Read Bulldog Carney Page 5

  V.--SEVEN BLUE DOVES

  |They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carneyfelt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he wasovertired--that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he hadseen 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 onthe Canadian side of the border.

  From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest nothabitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found arisk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve--gavehim a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. Butto-night there was a scent of evil in the room.

  A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for highstakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. ButSergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at suchtimes 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 thepolice shack rather than in a room of the hotel.

  Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feelingthat everything was not on the level; but he had a curious convictionthat some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what wasin his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a newsensation 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 thegreen on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with itssubstructure of nerve, he possessed it _in excelsis_.

  He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watchedhand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped fromthe top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle withoutcatch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had startedwith. 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 beendeliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had beencalled when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twicehe had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had beendone simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Strangerhad lost heavily.

  Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate acard 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 velocitydelicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuousquality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneaththe large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. Hewas 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 BuckingHorse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. Ifhe had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of theunrest that hung so evilly over the game.

  Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold NuggetHotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller ofcompressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler inmine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had madeon 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 notconfidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece ofa hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes werequerulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caughtCarney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pairof gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. Thegloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblerswho wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve thesensitiveness 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 toeliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficultto allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed--too well dressed forunobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond thefact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and dranksomewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation wasalmost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybodyand everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a goldmine 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 withTacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when theyreturned.

  Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easygrace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the pasteboards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals,Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smoothface, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, hechanged, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."

  It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic forfinished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all;the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney hadlaboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What'sthe use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll winlittle."

  Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed themover the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear therewas no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back ofthe cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple:seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was crosshatched 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 anartistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandthpart of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the rightwing of the second dove to the left.

  It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man tomemorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing.And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knewthe system. Who was it?

  Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted forthat, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were asuper-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capableof this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.

  Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistentconservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser.The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he hadplayed a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Sethwould 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 exquisitethat he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomentingof trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In theWest there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than toaccuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which evencowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wipedhis eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at hiscards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped oneinto the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into thediscard, and said, "I'm out!"

  Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back inhis pocket.

  At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card wasmissing. 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 hispocket.

  From the time Carney had discovered the erratic c
urve to the doves'wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but hadrealized that it would have led to other things. Now the query hadanswered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.

  This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long rideto-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 thematter with me."

  "I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but rightnow I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turnanother 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 timethere's been hell."

  The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenlygave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want toquit. 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'tlike 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 fromHadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over agame of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'dbetter just put the game off till to-morrow night."

  "We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and ifhe wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and startfresh. 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 settlenow; besides I want another sensation--this bottle's dry," Hadleyadvised.

  "I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said ashe rose.

  In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from abottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.

  Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up theaccounts.

  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'sforty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probablyforget 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 hundreddollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had beenpallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into anygame bigger than checkers."

  Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards--the blue-doved cardsand a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.

  Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intentlywhether 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, andCarney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolvinghimself from further interest.

  Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; havingfound 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 hundredon 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, butinflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:

  "You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't yousit 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 tocut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."

  Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen tohis lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build alittle pile in front of him.

  Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the otherdirection, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in amost depressed mood; he admitted this.

  "There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "Iknew you felt it--that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock onthe night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure someclaims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guessI've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy whenI 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'mtrying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kindof close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may--hell! don'tthink me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."

  Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it mergedinto the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost collidingwith Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into thedining-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 hehas any--is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then herdark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were youplaying?"

  "Yes."

  The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, notfor ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game wasover--why?"

  "Tired."

  Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Sethcheating?"

  "Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"

  "I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two orthree days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."

  "What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he broughtSeth those cards?"

  "I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth haveplayed together once or twice."

  "They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tellyou 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. ThisShipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. Heand Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was toogratuitous to be genuine."

  "You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to winHadley'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 gotto give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards inmy pocket, and that will be enough."

  "But if he divides with Shipley?"

  "Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then theconspiracy 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 thatstranger'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 evilin a man--petty larceny, sneak thieving--that pours sand into a woman'ssoul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd bequite satisfied--quite."

  "You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven--and you are the othersix, Jeanette."

  As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger thathad to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but afterhe had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soulfull of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.

  Carney's code was such that he could
shake heartily by the hand, ordrink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the deathof someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, ifthat man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who hadconfidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction ofknowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussedwhen 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 ofhow he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the markedpack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, likecounting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.

  He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left himsitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something withknown 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 shadowhad flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond thepolice shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shotand someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused himto precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about hiswaist.

  In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling overthe shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhancedthe 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; therewas no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered:"Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointeda finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again hetapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming backto Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be allright--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 feltso oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened--Iknow it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, andmanufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten aslab 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 windowof the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for theywere not playing at the table.

  He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what heknew was a dead man--Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor wherehe 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 tablefrom where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. Thered-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gatheredinto a pack.

  Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographingthe 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 hisoutstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridgesfrom 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 beenheld close.

  Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinningtop, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had dischargedSeth's gun to make it appear suicide?

  Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murdergoverned Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of thecoat where Seth had put the discarded pack--it was gone. He felt theother pocket--the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, tableand all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocketof the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money--therewas no wallet.

  At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, hiseyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against astone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.

  The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of thenight in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblinlight, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's faceto appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, orimbecile-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, passingto the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun backinto his belt.

  "What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening withintensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.

  "Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring thequestion.

  Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back hiswandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smearedfigure 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 toCranford'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 crispcross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were nowfierce.

  "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 thelevel?"

  "I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had beenin the gray eyes was in the voice now.

  "I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'dlost, 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--Ithought 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-stainedshirt.

  Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something tenminutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley--haveyou seen him? Were you here when this was done?"

  "Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round upHadley."

  As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in thelock.

  When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the barand turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about hegave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddledin one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley--sound asleep, orpretending to be.

  When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feetblinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and hemumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep--where's Seth?"

  "What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisivenessof his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.

  "I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy--had alittle 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 tidyup for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning--throw out the emptybottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. Icame on to go to bed and----" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though hismemory of his progress was still befogged--"when I got here I rememberedthat he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to besure 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 napthe whisky had sullenly s
ubsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.

  "I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matterbetween two men."

  Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out withstartling 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 gaspingfish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.

  "Seth--murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westernerspull 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 hasbeen shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I wantfrom you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrongman--do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the manwith a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.

  "My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the policeshack, and I don't know anything more about him."

  There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came throughthe door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall wherehe said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."

  "I know--I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and hepressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:

  "I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, andI want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts tohide 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 thehotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to makecertain, 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 impliesin canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; theapparent consistencies.

  Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to beconsidered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewedwith suspicion until by process of elimination they had been clearedof guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good aclaim 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 theterm. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'llagree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with alarge sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, andas each one of you will be more or less under suspicion--I'm speakingnow 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 asearch of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it'sexpedient."

  To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipleywith, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was notrace of the wallet.

  Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were theyfound.

  No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discoveredin Shipley's hip pocket.

  The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frownominously--there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.

  "There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting onShipley's face.

  "Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the emptychamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can'texplode."

  With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of anindeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleanedfor 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 itout: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standingover the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point willcertainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justiceto himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it hasnot 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--Iclean forgot it."

  Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and sixlead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lostits bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it towardthe 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 thecylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.

  Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night--we'll onlyobliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in themorning. 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 ourears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if theyheard the shot."

  "A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just adrunken miner, or an Indian playing brave."

  It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing outof the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that theScotchman's herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what wasbeing done.

  Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.

  The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as hepuffed vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to theplatoon of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.

  "I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, andpassing 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 veryfine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."

  The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a floridred handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:

  "Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' andto-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'sjust her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog, hasit struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man thatkilled Seth?"

  Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he couldsee that the latter was in deadly earnest.

  "Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that'sbecause I know you devilish well--you're too big for such small-brainedacts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the way of abrick 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 overstrained friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don'tyou remember what that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said whenJeanette'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 rep
eat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricksfor the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bendingover the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. AndI 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 hedrew 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 usto-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, whilehe's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were offby 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, andhe took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killedSeth, and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an emptyshell; and if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you,knowing that the clean gun would be nothing in your favor at theexamination as you had had the opportunity to put it right. I don't likethe incident, nor the man's spirit, but it proves nothing for or againsthim. I expect he's clever enough to know that the last man seen with amurdered man is, _de facto_, the slayer."

