Whispering Smith Part 24

McCloud looked at Marion. "I never worry over what can't be helped--though it is dollars to cents that those fellows don't need me down there any more than a cat needs two tails. And how will you get back?" he asked, turning to d.i.c.ksie.

"I will ride back!" returned d.i.c.ksie loftily. "But you may, if you like, help me get my horse up."

"Are you sure you can find your way back?" persisted McCloud.

d.i.c.ksie looked at him in surprise. "Find my way back?" she echoed softly. "I could not lose it. I can ride over any part of this country at noon or at midnight, asleep or awake, with a saddle or without, with a bridle or without, with a trail or without. I've ridden every horse that has ever come on the Crawling Stone Ranch. I could ride when I was three years old. Find my way back?"

The messenger had gone when the two rode from the house. The sky was heavily overcast, and the wind blew such a gale from the south and west that one could hardly hear what the other said. McCloud could not have ridden from the house to the barn in the utter darkness, but his horse followed d.i.c.ksie's. She halted frequently on the trail for him to come up with her, and after they had crossed the alfalfa fields McCloud did not care whether they ever found the path again or not.

"It's great, isn't it?" he exclaimed, coming up to her after opening a gate in the dark. "Where are you?"

"This way," laughed d.i.c.ksie. "Look out for the trail here. Give me your hand and let your horse have his head. If he slips, drop off quick on this side." McCloud caught her hand. They rode for a moment in silence, the horses stepping cautiously. "All right now," said d.i.c.ksie; "you may let go." But McCloud kept his horse up close and clung to the warm hand. "The camp is just around the hill," murmured d.i.c.ksie, trying to pull away. "But of course if you would like to ride in holding my hand you may!"

"No," said McCloud, "of course not--not for worlds! But, Miss d.i.c.ksie, couldn't we ride back to the house and ride around the other way into camp? I think the other way into the camp--say, around by the railroad bridge--would be prettier, don't you?"

For answer she touched Jim lightly with her lines and his spring released her hand very effectively. As she did so the trail turned, and the camp-fire, whipped in the high wind, blazed before them.

Whispering Smith and Lance Dunning were sitting together as the two galloped up. Smith helped d.i.c.ksie to alight. She was conscious of her color and that her eyes were now unduly bright. Moreover, Whispering Smith's glance rested so calmly on both McCloud's face and her own that d.i.c.ksie felt as if he saw quite through her and knew everything that had happened since they left the house.

Lance was talking to McCloud. "Don't abuse the wind," McCloud was saying. "It's our best friend to-night, Mr. Dunning. It is blowing the water off-sh.o.r.e. Where is the trouble?" For answer Dunning led McCloud off toward the Bend, and d.i.c.ksie was left alone with Whispering Smith.

He made a seat for her on the windward side of the big fire. When she had seated herself she looked up in great contentment to ask if he was not going to sit down beside her. The brown coat, the high black hat, and the big eyes of Whispering Smith had already become a part of her mental store. She saw that he seemed preoccupied, and sought to draw him out of his abstraction.

"I am so glad you and Mr. McCloud are getting acquainted with Cousin Lance," she said. "And do you mind my giving you a confidence, Mr.

Smith? Lance has been so unreasonable about this matter of the railroad's coming up the valley and powwowing so much with lawyers and ranchers that he has been forgetting about everything at home. He is so much older than I am that he ought to be the sensible one of the family, don't you think so? It frightens me to have him losing at cards and drinking. I am afraid he will get into some shooting affair.

I don't understand what has come over him, and I worry about it. I believe you could influence him if you knew him."

"What makes you think that?" asked Whispering Smith, but his eyes were on the fire.

"Because these men he spends his time with in town--the men who fight and shoot so much--are afraid of you. Don't laugh at me. I know it is quite true in spite of their talk. I was afraid of you myself until----"

"Until we made verse together."

