William Fraser - Bulldog Carney

"I'm Sergeant Black of the Mounted Police."

"You amuse me, Sergeant; you're unusual, even for a member of that joke bank, the Mounted."

"Fine!" the Sergeant sneered, subdued anger in his voice; "I'll entertain you for several days over in the pen."

"On what grounds?"

"You'll find out."

"Yes, and now, declare yourself!"

"We don't allow, rough house, gun play, and knocking people down, in Bucking Horse," the Sergeant retorted; "assault means the pen when I'm here."

"Then take that thing," and Bulldog jerked a thumb toward Jack Wolf, who stood at a far corner of the bar whispering with Cayuse.

"I'll take you, Bulldog Carney."

"Not if that's all you've got as reason," and Carney, either hand clasping his slim waist, the palms resting on his hips, eyed the Sergeant, a faint smile lifting his tawny mustache.

"You're wanted, Bulldog Carney, and you know it. I've been waiting a chance to rope you; now I've got you, and you're coming along. There's a thousand on you over in Calgary; and you've been running coke over the line."

"Oh! that's it, eh? Well, Sergeant, in plain English you're a tenderfoot to not know that the Alberta thing doesn't hold in British Columbia. You'll find that out when you wire headquarters for instructions, which you will, of course. I think it's easier for me, my dear Sergeant, to let you get this tangle straightened out by going with you than to kick you into the street; then they would have something on me – something because I'd mussed up the uniform."

"Carney ain't had no supper, Sergeant," Seth declared; "and I'll go bail – "

"I'm not takin' bail; and you can send his supper over to the lock-up."

The Sergeant had drawn from his pocket a pair of handcuffs.

Carney grinned.

"Put them back in your pocket, Sergeant," he advised. "I said I'd go with you; but if you try to clamp those things on, the trouble is all your own." Black looked into the gray eyes and hesitated; then even his duty-befogged mind realized that he would take too big a chance by insisting. He held out his hand toward Carney's gun, and the latter turned it over to him. Then the two, the Sergeant's hand slipped through Carney's arm, passed out.

Just around the corner was the police barracks, a square log shack divided by a partition. One room was used as an office, and contained a bunk; the other room had been built as a cell, and a heavy wooden door that carried a bar and strong lock gave entrance. There was one small window safeguarded by iron bars firmly embedded in the logs. Into this bull-pen, as it was called, Black ushered Carney by the light of a candle. There was a wooden bunk in one end, the sole furniture.

"Neat, but not over decorated," Carney commented as he surveyed the bare interior. "No wonder, with such surroundings, my dear Sergeant, you fellows are angular."

"I've heard, Bulldog, that you fancied yourself a superior sort."

"Not at all, Sergeant; you have my entire sympathy."

The Sergeant sniffed. "If they give you three years at Stony Mountain perhaps you'll drop some of that side."

Carney sat down on the side of the bed, took a cigarette case from his pocket and asked, "Do you allow smoking here? It won't fume up your curtains, will it?"

"It's against the regulations, but you smoke if you want to."

Carney's supper was brought in and when he had eaten it Sergeant Black went into the cell, saying: "You're a pretty slippery customer, Bulldog – I ought to put the bangles on you for the night." Rather irrelevantly, and with a quizzical smile, Carney asked, "Have you read 'Les Miserables,' Sergeant?"

"I ain't read a paper in a month – I've been too busy."

"It isn't a paper, it's a story."

"I ain't got no time for readin' magazines either."

"This is a story that was written long ago by a Frenchman," Carney persisted.

"Then I don't want to read it. The trickiest damn bunch that ever come into these mountains are them Johnnie Crapeaus from Quebec – they're more damn trouble to the police than so many Injuns." The soft quizzical voice of Carney interrupted Black gently. "You put me in mind of a character in that story, Sergeant; he was the best drawn, if I might discriminate over a great story."

This allusion touched Black's vanity, and drew him to ask, "What did he do – how am I like him?" He eyed Carney suspiciously.

"The character I liked in 'Les Miserables' was a policeman, like yourself, and his mind was only capable of containing the one idea – duty. It was a fetish with him; he was a fanatic."

"You're damn funny, Bulldog, ain't you? What I ought to do is slip the bangles on you and leave you in the dark."

"If you could. I give you full permission to try, Sergeant; if you can clamp them on me there won't be any hard feelings, and the first time I meet you on the trail I won't set you afoot."

Carney had risen to his feet, ostensibly to throw his cigarette through the bars of the open window.

Black stood glowering at him. He knew Carney's reputation well enough to know that to try to handcuff him meant a fight – a fight over nothing; and unless he used a gun he might possibly get the worst of it.

"It would only be spite work," Carney declared presently; "these logs would hold anybody, and you know it."

In spite of his rough manner the Sergeant rather admired Bulldog's gentlemanly independence, the quiet way in which he had submitted to arrest; it would be a feather in his cap that, single-handed, he had locked the famous Bulldog up. His better sense told him to leave well enough alone.

"Yes," he said grudgingly, "I guess these walls will hold you. I'll be sleeping in the other room, a reception committee if you have callers."

"Thanks, Sergeant. I take it all back. Leave me a candle, and give me something to read."

Black pondered over this; but Carney's allusion to the policeman in "Les Miserables" had had an effect. He brought from the other room a couple of magazines and a candle, went out, and locked the door.

Carney pulled off his boots, stretched himself on the bunk and read. He could hear Sergeant Black fussing at a table in the outer room; then the Sergeant went out and Carney knew that he had gone to send a wire to Major Silver for instructions about his captive. After a time he came back. About ten o'clock Carney heard the policeman's boots drop on the floor, his bunk creak, and knew that the representative of the law had retired. A vagrant thought traversed his mind that the heavy-dispositioned, phlegmatic policeman would be a sound sleeper once oblivious. However, that didn't matter, there was no necessity for escape.

Carney himself dozed over a wordy story, only to be suddenly wakened by a noise at his elbow. Wary, through the vicissitudes of his order of life he sat up wide awake, ready for action. Then by the light of the sputtering candle he saw his magazine sprawling on the floor, and knew he had been wakened by its fall. His bunk had creaked; but listening, no sound reached his ears from the other room, except certain stertorous breathings. He had guessed right, Sergeant Black was an honest sleeper, one of Shakespeare's full-paunched kind.

Carney blew out the candle; and now, perversely, his mind refused to cuddle down and rest, but took up the matter of Jack the Wolf's presence. He hated to know that such an evil beast was even indirectly associated with Seth, who was easily led. His concern was not over Seth so much as over Jeanette.

He lay wide awake in the dark for an hour; then a faint noise came from the barred window; it was a measured, methodical click-click-click of a pebble tapping on iron.

With the stealthiness of a cat he left the bunk, so gently that no tell-tale sound rose from its boards, and softly stepping to the window thrust the fingers of one hand between the bars.