Whispering Smith Part 18

"So I am responsible for this invasion," continued Marion calmly.

"I've been up with d.i.c.ksie at the ranch; she sent for me. Just think of it--no woman but old Puss within ten miles of the poor child! And they have been trying everywhere to get bags, and you have all the bags, and the men have been buzzing around over there for a week like b.u.mblebees and doing just about as much good. She and I talked it all over this afternoon, and I told her I was coming over here to see you, and we started out together--and merciful goodness, such a time as we have had!"

"But you started out together; where did you leave her?"

"There she stands the other side of the fire. O d.i.c.ksie!"

"Why did you not tell me she was here!" exclaimed McCloud.

d.i.c.ksie came into the light as he hastened over. If she was uncertain in manner, he was not. He met her, laughing just enough to relieve the tension of which both for an instant were conscious. She gave him her hand when he put his out, though he felt that it trembled a little.

"Such a ride as you have had! Why did you not send me word? I would have come to you!" he exclaimed, throwing reproach into the words.

d.i.c.ksie raised her eyes. "I wanted to ask you whether you would sell us some grain-sacks, Mr. McCloud, to use at the river, if you could spare them?"

"Sacks? Why, of course, all you want! But how did you _ever_ get here?

In all this water, and two lone women! You have been in danger to-night. Indeed you have--don't tell me! And you are both wet; I know it. Your feet must be wet. Come to the fire. O Bill!" he called to Dancing, "what's the matter with your wood? Let us have a fire, won't you?--one worth while; and build another in front of my tent. I can't believe you have ridden here all the way from the ranch, two of you alone!" exclaimed McCloud, hastening boxes up to the fire for seats.

Marion laughed. "d.i.c.ksie can go anywhere! I couldn't have ridden from the house to the barns alone."

"Then tell me how _you_ could do it?" demanded McCloud, devouring d.i.c.ksie with his eyes.

d.i.c.ksie looked at the fire. "I know all the roads pretty well. We did get lost once," she confessed in a low voice, "but we got out again."

"The roads are all underwater, though."

"What time is it, please?"

McCloud looked at his watch. "Two minutes past twelve."

d.i.c.ksie started. "Past twelve? Oh, this is dreadful! We must start right back, Marion. I had no idea we had been five hours coming five miles."

McCloud looked at her, as if still unable to comprehend what she had accomplished in crossing the flooded bottoms. Her eyes fell back to the fire. "What a blaze!" she murmured as the driftwood snapped and roared. "It's fine for to-night, isn't it?"

"I know you both must have been in the water," he insisted, leaning forward in front of d.i.c.ksie to feel Marion's skirt.

"I'm not wet!" declared Marion, drawing back.

"Nonsense, you are wet as a rat! Tell me," he asked, looking at d.i.c.ksie, "about your trouble up at the bend. I know something about it. Are the men there to-night? Given up, have they? Too bad! Do open your jackets and try to dry yourselves, both of you, and I'll take a look at the river."

"Suppose--I only say suppose--you first take a look at me." The voice came from behind the group at the fire, and the three turned together.

"By Heaven, Gordon Smith!" exclaimed McCloud. "Where did you come from?"

Whispering Smith stood in the gloom in patience. "Where do I look as if I had come from? Why don't you ask me whether I'm wet? And won't you introduce me--but this is Miss d.i.c.ksie Dunning, I am sure."

Marion with laughter hastened the introduction.

"And you are wet, of course," said McCloud, feeling Smith's shoulder.

