The buckskin was given a long steady gallop the day after he had received the ball of physic; then for three days he was given short sprinting runs and a little practise at breaking from the gun. Two days before the race he was given a mile and a quarter at a little under full speed; rated as though he were in a race, the last half a topping gallop. He showed little distress, and cleaned up his oats an hour later after he had been cooled out. Billy was in an ecstasy of happy content.
Nobody who was a judge of a horse's pace had seen Waster gallop his trial over the full course, for the boy had arranged it cleverly. Texas Sam and Snaky Dick both worked their horses in the morning, and sometimes gave them a slow gallop in the evening. Billy knew that at the first peep of day some of the Clatawa people would be on the track, so he waited that morning until everybody had gone home to breakfast, thinking all the gallops were over; then he slipped on to the course and covered the mile-and-a-quarter without being seen.
The course was a straightaway, one hundred feet wide, lying outside of the town on the open plain, and running parallel to the one long street. The finish post was opposite the heart of the town.
The week was one long betting carnival; one heard nothing but betting jargon. It was horse morning, noon, and night.
Carney had acquired another riding horse, and the Horned Toad cabal laughed cynically at his seriousness. Iron Jaw could not understand it, for Bulldog had a reputation for cleverness; but here he was acting like a tenderfoot. Once or twice a suspicion flashed across his mind that perhaps Bulldog had discovered something, and meant to call them after they had won the race. But there was Clatawa; there was nothing to cover up in his case, and surely Carney didn't think he could beat the bay with his buckskin. Besides they weren't racing under Jockey Club rules. They hadn't guaranteed anything; Carney had matched his horse against the black, and there he was; names didn't count—the horse was the thing.
Molly had heard about the match and had grown suspicious over Billy's active participation, fearing it might bring on a hemorrhage if he rode a punishing race. When she taxed Billy with this he pleaded so hard for a chance to help out, assuring Molly that Waster would run his own race, and would need little help from him, that she yielded. When she talked to Bulldog about it he told her he was going to give the whole stake to Billy, the four thousand, if he won it.
And then came the day of the great match. From the time the first golden shafts of sunlight had streamed over the Bitter Root Mountains, picking out the forms of Walla Walla's structures, that looked so like a mighty pack of wolves sleeping in the plain, till well on into the afternoon, the border town had been in a ferment. What mattered whether there was gold in the Coeur d'Alene or not; whether the Nez Perces were good Presbyterians under the leadership, physically, of Chief Joseph, and spiritually, Missionary Mackay, was of no moment. A man lay cold in death, a plug of lead somewhere in his chest, the result of a gambling row, but the morrow would be soon enough to investigate; to-day wastheday—the day of the race; minor business was suspended.
It made men thirsty this hot, parching anticipation; women had a desire for finery. Doors stood open, for the dwellers could not sit, but prowled in and out, watching the slow, loitering clock hands for four o'clock.
One phrase was on everybody's lips: "I'll take that bet."
Numerically the followers of Clatawa were in the majority; but there was a weight of metal behind Horned Toad that steadied the market; it came from a mysterious source. Texas Sam had been played for a blatant fool; nobody had seen Horned Toad show a performance that would warrant backing.
The little buckskin was looked upon as a sacrifice to his owner's well-known determination, his wild gambling spirit, that once roused, could not be bluffed. They pitied Carney because they liked him; but what was the use of stringing with a man who held the weakest hand? And yet when somebody, growing rash, offered ten to one against the buckskin, a man, quite as calm and serene as Bulldog Carney himself, looking like a placer miner who worked a rocker on some bend of the Columbia, would say, diffidently, "I'll take that bet." And he would make good—one yellow eagle or fifty. It was almost ominous, the quiet seriousness of this man who said his name was Oregon, just Oregon.
"Talk of gamblers," Iron Jaw said with a spluttering laugh, and he pointed to the street where little knots of people stood, close packed against some two, who, money in hand, were backing their faith. Then the fatty laugh chilled into a coldblooded sneer:
"Snaggle Tooth, we'll learn these tin-horns somethin'; tomorrow your safe won't be big enough to hold it. But, say, don't let that Texas brayin' ass have no more booze."
