Du Sang now looked sharply at him, and Smith looked at his cigar. Others were playing around the semicircular table—it might mean nothing. Du Sang waited. Smith lifted his right hand from the table and felt in his waistcoat for a match. Du Sang, however, made no effort to take up the dice. He watched Whispering Smith scratch a match on the table, and, either because it failed to light or through design, it was scratched the second time on the table, marking a cross between the two dice.

The meanest negro in the joint would not have stood that, yet Du Sang hesitated. Whispering Smith, mildly surprised, looked up. "Hello, Pearline! You shooting here?" He pushed the dice back toward the outlaw. "Shoot again!"

Du Sang, scowling, snapped the dice and threw badly.

"Up jump the devil, is it? Shoot again!" And, pushing back the dice, Smith moved closer to Du Sang. The two men touched arms. Du Sang, threatened in a way wholly new to him, waited like a snake braved by a mysterious enemy. His eyes blinked like a badger's. He caught up the dice and threw. "Is that the best you can do?" asked Smith. "See here!" He took up the dice. "Shoot with me!" Smith threw the dice up the table toward Du Sang. Once he threw craps, but, reaching directly in front of Du Sang, he picked the dice up and threw eleven. "Shoot with me, Du Sang."

"What's your game?" snapped Du Sang, with an oath.

"What do you care, if I've got the coin? I'll throw you for twenty-dollar gold pieces."

Du Sang's eyes glittered. Unable to understand the reason for the affront, he stood like a cat waiting to spring. "This is my game!" he snarled.

"Then play it."

"Look here, what do you want?" he demanded angrily.

Smith stepped closer. "Any game you've got. I'll throw you left-handed, Du Sang." With his right hand he snapped the dice under Du Sang's nose and looked squarely into his eyes. "Got any Sugar Buttes money?"

Du Sang for an instant looked keenly back; his eyes contracted in that time to a mere narrow slit; then, sudden as thought, he sprang back into the corner. He knew now. This was the man who held the aces at the barbecue, the railroad man—Whispering Smith. Kennedy, directly across the table, watched the lightning-like move. For the first time the crap-dealer looked impatiently up.

It was a showdown. No one watching the two men under the window breathed for a moment. Whispering Smith, motionless, only watched the half-closed eyes. "You can't shoot craps," he said coldly. "What can you shoot, Pearline? You can't stop a man on horseback."

Du Sang knew he must try for a quick kill or make a retreat. He took in the field at a glance. Kennedy's teeth gleamed only ten feet away, and with his right hand half under his coat lapel he toyed with his watch-chain. McCloud had moved in from the slot machine and stood at the point of the table, looking at Du Sang and laughing at him. Whispering Smith threw off all pretence. "Take your hand away from your gun, you albino! I'll blow your head off left-handed if you pull! Will you get out of this town to-night? If you can't drop a man in the saddle at two hundred and fifty yards, what do you think you'd look like after a break with me? Go back to the whelp that hired you, and tell him when he wants a friend of mine to send a man that can shoot. If you are within twenty miles of Medicine Bend at daylight I'll rope you like a fat cow and drag you down Front Street!"

Du Sang, with burning eyes, shrank narrower and smaller into his corner, ready to shoot if he had to, but not liking the chances. No man in Williams Cache could pull or shoot with Du Sang, but no man in the mountains had ever drawn successfully against the man that faced him.

Whispering Smith saw that he would not draw. He taunted him again in low tones, and, backing away, spoke laughingly to McCloud. While Kennedy covered the corner, Smith backed to the door and waited for the two to join him. They halted a moment at the door, then they backed slowly up the steps and out into the street.

There was no talk till they reached the Wickiup office. "Now, will some of you tell me who Du Sang is?" asked McCloud, after Kennedy and Whispering Smith with banter and laughing had gone over the scene.

Kennedy picked up the ruler. "The wickedest, cruelest man in the bunch—and the best shot."

"Where is your hat, George—the one he put the bullet through?" asked Whispering Smith, limp in the big chair. "Burn it up; he thinks he missed you. Burn it up now. Never let him find out what a close call you had. Du Sang! Yes, he is cold-blooded as a wild-cat and cruel as a soft bullet. Du Sang would shoot a dying man, George, just to keep him squirming in the dirt. Did you ever see such eyes in a human being, set like that and blinking so in the light? It's bad enough to watch a man when you can see his eyes. Here's hoping we're done with him!"



CHAPTER XVIII

NEW PLANS

Callahan crushed the tobacco under his thumb in the palm of his right hand. "So I am sorry to add," he concluded, speaking to McCloud, "that you are now out of a job." The two men were facing each other across the table in McCloud's office. "Personally, I am not sorry to say it, either," added Callahan, slowly filling the bowl of his pipe.

McCloud said nothing to the point, as there seemed to be nothing to say until he had heard more. "I never knew before that you were left-handed," he returned evasively.

"It's a lucky thing, because it won't do for a freight-traffic man, nowadays, to let his right hand know what his left hand does," observed Callahan, feeling for a match. "I am the only left-handed man in the traffic department, but the man that handles the rebates, Jimmie Black, is cross-eyed. Bucks offered to send him to Chicago to have Bryson straighten his eyes, but Jimmie thinks it is better to have them as they are for the present, so he can look at a thing in two different ways—one for the Interstate Commerce Commission and one for himself. You haven't heard, then?" continued Callahan, returning to his riddle about McCloud's job. "Why, Lance Dunning has gone into the United States Court and got an injunction against us on the Crawling Stone Line—tied us up tighter than zero. No more construction there for a year at least. Dunning comes in for himself and for a cousin who is his ward, and three or four little ranchers have filed bills—so it's up to the lawyers for eighty per cent. of the gate receipts and peace. Personally, I'm glad of it. It gives you a chance to look after this operating for a year yourself. We are going to be swamped with freight traffic this year, and I want it moved through the mountains like checkers for the next six months. You know what I mean, George."

To McCloud the news came, in spite of himself, as a blow. The results he had attained in building through the lower valley had given him a name among the engineers of the whole line. The splendid showing of the winter construction, on which he had depended to enable him to finish the whole work within the year, was by this news brought to naught. Those of the railroad men who said he could not deliver a completed line within the year could never be answered now. And there was some slight bitterness in the reflection that the very stumbling-block to hold him back, to rob him of his chance for a reputation with men like Glover and Bucks, should be the lands of Dicksie Dunning.

He made no complaint. On the division he took hold with new energy and bent his faculties on the operating problems. At Marion's he saw Dicksie at intervals, and only to fall more hopelessly under her spell each time. She could be serious and she could be volatile and she could be something between which he could never quite make out. She could be serious with him when he was serious, and totally irresponsible the next minute with Marion. On the other hand, when McCloud attempted to be flippant, Dicksie could be confusingly grave. Once when he was bantering with her at Marion's she tried to say something about her regret that complications over the right of way should have arisen; but McCloud made light of it, and waved the matter aside as if he were a cavalier. Dicksie did not like it, but it was only that he was afraid she would realize he was a mere railroad superintendent with hopes of a record for promotion quite blasted. And as if this obstacle to a greater reputation were not enough, a wilier enemy threatened in the spring to leave only shreds and patches of what he had already earned.

The Crawling Stone River is said to embody, historically, all of the deceits known to mountain streams. Below the Box Canyon it ploughs through a great bed of yielding silt, its own deposit between the two imposing lines of bluffs that resist its wanderings from side to side of the wide valley. This fertile soil makes up the rich lands that are the envy of less fortunate regions in the Great Basin; but the Crawling Stone is not a river to give quiet title to one acre of its own making. The toil of its centuries spreads beautifully green under the June skies, and the unsuspecting settler, lulled into security by many years of the river's repose, settles on its level bench lands and lays out his long lines of possession; but the Sioux will tell you in their own talk that this man is but a tenant at will; that in another time and at another place the stranger will inherit his fields; and that the Crawling Stone always comes back for its own.

