BULLDOG CARNEY
(1919)
by W.A. Fraser (1857 - 1933)
Chapter I. Bulldog Carney
BACK to Bulldog Carney Menu
I'VE thought
it over many ways and I'm going to tell this
story as it happened, for I believe the reader will feel he is
getting a true picture of things as they were but will not be
again. A little padding up of the love interest, a little
spilling of blood, would, perhaps, make it stronger
technically, but would it lessen his faith that the curious
thing happened? It's beyond me to know--I write it as it was.
To begin at the beginning, Cameron was peeved. He
was rather a diffident chap, never merging harmoniously into the
western atmosphere; what saved him from rude knocks was the
fact that he was lean of speech. He stood on the board
sidewalk in front of the Alberta Hotel and gazed dejectedly
across a trench of black mud that represented the main street.
He hated the sight of squalid, ramshackle Edmonton, but still
more did he dislike the turmoil that was within the hotel.
A lean-faced man, with small piercing gray eyes, had
ridden his buckskin cayuse into the bar and was buying. Nagel's
furtrading men, topping off their spree in town before the
long trip to Great Slave Lake, were enthusiastically,
vociferously naming their tipple. A freighter, Billy the
Piper, was playing the "Arkansaw Traveller" on a tin
whistle.
When the gray-eyed man on the buckskin pushed his
way into the bar, the whistle had almost clattered to the floor
from the piper's hand; then he gasped, so low that no one heard
him, "By cripes! Bulldog Carney!" There was
apprehension trembling in his hushed voice. Well he knew that if
he had clarioned the name something would have happened Billy the
Piper. A quick furtive look darting over the faces of his
companions told him that no one else had recognized the
horseman.
Outside, Cameron, irritated by the rasping tin
whistle groaned, "My God! a land of bums!" Three days he
had waited to pick up a man to replace a member of his gang down at
Fort Victor who had taken a sudden chill through intercepting a
plug of cold lead.
Diagonally across the lane of ooze two men waded and
clambered to the board sidewalk just beside Cameron to stamp
the muck from their boots. One of the two, Cayuse Gray,
spoke:
"This feller'll pull his freight with you,
boss, if terms is right; he's a hell of a worker."
Half turning, Cameron's Scotch eyes took keen
cognizance of the "feller": a shudder twitched his
shoulders. He had never seen a more wolfish face set atop a
man's neck. It was a sinister face; not the thin, vulpine
sneak visage of a thief, but lowering; black sullen eyes
peered boldly up from under shaggy brows that almost met a mop
of black hair, the forehead was so low. It was a hungry face,
as if its owner had a standing account against the world. But
Cameron wanted a strong worker, and his business instinct
found strength and endurance in that heavy-shouldered frame,
and strong, wide-set legs.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Jack Wolf," the man answered.
The questioner shivered; it was as if the speaker
had named the thought that was in his mind.
Cayuse Gray tongued a chew of tobacco into his
cheek, spat, and added, "Jack the Wolf is what he gets most
oftenest."
"From damn broncho-headed fools," Wolf
retorted angrily.
At that instant a strangling Salvation Army band
tramped around the corner into Jasper Avenue, and, forming a
circle, cut loose with brass and tambourine. As the wail from the
instruments went up the men in the bar, led by Billy the
Piper, swarmed out.
A half-breed roared out a profane parody on the
Salvation hymn:--
"There are flies on you, and there're flies on
me,
But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."
This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued
from the bar; they shouted in delight.
A girl who had started forward with her tambourine
to collect stood aghast at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in
horror.
The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's
damn fine new songs for de Army bums, Miss," he jeered.
The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had
been sticking through the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his
rider, stooping his lithe figure, took the right ear of the
breed in lean bony fingers with a grip that suggested he was
squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!" he snarled;
"you're insulting the two greatest things on earth--God and a
woman. Apologize, you hound!"
Probably the breed would have capitulated readily,
but his river-mates' ears were not in a death grip, and they were
bellicose with bad liquor. There was an angry yell of
defiance; events moved with alacrity. Profanity, the
passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer bottle
hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,--the man on
the buckskin,--but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the
Wolf's shoulder blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically
into the black mud of Jasper Avenue.
A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the
Arab it folded its instruments and stole away.
A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour,
reined his horse to the sidewalk to quiet with a few words of
admonition this bar-room row. He slipped from the saddle; but at
the second step forward he checked as the thin face of the
horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met his own. "Get
down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,--I want you!" he
commanded in sharp clicking tones.
Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a
6-gun, a flash, the Policeman's horse jerked his head
spasmodically, a little jet of red spurted from his forehead, and
he collapsed, his knees burrowing into the black mud and as the
buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the half-breed, two
steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind the rider.
With a spring like a panther the policeman reached
his fallen horse, but as he swung his gun from its holster he held
it poised silent; to shoot was to kill the breed.
Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden
into a deep puddle, and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away.
Half-a-dozen guns were out and barking vainly after the
escaping man.
Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous
way to the river flat, some two hundred feet below the town level.
The ferry, swinging from the steel hawser, that stretched
across the river, was snuggling the bank.
"Some luck," the rider of the buckskin
chuckled. To the ferryman he said in a crisp voice: "Cut her
out; I'm in a hurry!"
The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh?
Might you happen to be the Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"
Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the
boatman, and its owner answered, "I happen to be a man in a
hell of
a hurry. If you want to travel with me get busy."
The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they
resembled a slit in a dried orange. The small gray eyes were
barely discernible between the half-closed lids; there was
something devilish compelling in that lean parchment face; it
told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.
The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern
of the flat barge down stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined
a screeching protest, the hawsers creaked, the swift current
wedged against the tangented side of the ferry, and swiftly
Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across the muddy old
Saskatchewan.