"If you ask me, Blake, I think he's yeller. He's plumb babyfied now because of Carney—sober he'd quit."
"Carney won't turn a hair when we win."
"Course he won't. But you can't get that into Texas's noodle with a funnel—he's hoodooed; wants me to plant a couple of gun men at the finish for fear Bulldog'll grab him."
"Look here, Snaggle, that coyote—hell! I know the breed of them outlaws, they'd rather win a race crooked than by their horse gallopin' in front—he just can't trust himself; he's afraid he'll foul the others when the chance flashes on him. You just tell him that we can't stand to kiss twenty thousand good-bye because of any Injun trick; the Sheriff wouldn't stand for it for a minute; he'd turn the money over to the horse that he thought ought to get it, quick as a wolf'd grab a calf by the throat."
That was the atmosphere on that sweet-breathed August day in the archaic town of Walla Walla.
It was a perfectly conceived race; three men in it and each one confident that he held a royal flush; each one certain that, bar crooked work, he could win.
The sporting Commandant of the U. S. Cavalry troop had been appointed judge of the finish at the Sheriff's suggestion; and another officer was to fire the starting gun.
It was a springy turf course; just the going to suit Waster, whose legs had been dicky. On a hard course, built up of clay and sand, guiltless of turf, the fierce hammering of the hoofs might even yet heat up his joints, though they looked sound; his clutching hoofs might cup out unrooted earth and bow a tendon.
An hour before race time people had flocked out to the goal where would be settled the ownership of thousands of dollars by the gallant steed that first caught the judge's eye as he flashed past the post. Even Lieutenant Governor Moore was there; that magnificent Nez Perces, Chief Joseph, sat his half-blooded horse a six-foot-three bronze Apollo, every inch a king in his beaded buckskins and his eagle feathers. The picture was Homeric, grand; and behind the canvas was the subtle duplicity of gold worshipers.
At half-past three a hush fell over the chattering, betting, vociferating throng, as the judge, a tall soldierly figure of a man, called:
"Bring out the horses for this race: it is time to go to the post!"
Clatawa was the first to push from behind the throng to the course where the judge stood. He was a beautiful, high-spirited bay with black points, and a broad line of white, starting from a star in his forehead, ran down his somewhat Roman nose. Two men led him, one on either side, and a blanket covered his form.
Then Horned Toad was led forward by a stable man; beneath a loose blanket showed the outlines of a small saddle. The horse walked with the unconcerned step of one accustomed to crowds, and noise, and blare. Beside him strode Texas Sam, a long coat draping his form.
Behind Horned Toad came the buckskin, at his heels Bulldog Carney, and beside Carney a figure that might have been an eager boy out for the holiday. The buckskin walked with the same indifference Horned Toad had shown.
As he was brought to a stand he lifted his long lean neck, threw up the flopped ears, spread his nostrils, and with big bright eyes gazed far down the track, so like a huge ribbon laid out on the plain, as if wondering where was the circular course he loved so well. He knew it was a race—that he was going to battle with those of his own kind. The tight cinching of the little saddle on his back, the bandages on his shins, the sponging out of his mouth, the little sprinting gallops he had had—all these touches had brought back to his memory the game his rich warm, thoroughbred blood loved. His very tail was arched with the thrill of it.
"Mount your horses; it is time to go to the post!" Judge Cummings called, watch in hand.
The blanket was swept from Clatawa's back, showing nothing but a wide, padded surcingle, with a little pocket either side for his rider's feet. And Snaky Dick, dropping his coat, stood almost as scantily attired; a pair of buckskin trunks being the only garment that marked his brown, monkeylike form.
Horned Toad carried a racing saddle, and from a shaffle bit the reins ran through the steel rings of a martingale.
At this Carney smiled, and more than one in the crowd wondered at this get-up for a supposed cow-pony.
