as over Jeanette.

-

-He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from

-the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a

-pebble tapping on iron.

-

-With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no

-tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window

-thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.

-

-A soft warm hand grasped his, and he felt the smooth sides of a folded

-paper. As he gave the hand a reassuring pressure, his knuckles were

-tapped gently by something hard. He transferred the paper to his other

-hand, and reaching out again, something was thrust into it, that when he

-lifted it within he found was a strong screw-driver.

-

-He crept back to his bunk, slipped the screwdriver between the blankets,

-and standing by the door listened for ten seconds; then a faint gurgling

-breath told him that Black slept.

-

-Making a hiding canopy of his blanket, he lighted his candle, unfolded

-the paper, and read:

-

-"Two planks, north end, fastened with screws. Below is tunnel that leads

-to the mine. Will meet you there. Come soon. Important."

-

-There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.

-

-He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen

-knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks

-nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the

-flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these

-heads were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the

-other room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked

-in the lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened.

-

-As if suddenly startled from sleep, Carney called out: "Who's that--what

-do you want?"

-

-The Sergeant peered in and answered, "Nothing! thought I heard you

-moving about. Are you all right, Carney?"

-

-He swept the pen with his candle, noted Carney's boots on the floor,

-and, satisfied, closed the door and went back to his bunk.

-

-This interruption rather pleased Carney; he felt that it was a somnolent

-sense of duty, responsibility, that had wakened Black. Now that he had

-investigated and found everything all right he would probably sleep

-soundly for hours.

-

-Carney waited ten minutes. The Sergeant's bunk had given a note of

-complaint as its occupant turned over; now it was still. Taking his

-boots in his hand he crept back to the end of the pen and rapidly,

-noiselessly, withdrew the screw-nails from both ends of two planks. Then

-he crept back to the door and listened; the other room was silent save

-for the same little sleep breathings he had heard before.

-

-With the screw-driver he lifted the planks, slipped through the opening,

-all in the dark, and drew the planks back into place over his head. He

-had to crouch in the little tunnel.

-

-Pulling on his boots, on hands and knees he crawled through the small

-tunnel for fifty yards. Then he came to stope timbers stood on end,

-and turning these to one side found himself in what he knew must be a

-cross-cut from the main drift that ran between the mine opening and the

-hotel.

-

-As he stood up in this he heard a faint whistle, and whispered,

-"Jeanette."

-

-The girl came forward in the dark, her hand touching his arm.

-

-"I'm so glad," she whispered. "We'd better stand here in the dark, for I

-have something serious to tell you."

-

-Then in a low tone the girl said:

-

-"The Wolf and Cayuse Braun are going to hold up the train to-night, just

-at the end of the trestle, and rob the express car."

-

-"Is Seth in it?"

-

-"Yes, he's standing in, but he isn't going to help on the job. The Wolf

-is going to board the train at the station, and enter the express car

-when the train is creeping over the trestle. He's got a bar and rope for

-fastening the door of the car behind the express car. When the engine

-reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and

-make him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the

-other cars are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and

-Cayuse will force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop

-off on the up-grade, half a mile beyond."

-

-"Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away

-with it, I believe."

-

-"I listened to them planning the whole thing out," Jeanette confessed,

-"and they didn't know I could hear them."

-

-"What about this little tunnel under the jail--that's a new one on me?"

-

-"Seth had it dug, pretending he was looking for gold; but the men

-who dug it didn't know that it led under the jail, and he finished it

-himself, fixed the planks, and all. You see when the police go away they

-leave the keys with Seth in case any sudden trouble comes up. Nobody

-knows about it but Seth."

-

-There was a tang of regret in Carney's voice as he said:

-

-"Seth is playing it pretty low down, Jeanette; he's practically stealing

-from his pals. I put twenty thousand in gold in to-night to go by

-that train, coke money; he knows it, and that's what these thieves are

-after."

-

-"Surely Seth wouldn't do that, Bulldog--steal from his partners!"

-

-"Well, not quite, Jeanette. He figures that the express company is

-responsible, will have to make good, and that my people will get their

-money back; but all the same, it's kind of like that--it's rotten!"

-

-"What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I--not on Seth--not while

-I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't

---well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's

-been different. I've stuck to him--you know, Bulldog, how straight I've

-been--but a thief!"

-

-"No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the

-girl's voice carried a tremble.

-

-"I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the

-police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your

-being arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to

-Seth and stop it?"

-

-"No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just

-hell. Besides, girl, I'm in jail."

-

-"But you're free now--you'll go away."

-

-"Let me think a minute, Jeanette."

-

-As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose

-flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and

-they saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse

-Braun.

-

-The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is

-going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while

-they pull the job off."

-

-The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into

-action, fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:

-

-"You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing--I will see what

-I can do."

-

-"And Seth--you won't----"

-

-"Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't

-bother your pretty little head about it."

-

-The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was

-trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a

-school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion:

-"Bulldog, do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it

-at all, wondered?"

-

-"Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to

-being the finest girl I ever knew."

-

-"But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"

-

-"No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those

-things. Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he

-shouldn't steal it; that's one kind of man. I'm different."

-

-"You mean that I'm like the gold?"

-

-"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well--you know what I mean,

-Jeanette."

-

-"But you like me?"

-

-"So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."

-

-"Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you--if I kissed

-you?".

-

-"Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to

-do what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself.

-Don't get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that

-way. I've kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you,

-being Seth's girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you

-untangle that--get what I mean?"

-

-"I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"

-

-There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's

-arm and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in

-a steadier voice: "Good night, man--I'm going back." Together they felt

-their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift,

-Carney said: "I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's

-nobody about; I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to

-the cellar you go ahead and clear the way for me."

-

-The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little

-store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out

-to the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a

-gun that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn

-the two bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out

-he avoided the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent

-Bucking Horse.

-

-A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten

-by the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden

-trestle looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint

-moonlight, its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half

-a mile from where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its

-tail coming back to the same side of the stream after traversing two

-short kinks. It looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to

-carry the huge Mogul engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train

-went over it at a snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's

-attention.

-

-And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what

-chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to

-his assistance.

-

-Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned,

-and no doubt would go through unless---- At this juncture of thought Carney

-chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping into

-the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub growth

-Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat--easy,

-my boy!"

-

-The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip--that there was no

-hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man

-talking to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and

-he, understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.

-

-Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over

-Carney's shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek;

-and sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's

-withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.

-

-They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no

-telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they

-trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.

-

-Presently Carney dropped the rein from over the horse's head to the

-ground, took his lariat from the saddle-horn, hung the two pack-bags

-over his shoulder, and whispering, "Wait here, Patsy boy," slipped

-through the brush and wormed his way cautiously to a huge boulder a

-hundred feet from the trestle. There he sat down, his back against the

-rock, and his eye on the blobs of yellow light that was Bucking Horse

-town. Presently from beyond the rock carried to his listening ears the

-clink of an iron-shod hoof against a stone, and he heard a suppressed,

-"Damn!"

-

-"Coming, I guess," he muttered to himself.

-

-The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came

-hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring

-yellow-red eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced

-his angry way down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the

-Mogul rocked in its swift glide down the curved grade; there was the

-screeching grind of airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as

-the compressed air seethed from opened valves at their release when the

-train stood at rest beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.

-

-He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's

-lantern gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of

-packages thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then

-the little green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the

-Mogul coughed as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at

-steel rails and slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping

-breaths; then came the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel

-as the heavy train careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the

-trestle were whining a protest like the twang of loose strings on a

-harp.

-

-Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far

-side of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man

-huddled in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand

-the barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.

-

-Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it

-was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.

-

-When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the

-steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried

-to Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the

-stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind

-the express car still on the trestle.

-

-Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open,

-and within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with

-hands above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a

-third was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them

-through the open door.

-

-Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance

-in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car

-and waited.

-

-He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the

-Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move

-I'll plug you!"

-

-The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal

-to Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps

-from the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a

-graceful sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the

-head of Jack the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the

-fall he was pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.

-

-The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless

-with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail

-end of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had

-bound him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.

-

-Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse.

-Of course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but

-shooting a man was something to be avoided.

-

-He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the

-express messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty

-thousand dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But

-Carney, having secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack

-bags astride the saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow

-mine. He had small fear that the two men would think of looking in that

-direction for the man who had robbed them; even if they did he had a

-good start for it would take time to untie the Wolf and get their one

-horse. Also he had the Wolf's guns.

-

-He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that

-ran off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of

-water, sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin,

-tied him, and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the

-small tunnel back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and,

-chuckling, fell into a virtuous sleep.

-

-He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully,

-"You're in luck, Bulldog."

-

-"Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."

-

-The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the

-sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and

-if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."

-

-"Thanks for your foresight, friend--that is, if you knew it was coming

-off. Tell me how your friend worked it."

-

-Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had

-finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would

-say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that

-I never have a companion in any little joke I put over."

-

-"I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an

-apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."

-

-He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and

-then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars

-for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."

-

-"Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to

-Lake Erie and start a bean farm."

-

-Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them

-two down."

-

-"No, thanks; I like it here."

-

-"I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog--set you free."

-

-"And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your

-arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram

-and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:

-

-"Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company

-offers two thousand."

-

-"Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.

-

-"What other one?"

-

-"The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."

-

-The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he

-admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta

-case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police

-before."

-

-"Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But

-I'm no sleuth for the official robber--he's fair game."

-

-"You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"

-

-"No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men--that's your job. But you

-can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that

-offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand,

-that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the

-gold I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if

-you'll oblige me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for

-breakfast."

-

-"I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."

-

-Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered.

-Her face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the

-policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the

-dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two

-under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.

-

-He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to

-arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish

-your breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this

-thing is investigated."

-

-The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant--why

-ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"

-

-The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do

-with it?"

-

-"Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when

-he escaped last night."

-

-The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened

-the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how

-you robbed the train!"

-

-At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ!

-Bulldog has snitched--he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out when

-he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And his

-horse was gone from the stable this morning!"

-

-As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of

-their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was

-out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a

-puff of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.

-

-As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that

-drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and

-he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.

-

-In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where

-he sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine

-chamber.

-

-With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol

-back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for

-a doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him

-upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.

-

-As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the

-shoulder; he'll be all right."

-

-"What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.

-

-"Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground--he can't talk;

-Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he

-hits the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave

-me five thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl,

-I'm going to put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he

-ever takes a notion to."

-

-Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.

-

-

-

-

-III.--OWNERS UP

-

-|Clatawa had put racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.

-

-You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and

-Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down

-with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"

-

-Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous

-thrills--a commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez

-Perces Indians, who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and

-were rich, would troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold

-pieces plugged into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black

-sausage, and bet the coins as though they were nickels.

-

-It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U.

-S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was

-a live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great

-luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

-

-Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a

-harem of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they

-named him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa

-found that men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed

-the gambling, and the racing, and the high living like any other

-creature of brains.

-

-He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some

-half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the

-great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the

-sires were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the

-colt, not being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big,

-upstanding bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's

-bellows and sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage,

-too, had not been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There

-was just one rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a

-thoroughbred, and until his measure was taken, until some other equine

-looked him in the eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man

-could just say what the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.

-

-At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez

-Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there

-was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron

-Jaw Blake declared.

-

-Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and

-

-Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to

-ameliorate the monotony.

-

-They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual,

-architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked

-but a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.

-

-Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush

-and pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with

-"Irish" Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt,

-more sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that

-"Fagan met death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic

-event had crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely

-"Death-on-the-trail."

-

-Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his

-upper jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen

-him with aptitude.

-

-Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of

-the bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a

-Siwash.

-

-So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman,

-wrote to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough

-to beat Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were

-specific, lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred,

-even a selling plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any

-cross-bred horse, no matter how good the latter apparently was, running

-in scrub races. He also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the

-Walla Walla races were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to

-Reilly to send him a tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and

-look the part of an able-bodied cow puncher.

-

-It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly--he just loved that sort

-of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the

-commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the

-_Maid of Palouse,_ what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony

-in charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of

-navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over

-the twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.

-

-The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron

-Jaw, Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities

-that lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black

-horse that he called Horned Toad.

-

-As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and

-instructed in the art of fool talk.

-

-Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and

-faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand

-dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a

-thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which

-Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.

-

-There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas

-

-Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great

-desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his

-fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the

-cows came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he

-drank: he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him.

-This was no piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads

-had declared for a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its

-hind legs and howl.

-

-Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll

-that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had

-a horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was

-never tired of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to

-Kamschatka; a spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any

-cayuse that had ever looked through a halter.

-

-But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd

-rush him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready

-to plunk down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had

-arrived.

-

-It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played

-against the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted

-into the game.

-

-A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face,

-rode up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to

-Walla Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town

-with the laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and,

-incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in

-earnest and had the mazuma.

-

-As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the

-cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of

-turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows

-of which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy

-individual, standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with

-Bacchanalian vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew

-chronologically the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided

-hair, who stood in the open door. He must have enlarged on the

-sophistication of her past life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath,

-called the declaimer a liar and a seven-times misplaced offspring.

-

-The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely

-over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.

-

-The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his

-imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved

-him. With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he

-would bring its lash down on the décolletéd shoulders of the woman.

-

-At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door

-as though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread

-basket of the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.

-

-The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.

-

-But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled

-so neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into

-the little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers

-of steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte

-face, and a fist drove into his midriff.

-

-Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a

-grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner

-of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he

-contemplated a trip to dreamland.

-

-The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose

-gladsomeness swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man--you beaut!"

-She would have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes,

-so full of quiet aloofness, checked her.

-

-But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog,

-Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."

-

-He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You

-ride away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead

-booze-fighter!"

-

-The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for

-inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his

-shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.

-

-The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five

-feet of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting

-between wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not

-without derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.

-

-In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in

-astonishment:

-

-"Holy Gawd!"

-

-Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the

-buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a

-long-lost friend.

-

-Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet,

-mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.

-

-The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the

-inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.

-

-Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly--in full

-dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn--and asked: "Where the

-hell d'you get Waster?"

-

-A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a

-little cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask

-a man how he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was

-only a little wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so

-Carney smiled again, and answered by asking:

-

-"Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum

-of mine's name is Pat--Patsy boy, often enough."

-

-"Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I

-won the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."

-

-"Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.

-

-"Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be

-all right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout

-his friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie,

-whose breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by

-Counterfeit, he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported

-Australian, whose grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get

-that, sage-brush rider?"

-

-"I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."

-

-Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the

-chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.

-

-The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger

-levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you _ever_ took notice of them

-lop ears?"

-

-"Once--which was continuous."

-

-"And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"

-

-"Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."

-

-"Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like

-that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he

-was all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get

-that buckskin from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad,

-Australian?" This seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.

-

-"Go on, lad----"

-

-"Excuse me, sorry"--Molly was speaking--"this is Billy MacKay. My old

-school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to see

-what God's country could do for that busted chest."

-

-The little man was impatient over the switch to himself--the horse was

-the thing.

-

-"If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs--Gawd! what a horse Waster'd been.

-And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen

-him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say,

-Bulldog,--don't mind me, I like that name, it talks good,--Waster didn't

-need no blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip--I'd

-as lief hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear

-tryin'. Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till

-he threw a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and

-thirty-six pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at

-a mile and a quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and

-finished, fightin', on three legs. He was beat, of course; and

-Leatherhead was broke, and I never see Waster again. A trombone player

-in a beer garden would have known the little cuss with them hot-jointed

-knees couldn't pack weight, and would 've scratched him."

-

-Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You

-stand pat with me, kid--your heart is about human, I guess. What was

-that hostile person's game?"

-

-Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:

-

-"He comes here to-day, Bulldog--Well, you know----"

-

-Carney nodded placidly.

-

-"He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought--well, he was

-filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything

-he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get

-plumb Injun."

-

-"Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff,

-Slimy Red," Billy objected.

-

-"Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,--Billy knew him."

-

-"Knew him--huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed

-a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and

-laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in

-the ruck."

-

-"He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch

-guy that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped

-with.

-

-"I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein'

-a garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half

-an inch above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he

-says, 'I'll bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's

-a great sayin' with Slimy Red Smith--he was Slimy Red hisself. And

-politely, not givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests

-that me and Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best

-push on."

-

-"Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas

-person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."

-

-The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and

-with apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin'

-bullfrogs, Mr. Carney?"

-

-Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was

-twin brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.

-

-"Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."

-

-"Much of a storm?"

-

-"They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has

-got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."

-

-"Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's

-well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.

-

-"I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile

-lighting up his stern features.

-

-"Oh, you gentleman knight of the road--always the silver-tongued

-Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for

-a real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."

-

-The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;

-

-"It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but

-fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."

-

-"I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in

-the way of a cure."

-

-Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse

-first when it comes to grub--that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's

-bedded for the night."

-

-Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail

-upon which they had met at different times and in divers places.

-

-But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at

-sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of

-bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.

-

-"You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on

-the memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog

-were both in Denver.

-

-"Some time since," Carney replied.

-

-"D'you know about Clatawa?"

-

-"Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"

-

-"Clatawa's a horse."

-

-"I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.

-

-Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla

-Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast

-enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring

-that boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that

-is in a monetary way.

-

-Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique

-enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's

-chatter simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa

-disease, He pricked his ears.

-

-"What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding

-Dong?" he asked.

-

-A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.

-

-"Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.

-

-"Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.

-

-"Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds.

-He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too.

-He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him

-look big."

-

-Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against

-his stomach I thought it had gone clean through--it sank to the wrist;

-it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."

-

-"But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."

-

-"Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.

-

-"I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here,

-catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without

-givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they

-know you can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the

-Brooklyn Handicap together."

-

-"I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match,

-figures to get a big pull in the weights."

-

-"Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa;

-they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for

-the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"

-

-"Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably

-here on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones

-from the root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an

-ample pull in the weight."

-

-"Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into

-a meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several

-possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.

