Chapter III: Part 3

The heavy booming whistle of the giant Mogul up on the Divide came hoarsely down the Bucking Horse Pass, and then a great blaring yellow-red eye gleamed on the mountain side as if some Cyclops forced his angry way down into the valley. A bell clanged irritably as the Mogul rocked in its swift glide down the curved grade; there was the screeching grind of airbrakes gripping at iron wheels; a mighty sigh as the compressed air seethed from opened valves at their release when the train stood at rest beside the little log station of Bucking Horse.

He could see, like the green eye of some serpent, the conductor's lantern gyrate across the platform; even the subdued muffled noise of packages thrust into the express car carried to the listener's ear. Then the little green eye blinked a command to start, the bell clanged, the Mogul coughed as it strained to its task, the drivers gripped at steel rails and slipped, the Mogul's heart beating a tattoo of gasping breaths; then came the grinding rasp of wheel flange against steel as the heavy train careened on the curve, and now the timbers of the trestle were whining a protest like the twang of loose strings on a harp.

Carney turned on his hands and knees and, creeping around to the far side of the rock, saw dimly in the faint moonlight the figure of a man huddled in a little rounded heap twenty feet from the rails. In his hand the barrel of a gun glinted once as the moon touched it.

Slowly, like some ponderous animal, the Mogul crept over the trestle! it was like a huge centipede slipping along the dead limb of a tree.

When the engine reached the solid bank the crouched figure sprang to the steps of the cab and was lost to view. A sharp word of command carried to Carney's ear; he heard the clanging clamp of the air brakes; the stertorous breath of the Mogul ceased; the train stood still, all behind the express car still on the trestle.

Then a square of yellow light shone where the car door had slid open, and within stood a masked man, a gun in either hand; in one corner, with hands above his head, and face to the wall, stood a second man, while a third was taking from an iron safe little canvas bags and dropping them through the open door.

Carney held three loops of the lariat in his right hand, and the balance in his left; now he slipped from the rock, darted to the side of the car and waited.

He heard a man say, "That's all!" Then a voice that he knew as Jack the Wolf's commanded, "Face to the wall! I've got your guns, and if you move I'll plug you!"

The Wolf appeared at the open door, where he fired one shot as a signal to Cayuse; there was the hiss and clang of releasing brakes and gasps from the starting engine. At that instant the lariat zipped from a graceful sweep of Carney's hand to float like a ring of smoke over the head of Jack the Wolf, and he was jerked to earth. Half stunned by the fall he was pinned there as though a grizzly had fallen upon him.

The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that he was tied and helpless with hardly any semblance of a fight, where he lay watching the tail end of the train slipping off into the gloomed pass, and the man who had bound him as he nimbly gathered up the bags of loot.

Carney was in a hurry; he wanted to get away before the return Cayuse. Of course if Cayuse came back too soon so much the worse for Cayuse, but shooting a man was something to be avoided.

He was hampered a little due either to the Wolf's rapacity, or the express messenger's eagerness to obey, for in addition to the twenty thousand dollars there were four other plump bags of gold. But Carney, having secured the lot, hurried to his horse, dropped the pack bags astride the saddle, mounted, and made his way to the Little Widow mine. He had small fear that the two men would think of looking in that direction for the man who had robbed them; even if they did he had a good start for it would take time to untie the Wolf and get their one horse. Also he had the Wolf's guns.

He rode into the mine, dismounted, took the loot to a cross-cut that ran off the long drift and dropped it into a sump hole that was full of water, sliding in on top rock debris. Then he unsaddled the buckskin, tied him, and hurried along the drift and crawled his way through the small tunnel back to jail. There he threw himself on the bunk, and, chuckling, fell into a virtuous sleep.

He was wakened at daybreak by Sergeant Black who said cheerfully, "You're in luck, Bulldog."

"Honored, I should say, if you allude to our association."

The Sergeant groped silently through this, then, evidently missing the sarcasm, added, "The midnight was held up last night at the trestle, and if you'd been outside I guess you'd been pipped as the angel."

"Thanks for your foresight, friend--that is, if you knew it was coming off. Tell me how your friend worked it."

Sergeant Black told what Carney already knew so well, and when he had finished the latter said: "Even if I hadn't this good alibi nobody would say I had anything to do with it, for I distrust man so thoroughly that I never have a companion in any little joke I put over."

"I couldn't do anything in the dark," the Sergeant resumed, in an apologetic way, "so I'm going out to trail the robbers now."

He looked at Carney shiftingly, scratched an ear with a forefinger, and then said: "The express company has wired a reward of a thousand dollars for the robbers, and another thousand for the recovery of the money."

"Go to it, Sergeant," Carney laughed; "get that capital, then go east to Lake Erie and start a bean farm."

Black grinned tolerantly. "If you'll join up, Bulldog, we could run them two down."

"No, thanks; I like it here."

"I'm going to turn you out, Bulldog--set you free."

"And I'm going to insist on a hearing. I'll take those stripes off your arm for playing the fool." The Sergeant drew from his pocket a telegram and passed it to Carney. It was from Major Silver at Golden, and ran:

"Get Carney to help locate robbers. He knows the game. Express company offers two thousand."

"Where's the other telegram?" Carney asked, a twinkle in his eye.

"What other one?"

"The one in answer to yours asking for instructions over my arrest."

The Sergeant looked at Carney out of confused, astonished eyes; then he admitted: "The Major advises we can't hold you in B. C. on the Alberta case. But what about joining in the hunt? You've worked with the police before."