Then when Texas threw his long coat to a stable man, and stood up a slim lath of a man, clad in light racing boots, thin white tight-fitting racing breeches and a loose silk jacket, people stared again. It was as if, by necromancy, he'd suddenly wasted from off his bones forty pounds of flesh.
But there was still further magic waiting the curious throng, for now the buckskin, stripped of his blanket, showed atop his well-ribbed back a tiny matter of pigskin that looked like a huge postage stamp. And the little figure of a man, one foot in Carney's hand, was lifted lightly to the saddle, where he sat in attire the duplicate of Texas Sam's.
With a bellow of rage Iron Jaw pushed forward, crying:
"Hold, there! What th' hell are you doin' on that horse, you damn runt? Get down!"
He reached a huge paw to the rider's thigh, as though he would yank him out of the saddle.
His fingers had scarce touched the boy's leg when his hands were thrown up in the air, and he reeled back from a scimitar-like cut on his wind-pipe from the flat open hand of Carney, and choking, sputtering an oath of raging astonishment, he found himself looking into the bore of a gun, and heard a voice that almost hissed in its constrained passion:
"You coarse butcher! You touch that boy and you'll wake up in hell. Now stand back and make to Judge Cummings any complaint you have."
Snaggle Tooth and Death-on-the-trail had pushed to Iron Jaw's side, their hands on their guns, and Carney, full of a passion rare with him, turned on them:
"Draw, if you want that, or lift your hands, damn quick!"
Surlily they dropped their half-drawn guns back into their pig-skin pockets. And Oregon, who had thrust forward, drew close to the two and said something in a low voice that brought a bitter look of hatred into the face of Snaggle Tooth.
But Oregon looked him in the eye and said audibly: "That's the last call to chuck—don't forget."
Iron Jaw was now appealing to the judge:
"This match was for owners up."
He beckoned forward the stakeholder:
"Ain't that so, Sheriff—owners up?"
"That was the agreement," Teddy sustained. "Wasn't that the bargain, Carney?" Iron Jaw asked, turning on Bulldog.
"It was."
"Then what th' hell 're you doin' afoot—and that monkey up?" And Iron Jaw jerked a thumb viciously over his shoulder at the little man on Waster.
Carney's head lifted, and the bony contour of his lower jaw thrust out like the ram of a destroyer: "Mr. Blake," he said quietly, "don't use any foul words when you speak to me—we're not good enough pals for that; if you do I'll ram those crooked teeth of yours down your throat. Secondly, that's the owner of the buckskin sitting on his back. But the owner of Horned Toad is sitting in a chair down in Portland, a man named Reilly, and that thing on Ding Dong's back is Slimy Red, a man who has been warned off every track in the West. He doesn't own a hair in the horse's tail."
Iron Jaw's face paled with a sudden compelling thought that Carney, knowing all this, and still betting his money, held cards to beat him.
The judge now asked: "Do you object to the rider of Horned Toad, Mr. Carney?"
"No, sir—let him ride. I'm not trying to win their money on a technicality, but on a horse."
"Well, the agreement was owners up, you admit?"
"I do," Carney answered.
"Did this boy on the buckskin's back own him when the match was made?"
"He did."
"Is there any proof of the transaction, the sale?" Major Cummings asked.
"Let me have that envelope I asked you to keep," Carney said, addressing the sheriff.
When Teddy drew from a pocket the sealed envelope, Carney tore it open, and passed to the judge the bill of sale to MacKay of the buckskin. Its date showed that it had been executed the day the match was made, and Teddy, when questioned, said he had received it on that date, and before the match was made.
"It was a plant," Iron Jaw objected; "that proves it. Why did he put it in the sheriff's hands—why didn't the boy keep it—it was his?"
"Because I had a hunch I was going up against a bunch of crooks," Carney answered suavely; "crooks who played win, tie, or wrangle, and knew they would claim the date was forged when they were beat at their own game. And there was another reason."
Carney drew a second paper from the envelope, and passed it to the Judge. It was a brief note stating that if anything happened Carney his money, if the buckskin won, was to be turned over to the owner, Billy MacKay.
