"I'll see you in hell fust; I've heerd o' you, Bulldog; I've heerd you had a wolverine skinned seven ways of the jack for tricks, and by the rings on a Big Horn I believe it. You know that while I'm here that jack rabbit ain't goin' to get away—and he ain't; you can bet your soul on that, Bulldog. We'd go out on the trail and we'd find that Wie-sah-ke-chack, the Indian's devil, had stole 'em pipe-dream, club-footed tracks, and when we come back the man that killed my chum, old Fourteen-foot, would be down somewhere where a smart-Aleck lawyer'd get him off."
It took an hour of cool reasoning on the part of Carney to extract from that roomful of men a promise that they would give Holt three days of respite, Carney giving his word that he would not send out any information to the police but would devote the time to bringing in the murderer.
Kootenay Jim had had his wound dressed. He was in an ugly mood over the shooting, but the saner members of the lynching party felt that he had brought the quarrel on himself; that he had turned so viciously on Jeanette, whom they all liked, caused the men to feel that he had got pretty much his just deserts. He had drawn his gun first, and when a man does that he's got to take the consequences. He was a gambler, and a gambler generally had to abide by the gambling chance in gun play as well as by the fall of a card.
But Carney had work to do, and he was just brave enough to not be foolhardy. He knew that the three toughs would waylay him in the dark without compunction. They were now thirsting not only for young Holt's life, but his. So, saying openly that he would start in the morning, when it was dark he slipped through the back entrance of the hotel to the stable, and led his buckskin out through a corral and by a back way to the tunnel entrance of the abandoned Little Widow mine. Here he left the horse and returned to the hotel, set up the drinks, and loafed about for a time, generally giving the three desperadoes the impression that he was camped for the night in the Gold Nugget, though Graham, in whom he had confided, knew different.
Presently he slipped away, and Jeanette, who had got the key from Seth, unlocked the door that led down to the long communicating drift, at the other end of which was the opening to the Little Widow mine.
Jeanette closed the door and followed Carney down the stairway. At the foot of the stairs he turned, saying: "You shouldn't do this."
"Why, Bulldog?"
"Well, you saw why this afternoon. Kootenay Jim has got an arm in a sling because he can't understand. Men as a rule don't understand much about women, so a woman has always got to wear armor."
"But we understand, Bulldog; and Seth does."
"Yes, girl, we understand; but Seth can only understand the evident. You clamber up the stairs quick."
"My God! Bulldog, see what you're doing for me now. You never would stand for Harry yourself."
"If he'd been my brother I should, just as you have, girl."
"That's it, Bulldog, you're doing all this, standing there holding up a mob of angry men, because he'smybrother."
"You called the turn, Jeanette."
"And all I can do, all I can say is,thank you. Is that all?"
"That's all, girl. It's more than enough."
He put a strong hand on her arm, almost shook her, saying with an earnestness that the playful tone hardly masked:
"When you've got a true friend let him do all the friending—then you'll hold him; the minute you try to rearrange his life you start backing the losing card. Now, good-bye, girl; I've got work to do. I'll bring in that wolf of the trail; I've got him marked down in a cave—I'll get him. You tell that pin-headed brother of yours to stand pat. And if Kootenay starts any deviltry go straight to Graham. Good-bye."
Cool fingers touched the girl on the forehead; then she stood alone watching the figure slipping down the gloomed passage of the drift, lighted candle in hand.
Carney led his buckskin from the mine tunnel, climbed the hillside to a back trail, and mounting, rode silently at a walk till the yellow blobs of light that was Bucking Horse lay behind him. Then at a little hunch of his heels the horse broke into a shuffling trot.
It was near midnight when he camped; both he and the buckskin had eaten robustly back at the Gold Nugget Hotel, and Carney, making the horse lie down by tapping him gently on the shins with his quirt, rolled himself in his blanket and slept close beside the buckskin—they were like two men in a huge bed.
All next day he rode, stopping twice to let the buckskin feed, and eating a dry meal himself, building no fire. He had a conviction that the murderer of the gold hunters made the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge his stalking ground. And if the devil who stalked these returning miners was still there he felt certain that he would get him.
There had been nothing to rouse the murderer's suspicion that these men were known to have been murdered.
A sort of fatality hangs over a man who once starts in on a crime of that sort; he becomes like a man who handles dynamite—careless, possessed of a sense of security, of fatalism. Carney had found all desperadoes that way, each murder had made them more sure of themselves, it generally had been so easy.
Caribou Dave had probably passed without being seen by the murderer; indeed he had passed that point early in the morning, probably while the ghoul of the trail slept; the murderer would reason that if there was any suspicion in Bucking Horse that miners had been made away with, a posse would have come riding over the back trail, and the murderer would have ample knowledge of their approach.
To a depraved mind, such as his, there was a terrible fascination in this killing of men, and capturing their gold; he would keep at it like a gambler who has struck a big winning streak; he would pile up gold, probably in the cave Carney had seen the mouth of, even if it were more than he could take away. It was the curse of the lust of gold, and, once started, the devilish murder lust.
Carney had an advantage. He was looking for a man in a certain locality, and the man, not knowing of his approach, not dreading it, would be watching the trail in the other direction for victims. Even if he had met him full on the trail Carney would have passed the time of day and ridden on, as if going up into the Eagle Hills. And no doubt the murderer would let him pass without action. It was only returning miners he was interested in. Yes, Carney had an advantage, and if the man were still there he would get him.
His plan was to ride the buckskin to within a short distance of where the murders had been committed, which was evidently in the neighborhood of the cliff at the bottom of which Fourteen-foot Johnson had been found, and go forward on foot until he had thoroughly reconnoitered the ground. He felt that he would catch sight of the murderer somewhere between that point and the cave, for he was convinced that the cave was the home of this trail devil.