"Twice; because a woman was getting the worst of it in each case. But I'm no sleuth for the official robber--he's fair game."

"You won't take the trail with me then, Carney?"

"No, I won't; not to run down the hold-up men--that's your job. But you can tell your penny-in-the-slot company, that piking corporation that offers thousand dollars for the recovery of twenty or thirty thousand, that when they're ready to pay five thousand dollars' reward for the gold I'll see if I can lead them to it. Now, my dear Sergeant, if you'll oblige me with my gun I'd like to saunter over to the hotel for breakfast."

"I'll go with you," Sergeant Black said, "I haven't had mine yet."

Jeanette was in the front room of the hotel as the two men entered. Her face went white when she saw Carney seemingly in the custody of the policeman. He stopped to speak to her, and Black, going through to the dining room saw the Wolf and Cayuse Braun at a table. He had these two under suspicion, for the Wolf had a record with the police.

He closed the door and, standing in front of it, said: "I'm going to arrest you two men for the train robbery last night. When you finish your breakfast I want you to come quietly over to the lock-up till this thing is investigated."

The Wolf laughed derisively. "What're you doin' here, Sergeant--why ain't you out on the trail chasin' Bulldog Carney?"

The Sergeant stared. "Bulldog Carney?" he queried; "what's he got to do with it?"

"Everything. It's a God's certainty that he pulled this hold-up off when he escaped last night."

The Sergeant gasped. What was the Wolf talking about. He turned, opened the door and called, "Carney, come here and listen to Jack Wolf tell how you robbed the train!"

At this the Wolf bent across the table and whispered hoarsely, "Christ! Bulldog has snitched--he's give us away! I thought he'd clear out when he got the gold. And he knowed me last night when we clinched. And his horse was gone from the stable this morning!"

As the two men sprang to their feet, the Sergeant whirled at the rasp of their chairs on the floor, and reached for his gun. But Cayuse's gun was out, there was a roaring bark in the walled room, a tongue of fire, a puff of smoke, and the Sergeant dropped.

As he fell, from just behind him Carney's gun sent a leaden pellet that drilled a little round hole fair in the center of Cayuse's forehead, and he collapsed, a red jet of blood spurting over the floor.

In the turmoil the Wolf slipped through a door that was close to where he sat, sped along the hall into the storeroom, and down to the mine chamber.

With a look at Cayuse that told he was dead, Carney dropped his pistol back into the holster, and telling Seth, who had rushed in, to hurry for a doctor, took the Sergeant in his arms like a baby child carried him upstairs to a bed, Jeanette showing the way.

As they waited for the doctor Carney said: "He's shot through the shoulder; he'll be all right."

"What's going to happen over this, Bulldog?" Jeanette asked.

"Cayuse Braun has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground--he can't talk; Seth, of course, won't; and the Wolf will never stop running till he hits the border. I had a dream last night, Jeanette, that somebody gave me five thousand dollars easy money. If it comes true, my dear girl, I'm going to put it in your name so Seth can't throw you down hard if he ever takes a notion to."

Carney's dream came true at the full of the moon.

III.--OWNERS UP

|Clatawa had put racing in Walla Walla in cold storage.

You can't have any kind of sport with one individual, horse or man, and Clatawa had beaten everything so decisively that the gamblers sat down with blank faces and asked, "What's the use?"

Horse racing had been a civic institution, a daily round of joyous thrills--a commendable medium for the circulation of gold. The Nez Perces Indians, who owned that garden of Eden, the Palouse country, and were rich, would troop into Walla Walla long rolls of twenty-dollar gold pieces plugged into a snake-like skin till the thing resembled a black sausage, and bet the coins as though they were nickels.

It was a lovely town, with its straggling clap-boarded buildings, its U. S. Cavalry post, its wide-open dance halls and gambling palaces; it was a live town was Walla Walla, squatting there in the center of a great luxuriant plain twenty miles or more from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

Snaky Dick had roped a big bay with black points that was lord of a harem of wild mares; he had speed and stamina, and also brains; so they named him "Clatawa," that is, "The-one-who-goes-quick." When Clatawa found that men were not terrible creatures he chummed in, and enjoyed the gambling, and the racing, and the high living like any other creature of brains.

He was about three-quarter warm blood. How the mixture nobody knew. Some half-bred mare, carrying a foal, had, perhaps, escaped from one of the great breeding ranches, such as the "Scissors Brand Ranch" where the sires were thoroughbred, and dropped her baby in the herd. And the colt, not being raced to death as a two-year-old, had grown into a big, upstanding bay, with perfect unblemished bone, lungs like a blacksmith's bellows and sinews that played through unruptured sheaths. His courage, too, had not been broken by the whip and spur of pin-head jocks. There was just one rift in the lute, that dilution of cold blood. He wasn't a thoroughbred, and until his measure was taken, until some other equine looked him in the eye as they fought it out stride for stride, no man could just say what the cold blood would do; it was so apt to quit.

At first Walla Walla rejoiced when Snaky Dick commenced to make the Nez Perces horses look like pack mules; but now had come the time when there was no one to fight the "champ," and the game was on the hog, as Iron Jaw Blake declared.

Then Iron Jaw and Snaggle Tooth Boone, and

Death-on-the-trail Carson formed themselves into a committee of three to ameliorate the monotony.

They were a picturesque trio. Carson was a sombre individual, architecturally resembling a leafless gaunt-limbed pine, for he lacked but a scant half inch of being seven feet of bone and whip-cord.