When the judge lifted his eyes Carney said, with an apologetic little smile: "You see, the boy's got the bug, and he's up against it. Molly Burdan is keeping both him and his sister, and she can't afford it."
Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice as he said, quietly:
"The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to the post."
A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla, and the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they grasped the idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own game; that the intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides, now they could see that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had started more than one whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the Clatawa people believing in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted that perhaps there was a job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa and one of them go on and win; though few would admit that Carney would be party to cold-decking the public.
But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race to the finish, and the stakes represented real money.
Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider of Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:
"Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish waiting for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never ride again."
"I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.
The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat in a choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth snapping from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating his excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that springy lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding. Indians and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the course, on their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight. Old Walla Walla had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was on in all its glory.
After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course; they criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were being placed by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble; sometimes he reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought for his head. But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.
Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that distance, as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an equine statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had taken long odds about him felt a depression.
Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas, was keeping him on his toes—not letting him chill out; but, like the buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the antics of Clatawa—the starter was the whole works.
Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line, and the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter, finger on trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his finger gripped spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of smoke, and a white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying start.
The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.
"Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.
"Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.
"They'll never catch him!—never catch him! He'll win off by himself!" was droned.
Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them, galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone, as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the boy, his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either side of the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying, "Ste-a-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous sing-song through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the handicap of a strong wind that was blowing down the track.
He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the old Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful stride that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his horse. "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come back!"
He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under 2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he had cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it up, close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.
He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.
Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.
The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for a little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high deer-like lope that was impressive.
At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They could see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and Horned Toad was between the two.
Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.
Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a hundred against him."
"I'll take it," Carney declared.
"I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.
"You're on," came from Carney.
And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.
Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion lying along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were up. Surely a quirt had switched the air once.
Yes, the Toad was creeping up—his rider was making his run; they could see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.
Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he lost his whip—had he given up all idea of winning?
They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.
A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back was playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse instead of helping him.
And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.
Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now somebody cried:
"God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him—lo-ook at him, men!"
His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened their vision, and their owners gasped.
Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.
And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths? It was two—it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the black's quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now their heads rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled for the lead: Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the flanks of his horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him home a winner.
How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out of stride; no flash of the whip to startle him—to break his heart; the brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of brains, was wise enough to sit still.
They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave, stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding in front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping straight as an arrow.
"The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin wins—the buckskin wins!" became a clamor.
Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse, from some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the buckskin; they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!" rose; it was an angry roar like caged animals at war.
Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled; his head shot down—almost to his knees he went: then he was galloping again, the two horses locked together.
Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.
The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.
Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front. Their speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped, and the boy pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still tangled in the martingale of Horned Toad.
Men closed in frantically. A man—it was Oregon—twisted Carney's gun skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."
He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to battle back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings packed in a barrel.
Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!" and a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of a guarding circle.
Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad, trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then a woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:
"Back, you cowards—you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room—give him air!"
Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's side.
"Don't lift him—he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back—give him air!" she commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her shoulders a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated with red froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and Molly, sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.
"Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't speak," she admonished.
She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough the red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.
The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the circle about the lad and Molly.
The judge's voice was heard saying:
"The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong condemnation in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have disqualified him: it was a deliberate foul."
The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the barracks for protection.
"Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy will be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.
"You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of cupidity and guile.
All day long Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the odd imprint of that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle, riding a trail that winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs monotonously similar, the hush of the everlasting hills holding in subjection man's soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting up towards God's dome pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces a comatose condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little beyond the recognition of trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird, the sudden roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the harp of a giant pine.
And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history of the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails denting the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by a strange perversity, haunted Carney.
The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills, leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for the town of Bucking Horse.
Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the ford of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave yawned in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had melted into its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort of fear left the trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards beyond.
In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black bristles on his back erect in challenge.
The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in daylight was unusual.
Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.
The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the movement.
Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.
A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The sudden apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest, either in man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a wolf meant little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive away.
