Bulldog Carney

In a front room of the Victoria six men sat around an oak table upon which was enthroned a five-gallon keg with a spiggot in its end. It was an occasion.

Liquor was prohibited in Alberta, but the little joker in the law was that a white citizen, in good standing, might obtain a permit for the importation of five gallons.

Jack Enders held the patent right that made the keg on the table possible.

Five of the six were Remittance Men, the sixth man, Bulldog Carney, in some particulars, was different. His lean, tanned face suggested attainment; the gray, restful eyes held power and absolute fearlessness; they looked out from under light tawny eyebrows like the eyes of an eagle.

Like Aladdin's lamp, the amber fluid that trickled through the spiggot transported, mentally, the Englishmen back to the Old Land. It was always that way with them when there was a shatterment of the caste shell, an effacement of the hauteur; then they damned the uncouth West as a St. Helena, and blabbed of "Old London."

A blond giant, FitzHerbert, was saying: "Jack Enders, here, is in no end of a fazzle; his pater is coming out uninvited, and Jack has a floaty idea that the old gent will want to see that ranch."

"The ranch that the Victoria's worthy drayman, worthy Enders, is supposed to have acquired with the several remittances dear pater has remitted," Harden explained to Carney.

"Oh, Lord! you fellows!" Enders moaned.

His desolated groan was drowned by a droning call that floated in from the roadway; it was a weird drool – the droning, hoarse note of a tug's whistle.

Harden sprang to his feet crying: "St. Ives! a Thames 'Puffing Billy'! Oh, heavens! it makes me homesick."

Harden had named it; it was the absolute warning note of a busy, pudgy little Thames tug.

Some of them went over the table in their eagerness to investigate. Outside they stood aghast in silent wonderment; the hot, scorching sun lay like a yellow flame across the most archaic, disreputable caravan of one that had ever cast its disconsolate shadow upon the main street. A dejected, piebald cayuse hung limply between the shafts of a Red River cart whose appearance suggested that it had been constructed from broken bits of the ark. In the cart sat a weary semblance of humanity.

The man's face and hands were encrusted with a plastic mixture of dust and sweat till he looked like a lamellar creature – an armadillo. He turned small sullen eyes, in which was an impatient, querulous look, upon the six.

"It's a Trappist monk from the merry temple of Chartreuse," FitzHerbert declared solemnly.

"Do it again, bargee," Harden begged; "blow your horn, O Gabriel – there's vintage inside; one blast to warm the cockles of our hearts and we'll set you happy."

The little eyes of the charioteer fastened upon Harden with his cogent proposition; he made a trumpet of his palms, and blew the tug boat blast. He did it sadly, as though it were an occupation.

But Enders, with a spring, was in the cart. He picked up the slight figure and tossed it to the blond giant, who, catching the thing of buckskin and leather chapps, turned back into the bar.

"Sit you there, foghorn," FitzHerbert said, as he lowered the unresisting guest to a chair.

The guest's eyes had grown large with the confirmatory evidence of a keg; the spiggot fascinated him; it was like a crystal to a gazer. He shoved out a dry furred tongue and peeled from his lips the rim of lava that darkened their pale contours.

Harden had replenished the glasses, and the one he passed to the prodigal was the fated calf – it was full.

The guest raised the glass till the sunlight, slanting through a window, threw life into the amber fluid, and gazed lovingly upon it.

"Oh, my aunt!" Harden bantered; "the man who has come up out of the stillness has a toast." The little man coughed, and from the flat chest floated up through thin tubes a voice that was soft and cultured as it wafted to their astonished ears: "Gentlemen, the Queen."

FitzHerbert, who had been in the Guards before something had happened, started. It was the toast of a vice-president of an officer's mess at dinner.

The six sprang to their feet, carried aloft their glasses, drank, and sat down again in silence. Fitz-Herbert's big voice had a husk in it as he asked, "Where is the regimental band, sir?"

The little man's shoulders twitched as he answered: "The band is outside: we'll have the bandmaster in for a glass of wine, presently."

"By George!" FitzHerbert gasped, for he knew this was a custom at mess; and Carney, who also knew, gazed at the little man, and his gray eyes that were thought hard, had gone blue.