Years before he had gone out over the trail that wound among sage bush and pink-flowered ball cactus up into the Bitter Root Mountains with "Irish" Fagan. Months after he came back alone; more sombre, more gaunt, more sparing of speech, and had offered casually the statement that "Fagan met death on the trail." This laconic epitome of a gigantic event had crystallized into a moniker for Carson, and he became solely "Death-on-the-trail."

Snaggle Tooth Boone had a wolf-like fang on the very doorstep of his upper jaw, so it required no powerful inventive faculty to rechristen him with aptitude.

Blake was not only iron-jawed physically, but all his dealings were of the bullheaded order; finesse was as foreign to Iron Jaw as caviare to a Siwash.

So this triumvirate of decorative citizens, with Iron Jaw as penman, wrote to Reilly at Portland, Oregon, to send in a horse good enough to beat Clatawa, and a jock to ride him. Iron Jaw's directions were specific, lengthy; going into detail. He knew that a thoroughbred, even a selling plater, would be good enough to take the measure of any cross-bred horse, no matter how good the latter apparently was, running in scrub races. He also knew the value of weight as a handicap, and the Walla Walla races were all matches, catch-weights up. So he wrote to Reilly to send him a tall, slim rider who could pad up with clothes and look the part of an able-bodied cow puncher.

It was a pleasing line of endeavor to Reilly--he just loved that sort of thing; trimming "come-ons" was right in his mitt. He fulfilled the commission to perfection, sending up, by the flat river steamer, the _Maid of Palouse,_ what appeared to be an ordinary black ranch cow-pony in charge of "Texas Sam," a cow puncher. From Lewiston, the head of navigation, Texas Sam rode his horse behind the old Concord coach over the twenty-five miles of trail to Walla Walla.

The endeavor had gone through with swift smoothness. Nobody but Iron Jaw, Death-on-the-trail, and Snaggle Tooth knew of the possibilities that lurked in the long chapp-legged Texas Jim and the thin rakish black horse that he called Horned Toad.

As one spreads bait as a decoy, Sam was given money to flash, and instructed in the art of fool talk.

Iron Jaw was banker in this game; while Snaggle Tooth ran the wheel and faro lay-out in the Del Monte saloon. So, when Texas dribbled a thousand dollars across the table, "bucking the tiger," it was show money; a thousand that Iron Jaw had passed him earlier in the evening, and which Snaggle Tooth would pass back to its owner in the morning.

There was no hurry to spring the trap. Texas

Sam allowed that he himself was an uncurried wild horse from the great desert; that he was all wool and a yard wide; that he could lick his fighting weight in wild cats; and bet on anything he fancied till the cows came home with their tails between their legs. And all the time he drank: he would drink with anybody, and anybody might drink with him. This was no piking game, for the three students of get-it-in-big-wads had declared for a coup that would cause Walla Walla to stand up on its hind legs and howl.

Of course Snaky Dick and his clique cast covetous eyes on the bank roll that Texas showed an inkling of when he flashed his gold. That Texas had a horse was the key to the whole situation: a horse that he was never tired of describing as the king-pin cow-pony from Kalamazoo to Kamschatka; a spring-heeled antelope that could run rings around any cayuse that had ever looked through a halter.

But Snaky Dick went slow. Some night when Texas was full of hop he'd rush him for a match. Indeed the Clatawa crowd had the money ready to plunk down when the psychological pitch of Sam's Dutch courage had arrived.

It was all going swimmingly, both ends of Walla Walla being played against the middle, so to speak, when the "unknown quantity" drifted into the game.

A tall, lithe man, with small placid gray eyes set in a tanned face, rode up out of the sage brush astride a buckskin horse on his way to Walla Walla. He looked like a casual cow-puncher riding into town with the laudable purpose of tying the faro outfit hoof and horn, and, incidentally, showing what could be done to a bar when a man was in earnest and had the mazuma.

As the buckskin leisurely loped down the trail-road that ran from the cavalry barracks to the heart of Walla Walla, his rider became aware of turmoil in the suburbs. In front of a neat little cottage, the windows of which held flowers partly shrouded by lace curtains, a lathy individual, standing beside a rakish black horse, was orating with Bacchanalian vehemence. Gathered from his blasphemous narrative he knew chronologically the past history of a small pretty woman with peroxided hair, who stood in the open door. He must have enlarged on the sophistication of her past life, for the little lady, with a crisp oath, called the declaimer a liar and a seven-times misplaced offspring.

The rider of the buckskin checked his horse, threw his right leg loosely over the saddle, and restfully contemplated the exciting film.

The irate and also inebriated man knew that he had drawn on his imagination, but to be told in plain words that he was a liar peeved him. With an ugly oath he swung his quirt and sprang forward, as if he would bring its lash down on the décolletéd shoulders of the woman.

At that instant something that looked like a boy shot through the door as though thrust from a catapult, and landed, head on, in the bread basket of the cantankerous one, carrying him off his feet.

The man on the buckskin chuckled, and slipped to the ground.

But the boy had shot his bolt, so to speak; the big man he had tumbled so neatly, soon turned him, and, rising, was about to drive a boot into the little fellow's rib. I say about to, for just then certain fingers of steel twined themselves in his red neckerchief, he was yanked volte face, and a fist drove into his midriff.

Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he contemplated a trip to dreamland.

The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose gladsomeness swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man--you beaut!" She would have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes, so full of quiet aloofness, checked her.

But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog, Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."

He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You ride away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead booze-fighter!"

The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.

The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five feet of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting between wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not without derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.

In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in astonishment:

"Holy Gawd!"

Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a long-lost friend.

Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet, mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.

