Tacoma had known; he had smelt it; but he had lain there, fear in his heart that now, when it was possible, Bulldog would take him in to Bucking Horse.
"The bargain stands, don't it, Bulldog?" he asked: "I win on the chinook, don't I?"
"You do, Tacoma. Bulldog Carney's stock in trade is that he keeps his word."
"Yes, I've heard you was some man, Bulldog. If I'd knew you'd pulled into Buckin' Horse that day, and was in the game I guess I'd a-played my hand dif'rent—p'raps it's kind of lucky for you I didn't know all that when I drug you in out of the blizzard."
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."
VI.—EVIL SPIRITS
The Rockies, their towering white domes like sheets of ivory inlaid with blue and green, the glacier gems, looked down upon the Vermillion Range, and the Vermillion looked down upon the sienna prairie in which was Fort Calbert, as Marathon might have looked down upon the sea.