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.