BULLDOG CARNEY
(1919)
by W.A. Fraser (1857 - 1933)
Chapter IV. The Gold Wolf
BACK to Bulldog Carney Menu
ALL day long
Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was
soft, the odd imprint of that goblined inturned
hoof. All day in the saddle, riding a trail that
winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and
cliffs monotonously similar, the hush of the
everlasting hills holding in subjection man's
soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks
thrusting up towards God's dome pigmying to
nothingness that rat, a man, produces a comatose
condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable
of little beyond the recognition of trivial
things; the erratic swoop of a bird, the sudden
roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind
through the harp of a giant pine.
And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy
had toyed aimlessly with the history of the cayuse
that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always
where the hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of
a miner's boot, the hob nails denting the black
earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of
the miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was
the abnormal hoof that, by a strange perversity,
haunted Carney.
The man was probably a placer miner
coming down out of the Eagle Hills, leading a pack
pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small
fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was
heading for steel, for the town of Bucking Horse.
Toward evening, as Carney rode down
a winding trail that led to the ford of Singing
Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge
cave yawned in the side of a cliff away to his
left. Something of life had melted into its dark
shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it
might have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in
the valley that was called the Valley of the
Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a
snort of fear left the trail and elliptically came
back to it twenty yards beyond.
In the centre of the ellipse, on
the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge dog-wolf. He
was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled
back from strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful
head low hung, and the black bristles on his back
erect in challenge.
The whole thing was weird, uncanny;
a single wolf to stand his ground in daylight was
unusual.
Instinctively Bulldog reined in the
buckskin, and half turning in the saddle, with
something of a shudder, searched the ground at the
wolf's feet dreading to find something. But there
was nothing.
The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist
of his head, sprang into the bushes just as Carney
dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen
the movement.
Carney had meant to camp just
beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the usually
placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.
A haunting something was in the
air; Carney, himself, felt it. The sudden
apparition of the wolf could not account for this
mental unrest, either in man or beast, for they
were both inured to the trail, and a wolf meant
little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot
would drive away.
High above the rider towered Old
Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered feudal
castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and
bastion catching vagrant shafts of gold and green,
as, beyond, in the far west, a flaming sun slid
down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the
twisted valley a chill had struck the air,
suggesting vaults, dungeons; the giant ferns hung
heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with the
death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes
studded with myriad berries that gleamed like
topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling,
frothing stream that still held the green tint of
its glacier birth.
Many times in his opium running
Carney had swung along this wild trail almost
unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far
afield; now back to the old days of club life; to
the years of army routine; to the bright and happy
scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men
laughed and bantered with him. At times it was the
newer rough life of the West; the ever-present
warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he
had won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a
losing hazard where the dice might turn
groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and
the thrower take a fall.
But to-night, as he rode, something
of depression, of a narrow environment, of an evil
one, was astride the withers of his horse; the
mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The
buckskin, too, swung his heavy lop ears irritably
back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes one ear
was pricked forward as though its owner searched
the beyond, the now glooming valley that, at a
little distance, was but a blur, the other ear
held backward as though it would drink in the
sounds of pursuit.
Pursuit! that was the very thing;
instinctively the rider turned in his saddle, one
hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes
on the back trail, searching for the embodiment of
this phantasy. The unrest had developed that far
into conception, something evil hovered on his
trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the
swaying kaleidoscope of tumbling forest shadows;
rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms;
bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a
grizzly.
The buckskin had quickened his pace
as if, tired though he was, he would go on beyond
that valley of fear before they camped.
Where the trail skirted the brink
of a cliff that had a drop of fifty feet, Carney
felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner
wall; and, when they had rounded the point, the
buckskin, with a snort of relief, clamped the
snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.
"I wonder by Jove!" and
Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand, slipped
from his back, and searched the black-loamed
trail.
"I believe you're right, Pat," he
said, addressing the buckskin; "something happened
back there."
He walked for a dozen paces ahead
of the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He
stopped and rubbed his chin, thinking
thinking aloud.
"There are tracks, Patsy boy
moccasins; but we've lost our gunboat-footed
friend. What do you make of that, Patsy
gone over the cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are
here; he's travelled up and down. By gad! two of
them!"
Then, in silence, Carney moved
along the way, searching and pondering; cast into
a curious, superstitious mood that he could not
shake off. The inturned hoof-print had vanished,
so the owner of the big feet that carried
hob-nailed boots did not ride.
Each time that Carney stopped to
bend down in study of the trail the buckskin
pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and
rattled the snaffle against his bridle teeth.
At last Carney stroked the animal's
head reassuringly, saying: "You're quite right,
pal it's none of our business. Besides,
we're a pair of old grannies imagining things."
But as he lifted to the saddle,
Bulldog, like the horse, felt a compelling
inclination to go beyond the Valley of the
Grizzley's Bridge to camp for the night.
Even as they climbed to a higher
level of flat land, from back on the trail that
was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl
of a wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated
the answering call of the dog-wolf's mate a
whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.
"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed
softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by with a gun
and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."
As if some genii of the hills had
taken up and sent on silent waves his challenge,
there came filtering through the pines and birch a
snarling yelp.
"By gad!" and Carney cocked his
ear, pulling the horse to a stand.
Then in the heavy silence of the
wooded hills he pushed on again muttering,
"There's something wrong about that wolf howl
it's different."
Where a big pine had showered the
earth with cones till the covering was soft, and
deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed
mattress of velvet, he hesitated; but the
buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning, pleaded
with little impatient steps and shakes of the head
that they push on.
Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go
on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good dope for a
sleep."
So it was ten o'clock when the two
travellers, Carney and Pat, camped in an open,
where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the
earth in reassuring light. Here the buckskin had
come to a halt, filled his lungs with the perfumed
air in deep draughts, and turning his head half
round had waited for his partner to dismount.
It was curious this man of steel
nerve and flawless courage feeling at all the
guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable
disquietude. He did not even build a fire; but
choosing a place where the grass was rich he
spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.
Bulldog's life had provided him
with different sleeping moods; it was a curious
subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he
slipped away from the land of knowing. Sometimes
he could sleep like a tired laborer, heavily,
unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other
times, when deep sleep might cost him his life,
his senses hovered so close to consciousness that
a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call
him to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket,
sometimes over the border of spirit land, and
sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the
crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no
movement but the lifting of his eyelids. He had
heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching
the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a
full consciousness that there was something
not close, but hovering there beyond.
The buckskin also knew. He had been
lying down, but with a snort of discontent his
forequarters went up and he canted to his feet
with a spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the
wolves.
But after a little Carney knew it
was not the wolves; they, cunning devils, would
have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin,
with his delicate scent, would have swung his head
the full circle of the compass; but he stood
facing down the back trail; the thing was there,
watching.
After that Carney slept again,
lighter if possible, thankful that he had yielded
to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.
Half a dozen times there was this
gentle transition from the sleep that was hardly a
sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the
paling sky told that night was slipping off to the
western ranges, and that beyond the Rockies, to
the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the
plains.
The horse was again feeding; and
Carney, shaking oh the lethargy of his broken
sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and,
building a little fire, made a pot of tea;
confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he
considered himself no end of a superstitious ass
to have bothered over a nothing.
Not far from where Carney had
camped the trail he followed turned to the left to
sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a
time, the trail running from Fort Steel west
toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping the Rockies,
had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and
now Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of
the day before.
There was a feeling of relief with
this discovery. There had been a morbid disquiet
in his mind; a mental conviction that something
had happened that intoed cayuse and his
huge-footed owner. Now all the weird fancies of
the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where
the trail was earthed, holding clear impressions,
he dismounted, and walked ahead of the buckskin,
reading the lettered clay. Here and there was
imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the
impression of boots; but they were not the huge
imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that a
man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and
the cayuse had not an inturned left forefoot; also
the toe wall of one hind foot was badly broken.
His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with
the short step of a pack pony.
The indefinable depression took
possession of Bulldog again; he tried to shake it
off it was childish. The huge-footed one
perhaps was a prospector, and had wandered up into
some one of the gulches looking for gold. That was
objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.
Then presently Carney discovered
the confusing element of the same cayuse tracks
heading the other way, as if the man on horseback
had travelled both up and down the trail.
Where the Bucking Horse trail left
the Kootenay trail after circling the mountain,
Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward
Kootenay. And there were a myriad of tracks; many
mounted men had swung from the Bucking Horse trail
to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned,
for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse
lay on top.
This also was strange; men did not
ride out from the sleepy old town in a troop
like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the
explanation of the West those mounted men
had ridden after some body had trailed
somebody who was wanted quick. This crescendo to
his associated train of thought obliterated
mentally the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge
hob-nailed boot, the something at the cliff, the
hovering oppression of the night
everything.
Carney closed his mind to the
torturing riddle and rode, sometimes humming an
Irish ballad of Mangin's.
It was late afternoon when he rode
into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse was in a
ferment.
Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget,
was the cauldron in which the waters of unrest
seethed.
A lynching was in a state of almost
completion, with Jeanette Holt's brother, Harry,
elected to play the leading part of the lynched.
Through the deference paid to his well-known
activity when hostile events were afoot, Carney
was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of
ugly-tempered men.
Jeanette's brother may be said to
have suffered from a preponderance of opinion
against him, for only Jeanette, and with less
energy, Seth Long, were on his side. All Bucking
Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for stringing him
up tout de suite. The times were propitious
for this entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the
Mounted Police, was over at Fort Steel, or
somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the
keeping of the mob.
Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on
the side of law and order. That is what he meant
when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar,
one hand on his hip, chummily close to the butt of
his six-gun, he said:
"This town had got a pretty good
name, as towns go in the mountains, and my idea of
a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that
he's a pretty poor sport."
"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim
snapped.
"He's a poor sport," Carney
drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one the
best of it first, last, and always; he
isn't in any danger when he starts, because it's a
hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally,
isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his
mates will perjure themselves to save their own
necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and they
were generally egged on by men who were yellow."
Carney's gray eyes looked out over
the room full of angry men with a quiet thoughtful
steadiness that forced home the conviction that he
was wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other
man in that room could have stood up against that
plank bar and declared himself without being
called quick.
"You hear fust what this rat done,
Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've got to say,"
Kootenay growled.
"That's well spoken, Kootenay,"
Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the trail, and
perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but
first, being fresh in off the trail, there's a
little custom to be observed."
With a sweep of his hand Carney
waved a salute to a line of bottles behind the
bar.
Jeanette, standing in the open door
that led from the bar to the dining-room, gripping
the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt
hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool,
this brave Bulldog that she loved so well. She had
had no chance to plead with him for help. He had
just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the
words had been hurled at him from a dozen mouths
that her brother Harry Harry the waster,
the no-good, the gambler had been found to
be the man who had murdered returning miners on
the trail for their gold, and that they were going
to string him up.
