"I ain't got no sore spots on my hide," the other sneered; "I'm an ord'nary damn fool of a gold chaser, and I've been up in the Eagle Hills trailin' a ledge of auriferous quartz that's buck-jumpin' acrost the mountains so damn fast I never got a chanct to rope it. I'd a-stuck her out if the chuck hadn't petered. When I'd just got enough sowbelly to see me to the outside I pulled my freight. That's me, Goldbug Dave."
The other's statement flashed into Carney's mind a sudden disturbing thought—food! He, himself, had about one day's supply—had he it? He turned to his dunnage and saddle that lay where they had been tossed by the cave man when he had stripped them from the horse. His bacon and bannock were gone!
Wheeling, he asked, "Did you see anything of my grub?"
"All that was on your bronch is there, Bulldog. I don't rob no man's cache. And all I got's here," he held up in one hand a slab of bacon, about four pounds in weight, and in the other a drill bag, in its bottom a round bulge of flour the size of a cocoa-nut "That's got to get me to Bailey's Ferry," he added as he dropped them back at the head of his blankets.
A subconscious presentment of trouble caused Carney, through force of habit, to caress the place where his gun should have been—the pigskin pocket was empty.
The other man bared his teeth; it was like the quiver of a wolf's lip. "Your Gatt must've kicked out back there in the snow; I see it was gone."
Bulldog knew this was a lie; he knew the cave man had taken his gun. He ran his eye over his host's physical exhibit—when the time came he would get his gun back or appropriate the one so in evidence in the other's belt. He went back to his dunnage, a thought of the buckskin in his mind; to his joy he found the horse's oats safe in the bag. This fastened the idea he had that the other had stolen his food, for his bacon and bannock had been in the same bag, they could hardly have worked out and the oats remain.
He sat down again, and mentally arranged the situation. He could hear outside the blizzard still raging; he could see in the opening the swirling snow that indeed had gradually raised a barrier, a white gate to their chamber. This kept the intense cold out, a cold that was at least fifty below zero. The snow would lie in the valleys through which the trail wound twenty feet deep in places. They had no snowshoes; he had no food; and Goldbug Dave's store was only sufficient for a week with two men eating it.
He knew that there was something in Dave's mind; either a bargain, or a fight for the food. They might be imprisoned for a month; a chinook wind might come up the next day, or the day following that would melt the snow with its soft warm kiss like rain washes a street.
Carney was not hungry; the strain had left him fagged—he was hungry only for rest; and the buckskin, he knew, felt the same desire.