of like that – it's rotten!"
"What am I to do, Bulldog? I can't peach, can I – not on Seth – not while I'm living with him? And he's been kind of good to me, too. He ain't – well, once I thought he was all right, but since I knew you it's been different. I've stuck to him – you know, Bulldog, how straight I've been – but a thief!"
"No, you can't give Seth away, Jeanette," Carney broke in, for the girl's voice carried a tremble.
"I think they had planned, that you being here in Bucking Horse, the police would kind of throw the blame of this thing on you. Then your being arrested upset that. What am I to do, Bulldog? Will you speak to Seth and stop it?"
"No. He'd know you had told me, and your life with him would be just hell. Besides, girl, I'm in jail."
"But you're free now – you'll go away."
"Let me think a minute, Jeanette."
As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and they saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse Braun.
The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while they pull the job off."
The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into action, fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:
"You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing – I will see what I can do."
"And Seth – you won't – "
"Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't bother your pretty little head about it."
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; that's one kind of man. I'm different."
"You mean that I'm like the gold?"
"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. You see, well – you know what I mean, Jeanette."
"But you like me?"
"So much that I want to keep you good enough to like."
"Would it be playing the game crooked, Bulldog, if you – if I kissed you?".
"Not wrong for you to do it, Jeanette, because you don't know how to do what I call wrong, but I'm afraid I couldn't square it with myself. Don't get this wrong, girl, it sounds a little too holy, put just that way. 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; 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.
A half moon hung high in a deep-blue sky that in both sides was bitten by the jagged rock teeth of the Rockies. The long curving wooden trestle looked like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent in the faint moonlight, its head resting on the left bank of the Bucking Horse, half a mile from where the few lights of the mining town glimmered, and its tail coming back to the same side of the stream after traversing two short kinks. It looked so inadequate, so frail in the night light to carry the huge Mogul engine with its trailing cars. No wonder the train went over it at a snail's pace, just the pace to invite a highwayman's attention.
And with the engine stopped with a pistol at the engineer's head what chance that anyone would drop from the train to the trestle to hurry to his assistance.
Carney admitted to himself that the hold-up was fairly well planned, and no doubt would go through unless – At this juncture of thought Carney chuckled. The little unforeseen something that was always popping into the plans of crooks might eventuate. When he came to thick scrub growth Carney dismounted, and led the buckskin whispering, "Steady, Pat – easy, my boy!"
The bucksin knew that he must make no noisy slip – that there was no hurry. He and Carney had chummed together for three years, the man talking to him as though he had a knowledge of what his master said, and he, understanding much of the import if not the uttered signs.
Sometimes going down a declivity the horse's soft muzzle was over Carney's shoulder, the flexible upper lip snuggling his neck or cheek; and sometimes as they went up again Carney's arm was over the buckskin's withers and they walked like two men arm in arm.
They went through the scrubby bush in the noiseless way of wary deer; no telltale stone was thrust loose to go tinkling down the hillside; they trod on no dried brush to break with snapping noise.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