High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion catching vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far west, a flaming sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the twisted valley a chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons; the giant ferns hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with the death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad berries that gleamed like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling, frothing stream that still held the green tint of its glacier birth.
Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now back to the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the bright and happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed and bantered with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West; the ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard—where the dice might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the thrower take a fall.
But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung his heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes one ear was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond, the now glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur, the other ear held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of pursuit.
Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the back trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest had developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of tumbling forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms; bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.
The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.
Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall; and, when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of relief, clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.
"I wonder—by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand, slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.
"I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin; "something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his chin, thinking—thinking aloud.
"There are tracks, Patsy boy—moccasins; but we've lost our gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy—gone over the cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down. By gad! two of them!"
Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering; cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off. The inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.
Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the snaffle against his bridle teeth.
At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're quite right, pal—it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of old grannies imagining things."
But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a compelling inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge to camp for the night.
Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the dog-wolf's mate—a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.
"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."
As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling yelp.
"By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.
Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl—it's different."
Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering was soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning, pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they push on.
Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good dope for a sleep."
So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped in an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round had waited for his partner to dismount.
It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at all the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He did not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich he spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.
Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer, heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when deep sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting of his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that there was something—not close, but hovering there beyond.
The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.
But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with his delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the compass; but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there, watching.
After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.
Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky told that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond the Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the plains.
The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a nothing.
Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to the left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the trail running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping the Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.
There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a morbid disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had happened to that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the weird fancies of the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the trail was earthed, holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked ahead of the buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but they were not the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that a man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not an inturned left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly broken. His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step of a pack pony.
The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried to shake it off—it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.
Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same cayuse tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had travelled both up and down the trail.
Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay. And there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the Bucking Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned, for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.
This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in a troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation of the West—those mounted men had ridden after somebody—had trailed somebody who was wanted quick.
This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the cliff, the hovering oppression of the night—everything.
Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes humming an Irish ballad of Mangin's.
It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse was in a ferment.
Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters of unrest seethed.
A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered men.
Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth Long, were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for stringing him uptout de suite. The times were propitious for this entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at Fort Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping of the mob.
Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand on his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:
"This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains, and my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a pretty poor sport."
"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.
"He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one the best of it—first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when he starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally, isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."
Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a quiet thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could have stood up against that plank bar and declared himself without being called quick.
"You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've got to say," Kootenay growled.
"That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."
With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles behind the bar.
Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog that she loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for help. He had just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had been hurled at him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry—Harry the waster, the no-good, the gambler—had been found to be the man who had murdered returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they were going to string him up.
And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed her way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded and begged for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely hopeless it had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".
It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable. Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played the card of reason.
For the two or three gun men—Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver Ike—Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun; he could deal with those three toughs if necessary.
"Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they had drunk.
The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the narrative.
Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse—nobody had seen him.
Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the bodies had been devoured by wolves.
"And wolves don't eat gold—not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck," Kootenay Jim yelped.
"Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly, "That's your food, Jim."
"Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a threat.
"Just what the words convey—you sort them out, Kootenay."
But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game, Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin' in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou Dave—here he is sittin' right here—he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot Johnson—that is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."
"Johnson was my pal," Caribou Dave interrupted, a quaver in his voice, "and he leaves the Eagle Nest two days ahead of me, packin' a big clean-up of gold on a cayuse. He was goin' to mooch aroun' Buckin' Horse till I creeps in afoot, then we was goin' out. We been together a good many years, ol' Fourteen-foot and me."
Something seemed to break in Caribou's voice and Graham added: "Dave finds his mate at the foot of a cliff."
Carney started; and instinctively Kootenay's hand dropped to his gun, thinking something was going to happen.