The uncanny event of the wolves was not so simple. The curious tone of the wolf's howl had suggested a wild dog—that is, a creature that was half dog, half wolf; either whelped that way in the forests, or a train dog that had escaped. Even a fanciful weird thought entered Carney's mind that the murderer might be on terms of dominion over this half-wild pair; they might know him well enough to leave him alone, and yet devour his victims. This was conjecture, rather far-fetched, but still not impossible. An Indian's train dogs would obey their master, but pull down a white man quick enough if he were helpless.
However, the man was the thing.
The sun was dipping behind the jagged fringe of mountain tops to the west when Carney slipped down into the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, and, fording the stream, rode on to within a hundred and fifty yards of the spot where his buckskin had shied from the trail two days before.
Dismounting, he took off his coat and draping it over the horse's neck said: "Now you're anchored, Patsy—stand steady."
Then he unbuckled the snaffle bit and rein from the bridle and wound the rein about his waist. Carney knew that the horse, not hampered by a dangling rein to catch in his legs or be seized by a man, would protect himself. No man but Carney could saddle the buckskin or mount him unless he was roped or thrown; and his hind feet were as deft as the fists of a boxer.
Then he moved steadily along the trail, finding here and there the imprint of moccasined feet that had passed over the trail since he had. There were the fresh pugs of two wolves, the dog-wolf's paws enormous.
Carney's idea was to examine closely the trail that ran by the cliff to where his horse had shied from the path in the hope of finding perhaps the evidences of struggle, patches of blood soaked into the brown earth, and then pass on to where he could command a view of the cave mouth. If the murderer had his habitat there he would be almost certain to show himself at that hour, either returning from up the trail where he might have been on the lookout for approaching victims, or to issue from the cave for water or firewood for his evening meal. Just what he should do Carney had not quite determined. First he would stalk the man in hopes of finding out something that was conclusive.
If the murderer were hiding in the cave the gold would almost certainly be there.
That was the order of events, so to speak, when Carney, hand on gun, and eyes fixed ahead on the trail, came to the spot where the wolf had stood at bay. The trail took a twist, a projecting rock bellied it into a little turn, and a fallen birch lay across it, half smothered in a lake of leaves and brush.
As Carney stepped over the birch there was a crashing clamp of iron, and the powerful jaws of a bear trap closed on his leg with such numbing force that he almost went out. His brain swirled; there were roaring noises in his head, an excruciating grind on his leg.
His senses steadying, his first cogent thought was that the bone was smashed; but a limb of the birch, caught in the jaws, squelched to splinters, had saved the bone; this and his breeches and heavy socks in the legs of his strong riding boots.
As if the snapping steel had carried down the valley, the evening stillness was rent by the yelping howl of a wolf beyond where the cave hung on the hillside. There was something demoniac in this, suggesting to the half-dazed man that the wolf stood as sentry.
The utter helplessness of his position came to him with full force; he could no more open the jaws of that double-springed trap than he could crash the door of a safe. And a glance showed him that the trap was fastened by a chain at either end to stout-growing trees. It was a man-trap; if it had been for a bear it would be fastened to a piece of loose log.
The fiendish deviltry of the man who had set it was evident. The whole vile scheme flashed upon Carney; it was set where the trail narrowed before it wound down to the gorge, and the man caught in it could be killed by a club, or left to be devoured by the wolves. A pistol might protect him for a little short time against the wolves, but that even could be easily wheedled out of a man caught by the murderer coming with a pretense of helping him.
Suddenly a voice fell on Carney's ear:
"Throw your gun out on the trail in front of you! I've got you covered, Bulldog, and you haven't got a chance on earth."
Now Carney could make out a pistol, a man's head, and a crooked arm projecting from beside a tree twenty yards along the trail.
"Throw out the gun, and I'll parley with you!" the voice added.
Carney recognized the voice as that of Jack the Wolf, and he knew that the offered parley was only a blind, a trick to get his gun away so that he would be a quick victim for the wolves; that would save a shooting. Sometimes an imbedded bullet told the absolute tale of murder.
"There's nothing doing in that line, Jack the Wolf," Carney answered; "you can shoot and be damned to you! I'd rather die that way than be torn to pieces by the wolves."
Jack the Wolf seemed to debate this matter behind the tree; then he said: "It's your own fault if you get into my bear trap, Bulldog; I ain't invited you in. I've been watchin' you for the last hour, and I've been a-wonderin' just what your little game was. Me and you ain't good 'nough friends for me to step up there to help you out, and you got a gun on you. You throw it out and I'll parley. If you'll agree to certain things, I'll spring that trap, and you can ride away, 'cause I guess you'll keep your word. I don't want to kill nobody, I don't."
The argument was specious. If Carney had not known Jack the Wolf as absolutely bloodthirsty, he might have taken a chance and thrown the gun.
"You know perfectly well, Jack the Wolf, that if you came to help me out, and I shot you, I'd be committing suicide, so you're lying."
"You mean you won't give up the gun?"
"No."
"Well, keep it, damn you! Them wolves knows a thing or two. One of 'em knows pretty near as much about guns as you do. They'll just sit off there in the dark and laugh at you till you drop; then you'll never wake up. You think it over, Bulldog, I'm——"
The speaker's voice was drowned by the howl of the wolf a short distance down the valley.
"D'you hear him, Bulldog?" Jack queried when the howls had died down. "They get your number on the wind and they're sayin' you're their meat. You think over my proposition while I go down and gather in your buckskin; he looks good to me for a get-away. You let me know when I come back what you'll do, 'cause 'em wolves is in a hurry—they're hungry; and I guess your leg ain't none too comf'table."
Then there was silence, and Carney knew that Jack the Wolf was circling through the bush to where his horse stood, keeping out of range as he travelled.
Carney knew that the buckskin would put up a fight; his instinct would tell him that Jack the Wolf was evil. The howling wolf would also have raised the horse's mettle; but he himself was in the awkward position of being a loser, whether man or horse won.