And now there he stood, her god of
a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her side, calm,
and brave. It was the first glint of hope since
they had brought her brother in, bound to the back
of a cayuse. She had pushed her way amongst the
men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded
and begged for delay, but the evidence was so
overwhelming; absolutely hopeless it had appeared.
But now something whispered "Hope".
It was curious the quieting effect
that single drink at the bar had; the magnetism of
Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them
reasonable. Ordinarily they were reasonable men.
Bulldog knew this, and he played the card of
reason.
For the two or three gun men
Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver Ike
Carney had his own terrible personality and
his six-gun; he could deal with those three toughs
if necessary.
"Now tell me, boys, what started
this hellery," Carney asked when they had drunk.
The story was fired at him; if a
voice hesitated, another took up the narrative.
Miners returning from the gold
field up in the Eagle Hills had mysteriously
disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A
man would have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody
drifting in from the same place later on, would
ask for him at Bucking Horse nobody had
seen him.
Then one after another two
skeletons had been found on the trail; the bodies
had been devoured
by wolves.
"And wolves don't eat gold
not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck,"
Kootenay Jim yelped.
"Men wolves do," Carney thrust
back, and his gray eyes said plainly, "That's your
food, Jim."
"Meanin' what by that, pard?"
Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a threat.
"Just what the words convey
you sort them out, Kootenay."
But Miner Graham interposed. "We
got kinder leery about this wolf game, Carney,
'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men
packin' in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills;
and four days ago Caribou Dave here he is
sittin' right here he arrives packin'
Fourteen-foot Johnson that is, all that's
left of Fourteen-foot."
"Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave
interrupted, a quaver in his voice, "and he leaves
the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big
clean-up of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to
mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse till I creeps-in afoot,
then we was goin' out. We been together a good
many years, ol' Fourteen foot and me."
Something seemed to break in
Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave finds his
mate at the foot of a cliff."
Carney started; and instinctively
Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun, thinking
something was going to happen.
"I dunno just what makes me look
there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog," Caribou Dave
explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein'
the marks of 'em damn big feet of hisn, and they
looked good to me I guess I was gettin'
kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out
and paw 'em tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin'
hands. We been together a good many years, buckin'
the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin'
a bit of fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I
sees a kinder scrimmage like, as if his old
tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind
staggers, or somethin'; there was a lot of tracks.
But I give up thinkin' it out, 'cause I knowed if
the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited any,
Fourteen-foot'd pick him and his load up and carry
him. Then I see some wolf tracks clang near
as big as a steer's they was and I figger
Fourteen-foot's had a set-to with a couple of 'em
timber coyotes and lammed hell's delight out of
'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm
follerin' the cayuse's trail agen, pickin' it up
here and there, and all at onct it jumps me that
the big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger
Johnson's got mussed up a bit with the wolves and
is ridin'; but there's the clang wolf tracks agent
And some moccasin feet has been passierin' along,
too. Then the hoss tracks cuts out just same's if
he'd spread his wings and gone up in the air
they just ain't."
"Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes
back and peeks over the cliff," Miner Graham
added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite
viciously at a black plug of tobacco to hide his
feelings.
"I dunno what made me do it,"
Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's
Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can
make me believe that if two men paddles together
twenty years, had their little fights, and
show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is
going to cut clean out just 'cause he goes over
the Big Divide 'tain't natural. I tell you,
boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me that's
what he is, when I goes back."
Then Graham had to take up the
narrative, for Caribou, heading straight for the
bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.
"Yes, Carney," Graham said,
"Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his back what
was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no
gold and no sign of the cayuse. Then we swarms
out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse tracks most
partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the
trail for Kootenay. And when we overhaul the
cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks it's
Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry
Holt."
"And he's got the gold you was
talkie' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog," Kootenay
Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here
busted, cleaned to the bone, and there he's
a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse, with lots of
gold."
"That's the whole case then, is it,
boys?" Carney asked quietly.
"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim
snarled.
"No, it isn't. You were tried for
murder once yourself, Kootenay, and you got off,
though everybody knew it was the dead man's money
in your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you
kill the man, and the circumstantial evidence gave
you the benefit of the doubt."
"I ain't bein' tried for this,
Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores might get you
in wrong."
"You're not being tried, Kootenay,
but another man is, and I say he's got to have a
fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me
hear his story; that's only fair, men amongst men.
Because I give you fair warning, boys, if this
lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm
going to denounce you; not one of you will get
away not one!"
"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham
said; "what you say is only fair, but swing he
will."
Jeanette's brother had been locked
in the pen in the log police barracks. He was
brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was
what might be called powerfully weak. It was
simply a statement that he had bought the cayuse
from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse.
He refused to say where he had got the gold,
simply declaring that he had killed nobody, had
never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing
about the murder.
Something in the earnestness of the
man convinced Carney that he was innocent.
However, that was, so far as Carney's action was
concerned, a minor matter; it was Jeanette's
brother, and he was going to save him from being
lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men
there was no doubt about that in his mind.
"I can't say, boys," Carney began,
"that you can be blamed for thinking you've got
the right man."
"That's what we figgered," Graham
declared.
"But you've not gone far enough in
sifting the evidence if you sure don't want to
lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have
is that you caught Harry on Johnson's cayuse. How
do you know it's Johnsons cayuse?"
"Caribou says it is," Graham
answered.
"And Harry says it was an Indian's
cayuse," Carney affirmed.
"He most natural just ordinar'ly
lies about it," Kootenay ventured viciously.
"Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked. "There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou an
"Out in the stable," two or three
voices answered.
"I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm
working for you as much as for that poor devil you
want to string up, because if you get the wrong
man I'm going to denounce you, that's as sure as
God made little apples."