  "As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth waskilled with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night--he alwayswas a damn fool--and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffingway, and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I onlyheard 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'sevil, but I fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shotthat wakened me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to thepolice shack."

  "That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog--in theeyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."

  Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read thewriting on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that wentup, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette hadsworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:

  "Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and therewas considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murderwas discovered--these things are against him. Supposing he did shootSeth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upperhall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that darkcorner 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 manthat's drunk is like an engine that had lost the governing balls--he haslost control. And the shock of the murder may have sobered him enough tomake him a bit cautious."

  "But Shipley was out, too," Carney objected. "Aye, he was; and he'sgot a devilish lame story about going to see Cranford. I don't like hisface--' it's avariciously vicious--he's greedy. But the law can't hanga man for having a bad face; it takes little stock in the physiologist'spoint of view." Carney sat thinking hard. The full significance of theattached possibilities had been put clearly before him by the astute,canny Scotchman, and he realized that it was friendship. He was certainthe Doctor suspected Shipley.

  "I wanted to get shut of yon two," the Doctor added, presently, "foryou're the man that needs to get this cleared up, and you're the man cando it, even as you caught Jack the Wolf. Is there any clue that we canfollow 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 declaredemphatically.

  "He is."

  "And the wallet."

  "Yes."

  Then Carney explained to the Doctor that the marked pack had, evidentlybelonged to Seth, and told of the change in cards, and the possibilitythat Shipley had stood in with Seth on the winnings, letting the latterdo all the dirty work, perhaps helping Seth's game along by raising thebet when he knew that Seth held the winning cards.

  Again the Doctor consulted his old briar pipe; then he said: "EitherShipley 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 therailroad, for it was in fifty-dollar bills of the Bank of Toronto."

  "I comprehend: the wires, and the police at every important point; asearch. Aye, aye! What'll he do, Bulldog?"

  "He'll go out over the thieves' highway, down the border trail toMontana or Idaho."

  "My guidness! I think you're right. Perhaps before morning somebody maybe headin' south with the loot. If it's Shipley--I mean, anybody--he mayhave 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 beingtrapped 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 themurderer. It was devilish fatalism that made him take that pack, like aman 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 byanother pack, perhaps."

  "I comprehend. If the slayer goes down that trail he'll have the markedcards with him still, but if he sends an accomplice the man'll just havethe money on him. Very logical, Bulldog."

  Twice as they had talked Carney had stepped quickly, silently, to thedoor at the foot of the stairway and listened; now he came back, andlowering his voice, said: "I get you, Doctor; it's devilish square ofyou. I'm clear of this thing, I fancy, as you say, in the eye of thelaw, 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'sthere for my work; I'm going to pull out to-night and tell 'Oregon' tosearch every man that rides the border trail going south."

  "I don't know whether I can give you the proper authority, Bulldog--I'lllook 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 thelittle town clerk and myself are somewhat of a joke as representingauthority, eh?"

  "No, indeed, Doctor. I was thinking of 'Oregon.' He's got his authorityfor everything, got it right in his belt; he'll search his man first andexplain 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 tostake me to a couple of days' grub; I'll take some oats for the buckskinand be back in three days."

  "I'll wait here till you have a look," the Doctor declared; "there mightbe some clue you'd be leaving with me to follow up."

  Carney secured a reflector lantern from a back room and, first kneelingdown, examined the footsteps that had been left in the soft black eartharound the police shack door. He seemed to discover a trial, for heskirted the building, stooping down with the lantern held close to theground, and once more knelt under a back window. Here there were tracksof a heavy foot; some that indicated that a man had stood for some timethere; that sometimes he had been peering in the window, the toe printsalmost touching the wall. There were two deeply indented heel marks asif somebody had dropped from the window.

  Carney put up his hand and tested the lower half of the sash. Hecould shove it up quite easily. Next he drew a sheet of paper from hispocket--it was really an old letter--and w
ith his pocket-knife cut itto fit a footprint that was in the earth. Then he returned to the frontdoor, and with his paper gauge tested the different foot imprints,following them a piece as they lead away from the shack. He stood upand rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his brows drawn into a heavy frown ofreflection, ending by starting off at a fast pace that carried him tothe edge of the little town.

  In front of a small log shack he stooped and compared the paper in hishand with some footprints. He seemed puzzled, for there were differentboot tracks, and the one--the latest, he judged, for they topped theothers--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 thedoor by the iron handle until the latch clattered like a castanet:there was no sound from within. He stepped to a window, tapped on itand called, "Cranford, Cranford!" The gloomed stillness of the shackconvinced him that Cranford had gone--perhaps, as he had intimated, toBald Rock.

  He went back and fitted the paper into the topmost tracks, those headingaway 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 Doctorinvoluntarily exclaimed: "My God! that does complicate matters. I wasthinking we might get a double hitch on yon Shipley by proving fromCranford he hadn't been near the latter's shack. But now it involvesCranford, if he's gone. He's an unlucky devil, that, and I know, onthe quiet, that he's likely to get in trouble over some payments ona mine,--they're threatening a suit for misappropriation of funds orsomething."

  "You see, Doctor," Carney said, "the sooner I block the likely get-awaygame the better."

  "Yes. You pull out as soon as you like. I'll have a search forCranford, and I'll generally keep things in shape till Sergeant Blackcomes--likely to-morrow he'll be here. I'll hold an inquest and, ofcourse, the verdict will be 'by someone unknown.' I'll say that you'vegone to hurry in Sergeant Black."

  When the Doctor had gone Carney went upstairs to where Jeanette waswaiting for him in the little front sitting room.

  With her there was little beyond just the horror of the terrible endingto it. Her life with Seth Long had been a curious one, curious in itsabsolute emptiness of everything but just an arrangement. There was noaffection, 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 wasperhaps the one redeeming feature in Seth's ordinary useless life.

  Now Jeanette and Carney hardly touched on the past which they both knewso well, or the future about which, just now, they knew nothing.

  Carney explained, as delicately as he could, the situation; thedesirability of his clearing his name absolutely, independent of herevidence, by finding the murderer. He really held in his mind a somewhatnebulous theory. He had not confided this fully to Dr. Anderson, nordid he now to Jeanette; just told her that he was going away for twoor three days and would be supposed to have gone after the MountedPoliceman.

  He told her about the disappearance of the marked pack, and explainedhow 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 skirtedthe tortuous stream toward the south. He had had no sleep, but thatdidn't matter; for two or three days and nights at a stretch he could gowithout sleep when necessary. Perhaps when he spelled for breakfast, asthe buckskin fed on the now drying autumn grass, he would snatch a briefhalf hour of slumber, and again at noon; that would be quite enough.

  When the light became strong he examined the trail. There were severaltracks, cayuse tracks, the larger footprints of what were calledbronchos, the track of pack mules; they were coming and going. But theywere cold trails, seemingly not one fresh. Little cobwebs, like gossamerwings, stretched across the sunken bowl-like indentations, and dewsparkled on the silver mesh like jewels in the morning sun.

  It was quite ten o'clock when Carney discovered the footprints of apony that were evidently fresh; here and there the outcupped black earthwhere the cayuse had cantered glistened fresh in the sunlight.

  Carney could not say just where the cayuse had struck the trial he wason. It gave him a depressed feeling. Perhaps the rider carried the loot,and had circled to escape interception. But when Carney came to thecross trail that ran from Fort Steel to Kootenay the cayuse tracksturned to the right toward Kootenay, and he felt a conviction that therider was not associated with the murder. With that start he would beheading for across the border; he would not make for a Canadian townwhere 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 theGrizzley's Bridge--past the gruesome place where Fourteen-foot Johnsonhad been killed by Jack the Wolf; past where he himself had been caughtin the bear trap.

  The buckskin remembered it all; he was in a hurry to get beyond it; heclattered over the narrow, winding, up-and-down footpath with the eagerhasty step of a fleeing goat, his head swinging nervously, his big lopears weaving back and forth in apprehension.

  Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw ofthe cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went,camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holdingwalls of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelledalong an obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finersense of perception.