On the other side he handed the boatman a
five-dollar bill, and with a grim smile said: "Take a little
stroll with me to the top of the hill; there's some drunken bums
across there whose company I don't want."
At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his
buckskin and Melted away into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped
out of the story for the time being.
Back at the Alberta the general assembly was
rearranging itself. The Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the
death of his horse, had hurried down to the barracks to report;
possibly to follow up Carney's trail with a new mount.
The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing
of black ooze and profanity.
Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and
ears, and neck band, was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for
the summer's work at Fort Victor.
Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of
Bulldog Carney. From said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was
as humorous a bandit as ever slit a throat. Billy had freighted
whisky for Carney when that gentleman was king of the booze
runners.
"Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?"
Nagel queried; "there's a thousand on Carney's head all the
time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof and cropped the dough."
"Dif'rent here," the Piper growled;
"I've saw a man flick his gun and pot at Carney when Bulldog
told him to throw up his hands, and all that cuss did was laugh and
thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho; but it was
enough--the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set the
pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd
been lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss
I ever stacked up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his
religion; an' when he's out to play he's plumb hostile. Don't
monkey none with his game, is my advice to you fellers."
Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy face
though it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to
the bar and said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a
man, a real man."
He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it
held high till the others had done likewise; then he said in a
voice that vibrated with admiration:
"Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man!
When that damn trooper calls him, what does he do? You or me would
've quit cold or plugged Mister Khaki-jacket--we'd had to. Not so
Bulldog. He thinks with his nut, and both hands, and both
feet; I don't need to tell you boys what happened; you see it,
and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog Carney!" Nagel
held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd give
that cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin'
him as I do now."
. . . . .&
nbsp; .
The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color
line, was four people: the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary
minister and his wife, and a school teacher, Lucy Black.
Half-breeds and Indians came and went, constituting a floating
population;
Cameron and
his men were temporary citizens.
Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years
past her girlhood, and not an animated girl. She was a
professional religionist. If there were seeming voids in her life
they were filled with this dominating passion of moral reclamation;
if she worked without enthusiasm she made up for it in
insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the
old Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of
centuries and found a subdued existence in this pale-haired,
blue-eyed woman.
When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it
was evident to the little teacher that he was morally an Augean
stable: a man who wandered in mental darkness; his soul was
dying for want of spiritual nourishment.
On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buckboard
from Edmonton to Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every
remark with virile oaths, their original angularity suggesting
that his meditative moments were spent in coining appropriate
expressions for his perfervid view of life. Twice Cameron's
blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling perversity
of the horses, had struck viciously.
Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf
that roused the religious fanaticism of the little school teacher;
or perhaps it was that strange contrariness in nature that causes
the widely divergent to lean eachotherward. At any rate a
miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack the Wolf and the little
teacher strolled together in the evening as the great sun
swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes
the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east,
found Jack slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a
camp stool, talked Bible to him.
At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch
vision had somehow gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity
had manifested at first died away.
As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil
was like his thirst for moral betterment--insatiable. The
missionary in a chat with Cameron explained it very succinctly:
"Wolf, like many other Westerners, had never had a chance to
know the difference between right and wrong; but the One who missed
not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of salvation, Fort
Victor--Glory to God! The poor fellow's very wickedness was
but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord's
vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better
life.
It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough
characters were always being saved all over the world--regenerated,
metamorphosed, and who was Jack the Wolf that he should be
excluded from salvation.
At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the
abnormal energy of Wolf, became a high-powered machine.
The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed
their religion and became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The
missionary had always waited until this condition had passed,
then remonstrance and a gift of bacon with, perhaps, a bag of
flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack the Wolf
declared was all wrong; the breeds were like traindogs, he
affirmed, and should be taught respect for God's agents in a
proper muscular manner. So the first time three French
half-breeds, enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log
schoolhouse and declared school was out, sending the teacher
home with tears of shame in her blue eyes, Jack reestablished
the dignity of the church by generously walloping the three
backsliders.
It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places
will blossom the most ordinary woman into a flower of delight to
the masculine eye; and the lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired
school teacher had held as admirers all of Cameron's gang, and
one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she had known in
the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her
negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally;
but when the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came
to hand the others were practically ignored.
For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always
the willing worker and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.
Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered,
wise old man, was the only one of little faith. Once he said to
Cameron:
"I don't like it none too much; it takes no end
of worry to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has
blossomed too quick; he's a booze fighter, and that kind always
laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue devils away."
"You're doing the lad an injustice, I
think," Cameron said. "I was prejudiced myself at
first."
Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big
beard, spat a shaft of tobacco juice, took his hat off,
straightened out a couple of dents in it, and put it back on his
head:
"You best stick to that prejudice feeling,
Boss--first guesses about a feller most gener'ly pans out pretty
fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder skinned if you have any fuss with
Jack; I see him look at you once or twice when you corrected
his way of doin' things."
Cameron laughed.
"'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a
feller's been used to cussin' like hell he can't keep healthy
bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness that's in the Wolf 'll bust
out some day same's you touched a match to a tin of powder; he'll
throw back."
"There's nobody to worry about except the
little school teacher," Cameron said meditatively.
This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The
schoolmam's as safe as houses. She ain't got a pint of red blood
in 'em blue veins of hers, 'tain't nothin' but vinegar. Jack's
just tryin' to sober up on her religion, that's all; it kind of
makes him forget horse stealin' an' such while he makes a
stake workin' here."
Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.
Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning
to pick up some prairie chicken while he was out looking over his
men's work. As he passed the shack where his men bunked he
noticed the door open. This was careless, for train dogs were
always prowling about for just such a chance for loot. He
stepped through the door and took a peep into the other room.
There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.
"What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked.
"I've quit," the Wolf answered surlily.
"Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang
can't carry on without a chain man."
