316
“The railroad be hanged. I am for dinner.”
“But I will get dinner for you.”
“You need not. I can get it for myself.”
“You are perfectly absurd, and if we stand here disputing, Marion won’t have anything to eat.”
They went into the kitchen disputing about what should be cooked. At the end of an hour they had two fires going––one in the stove and one in Dicksie’s cheeks. By that time it had been decided to have a luncheon instead of a dinner. Dicksie attempted some soup, and McCloud found a strip of bacon, and after he had cooked it, Dicksie, with her riding-skirt pinned up and her sleeves delightfully rolled back, began frying eggs. When Marion, unable longer to withstand the excitement, appeared, the engineer, flushed with endeavor, was making toast.
The three sat down at table together. They found they had forgotten the coffee, but Marion was not allowed to move from her chair. When the coffee was made ready the bacon had been eaten and more had to be fried. McCloud proved able for any part of the programme, and when they rose it was four o’clock and too late, McCloud declared, to go back to the office that afternoon.
Marion and Dicksie, after a time, attempted jointly to get rid of him, but they found they could not, so the three talked about Whispering Smith.317When the women tried to discourage McCloud by talking hats he played the wheezy piano, and when Dicksie spoke about going home he declared he would ride home with her. But Dicksie had no mind that he should, and when he asked to know why, without realizing what a flush lingered in his face, she said only, no; if she had reasons she would give none. McCloud persisted, because under the flush about his eyes was the resolve that he would take one long ride that evening, in any event. He had made up his mind for that ride––a longer one than he had ever taken before or expected ever to take again––and would not be balked.
Dicksie, insisting upon going home, went so far as to have her horse brought from the stable. To her surprise, a horse for McCloud came over with it. Quiet to the verge of solemnity, but with McCloud following, Dicksie walked with admirable firmness out of the shop to the curb. McCloud gave her rein to her, and with a smile stood waiting to help her mount.
She was drawing on her second glove. “You are not going with me.”
“You’ll let me ride the same road, won’t you––even if I can’t keep up?”
Dicksie looked at his mount. “It would be difficult to keep up, with that horse.”
318
“Would you ride away from me just because you have a better horse?”
“No, notjustbecause I have a better horse.”
He looked steadily at her without speaking.
“Why must you ride home with me when I don’t want you to?” she asked reproachfully. Fear had come upon her and she did not know what she was saying. She saw only the expression of his eyes and looked away, but she knew that his eyes followed her. The sun had set. The deserted street lay in the white half-light of a mountain evening, and the day’s radiance was dying in the sky. In lower tones he spoke again, and she turned deadly white.
“I’ve wanted so long to say this, Dicksie, that I might as well be dead as to try to keep it back any longer. That’s why I want to ride home with you if you are going to let me.” He turned to stroke her horse’s head. Dicksie stood seemingly helpless. McCloud slipped his finger into his waistcoat pocket and held something out in his hand. “This shell pin fell from your hair that night you were at camp by the bridge––do you remember? I couldn’t bear to give it back.”
Dicksie’s eyes opened wide. “Let me see it. I don’t think that is mine.”
“Great Heaven! Have I been carrying Marion Sinclair’s pin for a month?” exclaimed McCloud.319“Well, I won’t lose any time in returning it to her, at any rate.”
“Where are you going?” Dicksie’s voice was faint.
“I’m going to give Marion her pin.”
“Do nothing of the sort! Come here! Give it to me.”
“Dicksie, dare you tell me, after a shock like that, it reallyisyour pin?”
“Oh, I don’t know whose pin it is!”
“Why, what is the matter?”
“Give me the pin!” She put her hands unsteadily up under her hat. “Here, for Heaven’s sake, if you must have something, take this comb!” She slipped from her head the shell that held her knotted hair. He caught her hand and kissed it, and she could not get it away.
“You are dear,” murmured Dicksie, “if you are silly. The reason I wouldn’t let you ride home with me is because I was afraid you might get shot. How do you suppose I should feel if you were killed? Or don’t you think I have any feeling?”
“But, Dicksie, is it all right?”
“How do I know? What do you mean? I will not let you ride home with me, and youwillnot let me ride home alone. Tie Jim again. I am going to stay with Marion all night.”