  At the first graying of the eastern sky he was up, and after a snatch ofbreakfast for himself and the buckskin, hurrying south again. No one hadpassed in the night for Carney had slept on one side of the trail whilethe horse fed or rested on the other, with a picket line stretchedbetween 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, Oregonadvised; and Carney gave the old man his instructions, which were tosearch any passer, and if he had the fifty-dollar bills or the markedcards, hobble him and bring him back to Bucking Horse.

  Over a pan of bacon and a pot of strong tea Oregon reported to hissuperior all the details of their own endeavor, which, in truth, wasopium 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 fanaticalones were; for once Carney had been ambushed, practically illegally,five miles within Canadian territory, and had had to fight his wayout, leaving twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium in the hand of atyrannical customs department.

  At four o'clock Carney sat the buckskin, and reached down to grasp thehand of his lieutenant.

  "I'll tell you, Bulldog," the latter said, swinging his eyes down thevalley toward the southwest, "there's somethin' brewin' in the way ofweather. My hip is pickin' a quarrel with that flat-nosed bit oflead that's been nestin' in a j'int, until I just natural feel as ifsomebody'd fresh plugged me."

  Carney laughed, for the day was glorious. The valley bed through whichwandered, now sluggishly, a green-tinged stream, lay like a gloriousoriental rug, its colors rich-tinted by the warm flood of golden lightthat hung in the cedar and pine perfumed air. The lower reaches of thehills on either side were crimson, and gold, and pink, and purple, andemerald green, all softened into a gentle maze-like tapestry where thegaillardias and monkshood and wolf-willow and salmonberry and saskatoonbushes caressed each other in luxurious profusion, their floral bloompreserved in autumn tawny richness by the dry mountain air.

  And this splendor of God's artistry, this wondrous great tapestry,wa
s hung against the sombre green wall of a pine and fir forest thatzigzagged and stood in blocks all up the mountain side like the designof 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, allsmilin' 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 nofancies. 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 fingerpointed to the buckskin's head; "he knows as well as I do that theOld Man of the Mountains is cookin' up somethin'. See 'em mule lugs ofhis--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 along arm toward the west, toward the home of the blue-green mountains ofice, the glaciers.

  "It's too early for a blizzard," Carney contended. "It might be, if theyrun on schedule time like the trains, but they don't. I froze to deathonce in one in September. I come back to life again, 'cause I'd beengood always; and perhaps, Bulldog, your record mightn't let you out ifyou got caught between here and Buckin' Horse in a real he-game of snowhell'ry. The trail runs mostly up narrow valleys that would pile twentyfeet deep, and I reckon, though you don't care overmuch yourself whatgener'ly happens, you don't want to give the buckskin a raw deal bygettin' him into any fool finish. He knows; he wants to get to a nicelittle silk-lined sleepin' box afore this snoozer hits the mountains.Good-bye, Bulldog, and ride like hell--the buckskin won't mind; let himrun the show--he knows, the clever little cuss."

  Carney's slim fingers, though steel, were almost welded together in theheat 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 thebuckskin accentuated his apprehensive eagerness by whisking away at asharp canter. Carney could hear, from over his shoulder, the croakingbellow of Oregon who had noticed this: "He knows, Bulldog. Leave himalone. Let him run things hisself!"

  Though Carney had laughed at Oregon's gloomy forecast, he knew the oldman was weather-wise, that a lifetime spent in the hills and the wideplaces 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, asthe buckskin, with loose rein, picked his way up hill and down daleand along the brink of gorges with the surefootedness of a big-horn. Hecamped beneath a giant pine whose fallen cones and needles had spreada luxurious mattress, and whose balsam, all unstoppered, floated in theair, a perfume that was like a balm of life.

  Almost across the trail Carney slept lest the bearer of the loot mightslip by in the night.

  He had lain down with one gray blanket over him; he had gone to sleepwith a delicious sense of warmth and cosiness; he woke shivering. Hiseyes opened to a gray light, a faint gray, the steeliness that filtereddown 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 asthough the very trees had died in the night; as if the air itself hadbeen 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 wakenedCarney, for now he repeated it, and threw his head up, the lop earscocked as though he listened for some break in the horrible stillness,watched for something that was creeping stealthily over the mountainsfrom the west.

  Carney wet the palm of his hand and held it up. It chilled as though ithad been dipped in evaporating spirits. Looking at the buckskin Oregon'scroak came back:

  "He knows: ride like hell, Bulldog!"

  Carney rose, and poured a little feed of oats from his bag on a cornerof his blanket for the horse. He built a fire and brewed in a copper pothis tea. Once the shaft of smoke that spiraled lazily upward flickeredand swished flat like a streaming whisp of hair; and above, high up inthe giant pine harp, a minor string wailed a thin tremulous note. Thegray of the morning that had been growing bright now gloomed againas though night had fled backwards before the thing that was in themountains to the west.

  The buckskin shivered; the hairs of his coat stood on end like fur in abitter cold day; he snapped at the oats as though he bit at the neckof a stallion; he crushed them in his strong jaws as though he werefamished, or ate to save them from a thief.

  In five minutes the strings of the giant harp above Carney's head wereplaying a dirge; the smoke of his fire swirled, and the blaze dartedhere and there angrily, like the tongue of a serpent. From far acrossthe 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 greatoppression, 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 theeating of his food. He became a living thermometer; his chilling bloodtold him that the temperature was going down, down, down. The daybefore he had ridden with his coat hung to the horn of his saddle; nowa vagrant thought flashed to his buffalo coat in his room at the GoldNugget.

  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 forthe bit.

  Carney strapped his dunnage to the back of the saddle, mounted, and thebuckskin, with a snort of relief, took the trail with eager steps.It wound down to the valley here toward the west, and little needlesstabbed at the rider's eyes and cheeks as though the air were filledwith indiscernible diamond dust. It stung; it burned his nostrils; itseemed 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 thecanyons with an overture, as if perched on the snowed slope of SquawMountain was the hydraulicon of Vitruvius, a torrent raging its manythroats into unearthly dirge.

  Carney's brain vibrated with this presage of the something that hadthrilled his horse. In his ears the wailing, sighing, reverberatingmusic 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 racedwhere the path was good; and where it was bad he scrambled over thestones and shelving rocks and projecting roots with catlike haste.

  In Carney's mind was the cave, the worked-out mine tunnel that droveinto the mountain side; the cave that Jack the Wolf had homed in when hemurdered the men on the trail; it was two hours beyond. If he could makethat he and the buckskin would be safe, for the horse could enter ittoo.

  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 gallantlittle steed that had saved him more than once with fleet heel and stoutheart.

  He patted the eager straining neck in front of him, and, though hespoke aloud, his voice was little more in that valley of echo andreverberation than a whisper: "Good Patsy boy, we'll make it. Don't fretyourself tired, old sport; we'll make it--the cave."

  The horse seemed to swing his head reassuringly as though he, too, hadin his heart the undying courage that nothing daunted.

  Now the invisible cutting dust that had scorched Carney's face had takenvisible form; it was like fierce-driven flour. Across the valley thetowering hills were blurred shapes. Carney's eyelashes were frozenridges 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 hadbeen stayed; and then in twenty yards the doors of the frozen northswung again and icy fingers of death gripped man and beast.

  And all the time the white prisms were growing larger; closer objectswere being blotted out; the prison walls of ice were coming closer; itwas more difficult to breathe; his life blood was growing sluggish; achill was suggesting indifference--why fight?

  Th
e horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard wasspreading 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 themerciless snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.

  To the man direction was lost--it was like being above the clouds; butthe 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 hisarms, fastened it to the saddle horn, leaving a play of eight feet, andslipping to the ground, clutched the horse's tail, and patted him on therump. The buckskin knew; he had checked for five seconds; now he went onagain, the weight off his back being a relief.

  The change was good. Carney had felt the chill of death creeping overhim in the saddle; the deadly chill, the palpitating of the chest thatpreluded a false warmth that meant the end, the sleep of death. Now theexertion wined his blood; it brought the battling back.

  Time, too, like direction, was a haze in the man's mind. Two hours awaythe cave had been, and surely they had struggled on hour after hour. Itscarce 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 wastedwas folly; just on through the enveloping curtain of that white wall.