"Now," Harden declared, "if somebody should dribble in who could give us twelve booms from 'Big Ben,' we'd have a perfect ecstasy of the blues."

At that two men came in through the front door, their scarlet tunics showing blood red in the glint of sunshine that played about their shoulders.

"Oh, you, Sergeant Jerry Platt!" the blond giant cried; "here is where the regulations bear heavy on a man, for we can't invite you to join up."

The Sergeant laughed. "You bad boys; if somebody hasn't a permit for this I'll have to run you all in."

Platt's companion, Corporal McBane, lengthened his dour face and added: "Drinkin' unlawful whisky is a dreadful sin."

"Shut your eyes, you two chaps, and open your mouths," FitzHerbert bantered; "that wouldn't be taking a drink."

"Let me see the permit," Platt asked, ignoring the chaff.

When he had examined the official script he said, "Sorry, gentlemen, to have troubled you."

As the two policemen turned away Platt nodded to Carney, the jovial cast of his countenance passing into a slightly cynical transition.

"Good fellows," Harden remarked; "our Scotch friend had tears of regret standing in his eyes at sight of the keg."

"Yes, and they have a beastly task," FitzHerbert declared; "this liquor law is all wrong. To keep it from the Indians white men out here have to be treated like babes or prisoners. That's why everybody is against the police when the law interferes with just rights, but with them when they're putting down crime."

"The worst part of it is," Carney added, "that sometimes a bull-headed man who has all the instincts of a thief catcher becomes a sergeant in the force, and can't interpret the law with any human intelligence. Fortunately, it's only one once in a while."

The ragged stranger shook himself out of the gentle state of quiescent restfulness the whisky had produced to say: "There will be a freshet of this stuff in Fort Calbert in a few days."

"Put me down for a barrel, O joyful stranger," FitzHerbert exclaimed eagerly.

Carney's gray eyes had widened a little at the stranger's statement.

"You can apply to Superintendent Kane," the little man answered; "he will have the handling of it, I fancy – a carload."

FitzHerbert's blue eyes searched Carney's, but the latter sat as if playing poker.

"Tell us about it, man," Enders suggested.

"I pulled into Fort Calbert this morning," the other contributed, "and a jocular constable took me to the Fort as a vagrant."

"Your equipage was against you," Enders advised. "Don't think anything of that," FitzHerbert said; "the hobos have been running neck-and-neck with the gophers about here; they burned up five freight cars in two weeks. The police have been shaken up over it by the O.C."

The little man drew from a pocket of his coat a bag of gold, and clapped it gently on the table.

"You had your credentials," and FitzHerbert nodded.

"I'd been washing gold down on the bars at Victoria. It was this way. I have a farm there, and last year I put in thirty acres of oats. It was a rotten crop and I didn't cut it. This year it came up a volunteer crop – a splendid one; I sold it to Major Grisbold, at Fort Saskatchewan, standing. Now I'm on my holidays, just a little pleasure jaunt."

"The constable took you to the Fort?" FitzHerbert suggested, for the little man's mind had returned to the convivial association of his glass.

"By Jove! forgive me, gentlemen – about the whisky: While I was waiting for an audience with the Polica Ogema I heard, through an open door, a pow-wow over a telegram that had just come. Its general statement was that whisky was being loaded at Winnipeg on car 6100 for delivery at Bald Rock. The Major gave the Sergeant orders to seize the car here."

"Who owns the whisky?" FitzHerbert asked.

"I heard the O.C. say, 'It's that damn Bulldog Carney again!' so I suppose – "

The speaker's eyes opened in wondering perplexity at the blizzard of merriment that cut off his supposition; neither could he understand why FitzHerbert clapped a hand on his shoulder and cried, "Old top, you're a joy!"

The laughter had but died down when Carney rose, and, addressing the little man, held out his hand, saying: "I'm very glad to have met you, sir." Then he was gone.

"I like that man," the derelict declared. "What's his name – you didn't introduce me?"

"That gentleman is Mr. Bulldog Carney," FitzHerbert answered solemnly.

"Oh, I say!" the other gasped.

"Don't worry; you've probably done him a good turn," FitzHerbert answered.