"I don't care a damn. It don't make no
dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that tough bunch--swearin' and
cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all day; a man can't keep
decent in that outfit."
"Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron
harked back to his most expressive Scotch.
"You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself
ain't never give me no square deal; you've treated me like a
breed."
This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also
the malignant look that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish
eyes. It was a murder look, enhanced by the hypocritical
attitude Jack had taken.
"You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted;
"I wouldn't keep you on the work. The sooner Fort Victor is
shut of you the better for all hands, especially the women folks.
You're a scoundrel."
Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip
pocket; but his blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle
of the double-barrel gun that Cameron had swung straight from his
hip, both fingers on the triggers.
"Put your hands flat on the table, you
blackguard," Cameron commanded. "If I weren't a married
man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no good on earth;
you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I did the
deed."
The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was
placed, palm downward, on the table.
"Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll
show you what I think of you. I'm going to turn my back, walk out,
and send a breed up to Fort Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather
you in."
Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his
heel and started out.
"Come back and settle with me," the Wolf
demanded.
"I'll settle with you in jail, you
blackguard!" Cameron threw over his shoulder, stalking on.
Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of
apprehension, the Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the
Wolf saying. "Don't do that, Mr. Cameron; I flew off the
handle and so did you, but I didn't mean nothin'."
Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his
shack and wrote a note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the
open door. He was humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana,
where the Wolf had left a bad record, was one thing, but with
a cordon of Mounted Police between him and the border it was
a different matter; also he was wanted for a more serious
crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might
crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf
had no right to stick up his work and quit at a moment's
notice.
Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy
Black. Like woman of all time her faith having been given she
stood pat, a flush rouging her bleached cheeks as, earnest in her
mission, she pleaded for the "wayward boy," as she
euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to let him go
to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police
barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated.
The police had always persecuted her Jack.
Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma
God!" as he saw tears in the neutral blue-tinted eyes. Indeed
it was time that the Wolf sought a new runway. He had a curious
Scotch reverence for women, and was almost reconciled to the loss
of a man over the breaking up of this situation.
Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for
a horse to take him back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed.
"I'm not making presents of horses to-day," he said;
"and I'll take good care that nobody else here is shy a horse
when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express it's good enough
for you."
So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack
slung over his shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into
town looking very debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the
bright blood-bay police horse.
He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man
here that I want--Jack Wolf. They've found his prospecting partner
dead up on the Smoky River, with a bullet hole in the back of his
head. We want Jack at Edmonton to explain."
"He's gone."
"Gone! When?"
"Yesterday."
The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman.
A light dawned upon Cameron. "Did you, by any
chance, send word that you were coming?" he asked.
"I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted
from the shack, swung to his saddle, and galloped toward the little
log school house.
Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was
back, a troubled look in his face.
"I'll tell you," he said dejectedly,
"women are hell; they ought to be interned when there's
business on."
"The little school teacher?"
"The little fool!"
"You trusted her and wrote you were coming,
eh?"
"I did."
"Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the
foolish one."
"How was I to know that rustler had been
'making bad medicine'--had put the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man,
she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for him; spun me the most
glimmering tale--she's got a dime novel skinned four ways of
the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog
Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the
goat. They persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's
given his heart to God, and has gone away to buy a ranch and
send for Lucy, where the two of them are to live happy ever
after."
"Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with
vehemence.
"That bean-headed affair in calico gave him
five hundred she's pinched up against her chest for years."
Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent
exclamatory standby seemed inadequate.
"What time yesterday did the Wolf pull
out?" the Sergeant asked.
"About three o'clock."
"Afoot?"
"Yes."
"He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he
gets, but if he stays afoot he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy
miles."
"To catch the morning train for Calgary,"
Cameron suggested.
"You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his
namesake of the forest skinned to death when it comes to covering
up his trail--no train for him now that he knows I'm on his track;
he'll just touch civilization for grub till he makes the
border for Montana. I've got to get him. If you'll stake me
to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse I'll
eat and pull out."
In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron
saying: "If you'll just not say a word about how that cuss got
the message I'll be much obliged. It would break me if it
dribbled to headquarters."
Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound
to the river bed, forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its
summer depth, mounted the south bank and disappeared.
. . . . .&
nbsp; .
*When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a
little log shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French
half-breed, lived. The family was away berry picking, and
Jack twisted a rope into an Indian bridle and borrowed a
cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some devil, and
that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope
hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.
Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no
more borrowable horses till he came to where the trail forked ten
miles short of Fort Saskatchewan. To the right, running
southwest, lay the well beaten trail that passed through Fort
Saskatchewan to cross the river and on to Edmonton. The trail
that switched to the left, running southeast, was the old, now
rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to
Winnipeg.
The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning;
a gambler where money was the stake, but where his freedom,
perhaps his life, was involved he could wait, and wait, and
play the game more than safe. The Winnipeg trail would be
deserted--Jack knew that; a man could travel it the round of
the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond he
could leave it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary
railroad and board a train at some small station. No notice
would be taken of him, for trappers, prospectors, men from
distant ranches, morose, untalkative men, were always drifting
toward the rails, coming up out of the silent solitudes of the
wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.
The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew
that Sergeant Heath would pull out on his trail and follow
relentlessly, seeking the glory of capturing his man
single-handed. That was the esprit de corps of these riders
of the prairies, and Heath was, par excellence, large in
conceit.
A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the
trailing man until his strong teeth glistened like veritable wolf
fangs. He had full confidence in his ability to outguess Sergeant
Heath or any other Mounted Policeman.
He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough
to light his pipe, looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road
thinking. He knew the old Winnipeg trail ran approximately
ten or twelve miles east of the railroad south for a hundred
miles or more; where it crossed a trail running into Red Deer,
half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was about ten miles
east of that town.