  Carney had meant to remount the horse when he was warmer, when hehimself was tiring; but it would be murder, murder of the little herothat had fought his battles ever since they had been together. Thebuckskin's flanks were pumping spasmodically, like the sides of abellows; his withers drooped; his head was low hung; he looked lean andsmall--scarce mightier than a jack rabbit, knee deep in the shifting seaof 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 tookJack the Wolf to Bucking Horse; of how cosy it would be with a brightfire going, and the baffled blizzard howling without. Yes, he would makeit. Was his life, so full of the wild adventures that he had always wonout on, to be blotted by just a snowstorm, just cold?

  He took a lofty stand against this. He was possessed of a feeling thatit was a combat between the crude elements and his vital force of mentalstamina. 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 collidedwith another world; there had been some sort of a gross shock; he wasalone, floating through space, and passing through snowladen clouds.There was a restful exhilaration, such as he had felt once when passingunder an anesthetic--Nirvana.

  Then the cold snout of some abnormal creature in these regions of thebeyond pressed against his face. Gradually, as though waking froma dream--it was the muzzle of the buckskin nosing him back toconsciousness. He struggled painfully to his feet. How heavy his legswere; at the bottom of them were leaden-soled diver's boots. Hisbrain, not more than half clearing at that, he realized that he and thebuckskin had slid from a treacherous shelf of rock, and fallen a dozenfeet; the snow, unwittingly kind, catching them in a lap of featherysoftness. But for the gallant horse he would have lain there, never torise again of his own volition.

  They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they weregoing forward. Oregon's command was working out--"Let the buckskin havehis own way."

  If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gonearound in a circle--in fact, Carney once had done so--and the cold wouldhave been more intense, the sweep of the wind more life-sapping; buthere in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it was like surfrolling 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 manbattling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flaggedsenses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the factthat they still held on toward the cave.

  Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream--or was this thereal thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party--that theywere 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 adream--he was waking.

  When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelightplayed on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind himsomething stamped on the stone floor.

  He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hunghead.

  "How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, andcoming to his side.

  Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. Andnow, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, hewas 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 thinlysinister had a humanized tone as he said this.

  Carney's tongue was dry, puckered from the lowered vitality. He tried toanswer, and the man, noting this, said: "Take your time, Mister. You'remakin' the grade all right, all right. I knowed you was just asleep. Trythis dope."

  He poured some hot tea into a tin cup. It toniced the tired Carney; itwas like oil on the dry bearings of a delicate machine.

  "Some April shower," the man said, piling wood on the fire. "I heerd ahorse neigh--it was kind of a squeal, and my bronch havin' drifted outto sea ahead of this damn gale, I thinks he's come back. I heerd hisbell, and I makes a fight with ol' white whiskers--'twan't more'n 'boutten yards at that--and there's that danged rat of yours, and he won'tcome in to the warm 'cause you'd got pinned agin a boulder and snow; heseemed 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 heldout his hand.

  But a curious metamorphosis in the man startled Carney. He turnedsurlily to shake up the fire, throwing over his shoulder: "I ain't donenothin'; you've got to thank that little jack rabbit fer pullin' youthrough. I went out after my own bronch."

  "But ain't I all right, Stranger?" Carney asked gently, for he had metmany men in the waste places with just this curious antipathy to anunknown. Oregon was like that. Men living in the wide outside becamelike outcast buffalo bulls, in their supersensitiveness--every man wasan enemy till he proved himself.

  The man straightened up, and his eyes that were set too close togethereach side of the fin-like nose rested on Carney in a squinting look ofdistrust.

  "I ain't never knowed but one man was _all right_, and the MountedPolice hounded him till he give up."

  The cave man turned the stem of the pipe he had been smoking toward thehorse. "That buckskin with the mule ears belongs to Bulldog Carney. Areyou 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 WallaWalla when he beat Clatawa; and I guess you're the racin' shark thatcold-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; Ijust beat them out."

  "Where d'you come from now?" the cave man asked.

  "Bailey's Ferry," Carney answered in oblique precaution. He noticed thatthe 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 wasthree 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," heanswered.

  "I ain't got no sore spots on my h
ide," the other sneered; "I'm anord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hillstrailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost themountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck herout if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly tosee me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."

  The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbingthought--_food!_ He, himself, had about one day's supply--had he it? Heturned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been tossedby the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon andbannock 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'scache. 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 bottoma round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me toBailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of hisblankets.

  A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force ofhabit, to caress the place where his gun should have been--the pigskinpocket 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 wasgone."

  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 camehe would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in theother's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskinin his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. Thisfastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for hisbacon and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly haveworked out and the oats remain.

  He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hearoutside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening theswirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gateto their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was atleast fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through whichthe trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; hehad no food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a weekwith two men eating it.

  He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or afight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook windmight come up the next day, or the day following that would melt thesnow with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.

  Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged--he was hungryonly 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 sweetperfume of frying pork.

  Casually he noticed that but one slice of bacon lay in the pan. Hewatched the cook turn it over and over with the point of his huntingknife, cooking it slowly, economically, hoarding every drop of its vitalfat. When the bacon was cooked the chef lifted it out on the point ofhis knife and stirred some flour into the gravy, adding water, preparingthat well-known delicacy of the trail known as slumgullion.

  Dave withdrew the pan and let it rest on the stone floor just besidethe fire; then he looked across af Carney, and, catching the gray ofhis opened eyes, worded the foreboding thought that had been in Carney'smind before he fell asleep.

  "I ain't got no call to give you a show-down on this, Bulldog, but I'mgoin' to. When I snaked you in here that didn't cost me nothin'; anywaysyou was down and out for the count. Now you've come back it ain't up tome to throw my chanct away by de-clarin' you in on this grub; I'd be adamn 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 theslimy mixture.

  Carney remained silent, and his host, as if making out a case forhimself 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'smine; 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'sgone, you cut in with the bronch."

  Carney shivered at this, inwardly; facially he didn't twitch an eye; hisfeatures were as immobile as though he had just filled a royal flush.The proposition sounded as cold-blooded as if the other man had askedhim 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 whena 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," Carneysaid in a well-mastered voice: "I'm not hungry just now, and I'll thinkit over. I've got a sneaking regard for the little buckskin, but, ofcourse, 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 glutinousmess.

  Carney watched this performance, smothering the anger and hunger thatwere now battling in him. It was a one-sided argument; the other manhad a gun, and Carney knew that he would use it the minute his store ofprovisions were gone--perhaps before that. And Carney was determinedto make the discussion more equitable. Once he could put a hand on thedictator, the lop-sided argument would true itself up. As to killing thelittle buckskin that had saved his life--bah! the very idea of it madehis 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 ofthe 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 otherway. The manna days is all gone by."

  "There's another way. This is an old worked-out mine we're in, the LostLedge Mine."

  "She's worked out, right enough. There never was nothin' but a fewstringers of gold--they soon petered out."

  "When the men who were working this mine pulled out they left a lot ofheavy truck behind," Carney continued. "There's a forge, coal, tools,and, what I'm thinking of, half a dozen sets of horse snowshoes backthere. I could put a set of those snowshoes on the buckskin and makeBucking Horse in three or four days. He wore them down in the Courd'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 partyon snowshoes and dog-train." Dave sucked at his pipe, pondering thisproposition in silence; then he said, as if having made up his mind todo a generous act: "I'll cut the cards with you--your bronch agin halfmy chuck. If you win you can try this fool trick, if I win the bronchis mine to do the same thing, or use him to keep us both alive till achinook blows up."

  From an inside pocket of his coat he brought forth a pack of cards, andslid them apart, fan-shaped, on the corner of his blanket.

  Carney was almost startled into a betrayal. On the backs of the cardswinged _seven blue doves_. It was the pack that had been stolen fromSeth Long's pocket, and the man that sat behind them was the murdererof Seth Long, Carney knew. Yes, it was the same pack; there was the sameslight 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'mfond 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 mindreader the gun in his belt would have covered Carney for the latter wasthinking, "There are three aces in that pack and the fourth is in mypocket."

  Then he spoke, shifting closer to t
he 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; heturned it up--it was the ace of diamonds.

  "Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace ofspades, 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 theblanket in a tenuous stream.

  Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner ofthem, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in agambler's eagerness.

  Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on hisknees and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, alittle to the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in thepack. If he turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that theminute he turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had beendouble-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney'sface; perhaps--once a killer always a killer--he would not hesitate butwould 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 splitsecond 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 lefthand, but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm fromthe shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whiskedfrom 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 heshould, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceedinghad hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held aforeboding look.

  Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:

  "You're Tacoma Jack--you're the man that staked Seth Long to this markedpack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up toTacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."

  He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, whenyou found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he wentwith you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If hehad 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 thewindow, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the moneywas too much, and you plugged him."

  "It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' aboutit."

  "You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth andHadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enoughnot to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and seeyou, but jumped from the back window."

  Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracksin the mud.

  "I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." Heheld it up.

  "It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your ownhop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"

  Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-ideatype; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicityeven with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lyingtwenty feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; infact with him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had beena Mounted Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded thathe give up his life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a privateindividual, trying to keep clean the name of a woman he had a highregard for--Jeanette Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man.Bringing in the stolen money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it mightbe said that he, himself, had taken these two things and returned them.

  Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieveshad combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one hadbeen 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 hiscunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie--Seth's as dead's aherrin'!"

  "How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.

  The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You saidso yourself."

  "Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to makeyour 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 wasdriving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to BuckingHorse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could doto carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man couldmake 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 Ididn't value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give adamn whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slabof bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a littleflour I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at mostwith snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with adogtrain 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 backyou'll get away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've gotto clear a good woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped thecards with a forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confessionhere 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 Itake the money, your gun, your boots, and _all the grub_."

  As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sanklower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.

  "Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, andyou bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I makea cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if thechinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence.Carney broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decidequick, for I'm going to hobble you."

  Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. IfCarney took the food--and he would--he had no chance. The alternativewas his only hope.

  "I'll sign--I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell justhow it happened."

  "You write it yourself--I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear Iforged 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 eyeon the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and TacomaJack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, hadpulled his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, andin the struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.

  Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This maybe true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. Ifyou're laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on BulldogCarney, forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might makeme plug you I'm g
oing to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'llturn you loose."

  Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, andTacoma, placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carneyproceeded 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 thehorse, gave him a feed of oats, and stretched himself on the oppositeside of the fire from Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, forthe minute you start anything you lose your bet on the chinook."

  In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming inthrough the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that hadall but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that hadhuddled to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was softand balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.

  Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggysnow and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneaththe weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge massesof snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbingsun. Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet,gnarled faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorgedwith snow-water.

  A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned againsta cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out ofthe white mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung acow-bell. It was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bellthat Carney had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind thelittle buckskin.

  Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peepingout 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 hisheart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in toBucking Horse.

  "The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on thechinook, don't I?"

  "You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps hisword."

  "Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulledinto Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played myhand dif'rent--p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all thatwhen I drug you in out of the blizzard."

  Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It wasjust before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bitefrom an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog--I'd be kindof 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 iswaiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocketthat's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deckyou. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them gettingyou."

  VI.--EVIL SPIRITS

  |The Rockies, their towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaidwith blue and green, the glacier gems, looked down upon the VermillionRange, and the Vermillion looked down upon the sienna prairie in whichwas Fort Calbert, as Marathon might have looked down upon the sea.

  In Fort Calbert the Victoria Hotel, monument to the prodigalityof Remittance Men, held its gray stone body in aloofment from thesurrounding boxlike structures of the town.

  In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table uponwhich was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It wasan occasion.

  Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law wasthat a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for theimportation of five gallons.

  Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the tablepossible.

  Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, insome particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggestedattainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness;they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of aneagle.

  Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggottransported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It wasalways that way with them when there was a shatterment of the casteshell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth Westas a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."

  A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no endof a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floatyidea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."

  "The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, issupposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater hasremitted," Harden explained to Carney.

  "Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.

  His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in fromthe roadway; it was a weird drool--the droning, hoarse note of a tug'swhistle.

  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, pudgylittle Thames tug.

  Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate.Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sunlay like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan ofone that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. Adejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red Rivercart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from brokenbits 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 dustand sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature--an armadillo. Heturned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look,upon the six.

  "It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbertdeclared solemnly.

  "Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, OGabriel--there's vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of ourhearts and we'll set you happy."

  The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogentproposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boatblast. He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.

  But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slightfigure and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing ofbuckskin and leather chapps, turned back into the bar.

  "Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered theunresisting guest to a chair.

  The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of akeg; the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. Heshoved out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lavathat darkened their pale contours.

  Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to theprodigal 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 thestillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chestfloated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as itwafted 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 atdinner.

  The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, andsat down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it ashe asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"

  The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band isoutside: 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 eyesthat were thought hard, had gone blue.

  "Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give ustwelve 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 tunicsshowing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about theirshoulders.

  "Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is wherethe regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to joinup."

  The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit forthis 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," FitzHerbertbantered; "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, tohave troubled you."

  As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial castof his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.

  "Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regretstanding in his eyes at sight of the keg."

  "Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquorlaw is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have tobe treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is againstthe police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them whenthey're putting down crime."

  "The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headedman who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeantin 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 quiescentrestfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet ofthis stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."

  "Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimedeagerly.

  Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.

  "You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "hewill have the handling of it, I fancy--a carload."

  FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as ifplaying poker.

  "Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.

  "I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and ajocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."

  "Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anythingof that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neckwith the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in twoweeks. 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 clappedit 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. Ihave a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It wasa rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteercrop--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 thelittle man's mind had returned to the convivial association of hisglass.

  "By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen--about the whisky: While I was waitingfor 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 wasthat whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for delivery atBald 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 Isuppose----"

  The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard ofmerriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand whyFitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're ajoy!"

  The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing thelittle 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'tintroduce 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," FitzHerbertanswered.

  The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; thenhe related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; fromAn-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of threecounties--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 senta telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type ofmessage, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the eveninghe had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.

  Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railwaystation for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platformfrom morning till night.

  On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across theprairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebraswas numbered 6100.

  Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Majorhad received was reliable, evidently.

  The station master knew nothing about the car; it was throughfreight--not for Fort Calbert.

  Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a drysmile hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between theamiable Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.

  "Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to thediscussion.

  It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mightyforce, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power:the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issuedan order.

  Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refusedto 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 forlong. "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 hejumped:

  "I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered;"Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario--they haveuse for it down that way."

  "It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell yousomething on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but ifI get the evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as thoughI never set eyes on you."

  Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make aget-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a betof ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. Acarload 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 notbreak the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to takeit on himself.

  "Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. tocome down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point howto act. We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but Idon't want to get you into trouble."

  A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, headmired brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were alsowell 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 theproper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."

  Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight trainwas now on the platform asking for his "line clear."

  Craig was up agai
nst a new situation. His company was powerful, andwould back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they alsoexpected of a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; theydidn't encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.

  "Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to theconductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've gotsomebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a jobas brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."

  Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to theFort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break theseals on this car, as the agent refuses to."

  So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptilecrawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, thecaboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.

  An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casuallythe worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirstysouls, for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carloadof 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 anattraction like a funeral.

  EVIL SPIRITS

  At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with awritten order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came aheavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.

  The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at adefiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, agame cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, andin his speech there was the savor of London fog.

  "What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as headdressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: doso 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 fastenedon 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 oakbarrels.

  The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned atBulldog Carney.

  It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle ofastonishment 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 takethis stuff to the fort."

  The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizingthis stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit toogreasy 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 atCarney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-menbring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to bedestroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."

  One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood onend, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge.At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrupfluttered 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 theturmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dippedtheir dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts ofappreciation. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoatman! 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 troubledwaters--literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.

  The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to wastethese things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.

  The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse inhis objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you'veroped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nightsanswering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries willwant to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods.The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why Iside-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd takeresponsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't nonetoo well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."

  "And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I haveto follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.

  Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrelsof 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-orderedgrocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.

  The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had beenwired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.

  He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbertwere several small places on the line where there were neither policenor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to thestation master, saying:

  "Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whiskycut off? I believe it's on that train."

  "How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outsidemy 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 tryto cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packagesback in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire theSuperintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the wholething to your Commissioner at Regina."

  Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of thebroken 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 ofsomething 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 onyou 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 washandicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone ofcontention everybody's hand would be against the force--the very trainmen, if they could get away with it.

  Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 containedgroceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely throughwith its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram wassent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars--one of goods and one ofwhisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and JohnRoss was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeperin the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neithercar would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police,either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did notmatter.

  Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert weregoing to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shootthrough the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of thesuspected car.

  Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for aconsultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risenfrom 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 c
oolkind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good toround him up, for we haven't got a thing on him--not a thing. He's sowell liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like RobinHood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clappedyour hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'llbe run into the plains--there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel ofit, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against thislaw, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."

  The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Majorto send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some ofthis 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 wasaccosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of tendollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lotof whisky as it was being run the following night.

  The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to theCommanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightenedbreed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over theten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along thetrail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbertitself.

  This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, stillwondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the informationto the Major.

  "We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed willsell 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 thesouthwest.

  At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush ofa little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horseshad been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lanternfastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slidewas pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from thecut-bank to the stream.

  They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that hadhung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothedridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, anda sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In thebelly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by apenciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock.The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of thenight passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed thesolemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thoughtthat they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man towhom odds meant little or nothing.

  As they lay chest to earth in the heavy grass Corporal McBane pivotedhis 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 ifhe 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 graycat-eyes of his can see in the dark."

  "Well, wi' the flare on him he'll quit. It's only damn fools that won'twait for a better chance."

  "We had him once before," Jerry said reflectively, "and he gave us theslip; just for the joke of it, too, for it was that train hold-up, andit 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 theForce."

  "Aye, I'm aware of it, Sergeant; and Bulldog himself wouldn't thankus to spit on our salt. But what makes you think he'll be with thisoutfit?"

  "Because it's just one of his damned mad capers to run it into FortCalbert under our noses, and he wouldn't ask anyone to run the risk andnot be there."

  But McBane had a Scotch reluctance to believe in foolish bravado. "It'sno sense, Sergeant," he objected, "and Carney's vera clever."

  Suddenly, on top of the cut bank where the trail dipped through thesandy wall, something blurred the blue-black sky; there was a heavy,slipping, sliding noise as if a giant sheet of sand-paper were beingshoved along the earth. There was the creaking of wood on wood, the dullthump of an axle in a hub; a softened, just perceptible thud, thud ofmuffled hoofs.

  The shuffling noise that was as if some serpent dragged its length overthe deep sands of the cut was opposite the armed men when the voice ofSergeant 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 oflight upon the creeping thing of noise. It painted against the cut-bankthe bleary-eyed cayuse, the archaic Red River cart, and the unformidablefigure 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 McBaneexclaimed: "Ma God! it's like catchin' a red herrin'."

  But Jerry, careful scout, whispered: "Circle to the rear, Corporal; keepout 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 ofconcealed spirits; he was fully half-drunk. Questions only brought somenebulous answers about the permit being up in Fort Calbert, and thathe was bringing in the goods. Even Jerry's proverbial good nature wassorely 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 yonbreed, hearin' it, saw a chance to make a shillin' or two."

  However, Reggie, and his cayuse and the whisky were attached andescorted in to barracks.

  Perhaps it was the fortifying courage of the whisky the villain hadimbibed that caused him to bear up remarkably well under this misfortuneof the very great possibility of losing his not-too-valuable outfit; orhe may have known of some fairy who would make good his fine.

  In the morning the liquor was very formally taken out to the usualsacrifice place, just at the back of the barracks, and in the presenceof the Superintendent and a small guard of constables, poured in agurgling libation upon the thirsting sand-bank of a little ravine. Thenthe 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 theminers and lumberjacks. Take Lemoine the scout, and pick up some of thepatrol up about the Pass."

  In half an hour Sergeant Jerry rode out from the Fort into the west; andby the middle of the afternoon Corporal McBane reported to the O.C. thatthe few constables remaining in the Fort were drunk--half were in theguard room.

  The Major was horrified. Where had the liquor come from? Corporal McBanedidn't know.

  In his perplexity the Major, stick in hand, stalked angrily to the sceneof the morning sacrifice. The mound apparently had not been disturbed.He had a nebulous idea that perhaps the men had chewed up the saturatedearth. He jabbed viciously at the spot with his walking stick asif spearing the alcoholic demon. At the third thrust his stick wentthrough, suggesting a hole. With boot and hand the Major sent the sandflying. A foot down he came upon a gunny sack. Beneath this was a neatcrosshatching of willow wands resting atop an iron grating that wassupported by a tub; a tub boned from the laundry, but the strong odorthat 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. Thenhe stood up and
mopped his perspiring forehead, muttering: "The devils!the cursed stuff! It's that damned outlaw, Bulldog Carney, that's putthem up to this. The liquor that poor waster brought in was just ablind, the tip from the half-breed was part of his devilish plot. It's agame 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; butbefore he had reached the gates his sense--and the little man hadlots of it--laid embargo on his tongue, and he passed silently to hisquarters to sit on the verandah and curse softly to himself.

  He was sick of the whole whisky business. He had been in the Mountedfrom the very first, fifteen years or so of it now. They had not comeinto the Territories to be pitted against the social desires of thewhite inhabitants who were in all other things law abiding; but herethis very thing took up more than half their time and energy. And itwas a losing game with the cunning and desires of a hundred men pittedagainst every one of his force.

  There were rumors that it was soon to be changed--the tradelegitimatized; that is, for Alberta to the Athabasca border. With asmall army of clever whisky traders, no licenses, no supervision againstthem, it was a matter of impossibility to keep liquor from thehalf-breeds who were a sort of carry-on station to the Indians.

  To trail murderers, gunmen, cattle and horse thieves, day after dayacross the trackless prairie, or the white sheet-of-snow buried plain,was an exhilarating game--it was something to stimulate the _espirit decorps;_ a Mounted Policeman, feeling, when he had landed his man, fullreward for all his hardships and danger; but to poke around like anordinary city sleuth and bag some poor devil of a breed with a bottle ofwhisky, 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 theirmission.

  Of course the present incident was not petty; it was like Bulldog Carneyhimself--big; and the Major would have given, right there, a half-year'spay 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 willhave to recede," really, "Don't make mistakes."

  As the little man sat thinking over these many things, sore at heart atthe quirky thrust Fate had dealt him, for he loved the Mounted, lovedhis duties, loved the very men, until sometimes breaking under thestrain of service in the lonely wastes they cracked and a weak streakshowed--then he was a tiger, a martinet; no sparing: "Out you go, youhound!" he would snap; "you're a disgrace to the Force, and it's got tobe kept clean."

  Then "Dismissed" would be written opposite the man's name in the annualreport that went from the Commissioner at Regina to the "Comptroller atOttawa."

  Suddenly the chorus of a refrain floated to his ears from the guardhouse--it was "The Stirrup Cup."

  "God, _England!_" the little man groaned. "That's Cavendish singing," hemuttered.

  How long and broad the highway of life; how human, how weakly humanthose who travelled it! Cavendish, a younger son of a noble family, aconstable at sixty cents a day! They were all like that--not of noblefamily, but adventurers, roamers, men who had broken the shackles ofrestraint all over the world. That was largely why they were in theMounted; certainly not because of the sixty cents a day. And, so, how,even in his bitterness of set-awry-authority, could the incident of thetub be a heinous crime on their part.

  "By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced theverandah, crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive themand shoot Carney--damn him! he's at the bottom of it."

  The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped downbehind the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, andthe blond giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of FortCalbert 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 dustto the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman thatseemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.

  "A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying inthe town--he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."

  The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out thefamiliar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rideryanked his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from thesaddle in exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, andthe 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 physicalshatterment that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heelto his bay's flank and moved slowly along the trail.

  Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney hismessage.

  "All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to theVictoria, 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. Carneygave a whistle, and FitzHerbert, wheeling his bay, turned. "I've got togo back to town," Carney said.

  "I'll go too," the other volunteered; "this devilish boundlessnessis like a painted sky above a painted ocean--it gives me the lonelywillies."

  "There's hell to pay back yonder," Carney said, jerking a thumb over hisshoulder.

  "It's always back there, or over yonder--never here when there's anyhell to pay," FitzHerbert commented dejectedly; "it's just one longplaintive sabbath."

  "I've got to go back to the foothills soon's I've got fixed up," Carneycontinued.