His quiet earnestness was
compelling. All the fierce heat of passion had
gone from the men; there still remained the grim
determination that, convinced they were right,
nothing but the death of some of them would check.
But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction
would swing even Carney to their side.
So, without even a word from a
leader, they all thronged out to the stable yard;
the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's
request, led up and down the yard, his hoofs
leaving an imprint in the bare clay at every step.
It was the footprints alone that interested
Carney. He studied them intently, a horrible dread
in his heart as he searched for that goblined hoof
that inturned. But the two forefeet left
saucer-like imprints, that, though they were both
slightly intoed, as is the way of a cayuse,
neither was like the curious goblined track that
had so fastened on his fancy out in the Valley of
the Grizzley's Bridge.
And also there was the broken toe
wall of the hind foot that he had seen on the
newer trail.
He turned to Caribou Dave, asking,
"What makes you think this is Johnson's pack
horse?"
"There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it,"
Caribou answered with asperity. "When I see my
boots I don't think they're mine, I just
most natur'ly figger they are and pull em on. I'd
know that dun-colored rat if I see him in a wild
herd."
"And yet," Carney objected in an
even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that Johnson
toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."
A cackle issued from Kootenay
Jim's long, scraggy neck:
"That settles it, boys; Bulldog
passes the buck and the game's over. Caribou is
just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."
"Caribou is perfectly honest in
his belief," Carney declared. "There isn't more
than half a dozen colors for horses, and there
are a good many thousand horses in this
territory, so a great many of them are the same
color. And the general structure of different
cayuses is as similar as so many wheel-barrows.
That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new
moon, or a flapjack."
He turned to Caribou: "What brand
had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"
"I don't know," the old chap
answered surlily, "but it was there same place
it's restin' now it ain't shifted none
since you fingered it."
"That won't do, boys," Carney
said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's brand,
how can he swear to the beast?"
"And if Fourteen-foot'd come back
and stand up here and swear it was his hawse,
that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And
Kootenay cackled.
"Johnson wouldn't say so
he'd know better. His cayuse had a club foot, an
inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and
there, for miles back on the trail, sometimes
fair on top of Johnson's big boot track, and
sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled
behind."
The men stared; and Graham asked:
"What do you say to that, Caribou? Did you ever
map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse what his
travellers was like?"
"I never looked at his feet
there wasn't no reason to; I was minin'."
"There's another little test we
can make," Carney suggested. "Have you got any of
Johnson's belongings a coat?"
"We got his coat," Graham
answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the
wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent
in a suit of store clothes."
At Carney's request the coat was
brought, a rough Mackinaw, and from one of the
men present he got a miner's magnifying glass,
saying, as he examined the coat:
"This ought, naturally, to be
pretty well filled with hairs from that cayuse of
Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike,
there's generally a difference in the hair."
Carney's surmise proved correct;
dozens of short hairs were imbedded in the coat,
principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked
from many different parts of the cayuse's body,
and the two lots were viewed through the glass.
They were different. The hair on the cayuse
standing in the yard was coarser, redder, longer,
for its Indian owner had let it run like a wild
goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse
considerable attention. There were also some white
hairs in the coat warp, and on this cayuse there
was not a single white hair to be seen.
When questioned Caribou would not
emphatically declare that there had not been a
star or a white stripe in the forehead of
Johnson's horse.
These things caused one or two of
the men to waver, for if it were not Johnson's
cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no
direct evidence to connect Harry Holt with the
murder.
Kootenay Jim objected that the
examination of the hair was nothing; that Carney,
like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the
murderer off on a technicality. As to the club
foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas Caribou
had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.
"We can prove that part of it,"
Graham said; "we can go back on the trail and see
what Bulldog seen."
Half a dozen men approved this,
saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and go back."
But Carney objected.
When he did so Kootenay Jim and
John from Slocan raised a howl of derision,
Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he
throws his hand in the discard. There ain't no
club foot anywheres; it's just a game to gain time
to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a
get-away. We're bein' buffaloed we're
wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered
man's hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and
Bulldog Carney puts some hawse hairs under a
glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost
tracks back on the trail, and reaches out to grab
the pot. Hell! you'd think we was a damn lot of
tenderfeet."
This harangue had an effect on the
angry men, but seemingly none whatever upon
Bulldog, for he said quietly:
"I don't want a troop of men to go
back on the trail just now, because I'm going out
myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him
alone, for if he does see me he won't think that
I'm after him, simply that I'm trailing. But if a
party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever
devil, and will make his get-away. All I want on
this evidence is that you hold Holt till I get
back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse with a
club foot, for there's no doubt the murderer made
sure that the wolves got him too."
They had worked back into the hotel
by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim and his two
cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky,
whispering together as they drank.
As Carney and Graham entered,
Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:
"We're bein' flim-flammed
played for a lot of kids. There ain't been a damn
thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a
glass. Men has been murdered on the trail, and who
done it somebody. Caribou's mate was
murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was
stony broke here, was bummin' on the town,
spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits. And
'cause his sister stands well with Bulldog he
palms this three-card trick with hawse hairs, and
we got to let the murderer go."
"You lie, Kootenay!" The words had
come from Jeanette. "My brother wouldn't tell you
where he got the gold he'd let you hang him
first; but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's
safe and gave it to him to get out of the country,
because I knew that you and those two other
hounds, Slocan and Denver, would murder him some
night because he knocked you down for insulting
me."
"That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed;
"you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates and you've put
this up."