The little man ran a hand up and down the horse's canon-bones with the inquisitiveness of a blind man reading raised print.

Then he turned to Carney who had been chatting with Molly--in full dignity of Walla Walla nomenclature Molly B'Damn--and asked: "Where the hell d'you get Waster?"

A faint smile twitched the owner's tawny mustache, chased away by a little cloud of anger, for in that land of many horse stealings to ask a man how he had come by his horse savoured of discourtesy. But it was only a little wizen-faced, flat-chested friend of Molly B'Damn's; so Carney smiled again, and answered by asking:

"Gentle-voiced kidaloona, explain what you mean by the Waster. That chum of mine's name is Pat--Patsy boy, often enough."

"Pat nothin'! nor Percy, nor Willie; he's just plain old Waster that I won the Ranch Stakes on in Butte, four years ago."

"Guess again, kid," Carney suggested.

"Holy Mike! Say, boss, if you could think like you can punch you'd be all right. That's Waster. Listen, Mister Cowboy, while I tell you 'bout his friends and relatives. He's by Gambler's Money out of Scotch Lassie, whose breedin' runs back to Prince Charlie: Gambler's Money was by Counterfeit, he by Spendthrift, and Spendthrift's sire was imported Australian, whose grandsire was the English horse, Melbourne. D'you get that, sage-brush rider?"

"I hear sounds. Tinkle again, little man."

Molly laughed, her white teeth and honest blue eyes discounting the chemically yellow hair until the face looked good.

The little man stretched out an arm, at the end of it a thin finger levelled at the buckskin's head: "Have you _ever_ took notice of them lop ears?"

"Once--which was continuous."

"And you thought there was a jackass strain in him, eh?"

"Pat looked good to me all the time, ears and all."

"Well, them sloppy listeners are a throw-back to Melbourne, he was like that. I've read he was a mean-lookin' cuss, with weak knees; but he was all horse: and ain't Waster got bad knees? And don't he get that buckskin from Spendthrift who was a chestnut, same's his dad, Australian?" This seemed a direct query for he broke off to cough.

"Go on, lad----"

"Excuse me, sorry"--Molly was speaking--"this is Billy MacKay. My old school chum, Bessie, his sister, wished him on me a month ago to see what God's country could do for that busted chest."

The little man was impatient over the switch to himself--the horse was the thing.

"If it wasn't for them dicky forelegs--Gawd! what a horse Waster'd been. And if his owner, Leatherhead Mike Doyle, had kept the weight offen him he'd've stood up anyway, for he was the truest thing. Say, Bulldog,--don't mind me, I like that name, it talks good,--Waster didn't need no blinkers he didn't need no spurs; he didn't need no whip--I'd as lief hit a child with the bud as hit him. He'd just break his hear tryin'. Waster was Leather-head's meal ticket, dicky knees and all, till he threw a splint. It was the weight that broke him down; a hundred and thirty-six pounds the handicapper give him in the Gold Range Stakes at a mile and a quarter; at that he was leadin' into the stretch and finished, fightin', on three legs. He was beat, of course; and Leatherhead was broke, and I never see Waster again. A trombone player in a beer garden would have known the little cuss with them hot-jointed knees couldn't pack weight, and would 've scratched him."

Carney put a hand caressingly on Jockey Mackay's shoulder, saying: "You stand pat with me, kid--your heart is about human, I guess. What was that hostile person's game?"

Molly explained with a certain amount of asperity:

"He comes here to-day, Bulldog--Well, you know----"

Carney nodded placidly.

"He'd seen me down in the Del Monte joint, and thought--well, he was filled up on Chinese rum. He wasn't none too much like a man in anything he said or done, but I was standin' for him so long as he don't get plumb Injun."

"Injun? Cripes! An Injun's a drugstore gent compared to that stiff, Slimy Red," Billy objected.

"Yes, that's what started it, Bulldog,--Billy knew him."

"Knew him--huh! Slimy Red was the crookedest rider that ever throwed a leg over a horse. He used to give his own father the wrong steer and laugh when the old man's money was burnt up on a horse that finished in the ruck."

"He comes in here palmin' off the moniker of Texas Sam, a big ranch guy that sees blood on the moon when he's out for a time," Molly helped with.

"I didn't know him at first," the little man admitted, "his face bein' a garden of black alfalfa, till I sees that the crop is red for half an inch above the surface where it had pushed through the dye. Then he says, 'I'll bet my left eye agin' your big toe,' and I'm on, for that's a great sayin' with Slimy Red Smith--he was Slimy Red hisself. And politely, not givin' the game away, but callin' him 'Texas,' I suggests that me and Molly is goin' to sing hymns for a bit, and that he'd best push on."

"Soon's Billy warbles, 'Good-bye, stranger,'" Molly laughed, "this Texas person goes up in the air. Well, you see the finish, Bulldog."

The little man had wrestled a coughing spell into subjection and with apparent inconsistency asked, "Did you ever hear of it rainin' bullfrogs, Mr. Carney?"

Carney nodded, a suspicion flashing upon him that the weak chest was twin brother to a weak brain in Billy the Jock.

"Well, it's been rainin' discard race-horses about Walla Walla."

"Much of a storm?"

"They're comin' kind of thick. There's yours, Waster, and Slimy Red has got Ding Dong; he's out of Weddin' Bells by Tambourine."

"Are you in a hurry, Bulldog?" Molly asked, fancying that Carney's well-known courtesy was perhaps the father of his apparent interest.

"I was, Molly, till I saw you," he answered graciously, a gentle smile lighting up his stern features.