He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped
blithely along the Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering:
"You red-coated snobs, you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited
trap. And behind, herding me in, my brave Sergeant. Well,
I'm coming."
Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care
to leave a footprint; where there was dust he walked in it, in one
or the other of the ever persisting two furrow-like paths that
had been worn through the strong prairie turf by the hammering
hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding wheels of wagon and
buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till he
sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here
the Wolf went in and begged some matches and a drink of milk;
incidentally he asked how far it was to Edmonton. Then he
went back to the trail--still toward Edmonton. The Wolf had
plenty of matches, and he didn't need the milk, but the man
would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the one he had
seen heading for Edmonton.
For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf
beside the road, twice putting down a foot in the dust to make a
print; then he walked on the road for a short distance and again
took to the turf. He saw a rig coming from behind, and popped into
a cover of poplar bushes until it had passed. Then he went
back to the road and left prints of his feet in the black soft
dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into a waggon
here from behind. This accomplished he turned east across the
prairie, reaching the old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he
turned south.
At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon
raw, not risking the smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless
Indian plod--toes in, and head hung forward, that is so easy on the
working joints--hour after hour; it was not a walk, it was
more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy springing short
steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.
At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till
midnight, the shadowy gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock.
Then he slept in a thick clump of saskatoon bushes.
At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and
thirsting for his drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and
brewed the inspiring beverage. On forked sticks he broiled
some bacon; then on again.
All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation
began to creep into his veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At
night he would take the dipper on his right hand and cut across the
prairie straight west; by morning he would reach steel; the
train leaving Edmonton would come along about ten, and he
would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east, or
west, or south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go
on to Edmonton; the police would spend two or three days
searching all the shacks and Indian and half-breed camps, and
they would watch the daily outgoing train.
There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to
look out for him; but there was no course open without some risk of
capture; he was up against that possibility. It was a gamble,
and he was playing his hand the best he knew how. Even
approaching Calgary he would swing from the train on some
grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack where
Montana Dick lived. Dick would know what was doing.
Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east
skirting muskeg country. At first the Wolf took little notice
of the angle of detour; he was thankful he followed a trail,
for trails never led one into impassable country; the muskeg
would run out and the trail swing west again. But for two
hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he realized
now that he was covering miles which had to be made up when he
swung west again.
Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the
desolate muskeg through which the shadowy figures of startled hares
darted that cast the tiring man into foreboding. Into his
furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was being trailed. So
insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it was simply
worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie was
closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was
a crouching wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and
cursed. It was that he was tiring, perhaps.
Then suddenly the thing took form, mental
form--something was on his trail. This primitive creature was like
an Indian--gifted with the sixth sense that knows when somebody is
coming though he may be a day's march away; the mental
wireless that animals possess. He tried to laugh it off; to
dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't down.
The prairie was like a huge platter, everything
stood out against the luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship
at sea. If it were Heath trailing, and that man saw him, he
would never reach the railroad. His footprints lay along the
trail, for it was hard going on the heavily-grassed turf. To
cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles would trap him.
In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that his
tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone.
Being mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few
hours of darkness would reach the railway and wire down the
line.
The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left
the trail where the ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred
yards, and circled back. On the top of a cut-bank that was fringed
with wolf willow he crouched to watch. The sun had slipped
through purple clouds, and dropping below them into a sea of
greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole mass of
tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious
background a horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat
in the saddle, the docked tail of the horse, square cut at the
hocks, told the watcher that it was a policeman.
When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him,
keeping east of the road where his visibility was low against the
darkening side of the vast dome. Half a mile beyond where the Wolf
had turned, the Sergeant stopped, dismounted, and, leading the
horse, with head low hung searched the trail for the tracks
that had now disappeared. Approaching night, creeping first
over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of sombre
hue. The trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might
be there, merged into the pattern till they were
indiscernible.
A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg
beside the trail, its sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint,
wild oats, wolf willow, saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed
poplar. Ducks, startled from their nests, floating nests
built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose in circling
flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill
cranes flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle
shanks straight out behind, and soared away like kites.
Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and
waited. He knew what the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail
of his quarry he would camp there, beside good water, tether his
horse to the picket-pin by the hackamore rope, eat, and sleep
till daylight, which would come about three o'clock; then he
would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop along the
southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise
that Jack had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round
the southern end of the swamp and head for the railway.
"I must get him," the Wolf muttered
mercilessly; "gentle him if I can, if not--get him."
He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him,
and eat a cold meal; this rather than beacon his presence by a
glimmering fire.
The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering
over the gillardias, crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil
body, his revolver held between his strong teeth as his grimy
paws felt the ground for twigs that might crack.
If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt,
and perhaps go down to the water for a drink, or even to the horse
that was at the far end of the picket line, his nose buried
deep in the succulent wild-pea vine, then the Wolf would rush
his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would throw up his hands.
The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a
Mounted Policeman, for then the "Redcoats" would trail
him to all corners of the earth. All his life there would be
someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even if the murder
thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first shot
meant not overmuch.
So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head,
cocked his ears fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he
blew a breath of discontent through his spread nostrils, and
again buried his muzzle in the pea vine and sweet-grass.
Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased
cutting at the plug of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe;
he stood up, and searched with his eyes the mysterious gloomed
prairie.
The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.
The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his
cupped hands over the bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and,
revolver in hand, walked in a narrow circle; slowly, stealthily,
stopping every few feet to listen; not daring to go too far
lest the man he was after might be hidden somewhere and cut
out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the Wolf
lay, just a gray mound against the gray turf.
The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his
saddle for a pillow lay down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the
Wolf that he smoked. He had not removed his pistol belt.