The stranger blinked his solemn eyes as if debating something; then he related: "My name is Reginald Llewellyn Fordyce-Anstruther; from An-struther Hall one can drive a golf ball into either one of three counties – Surrey, Sussex, or Kent."

In retaliation each of the five presented himself at decorous length.

From the Victoria Carney strolled to the railway station and sent a telegram to John Arliss at Winnipeg. It was an ordinary ranch-type of message, about a registered bull that was being shipped. In the evening he had an answer to the effect that the bull would be well looked after.

Then Sergeant Jerry Platt paid several visits daily to the railway station for little chats with a constable who patrolled its platform from morning till night.

On the sixth day a gigantic, black-headed, drab snake crawled across the prairie from the east, and toward its tail one joint of the vertebras was numbered 6100.

Sergeant Jerry was on hand, and his eye brightened; the advice the Major had received was reliable, evidently.

The station master knew nothing about the car; it was through freight – not for Fort Calbert.

Bulldog Carney had wandered unobtrusively down to the station; a dry smile hovered about his lips as he listened to the argument between the amiable Jerry and the rather important magnate of the C. P. R.

"Lovely!" he muttered once to himself as he wandered closer to the discussion.

It was a case of when great bodies collide. The C. P. R. was a mighty force, and its agents sometimes felt the tremendousness of their power: the Mounted Police were not accustomed to being balked when they issued an order.

Jerry wanted the seals broken on the car. This the agent flatly refused to do; rules were rules, and he only took orders, re railroad matters, from his superior officer.

Jerry was firm; but the famous Jerry Platt smile never left his face for long. "There's booze in that car, Mr. Craig," he declared.

"How do you know?" the station agent retorted.

"Perhaps we got the info from Bulldog Carney, there," and Jerry laughed.

Perhaps Bulldog had been waiting for a legitimate opening, for he jumped:

"I think it is altogether incredible, Sergeant Jerry,"' he answered; "Ottawa would never let that much liquor get out of Ontario – they have use for it down that way."

"It's booze," Jerry asserted flatly; "and I'm going to tell you something on the level, Bulldog. You're a hell of a nice fellow, but if I get the evidence I expect to get you'll go into the pen just as though I never set eyes on you."

Carney laughed. "When you say the word, Jerry, and I can't make a get-away, I'm yours without trouble. But I don't mind laying you a bet of ten dollars that somebody's been pulling your Superintendent's leg. A carload of whisky is simply preposterous."

This little by-play had given Sergeant Platt time for a second thought. He could see that the agent was one of those duty-set men, and would not break the seal of the car; and without authority he did not care to take it on himself.

"Look here, Craig," he said, "cut that car off. I'll get the O.C. to come down; in the meantime you might wire your divisional point how to act. We've simply got to detain the car even if we use force; but I don't want to get you into trouble."

A look of pleasure suffused Carney's face; for or against him, he admired brains in a man. And Jerry's determination and bravery were also well known. He turned to the station master saying:

"I don't want to horn in on this round-up, Craig, but I fancy that's the proper way. I've a curiosity to see just what is in that car."

Sergeant Platt waited patiently; and the conductor of the freight train was now on the platform asking for his "line clear."

Craig was up against a new situation. His company was powerful, and would back him up if he were absolutely in the right, but they also expected of a man a certain amount of intelligence plus his orders; they didn't encourage friction between their employees and the Mounted.

"Cut off 6100, Jim, and run her into the sidin'," he said curtly to the conductor. And as a panacea to his capitulation he added: "If you've got somebody else's freight there, Jerry, I'd advise you to apply for a job as brakeman, you're so damned fond of runnin' the C. P. R."

Platt laughed and, turning to the constable, said: "Gallop down to the Fort, report to the O.C., and ask him for a written order to break the seals on this car, as the agent refuses to."

So 6100 was lanced from the drab snake's body, and then the reptile crawled up the grade toward the foothills, the tail-end joint, the caboose, flicking about derisively as it hobbled over the uneven track.

An inkling of what was on had come to the ears of the citizens; casually the worthy people sauntered down to the station. They were thirsty souls, for permits did not grow on every lamp post. That a whole carload of whisky had been seized bred a demoralizing thirst. It was doomed, of course, to be poured out on the parched earth, but the event had an attraction like a funeral.