-

-Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.

-

-After a time Billy spoke.

-

-"It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red--he

-don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."

-

-"He sure ought," Molly corroborated.

-

-"Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause

-he never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel;

-and Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead

-pad; booze gets his."

-

-"Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once--Iron

-Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and

-Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're

-gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while

-they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been,

-'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."

-

-"Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the

-combination," Billy declared. "I was right."

-

-"And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some

-bad splits in bets," Molly added.

-

-"The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a

-bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake--I know his

-method of old--has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse and

-rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."

-

-"You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game,"

-Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard

-Iron Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."

-

-Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it,

-Billy--do we draw cards?"

-

-Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike!

-there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty

-at a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a

-stayer from Stayville; but he can't pack weight--don't forget that. If

-you rode him--let's see----"

-

-The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone

-and muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.

-

-"You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em

-rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy

-'ll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a

-hundred and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds.

-What chance?"

-

-"I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or

-a pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"

-

-"And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd

-bribe them to pull the horse."

-

-"What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot.

-"Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on

-pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had

-gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather

-want to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if

-he's about."

-

-"Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the

-figure that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths

-holding a look that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she

-whispered; "why do women like him--gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on

-the buckskin. "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin

-door, "you heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't

-you?"

-

-"Uh-huh!"

-

-"Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie

-to bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been

-gettin' it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I

-hadn't saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a

-money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't

-have to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and

-two."

-

-"That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over--I know her. But don't

-worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and no

-use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't

-tout off Molly that you're doing it."

-

-"I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney--you just listen now. I didn't

-spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say

-that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like

-goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."

-

-Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the

-package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid?

-Spring it; get it off your chest."

-

-Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot

-meditatively; then said:

-

-"Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most

-of the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and

-weight don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or

-a mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty

-well himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me

-ride him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse

-than Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on

-their form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in

-his eyes, gazed helplessly at Bulldog.

-

-"What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"

-

-"The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A

-match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows

-a couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block

-of city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big

-stake you've got to have the long green."

-

-"How much, Billy?"

-

-"Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally

-would stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."

-

-"I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires

-hot."

-

-"Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch

-weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but

-he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he

-can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."

-

-Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid

-gray eyes.

-

-"Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it

-owners up."

-

-"I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with

-only a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse

-eyeing him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the

-others, examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs.

-He pinched with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he

-squeezed the horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:

-

-"Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed,

-finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's

-got the slows."

-

-As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the

-buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and

-then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing

-back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air

-like the roll of a kettle-drum.

-

-"Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse

-down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that

-stride of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none.

-He'll do; he's had lots of work--he's in better condition than Ding

-Dong, 'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at

-the bar. I got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner

-Stakes' at Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if

-you make the match catch weights; it'll be a cinch--like gettin' money

-from home. But don't tell Molly."

-

-"We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.

-

-"Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself--how much are

-you goin' to bet?"

-

-"Five or ten thousand."

-

-"Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand--five hundred

-bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."

-

-"Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."

-

-Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding

-horse----"

-

-"What?"

-

-But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of

-Bulldog's gray eyes.

-

-"Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse,"

-Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a

-young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a

-man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came

-by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form

-of a bill of sale."

-

-Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar,

-paid in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay.

-Molly signed it as witness.

-

-"I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog

-declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend

-in town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of

-the gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.

-

-As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it,

-Billy--owners up?"

-

-"Gee! I get you."

-

-The little man had been mystified.

-

-"Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week

-away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin'

-to bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his

-neck for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can

-get a set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet

-is four pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr.

-Carney, and Waster 'll do his part."

-

-The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then

-he turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.

-

-"Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"

-

-"Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.

-

-"Shoot," she commanded.

-

-"Is he--was he--the man--Bessie told me something?"

-

-"There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney

-was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a

-woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake

-him if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man

-that knows him that'll try to put one over--'tain't healthy. He's got a

-temper as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts.

-He don't cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the

-sweetest you ever see, Billy."

-

-"Did she die, Molly?"

-

-"The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin'

-to the hound."

-

-Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home

-for the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.

-

-First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.

-

-When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon

-were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle

-on his buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was

-Sheriff of Shoshone County.

-

-The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed

-they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation

-varied in different places, and with different people, it stood

-strongest with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men

-of the West, were apt to judge men from their own experience.

-

-Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked

-his life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County

-of Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing

-on its records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing

-up of Bulldog Carney.

-

-Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of

-this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."

-

-"What, Bulldog--the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's face;

-it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had put

-many a practical joke over--he was kidding. Teddy laughed.

-

-"Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of

-them bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor

-as you've nerve--you're Irish."

-

-"There's also a note in that envelope"--Carney ignored the chaff--"that

-directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at

-Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I

-suddenly--well, if I didn't need it--see?"

-

-"I'll do that, Bulldog."

-

-"Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked

-casually.

-

-Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then

-he answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be

-there--lest I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was

-when I made that record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If

-you've got anything to settle, go ahead."

-

-Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up

-at the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."

-

-Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid

-face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then

-ventured:

-

-"If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the

-occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."

-

-Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might

-so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times

-as they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does

-that put any kink in your code?"

-

-"Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be

-there."

-

-Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post,

-he adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of

-his hand.

-

-As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and

-a group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man

-perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It

-wasn't Slimy Red--it was a tougher man.

-

-Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and

-behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.

-

-As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant

-in Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his

-coarse lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer.

-You seem conditioned. Know Carson?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's

-paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."

-

-Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was

-even the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.

-

-"How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held

-toward each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument

-once in a while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez

-Perces loose on you?"

-

-"Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder

-pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he

-calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"

-

-Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice

-babbling:

-

-"Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got

-anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber

-hose up his back holdin' his ribs."

-

-Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's

-snarled:

-

-"Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'--a hundred iron men?"

-

-"Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he

-comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess

-that's what gives him dreams."

-

-Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail

-across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table

-sat Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling

-height at his right hand.

-

-Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing

-from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy

-of the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he

-drew and what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the

-winnings were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had

-to be accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin'

-up a bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached;

-"it's too damn slow. I want action."

-

-He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel,

-bleating:

-

-"Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the

-thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock--as you old leatherheads make it, one

-A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the

-smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into

-one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled

-over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was

-number "13."

-

-"By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was

-as expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars

-over eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to

-Texas.

-

-The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a

-drink.

-

-It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play

-of the uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with

-apathetic interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the

-bag--it didn't mean anything.

-

-Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his

-opportunity.

-

-Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent

-chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play

-was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times--a man loaded with

-bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky

-Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money

-was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.

-

-Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They

-had arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that

-could be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently

-Texas should make a killing.

-

-Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the

-wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing

-the cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the

-merry-go-round plays on."

-

-"For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on

-to the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the

-croupier checked him:

-

-"Mind the limit, Mister."

-

-"When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.

-

-"Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the

-ivory discs from thirteen.

-

-The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way

-during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.

-

-"Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.

-

-Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no

-green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track--everybody's got a chance.

-Here! I'm goin' to cash in."

-

-He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier,

-stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."

-

-As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected

-little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands

-pushed them toward the winner. .

-

-Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:

-

-"I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long

-sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to

-the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says

-I got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that

-can outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a

-grasshopper's jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies--who's next?"

-

-A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will

-take your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."

-

-At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled,

-and seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe

-body, and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him

-like a rat.

-

-"You damn locoed fool!" he swore; "what d'you mean?--what d'you mean?"

-each query being emphasized by a vigorous shake.

-

-"He simply means," explained Carney, "that he's a cheap bluffer--a wind

-gambler. When he's called he quits. That's just what I thought."

-

-"Give him a chance, Blake," Death-on-the-trail interposed; "let go!"

-

-Iron Jaw pressed Texas back into his chair, saying:

-

-"You've got too much booze. If you want to bet on your horse sit there

-and cut out this Injun stuff." Snaky Dick had jumped to his feet,

-startled by the fact that Carney was about to break in on his preserve.

-Now he said: "If Texas is pinin' for a race Clatawa is waitin'--so is

-his backin'."

-

-Carney turned his gray eyes on the speaker: "There's a rule in this

-country, Snaky, that when two men have got a discussion on, others keep

-out. I've undertaken to call this jack rabbit's bluff, and he makes

-good, or takes his noisy organ away to play it outside of Walla Walla."

-

-Texas Sam had received a thumb in the rib from Iron Jaw that meant, "Go

-ahead," so he said, surlily: "There's my money on the table. Anybody can

-come in--the game's wide open."

-

-"That being so," Carney drawled, "there's a little buckskin horse tied

-to the post outside, that's carried me for three years around this land

-of delight, and he looks good to me."

-

-He unslung from his waist a leather roll, and dropped its snake-like

-body across the Texas coin, saying:

-

-"There's two thousand in twenties, and if this cheap-singing person sees

-the raise, it goes for a race at a mile-and-a-quarter between the little

-buckskin outside and this cow-hocked mule he sings about."

-

-"I want to see this damn buckskin," Texas objected.

-

-"You don't need to worry," Iron Jaw commented; "the horse is pretty nigh

-as well known as Bulldog."

-

-But Texas, having been born in a very nest of iniquity, having been

-stable boy, tout, half-mile-track ringer, and runner for a wire-tapping

-bunch, was naturally suspicious.

-

-"I don't match against an unknown," he objected; "let me lamp this

-Flyin' Dutchman of the Plains; it may be Salvator for all I know."

-

-"Let him get out the door," Carney sneered; "it will be good-bye--we'll

-never see him again."

-

-"And if we don't," Snaky Dick interposed, "I'll cover your money,

-Carney."

-

-Bulldog swung the gray eyes, and levelled them at the red-and-yellow

-streaked beads that did seeing duty in Snaky's face:

-

-"You ever hear about the gent who was kicked out of Paradise and told to

-go scoot along on his belly for butting in?" Then he followed the little

-crowd at Texas Sam's heels.

-

-In the yellow glare of the Del Monte lights the buckskin looked very

-little like a race horse. He stood about fifteen and a quarter hands,

-looking not much more than a pony, as, half asleep, he had relaxed his

-body; the lop ears hanging almost at right angles to his lean bony head

-suggested humor more than speed. He stood "over" on his front legs, a

-habit contracted when he favoured the weak knees. As he was a gelding

-his neck was thin, so far removed from a crest that it was almost

-ewe-like; his tremendous width of rump caused the hip bones to project,

-suggesting an archaic design of equine structure. The direct lamplight

-threw cavernous shadows all over his lean form.

-

-Texas Sam shot one rapid look of appraisement over the sleepy little

-horse; then he laughed.

-

-"Pinch me, Iron Jaw!" he cried; "am I ridin' on the tail board of an

-overland bus seein' things in the desert, and hearin' wings?"

-

-He pointed a forefinger at the buckskin. "Is that the lopin' jack-rabbit

-that runs for your money?" he queried of Carney.

-

-"That horse's name is Pat," Bulldog answered quietly, "and we've been

-pals so long that when any yapping coyote snaps at him I most naturally

-kick the brute out of the way. But that's the horse, Buckskin Pat,

-that my money says can outrun, for a mile-and-a-quarter, the horse you

-describe as a cow-hocked cow-pony, the same being, I take it, the horse

-you scooted away on when I palmed you on the mouth this morning."

-

-Texas Sam was naturally of a vicious temper, and this allusion caused

-him to flare up again, as Carney meant it to. But Iron Jaw whirled him

-around, saying:

-

-"Cut out the man end of it--let's get down to cases. We ain't had a live

-'hoss race for so long that I most forget what it looks like. If you two

-mean business come inside and put up your bets, gentlemen."

-

-Iron Jaw abrogated to himself the duty of Master of Ceremonies. First

-he set his croupier to work counting the gold of Texas Sam and Bulldog

-Carney. There were an even hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces in the belt

-Carney had thrown on the table.

-

-"You're shy on the raise," Iron Jaw remarked, winking at Texas.

-

-"I'll see his raise," the latter growled. "You've got more'n that of

-mine in your safe, Iron Jaw, so stack 'em up for me till they're level.

-I might as well win somethin' worth while--there won't be no fun in the

-race. That jack--that buckskin,"--he checked himself--"won't make me go

-fast enough to know I'm in the saddle."

-

-"You let me in that and I'll furnish the speed," Snaky Dick could not

-resist the temptation to clutch at the money he saw slipping away from

-him. "Make it a three-cornered sweep, Mr. Carney," he pleaded; "I'll

-ante."

-

-"It would be some race," Iron Jaw encouraged; "some race, boys. I've

-seen the little buckskin amble. I don't know nothin' about this Texas

-person's caravan, but Clatawa, for a sauce bottle that holds both warm

-and cold blood, ain't so slow--he ain't so slow, gents."

-

-The idea caught on; everybody in the saloon rose to the occasion. Yells

-of, "Make it a sweep! Let Clatawa in! Wake up old Walla Walla with

-something worth while!" came from many throats.

-

-Bulldog seemed to debate the matter, a smile twitching his drab

-mustache.

-

-"I've said it," Texas cried; "she's wide open. Anybody that's got a pet

-eagle he thinks can fly faster'n my cow-pony can run, can enter him.

-There ain't no one barred, and the limit's up where the pines point to."

-

-Snaky Dick had edged around the table till he stood close beside

-Bulldog, where he whispered: "Let me in, Carney; I've been layin' for

-this flannel-mouth. I don't want to see him get away with Walla Walla

-money. You save your stake with me, if I'm in."

-

-Carney pushed the little wizzen-face speaker away, saying:

-

-"Any kind of a talking bird can swing in on a winning if he's got a

-copper-riveted, cinch bet. But sport, as I understand it, gentlemen,

-consists in providing excitement, taking on long chances."

-

-"That's Bulldog talkin'," somebody interrupted; and they all cheered.

-

-"That being acknowledged," Carney resumed, "I feel like stealing candy

-from a blind kid when I crowd in on this Texas person. A yellow man

-wouldn't know how to own a real horse; that money on the table is, so

-to speak, mine now; but as Snaky Dick is panting to make it a real race,

-purely out of a kindly feeling for Walla Walla sports, I'm going to let

-him draw cards. Clatawa is welcome."

-

-"The drinks is on the house when I hear a wolf howl like that!" Snaggle

-Tooth yelled. "Crowd up, gentlemen--the drinks is on the house! Old

-Walla Walla is goin' to sit up and take notice; Bulldog is some live

-wire."

-

-Chairs were thrust back; men crowded the bar; liquors were tossed off.

-Sheriff Teddy the Leaper, who had come in, felt his arm touched by

-Carney, and inclining his head to a gentle pull at his coat-sleeve, he

-heard the latter whisper, "Stake holder for my sake." That was all.

-

-Then the crowd swarmed back to the table where the croupier had remained

-beside the mound of gold.

-

-"You give Jim, there, a receipt for a thousand, and he'll pass it out,"

-Iron Jaw told Texas.

-

-Jim the croupier took from the safe behind him rolls of twenty-dollar

-gold pieces and stood them up in Texas's pile. He removed a few coins,

-saying, "The pot is right, gentlemen; two thousand apiece."

-

-"Hold on," Snaky Dick cried; "it ain't called yet--I draw cards."

-

-"Not till you see the bet and the raise," Carney objected. "Nobody

-whispers his way into this game; it's for blood."

-

-"Give me a cheque book, Snaggle Tooth," Snaky pleaded.

-

-"Flimsies don't go," Carney objected.

-

-"Nothin' but the coin weighs in agin me," Texas agreed; "put up the

-dough-boys or keep out."

-

-Snaky was in despair. Here was just the softest spot in all the world,

-and without the cash he couldn't get in.

-

-"Will you cash my cheque?" he asked Iron Jaw.

-

-"If Baker'll O.K. it I figger you must have the stuff in his bank--it'll

-be good enough for me," Iron Jaw replied.

-

-There was a little parley between Snaky Dick, his associates, and Baker,

-who was a private banker. The cheque was made out, endorsed, and cashed

-from the gambling funds, Iron Jaw being a partner of Snaggle Tooth's in

-this commercial enterprise.

-

-When the pot was complete, six thousand on the table, Texas said:

-

-"We've got to have a stakeholder; put the money in Blake's hands--does

-that go?"

-

-Snaky Dick coughed, and hesitated. He had no suspicion that Iron Jaw had

-any interest with Texas Sam, but knowing the man as he did, he felt sure

-that before the race was run Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth would be in the

-game up to the eyes.

-

-The drawling voice of Carney broke the little hush that followed this

-request.

-

-"You're from the outside, Texas; you know all about your own horse,

-and that lets you out. The selecting of a stakeholder, and such, most

-properly belongs to Walla Walla, that is to say, such of us interested

-as more or less live here. The Sheriff of Shoshone, who is present, if

-he'll oblige, is the man that holds my money, and yours, too, unless you

-want to crawfish. Does that suit you, Snaky?"

-

-"It does," the latter answered cheerfully, for, fully believing that

-Clatawa was going to show a clean pair of heels to the other horses, he

-wanted the money where he could get it without gun-play.

-

-"That's settled, then," Carney said blithely, ignoring Texas completely.

-He turned to Teddy the Leaper: "Will you oblige, Sheriff?"

-

-The Sheriff was agreeable, saying that as soon as they had completed

-details they would take the money over to Baker's bank and lock it up

-in the safe, Baker promising to take charge of it, even if it were at

-night.

-

-"Just repeat the conditions of the match," the Sheriff said, and he drew

-from his pocket a note book and pencil.

-

-Carney seized the opportunity to say:

-

-"A three-cornered race between the buckskin gelding Pat, the black

-gelding Horned Toad, and the bay horse Clatawa at one mile and a

-quarter. The stake, two thousand dollars a corner; winner take all. To

-be run one week from to-day."

-

-"Is that right, gentlemen?" the Sheriff asked; "all agreed?"

-

-"Owners up--this is a gentleman's race," Texas snapped.

-

-"Satisfactory?" the Sheriff asked, his eyes on Carney.