"Until you made verse and I spoiled it. But I think it is because I don't understand things that I am so afraid. I am not naturally a coward. I'm sure I could not be afraid of you if I understood things better. And there is Marion. She puzzles me. She will never speak of her husband--I don't know why. And I don't know why Mr. McCloud is so hard on Mr. Sinclair--Mr. Sinclair seems so kind and good-natured."

Whispering Smith looked from the fire into d.i.c.ksie's eyes. "What should you say if I gave you a confidence?"

She opened her heart to his searching gaze. "Would you trust me with a confidence?"

He answered without hesitation. "You shall see. Now, I have many things I can't talk about, you understand. But if I had to give you a secret this instant that carried my life, I shouldn't fear to do it--so much for trusting you. Only this, too, as to what I say: don't ever quote me or let it appear that you any more than know me. Can you manage that? Really? Very good; you will understand why in a minute.

The man that is stirring up all this trouble with your Cousin Lance and in this whole country is your kind and good-natured neighbor, Mr.

Sinclair. I am prejudiced against him; let us admit that on the start, and remember it in estimating what I say. But Sinclair is the man who has turned your cousin's head, as well as made things in other ways unpleasant for several of us. Sinclair--I tell you so you will understand everything, more than your cousin, Mr. McCloud, or Marion Sinclair understand--Sinclair is a train-wrecker and a murderer. That makes you breathe hard, doesn't it? but it is so. Sinclair is fairly educated and highly intelligent, capable in every way, daring to the limit, and, in a way, fascinating; it is no wonder he has a following.

But his following is divided into two cla.s.ses: the men that know all the secrets, and the men that don't--men like Rebstock and Du Sang, and men like your cousin and a hundred or so sports in Medicine Bend, who see only the glamour of Sinclair's pace. Your cousin sympathizes with Sinclair when he doesn't actually side with him. All this has helped to turn Sinclair's head, and this is exactly the situation you and McCloud and I and a lot of others are up against. They don't know all this, but I know it, and now you know it. Let me tell you something that comes close to home. You have a cowboy on the ranch named Karg--he is called Flat Nose. Karg was a railroad man. He is a cattle-thief, a train-robber, a murderer, and a spy. I should not tell you this if you were not game to the last drop of your blood. But I think I know you better than you know yourself, though you never saw me until last night. Karg is Sinclair's spy at your ranch, and you must never feel it or know it; but he is there to keep your cousin's sympathy with Sinclair, and to lure your cousin his way. And Karg will try to kill George McCloud every time he sets foot on this ranch, remember that."

"Then Mr. McCloud ought not to be here. I don't want him to stay if he is in danger!" exclaimed d.i.c.ksie.

"But I do want him to come here as if it mattered nothing, and I shall try to take care of him. I have a man among your own men, a cowboy named Wickwire, who will be watching Karg, and who is just as quick, and Karg, not knowing he was watched, would be taken unawares. If Wickwire goes elsewhere to work some one else will take his place here. Karg is not on the ranch now; he is up North, hunting up some of your steers that were run off last month by his own cronies. Now do you think I am giving you confidence?"

She looked at him steadily. "If I can only deserve it all." In the distance she heard the calling of the men at the river borne on the wind. The shock of what had been told her, the strangeness of the night and of the scene, left her calm. Fear had given way to responsibility and d.i.c.ksie seemed to know herself.

"You have nothing whatever to do to deserve it but keep your own counsel. But listen a moment longer--for this is what I have been leading up to," he said. "Marion will get a message to-morrow, a message from Sinclair, asking her to come to see him at his ranch-house before she goes back. I don't know what he wants--but she is his wife. He has treated her infamously; that is why she will not live with him and does not speak of him. But you know how strange a woman is--or perhaps you don't: she doesn't always cease to care for a man when she ceases to trust him. I am not in Marion's confidence, Miss d.i.c.ksie. She is another man's wife. I cannot tell how she feels toward him; I know she has often tried to reclaim him from his deviltry. She may try again, that is, she may, for one reason or another, go to him as he asks. I could not interfere, if I would. I have no right to if I could, and I will not. Now this is what I'm trying to get up the courage to ask you. Should you dare to go with her to Sinclair's ranch if she decides to go to him?"

