Читать книгу: «Bulldog Carney», страница 7

Major Cummings coughed; and there was a little husky rasp in his voice as he said, quietly:

"The objection to the rider of the buckskin horse is disallowed. This paper proves he is the legitimate owner and entitled to ride. Go down to the post."

A yell of delight went up from many throats. The men of Walla Walla, and the riders of the plains who had trooped in, were sports; they grasped the idea that the gambling clique had been caught at their own game; that the intrepid Bulldog had put one over on them. Besides, now they could see that the race was for blood. The heavy betting had started more than one whisper that perhaps it was a bluff; some of the Clatawa people believing in the invincibility of their horse, had hinted that perhaps there was a job on for the two other horses to foul Clatawa and one of them go on and win; though few would admit that Carney would be party to cold-decking the public.

But accident had thrown the cards all on the table; it was to be a race to the finish, and the stakes represented real money.

Before they could start quite openly Carney stepped close to the rider of Horned Toad, and said, in even tones:

"Slimy Red, if you pull any dirty work I'll be here at the finish waiting for you. If you can win, win; but ride straight, or you'll never ride again."

"I'll be hangin' round the finish post, too," Oregon muttered abstractedly, but both Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth could hear him.

The three horses passed down the course, Clatawa sidling like a boat in a choppy sea, champing at his bit irritably, flecks of white froth snapping from his lips, and his tail twitching and swishing, indicating his excitable temperament; Horned Toad and Waster walked with that springy lift to the pasterns that indicated the perfection of breeding. Indians and cowboys raced up and down the plain, either side of the course, on their ponies, bandying words in a very ecstasy of delight. Old Walla Walla had come into its own; the greatest sport on earth was on in all its glory.

After a time the three horses were seen to turn far down the course; they criss-crossed, and wove in and out a few times as they were being placed by the starter. The excitable Clatawa was giving trouble; sometimes he reared straight up; then, with a few bucking jumps, fought for his head. But the sinewy Snaky Dick was always his master.

Atop the little buckskin the boy was scarce discernible at that distance, as he sat low crouched over his horse's wither. Almost like an equine statue stood Waster, so still, so sleepy-like, that those who had taken long odds about him felt a depression.

Horned Toad was scarcely still for an instant; his wary rider, Texas, was keeping him on his toes – not letting him chill out; but, like the buckskin's jockey, his eye was always on the man with the gun. They were old hands at the game, both of them; they paid little attention to the antics of Clatawa – the starter was the whole works.

Clatawa had broken away to be pulled up in thirty yards. Now, as he came back, his wily rider wheeled him suddenly short of the starting line, and the thing that he had cunningly planned came off. The starter, finger on trigger, was mentally pulled out of himself by this; his finger gripped spasmodically; those at the finish post saw a puff of smoke, and a white-nosed horse, well out in front, off to a flying start.

The backers of Clatawa yelled in delight.

"Good old Snaky Dick!" some one cried.

"Clatawa beat the gun!" another roared.

"They'll never catch him! – never catch him! He'll win off by himself!" was droned.

Behind, seemingly together, half the width of the track separating them, galloped the black and the buckskin. It looked as if Waster raced alone, as if he had lost his rider, so low along his wither and neck lay the boy, his weight eased high from the short stirrups. A hand on either side of the lean neck, he seemed a part of his mount. He was saying, "Ste-a-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy! stead-d-dy boy!" a soft, low monotonous sing-song through his clinched teeth, his crouch discounting the handicap of a strong wind that was blowing down the track.

He could feel the piece of smooth-moving machinery under him flatten out in a long rhythmic stride, and his heart sang, for he knew it was the old Waster he had ridden to victory more than once; that same powerful stride that ate up the course with little friction. He was rating his horse. "Clatawa will come back," he kept thinking: "Clatawa will come back!"

He himself, who had ridden hundreds of races, and working gallops and trials beyond count, knew that the chestnut was rating along of his own knowledge at a pace that would cover the mile-and-a-quar-ter in under 2.12. Methodically he was running his race. Clatawa was sprinting; he had cut out at a gait that would carry him a mile, if he could keep it up, close to 1.40. Too fast, for the track was slow, being turf.

He watched Homed Toad; that was what he had to beat, he knew.