-

-The latter nodded; and Iron Jaw winked at Snaggle Tooth.

-

-Snaky Dick could scarce credit his ears; surely the gods were looking

-with favor upon his fortunes; the other riders would be giving him many

-pounds in this self-accepted handicap.

-

-At Sheriff Teddy's suggestion the gold was carried over to Baker's bank,

-a stone building almost opposite the Del Monte; the bag containing it

-was sealed and placed in a big safe, Baker giving the Sheriff a receipt

-for six thousand dollars.

-

-Then they went back to the Del Monte for target practise at the bottle,

-each man implicated buying ammunition.

-

-At this time Carney had taken the buckskin to his stable, going back to

-the saloon.

-

-Snaggle Tooth made a short patriotic speech, the burden of which was

-that the saloon was full of men of eager habit who had not had a chance

-to sit into the game, and to ameliorate the condition of these mournful

-mavericks he would sell pools on the race, for the mere honorarium of

-five per cent.

-

-Fever was in the men's blood; if he had suggested twenty per cent it

-would have gone.

-

-Snaggle Tooth took up his position behind a faro table and called out:

-

-"The pool is open, with Clatawa, Horned Toad, and Pat in the box. What

-am I bid for first choice?"

-

-"Twenty dollars," a voice cried.

-

-"Thirty," another said.

-

-"Forty."

-

-"Fifty."

-

-A dry rasp that suggested an alkaline throat squeaked: "A hundred. Is

-this a horse race, or are we dribblin' into the plate at the synagogue?"

-

-"Sold!" Snaggle Tooth yapped, knowing well that excitement begat quick

-action. "Which cayuse do you favor, plunger?"

-

-"The range horse, Clatawa."

-

-The croupier at Snaggle Tooth's elbow took the bidder's live

-twenty-dollar gold pieces and passed him a slip with Clatawa's name on

-it.

-

-"A hundred dollars in the box and second choice for sale," Snaggle Tooth

-drawled, his prominent fang gleaming in the lamp light as he mouthed the

-words.

-

-Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty was bid like the quick popping of a

-machine gun; at seventy-five the bids hung fire, and the auctioneer,

-thumping the table with his bony fist, snapped, "Sold! Name your jack

-rabbit."

-

-"Horned Toad!" came from the bidder of the seventy-five.

-

-"A hundred and seventy-five in the box," Snaggle Tooth droned, "and the

-buckskin for sale. What about it, you pikers--what about it?"

-

-There seemed to be nothing about it, unless silence was something. The

-hush seemed to dampen the gambling spirit.

-

-"What!" yelped Snaggle Tooth; "two thousand golden bucks staked on the

-horse now, and no tinhorn with sand enough in his gizzard to open his

-trap. This is a race, not a funeral--who's dead? Bulldog, you laid even

-money; here's a hundred and seventy-five goin' a-beggin'. Ain't you got

-a chance?"

-

-"Ten dollars!" Carney bid as if driven into it.

-

-"Ten dollars, ten dollars bid for the buckskin; a hundred and

-seventy-five in the box, and ten dollars bid for the buckskin. Sold!"

-

-The first pool was followed by others, one after another: the roulette

-table, the keno game, and faro were in the discard--their tables were

-deserted.

-

-It soon became evident that Clatawa was a hot favorite; the public's

-money was all for the Walla Walla champion.

-

-Noting this, the Horned Toad trio hung back, bidding less. Clatawa

-was selling for a hundred, Horned Toad about fifty, and the buckskin

-sometimes knocked down at ten to Carney, or sometimes bid up to twenty

-by someone tempted by the odds.

-

-At last Carney slipped quietly away, having bought at least twenty

-pools that stood him between three and four thousand to a matter of two

-hundred.

-

-In the morning he rode the buckskin out to Molly's cottage and turned

-him over to Billy.

-

-The boy's voice trembled with delight when he was told of what had taken

-place.

-

-"Gee! now I will get well," he said; "I'll beat the bug out now--I'll

-have heart. You see, Mr. Carney, I got set down in California a year

-ago. It wasn't my fault; I was ridin' for Timberleg Harley, and he give

-the horse a bucket of water before the race; he didn't want to win--was

-lettin' the horse run for Sweeney, layin' for a big price later on.

-He had an interest in a book, and they took liberties with the horse's

-odds--he was favorite. He didn't dare tell me anything about it, the

-hound. When I found the horse couldn't raise a gallop, hangin' in my

-hands like a sea lion, I didn't ride him out, thinkin' he'd broke down.

-They had me up in the Judges' Stand, and sent for the books. It looked

-bad. Timberleg got off by swearin' I'd pulled the horse to let the other

-one win; swore that I stood in with the book that overlaid him. I was

-give the gate, and it just broke my heart. I was weak from wastin'

-anyway. And you can't beat the bug out if your heart's soft; the bug'll

-win--it's a hundred-to-one on him. First thing I'm goin' to give Waster

-a ball to clean him out, give him a bran mash, too. He must be like a

-currycomb inside, grass and hay and everything here is full of this damn

-cactus. A week ain't much to ready up a horse for a race, but he ain't

-got no fat to work off, and he knows the game. In a week he'll be as

-spry as a kitten. I'll just play with him. I'll bunk with him, too. If

-Slimy Red got wise to anything he'd slip him a twig of locoe, or put a

-sponge up his nose. Do you know what that thief did once, Mr. Carney? He

-was a moonlighter; he sneaked the favorite for a race that was to be

-run next day out of his stall at night and galloped him four miles with

-about a hundred and sixty in the saddle. That settled the favorite; he

-run his race same's if he was pullin' a hearse.

-

-"That's a good idea, Billy. There's half-a-dozen Slimy Reds in Walla

-Walla: it's a good idea, only I'll do the sleeping with the buckskin.

-I'd be lonesome away from him."

-

-The boy objected, but Carney was firm.

-

-Billy was not only a good rider, but he was a man of much brains. There

-was little of the art of training that he did not know, for his father

-had been a trainer before him--he had been brought up in a stable.

-

-Fortunately the buckskin's working life had left little to be desired in

-the way of conditioning; it was just that the sinews and muscles might

-have become case-hardened, more the muscles of endurance than activity.

-

-But then the race was over a distance, a mile-and-a-quarter, where the

-endurance of the thoroughbred would tell over Clatawa. Indeed, full of

-the contempt which a racing man has for a cold-blooded horse, Billy did

-not consider Clatawa in the race at all.

-

-"That part of it is just found money," he assured Carney. "Clatawa will

-go off with a burst of speed like those Texas half-milers, and he'll

-commence to die at the mile; he hasn't a chance."

-

-As to Ding Dong it was simply a question of whether the black had

-improved and Waster gone back enough, through being thrown out of

-training, to bring the two together. Anywhere near alike in condition

-Waster was a fourteen-pound better horse than Ding Dong. It might be

-that now, his legs sounder than they had ever been when he was racing,

-Waster might run the best mile-and-a-quarter of his life.

-

-Of course this might not be possible in a three-quarter sprint, for, at

-that terrific rate of going, running it from end to end at top speed,

-a certain nervous or muscular system would be called upon that had

-practically become atrophied through the more leisure ways of the trail

-work.

-

-The little man pondered over these many things just as a man of commerce

-might mentally canvas great markets, conveying his point of view to

-Carney generally. He would map out the race as they sat together in the

-evening.

-

-"Of course Snaky Dick will shoot out from the crack of the pistol, and

-try to open up a gap that'll break our hearts. He won't dare to

-pull Clatawa in behind; a cold-blooded horse's got the heart of a

-chicken--he'd quit. Slimy'll carry Ding Dong along at a rate he knows

-will leave him enough for a strong run home; but he'll think that he's

-only got Clatawa to beat and he'll pull out of his pace--he'll keep

-within strikin' distance of Clatawa. I'll let them go on. I know 'bout

-how fast Waster can run that mile-and-a-quarter from end to end. Don't

-you worry if you see me ten lengths out of it at the mile. Waster won

-all his races comin' through his horses from behind--'cause he's game.

-When Caltawa cracks, and I'm not up, Slimy'll stop ridin' he'll let

-his horse down thinkin' he's won. You'll see, Mr. Carney. If a

-quarter-of-a-mile from the finish post I'm within three lengths of Ding

-Dong and not drivin' him you can take all the money in sight. I'll tell

-you somethin' else, Mr. Carney; if I'm up with Ding Dong, and Slimy Red

-thinks I've got him, he'll try a foul."

-

-"Glad you mentioned it, little man," Carney remarked drily.

-

-The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had

-received the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short

-sprinting runs and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days

-before the race he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under

-full speed; rated as though he were in a race, the last half a topping

-gallop. He showed little distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later

-after he had been cooled out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.

-

-Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his

-trial over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly.

-Texas Sam and Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and

-sometimes gave them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the

-first peep of day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track,

-so he waited that morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast,

-thinking all the gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and

-covered the mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.

-

-The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of

-the town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street.

-The finish post was opposite the heart of the town.

-

-The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting

-jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.

-

-Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal

-laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it,

-for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like

-a tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that

-perhaps Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after

-they had won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover

-up in his case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay

-with his buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules.

-They hadn't guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against

-the black, and there he was; names didn't count--the horse was the

-thing.

-

-Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's

-active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode

-a punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for

-a chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race,

-and would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked

-to Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to

-Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.

-

-And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden

-shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking

-out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty

-pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon,

-the border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there

-was gold in the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good

-Presbyterians under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and

-spiritually, Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in

-death, a plug of lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling

-row, but the morrow would be soon enough to investigate; to-day was

-_the_ day--the day of the race; minor business was suspended.

-

-It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire

-for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but

-prowled in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four

-o'clock.

-

-One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."

-

-Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was

-a weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came

-from a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant

-fool; nobody had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant

-backing.

-

-The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's

-well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused,

-could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but

-what was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand?

-And yet when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the

-buckskin, a man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself,

-looking like a placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the

-Columbia, would say, diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would

-make good--one yellow eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet

-seriousness of this man who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.

-

-"Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he

-pointed to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed

-against some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the

-fatty laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:

-

-"Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your

-safe won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas

-brayin' ass have no more booze."

-

-"If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now

-because of Carney--sober he'd quit."

-

-"Carney won't turn a hair when we win."

-

-"Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a

-funnel--he's hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the

-finish for fear Bulldog'll grab him."

-

-"Look here, Snaggle, that coyote--hell! I know the breed of them

-outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin'

-in front--he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others

-when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand

-to kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff

-wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the

-horse that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by

-the throat."

-

-That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic

-town of Walla Walla.

-

-It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one

-confident that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked

-work, he could win.

-

-The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed

-judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was

-to fire the starting gun.

-

-It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs

-had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless

-of turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his

-joints, though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out

-unrooted earth and bow a tendon.

-

-An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would

-be settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed

-that first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even

-Lieutenant Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief

-Joseph, sat his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every

-inch a king in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture

-was Homeric, grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of

-gold worshipers.

-

-At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting,

-vociferating throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man,

-called:

-

-"Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"

-

-Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course

-where the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black

-points, and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead,

-ran down his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side,

-and a blanket covered his form.

-

-Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose

-blanket showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with

-the unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare.

-Beside him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.

-

-Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and

-beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the

-holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had

-shown.

-

-As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the

-flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far

-down the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if

-wondering where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it

-was a race--that he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The

-tight cinching of the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his

-shins, the sponging out of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he

-had had--all these touches had brought back to his memory the game his

-rich warm, thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the

-thrill of it.

-

-"Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings

-called, watch in hand.

-

-The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide,

-padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet.

-And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a

-pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown,

-monkeylike form.

-

-Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins

-ran through the steel rings of a martingale.

-

-At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this

-get-up for a supposed cow-pony.

-

-Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a

-slim lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting

-racing breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as

-if, by necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds

-of flesh.

-

-But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now

-the buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back

-a tiny matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the

-little figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to

-the saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.

-

-With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:

-

-"Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt?

-Get down!"

-

-He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him

-out of the saddle.

-

-His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown

-up in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his

-wind-pipe from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an

-oath of raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a

-gun, and heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:

-

-"You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now

-stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."

-

-Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side,

-their hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him,

-turned on them:

-

-"Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"

-

-Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin

-pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and

-said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into

-the face of Snaggle Tooth.

-

-But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call

-to chuck--don't forget."

-

-Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:

-

-"This match was for owners up."

-

-He beckoned forward the stakeholder:

-

-"Ain't that so, Sheriff--owners up?"

-

-"That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain,

-Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.

-

-"It was."

-

-"Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot--and that monkey up?" And Iron

-Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on

-Waster.

-

-Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out

-like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use

-any foul words when you speak to me--we're not good enough pals for

-that; if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat.

-Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the

-owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named

-Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has

-been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the

-horse's tail."

-

-Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney,

-knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.

-

-The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr.

-Carney?"

-

-"No, sir--let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a

-technicality, but on a horse."

-

-"Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"

-

-"I do," Carney answered.

-

-"Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"

-

-"He did."

-

-"Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.

-

-"Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing

-the sheriff.

-

-When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open,

-and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its

-date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and

-Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before

-the match was made.

-

-"It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it

-in the sheriff's hands--why didn't the boy keep it--it was his?"

-

-"Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney

-answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they

-would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game.

-And there was another reason."

-

-Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the

-Judge. It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his

-money, if the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy

-MacKay.

-

-When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little

-smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly

-Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."

-

-Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice

-as he said, quietly:

-

-"The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This

-paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to

-the post."

-

-A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla,

-and the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they

-grasped the idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own

-game; that the intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides,

-now they could see that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had

-started more than one whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the

-Clatawa people believing in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted

-that perhaps there was a job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa

-and one of them go on and win; though few would admit that Carney would

-be party to cold-decking the public.

-

-But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race

-to the finish, and the stakes represented real money.

-

-Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider

-of Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:

-

-"Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish

-waiting for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never

-ride again."

-

-"I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered

-abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.

-

-The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat

-in a choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth

-snapping from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating

-his excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that

-springy lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding.

-Indians and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the

-course, on their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight.

-Old Walla Walla had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was

-on in all its glory.

-

-After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course;

-they criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were

-being placed by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble;

-sometimes he reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought

-for his head. But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.

-

-Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that

-distance, as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an

-equine statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had

-taken long odds about him felt a depression.

-

-Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas,

-was keeping him on his toes--not letting him chill out; but, like the

-buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were

-old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the

-antics of Clatawa--the starter was the whole works.

-

-Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came

-back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line,

-and the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter,

-finger on trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his

-finger gripped spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of

-smoke, and a white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying

-start.

-

-The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.

-

-"Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.

-

-"Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.

-

-"They'll never catch him!--never catch him! He'll win off by himself!"

-was droned.

-

-Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them,

-galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone,

-as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the

-boy, his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either

-side of the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying,

-"Ste-a-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous

-sing-song through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the

-handicap of a strong wind that was blowing down the track.

-

-He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out

-in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the

-old Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful

-stride that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his

-horse. "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come

-back!"

-

-He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and

-trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own

-knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under

-2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he

-had cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it

-up, close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.

-

-He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.

-

-Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more

-flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild

-horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.

-

-The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for

-a little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let

-Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the

-white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high

-deer-like lope that was impressive.

-

-At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They

-could see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and

-Horned Toad was between the two.

-

-Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had

-forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.

-

-Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a

-hundred against him."

-

-"I'll take it," Carney declared.

-

-"I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.

-

-"You're on," came from Carney.

-

-And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.

-

-Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it

-seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the

-latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion

-lying along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were

-up. Surely a quirt had switched the air once.

-

-Yes, the Toad was creeping up--his rider was making his run; they could

-see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.

-

-Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he

-lost his whip--had he given up all idea of winning?

-

-They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.

-

-A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa

-was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back

-was playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse

-instead of helping him.

-

-And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.

-

-Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered

-tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now

-somebody cried:

-

-"God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him--lo-ook at him, men!"

-

-His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened

-their vision, and their owners gasped.

-

-Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced

-by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.

-

-And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths?

-It was two--it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the

-black's quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now

-their heads rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled

-for the lead: Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the

-flanks of his horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him

-home a winner.

-

-How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race

-won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out

-of stride; no flash of the whip to startle him--to break his heart; the

-brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of

-brains, was wise enough to sit still.

-

-They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin

-drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave,

-stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding

-in front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping

-straight as an arrow.

-

-"The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin

-wins--the buckskin wins!" became a clamor.

-

-Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse,

-from some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the

-buckskin; they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!"

-rose; it was an angry roar like caged animals at war.

-

-Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The

-buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled;

-his head shot down--almost to his knees he went: then he was galloping

-again, the two horses locked together.

-

-Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.

-

-The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.

-

-Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front.

-Their speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped,

-and the boy pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still

-tangled in the martingale of Horned Toad.

-

-Men closed in frantically. A man--it was Oregon--twisted Carney's gun

-skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."

-

-He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to

-battle back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and

-Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring

-devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings

-packed in a barrel.

-

-Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!"

-and a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of

-a guarding circle.

-

-Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad,

-trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then

-a woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:

-

-"Back, you cowards--you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room--give

-him air!"

-

-Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a

-battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's

-side.

-

-"Don't lift him--he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put

-his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back--give him air!" she

-commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her shoulders

-a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated with red

-froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and Molly,

-sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.

-

-"Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't

-speak," she admonished.

-

-She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the

-ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough

-the red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.

-

-The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the

-circle about the lad and Molly.

-

-The judge's voice was heard saying:

-

-"The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong

-condemnation in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have

-disqualified him: it was a deliberate foul."

-

-The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the

-barracks for protection.

-

-"Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy

-will be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.

-

-"You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips

-touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot

-tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of

-cupidity and guile.

-

-

-

-

-IV.--THE GOLD WOLF

-

-|All day long Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the

-odd imprint of that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle,

-riding a trail that winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs

-monotonously similar, the hush of the everlasting hills holding in

-subjection man's soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting

-up towards God's dome pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces

-a comatose condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little

-beyond the recognition of trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird,

-the sudden roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the

-harp of a giant pine.

