```"There are flies on you, and there're flies on
````me,
```But there ain't no flies on Je-e-e-sus."=
This crude humor appealed to the men who had issued from the bar; they
shouted in delight.
A girl who had started forward with her tambourine to collect stood
aghast at the profanity, her blue eyes wide in horror.
The breed broke into a drunken laugh: "That's damn fine new songs for de
Army bums, Miss," he jeered.
The buckskin cayuse, whose mouse-colored muzzle had been sticking
through the door, now pushed to the sidewalk, and his rider, stooping
his lithe figure, took the right ear of the breed in lean bony fingers
with a grip that suggested he was squeezing a lemon. "You dirty swine!"
he snarled; "you're insulting the two greatest things on earth--God and
a woman. Apologize, you hound!"
Probably the breed would have capitulated readily, but his river-mates'
ears were not in a death grip, and they were bellicose with bad liquor.
There was an angry yell of defiance; events moved with alacrity.
Profanity, the passionate profanity of anger, smote the air; a beer
bottle hurtled through the open door, missed its mark,--the man on the
buckskin,--but, end on, found a bull's-eye between the Wolf's shoulder
blades, and that gentleman dove parabolically into the black mud of
Jasper Avenue.
A silence smote the Salvation Army band. Like the Arab it folded its
instruments and stole away.
A Mounted Policeman, attracted by the clamour, reined his horse to the
sidewalk to quiet with a few words of admonition this bar-room row. He
slipped from the saddle; but at the second step forward he checked as
the thin face of the horseman turned and the steel-gray eyes met
his own. "Get down off that cayuse, Bulldog Carney,--I want you!" he
commanded in sharp clicking tones.
Happenings followed this. There was the bark of a 6-gun, a flash, the
Policeman's horse jerked his head spasmodically, a little jet of red
spurted from his forehead, and he collapsed, his knees burrowing into
the black mud and as the buckskin cleared the sidewalk in a leap, the
half-breed, two steel-like fingers in his shirt band, was swung behind
the rider.
With a spring like a panther the policeman reached his fallen horse, but
as he swung his gun from its holster he held it poised silent; to shoot
was to kill the breed.
Fifty yards down the street Carney dumped his burden into a deep puddle,
and with a ringing cry of defiance sped away. Half-a-dozen guns were out
and barking vainly after the escaping man.
Carney cut down the bush-road that wound its sinuous way to the river
flat, some two hundred feet below the town level. The ferry, swinging
from the steel hawser, that stretched across the river, was snuggling
the bank.
"Some luck," the rider of the buckskin chuckled. To the ferryman he said
in a crisp voice: "Cut her out; I'm in a hurry!"
The ferryman grinned. "For one passenger, eh? Might you happen to be the
Gov'nor General, by any chanct?"
Carney's handy gun held its ominous eye on the boatman, and its owner
answered, "I happen to be a man in a hell of a hurry. If you want to
travel with me get busy."
The thin lips of the speaker had puckered till they resembled a slit in
a dried orange. The small gray eyes were barely discernible between the
halfclosed lids; there was something devilish compelling in that lean
parchment face; it told of demoniac concentration in the brain behind.
The ferryman knew. With a pole he swung the stern of the flat barge down
stream, the iron pulleys on the cable whined a screeching protest, the
hawsers creaked, the swift current wedged against the tangented side of
the ferry, and swiftly Bulldog Carney and his buckskin were shot across
the muddy old Saskatchewan.
On the other side he handed the boatman a five-dollar bill, and with a
grim smile said: "Take a little stroll with me to the top of the hill;
there's some drunken bums across there whose company I don't want."
At the top of the south bank Carney mounted his buckskin and melted away
into the poplar-covered landscape; stepped out of the story for the time
being.
Back at the Alberta the general assembly was rearranging itself. The
Mounted Policeman, now set afoot by the death of his horse, had hurried
down to the barracks to report; possibly to follow up Carney's trail
with a new mount.
The half-breed had come back from the puddle a thing of black ooze and
profanity.
Jack the Wolf, having dug the mud from his eyes, and ears, and neck
band, was in the hotel making terms with Cameron for the summer's work
at Fort Victor.
Billy the Piper was revealing intimate history of Bulldog Carney. From
said narrative it appeared that Bulldog was as humorous a bandit as ever
slit a throat. Billy had freighted whisky for Carney when that gentleman
was king of the booze runners.
"Why didn't you spill the beans, Billy?" Nagel queried; "there's a
thousand on Carney's head all the time. We'd 've tied him horn and hoof
and copped the dough."
"Dif'rent here," the Piper growled; "I've saw a man flick his gun and
pot at Carney when Bulldog told him to throw up his hands, and all that
cuss did was laugh and thrown his own gun up coverin' the other broncho;
but it was enough--the other guy's hands went up too quick. If I'd set
the pack on him, havin' so to speak no just cause, well, Nagel, you'd
been lookin' round for another freighter. He's the queerest cuss I ever
stacked up agen. It kinder seems as if jokes is his religion; an' when
he's out to play he's plumb hostile. Don't monkey none with his game, is
my advice to you fellers." Nagel stepped to the door, thrust his swarthy
face through it, and, seeing that the policeman had gone, came back to
the bar and said: "Boys, the drinks is on me cause I see a man, a real
man."
He poured whisky into a glass and waited with it held high till the
others had done likewise; then he said in a voice that vibrated with
admiration:
"Here's to Bulldog Carney! Gad, I love a man! When that damn trooper
calls him, what does he do? You or me would 've quit cold or plugged
Mister Khaki-jacket--we'd had to. Not so Bulldog. He thinks with his
nut, and both hands, and both feet; I don't need to tell you boys
what happened; you see it, and it were done pretty. Here's to Bulldog
Carney!" Nagel held his hand out to the Piper: "Shake, Billy. If you'd
give that cuss away I'd 've kicked you into kingdom come, knowin' him as
I do now."
The population of Fort Victor, drawing the color line, was four people:
the Hudson's Bay Factor, a missionary minister and his wife, and a
school teacher, Lucy Black. Half-breeds and Indians came and went,
constituting a floating population; Cam-aron and his men were temporary
citizens.
Lucy Black was lathy of construction, several years past her girlhood,
and not an animated girl. She was a professional religionist. If there
were seeming voids in her life they were filled with this dominating
passion of moral reclamation; if she worked without enthusiasm she made
up for it in insistent persistence. It was as if a diluted strain of the
old Inquisition had percolated down through the blood of centuries and
found a subdued existence in this pale-haired, blue-eyed woman.