This was the peril that Glover and McCloud essayed when they ran a three-tenths grade and laid an eighty-pound rail up two hundred and fifty miles of the valley. It was in local and exclusive territory a rich prize, and they brought to their undertaking not, perhaps, greater abilities than other men, but incomparably greater material resources than earlier American engineers had possessed.

Success such as theirs is cumulative: when the work is done one man stands for it, but it represents the work of a thousand men in every walk of American industry. Where the credit must lie with the engineer who achieves is in the application of these enormous reserves of industrial triumphs to the particular conditions he faces in the problem before him; in the application lies the genius called success, and this is always new. Moreover, men like Glover and McCloud were fitted for a fight with a mountain river because trained in the Western school, where poverty or resource had sharpened the wits. The building of the Crawling Stone Line came with the dawn of a new day in American capital, when figures that had slept in fairies' dreams woke into every-day use, and when enlarged calculation among men controlling hitherto unheard-of sums of money demanded the best and most permanent methods of construction to insure enduring economies in operating. Thus the constructing of the Crawling Stone Line opened in itself new chapters in Rocky Mountain railroad-building. An equipment of machinery, much of which had never before been applied to such building, had been assembled by the engineers. Steam-shovels had been sent in battalions, grading-machines and dump-wagons had gone forward in trainloads, and an army of men were operating in the valley. A huge steel bridge three thousand feet long was now being thrown across the river below the Dunning ranch.

The winter had been an unusual one even in a land of winters. The season's fall of snow had not been above an average, but it had fallen in the spring and had been followed by excessively low temperatures throughout the mountains. June came again, but a strange June. The first rise of the Crawling Stone had not moved out the winter frost, and the stream lay bound from bank to bank, and for hundreds of miles, under three feet of ice. When June opened, backward and cold, there had been no spring. Heavy frosts lasting until the middle of the month gave sudden way to summer heat, and the Indians on the upper-valley reservation began moving back into the hills. Then came the rise. Creek after creek in the higher mountains, ice-bound for six months, burst without warning into flood. Soft winds struck with the sun and stripped the mountain walls of their snow. Rains set in on the desert, and far in the high northwest the Crawling Stone lifting its four-foot cap of ice like a bed of feathers began rolling it end over end down the valley. In the Box, forty feet of water struck the canyon walls and ice-floes were hurled like torpedoes against the granite spurs: the Crawling Stone was starting after its own.

When the river rose, the earlier talk of Dunning's men had been that the Crawling Stone would put an end to the railroad pretensions by washing the two hundred and fifty miles of track back to the Peace River, where it had started. This much in the beginning was easy to predict; but the railroad men had turned out in force to fight for their holdings, and while the ranchers were laughing, the river was flowing over the bench lands in the upper valley.

At the Dunning ranch the confidence of the men in their own security gave way to confusion as the river, spreading behind the ice-jams into broad lakes and bursting in torrents through its barriers, continued to rise. Treacherous in its broad and yellow quiet, lifting its muddy head in the stillness of the night, moving unheard over broad sandy bottoms, backing noiselessly into forgotten channels, stealing through heavy alfalfa pastures, eating a channel down a slender furrow—then, with the soil melting from the root, the plant has toppled at the head, the rivulet has grown a stream; night falls, and in the morning where yesterday smiling miles of green fields looked up to the sun rolls a mad flood of waters: this is the Crawling Stone.



CHAPTER XIX

THE CRAWLING STONE RISE

So sudden was the onset of the river that the trained riders of the big ranch were taken completely aback, and hundreds of head of Dunning cattle were swept away before they could be removed to points of safety. Fresh alarms came with every hour of the day and night, and the telephones up and down the valley rang incessantly with appeals from neighbor to neighbor. Lance Dunning, calling out the reserves of his vocabulary, swore tremendously and directed the operations against the river. These seemed, indeed, to consist mainly of hard riding and hard language on the part of everybody. Murray Sinclair, although he had sold his ranch on the Crawling Stone and was concentrating his holdings on the Frenchman, was everywhere in evidence. He was the first at a point of danger and the last to ride away from the slipping acres where the muddy flood undercut; but no defiance seemed to disturb the Crawling Stone, which kept alarmingly at work.

Above the alfalfa lands on the long bench north of the house the river, in changing its course many years earlier, had left a depression known as Mud Lake. It had become separated from the main channel of the Crawling Stone by a high, narrow barrier in the form of a bench deposited by the receding waters of some earlier flood, and added to by sand-storms sweeping among the willows that overspread it. Without an effective head or definite system of work the efforts of the men at the Stone Ranch were of no more consequence than if they had spent their time in waving blankets at the river. Twenty men riding in together to tell Lance Dunning that the river was washing out the tree claims above Mud Lake made no perceptible difference in the event. Dicksie, though an inexperienced girl, saw with helpless clearness the futility of it all. The alarms and the continual failures of the army of able-bodied men directed by Sinclair and her cousin wore on her spirit. The river rose until each succeeding inch became a menace to the life and property of the ranch, and in the midst of it came the word that the river was cutting into the willows and heading for Mud Lake. All knew what that meant. If the Crawling Stone should take its old channel, not alone were the two square miles of alfalfa doomed: it would sweep away every vestige of the long stacks below the corrals, take the barns, and lap the slope in front of the ranch-house itself.

Terror seized Dicksie. She telephoned in her distress for Marion, begging her to come up before they should all be swept away; and Marion, turning the shop over to Katie Dancing, got into the ranch-wagon that Dicksie had sent and started for the Crawling Stone. The confusion along the river road as the wagon approached the ranch showed Marion the seriousness of the situation. Settlers driven from their homes in the upper valley formed almost a procession of misery-stricken people, making their way on horseback, on foot, and in wagons toward Medicine Bend. With them they were bringing all they had saved from the flood—the little bunch of cows, the wagonload of hogs, the household effects, the ponies—as if war or pestilence had struck the valley.

At noon Marion arrived. The ranch-house was deserted, and the men were all at the river. Puss stuck her head out of the kitchen window, and Dicksie ran out and threw herself into Marion's arms. Late news from the front had been the worst: the cutting above Mud Lake had weakened the last barrier that held off the river, and every available man was fighting the current at that point.

Marion heard it all while eating a luncheon. Dicksie, beset with anxiety, could not stay in the house. The man that had driven Marion over, saddled horses in the afternoon and the two women rode up above Mud Lake, now become through rainfall and seepage from the river a long, shallow lagoon. For an hour they watched the shovelling and carrying of sandbags, and rode toward the river to the very edge of the disappearing willows, where the bank was melting away before the undercut of the resistless current. They rode away with a common feeling—a conviction that the fight was a losing one, and that another day would see the ruin complete.

"Dicksie," exclaimed Marion—they were riding to the house as she spoke—"I'll tell you what we can do!" She hesitated a moment. "I will tell you what we can do! Are you plucky?"

Dicksie looked at Marion pathetically.

"If you are plucky enough to do it, we can keep the river off yet. I have an idea. I will go, but you must come along."

"Marion, what do you mean? Don't you think I would go anywhere to save the ranch? I should like to know where you dare go in this country that I dare not!"

"Then ride with me over to the railroad camp by the new bridge. We will ask Mr. McCloud to bring some of his men over. He can stop the river; he knows how."

Dicksie caught her breath. "Oh, Marion! that would do no good, even if I could do it. Why, the railroad has been all swept away in the lower valley."

"How do you know?"

"So every one says."

"Who is every one?"

"Cousin Lance, Mr. Sinclair—all the men. I heard that a week ago."

"Dicksie, don't believe it. You don't know these railroad men. They understand this kind of thing; cattlemen, you know, don't. If you will go with me we can get help. I feel just as sure that those men can control the river as I do that I am looking at you—that is, if anybody can. The question is, do you want to make the effort?"

They talked until they left the horses and entered the house. When they sat down, Dicksie put her hands to her face. "Oh, I wish you had said nothing about it! How can I go to him and ask for help now—after Cousin Lance has gone into court about the line and everything? And of course my name is in it all."