"Oh, you gentleman knight of the road--always the silver-tongued Bulldog. There's a bottle inside with a gold necktie on it, waitin' for a real man to pull the cork. Come on, kid Billy."

The boy looked at Carney, and the latter said;

"It's been a full moon since I pattered with anybody about anything but fat pork and sundown. We'll accept the little lady's invitation."

"I can give Waster four quarts of oats, Mr. Carney; I've been ridin' in the way of a cure."

Carney laughed. "You're a sure little bit of all right, kid; the horse first when it comes to grub--that's me; but I'll feed Pat when he's bedded for the night."

Inside the cottage Molly and Bulldog jaunted back over the life trail upon which they had met at different times and in divers places.

But Jockey Mackay had been thrown back into his life's environment at sight of Waster. He was as full of racing as the wine bottle was full of bubbles; like the wine he effervesced.

"You been here in Walla Walla before?" he asked Carney, breaking in on the memory of a funny something that had happened when Molly and Bulldog were both in Denver.

"Some time since," Carney replied.

"D'you know about Clatawa?"

"Is it a mine or a cocktail, Billy?"

"Clatawa's a horse."

"I might have known," Carney murmured resignedly.

Then the little man narrated of Clatawa, and the fatuous belief Walla Walla held that a horse with cold blood in his veins could gallop fast enough to keep himself warm. He waxed indignant over this, declaring that boneheads that held such crazy ideas ought to be bled white, that is in a monetary way.

Carney, being a Chevalier d'industrie, had a keen nose for oblique enterprises, but up to the present he had enjoyed the little man's chatter simply because he loved horses himself; but at this, the Clatawa disease, He pricked his ears.

"What is your unsavory acquaintance, Slimy Red, doing here with Ding Dong?" he asked.

A cunning smile twisted the lad's bluish lips as he lighted a cigarette.

"Slimy Red is padded," he vouchsafed after a puff at the cigarette.

"Padded!" Molly exclaimed, her blue eyes rounding.

"Sure thing. That herrin' gut can ride at a hundred and twenty pounds. He's a steeplechase jock, gener'ly, though he's good on the flat, too. He's got a couple of sweaters on under that corduroy jacket to make him look big."

Carney laughed. "That explains something. When I pushed my fist against his stomach I thought it had gone clean through--it sank to the wrist; it was just as though I had punched a bag of feathers."

"But the upper cut was all right, Mr. Carney; it was a lallapaloosa."

"Why all the clothes?" Molly asked.

"I've been dopin' it out," the boy answered. "It's all match races here, catch weights; there ain't one of them could ride a flat car without givin' it the slows, but they know what weight is in a race; they know you can pile enough on to bring a cart horse and a winner of the Brooklyn Handicap together."

"I see," Carney said contemplatively; "Slimy Red, if he makes a match, figures to get a big pull in the weights."

"Sure thing, Mike; Walla Walla will bet the family plate on Clatawa; they'll go down hook, line, and sinker, and then some. They'll fall for the clothes and think Slimy weighs a hundred and seventy. D'you get it?"

"Fancy I do," Carney chuckled. "The avaricious Mister Red is probably here on a missionary venture; he aims to separate these godless ones from the root of evil through having a trained thoroughbred, and an ample pull in the weight."

"Now you're talkin'," Jockey Mackay declared. Then he relapsed into a meditative silence, sipping his wine as he correlated several possibilities suggested by the rainfall of racing horses in Walla Walla.

Carney and Molly drifted into desultory talk again.

After a time Billy spoke.

"It ain't on the cards that a lot of money is comin' to Slimy Red--he don't deserve it; he ought to be trimmed hisself."

"He sure ought," Molly corroborated.

"Hell!" the little man exclaimed; "nobody could never trim Red, 'cause he never had nothin'. I got it! Somebody in Walla Walla is the angel; and Red'll get a rakeoff. He don't own Ding Dong; he couldn't own a lead pad; booze gets his."

"Billy," Molly's face went serious; "I can guess it in once--Iron Jaw! Oh, gee! I've been blind. Iron Jaw, and Snaggle Tooth, and Death-on-the-trail ain't men to cotton to a coot like Slimy Red; they're gamblers, and don't stand for anything that ain't a man, only just while they take his roll. They've been nursin' this four-flusher. It's been, 'Hello, Texas!' and 'Have a drink, Texas.' I've got it."

"Fancy you have, Molly," Bulldog submitted. "Gawd! that's the combination," Billy declared. "I was right."

"And Iron Jaw has got a down on Snaky Dick that owns Clatawa over some bad splits in bets," Molly added.

"The old game," Carney laughed. "When thieves fall out honest men win a bet. It would appear from the evidence that Iron Jaw Blake--I know his method of old--has sent out and got some one to ship in a horse and rider to trim Clatawa, and turn an honest penny."

"You're gettin' warm, Bulldog, as we used to say in that child's game," Molly declared. "I know the pippin; one Reilly, at Portland. I heard Iron Jaw and this Texas talkin' about him."

Carney turned toward the little man. "What are we going to do about it, Billy--do we draw cards?"

Billy sprang from his chair, and paced the floor excitedly. "Holy Mike! there never was such a chance. Waster can trim Ding Dong to a certainty at a mile and a quarter. See, Bulldog, that's his distance; he's a stayer from Stayville; but he can't pack weight--don't forget that. If you rode him--let's see----"

The little man stood back and eyed critically the tall package of bone and muscle, that while it suggested no surplus flesh, would weigh well.