When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the
little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who
wandered in mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual
nourishment.
On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buck-board from Edmonton to
Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile
oaths, their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments
were spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of
life. Twice Cameron's blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling
perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.
Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the
religious fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was
that strange contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to
lean eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack
the Wolf and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the
great sun swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes
the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack
slouching at Lucy's feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked
Bible to him.
At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow
gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first
died away.
As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst
for moral betterment--insatiable. The missionary in a chat with Cameron
explained it very succinctly: Wolf, like many other Westerners, had
never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but
the One who missed not the sparrow's fall had led him to the port of
salvation, Fort Victor--Glory to God! The poor fellow's very wickedness
was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord's
vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.
It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always
being saved all over the world--regenerated, metamorphosed, and who was
Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.
At any rate Cameron's survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of
Wolf, became a high-powered machine.
The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and
became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited
until this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon
with, perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack
the Wolf declared was all wrong; the breeds were like train-dogs, he
affirmed, and should be taught respect for God's agents in a
proper muscular manner. So the first time three French half-breeds,
enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log schoolhouse and declared
school was out, sending the teacher home with tears of shame in her
blue eyes, Jack reestablished the dignity of the church by generously
walloping the three backsliders.
It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most
ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the
lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all
of Cameron's gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she
had known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her
negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when
the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others
were practically ignored.
For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker
and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.
Cameron's foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the
only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron:
"I don't like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he's a booze
fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue
devils away."
"You're doing the lad an injustice, I think," Cameron said. "I was
prejudiced myself at first."
Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft
of tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents
in it, and put it back on his head:
"You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss--first guesses about a
feller most gener'ly pans out pretty fair. And I'd keep an eye kinder
skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or
twice when you corrected his way of doin' things."
Cameron laughed.
"'Tain't no laughin' matter, Boss. When a feller's been used to cussin'
like hell he can't keep healthy bottlin' it up. And all that dirtiness
that's in the Wolf 'll bust out some day same's you touched a match to a
tin of powder; he'll throw back."
"There's nobody to worry about except the little school teacher,"
Cameron said meditatively.
This time it was Slade who chuckled. "The school-mam's as safe as
houses. She ain't got a pint of red blood in 'em blue veins of hers,
'tain't nothin' but vinegar. Jack's just tryin' to sober up on her
religion, that's all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin' an'
such while he makes a stake workin' here."
Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.
Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some
prairie chicken while he was out looking over his men's work. As he
passed the shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This
was careless, for train dogs were always prowling about for just such
a chance for loot. He stepped through the door and took a peep into the
other room. There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.
"What's the matter?" the Scotchman asked. "I've quit," the Wolf answered
surlily.
"Quit?" Cameron queried. "The gang can't carry on without a chain man."
"I don't care a damn. It don't make no dif'rence to me. I'm sick of that
tough bunch--swearin' and cussin', and tellin' smutty stories all day; a
man can't keep decent in that outfit."
"Ma God!" Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive
Scotch.
"You needn't swear 'bout it, Boss; you yourself ain't never give me no
square deal; you've treated me like a breed."
This palpable lie fired Cameron's Scotch blood; also the malignant look
that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look,
enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.
"You're a scoundrel!" Cameron blurted; "I wouldn't keep you on the
work. The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands,
especially the women folks. You're a scoundrel."
Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his
blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel
gun that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the
triggers.
"Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard," Cameron commanded.
"If I weren't a married man I'd blow the top of your head off; you're no
good on earth; you'd be better dead, but my wife would worry because I
did the deed."
The Wolf's empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on
the table.
"Now, you hound, you're just a bluffer. I'll show you what I think of
you. I'm going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort
Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in."
Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started
out.
"Come back and settle with me," the Wolf demanded.
"I'll settle with you in jail, you blackguard!" Cameron threw over his
shoulder, stalking on.
Plodding along, not without nervous twitchings of apprehension, the
Scotchman heard behind him the voice of the Wolf saying. "Don't do that,
Mr. Cameron; I flew off the handle and so did you, but I didn't mean
nothin'."
Cameron, ignoring the Wolf's plea, went along to his shack and wrote
a note, the ugly visage of the Wolf hovering at the open door. He was
humbled, beaten. Gun-play in Montana, where the Wolf had left a bad
record, was one thing, but with a cordon of Mounted Police between him
and the border it was a different matter; also he was wanted for a more
serious crime than a threat to shoot, and once in the toils this might
crop up. So he pleaded. But Cameron was obdurate; the Wolf had no right
to stick up his work and quit at a moment's notice.
Then Jack had an inspiration. He brought Lucy Black. Like woman of all
time her faith having been given she stood pat, a flush rouging her
bleached cheeks as, earnest in her mission, she pleaded for the "wayward
boy," as she euphemistically designated this coyote. Cameron was to
let him go to lead the better life; thrown into the pen of the police
barracks, among bad characters, he would become contaminated. The police
had always persecuted her Jack.
Cameron mentally exclaimed again, "Ma God!" as he saw tears in the
neutral blue-tinted eyes. Indeed it was time that the Wolf sought a
new runway. He had a curious Scotch reverence for women, and was almost
reconciled to the loss of a man over the breaking up of this situation.
Jack was paid the wages due; but at his request for a horse to take
him back to Edmonton the Scotchman laughed. "I'm not making presents of
horses to-day," he said; "and I'll take good care that nobody else here
is shy a horse when you go, Jack. You'll take the hoof express--it's
good enough for you."
So the Wolf tramped out of Fort Victor with a pack slung over his
shoulder; and the next day Sergeant Heath swung into town looking very
debonaire in his khaki, sitting atop the bright blood-bay police horse.
He hunted up Cameron, saying: "You've a man here that I want--Jack Wolf.
They've found his prospecting partner dead up on the Smoky River, with
a bullet hole in the back of his head. We want Jack at Edmonton to
explain."
"He's gone."
"Gone! When?"
"Yesterday."
The Sergeant stared helplessly at the Scotchman. A light dawned upon
Cameron. "Did you, by any chance, send word that you were coming?" he
asked.
"I'll be back, mister," and Heath darted from the shack, swung to his
saddle, and galloped toward the little log school house.