The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how
easy it would be to kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle,
snake-like to within a few feet and then the shot. But
killing was a losing game, the blundering trick of a man who
easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when a man was
cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain
ahead of him, or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all
the advantage was with him. Besides, the horse was like a
watch-dog. The Wolf was down wind from them now, but if he
moved enough to rouse the horse, or the wind shifted--no, he
would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary in the
daylight, might give him his chance.
Fortunately it was late in the summer and that
terrible pest, the mosquito, had run his course.
The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the
scrub, and, tired, slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray
in the eastern sky the ducks would wake him. He slept like an
animal, scarce slipping from consciousness; a stamp of the
horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing him wide awake.
Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but sprang to
his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again
a great horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed,
swooped silently and struck, thinking it a hare.
Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the
waterfowl the Wolf knew that night was past, and the dice of
chance were about to be thrown. He crept back to where the
Sergeant was in full view, the horse, his sides ballooned by
the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest, his muzzle on
the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.
Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by
rending the air with his death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt
upright and rubbed his eyes sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms
above his head, and stood for a minute looking off toward the
eastern sky that was now taking on a rose tint. The horse,
with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed toward the
water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the
lake for a drink.
Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay
across the saddle, but the Sergeant watered his horse without
passing behind the bushes. It was a chance; but still the Wolf
waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the hole when I play this
hand."
Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the
turf, saddled his horse, and stood mentally debating something.
Evidently the something had to do with Jack's whereabouts, for
Heath next climbed a short distance up a poplar, and with his
field glasses scanned the surrounding prairie. This seemed to
satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered some dry
poplar branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked
stick he drove in the ground his copper tea pail half full of
water.
Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited
for happened. The Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki
coat, rolled up the sleeves of his gray flannel shirt, turned
down its collar, took a piece of soap and a towel from the
roll of his blanket and went to the water to wash away the
black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and heavy on
his face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds,
splashing and blowing water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid
creep to the fire was unheard.
When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the
towel, stood up and turned about he was looking into the yawning
maw of his own heavy police revolver, and the Wolf was saying:
"Come here beside the fire and strip to the buff--I want them
duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless you get hostile,
then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're told
and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."
Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile,
obeyed.
"Now get up in that tree and stay there while
I dress," the Wolf ordered. In three minutes he was arrayed
in the habiliments of Sergeant Heath; then he said, "Come down
and put on my shirt."
In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now
wore were a pair of steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in
the shirt commanding, "Click these on."
"I say," the Sergeant expostulated,
"can't I have the pants and the coat and your boots?"
The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I
got to make a get-away. I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you
your choice of three ways: I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and
gag you; or I'll rip one of these 44 plugs through you; or
I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt on your back; I
reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare feet."
"I don't walk on my pants."
"That's just what you would do; the pants and
coat would cut up into about four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as
good as duffel cloth."
"I'll starve."
"That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights
worrying about where Jack Wolf would get a dinner--I guess not. I
ought to shoot you. The damn police are nothin' but a lot of
dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook grub for two--bacon and
tea while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."
The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the
manacles on his wrists, and clad only in a shirt.
When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse,
curled up the picket line and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled
the blanket and with the carbine strapped it to the saddle, also
his own blanket.
"I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said,
"leave you rations for three days; that's more than you'd do
for me. I'll turn your horse loose near steel, I ain't horse
stealin', myself--I'm only borrowin'."
When he was ready to mount a thought struck the
Wolf. It could hardly be pity for the forlorn condition of Heath;
it must have been cunning--a play against the off chance of the
Sergeant being picked up by somebody that day. He said:
"You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep
your word, don't you?"
"We try to."
"I'll give you another chance, then. I don't
want to see nobody put in a hole when there ain't no call for it.
If you give me your word, on the honor of a Mounted Policeman,
swear it, that you'll give me four days' start before you squeal
I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then you can get out
in two days and be none the worse."
"I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted
Policeman doesn't compromise with a horse thief--with a skunk who
steals a working girl's money."
"You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of
your head off," the Wolf snarled. "You'll look sweet
trampin' in to some town in about a week askin' somebody to file
off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you, won't you?"
"I won't get any place in a week with these
handcuffs on," the Sergeant objected; "even if a pack of
coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect myself."
The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away
without it he didn't want the death of a man on his hands--there
was nothing in it. So he unlocked the handcuffs, dangled them in
his fingers debatingly, and then threw them far out into the
bushes, saying, with a leer: "I might get stuck up by
somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a
get-away harder."
"Give me some matches," pleaded the
Sergeant.
With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I
don't want to do nothin' mean unless it helps me out of a
hole."
Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the
trail. For four miles he rode, wondering at the persistence of the
muskeg. But now he had a horse and twenty-four hours ahead
before train time; he should worry.
Another four miles, and to the south he could see a
line of low rolling hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even
where he rode the prairie rose and fell, the trail dipping
into hollows, on its rise to sweep over higher land. Perhaps
some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs; but there
was no hurry.
Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man
leisurely cinching a saddle on a buckskin horse.
"Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his
mount; "that's the buckskin that I see at the Alberta; that's
Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with him."
He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and
raced for the hiding screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost
certain Carney had not seen him, for the other had given no sign;
he would wait in the cover until Carney had gone; perhaps he
could keep right on across the bad lands, for his horse, as
yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover and
waited.
Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his
neck backward, cocked his ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear
a splashing, sucking sound of hoofs back on the tell-tale
trail he had left.
With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's
flanks, and the startled animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the
ooze throwing up in a shower.
A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming
to his knees; he recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and
struggled on; now going half the depth of his cannon bones in the
yielding muck, he was floundering like a drunken man; in ten
feet his legs went to the knees.
Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched
heavily, and with a writhing struggle against the sucking
sands stood trembling; from his spread mouth came a scream of
terror--he knew.