-

-And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history

-of the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the

-hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails

-denting the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the

-miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by

-a strange perversity, haunted Carney.

-

-The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills,

-leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small

-fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for

-the town of Bucking Horse.

-

-Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the

-ford of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave

-yawned in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had

-melted into its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might

-have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the

-Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort

-of fear left the trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards

-beyond.

-

-In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge

-dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from

-strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black

-bristles on his back erect in challenge.

-

-The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in

-daylight was unusual.

-

-Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the

-saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's

-feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.

-

-The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes

-just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the

-movement.

-

-Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the

-usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.

-

-A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The

-sudden apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest,

-either in man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a

-wolf meant little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive

-away.

-

-High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered

-feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion

-catching vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far

-west, a flaming sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the

-twisted valley a chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons;

-the giant ferns hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with

-the death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad

-berries that gleamed like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling,

-frothing stream that still held the green tint of its glacier birth.

-

-Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail

-almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now

-back to the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the

-bright and happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed

-and bantered with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West;

-the ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had

-won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard--where the

-dice might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the

-thrower take a fall.

-

-But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow

-environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the

-mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung

-his heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes

-one ear was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond,

-the now glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur,

-the other ear held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of

-pursuit.

-

-Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his

-saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the

-back trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest

-had developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his

-trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of

-tumbling forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms;

-bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.

-

-The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would

-go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.

-

-Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty

-feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall;

-and, when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of

-relief, clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.

-

-"I wonder--by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand,

-slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.

-

-"I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin;

-"something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of

-the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his

-chin, thinking--thinking aloud.

-

-"There are tracks, Patsy boy--moccasins; but we've lost our

-gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy--gone over the

-cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down.

-By gad! two of them!"

-

-Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering;

-cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off.

-The inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that

-carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.

-

-Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the

-buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the

-snaffle against his bridle teeth.

-

-At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're

-quite right, pal--it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of

-old grannies imagining things."

-

-But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a

-compelling inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge

-to camp for the night.

-

-Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the

-trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a

-wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the

-dog-wolf's mate--a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.

-

-"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by

-with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."

-

-As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his

-challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling

-yelp.

-

-"By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.

-

-Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again

-muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl--it's

-different."

-

-Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering

-was soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of

-velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning,

-pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they

-push on.

-

-Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good

-dope for a sleep."

-

-So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped

-in an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in

-reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs

-with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round

-had waited for his partner to dismount.

-

-It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at

-all the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He

-did not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich

-he spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.

-

-Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a

-curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away

-from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer,

-heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when

-deep sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to

-consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him

-to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border

-of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the

-crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting

-of his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching

-the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that

-there was something--not close, but hovering there beyond.

-

-The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of

-discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a

-spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.

-

-But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning

-devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with

-his delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the

-compass; but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there,

-watching.

-

-After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had

-yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.

-

-Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that

-was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky

-told that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond

-the Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the

-plains.

-

-The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his

-broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little

-fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he

-considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a

-nothing.

-

-Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to

-the left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the

-trail running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping

-the Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now

-Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.

-

-There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a

-morbid disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had

-happened to that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the

-weird fancies of the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the

-trail was earthed, holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked

-ahead of the buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was

-imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but

-they were not the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that

-a man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not

-an inturned left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly

-broken. His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step

-of a pack pony.

-

-The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried

-to shake it off--it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a

-prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for

-gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.

-

-Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same

-cayuse tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had

-travelled both up and down the trail.

-

-Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the

-mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay.

-And there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the

-Bucking Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned,

-for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.

-

-This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in

-a troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation

-of the West--those mounted men had ridden after somebody--had trailed

-somebody who was wanted quick.

-

-This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally

-the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the

-cliff, the hovering oppression of the night--everything.

-

-Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes

-humming an Irish ballad of Mangin's.

-

-It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse

-was in a ferment.

-

-Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters

-of unrest seethed.

-

-A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's

-brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through

-the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were

-afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered

-men.

-

-Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of

-opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth

-Long, were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for

-stringing him up _tout de suite_. The times were propitious for this

-entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at

-Fort Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping

-of the mob.

-

-Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is

-what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand

-on his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:

-

-"This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains,

-and my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a

-pretty poor sport."

-

-"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.

-

-"He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one

-the best of it--first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when he

-starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,

-isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure

-themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and

-they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."

-

-Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a

-quiet thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was

-wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could

-have stood up against that plank bar and declared himself without being

-called quick.

-

-"You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've

-got to say," Kootenay growled.

-

-"That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the

-trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being

-fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."

-

-With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles

-behind the bar.

-

-Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the

-dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt

-hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog

-that she loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for

-help. He had just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had

-been hurled at him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry--Harry the

-waster, the no-good, the gambler--had been found to be the man who had

-murdered returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they

-were going to string him up.

-

-And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her

-side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had

-brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed

-her way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded

-and begged for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely

-hopeless it had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".

-

-It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the

-magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable.

-Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played

-the card of reason.

-

-For the two or three gun men--Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver

-Ike--Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun; he could

-deal with those three toughs if necessary.

-

-"Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they

-had drunk.

-

-The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the

-narrative.

-

-Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had

-mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would

-have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place

-later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse--nobody had seen him.

-

-Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the

-bodies had been devoured by wolves.

-

-"And wolves don't eat gold--not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck,"

-Kootenay Jim yelped.

-

-"Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly,

-"That's your food, Jim."

-

-"Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a

-threat.

-

-"Just what the words convey--you sort them out, Kootenay."

-

-But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game,

-Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin'

-in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou

-Dave--here he is sittin' right here--he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot

-Johnson--that is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."

-

-"Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice,

-"and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big

-clean-up of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse

-till I creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good

-many years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."

-

-Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave

-finds his mate at the foot of a cliff."

-

-Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun,

-thinking something was going to happen.

-

-"I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog,"

-Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks

-of 'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me--I guess I was

-gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em

-tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many

-years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit

-of fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage

-like, as if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind

-staggers, or somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up

-thinkin' it out, 'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited

-any, Fourteen-foot'd pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see

-some wolf tracks--dang near as big as a steer's they was--and I figger

-Fourteen-foot's had a set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and

-lammed hell's delight out of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm

-follerin' the cayuse's trail agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all

-at onct it jumps me that the big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger

-Johnson's got mussed up a bit with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's

-the dang wolf tracks agen. And some moccasin feet has been passin'

-along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts out just same's if he'd spread his

-wings and gone up in the air--they just ain't."

-

-"Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff,"

-Miner Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously

-at a black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.

-

-"I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's

-Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that

-if two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and

-show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out

-just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide--'tain't natural. I tell you,

-boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me--that's what he is, when I goes back."

-

-Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight

-for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.

-

-"Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his

-back what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no

-sign of the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse

-tracks most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for

-Kootenay. And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks

-it's Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."

-

-"And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog,"

-Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted,

-cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse,

-with lots of gold."

-

-"That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.

-

-"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.

-

-"No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and

-you got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in

-your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the

-circumstantial evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."

-

-"I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores

-might get you in wrong."

-

-"You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's

-got to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear

-his story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair

-warning, boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm

-going to denounce you; not one of you will get away--_not one!_"

-

-"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but

-swing he will."

-

-Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police

-barracks. He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what

-might be called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had

-bought the cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He

-refused to say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had

-killed nobody, had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing

-about the murder..

-

-Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was

-innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned,

-a minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him

-from being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men--there was no

-doubt whatever about that in his mind.

-

-"I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking

-you've got the right man."

-

-"That's what we figgered," Graham declared.

-

-"But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure

-don't want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that

-you caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's

-cayuse?"

-

-"Caribou says it is," Graham answered.

-

-"And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.

-

-"He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured

-viciously.

-

-"Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.

-

-"Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.

-

-"I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that

-poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm

-going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."

-

-His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion

-had gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that,

-convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would

-check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing

-even Carney to their side.

-

-So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the

-stable yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request,

-led up and down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay

-at every step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He

-studied them intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for

-that goblined hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like

-imprints, that, though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way

-of a cayuse, neither was like the curious goblined track that had so

-fastened on his fancy out in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.

-

-And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen

-on the newer trail.

-

-He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is

-Johnson's pack horse?"

-

-"There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity.

-"When I see my boots I don't _think_ they're mine, I just most natur'ly

-figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see

-him in a wild herd."

-

-"And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that

-Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."

-

-A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:

-

-"That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over.

-Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."

-

-"Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There

-isn't more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good

-many thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the

-same color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar

-as so many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new

-moon, or a flapjack."

-

-He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"

-

-"I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same

-place it's restin' now--it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."

-

-"That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's

-brand, how can he swear to the beast?"

-

-"And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was

-his hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay

-cackled.

-

-"Johnson wouldn't say so--he'd know better. His cayuse had a club foot,

-an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles

-back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track,

-and sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."

-

-The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did

-you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse--what his travellers was like?"

-

-"I never looked at his feet--there wasn't no reason to; I was minin'."

-

-"There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you

-got any of Johnson's belongings--a coat?"

-

-"We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the

-wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store

-clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw,

-and from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass,

-saying, as he examined the coat:

-

-"This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that

-cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's

-generally a difference in the hair."

-

-Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in

-the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many

-different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed

-through the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing

-in the yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let

-it run like a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse

-considerable attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat

-warp, and on this cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.

-

-When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had

-not been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.

-

-These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not

-Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence

-to connect Harry Holt with the murder.

-

-Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that

-Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a

-technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas

-Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.

-

-"We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the

-trail and see what Bulldog seen."

-

-Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and

-go back."

-

-But Carney objected.

-

-When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of

-derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand

-in the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to

-gain time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're

-bein' buffaloed--we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered

-man's hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some

-hawse hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks

-back on the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we

-was a damn lot of tender-feet."

-

-This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none

-whatever upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:

-

-"I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because

-I'm going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for

-if he does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm

-trailing. But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever

-devil, and will make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that

-you hold Holt till I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse

-with a club foot, for there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the

-wolves got him too."

-

-They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim

-and his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering

-together as they drank.

-

-As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:

-

-"We're bein' flim-flammed--played for a lot of kids. There ain't been

-a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has

-been murdered on the trail, and who done it--somebody. Caribou's mate

-was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here,

-was bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits.

-And 'cause his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card

-trick with hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."

-

-"You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother

-wouldn't tell you where he got the gold--he'd let you hang him first;

-but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get

-out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds,

-Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you

-down for insulting me."

-

-"That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates

-and you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and

-Kootenay whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his

-gun clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt,

-incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's

-hand was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their

-backs to the bar.

-

-No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five

-seconds. Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a

-trigger--no one spoke.

-

-It was Carney who broke the silence:

-

-"Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the

-doctor--I guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."

-

-A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension

-slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.

-

-Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left,

-followed Jeanette out of the room.

-

-As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men,

-his wrists bound behind his back, said:

-

-"My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's

-safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to

-kill Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the

-gold come from."

-

-"Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed

-any gold--what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold from

-your safe?"

-

-"I ain't looked--I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron

-box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I

-wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I

-guess she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."

-

-"I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette

-didn't know I was going to take it."

-

-"But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a

-frame-up?" Graham asked.

-

-"I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in

-wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."

-

-"Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man,

-and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find

-on Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."

-

-"That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out

-with."

-

-Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he

-would have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off

-a passing train and lynched him; it would have been a _quid pro quo._

-He felt that he was being cheated by the superior cleverness of Bulldog

-Carney. He had seen miners beaten out of their just gold claims by

-professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the microscopic evidence of the

-hairs, the intoed hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was honest

-in his conviction that the cayuse was Johnson's, and feared that the man

-who had killed his friend would slip through their fingers.

-

-"It's just like this, boys," he said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together

-so long that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was comin' back a day

-afore he hit camp--I'd feel it, same's I turned back on the trail there

-and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There wasn't no reason to

-look over that cliff only ol' Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's

-a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there murdered him when he wasn't

-lookin'. And if you chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish

-I'll get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he won't never get away.

-If you boys is just a pack of coyotes that howls good and plenty till

-somebody calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away with your tails between

-your legs for fear you'll be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn

-this murderer loose right now--you don't need to worry what'll happen to

-him. I'll be too danged lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's

-comin' to me. Turn him loose--take the hobbles off him. You fellers

-go home and pull your blankets over your heads so's you won't see no

-ghosts."

-

-Carney's sharp gray eyes watched the old fanatic's every move; he let

-him talk till he had exhausted himself with his passionate words; then

-he said:

-

-"Caribou, you're some man. You'd go through a whole tribe of Indians for

-a chum. You believe you're right, and that's just what I'm trying to do

-in this, find out who is right--we don't want to wrong anybody. You

-can come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you the club-footed

-tracks; I'll let you help me get the right man."

-

-The old chap turned his humpy shoulders, and looked at Carney out of

-bleary, weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he shrilled:

-

-"I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you

-had a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the

-rings on a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack

-rabbit ain't goin' to get away--and he ain't; you can bet your soul

-on that, Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that

-Wie-sah-ke-chack, the Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream,

-club-footed tracks, and when we come back the man that killed my chum,

-old Fourteen-foot, would be down somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd

-get him off."

-

-It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from

-that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days

-of respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any

-information to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the

-murderer.

-

-Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the

-shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he

-had brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on

-Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got

-pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a

-man does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and

-a gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as

-well as by the fall of a card.

-

-But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be

-foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark

-without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's

-life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning,

-when it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to

-the stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way

-to the tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left

-the horse and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about

-for a time, generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that

-he was camped for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom

-he had confided, knew different.

-

-Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth,

-unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the

-other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.

-

-Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the

-foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."

-

-"Why, Bulldog?"

-

-"Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a

-sling because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much

-about women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."

-

-"But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."

-

-"Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You

-clamber up the stairs quick."

-

-"My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would

-stand for Harry yourself."

-

-"If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."

-

-"That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a

-mob of angry men, because he's _my_ brother."

-

-"You called the turn, Jeanette."

-

-"And all I can do, all I can say is, _thank you_. Is that all?"

-

-"That's all, girl. It's more than enough."

-

-He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an

-earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:

-

-"When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending--then you'll

-hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start backing

-the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll bring

-in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave--I'll

-get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if

-Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."

-

-Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone

-watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift,

-lighted candle in hand.

-

-Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a

-back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs

-of light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch

-of his heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.

-

-It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten

-robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie

-down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself

-in his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin--they were like two

-men in a huge bed.

-

-All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and

-eating a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that

-the murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's

-Bridge his stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning

-miners was still there he felt certain that he would get him.

-

-There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men

-were known to have been murdered.

-

-A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime

-of that sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite--careless,

-possessed of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all

-desperadoes that way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves,

-it generally had been so easy.

-

-Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer;

-indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the

-ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was

-any suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a

-posse would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would

-have ample knowledge of their approach.

-

-To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in

-this killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like

-a gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold,

-probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more

-than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once

-started, the devilish murder lust.

-

-Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality,

-and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be

-watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had

-met him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day

-and ridden on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the

-murderer would let him pass without action. It was only returning miners

-he was interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were

-still there he would get him.

-

-His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where

-the murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood

-of the cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been

-found, and go forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered

-the ground. He felt that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere

-between that point and the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was

-the home of this trail devil.

-

-The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of

-the wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog--that is, a creature that was

-half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train

-dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's

-mind that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild

-pair; they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour

-his victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not

-impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull

-down a white man quick enough if he were helpless.

-

-However, the man was the thing.

-

-The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the

-west when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge,

-and, fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of

-the spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.

-

-Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck

-said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy--stand steady."

-

-Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound

-the rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a

-dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect

-himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless

-he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a

-boxer.

-

-Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the

-imprint of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had.

-There were the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.

-

-Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to

-where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps

-the evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth,

-and then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If

-the murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show

-himself at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might

-have been on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the

-cave for water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do

-Carney had not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes

-of finding out something that was conclusive.

-

-If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly

-be there.

-

-That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and

-eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood

-at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a

-little turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake

-of leaves and brush.

-

-As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron,

-and the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing

-force that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring

-noises in his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.

-

-His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was

-smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to

-splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in

-the legs of his strong riding boots.

-

-As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening

-stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave

-hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting

-to the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.

-

-The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he

-could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could

-crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was

-fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a

-man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of

-loose log.

-

-The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole

-vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed

-before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be

-killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might

-protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even

-could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with

-a pretense of helping him.

-

-Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:

-

-"Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered,

-Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."

-

-Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm

-projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.

-

-"Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.

-

-Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that

-the offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that

-he would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting.

-Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.

-

-"There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered;

-"you can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be

-torn to pieces by the wolves."

-

-Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he

-said: "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I

-ain't invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've

-been a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good

-'nough friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a

-gun on you. You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain

-things, I'll spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess

-you'll keep your word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."

-

-The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as

-absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the

-gun.

-

-"You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me

-out, and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."

-

-"You mean you won't give up the gun?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em

-knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off

-there in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake

-up. You think it over, Bulldog, I'm----"

-

-The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance

-down the valley.

-

-"D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down.

-"They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their

-meat. You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your

-buckskin; he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when

-I come back what you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry--they're

-hungry; and I guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."

-

-Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling

-through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he

-travelled.

-

-Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would

-tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have

-raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of

-being a loser, whether man or horse won.

-

-From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head

-go up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see,

-beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree

-to tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.

-

-Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his

-gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark

-he would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be

-a chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second

-purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that

-there was a battle on.

-

-Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly

-approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was

-shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.

-

-Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the

-bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist

-an ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in

-a hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward

-the buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.