Cameron waited. In half an hour the Sergeant was back, a troubled look
in his face.
"I'll tell you," he said dejectedly, "women are hell; they ought to be
interned when there's business on."
"The little school teacher?"
"The little fool!"
"You trusted her and wrote you were coming, eh?"
"I did."
"Then, my friend, I'm afraid you were the foolish one."
"How was I to know that rustler had been 'making bad medicine'--had put
the evil eye on Lucy? Gad, man, she's plumb locoed; she stuck up for
him; spun me the most glimmering tale--she's got a dime novel skinned
four ways of the pack. According to her the police stood in with Bulldog
Carney on a train holdup, and made this poor innocent lamb the goat.
They persecuted him, and he had to flee. Now he's given his heart to
God, and has gone away to buy a ranch and send for Lucy, where the two
of them are to live happy ever after."
"Ma God!" the Scotchman cried with vehemence.
"That bean-headed affair in calico gave him five hundred she's pinched
up against her chest for years."
Cameron gasped and stared blankly; even his reverent exclamatory standby
seemed inadequate.
"What time yesterday did the Wolf pull out?" the Sergeant asked.
"About three o'clock."
"Afoot?"
"Yes."
"He'll rustle a cayuse the first chance he gets, but if he stays afoot
he'll hit Edmonton to-night, seventy miles."
"To catch the morning train for Calgary," Cameron suggested.
"You don't know the Wolf, Boss; he's got his namesake of the forest
skinned to death when it comes to covering up his trail--no train for
him now that he knows I'm on his track; he'll just touch civilization
for grub till he makes the border for Montana. I've got to get him. If
you'll stake me to a fill-up of bacon and a chew of oats for the horse
I'll eat and pull out."
In an hour Sergeant Heath shook hands with Cameron saying: "If you'll
just not say a word about how that cuss got the message I'll be much
obliged. It would break me if it dribbled to headquarters."
Then he rode down the ribbon of roadway that wound to the river bed,
forded the old Saskatchewan that was at its summer depth, mounted the
south bank and disappeared.
When Jack the Wolf left Fort Victor he headed straight for a little log
shack, across the river, where Descoign, a French half-breed, lived. The
family was away berry picking, and Jack twisted a rope into an Indian
bridle and borrowed a cayuse from the log corral. The cayuse was some
devil, and that evening, thirty miles south, he chewed loose the rope
hobble on his two front feet, and left the Wolf afoot.
Luck set in against Jack just there, for he found no more borrowable
horses till he came to where the trail forked ten miles short of Fort
Saskatchewan. To the right, running southwest, lay the well beaten
trail that passed through Fort Saskatchewan to cross the river and on
to Edmonton. The trail that switched to the left, running southeast, was
the old, now rarely-used one that stretched away hundreds of miles to
Winnipeg.
The Wolf was a veritable Indian in his slow cunning; a gambler where
money was the stake, but where his freedom, perhaps his life, was
involved he could wait, and wait, and play the game more than safe. The
Winnipeg trail would be deserted--Jack knew that; a man could travel it
the round of the clock and meet nobody, most like. Seventy miles beyond
he could leave it, and heading due west, strike the Calgary railroad and
board a train at some small station. No notice would be taken of him,
for trappers, prospectors, men from distant ranches, morose, untalkative
men, were always drifting toward the rails, coming up out of the silent
solitudes of the wastes, unquestioned and unquestioning.
The Wolf knew that he would be followed; he knew that Sergeant Heath
would pull out on his trail and follow relentlessly, seeking the glory
of capturing his man single-handed. That was the _esprit de corps_ of
these riders of the prairies, and Heath was, _par excellence_, large in
conceit.
A sinister sneer lifted the upper lip of the trailing man until his
strong teeth glistened like veritable wolf fangs. He had full confidence
in his ability to outguess Sergeant Heath or any other Mounted
Policeman.
He had stopped at the fork of the trail long enough to light his pipe,
looking down the Fort Saskatchewan-Edmonton road thinking. He knew the
old Winnipeg trail ran approximately ten or twelve miles east of the
railroad south for a hundred miles or more; where it crossed a trail
running into Red Deer, half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, it was
about ten miles east of that town.
He swung his blanket pack to his back and stepped blithely along the
Edmonton chocolate-colored highway muttering: "You red-coated snobs,
you're waiting for Jack. A nice baited trap. And behind, herding me in,
my brave Sergeant. Well, I'm coming."
Where there was a matrix of black mud he took care to leave a footprint;
where there was dust he walked in it, in one or the other of the ever
persisting two furrow-like paths that had been worn through the strong
prairie turf by the hammering hoofs of two horses abreast, and grinding
wheels of wagon and buckboard. For two miles he followed the trail till
he sighted a shack with a man chopping in the front yard. Here the Wolf
went in and begged some matches and a drink of milk; incidentally he
asked how far it was to Edmonton. Then he went back to the trail--still
toward Edmonton. The Wolf had plenty of matches, and he didn't need the
milk, but the man would tell Sergeant Heath when he came along of the
one he had seen heading for Edmonton.
For a quarter of a mile Jack walked on the turf beside the road, twice
putting down a foot in the dust to make a print; then he walked on
the road for a short distance and again took to the turf. He saw a rig
coming from behind, and popped into a cover of poplar bushes until it
had passed. Then he went back to the road and left prints of his feet
in the black soft dust, that would indicate that he had climbed into
a waggon here from behind. This accomplished he turned east across the
prairie, reach-ing the old Winnipeg trail, a mile away; then he turned
south.
At noon he came to a little lake and ate his bacon raw, not risking the
smoke of a fire; then on in that tireless Indian plod--toes in, and head
hung forward, that is so easy on the working joints--hour after
hour; it was not a walk, it was more like the dog-trot of a cayuse, easy
springing short steps, always on the balls of his wide strong feet.
At five he ate again, then on. He travelled till midnight, the shadowy
gloom having blurred his path at ten o'clock. Then he slept in a thick
clump of saskatoon bushes.
At three it was daylight, and screened as he was and thirsting for
his drink of hot tea, he built a small fire and brewed the inspiring
beverage. On forked sticks he broiled some bacon; then on again.