And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he
remembered--he had ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting
Sands." This was the country they were in and he had
forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low forehead; all
the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared from off the
face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came back to
him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two or
three wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the
claiming quicksands.
The horse's belly was against the black muck. The
Wolf had drawn his feet up; he gave a cry for help. A voice
answered, and twisting his head about he saw, twenty yards away,
Carney on the buckskin. About the man's thin lips a smile hovered.
He sneered:
"You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what
name'll I turn in back at barracks?"
Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might
know Heath by sight, so he lied:
"I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me
out."
Bulldog sneered. "Why should I--God doesn't
love a sneaking police hound."
The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually
sinking; his struggles now stilled for the beast knew that he was
doomed.
"All right," Carney said suddenly.
"One condition--never mind, I'll save you first--there isn't
too much time. Now break your gun, empty the cartridges out and
drop it back into the holster," he commanded. "Unsling
your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can get my
cow-rope to you tie the two together."
He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far
out as he dared, seemingly having found firmer ground a little to
one side. Then taking his cowrope, he worked his way still
farther out, placing his feet on the tufted grass that stuck
up in little mounds through the treacherous ooze. Then
calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught
it at the first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his
way back, looped the rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and
calling, "Flop over on your belly--look out!" he started
his horse, veritably towing the Wolf to safe ground.
The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered
with muck, drew his revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into
the cylinder.
A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you
swine!" and raising his eyes he was gazing into Carney's gun.
"Come up here on the dry ground," the latter commanded.
"Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take
ten paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and
belt of cartridges.
"Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered,
leaning casually against his horse, one hand resting on the butt of
his revolver.
He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when
the latter had built a little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch
bark.
When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your
coat and dry it; stand close to the fire so your pants dry too--I
want that suit."
The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on
his trail? Was Carney about to set him afoot just as he had set
afoot Sergeant Heath? His two hundred dollars and Lucy Black's
five hundred were in the pocket of that coat also. As he took it
off he turned it upside down, hoping for a chance to slip the
parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his captor.
"Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded;
"seems to be papers in the pocket."
When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat
down on a fallen tree, took from it two packets--one of papers, and
another wrapped in strong paper. He opened the papers,
reading them with one eye while with the other he watched the
man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say, you're some
liar--even for a government hound; your name's not Phillips,
it's Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at
Golden. You're the bounder who came down from the Klondike to
gather Bulldog Carney in; you shot off your mouth all along
the line that you were going to take him singlehanded. You
bet a man in Edmonton a hundred you'd tie him hoof and horn.
Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you first, see? Turn
you over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds; that's
just what I'm going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break
you for the sake of that little girl at Golden, for she was my
friend and I'm Bulldog Carney. Soon as that suit is dried a
bit you'll strip and pass it over; then you'll get into my
togs and I'm going to turn you over to the police as Bulldog
Carney. D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll
break you, won't it, Mister Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the
Force a joke; you'll never live it down if you live to be a
thousand--you've boasted too much."
The Wolf had remained silent--waiting. He had an
advantage if his captor did not know him. Now he was frightened;
to be turned in at Edmonton by Carney was as bad as being taken by
Sergeant Heath.
"You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he
objected; "the minute I tell them who I am and who you are
they'll grab you too quick. They'll know me; perhaps some of
them'll know you."
A sneering "Ha!" came from between the
thin lips of the man on the log. "Not where we're going they
won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over on the rail"--and
he jerked his thumb toward the west--"where there's two
policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen
either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months
since you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog
Carney is wanted at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to
the man that brings him in."
At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light--a
flood of it. If this thing went through, and he was sent on to
Calgary as Bulldog Carney, he would be turned loose at once as not
being the man. The police at Calgary had cause to know just
what Carney looked like for he had been in their clutches and
escaped.
But Jack must bluff--appear to be the angry
Sergeant. So he said: "They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll
get hell for this."
Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give
a damn if they do. Can't you get it through your wooden police
head that I just want this little pleasantry driven home so that
you're the goat of that nanny band, the Mounted Police; then
you'll send in your papers and go back to the farm?"
As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet.
Now he gave a crisp "Hello! what have we here?" as a
sheaf of bills appeared.
The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to
leave him for five seconds. One hand rested in his trousers
pocket. He drew it out and dropped a knife, treading it into the
sand and ashes.
"Seven hundred," Bulldog continued.
"Rather a tidy sum for a policeman to be toting. Is this
police money?"
The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation.
Jack wanted that money but a slip might ruin his escape. If
Bulldog suspected that Jack was not a policeman he would jump
to the conclusion that he had killed the owner of the horse
and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman
on duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if
Jack claimed it all Carney would say he lied and keep it as
Government money.
"Five hundred is Government money I was
bringin' in from a post, and two hundred is my own," he
answered.
"I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog
said crisply; "the Government robbed me of my ranch--said I
had no title. And I'll keep yours, too; it's coming to you."
"If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get
away with this dirty trick, what you say'll make good--I'll have to
quit the Force; an' I want to get home down east. Give me a
chance; let me have my own two hundred."
"I think you're lying--a man in the Force
doesn't get two hundred ahead, not honest. But I'll toss you
whether I give you one hundred or two," Carney said, taking a
half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he spun it in
the air.
"Heads!" the Wolf cried.
The coin fell tails up. "Here's your
hundred," and Bulldog passed the bills to their owner.
"I see here," he continued, "your
order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well, you've made good, haven't
you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you missed him, didn't
you? Where's he--what's he done lately? He played me a dirty
trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I
never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the
Wolf I'd give you this six hundred. He's the real hound that
I've got a low down grudge against. What's his
description--what does he look like?"
"He's a tall slim chap--looks like a breed,
'cause he's got nigger blood in him," the Wolf lied.
"I'll get him some day," Carney said;
"and now them duds are about cooked--peel!"
The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.