"Dicksie, don't raise spectres that have nothing to do with the case. If we go to him and ask him for help he will give it to us if he can; if he can't, what harm is done? He has been up and down the river for three weeks, and he has an army of men camped over by the bridge. I know that, because Mr. Smith rode in from there a few days ago."

"What, Whispering Smith? Oh, if he is there I would not go for worlds!"

"Pray, why not?"

"Why, he is such an awful man!"

"That is absurd, Dicksie."

Dicksie looked grave. "Marion, no man in this part of the country has a good word to say for Whispering Smith."

"Perhaps you have forgotten, Dicksie, that you live in a very rough part of the country," returned Marion coolly. "No man that he has ever hunted down would have anything pleasant to say about him; nor would the friends of such a man be likely to say a good word of him. There are many on the range, Dicksie, that have no respect for life or law or anything else, and they naturally hate a man like Whispering Smith——"

"But, Marion, he killed——"

"I know. He killed a man named Williams a few years ago, while you were at school—one of the worst men that ever infested this country. Williams Cache is named after that man; he made the most beautiful spot in all these mountains a nest of thieves and murderers. But did you know that Williams shot down Gordon Smith's only brother, a trainmaster, in cold blood in front of the Wickiup at Medicine Bend? No, you never heard that in this part of the country, did you? They had a cow-thief for sheriff then, and no officer in Medicine Bend would go after the murderer. He rode in and out of town as if he owned it, and no one dared say a word, and, mind you, Gordon Smith's brother had never seen the man in his life until he walked up and shot him dead. Oh, this was a peaceful country a few years ago! Gordon Smith was right-of-way man in the mountains then. He buried his brother, and asked the officers what they were going to do about getting the murderer. They laughed at him. He made no protest, except to ask for a deputy United States marshal's commission. When he got it he started for Williams Cache after Williams in a buckboard—think of it, Dicksie—and didn't they laugh at him! He did not even know the trails, and imagine riding two hundred miles in a buckboard to arrest a man in the mountains! He was gone six weeks, and came back with Williams's body strapped to the buckboard behind him. He never told the story; all he said when he handed in his commission and went back to his work was that the man was killed in a fair fight. Hate him! No wonder they hate him—the Williams Cache gang and all their friends on the range! Your cousin thinks it policy to placate that element, hoping that they won't steal your cattle if you are friendly with them. I know nothing about that, but I do know something about Whispering Smith. It will be a bad day for Williams Cache when they start him up again. But what has that to do with your trouble? He will not eat you up if you go to the camp, Dicksie. You are just raising bogies."

They had moved to the front porch and Marion was sitting in the rocking-chair. Dicksie stood with her back against one of the pillars and looked at her. As Marion finished Dicksie turned and, with her hand on her forehead, looked in wretchedness of mind out on the valley. As far, in many directions, as the eye could reach the waters spread yellow in the flood of sunshine across the lowlands. There was a moment of silence. Dicksie turned her back on the alarming sight. "Marion, I can't do it!"

"Oh, yes, you can if you want to, Dicksie!" Dicksie looked at her with tearless eyes. "It is only a question of being plucky enough," insisted Marion.

"Pluck has nothing to do with it!" exclaimed Dicksie in fiery tones. "I should like to know why you are always talking about my not having courage! This isn't a question of courage. How can I go to a man that I talked to as I talked to him in your house and ask for help? How can I go to him after my cousin has threatened to kill him, and gone into court to prevent his coming on our land? Shouldn't I look beautiful asking help from him?"

Marion rocked with perfect composure. "No, dear, you would not look beautiful asking help, but you would look sensible. It is so easy to be beautiful and so hard to be sensible."

"You are just as horrid as you can be, Marion Sinclair!"

"I know that, too, dear. All I wanted to say is that you would look very sensible just now in asking help from Mr. McCloud."

"I don't care—I won't do it. I will never do it, not if every foot of the ranch tumbles into the river. I hope it will! Nobody cares anything about me. I have no friends but thieves and outlaws."

"Dicksie!" Marion rose.

"That is what you said."

"I did not. I am your friend. How dare you call me names?" demanded Marion, taking the petulant girl in her arms. "Don't you think I care anything about you? There are people in this country that you have never seen who know you and love you almost as much as I do. Don't let any silly pride prevent your being sensible, dear." Dicksie burst into tears. Marion drew her over to the settee, and she had her cry out. When it was over they changed the subject. Dicksie went to her room. It was a long time before she came down again, but Marion rocked in patience: she was resolved to let Dicksie fight it out herself.

When Dicksie came down, Marion stood at the foot of the stairs. The young mistress of Crawling Stone Ranch descended step by step very slowly. "Marion," she said simply, "I will go with you."



CHAPTER XX

AT THE DIKE

Marion caught her closely to her heart. "I knew you would go if I got you angry, dear. But you are so slow to anger. Mr. McCloud is just the same way. Mr. Smith says when he does get angry he can do anything. He is very like you in so many ways."

Dicksie was wiping her eyes. "Is he, Marion? Well, what shall I wear?"

"Just your riding-clothes, dear, and a smile. He won't know what you have on. It is you he will want to see. But I've been thinking of something else. What will your Cousin Lance say? Suppose he should object?"

"Object! I should like to see him object after losing the fight himself." Marion laughed. "Well, do you think you can find the way down there for us?"

"I can find any way anywhere within a hundred miles of here."

On the 20th of June McCloud did have something of an army of men in the Crawling Stone Valley. Of these, two hundred and fifty were in the vicinity of the bridge, the abutments and piers of which were being put in just below the Dunning ranch. Near at hand Bill Dancing, with a big gang, had been for some time watching the ice and dynamiting the jams. McCloud brought in more men as the river continued to rise. The danger line on the gauges was at length submerged, and for three days the main-line construction camps had been robbed of men to guard the soft grades above and below the bridge. The new track up and down the valley had become a highway of escape from the flood, and the track patrols were met at every curve by cattle, horses, deer, wolves, and coyotes fleeing from the waste of waters that spread over the bottoms.

Through the Dunning ranch the Crawling Stone River makes a far bend across the valley to the north and east. The extraordinary volume of water now pouring through the Box Canyon exposed ten thousand acres of the ranch to the caprice of the river, and if at the point of its tremendous sweep to the north it should cut back into its old channel the change would wipe the entire body of ranch alfalfa lands off the face of the valley. With the heat of the lengthening June days a vast steam rose from the chill waters of the river, marking in ominous windings the channel of the main stream through a yellow sea which, ignoring the usual landmarks of trees and dunes, flanked the current broadly on either side. Late in the afternoon of the day that Dicksie with Marion sought McCloud, a storm drifted down the Topah Topah Hills, and heavy showers broke across the valley.

At nightfall the rain had passed and the mist lifted from the river. Above the bluffs rolling patches of cloud obscured the face of the moon, but the distant thunder had ceased, and at midnight the valley near the bridge lay in a stillness broken only by the hoarse calls of the patrols and far-off megaphones. From the bridge camp, which lay on high ground near the grade, the distant lamps of the track-walkers could be seen moving dimly.

Before the camp-fire in front of McCloud's tent a group of men, smoking and talking, sat or lay sprawled on tarpaulins, drying themselves after the long day. Among them were the weather-beaten remnants of the old guard of the mountain-river workers, men who had ridden in the caboose the night that Hailey went to his death, and had fought the Spider Water with Glover. Bill Dancing, huge, lumbering, awkward as a bear and as shifty, was talking, because with no apparent effort he could talk all night, and was a valuable man at keeping the camp awake. Bill Dancing talked and, after Sinclair's name had been dropped from the roll, ate and drank more than any two men on the division. A little apart, McCloud lay on a leather caboose cushion trying to get a nap.