-

-Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that

-meant--a little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head,

-or seize him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump

-to the man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as

-a warning to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the

-ground.

-

-Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a

-sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance,

-he sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels

-by the narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet

-missed, and Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.

-

-Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right

-hand, and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the

-loop swishing through the air, and at the first cast it went over the

-buckskin's head.

-

-Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that

-always brought the buckskin to his side.

-

-Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at

-the well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through

-Jack's sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The

-buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal

-at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as

-though he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body

-struck rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a

-cork, for the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.

-

-Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a

-slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as

-the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.

-

-"Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing

-forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long

-arm, to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against

-his master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all

-right--don't worry."

-

-Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead,

-answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat--i'm glad you're here.

-It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled the

-horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant nerves

-to Carney's brain.

-

-In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows

-that had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he

-could build a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the

-darkness they would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a

-target when the light fell on their snarling faces.

-

-Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of

-dead branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold

-the leaves. There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver

-parchment-like bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from

-about his limbs, then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly

-to his free knee and built a little mound of sticks and bark against the

-birch log. Then he put his hand in a pocket for matches--every pocket;

-he had not one match; they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the

-trail. He looked longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree;

-Jack would have matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the

-means to a fire. But matches in New York were about as accessible as any

-that might be in the dead man's pockets.

-

-Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically

-impossible, and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant.

-As if Fate resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped

-man's mind a magical inspiration--a vital grievance. His mind, acute

-because of his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his

-cognizance, for a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he

-could heat the steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring

-were thin, depending upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for

-strength. If he could heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper

-would leave it as a spirit forsakes a body, and the spring would bend

-like cardboard.

-

-"And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the

-body. "But you've got them----"

-

-He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he

-unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he

-could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.

-

-Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the

-thrower's legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney--it was some

-test.

-

-Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out

-I'll get him yet, Patsy."

-

-Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off

-the head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form

-and earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face

-that carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.

-

-He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching

-slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the

-man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from

-his hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim

-form of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving

-him the grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope

-and dropped his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the

-man--he was gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic

-twist of the rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin,

-and gently, vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold.

-Then, hand over hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without

-ceremony, searched it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin

-in a pocket of Jack's shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had

-been torn from its belt during the owner's rough voyage.

-

-The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the

-clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on

-us; they can't beat us, old pard."

-

-He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs,

-one pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.

-

-The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his

-wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat

-as it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with

-the fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the

-black moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating

-jaws.

-

-Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically

-forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection

-of a spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes

-watching him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the

-birch log.

-

-The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a

-terrible struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which

-seemed to bite into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting

-Jack's battle; and Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise,

-that his legs had been made almost useless in that drag by the horse.

-

-Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting

-his fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost

-shattering the bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp

-of the belt, and Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:

-

-"Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log,

-with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."

-

-"I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.

-

-"Don't need you--I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be

-under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you

-now--my leg is on fire."

-

-Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in

-his hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.

-

-When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop

-about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.

-

-The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the

-twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down

-from the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and

-soon it was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the

-trap, he placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip

-of steel went down like paper. He was free.

-

-At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as

-if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released

-veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged

-the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves

-hovered beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.

-

-When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle

-rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line

-from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"

-

-"I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."

-

-"Take your choice--get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you

-for the wolves," Carney snapped.

-

-Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his

-feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket

-line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:

-

-"Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through

-you--this sore leg's got me peeved."

-

-At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags

-of gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also

-foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he

-had not expected to find--the cayuse that had belonged to Fourteen-foot

-Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack out his

-wealth.

-

-Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through

-the night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted,

-he started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot

-Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's

-belly. Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.

-

-And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the

-enterprising man of the bear trap.

-

-

-

-

-V.--SEVEN BLUE DOVES

-

-|They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney

-felt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was

-overtired--that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had

-seen in a month, for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse,

-the little, old, worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on

-the Canadian side of the border.

-

-From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not

-habitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a

-risk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve--gave

-him a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But

-to-night there was a scent of evil in the room.

-

-A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high

-stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But

-Sergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such

-times the key of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel,

-the Gold Nugget. And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the

-police shack rather than in a room of the hotel.

-

-Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling

-that everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction

-that some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was

-in his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new

-sensation to Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it.

-His steel-gray eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the

-green on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with its

-substructure of nerve, he possessed it _in excelsis_.

-

-He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched

-hand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from

-the top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without

-catch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started

-with. He had not lost anything to speak of--and here was the hitch,

-the enigma of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been

-deliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had been

-called when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice

-he had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been

-done simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger

-had lost heavily.

-

-Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a

-card was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs;

-his mind, so to speak, was all thumbs.

-

-Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.

-

-He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity

-delicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous

-quality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath

-the large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He

-was hard to place. He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage.

-He was somewhat of a promoter--of restless activity. He was in Bucking

-Horse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If

-he had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of the

-unrest that hung so evilly over the game.

-

-Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget

-Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of

-compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in

-mine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made

-on the "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird,

-for its stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not

-confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of

-a hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were

-querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught

-Carney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair

-of gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The

-gloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers

-who wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve the

-sensitiveness of their finger tips. He also had known gamblers who,

-ostensibly, had a reputable occupation.

-

-If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to

-eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult

-to allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed--too well dressed for

-unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the

-fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank

-somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was

-almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody

-and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.

-Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold

-mine up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him.

-That was what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with

-Tacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when they

-returned.

-

-Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy

-grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste

-boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals,

-Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth

-face, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he

-changed, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."

-

-It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for

-finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all;

-the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had

-laboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's

-the use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win

-little."

-

-Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them

-over the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there

-was no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of

-the cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple:

-seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross

-hatched and sprayed with leaves.

-

-Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves'

-wings were all alike--almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an

-artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth

-part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right

-wing of the second dove to the left.

-

-It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to

-memorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing.

-And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew

-the system. Who was it?

-

-Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for

-that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a

-super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable

-of this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.

-

-Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent

-conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser.

-The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had

-played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth

-would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney,

-for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck,

-or knew something.

-

-Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite

-that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting

-of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the

-West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to

-accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even

-cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped

-his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his

-cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one

-into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the

-discard, and said, "I'm out!"

-

-Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in

-his pocket.

-

-At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card was

-missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.

-

-A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.

-

-The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.

-

-"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"

-

-Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his

-pocket.

-

-From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves'

-wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had

-realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had

-answered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.

-

-This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long ride

-to-day."

-

-He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."

-

-He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up,

-yawning.

-

-"I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man.

-To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game--don't know what's the

-matter with me."

-

-"I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right

-now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn

-another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me.

-I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time

-there's been hell."

-

-The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly

-gave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to

-quit. The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."

-

-Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:

-

-"I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't

-like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now,

-or I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."

-

-Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from

-Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a

-game of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd

-better just put the game off till to-morrow night."

-

-"We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if

-he wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start

-fresh. Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."

-

-"I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle

-now; besides I want another sensation--this bottle's dry," Hadley

-advised.

-

-"I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as

-he rose.

-

-In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a

-bottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.

-

-Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the

-accounts.

-

-Hadley was twelve hundred loser.

-

-He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth,

-and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips,

-"Here, banker, put that back in your pocket--you're responsible. There's

-forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probably

-forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."

-

-Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."

-

-Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred

-dollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been

-pallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any

-game bigger than checkers."

-

-Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards--the blue-doved cards

-and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.

-

-Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently

-whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves.

-The red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and

-Carney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving

-himself from further interest.

-

-Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having

-found it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked,

-"Now, who's in?"

-

-"I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness;

-"then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred

-on the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot."

-Curiously this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but

-inflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:

-

-"You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you

-sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."

-

-"I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to

-cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."

-

-Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to

-his lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a

-little pile in front of him.

-

-Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other

-direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a

-most depressed mood; he admitted this.

-

-"There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I

-knew you felt it--that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on

-the night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some

-claims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess

-I've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when

-I hear the click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while,

-generally, it's not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm

-trying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind

-of close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may--hell! don't

-think me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."

-

-Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged

-into the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding

-with Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the

-dining-room to a seat at a little table.

-

-"Where's Seth?" she asked.

-

-"Over at the police shack."

-

-"Poker?"

-

-Carney nodded.

-

-"Mr. Hadley there?"

-

-Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"

-

-"I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre--if he

-has any--is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her

-dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you

-playing?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not

-for ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was

-over--why?"

-

-"Tired."

-

-Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth

-cheating?"

-

-"Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"

-

-"I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or

-three days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."

-

-"What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought

-Seth those cards?"

-

-"I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have

-played together once or twice."

-

-"They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell

-you absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess.

-There was a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This

-Shipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He

-and Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too

-gratuitous to be genuine."

-

-"You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win

-Hadley's money--he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"

-

-"I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got

-to give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in

-my pocket, and that will be enough."

-

-"But if he divides with Shipley?"

-

-"Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the

-conspiracy will be proven."

-

-"Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back,

-there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added,

-patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that

-stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him--the moral aspect, I mean;

-but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil

-in a man--petty larceny, sneak thieving--that pours sand into a woman's

-soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd be

-quite satisfied--quite."

-

-"You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven--and you are the other

-six, Jeanette."

-

-As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that

-had to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after

-he had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul

-full of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.

-

-Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or

-drink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death

-of someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if

-that man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had

-confidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of

-knowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed

-when they were forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains.

-That would be a matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of

-how he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked

-pack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like

-counting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.

-

-He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him

-sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with

-known remembrances of the noise.

-

-"Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"

-

-He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow

-had flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the

-police shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot

-and someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him

-to precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his

-waist.

-

-In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over

-the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced

-the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.

-

-"What's wrong, Jeanette--was it a shot?"

-

-"Yes! I've looked into Seth's room--he's not there!"

-

-Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there

-was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:

-"Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed

-a finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he

-tapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back

-to Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all

-right--they're still playing. I'll go over to the shack."

-

-"I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt

-so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened--I

-know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and

-manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a

-slab of bacon, _à la_ fry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.

-

-As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window

-of the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they

-were not playing at the table.

-

-He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he

-knew was a dead man--Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor where

-he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood,

-just over the heart.

-

-There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table

-from where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The

-red-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered

-into a pack.

-

-Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing

-the interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress,

-unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.

-

-Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his

-outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges

-from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.

-

-Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been

-held close.

-

-Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning

-top, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged

-Seth's gun to make it appear suicide?

-

-Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder

-governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the

-coat where Seth had put the discarded pack--it was gone. He felt the

-other pocket--the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table

-and all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket

-of the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money--there

-was no wallet.

-

-At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his

-eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a

-stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.

-

-The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the

-night in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin

-light, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face

-to appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or

-imbecile-tinged by horror.

-

-"My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I--I----"

-

-"Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.

-

-In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing

-to the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back

-into his belt.

-

-"What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with

-intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.

-

-"Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the

-question.

-

-Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his

-wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared

-figure on the floor.

-

-"I went for a walk," he answered.

-

-"Why--when?" Carney snapped imperiously.

-

-"I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to

-Cranford's house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."

-

-"Why to Cranford's house?"

-

-Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp

-cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now

-fierce.

-

-"Well,"--Shipley coughed--"I didn't like the looks of the game to-night;

-that ace being shy---- Didn't you feel there was something not on the

-level?"

-

-"I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been

-in the gray eyes was in the voice now.

-

-"I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd

-lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."

-

-"What did Cranford say?"

-

-"I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I--I

-thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and----"

-

-Shipley hesitated.

-

-"Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"And you didn't see either of them again?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained

-shirt.

-

-Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten

-minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley--have

-you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"

-

-"Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up

-Hadley."

-

-As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the

-lock.

-

-When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar

-and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he

-gave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled

-in one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley--sound asleep, or

-pretending to be.

-

-When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet

-blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he

-mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep--where's Seth?"

-

-"What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness

-of his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.

-

-"I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy--had a

-little too much of it."

-

-"Where did you leave Seth--how long ago?"

-

-"Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy

-up for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning--throw out the empty

-bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I

-came on to go to bed and----" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his

-memory of his progress was still befogged--"when I got here I remembered

-that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to be

-sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."

-

-"Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"

-

-Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap

-the whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.

-

-"I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter

-between two men."

-

-Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with

-startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered--do you know that?"

-

-"What--what--what're you saying?"

-

-Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping

-fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.

-

-"Seth--murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners

-pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that;

-I'm a tenderfoot, but----"

-

-"Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has

-been shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want

-from you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong

-man--do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man

-with a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.

-

-"My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police

-shack, and I don't know anything more about him."

-

-There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through

-the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where

-he said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."

-

-"I know--I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he

-pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:

-

-"I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and

-I want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to

-hide anything--I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-He came back to the room with the girl and said:

-

-"I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes,

-gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room--it will be better."

-

-Then he was gone.

-

-In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the

-hotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make

-certain, through medical examination, that Seth was dead.

-

-Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.

-

-Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies

-in canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the

-apparent consistencies.

-

-Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be

-considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed

-with suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared

-of guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a

-claim as any of them to the title of assassin.

-

-In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.

-

-When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:

-

-"Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action.

-I'd advise you gentlemen to remain _in statu quo_, if I might use the

-term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll

-agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a

-large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and

-as each one of you will be more or less under suspicion--I'm speaking

-now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual,

-the law, will do--it would be as well for each of you to submit to a

-search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's

-expedient."

-

-To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley

-with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no

-trace of the wallet.

-

-Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they

-found.

-

-No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered

-in Shipley's hip pocket.

-

-The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown

-ominously--there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.

-

-"There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on

-Shipley's face.

-

-"Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty

-chamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't

-explode."

-

-With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an

-indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned

-for a long time, or a recent discharge.

-

-"I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.

-

-Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating,

-apologetic way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it

-out: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing

-over the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will

-certainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice

-to himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has

-not lately been discharged."

-

-Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this.

-But the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should--I

-clean forgot it."

-

-Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six

-lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost

-its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward

-the light, looked through the barrel.

-

-"As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice;

-"I'm glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the

-cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.

-

-Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night--we'll only

-obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the

-morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet,

-if I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our

-ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they

-heard the shot."

-

-"A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a

-drunken miner, or an Indian playing brave."

-

-It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out

-of the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the

-Scotchman's herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was

-being done.

-

-Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.

-

-The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he

-puffed vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the

-platoon of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.

-

-"I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and

-passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding,

-"Would you mind joining?"

-

-"I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law--a wee bit of it is very

-fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."

-

-The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid

-red handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:

-

-"Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and

-to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now, _ad interim_

-(the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you,

-Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil.

-And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette--perhaps it's

-just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog, has

-it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man that

-killed Seth?"

-

-Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could

-see that the latter was in deadly earnest.

-

-"Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's

-because I know you devilish well--you're too big for such small-brained

-acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the way of a

-brick mason--facts are the bricks that make the structure."

-

-"But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth,

-who was more or less a friend?"

-

-"All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over

-strained friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't

-you remember what that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when

-Jeanette's brother was near lynched?"

-

-Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:

-

-"You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"

-

-"Aye."

-

-Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.

-

-"The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks

-for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending

-over the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And

-I noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."

-

-Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he

-drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"

-

-"There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us

-to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while

-he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off

-by yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."

-

-"And that swine, Shipley--do you suppose he thought of that, too?"

-

-"I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see,

-Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and

-he took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed

-Seth, and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty

-shell; and if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you,

-knowing that the clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the

-examination as you had had the opportunity to put it right. I don't like

-the incident, nor the man's spirit, but it proves nothing for or against

-him. I expect he's clever enough to know that the last man seen with a

-murdered man is, _de facto_, the slayer."

-

-"As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was

-killed with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night--he always

-was a damn fool--and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing

-way, and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only

-heard one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said:

-"One doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's

-evil, but I fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot

-that wakened me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the

-police shack."

-

-"That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog--in the

-eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."

-

-Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the

-writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went

-up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had

-sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:

-

-"Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there

-was considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder

-was discovered--these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot

-Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper

-hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark

-corner till things had quieted down before going to his room."

-

-"Hadley isn't the kind to commit murder."

-

-"To-night he was another kind of man--he was pretty drunk; and the man

-that's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls--he has

-lost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough to

-make him a bit cautious."

-

-"But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he's

-got a devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like his

-face--' it's avariciously vicious--he's greedy. But the law can't hang

-a man for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist's

-point of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of the

-attached possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute,

-canny Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certain

-the Doctor suspected Shipley.

-

-"I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "for

-you're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man can

-do it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we can

-follow up before the trail gets cold?"

-

-"There is, Doctor. There was a pack of marked cards in Seth's pocket,

-and they're gone."

-

-"The man that has that pack is the murderer," Dr. Anderson declared

-emphatically.

-

-"He is."

-

-"And the wallet."

-

-"Yes."

-

-Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidently

-belonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibility

-that Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latter

-do all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising the

-bet when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.

-

-Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "Either

-Shipley or somebody was in collusion with Seth, you think?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"If we could get that man--?"

-

-"Look here, Doctor," and Carney put his hand on the other's knee,

-"whoever has got that money will not try to take it out over the

-railroad, for it was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."

-

-"I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; a

-search. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"

-

-"He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail to

-Montana or Idaho."

-

-"My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody may

-be headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley--I mean, anybody--he may

-have a colleague to take the money down over the border."

-

-"Yes, the money; he'll not try to handle it in Canada for fear of being

-trapped on the numbers."

-

-"So you might not get the murderer after all," Anderson said,

-meditatively; "just an accomplice who wouldn't squeal."

-

-"No; not with the money alone on him we wouldn't have just what I want,

-but when we get a man with the marked pack in his pocket that's the

-murderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like a

-man will cling to an old pocket-knife; they're the tools of his trade,

-so to speak. And here in the mountains he could not handily come by

-another pack, perhaps."

-

-"I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the marked

-cards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just have

-the money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."