From where he was trapped the buckskin was in view. Carney saw his head go up, the lop ears throw forward in rigid listening, and he could see, beyond, off to the right, the skulking form of Jack slipping from tree to tree so as to keep the buckskin between him and Carney.
Now the horse turned his arched neck and snorted. Carney whipped out his gun, a double purpose in his mind. If Jack the Wolf offered a fair mark he would try a shot, though at a hundred and fifty yards it would be a chance; and he must harbor his cartridges for the wolves; the second purpose was that the shot would rouse the buckskin with a knowledge that there was a battle on.
Jack the Wolf came to the trail beyond the horse and was now slowly approaching, speaking in coaxing terms. The horse, warily alert, was shaking his head; then he pawed at the earth like an angry bull.
Ten yards from the horse Jack stood still, his eye noticing that the bridle rein and bit were missing. Carney saw him uncoil from his waist an ordinary packing rope; it was not a lariat, being short. With this in a hand held behind his back, Jack, with short steps, moved slowly toward the buckskin, trying to soothe the wary animal with soft speech.
Ten feet from the horse he stood again, and Carney knew what that meant—a little quick dash in to twist the rope about the horse's head, or seize him by the nostrils. Also the buckskin knew. He turned his rump to the man, threw back his ears, and lashed out with his hind feet as a warning to the horse thief. The coat had slipped from his neck to the ground.
Jack the Wolf tried circling tactics, trying to gentle the horse into a sense of security with soothing words. Once, thinking he had a chance, he sprang for the horse's head, only to escape those lightning heels by the narrowest margin; at that instant Carney fired, but his bullet missed, and Jack, startled, stood back, planning sulkily.
Carney saw him thread out his rope with the noose end in his right hand, and circle again. Then the hand with a half-circle sent the loop swishing through the air, and at the first cast it went over the buckskin's head.
Carney had been waiting for this. He whistled shrilly the signal that always brought the buckskin to his side.
Jack had started to work his way up the rope, hand over hand, but at the well-known signal the horse whirled, the rope slipped through Jack's sweaty hands, a loop of it caught his leg, and he was thrown. The buckskin, strung to a high nervous tension, answered his master's signal at a gallop, and the rope, fastened to Jack's waist, dragged him as though he hung from a runaway horse with a foot in the stirrup. His body struck rocks, trees, roots; it jiggered about on the rough earth like a cork, for the noose had slipped back to the buckskin's shoulders.
Just as the horse reached Carney, Jack the Wolf's two legs straddled a slim tree and the body wedged there. Carney snapped his fingers, but as the horse stepped forward the rope tightened, the body was fast.
"Damned if I want to tear the cuss to pieces, Patsy," he said, drawing forth his pocket knife. He just managed by reaching out with his long arm, to cut the rope, and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against his master's cheek, as if he would say, "Now, old pal, we're all right—don't worry."
Bulldog understood the reassurance and, patting the broad wise forehead, answered: "We can play the wolves together, Pat—i'm glad you're here. It's a hundred to one on us yet." Then a halfsmothered oath startled the horse, for, at a twist, a shoot of agony raced along the vibrant nerves to Carney's brain.
In the subsidence of strife Carney was cognizant of the night shadows that had crept along the valley; it would soon be dark. Perhaps he could build a little fire; it would keep the wolves at bay, for in the darkness they would come; it would give him a circle of light, and a target when the light fell on their snarling faces.
Bending gingerly down he found in the big bed of leaves a network of dead branches that Jack the Wolf had cunningly placed there to hold the leaves. There was within reach on the dead birch some of its silver parchment-like bark. With his cowboy hat he brushed the leaves away from about his limbs, then taking off his belt he lowered himself gingerly to his free knee and built a little mound of sticks and bark against the birch log. Then he put his hand in a pocket for matches—every pocket; he had not one match; they were in his coat lying down somewhere on the trail. He looked longingly at the body lying wedged against the tree; Jack would have matches, for no man travelled the wilds without the means to a fire. But matches in New York were about as accessible as any that might be in the dead man's pockets.
Philosophic thought with one leg in a bear trap is practically impossible, and Carney's arraignment of tantalizing Fate was inelegant. As if Fate resented this, Fate, or something, cast into the trapped man's mind a magical inspiration—a vital grievance. His mind, acute because of his dilemna and pain, must have wandered far ahead of his cognizance, for a sane plan of escape lay evident. If he had a fire he could heat the steel springs of that trap. The leaves of the spring were thin, depending upon that elusive quality, the steel's temper, for strength. If he could heat the steel, even to a dull red, the temper would leave it as a spirit forsakes a body, and the spring would bend like cardboard.
"And I haven't got a damn match," Carney wailed. Then he looked at the body. "But you've got them——"
He grasped the buckskin's headpiece and drew him forward a pace; then he unslung his picket line and made a throw for Jack the Wolf's head. If he could yank the body around, the wedged legs would clear.
Throwing a lariat at a man lying groggily flat, with one of the thrower's legs in a bear trap, was a new one on Carney—it was some test.
Once he muttered grimly, from between set teeth: "If my leg holds out I'll get him yet, Patsy."
Then he threw the lariat again, only to drag the noose hopelessly off the head that seemed glued to the ground, the dim light blurring form and earth into a shadow from which thrust, indistinctly, the pale face that carried a crimson mark from forehead to chin.
He had made a dozen casts, all futile, the noose sometimes catching slightly at the shaggy head, even causing it to roll weirdly, as if the man were not dead but dodging the rope. As Carney slid the noose from his hand to float gracefully out toward the body his eye caught the dim form of the dog-wolf, just beyond, his slobbering jaws parted, giving him the grinning aspect of a laughing hyena. Carney snatched the rope and dropped his hand to his gun, but the wolf was quicker than the man—he was gone. A curious thing had happened, though, for that erratic twist of the rope had spiraled the noose beneath Jack the Wolf's chin, and gently, vibratingly tightening the slip, Carney found it hold. Then, hand over hand, he hauled the body to the birch log, and, without ceremony, searched it for matches. He found them, wrapped in an oilskin in a pocket of Jack's shirt. He noticed, casually, that Jack's gun had been torn from its belt during the owner's rough voyage.