320CHAPTER XXXIIITHE LAUGH OF A WOMAN
Within an hour, Marion, working over a hat in the trimming-room, was startled to hear the cottage door open, and to see Dicksie quite unconcernedly walk in. To Marion’s exclamation of surprise she returned only a laugh. “I have changed my mind, dear. I am going to stay all night.”
Marion kissed her approvingly. “Really, you are getting so sensible I shan’t know you, Dicksie. In fact, I believe this is the most sensible thing you were ever guilty of.”
“Glad you think so,” returned Dicksie dryly, unpinning her hat. “I certainly hope it is. Mr. McCloud persuaded me it wasn’t right for me to ride home alone, and I knew better than he what danger there was for him in riding home with me––so here I am. He is coming over for supper, too, in a few minutes.”
When McCloud arrived he brought with him a porterhouse steak, and Marion was again driven321from the kitchen. At the end of an hour, Dicksie, engrossed over the broiler, was putting the finishing touches to the steak, and McCloud, more engrossed, was watching her, when a diffident and surprised-looking person appeared in the kitchen doorway and put his hand undecidedly on the casing. While he stood, Dicksie turned abruptly to McCloud.
“Oh, by the way, I have forgotten something! Will you do me a favor?”
“Certainly! Do you want money or a pass?”
“No, not money,” said Dicksie, lifting the steak on her forks, “though you might give me a pass.”
“But I should hate to have you go away anywhere–––”
“I don’t want to go anywhere, but I never had a pass, and I think it would be kind of nice to have one just to keep. Don’t you?”
“Why, yes; you might put it in the bank and have it drawing interest.”
“This steak is. Do they give interest on passes?”
“Well, a good deal of interest is felt in them––on this division at least. What is the favor?”
“Yes, what is it? How can I think? Oh, I know! If they don’t put Jim in a box stall to-night he will kill some of the horses over there. Will you telephone the stables?”
322
“Won’t you give me the number and let me telephone?” asked a voice behind them. They turned in astonishment and saw Whispering Smith. “I am surprised,” he added calmly, “to see a man of your intelligence, George, trying to broil a steak with the lower door of your stove wide open. Close the lower door and cut out the draft through the fire. Don’t stare, George; put back the broiler. And haven’t you made a radical mistake to start with?” he asked, stepping between the confused couple. “Are you not trying to broil a roast of beef?”
“Where did you come from?” demanded McCloud, as Marion came in from the dining-room.
“Don’t search me the very first thing,” protested Whispering Smith.
“But we’ve been frightened to death here for twenty-four hours. Are you really alive and unhurt? This young lady rode in twenty miles this morning and came to the office in tears to get news of you.”
Smith looked mildly at Dicksie. “Did you shed a tear for me? I should like to have seen just one! Where did I come from? I reported in wild over the telephone ten minutes ago. Didn’t Marion tell you? She is so forgetful. That is what causes wrecks, Marion. I have been in the saddle since three o’clock this morning, thank you, and323have had nothing for five days but raw steer garnished with sunshine.”
The four sat down to supper, and Whispering Smith began to talk. He told the story of the chase to the Cache, the defiance from Rebstock, and the tardy appearance of the men he wanted. “Du Sang meant to shoot his way through us and make a dash for it. There really was nothing else for him to do. Banks and Kennedy were up above, even if he could have ridden out through the upper canyon, which is very doubtful with all the water now. After a little talk back and forth, Du Sang drew, and of course then it was every man for himself. He was hit twice and he died Sunday night, but the other two were not seriously hurt. What can you do? It is either kill or get killed with those fellows, and, of course, I talked plainly to Du Sang. He had butchered a man at Mission Springs just the night before, and deserved hanging a dozen times over. He meant from the start, he told me afterward, to get me. Oh, Miss Dunning, may I have some more coffee? Haven’t I an agreeable part of the railroad business, don’t you think? I shouldn’t have pushed in here to-night, but I saw the lights when I rode by awhile ago; they looked so good I couldn’t resist.”
McCloud leaned forward. “You call it pushing in, do you, Gordon? Do you know what this324young lady did this morning? One of her cowboys came down from the Cache early with the word that you had been killed in the fight by Du Sang. He said he saw you drop from your saddle to the ground with Du Sang shooting at you. She ordered up her horse, without a word, and rode twenty miles in an hour and a half to find out here what we had heard. She ‘pushed in’ at the Wickiup, where she never had been before in her life, and wandered through it alone looking for my office, to find out from me whether I hadn’t something to contradict the bad news. While we talked, in came your despatch from Sleepy Cat. Never was one better timed! And when she knew you were safe her eyes filled again.”