"No, only soaked. I have fallen into the river two or three times, and the last time a big rhinoceros of yours down the grade, a section foreman named Klein, was obliging enough to pull me out. Oh, no! I was not looking for you," he ran on, answering McCloud's question; "not when he pulled me out. I was just looking for a farm or a ladder or something. Klein, for a man named Small, is the biggest Dutchman I ever saw. 'Tell me, Klein,' I asked, after he had quit dragging me out--he's a Hanoverian--'where did you get your pull? And how about your height? Did your grandfather serve as a grenadier under old Frederick William and was he kidnapped?' Bill, don't feed my horse for a while. And Klein tried to light a cigar I had just taken from my pocket and given him--fancy! the Germans are a remarkable people--and sat down to tell me his history, when some friend down the line began bawling through a megaphone, and all that poor Klein had time to say was that he had had no supper, nor dinner, nor yet breakfast, and would be obliged for some by the boat he forwarded me in." And, in closing, Whispering Smith looked cheerfully around at Marion, at McCloud, and last and longest of all at d.i.c.ksie Dunning.

"Did you come from across the river?" asked d.i.c.ksie, adjusting her wet skirt meekly over her knees.

"You are soaking wet," observed Whispering Smith. "Across the river?"

he echoed. "Well, hardly, my dear Miss Dunning! Every bridge is out down the valley except the railroad bridge and there are a few things I don't tackle; one is the Crawling Stone on a tear. No, this was across a little break in this man McCloud's track. I came, to be frank, from the Dunning Ranch to look up two women who rode away from there at seven o'clock to-night, and I want to say that they gave me the ride of my life," and Whispering Smith looked all around the circle and back again and smiled.

d.i.c.ksie spoke in amazement. "How did you know we rode away? You were not at the ranch when we left."

"Oh, don't ask him!" cried Marion.

"He knows everything," explained McCloud.

Whispering Smith turned to d.i.c.ksie. "I was interested in knowing that they got safely to their destination--whatever it might be, which was none of my business. I happened to see a man that had seen them start, that was all. You don't understand? Well, if you want it in plain English, I made it my business to see a man who made it _his_ business to see them. It's all very simple, but these people like to make a mystery of it. Good women are scarcer than riches, and more to be prized than fine gold--in my judgment--so I rode after them."

Marion put her hand for a moment on his coat sleeve; he looked at d.i.c.ksie with another laugh and spoke to her because he dared not look toward Marion. "Going back to-night, do you say? You never are."

d.i.c.ksie answered quite in earnest: "Oh, but we are. We must!"

"Why did you come, then? It's taken half the night to get here, and will take a night and a half at least to get back."

"We came to ask Mr. McCloud for some grain-sacks--you know, they have nothing to work with at the ranch," said Marion; "and he said we might have some and we are to send for them in the morning."

"I see. But we may as well talk plainly." Smith looked at d.i.c.ksie.

"You are as brave and as game as a girl can be, I know, or you couldn't have done this. Sacks full of sand, with the boys at the ranch to handle them, would do no more good to-morrow at the bend than bladders. The river is flowing into Squaw Lake above there now. A hundred men that know the game might check things yet if they're there by daylight. n.o.body else, and nothing else on G.o.d's earth, can."

There was silence before the fire. McCloud broke it: "I can put the hundred men there at daylight, Gordon, if Miss Dunning and her cousin want them," said McCloud.

Marion sprang to her feet. "Oh, will you do that, Mr. McCloud?"

McCloud looked at d.i.c.ksie. "If they are wanted."

d.i.c.ksie tried to look at the fire. "We have hardly deserved help from Mr. McCloud at the ranch," she said at last.

He put out his hand. "I must object. The first wreck I ever had on this division Miss Dunning rode twenty miles to offer help. Isn't that true? Why, I would walk a hundred miles to return the offer to her.

Perhaps your cousin would object," he suggested, turning to d.i.c.ksie; "but no, I think we can manage that. Now what are we going to do? You two can't go back to-night, that is certain."

"We must."

"Then you will have to go in boats," said Whispering Smith.

"But the hill road?"

"There is five feet of water across it in half a dozen places. I swam my horse through, so I ought to know."

"It is all back-water, of course, Miss Dunning," explained McCloud.

"Not dangerous."

"But moist," suggested Whispering Smith, "especially in the dark."