EVIL SPIRITS

At the end of half an hour the constable returned, not only with a written order, but accompanied by Major Kane himself. Behind came a heavy police wagon, drawn by an upstanding pair of bays.

The Major was a jaunty, wiry little man; his braided cap, cocked at a defiant angle on his grizzled head, suggested the comb of a Black-Red, a game cock. He had originally been a sergeant in the Imperial forces, and in his speech there was the savor of London fog.

"What's this, my good man?" The words popped from his thin lips as he addressed the agent. "You should have broken the seals on that car: do so now!"

"You'll take the responsibility, then, sir," Craig answered.

"My word! we're always doing that, always – that's what we're here for, to take responsibility; the Force is noted for it."

There was an ominous squint in the little man's eye, which was fastened on Carney rather than the agent, as he said this. Now, led by the Major, a procession headed for the car of interest.

The station agent clipped the seal wire, and as the door was slid open, the sunlight streaming in picked out the goodly forms of several oak barrels.

The Major's lips clipped out a sharp "Ha!" and Sergeant Jerry grinned at Bulldog Carney.

It must be confessed that Bulldog's gray eyes held a trifle of astonishment over this exhibit.

At a command two constables had popped into the car, and the Major, turning to Sergeant Jerry, said, "Back the wagon up, Sergeant, and take this stuff to the fort."

The station master interposed: "I think, Major, that if you're seizing this stuff as liquor you'd better make sure. Them bar'ls looks a bit too greasy and dirty to be whisky bar'ls."

"Just a clever little covering up of the trail by a foxy whisky-runner," the Major said pleasantly, and let his shrewd eyes almost wink at Carney. "But I'll humor you, Mr. Craig. Have one of your section-men bring a sledge and we'll knock in the head of a barrel; it's got to be destroyed; the devilish stuff gives us trouble enough."

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. It was Long Dog-leg who grunted: "Heap big chief, Redcoat man! Him damn good; break him more!"

"Dump out another barrel," the nettled Major commanded.

This oaken casket when shattered by the sledge cast oil on the troubled waters – literally, for it contained good healthy kerosene.

The citizens yelped with delight. Dog-leg begged the Major not to waste these things of an Indian's desire, but give them to his tribe.

The station agent, realizing that he had been on the winning horse in his objection, could not resist a little crow. "Well, Major, you've roped something at last. For the next thirty days I can sit up nights answering correspondence. The man that owns this car of groceries will want to know what the hell the company's up to broaching his goods. The Superintendent of the Western Division will want to know why I side-track freight billed through Fort Calbert. You said you'd take responsibility, but you've given me a big lot of work, and I ain't none too well paid as it is. Somebody's doublecrossed you."

"And, by George! I'll keep after that somebody till I get him, if I have to follow him to the North Pole!" Major Kane answered crossly.

Then the constables investigated the car's interior. There were barrels of sugar, biscuit, bundles of brooms, boxes of salt cod, tins of peas, beans – in fact the car's interior was a replica of a well-ordered grocery store rather than the duplicate of a barroom.

The Major was mystified. They certainly had got the car that had been wired on by the Secret Intelligence Department as containing whisky.

He had no word of another car; what could he do? Beyond Fort Calbert were several small places on the line where there were neither police nor men who either feared or were friendly to the law. He turned to the station master, saying:

"Craig, can't you wire ahead and see if you can get that car of whisky cut off? I believe it's on that train."

"How'd I know what car to cut out; besides, I've no jurisdiction outside my own station. As it is, the company'll have a bill of damages to pay, and, of course, somebody on a three-legged stool at head office'll try to cut it out of my pay. You'd better have your men put those packages back in the car, so I can seal it up. I'm going in to wire the Superintendent of the Western Division at Winnipeg to report the whole thing to your Commissioner at Regina."

Some Stoney Indians, with the Sarcees, watched sadly the return of the broken barrels of desire to the car; not since they had looted the H. B. Coy's store at Fort Platt had there been such a pleasing prospect of something for nothing.