"I dunno just what makes me look there for Fourteen-foot, Bulldog," Caribou Dave explained. "I was comin' along the trail seein' the marks of 'em damn big feet of his, and they looked good to me—I guess I was gettin' kinder homesick for him; when I'd camp I'd go out and paw 'em tracks; 'twas kinder like shakin' hands. We been together a good many years, buckin' the mountains and the plains, and sometimes havin' a bit of fun. I'm comin' along, as I says, and I sees a kinder scrimmage like, as if his old tan-colored cayuse had got gay, or took the blind staggers, or somethin'; there was a lot of tracks. But I give up thinkin' it out, 'cause I knowed if the damn cayuse had jack-rabbited any, Fourteen-foot'd pick him and his load up and carry him. Then I see some wolf tracks—dang near as big as a steer's they was—and I figger Fourteen-foot's had a set-to with a couple of 'em timber coyotes and lammed hell's delight out of 'em, 'cause he could've done it. Then I'm follerin' the cayuse's trail agen, pickin' it up here and there, and all at onct it jumps me that the big feet is missin'. Sure I natural figger Johnson's got mussed up a bit with the wolves and is ridin'; but there's the dang wolf tracks agen. And some moccasin feet has been passin' along, too. Then the hoss tracks cuts out just same's if he'd spread his wings and gone up in the air—they just ain't."
"Then Caribou gets a hunch and goes back and peeks over the cliff," Miner Graham added, for old David had stopped speaking to bite viciously at a black plug of tobacco to hide his feelings.
"I dunno what made me do it," Caribou interrupted; "it was just same's Fourteen-foot's callin' me. There ain't nobody can make me believe that if two men paddles together twenty years, had their little fights, and show-downs, and still sticks, that one of 'em is going to cut clean out just 'cause he goes over the Big Divide—'tain't natural. I tell you, boys, Fourteen-foot's callin' me—that's what he is, when I goes back."
Then Graham had to take up the narrative, for Caribou, heading straight for the bar, pointed dumbly at a black bottle.
"Yes, Carney," Graham said, "Caribou packs into Buckin' Horse on his back what was left of Fourteen-foot, and there wasn't no gold and no sign of the cayuse. Then we swarms out, a few of us, and picks up cayuse tracks most partic'lar where the Eagle Hills trail hits the trail for Kootenay. And when we overhaul the cayuse that's layin' down 'em tracks it's Fourteen-foot's hawse, and a-ridin' him is Harry Holt."
"And he's got the gold you was talkin' 'bout wolves eatin', Bulldog," Kootenay Jim said with a sneer. "He was hangin' 'round here busted, cleaned to the bone, and there he's a-ridin' Fourteen-foot's cayuse, with lots of gold."
"That's the whole case then, is it, boys?" Carney asked quietly.
"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.
"No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and you got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the circumstantial evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."
"I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores might get you in wrong."
"You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's got to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear his story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair warning, boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm going to denounce you; not one of you will get away—not one!"
"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but swing he will."
Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police barracks. He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what might be called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had bought the cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He refused to say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had killed nobody, had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing about the murder..
Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned, a minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him from being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men—there was no doubt whatever about that in his mind.
"I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking you've got the right man."
"That's what we figgered," Graham declared.
"But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure don't want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that you caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's cayuse?"
"Caribou says it is," Graham answered.
"And Harry says it was an Indian's cayuse," Carney affirmed.
"He most natural just ordinar'ly lies about it," Kootenay ventured viciously.
"Where's the cayuse?" Carney asked.
"Out in the stable," two or three voices answered.
"I want to see him. Mind, boys, I'm working for you as much as for that poor devil you want to string up, because if you get the wrong man I'm going to denounce you, that's as sure as God made little apples."
His quiet earnestness was compelling. All the fierce heat of passion had gone from the men; there still remained the grim determination that, convinced they were right, nothing but the death of some of them would check. But somehow they felt that the logic of conviction would swing even Carney to their side.
So, without even a word from a leader, they all thronged out to the stable yard; the cayuse was brought forth, and, at Bulldog's request, led up and down the yard, his hoofs leaving an imprint in the bare clay at every step. It was the footprints alone that interested Carney. He studied them intently, a horrible dread in his heart as he searched for that goblined hoof that inturned. But the two forefeet left saucer-like imprints, that, though they were both slightly intoed, as is the way of a cayuse, neither was like the curious goblined track that had so fastened on his fancy out in the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge.