The finding of the matches was like an anesthetic to the agony of the clamp on his leg. He chuckled, saying, "Patsy, it's a million to one on us; they can't beat us, old pard."
He transferred his faggots and birch bark to the loops of the springs, one pile at either end of the trap, and touched a match to them.
The acrid smoke almost stifled him; sparks burnt his hands, and his wrists, and his face; the jaws of the trap commenced to catch the heat as it travelled along the conducting steel, and he was threatened with the fact that he might burn his leg off. With his knife he dug up the black moist earth beneath the leaves, and dribbled it on to the heating jaws.
Carney was so intent on his manifold duties that he had practically forgotten Jack the Wolf; but as he turned his face from an inspection of a spring that was reddening, he saw a pair of black vicious eyes watching him, and a hand reaching for his gun belt that lay across the birch log.
The hands of both men grasped the belt at the same moment, and a terrible struggle ensued. Carney was handicapped by the trap, which seemed to bite into his leg as if it were one of the wolves fighting Jack's battle; and Jack the Wolf showed, by his vain efforts to rise, that his legs had been made almost useless in that drag by the horse.
Carney had in one hand a stout stick with which he had been adjusting his fire, and he brought this down on the other's wrist, almost shattering the bone. With a cry of pain Jack the Wolf released his grasp of the belt, and Carney, pulling the gun, covered him, saying:
"Hoped you were dead, Jack the Murderer! Now turn face down on this log, with your hands behind your back, till I hobble you."
"I can spring that trap with a lever and let you out," Jack offered.
"Don't need you—I'm going to see you hanged and don't want to be under any obligation to you, murderer; turn over quick or I'll kill you now—my leg is on fire."
Jack the Wolf knew that a man with a bear trap on his leg and a gun in his hand was not a man to trifle with, so he obeyed.
When Jack's wrists were tied with the picket line, Carney took a loop about the prisoner's legs; then he turned to his fires.
The struggle had turned the steel springs from the fires; but in the twisting one of them had been bent so that its ring had slipped down from the jaws. Now Carney heaped both fires under the other spring and soon it was so hot that, when balancing his weight on the leg in the trap, he placed his other foot on it and shifted his weight, the strip of steel went down like paper. He was free.
At first Carney could not bear his weight on the mangled leg; it felt as if it had been asleep for ages; the blood rushing through the released veins pricked like a tatooing needle. He took off his boot and massaged the limb, Jack eyeing this proceeding sardonically. The two wolves hovered beyond the firelight, snuffling and yapping.
When he could hobble on the injured limb Carney put the bit and bridle rein back on the buckskin, and turning to Jack, unwound the picket line from his legs, saying, "Get up and lead the way to that cave!"
"I can't walk, Bulldog," Jack protested; "my leg's half broke."
"Take your choice—get on your legs, or I'll tie you up and leave you for the wolves," Carney snapped.
Jack the Wolf knew his Bulldog Carney well. As he rose groggily to his feet, Carney lifted to the saddle, holding the loose end of the picket line that was fastened to Jack's wrists, and said:
"Go on in front; if you try any tricks I'll put a bullet through you—this sore leg's got me peeved."
At the cave Carney found, as he expected, several little canvas bags of gold, and other odds and ends such as a murderer too often, and also foolishly, will garner from his victims. But he also found something he had not expected to find—the cayuse that had belonged to Fourteen-foot Johnson, for Jack the Wolf had preserved the cayuse to pack out his wealth.
Next morning, no chance of action having come to Jack the Wolf through the night, for he had lain tied up like a turkey that is to be roasted, he started on the pilgrimage to Bucking Horse, astride Fourteen-foot Johnson's cayuse, with both feet tied beneath that sombre animal's belly. Carney landed him and the gold in that astonished berg.
And in the fullness of time something very serious happened the enterprising man of the bear trap.
They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney felt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was overtired—that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had seen in a month, for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse, the little, old, worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on the Canadian side of the border.
From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not habitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a risk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve—gave him a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But to-night there was a scent of evil in the room.
A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But Sergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such times the key of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel, the Gold Nugget. And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the police shack rather than in a room of the hotel.
Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling that everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction that some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was in his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new sensation to Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it. His steel-gray eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the green on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with its substructure of nerve, he possessed itin excelsis.
He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched hand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from the top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without catch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started with. He had not lost anything to speak of—and here was the hitch, the enigma of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been deliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had been called when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice he had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been done simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger had lost heavily.
Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a card was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs; his mind, so to speak, was all thumbs.
Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.
He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity delicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous quality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath the large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He was hard to place. He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage. He was somewhat of a promoter—of restless activity. He was in Bucking Horse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If he had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of the unrest that hung so evilly over the game.
Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in mine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made on the "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird, for its stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of a hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught Carney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair of gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The gloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers who wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve the sensitiveness of their finger tips. He also had known gamblers who, ostensibly, had a reputable occupation.
If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult to allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed—too well dressed for unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink. Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold mine up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him. That was what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with Tacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when they returned.
Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals, Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth face, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he changed, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."
It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all; the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had laboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's the use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win little."
Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them over the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there was no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of the cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple: seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross hatched and sprayed with leaves.
Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves' wings were all alike—almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right wing of the second dove to the left.
It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to memorize the whole system, but it was there—which was the main thing. And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew the system. Who was it?
Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable of this interesting chicanery—but he had lost.
Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser. The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney, for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck, or knew something.
Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the discard, and said, "I'm out!"
Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in his pocket.
At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy—a card was missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.
A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.
The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.
"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"
Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his pocket.
From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves' wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had answered itself—they were Seth's, evidently.