Texas had reasoned somewhat along the same lines; but his brain was more flighty. As Clatawa opened a gap of a dozen lengths, running like a wild horse, Texas grew anxious; he shook up his mount and increased his pace.

The buckskin reached into his bridle at this, as though he coaxed for a little more speed, but the boy called, "Steady, lad, steady!" and let Horned Toad creep away a length, two lengths; and always in front the white-faced horse, Clatawa, was galloping on and on with a high deer-like lope that was impressive.

At the finish post people were acclaiming the name of Clatawa. They could see the little buckskin trailing fifteen lengths behind, and Horned Toad was between the two.

Carney watched the race stoically. It was being run just as Billy had forecasted; there was nothing in this to shake his faith.

Somebody cried out: "Buckskin's out of it! I'll lay a thousand to a hundred against him."

"I'll take it," Carney declared.

"I'll lay the same," Snaggle Tooth yelled.

"You're on," came from Carney.

And even as they bet the buckskin had lost a length.

Half-a-mile had been covered by the horses; three-quarters; and now it seemed to the watchers that the black was creeping up on Clatawa, the latter's rider, who had been almost invisible, riding Indian fashion lying along the back of his horse, was now in view; his shoulders were up. Surely a quirt had switched the air once.

Yes, the Toad was creeping up – his rider was making his run; they could see Texas's arms sway as he shook up his mount.

Why was the boy on the little buckskin riding like one asleep? Had he lost his whip – had he given up all idea of winning?

They were at the mile: but a short quarter away.

A moan went up from many throats, mixed with hoarse curses, for Clatawa was plainly in trouble; he was floundering; the monkey man on his back was playing the quirt against his ribs, the gyrations checking the horse instead of helping him.

And the Toad, galloping true and straight, was but a length behind.

Watching this battle, almost in hushed silence, gasping in the smothered tenseness, the throng went mentally blind to the little buckskin. Now somebody cried:

"God! look at the other one comin'! Look at him – lo-ook at him, men!"

His voice ran up the scale to a shrill scream. Other eyes lengthened their vision, and their owners gasped.

Clatawa seemed to be running backwards, so fast the little buckskin raced by him as he dropped out of it, beaten.

And Horned Toad was but three lengths in front now. Three lengths? It was two – it was one. Now the buckskin's nose rose and fell on the black's quarters; now the mouse-coloured muzzle was at his girth; now their heads rose and fell together, as, stride for stride, they battled for the lead: Texas driving his mount with whip and spur, cutting the flanks of his horse with cruel blows in a frantic endeavor to lift him home a winner.

How still the boy sat Waster; how well he must know that he had the race won to nurse him like a babe. No swaying of the body to throw him out of stride; no flash of the whip to startle him – to break his heart; the brave little horse was doing it all himself. And the boy, creature of brains, was wise enough to sit still.

They could hear the pound of hoofs on the turf like the beat of twin drums; they could see the eager strife in the faces of the two brave, stout-hearted thoroughbreds: and then the buckskin's head nodding in front; his lean neck was clear of the black and he was galloping straight as an arrow.

"The Toad is beat!" went up from a dozen throats. "The buckskin wins – the buckskin wins!" became a clamor.

Pandemonium broke loose. It was stilled by a demoniac cry, a curse, from some strong-voiced man. The black had swerved full in on to the buckskin; they saw Texas clutch at the rider. Curses; cries of "Foul!" rose; it was an angry roar like caged animals at war.

Carney, watching, found his fingers rubbing the butt of his gun. The buckskin had been thrown out of his stride in the collision: he stumbled; his head shot down – almost to his knees he went: then he was galloping again, the two horses locked together.

Fifty feet away from the finish post they were locked: twenty feet.

The cries of the throng were hushed; they scarce breathed.

Locked together they passed the post, the buckskin's neck in front. Their speed had been checked; in a dozen yards they were stopped, and the boy pitched headlong from the buckskin's back, one foot still tangled in the martingale of Horned Toad.

Men closed in frantically. A man – it was Oregon – twisted Carney's gun skyward crying: "Leave that coyote to the boys."

He was right. In vain Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail sought to battle back the tense-faced men who reached for Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail were swallowed up in a seething mass of clamoring devils. Gun play was out of the question: humans were like herrings packed in a barrel.

Major Cummings, cool and quick-witted, had called shrilly "Troopers!" and a little cordon of men in cavalry uniform had Texas in the centre of a guarding circle.