"It was the day George McCloud came," continued Dancing, spinning a continuous story. "Nobody was drinking—Murray Sinclair started that yarn. I was getting fixed up a little for to meet George McCloud, so I asked the barber for some tonic, and he understood me for to say dye for my whiskers, and he gets out the dye and begins to dye my whiskers. My cigar went out whilst he was shampooing me, and my whiskers was wet up with the dye. He turned around to put down th' bottle, and I started for to light my cigar with a parlor-match, and, by gum! away went my whiskers on fire—burnt jus' like a tumbleweed. There was the barbers all running around at once trying for to choke me with towels, and running for water, and me sitting there blazing like a tar-barrel. That's all there was to that story. I went over to Doc Torpy's and got bandaged up, and he wanted me for to go to the hospit'l—but I was going for to meet George McCloud." Bill raised his voice a little and threw his tones carelessly over toward the caboose cushion: "And I was the on'y man on the platform when his train pulled in. His car was on the hind end. I walked back and waited for some one to come out. It was about seven o'clock in the evening and they was eating dinner inside, so I set up on the fence for a minute, and who do you think got out of the car? That boy laying right over there. 'Where's your dad?' says I; that's exactly what I said. 'Dead,' says he. 'Dead!' says I, surprised-like. 'Dead,' says he, 'for many years.' 'Where's the new superintendent?' says I. 'I'm the new superintendent,' says he. Well, sir, you could have blowed me over with a air-hose. 'Go 'way,' I says. 'What's the matter with your face, Bill?' he says, while I was looking at him; now that's straight. That was George McCloud, right over there, the first time I ever set eyes on him or him on me. The assertion was met with silence such as might be termed marked.



"Bucks told him," continued Bill Dancing, in corroborative detail, "that when he got to Medicine Bend one man would be waiting for to meet him. 'He met me,' says Bucks; 'he's met every superintendent since my time; he'll meet you. Go right up and speak to him,' Bucks says; 'it'll be all right.'"

"Oh, hell, Bill!" protested an indignant chorus.

"Well, what's er matter with you fellows? Didn't you ask me to tell the story?" demanded Dancing angrily. "If you know it better than I do, tell it! Give me some tobacco, Chris," said Bill, honoring with the request the only man in the circle who had shown no scepticism, because he spoke English with difficulty. "And say, Chris, go down and read the bridge gauge, will you? It's close on twelve o'clock, and he's to be called when it reaches twenty-eight feet. I said the boy could never run the division without help from every man on it, and that's what I'm giving him, and I don't care who knows it," said Bill Dancing, raising his voice not too much. "Bucks says that any man that c'n run this division c'n run any railroad on earth. Shoo! now who's this coming here on horseback? Clouding up again, too, by gum!"

The man sent to the bridge had turned back, and behind his lantern Dancing heard the tread of horses. He stood at one side of the camp-fire while two visitors rode up; they were women. Dancing stood dumb as they advanced into the firelight. The one ahead spoke: "Mr. Dancing, don't you know me?" As she stopped her horse the light of the fire struck her face. "Why, Mis' Sinclair!"

"Yes, and Miss Dunning is with me," returned Marion. Bill staggered. "This is an awful place to get to; we have been nearly drowned, and we want to see Mr. McCloud."

McCloud, roused by Marion's voice, came forward. "You were asleep," said she as he greeted her. "I am so sorry we have disturbed you!" She looked careworn and a little forlorn, yet but a little considering the struggle she and Dicksie had made to reach the camp.

Light blazed from the camp-fire, where Dicksie stood talking with Dancing about horses.

"They are in desperate straits up at the ranch," Marion went on, when McCloud had assured her of her welcome. "I don't see how they can save it. The river is starting to flow into the old channel and there's a big pond right in the alfalfa fields."

"It will play the deuce with things if it gets through there," mused McCloud. "I wonder how the river is? I've been asleep. O Bill!" he called to Dancing, "what water have you got?"

"Twenty-eight six just now, sir. She's a-raising very, very slow, Mr. McCloud."

"So I am responsible for this invasion," continued Marion calmly. "I've been up with Dicksie 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 bumblebees 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 Dicksie!"

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

Dicksie 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.

Dicksie 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. "Dicksie 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 Dicksie with his eyes.

Dicksie 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."

Dicksie 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 Dicksie 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 Dicksie, "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 Dicksie 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 Dicksie Dunning.

"Did you come from across the river?" asked Dicksie, 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.

Dicksie 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 Dicksie. "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 Dicksie with another laugh and spoke to her because he dared not look toward Marion. "Going back to-night, do you say? You never are."

Dicksie 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 Dicksie. "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. Nobody else, and nothing else on God'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 Dicksie. "If they are wanted."

Dicksie 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 Dicksie; "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."

McCloud looked at Marion. "Then let's be sensible," he said. "You and Miss Dunning can have my tent as soon as we have supper."

"Supper!"

"Supper is served to all on duty at twelve o'clock, and we're on duty, aren't we? They're about ready to serve now; we eat in the tent," he added, holding out his hand as he heard the patter of raindrops. "Rain again! No matter, we shall be dry under canvas."

Dicksie had never seen an engineers' field headquarters. Lanterns lighted the interior, and the folding-table in the middle was strewn with papers which McCloud swept off into a camp-chest. Two double cots with an aisle between them stood at the head of the tent, and, spread with bright Hudson Bay blankets, looked fresh and undisturbed. A box-table near the head-pole held an alarm-clock, a telegraph key, and a telephone, and the wires ran up the pole behind it. Leather jackets and sweaters lay on boxes under the tent-walls, and heavy boots stood in disorderly array along the foot of the cots. These McCloud, with apologies, kicked into the corners.

"Is this where you stay?" asked Dicksie.

"Four of us sleep in the cots, when we can, and an indefinite number lie on the ground when it rains."

Marion looked around her. "What do you do when it thunders?"

The two men were pulling boxes out for seats; McCloud did not stop to look up. "I crawl under the bed—the others don't seem to mind it."

"Which is your bed?"

"Whichever I can crawl under quickest. I usually sleep there." He pointed to the one on the right.

"I thought so. It has the blanket folded back so neatly, just as if there were sheets under it. I'll bet there aren't any."

"Do you think this is a summer resort? Knisely, my assistant, sleeps there, but of course we are never both in bed at the same time; he's down the river to-night. It's a sort of continuous performance, you know." McCloud looked at Dicksie. "Take off your coat, won't you, please?"

Whispering Smith was trying to drag a chest from the foot of the cot, and Marion stood watching. "What are you trying to do?"

"Get this over to the table for a seat."

"Silly man! why don't you move the table?"

Dicksie was taking off her coat. "How inviting it all is!" she smiled. "And this is where you stay?"

"When it rains," answered McCloud. "Let me have your hat, too."

"My hair is a sight, I know. We rode over rocks and up gullies into the brush——"

"And through lakes—oh, I know! I can't conceive how you ever got here at all. Your hair is all right. This is camp, anyway. But if you want a glass you can have one. Knisely is a great swell; he's just from school, and has no end of things. I'll rob his bag."

"Don't disturb Mr. Knisely's bag for the world!"

"But you are not taking off your hat. You seem to have something on your mind."

"Help me to get it off my mind, will you, please?"

"If you will let me."

"Tell me how to thank you for your generosity. I came all the way over here to-night to ask you for just the help you have offered, and I could not—it stuck in my throat. But that wasn't what was on my mind. Tell me what you thought when I acted so dreadfully at Marion's."

"I didn't deserve anything better after placing myself in such a fool position. Why don't you ask me what I thought the day you acted so beautifully at Crawling Stone Ranch? I thought that the finest thing I ever saw."

"You were not to blame at Marion's."

"I seemed to be, which is just as bad. I am going to start the 'phones going. It's up to me to make good, you know, in about four hours with a lot of men and material. Aren't you going to take off your hat?—and your gloves are soaking wet."