There was a cry of warning from
Slocan, and Kootenay whirled, drawing his gun. As
he did so him arm dropped and his gun clattered to
the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its
butt, incidentally clipping away a finger. And the
same weapon in Carney's hand was covering Slocan
and Denver as they stood side by side, their backs
to the bar.
No one spoke; almost absolute
stillness hung in the air for five seconds. Half
the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a
trigger no one spoke.
It was Carney who broke the
silence:
"Jeanette, bind that hound's hand
up; and you, Seth, send for the doctor I
guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."
A wave of relief swept over the
room; men coughed or spat as the tension slipped,
dropping their guns back into holsters.
Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged
hand, holding it in his left, followed Jeanette
out of the room.
As the girl disappeared Harry Holt,
who had stood between the two men, his wrists
bound behind his back, said:
"My sister told a lie to shield me.
I stole the gold myself from Seth's safe. I wanted
to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got
to kill Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I
didn't tell before where the gold come from."
"Here, Seth," Carney called as Long
came back into the room, "you missed any gold
what do you know about Holt's story that he
got the gold from your safe?"
"I ain't looked I don't keep
no close track of what's in that iron box; I jus'
keep the key, and a couple of bags might get
lifted and I wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag
or two to stake her brother, I guess she's got a
right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."
"I took the key when Seth was
sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette didn't know I
was going to take it."
"But your sister claims she took
it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a frame-up?"
Graham asked.
"I told her just as I was pullin'
out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in wrong by
blamin' her or somebody else."
"Don't you see, boys," Carney
interposed, "if you'd swung off this man, and all
this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong?
You didn't find on Harry a tenth of the gold
Fourteen-foot likely had."
"That skunk hid it," Caribou
declared; "he just kept enough to get out with."
Poor old Caribou was thirsting for
revenge; in his narrowed hate he would have been
satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect
stranger off a passing train and lynched him; it
would have been a quid pro quo. He felt
that he was being cheated by the superior
cleverness of Bulldog Carney. He had seen miners
beaten out of their just gold claims by
professional sharks; the fine reasoning, the
microscopic evidence of the hairs, the intoed
hoof, all these things were beyond him. He was
honest in his conviction that the cayuse was
Johnson's, and feared that the man who had killed
his friend would slip through their fingers.
"It's just like this, boys," he
said, "me and Fourteen-foot was together so long
that if he was away somewhere I'd know he was
comin' back a day afore he hit camp I'd
feel it, same's I turned back on the trail there
and found him all chawed up by the wolves. There
wasn't no reason to look over that cliff only ol'
Fourteen-foot a-callin' me. And now he's
a-tellin' me inside that that skunk there
murdered him when he wasn't lookin'. And if you
chaps ain't got the sand to push this to a finish
I'll get the man that killed Fourteen-foot; he
won't never get away. If you boys is just a pack
of coyotes that howls good and plenty till
somebody calls 'em, and is goin' to slink away
with your tails between your legs for fear you'll
be rounded up for the lynchin', you can turn this
murderer loose right now you don't need to
worry what'll happen to him. I'll be too danged
lonesome without Fourteen-foot to figger what's
comin' to me. Turn him loose take the
hobbles off him. You fellers go home and pull
your blankets over your heads so's you won't see
no ghosts."
Carney's sharp gray eyes watched
the old fanatic's every move; he let him talk
till he had exhausted himself with his passionate
words; then he said:
"Caribou, you're some man. You'd
go through a whole tribe of Indians for a chum.
You believe you're right, and that's just what
I'm trying to do in this, find out who is right
we don't want to wrong anybody. You can
come back on the trail with me, and I'll show you
the club-footed tracks; I'll let you help me get
the right man."
The old chap turned his humpy
shoulders, and looked at Carney out of bleary,
weasel eyes set beneath shaggy brows; then he
shrilled:
"I'll see you in hell fuss; I've
heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you had a
wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for
tricks, and by the rings on a Big Horn I believe
it. You know that while I'm here that jack rabbit
ain't goin' to get away and he ain't; you
can bet your soul on that, Bulldog. We'd go out on
the trail and we'd find that Wie-sah-ke-chack, the
Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream,
club-footed tracks, and when we come back the man
that killed my chum, old Fourteen-foot, would be
down somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer 'd get
him off."
It took an hour of cool reasoning
on the part of Carney to extract from that roomful
of men a promise that they would give Holt three
days of respite, Carney giving his word that he
would not send out any information to the police
but would devote the time to bringing in the
murderer.
Kootenay Jim had had his wound
dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the shooting,
but the saner members of the lynching party felt
that he had brought the quarrel on himself; that
he had turned so viciously on Jeanette, whom they
all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got
pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun
first, and when a man does that he's got to take
the consequences. He was a gambler, and a gambler
generally had to abide by the gambling chance in
gun play as well as by the fall of a card.
But Carney had work to do, and he
was just brave enough to not be foolhardy. He knew
that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark
without compunction. They were now thirsting not
only for young Holt's life, but his. So, saying
openly that he would start in the morning, when it
was dark he slipped through the back entrance of
the hotel to the stable, and led his buckskin out
through a corral and by a back way to the tunnel
entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here
he left the horse and returned to the hotel, set
up the drinks, and loafed about for a time,
generally giving the three desperadoes the
impression that he was camped for the night in the
Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom he had
confided, knew different.
Presently he slipped away, and
Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth, unlocked
the door that led down to the long communicating
drift, at the other end of which was the opening
to the Little Widow mine.
Jeanette closed the door and
followed Carney down the stairway. At the foot of
the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do
this."
"Why, Bulldog?"
"Well, you saw why this afternoon.
Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a sling because he
can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand
much about women, so a woman has always got to
wear armor."