Carney, on his knees beside the boy, was guarding the lad from the mad, trampling, fighting men; striking with the butt of his pistol. And then a woman's shrill voice rose clear above the tumult, crying:

"Back, you cowards – you brutes: the boy is dying: give him room – give him air!"

Her bleached hair was down her back; her silk finery was torn like a battered flag; for she had fought her way through the crowd to the boy's side.

"Don't lift him – he's got a hemorrhage!" she shrilled, as Carney put his arms beneath the little lad. "Drive the men back – give him air!" she commanded; and turned Billy flat on his back, tearing from her shoulders a rich scarf to place beneath his head. The lad's lips, coated with red froth, twitched in a weak smile; he reached out a thin hand, and Molly, sitting at his head, drew it into her lap.

"Just lie still, Billy. You'll be all right, boy; just lie still; don't speak," she admonished.

She could hear the lad's throat click, click, click at each breath, the ominous tick tick, of "the bug's" work; and at each half-stifled cough the red-tinged yeasty sputum bubbled up from the life well.

The fighting clamor was dying down; shamefaced men were widening the circle about the lad and Molly.

The judge's voice was heard saying:

"The buckskin won the race, gentlemen." And he added, strong condemnation in his voice: "If Horned Toad had been first I would have disqualified him: it was a deliberate foul."

The cavalry men had got Texas away, mounted, and rushed him out to the barracks for protection.

"Get a stretcher, someone, please," Molly asked of the crowd. "Billy will be all right, but we must keep him flat on his back.

"You'll be all right, Billy," she added, bending her head till her lips touched the boy's forehead, and her mass of peroxided hair hid the hot tears that fell from the blue eyes that many thought only capable of cupidity and guile.

IV. – THE GOLD WOLF

All day long Bulldog Carney had found, where the trail was soft, the odd imprint of that goblined inturned hoof. All day in the saddle, riding a trail that winds in and out among rocks, and trees, and cliffs monotonously similar, the hush of the everlasting hills holding in subjection man's soul, the towering giants of embattled rocks thrusting up towards God's dome pigmying to nothingness that rat, a man, produces a comatose condition of mind; man becomes a child, incapable of little beyond the recognition of trivial things; the erratic swoop of a bird, the sudden roar of a cataract, the dirge-like sigh of wind through the harp of a giant pine.

And so, curiously, Bulldog's fancy had toyed aimlessly with the history of the cayuse that owned that inturned left forefoot. Always where the hoof's imprint lay was the flat track of a miner's boot, the hob nails denting the black earth with stolid persistency. But the owner of the miner's boot seemed of little moment; it was the abnormal hoof that, by a strange perversity, haunted Carney.

The man was probably a placer miner coming down out of the Eagle Hills, leading a pack pony that carried his duffel and, perhaps, a small fortune in gold. Of course, like Carney, he was heading for steel, for the town of Bucking Horse.

Toward evening, as Carney rode down a winding trail that led to the ford of Singing Water, rounding an abrupt turn the mouth of a huge cave yawned in the side of a cliff away to his left. Something of life had melted into its dark shadow that had the semblance of a man; or it might have been a bear or a wolf. Lower down in the valley that was called the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, his buckskin shied, and with a snort of fear left the trail and elliptically came back to it twenty yards beyond.

In the centre of the ellipse, on the trail, stood a gaunt form, a huge dog-wolf. He was a sinister figure, his snarling lips curled back from strong yellow fangs, his wide powerful head low hung, and the black bristles on his back erect in challenge.

The whole thing was weird, uncanny; a single wolf to stand his ground in daylight was unusual.

Instinctively Bulldog reined in the buckskin, and half turning in the saddle, with something of a shudder, searched the ground at the wolf's feet dreading to find something. But there was nothing.

The dog-wolf, with a snarling twist of his head, sprang into the bushes just as Carney dropped a hand to his gun; his quick eye had seen the movement.

Carney had meant to camp just beyond the ford of Singing Water, but the usually placid buckskin was fretful, nervous.

A haunting something was in the air; Carney, himself, felt it. The sudden apparition of the wolf could not account for this mental unrest, either in man or beast, for they were both inured to the trail, and a wolf meant little beyond a skulking beast that a pistol shot would drive away.

