Whispering Smith Part 11

"I want my job, or I want a new superintendent here."

"Just exactly the two things, and, by heavens! the only two, I can't manage. Come once more and I'll meet you."

"No!" Sinclair rose to his feet. "No--d.a.m.n your money! This is my home. The high country is my country; it's where my friends are."

"It's filled with your friends; I know that. But don't put your trust in your friends. They will stay by you, I know; but once in a long while there will be a false friend, Murray, one that will sell you--remember that."

"I stay."

Whispering Smith looked up in admiration. "I know you're game. It isn't necessary for me to say that to you. But think of the fight you are going into against this company. You can worry them; you've done it. But a bronco might as well try to buck a locomotive as for one man or six or six hundred to win out in the way you are playing."

"I will look out for my friends; others--" Sinclair hitched his belt and paused, but Whispering Smith, cutting and running the cards, gave no heed. His eyes were fixed on the green cloth under his fingers.

"Others--" repeated Sinclair.

"Others?" echoed Whispering Smith good-naturedly.

"May look out for themselves."

"Of course, of course! Well, if this is the end of it, I'm sorry."

"You will be sorry if you mix in a quarrel that is none of yours."

"Why, Murray, I never had a quarrel with a man in my life."

"You are pretty smooth, but you can't drive me out of this country. I know how well you'd like to do it; and, take notice, there's one trail you can't cross even if you stay here. I suppose you understand that."

Smith felt his heart leap. He sat in his chair turning the pack slowly, but with only one hand now; the other hand was free. Sinclair eyed him sidewise. Smith moistened his lips and when he replied spoke slowly: "There is no need of dragging any allusion to her into it. For that matter, I told Bucks he should have sent any man but me. If I'm in the way, Sinclair, if my presence here is all that stands in the way, I'll go back and stay back as before, and send any one else you like or Bucks likes. Are you willing to say that I stand in the way of a settlement?"

Sinclair sat down and put his hands on the table. "No; your matter and mine is another affair. All I want between you and me is fair and right."

Whispering Smith's eyes were on the cards. "You've always had it."

"Then keep away from _her_."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Then don't tell me."

"I'm not telling you. You will do as you please; so will I. I left here because Marion asked me to. I am here now because I have been sent here. It is in the course of my business. I have my living to earn and my friends to protect. Don't dictate to me, because it would be of no use."

"Well, you know now how to get into trouble."

"Every one knows that; few know how to keep out."

"You can't lay your finger on me at any turn of the road."

"Not if you behave yourself."

"And you can't bully me."

"Surely not. No hard feelings, Murray. I came for a friendly talk, and if it's all the same to you I'll watch this wheel awhile and then go over to the Wickiup. I leave first--that's understood, I hope--and if your pink-eyed friend is waiting outside tell him there is nothing doing, will you, Murray? Who is the albino, by the way? You don't know him? I think I do. Fort City, if I remember. Well, good-night, Murray."

It was after twelve o'clock and the room had filled up. Roulette-b.a.l.l.s were dropping, and above the faro-table the extra lights were on. The dealers, fresh from supper, were putting things in order for the long trick.

At the Wickiup Whispering Smith found McCloud in the office signing letters. "I can do nothing with him," said Smith, drawing down a window-shade before he seated himself to detail his talk with Sinclair. "He wants a fight."

McCloud put down his pen. "If I am the disturber it would be better for me to get out."

"That would be hauling down the flag across the whole division. It is too late for that. If he didn't centre the fight on you he would centre it somewhere else. The whole question is, who is going to run this division, Sinclair and his gang or the company? and it is as easy to meet them on one point as another. I know of no way of making this kind of an affair pleasant. I am going to do some riding, as I told you. Kennedy is working up through the Deep Creek country, and has three men with him. I shall ride toward the Cache and meet him somewhere near South Mission Pa.s.s."

"Gordon, would it do any good to ask a few questions?"

"Ask as many as you like, my dear boy, but don't be disappointed if I can't answer them. I can look wise, but I don't know anything. You know what we are up against. This fellow has grown a tiger among the wolves, and he has turned the pack loose on us. One thing I ask you to do. Don't expose yourself at night. Your life isn't worth a coupling-pin if you do."