All day he travelled. In the afternoon elation began to creep into his
veins; he was well past Edmonton now. At night he would take the dipper
on his right hand and cut across the prairie straight west; by morning
he would reach steel; the train leaving Edmonton would come along about
ten, and he would be in Calgary that night. Then he could go east,
or west, or south to the Montana border by rail. Heath would go on to
Edmonton; the police would spend two or three days searching all the
shacks and Indian and half-breed camps, and they would watch the daily
outgoing train.
There was one chance that they might wire Calgary to look out for him;
but there was no course open without some risk of capture; he was up
against that possibility. It was a gamble, and he was playing his hand
the best he knew how. Even approaching Calgary he would swing from the
train on some grade, and work his way into town at night to a shack
where Montana Dick lived. Dick would know what was doing.
Toward evening the trail gradually swung to the east skirting muskeg
country. At first the Wolf took little notice of the angle of detour;
he was thankful he followed a trail, for trails never led one into
impassable country; the muskeg would run out and the trail swing west
again. But for two hours he plugged along, quickening his pace, for he
realized now that he was covering miles which had to be made up when he
swung west again.
Perhaps it was the depressing continuance of the desolate muskeg through
which the shadowy figures of startled hares darted that cast the tiring
man into foreboding. Into his furtive mind crept a suspicion that he was
being trailed. So insidiously had this dread birthed that at first it
was simply worry, a feeling as if the tremendous void of the prairie
was closing in on him, that now and then a white boulder ahead was a
crouching wolf. He shivered, shook his wide shoulders and cursed. It was
that he was tiring, perhaps.
Then suddenly the thing took form, mental form--something _was_ on his
trail. This primitive creature was like an Indian--gifted with the sixth
sense that knows when somebody is coming though he may be a day's march
away; the mental wireless that animals possess. He tried to laugh it
off; to dissipate the unrest with blasphemy; but it wouldn't down.
The prairie was like a huge platter, everything stood out against the
luminous evening sky like the sails of a ship at sea. If it were Heath
trailing, and that man saw him, he would never reach the railroad.
His footprints lay along the trail, for it was hard going on the
heavily-grassed turf. To cut across the muskeg that stretched for miles
would trap him. In the morning light the Sergeant would discover that
his tracks had disappeared, and would know just where he had gone.
Being mounted the Sergeant would soon make up for the few hours of
darkness--would reach the railway and wire down the line.
The Wolf plodded on for half a mile, then he left the trail where the
ground was rolling, cut east for five hundred yards, and circled back.
On the top of a cut-bank that was fringed with wolf willow he crouched
to watch. The sun had slipped through purple clouds, and dropping below
them into a sea of greenish-yellow space, had bathed in blood the whole
mass of tesselated vapour; suddenly outlined against this glorious
background a horse and man silhouetted, the stiff erect seat in the
saddle, the docked tail of the horse, square cut at the hocks, told the
watcher that it was a policeman.
When the rider had passed the Wolf trailed him, keeping east of the
road where his visibility was low against the darkening side of the
vast dome. Half a mile beyond where the Wolf had turned, the Sergeant
stopped, dismounted, and, leading the horse, with head low hung searched
the trail for the tracks that had now disappeared. Approaching night,
coming first over the prairie, had blurred it into a gigantic rug of
sombre hue. The trail was like a softened stripe; footprints might be
there, merged into the pattern till they were indiscernible.
A small oval lake showed in the edge of the muskeg beside the trail, its
sides festooned by strong-growing blue-joint, wild oats, wolf willow,
saskatoon bushes, and silver-leafed poplar. Ducks, startled from their
nests, floating nests built of interwoven rush leaves and grass, rose
in circling flights, uttering plaintive rebukes. Three giant sandhill
cranes flopped their sail-like wings, folded their long spindle shanks
straight out behind, and soared away like kites.
Crouched back beside the trail the Wolf watched and waited. He knew what
the Sergeant would do; having lost the trail of his quarry he would
camp there, beside good water, tether his horse to the picket-pin by
the hackamore rope, eat, and sleep till daylight, which would come about
three o'clock; then he would cast about for the Wolf's tracks, gallop
along the southern trail, and when he did not pick them up would surmise
that Jack had cut across the muskeg land; then he would round the
southern end of the swamp and head for the railway.
"I must get him," the Wolf muttered mercilessly; "gentle him if I can,
if not--get him."
He saw the Sergeant unsaddle his horse, picket him, and eat a cold meal;
this rather than beacon his presence by a glimmering fire.
The Wolf, belly to earth, wormed closer, slithering over the gillardias,
crunching their yellow blooms beneath his evil body, his revolver held
between his strong teeth as his grimy paws felt the ground for twigs
that might crack.
If the Sergeant would unbuckle his revolver belt, and perhaps go down to
the water for a drink, or even to the horse that was at the far end of
the picket line, his nose buried deep in the succulent wild-pea vine,
then the Wolf would rush his man, and the Sergeant, disarmed, would
throw up his hands.
The Wolf did not want on his head the death of a Mounted Policeman, for
then the "Redcoats" would trail him to all corners of the earth. All his
life there would be someone on his trail. It was too big a price. Even
if the murder thought had been paramount, in that dim light the first
shot meant not overmuch.
So Jack waited. Once the horse threw up his head, cocked his ears
fretfully, and stood like a bronze statue; then he blew a breath of
discontent through his spread nostrils, and again buried his muzzle in
the pea vine and sweet-grass.
Heath had seen this movement of the horse and ceased cutting at the plug
of tobacco with which he was filling his pipe; he stood up, and searched
with his eyes the mysterious gloomed prairie.
The Wolf, flat to earth, scarce breathed.
The Sergeant snuffed out the match hidden in his cupped hands over the
bowl, put the pipe in his pocket, and, revolver in hand, walked in a
narrow circle; slowly, stealthily, stopping every few feet to listen;
not daring to go too far lest the man he was after might be hidden
somewhere and cut out his horse. He passed within ten feet of where the
Wolf lay, just a gray mound against the gray turf.
The Sergeant went back to his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow
lay down, the tiny glow of his pipe showing the Wolf that he smoked. He
had not removed his pistol belt.
The Wolf lying there commenced to think grimly how easy it would be to
kill the policeman as he slept; to wiggle, snake-like to within a few
feet and then the shot. But killing was a losing game, the blundering
trick of a man who easily lost control; the absolutely last resort when
a man was cornered beyond escape and saw a long term at Stony Mountain
ahead of him, or the gallows. The Wolf would wait till all the advantage
was with him. Besides, the horse was like a watch-dog. The Wolf was down
wind from them now, but if he moved enough to rouse the horse, or the
wind shifted--no, he would wait. In the morning the Sergeant, less wary
in the daylight, might give him his chance.