And also there was the broken toe wall of the hind foot that he had seen on the newer trail.
He turned to Caribou Dave, asking, "What makes you think this is Johnson's pack horse?"
"There ain't no thinkin' 'bout it," Caribou answered with asperity. "When I see my boots I don'tthinkthey're mine, I just most natur'ly figger they are and pull 'em on. I'd know that dun-colored rat if I see him in a wild herd."
"And yet," Carney objected in an even tone, "this isn't the cayuse that Johnson toted out his duffel from the Eagle Hills on."
A cackle issued from Kootenay Jim's long, scraggy neck:
"That settles it, boys; Bulldog passes the buck and the game's over. Caribou is just an ord'nary liar, 'cordin' to Judge Carney."
"Caribou is perfectly honest in his belief," Carney declared. "There isn't more than half a dozen colors for horses, and there are a good many thousand horses in this territory, so a great many of them are the same color. And the general structure of different cayuses is as similar as so many wheelbarrows. That brand on his shoulder may be a C, or a new moon, or a flapjack."
He turned to Caribou: "What brand had Fourteen-foot's cayuse?"
"I don't know," the old chap answered surlily, "but it was there same place it's restin' now—it ain't shifted none since you fingered it."
"That won't do, boys," Carney said; "if Caribou can't swear to a horse's brand, how can he swear to the beast?"
"And if Fourteen-foot'd come back and stand up here and swear it was his hawse, that wouldn't do either, would it, Bulldog?" And Kootenay cackled.
"Johnson wouldn't say so—he'd know better. His cayuse had a club foot, an inturned left forefoot. I picked it up, here and there, for miles back on the trail, sometimes fair on top of Johnson's big boot track, and sometimes Johnson's were on top when he travelled behind."
The men stared; and Graham asked: "What do you say to that, Caribou? Did you ever map out Fourteen-foot's cayuse—what his travellers was like?"
"I never looked at his feet—there wasn't no reason to; I was minin'."
"There's another little test we can make," Carney suggested. "Have you got any of Johnson's belongings—a coat?"
"We got his coat," Graham answered; "it was pretty bad wrecked with the wolves, and we kinder fixed the remains up decent in a suit of store clothes." At Carney's request the coat was brought, a rough Mackinaw, and from one of the men present he got a miner's magnifying glass, saying, as he examined the coat:
"This ought, naturally, to be pretty well filled with hairs from that cayuse of Johnson's; and while two horses may look alike, there's generally a difference in the hair."
Carney's surmise proved correct; dozens of short hairs were imbedded in the coat, principally in the sleeves. Then hair was plucked from many different parts of the cayuse's body, and the two lots were viewed through the glass. They were different. The hair on the cayuse standing in the yard was coarser, redder, longer, for its Indian owner had let it run like a wild goat; and Fourteen-foot had given his cayuse considerable attention. There were also some white hairs in the coat warp, and on this cayuse there was not a single white hair to be seen.
When questioned Caribou would not emphatically declare that there had not been a star or a white stripe in the forehead of Johnson's horse.
These things caused one or two of the men to waver, for if it were not Johnson's cayuse, if Caribou were mistaken, there was no direct evidence to connect Harry Holt with the murder.
Kootenay Jim objected that the examination of the hair was nothing; that Carney, like a clever lawyer, was trying to get the murderer off on a technicality. As to the club foot they had only Carney's guess, whereas Caribou had never seen any club foot on Johnson's horse.
"We can prove that part of it," Graham said; "we can go back on the trail and see what Bulldog seen."
Half a dozen men approved this, saying: "We'll put off the hangin' and go back."
But Carney objected.
When he did so Kootenay Jim and John from Slocan raised a howl of derision, Kootenay saying: "When we calls his bluff he throws his hand in the discard. There ain't no club foot anywheres; it's just a game to gain time to give this coyote, Holt, a chance to make a get-away. We're bein' buffaloed—we're wastin' time. We gets a murderer on a murdered man's hawse, with the gold in his pockets, and Bulldog Carney puts some hawse hairs under a glass, hands out a pipe dream bout some ghost tracks back on the trail, and reaches out to grab the pot. Hell! you'd think we was a damn lot of tender-feet."