High above the rider towered Old Squaw Mountain. It was like a battered feudal castle, on its upper reaches turret and tower and bastion catching vagrant shafts of gold and green, as, beyond, in the far west, a flaming sun slid down behind the Selkirks. Where he rode in the twisted valley a chill had struck the air, suggesting vaults, dungeons; the giant ferns hung heavy like the plumes of knights drooping with the death dew. A reaching stretch of salmon bushes studded with myriad berries that gleamed like topaz jewels hedged on both sides the purling, frothing stream that still held the green tint of its glacier birth.

Many times in his opium running Carney had swung along this wild trail almost unconscious of the way, his mind travelling far afield; now back to the old days of club life; to the years of army routine; to the bright and happy scenes where rich-gowned women and cultured men laughed and bantered with him. At times it was the newer rough life of the West; the ever-present warfare of man against man; the yesterday where he had won, or the to-morrow where he might cast a losing hazard – where the dice might turn groggily from a six-spotted side to a deuce, and the thrower take a fall.

But to-night, as he rode, something of depression, of a narrow environment, of an evil one, was astride the withers of his horse; the mountains seemed to close in and oppress him. The buckskin, too, swung his heavy lop ears irritably back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes one ear was pricked forward as though its owner searched the beyond, the now glooming valley that, at a little distance, was but a blur, the other ear held backward as though it would drink in the sounds of pursuit.

Pursuit! that was the very thing; instinctively the rider turned in his saddle, one hand on the horn, and held his piercing gray eyes on the back trail, searching for the embodiment of this phantasy. The unrest had developed that far into conception, something evil hovered on his trail, man or beast. But he saw nothing but the swaying kaleidoscope of tumbling forest shadows; rocks that, half gloomed, took fantastic forms; bushes that swayed with the rolling gait of a grizzly.

The buckskin had quickened his pace as if, tired though he was, he would go on beyond that valley of fear before they camped.

Where the trail skirted the brink of a cliff that had a drop of fifty feet, Carney felt the horse tremble, and saw him hug the inner wall; and, when they had rounded the point, the buckskin, with a snort of relief, clamped the snaffle in his teeth and broke into a canter.

"I wonder – by Jove!" and Bulldog, pulling the buckskin to a stand, slipped from his back, and searched the black-loamed trail.

"I believe you're right, Pat," he said, addressing the buckskin; "something happened back there." He walked for a dozen paces ahead of the horse, his keen gray eyes on the earth. He stopped and rubbed his chin, thinking – thinking aloud.

"There are tracks, Patsy boy – moccasins; but we've lost our gunboat-footed friend. What do you make of that, Patsy – gone over the cliff? But that damn wolf's pugs are here; he's travelled up and down. By gad! two of them!"

Then, in silence, Carney moved along the way, searching and pondering; cast into a curious, superstitious mood that he could not shake off. The inturned hoof-print had vanished, so the owner of the big feet that carried hob-nailed boots did not ride.

Each time that Carney stopped to bend down in study of the trail the buckskin pushed at him fretfully with his soft muzzle and rattled the snaffle against his bridle teeth.

At last Carney stroked the animal's head reassuringly, saying: "You're quite right, pal – it's none of our business. Besides, we're a pair of old grannies imagining things."

But as he lifted to the saddle, Bulldog, like the horse, felt a compelling inclination to go beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge to camp for the night.

Even as they climbed to a higher level of flat land, from back on the trail that was now lost in the deepening gloom, came the howl of a wolf; and then, from somewhere beyond floated the answering call of the dog-wolf's mate – a whimpering, hungry note in her weird wail.

"Bleat, damn you!" Carney cursed softly; "if you bother us I'll sit by with a gun and watch Patsy boy kick you to death."

As if some genii of the hills had taken up and sent on silent waves his challenge, there came filtering through the pines and birch a snarling yelp.

"By gad!" and Carney cocked his ear, pulling the horse to a stand.

Then in the heavy silence of the wooded hills he pushed on again muttering, "There's something wrong about that wolf howl – it's different."

Where a big pine had showered the earth with cones till the covering was soft, and deep, and springy, and odorous like a perfumed mattress of velvet, he hesitated; but the buckskin, in the finer animal reasoning, pleaded with little impatient steps and shakes of the head that they push on.

Carney yielded, saying softly: "Go on, kiddie boy; peace of mind is good dope for a sleep."