McCloud took down the receiver, and Dicksie put her hands slowly to her head to unpin her hat. It was a broad hat of scarlet felt rolled high above her forehead, and an eagle's quill caught in the black rosette swept across the front. As she stood in her clinging riding-skirt and her severely plain scarlet waist with only a black ascot falling over it, Whispering Smith looked at her. His eyes did not rest on the picture too long, but his glance was searching. He spoke in an aside to Marion. Marion laughed as she turned her head from where Dicksie was talking again with McCloud. "The best of it is," murmured Marion, "she hasn't a suspicion of how lovely she really is."



CHAPTER XXI

SUPPER IN CAMP

"Will you never be done with your telephoning?" asked Marion. McCloud was still planning the assembling of the men and teams for the morning. Breakfast and transportation were to be arranged for, and the men and teams and material were to be selected from where they could best be spared. Dicksie, with the fingers of one hand moving softly over the telegraph key, sat on a box listening to McCloud's conferences and orders.

"Cherry says everything is served. Isn't it, Cherry?" Marion called to the Japanese boy.

Cherry laughed with a guttural joy.

"We are ready for it," announced McCloud, rising. "How are we to sit?"

"You are to sit at the head of your own table," said Marion. "I serve the coffee, so I sit at the foot; and Mr. Smith may pass the beans over there, and Dicksie, you are to pour the condensed milk into the cups."

"Or into the river, just as you like," suggested Whispering Smith.

McCloud looked at Marion Sinclair. "Really," he exclaimed, "wherever you are it's fair weather! When I see you, no matter how tangled up things are, I feel right away they are coming out. And this man is another."

"Another what?" demanded Whispering Smith.

"Another care-killer." McCloud, speaking to Dicksie, nodded toward his companion. "Troubles slip from your shoulders when he swaggers in, though he's not of the slightest use in the world. I have only one thing against him. It is a physical peculiarity, but an indefensible one. You may not have noticed it, but he is bowlegged."

"From riding your scrub railroad horses. I feel like a sailor ashore when I get off one. Are you going to eat all the bacon, Mr. McCloud, or do we draw a portion of it? I didn't start out with supper to-night."

"Take it all. I suppose it would be useless to ask where you have been to-day?"

"Not in the least, but it would be useless to tell. I am violating no confidence, though, in saying I'm hungry. I certainly shouldn't eat this stuff if I weren't, should you, Miss Dunning? And I don't believe you are eating, by the way. Where is your appetite? Your ride ought to have sharpened it. I'm afraid you are downcast. Oh, don't deny it; it is very plain: but your worry is unnecessary."

"If the rain would only stop," said Marion, "everybody would cheer up. They haven't seen the sun at the ranch for ten days."

"This rain doesn't count so far as the high water is concerned," said McCloud. "It is the weather two hundred and fifty miles above here that is of more consequence to us, and there it is clear to-night. As long as the tent doesn't leak I rather like it. Sing your song about fair weather, Gordon."

"But can the men work in such a downpour?" ventured Dicksie.

The two men looked serious and Marion laughed.

"In the morning you will see a hundred of them marching forward with umbrellas, Mr. McCloud leading. The Japs carry fans, of course."

"I wish I could forget we are in trouble at home," said Dicksie, taking the badinage gracefully. "Worrying people are such a nuisance. Don't protest, for every one knows they are."

"But we are all in trouble," insisted Whispering Smith. "Trouble! Why, bless you, it really is a blessing; pretty successfully disguised, I admit, sometimes, but still a blessing. I'm in trouble all the time, right now, up to my neck in trouble, and the water rising this minute. Look at this man," he nodded toward McCloud. "He is in trouble, and the five hundred under him, they are in all kinds of trouble. I shouldn't know how to sleep without trouble," continued Whispering Smith, warming to the contention. "Without trouble I lose my appetite. McCloud, don't be tight; pass the bread."

"Never heard him do so well," declared McCloud, looking at Marion.

"Seriously, now," Whispering Smith went on, "don't you know people who, if they were thoroughly prosperous, would be intolerable—simply intolerable? I know several such. All thoroughly prosperous people are a nuisance. That is a general proposition, and I stand by it. Go over your list of acquaintances and you will admit it is true. Here's to trouble! May it always chasten and never overwhelm us: our greatest bugbear and our best friend! It sifts our friends and unmasks our enemies. Like a lovely woman, it woos us——"

"Oh, never!" exclaimed Marion. "A lovely woman doesn't woo, she is wooed!"

"What are you looking for, perfection in rhetorical figure? This is extemporaneous."

"But it won't do!"

"And asks to be conquered," suggested Whispering Smith.

"Asks! Oh, scandalous, Mr. Smith!"

"It is easy to see why he never could get any one to marry him," declared McCloud over the bacon.

"Hold on, then! Like lovely woman, it does not seek us, we seek it," persisted the orator, "That at least is so, isn't it?"

"It is better," assented Marion.

"And it waits to be conquered. How is that?"

Marion turned to Dicksie. "You are not helping a bit. What do you think?"

"I don't think woman and trouble ought to be associated even in figure; and I think 'waits' is horrid," and Dicksie looked gravely at Whispering Smith.

McCloud, too, looked at him. "You're in trouble now yourself."

"And I brought it on myself. So we do seek it, don't we? And trouble, I must hold, is like woman. 'Waits' I strike out as unpleasantly suggestive; let it go. So, then, trouble is like a lovely woman, loveliest when conquered. Now, Miss Dunning, if you have a spark of human kindness you won't turn me down on that proposition. By the way, I have something put down about trouble."

He was laughing. Dicksie asked herself if this could be the man about whom floated so many accusations of coldness and cruelty and death. He drew a note-book from a waistcoat pocket.

"Oh, it's in the note-book! There comes the black note-book," exclaimed McCloud.

"Don't make fun of my note-book!"

"I shouldn't dare." McCloud pointed to it as he spoke to Dicksie. "You should see what is in that note-book: the record, I suppose, of every man in the mountains and of a great many outside."

"And countless other things," added Marion.

"Such as what?" asked Dicksie.

"Such as you, for example," said Marion.

"Am I a thing?"

"A sweet thing, of course," said Marion ironically. "Yes, you; with color of eyes, hair, length of index finger of the right hand, curvature of thumb, disposition—whether peaceable or otherwise, and prison record, if any."

"And number of your watch," added McCloud.

"How dreadful!"

Whispering Smith eyed Dicksie benignly. "They are talking this nonsense to distract us, of course, but I am bound to read you what I have here, if you will graciously submit."

"Submit? I wait to hear it," laughed Dicksie.

"My training in prosody is the slightest, as will appear," he continued, "and synecdoche and Schenectady were always on the verge of getting mixed when I went to school. My sentiment may be termed obvious, but I want to offer a slight apology on behalf of trouble; it is abused too much. I submit this

"SONG TO TROUBLE

"Here's to the measure of every man's worth, Though when men are wanting it grieves us. Hearts that are hollow we're better without, Hearts that are loyal it leaves us.

"Trouble's the dowry of every man's birth, A nettle adversity flings us; It yields to the grip of the masterful hand, When we play coward it stings us.

"Chorus."

"Don't say chorus; that's common."

"I have to say chorus. My verses don't speak for themselves, and no one would know it was a chorus if I didn't explain. Besides, I'm short a line in the chorus, and that is what I'm waiting for to finish the song.

"Chorus:

"Then here's to the bumper that proves every friend! And though in the drinking it wrings us, Here's to the cup that we drain to the end, And here's to—

There I stick. I can't work out the last line."

"And here's to the hearts that it brings us!" exclaimed Dicksie.

"Fine!" cried McCloud. "'Here's to the hearts that it brings us!'"

Dicksie threw back her head and laughed with the others. Then Whispering Smith looked grave. "There is a difficulty," said he, knitting his brows. "You have spoiled my song."

"Oh, Mr. Smith, I hope not! Have I?"

"Your line is so much better than what I have that it makes my stuff sound cheap."

"Oh, no, Gordon!" interposed McCloud. "You don't see that one reason why Miss Dunning's line sounds better than yours is owing to the differences in your voices. If she will repeat the chorus, finishing with her line, you will see the difference."

"Miss Dunning, take the note-book," begged Whispering Smith.