"Certainly I should dare."

"After all you know?"

"After all I know--why not?"

"Then in case she does go and you go with her, you will know nothing whatever about anything, of course, unless you get the story from her.

What I fear is that which possibly may come of their interview. He may try to kill her--don't be frightened. He will not succeed if you can only make sure he doesn't lead her away on horseback from the ranch-house or get her alone in a room. She has few friends. I respect and honor her because she and I grew up as children together in the same little town in Wisconsin. I know her folks, all of them, and I've promised them--you know--to have a kind of care of her."

"I think I know."

He looked self-conscious even at her tone of understanding. "I need not try to deceive you; your instinct would be poor if it did not tell you more than I ought to. He came along and turned her head. You need fear nothing for yourself in going with her, and nothing for her if you can cover just those two points--can you remember? Not to let her go away with him on horseback, and not to leave her where she will be alone with him in the house?"

"I can and will. I think as much of Marion as you do. I am proud to be able to do something for you. How little I have known you! I thought you were everything I didn't want to know."

"It's nothing," he returned easily, "except that Sinclair has stirred up your cousin and the ranchers as well as the Williams Cache gang, and that makes talk about me. I have to do what I can to make this a peaceable country to live in. The railroad wants decent people here and doesn't want the other kind, and it falls on me, unfortunately, to keep the other kind moving. I don't like it, but we can none of us do quite what we please in making a living. Let me tell you this"--he turned to fix his eyes seriously on hers: "Believe anything you hear of me except that I have ever taken human life willingly or save in discharge of my duty. But this kind of work makes my own life an uncertainty, as you can see. I do almost literally carry my life in my hand, for if my hand is not quicker every time than a man's eye, I am done for then and there."

"It is dreadful to think of."

"Not exactly that, but it is something I can't afford to forget."

"What would become of the lives of the friends you protect if you were killed?"

"You say you care for Marion Sinclair. I should like to think if anything should happen to me you wouldn't forget her?"

"I never will."

He smiled. "Then I put her in charge of the man closest to me, George McCloud, and the woman she thinks the most of in the world--except her mother. What is this, are they back? Yonder they come."

"We found nothing serious," McCloud said, answering their questions as he approached with Lance Dunning. "The current is really swinging away, but the bank is caving in where it was undermined last night."

He stopped before d.i.c.ksie. "I am trying to get your cousin to go to the house and go to bed. I am going to stay all night, but there is no necessity for his staying."

"d.a.m.n it, McCloud, it's not right," protested Lance, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead. "You need the sleep more than I do. I say he is the one to go to bed to-night," continued Lance, putting it up to Whispering Smith. "And I insist, by the Almighty, that you two take him back to the house with you now!"

Whispering Smith raised his hand. "If this is merely a family quarrel about who shall go to bed, let us compromise. You two stay up all night and let me go to bed."

Lance, however, was obdurate.

"It seems to be a family characteristic of the Dunnings to have their own way," ventured McCloud, after some further dispute. "If you will have it so, Mr. Dunning, you may stand watch to-night and I will go to the house."

Riding back with McCloud, d.i.c.ksie and Whispering Smith discussed the flood. McCloud disclaimed credit for the improvement in the situation.

"If the current had held against us as it did yesterday, nothing I could have done would have turned it," he said.

"Honesty is the best policy, of course," observed Whispering Smith. "I like to see a modest man--and you want to remind him of all this when he sends in his bill," he suggested, speaking to d.i.c.ksie in the dark.

"But," he added, turning to McCloud, "admitting that you are right, don't take the trouble to advertise your view of it around here. It would be only decent strategy for us in the valley just now to take a little of the credit due to the wind."