William Fraser - Bulldog Carney

With the picket line around his waist once more Jack trudged ahead of the buckskin, in the night gloom the shadowy cavalcade cutting a strange, weird figure as though a boat were being towed across sleeping waters.

The Wolf, groggy from the blow that had almost cracked his skull, was wobbly on his legs – his feet were heavy as though he wore a diver's leaden boots. As he waded through a patch of wild rose the briars clung to his legs, and, half dazed he cried out, thinking he struggled in the shifting sands.

"Shut up!" The words clipped from the thin lips of the rider behind.

They dipped into a hollow and the played-out man went half to his knees in the morass. A few lurching steps and overstrained nature broke; he collapsed like a jointed doll – he toppled head first into the mire and lay there.

The buckskin plunged forward in the treacherous going, and the bag of a man was skidded to firm ground by the picket line, where he sat wiping the mud from his face, and looking very all in.

Carney slipped to the ground and stood beside his captive. "You're soft, my bucko – I knew Sergeant Heath had a yellow streak," he sneered; "boasters generally have. I guess we'll rest till daylight. I've a way of hobbling a bad man that'll hold you this time, I fancy."

He drove the picket-pin of the rope that tethered the buckskin, and ten feet away he drove the other picket pin. He made the Wolf lie on his side and fastened him by a wrist to each peg so that one arm was behind and one in front.

Carney chuckled as he surveyed the spread-eagle man: "You'll find some trouble getting out of that, my bucko; you can't get your hands together and you can't get your teeth at either rope. Now I will have a sleep."

The Wolf was in a state of half coma; even untethered he probably would have slept like a log; and Carney was tired; he, too, slumbered, the soft stealing gray of the early morning not bringing him back out of the valley of rest till a glint of sunlight throwing over the prairie grass touched his eyes, and the warmth gradually pushed the lids back.

He rose, built a fire, and finding water made a pot of tea. Then he saddled the buckskin, and untethered the Wolf, saying: "We'll eat a bite and pull out."

The rest and sleep had refreshed the Wolf, and he plodded on in front of the buckskin feeling that though his money was gone his chances of escape were good.

At eight o'clock the square forms of log shacks leaning groggily against a sloping hill came into view; it was Hobbema; and, swinging a little to the left, in an hour they were close to the Post.

Carney knew where the police shack lay, and skirting the town he drew up in front of a log shack, an iron-barred window at the end proclaiming it was the Barracks. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the rein over his horse's head, and said quietly to the Wolf: "Knock on the door, open it, and step inside," the muzzle of his gun emphasizing the command.

He followed close at the Wolf's heels, standing in the open door as the latter entered. He had expected to see perhaps one, not more than two constables, but at a little square table three men in khaki sat eating breakfast.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Carney said cheerily; "I've brought you a prisoner, Bulldog Carney."

The one who sat at table with his back to the door turned his head at this; then he sprang to his feet, peered into the prisoner's face and laughed.

"Bulldog nothing, Sergeant; you've bagged the Wolf."

The speaker thrust his face almost into the Wolf's. "Where's my uniform – where's my horse? I've got you now – set me afoot to starve, would you, you damn thief – you murderer! Where's the five hundred dollars you stole from the little teacher at Fort Victor?"

He was trembling with passion; words flew from his lips like bullets from a gatling – it was a torrent.

But fast as the accusation had come, into Carney's quick mind flashed the truth – the speaker was Sergeant Heath. The game was up. Still it was amusing. What a devilish droll blunder he had made. His hands crept quietly to his two guns, the police gun in the belt and his own beneath the khaki coat.

Also the Wolf knew his game was up. His blood surged hot at the thought that Carney's meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of his evil luck should not escape.

" That's Bulldog Carney! " he cried fiercely; "don't let him get away."

Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.

A sharp, crisp voice said: "The first man that reaches for a gun drops." They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.

"I'll make you a present of the Wolf," Carney said quietly; "I thought I had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren't such a skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by one, into the pen," and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led from the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as a cell. "I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack – you really should have been properly in uniform by this time; I'll dump them out on the prairie somewhere, and you'll find them in the course of a day or so. Step in, boys, and you go first, Wolf."

When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.

A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through the mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note: —

Dear Miss Black: —

I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No woman can afford to bet on even a good man. Stick to the kids, for I've heard they love you. If those Indians hadn't picked up Sergeant Heath and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I wouldn't have known, and you'd have lost out.

Yours delightedly,

Bulldog Carney.

A day's trail north from where Idaho and Montana come together on the Canadian border, fumed and fretted Bucking Horse River. Its nomenclature was a little bit of all right, for from the minute it trickled from a huge blue-green glacier up in the Selkirks till it fell into the Kootenay, it bucked its way over, under, and around rock-cliffs, and areas of stolid mountain sides that still held gigantic pine and cedar.

It had ripped from the bowels of a mountain pebbles of gold, and the town of Bucking Horse was the home of men who had come at the call of the yellow god.

When Bulldog Carney struck Bucking Horse it was a sick town, decrepid, suffering from premature old age, for most of the mines had petered out.

One hotel, the Gold Nugget, still clung to its perch on a hillside, looking like a bird cage hung from a balcony.

Carney had known its proprietor, Seth Long, in the Cour d'Alene: Seth and Jeanette Holt; in the way of disapproval Seth, for he was a skidder; Jeanette with a manly regard, for she was as much on the level as a gyroscope.

Carney was not after gold that is battled from obdurate rocks with drill and shovel. He was a gallant knight of the road – a free lance of adventure; considering that a man had better lie in bed and dream than win money by dreary unexciting toil. His lithe six foot of sinewy anatomy, the calm, keen, gray eye, the splendid cool insulated nerve and sweet courage, the curious streaks of chivalry, all these would have perished tied to routine. Like "Bucking Horse" his name, "Bulldog" Carney, was an inspiration.

He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border, mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam the exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking Horse.