So it was ten o'clock when the two travellers, Carney and Pat, camped in an open, where the moon, like a silver mirror, bathed the earth in reassuring light. Here the buckskin had come to a halt, filled his lungs with the perfumed air in deep draughts, and turning his head half round had waited for his partner to dismount.

It was curious this man of steel nerve and flawless courage feeling at all the guidance of unknown threatenings, unexplainable disquietude. He did not even build a fire; but choosing a place where the grass was rich he spread his blanket beside the horse's picket pin.

Bulldog's life had provided him with different sleeping moods; it was a curious subconscious matter of mental adjustment before he slipped away from the land of knowing. Sometimes he could sleep like a tired laborer, heavily, unresponsive to the noise of turmoil; at other times, when deep sleep might cost him his life, his senses hovered so close to consciousness that a dried leaf scurrying before the wind would call him to alert action. So now he lay on his blanket, sometimes over the border of spirit land, and sometimes conscious of the buckskin's pull at the crisp grass. Once he came wide awake, with no movement but the lifting of his eyelids. He had heard nothing; and now the gray eyes, searching the moonlit plain, saw nothing. Yet within was a full consciousness that there was something – not close, but hovering there beyond.

The buckskin also knew. He had been lying down, but with a snort of discontent his forequarters went up and he canted to his feet with a spring of wariness. Perhaps it was the wolves.

But after a little Carney knew it was not the wolves; they, cunning devils, would have circled beyond his vision, and the buckskin, with his delicate scent, would have swung his head the full circle of the compass; but he stood facing down the back trail; the thing was there, watching.

After that Carney slept again, lighter if possible, thankful that he had yielded to the wisdom of the horse and sought the open.

Half a dozen times there was this gentle transition from the sleep that was hardly a sleep, to a full acute wakening. And then the paling sky told that night was slipping off to the western ranges, and that beyond the Rockies, to the east, day was sleepily travelling in from the plains.

The horse was again feeding; and Carney, shaking off the lethargy of his broken sleep, gathered some dried stunted bushes, and, building a little fire, made a pot of tea; confiding to the buckskin as he mounted that he considered himself no end of a superstitious ass to have bothered over a nothing.

Not far from where Carney had camped the trail he followed turned to the left to sweep around a mountain, and here it joined, for a time, the trail running from Fort Steel west toward the Kootenay. The sun, topping the Rockies, had lifted from the earth the graying shadows, and now Carney saw, as he thought, the hoof-prints of the day before.

There was a feeling of relief with this discovery. There had been a morbid disquiet in his mind; a mental conviction that something had happened to that intoed cayuse and his huge-footed owner. Now all the weird fancies of the night had been just a vagary of mind. Where the trail was earthed, holding clear impressions, he dismounted, and walked ahead of the buckskin, reading the lettered clay. Here and there was imprinted a moccasined foot; once there was the impression of boots; but they were not the huge imprints of hob-nailed soles. They showed that a man had dismounted, and then mounted again; and the cayuse had not an inturned left forefoot; also the toe wall of one hind foot was badly broken. His stride was longer, too; he did not walk with the short step of a pack pony.

The indefinable depression took possession of Bulldog again; he tried to shake it off – it was childish. The huge-footed one perhaps was a prospector, and had wandered up into some one of the gulches looking for gold. That was objecting Reason formulating an hypothesis.

Then presently Carney discovered the confusing element of the same cayuse tracks heading the other way, as if the man on horseback had travelled both up and down the trail.

Where the Bucking Horse trail left the Kootenay trail after circling the mountain, Carney saw that the hoof prints continued toward Kootenay. And there were a myriad of tracks; many mounted men had swung from the Bucking Horse trail to the Kootenay path; they had gone and returned, for the hoof prints that toed toward Bucking Horse lay on top.

This also was strange; men did not ride out from the sleepy old town in a troop like cavalry. There was but one explanation, the explanation of the West – those mounted men had ridden after somebody – had trailed somebody who was wanted quick.

This crescendo to his associated train of thought obliterated mentally the goblin-footed cayuse, the huge hob-nailed boot, the something at the cliff, the hovering oppression of the night – everything.

Carney closed his mind to the torturing riddle and rode, sometimes humming an Irish ballad of Mangin's.

It was late afternoon when he rode into Bucking Horse; and Bucking Horse was in a ferment.