-

-Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to the

-door at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, and

-lowering his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square of

-you. I'm clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of the

-law, but for a good woman's sake I've got to get the murderer."

-

-"It would be commendable, Carney, if you can."

-

-"Well, then, give these other men plenty of rope."

-

-"I comprehend," and Dr. Anderson nodded his head.

-

-"I've got a man--'Oregon' he's known as--down at Big Horn Crossing; he's

-there for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell 'Oregon' to

-search every man that rides the border trail going south."

-

-"I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog--I'll

-look it up with the town clerk."

-

-Carney laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle of honest amusement.

-

-Piqued, the Doctor said irritably, "You're thinking, Bulldog, that the

-little town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representing

-authority, eh?"

-

-"No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authority

-for everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first and

-explain afterwards; and when he gets the right man he'll bring him in.

-First, I'm going to make a cast around the police shack with a lantern.

-Even by its light I may pick up some information. I'll get Jeanette to

-stake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskin

-and be back in three days."

-

-"I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there might

-be some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."

-

-Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneeling

-down, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black earth

-around the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for he

-skirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to the

-ground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracks

-of a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some time

-there; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe prints

-almost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks as

-if somebody had dropped from the window.

-

-Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. He

-could shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from his

-pocket--it was really an old letter--and with his pocket-knife cut it

-to fit a footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the front

-door, and with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints,

-following them a piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood up

-and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown of

-reflection, ending by starting off at a fast pace that carried him to

-the edge of the little town.

-

-In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in his

-hand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were different

-boot tracks, and the one--the latest, he judged, for they topped the

-others--was toeing away from the shack.

-

-He straightened up and knocked on the door.

-

-There was no answer. He knocked again loudly; no answer. He shook the

-door by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet:

-there was no sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on it

-and called, "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shack

-convinced him that Cranford had gone--perhaps, as he had intimated, to

-Bald Rock.

-

-He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those heading

-away from the shack. The paper did not seem to fit--not quite; in fact,

-the other track was closer to the paper gauge.

-

-Back at the hotel he related to Dr. Anderson the result of his trailing.

-

-When he spoke of Cranford's absence from the shack, the Doctor

-involuntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I was

-thinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving from

-Cranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involves

-Cranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, on

-the quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments on

-a mine,--they're threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds or

-something."

-

-"You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-away

-game the better."

-

-"Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search for

-Cranford, and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Black

-comes--likely to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, of

-course, the verdict will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you've

-gone to hurry in Sergeant Black."

-

-When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette was

-waiting for him in the little front sitting room.

-

-With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible ending

-to it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in its

-absolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was no

-affection, no pretense of it. She was like a niece, or even a daughter,

-to Seth; their relationship had been practically on that basis.

-Her father had been a partner of Long in some of his enterprises,

-enterprises that had never been much of anything beyond final failure.

-When his partner had died Seth had assumed charge of the girl. It was

-perhaps the one redeeming feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.

-

-Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knew

-so well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.

-

-Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; the

-desirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of her

-evidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhat

-nebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nor

-did he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for two

-or three days and would be supposed to have gone after the Mounted

-Policeman.

-

-He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explained

-how much depended upon the discovery of its present possessor.

-

-Second Part

-

-It was within an hour of daybreak when Carney, astride his buckskin,

-slipped quietly out of Bucking Horse, and took the trail that skirted

-the tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but that

-didn't matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could go

-without sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, as

-the buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a brief

-half hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.

-

-When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were several

-tracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were called

-bronchos, the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But they

-were cold trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamer

-wings, stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dew

-sparkled on the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.

-

-It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of a

-pony that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earth

-where the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.

-

-Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he was

-on. It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot,

-and had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to the

-cross trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracks

-turned to the right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that the

-rider was not associated with the murder. With that start he would be

-heading for across the border; he would not make for a Canadian town

-where he would be in touch with the wires.

-

-Along the border trail there were no fresh tracks.

-

-It was toward evening when Carney passed through the Valley of the

-Grizzley's Bridge--past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot Johnson

-had been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been caught

-in the bear trap.

-

-The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; he

-clattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eager

-hasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lop

-ears weaving back and forth in apprehension.

-

-Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of

-the cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,

-camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding

-walls of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled

-along an obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer

-sense of perception.

-

-At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch of

-breakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one had

-passed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail while

-the horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretched

-between them: and there were no fresh tracks.

-

-At two o'clock he came to the little log shack just this side of the U.

-S. border where Oregon kept his solitary ward. Nobody had passed, Oregon

-advised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were to

-search any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the marked

-cards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.

-

-Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to his

-superior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, was

-opium running. That was his office, to drift across the line casually,

-back and forth, as a prospector, and keep posted as to customs officers;

-who they were, where the kind-hearted ones were, and where the fanatical

-ones were; for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally,

-five miles within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his way

-out, leaving twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of a

-tyrannical customs department.

-

-At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp the

-hand of his lieutenant.

-

-"I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down the

-valley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way of

-weather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit of

-lead that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as if

-somebody'd fresh plugged me."

-

-Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through which

-wandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a glorious

-oriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden light

-that hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of the

-hills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, and

-emerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where the

-gaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoon

-bushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloom

-preserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.

-

-And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry,

-was hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest that

-zigzagged and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the design

-of some giant cubist.

-

-Carney laughed and swung his gloved hand in a semicircle of derision.

-

-"It's purty," Oregon said, "it's purty, but I've seen a purty woman, all

-smilin' too, break out in a hell of a temper afore you could say

-'hands up.' My hip don't never make no mistakes, 'cause it ain't got no

-fancies. It's a-comin'. You ride like hell, Carney; it's a-comin'. Say,

-Bulldog, look at that," and Oregon's long, lean, not over-clean finger

-pointed to the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that the

-Old Man of the Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs of

-his--see the white of that eye? And he ain't takin' in no purty scenery,

-he's lookin' over his shoulder down off there," and Oregon stretched a

-long arm toward the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains of

-ice, the glaciers.

-

-"It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if they

-run on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to death

-once in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd been

-good always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out if

-you got caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snow

-hell'ry. The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twenty

-feet deep, and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself what

-gener'ly happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal by

-gettin' him into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nice

-little silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains.

-Good-bye, Bulldog, and ride like hell--the buckskin won't mind; let him

-run the show--he knows, the clever little cuss."

-

-Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in the

-heat of the squeeze they got in Oregon's bear-trap of a paw.

-

-The trail here was like a prairie road for the valley was flat, and the

-buckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at a

-sharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croaking

-bellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave him

-alone. Let him run things hisself!"

-

-Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the old

-man was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wide

-places of earth had tutored him to the varying moods of the elements;

-that his super-sense was akin to the subtle understanding of animals.

-So he rode late into the night, sometimes sleeping in the saddle, as

-the buckskin, with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down dale

-and along the brink of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. He

-camped beneath a giant pine whose fallen cones and needles had spread

-a luxurious mattress, and whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in the

-air, a perfume that was like a balm of life.

-

-Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot might

-slip by in the night.

-

-He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleep

-with a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. His

-eyes opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtered

-down into the gloomed valley from a paling sky. A day was being born;

-the night was dying.

-

-An appalling hush was in the air; the valley was as devoid of sound as

-though the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself had

-been sucked out from between the hills, leaving a void.

-

-The buckskin was up and picking at the tender shoots of a young birch.

-It had been a half-whinnying snort from the horse that had wakened

-Carney, for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop ears

-cocked as though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness,

-watched for something that was creeping stealthily over the mountains

-from the west.

-

-Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though it

-had been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon's

-croak came back:

-

-"He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"

-

-Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a corner

-of his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pot

-his tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickered

-and swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up in

-the giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. The

-gray of the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed again

-as though night had fled backwards before the thing that was in the

-mountains to the west.

-

-The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in a

-bitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neck

-of a stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he were

-famished, or ate to save them from a thief.

-

-In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head were

-playing a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze darted

-here and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far across

-the valley, from somewhere in the rocky caverns of the mighty hills,

-came the heavy moans of genii. It was hardly a noise, it was a great

-oppression, a manifestation of turmoil, of the turmoil of God's majesty,

-His creation in travail.

-

-Carney quaffed the scalding tea, and raced with the buckskin in the

-eating of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling blood

-told him that the temperature was going down, down, down. The day

-before he had ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; now

-a vagrant thought flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the Gold

-Nugget.

-

-He saddled the buckskin, and the horse, at the pinch of the cinch,

-turned from his oats that were only half eaten, and held up his head for

-the bit.

-

-Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and the

-buckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps.

-It wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needles

-stabbed at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filled

-with indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; it

-seemed to penetrate the horse's lungs, for he gave a snorting cough.

-

-And now the full orchestra of the hills was filling the valleys and the

-canyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of Squaw

-Mountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its many

-throats into unearthly dirge.

-

-Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that had

-thrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberating

-music seemed to carry as refrain the words of Oregon: "Ride like hell,

-Carney! Ride like hell!"

-

-And, as if the command were within the buckskin's knowing, he raced

-where the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over the

-stones and shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.

-

-In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that drove

-into the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when he

-murdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could make

-that he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter it

-too.

-

-In the thought of saving his life the buckskin occupied a dual place;

-that's what Oregon had said; he had no right to jeopardize the gallant

-little steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stout

-heart.

-

-He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though he

-spoke aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo and

-reverberation than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fret

-yourself tired, old sport; we'll make it--the cave."

-

-The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, had

-in his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.

-

-Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had taken

-visible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley the

-towering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozen

-ridges above his eyes; his breath floated away in little clouds of ice;

-the buckskin coat of the horse had turned to gray.

-

-Sometimes at the turn of a cliff was a false lull as if the storm had

-been stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen north

-swung again and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.

-

-And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objects

-were being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; it

-was more difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; a

-chill was suggesting indifference--why fight?

-

-The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was

-spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold;

-it was like a winding sheet.

-

-Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the

-merciless snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.

-

-To the man direction was lost--it was like being above the clouds; but

-the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting,

-making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter,

-meant death; the buckskin knew it; but he was tiring.

-

-Carney unslung his picket line, put the loop around his chest below his

-arms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, and

-slipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on the

-rump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went on

-again, the weight off his back being a relief.

-

-The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping over

-him in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest that

-preluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now the

-exertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.

-

-Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours away

-the cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. It

-scarce mattered; to draw forth his watch and look was a waste of energy,

-the vital energy that weighed against his death; an ounce of it wasted

-was folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.

-

-Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when he

-himself was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little hero

-that had fought his battles ever since they had been together. The

-buckskin's flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of a

-bellows; his withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean and

-small--scarce mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting sea

-of snow.

-

-But the cave must be near. Carney found himself repeating these words:

-"The cave is near, the cave is near, Patsy; on, boy--the cave is near."

-His mind dwelt on the wood that he had left in the cave when he took

-Jack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a bright

-fire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would make

-it. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always won

-out on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?

-

-He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling that

-it was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mental

-stamina. If he kept up his courage he would win out, as he always had.

-It was just Excelsior and Success, just----

-

-There was a swirl of oblivion; he had flown through space and collided

-with another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he was

-alone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds.

-There was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passing

-under an anesthetic--Nirvana.

-

-Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of the

-beyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking from

-a dream--it was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back to

-consciousness. He struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legs

-were; at the bottom of them were leaden-soled diver's boots. His

-brain, not more than half clearing at that, he realized that he and the

-buckskin had slid from a treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozen

-feet; the snow, unwittingly kind, catching them in a lap of feathery

-softness. But for the gallant horse he would have lain there, never to

-rise again of his own volition.

-

-They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were

-going forward. Oregon's command was working out--"Let the buckskin have

-his own way."

-

-If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone

-around in a circle--in fact, Carney once had done so--and the cold would

-have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more life-sapping; but

-here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it was like surf

-rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and horse.

-

-Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man

-battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged

-senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact

-that they still held on toward the cave.

-

-Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream--or was this the

-real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party--that they

-were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.

-

-Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a

-dream--he was waking.

-

-When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight

-played on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him

-something stamped on the stone floor.

-

-He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung

-head.

-

-"How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and

-coming to his side.

-

-Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And

-now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he

-was in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.

-

-He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.

-

-"Some horse, that, Stranger." The man's voice that had sounded thinly

-sinister had a humanized tone as he said this.

-

-Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried to

-answer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You're

-makin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Try

-this dope."

-

-He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; it

-was like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.

-

-"Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd a

-horse neigh--it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted out

-to sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd his

-bell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers--'twan't more'n 'bout

-ten yards at that--and there's that danged rat of yours, and he won't

-come in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow; he

-seemed to know that if he pulled too hard he'd break your danged neck.

-Then we got you in--that's all. Some horse!"

-

-This and the warmth and the tonic tea brought Carney up to date. He held

-out his hand.

-

-But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turned

-surlily to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't done

-nothin'; you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' you

-through. I went out after my own bronch."

-

-"But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had met

-many men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to an

-unknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside became

-like outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness--every man was

-an enemy till he proved himself.

-

-The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close together

-each side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look of

-distrust.

-

-"I ain't never knowed but one man was _all right_, and the Mounted

-Police hounded him till he give up."

-

-The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward the

-horse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Are

-you him, or are you a hawse thief?"

-

-"How do you know the horse?"

-

-"I got reason a-plenty to know him. He cleaned me out in Walla

-Walla when he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark that

-cold-decked us boys with this ringer."

-

-Now Bulldog knew why the aversion.

-

-"I'm Carney," he 'admitted; "but it was the gamblers put up the job; I

-just beat them out."

-

-"Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.

-

-"Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed that

-the other hung with peculiar intensity on his answer.

-

-"How long was you fightin' that blizzard?"

-

-"Since daylight--when I broke camp." Carney looked at his watch; it was

-three o'clock. "How long have I been here?"

-

-"A couple of hours. Was you runnin' booze or hop, Bulldog?"

-

-Carney started. Perhaps the cave man was conveying a covert threat,

-an intimation that he might inform on him. "Don't let's talk shop," he

-answered.

-

-"I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an

-ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills

-trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the

-mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her

-out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to

-see me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."

-

-The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing

-thought--_food!_ He, himself, had about one day's supply--had he it? He

-turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been tossed

-by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon and

-bannock were gone!

-

-Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"

-

-"All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's

-cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon,

-about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom

-a round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to

-Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his

-blankets.

-

-A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of

-habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been--the pigskin

-pocket was empty.

-

-The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip.

-"Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was

-gone."

-

-Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun.

-He ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit--when the time came

-he would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the

-other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin

-in his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This

-fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his

-bacon and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have

-worked out and the oats remain.

-

-He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear

-outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the

-swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate

-to their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at

-least fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which

-the trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he

-had no food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week

-with two men eating it.

-

-He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a

-fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind

-might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the

-snow with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.

-

-Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged--he was hungry

-only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.

-

-He lay down, and had slept two hours when he was wakened by the sweet

-perfume of frying pork.

-

-Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. He

-watched the cook turn it over and over with the point of his hunting

-knife, cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vital

-fat. When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point of

-his knife and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparing

-that well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.

-

-Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just beside

-the fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray of

-his opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney's

-mind before he fell asleep.

-

-"I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'm

-goin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anyways

-you was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up to

-me to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be a

-damn fool to do it--I'd be just playin' agin myself."

-

-Then he spat in the fire and held the pan over its blaze to warm the

-slimy mixture.

-

-Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case for

-himself continued: "We may be bottled up here for a week, or a month.

-Two men ain't got no chanct on that grub-pile, no chanct."

-

-"Why don't you eat it then?" and Carney sat up. "I could, 'cause it's

-mine; but I got a proposition to make--you can take it or leave it."

-

-"Spit it out."

-

-"It's just this"--the fox eyes shifted uneasily to the little buckskin,

-and then back to Carney's face--"I'll share this grub if, when it's

-gone, you cut in with the bronch."

-

-Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; his

-features were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush.

-The proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had asked

-him to slit the throat of a brother for a cannibalistic orgy.

-

-"It's only ord'nary hawse sense," Dave added when Carney did not speak;

-"kept in the snow that meat'd last us a month. Feelin's don't count when

-a man's playin' fer his life, and that's what we're doin'."

-

-"I don't dispute the sense of your proposition, my kind friend," Carney

-said in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll think

-it over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, of

-course, if I don't get out he'd starve to death anyway."

-

-"Take your time," and the owner of the pan pulled it between his legs,

-ate the slice of bacon, and with a tin spoon lapped up the glutinous

-mess.

-

-Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger that

-were now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other man

-had a gun, and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store of

-provisions were gone--perhaps before that. And Carney was determined

-to make the discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on the

-dictator, the lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing the

-little buckskin that had saved his life--bah! the very idea of it made

-his fingers twitch for a grasp of the other's windpipe.

-

-For a long time Carney sat moodily turning over in his mind something;

-and the other man, having lighted his pipe, sat back against the wall of

-the cave smoking.

-

-At last Carney spoke. "There's a way out of this."

-

-"Yes, if a chinook blows up Kettlebelly Valley--there ain't no other

-way. The manna days is all gone by."

-

-"There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the Lost

-Ledge Mine."

-

-"She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a few

-stringers of gold--they soon petered out."

-

-"When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot of

-heavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools,

-and, what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes back

-there. I could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and make

-Bucking Horse in three or four days. He wore them down in the Cour

-d'Alene."

-

-"If you had the grub," Dave snapped; "where're you goin' to get that?"

-

-"Half of what you've got would keep me up that long on short rations."

-

-"And what about me--where do I come in on givin' you half my grub?"

-

-"The other half would keep you alive till I could bring a rescue party

-on snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering this

-proposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind to

-do a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you--your bronch agin half

-my chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronch

-is mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till a

-chinook blows up."

-

-From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, and

-slid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.

-

-Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cards

-winged _seven blue doves_. It was the pack that had been stolen from

-Seth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murderer

-of Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the same

-slight variation of the wings. In a second Carney had mastered himself.