"And rise, of course," suggested McCloud.

"Oh, the note-book! I shall be afraid to hold it. Where are the verses, Mr. Smith? Is this fine handwriting yours?

Then here's to the bumper that proves every friend!

Isn't that true?

And though when we drink it it wrings us,

—and it does sometimes!

Here's to the cup that we drain to the end,

Even women have to be plucky, don't they, Marion?

And here's to the hearts that it brings us!"

Whispering Smith rose before the applause subsided. "I ask you to drink this, standing, in condensed milk."

"Have we enough to stand in?" interposed Dicksie.

"If we stand together in trouble, that ought to be enough," observed McCloud.

"We're doing that without rising, aren't we?" asked Marion. "If we hadn't been in trouble we shouldn't have ventured to this camp to-night."

"And if you had not put me to the trouble of following you—and it was a lot of trouble!—I shouldn't have been in camp to-night," said Whispering Smith.

"And if I had not been in trouble this camp wouldn't have been here to-night," declared McCloud. "What have we to thank for it all but trouble?"

A voice called the superintendent's name through the tent door. "Mr. McCloud?"

"And there is more trouble," added McCloud. "What is it, Bill?"

"Twenty-eight and nine tenths on the gauge, sir."

McCloud looked at his companions. "I told you so. Up three-tenths. Thank you, Bill; I'll be with you in a minute. Tell Cherry to come and take away the supper things, will you? That is about all the water we shall get to-night, I think. It's all we want," added McCloud, glancing at his watch. "I'm going to take a look at the river. We shall be quiet now around here until half-past three, and if you, Marion, and Miss Dunning will take the tent, you can have two hours' rest before we start. Bill Dancing will guard you against intrusion, and if you want ice-water ring twice."



CHAPTER XXII

A TALK WITH WHISPERING SMITH

When Whispering Smith had followed McCloud from the tent, Dicksie turned to Marion and caught her hand. "Is this the terrible man I have heard about?" she murmured. "And I thought him ferocious! But is he as pitiless as they say, Marion?"

Marion laughed—a troubled little laugh of surprise and sadness. "Dear, he isn't pitiless at all. He has unpleasant things to do, and does them. He is the man on whom the railroad relies to repress the lawlessness that breaks out in the mountains at times and interferes with the operating of the road. It frightens people away, and prevents others from coming in to settle. Railroads want law and order. Robbery and murders don't make business for railroads. They depend on settlers for developing a country, don't you know; otherwise they would have no traffic, not to speak of wanting their trains and men let alone. When Mr. Bucks undertook to open up this country to settlers, he needed a man of patience and endurance and with courage and skill in dealing with lawless men, and no man has ever succeeded so well as this terrible man you have heard about. He is terrible, my dear, to lawless men, not to any one else. He is terrible in resource and in daring, but not in anything else I know of, and I knew him when he was a boy and wore a big pink worsted scarf when he went skating."

"I should like to have seen that scarf," said Dicksie reflectively. She rose and looked around the tent. In a few minutes she made Marion lie down on one of the cots. Then she walked to the front of the tent, opened the flap, and looked out.

Whispering Smith was sitting before the fire. Rain was falling, but Dicksie put on her close-fitting black coat, raised the door-flap, and walked noiselessly from the tent and up behind him. "Alone in the rain?" she asked.

She had expected to see him start at her voice, but he did not, though he rose and turned around. "Not now," he answered as he offered her his box with a smile.

"Are you taking your hat off for me in the rain? Put it on again!" she insisted with a little tone of command, and she was conscious of gratification when he obeyed amiably.

"I won't take your box unless you can find another!" she said. "Oh, you have another! I came out to tell you what a dreadful man I thought you were, and to apologize."

"Never mind apologizing. Lots of people think worse than that of me and don't apologize. I'm sorry I have no shelter to offer you, except to sit on this side and take the rain."

"Why should you take the rain for me?"

"You are a woman."

"But a stranger to you."

"Only in a way."

Dicksie gazed for a moment at the fire. "You won't think me abrupt, will you?" she said, turning to him, "but, as truly as I live, I cannot account for you, Mr. Smith. I guess at the ranch we don't know what goes on in the world. Everything I see of you contradicts everything I have heard of you."

"You haven't seen much of me yet, you know, and you may have heard much better accounts of me than I deserve. Still, it isn't surprising you can't account for me; in fact, it would be surprising if you could. Nobody pretends to do that. You must not be shocked if I can't even account for myself. Do you know what a derelict is? A ship that has been abandoned but never wholly sinks."

"Please don't make fun of me! How did you happen to come into the mountains? I do want to understand things better."

"Why, you are in real earnest, aren't you? But I am not making fun of you. Do you know President Bucks? No? Too bad! He's a very handsome old bachelor. And he is one of those men who get all sorts of men to do all sorts of things for them. You know, building and operating railroads in this part of the country is no joke. The mountains are filled with men that don't care for God, man, or the devil. Sometimes they furnish their own ammunition to fight with and don't bother the railroad for years; at such times the railroad leaves them alone. For my part, I never quarrel with a man that doesn't quarrel with the road. Then comes a time when they get after us, shooting our men or robbing our agents or stopping our trains. Of course we have to get busy then. A few years ago they worried Bucks till they nearly turned his hair gray. At that unfortunate time I happened into his office with a letter of introduction from his closest Chicago friend, Willis Howard, prince of good men, the man that made the Palmer House famous—yes. Now I had come out here, Miss Dunning—I almost said Miss Dicksie, because I hear it so much——"

"I should be greatly set up to hear you call me Dicksie. And I have wondered a thousand times about your name. Dare I ask—why do they call you Whispering Smith? You don't whisper."

He laughed with abundance of good-humor. "That is a ridiculous accident, and it all came about when I lived in Chicago. Do you know anything about the infernal climate there? Well, in Chicago I used to lose my voice whenever I caught a cold—sometimes for weeks together. So they began calling me Whispering Smith, and I've never been able to shake the name. Odd, isn't it? But I came out to go into the real-estate business. I was looking for some gold-bearing farm lands where I could raise quartz, don't you know, and such things—yes. I don't mind telling you this, though I wouldn't tell it to everybody——"

"Certainly not," assented Dicksie, drawing her skirt around to sit in closer confidence.

"I wanted to get rich quick," murmured Whispering Smith, confidentially.

"Almost criminal, wasn't it?"

"I wanted to have evening clothes."

"Yes."

"And for once in my life two pairs of suspenders—a modest ambition, but a gnawing one. Would you believe it? Before I left Bucks's office he had hired me for a railroad man. When he asked me what I could do, and I admitted a little experience in handling real estate, he brought his fist down on the table and swore I should be his right-of-way man."

"How about the mining?"

Whispering Smith waved his hand in something of the proud manner in which Bucks could wave his presidential hand. "My business, Bucks said, need not interfere with that, not in the least; he said that I could do all the mining I wanted to, and I have done all the mining I wanted to. But here is the singular thing that happened: I opened up my office and had nothing to do; they didn't seem to want any right of way just then. I kept getting my check every month, and wasn't doing a hand's turn but riding over the country and shooting jack-rabbits. But, Lord, I love this country! Did you know I used to be a cowboy in the mountains years ago? Indeed I did. I know it almost as well as you do. I mined more or less in the meantime. Occasionally I would go to Bucks—you say you don't know him?—too bad!—and tell him candidly I wasn't doing a thing to earn my salary. At such times he would only ask me how I liked the job," and Whispering Smith's heavy eyebrows rose in mild surprise at the recollection. "One day when I was talking with him he handed me a telegram from the desert saying that a night operator at a lonely station had been shot and a switch misplaced and a train nearly wrecked. He asked me what I thought of it. I discovered that the poor fellow had shot himself, and in the end we had to put him in the insane asylum to save him from the penitentiary—but that was where my trouble began.