  "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 kisssomebody on both cheeks, pat him on the back, and say, 'Here's a goodcigar 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 cousinsto the Kilkenny cats. In the rebellion, a few years ago, only for theWood Crees they'd have murdered every white prisoner that came intotheir 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, theliquor was from the car.

  "How did they make the haul?" he asked.

  "The Stonies have just had their Treaty Payment, and there's a newregulation that they may go off the reserve at Morley to make their Fallhunt in the mountains, at this time; they were on their way, under ChiefStanding Bear, when they ran into the gent we've just met and his matesin the Vermillion Valley. George was running two loads of whisky up tothe lumber camps."

  "Great! that combination--lumberjacks, Stonies, and Whisky; it would beas 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 abit of a turn. I was coming through the Flathead Valley once, and theold fellow had insulted a grizzly. The grizzly was peeved, for theStoney 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 wasabout 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 youright up to the grizzly, and you pumped him full of .45's"

  "That's ju
st a yarn," Carney asserted; "but, anyway, the Chief and I aregood friends. I'm going to pull out and persuade him to go back to thereserve. Jerry Platt has gone down in that direction, and you knowwhat the Sergeant is, Fitz--he'll stack up against that tribe alone;if they're full of fire-water, and have been rowing with thelumberjacks--their squaws will be along, and you know what thatmeans--Jerry stands a mighty good chance of being killed. I feel that itwill be sort of my fault."

  "It's rotten to go alone, Bulldog. I'll get a dozen of the fellows, andwe'll play rugby with those devilish _nichies_ if they don't act likegentlemen."

  Carney laughed. "If you'd been at Duck Lake or Cut Knife you'd know allabout that. Your bally Remittance Men wouldn't have a chance, Fitz--nota chance. It would be a fight--your hot heads would start it--and afterthe first shot you wouldn't see anything to shoot at; you'd see the redspit of their rifles, and hear the singing note of their bullets. TheseStonies are hunters; they can outwit a big-horn in the mountains; firstthing 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 justbecause you feel that it's your fault?"

  "No, I'm going to try and make good. If I can hook up with Jerry Plattwe'll put before them the strongest kind of an argument, the only kindthey'll listen to. They'll obey the Police generally, because they knowthe '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 willfeel like pulling the White Mother's nose. But Standing Bear has gotsense and he promised me when we were made blood brothers that his wholetribe 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 myeyes, and nothing doing. I sit here in this damned village watching thewest wind blow the boulders up the street, and the east wind blow themback 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 boozedStonies would spit in your eye, and you'd knock him down; then hellwould break loose."

  "You're generally right, Bulldog, mister some man; none of us have gotthe cool courage you've got. I guess it's rather moral cowardice. I'veseen you stand more abuse than a mule-skinner gives his mule and notlose caste over it." He held out his big hand, saying: "Good luck, oldboy! I rather fancy Standing Bear will be back on his reserve or thiswill be good-bye."

  It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavygloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears,threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into along graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadowchasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peepingover Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturnedprairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenitythe turbulent ones in the foothills. It cast a mystic, sleepy hazeover the plain that lay in restful lethargy, bathed in an atmosphereso peaceful that Carney's mission seemed but the promptings of aphantasmagoria. There was a pungent, acrid taint of burning grass in thesleepy air, and off to the south glinted against the horizon the peepingred eyes of a prairie fire. They were like the rimmed lights of ashore-held city.

  The way was always uphill, the low unperceived grade of the prairieuplifting so gradually to the foothills, and the buckskin, as if hisinstinct told him that their way was long, broke his lope into the easysuffling pace of a cayuse.

  Carney, roused from the reverie into which the somnolence of the gentlenight had cast him, patted the slim neck approvingly. Then his mindslipped back into a fairy boat that ferried it across leagues of oceanto the land of green hills and oak-hidden castles.

  Something of the squalid endeavor ahead bred in his mind a distaste forhis life of adventure. Was it good enough? Danger, the pitting of hiswits against other wits, carried a savor of excitement that was betterthan remembering. The foolish past could only be kept in oblivion byaction, by strain, by danger, by adventure, by winning out against odds;but the thing ahead--drunken, brawling lumberjacks, and Indians thrustback into primitive savagery because of him, put in his soul a taste ofthe ashes of regret.

  Even the test he was going to put himself to was not enough to deadenthis suddenly awakened remorse. To the blond giant he had minimized thedanger, the prospect of conflict, but he knew that he was playing a gamewith Fate that the roll of the dice would decide. He was going to pithimself against the young bucks of the Stonies. They were an offshoot ofthe Sioux; in their veins ran fighting blood, the blood of killers; andinflamed by liquor the blood would be the blood of ghazis. It would alldepend upon Standing Bear, for Carney could not quit, could not weaken;he must turn them back from the valley of the Vermillion, or remainthere with his face upturned to the sky, and his soul seeking theFerryman at the crossing of the Styx.

  He had ridden three hours, scarce conscious of anything but the mentaltraverse, when the palpitating beat of hoofs pounding the drum-like turffell upon his ears. From far down the trail to the west came a soundthat was like the drum of a mating pheasant's wings.

  The trail he rode dipped into a little hollow. Here he slipped from thesaddle, led the buckskin to one side, and dropped the bridle rein overhis head. Then he took a newspaper from his pocket, canopied it into alittle gray mound on the trail, and, drawing his gun, stepped fivepaces to one side and waited. All this precaution was that he might holdconverse with the galloping horseman without the startling semblance ofa hold-up; sometimes the too abrupt command to halt meant a pistol shot.

  As the pound of the hoofs neared, the rhythmic cadence separatedinto staccato beats of, "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat," andCarney muttered: "Rather like a drunken nichie; he's ridinghell-bent-for-leather."

  Now the racing horseman was close; now he loomed against the sky as hetopped the farther bank. Half-way down the dipping trail the cayusesaw the paper mound, and with his prairie bred instinct took it fora crouching wolf. With a squealing snort he swerved, propped, and hisrider, in search of equilibrium, shot over his head. As he staggered tohis feet a strong hand was on his arm, and a disagreeable cold circle ofsteel 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 aprecaution, that's all. Where are you going?"

  "I'm goin' to de Fort, me," the French halfbreed replied. "De Stoneynichies 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 heesreserve. He's hell of brave mans, dat Jerry."

  "All right, boy," Carney said; "you ride on to the Fort and tell theSuperintendent that Bulldog Carney----"

  "Sacre! Bulldog Carney?" The poor breed gasped the words much as if theDevil had clapped him on a shoulder.

  "Yes; tell him that Bulldog Carney has gone to help Jerry Platt put thefear 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 tothe help of jerry Platt.

  Dozing in the saddle he rode while the gallant horse ate up mile aftermile in that steady, shuffling trot he had learned from his cold-bloodedbrothers of the plains. The grade was now steeper; they were approachingthe foothills that rose at first in undulating mounds like a heavyground swell; then the ri
dges commenced to take shape against the skyline, 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 onYellowstone Creek.

  The Indians' clock, the long-handled dipper, had swung around the NorthStar 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, punctuatedat 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 thewell-known time that was beaten from the tom-tom--it was the gamblingnote. That was the Indians all over; when drunk to squat on the groundin a circle, a blanket between them to hide the guessing bean, and oneof their number beating an exciting tattoo from a skin-covered hoop,ceasing his flagellation at times to tighten the sagging skin by theheat 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 hedrifted into quick slumber: "The cold gray light of morning is the birthtime of the yellow streak--I'll tackle them then."

  The sun was flicking the upper benches of the Vermillion Range whenCarney opened his eyes. He sat up and watched the golden light leap downthe mountain side from crag to crag as the fount of all this liquid goldclimbed majestically the eastern sky. As he stood up the buckskin cantedto 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 eatafterwards; 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 twoor three gunshots came down the valley.

  As Carney saddled the buckskin he tried to formulate a plan. There wasnothing to plan about; he had no clue to where he might find Platt--thatpart of it was all chance. Failing to locate the Sergeant he must go onand play his hand alone against the Stonies.