-

-"I guess it's fair," he said hesitatingly; "let me think it over--I'm

-fond of that little cuss, but I guess a man's life comes first."

-

-He sat looking into the fire thinking, and if Dave had been a mind

-reader the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter was

-thinking, "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in my

-pocket."

-

-Then he spoke, shifting closer to the blanket on which the other sat:

-

-"I'll cut!"

-

-"Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.

-

-Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he

-turned it up--it was the ace of diamonds.

-

-"Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of

-spades, adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."

-

-"Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.

-

-Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the

-blanket in a tenuous stream.

-

-Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of

-them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a

-gambler's eagerness.

-

-Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his

-knees and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a

-little to the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the

-pack. If he turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the

-minute he turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been

-double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's

-face; perhaps--once a killer always a killer--he would not hesitate but

-would kill.

-

-So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace,

-while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.

-

-"Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you----"

-

-Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split

-second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.

-

-"Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.

-

-Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left

-hand, but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from

-the shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked

-from its pigskin pocket by Carney.

-

-Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick,

-or I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"

-

-Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."

-

-"You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."

-

-Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.

-

-Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he

-should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding

-had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a

-foreboding look.

-

-Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:

-

-"You're Tacoma Jack--you're the man that staked Seth Long to this marked

-pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to

-Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."

-

-He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when

-you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went

-with you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he

-had taken the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth.

-When the game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the

-window, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money

-was too much, and you plugged him."

-

-"It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about

-it."

-

-"You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and

-Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough

-not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see

-you, but jumped from the back window."

-

-Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks

-in the mud.

-

-"I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He

-held it up.

-

-"It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own

-hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"

-

-Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea

-type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity

-even with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying

-twenty feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in

-fact with him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been

-a Mounted Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that

-he give up his life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private

-individual, trying to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high

-regard for--Jeanette Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man.

-Bringing in the stolen money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might

-be said that he, himself, had taken these two things and returned them.

-

-Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves

-had combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had

-been killed--it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.

-

-Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:

-

-"They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his

-cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie--Seth's as dead's a

-herrin'!"

-

-"How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.

-

-The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said

-so yourself."

-

-"Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make

-your get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you,

-Tacoma Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."

-

-The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was

-driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking

-Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do

-to carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could

-make half a mile of that trail.

-

-Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma,

-when you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I

-didn't value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a

-damn whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab

-of bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little

-flour I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most

-with snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a

-dogtrain and a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance;

-it's like filling a bob-tailed flush--but I'm going to let you draw.

-If the chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back

-you'll get away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got

-to clear a good woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the

-cards with a forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession

-here in my noteboook that you killed Seth Long."

-

-"I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap--I didn't kill him!" %

-

-"As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I

-take the money, your gun, your boots, and _all the grub_."

-

-As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank

-lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.

-

-"Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and

-you bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make

-a cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the

-chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence.

-Carney broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide

-quick, for I'm going to hobble you."

-

-Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If

-Carney took the food--and he would--he had no chance. The alternative

-was his only hope.

-

-"I'll sign--I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just

-how it happened."

-

-"You write it yourself--I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I

-forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."

-

-He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.

-

-When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye

-on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma

-Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had

-pulled his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and

-in the struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.

-

-Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may

-be true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If

-you're laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog

-Carney, forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make

-me plug you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll

-turn you loose."

-

-Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and

-Tacoma, placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney

-proceeded to cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon.

-Then he rubbed down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the

-horse, gave him a feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite

-side of the fire from Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for

-the minute you start anything you lose your bet on the chinook."

-

-In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in

-through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had

-all but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had

-huddled to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft

-and balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.

-

-Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy

-snow and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath

-the weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses

-of snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing

-sun. Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet,

-gnarled faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged

-with snow-water.

-

-A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against

-a cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of

-the white mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a

-cow-bell. It was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell

-that Carney had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the

-little buckskin.

-

-Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping

-out from above his blanket--they were like rat eyes.

-

-"You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."

-

-Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his

-heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to

-Bucking Horse.

-

-"The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the

-chinook, don't I?"

-

-"You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his

-word."

-

-"Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled

-into Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my

-hand dif'rent--p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that

-when I drug you in out of the blizzard."

-

-Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was

-just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite

-from an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog--I'd be kind

-of lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."

-

-"If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is

-waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket

-that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck

-you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting

-you."

-

-

-

-

-VI.--EVIL SPIRITS

-

-|The Rockies, their towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid

-with blue and green, the glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion

-Range, and the Vermillion looked down upon the sienna prairie in which

-was Fort Calbert, as Marathon might have looked down upon the sea.

-

-In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigality

-of Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from the

-surrounding boxlike structures of the town.

-

-In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon

-which was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was

-an occasion.

-

-Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was

-that a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the

-importation of five gallons.

-

-Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table

-possible.

-

-Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in

-some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested

-attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;

-they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an

-eagle.

-

-Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot

-transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was

-always that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste

-shell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West

-as a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."

-

-A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end

-of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty

-idea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."

-

-"The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is

-supposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has

-remitted," Harden explained to Carney.

-

-"Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.

-

-His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from

-the roadway; it was a weird drool--the droning, hoarse note of a tug's

-whistle.

-

-Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'!

-Oh, heavens! it makes me homesick."

-

-Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy

-little Thames tug.

-

-Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.

-Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun

-lay like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of

-one that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A

-dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River

-cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken

-bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.

-

-The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust

-and sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature--an armadillo. He

-turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look,

-upon the six.

-

-"It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert

-declared solemnly.

-

-"Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O

-Gabriel--there's vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our

-hearts and we'll set you happy."

-

-The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent

-proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat

-blast. He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.

-

-But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight

-figure and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of

-buckskin and leather chapps, turned back into the bar.

-

-"Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the

-unresisting guest to a chair.

-

-The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a

-keg; the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He

-shoved out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava

-that darkened their pale contours.

-

-Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the

-prodigal was the fated calf--it was full.

-

-The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window,

-threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.

-

-"Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the

-stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest

-floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it

-wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."

-

-FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened,

-started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at

-dinner.

-

-The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and

-sat down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as

-he asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"

-

-The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is

-outside: we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."

-

-"By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess;

-and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes

-that were thought hard, had gone blue.

-

-"Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us

-twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."

-

-At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics

-showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their

-shoulders.

-

-"Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where

-the regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join

-up."

-

-The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for

-this I'll have to run you all in."

-

-Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added:

-"Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."

-

-"Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert

-bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."

-

-"Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.

-

-When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to

-have troubled you."

-

-As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast

-of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.

-

-"Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret

-standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."

-

-"Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor

-law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to

-be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against

-the police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when

-they're putting down crime."

-

-"The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed

-man who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant

-in the force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence.

-Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."

-

-The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent

-restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of

-this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."

-

-"Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed

-eagerly.

-

-Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.

-

-"You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he

-will have the handling of it, I fancy--a carload."

-

-FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if

-playing poker.

-

-"Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.

-

-"I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a

-jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."

-

-"Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything

-of that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck

-with the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two

-weeks. The police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."

-

-The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped

-it gently on the table.

-

-"You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.

-

-"I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I

-have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was

-a rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer

-crop--a splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan,

-standing. Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."

-

-"The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the

-little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his

-glass.

-

-"By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen--about the whisky: While I was waiting

-for an audience with the Polica _Ogema_ I heard, through an open door,

-a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general statement was

-that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for delivery at

-Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car here."

-

-"Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.

-

-"I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I

-suppose----"

-

-The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of

-merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why

-FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a

-joy!"

-

-The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the

-little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm _very_ glad to have met you,

-sir." Then he was gone.

-

-"I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name--you didn't

-introduce me?"

-

-"That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.

-

-"Oh, I say!" the other gasped.

-

-"Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert

-answered.

-

-The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then

-he related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from

-An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three

-counties--Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."

-

-In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.

-

-From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent

-a telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of

-message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening

-he had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.

-

-Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway

-station for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform

-from morning till night.

-

-On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the

-prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras

-was numbered 6100.

-

-Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major

-had received was reliable, evidently.

-

-The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through

-freight--not for Fort Calbert.

-

-Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry

-smile hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the

-amiable Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.

-

-"Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the

-discussion.

-

-It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty

-force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:

-the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued

-an order.

-

-Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused

-to do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters,

-from his superior officer.

-

-Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for

-long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.

-

-"How do you know?" the station agent retorted.

-

-"Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.

-

-Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he

-jumped:

-

-"I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;

-"Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario--they have

-use for it down that way."

-

-"It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you

-something on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if

-I get the evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though

-I never set eyes on you."

-

-Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a

-get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet

-of ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A

-carload of whisky is simply preposterous."

-

-This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought.

-He could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not

-break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take

-it on himself.

-

-"Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to

-come down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how

-to act. We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I

-don't want to get you into trouble."

-

-A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he

-admired brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also

-well known. He turned to the station master saying:

-

-"I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the

-proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."

-

-Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train

-was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."

-

-Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and

-would back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also

-expected of a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they

-didn't encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.

-

-"Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the

-conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got

-somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job

-as brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."

-

-Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the

-Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the

-seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."

-

-So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile

-crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the

-caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.

-

-An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually

-the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty

-souls, for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload

-of whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed,

-of course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an

-attraction like a funeral.

-

-EVIL SPIRITS

-

-At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a

-written order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a

-heavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.

-

-The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a

-defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a

-game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and

-in his speech there was the savor of London fog.

-

-"What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he

-addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do

-so now!"

-

-"You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.

-

-"My word! we're always doing that, always--that's what we're here for,

-to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."

-

-There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened

-on Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major,

-a procession headed for the car of interest.

-

-The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open,

-the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak

-barrels.

-

-The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at

-Bulldog Carney.

-

-It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of

-astonishment over this exhibit.

-

-At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major,

-turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take

-this stuff to the fort."

-

-The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing

-this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too

-greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."

-

-"Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner,"

-the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at

-Carney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men

-bring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be

-destroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."

-

-One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on

-end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge.

-At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup

-fluttered up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.

-

-"Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time,

-Major."

-

-A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the

-turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped

-their dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of

-appreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat

-man! Him damn good; break him more!"

-

-"Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.

-

-This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled

-waters--literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.

-

-The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste

-these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.

-

-The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in

-his objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've

-roped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights

-answering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will

-want to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods.

-The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why I

-side-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take

-responsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't none

-too well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."

-

-"And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have

-to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.

-

-Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels

-of sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas,

-beans--in fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered

-grocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.

-

-The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been

-wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.

-

-He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert

-were several small places on the line where there were neither police

-nor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the

-station master, saying:

-

-"Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky

-cut off? I believe it's on that train."

-

-"How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside

-my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay,

-and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try

-to cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages

-back in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the

-Superintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole

-thing to your Commissioner at Regina."

-

-Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the

-broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H.

-B. Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of

-something for nothing.

-

-The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.

-

-Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying,

-as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country;

-Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on

-you yet, old top."

-

-"Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."

-

-The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair.

-He would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was

-handicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of

-contention everybody's hand would be against the force--the very train

-men, if they could get away with it.

-

-Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained

-groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through

-with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was

-sent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars--one of goods and one of

-whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John

-Ross was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper

-in the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither

-car would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,

-either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not

-matter.

-

-Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were

-going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot

-through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the

-suspected car.

-

-Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a

-consultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen

-from the position of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game;

-besides, which was almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.

-

-"Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool

-kind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to

-round him up, for we haven't got a thing on him--not a thing. He's so

-well liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin

-Hood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped

-your hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll

-be run into the plains--there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of

-it, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this

-law, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."

-

-The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major

-to send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of

-this consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."

-

-So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.

-

-Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was

-accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten

-dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot

-of whisky as it was being run the following night.

-

-The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the

-Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened

-breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the

-ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the

-trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert

-itself.

-

-This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still

-wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information

-to the Major.

-

-"We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will

-sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."

-

-When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt,

-Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates,

-and, skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the

-southwest.

-

-At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of

-a little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses

-had been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern

-fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide

-was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the

-cut-bank to the stream.

-

-They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had

-hung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed

-ridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and

-a sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the

-belly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a

-penciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock.

-The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the

-night passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the

-solemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thought

-that they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man to

-whom odds meant little or nothing.

-

-As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivoted

-his body on elbows close to Sergeant Jerry and whispered: "I'm glad,

-man, you suggested the flare. In the dark, wi' promiscuous shootin',

-there might be killin', and I'd no like to pot Bulldog myself', even if

-he is a whisky runner."

-

-Jerry laughed a soft, throaty chuckle. "You'd have a fine chance, Mac,

-with that old .44 Enfield pepper-box against Carney with his .45 Colt;

-he just plays it like a girl fingerin' the keys of a piano; those gray

-cat-eyes of his can see in the dark."

-

-"Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won't

-wait for a better chance."

-

-"We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us the

-slip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, and

-it was proved after he had nothing to do with it. But listen to this,

-Scottie, we both like Bulldog, but if he bucks us, we belong to the

-Force."

-

-"Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thank

-us to spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with this

-outfit?"

-

-"Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into Fort

-Calbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk and

-not be there."

-

-But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It's

-no sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."

-

-Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through the

-sandy wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy,

-slipping, sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were being

-shoved along the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dull

-thump of an axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud of

-muffled hoofs.

-

-The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length over

-the deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice of

-Sergeant Platt rang out in a sharp command:

-

-"Halt! hands up--you are covered! If you move we fire!"

-

-At the first word, "Halt!" the bull's-eye threw its arrogant glare of

-light upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bank

-the bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidable

-figure of the Honorable Reginald Fordyce-Anstruther--that was all.

-That is to say, all but five square tins, atop of which sat the outlaw,

-Reggie.

-

-It was a goblined, pathetically inadequate figure sitting atop the tins,

-the lean attenuated arms held high as if in beseechment.

-

-Sergeant Jerry cursed softly; then he laughed; and Corporal McBane

-exclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."

-

-But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keep

-out of the light; it may be a blind."

-

-Soon McBane's voice was heard from the cut-bank: "All clear, Sergeant."

-

-Then Sergeant Jerry, stepping into the open, examined the exhibit.

-Instead of carrying concealed weapons Reggie had a fair load of

-concealed spirits; he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought some

-nebulous answers about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and that

-he was bringing in the goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature was

-sorely taxed.

-

-"I'm gettin' fed up on these damned tricks of Bulldog's," he growled,

-"for that's what it is."

-

-"I'm not sure," McBane objected; "this ninny may ha' blabbed, and yon

-breed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."

-

-However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached and

-escorted in to barracks.

-

-Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain had

-imbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortune

-of the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; or

-he may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.

-

-In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usual

-sacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presence

-of the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in a

-gurgling libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Then

-the empty tins were tossed disdainfully into the coulee.

-

-Back in the Fort Major Kane said: "This was all a blind, Sergeant Platt;

-none of the stuff will come down this way--they'll run it up among the

-miners and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of the

-patrol up about the Pass."

-

-In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; and

-by the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. that

-the few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk--half were in the

-guard room.

-

-The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBane

-didn't know.

-

-In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the scene

-of the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed.

-He had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturated

-earth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick as

-if spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick went

-through, suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sand

-flying. A foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neat

-crosshatching of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that was

-supported by a tub; a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odor

-that struck the Superintendent's nostrils was not suds--it was whisky.

-

-He yanked the tub out of the cavity and kicked it into the coulee. Then

-he stood up and mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils!

-the cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's put

-them up to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just a

-blind, the tip from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's a

-game to put my men on the blink while he runs that carload."

-

-Rage swirled in the Major's heart as he turned toward the Fort; but

-before he had reached the gates his sense--and the little man had

-lots of it--laid embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to his

-quarters to sit on the verandah and curse softly to himself.

-

-He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mounted

-from the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not come

-into the Territories to be pitted against the social desires of the

-white inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but here

-this very thing took up more than half their time and energy. And it

-was a losing game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pitted

-against every one of his force.

-

-There were rumors that it was soon to be changed--the trade

-legitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With a

-small army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision against

-them, it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from the

-half-breeds who were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.

-

-To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after day

-across the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain,

-was an exhilarating game--it was something to stimulate the _espirit de

-corps;_ a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, full

-reward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like an

-ordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle of

-whisky, only to have him up before the magistrate for a small fine was,

-to say the least, disquieting; it made his men half ashamed of their

-mission.

-

-Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carney

-himself--big; and the Major would have given, right there, a half-year's

-pay to have bagged Bulldog, and so, perhaps have broken up the ring.

-

-But determined as the force was, the British law was greater still.

-Without absolute, convicting evidence Carney would have been acquitted,

-and the Major perhaps censured for making a mistake.

-

-At headquarters was a fixed edict: "Take no position from which you will

-have to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."

-

-As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart at

-the quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, loved

-his duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under the

-strain of service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streak

-showed--then he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, you

-hound!" he would snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got to

-be kept clean."

-

-Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annual

-report that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller at

-Ottawa."

-

-Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guard

-house--it was "The Stirrup Cup."

-

-"God, _England!_" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing," he

-muttered.

-

-How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly human

-those who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, a

-constable at sixty cents a day! They were all like that--not of noble

-family, but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles of

-restraint all over the world. That was largely why they were in the

-Mounted; certainly not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how,

-even in his bitterness of set-awry-authority, could the incident of the

-tub be a heinous crime on their part.

-

-"By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the

-verandah, crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them

-and shoot Carney--damn him! he's at the bottom of it."

-

-The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down

-behind the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and

-the blond giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort

-Calbert for a breather over the prairie.

-

-As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling

-"pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust

-to the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that

-seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.

-

-"A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in

-the town--he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."

-

-The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the

-familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider

-yanked his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the

-saddle in exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and

-the flanks of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.

-

-"Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.

