W. A. Fraser

“ Carney's gray eyes travelled up and down the Wolf's form in a cold, searching manner; then he added, with the same aggravating drawl: "You put your hands up on the bar, same as you were set when I came in, or something will happen. I've got a proposition."
The Wolf hesitated; but Bulldog's right hand rested carelessly on his belt. Slowly the Wolf lifted his arm till his fingers touched the wooden rail, saying, surlily:
"I ain't got no truck with you; I don't want no proposition from a man that plays into the hands of the damn police." ”

“ He had ridden his famous buckskin, Pat, up from the Montana border, mentally surveying his desire, a route for running into the free and United States opium without the little formality of paying Uncle Sam the exorbitant and unnatural duty. That was why he first came to Bucking Horse.
The second day after his arrival Seth Long bought for a few hundred dollars the Little Widow mine that was almost like a back yard to the hotel. People laughed, for it was a worked-out proposition; when he put a gang of men to work, pushing on the long drift, they laughed again. ”

“ 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 enterprise was practically legitimatized by public opinion; besides there was the compelling matter of Bulldog's proficiency in looking after himself. People had grown into the habit of leaving him alone.
The Mounted Police more or less supervised the region, and sometimes one of them would be in Bucking Horse for a few days, and sometimes the town would be its own custodian.
One autumn evening Carney rode up the Bucking Horse valley at his horse's heels a mule that carried twenty thousand dollars in gold slung from either side of a pack saddle. ”

“ As he turned to hand the bottle to Carney he arched his eyebrows at Jeanette, and the girl slipped quietly away.
Bulldog raised his glass of whisky, and said:
"Gents, we're going to drink to the squarest little woman it has ever been my good fortune to run across. Here's to Miss Jeanette Holt, the truest pal that Seth Long ever had—Miss Jeanette."
Cayuse and Seth tossed off their liquor, but the Wolf did not touch his glass.
"You drink to that toast dam quick, Jack Wolf!" and Carney's voice was deadly. ”

“ The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion:
"Bulldog, do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it at all, wondered?"
"Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to being the finest girl I ever knew."
"But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"
"No; why should we? Different men have different ideas about those things. Seth can't see that because that gold was ours in the gang, he shouldn't steal it ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the engine reaches the other side Cayuse will jump it, hold up the engineer, and make him stop the train long enough to throw the gold off while the other cars are still on the trestle; then the Wolf will jump off, and Cayuse will force the engineer to carry the train on, and he will drop off on the up-grade, half a mile beyond."
"Old stuff, but rather effective," Carney commented; "they'll get away with it, I believe." ”

“ I want to get my horse from the stable. When we come to the cellar you go ahead and clear the way for me."
The passage from the drift through the cellar led up into a little store-room at the back of the hotel; and through this Carney passed out to the stable where he saddled his bucksin, transferring to his belt a gun that was in a pocket of the saddle. Then he fastened to the horn the two bags that had been on the pack mule. Leading the buckskin out he avoided the street, cut down the hillside, and skirted the turbulent Bucking Horse. ”

“ I guess when I tell you what got her dander up you'll figger you've got another think comin'. You're like a good many men I see—you're bein' stung. That smooth proposition, Bulldog Carney, is stingin' you right here in your own nest."
Biff!
That was the lady's hand, flat open, impinged on the speaker's cheek.
The Wolf sprang back with an oath, put his hand to his cheek, and turned to Seth with a volley of denunciation starting from his lips. At a look that swept over the proprietor's face he turned, stared, and stifling an oath dropped a hand subconsciously to the butt of his gun. ”

“ I've kissed many a fellow's girl, but I don't want to kiss you, being Seth's girl, and that isn't because of Seth, either. Can you untangle that—get what I mean?"
"I get it, Bulldog. You are some man, some man!"
There was a catch in the girl's voice; she took her hand from Carney's arm and drew the back of it irritably across her eyes; then she said in a steadier voice: "Good night, man—I'm going back."
Together they felt their way along the cross-cut, and when they came to the main drift, Carney said:
"I'm going out through the hotel, Jeanette, if there's nobody about ”

“ Come soon. Important."
There was no name signed, but Carney knew it was Jeanette's writing.
He blew out the candle and stepping softly to the other end of the pen knelt down, and with his fingertips searched the ends of the two planks nearest the log wall. At first he was baffled, his fingers finding the flat heads of ordinary nails; but presently he discovered that these heads were dummies, half an inch long. Suddenly a board rapped in the other room. He had just time to slip back to his bunk when a key clinked in the lock, and a light glinted through a chink as the door opened. ”

“ Then he added, "Seth, locate a bottle on the bar and deal glasses all round."
As Long deftly twirled little heavy-bottomed glasses along the plank as though he were dealing cards, Carney turned, surveyed the room, and addressing a man who sat in a heavy wooden chair beside a square box-stove, said: "Join up, stranger—we're going to liquidate."
The man addressed came forward, and lined up the other side of Jack Wolf.
"Cayuse Braun, Mr. Carney," Seth lisped past his fat cigar as he shoved a black bottle toward Bulldog.
"The gents first," the latter intimated. ”