This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired—I've had a long ride to-day."
He stacked up his chips and added: "I'm shy a hundred."
He slid five twenty-dollar gold pieces on to the table, and stood up, yawning.
"I think I'll quit, too," Cranford said. "I've played like a wooden man. To tell you the truth, I haven't enjoyed the game—don't know what's the matter with me."
"I'm winner," Shipley declared, "so I'll stick with the game; but right now I'd rather shove the two hundred into a pot and cut for it than turn another card, for to play one round with a card shy is a hoodoo to me. I've got a superstition about it. It's come my way twice, and each time there's been hell."
The boyish smile that had been hovering about Hadley's lips suddenly gave place to a hard sneer, and he said: "I'm loser and I don't want to quit. The game is young, and, gentlemen, you know what that means."
Shipley's black brows drew together, and he turned on the speaker:
"I haven't got your money, mister; your losin' has been to Seth. I don't like your yap a little bit. I'll cut the cards cold for a thousand now, or I'll make you a present of the two hundred if you need it."
Carney's quiet voice hushed into nothingness a damn that had issued from Hadley's lips; he was saying: "You two gentlemen can't quarrel over a game of cards that I've sat in; I don't think you want to, anyway. We'd better just put the game off till to-morrow night."
"We can't do that," Seth objected; "I've won Mr. Hadley's money, and if he wants to play I've got to stay with him. We'll square up and start fresh. Anybody wants to draw cards sets in; them as don't, quits."
"I've got to have my wallet out of your box, Seth, if we're to settle now; besides I want another sensation—this bottle's dry," Hadley advised.
"I'll bring over the cards, your wad, and another bottle," Long said as he rose.
In three or four minutes he was back again, pulled the cork from a bottle of Scotch whisky, and they all drank.
Then, after passing a leather wallet over to Hadley, he totaled up the accounts.
Hadley was twelve hundred loser.
He took from the wallet this amount in large bills, passed them to Seth, and handed the wallet back, saying, with the boy's smile on his lips, "Here, banker, put that back in your pocket—you're responsible. There's forty-eight hundred there now. If I put it in my pocket I'll probably forget it, and hang the coat on my bedpost."
Seth passed two hundred across to Shipley, saying, "That squares you."
Cranford had shoved his chips in with an I. O. U. for two hundred dollars, saying, "I'll pay that tomorrow. I feel as if I had been pallbearer at a funeral. When a man is gloomy he shouldn't sit into any game bigger than checkers."
Seth now drew from a pocket two packs of cards—the blue-doved cards and a red pack; then he returned the blue cards to his pocket.
Carney viewed this performance curiously. He had been wondering intently whether the new pack would be the same as the one with the blue doves. The red cards carried a different design, a simple leafy scroll, and Carney washed his mind of the whole oblique thing, mentally absolving himself from further interest.
Seth shuffled the new cards, face up, to take out the joker; having found it, he tore the card in two, threw it on the floor, and asked, "Now, who's in?"
"I'll play for one hour," Shipley said, with an aggressive crispness; "then I quit, win or lose; if that doesn't go I'll put the two hundred on the table to Mr. Hadley's one hundred, and cut for the pot." Curiously this only raised the boy's smile on Hadley's face, but inflamed Seth. He turned on Shipley with a coarse raging:
"You talk like a man lookin' for trouble, mister. Why the hell don't you sit into the game or take your little bag of marbles and run away home."
"I'm going," Carney declared noisily. "My advice to you gentlemen is to cut out the unpleasantness, and play the game."
Somewhat sullenly Shipley checked an angry retort that had risen to his lips, and, reaching for the rack of poker chips, started to build a little pile in front of him.
Cranford followed Carney out, and though his shack lay in the other direction, walked with the latter to the Gold Nugget. Cranford was in a most depressed mood; he admitted this.
"There was something wrong about that game, Carney," he asserted. "I knew you felt it—that's why you quit. I was to go up to Bald Rock on the night train to make a little payment in the morning to secure some claims, but now I don't know. I'm sore on myself for sitting in. I guess I've got the gambling bug in me as big as a woodchuck; I'm easy when I hear the click of poker chips. I lose two hundred there, and while, generally, it's not more than a piker's bet on anything, just now I'm trying to put something over in the way of a deal, and I'm runnin' kind of close to the wind, financially. That two hundred may—hell! don't think me a squealer, Bulldog. Good night, Bulldog."
Carney stood for ten seconds watching Cranford's back till it merged into the blur of the night. Then he entered the hotel, almost colliding with Jeanette Holt, who put a hand on his arm and drew him into the dining-room to a seat at a little table.
"Where's Seth?" she asked.
"Over at the police shack."
"Poker?"
Carney nodded.
"Mr. Hadley there?"
Again Carney nodded. Then he asked, "Why, Jeanette?"
"I don't quite know," she answered wearily. "Seth's moral fibre—if he has any—is becoming like a worn-out spring in a clock." Then her dark eyes searched Carney's placid gray eyes, and she asked, "Were you playing?"
"Yes."
The girl drew her hand across her eyes as if she were groping, not for ideas, but for vocal vehicle. "And you left before the game was over—why?"
"Tired."
Jeanette put her hand on Carney's that was lying on the table. "Was Seth cheating?"
"Why do you ask that, Jeanette?"
"I'll tell you. He's been playing by himself in his room for two or three days. He's got a pack of cards that I think are crooked."
"What is this Shipley like, Jeanette? Do you suppose that he brought Seth those cards?"
"I don't know," the girl answered; "I don't like him. He and Seth have played together once or twice."
"They have! Look here, Jeanette, you must keep what I am going to tell you absolutely to yourself, for I may be entirely wrong in my guess. There was a marked pack in the game, and I think Seth owned it. This Shipley acted very like a man who was running a bluff of being angry. He and Seth had some words over nothing. It seems to me the quarrel was too gratuitous to be genuine."
