The angry men turned. "What's on time?" asked McCloud curtly.

"Number One; she's in and changing engines. I told them you were going West," declared Rooney in so deep tones that his fiction would never have been suspected. If his cue had been, "My lord, the conductor waits," it could not have been rung in more opportunely.

Dunning, to emphasize, without a further word, his disgust for the situation and his contempt for the management, tore into scraps the pass that had been given him, threw the scraps on the floor, took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it; insolence could do no more.

McCloud looked over at the despatcher. "No, I am not going West, Rooney. But if you will be good enough to stay here and find out from this man just how this railroad ought to be run, I will go to bed. He can tell you; the microbe seems to be working in his mind right now," said McCloud, slamming down the roll-top of his desk. And with Lance Dunning glaring at him, somewhat speechless, he put on his hat and walked out of the room.

It was but one of many disagreeable incidents due to the loss of the bridge. Complications arising from the tie-up followed him at every turn. It seemed as if he could not get away from trouble following trouble. After forty hours further of toil, relieved by four hours of sleep, McCloud found himself, rather dead than alive, back at Medicine Bend and in the little dining-room at Marion's. Coming in at the cottage door on Fort Street, he dropped into a chair. The cottage rooms were empty. He heard Marion's voice in the front shop; she was engaged with a customer. Putting his head on the table to wait a moment, nature asserted itself and McCloud fell asleep. He woke hearing a voice that he had heard in dreams. Perhaps no other voice could have wakened him, for he slept for a few minutes a death-like sleep. At all events, Dicksie Dunning was in the front room and McCloud heard her. She was talking with Marion about the burning of Smoky Creek Bridge.

"Every one is talking about it yet," Dicksie was saying. "If I had lost my best friend I couldn't have felt worse; you know, my father built it. I rode over there the day of the fire, and down into the creek, so I could look up where it stood. I never realized before how high and how long it was; and when I remembered how proud father always was of his work there—Cousin Lance has often told me—I sat down right on the ground and cried. Really, the ruins were the most pathetic thing you ever saw, Marion, with great clouds of smoke rolling up from the canyon that day; the place looked so lonely when I rode away that every time I turned to look back my eyes filled with tears. Poor daddy! I am almost glad he didn't live to see it. How times have changed in railroading, haven't they? Mr. Sinclair was over just the other night, and he said if they kept using this new coal in the engines they would burn up everything on the division. Do you know, I have been waiting in town three or four hours now for Cousin Lance? I feel almost like a tramp. He is coming from the West with the stock train. It was due here hours ago, but they never seem to know when anything is to get here the way things are run on the railroad now. I want to give Cousin Lance some mail before he goes through."

"The passenger trains crossed the creek over the switchbacks hours ago, and they say the emergency grades are first-rate," said Marion Sinclair, on the defensive. "The stock trains must have followed right along. Your cousin is sure to be here pretty soon. Probably Mr. McCloud will know which train he is on, and Mr. Lee telephoned that Mr. McCloud would be over here at three o'clock for his dinner. He ought to be here now."

"Oh, dear, then I must go!"

"But he can probably tell you just when your cousin will be in."

"I wouldn't meet him for worlds!"

"You wouldn't? Why, Mr. McCloud is delightful."

"Oh, not for worlds, Marion! You know he is discharging all the best of the older men, the men that have made the road everything it is, and of course we can't help sympathizing with them over our way. For my part, I think it is terrible, after a man has given all of his life to building up a railroad, that he should be thrown out to starve in that way by new managers, Marion."

McCloud felt himself shrinking within his weary clothes. Resentment seemed to have died. He felt too exhausted to undertake controversy, even if it were to be thought of, and it was not.

Nothing further was needed to complete his humiliation. He picked up his hat and with the thought of getting out as quietly as he had come in. In rising he swept a tumbler at his elbow from the table. The glass broke on the floor, and Marion exclaimed, "What is that?" and started for the dining-room.

It was too late to get away. McCloud stepped to the portieres of the trimming-room door and pushed them aside. Marion stood with a hat in her hand, and Dicksie, sitting at the table, was looking directly at the intruder as he appeared in the doorway. She saw in him her pleasant acquaintance of the wreck at Smoky Creek, whose name she had not learned. In her surprise she rose to her feet, and Marion spoke quickly: "Oh, Mr. McCloud, is it you? I did not hear you come in."

Dicksie's face, which had lighted, became a spectacle of confusion after she heard the name. McCloud, conscious of the awkwardness of his position and the disorder of his garb, said the worst thing at once: "I fear I am inadvertently overhearing your conversation."

He looked at Dicksie as he spoke, chiefly because he could not help it, and this made matters hopeless.

She flushed more deeply. "I cannot conceive why our conversation should invite a listener."

Her words did not, of course, help to steady him. "I tried to get away," he stammered, "when I realized I was a part of it."

"In any event," she exclaimed hastily, "if you are Mr. McCloud I think it unpardonable to do anything like that!"

"I am Mr. McCloud, though I should rather be anybody else; and I am sorry that I was unable to help hearing what was said; I——"

"Marion, will you be kind enough to give me my gloves?" said Dicksie, holding out her hand.

Marion, having tried once or twice to intervene, stood between the firing-lines in helpless amazement. Her exclamations were lost; the two before her gave no heed to ordinary intervention.

McCloud flushed at being cut off, but he bowed. "Of course," he said, "if you will listen to no explanation I can only withdraw."



He went back, dinnerless, to work all night; but the switchbacks were doing capitally, and all night long, trains were rolling through Medicine Bend from the West in an endless string. In the morning the yard was nearly cleared of westbound tonnage. Moreover, the mail in the morning brought compensation. A letter came from Glover telling him not to worry himself to death over the tie-up, and one came from Bucks telling him to make ready for the building of the Crawling Stone Line.

McCloud told Rooney Lee that if anybody asked for him to report him dead, and going to bed slept twenty-four hours.



CHAPTER X

SWEEPING ORDERS

The burning of Smoky Creek Bridge was hardly off the minds of the mountain men when a disaster of a different sort befell the division. In the Rat Valley east of Sleepy Cat the main line springs between two ranges of hills with a dip and a long supported grade in each direction. At the point of the dip there is a switch from which a spur runs to a granite quarry. The track for two miles is straight and the switch-target and lights are seen easily from either direction save at one particular moment of the day—a moment which is in the valley neither quite day nor quite night. Even this disadvantage occurs to trains east-bound only, because due to unusual circumstances. When the sun in a burst of dawning glory shows itself above the crest of the eastern range an engineman, east-bound, may be so blinded by the rays streaming from the rising sun that he cannot see the switch at the foot of the grade. For these few moments he is helpless should anything be wrong with the quarry switch. Down this grade, a few weeks after the Smoky Creek fire, came a double-headed stock train from the Short Line with forty cars of steers. The switch stood open; this much was afterward abundantly proved. The train came down the grade very fast to gain speed for the hill ahead of it. The head engineman, too late, saw the open target. He applied the emergency air, threw his engine over, and whistled the alarm. The mightiest efforts of a dozen engines would have been powerless to check the heavy train. On the quarry track stood three flat cars loaded with granite blocks for the abutment of the new Smoky Creek Bridge. On a sanded track, rolling at thirty miles an hour and screaming in the clutches of the burning brakes, the heavy engines struck the switch like an avalanche, reared upon the granite-laden flats, and with forty loads of cattle plunged into the canyon below; not a car remained on the rails. The head brakeman, riding in the second cab, was instantly killed, and the engine crews, who jumped, were badly hurt.

The whole operating department of the road was stirred. What made the affair more dreadful was that it had occurred on the time of Number Six, the east-bound passenger train, held that morning at Sleepy Cat by an engine failure. Glover came to look into the matter. The testimony of all tended to one conclusion—that the quarry switch had been thrown at some time between four-thirty and five o'clock that morning. Inferences were many: tramps during the early summer had been unusually troublesome and many of them had been rigorously handled by trainmen; robbery might have been a motive, as the express cars on train Number Six carried heavy specie shipments from the coast.

Yet a means so horrible as well as so awkward and ineffective seemed unlike mountain outlaws. Strange men from headquarters were on the ground as soon as they could reach the wreck, men from the special-service department, and a stock inspector who greatly resembled Whispering Smith was on the ground looking into the brands of the wrecked cattle. Glover was much in consultation with him, and there were two or three of the division men, such as Anderson, Young, McCloud, and Lee, who knew him but could answer no inquiries concerning his long stay at the wreck.

A third and more exciting event soon put the quarry wreck into the background. Ten days afterward an east-bound passenger train was flagged in the night at Sugar Buttes, twelve miles west of Sleepy Cat. When the heavy train slowed up, two men boarded the engine and with pistols compelled the engineman to cut off the express cars and pull them to the water-tank a mile east of the station. Three men there in waiting forced the express car, blew open the safe, and the gang rode away half an hour later loaded with gold coin and currency.

Had a stick of dynamite been exploded under the Wickiup there could not have been more excitement at Medicine Bend. Within three hours after the news reached the town a posse under Sheriff Van Horn, with a carload of horseflesh and fourteen guns, was started for Sugar Buttes. The trail led north and the pursuers rode until nearly nightfall. They crossed Dutch Flat and rode single file into a wooded canyon, where they came upon traces of a camp-fire. Van Horn, leading, jumped from his horse and thrust his hand into the ashes; they were still warm, and he shouted to his men to ride up. As he called out, a rifle cracked from the box-elder trees ahead of him. The sheriff fell, shot through the head, and a deputy springing from his saddle to pick him up was shot in precisely the same way, through the head. The riderless horses bolted; the posse, thrown into a panic, did not fire a shot, and for an hour dared not ride back for the bodies. After dark they got the two dead men and at midnight rode with them into Sleepy Cat.

When the news reached McCloud he was talking with Bucks over the wires. Bucks had got into headquarters at the river late that night, and was getting details from McCloud of the Sugar Buttes robbery when the superintendent sent him the news of the killing of Van Horn and the deputy. In the answer that Bucks sent came a name new to the wires of the mountain division and rarely seen even in special correspondence, but Hughie Morrison, who took the message, never forgot that name; indeed, it was soon to be thrown sharply into the spotlight of the mountain railroad stage. Hughie repeated the message to get it letter-perfect; to handle stuff at the Wickiup signed "J. S. B." was like handling diamonds on a jeweller's tongs or arteries on a surgeon's hook; and, in truth, Bucks's words were the arteries and pulse-beat of the mountain division. Hughie handed the message to McCloud and stood by while the superintendent read:

Whispering Smith is due in Cheyenne to-morrow. Meet him at the Wickiup Sunday morning; he has full authority. I have told him to get these fellows, if it takes all the money in the treasury, and not to stop till he cleans them out of the Rocky Mountains. J. S. B.



CHAPTER XI

AT THE THREE HORSES

"Clean them out of the Rocky Mountains; that is a pretty good contract," mused the man in McCloud's office on Sunday morning. He sat opposite McCloud in Bucks's old easy chair and held in his hand Bucks's telegram. As he spoke he raised his eyebrows and settled back, but the unusual depth of the chair and the shortness of his legs left his chin helpless in his black tie, so that he was really no better off except that he had changed one position of discomfort for another. "I wonder, now," he mused, sitting forward again as McCloud watched him, "I wonder—you know, George, the Andes are, strictly speaking, a part of the great North American chain—whether Bucks meant to include the South American ranges in that message?" and a look of mildly good-natured anticipation overspread his face.

"Suppose you wire him and find out," suggested McCloud.

"No, George, no! Bucks never was accurate in geographical expressions. Besides, he is shifty and would probably cover his tracks by telling me to report progress when I got to Panama."

A clerk opened the outer office door. "Mr. Dancing asks if he can see you, Mr. McCloud."

"Tell him I am busy."

Bill Dancing, close on the clerk's heels, spoke for himself. "I know it, Mr. McCloud, I know it!" he interposed urgently, "but let me speak to you just a moment." Hat in hand, Bill, because no one would knock him down to keep him out, pushed into the room. "I've got a plan," he urged, "in regards to getting these hold-ups."

"How are you, Bill?" exclaimed the man in the easy chair, jumping hastily to his feet and shaking Dancing's hand. Then quite as hastily he sat down, crossed his knees violently, stared at the giant lineman, and exclaimed, "Let's have it!"

Dancing looked at him in silence and with some contempt. The trainmaster had broken in on the superintendent for a moment and the two were conferring in an undertone. "What might your name be, mister?" growled Dancing, addressing with some condescension the man in the easy chair.

The man waved his hand as if it were immaterial and answered with a single word: "Forgotten!"

"How's that?"

"Forgotten!"

"That's a blamed queer name——"

"On the contrary, it's a very common name and that is just the trouble: it's forgotten."

"What do you want, Bill?" demanded McCloud, turning to the lineman.

"Is this man all right?" asked Dancing, jerking his thumb toward the easy chair.

"I can't say; you'll have to ask him."

"I'll save you that trouble, Bill, by saying that if it's for the good of the division I am all right. Death to its enemies, damme, say I. Now go on, William, and give us your plan in regards to getting these hold-ups—yes."

Dancing looked from one man to the other, but McCloud appeared preoccupied and his visitor seemed wholly serious. "I don't want to take too much on myself—" Bill began, speaking to McCloud.

"You look as if you could carry a fair-sized load, William, provided it bore the right label," suggested the visitor, entirely amiable.

"—But nobody has felt worse over this thing and recent things——"

"Recent things," echoed the easy chair.

"—happening to the division that I have. Now I know there's been trouble on the division——"

"I think you are putting it too strong there, Bill, but let it pass."

"—there's been differences; misunderstandings and differences. So I says to myself maybe something might be done to get everybody together and bury the differences, like this: Murray Sinclair is in town; he feels bad over this thing, like any railroad man would. He's a mountain man, quick as the quickest with a gun, a good trailer, rides like a fiend, and can catch a streak of sunshine travelling on a pass. Why not put him at the head of a party to run 'em down?"

"Run 'em down," nodded the stranger.

"Differences such as be or may be——"

"May be——"

"Being discussed when he brings 'em in dead or alive, and not before. That's what I said to Murray Sinclair, and Murray Sinclair is ready for to take hold this minute and do what he can if he's asked. I told him plain I could promise no promises; that, I says, lays with George McCloud. Was I right, was I wrong? If I was wrong, right me; if I was right, say so. All I want is harmony."

The new man nodded approval. "Bully, Bill!" he exclaimed heartily.

"Mister," protested the lineman, with simple dignity, "I'd just a little rather you wouldn't bully me nor Bill me."

"All in good part, Bill, as you shall see; all in good part. Now before Mr. McCloud gives you his decision I want to be allowed a word. Your idea looks good to me. At first I may say it didn't. I am candid; I say it didn't. It looked like setting a dog to catch his own tail. Mind you, I don't say it can't be done. A dog can catch his own tail; they do do it," proclaimed the stranger in a low and emphatic undertone. "But," he added, moderating his utterance, "when they succeed—who gets anything out of it but the dog?" Bill Dancing, somewhat clouded and not deeming it well to be drawn into any damaging admissions, looked around for a cigar, and not seeing one, looked solemnly at the new Solomon and stroked his beard. "That is how it looked to me at first," concluded the orator; "but, I say now it looks good to me, and as a stranger I may say I favor it."

Dancing tried to look unconcerned and seemed disposed to be friendly. "What might be your line of business?"

"Real estate. I am from Chicago. I sold everything that was for sale in Chicago and came out here to stake out the Spanish Sinks and the Great Salt Lake—yes. It's drying up and there's an immense opportunity for claims along the shore. I've been looking into it."

"Into the claims or into the lake?" asked McCloud.

"Into both; and, Mr. McCloud, I want to say I favor Mr. Dancing's idea, that's all. Right wrongs no man. Let Bill see Sinclair and see what they can figure out." And having spoken, the stranger sank back and tried to look comfortable.

"I'll talk with you later about it, Bill," said McCloud briefly.

"Meantime, Bill, see Sinclair and report," suggested the stranger.

"It's as good as done," announced Dancing, taking up his hat, "and, Mr. McCloud, might I have a little advance for cigars and things?"

"Cigars and ammunition—of course. See Sykes, William, see Sykes; if the office is closed go to his house—and see what will happen to you—" added the visitor in an aside, "and tell him to telephone up to Mr. McCloud for instruction," he concluded unceremoniously.

"Now why do you want to start Bill on a fool business like that?" asked McCloud, as Bill Dancing took long steps from the room toward the office of Sykes, the cashier.

"He didn't know me to-day, but he will to-morrow," said the stranger reflectively. "Gods, what I've seen that man go through in the days of the giants! Why, George, this will keep the boys talking, and they have to do something. Spend the money; the company is making it too fast anyway; they moved twenty-two thousand cars one day last week. Personally I'm glad to have a little fun out of it; it will be hell pure and undefiled long before we get through. This will be an easy way of letting Sinclair know I am here. Bill will report me confidentially to him as a suspicious personage."

To the astonishment of Sykes, the superintendent confirmed over the telephone Dancing's statement that he was to draw some expense money. Bill asked for twenty-five dollars. Sykes offered him two, and Bill with some indignation accepted five. He spent all of this in trying to find Sinclair, and on the strength of his story to the boys borrowed five dollars more to prosecute the search. At ten o'clock that night he ran into Sinclair playing cards in the big room above the Three Horses.

The Three Horses still rears its hospitable two-story front in Fort Street, the only one of the Medicine Bend gambling houses that goes back to the days of '67; and it is the boast of its owners that since the key was thrown away, thirty-nine years ago, its doors have never been closed, night or day, except once for two hours during the funeral of Dave Hawk. Bill Dancing drew Sinclair from his game and told him of the talk with McCloud, touching it up with natural enthusiasm. The bridgeman took the news in high good humor and slapped Dancing on the back. "Did you see him alone, Bill?" asked Sinclair, with interest. "Come over here, come along. I want you to meet a good friend. Here, Harvey, shake hands with Bill Dancing. Bill, this is old Harvey Du Sang, meanest man in the mountains to his enemies and the whitest to his friends—eh, Harvey?"

Harvey seemed uncommunicative. Studying his hand, he asked in a sour way whether it was a jackpot, and upon being told that it was not, pushed forward some chips and looked stupidly up—though Harvey was by no means stupid. "Proud to know you, sir," said Bill, bending frankly as he put out his hand. "Proud to know any friend of Murray Sinclair's. What might be your business?"

Again Du Sang appeared abstracted. He looked up at the giant lineman, who, in spite of his own size and strength, could have crushed him between his fingers, and hitched his chair a little, but got no further toward an answer and paid no attention whatever to Bill's extended hand.

"Cow business, Bill," interposed Sinclair. "Where? Why, up near the park, Bill, up near the park. Bill is an old friend of mine, Harvey. Shake hands with George Seagrue, Bill, and you know Henry Karg—and old Stormy Gorman—well, I guess you know him too," exclaimed Sinclair, introducing the other players. "Look here a minute, Harvey."

Harvey, much against his inclination, was drawn from the table and retired with Sinclair and Dancing to an empty corner, where Dancing told his story again. At the conclusion of it Harvey rather snorted. Sinclair asked questions. "Was anybody else there when you saw McCloud, Bill?"

"One man," answered Bill impressively.

"Who?"

"A stranger to me."

"A stranger? What did he look like?"

"Slender man and kind of odd talking, with a sandy mustache."

"Hear his name?"

"He told me his name, but it's skipped me, I declare. He's kind of dark-complected like."

"Stranger, eh?" mused Du Sang; his eyes were wandering over the room.

"Slender man," repeated Bill, "but I didn't take much notice of him. Said he was in the real-estate business."

"In the real-estate business? And did he sit there while you talked this over with the college guy?" muttered Du Sang.

"He is all right, boys, and he said you'd know his name if I could speak it," declared Bill.

"Look anything like that man standing with his hands in his pockets over there by the wheel?" asked Du Sang, turning his back carefully on a new-comer as he made the suggestion.

"Where—there? No! Yes, hold on, that's the man there now! Hold on, now!" urged Bill, struggling with the excitement of ten hours and ten dollars all in one day. "His name sounded like Fogarty."

As Dancing spoke, Sinclair's eyes riveted on the new face at the other side of the gambling-room. "Fogarty, hell!" he exclaimed, starting. "Stand right still, Du Sang; don't look around. That man is Whispering Smith."



CHAPTER XII

PARLEY

It was recalled one evening not long ago at the Wickiup that the affair with Sinclair had all taken place within a period of two years, and that practically all of the actors in the event had been together and in friendly relation on a Thanksgiving Day at the Dunning ranch not so very long before the trouble began. Dicksie Dunning was away at school at the time, and Lance Dunning was celebrating with a riding and shooting fest and a barbecue.

The whole country had been invited. Bucks was in the mountains on an inspection trip, and Bill Dancing drove him with a party of railroad men over from Medicine Bend. The mountain men for a hundred and fifty miles around were out. Gene and Bob Johnson, from Oroville and the Peace River, had come with their friends. From Williams Cache there was not only a big delegation—more of one than was really desirable—but it was led by old John Rebstock himself. When the invitation is general, lines cannot be too closely drawn. Not only was Lance Dunning something of a sport himself, but on the Long Range it is part of a stockman's creed to be on good terms with his neighbors. At a Thanksgiving Day barbecue not even a mountain sheriff would ask questions, and Ed Banks, though present, respected the holiday truce. Cowboys rode that day in the roping contest who were from Mission Creek and from Two Feather River.

Among the railroad people were George McCloud, Anderson, the assistant superintendent, Farrell Kennedy, chief of the special service, and his right-hand man, Bob Scott. In especial, Sinclair's presence at the barbecue was recalled. He had some cronies with him from among his up-country following, and was introducing his new bridge foreman, Karg, afterward known as Flat Nose, and George Seagrue, the Montana cowboy. Sinclair fraternized that day with the Williams Cache men, and it was remarked even then that though a railroad man he appeared somewhat outside the railroad circle. When the shooting matches were announced a brown-eyed railroad man was asked to enter. He had been out of the mountains for some time and was a comparative stranger in the gathering, but the Williams Cache men had not forgotten him; Rebstock, especially, wanted to see him shoot. While much of the time out of the mountains on railroad business, he was known to be closely in Bucks's counsels, and as to the mountains themselves, he was reputed to know them better than Bucks or Glover himself knew them. This was Whispering Smith; but, beyond a low-voiced greeting or an expression of surprise at meeting an old acquaintance, he avoided talk. When urged to shoot he resisted all persuasion and backed up his refusal by showing a bruise on his trigger finger. He declined even to act as judge in the contest, suggesting the sheriff, Ed Banks, for that office.

The rifle matches were held in the hills above the ranch-house, and in the contest between the ranches, for which a sweepstakes had been arranged, Sinclair entered Seagrue, who was then working for him. Seagrue shot all the morning and steadily held up the credit of the Frenchman Valley Ranch against the field. Neither continued shooting nor severe tests availed to upset Sinclair's entry, and riding back after the matches with the prize purse in his pocket, Seagrue, who was tall, light-haired, and perfectly built, made a new honor for himself on a dare from Stormy Gorman, the foreman of the Dunning ranch. Gorman, who had ridden a race back with Sinclair, was at the foot of the long hill, down which the crowd was riding, when he stopped, yelled back at Seagrue, and, swinging his hat from his head, laid it on a sloping rock beside the trail.

"You'd better not do that, Stormy," said Sinclair. "Seagrue will put a hole through it."

Gorman laughed jealously. "If he can hit it, let him hit it."

At the top of the hill Seagrue had dismounted and was making ready to shoot. Whispering Smith, at his side, had halted with the party, and the cowboy knelt to adjust his sights. On his knee he turned to Whispering Smith, whom he seemed to know, with an abrupt question: "How far do you call it?"

The answer was made without hesitation: "Give it seven hundred and fifty yards, Seagrue."

The cowboy made ready, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. The slug passed through the crown of the hat, and a shower of splinters flying back from the rock blew the felt into a sieve. Gorman's curiosity, as well as that of everybody else, seemed satisfied, and, gaining the level ground, the party broke into a helter-skelter race for the revolver-shooting.

In this Sinclair himself had entered, and after the early matches found only one troublesome contestant—Du Sang from the Cache, who was present under Rebstock's wing. After Sinclair and Du Sang had tied in test after test at shooting out of the saddle, Whispering Smith, who lost sight of nothing in the gun-play, called for a pack of cards, stripped the aces from the deck, and had a little conference with the judge. The two contestants, Sinclair and Du Sang, were ordered back thirty-five paces on their horses, and the railroad man, walking over to the targets, held out between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand the ace of clubs. The man that should first spot the pip out of the card was to take the prize, a Cheyenne saddle. Sinclair shot, and his horse, perfectly trained, stood like a statue. The card flew from Smith's hand, but the bullet had struck the ace almost an inch above the pip, and a second ace was held out for Du Sang. As he raised his gun his horse moved. He spurred angrily, circled quickly about, halted, and instantly fired. It was not alone that his bullet cut the shoulder of the club pip on the card: the whole movement, beginning with the circling dash of the horse under the spur, the sudden halt, and the instantly accurate aim, raised a quick, approving yell for the new-comer. The signal was given for Sinclair, and a third ace went up. In the silence Sinclair, with deliberate care, brought his gun down on the card, fired, and cut the pip cleanly from the white field. Du Sang was urged to shoot again, but his horse annoyed him and he would not.

With a little speech the prize was given by Ed Banks to Sinclair. "Here's hoping your gun will never be trained on me, Murray," smiled the modest sheriff.

Sinclair responded in high humor. He had every reason to feel good. His horses had won the running races, and his crowd had the honors with the guns. He turned on Du Sang, who sat close by in the circle of horsemen, and, holding the big prize out toward him on his knee, asked him to accept it. "It's yours by rights anyway, Du Sang," declared Sinclair. "You're a whole lot better shot than I am, every turn of the road. You've shot all day from a nervous horse."

Not only would Sinclair not allow a refusal of his gift, but, to make his generosity worth while, he dispatched Flat Nose to the corral, and the foreman rode back leading the pony that had won the half-mile dash. Sinclair cinched the prize saddle on the colt with his own hands, led the beast to Du Sang, placed the bridle in his hand, and bowed. "From a jay to a marksman," he said, saluting.

Du Sang, greatly embarrassed by the affair—he had curious pink eyes—blinked and got away to the stables. When Rebstock joined him the Williams Cache party were saddling to go home. Du Sang made no reference to his gift horse and saddle, but spoke of the man that had held the target aces. "He must be a sucker!" declared Du Sang, with an oath. "I wouldn't do that for any man on top of ground. Who is he?"

"That man?" wheezed Rebstock. "Never have no dealings with him. He plays 'most any kind of a game. He's always ready to play, and holds aces most of the time. Don't you remember my telling about the man that got Chuck Williams and hauled him out of the Cache on a buckboard? That's the man. Here, he give me this for you; it's your card." Rebstock handed Du Sang the target ace of clubs. "Why didn't you thank Murray Sinclair, you mule?"

Du Sang, whose eyelashes were white, blinked at the hole through the card, and looked around as he rode back across the field for the man that had held it; but Whispering Smith had disappeared.

He was at that moment walking past the barbecue pit with George McCloud. "Rebstock talks a great deal about your shooting, Gordon," said McCloud to his companion.

"He and I once had a little private match of our own. It was on the Peace River, over a bunch of steers. Since then we have got along very well, though he has an exaggerated opinion of my ability. Rebstock's worst failing is his eyesight. It bothers him in seeing brands. He's liable to brand a critter half a dozen times. That albino, Du Sang, is a queer duck. Sinclair gave him a fine horse. There they go." The Cache riders were running their horses and whooping across the creek. "What a hand a State's prison warden at Fort City could draw out of that crowd, George!" continued McCloud's companion. "If the right man should get busy with that bunch of horses Sinclair has got together, and organize those up-country fellows for mischief, wouldn't it make things hum on the mountain division for a while?"

McCloud did not meet the host, Lance Dunning, that day, nor since the day of the barbecue had Du Sang or Sinclair seen Whispering Smith until the night Du Sang spotted him near the wheel in the Three Horses. Du Sang at once drew out of his game and left the room. Sinclair in the meantime had undertaken a quarrelsome interview with Whispering Smith.

"I supposed you knew I was here," said Smith to him amiably. "Of course I don't travel in a private car or carry a bill-board on my back, but I haven't been hiding."

"The last time we talked," returned Sinclair, measuring words carefully, "you were going to stay out of the mountains."

"I should have been glad to, Murray. Affairs are in such shape on the division now that somebody had to come, so they sent for me."

The two men were sitting at a table. Whispering Smith was cutting and leisurely mixing a pack of cards.

"Well, so far as I'm concerned, I'm out of it," Sinclair went on after a pause, "but, however that may be, if you're back here looking for trouble there's no reason, I guess, why you can't find it."

"That's not it. I'm not here looking for trouble; I'm here to fix this thing up. What do you want?"

"Not a thing."

"I'm willing to do anything fair and right," declared Whispering Smith, raising his voice a little above the hum of the rooms.

"Fair and right is an old song."

"And a good one to sing in this country just now. I'll do anything I can to adjust any grievance, Murray. What do you want?"

Sinclair for a moment was silent, and his answer made plain his unwillingness to speak at all. "There never would have been a grievance if I'd been treated like a white man." His eyes burned sullenly. "I've been treated like a dog."

"That is not it."

"That is it," declared Sinclair savagely, "and they'll find it's it."

"Murray, I want to say only this—only this to make things clear. Bucks feels that he's been treated worse than a dog."

"Then let him put me back where I belong."

"It's a little late for that, Murray; a little late," said Smith gently. "Shouldn't you rather take good money and get off the division? Mind you, I say good money, Murray—and peace."

Sinclair answered without the slightest hesitation: "Not while that man McCloud is here."

Whispering Smith smiled. "I've got no authority to kill McCloud."

"There are plenty of men in the mountains that don't need any."

"But let's start fair," urged Whispering Smith softly. He leaned forward with one finger extended in confidence. "Don't let us have any misunderstanding on the start. Let McCloud alone. If he is killed—now I'm speaking fair and open and making no threats, but I know how it will come out—there will be nothing but killing here for six months. We will make just that memorandum on McCloud. Now about the main question. Every sensible man in the world wants something."

"I know men that have been going a long time without what they wanted."

Smith flushed and nodded. "You needn't have said that, but no matter. Every sensible man wants something Murray. This is a big country. There's a World's Fair running somewhere all the time in it. Why not travel a little? What do you want?"

"I want my job, or I want a new superintendent here."

"Just exactly the two things, and, by heavens! the only two, I can't manage. Come once more and I'll meet you."

"No!" Sinclair rose to his feet. "No—damn your money! This is my home. The high country is my country; it's where my friends are."

"It's filled with your friends; I know that. But don't put your trust in your friends. They will stay by you, I know; but once in a long while there will be a false friend, Murray, one that will sell you—remember that."

"I stay."

Whispering Smith looked up in admiration. "I know you're game. It isn't necessary for me to say that to you. But think of the fight you are going into against this company. You can worry them; you've done it. But a bronco might as well try to buck a locomotive as for one man or six or six hundred to win out in the way you are playing."

"I will look out for my friends; others—" Sinclair hitched his belt and paused, but Whispering Smith, cutting and running the cards, gave no heed. His eyes were fixed on the green cloth under his fingers. "Others—" repeated Sinclair.

"Others?" echoed Whispering Smith good-naturedly.

"May look out for themselves."

"Of course, of course! Well, if this is the end of it, I'm sorry."

"You will be sorry if you mix in a quarrel that is none of yours."

"Why, Murray, I never had a quarrel with a man in my life."

"You are pretty smooth, but you can't drive me out of this country. I know how well you'd like to do it; and, take notice, there's one trail you can't cross even if you stay here. I suppose you understand that."

Smith felt his heart leap. He sat in his chair turning the pack slowly, but with only one hand now; the other hand was free. Sinclair eyed him sidewise. Smith moistened his lips and when he replied spoke slowly: "There is no need of dragging any allusion to her into it. For that matter, I told Bucks he should have sent any man but me. If I'm in the way, Sinclair, if my presence here is all that stands in the way, I'll go back and stay back as before, and send any one else you like or Bucks likes. Are you willing to say that I stand in the way of a settlement?"

Sinclair sat down and put his hands on the table. "No; your matter and mine is another affair. All I want between you and me is fair and right."

Whispering Smith's eyes were on the cards. "You've always had it."

"Then keep away from her."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Then don't tell me."

"I'm not telling you. You will do as you please; so will I. I left here because Marion asked me to. I am here now because I have been sent here. It is in the course of my business. I have my living to earn and my friends to protect. Don't dictate to me, because it would be of no use."

"Well, you know now how to get into trouble."

"Every one knows that; few know how to keep out."

"You can't lay your finger on me at any turn of the road."

"Not if you behave yourself."

"And you can't bully me."

"Surely not. No hard feelings, Murray. I came for a friendly talk, and if it's all the same to you I'll watch this wheel awhile and then go over to the Wickiup. I leave first—that's understood, I hope—and if your pink-eyed friend is waiting outside tell him there is nothing doing, will you, Murray? Who is the albino, by the way? You don't know him? I think I do. Fort City, if I remember. Well, good-night, Murray."

It was after twelve o'clock and the room had filled up. Roulette-balls were dropping, and above the faro-table the extra lights were on. The dealers, fresh from supper, were putting things in order for the long trick.

At the Wickiup Whispering Smith found McCloud in the office signing letters. "I can do nothing with him," said Smith, drawing down a window-shade before he seated himself to detail his talk with Sinclair. "He wants a fight."

McCloud put down his pen. "If I am the disturber it would be better for me to get out."

"That would be hauling down the flag across the whole division. It is too late for that. If he didn't centre the fight on you he would centre it somewhere else. The whole question is, who is going to run this division, Sinclair and his gang or the company? and it is as easy to meet them on one point as another. I know of no way of making this kind of an affair pleasant. I am going to do some riding, as I told you. Kennedy is working up through the Deep Creek country, and has three men with him. I shall ride toward the Cache and meet him somewhere near South Mission Pass."

"Gordon, would it do any good to ask a few questions?"

"Ask as many as you like, my dear boy, but don't be disappointed if I can't answer them. I can look wise, but I don't know anything. You know what we are up against. This fellow has grown a tiger among the wolves, and he has turned the pack loose on us. One thing I ask you to do. Don't expose yourself at night. Your life isn't worth a coupling-pin if you do."

McCloud raised his hand. "Take care of yourself. If you are murdered in this fight I shall know I got you in and that I am to blame."

"And suppose you were?" Smith had risen from his chair. He had few mannerisms, and recalling the man the few times I have seen him, the only impression he has left on me is that of quiet and gentleness. "Suppose you were?" He was resting one arm on top of McCloud's desk. "What of it? You have done for me up here what I couldn't do, George. You have been kind to Marion when she hadn't a friend near. You have stood between him and her when I couldn't be here to do it, and when she didn't want me to—helped her when I hadn't the privilege of doing it." McCloud put up his hand in protest, but it was unheeded. "How many times it has been in my heart to kill that man. She knows it; she prays it may never happen. That is why she stays here and has kept me out of the mountains. She says they would talk about her if I lived in the same town, and I have stayed away." He threw himself back into the chair. "It's going beyond both of us now. I've kept the promise I made to her to-day to do all in my power to settle this thing without bloodshed. It will not be settled in that way, George."

"Was he at Sugar Buttes?"

"If not, his gang was there. The quick get-away, the short turn on Van Horn, killing two men to rattle the posse—it all bears Sinclair's ear-marks. He has gone too far. He has piled up plunder till he is reckless. He is crazy with greed and insane with revenge. He thinks he can gallop over this division and scare Bucks till he gets down on his knees to him. Bucks will never do it. I know him, and I tell you Bucks will never do it. He is like that man in Washington: he will fight it to the death. He would fight Sinclair if he had to come up here and meet him single-handed, but, he will never have to do it. He put you here, George, to round that man up. This is the price for your advancement, and you must pay it."

"It is all right for me to pay it, but I don't want you to pay it. Will you have a care for yourself, Gordon?"

"Will you?"

"Yes."

"You need never ask me to be careful," Smith went on. "That is my business. I asked you to watch your window-shades at night, and when I came in just now I found one up. It is you who are likely to forget, and in this kind of a game a man never forgets but once. I'll lie down on the Lincoln lounge, George."

"Get into the bed."

"No; I like the lounge, and I'm off early."

In the private room of the superintendent, provided as a sleeping apartment in the old headquarters building many years before hotel facilities reached Medicine Bend, stood the only curio the Wickiup possessed—the Lincoln lounge. When the car that carried the remains of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield was dismantled, the Wickiup fell heir to one piece of its elaborate furnishings, the lounge, and the lounge still remains as an early-day relic. Whispering Smith walked into the bedroom and disposed himself in an incredibly short time. "I've borrowed one of your pillows, George," he called out presently.

"Take both."

"One's enough. I hope," he went on, rolling himself like a hen into the double blanket, "the horse Kennedy has left me will be all right; he got three from Bill Dancing. Bill Dancing," he snorted, driving his nose into the pillow as if in final memorandum for the night, "he will get himself killed if he fools around Sinclair too much now."

McCloud, under a light shaded above his desk, opened a roll of blue-prints. He was going to follow a construction gang up the Crawling Stone in the morning and wanted to look over the surveys. Whispering Smith, breathing regularly, lay not far away. It was late when McCloud put away his maps, entered the inner room, and looked at his friend.

He lay like a boy asleep. On the chair beside his head he had placed his old-fashioned hunting-case watch, as big as an alarm-clock, the kind a railroad man would wind up with a spike-maul. Beside the watch he had laid his huge revolver in its worn leather scabbard. Breathing peacefully, he lay quite at his companion's mercy, and McCloud, looking down on this man who never made a mistake, never forgot a danger, and never took an unnecessary chance, thought of what between men confidence may sometimes mean. He sat a moment with folded arms on the side of his bed, studying the tired face, defenceless in the slumber of fatigue. When he turned out the light and lay down, he wondered whether, somewhere in the valley of the great river to which he was to take his men in the morning, he should encounter the slight and reckless horsewoman who had blazed so in anger when he stood before her at Marion's. He had struggled against her charm too long. She had become, how or when he could not tell, not alone a pretty woman but a fascinating one—the creature of his constant thought. Already she meant more to him than all else in the world. He well knew that if called on to choose between Dicksie and all else he could only choose her. But as he drew together the curtains of thought and sleep stole in upon him, he was resolved first to have Dicksie; to have all else if he could, but, in any case, Dicksie Dunning. When he awoke day was breaking in the mountains. The huge silver watch, the low-voiced man, and the formidable six-shooter had disappeared. It was time to get up, and Marion Sinclair had promised an early breakfast.



CHAPTER XIII

THE TURN IN THE STORM

The beginning of the Crawling Stone Line marked the first determined effort under President Bucks, while undertaking the reconstruction of the system for through traffic, to develop the rich local territory tributary to the mountain division. New policies in construction dated from the same period. Glover, with an enormous capital staked for the new undertakings, gave orders to push the building every month in the year, and for the first time in mountain railroad-building winter was to be ignored. The older mountain men met the innovation as they met any departure from their traditions, with curiosity and distrust. On the other hand, the new and younger blood took hold with confidence, and when Glover called, "Yo, heave ho!" at headquarters, they bent themselves clear across the system for a hard pull together.

McCloud, resting the operating on the shoulders of his assistant Anderson, devoted himself wholly to forwarding the construction plans, and his first clash over winter road-building in the Rockies came with his own right-hand man, Mears. McCloud put in a switch below Piedmont, opened a material-yard, and began track-laying toward the lower Crawling Stone Valley, when Mears said it was time to stop work till spring. When McCloud told him he wanted track across the divide and into the lower valley by spring, Mears threw up his hands. But there was metal in the old man, and he was for orders all the time. He kept up a running fire of protests and forebodings about the danger of exposing men during the winter season, but stuck to his post. Glover sent along the men, and although two out of every three deserted the day after they arrived, Mears kept a force in hand, and crowded the track up the new grade as fast as the ties and steel came in, working day in and day out with one eye on the clouds and one on the tie-line and hoping every day for orders to stop.

December slipped away to Christmas with the steel still going down and the disaffected element among the railroad men at Medicine Bend waiting for disaster. The spectacle of McCloud handling a flying column on the Crawling Stone work in the face of the most treacherous weather in the mountain year was one that brought out constant criticism of him among Sinclair's sympathizers and friends, and while McCloud laughed and pushed ahead on the work, they waited only for his discomfiture. Christmas Day found McCloud at the front, with men still very scarce, but Mears's gang at work and laying steel. The work train was in charge of Stevens, the freight conductor, who had been set back after the Smoky Creek wreck and was slowly climbing back to position. They were working in the usual way, with the flat cars ahead pushed by the engine, the caboose coupled to the tender being on the extreme hind end of the train.

At two o'clock on Christmas afternoon, when there was not a cloud in the sky, the horizon thickened in the east. Within thirty minutes the mountains from end to end of the sky-line were lost in the sweep of a coming wind, and at three o'clock snow struck the valley like a pall. Mears, greatly disturbed, ordered the men off the grade and into the caboose. McCloud had been inspecting culverts ahead, and had started for the train when the snow drove across the valley. It blotted the landscape from sight so fast that he was glad after an anxious five minutes to regain the ties and find himself safely with his men.

But when McCloud came in the men were bordering on a panic. Mears, with his two foremen, had gone ahead to hunt McCloud up, and had passed him in the storm; it was already impossible to see, or to hear an ordinary sound ten yards away. McCloud ordered the flat cars cut off the train and the engine whistle sounded at short intervals, and, taking Stevens, buttoned his reefer and started up the grade after the three trackmen. They fired their revolvers as they went on, but the storm tossed their signals on the ears of Mears and his companions from every quarter of the compass. McCloud was standing on the last tie and planning with his companion how best to keep the grade as the two advanced, when the engine signals suddenly changed. "Now that sounds like one of Bill Dancing's games," said McCloud to his companion. "What the deuce is it, Stevens?"

Stevens, who knew a little of everything, recognized the signals in an instant and threw up his hands. "It's Morse code, Mr. McCloud, and they are in—Mears and the foremen—and us for the train as quick as the Lord will let us; that's what they're whistling."

"So much for an education, Stevens. Bully for you! Come on!"

They regained the flat cars and made their way back to the caboose and engine, which stood uncoupled. McCloud got into the cab with Dancing and Stevens. Mears, from the caboose ahead, signalled all in, and, with a whistling scream, the engine started to back the caboose to Piedmont. They had hardly more than got under full headway when a difficulty became apparent to the little group around the superintendent. They were riding an unballasted track and using such speed as they dared to escape from a situation that had become perilous. But the light caboose, packed like a sardine-box with men, was dancing a hornpipe on the rail-joints. McCloud felt the peril, and the lurching of the car could be seen in the jerk of the engine tender to which it was coupled. Apprehensive, he crawled back on the coal to watch the caboose himself, and stayed long enough to see that the rapidly drifting snow threatened to derail the outfit any minute. He got back to the cab and ordered a stop. "This won't do!" said he to Stevens and the engineman. "We can't back that caboose loaded with men through this storm. We shall be off the track in five minutes."

"Try it slow," suggested Stevens.

"If we had the time," returned McCloud; "but the snow is drifting on us. We've got to make a run for it if we ever get back, and we must have the engine in front of that way car with her pilot headed for the drifts. Let's look at things."

Dancing and Stevens, followed by McCloud, dropped out of the gangway. Mears opened the caboose door and the four men went forward to inspect the track and the trucks. In the lee of the caboose a council was held. The roar of the wind was like the surge of many waters, and the snow had whitened into storm. They were ten miles from a habitation, and, but for the single track they were travelling, might as well have been a hundred miles so far as reaching a place of safety was concerned. They were without food, with a caboose packed with men on their hands, and they realized that their supply of fuel for either engine or caboose was perilously slender.

"Get your men ready with their tools, Pat," said McCloud to Mears.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to turn the train around and put the nose of the engine into it."

"Turn the train around—why, yes, that would make it easy. I'd be glad to see it turned around. But where's your turntable, Mr. McCloud?" asked Mears.

"How are you going to turn your train around on a single track?" asked Stevens darkly.

"I'm going to turn the track around. I know about where we are, I think. There's a little stretch just beyond this curve where the grade is flush with the ground. Ask your engineman to run back very slowly and watch for the bell-rope. I'll ride on the front platform of the caboose till we get to where we want to go to work. Lose no time, Pat; tell your men it's now or never. If we are caught here we may stay till they carry us home, and the success of this little game depends on having everything ready and working quick."

Stevens, who stayed close to McCloud, pulled the cord within five minutes, and before the caboose had stopped the men were tumbling out of it. McCloud led Mears and his foreman up the track. They tramped a hundred yards back and forth, and, with steel tapes for safety lines, swung a hundred feet out on each side of the track to make sure of the ground. "This will do," announced McCloud; "you waited here half a day for steel a week ago; I know the ground. Break that joint, Pat." He pointed to the rail under his foot. "Pass ahead with the engine and car about a thousand feet," he said to the conductor, "and when I give you a signal back up slow and look out for a thirty-degree curve—without any elevation, either. Get out all your men with lining-bars."

The engine and caboose faded in the blur of the blizzard as the break was made in the track. "Take those bars and divide your men into batches of ten with foremen that can make signs, if they can't talk English," directed McCloud. "Work lively now, and throw this track to the south!"

Pretty much everybody—Japs, Italians, and Greeks—understood the game they were playing. McCloud said afterward he would match his Piedmont hundred in making a movable Y against any two hundred experts Glover could pick; they had had the experience, he added, when the move meant their last counter in the game of mountain life or death. The Piedmont "hundred," to McCloud's mind, were after that day past masters in the art of track-shifting. Working in a driving cloud of grit and snow, the ignorant, the dull, and the slow rose to the occasion. Bill Dancing, Pat Mears and his foreman, and Stevens moved about in the driving snow like giants. The howling storm rang with the shouting of the foremen, the guttural cries of the Japs, and the clank of the lining-bars as rail-length after rail-length of the heavy track was slued bodily from the grade alignment and swung around in a short curve to a right angle out on the open ground.

McCloud at last gave the awaited signal, and, with keen-eyed, anxious men watching every revolution of the cautious driving-wheels, the engine, hissing and pausing as the air-brakes went off and on, pushed the light caboose slowly out on the rough spur to its extreme end and stopped with the pilot facing the main track at right angles; but before it had reached its halting-place spike-mauls were ringing at the fish-plates where a moment before it had left the line on the curve. The track at that point was cut again, and under a long line of bars and a renewed shouting it was thrown gradually quite across the long gap in the main line, and the new joints in a very rough curve were made fast just as the engine, running now with its pilot ahead, steamed slowly around the new curve and without accident regained the regular grade. It was greeted by a screeching yell as the men climbed into the caboose, for the engine stood safely headed into the teeth of the storm for Piedmont. The ten miles to cover were now a matter of less than thirty minutes, and the construction train drew into the Piedmont yards just as the telegraph wires were heating from headquarters with orders annulling freights, ordering ploughs on outgoing engines, and battening the division hatches for a grapple with a Christmas blizzard.

No man came back better pleased than Stevens. "That man is all right," said he to Mears, nodding his head toward McCloud, as they walked up from the caboose. "That's all I want to say. Some of these fellows have been a little shy about going out with him; they've hounded me for months about stepping over his way when Sinclair and his mugs struck. I reckon I played my hand about right."



CHAPTER XIV

THE QUARREL

Spring found the construction of the valley line well advanced, and the grades nearing the lands of the Dunning ranch. Right-of-way men had been working for months with Lance Dunning, over the line, and McCloud had been called frequently into consultation to adjust the surveys to objections raised by Dicksie's cousin to the crossing of the ranch lands. Even when the proceedings had been closed, a strong current of discontent set from the managing head of the Stone Ranch. Rumors of Lance Dunning's dissatisfaction often reached the railroad people. Vague talk of an extensive irrigation scheme planned by Sinclair for the Crawling Stone Valley crept into the newspapers, and it was generally understood that Lance Dunning had expressed himself favorably to the enterprise.

Dicksie gave slight heed to matters as weighty as these. She spent much of her time on horseback, with Jim under the saddle; and in Medicine Bend, where she rode with frequency, Marion's shop became her favorite abiding-place. Dicksie ordered hats until Marion's conscience rose and she practically refused to supply any more. But the spirited controversy on this point, as on many others—Dicksie's haughtiness and Marion's restraint, quite unmoved by any show of displeasure—ended always in drawing the two closer to each other.

At home Dicksie's fancies at that time ran to chickens, and crate after crate of thoroughbreds and clutch after clutch of eggs were brought over the pass from far-away countries. But the coyotes stole the chickens and kept the hens in such a state of excitement that they could not be got to sit effectively. Nest after nest Dicksie had the mortification of seeing deserted at critical moments and left to furred prowlers of the foothills and canyons. Once she had managed to shoot a particularly bold coyote, only to be overcome with remorse at seeing its death-struggle. She gained reputation with her cousin and the men, but was ever afterward assailed with the reflection that the poor fellow might have been providing for a hungry family. Housekeeping cares rested lightly on Dicksie. Puss had charge of the house, and her mistress concerned herself more with the setting of Jim's shoes than with the dust on the elk heads over the fireplace in the dining-room. Her Medicine Bend horseshoer stood in much greater awe of her than Puss did, because if he ever left a mistake on Jim's heels Dicksie could, and would, point it coldly out.

One March afternoon, coming home from Medicine Bend, she saw at some distance before her a party of men on horseback. She was riding a trail leading from the pass road that followed the hills, and the party was coming up the bridge road from the lower ranch. Dicksie had good eyes, and something unusual in the riding of the men was soon apparent to her. Losing and regaining sight of them at different turns in the trail, she made out, as she rode among the trees, that they were cowboys of her own ranch, and riding, under evident excitement, about a strange horseman. She recognized in the escort Stormy Gorman, the ferocious foreman of the ranch, and Denison and Jim Baugh, two of the most reckless of the men. These three carried rifles slung across their pommels, and in front of them rode the stranger.

Fragments of the breakfast-table talk of the morning came back to Dicksie's mind. The railroad graders were in the valley below the ranch, and she had heard her cousin say a good deal on a point she cared little about, as to where the railroad should cross the Stone Ranch. Approaching the fork of the two roads toward which she and the cowboys were riding, she checked her horse in the shade of a cottonwood tree, and as the party rode up the draw she saw the horseman under surveillance. It was George McCloud.

Unluckily, as she caught a glimpse of him she was conscious that he was looking at her. She bent forward to hide a momentary confusion, spoke briskly to her horse, and rode out of sight. At Marion's she had carefully avoided him. Her precipitancy at their last meeting had seemed, on reflection, unfortunate. She felt that she must have appeared to him shockingly rude, and there was in her recalling of the scene an unconfessed impression that she had been to blame. Often when Marion spoke of him, which she did without the slightest reserve and with no reference as to whether Dicksie liked it or not, it had been in Dicksie's mind to bring up the subject of the disagreeable scene, hoping that Marion would suggest a way for making some kind of unembarrassing amends. But such opportunities had slipped away unimproved, and here was the new railroad superintendent, whom their bluff neighbor Sinclair never referred to other than as the college guy, being brought apparently as a prisoner to the Stone Ranch.

Busied with her thoughts, Dicksie rode slowly along the upper trails until a long detour brought her around the corrals and in at the back of the house. Throwing her lines to the ground, she alighted and through the back porch door made her way unobserved to her room. From the office across the big hall she heard men's voices in dispute, and she slipped into the dining-room, where she could hear and might see without being seen. The office was filled with cowboys. Lance Dunning, standing with a cigar in his hand and one leg thrown over a corner of the table, was facing McCloud, who stood before him with his hand on a chair. Lance was speaking as Dicksie looked into the room, and in curt tones: "My men were acting under my orders."

"You have no right to give such orders," McCloud said distinctly, "nor to detain me, nor to obstruct our free passage along the right of way you have agreed to convey to us under our survey."

"Damn your survey! I never had a plat of any such survey. I don't recognize any such survey. And if your right-of-way men had ever said a word about crossing the creek above the flume I never would have given you a right of way at all."

"There were never but two lines run below the creek; after you raised objection I ran them both, and both were above the flume."

"Well, you can't put a grade there. I and some of my neighbors are going to dam up that basin, and the irrigation laws will protect our rights."

"I certainly can't put a grade in below the flume, and you refuse to talk about our crossing above it."

"I certainly do."

"Why not let us cross where we are, and run a new level for your ditch that will put the flume higher up?"

"You will have to cross below the flume where it stands, or you won't cross the ranch at all."

McCloud was silent for a moment. "I am using a supported grade there for eight miles to get over the hill within a three-tenths limit. I can't drop back there. We might as well not build at all if we can't hold our grade, whereas it would be very simple to run a new line for your ditch, and my engineers will do it for you without a dollar of expense to you, Mr. Dunning."

Lance Dunning waved his hand as an ultimatum. "Cross where I tell you to cross, or keep off the Stone Ranch. Is that English?"

"It certainly is. But in matter of fact we must cross on the survey agreed on in the contract for a right-of-way deed."

"I don't recognize any contract obtained under false representations."

"Do you accuse me of false representations?"

Lance Dunning flipped the ash from his cigar. "Who are you?"

"I am just a plain, every-day civil engineer, but you must not talk false representations in any contract drawn under my hand."

"I am talking facts. Whispering Smith may have rigged the joker—I don't know. Whoever rigged it, it has been rigged all right."

"Any charge against Whispering Smith is a charge against me. He is not here to defend himself, but he needs no defence. You have charged me already with misleading surveys. I was telephoned for this morning to come over to see why you had held up our work, and your men cover me with rifles while I am riding on a public road."

"You have been warned, or your men have, to keep off this ranch. Your man Stevens cut our wires this morning——"

"As he had a perfect right to do on our right of way."

"If you think so, stranger, go ahead again!"

"Oh, no! We won't have civil war—not right away, at least. And if you and your men have threatened and browbeaten me enough for to-day, I will go."

"Don't set foot on the Stone Ranch again, and don't send any men here to trespass, mark you!"

"I mark you perfectly. I did not set foot willingly on your ranch to-day. I was dragged on it. Where the men are grading now, they will finish their work."

"No, they won't."

"What, would you drive us off land you have already deeded?"

"The first man that cuts our wires or orders them cut where they were strung yesterday will get into trouble."

"Then don't string any wires on land that belongs to us, for they will certainly come down if you do."

Lance Dunning turned in a passion. "I'll put a bullet through you if you touch a barb of Stone Ranch wire!"

Stormy Gorman jumped forward with his hand covering the grip of his six-shooter. "Yes, damn you, and I'll put another!"

"Cousin Lance!" Dicksie Dunning advanced swiftly into the room. "You are under our own roof, and you are wrong to talk in that way."

Her cousin stared at her. "Dicksie, this is no place for you!"

"It is when my cousin is in danger of forgetting he is a gentleman."

"You are interfering with what you know nothing about!" exclaimed Lance angrily.

"I know what is due to every one under this roof."

"Will you be good enough to leave this room?"

"Not if there is to be any shooting or threats of shooting that involve my cousin."

"Dicksie, leave the room!"

There was a hush. The cowboys dropped back. Dicksie stood motionless. She gave no sign in her manner that she heard the words, but she looked very steadily at her cousin. "You forget yourself!" was all she said.

"I am master here!"

"Also my cousin," murmured Dicksie evenly.

"You don't understand this matter at all!" declared Lance Dunning vehemently.

"Nothing could justify your language."

"Do you think I am going to allow this railroad company to ruin this ranch while I am responsible here? You have no business interfering, I say!"

"I think I have."

"These matters are not of your affair!"

"Not of my affair?" The listeners stood riveted. McCloud felt himself swallowing, and took a step backward with an effort as Dicksie advanced. Her hair, loosened by her ride, spread low upon her head. She stood in her saddle habit, with her quirt still in hand. "Any affair that may lead my cousin into shooting is my affair. I make it mine. This is my father's roof. I neither know nor care anything about what led to this quarrel, but the quarrel is mine now. I will not allow my cousin to plunge into anything that may cost him his life or ruin it." She turned suddenly, and her eyes fell on McCloud. "I am not willing to leave either myself or my cousin in a false position. I regret especially that Mr. McCloud should be brought into so unpleasant a scene, because he has already suffered rudeness at my own hands——"

McCloud flushed. He raised his hand slightly.

"And I am very sorry for it," added Dicksie, before he could speak. Then, turning, she withdrew from the room.

"I am sure," said McCloud slowly, as he spoke again to her cousin, "there need be no serious controversy over the right-of-way matter, Mr. Dunning. I certainly shall not precipitate any. Suppose you give me a chance to ride over the ground with you again and let us see whether we can't arrive at some conclusion?"

But Lance was angry, and nursed his wrath a long time.



CHAPTER XV

THE SHOT IN THE PASS

Dicksie walked hurriedly through the dining-room and out upon the rear porch. Her horse was standing where she had left him. Her heart beat furiously as she caught up the reins, but she sprang into the saddle and rode rapidly away. The flood of her temper had brought a disregard of consequence: it was in the glow of her eyes, the lines of her lips, and the tremor of her nostrils as she breathed long and deeply on her flying horse.

When she checked Jim she had ridden miles, but not without a course nor without a purpose. Where the roads ahead of her parted to lead down the river and over the Elbow Pass to Medicine Bend, she halted within a clump of trees almost where she had first seen McCloud. Beyond the Mission Mountains the sun was setting in a fire like that which glowed under her eyes. She could have counted her heart-beats as the crimson ball sank below the verge of the horizon and the shadows threw up the silver thread of the big river and deepened across the heavy green of the alfalfa fields. Where Dicksie sat, struggling with her bounding pulse and holding Jim tightly in, no one from the ranch or, indeed, from the up-country could pass her unseen. She was waiting for a horseman, and the sun had set but a few minutes when she heard a sharp gallop coming down the upper road from the hills.

All her brave plans, terror-stricken at the sound of the hoof-beats, fled from her utterly. She was stunned by the suddenness of the crisis. She had meant to stop McCloud and speak to him, but before she could summon her courage a tall, slender man on horseback dashed past within a few feet of her. She could almost have touched him as he flew by, and a horse less steady than Jim would have shied under her. Dicksie caught her breath. She did not know this man—she had seen only his eyes, oddly bright in the twilight as he passed—but he was not of the ranch. He must have come from the hill road, she concluded, down which she herself had just ridden. He was somewhere from the North, for he sat his horse like a statue and rode like the wind.

But the encounter nerved her to her resolve. Some leaden moments passed, and McCloud, galloping at a far milder pace toward the fork of the roads, checked his speed as he approached. He saw a woman on horseback waiting in his path.

"Mr. McCloud!"

"Miss Dunning!"

"I could not forgive myself if I waited too long to warn you that threats have been made against your life. Not of the kind you heard to-day. My cousin is not a murderer, and never could be, I am sure, in spite of his talk; but I was frightened at the thought that if anything dreadful should happen his name would be brought into it. There are enemies of yours in this country to be feared, and it is against these that I warn you. Good-night!"

"Surely you won't ride away without giving me a chance to thank you!" exclaimed McCloud. Dicksie checked her horse. "I owe you a double debt of gratitude," he added, "and I am anxious to assure you that we desire nothing that will injure your interests in any way in crossing your lands."

"I know nothing about those matters, because my cousin manages everything. It is growing late and you have a good way to go, so good-night."

"But you will allow me to ride back to the house with you?"

"Oh, no, indeed, thank you!"

"It will soon be dark and you are alone."

"No, no! I am quite safe and I have only a short ride. It is you who have far to go," and she spoke again to Jim, who started briskly.

"Miss Dunning, won't you listen just a moment? Please don't run away!" McCloud was trying to come up with her. "Won't you hear me a moment? I have suffered some little humiliation to-day; I should really rather be shot up than have more put on me. I am a man and you are a woman, and it is already dark. Isn't it for me to see you safely to the house? Won't you at least pretend I can act as an escort and let me go with you? I should make a poor figure trying to catch you on horseback——"

Dicksie nodded naively. "With that horse."

"With any horse—I know that," said McCloud, keeping at her side.

"But I can't let you ride back with me," declared Dicksie, urging Jim and looking directly at McCloud for the first time. "How could I explain?"

"Let me explain. I am famous for explaining," urged McCloud, spurring too.

"And will you tell me what I should be doing while you were explaining?" she asked.

"Perhaps getting ready a first aid for the injured."

"I feel as if I ought to run away," declared Dicksie, since she had clearly decided not to. "It will have to be a compromise, I suppose. You must not ride farther than the first gate, and let us take this trail instead of the road. Now make your horse go as fast as you can and I'll keep up."

But McCloud's horse, though not a wonder, went too fast to suit his rider, who divided his efforts between checking him and keeping up the conversation. When McCloud dismounted to open Dicksie's gate, and stood in the twilight with his hat in his hand and his bridle over his arm, he was telling a story about Marion Sinclair, and Dicksie in the saddle, tapping her knee with her bridle-rein, was looking down and past him as if the light upon his face were too bright. Before she would start away she made him remount, and he said good-by only after half a promise from her that she would show him sometime a trail to the top of Bridger's Peak, with a view of the Peace River on the east and the whole Mission Range and the park country on the north. Then she rode away at an amazing run, nodding back as he sat still holding his hat above his head.

McCloud galloped toward the pass with one determination—that he would have a horse, and a good one, one that could travel with Jim, if it cost him his salary. He exulted as he rode, for the day had brought him everything he wished, and humiliation had been swallowed up in triumph. It was nearly dark when he reached the crest between the hills. At this point the southern grade of the pass winds sharply, whence its name, the Elbow; but from the head of the pass the grade may be commanded at intervals for half a mile. Trotting down this road with his head in a whirl of excitement, McCloud heard the crack of a rifle; at the same instant he felt a sharp slap at his hat. Instinct works on all brave men very much alike. McCloud dropped forward in his saddle, and, seeking no explanation, laid his head low and spurred Bill Dancing's horse for life or death. The horse, quite amazed, bolted and swerved down the grade like a snipe, with his rider crouching close for a second shot. But no second shot came, and after another mile McCloud ventured to take off his hat and put his finger through the holes in it, though he did not stop his horse to make the examination. When they reached the open country the horse had settled into a fast, long stride that not only redeemed his reputation but relieved his rider's nerves.

When McCloud entered his office it was half-past nine o'clock, and the first thing he did before turning on the lights was to draw the window-shades. He examined the hat again, with sensations that were new to him—fear, resentment, and a hearty hatred of his enemies. But all the while the picture of Dicksie remained. He thought of her nodding to him as they parted in the saddle, and her picture blotted out all that had followed.



CHAPTER XVI

AT THE WICKIUP

Two nights later Whispering Smith rode into Medicine Bend. "I've been up around Williams Cache," he said, answering McCloud's greeting as he entered the upstairs office. "How goes it?" He was in his riding rig, just as he had come from a late supper.

When he asked for news McCloud told him the story of the trouble with Lance Dunning over the survey, and added that he had referred the matter to Glover. He told then of his unpleasant surprise when riding home afterward.

"Yes," assented Smith, looking with feverish interest at McCloud's head; "I heard about it."

"That's odd, for I haven't said a word about the matter to anybody but Marion Sinclair, and you haven't seen her."

"I heard up the country. It is great luck that he missed you."

"Who missed me?"

"The man that was after you."

"The bullet went through my hat."

"Let me see the hat."

McCloud produced it. It was a heavy, broad-brimmed Stetson, with a bullet-hole cut cleanly through the front and the back of the crown. Smith made McCloud put the hat on and describe his position when the shot was fired. McCloud stood up, and Whispering Smith eyed him and put questions.

"What do you think of it?" asked McCloud when he had done.

Smith leaned forward on the table and pushed McCloud's hat toward him as if the incident were closed. "There is no question in my mind, and there never has been, but that Stetson puts up the best hat worn on the range."

McCloud raised his eyebrows. "Why, thank you! Your conclusion clears things so. After you speak a man has nothing to do but guess."

"But, by Heaven, George," exclaimed Smith, speaking with unaccustomed fervor, "Miss Dicksie Dunning is a hummer, isn't she? That child will have the whole range going in another year. To think of her standing up and lashing her cousin in that way when he was browbeating a railroad man!"

"Where did you hear about that?"

"The whole Crawling Stone country is talking about it. You never told me you had a misunderstanding with Dicksie Dunning at Marion's. Loosen up!"

"I will loosen up in the way you do. What scared me most, Gordon, was waiting for the second shot. Why didn't he fire again?"

"Doubtless he thought he had you the first time. Any man big enough to start after you is not used to shooting twice at two hundred and fifty yards. He probably thought you were falling out of the saddle; and it was dark. I can account for everything but your reaching the pass so late. How did you spend all your time between the ranch and the foothills?"

McCloud saw there was no escape from telling of his meeting with Dicksie Dunning, of her warning, and of his ride to the gate with her. Every point brought a suppressed exclamation from Whispering Smith. "So she gave you your life," he mused. "Good for her! If you had got into the pass on time you could not have got away—the cards were stacked for you. He overestimated you a little, George; just a little. Good men make mistakes. The sport of circumstances that we are! The sport of circumstances!"

"Now tell me how you heard so much about it, Gordon, and where?"

"Through a friend, but forget it."

"Do you know who shot at me?"

"Yes."

"I think I do, too. I think it was the fellow that shot so well with the rifle at the barbecue—what was his name? He was working for Sinclair, and perhaps is yet."

"You mean Seagrue, the Montana cowboy? No, you are wrong. Seagrue is a man-killer, but a square one."

"How do you know?"

"I will tell you sometime—but this was not Seagrue."

"One of Dunning's men, was it? Stormy Gorman?"

"No, no, a very different sort! Stormy is a wind-bag. The man that is after you is in town at this minute, and he has come to stay until he finishes his job."

"The devil! That's what makes your eyes so bright, is it? Do you know him?"

"I have seen him. You may see him yourself if you want to."

"I'd like nothing better. When?"

"To-night—in thirty minutes." McCloud closed his desk. There was a rap at the door.

"That must be Kennedy," said Smith. "I haven't seen him, but I sent word for him to meet me here." The door opened and Kennedy entered the room.

"Sit down, Farrell," said Whispering Smith easily. "Ve gates?"

"How's that?"

"Wie geht es? Don't pretend you can't make out my German. He is trying to let on he is not a Dutchman," observed Whispering Smith to McCloud. "You wouldn't believe it, but I can remember when Farrell wore wooden shoes and lighted his pipe with a candle. He sleeps under a feather-bed yet. Du Sang is in town, Farrell."

"Du Sang!" echoed the tall man with mild interest as he picked up a ruler and, throwing his leg on the edge of the table, looked cheerful. "How long has Du Sang been in town? Visiting friends or doing business?"

"He is after your superintendent. He has been here since four o'clock, I reckon, and I've ridden a hard road to-day to get in in time to talk it over with him. Want to go?"

Kennedy slapped his leg with the ruler. "I always want to go, don't I?"

"Farrell, if you hadn't been a railroad man you would have made a great undertaker, do you know that?" Kennedy, slapping his leg, showed his ivory teeth. "You have such an instinct for funerals," added Whispering Smith.

"Now, Mr. Smith! Well, who are we waiting for? I'm ready," said Kennedy, taking out his revolver and examining it.

McCloud put on his new hat and asked if he should take a gun. "You are really accompanying me as my guest, George," explained Whispering Smith reproachfully. "Won't it be fun to shove this man right under Du Sang's nose and make him bat his eyes?" he added to Kennedy. "Well, put one in your pocket if you like, George, provided you have one that will go off when sufficiently urged."

McCloud opened the drawer of the table and took from it a revolver. Whispering Smith reached out his hand for the gun, examined it, and handed it back.

"You don't like it."

Smith smiled a sickly approbation. "A forty-five gun with a thirty-eight bore, George? A little light for shock; a little light. A bullet is intended to knock a man down; not necessarily to kill him, but, if possible, to keep him from killing you. Never mind, we all have our fads. Come on!"

At the foot of the stairs Whispering Smith stopped. "Now I don't know where we shall find this man, but we'll try the Three Horses." As they started down the street McCloud took the inside of the sidewalk, but Smith dropped behind and brought McCloud into the middle. They failed to find Du Sang at the Three Horses, and leaving started to round up the street. They visited many places, but each was entered in the same way. Kennedy sauntered in first and moved slowly ahead. He was to step aside only in case he saw Du Sang. McCloud in every instance followed him, with Whispering Smith just behind, amiably surprised. They spent an hour in and out of the Front Street resorts, but their search was fruitless.

"You are sure he is in town?" asked Kennedy. The three men stood deliberating in the shadow of a side street.

"Sure!" answered Whispering Smith. "Of course, if he turns the trick he wants to get away quietly. He is lying low. Who is that, Farrell?" A man passing out of the shadow of a shade tree was crossing Fort Street a hundred feet away.

"It looks like our party," whispered Kennedy. "No, stop a bit!" They drew back into the shadow. "That is Du Sang," said Kennedy; "I know his hobble."



CHAPTER XVII

A TEST

Du Sang had the sidewise gait of a wolf, and crossed the street with the choppy walk of the man out of a long saddle. Being both uncertain and quick, he was a man to slip a trail easily. He travelled around the block and disappeared among the many open doors that blazed along Hill Street. Less alert trailers than the two behind him would have been at fault; but when he entered the place he was looking for, Kennedy was so close that Du Sang could have spoken to him had he turned around.

Kennedy passed directly ahead. A moment later Whispering Smith put his head inside the door of the joint Du Sang had entered, withdrew it, and, rejoining his companions, spoke in an undertone: "A negro dive; he's lying low. Now we will keep our regular order. It's a half-basement, with a bar on the left; crap games at the table behind the screen on the right. Kennedy, will you take the rear end of the bar? It covers the whole room and the back door. George, pass in ahead of me and step just to the left of the slot machine; you've got the front door there and everything behind the screen, and I can get close to Du Sang. Look for a thinnish, yellow-faced man with a brown hat and a brown shirt—and pink eyes—shooting craps under this window. I'll shoot craps with him. Is your heart pumping, George? Never mind, this is easy! Farrell, you're first!"

The dive, badly lighted and ventilated, was counted tough among tough places. White men and colored mixed before the bar and about the tables. When Smith stepped around the screen and into the flare of the hanging lamps, Du Sang stood in the small corner below the screened street window. McCloud, though vitally interested in looking at the man that had come to town to kill him, felt his attention continually wandering back to Whispering Smith. The clatter of the rolling dice, the guttural jargon of the negro gamblers, the drift of men to and from the bar, and the clouds of tobacco smoke made a hazy background for the stoop-shouldered man with his gray hat and shabby coat, dust-covered and travel-stained. Industriously licking the broken wrapper of a cheap cigar and rolling it fondly under his forefinger, he was making his way unostentatiously toward Du Sang. Thirty-odd men were in the saloon, but only two knew what the storm centre moving slowly across the room might develop. Kennedy, seeing everything and talking pleasantly with one of the barkeepers, his close-set teeth gleaming twenty feet away, stood at the end of the bar sliding an empty glass between his hands. Whispering Smith pushed past the on-lookers to get to the end of the table where Du Sang was shooting. He made no effort to attract Du Sang's attention, and when the latter looked up he could have pulled the gray hat from the head of the man whose brown eyes were mildly fixed on Du Sang's dice; they were lying just in front of Smith. Looking indifferently at the intruder, Du Sang reached for the dice: just ahead of his right hand, Whispering Smith's right hand, the finger-tips extended on the table, rested in front of them; it might have been through accident or it might have been through design. In his left hand Smith held the broken cigar, and without looking at Du Sang he passed the wrapper again over the tip of his tongue and slowly across his lips.