"It ended in my having to organize the special service on the whole road to look after a thousand and one things that nobody else had—well, let us say time or inclination to look after: fraud and theft and violence and all that sort of disagreeable thing. Then one day the cat crawled out of the bag. What do you think? That man who is now president of this road had somewhere seen a highly colored story about me in a magazine, a ten-cent magazine, you know. He had spotted me the first time I walked into his office, and told me a long time afterward it was just like seeing a man walk out of a book, and that he had hard work to keep from falling on my neck. He knew what he wanted me for; it was just this thing. I left Chicago to get away from it, and this is the result. It is not all that kind of thing, oh, no! When they want to cross a reservation I have a winter in Washington with our attorneys and dine with old friends in the White House, and the next winter I may be on snowshoes chasing a band of rustlers. I swore long ago I would do no more of it—that I couldn't and wouldn't. But it is Bucks. I can't go back on him. He is amiable and I am soft. He says he is going to have a crown and harp for me some day, but I fancy—that is, I have an intimation—that there will be a red-hot protest at the bar of Heaven," he lowered his tone, "from a certain unmentionable quarter when I undertake to put the vestments on. By the way, I hear you are interested in chickens. Oh, yes, I've heard a lot about you! Bob Johnson, over at Oroville, has some pretty bantams I want to tell you about."

Whether he talked railroad or chickens, it was all one: Dicksie sat spellbound; and when he announced it was half-past three o'clock and time to rouse Marion, she was amazed.



Dawn showed in the east. The men eating breakfast in tents were to be sent on a work-train up a piece of Y-track that led as near as they could be taken to where they were needed. The train had pulled out when Dicksie, Marion, McCloud, and Whispering Smith took horses to get across to the hills and through to the ranch-house. They had ridden slowly for some distance when McCloud was called back. The party returned and rode together into the mists that hung below the bridge. They came out upon a little party of men standing with lanterns on a piece of track where the river had taken the entire grade and raced furiously through the gap. Fog shrouded the light of the lanterns and lent gloom to the silence, but the women could see the group that McCloud had joined. Standing above his companions on a pile of ties, a tall young man holding a megaphone waited. Out of the darkness there came presently a loud calling. The tall young man at intervals bawled vigorously into the fog in answer. Far away could be heard, in the intervals of silence, the faint clang of the work-train engine-bell. Again the voice came out of the fog. McCloud took the megaphone and called repeatedly. Two men rowed a boat out of the back-water behind the grade, and when McCloud stepped into it, it was released on a line while the oarsmen guided it across the flood until it disappeared. The two megaphone voices could still be heard. After a time the boat was pulled back again, and McCloud stepped out of it. He spoke a moment with the men, rejoined his party, and climbed into the saddle. "Now we are off," said he.

"What was it all about?" asked Whispering Smith.

"Your friend Klein is over there. Nobody could understand what he said except that he wanted me. When I got here I couldn't make out what he was talking about, so they let us out in the boat on a line. Half-way across the break I made out what was troubling him. He said he was going to lose three hundred feet of track, and wanted to know what to do."

"And you told him, of course?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him to lose it."

"I could have done that myself."

"Why didn't you?"



CHAPTER XXIII

AT THE RIVER

They found the ranch-house as Marion and Dicksie had left it, deserted. Puss told them every one was at the river. McCloud did not approve Dicksie's plan of going down to see her cousin first. "Why not let me ride down and manage it without bringing you into it at all?" he suggested. "It can be done." And after further discussion it was so arranged.

McCloud and Smith had been joined by Dancing on horseback, and they made their way around Squaw Lake and across the fields. The fog was rolling up from the willows at the bend. Men were chopping in the brush, and McCloud and his companion soon met Lance Dunning riding up the narrow strip of sand that held the river off the ranch.

McCloud greeted Dunning, regardless of his amazement, as if he had parted from him the day before. "How are you making it over here?" he asked. "We are in pretty good shape at the moment down below, and I thought I would ride over to see if we could do anything for you. This is what you call pretty fair water for this part of the valley, isn't it?"

Lance swallowed his astonishment. "This isn't water, McCloud; this is hell." He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "Well, I call this white, anyway, and no mistake—I do indeed, sir! This is Whispering Smith, isn't it? Glad to see you at Crawling Stone, sir." Which served not only to surprise but to please Whispering Smith.

"Some of my men were free," continued McCloud; "I switched some mattresses and sacks around the Y, thinking they might come in play here for you at the bend. They are at your service if you think you need them."

"Need them!" Lance swore fiercely and from the bottom of his heart. He was glad to get help from any quarter and made no bones about it. Moreover, McCloud lessened the embarrassment by explaining that he had a personal interest in holding the channel where it ran, lest a change above might threaten the approaches already built to the bridge; and Whispering Smith, who would have been on terms with the catfish if he had been flung into the middle of the Crawling Stone, contributed at once, like a reenforced spring, to the ease of the situation.

Lance again took off his hat and wiped the sweat of anxiety from his dripping forehead. "Whatever differences of opinion I may have with your damned company, I have no lack of esteem personally, McCloud, for you, sir, by Heaven! How many men did you bring?"

"And whatever wheels you Crawling Stone ranchers may have in your heads on the subject of irrigation," returned McCloud evenly, "I have no lack of esteem personally, Mr. Dunning, for you. I brought a hundred."

"Do you want to take charge here? I'm frank, sir; you understand this game and I don't."

"Suppose we look the situation over; meantime, all our supplies have to be brought across from the Y. What should you think, Mr. Dunning, of putting all the teams you can at that end of the work?"

"Every man that can be spared from the river shall go at it. Come over here and look at our work and judge for yourself."

They rode to where the forces assembled by Lance were throwing up embankments and riprapping. There was hurried running to and fro, a violent dragging about of willows, and a good deal of shouting.

Dunning, with some excitement, watched McCloud's face to note the effect of the activity on him, but McCloud's expression, naturally reserved, reflected nothing of his views on the subject. Dunning waved his hand at the lively scene. "They've been at it all night. How many would you take away, sir?"

"You might take them all away, as far as the river is concerned," said McCloud after a moment.

"What? Hell! All?"

"They are not doing anything, are they, but running around in a circle? And those fellows over there might as well be making mud pies as riprapping at that point. What we need there is a mattress and sandbags—and plenty of them. Bill," directed McCloud in an even tone of business as he turned to Dancing, "see how quick you can get your gangs over here with what sacks they can carry and walk fast. If you will put your men on horses, Mr. Dunning, they can help like everything. That bank won't last a great while the way the river is getting under it now." Dancing wheeled like an elephant on his bronco and clattered away through the mud. Lance Dunning, recovering from his surprise, started his men back for the wagons, and McCloud, dismounting, walked with him to the water's edge to plan the fight for what was left of the strip in front of the alfalfa fields.

When Whispering Smith got back to the house he was in good-humor. He joined Dicksie and Marion in the dining-room, where they were drinking coffee. Afterward Dicksie ordered horses saddled and the three rode to the river. Up and down the bank as far as they could see in the misty rain, men were moving slowly about—more men, it seemed to Dicksie, than she had ever seen together in her life. The confusion and the noise had disappeared. No one appeared to hurry, but every one had something to do, and, from the gangs who with sledges were sinking "dead-men" among the trees to hold the cables of the mattress that was about to be sunk, and the Japs who were diligently preparing to float and load it, to the men that were filling and wheeling the sandbags, no one appeared excited. McCloud joined the visitors for a few moments and then went back to where Dancing and his men on life-lines were guiding the mattress to its resting-place. In spite of the gloom of the rain, which Whispering Smith said was breaking, Dicksie rode back to the house in much better spirits with her two guests; and when they came from luncheon the sun, as Smith had predicted, was shining.

"Oh, come out!" cried Dicksie, at the door. Marion had a letter to write and went upstairs, but Whispering Smith followed Dicksie. "Does everything you say come true?" she demanded as she stood in the sunshine.

She was demure with light-heartedness and he looked at her approvingly. "I hope nothing I may say ever will come true unless it makes you happy," he answered lightly. "It would be a shame if it did anything else."