"You're a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and you ride in one of 'em rockin' chairs that'll tip the beam at forty pounds. What chance? Slimy 'll have a five-pound saddle; he could weigh in, saddle and all, a hundred and twenty-five. You'd be takin' on a handicap of ninety pounds. What chance?"

"I might get an Indian boy," Carney suggested. "You might get a doll or a pet monkey," Billy sneered. "What chance?"

"And they all work for Iron Jaw," Molly advised; "they'd blow; he'd bribe them to pull the horse."

"What chance?" Billy repeated with the mournful persistency of a parrot. "Guess I'll go out and tell Waster to forget he's a gentleman and go on pluggin' among the sage brush as a cow-pony." Carney rose when Billy had gone, saying, "Fancy I'll drift on to the rest joint, Molly. I rather want to hold converse with a certain man while the seeing's good, if he's about."

"Good-bye, Bulldog," Molly answered, and her blue eyes followed the figure that slipped so gracefully through the door, their depths holding a look that was beautiful in its honest admiration. "God!" she whispered; "why do women like him--gee!" Billy was tickling a lop ear on the buckskin. "Mr. Carney," he said in a low voice, one eye on the cabin door, "you heard what Molly said about Bessie wishin' me on her, didn't you?"

"Uh-huh!"

"Let me give you the straight info. Molly sent the money to Bessie to bring me here; we was both broke. Then I found out Bessie had been gettin' it for a year from her, 'cause I was sick and couldn't ride. I hadn't saved none, thinkin' I'd got Rockefeller skinned to death as a money-getter. It was the wastin' to make weight that got me. I don't have to sweat off flesh now," he added pathetically; "I'm a hundred and two."

"That's Molly Bur-dan" (her right name) "all over--I know her. But don't worry kid. I haven't got anybody to look after, and having money and no use for it makes me lonesome. You give me Bessie's address, and don't tout off Molly that you're doing it."

"I can get the money myself, Mr. Carney--you just listen now. I didn't spring it inside 'cause Molly'd get hot under the collar; she'd say that if I rode in a race I'd bust a lung. Gee! ridin' to me is just like goin' by-bye in a hammock; it'd do me good."

Carney put a hand gently on the boy's shoulder, saying: "The size of the package doesn't mean much when it comes to being a man, does it, kid? Spring it; get it off your chest."

Billy made a horseshoe in the sand with the toe of his boot meditatively; then said:

"Slimy Red, of course, will be lookin' for a match for Ding Dong. Most of the races here is sprints, the old Texas game of half-a-mile, and weight don't cut much ice that distance. He'll make it for a mile, or a mile-and-a-quarter, 'cause Ding Dong could stay that distance pretty well himself. If you was to match Waster against the black, and let me ride him, I'd bring home the bacon. He's a fourteen pound better horse than Ding Dong ever was; a handicapper would separate them that much on their form. Gee! I forgot somethin'," and Billy, a shame-faced look in his eyes, gazed helplessly at Bulldog.

"What was it dropped out of your think-pan, kid?"

"The roll. I've been makin' a noise like a man with a bank behind him. A match ain't like where a feller can go into the bettin' ring if he knows a couple of hundred-to-one chances and parley a shoe-string into a block of city houses; a match is even money, just about. And to win a big stake you've got to have the long green."

"How much, Billy?"

"Well, the Iron Jaw bunch, bein' whisky men and gamblers, naturally would stand to lose twenty thousand, at least."

"I could manage it in a couple of days, Billy, by keeping the wires hot."

"Before I forget it, Mr. Carney, if you do buck this crowd make it catch weights. Slimy Red don't own a hair in Ding Dong's tail, of course, but he'll have a bill of sale right enough showin' he's the owner, and as he can ride light they'll word it, 'owners up'."

Carney was thinking fast, and a glint of light shot athwart his placid gray eyes.

"Happy thought, Kid; we'll string with them on that; we'll make it owners up."

"I said catch weights," Billy snapped irritably. Carney answered with only a quizzical smile, and the boy, turning, walked around the horse eyeing him from every angle. He lifted first one foot and then the others, examining them critically, pressing a thumb into the frogs. He pinched with thumb and forefinger the tendons of both forelegs; he squeezed the horse's windpipe till the latter coughed; then he said:

"Please, Mr. Carney, mount and give him half a furlong at top speed, finishin' up here. Make him break as quick as you can till I see if he's got the slows."

As obedient as a servant Bulldog swung to the saddle, centered the buckskin down the road, wheeled, brought the horse to a standstill, and then, with a shake of the rein and a cry of encouragement, came tearing back, the pound of the horse's hoofs on the turf palpitating the air like the roll of a kettle-drum.

"Great!" the boy commented when Carney, having gently eased the horse down, returned. "He's the same old Waster; he flattens out in that stride of his till he looks like a pony. His flanks ain't pumpin' none. He'll do; he's had lots of work--he's in better condition than Ding Dong, 'cause Slimy Red's been puttin' in most of his trainin' time at the bar. I got a three-pound saddle in my trunk that I won the 'Kenner Stakes' at Saratoga on. Slimy Red will be givin' me about ten pounds if you make the match catch weights; it'll be a cinch--like gettin' money from home. But don't tell Molly."

"We'll split fifty-fifty," Carney said.

"Nothin' doin', Mister Mug; you cop the coin for yourself--how much are you goin' to bet?"

"Five or ten thousand."

"Well, you give me ten per cent of the five thousand--five hundred bucks, if we win. That'll square Molly's bill for bringin' me up here."

"Come inside, kid," Carney said; "I want to write out something."

Inside Carney said, "Molly, I'm going to give Pat to Billy for a riding horse----"

"What?"