  As he rode, the trail wound along the flat bank of a little lake thatwas like an oval torquoise set in platinum and dull gold. Beyond itskirted the lake's feeder, a rippling stream that threw cascades ofpearl tints and sapphire as it splashed over and against the stubbornrocks. From beyond, on the far side, floated down from green fir-cladslopes the haunting melody of a French-Canadian song. It was like ridinginto a valley of peace; and just over a jutting point was the droningtom-toms. As Carney rounded the bend in the trail he could see thesmoke-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 baypolice horse, taking a ford of the shallow stream. It was Sergeant JerryPlatt, all alone, save for a half-breed scout that trailed behind.

  Pandemonium broke loose in the Indian encampment. Half-naked bucksswarmed in and out among the tepees like rabbits in a muskeg; some ofthem, still groggy, pitched headlong over a root, or a stone. Many ofthem raced for their hobbled ponies, and clambered to their backs. Twoor three had rushed from their tepees, Winchester in hand, and when theysaw the policeman banged at the unoffending sky in the way of bravado.

  Carney shook up his mount, and at a smart canter reached the Sergeantjust as his horse came up to the level of the trail, fifty yards shortof the camp.

  Platt's shoulder had been roughly bandaged by the guide, and his leftarm was bound across his chest in the way of a sling. The Sergeant'sface, that yesterday had been the genial merry face of Jerry, was drawnand haggard; grim determination had buried the boyishness that manyhad 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 areyou 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"--heswept an arm toward the tepees--"and I've ridden all night to help bustthis hellery. Heard on the trail you'd got pinked."

  "Not much--just through the flesh. A couple of drunken lumberjackspotted me from cover. I've been over at the Company's shacks, but I'mpretty sure they've taken cover with the Indians. I'll get them ifthey're here. But I've got to herd these bronco-headed bucks back to thereserve."

  "They'll put up an argument, Sergeant."

  "I expect it; but it's got to be done. They'll go back, or CorporalMcBane 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 whiningmoan of a bullet cutting the air above their heads. A little cloud ofwhite 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 buzzlike 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 knowStanding Bear well, and if you'll allow it, I'll make a pow-wow. But I'min it to the finish, boy."

  "Thanks, Bulldog"--they were moving along at a steady walk of the horsestoward the tepees--"but you know our way--you've got to stand a lot ofdirt; if you don't, Bulldog, and start anything, you'll make me wish youhadn't come. It's better to get wiped out than be known as having lostour heads. D'you get it?"

  "I'm on, Jerry."

  Carney knew Standing Bear's tepee; it was larger than the others; onits moose-skin cover was painted his caste mark, something meant torepresent a hugetoothed grizzly.

  But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. Theold men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies--it wasa shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled,vociferous creatures.

  A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Somecircus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmendon't slip from a tepee."

  Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-lookingIndian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunkengravity. 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 huntedmuch with the tribe.

  "Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.

  "Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeantwith 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 whitemen, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great WhiteMother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoatsoldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoatthat Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."

  At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into aclamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi,yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled theirponies, 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 thetwo white men.

  Running Antelope, a Stoney whose always evil face had been made horribleby the sweep of a bear's claws, raced his pony, chest on, against thebuckskin, thrust his ugly visage almost into Carney's face, and spat.

  Bulldog wiped it off with the barrel of his gun, then dropped the gunback into its holster, saying quietly: "Some day, Running Antelope, I'llcover that stain with your blood."

  The Sergeant sat as stolid as
a bronze statue. The squaws stood ingroups, either side the Chief's tepee, and hurled foul epithets at thetwo white men. Little copper-skinned imps threw handfuls of sand, andgravel, 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 withsolemn dignity, and held the eagle wing above his head; "it is the timeof our hunt, and a new treaty has been made that we go to the hunt whenthe payment is made. Of the two pale faces that have done evil I knownot."

  "They are here in the tepees," Bulldog declared. "The tepees are thehomes of my tribe, and what is there is there. Go back while the trailis open, Bulldog, you and the Redcoat; my braves may do harm if youremain."

  "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 giftStanding 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 goodof 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 thesquaws to load them on the travois, and lead the braves back to thereserve."

  Running Antelope pushed himself between Carney and the Chief, and inrapid, 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 Chiefdeclared.

  "Is Standing Bear Chief of the Stonies?" Carney asked; "or is he an oldoutcast buffalo bull--and does the herd follow Running Antelope?"

  The Chief's face twisted with the shock of this thrust, and RunningAntelope scowled and flashed a hunting knife from his belt.

  "If Standing Bear is Chief of the Stonies, the White Mother's Redcoatasks him to deliver the two evil _moneas _" Carney added.

  Standing Bear seemed to waver; his yellow-streaked black-pointed eyesswept back and forth from the faces of the white men to the faces of thebraves.

  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 thetwo men you want are in that old blackguard's tepee. Shall I carry outsomething 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 tostrike the tepees, that may cow them. We've got to keep going."

  Standing Bear saw the watch, and asked: "What medicine does the Redcoatmake?"

  Carney explained that the Sergeant gave him five minutes to strike histepee as a sign to the others.

  "And if Standing Bear says that talk is not good talk, that a Chief ofthe Stonies is not a dog to be driven from his hunting, what will theRedcoat 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 WhiteMother's soldier will lead the Stonies back to the reserve." A quietfollowed this; the dreadful heaviness of a sudden stilling of thetumult, for the Chief, raising his eagle wing, had commanded silence.

  "Standing Bear will wait to see the medicine making of the Redcoat," hesaid to Carney.

  One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes; the two men sattheir horses facing the sullen redskins. A thrilling exhilaration wastingling the nerves of Carney; a test such as this lifted him. AndJerry, 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 withhis lariat idly as he answered: "Put your watch back in your pocket,Jerry, and command, in the Queen's name, Standing Bear to strike histepee. The authority game, old boy. I'll interpret, and if he doesn'tobey 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 voicein solemn declamation, and Carney interpreted the command.

  The Chief seemed to waver; his eyes were shifty, like the eyes of a wolfthat 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; fromCarney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils ofa snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull ofthe rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed toearth like a pricked balloon.

  This extraordinary, unlooked-for event had the effect of a sudden vividshaft of lightning from out a troubled sky. Half paralyzed the Indiansstood in gasping suspense, and into the Chief's clever brain flashed theknowledge that all his bluff had failed, that he must yield or takethe awful consequence of thrusting his little tribe into a war withthe great nation of the palefaces; he must yield or kill, and to killa Redcoat on duty, or even Bulldog, a paleface who had not struck atribesman, 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-shirtedwhite men wriggled like badgers escaping from a hole, and stood upgazing about in bewilderment. One of them had drawn a gun, and in thehand of the other was a vicious knife.

  Sergeant Jerry drew a pair of handcuffs from a pocket, and pushed hisbay forward to cut off the retreat of the Frenchmen, commanding: "Youare under arrest--hands up!"

  As he spoke, with an ugly oath the man with the gun fired. The reportwas echoed by the crack of Carney's gun and the Frenchman's hand droppedto 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 yourcompanion."

  The man hesitated, sweeping with his vicious eyes the band of cowedIndians.

  One look at the gun in Carney's hands and muttering: "Sacre! dem damnInjuns is coward dogs!" he picked up the chained rings and snapped themon his mate's wrists and his own.

  Carney turned to Standing Bear, who stood petrified by the rapidity ofevents.

  "Chief," he said, "with these white outcasts the way is different, theyare evil; the Indians are children of the White Mother."

  The wily old Chief quickly repudiated the two Frenchmen; he could seethat the policeman and Bulldog were not to be bluffed.

  "If the two moneas have broken the law, take them," he saidmagnanimously; "but tell the Redcoat that Standing Bear and his tribewill go from here up into the hills for the hunt, for to return to thereserve would bring hunger to the Stonies when the white rain lies onthe ground. Ask the Redcoat to say that this is good, that we may goquickly, and the evil be at an end."

  Carney conveyed this to Jerry. It was perhaps the better way, headvised, for the breaking up of the hunt, during which they laid ina stock of meat for the winter, and skins and furs, would be distincthardship.

  "You can take the prisoners in, Sergeant," Carney said, "and I'llstay with Standing Bear till they're up in the mountains away from thelumberjacks."

  "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 astruggling line the Stonies were heading for the hills.

  Toward the east the two Frenchmen, linked together, plodded sullenlyover the trail, and behind them rode Sergeant Jerry and his half-breedscout.

  Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends

nline-share-buttons">