"Now step back fifteen paces while I make my
toilet," Carney commanded, toying with his 6-gun in the way of
emphasis.
In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant
Heath of the N.W.M.P., revolver belt and all. He threw his own
clothes to the Wolf, and lighted his pipe.
When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved
your life, so I don't want you to make me throw it away again. I
don't want a muss when I turn you over to the police in the
morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen to you if you put
up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath--they'd laugh at you, but
if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and you'd
sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet--see? I'm going to
stay close to you till you're on that train."
Of course that was just what the Wolf wanted; to go
down the line as Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would
be like a passport for Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to
him--the policeman would see to that.
"You're dead set on putting this crazy thing
through, are you?" he asked.
"You bet I am--I'd rather work this racket than
go to my own wedding."
"Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to
shoot keeps me mum, I'll just tell you that if you get that far
with it I ain't going to give myself away. You've called the turn,
Carney; I'd be a joke even if I only got as far as the first
barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog Carney I won't
come out as Sergeant Heath--I'll disappear as Mister Somebody.
I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what
happened toSergeant
Heath from me--I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever stack up
against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was
pure bluff--for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the
other's ready compliance.
Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering:
"I've heard women talk like that in the dance halls. You cook
some bacon and tea at that fire--then we'll pull out."
As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers
into a blaze he found a chance to slip the knife he had buried into
his pocket.
When they had eaten they took the trail, heading
south to pass the lower end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the
buckskin, and the Wolf strode along in front, his mind
possessed of elation at the prospect of being helped out of
the country, and depression over the loss of his money.
Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater
enormity than that of the school teacher's five hundred. That
money had been easily come by, but he had toiled a month for
the hundred. What right had Carney to steal his labor--to rob
a workman. As they plugged along mile after mile, a fierce
determination to get the money back took possession of Jack.
If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix
Bulldog some way so that the latter would not stop him. He
must have the clothes, too. The khaki suit obsessed him; it
was a red flag to his hot mind.
They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when
they started for another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope
tightly about the Wolf's waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut
out in these gloomy hills I'd be peeved. Just keep that line
taut in front of the buckskin and there won't be no argument."
In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll
camp by this bit of water, and hit the trail in the early morning.
We ain't more than ten miles from steel, and we'll make some
place before train time."
Carney had both the police picket line and his own.
He drove a picket in the ground, looped the line that was about
the Wolf's waist over it, and said.
"I don't want to be suspicious of a mate
jumping me in the dark, so I'll sleep across this line and you'll
keep to the other end of it; if you so much as wink at it I guess
I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and sleep light. We'll build
a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it same's we were
neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."
Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious
look in Jack's eyes. It was as clearly a murder look as he had
ever seen; and more than once he had faced eyes that thirsted for
his life. He wondered at the psychology of it; it was not
like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what he had been told
of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering chap
who had had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm.
He determined to take a few extra precautions, for he did not
wish to lie awake.
"We'll turn in," he said when they had
eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a shy cayuse, for fear you'd
walk in your sleep, Sergeant."
He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists
behind his back, saying, as he knotted the rope, "What the
devil did you do with your handcuffs--thought you johnnies always
had a pair in your pocket?"
"They were in the saddle holster and went down
with my horse," the Wolf lied.
Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with
exquisite precision. When it told him there was nothing to
fear, that his precautions had made all things safe, his mind
rested, untortured by jerky nerves; so in five minutes he
slept.
The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake,
waiting to carry out the something that had been in his mind. Six
hundred dollars was a stake to play for; also clad once again
in the police suit, with the buckskin to carry him to the
railroad, he could get away; money was always a good thing to
bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the
pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had
changed clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in
front of the buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the
cool-nerved man that would sleep--not lie awake through fear
over nothing.
In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew
from the half-dried grass a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the
sleeper; he changed the steady rhythm of his breathing; he
even drew a heavy-sighing breath; had he been lying awake
watching the Wolf he would have stilled his breathing to
listen.
The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the
sleeper told that he had lapsed again into the deeper sleep.
Slowly, silently the Wolf worked his hands to the side pocket, drew
out the knife and cut the cords that bound his wrists. It
took time, for he worked with caution. Then he waited. The
buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the
flowered carpet from his nostrils.
Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin
blew through his nostrils again, ending with a luxurious sigh of
content; then was heard the clip-clip of his strong teeth
scything the grass. Carney, recognizing what had waked him,
turned over and slept again.
Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet
slowly, silently, sawed through the rope on his ankles. Then with
spread fingers he searched the grass for a stone the size of
a goose egg, beside which he had purposely lain down. When
his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief that had
been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his
neck, and in one corner tied the stone, fastening the other
end about his wrist. Now he had a slung shot that with one
blow would render the other man helpless.
Then he commenced his crawl.
A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed
listlessly up the eastern sky changing the sombre prairie into a
vast spirit land, draping With ghostly garments bush and shrub.
Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind
from where he and the Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of
this action, but Carney knew the sensitive wariness of his
horse, the scent of the stranger in his nostrils would keep
him restless, and any unusual move on the part of the prisoner
would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended to
drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had
trailed it back and worked it into the loose soil at his very
feet. This was more a move of habitual care than a belief
that the bound man could work his way, creeping and rolling,
to the picket-pin, pull it, and get away with the horse.
At the Wolf's first move the buckskin threw up his
head, and, with ears cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred
shadow. Perhaps it was the scent of his master's clothes
which the Wolf wore that agitated his mind, that cast him to
wondering whether his master was moving about; or, perhaps as
animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious man he
distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light,
his prairie dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf
that had crept into camp. He took a step forward; then
another, shaking his head irritably. A vibration trembled
along the picket line that now lay across Carney's foot and he
stirred restlessly.
The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored.
