CHAPTER XXIV
BETWEEN GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD
ABOUT nine o’clock that night Puss ushered McCloud in from the river. Dicksie came running downstairs to meet him. “Your cousin insisted I should come up to the house for some supper,” said McCloud dryly. “I could have taken camp fare with the men. Gordon stayed there with him.”
Dicksie held his hat in her hand, and her eyes were bright in the firelight. Puss must have thought the two made a handsome couple, for she lingered, as she started for the kitchen, to look back.
“Puss,” exclaimed her mistress, “fry a chicken right away! A big one, Puss! Mr. McCloud is very hungry, I know. And be quick, do! Oh, how is the river, Mr. McCloud?”
“Behaving like a lamb. It hasn’t fallen much, but the pressure seems to be off the bank, if you know what that means?”
“You must be a magician! Things changed the minute you came!”
“The last doctor usually gets credit for the cure, you know.”
“Oh, I know all about that. Don’t you want to freshen up? Should you mind coming right to my room? Marion is in hers,” explained Dicksie, “and I am never sure of Cousin Lance’s,—he has so many boots.”
When she had disposed of McCloud she flew to the kitchen. Puss was starting after a chicken. “Take a lantern, Puss!” whispered Dicksie vehemently.
“No, indeed; dis nigger don’ need no lantern fo’ chickens, Miss Dicksie.”
“But get a good one, Puss, and make haste, do! Mr. McCloud must be starved! Where is the baking powder? I’ll get the biscuits started.”
Puss turned fiercely. “Now look-a heah, yo’ can’t make biscuits! Yo’ jes’ go se’ down wif dat young gen’m’n! Jes’ lemme lone, ef yo’ please! Dis ain’t de firs’ time I killed chickens, Miss Dicksie, an’ made biscuits. Jes’ clair out an’ se’ down! Place f’r young ladies is in de parlor! Ol’ Puss can cook supper f’r one man yet—ef she has to!”
“Oh, yes, Puss, certainly, I know, of course; only, get a nice chicken!” and with the parting admonition Dicksie, smoothing her hair wildly, hastened back to the living-room.
But the harm was done. Puss, more excited than her mistress, lost her head when she got to the chicken-yard, and with sufficiently bad results. When Dicksie ran out a few moments afterward for a glass of water for McCloud, Puss was calmly wiping her hands, and in the sink lay the quivering form of young Cæsar. Dicksie caught her favorite up by the legs and suppressed a cry. There could be no mistake. She cast a burning look on Puss. It would do no good to storm now. Dicksie only wrung her hands and returned to McCloud.
He rose in the happiest mood. He could not see what a torment Dicksie was in, and took the water without asking himself why it trembled in her hand. Her restrained manner did not worry him, for he felt that his fight at the river was won, and the prospect of fried chicken composed him. Even the long hour before Puss, calm and inviting in a white cap and apron, appeared to announce supper, passed like a dream. When Dicksie rose to lead the way to the dining-room, McCloud walked on air; the high color about her eyes intoxicated him. Not till half the fried chicken, with many compliments from McCloud, had disappeared, and the plate had gone out for the second dozen biscuits, did he notice Dicksie’s abstraction.
“I’m sure you need worry no longer about the water,” he observed reassuringly. “I think the worst of the danger is past.”
Dicksie looked at the table-cloth with wide-open eyes. “I feel sure that it is. I am no longer worrying about that.”
“It’s nothing I can do or leave undone, is it?” asked McCloud, laughing a little as he implied in his tone that she must be worrying about something.
Dicksie made a gesture of alarm. “Oh, no, no; nothing!”
“It’s a pretty good plan not to worry about anything.”
“Do you think so?”
“Why, we all thought so last night. Heavens!” McCloud drew back in his chair. “I never offered you a piece of chicken! What have I been thinking of?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t eat it anyway!” cried Dicksie.
“You wouldn’t? It is delicious. Do have a plate and a wing at least.”
“Really, I could not bear to think of it,” she said pathetically.
He spoke lower. “Something is troubling you. I have no right to a confidence, I know,” he added, taking a biscuit.
