W. A. Fraser

“ Right across the jump, close to the wall, is a mass of crumpled life, horse and man,
Too late for Gun Metal to check; too late for Leigh to pull to the right or to the left, or to falter. He sees but one thing—to act. He draws his whip. Like a vise his long legs cleave to the girth; he calls on the bay, he crouches to the wither to take the weight off the straining loins. One cut of the whip, and Gun Metal, answering bravely, lifts high and long and broad, and clears mud wall and fallen horse, staggers from the impact, gathers himself, and again he is galloping, now in the lead. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ Savarin was tireless,—a wolf that tracked hour after hour a wounded buck. When he should have eaten, he lighted a pipe and, holding it between his strong teeth, pushed on; when he must eat, because even determined energy must have food, there was a quick frying of pork, a minute for a smoke, the tea-pail emptied in great draughts, and then on again.
Crouched in the canoe, I cared not; it was his energy, his muscles, his way of going. Larue sat silent and heavy-faced, his fierce black eyes watching every rock, every eddy, every treacherous pool. ”

“ It was dark when Carney rode out of Fort Calbert heading for the heavy gloomed line of the Vermillions. The little buckskin pricked his ears, threw up his head with a playful clamp at the bit, and broke into a long graceful lope; beneath them the chocolate trail swam by like shadow chasing shadow over a mirror. A red-faced moon that had come peeping over Fort Calbert, followed the rider, traversing the blue upturned prairie above, as if it, too, hurried to rebuke with its silent serenity the turbulent ones in the foothills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The horse's feet were muffled by the ghastly white rug, the blizzard was spreading over the earth that the day before had been a cloth of gold; it was like a winding sheet.
Carney could feel the brave little beast falter and lurch as the merciless snow clutched at his legs where it had swirled into billows.
To the man direction was lost—it was like being above the clouds; but the buckskin held on his way straight and true; fighting, fighting, making the glorious fight that is without fear. To stop, to falter, meant death; the buckskin knew it ”

“ He rolled over as he fell, and the bright blots of blood splashed over the rose leaves by the side of the trail.
The first cayuse, startled out of his sleepy lopa by the report and flash, reared and plunged madly forward. As he took the first bound in the air a bullet glanced from the high horn in front of the man and went tearing its corkscrew way through the leather flaps of the big Mexican saddle. The rider yelled and dug the spurs in the trembling flanks of the horse as he felt the hot lead scorching its way close to his skin. ”

“ The lady-who-had-seen took in the situation in an instant; for jealousy acts like new wine on the intellect. She darted forward, picked up the obese little god, and, with a sweet smile on her gentle face, proffered it to the captain's companion, with the remark, "I think you've dropped one of your children's toys."
Captain Larry was speechless; he was like a hamstrung elephant, and as helpless.
A private secretary is a most useful adjunct to a Chief Commissioner, but a private secretary with brains is a jewel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Halsted was away, and panic paralyzed Ducky's saner thought. If he attempted to flee it would be across miles of open prairie; Moran would pursue him. One minute he thought of taking the gun to defend himself; but his mind sickened at the thought of combat with Moran and the desperado with him. If he could hide—the avenger might be but passing through; but alas! a single-roomed square log shack affords but poor cover.
Like an inspiration came to Ducky a thought of the dead Egyptian nestling so cozily in his sycamore sarcophagus in the little shed: Fear hastened the workings of Glover's mind. ”

“ Christmas had come to Marie. The Holy Mother had heard her prayer, and she was with Leon.
And every Christmas since, in Arichat, a mass is said for the repose of the soul of little Marie, and the lover who rose from the sea to come to her, even in death. ”

“ Runfeet answered, "and here is his purse with ten rupees that the Sahib has lost in my gharry."
There was the clink of a chain, the rasp of a bolt, the creak of hinges as the heavy gate was swung to a crack; a lean black arm was thrust through, and a voice said: "Give me the purse, brother—I will give it to the Sahib."
"Call the Sahib," Runjeet answered, "that I may give it into his hands. How do I know that thou are not a thief?—all durwans are of the robber caste," and he jingled the rupees seductively in his hand. ”

“ One of the yard-men brought a sledge; a barrel was rolled out, stood on end, and the yard-man swung his heavy, long-nosed spike-driving sledge. At the second blow it went through, and a little fountain of syrup fluttered up like a spray of gold in the sunlight.
"Oh, my aunt!" FitzHerbert exclaimed; "you've struck it sweet this time, Major."
A little group of Sarcees who had viewed with apathetic indifference the turmoil of the whites, swarmed forward like so many bees, dipped their dirty fingers in the treacle, and lapped it off with grunts of appreciation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THIS is a story of how, on 13th of August, a White Man does not know everything.
It was all in that land of spruce forest and moss-covered muskeg, ribboned by rivers that rush many miles an hour over cataract beds, and jewel-set with sapphire lakes, and lakes sometimes of emerald; and of its animate life, the patrician Cree Indian and the conglomerate Breed harassed forever and ever the trumpet-voiced moose and the velvet-coated bear and the caribou—the wood-caribou whose head is rigged like a ship, all spars and yards ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well beyond the Valley of the Grizzley's Bridge, past the dark maw of the cave in which Jack the Wolf had hidden the stolen gold, Carney went, camping in the valley, that had now broadened out, when its holding walls of mountain sides had blanketed the light so that he travelled along an obliterated trail, obliterated to all but the buckskin's finer sense of perception. ”

“ 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 ”

“ TWO miles from Dan Stuart's whiskey dive, and eighteen from Golden, the Missoula trail took a sudden kink in its flesh-coloured ribbon and wound partly around the butt of a big fir stump. Behind the stump a man was kneeling that gladsome September day—all among the tawny gold and crimson of the dead rose leaves and the soft gray and cream of the bleached bunch grass. ”

“ Carney commanded: "tell your braves to strike their tepees."
"Go back on the trail, Bulldog."
Standing Bear's words were cut short by the zipp of a rope; from Carney's right hand the lariat floated up like the loosening coils of a snake; the noose settled down over the key-pole, and at a pull of the rein the little buckskin raced backward, and the tepee collapsed to earth like a pricked balloon. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Once under way, they were no more desirous of speed than was I; a man who is needed in two places at once loves not the midway.
Savarin and the Indian leapt to the collars of the tracking-line as greyhounds might have cast from the leash with eyes enamored of a flitting hare.
The Athabasca was low, long points of rock-cobbled bottom running out far from shore. In the stern, Larue, paddle in hand, sweeping the canoe the full length of the tracking-line out to the proper depth, ate into our progress. It was slow going; much strain for the headway gained. ”

“ 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." ”

“ IT was two o’clock when Le Bretagne spread her white sails and crept out toward the eastern sky. It was six when the gray wall of the sea rose and blotted out the ship as though she had gone to the bottom.
Then the dark figure which had been outlined against the crimson of the big, red setting sun turned wearily and crept over the sands towards Arichat—it was Marie, returning to her newly widowed home.
“Leon said he would come at the time of Christmas, so why should I fear?” she kept muttering, “and Leon will keep his word in life or death. ”