But Billy's gasp of astonishment was choked by a frowning wink of one of Bulldog's gray eyes.

"Pat's getting a little old for the hard knocks I have to give a horse," Carney resumed; "that's partly what I came to Walla Walla for, to get a young horse. Let me have a sheet of paper and a pen; it doesn't do for a man to own a horse in this country without handy evidence as how he came by him; and though this is a gift I'm going to make it out in the form of a bill of sale."

Carney drew up a simple bill of sale, stating, that for one dollar, paid in hand, he transferred his buckskin horse "Pat" to William Mackay. Molly signed it as witness.

"I'll have to keep Pat for a day or two till I get a new pony." Bulldog declared; "also rather think I'll leave this bill of sale with a friend in town for safe keeping, Billy might lose it," and a wink closed one of the gray eyes that were turned on the boy's face.

As Carney sat the buckskin outside, he whispered, "Do you get it, Billy--owners up?"

"Gee! I get you."

The little man had been mystified.

"Don't be in a hurry over the race," he advised; "make it for one week away. That'll give me a chance to give Waster a few lessons in breakin' to bring him back to the old days. I'll put a heavy blanket about his neck for a gallop or two and sweat some of the fat off his pipes. I can get a set of racin' plates made for him, too, for a pound off his feet is four pounds off his back. We'll give him all the fine touches, Mr. Carney, and Waster 'll do his part."

The little man watched the buckskin lope down toward Walla Walla, then he turned in to the cottage where he was greeted by Molly.

"Ain't Bulldog some man, Billy?"

"Will you tell me something, Molly?" the boy asked hesitatingly.

"Shoot," she commanded.

"Is he--was he--the man--Bessie told me something?"

"There ain't no woman on God's footstool, Billy, can say Bulldog Carney was the man that fell down. That's why we all like him. There ain't a woman on the Gold Coast that ever lamped Bulldog that wouldn't stake him if she had to put her sparklers in hock. And there ain't a man that knows him that'll try to put one over--'tain't healthy. He's got a temper as sweet as a bull pup's, but he's lightnin' when he starts. He don't cotton to no girl, 'cause he was once engaged to one of the sweetest you ever see, Billy."

"Did she die, Molly?"

"The other man did! And nothin' was done to Bulldog 'cause it was comin' to the hound."

Carney rode on till he came to the Mountain House. Here he was at home for the proprietor was an old Gold Range friend.

First he saw that the buckskin had a worthy supper, then he ate his own.

When it had grown dark and the gleaming lights of the Del Monte Saloon were throwing their radiancy out into the street, he put the bridle on his buckskin and rode to the house of "Teddy the Leaper," who was Sheriff of Shoshone County.

The sheriff welcomed Carney with a differential friendship that showed they stood well together as man to man; for though Bulldog's reputation varied in different places, and with different people, it stood strongest with those who had known him longest, and who, like most men of the West, were apt to judge men from their own experience.

Teddy the Leaper admired Bulldog Carney the man; he would have staked his life on anything Carney told him. Officially, as sheriff, the County of Shoshone was his bailiwick, and the County of Shoshone held nothing on its records against Carney. "Always a gentleman," was Teddy's summing up of Bulldog Carney.

Carney drew an envelope from his pocket, saying: "Will you take care of this for me, Sheriff? Inside is a bill of sale of my horse."

"What, Bulldog--the buckskin?" Teddy's eyes searched the speaker's face; it was unbelievable. A light dawned upon the sheriff; Bulldog had put many a practical joke over--he was kidding. Teddy laughed.

"Bulldog," he said, "I've heard that you was English, a son of one of them bloated lords, but faith it's Irish you are. You've as much humor as you've nerve--you're Irish."

"There's also a note in that envelope"--Carney ignored the chaff--"that directs you to pay over to a little lad that's up against it out at Molly's place, any money that might happen to be in your hands if I suddenly--well, if I didn't need it--see?"

"I'll do that, Bulldog."

"Think you'll be at the Del Monte to-night, Sheriff?" Carney asked casually.

Teddy's Irish eyes flashed a quizzical look on the speaker; then he answered diplomatically: "There ain't no call why I got to be there--lest I'm sent for, and I ain't as spry gettin' around as I was when I made that record of forty-six feet for the hop-step-and-jump. If you've got anything to settle, go ahead."

Carney rippled one of his low musical laughs: "I'd like to line you up at the bar, Sheriff, for a thimbleful of poison."

Teddy's eyes again sought the speaker's mental pockets, but the placid face showed no warrant for expected trouble. The Sheriff coughed, then ventured:

"If you're goin' to stack up agin odds, Bulldog, I'll dress for the occasion; I don't gener'ly go 'round hostile draped."

Again Carney laughed. "You might bring a roomy pocket, Sheriff; it might so turn out that I'd like you to hold a few eagle birds till such times as they're right and proper the property of another man or myself. Does that put any kink in your code?"

"Not when I act for you, Bulldog; 'cause it'll be on the level: I'll be there."

Next Carney rode to the Del Monte; and hitching the buckskin to a post, he adjusted his belt till the butt of his gun lay true to the drop of his hand.

As he entered the saloon slowly, his gray eyes flashed over the bar and a group of men on the right of the gaming tables, for there was one man perhaps in Walla Walla he wanted to see before the other saw him. It wasn't Slimy Red--it was a tougher man.

Iron Jaw was leaning against the bar talking to Death-on-the-trail, and behind the bar Snaggle Tooth Boone stood listening to the conversation.

As Carney entered a quick look of apprehension showed for an instant in Iron Jaw's heavy-browned eyes; then a smile of greeting curled his coarse lips. He held out a hand, saying: "Glad to see you, Old Timer. You seem conditioned. Know Carson?"

"Yes."

Carney shook hands with the two men, and reached across to clasp Boone's paw, adding: "We'll sample the goods, Snaggle Tooth."

Boone winced at the appellation, for Carney did not smile; there was even the suspicion of a sneer on the lean face.

"How is Walla Walla?" Carney queried, as the four glasses were held toward each other in salute. "Racing relieved by a little gun argument once in a while, I suppose. Chief Joseph threatening to let his Nez Perces loose on you?"

"Racin' is on the hog," Iron Jaw growled. "There's a bum over yonder pikin' agin the Wheel that's been stung by the racin' bug, but when he calls for a show-down some of 'em will trim him. Hear that?"

Iron Jaw held up a thumb, and they could hear a thin strident voice babbling:

"Walla Walla's a nursery for tin horn sports. There ain't a man here got anythin' but a goose liver pumpin' his system, and a length of rubber hose up his back holdin' his ribs."

Somebody objected; and the voice, that Carney recognized as Texas Sam's snarled:

"Five birds of liberty! You call that bettin'--a hundred iron men?"

"Want to see him?" Iron Jaw queried. "I can't place him. Texas Sam he comes here as; seems to be well fixed; but he's a booze fighter. I guess that's what gives him dreams."

Quiescently Bulldog followed the lead of Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail across the room where, with his back to the door, at a roulette table sat Texas Sam. He was winning; three stacks of chips rose to a toppling height at his right hand.

Carney noticed from the color that they were five dollar chips. Knowing from Molly that Texas was a stool pigeon he understood the philosophy of the high-priced counters. It was easier to keep tally on what he drew and what he turned back in after the game, for the losings and the winnings were all a bluff, and the money furnished him for the show had to be accounted for Iron Jaw trusted no man. "The game's like roundin' up a bunch of cows heavy in calf," Texas was saying as they approached; "it's too damn slow. I want action."

He placed five chips on the thirteen as the croupier spun the wheel, bleating:

"Hoodoo thirteen's my lucky number. I was whelped on Friday the thirteenth, at thirteen o'clock--as you old leatherheads make it, one A.M." The little ivory ball skipped and hopped as it slid down from the smooth plane of the wheel to the number chambers. It almost settled into one, and then, as if agitated by some unseen devil of perversity, rolled over the thin wall and lay, like a bird's egg, in a black nest that was number "13."

"By a nose!" Texas exulted. "Do I win, Judge?" The croupier's face was as expressionless as the silver veil of Mahmoud as he built into pillars over eight hundred dollars in chips, and shoved them across the board to Texas.

The noisy one swept them to the side of the table, and called for a drink.

It was a curiously diversified interest that centered on this play of the uncouth Texas. Iron Jaw and Death-on-the-trail viewed it with apathetic interest, much as a trainer might watch a pupil punching the bag--it didn't mean anything.

Carney, too, knowing its farcical value, looked on, waiting for his opportunity.

Snaky Dick sat across the table from Texas, dribbling a few fifty-cent chips here and there amongst the numbers, also waiting. To him the play was real; he had seen it in reality a thousand times--a man loaded with bad liquor and in possession of money running the gamut. Behind Snaky Dick sat others of the Clatawa clique waiting for his lead. Their money was ready to cinch the match as soon as made.

Iron Jaw watched Snaky Dick furtively; the time seemed ripening. They had arranged, through some little vagaries of the wheel, vagaries that could be brought out by the assistance of the croupier, that apparently Texas should make a killing.

Now the croupier called out: "Make your bets, gentlemen." He gave the wheel a send-off with finger and thumb, his droning voice singing the cadence of: "Hurry up, gentlemen! Make your bets while the merry-go-round plays on."

"For a repeat," Texas shrilled, dropping the chips one after another on to the thirteen square until they stood like a candle. Impatiently the croupier checked him:

"Mind the limit, Mister."

"When I play the sky's my limit," Texas answered.

"Not here," the croupier admonished, sweeping three-quarters of the ivory discs from thirteen.

The little ball of peripatetic fate that had held on its erratic way during this, now settled down into a compartment painted green.

"Double zero!" the croupier remarked, and swept the table bare.

Texas cursed. "There ain't no double zero in racin'; there ain't no green-eyed horse runnin' for the the track--everybody's got a chance. Here! I'm goin' to cash in."

He shoved the ivory chips irritably across the table, and the croupier, stacking them in his board, said: "A thousand and fifty."

As methodically as he had built up the chips, from a drawer he erected little golden plinths of twenty-dollar pieces, and with both hands pushed them toward the winner. .

Texas put the palm of his hand on the shiny mound, saying:

"I'm goin' to orate; I'm gettin' plumb hide-bound 'cause of this long sleep in Walla Walla. To-morrow I'm pullin' my freight down the trail to the outside where men is. But these yeller-throated singin' birds says I got a cow-hocked whang-doodle on four hoofs named Horned Toad that can outrun anything that eats with molars in Walla Walla, from a grasshopper's jump to four miles. Now I've said it, ladies--who's next?"

A quiet voice at his elbow answered almost plaintively: "If you will take your paw off those yellow boys I'll bury them twice."

At the sound of that drawling voice Texas sprang to his feet, whirled, and seeing Carney, struck at him viciously. Carney simply bent his lithe body, and the next instant Iron Jaw had Texas by the throat, shaking him like a rat.