Fortunately it was late in the summer and that terrible pest, the
mosquito, had run his course.
The Wolf slipped back a few yards deeper into the scrub, and, tired,
slept. He knew that at the first wash of gray in the eastern sky the
ducks would wake him. He slept like an animal, scarce slipping from
consciousness; a stamp of the horse's hoof on the sounding turf bringing
him wide awake. Once a gopher raced across his legs, and he all but
sprang to his feet thinking the Sergeant had grappled with him. Again
a great horned owl at a twist of Jack's head as he dreamed, swooped
silently and struck, thinking it a hare.
Brought out of his sleep by the myriad noises of the waterfowl the
Wolf knew that night was past, and the dice of chance were about to be
thrown. He crept back to where the Sergeant was in full view, the horse,
his sides ballooned by the great feed of sweet-pea vine, lay at rest,
his muzzle on the earth, his drooped ears showing that he slept.
Waked by the harsh cry of a loon that swept by rending the air with his
death-like scream, the Sergeant sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes
sleepily. He rose, stretched his arms above his head, and stood for a
minute looking off toward the eastern sky that was now taking on a rose
tint. The horse, with a little snort, canted to his feet and sniffed
toward the water; the Sergeant pulled the picket-pin and led him to the
lake for a drink.
Hungrily the Wolf looked at the carbine that lay across the saddle, but
the Sergeant watered his horse without passing behind the bushes. It
was a chance; but still the Wolf waited, thinking, "I want an ace in the
hole when I play this hand."
Sergeant Heath slipped the picket-pin back into the turf, saddled his
horse, and stood mentally debating something. Evidently the something
had to do with Jack's whereabouts, for Heath next climbed a short
distance up a poplar, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding
prairie. This seemed to satisfy him; he dropped back to earth, gathered
some dry poplar branches and built a little fire; hanging by a forked
stick he drove in the ground his copper tea pail half full of water.
Then the thing the Wolf had half expectantly waited for happened. The
Sergeant took off his revolver belt, his khaki coat, rolled up the
sleeves of his gray flannel shirt, turned down its collar, took a piece
of soap and a towel from the roll of his blanket and went to the water
to wash away the black dust of the prairie trail that was thick and
heavy on his face and in his hair. Eyes and ears full of suds, splashing
and blowing water, the noise of the Wolf's rapid creep to the fire was
unheard.
When the Sergeant, leisurely drying his face on the towel, stood up and
turned about he was looking into the yawning maw of his own heavy police
revolver, and the Wolf was saying: "Come here beside the fire and strip
to the buff--I want them duds. There won't nothin' happen you unless
you get hostile, then you'll get yours too damn quick. Just do as you're
told and don't make no fool play; I'm in a hurry."
Of course the Sergeant, not being an imbecile, obeyed.
"Now get up in that tree and stay there while I dress," the Wolf
ordered. In three minutes he was arrayed in the habiliments of Sergeant
Heath; then he said, "Come down and put on my shirt."
In the pocket of the khaki coat that the Wolf now wore were a pair of
steel handcuffs; he tossed them to the man in the shirt commanding,
"Click these on."
"I say," the Sergeant expostulated, "can't I have the pants and the coat
and your boots?"
The Wolf sneered: "Dif'rent here my bounder; I got to make a get-away.
I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you your choice of three ways:
I'll stake you to the clothes, bind and gag you; or I'll rip one of
these .44 plugs through you; or I'll let you run foot loose with a shirt
on your back; I reckon you won't go far on this wire grass in bare
feet."
"I don't walk on my pants."
"That's just what you would do; the pants and coat would cut up into
about four pairs of moccasins; they'd be as good as duffel cloth."
"I'll starve."
"That's your look-out. You'd lie awake nights worrying about where Jack
Wolf would get a dinner--I guess not. I ought to shoot you. The damn
police are nothin' but a lot of dirty dogs anyway. Get busy and cook
grub for two--bacon and tea, while I sit here holdin' this gun on you."
The Sergeant was a grotesque figure cooking with the manacles on his
wrists, and clad only in a shirt.
When they had eaten the Wolf bridled the horse, curled up the picket
line and tied it to the saddle horn, rolled the blanket and with the
carbine strapped it to the saddle, also his own blanket.
"I'm goin' to grubstake you," he said, "leave you rations for three
days; that's more than you'd do for me. I'll turn your horse loose near
steel, I ain't horse stealin', myself--I'm only borrowin'."
When he was ready to mount a thought struck the Wolf. It could hardly
be pity for the forlorn condition of Heath; it must have been cunning--a
play against the off chance of the Sergeant being picked up by somebody
that day. He said:
"You fellers in the force pull a gag that you keep your word, don't
you?"
"We try to."
"I'll give you another chance, then. I don't want to see nobody put in
a hole when there ain't no call for it. If you give me your word, on the
honor of a Mounted Policeman, swear it, that you'll give me four days'
start before you squeal I'll stake you to the clothes and boots; then
you can get out in two days and be none the worse."
"I'll see you in hell first. A Mounted Policeman doesn't compromise with
a horse thief--with a skunk who steals a working girl's money."
"You'll keep palaverin' till I blow the top of your head off," the Wolf
snarled. "You'll look sweet trampin' in to some town in about a week
askin' somebody to file off the handcuffs Jack the Wolf snapped on you,
won't you?"
"I won't get any place in a week with these handcuffs on," the Sergeant
objected; "even if a pack of coyotes tackled me I couldn't protect
myself."
The Wolf pondered this. If he could get away without it he didn't want
the death of a man on his hands--there was nothing in it. So he unlocked
the handcuffs, dangled them in his fingers debatingly, and then threw
them far out into the bushes, saying, with a leer; "I might get stuck up
by somebody, and if they clamped these on to me it would make a get-away
harder."
"Give me some matches," pleaded the Sergeant.
With this request the Wolf complied saying, "I don't want to do nothin'
mean unless it helps me out of a hole."
Then Jack swung to the saddle and continued on the trail. For four miles
he rode, wondering at the persistence of the muskeg. But now he had a
horse and twenty-four hours ahead before train time; he should worry.
Another four miles, and to the south he could see a line of low rolling
hills that meant the end of the swamps. Even where he rode the prairie
rose and fell, the trail dipping into hollows, on its rise to sweep over
higher land. Perhaps some of these ridges ran right through the muskegs;
but there was no hurry.
Suddenly as the Wolf breasted an upland he saw a man leisurely cinching
a saddle on a buckskin horse.
"Hell!" the Wolf growled as he swung his mounts, "that's the buckskin
that I see at the Alberta; that's Bulldog; I don't want no mix-up with
him."
He clattered down to the hollow he had left, and raced for the hiding
screen of the bushed muskeg. He was almost certain Carney had not seen
him, for the other had given no sign; he would wait in the cover until
Carney had gone; perhaps he could keep right on across the bad lands,
for his horse, as yet, sunk but hoof deep. He drew rein in thick cover
and waited.
Suddenly the horse threw up his head, curved his neck backward, cocked
his ears and whinnied. The Wolf could hear a splashing, sucking sound of
hoofs back on the tell-tale trail he had left.
With a curse he drove his spurs into the horse's flanks, and the
startled animal sprang from the cutting rowels, the ooze throwing up in
a shower.
A dozen yards and the horse stumbled, almost coming to his knees; he
recovered at the lash of Jack's quirt, and struggled on; now going half
the depth of his cannon bones in the yielding muck, he was floundering
like a drunken man; in ten feet his legs went to the knees.
Quirt and spur drove him a few feet; then he lurched heavily, and with
a writhing struggle against the sucking sands stood trembling; from his
spread mouth came a scream of terror--he knew.
And now the Wolf knew. With terrifying dread he remembered--he had
ridden into the "Lakes of the Shifting Sands." This was the country they
were in and he had forgotten. The sweat of fear stood out on the low
forehead; all the tales that he had heard of men who had disappeared
from off the face of the earth, swallowed up in these quicksands, came
back to him with numbing force. To spring from the horse meant but two
or three wallowing strides and then to be sucked down in the claiming
quicksands.
The horse's belly was against the black muck. The Wolf had drawn his
feet up; he gave a cry for help. A voice answered, and twisting his head
about he saw, twenty yards away, Carney on the buckskin. About the man's
thin lips a smile hovered. He sneered:
"You're up against it, Mister Policeman; what name'll I turn in back at
barracks?"
Jack knew that it was Carney, and that Carney might know Heath by sight,
so he lied:
"I'm Sergeant Phillips; for God's sake help me out."
Bulldog sneered. "Why should I--God doesn't love a sneaking police
hound."
The Wolf pleaded, for his horse was gradually sinking; his struggles now
stilled for the beast knew that he was doomed.
"All right," Carney said suddenly. "One condition--never mind, I'll
save you first--there isn't too much time. Now break your gun, empty
the cartridges out and drop it back into the holster," he commanded.
"Unsling your picket line, fasten it under your armpits, and if I can
get my cow-rope to you tie the two together."
He slipped from the saddle and led the horse as far out as he dared,
seemingly having found firmer ground a little to one side. Then taking
his cow-rope, he worked his way still farther out, placing his feet on
the tufted grass that stuck up in little mounds through the treacherous
ooze. Then calling, "Look out!" he swung the rope. The Wolf caught it
at the first throw and tied his own to it. Carney worked his way back,
looped the rope over the horn, swung to the saddle, and calling, "Flop
over on your belly--look out!" he started his horse, veritably towing
the Wolf to safe ground.
The rope slacked; the Wolf, though half smothered with muck, drew his
revolver and tried to slip two cartridges into the cylinder.
A sharp voice cried, "Stop that, you swine!" and raising his eyes he was
gazing into Carney's gun. "Come up here on the dry ground," the latter
commanded. "Stand there, unbuckle your belt and let it drop. Now take
ten paces straight ahead." Carney salvaged the weapon and belt of
cartridges.
"Build a fire, quick!" he next ordered, leaning casually against his
horse, one hand resting on the butt of his revolver.
He tossed a couple of dry matches to the Wolf when the latter had built
a little mound of dry poplar twigs and birch bark.
When the fire was going Carney said: "Peel your coat and dry it; stand
close to the fire so your pants dry too--I want that suit."
The Wolf was startled. Was retribution so hot on his trail? Was Carney
about to set him afoot just as he had set afoot Sergeant Heath? His two
hundred dollars and Lucy Black's five hundred were in the pocket of
that coat also. As he took it off he turned it upside down, hoping for
a chance to slip the parcel of money to the ground unnoticed of his
captor.
"Throw the jacket here," Carney commanded; "seems to be papers in the
pocket."
When the coat had been tossed to him, Carney sat down on a fallen tree,
took from it two packets--one of papers, and another wrapped in strong
paper. He opened the papers, reading them with one eye while with the
other he watched the man by the fire. Presently he sneered: "Say, you're
some liar--even for a government hound; your name's not Phillips, it's
Heath. You're the waster who fooled the little girl at Golden. You're
the bounder who came down from the Klondike to gather Bulldog Carney in;
you shot off your mouth all along the line that you were going to take
him singlehanded. You bet a man in Edmonton a hundred you'd tie him hoof
and horn. Well, you lose, for I'm going to rope you first, see? Turn you
over to the Government tied up like a bag of spuds; that's just what I'm
going to do, Sergeant Liar. I'm going to break you for the sake of that
little girl at Golden, for she was my friend and I'm Bulldog Carney.
Soon as that suit is dried a bit you'll strip and pass it over; then
you'll get into my togs and I'm going to turn you over to the police as
Bulldog Carney.
"D'you get me, kid?" Carney chuckled. "That'll break you, won't it,
Mister Sergeant Heath? You can't stay in the Force a joke; you'll never
live it down if you live to be a thousand--you've boasted too much."
The Wolf had remained silent--waiting. He had an advantage if his captor
did not know him. Now he was frightened; to be turned in at Edmonton by
Carney was as bad as being taken by Sergeant Heath.
"You can't pull that stuff, Carney," he objected; "the minute I tell
them who I am and who you are they'll grab you too quick. They'll know
me; perhaps some of them'll know you."
A sneering "Ha!" came from between the thin lips of the man on the log.
"Not where we're going they won't, Sergeant. I know a little place over
on the rail"--and he jerked his thumb toward the west--"where there's
two policemen that don't know much of anything; they've never seen
either of us. You ain't been at Edmonton more'n a couple of months since
you came from the Klondike. But they do know that Bulldog Carney is
wanted at Calgary and that there's a thousand dollars to the man that
brings him in."
At this the Wolf pricked his ears; he saw light--a flood of it. If this
thing went through, and he was sent on to Calgary as Bulldog Carney,
he would be turned loose at once as not being the man. The police at
Calgary had cause to know just what Carney looked like for he had been
in their clutches and escaped.
But Jack must bluff--appear to be the angry Sergeant. So he said:
"They'll know me at Calgary, and you'll get hell for this."
Now Carney laughed out joyously. "I don't give a damn if they do. Can't
you get it through your wooden police head that I just want this little
pleasantry driven home so that you're the goat of that nanny band,
the Mounted Police; then you'll send in your papers and go back to the
farm?"
As Carney talked he had opened the paper packet. Now he gave a crisp
"Hello! what have we here?" as a sheaf of bills appeared.
The Wolf had been watching for Carney's eyes to leave him for five
seconds. One hand rested in his trousers pocket. He drew it out and
dropped a knife, treading it into the sand and ashes.
"Seven hundred," Bulldog continued. "Rather a tidy sum for a policeman
to be toting. Is this police money?"
The Wolf hesitated; it was a delicate situation. Jack wanted that money
but a slip might ruin his escape. If Bulldog suspected that Jack was not
a policeman he would jump to the conclusion that he had killed the owner
of the horse and clothes. Also Carney would not believe that a policeman
on duty wandered about with seven hundred in his pocket; if Jack claimed
it all Carney would say he lied and keep it as Government money.
"Five hundred is Government money I was bringin' in from a post, and two
hundred is my own," he answered.
"I'll keep the Government money," Bulldog said crisply; "the Government
robbed me of my ranch--said I had no title. And I'll keep yours, too;
it's coming to you."
"If luck strings with you, Carney, and you get away with this dirty
trick, what you say'll make good--I'll have to quit the Force; an' I
want to get home down east. Give me a chance; let me have my own two
hundred."
"I think you're lying--a man in the Force doesn't get two hundred ahead,
not honest. But I'll toss you whether I give you one hundred or two,"
Carney said, taking a half dollar from his pocket. "Call!" and he spun
it in the air.
"Heads!" the Wolf cried.
The coin fell tails up. "Here's your hundred," and Bulldog passed the
bills to their owner.
"I see here," he continued, "your order to arrest Bulldog Carney. Well,
you've made good, haven't you. And here's another for Jack the Wolf; you
missed him, didn't you? Where's he--what's he done lately? He played me
a dirty trick once; tipped off the police as to where they'd get me. I
never saw him, but if you could stake me to a sight of the Wolf I'd
give you this six hundred. He's the real hound that I've got a low down
grudge against. What's his description--what does he look like?"
"He's a tall slim chap--looks like a breed, 'cause he's got nigger blood
in him," the Wolf lied.
"I'll get him some day," Carney said; "and now them duds are about
cooked--peel!"
The Wolf stripped, gray shirt and all.
"Now step back fifteen paces while I make my toilet," Carney commanded,
toying with his 6-gun in the way of emphasis.
In two minutes he was transformed into Sergeant Heath of the N. W. M.
P., revolver belt and all. He threw his own clothes to the Wolf, and
lighted his pipe.
When Jack had dressed Carney said: "I saved your life, so I don't want
you to make me throw it away again. I don't want a muss when I turn you
over to the police in the morning. There ain't much chance they'd listen
to you if you put up a holler that you were Sergeant Heath--they'd laugh
at you, but if they did make a break at me there's be shooting, and
you'd sure be plumb in line of a careless bullet--see? I'm going to stay
close to you till you're on that train."
Of course this was just what the Wolf wanted; to go down the line as
Bulldog Carney, handcuffed to a policeman, would be like a passport for
Jack the Wolf. Nobody would even speak to him--the policeman would see
to that.
"You're dead set on putting this crazy thing through, are you?" he
asked.
"You bet I am--I'd rather work this racket than go to my own wedding."
"Well, so's you won't think your damn threat to shoot keeps me mum, I'll
just tell you that if you get that far with it I ain't going to give
myself away. You've called the turn, Carney; I'd be a joke even if I
only got as far as the first barracks a prisoner. If I go in as Bulldog
Carney I won't come out as Sergeant Heath--I'll disappear as Mister
Somebody. I'm sick of the Force anyway. They'll never know what happened
Sergeant Heath from me--I couldn't stand the guying. But if I ever
stack up against you, Carney, I'll kill you for it." This last was pure
bluff--for fear Carney's suspicions might be aroused by the other's
ready compliance.
Carney scowled; then he laughed, sneering: "I've heard women talk like
that in the dance halls. You cook some bacon and tea at that fire--then
we'll pull out."
As the Wolf knelt beside the fire to blow the embers into a blaze he
found a chance to slip the knife he had buried into his pocket.
When they had eaten they took the trail, heading south to pass the lower
end of the great muskegs. Carney rode the buckskin, and the Wolf strode
along in front, his mind possessed of elation at the prospect of being
helped out of the country, and depression over the loss of his money.
Curiously the loss of his own one hundred seemed a greater enormity than
that of the school teacher's five hundred. That money had been easily
come by, but he had toiled a month for the hundred. What right had
Carney to steal his labor--to rob a workman. As they plugged along mile
after mile, a fierce determination to get the money back took possession
of Jack.
If he could get it he could get the horse. He would fix Bulldog some way
so that the latter would not stop him. He must have the clothes, too.
The khaki suit obsessed him; it was a red flag to his hot mind.
They spelled and ate in the early evening; and when they started for
another hour's tramp Carney tied his cow-rope tightly about the Wolf's
waist, saying: "If you'd tried to cut out in these gloomy hills I'd
be peeved. Just keep that line taut in front of the buckskin and there
won't be no argument."
In an hour Carney called a halt, saying: "We'll camp by this bit of
water, and hit the trail in the early morning. We ain't more than ten
miles from steel, and we'll make some place before train time." Carney
had both the police picket line and his own. He drove a picket in the
ground, looped the line that was about the Wolf's waist over it, and
said.
"I don't want to be suspicious of a mate jumping me in the dark, so I'll
sleep across this line and you'll keep to the other end of it; if you
so much as wink at it I guess I'll wake. I've got a bad conscience and
sleep light. We'll build a fire and you'll keep to the other side of it
same's we were neighbors in a city and didn't know each other."
Twice, as they ate, Carney caught a sullen, vicious look in Jack's eyes.
It was as clearly a murder look as he had ever seen; and more than
once he had faced eyes that thirsted for his life. He wondered at the
psychology of it; it was not like his idea of Sergeant Heath. From what
he had been told of that policeman he had fancied him a vain, swaggering
chap who had had his ego fattened by the three stripes on his arm. He
determined to take a few extra precautions, for he did not wish to lie
awake.
"We'll turn in," he said when they had eaten; "I'll hobble you, same's a
shy cayuse, for fear you'd walk in your sleep, Sergeant."
He bound the Wolf's ankles, and tied his wrists behind his back,
saying, as he knotted the rope, "What the devil did you do with your
handcuffs--thought you johnnies always had a pair in your pocket?"
"They were in the saddle holster and went down with my horse," the Wolf
lied.
Carney's nerves were of steel, his brain worked with exquisite
precision. When it told him there was nothing to fear, that his
precautions had made all things safe, his mind rested, untortured by
jerky nerves; so in five minutes he slept.
The Wolf mastered his weariness and lay awake, waiting to carry out the
something that had been in his mind. Six hundred dollars was a stake to
play for; also clad once again in the police suit, with the buckskin to
carry him to the railroad, he could get away; money was always a good
thing to bribe his way through. Never once had he put his hand in the
pocket where lay the knife he had secreted at the time he had changed
clothes with Carney, as he trailed hour after hour in front of the
buckskin. He knew that Carney was just the cool-nerved man that would
sleep--not lie awake through fear over nothing.
In the way of test he shuffled his feet and drew from the half-dried
grass a rasping sound. It partly disturbed the sleeper; he changed the
steady rhythm of his breathing; he even drew a heavy-sighing breath;
had he been lying awake watching the Wolf he would have stilled his
breathing to listen.
The Wolf waited until the rhythmic breaths of the sleeper told that he
had lapsed again into the deeper sleep. Slowly, silently the Wolf worked
his hands to the side pocket, drew out the knife and cut the cords that
bound his wrists. It took time, for he worked with caution. Then he
waited. The buckskin, his nose deep in the grass, blew the pollen of the
flowered carpet from his nostrils.
Carney stirred and raised his head. The buckskin blew through his
nostrils again, ending with a luxurious sigh of content; then was
heard the clip-clip of his strong teeth scything the grass. Carney,
recognizing what had waked him, turned over and slept again.
Ten minutes, and the Wolf, drawing up his feet slowly, silently, sawed
through the rope on his ankles. Then with spread fingers he searched the
grass for a stone the size of a goose egg, beside which he had purposely
lain down. When his fingers touched it he unknotted the handkerchief
that had been part of Carney's make-up and which was now about his neck,
and in one corner tied the stone, fastening the other end about his
wrist. Now he had a slung-shot that with one blow would render the other
man helpless.
Then he commenced his crawl.
A pale, watery, three-quarter moon had climbed listlessly up the eastern
sky changing the sombre prairie into a vast spirit land, draping with
ghostly garments bush and shrub.
Purposely Carney had tethered the buckskin down wind from where he and
the Wolf lay. Jack had not read anything out of this action, but Carney
knew the sensitive wariness of his horse,--the scent of the stranger in
his nostrils would keep him restless, and any unusual move on the part
of the prisoner would agitate the buckskin. Also he had only pretended
to drive the picket pin at some distance away; in the dark he had
trailed it back and worked it into the loose soil at his very feet. This
was more a move of habitual care than a belief that the bound man could
work his way, creeping and rolling, to the picket-pin, pull it, and get
away with the horse.
At the Wolfs first move the buckskin threw up his head, and, with ears
cocked forward, studied the shifting blurred shadow. Perhaps it was
the scent of his master's clothes which the Wolf wore that agitated his
mind, that cast him to wondering whether his master was moving about;
or, perhaps as animals instinctively have a nervous dread of a vicious
man he distrusted the stranger; perhaps, in the dim uncertain light, his
prairie dread came back to him and he thought it a wolf that had crept
into camp. He took a step forward; then another, shaking his head
irritably. A vibration trembled along the picket line that now lay
across Carney's foot and he stirred restlessly.
The Wolf flattened himself to earth and snored. Five minutes he waited,
cursing softly the restless horse. Then again he moved, so slowly that
even the watchful animal scarce detected it.
He was debating two plans: a swift rush and a swing of his slung shot,
or the silent approach. The former meant inevitably the death of one or
the other--the crushed skull of Carney, or, if the latter were by
any chance awake, a bullet through the Wolf. He could feel his heart
pounding against the turf as he scraped along, inch by inch. A bare ten
feet, and he could put his hand on the butt of Carney's gun and snatch
it from the holster; if he missed, then the slung shot.
The horse, roused, was growing more restless, more inquisitive.
Sometimes he took an impatient snap at the grass with his teeth; but
only to throw his head up again, take a step forward, shake his head,
and exhale a whistling breath.
Now the Wolf had squirmed his body five feet forward. Another yard
and he could reach the pistol; and there was no sign that Carney had
wakened--just the steady breathing of a sleeping man.
The Wolf lay perfectly still for ten seconds, for the buckskin seemingly
had quieted; he was standing, his head low hung, as if he slept on his
feet.
Carney's face was toward the creeping man and was in shadow. Another
yard, and now slowly the Wolf gathered his legs under him till he rested
like a sprinter ready for a spring; his left hand crept forward toward
the pistol stock that was within reach; the stone-laden handkerchief was
twisted about the two first fingers of his right.
Yes, Carney slept.
As the Wolf's finger tips slid along the pistol butt the wrist was
seized in fingers of steel, he was twisted almost face to earth, and the
butt of Carney's own gun, in the latter's right hand, clipped him over
the eye and he slipped into dreamland. When he came to workmen were
riveting a boiler in the top of his head; somebody with an augur was
boring a hole in his forehead; he had been asleep for ages and had
wakened in a strange land. He sat up groggily and stared vacantly at
a man who sat beside a camp fire smoking a pipe. Over the camp fire a
copper kettle hung and a scent of broiling bacon came to his nostrils.
The man beside the fire took the pipe from his mouth and said: "I hoped
I had cracked your skull, you swine. Where did you pick up that thug
trick of a stone in the handkerchief? As you are troubled with insomnia
we'll hit the trail again."
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:--