She pointed two accusing fingers at him. "Do you know what you promised last night? You have forgotten already! You said you would tell me why my leghorns are eating their feathers off."

"Let me talk with them."

"Just what I should like. Come on!" said Dicksie, leading the way to the chicken-yard. "I want you to see my bantams too. I have three of the dearest little things. One is setting. They are over the way. Come see them first. And, oh, you must see my new game chickens. Truly, you never saw anything as handsome as Caesar—he's the rooster; and I have six pullets. Caesar is perfectly superb."

When the two reached the chicken-houses Dicksie examined the nest where she was setting the bantam hen. "This miserable hen will not set," she exclaimed in despair. "See here, Mr. Smith, she has left her nest again and is scratching around on the ground. Isn't it a shame? I've tied a cord around her leg so she couldn't run away, and she is hobbling around like a scrub pony."

"Perhaps the eggs are too warm," suggested her companion. "I have had great success in cases like this with powdered ice—not using too much, of course; just shave the ice gently and rub it over the eggs one at a time; it will often result in refreshing the attention of the hen."

Dicksie looked grave. "Aren't you ashamed to make fun of me?"

Whispering Smith seemed taken aback. "Is it really serious business?"

"Of course."

"Very good. Let me watch this hen for a few minutes and diagnose her. You go on to your other chickens. I'll stay here and think."

Dicksie went down through the yards. When she came back, Whispering Smith was sitting on a cracker-box watching the bantam. The chicken was making desperate efforts to get off Dicksie's cord and join its companions in the runway. Smith was eying the bantam critically when Dicksie rejoined him. "Do you usually," he asked, looking suddenly up, "have success in setting roosters?"

"Now you are having fun with me again."

"No, by Heaven! I am not."

"Have you diagnosed the case?"

"I have, and I have diagnosed it as a case of mistaken identity."

"Identity?"

"And misapplied energy. Miss Dicksie, you have tied up the wrong bird. This is not a bantam hen at all; this is a bantam rooster. Now that is my judgment. Compare him with the others. Notice how much darker his plumage is—it's the rooster," declared Whispering Smith, wiping the perplexity from his brow. "Don't feel bad, not at all. Cut him loose, Miss Dicksie—don't hesitate; do it on my responsibility. Now let's look at the cannibal leghorns—and great Caesar."



CHAPTER XXIV

BETWEEN GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD

About nine o'clock that night Puss ushered McCloud in from the river. Dicksie came running downstairs to meet him. "Your cousin insisted I should come up to the house for some supper," said McCloud dryly. "I could have taken camp fare with the men. Gordon stayed there with him."

Dicksie held his hat in her hand, and her eyes were bright in the firelight. Puss must have thought the two made a handsome couple, for she lingered, as she started for the kitchen, to look back.

"Puss," exclaimed her mistress, "fry a chicken right away! A big one, Puss! Mr. McCloud is very hungry, I know. And be quick, do! Oh, how is the river, Mr. McCloud?"

"Behaving like a lamb. It hasn't fallen much, but the pressure seems to be off the bank, if you know what that means?"

"You must be a magician! Things changed the minute you came!"

"The last doctor usually gets credit for the cure, you know."

"Oh, I know all about that. Don't you want to freshen up? Should you mind coming right to my room? Marion is in hers," explained Dicksie, "and I am never sure of Cousin Lance's,—he has so many boots."

When she had disposed of McCloud she flew to the kitchen. Puss was starting after a chicken. "Take a lantern, Puss!" whispered Dicksie vehemently.

"No, indeed; dis nigger don' need no lantern fo' chickens, Miss Dicksie."

"But get a good one, Puss, and make haste, do! Mr. McCloud must be starved! Where is the baking powder? I'll get the biscuits started."

Puss turned fiercely. "Now look-a heah, yo' can't make biscuits! Yo' jes' go se' down wif dat young gen'm'n! Jes' lemme lone, ef yo' please! Dis ain't de firs' time I killed chickens, Miss Dicksie, an' made biscuits. Jes' clair out an' se' down! Place f'r young ladies is in de parlor! Ol' Puss can cook supper f'r one man yet—ef she has to!"

"Oh, yes, Puss, certainly, I know, of course; only, get a nice chicken!" and with the parting admonition Dicksie, smoothing her hair wildly, hastened back to the living-room.

But the harm was done. Puss, more excited than her mistress, lost her head when she got to the chicken-yard, and with sufficiently bad results. When Dicksie ran out a few moments afterward for a glass of water for McCloud, Puss was calmly wiping her hands, and in the sink lay the quivering form of young Caesar. Dicksie caught her favorite up by the legs and suppressed a cry. There could be no mistake. She cast a burning look on Puss. It would do no good to storm now. Dicksie only wrung her hands and returned to McCloud.

He rose in the happiest mood. He could not see what a torment Dicksie was in, and took the water without asking himself why it trembled in her hand. Her restrained manner did not worry him, for he felt that his fight at the river was won, and the prospect of fried chicken composed him. Even the long hour before Puss, calm and inviting in a white cap and apron, appeared to announce supper, passed like a dream. When Dicksie rose to lead the way to the dining-room, McCloud walked on air; the high color about her eyes intoxicated him. Not till half the fried chicken, with many compliments from McCloud, had disappeared, and the plate had gone out for the second dozen biscuits, did he notice Dicksie's abstraction.

"I'm sure you need worry no longer about the water," he observed reassuringly. "I think the worst of the danger is past."

Dicksie looked at the table-cloth with wide-open eyes. "I feel sure that it is. I am no longer worrying about that."

"It's nothing I can do or leave undone, is it?" asked McCloud, laughing a little as he implied in his tone that she must be worrying about something.

Dicksie made a gesture of alarm. "Oh, no, no; nothing!"

"It's a pretty good plan not to worry about anything."

"Do you think so?"

"Why, we all thought so last night. Heavens!" McCloud drew back in his chair. "I never offered you a piece of chicken! What have I been thinking of?"

"Oh, I wouldn't eat it anyway!" cried Dicksie.

"You wouldn't? It is delicious. Do have a plate and a wing at least."

"Really, I could not bear to think of it," she said pathetically.

He spoke lower. "Something is troubling you. I have no right to a confidence, I know," he added, taking a biscuit.

Her eyes fell to the floor. "It is nothing. Pray, don't mind me. May I fill your cup?" she asked, looking up. "I am afraid I worry too much over what has happened and can't be helped. Do you never do that?"

McCloud, laughing wretchedly, tore Caesar's last leg from his body. "No indeed. I never worry over what can't be helped."

They left the dining-room. Marion came down. But they had hardly seated themselves before the living-room fire when a messenger arrived with word that McCloud was wanted at the river. His chagrin at being dragged away was so apparent that Marion and Dicksie sympathized with him and laughed at him. "'I never worry about what can't be helped,'" Dicksie murmured.

He looked at Marion. "That's a shot at me. You don't want to go down, do you?" he asked ironically, looking from one to the other.

"Why, of course I'll go down," responded Dicksie promptly. "Marion caught cold last night, I guess, so you will excuse her, I know. I will be back in an hour, Marion, and you can toast your cold while I'm gone."

"But you mustn't go alone!" protested McCloud.

Dicksie lifted her chin the least bit. "I shall be going with you, shall I not? And if the messenger has gone back I shall have to guide you. You never could find your way alone."

"But I can go," interposed Marion, rising.

"Not at all; you can not go!" announced Dicksie. "I can protect both Mr. McCloud and myself. If he should arrive down there under the wing of two women he would never hear the last of it. I am mistress here still, I think; and I sha'n't be leaving home, you know, to make the trip!"

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 Dicksie.

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

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

Dicksie 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 Dicksie'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 Dicksie. "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 Dicksie; "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 Dicksie, 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 Dicksie, 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 Dicksie 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 Dicksie 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-shore. Where is the trouble?" For answer Dunning led McCloud off toward the Bend, and Dicksie was left alone with Whispering Smith.