This harangue had an effect on the angry men, but seemingly none whatever upon Bulldog, for he said quietly:
"I don't want a troop of men to go back on the trail just now, because I'm going out myself to bring the murderer in. I can get him alone, for if he does see me he won't think that I'm after him, simply that I'm trailing. But if a party goes they'll never see him. He's a clever devil, and will make his get-away. All I want on this evidence is that you hold Holt till I get back. I'll bring the foreleg of that cayuse with a club foot, for there's no doubt the murderer made sure that the wolves got him too."
They had worked back into the hotel by now, and, inside, Kootenay Jim and his two cronies had each taken a big drink of whisky, whispering together as they drank.
As Carney and Graham entered, Kootenay's shrill voice was saying:
"We're bein' flim-flammed—played for a lot of kids. There ain't been a damn thing 'cept lookin' at some hawse hairs through a glass. Men has been murdered on the trail, and who done it—somebody. Caribou's mate was murdered, and we find his gold on a man that was stony broke here, was bummin' on the town, spongin' on Seth Long; he hadn't two bits. And 'cause his sister stands well with Bulldog he palms this three-card trick with hawse hairs, and we got to let the murderer go."
"You lie, Kootenay!" The words had come from Jeanette. "My brother wouldn't tell you where he got the gold—he'd let you hang him first; but I will tell. I took it out of Seth's safe and gave it to him to get out of the country, because I knew that you and those two other hounds, Slocan and Denver, would murder him some night because he knocked you down for insulting me."
"That's a lie!" Kootenay screamed; "you and Bulldog 're runnin' mates and you've put this up." There was a cry of warning from Slocan, and Kootenay whirled, drawing his gun. As he did so him arm dropped and his gun clattered to the floor, for Carney's bullet had splintered its butt, incidentally clipping away a finger. And the same weapon in Carney's hand was covering Slocan and Denver as they stood side by side, their backs to the bar.
No one spoke; almost absolute stillness hung in the air for five seconds. Half the men in the room had drawn, but no one pulled a trigger—no one spoke.
It was Carney who broke the silence:
"Jeanette, bind that hound's hand up; and you, Seth, send for the doctor—I guess he's too much of a man to be in this gang."
A wave of relief swept over the room; men coughed or spat as the tension slipped, dropping their guns back into holsters.
Kootenay Jim, cowed by the damaged hand, holding it in his left, followed Jeanette out of the room.
As the girl disappeared Harry Holt, who had stood between the two men, his wrists bound behind his back, said:
"My sister told a lie to shield me. I stole the gold myself from Seth's safe. I wanted to get out of this hell hole 'cause I knew I'd got to kill Kootenay or he'd get me. That's why I didn't tell before where the gold come from."
"Here, Seth," Carney called as Long came back into the room, "you missed any gold—what do you know about Holt's story that he got the gold from your safe?"
"I ain't looked—I don't keep no close track of what's in that iron box; I jus' keep the key, and a couple of bags might get lifted and I wouldn't know. If Jeanette took a bag or two to stake her brother, I guess she's got a right to, 'cause we're pardners in all I got."
"I took the key when Seth was sleeping," Harry declared. "Jeanette didn't know I was going to take it."
"But your sister claims she took it, so how'd she say that if it isn't a frame-up?" Graham asked.
"I told her just as I was pullin' out, so she wouldn't let Seth get in wrong by blamin' her or somebody else."
"Don't you see, boys," Carney interposed, "if you'd swung off this man, and all this was proved afterwards, you'd be in wrong? You didn't find on Harry a tenth of the gold Fourteen-foot likely had."
"That skunk hid it," Caribou declared; "he just kept enough to get out with."
Poor old Caribou was thirsting for revenge; in his narrowed hate he would have been satisfied if the party had pulled a perfect stranger off a passing train and lynched him; it would have been aquid 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: