"You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."
Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.
Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he
should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding
had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a
foreboding look.
Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:
"You're Tacoma Jack--you're the man that staked Seth Long to this marked
pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to
Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."
He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when
you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went
with you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he
had taken the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth.
When the game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the
window, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money
was too much, and you plugged him."
"It's a damn lie! I was up in the mountains and don't know nothin' about
it."
"You were standing at that back window of the police shack when Seth and
Hadley were playing alone, and when you shot Seth you were smooth enough
not to open the front door for fear some one might be coming and see
you, but jumped from the back window."
Carney took from his pocket the paper templet he had made of the tracks
in the mud.
"I see from the soles of your gum-shoe packs that this gets you." He
held it up.
"It's all a damned pack of lies, Bulldog; you've been chewin' your own
hop. Who's goin' to swaller that guff?"
Carney had expected this. He knew Tacoma was of the determined one-idea
type; lacking absolute eye-witness evidence he would deny complicity
even with a rope around his neck. He realized that with the valley lying
twenty feet deep in snow he couldn't take Tacoma to Bucking Horse; in
fact with him that was not the real desired point. If Carney had been
a Mounted Policeman the honor of the force would have demanded that
he give up his life trying to land his prisoner; but he was a private
individual, trying to keep clean the name of a woman he had a high
regard for--Jeanette Holt. He wanted a written confession from this man.
Bringing in the stolen money and the cards wouldn't be enough; it might
be said that he, himself, had taken these two things and returned them.
Even the punishment of Tacoma didn't interest him vitally. Two thieves
had combined to rob a stranger, and over a division of the spoil one had
been killed--it was not, vitally, Carney's funeral.
Now to gain the confession he stretched a point, saying:
"They believe Seth Long. He says you shot him." Startled out of his
cunning, Tacoma blundered: "That's a damn lie--Seth's as dead's a
herrin'!"
"How do you know, Tacoma?" and Carney smiled.
The other, stunned by his foolish break, spluttered sullenly, "You said
so yourself."
"Seth's dead now, Tacoma, but you were in too much of a hurry to make
your get-away. Dr. Anderson and I found him alive, and he said that you,
Tacoma Jack, shot him. That's why I pulled out on this trail."
The two men sat in silence for a little. Tacoma knew that Carney was
driving at something; he knew that Carney could not take him to Bucking
Horse with the trail as it was; the buckskin would have all he could do
to carry one man, and without huge moose-hunting snowshoes no man could
make half a mile of that trail.
Carney broke the silence: "You made a one-sided proposition, Tacoma,
when you had the drop on me; now I'm going to deal. I'd take you in if I
didn't value the little buckskin more than your carcass; I don't give a
damn whether you're hanged or die here. I'm going to cut from that slab
of bacon six slices. That'll keep you alive for six days with a little
flour I'll leave you. I can make Bucking Horse in three days at most
with snowshoes on the buckskin; then I'll come back for you with a
dogtrain and a couple of men on snowshoes. You've got a gambling chance;
it's like filling a bob-tailed flush--but I'm going to let you draw.
If the chinook comes up the valley kissing this snow before I get back
you'll get away; I'd give even a wolf a fighting chance. But I've got
to clear a good woman's name; get that, Tacoma!" and Carney tapped the
cards with a forefinger in emphasis. "You've got to sign a confession
here in my noteboook that you killed Seth Long."
"I'll see you in hell first! It's a damn trap--I didn't kill him!" %
"As you like. Then you lose your bet on the chinook right now; for I
take the money, your gun, your boots, and _all the grub_."
As Carney with slow deliberation stated the terms Tacoma's heart sank
lower and lower as each article of life saving was specified.
"Take your choice, quick!" Carney resumed; "a grub stake for you, and
you bet on the chinook if you sign the confession; if you refuse I make
a cleanup. You starve to death here, or die on the trail, even if the
chinook comes in two or three days." There was an ominous silence.
Carney broke it, saying, a sharp determination in his voice: "Decide
quick, for I'm going to hobble you."
Tacoma knew Bulldog's reputation; he knew he was up against it. If
Carney took the food--and he would--he had no chance. The alternative
was his only hope.
"I'll sign--I got to!" he said, surily; "you write and I'll tell just
how it happened."
"You write it yourself--I won't take a chance on you: you'd swear I
forged your signature, but a man can't forge a whole letter."
He tossed his notebook and pencil over to the other.
When Tacoma tossed it back with a snarling oath, Carney, keeping one eye
on the other man, read it. It was a statement that Seth Long and Tacoma
Jack had quarreled over the money; that Seth, being half drunk, had
pulled his gun; that Tacoma had seized Seth's hand across the table, and
in the struggle Seth had been shot with his own gun.
Carney closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, saying: "This may
be true, Tacoma, or it may not. Personally I've got what I want. If
you're laughing down in your chest that you've put one over on Bulldog
Carney, forget it. To keep you from making any fool play that might make
me plug you I'm going to hobble you. When I pull out in the morning I'll
turn you loose."
Carney was an artist at twisting a rope security about a man, and
Tacoma, placed in the helpless condition of a swathed babe, Carney
proceeded to cook himself a nice little dinner off the latter's bacon.
Then he rubbed down the buckskin, melted some snow for a drink for the
horse, gave him a feed of oats, and stretched himself on the opposite
side of the fire from Tacoma, saying: "You're on your good behavior, for
the minute you start anything you lose your bet on the chinook."
In the morning when Carney opened his eyes daylight was streaming in
through the cave mouth. He blinked wonderingly; the snow wall that had
all but closed the entrance had sagged down like a weary man that had
huddled to sleep; and the air that swept in through the opening was soft
and balmy, like the gentle breeze of a May day.
Carney rose and pushed his way through the little mound of wet, soggy
snow and gazed down the valley. The giant pines that had drooped beneath
the weight of their white mantles were now dropping to earth huge masses
of snow; the sky above was blue and suffused with gold from a climbing
sun. Rocks on the hillside thrust through the white sheet black, wet,
gnarled faces, and in the bottom of the valley the stream was gorged
with snow-water.
A hundred yards down the trail, where a huge snow bank leaned against
a cliff, the head and neck of a horse stood stiff and rigid out of
the white mass. About the neck was a leather strap from which hung a
cow-bell. It was Tacoma's cayuse frozen stiff, and the bell was the bell
that Carney had heard as he was slipping off into dreamland behind the
little buckskin.
Carney turned back to where the other man lay, his furtive eyes peeping
out from above his blanket--they were like rat eyes.
"You win your bet, Tacoma," Carney said; "the chinook is here."
Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his
heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to
Bucking Horse.
"The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the
chinook, don't I?"
"You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his
word."
"Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled
into Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my
hand dif'rent--p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that
when I drug you in out of the blizzard."
Carney waited a day for the snow to melt before the hot chinook. It was
just before he left that Tacoma asked, like a boy begging for a bite
from an apple: "Will you give me back them cards, Bulldog--I'd be kind
of lost without them when I'm alone if I didn't have 'em to riffle."
"If I gave you the cards, Tacoma, you'd never make the border; Oregon is
waiting down at Bighorn to rope a man with a pack of cards in his pocket
that's got seven blue doves on the back; and I'm not going to cold-deck
you. After you pass Oregon you take your own chances of them getting
you."