McCloud raised his hand. "Take care of _your_self. If you are murdered in this fight I shall know I got you in and that I am to blame."

"And suppose you were?" Smith had risen from his chair. He had few mannerisms, and recalling the man the few times I have seen him, the only impression he has left on me is that of quiet and gentleness.

"Suppose you were?" He was resting one arm on top of McCloud's desk.

"What of it? You have done for me up here what I couldn't do, George.

You have been kind to Marion when she hadn't a friend near. You have stood between him and her when I couldn't be here to do it, and when she didn't want me to--helped her when I hadn't the privilege of doing it." McCloud put up his hand in protest, but it was unheeded. "How many times it has been in my heart to kill that man. She knows it; she prays it may never happen. That is why she stays here and has kept me out of the mountains. She says they would talk about her if I lived in the same town, and I have stayed away." He threw himself back into the chair. "It's going beyond both of us now. I've kept the promise I made to her to-day to do all in my power to settle this thing without bloodshed. It will not be settled in that way, George."

"Was he at Sugar b.u.t.tes?"

"If not, his gang was there. The quick get-away, the short turn on Van Horn, killing two men to rattle the _posse_--it all bears Sinclair's ear-marks. He has gone too far. He has piled up plunder till he is reckless. He is crazy with greed and insane with revenge. He thinks he can gallop over this division and scare Bucks till he gets down on his knees to him. Bucks will never do it. I know him, and I tell you Bucks will never do it. He is like that man in Washington: he will fight it to the death. He would fight Sinclair if he had to come up here and meet him single-handed, but, he will never have to do it. He put you here, George, to round that man up. This is the price for your advancement, and you must pay it."

"It is all right for me to pay it, but I don't want you to pay it.

Will you have a care for yourself, Gordon?"

"Will you?"

"Yes."

"You need never ask me to be careful," Smith went on. "That is my business. I asked you to watch your window-shades at night, and when I came in just now I found one up. It is you who are likely to forget, and in this kind of a game a man never forgets but once. I'll lie down on the Lincoln lounge, George."

"Get into the bed."

"No; I like the lounge, and I'm off early."

In the private room of the superintendent, provided as a sleeping apartment in the old headquarters building many years before hotel facilities reached Medicine Bend, stood the only curio the Wickiup possessed--the Lincoln lounge. When the car that carried the remains of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield was dismantled, the Wickiup fell heir to one piece of its elaborate furnishings, the lounge, and the lounge still remains as an early-day relic. Whispering Smith walked into the bedroom and disposed himself in an incredibly short time. "I've borrowed one of your pillows, George," he called out presently.

"Take both."

"One's enough. I hope," he went on, rolling himself like a hen into the double blanket, "the horse Kennedy has left me will be all right; he got three from Bill Dancing. Bill Dancing," he snorted, driving his nose into the pillow as if in final memorandum for the night, "he will get himself killed if he fools around Sinclair too much now."

McCloud, under a light shaded above his desk, opened a roll of blue-prints. He was going to follow a construction gang up the Crawling Stone in the morning and wanted to look over the surveys.

Whispering Smith, breathing regularly, lay not far away. It was late when McCloud put away his maps, entered the inner room, and looked at his friend.

He lay like a boy asleep. On the chair beside his head he had placed his old-fashioned hunting-case watch, as big as an alarm-clock, the kind a railroad man would wind up with a spike-maul. Beside the watch he had laid his huge revolver in its worn leather scabbard. Breathing peacefully, he lay quite at his companion's mercy, and McCloud, looking down on this man who never made a mistake, never forgot a danger, and never took an unnecessary chance, thought of what between men confidence may sometimes mean. He sat a moment with folded arms on the side of his bed, studying the tired face, defenceless in the slumber of fatigue. When he turned out the light and lay down, he wondered whether, somewhere in the valley of the great river to which he was to take his men in the morning, he should encounter the slight and reckless horsewoman who had blazed so in anger when he stood before her at Marion's. He had struggled against her charm too long.

She had become, how or when he could not tell, not alone a pretty woman but a fascinating one--the creature of his constant thought.