169CHAPTER XIXTHE 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.
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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,171take 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.172Dicksie, 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 wecando!” She hesitated a moment. “I will tell you what wecando! 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 to173bring 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! HowcanI 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,174what 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 a175nest 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 hate176him––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!177This 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 you178and 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.”
179CHAPTER XXAT 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 seehimobject 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.180Of 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 channel181of 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 valuable182man 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.
SCENE FROM THE PHOTO-PLAY PRODUCTION OF “WHISPERING SMITH.” ©American Mutual Studio.
SCENE FROM THE PHOTO-PLAY PRODUCTION OF “WHISPERING SMITH.” ©American Mutual Studio.
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“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?184Didn’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 awful185place 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 a186week 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 youeverget here? In all this water, and two lone women! You have been in danger to-night. Indeed you have––don’t tell me! And you187are 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 howyoucould 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.188“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 river189two 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.
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“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 ithisbusiness 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 be191prized 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. McCloud192broke 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.”
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“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,194and 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 inviting195it 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 beautifully196at 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.”
197CHAPTER XXISUPPER 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.”
198
“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. Where199is 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,200sometimes, 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!”
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“And asks to be conquered,” suggested Whispering Smith.
“Asks! Oh, scandalous, Mr. Smith!”
“It is easy to see whyhenever 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, “Thatat 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,islike woman. ‘Waits’ I strike out as unpleasantly suggestive; let it go. So, then, trouble is like a lovely woman, loveliestwhenconquered. 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.”
202
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? Iwaitto hear it,” laughed Dicksie.
“My training in prosody is the slightest, as203will appear,” he continued, “andsynecdocheandSchenectadywere 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.”