"You think, Bulldog, that Shipley and Seth worked together to win Hadley's money—he had six thousand in Seth's strong box?"
"I can't go that far, even to you, Jeanette. But to-morrow Seth has got to give back to Hadley whatever he has won. I've got one of the cards in my pocket, and that will be enough."
"But if he divides with Shipley?"
"Shipley will have to cough up the stolen money, too, because then the conspiracy will be proven."
"Yes, Bulldog. I guess if you just tell them to hand the money back, there'll be no argument. I can go to bed now and sleep," she added, patting Carney's hand with her slim fingers. "You see, if Seth got that stranger's money away it wouldn't worry him—the moral aspect, I mean; but somehow it makes it terrible for me. It's discovering small evil in a man—petty larceny, sneak thieving—that pours sand into a woman's soul. Good night, Bulldog. I think if I were only your sister I'd be quite satisfied—quite."
"You are," Carney said, rising; "we are seven—and you are the other six, Jeanette."
As a rule nothing outside of a tangible actuality, such as danger that had to be guarded against, kept Carney from desired slumber; but after he had turned out his light he lay wide awake for half an hour, his soul full of the abhorrent repugnance of Seth's stealing.
Carney's code was such that he could shake heartily by the hand, or drink with, a man who had held up a train, or fought (even to the death of someone) the Police over a matter of whisky or opium running, if that man were above petty larceny, above stealing from a man who had confidence in him. He lay there suffused with the grim satisfaction of knowing how completely Seth, and possibly Shipley, would be nonplussed when they were forced on the morrow to give up their ill-gotten gains. That would be a matter purely between Carney and Seth. The problem of how he would return the loot to Hadley without telling him of the marked pack, was not yet solved. Indeed, this little mental exercise, like counting sheep, led Carney off into the halls of slumber.
He was brought back from the rest cavern by something that left him sitting bolt upright in bed, correlating the disturbing something with known remembrances of the noise.
"Yes, by gad, it was a shot!"
He was out of bed and at the window. He could have sworn that a shadow had flitted in the dim moonlight along the roadway that lay beyond the police shack; it was so possible this aftermath of card cheating, a shot and someone fleeing. It was a subconscious conviction that caused him to precipitate himself into his clothes, and slip his gun belt about his waist.
In the hall he met Jeanette, her great mass of black hair rippling over the shoulders, from which draped a kimono. The lamp in her hand enhanced the ghastly look of horror that was over her drawn face.
"What's wrong, Jeanette—was it a shot?"
"Yes! I've looked into Seth's room—he's not there!"
Without speaking Carney tapped on a door almost opposite his own; there was no answer, and he swung it open. Then he closed it and whispered: "Hadley's not in, either; fancy they're still playing." Jeanette pointed a finger to a door farther down the hall. Carney understood. Again he tapped on this door, opened it, peered in, closed it, and coming back to Jeanette whispered: "Shipley's not there. Fancy it must be all right—they're still playing. I'll go over to the shack."
"I'll wait till you come back, Bulldog. It isn't all right. I never felt so oppressed in my life. I know something dreadful has happened—I know it." Carney touched his fingers gently to the girl's arm, and manufacturing a smile of reassurance, said blithely: "You've eaten a slab of bacon,à lafry-pan, girl." Then he was gone.
As he rounded the hotel corner he could see a lighted lamp in a window of the police shack. This was curious; it hurried his pace, for they were not playing at the table.
He threw open the shack door, and stood just within, looking at what he knew was a dead man—Seth Long sprawled on his back on the floor where he had tumbled from a chair. His shirt front was crimson with blood, just over the heart.
There was no evidence of a struggle; just the chair across the table from where Seth had sat was ominously pushed back a little. The red-backed cards were resting on the corner of the table neatly gathered into a pack.
Cool-brained Carney stood just within the door, mentally photographing the interior. The killing had not been over a game that was in progress, unless the murderer, with super-cunning, had rearranged the tableau.
Carney stepped to beside the dead man. Seth's pistol lay close to his outstretched right hand. Carney picked it up, and broke the cartridges from the cylinder; one was empty; the barrel of the gun was foul.
Seth's shirt was black and singed; the weapon that killed him had been held close.
Carney's brain, running with the swift, silent velocity of a spinning top, queried: Was the killer so super-clever that he had discharged Seth's gun to make it appear suicide?
Subconsciously the marked cards that probably had led up to this murder governed Carney's next move. He thrust his hand in the pocket of the coat where Seth had put the discarded pack—it was gone. He felt the other pocket—the pack was not there. A quick look over the room, table and all, failed to locate the missing cards. He felt the inside pocket of the coat for the leather wallet that contained Hadley's money—there was no wallet.
At that instant a sinister feeling of evil caused Carney to stiffen, his eyes to set in a look of wariness; at the soft click of a boot against a stone his gun was out and, without rising, he whipped about.
The flickering uncertain lamplight picked out from the gloom of the night in the open doorway the face of Shipley. Perhaps it was the goblin light, or fear, or malignant satisfaction that caused Shipley's face to appear grotesquely contorted; his eyes were either gloating, or imbecile-tinged by horror.
"My God! what's happened, Carney?" he asked. "Don't cover me, I—I——"
"Come into the light, then," Carney commanded.
In silent obedience Shipley stepped into the room, and Carney, passing to the door, peered out. Then he closed it, and dropped his gun back into his belt.
"What's happened?" Shipley repeated. And the other, listening with intensity, noticed that the speaker's voice trembled.
"Where have you come from just now?" Carney asked, ignoring the question.
Shipley drew a hand across his eyes, as if he would compel back his wandering thoughts, or would blot out the horror of that blood-smeared figure on the floor.
"I went for a walk," he answered.
"Why—when?" Carney snapped imperiously.
"I quit the game half an hour ago, and thought I'd walk over to Cranford's house; the smoking and the drinks had given me a headache."
"Why to Cranford's house?"