Whispering Smith looked at Dicksie quizzically. Her confusion was delightful. He rose, lifted her hand in his own, and, bending, kissed it.
They talked till late, and when Dicksie walked out on the porch McCloud followed to smoke. Whispering Smith still sat at the table talking to Marion, and the two heard the sound of the low voices outside. At intervals Dicksie’s laugh came in through the open door.
Whispering Smith, listening, said nothing for some time, but once she laughed peculiarly. He pricked up his ears. “What has been happening since I left town?”
325
“What do you mean?” asked Marion Sinclair.
He nodded toward the porch. “McCloud and Dicksie out there. They have been fixing things up.”
“Nonsense! What do you mean?”
“I mean they are engaged.”
“Never in the world!”
“I may be slow in reading a trail,” said Smith modestly, “but when a woman laughs like that I think there’s something doing. Don’t you believe it? Call them in and ask them. You won’t? Well, I will. Take them in separate rooms. You ask her and I’ll ask him.”
In spite of Marion’s protests the two were brought in. “I am required by Mr. Smith to ask you a very silly question, Dicksie,” said Marion, taking her into the living-room. “Answer yes or no. Are you engaged to anybody?”
“What a question! Why, no!”
“Marion Sinclair wants to know just one thing, George,” said Whispering Smith to McCloud after he had taken him into the dark shop. “She feels she ought to know because she is in a way Dicksie’s chaperone, you know, and she feels that you are willing she should know. I don’t want to be too serious, but answer yes or no. Are you engaged to Dicksie?”
“Why, yes. I–––”
326
“That’s all; go back to the porch,” directed Whispering Smith. McCloud obeyed orders.
Marion, alone in the living-room, was waiting for the inquisitor, and her face wore a look of triumph. “You are not such a mind-reader after all, are you? I told you they weren’t.”
“I told you they were,” contended Whispering Smith.
“She says they arenot,” insisted Marion.
“He says they are,” returned Whispering Smith, “And, what’s more, I’ll bet my saddle against the shop they are. I could be mistaken in anything but that laugh.”
327CHAPTER XXXIVA MIDNIGHT VISIT
The lights, but one, were out. McCloud and Whispering Smith had gone, and Marion was locking up the house for the night, when she was halted by a knock at the shop door. It was a summons that she thought she knew, but the last in the world that she wanted to hear or to answer. Dicksie had gone to the bedroom, and standing between the portières that curtained the work-room from the shop, Marion in the half-light listened, hesitating whether to ignore or to answer the midnight intruder. But experience, and bitter experience, had taught her there was only one way to meet that particular summons, and that was to act, whether at noon or at midnight, without fear. She waited until the knocking had been twice repeated, turned up the light, and going to the door drew the bolt; Sinclair stood before her, and she drew back for him to enter. “Dicksie Dunning is with me to-night,” said Marion, with her hand on the latch, “and we shall have to talk here.”
Sinclair took off his hat. “I knew you had company,”328he returned in the low, gentle tone that Marion knew very well, “so I came late. And I heard to-night, for the first time, that this railroad crowd is after me––God knows why; but they have to earn their salary somehow. I want to keep out of trouble if I can. I won’t kill anybody if they don’t force me to it. They’ve scared nearly all my men away from the ranch already; one crippled-up cowboy is all I have got to help me look after the cattle. But I won’t quarrel with them, Marion, if I can get away from here peaceably, so I’ve come to talk it over once more with you. I’m going away and I want you to go with me; I’ve got enough to keep us as well as the best of them and as long as we live. You’ve given me a good lesson. I needed it, girlie–––”
“Don’t call me that!”
He laughed kindly. “Why, that’s what it used to be; that’s what I want it to be again. I don’t blame you. You’re worth all the women I ever knew, Marion. I’ve learned to appreciate some few things in the lonely months I’ve spent up on the Frenchman; but I’ve felt while I was there as if I were working for both of us. I’ve got a buyer in sight now for the cattle and the land. I’m ready to clean up and say good-by to trouble––all I want is for you to give me the one chance I’ve asked for and go along.”
329
They stood facing each other under the dim light. She listened intently to every word, though in her terror she might not have heard or understood all of them. One thing she did very clearly understand, and that was why he had come and what he wanted. To that she held her mind tenaciously, and for that she shaped her answer. “I cannot go with you––now or ever.”
He waited a moment. “We always got along, Marion, when I behaved myself.”
“I hope you always will behave yourself; but I could no more go with you than I could make myself again what I was years ago, Murray. I wish you nothing but good; but our ways parted long ago.”
“Stop and think a minute, Marion. I offer you more and offer it more honestly than I ever offered it before, because I know myself better. I am alone in the world––strong, and better able to care for you than I was when I undertook to–––”
“I have never complained.”
“That’s what makes me more anxious to show you now that I can and will do what’s right.”
“Oh, you multiply words! It is too late for you to be here. You are in danger, you say; for the love of Heaven, leave me and go away!”
“You know me, Marion, when my mind is made330up. I won’t leave without you.” He leaned with one hand against the ribbon showcase. “If you don’t want to go I will stay right here and pay off the scores I owe. Two men here have stirred this country up too long, anyway. I don’t care much how soon anybody gets me after I round them up. But to-night I felt like this: you and I started out in life together, and we ought to live it out or die together, whether it’s to-night, Marion, or twenty years from to-night.”
“If you want to kill me to-night, I have no resistance to make.”
Sinclair sat down on a low counter-stool, and, bending forward, held his head between his hands. “It oughtn’t all to end here. I know you, and I know you want to do what’s right. I couldn’t kill you without killing myself; you know that.” He straightened up slowly. “Here!” He slipped his revolver from his hip-holster and held the grip of the gun toward her. “Use it on me if you want to. It is your chance to end everything; it may save several lives if you do. I won’t leave McCloud here to crow over me, and, by God, I won’t leave you here for Whispering Smith! I’ll settle with him anyhow. Take the pistol! What are you afraid of? Take it! Use it! I don’t want to live without you. If you make me do it, you’re to blame for the consequences.”
331
She stood with wide-open eyes, but uttered no word.
“You won’t touch it––then you care a little for me yet,” he murmured.
“No! Do not say so. But I will not do murder.”
“Think about the other, then. Go with me and everything will be all right. I will come back some evening soon for my answer. And until then, if those two men have any use for life, let them keep in the clear. I heard to-night that Du Sang is killed. Do you know whether it is true?”
“It is true.”
An oath half escaping showed how the confirmation cut him. “And Whispering Smith got away! It is Du Sang’s own fault; I told him to keep out of that trap. I stay in the open; and I’m not Du Sang. I’ll choose my own ground for the finish when they want it with me, and when I go I’ll take company––I’ll promise you that. Good-night, Marion. Will you shake hands?”
“No.”
“Damn it, I like your grit, girl! Well, good-night, anyway.”
She closed the door. She had even strength enough to bolt it before his footsteps died away. She put out the light and felt her way blindly back to the work-room. She staggered through it,332clutching at the curtains, and fell in the darkness into Dicksie’s arms.
“Marion dear, don’t speak,” Dicksie whispered. “I heard everything. Oh, Marion!” she cried, suddenly conscious of the inertness of the burden in her arms. “Oh, what shall I do?”
Moved by fright to her utmost strength, Dicksie drew the unconscious woman back to her room and managed to lay her on the bed. Marion opened her eyes a few minutes later to see the lights burning, to hear the telephone bell ringing, and to find Dicksie on the edge of the bed beside her.
“Oh, Marion, thank Heaven, you are reviving! I have been frightened to death. Don’t mind the telephone; it is Mr. McCloud. I didn’t know what to do, so I telephoned him.”
“But you had better answer him,” said Marion faintly. The telephone bell was ringing wildly.
“Oh, no! he can wait. How are you, dear? I don’t wonder you were frightened to death. Marion, he means to kill us––every one!”
“No, Dicksie. He will kill me and kill himself; that is where it will end. Dicksie, do answer the telephone. What are you thinking of? Mr. McCloud will be at the door in five minutes. Do you want him in the street to-night?”
Dicksie fled to the telephone, and an excited conference over the wire closed in seeming reassurance333at both ends. By that time Marion had regained her steadiness, but she could not talk of what had passed. At times, as the two lay together in the darkness, Marion spoke, but it was not to be answered. “I do not know,” she murmured once wearily. “Perhaps I am doing wrong; perhaps I ought to go with him. I wish, oh, I wish I knew what I ought to do!”
334CHAPTER XXXVTHE CALL
Beyond receiving reports from Kennedy and Banks, who in the interval rode into town and rode out again on their separate and silent ways, Whispering Smith for two days seemed to do nothing. Yet instinct keener than silence kept the people of Medicine Bend on edge during those two days, and when President Bucks’s car came in on the evening of the second day, the town knew from current rumors that Banks had gone to the Frenchman ranch with a warrant on a serious charge for Sinclair. In the president’s car Bucks and McCloud, after a late dinner, were joined by Whispering Smith, and the president heard the first connected story of the events of the fortnight that had passed. Bucks made no comment until he had heard everything. “And they rode Sinclair’s horses,” he said in conclusion.
“Sinclair’s horses,” returned Whispering Smith, “and they are all accounted for. One horse supplied by Rebstock was shot where they crossed Stampede Creek. It had given out and they had335a fresh horse in the willows, for they shot the scrub half a mile up one of the canyons near the crossing. The magpies attracted my attention to it. A piece of skin a foot square had been cut out of the flank.”
“You got there before the birds.”
“It was about an even thing,” said Smith. “Anyway, we were there in time to see the horse.”
“And Sinclair was away from the ranch from Saturday noon till Sunday night?”
“A rancher living over on Stampede Creek saw the five men when they crossed Saturday afternoon. The fellow was scared and lied to me about it, but he told Wickwire who they were.”
“Now, who is Wickwire?” asked Bucks.
“You ought to remember Wickwire, George,” remarked Whispering Smith, turning to McCloud. “You haven’t forgotten the Smoky Creek wreck? Do you remember the tramp who had his legs crushed and lay in the sun all morning? You put him in your car and sent him down here to the railroad hospital and Barnhardt took care of him. That was Wickwire. Not a bad fellow, either; he can talk pretty straight and shoot pretty straight. How do I know? Because he has told me the story and I’ve seen him shoot. There, you see, is one friend that you never reckoned on. He used to be a cowboy, and I got him a job working for336Sinclair on the Frenchman; he has worked at Dunning’s and other places on the Crawling Stone. He hates Sinclair with a deadly hatred for some reason. Just lately Wickwire set up for himself on Little Crawling Stone.”
“I have noticed that fellow’s ranch,” remarked McCloud.
“I couldn’t leave him at Sinclair’s,” continued Whispering Smith frankly. “The fellow was on my mind all the time. I felt certain he would kill Sinclair or get killed if he stayed there. And then, when I took him away they sprang Tower W on me! That is the price, not of having a conscience, for I haven’t any, but of listening to the voice that echoes where my conscience used to be,” said the railroad man, moving uneasily in his chair.
Bucks broke the ash from his cigar into the tray on the table. “You are restless to-night, Gordon––and it isn’t like you, either.”
“It is in the air. There has been a dead calm for two days. Something is due to happen to-night. I wish I could hear from Banks; he started with the papers for Sinclair’s yesterday while I went to Oroville to sweat Karg. Blood-poisoning has set in and it is rather important to us to get a confession. There’s a horse!” He stepped to the window. “Coming fast, too. Now, I wonder––no, he’s gone by.”
337
Five minutes later a messenger came to the car from the Wickiup with word that Kennedy was looking for Whispering Smith. Bucks, McCloud, and Smith left the car together and walked up to McCloud’s office.
Kennedy, sitting on the edge of the table, was tapping his leg nervously with a ruler. “Bad news, Gordon.”
“Not from Ed Banks?”
“Sinclair got him this morning.”
Whispering Smith sat down. “Go on.”
“Banks and I picked up Wickwire on the Crawling Stone early, and we rode over to the Frenchman. Wickwire said Sinclair had been up at Williams Cache the day before, and he didn’t think he was home. Of course I knew the Cache was watched and he wouldn’t be there long, so Ed asked me to stay in the cottonwoods and watch the creek for him. He and Wickwire couldn’t find anybody home when they got to the ranch-house and they rode down the corral together to look over the horses.”
Whispering Smith’s hand fell helplessly on the table. “Rode down together! For God’s sake, why didn’toneof them stay at the house?”
“Sinclair rode out from behind the barn and hit Wickwire in the arm before they saw him. Banks turned and opened on him, and Wickwire338ducked for the creek. Sinclair put a soft bullet through Banks’s shoulder––tore it pretty bad, Gordon––and made his get-away before Wickwire and I could reach the barn again. I got Ed on his horse and back to Wickwire’s, and we sent one of the boys to Oroville for a doctor. After Banks fell out of the saddle and was helpless Sinclair talked to him before I came up. ‘You ought to have kept out of this, Ed,’ he said. ‘This is a railroad fight. Why didn’t they send the head of their own gang after me?’––naming you.” Kennedy nodded toward Whispering Smith.
“Naming me.”
“Banks says, ‘I’m sheriff of this county, and will be a long time yet!’ I took the papers from his breast pocket,” continued Kennedy. “You can see where he was hit.” Kennedy laid the sheriff’s packet on the table. Bucks drew his chair forward and, with his cigar between his fingers, picked the packet up and opened it. Kennedy went on: “Ed told Sinclair if he couldn’t land him himself that he knew a man who could and would before he was a week older. He meant you, Gordon, and the last thing Ed told me was that he wanted you to serve the papers on Sinclair.”
A silence fell on the company. One of the documents passing under Bucks’s hand caught his eye and he opened it. It was the warrant for Sinclair.339He read it without comment, folded it, and, looking at Whispering Smith, pushed it toward him. “Then this, I guess, Gordon, belongs to you.”
Starting from a revery, Whispering Smith reached for the warrant. He looked for a moment at the blood-stained caption. “Yes,” he said, “this, I guess, belongs to me.”
340CHAPTER XXXVIDUTY
The stir of the town over the shooting of Banks seemed to Marion, in her distress, to point an accusing finger at her. The disgrace of what she had felt herself powerless to prevent now weighed on her mind, and she asked herself whether, after all, the responsibility of this murder was not upon her. Even putting aside this painful doubt, she bore the name of the man who had savagely defied accountability and now, it seemed to her, was dragging her with him through the slough of blood and dishonor into which he had plunged.
The wretched thought would return that had she listened to him, had she consented to go away, this outbreak might have been prevented. And what horror might not another day bring––what lives still closer to her life be taken? For herself she cared less; but she knew that Sinclair, now that he had begun, would not stop. In whichever way her thoughts turned, wretchedness was upon them, and the day went in one of those despairing341and indecisive battles that each one within his own heart must fight at times with heaviness and doubt.
McCloud called her over the telephone in the afternoon to say that he was going West on the evening train and would not be over for supper. She wished he could have come, for her loneliness began to be insupportable.
Toward sunset she put on her hat and started for the post-office. In the meantime, Dicksie, at home, had called McCloud up and told him she was coming down for the night. He immediately cancelled his plans for going West, and when Marion returned at dusk she found him with Dicksie at the cottage. The three had supper. Afterward Dicksie and McCloud went out for a walk, and Marion was alone in the house when the shop door opened and Whispering Smith walked in. It was dusk.
“Don’t light the lamps, Marion,” he said, sitting down on a counter-stool as he took off his hat. “I want to talk to you just a minute, if you don’t mind. You know what has happened. I am called on now to go after Sinclair. I have tried to avoid it, but my hand has been forced. To-day I’ve been placing horses. I am going to ride to-night with the warrant. I have given him a start of twenty-four hours, hoping he may get out of342the country. To stay here means only death to him in the end, and, what is worse, the killing of more and innocent men. But he won’t leave the country; do you think he will?”
“Oh, I do not know! I am afraid he will not.”
“I do not think I have ever hesitated before at any call of this kind; nor at what such a call will probably sometime mean; but this man I have known since we were boys.”
“If I had never seen him!”
“That brings up another point that has been worrying me all day. I could not help knowing what you have had to go through in this country. It is a tough country for any woman. Your people and mine were always close together and I have felt bound to do what I could to–––”
“Don’t be afraid to say it––make my path easier.”
“Something like that, though there’s been little real doing. What this situation in which Sinclair is now placed may still mean to you I do not know, but I would not add a straw to the weight of your troubles. I came to-night to ask a plain question. If he doesn’t leave the country I have got to meet him. You know what, in all human probability, that will mean. From such a meeting only one of us can come back. Which shall it be?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you––do you343ask me this question? How can I know which it shall be? What is it you mean?”
“I mean I will not take his life in a fight––if it comes to that––if you would rather he should come back.”
A sob almost refused an answer to him. “How can you ask me so terrible a question?”
“It is a question that means a good deal to me, of course, and I don’t know just what it means to you: that is the point I am up against. I may have no choice in the matter, but I must decide what to try to do if I have one. Am I to remember first that he is your husband?”
There was a silence. “What shall I say––what can I say? God help me, how am I to answer a question like that?”
“How am I to answer it?”
Her voice was low and pitiful when her answer came: “You must do your duty.”
“What is my duty then? To serve the paper that has been given to me, I know––but not necessarily to defend my life at the price of his. The play of a chance lies in deciding that; I can keep the chance or give it away; that is for you to say. Or take the question of duty again. You are alone and your friends are few. Haven’t I any duty toward you, perhaps? I don’t know a woman’s heart. I used to think I did, but I don’t.344My duty to this company that I work for is only the duty of a servant. If I go, another takes my place; it means nothing except taking one name off the payroll and putting another on. Whatever he may have done, this man is your husband; if his death would cause you a pang, it shall not be laid at my door. We ought to understand each other on that point fairly before I start to-night.”
“Can you ask me whether you ought not to take every means to defend your own life? or whether any consideration ought to come before that? I think not. I should be a wicked woman if I were to wish evil to him, wretched as he has made me. I am a wretched woman, whichever way I turn. But I should be less than human if I could say that to me your death would not be a cruel, cruel blow.”
There was a moment of silence. “Dicksie understood you to say that you were in doubt as to whether you ought to go away with him when he asked you to go. That is why I was unsettled in my mind.”
“The only reason why I doubted was that I thought by going I might save better lives than mine. I could willingly give up my life to do that. But to stain it by going back to such a man––God help me!”
“I think I understand. If the unfortunate345should happen before I come back I hope only this: that you will not hate me because I am the man on whom the responsibility has fallen. I haven’t sought it. And if I should not come back at all, it is only––good-by.”
He saw her clasp her hands convulsively. “I will not say it! I will pray on my knees that you do come back.”
“Good-night, Marion. Some one is at the cottage door.”
“It is probably Mr. McCloud and Dicksie. I will let them in.”
346CHAPTER XXXVIIWICKWIRE
McCloud and Dicksie met them at the porch door. Marion, unnerved, went directly to her room. Whispering Smith stopped to speak to Dicksie and McCloud interposed. “Bob Scott telephoned the office just now he had a man from Oroville who wanted to see you right away, Gordon,” said he. “I told him to send him over here. It is Wickwire.”
“Wickwire,” repeated Whispering Smith. “Wickwire has no business here that I know of; no doubt it is something I ought to know of. And, by the way, you ought to see this man,” he said, turning again to Dicksie. “If McCloud tells the story right, Wickwire is a sort of protégé of yours, Miss Dicksie, though neither of you seems to have known it. He is the tramp cowboy who was smashed up in the wreck at Smoky Creek. He is not a bad man, but whiskey, you know, beats some decent men.” A footstep fell on the porch. “There he comes now, I reckon. Shall I let him in a minute?”
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“Oh, I should like to see him! He has been at the ranch at different times, you know.”
Smith opened the door and stepping out on the porch, talked with the new-comer. In a moment he brought him in. Dicksie had seated herself on the sofa, McCloud stood in the doorway of the dining-room, and Whispering Smith laid one arm on the table as he sat down beside it with his face above the dark shade of the lamp. Before him stood Wickwire. The half-light threw him up tall and dark, but it showed the heavy shock of black hair falling over his forehead, and the broad, thin face of a mountain man.
“He has just been telling me that Seagrue is loose,” Whispering Smith explained pleasantly. “Who turned the trick, Wickwire?”
“Sheriff Coon and a deputy jailer started with Seagrue for Medicine Bend this morning. Coming through Horse Eye Canyon, Murray Sinclair and Barney Rebstock got a clean drop on them, took Seagrue, and they all rode off together. They didn’t make any bones about it, either. Their gang has got lots of friends over there, you know. They rode into Atlantic City and stayed over an hour. Coon tracked them there and got up aposseof six men. The three were standing in front of the bank when the sheriff rode into town. Sinclair and Seagrue got on their horses and started off. Rebstock348went back to get another drink. When he came out of the saloon he gave thepossea gun-fight all by himself, and wounded two men and made his get-away.”
Whispering Smith shook his head, and his hand fell on the table with a tired laugh. “Barney Rebstock,” he murmured, “of all men! Coward, skate, filler-in! Barney Rebstock––stale-beer man, sneak, barn-yard thief! Hit two men!” He turned to McCloud. “What kind of a wizard is Murray Sinclair? What sort of red-blood toxin does he throw into his gang to draw out a spirit like that? Murray Sinclair belongs to the race of empire-builders. By Heaven, it is pitiful a man like that should be out of a job! England, McCloud, needs him. And here he is holding up trains on the mountain division!”
“They are all up at Oroville with the Williams Cache gang, celebrating,” continued Wickwire.
Whispering Smith looked at the cowboy. “Wickwire, you made a good ride and I thank you. You are all right. This is the young lady and this is the man who had you sent to the hospital from Smoky Creek,” he added, rising. “You can thank them for picking you up. When you leave here tell Bob Scott to meet me at the Wickiup with the horses at eleven o’clock, will you?” He turned to Dicksie in a gentle aside. “I349am riding north to-night––I wish you were going part way.”
Dicksie looked at him intently. “You are worried over something,” she murmured; “I can see it in your face.”
“Nothing more than usual. I thrive, you know, on trouble––and I’m sorry to say good-night so early, but I have a long ride ahead.” He stepped quietly past McCloud and out of the door.
Wickwire was thanking Dicksie when unwillingly she let Whispering Smith’s hand slip out of her own. “I shore wouldn’t have been here to-night if you two hadn’t picked me up,” laughed Wickwire, speaking softly to Dicksie when she turned to him. “I’ve knowed my friends a long time, but I reckon they all didn’t know me.”
“I’ve known you longer than you think,” returned Dicksie with a smile. “I’ve seen you at the ranch-house. But now that we really do know each other, please remember you are always sure of a home at the ranch––whenever you want one, Mr. Wickwire, and just as long as you want one. We never forget our friends on the Crawling Stone.”
“If I may make so bold, I thank you kindly. And if you all will let me run away now, I want to catch Mr. Whispering Smith for just one minute.”
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Wickwire overtook Smith in Fort Street. “Talk quick, Wickwire,” he said; “I’m in a hurry. What do you want?”
“Partner, I’ve always played fair with you.”
“So far as I know, Wickwire, yes. Why?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“What is it––money?”
“No, partner, not money this time. You’ve always been more than liberal with me. But so far I’ve had to keep under cover; you asked me to. I want to ask the privilege now of coming out into the open. The jig is up so far as watching anybody goes.”
“Yes.”
“There’s nobody to watch any more––they’re all to chase, I reckon, now. The open is my kind of a fight, anyway. I want to ride out this manhunt with you.”
“How is your arm?”
“My arm is all right, and there ought to be a place for me in the chase now that Ed Banks is out of it. I want to cut loose up on the range, anyhow; if I’m a man I want to know it, and if I ain’t I want to know it. I want to ride with you after Seagrue and Sinclair and Barney Rebstock.”
Whispering Smith spoke coldly: “You mean, Wickwire, you want to get killed.”
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“Why, partner, if it’s coming to me, I don’t mind––yes.”
“What’s the use, Wickwire?”
“If I’m a man I want to know it; if I ain’t, it’s time my friends knowed it. Anyhow, I’m man enough to work out with some of that gang. Most of them have put it over me one time or another; Sinclair pasted me like a blackbird only the other day. They all say I’m nothing but a damned tramp. You say I have done you service––give me a show.”
Whispering Smith stopped a minute in the shadow of a tree and looked keenly at him. “I’m too busy to-night to say much, Wickwire,” he said after a moment. “You go over to the barn and report to Bob Scott. If you want to take the chances, it is up to you; and if Bob Scott is agreeable, I’ll use you where I can––that’s all I can promise. You will probably have more than one chance to get killed.”