Her eyes fell to the floor. “It is nothing. Pray, don’t mind me. May I fill your cup?” she asked, looking up. “I am afraid I worry too much over what has happened and can’t be helped. Do you never do that?”
McCloud, laughing wretchedly, tore Cæsar’s last leg from his body. “No indeed. I never worry over what can’t be helped.”
They left the dining-room. Marion came down. But they had hardly seated themselves before the living-room fire when a messenger arrived with word that McCloud was wanted at the river. His chagrin at being dragged away was so apparent that Marion and Dicksie sympathized with him and laughed at him. “‘I never worry about what can’t be helped,’” Dicksie murmured.
He looked at Marion. “That’s a shot at me. You don’t want to go down, do you?” he asked ironically, looking from one to the other.
“Why, of course I’ll go down,” responded Dicksie promptly. “Marion caught cold last night, I guess, so you will excuse her, I know. I will be back in an hour, Marion, and you can toast your cold while I’m gone.”
“But you mustn’t go alone!” protested McCloud.
Dicksie lifted her chin the least bit. “I shall be going with you, shall I not? And if the messenger has gone back I shall have to guide you. You never could find your way alone.”
“But I can go,” interposed Marion, rising.
“Not at all; you can not go!” announced Dicksie. “I can protect both Mr. McCloud and myself. If he should arrive down there under the wing of two women he would never hear the last of it. I am mistress here still, I think; and I sha’n’t be leaving home, you know, to make the trip!”
McCloud looked at Marion. “I never worry over what can’t be helped—though it is dollars to cents that those fellows don’t need me down there any more than a cat needs two tails. And how will you get back?” he asked, turning to Dicksie.
“I will ride back!” returned Dicksie loftily. “But you may, if you like, help me get my horse up.”
“Are you sure you can find your way back?” persisted McCloud.
Dicksie looked at him in surprise. “Find my way back?” she echoed softly. “I could not lose it. I can ride over any part of this country at noon or at midnight, asleep or awake, with a saddle or without, with a bridle or without, with a trail or without. I’ve ridden every horse that has ever come on the Crawling Stone Ranch. I could ride when I was three years old. Find my way back?”
The messenger had gone when the two rode from the house. The sky was heavily overcast, and the wind blew such a gale from the south and west that one could hardly hear what the other said. McCloud could not have ridden from the house to the barn in the utter darkness, but his horse followed Dicksie’s. She halted frequently on the trail for him to come up with her, and after they had crossed the alfalfa fields McCloud did not care whether they ever found the path again or not. “It’s great, isn’t it?” he exclaimed, coming up to her after opening a gate in the dark. “Where are you?”
“This way,” laughed Dicksie. “Look out for the trail here. Give me your hand and let your horse have his head. If he slips, drop off quick on this side.” McCloud caught her hand. They rode for a moment in silence, the horses stepping cautiously. “All right now,” said Dicksie; “you may let go.” But McCloud kept his horse up close and clung to the warm hand. “The camp is just around the hill,” murmured Dicksie, trying to pull away. “But of course if you would like to ride in holding my hand you may!”
“No,” said McCloud, “of course not—not for worlds! But, Miss Dicksie, couldn’t we ride back to the house and ride around the other way into camp? I think the other way into the camp—say, around by the railroad bridge—would be prettier, don’t you?”
For answer she touched Jim lightly with her lines and his spring released her hand very effectively. As she did so the trail turned, and the camp-fire, whipped in the high wind, blazed before them.
Whispering Smith and Lance Dunning were sitting together as the two galloped up. Smith helped Dicksie to alight. She was conscious of her color and that her eyes were now unduly bright. Moreover, Whispering Smith’s glance rested so calmly on both McCloud’s face and her own that Dicksie felt as if he saw quite through her and knew everything that had happened since they left the house.
Lance was talking to McCloud. “Don’t abuse the wind,” McCloud was saying. “It’s our best friend to-night, Mr. Dunning. It is blowing the water off-shore. Where is the trouble?” For answer Dunning led McCloud off toward the Bend, and Dicksie was left alone with Whispering Smith.