-

-FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical

-shatterment that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel

-to his bay's flank and moved slowly along the trail.

-

-Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his

-message.

-

-"All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the

-Victoria, feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."

-

-"What'll I do, boss, when I wake up--how long'll I sleep?"

-

-"As long as you like--a week if you want."

-

-"What'll I do then--don't you need me?"

-

-"No, play with your toes if you like."

-

-Lathy George pulled his reeling cayuse together, and pushed on. Carney

-gave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got to

-go back to town," Carney said.

-

-"I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessness

-is like a painted sky above a painted ocean--it gives me the lonely

-willies."

-

-"There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over his

-shoulder.

-

-"It's always back there, or over yonder--never here when there's any

-hell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one long

-plaintive sabbath."

-

-"I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carney

-continued.

-

-"Me, too--if there's action there."

-

-"Hardly, my dear boy; it's purely a matter of diplomacy."

-

-"Absolutely, Bulldog; that's why you're going. You're going to kiss

-somebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a good

-cigar for you'--you love it. What's happened?"

-

-"The Stonies are on the war-path."

-

-"Ugly devils--part Sioux. They're hunters--blood letters--first cousins

-to the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for the

-Wood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came into

-their hands."

-

-"Yes, they're peppery devils. In the Frog Lake massacre one of them,

-Itcka, killed a white man or two and was hanged for it."

-

-"What started them now?" FitzHerbert asked. "Whisky."

-

-FitzHerbert stole a glance at Carney's stolid face; then he whistled;

-Carney's word had been like a gasp of confession, for, undoubtedly, the

-liquor was from the car.

-

-"How did they make the haul?" he asked.

-

-"The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a new

-regulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fall

-hunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under Chief

-Standing Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his mates

-in the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up to

-the lumber camps."

-

-"Great! that combination--lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would be

-as if sheol had opened a chute--there'll be murder."

-

-"I know Standing Bear; he made me a blood brother of his. I did him a

-bit of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and the

-old fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for the

-Stoney had peppered a couple of silly bullets into the brute's shoulder.

-I happened to get in a lucky shot and stopped the silver-tip when he was

-about to shampoo old Standing Bear."

-

-"Yes, I heard about that--you and your little buckskin. Say, Bulldog,

-that little devil must have the pluck of a lion--they say he carried you

-right up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"

-

-"That's just a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I are

-good friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to the

-reserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you know

-what the Sergeant is, Fitz--he'll stack up against that tribe alone;

-if they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with the

-lumberjacks--their squaws will be along, and you know what that

-means--Jerry stands a mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that it

-will be sort of my fault."

-

-"It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, and

-we'll play rugby with those devilish _nichies_ if they don't act like

-gentlemen."

-

-Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know all

-about that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz--not

-a chance. It would be a fight--your hot heads would start it--and after

-the first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the red

-spit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets. These

-Stonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains; first

-thing he knows of their approach is when he's bowled over."

-

-EVIL SPIRITS

-

-"How are you going to do it then, mister man? Go in and get shot up just

-because you feel that it's your fault?"

-

-"No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Platt

-we'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kind

-they'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they know

-the 'Redcoat' is an agent of the Queen, the White Mother who feeds them;

-but, being drunk, the young bucks will be hostile--some of them will

-feel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has got

-sense and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his whole

-tribe was pledged to me. I'm going down to collect--do you see, Fitz?"

-

-They were riding in to town now, and FitzHerbert made another plea:

-"Let me go with you, Bulldog. I'm petrified with fanning the air with my

-eyes, and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching the

-west wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow them

-back again, till they're worn to the size of golf balls. I'm atrophied;

-my insides are like an enamelled pot from the damned alkaline dust."

-

-"Sorry, my dear boy, but I know what would happen if you went with me.

-While I'd be holding a pow-wow with Standing Bear one of those boozed

-Stonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hell

-would break loose."

-

-"You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have got

-the cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I've

-seen you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and not

-lose caste over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, old

-boy! I rather fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or this

-will be good-bye."

-

-It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy

-gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,

-threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a

-long graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow

-chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping

-over Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned

-prairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity

-the turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy haze

-over the plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphere

-so peaceful that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of a

-phantasmagoria. There was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in the

-sleepy air, and off to the south glinted against the horizon the peeping

-red eyes of a prairie fire. They were like the rimmed lights of a

-shore-held city.

-

-The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairie

-uplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if his

-instinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easy

-suffling pace of a cayuse.

-

-Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentle

-night had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mind

-slipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of ocean

-to the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.

-

-Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste for

-his life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of his

-wits against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was better

-than remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion by

-action, by strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds;

-but the thing ahead--drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrust

-back into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste of

-the ashes of regret.

-

-Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deaden

-this suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized the

-danger, the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a game

-with Fate that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pit

-himself against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot of

-the Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; and

-inflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would all

-depend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken;

-he must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remain

-there with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking the

-Ferryman at the crossing of the Styx.

-

-He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mental

-traverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turf

-fell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a sound

-that was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.

-

-The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from the

-saddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein over

-his head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into a

-little gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped five

-paces to one side and waited. All this precaution was that he might hold

-converse with the galloping horseman without the startling semblance of

-a hold-up; sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.

-

-As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separated

-into staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," and

-Carney muttered: "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's riding

-hell-bent-for-leather."

-

-Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as he

-topped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayuse

-saw the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it for

-a crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and his

-rider, in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered to

-his feet a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle of

-steel was touching his cheek.

-

-"By gar!" the frightened traveller cried aghast, "don't s'oot me."

-

-Carney laughed, and lowering his gun, said: "Certainly not, boy--just a

-precaution, that's all. Where are you going?"

-

-"I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoney

-nichies an' de lumberjacks is raise hell; by gar! dere's fine row;

-dey s'oot de Sergeant, Jerry Platt."

-

-"Where?"

-

-"Jus' by Yellowstone Creek, De Stonies pitch dere tepees dere."

-

-"Where's the Sergeant?"

-

-"I don't know me. He get de bullet in de shoulder, but he swear by

-_le bon Dieu_ dat he'll get hes man, an' mak' de Injun go back to hees

-reserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."

-

-"All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell the

-Superintendent that Bulldog Carney----"

-

-"Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if the

-Devil had clapped him on a shoulder.

-

-"Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put the

-fear of God into those drunken bums. Now pull out."

-

-The breed, who had clung to the bridle rein, mounted his cayuse, crying,

-as he clattered away: "May de Holy Mudder give you de help, Bulldog,

-dat's me, Ba'tiste, wish dat."

-

-Then Carney swung to the back of the little buckskin, and pushed on to

-the help of jerry Platt.

-

-Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile after

-mile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-blooded

-brothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approaching

-the foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavy

-ground swell; then the ridges commenced to take shape against the sky

-line, looking like the escarpments of a fort.

-

-The trail Carney followed wound, as he knew, into the Vermillion Valley,

-at the upper end of which, near the gap, the Indians were encamped on

-Yellowstone Creek.

-

-The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the North

-Star off to Carney's right, and he had tabulated the hours by its sweep.

-It was near morning he knew, for the handle was climbing up in the east.

-

-Then, faintly at first, there carried to his ears the droning

-"tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump, tump-tump!" of a tom-tom, punctuated

-at intervals by a shrill, high-pitched sing-song of "Hi-yi, hi-yi,

-hi-yi, hi-yi!"

-

-Carney pulled his buckskin to a halt, his trained ear interpreted the

-well-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom--it was the gambling

-note. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the ground

-in a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and one

-of their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop,

-ceasing his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by the

-heat of a fire.

-

-Carney slipped from the buckskin's back, stripped the saddle off,

-picketed the horse, and stretched himself on the turf, muttering, as he

-drifted into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birth

-time of the yellow streak--I'll tackle them then."

-

-The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range when

-Carney opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap down

-the mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid gold

-climbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin canted

-to his feet. Bulldog laid his cheek against the soft mouse-colored nose,

-and said: "Patsy, old boy, it's business first this morning--we'll eat

-afterwards; though you've had a fair snack of this jolly buffalo grass,

-I see from your tummy."

-

-The tom-tom was still troubling the morning air, and the crackle of two

-or three gunshots came down the valley.

-

-As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There was

-nothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt--that

-part of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go on

-and play his hand alone against the Stonies.

-

-As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake that

-was like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond it

-skirted the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades of

-pearl tints and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubborn

-rocks. From beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-clad

-slopes the haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like riding

-into a valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droning

-tom-toms. As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see the

-smoke-stained tepees of the Stonies.

-

-At that instant the valley was filled with the vocal turmoil of yelping,

-snarling dogs--the pack-dogs of the Indians.

-

-At first Carney thought that he was the incentive to this demonstration;

-but a quick searching look discovered a khaki-clad figure on a bay

-police horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant Jerry

-Platt, all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.

-

-Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucks

-swarmed in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some of

-them, still groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many of

-them raced for their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Two

-or three had rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when they

-saw the policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.

-

-Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeant

-just as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards short

-of the camp.

-

-Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his left

-arm was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant's

-face, that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawn

-and haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that many

-had said would never leave him. His blue eyes warmed out of their cold,

-tired fixity, and his voice essayed some of the old-time recklessness,

-as he called: "Hello, Bulldog. What in the name of lost mavericks are

-you doing here--collecting?"

-

-"Came to give you a hand, Jerry."

-

-"A hand, Bulldog?"

-

-"That's the palaver, Jerry. Somebody ran me in the news of this"--he

-swept an arm toward the tepees--"and I've ridden all night to help bust

-this hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."

-

-"Not much--just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjacks

-potted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'm

-pretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them if

-they're here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to the

-reserve."

-

-"They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."

-

-"I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or Corporal

-McBane will get a promotion--he's next in line to Jerry Platt."

-

-"Good stuff, Jerry, I'll----"

-

-"Pss-s-ing!"

-

-Bulldog's statement of what he would do was cut short by the whining

-moan of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud of

-white smoke was spiraling up from the door of a teepee.

-

-"That's bluff," Jerry grunted.

-

-"We've got to move in, Jerry--if we hesitate, after that, they'll buzz

-like flies. If you start kicking an Indian off the lot keep him moving.

-I'm under your command; I've sworn myself in, a special; but I know

-Standing Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But I'm

-in it to the finish, boy."

-

-"Thanks, Bulldog"--they were moving along at a steady walk of the horses

-toward the tepees--"but you know our way--you've got to stand a lot of

-dirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll make me wish you

-hadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known as having lost

-our heads. D'you get it?"

-

-"I'm on, Jerry."

-

-Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; on

-its moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant to

-represent a hugetoothed grizzly.

-

-But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The

-old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies--it was

-a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,

-vociferous creatures.

-

-A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some

-circus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen

-don't slip from a tepee."

-

-Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking

-Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken

-gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship,

-and the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.

-

-Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted

-much with the tribe.

-

-"Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.

-

-"Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant

-with a sweep of the eagle wing.

-

-"We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.

-

-"Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."

-

-"Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white

-men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White

-Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat

-soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat

-that Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."

-

-At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a

-clamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi,

-yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their

-ponies, driving them with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance.

-Half-a-dozen times the lean racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the

-two white men.

-

-Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horrible

-by the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against the

-buckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.

-

-Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gun

-back into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'll

-cover that stain with your blood."

-

-The Sergeant sat as stolid as a bronze statue. The squaws stood in

-groups, either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at the

-two white men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, and

-gravel, and bits of turf.

-

-The dogs howled and snapped as they sulked amongst their red masters.

-

-"We will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief said with

-solemn dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the time

-of our hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt when

-the payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I know

-not."

-

-"They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are the

-homes of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trail

-is open, Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if you

-remain."

-

-"Chief, we are blood brothers--was it not so spoken?"

-

-"Standing Bear has said that it is so, Bulldog."

-

-"And Standing Bear said that when his white brother asked a gift

-Standing Bear would hear the words of his brother."

-

-"Standing Bear said that, Bulldog."

-

-"Then, Chief, Bulldog asks the favor, not for himself, but for the good

-of Standing Bear and his Braves."

-

-"What asks the Bulldog of Standing Bear?"

-

-"That he give into the hand of the White Mother's Redcoat the two

-_moneas_, the Frenchmen; and that he strike the tepees and command the

-squaws to load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to the

-reserve."

-

-Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and in

-rapid, fierce language denounced this request to Standing Bear.

-

-A ringing whoop of approval from the bucks greeted Antelope's harrangue.

-

-"My braves will not go back to the reserve, Bulldog," the Chief

-declared.

-

-"Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an old

-outcast buffalo bull--and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"

-

-The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and Running

-Antelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.

-

-"If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoat

-asks him to deliver the two evil _moneas _" Carney added.

-

-Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyes

-swept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of the

-braves.

-

-In a few rapid words Carney explained to Sergeant Platt the situation,

-saying: "Now is the test, Jerry. We've got to act. I've a hunch the

-two men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry out

-something I mean to do?"

-

-"Don't strike an Indian, Bulldog; don't wound one: anything else goes.

-If they start shooting, go to it--then we'll fight to the finish."

-

-The Sergeant pulled out his watch, saying: "Give them five minutes to

-strike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."

-

-Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoat

-make?"

-

-Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike his

-tepee as a sign to the others.

-

-"And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief of

-the Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will the

-Redcoat do?" the Chief asked haughtily.

-

-But Carney simply answered: "Bulldog is the friend of Standing Bear,

-his blood brother, but at the end of five minutes Bulldog and the White

-Mother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quiet

-followed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of the

-tumult, for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.

-

-"Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," he

-said to Carney.

-

-One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sat

-their horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration was

-tingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. And

-Jerry, as brave as Bulldog, sat throned on his duty, waiting, patient--

-but it _must_ be.

-

-"The five minutes are up," he said, quietly. Carney seemed toying with

-his lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket,

-Jerry, and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike his

-tepee. The authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn't

-obey I'm going to pull his shack down. Does that go?"

-

-"It does, and the Lord be with us."

-

-Jerry dropped the watch dramatically into his pocket, raised his voice

-in solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.

-

-The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolf

-that hesitates between a charge and a skulk-away.

-

-"Speak," Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."

-

-"Go back on the trail, Bulldog."

-

-Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from

-Carney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of

-a snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of

-the rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to

-earth like a pricked balloon.

-

-This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vivid

-shaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indians

-stood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed the

-knowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or take

-the awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war with

-the great nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to kill

-a Redcoat on duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck a

-tribesman, meant the dreaded punishment of hanging.

-

-The god of chance took the matter out of his hands.

-

-From the entangling folds of the skin tepee two swarthy, flannel-shirted

-white men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood up

-gazing about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in the

-hand of the other was a vicious knife.

-

-Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed his

-bay forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "You

-are under arrest--hands up!"

-

-As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The report

-was echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand dropped

-to his side, his pistol clattering to earth.

-

-Sergeant Jerry threw the handcuffs to the man with the knife, saying,

-sharply: "Shackle yourself by the right wrist to the left wrist of your

-companion."

-

-The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowed

-Indians.

-

-One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damn

-Injuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped them

-on his mate's wrists and his own.

-

-Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity of

-events.

-

-"Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, they

-are evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."

-

-The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could see

-that the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.

-

-"If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he said

-magnanimously; "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribe

-will go from here up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to the

-reserve would bring hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies on

-the ground. Ask the Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may go

-quickly, and the evil be at an end."

-

-Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, he

-advised, for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid in

-a stock of meat for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distinct

-hardship.

-

-"You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'll

-stay with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from the

-lumberjacks."

-

-"They must destroy any whisky they have," Jerry declared.

-

-This the Chief agreed to do.

-

-In half an hour the tepees were all down, packed on the poled travois,

-blankets and bundles were strapped to the backs of the dogs, and in a

-struggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.

-

-Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenly

-over the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breed

-scout.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bulldog Carney, by W. A. Fraser

-

-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLDOG CARNEY ***

-

-***** This file should be named 45926-8.txt or 45926-8.zip *****

-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

-        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/9/2/45926/

-

-Produced by David Widger from page images generously

-provided by the Internet Archive

-

-

-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

-will be renamed.

-

-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,

-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project

-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you

-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do

-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is

-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

-redistribution.

-

-

-

-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

-

-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

-

-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at

-  www.gutenberg.org/license.

-

-

-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic works

-

-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all

-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

-

-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be

-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few

-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See

-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

-

-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the

-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an

-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

-

-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in

-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check

-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning

-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

-States.

-

-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

-

-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project

-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

-copied or distributed:

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the

-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

-1.E.9.

-

-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked

-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

-

-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

-

-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm License.

-

-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or

-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version

-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other

-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

-

-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

-

-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

-that

-

-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is

-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments

-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to

-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

-

-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

-     License.  You must require such a user to return or

-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

-     of receipt of the work.

-

-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

-

-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the

-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

-

-1.F.

-

-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

-your equipment.

-

-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

-DAMAGE.

-

-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you

-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with

-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy

-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

-opportunities to fix the problem.

-

-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER

-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

-

-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any

-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

-

-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

-

-

-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists

-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

-people in all walks of life.

-

-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's

-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project

-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

-Foundation

-

-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification

-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

-

-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809

-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email

-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the

-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

-

-For additional contact information:

-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby

-     Chief Executive and Director

-     gbnewby@pglaf.org

-

-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

-Literary Archive Foundation

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations

-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

-status with the IRS.

-

-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations

-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To

-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

-approach us with offers to donate.

-

-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

-

-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other

-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.

-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate

-

-

-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

-works.

-

-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project

-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

-

-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily

-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

-

-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

-

-     www.gutenberg.org

-

-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

-

diff --git a/45926/45926-8.zip b/45926/45926-8.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 13fa355..0000000
--- a/45926/45926-8.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/45926/45926-h.zip b/45926/45926-h.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 59b2ec0..0000000
--- a/45926/45926-h.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/45926/45926.zip b/45926/45926.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index bbc24dd..0000000
--- a/45926/45926.zip
+++ /dev/null