Shipley threw his head up as if he were about to resent the crisp cross-examining, but Bulldog's gray eyes, always compelling, were now fierce.
"Well,"—Shipley coughed—"I didn't like the looks of the game to-night; that ace being shy—— Didn't you feel there was something not on the level?"
"I didn't take that walk to Cranford's!". The deadliness that had been in the gray eyes was in the voice now.
"I thought that if Cranford was still up I'd talk it over with him; he'd lost, and I fancied he was sore on the game."
"What did Cranford say?"
"I didn't see him. I tapped on his door, and as he didn't answer I—I thought he was asleep and came back. I saw the door open here, and——"
Shipley hesitated.
"Did you leave Seth and Hadley playing?"
"Yes."
"And you didn't see either of them again?"
"No."
"Did you hear a shot?" and Carney pointed toward the blood-stained shirt.
Shipley looked at Carney and seemed to hesitate. "I heard something ten minutes ago, but thought it was a door slamming. Where's Hadley—have you seen him? Were you here when this was done?"
"Come on," Carney said, "we'll go back to the hotel and round up Hadley."
As they went out Carney locked the door, the key being still in the lock.
When the two men entered the Gold Nugget, Carney stepped behind the bar and turned up a wall lamp that was burning low. As he faced about he gave a start, and then hurried across the room to where a figure huddled in one of the big wooden arm chairs. It was Hadley—sound asleep, or pretending to be.
When Carney shook him the sleeper scrambled drunkenly to his feet blinking. Then the boy smile flitted foolishly over his lips, and he mumbled: "I say, how long've I been asleep—where's Seth?"
"What are you doing here asleep?" Carney asked, the crisp incisiveness of his voice wakening completely the rather fogged man.
"I sat down to wait for Seth. Guess the whisky made me sleepy—had a little too much of it."
"Where did you leave Seth—how long ago?"
"Over at the police shack; we quit the game and Seth said he'd tidy up for fear the Sergeant'd be back in the morning—throw out the empty bottles, and pick up the cigar stubs and matches, kind of tidy up. I came on to go to bed and——" Hadley spoke haltingly, as though his memory of his progress was still befogged—"when I got here I remembered that he'd got my wallet, and thought I'd sit down and wait so's to be sure he didn't forget to put it back in the iron box."
"Did you have a row with Seth when you broke up the game?"
Hadley flushed. He was in a slightly stupid condition. During his nap the whisky had sullenly subsided, leaving him a touch maudlin, surly.
"I don't see what right you've got to ask that; I guess that's a matter between two men."
Carney fastened his piercing eyes on the speaker's, and shot out with startling suddenness: "Seth Long has been murdered—do you know that?"
"What—what—what're you saying?"
Hadley's mouth remained open; it was like the gaping mouth of a gasping fish; his eyes had been startled into a wide horrified wonder look.
"Seth—murdered!" then he grinned foolishly. "By God! you Westerners pull some rough stuff. That's not good form to spring a joke like that; I'm a tenderfoot, but——"
"Stop it!" Carney snarled; "do you think I'm a damned fool. Seth has been shot through the heart, and you were the last man with him. I want from you all you know. We've got to catch the right man, not the wrong man—do you get that, Hadley?" The fierceness of this toniced the man with a hang-over, cleared his fuzzy brain.
"My God! I don't know anything about it. I left Seth Long at the police shack, and I don't know anything more about him."
There was a step on the stairway. Carney turned as Jeanette came through the door. He went to meet her, and turned her back into the hall where he said: "Steady yourself, girl. Something has happened."
"I know—I heard you; I'm steady." She put her hand in his, and he pressed it reassuringly. Then he whispered:
"I'm going to leave you with these two men while I get Dr. Anderson, and I want you to see if either of these men leaves the room, or attempts to hide anything—I can't search them. Do you understand, Jeanette?"
"Yes."
He came back to the room with the girl and said:
"I'm going for the coroner, Dr. Anderson, and for your own sakes, gentlemen, I'll ask you to wait here in this room—it will be better."
Then he was gone.
In twenty minutes he was back with Dr. Anderson. On their way to the hotel Carney and the Doctor had gone into the police shack to make certain, through medical examination, that Seth was dead.
Upon their entry Jeanette had gone upstairs, the Doctor suggesting this.
Dr. Anderson was a Scotchman, absolute, with all that the name implies in canny conservative stubborn adherence to things as they are; the apparent consistencies.
Here was a man murdered in cold blood; he was the only one to be considered; he was the wronged party; the others were to be viewed with suspicion until by process of elimination they had been cleared of guilt. So there was no doubt whatever but that Carney had as good a claim as any of them to the title of assassin.
In the flurry of it all Carney had not thought of this.
When the three stories had been told, Dr. Anderson said:
"Sergeant Black will be back to-morrow, I think; then we'll take action. I'd advise you gentlemen to remainin statu quo, if I might use the term. There's one thing that ought to be done, though; I think you'll agree with me that it is advisable for each man's sake. A wallet with a large sum of money has disappeared from the murdered man's pocket, and as each one of you will be more or less under suspicion—I'm speaking now just in the way of forecasting what that unsympathetic individual, the law, will do—it would be as well for each of you to submit to a search of your person. I have no authority to demand this, but it's expedient."
To this the three agreed; Hadley, with a sort of repugnance, and Shipley with, perhaps, an overzealous compliance, Carney thought. There was no trace of the wallet.
Carney had said nothing about the missing cards, but neither were they found.
No pistol was found on Hadley, but a short-barreled gun was discovered in Shipley's hip pocket.
The Doctor broke the weapon, and his eyebrows drew down in a frown ominously—there was an empty chamber in the cylinder.
"There're only five bullets here," he said, his keen eyes resting on Shipley's face.
"Yes, I always load it that way, leaving the hammer at the empty chamber, so that if it falls and strikes on the hammer it can't explode."