He made a seat for her on the windward side of the big fire. When she had seated herself she looked up in great contentment to ask if he was not going to sit down beside her. The brown coat, the high black hat, and the big eyes of Whispering Smith had already become a part of her mental store. She saw that he seemed preoccupied, and sought to draw him out of his abstraction.
“I am so glad you and Mr. McCloud are getting acquainted with Cousin Lance,” she said. “And do you mind my giving you a confidence, Mr. Smith? Lance has been so unreasonable about this matter of the railroad’s coming up the valley and powwowing so much with lawyers and ranchers that he has been forgetting about everything at home. He is so much older than I am that he ought to be the sensible one of the family, don’t you think so? It frightens me to have him losing at cards and drinking. I am afraid he will get into some shooting affair. I don’t understand what has come over him, and I worry about it. I believe you could influence him if you knew him.”
“What makes you think that?” asked Whispering Smith, but his eyes were on the fire.
“Because these men he spends his time with in town—the men who fight and shoot so much—are afraid of you. Don’t laugh at me. I know it is quite true in spite of their talk. I was afraid of you myself until”
“Until we made verse together.”
“Until you made verse and I spoiled it. But I think it is because I don’t understand things that I am so afraid. I am not naturally a coward. I’m sure I could not be afraid of you if I understood things better. And there is Marion. She puzzles me. She will never speak of her husband—I don’t know why. And I don’t know why Mr. McCloud is so hard on Mr. Sinclair—Mr. Sinclair seems so kind and good-natured.”
Whispering Smith looked from the fire into Dicksie’s eyes. “What should you say if I gave you a confidence?”
She opened her heart to his searching gaze. “Would you trust me with a confidence?”
He answered without hesitation. “You shall see. Now, I have many things I can’t talk about, you understand. But if I had to give you a secret this instant that carried my life, I shouldn’t fear to do it—so much for trusting you. Only this, too, as to what I say: don’t ever quote me or let it appear that you any more than know me. Can you manage that? Really? Very good; you will understand why in a minute. The man that is stirring up all this trouble with your Cousin Lance and in this whole country is your kind and good-natured neighbor, Mr. Sinclair. I am prejudiced against him; let us admit that on the start, and remember it in estimating what I say. But Sinclair is the man who has turned your cousin’s head, as well as made things in other ways unpleasant for several of us. Sinclair—I tell you so you will understand everything, more than your cousin, Mr. McCloud, or Marion Sinclair understand—Sinclair is a train-wrecker and a murderer. That makes you breathe hard, doesn’t it? but it is so. Sinclair is fairly educated and highly intelligent, capable in every way, daring to the limit, and, in a way, fascinating; it is no wonder he has a following. But his following is divided into two classes: the men that know all the secrets, and the men that don’t—men like Rebstock and Du Sang, and men like your cousin and a hundred or so sports in Medicine Bend, who see only the glamour of Sinclair’s pace. Your cousin sympathizes with Sinclair when he doesn’t actually side with him. All this has helped to turn Sinclair’s head, and this is exactly the situation you and McCloud and I and a lot of others are up against. They don’t know all this, but I know it, and now you know it. Let me tell you something that comes close to home. You have a cowboy on the ranch named Karg—he is called Flat Nose. Karg was a railroad man. He is a cattle-thief, a train-robber, a murderer, and a spy. I should not tell you this if you were not game to the last drop of your blood. But I think I know you better than you know yourself, though you never saw me until last night. Karg is Sinclair’s spy at your ranch, and you must never feel it or know it; but he is there to keep your cousin’s sympathy with Sinclair, and to lure your cousin his way. And Karg will try to kill George McCloud every time he sets foot on this ranch, remember that.”
“Then Mr. McCloud ought not to be here. I don’t want him to stay if he is in danger!” exclaimed Dicksie.
“But I do want him to come here as if it mattered nothing, and I shall try to take care of him. I have a man among your own men, a cowboy named Wickwire, who will be watching Karg, and who is just as quick, and Karg, not knowing he was watched, would be taken unawares. If Wickwire goes elsewhere to work some one else will take his place here. Karg is not on the ranch now; he is up North, hunting up some of your steers that were run off last month by his own cronies. Now do you think I am giving you confidence?”