"But we understand, Bulldog; and
Seth does."
"Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth
can only understand the evident. You clamber up
the stairs quick."
"My God! Bulldog, see what you're
doing for me now. You never would stand for Harry
yourself."
"If he'd been my brother I should,
just as you have, girl."
"That's it, Bulldog, you're doing
all this, standing there holding up a mob of angry
men, because he's my brother."
"You called the turn, Jeanette."
"And all I can do, all I can say
is, thank you. Is that all?"
"That's all, girl. It's more than
enough."
He put a strong hand on her arm,
almost shook her, saying with an earnestness that
the playful tone hardly masked:
"When you've got a true friend let
him do all the friending then you'll hold
him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you
start backing the losing card. Now, good-bye,
girl; I've got work to do. I'll bring in that wolf
of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave
I'll get him. You tell that pin-headed
brother of yours to stand pat. And if Kootenay
starts any deviltry go straight to Graham.
Good-bye."
Cool fingers touched the girl on
the forehead then she stood alone watching the
figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the
drift, lighted candle in hand.
Carney led his buckskin from the
mine tunnel climbed the hillside to a back trail,
and mounting rode silently at a walk till the
yellow blobs of light that was Bucking Horse lay
behind him. Then at a little hunch of his heels
the horse broke into a shuffling trot.
It was near midnight when he
camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten
robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and
Carney, making the horse lie down by tapping him
gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself
in his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin
they were like two men in a huge bed.
All next day he rode, stopping
twice to let the buckskin feed, and eating a dry
meal himself, building no fire. He had a
conviction that the murderer of the gold hunters
made the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge his
stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked
these returning miners was still there he felt
certain that he would get him.
There had been nothing to rouse the
murderer's suspicion that these men were known to
have been murdered.
A sort of fatality hangs over a man
who once starts in on a crime of that sort; he
becomes like a man who handles dynamite
careless, possessed of a sense of security, of
fatalism. Carney had found all desperadoes that
way, each murder had made them more sure of
themselves, it generally had been so easy.
Caribou Dave had probably passed
without being seen by the murderer; indeed he had
passed that point early in the morning, probably
while the ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer
would reason that if there was any suspicion in
Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with,
a posse would have come riding over the back
trail, and the murderer would have ample knowledge
of their approach.
To a depraved mind, such as his,
there was a terrible fascination in this killing
of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at
It like a gambler who has struck a big winning
streak; he would pile up gold, probably in the
cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were
more than he could take away. It was the curse of
the lust of gold, and, once started, the devilish
murder lust.
Carney had an advantage. He was
looking for a man in a certain locality, and the
man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it,
would be watching the trail in the other direction
for victims. Even if he had met him full on the
trail Carney would have passed the time of day and
ridden on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills.
And no doubt the murderer would let him pass
without action. It was only returning miners he
was interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage,
and if the man were still there he would get him.
His plan was to ride the buckskin
to within a short distance of where the murders
had been committed, which was evidently in the
neighborhood of the cliff at the bottom of which
Fourteen-foot Johnson had been found, and go
forward on foot until he had thoroughly
reconnoitered the ground. He felt that he would
catch sight of the murderer somewhere between that
point and the cave, for he was convinced that the
cave was the home of this trail devil.
The uncanny event of the wolves was
not so simple. The curious tone of the wolf's howl
had suggested a wild dog that is, a
creature that was half dog, half wolf; either
whelped that way in the forests, or a train dog
that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought
entered Carney's mind that the murderer might be
on terms of dominion over this half-wild pair;
they might know him well enough to leave him
alone, and yet devour his victims. This was
conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not
impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey
their master, but pull down a white man quick
enough if he were helpless.
However, the man was the thing.
The sun was dipping behind the
jagged fringe of mountain tops to the west when
Carney slipped down into the Valley of the
Grizzley's Bridge, and, fording the stream, rode
on to within a hundred and fifty yards of the spot
where his buckskin had shied from the trail two
days before.
Dismounting, he took off his coat
and draping it over the horse's neck said: "Now
you're anchored, Patsy stand steady."
Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit
and rein from the bridle and wound the rein about
his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not
hampered by a dangling rein to catch in his legs
or be seized by a man, would protect himself. No
man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount
him unless he was roped or thrown; and his hind
feet were as deft as the fists of a boxer.
Then he moved steadily along the
trail, finding here and there the imprint of
moccasined feet that had passed over the trail
since he had. There were the fresh pugs of two
wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.
Carney's idea was to examine
closely the trail that ran by the cliff to where
his horse had shied from the path in the hope of
finding perhaps the evidences of struggle, patches
of blood soaked into the brown earth, and then
pass on to where he could command a view of the
cave mouth. If the murderer had his habitat there
he would be almost certain to show himself at that
hour, either returning from up the trail where he
might have been on the lookout for approaching
victims, or to issue from the cave for water or
firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should
do Carney had not quite determined. First he would
stalk the man in hopes of finding out something
that was conclusive.
If the murderer were hiding in the
cave the gold would almost certainly be there.
That was the order of events, so to
speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and eyes fixed
ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the
wolf had stood at bay. The trail took a twist, a
projecting rock bellied it into a little turn, and
a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a
lake of leaves and brush.
As Carney stepped over the birch
there was a crashing clamp of iron, and the
powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg
with such numbing force that he almost went out.
His brain swirled; there were roaring noises in
his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.
His senses steadying, his first
cogent thought was that the bone was smashed; but
a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched
to splinters, had saved the bone; this and his
breeches and heavy socks in the legs of his strong
riding boots.
As if the snapping steel had
carried down the valley, the evening stillness was
rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where
the cave hung on the hillside. There was something
demoniac in this, suggesting to the half-dazed man
that the wolf stood as sentry.
The utter helplessness of his
position came to him with full force; he could no
more open the jaws of that double-springed trap
than he could crash the door of a safe. And a
glance showed him that the trap was fastened by a
chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was
a man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be
fastened to a piece of loose log.
The fiendish deviltry of the man
who had set it was evident. The whole vile scheme
flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail
narrowed before it wound down to the gorge, and
the man caught in it could be killed by a club, or
left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might
protect him for a little short time against the
wolves, but that even could be easily wheedled out
of a man caught by the murderer coming with a
pretense of helping him.
Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's
ear:
"Throw your gun out on the trail in
front of you! I've got you covered, Bulldog, and
you haven't got a chance on earth."
Now Carney could make out a pistol,
a man's head, and a crooked arm projecting from
beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.
"Throw out the gun, and I'll parley
with your" the voice added.
Carney recognized the voice as that
of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that the offered
parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun
away so that he would be a quick victim for the
wolves; that would save a shooting. Sometimes an
imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.
"There's nothing doing in that
line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered; "you can
shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that
way than be torn to pieces by the wolves."
Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this
matter behind the tree; then he said: "It's your
own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I
ain't invited you in. I've been watchin' you for
the last hour, and I've been a-wonderin' just what
your little game was. Me and you ain't good 'nough
friends for me to step up there to help you out,
and you got a gun on you. You throw it out and
I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain things,
I'll spring that trap, and you can ride away,
'cause I guess you'll keep your word. I don't want
to kill nobody, I don't."
The argument was specious. If
Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as absolutely
bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and
thrown the gun.
"You know perfectly well, Jack the
Wolf, that if you came to help me out, and I shot
you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."
"You mean you won't give up the
gun?"
"No."
"Well, keep it, damn you! Them
wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em knows
pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll
just sit off there in the dark and laugh at you
till you drop; then you'll never wake up. You
think it over, Bulldog, I'm "
The speaker's voice was drowned by
the howl of the wolf a short distance down the
valley.
"D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack
queried when the howls had died down. "They get
your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're
their meat. You think over my proposition while I
go down and gather in your buckskin; he looks good
to me for a get-away. You let me know when I come
back what you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a
hurry they're hungry; and I guess your leg
ain't none too comf'table."
Then there was silence, and Carney
knew that Jack the Wolf was circling through the
bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of
range as he travelled.
Carney knew that the buckskin would
put up a fight; his instinct would tell him that
Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would
also have raised the horse's mettle; but he
himself was in the awkward position of being a
loser, whether man or horse won.
From where he was trapped the
buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head go up,
the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and
he could see, beyond, off to the right, the
skulking form of Jack slipping from tree to tree
so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.
Now the horse turned his arched
neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his gun, a
double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf
offered a fair mark he would try a shot, though at
a hundred and fifty yards it would be a chance;
and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves;
the second purpose was that the shot would rouse
the buckskin with a knowledge that there was a
battle on.
Jack the Wolf came to the trail
beyond the horse and was now slowly approaching,
speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily
alert, was shaking his head; then he pawed at the
earth like an angry bull.
Ten yards from the horse Jack stood
still, his eye noticing that the bridle rein and
bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his
waist an ordinary packing rope; it was not a
lariat, being short. With this in a hand held
behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved
slowly toward the buckskin, trying to soothe the
wary animal with soft speech.
Ten feet from the horse he stood
again, and Carney knew what that meant a
little quick dash in to twist the rope about the
horse's head, or seize him by the nostrils. Also
the buckskin knew. He turned his rump to the man,
threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind
feet as a warning to the horse thief. The coat had
slipped from his neck to the ground.
Jack the Wolf tried circling
tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a sense
of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he
had a chance, he sprang for the horse's head, only
to escape those lightning heels by the narrowest
margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his
bullet missed, and Jack, startled, stood back,
planning sulkily.
Carney saw him thread out his rope
with the noose end in his right hand, and circle
again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the
loop swishing through the air, and at the first
cast it went over the buckskin's head.
Carney had been waiting for this.
He whistled shrilly the signal that always brought
the buckskin to his side.
Jack had started to work his way up
the rope, hand over hand, but at the well-known
signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through
Jack's sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg,
and he was thrown. The buckskin, strung to a high
nervous tension, answered his master's signal at a
gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist,
dragged him as though he hung from a runaway horse
with a foot in the stirrup. His body struck rocks,
trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth
like a cork, for the noose had slipped back to the
buckskin's shoulders.
Just as the horse reached Carney,
Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a slim tree and
the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers,
but as the horse stepped forward the rope
tightened, the body was fast.
"Damned if I want to tear the cuss
to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing forth his
pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with
his long arm, to cut the rope, and the horse
thrust his velvet muzzle against his master's
cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're
all right don't worry."
Bulldog understood the reassurance
and, patting the broad wise forehead, answered:
"We can play the wolves together, Pat I'm
glad you're here. It's a hundred to one on us
yet." Then a half-smothered oath startled the
horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced
along the vibrant nerves to Carney's brain.
In the subsidence of strife Carney
was cognizant of the night shadows that had crept
along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps
he could build a little fire; it would keep the
wolves at bay, for in the darkness they would
come; it would give him a circle of light, and a
target when the light fell on their snarling
faces.
Bending gingerly down he found in
the big bed of leaves a network of dead branches
that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to
hold the leaves. There was within reach on the
dead birch some of its silver parchment-like bark.
With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away
from about his limbs, then taking off his belt he
lowered himself gingerly to his free knee and
built a little mound of sticks and bark against
the birch log. Then he put his hand in a pocket
for matches every pocket; he had not one
match; they were in his coat lying down somewhere
on the trail. He looked longingly at the body
lying wedged against the tree; Jack would have
matches, for no man travelled the wilds without
the means to a fire. But matches in New York were
about as accessible as any that might be in the
dead man's pockets.
Philosophic thought with one leg in
a bear trap is practically impossible, and
Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was
inelegant. As if Fate resented this, Fate, or
something, cast into the trapped man's mind a
magical inspiration a vital grievance. His
mind, acute because of his dilemna and pain, must
have wandered far ahead of his cognizance, for a
sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire
he could heat the steel springs of that trap. The
leaves of the spring were thin, depending upon
that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for
strength. If he could heat the steel, even to a
dull red, the temper would leave it as a spirit
forsakes a body, and the spring would bend like
cardboard.
"And I haven't got a damn match,"
Carney wailed. Then he looked at the body. "But
you've got them "
He grasped the buckskin's headpiece
and drew him forward a pace; then he unslung his
picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's
head. If he could yank the body around, the wedged
legs would clear.
Throwing a lariat at a man lying
groggily flat, with one of the thrower's legs in a
bear trap, was a new one on Carney It was
some test.
Once he muttered grimly, from
between set teeth: "If my leg holds out I'll get
him yet, Patsy."
Then he threw the lariat again,
only to drag the noose hopelessly off the head
that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light
blurring form and earth into a shadow from which
thrust, indistinctly, the pale face that carried a
crimson mark from forehead to chin.
He had made a dozen casts, all
futile, the noose sometimes catching slightly at
the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly,
as if the man were not dead but dodging the rope.
As Carney slid the noose from his hand to float
gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the
dim form of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his
slobbering jaws parted, giving him the grinning
aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the
rope and dropped his hand to his gun, but the wolf
was quicker than the man he was gone. A
curious thing had happened, though, for that
erratic twist of the rope had spiraled the noose
beneath Jack the Wolf's chin, and gently,
vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it
hold. Then, hand over hand, he hauled the body to
the birch log, and, without ceremony, searched it
for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin
in a pocket of Jack's shirt. He noticed, casually,
that Jack's gun had been torn from its belt during
the owner's rough voyage.
The finding of the matches was like
an anesthetic to the agony of the clamp on his
leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million
to one on us; they can't beat us, old pard."
He transferred his faggots and
birch bark to the loops of the springs, one pile
at either end of the trap, and touched a match to
them.
The acrid smoke almost stilled him;
sparks burnt his hands, and his wrists, and his
face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the
heat as it travelled along the conducting steel,
and he was threatened with the fact that he might
burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the
black moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled
it on to the heating jaws.
Carney was so intent on his
manifold duties that he had practically forgotten
Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an
inspection of a spring that was reddening, he saw
a pair of black vicious eyes watching him, and a
hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the
birch log.
The hands of both men grasped the
belt at the same moment, and a terrible struggle
ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which
seemed to bite into his leg as if it were one of
the wolves fighting Jack's battle; and Jack the
Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise, that his
legs had been made almost useless in that drag by
the horse.
Carney had in one hand a stout
stick with which he had been adjusting his fire,
and he brought this down on the other's wrist,
almost shattering the bone. With a cry of pain
Jack the Wolf released his grasp of the belt, and
Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:
"Hoped you were dead, Jack the
Murderer! Now turn face down on this log, with
your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."
"I can spring that trap with a
lever and let you out," Jack offered.
"Don't need you I'm going to
see you hanged and don't want to be under any
obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or
I'll kill you now my leg is on fire."
Jack the Wolf knew that a man with
a bear trap on his leg and a gun in his hand was
not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.
When Jack's wrists were tied with
the picket line, Carney took a loop about the
prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.
The struggle had turned the steel
springs from the fires; but in the twisting one of
them had been bent so that its ring had slipped
down from the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires
under the other spring and soon it was so hot
that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the
trap, he placed his other foot on it and shifted
his weight, the strip of steel went down like
paper. He was free.
At first Carney could not bear his
weight on the mangled leg; it felt as if it had
been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through
the released veins pricked like a tatooing needle.
He took off his boot and massaged the limb, Jack
eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two
wolves hovered beyond the firelight, snuffling and
yapping.
When he could hobble on the injured
limb Carney put the bit and bridle rein back on
the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the
picket line from his legs, saying, "Get up and
lead the way to that cave!"
"I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack
protested; my leg's half broke."
"Take your choice get on
your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you for
the wolves," Carney snapped.
Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog
Carney well. As he rose groggily to his feet,
Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end
of the picket line that was fastened to Jack's
wrists, and said:
"Go on in front; if you try any
tricks I'll put a bullet through you this
sore leg's got me peeved."
At the cave Carney found, as he
expected, several little canvas bags of gold, and
other odds and ends such as a murderer too often,
and also foolishly, will garner from his victims.
But he also found something he had not expected to
find the cayuse that had belonged to
Fourteen-foot Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had
preserved the cayuse to pack out his wealth.
Next morning, no chance of action
having come to Jack the Wolf through the night,
for he had lain tied up, like a turkey that is to
be roasted, he started on the pilgrimage to
Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot Johnson's
cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre
animal's belly. Carney landed him and the gold in
that astonished berg.
And in the fullness of time
something very serious happened to the enterprising
man of the bear trap.
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