With an "Ugh-huh!" Anderson looked through the barrel. It was of an indeterminate murkiness; this might be due to not having been cleaned for a long time, or a recent discharge.
"I'd better retain this gun, if you don't mind," he said.
Shipley agreed to this readily. Then he said, in a hesitating, apologetic way that was really more irritating than if he had blurted it out: "Mr. Carney, as I have stated, was discovered by me standing over the dead man with a gun in his hand. I think as this point will certainly be brought up at any examination, that Mr. Carney, in justice to himself, should let the Doctor examine his weapon to see that it has not lately been discharged."
Carney started, for he fancied there was a direct implication in this. But the Doctor spoke quickly, brusquely. "Most certainly he should—I clean forgot it."
Carney drew the gun from its leather pocket, broke it, and six lead-nosed.45 shells rolled on the table; not one of the shells had lost its bullet. He passed the gun to Dr. Anderson, who, pointing it toward the light, looked through the barrel.
"As bright as a silver dollar," he commented, relief in his voice; "I'm glad we thought of this." Carney slipped the shells back into the cylinder, and dropped the gun into its holster without comment.
Then the Doctor said: "We can't do anything to-night—we'll only obliterate any tracks and lose good clues. We'll take it up in the morning. You men have got to clear yourselves, so I'd just rest quiet, if I were you. If we go poking about we'll have the whole town about our ears. I'm glad that nobody thought it worth while to investigate if they heard the shot."
"A shot in Bucking Horse doesn't mean much," Carney said, "just a drunken miner, or an Indian playing brave."
It seemed to Carney that Anderson had rather hurried the closing out of the matter, that is, temporarily. It occurred to him that the Scotchman's herring-hued eyes were asking him to acquiesce in what was being done.
Carney lingered when Shipley and Hadley had gone to bed.
The Scotch Doctor had filled a pipe, and Bulldog noticed that as he puffed vigorously at its stem his eyes had wandered several times to the platoon of black bottles ranged with military precision behind the bar.
"I'm tired over this devilish thing," Carney remarked casually, and passing behind the bar he brought out a bottle and two glasses, adding, "Would you mind joining?"
"I'd like it, man. Good whisky is like good law—a wee bit of it is very fine, too much of it is as bad as roguery."
The Doctor quaffed with zest the liquid, wiped his lips with a florid red handkerchief, took a puff at the evil-smelling pipe, and said:
"Court's over! A minute ago I was 'Jeffries, the Hangin' Judge,' and to-morrow, as coroner, I'll be as veecious no doubt; now,ad interim(the Doctor was fond of a legal phrase), I'm going to talk to you, Bulldog, as man to man, because I want your help to pin the right devil. And besides, I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeanette—perhaps it's just her Scotch name, I'm not sayin'. In the first place, Bulldog, has it struck you that you're in fair runnin' to be selected as the man that killed Seth?"
Carney laughed; then he looked quizzically at the speaker; but he could see that the latter was in deadly earnest.
"Mind," the Doctor resumed, "personally I know you didn't do it; that's because I know you devilish well—you're too big for such small-brained acts. But the law is a godless machine; its way is like the way of a brick mason—facts are the bricks that make the structure."
"But the law always searches for the motive, and why should I kill Seth, who was more or less a friend?"
"All the worse. As a matter of fact there are more slayings over strained friendships than over the acquisition of gold. But don't you remember what that foul-mouthed brute, Kootenay Jim, said when Jeanette's brother was near lynched?"
Carney stared; then a little flush crept over his lean tanned face:
"You mean, Doctor, about Jeanette and myself?"
"Aye."
Carney nodded, holding himself silent in suppressed bitterness.
"The same evil mouths will repeat that, Bulldog. And here are the bricks for the law's building. Shipley will swear that he found you bending over the murdered man with a gun in one hand searching his pockets. And I noticed, though I didn't speak of it, there was blood on your hands."
Startled, Carney looked at his fingers; they were blood-stained. Then he drew his gun, saying, "God! and there's blood on this thing, too!"
"There is; I saw it on the butt. And though you broke it here before us to-night to show that it hadn't been discharged, Sergeant Black, while he's thickheaded, will perhaps have wit enough to say that you were off by yourself when you came for me, and could have cleaned house."
"And that swine, Shipley—do you suppose he thought of that, too?"
"I think he did: I did at the time, though I said nothing. You see, Carney, innocent or guilty, he naturally wants to clear himself, and he took a chance. If he's innocent he may really think that you killed Seth, and hoped to find the proof of it in a smudged gun and an empty shell; and if he's guilty, he was directing suspicion towards you, knowing that the clean gun would be nothing in your favor at the examination as you had had the opportunity to put it right. I don't like the incident, nor the man's spirit, but it proves nothing for or against him. I expect he's clever enough to know that the last man seen with a murdered man is,de facto, the slayer."
"As to the matter of the gun," Carney said, "I've an idea Seth was killed with his own gun. He was in a grouchy mood to-night—he always was a damn fool—and he may have pulled his gun, in his usual bluffing way, and the other party twisted it out of his hand and shot him. I only heard one shot." Carney remained silent for a full minute; then he said: "One doesn't care to bring a good woman's name into anything that's evil, but I fancy I'd better tell you: Jeanette was wakened by the shot that wakened me, and we talked in the hall before I went over to the police shack."
"That'll be valuable evidence to establish your alibi, Bulldog—in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the law."
Then the Doctor puffed moodily at his pipe, and Carney could read the writing on the wall in the irritable little balloons of smoke that went up, the Doctor's unexpressed meaning that gossips would say Jeanette had sworn falsely to clear him. Anderson resumed:
"Hadley was evidently the last man playing cards with Seth, and there was considerable money at stake; that he was still up when the murder was discovered—these things are against him. Supposing he did shoot Seth, he might have come to the hotel and, seeing a light in the' upper hall and hearing Jeanette moving about, might have sat in that dark corner till things had quieted down before going to his room."