The constables mounted their horses and with the police wagon departed.

Sergeant Jerry Platt, in a little detour passed close to Carney, saying, as he slacked his pace: "Bulldog, you're too damn hot for this country; Montana, I would suggest as a wider field. But we'll get the goods on you yet, old top."

"Then Montana might prove attractive, dear Jerry."

The Major walked away stiffly, pondering over this mixed-up affair. He would wire to one of his outposts up in the hills; but he was handicapped by his now want of data. With whisky as the bone of contention everybody's hand would be against the force – the very train men, if they could get away with it.

Carney had viewed the incident with complacency. If 6100 contained groceries then the other car, for there was one, had got safely through with its holding of liquor. Carney had known before his telegram was sent that Jack Arliss was shipping two cars – one of goods and one of whisky; one consigned to John Ross, and one to Dan Stewart; and John Ross was also of the gang, though ostensibly an industrious storekeeper in the next town to Bald Rock, Dan Stewart's habitat. Of course, neither car would be billed as liquor. How Arliss had double-crossed the police, either by shifting the goods or juggling the shipping bills, did not matter.

Carney's telegram telling Arliss that the police at Fort Calbert were going to seize 6100 made it a sure thing for that gentleman to shoot through the whisky under another number, and a day ahead of the suspected car.

Back at the Fort, Major Kane called in Sergeant Jerry for a consultation. Jerry had been in the force for many years; he had risen from the position of scout and knew every trick and curve of the game; besides, which was almost a greater asset, he was liked of the citizens.

"Bulldog 'illstay right here," he advised; "he's got brains, the cool kind that don't sputter in the pan. It wouldn't do a bit of good to round him up, for we haven't got a thing on him – not a thing. He's so well liked that nobody'll give him away; he plays the game like Robin Hood used to. Dan Stewart 'll handle this stuff; but till you've clapped your hands on somebody with the goods we'll be guessing. A lot of it'll be run into the plains – there isn't a rancher wouldn't buy a barrel of it, and swear he'd never heard of it. Every white man is against this law, sir. They don't think Carney's breakin' the law."

The Major pondered a little, then he said: "Instruct the Sergeant Major to send out a patrol up toward the foothills, with orders to get some of this consignment, and some of the runners at any cost."

So that night a patrol rode into the western gloom.

Next day, as Sergeant Jerry strolled out of the stockade gate, he was accosted by a French halfbreed, who intimated that for a matter of ten dollars, paid in hand, he would tell Jerry where he could nab a big lot of whisky as it was being run the following night.

The informant refused Jerry's invitation to accompany him to the Commanding Officer. To insist would only frighten him, and a frightened breed always lied; so Jerry, taking a gambling chance, passed over the ten, and learned that in the night a whisky caravan would come along the trail that crossed the ford at Whispering Water heading for Fort Calbert itself.

This was quite in keeping with Carney's audacity; and Jerry, still wondering that anybody would give away Bulldog, carried the information to the Major.

"We'll have to act on it," Major Kane declared? "sometimes a breed will sell his own wife for a slab of bacon."

When night had settled down over the prairie Sergeant Jerry Platt, Corporal McBane, and three constables rode quietly through the gates, and, skirting the west wall of the stockade, drifted away to the southwest.

At ten o'clock the police were snugly hidden in the heavy willow bush of a little valley through which rippled Whispering Water; their horses had been taken back on the trail by one constable. A bull's-eye lantern fastened to a stake just topped a rock. In this position, when the slide was pulled, its rays would light up the trail where it dipped from the cut-bank to the stream.

They lay for an hour in the little bluff of willows. A moon that had hung in the western sky wandering lazily toward the distant saw-toothed ridge of the Rockies, had passed behind the gigantic stone wall, and a sombre gloom had obliterated the uneven edge of the cut-bank. In the belly of the valley it was just a well of blackness, cut at times by a penciled line of silver where the waters swirled around a cutting rock. The stillness was oppressive for the air was dead; no winger of the night passed; no animal of the prairie, gopher or coyote, disturbed the solemn hush; nobody spoke; in each one's mind was the unworded thought that they waited for a man that was known to be without fear, a man to whom odds meant little or nothing.