Five minutes he waited, cursing softly the restless horse. Then
again he moved, so slowly that even the watchful animal scarce
detected it.
He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing
of his slung shot, or the silent approach. The former meant
inevitably the death of one or the other--the crushed skull of
Carney, or, if the latter were by any chance awake, a bullet
through the Wolf. He could feel his heart pounding against
the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten feet,
and he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and
snatch it from the holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.
The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more
inquisitive. Sometimes he took an impatient snap at the grass
with his teeth; but only to throw his head up again, take a
step forward, shake his head, and exhale a whistling breath.
Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet
forward. Another yard and he could reach the pistol; and there was
no sign that Carney had wakened--just the steady breathing of a
sleeping man.
The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for
the buckskin seemingly had quieted; he was standing, his head low
hung, as if he slept on his feet. Carney's face was toward
the creeping man and was in shadow. Another yard and now
slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested
like a sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept
forward toward the pistol stock that was within reach; the
stone-laden handkerchief was twisted about the two first
fingers of his right.
Yes, Carney slept.
As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt
the wrist was seized in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost
face to earth, and the butt of Carney's own gun, in the
latter's right hand, clipped him over the eye and he slipped
into dreamland. When he came to workmen were riveting a
boiler in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was
boring a hole in his forehead; he had been asleep for ages and
had wakened in a strange land. He sat up groggily and stared
vacantly at a man who sat beside a camp fire smoking a pipe.
Over the camp fire a copper kettle hung and a scent of
broiling bacon came to his nostrils. The man beside the fire
took the pipe from his mouth and said: "I hoped I had cracked
your skull, you swine. Where did you pick up that thug trick
of a stone in the handkerchief? As you are troubled with
insomnia we'll hit the trail again."
With the picket line around his waist once more Jack
trudged ahead of the buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy
cavalcade cutting a strange, weird figure as though a boat
were being towed across sleeping waters.
The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost
cracked his skull, was wobbly on his legs--his feet were heavy as
though he wore a diver's leaden boots. As he waded through a patch
of wild rose the briars clung to his legs, and, half dazed he
cried out, thinking he struggled in the shifting sands.
"Shut up!" The words clipped from the
thin lips of the rider behind.
They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man
went half to his knees in the morass. A few lurching steps and
overstrained nature broke; he collapsed like a jointed doll--he
toppled head first into the mire and lay there.
The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous
going, and the bag of a man was skidded to firm ground by the
picket line, where he sat wiping the mud from his face, and looking
very all in.
Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his
captive. "You're soft, my bucko--I knew Sergeant Heath had a
yellow streak," he sneered; "boasters generally have. I
guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way of hobbling a bad man
that'll hold you this time, I fancy."
He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered
the buckskin, and ten feet away he drove the other picket pin. He
made the Wolf lie on his side and fastened him by a wrist to
each peg so that one arm was behind and one in front.
Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man:
"You'll find some trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you
can't get your hands together and you can't get your teeth at
either rope. Now I will have a sleep."
The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even
untethered he probably would have slept like a log; and Carney was
tired; he, too, slumbered, the soft stealing gray of the early
morning not bringing him back out of the valley of rest till
a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass touched
his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.
He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot
of tea. Then he saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf,
saying: "We'll eat a bite and pull out."
The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he
plodded on in front of the buckskin feeling that though his money
was gone his chances of escape were good.
At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks
leaning groggily against a sloping hill came into view; it was
Hobbema; and, swinging a little to the left, in an hour they
were close to the Post.
Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting
the town he drew up in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window
at the end proclaiming it was the Barracks. He slipped from
the saddle, dropped the rein over his horse's head, and said
quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it, and step
inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.
He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in
the open door as the latter entered. He had expected to see
perhaps one, not more than two constables, but at a little square
table three men in khaki sat eating breakfast.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said
cheerily; "I've brought you a prisoner, Bulldog Carney."
The one who sat at table with his back to the door
turned his head at this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into
the prisoner's face and laughed.
"Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the
Wolf.
The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's.
"Where's my uniform--where's my horse? I've got you now--set
me afoot to starve, would you, you damn thief--you murderer!
Where's the five hundred dollars you stole from the little
teacher at Fort Victor?"
He was trembling with passion; words flew from his
lips like bullets from a gatling--it was a torrent.
But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's
quick mind flashed the truth--the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The
game was up. Still it was amusing. What a devilish droll
blunder he had made. His hands crept quietly to his two guns,
the police gun in the belt and his own beneath the khaki coat.
Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood
surged hot at the thought that Carney's meddling had trapped him.
He was caught, but the author of his evil luck should not escape.
"That's Bulldog Carney!" he cried
fiercely; "don't let him get away."
Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to
their feet.
A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that
reaches for a gun drops." They were covered by two guns held
in the steady hands of the man whose small gray eyes watched from
out narrowed lids.
"I'll make you a present of the Wolf,"
Carney said quietly; "I thought I had Sergeant Heath. I could
almost forgive this man, if he weren't such a skunk, for doing the
job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by one, into the
pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led from
the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as
a cell. "I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack--you
really should have been properly in uniform by this time; I'll
dump them out on the prairie somewhere, and you'll find them
in the course of a day or so. Step in, boys, and you go
first, Wolf."
When the four men had passed through the door Carney
dropped the heavy wooden bar into place, turned the key in the
padlock, gathered up the fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and
rode into the west.
A week later the little school teacher at Fort
Victor received through the mail a packet that contained five
hundred dollars, and this note:--
DEAR MISS BLACK:--
I am sending you the five hundred dollars that
you bet
on a bad man. No woman can afford to bet on even a good
man. Stick to the kids, for I've heard they love you.
If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant Heath and got
him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I
wouldn't have known, and you'd have lost out.
Yours delightedly,
BULLDOG CARNEY.
|