Seth Long's hotel, the Gold Nugget, was the cauldron in which the waters of unrest seethed.

A lynching was in a state of almost completion, with Jeanette Holt's brother, Harry, elected to play the leading part of the lynched. Through the deference paid to his well-known activity when hostile events were afoot, Carney was cordially drawn into the maelstrom of ugly-tempered men.

Jeanette's brother may be said to have suffered from a preponderance of opinion against him, for only Jeanette, and with less energy, Seth Long, were on his side. All Bucking Horse, angry Bucking Horse, was for stringing him up tout de suite. The times were propitious for this entertainment, for Sergeant Black, of the Mounted Police, was over at Fort Steel, or somewhere else on patrol, and the law was in the keeping of the mob.

Ostensibly Carney ranged himself on the side of law and order. That is what he meant when, leaning carelessly against the Nugget bar, one hand on his hip, chummily close to the butt of his six-gun, he said:

"This town had got a pretty good name, as towns go in the mountains, and my idea of a man that's too handy at the lynch game is that he's a pretty poor sport."

"How's that, Bulldog?" Kootenay Jim snapped.

"He's a poor sport," Carney drawled, "because he's got a hundred to one the best of it – first, last, and always; he isn't in any danger when he starts, because it's a hundred men to one poor devil, who, generally, isn't armed, and he knows that at the finish his mates will perjure themselves to save their own necks. I've seen one or two lynch mobs and they were generally egged on by men who were yellow."

Carney's gray eyes looked out over the room full of angry men with a quiet thoughtful steadiness that forced home the conviction that he was wording a logic he would demonstrate. No other man in that room could have stood up against that plank bar and declared himself without being called quick.

"You hear fust what this rat done, Bulldog, then we'll hear what you've got to say," Kootenay growled.

"That's well spoken, Kootenay," Bulldog answered. "I'm fresh in off the trail, and perhaps I'm quieter than the rest of you, but first, being fresh in off the trail, there's a little custom to be observed."

With a sweep of his hand Carney waved a salute to a line of bottles behind the bar.

Jeanette, standing in the open door that led from the bar to the dining-room, gripping the door till her nails sank into the pine, felt hot tears gush into her eyes. How wise, how cool, this brave Bulldog that she loved so well. She had had no chance to plead with him for help. He had just come into that murder-crazed throng, and the words had been hurled at him from a dozen mouths that her brother Harry – Harry the waster, the no-good, the gambler – had been found to be the man who had murdered returning miners on the trail for their gold, and that they were going to string him up.

And now there he stood, her god of a man, Bulldog Carney, ranged on her side, calm, and brave. It was the first glint of hope since they had brought her brother in, bound to the back of a cayuse. She had pushed her way amongst the men, but they were like wolves; she had pleaded and begged for delay, but the evidence was so overwhelming; absolutely hopeless it had appeared. But now something whispered "Hope".

It was curious the quieting effect that single drink at the bar had; the magnetism of Carney seemed to envelop the men, to make them reasonable. Ordinarily they were reasonable men. Bulldog knew this, and he played the card of reason.

For the two or three gun men – Kootenay Jim, John of Slocan, and Denver Ike – Carney had his own terrible personality and his six-gun; he could deal with those three toughs if necessary.

"Now tell me, boys, what started this hellery," Carney asked when they had drunk.

The story was fired at him; if a voice hesitated, another took up the narrative.

Miners returning from the gold field up in the Eagle Hills had mysteriously disappeared, never turning up at Bucking Horse. A man would have left the Eagle Hills, and somebody drifting in from the same place later on, would ask for him at Bucking Horse – nobody had seen him.

Then one after another two skeletons had been found on the trail; the bodies had been devoured by wolves.

"And wolves don't eat gold – not what you'd notice, as a steady chuck," Kootenay Jim yelped.

"Men wolves do," Carney thrust back, and his gray eyes said plainly, "That's your food, Jim."

"Meanin' what by that, pard?" Kootenay snarled, his face evil in a threat.

"Just what the words convey – you sort them out, Kootenay."

But Miner Graham interposed. "We got kinder leary about this wolf game, Carney, 'cause they ain't bothered nobody else 'cept men packin' in their winnin's from the Eagle Hills; and four days ago Caribou Dave – here he is sittin' right here – he arrives packin' Fourteen-foot Johnson – that is, all that's left of Fourteen-foot."