She looked at him steadily. “If I can only deserve it all.” In the distance she heard the calling of the men at the river borne on the wind. The shock of what had been told her, the strangeness of the night and of the scene, left her calm. Fear had given way to responsibility and Dicksie seemed to know herself.
“You have nothing whatever to do to deserve it but keep your own counsel. But listen a moment longer—for this is what I have been leading up to,” he said. “Marion will get a message to-morrow, a message from Sinclair, asking her to come to see him at his ranch-house before she goes back. I don’t know what he wants—but she is his wife. He has treated her infamously; that is why she will not live with him and does not speak of him. But you know how strange a woman is—or perhaps you don’t: she doesn’t always cease to care for a man when she ceases to trust him. I am not in Marion’s confidence, Miss Dicksie. She is another man’s wife. I cannot tell how she feels toward him; I know she has often tried to reclaim him from his deviltry. She may try again, that is, she may, for one reason or another, go to him as he asks. I could not interfere, if I would. I have no right to if I could, and I will not. Now this is what I’m trying to get up the courage to ask you. Should you dare to go with her to Sinclair’s ranch if she decides to go to him?”
“Certainly I should dare.”
“After all you know?”
“After all I know—why not?”
“Then in case she does go and you go with her, you will know nothing whatever about anything, of course, unless you get the story from her. What I fear is that which possibly may come of their interview. He may try to kill her—don’t be frightened. He will not succeed if you can only make sure he doesn’t lead her away on horseback from the ranch-house or get her alone in a room. She has few friends. I respect and honor her because she and I grew up as children together in the same little town in Wisconsin. I know her folks, all of them, and I’ve promised them—you know—to have a kind of care of her.”
“I think I know.”
He looked self-conscious even at her tone of understanding. “I need not try to deceive you; your instinct would be poor if it did not tell you more than I ought to. He came along and turned her head. You need fear nothing for yourself in going with her, and nothing for her if you can cover just those two points—can you remember? Not to let her go away with him on horseback, and not to leave her where she will be alone with him in the house?”
“I can and will. I think as much of Marion as you do. I am proud to be able to do something for you. How little I have known you! I thought you were everything I didn’t want to know.”
“It’s nothing,” he returned easily, “except that Sinclair has stirred up your cousin and the ranchers as well as the Williams Cache gang, and that makes talk about me. I have to do what I can to make this a peaceable country to live in. The railroad wants decent people here and doesn’t want the other kind, and it falls on me, unfortunately, to keep the other kind moving. I don’t like it, but we can none of us do quite what we please in making a living. Let me tell you this”—he turned to fix his eyes seriously on hers: “Believe anything you hear of me except that I have ever taken human life willingly or save in discharge of my duty. But this kind of work makes my own life an uncertainty, as you can see. I do almost literally carry my life in my hand, for if my hand is not quicker every time than a man’s eye, I am done for then and there.”
“It is dreadful to think of.”
“Not exactly that, but it is something I can’t afford to forget.”
“What would become of the lives of the friends you protect if you were killed?”
“You say you care for Marion Sinclair. I should like to think if anything should happen to me you wouldn’t forget her?”
“I never will.”
He smiled. “Then I put her in charge of the man closest to me, George McCloud, and the woman she thinks the most of in the world—except her mother. What is this, are they back? Yonder they come.”
“We found nothing serious,” McCloud said, answering their questions as he approached with Lance Dunning. “The current is really swinging away, but the bank is caving in where it was undermined last night.” He stopped before Dicksie. “I am trying to get your cousin to go to the house and go to bed. I am going to stay all night, but there is no necessity for his staying.”
“Damn it, McCloud, it’s not right,” protested Lance, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead. “You need the sleep more than I do. I say he is the one to go to bed to-night,” continued Lance, putting it up to Whispering Smith. “And I insist, by the Almighty, that you two take him back to the house with you now!”
Whispering Smith raised his hand. “If this is merely a family quarrel about who shall go to bed, let us compromise. You two stay up all night and let me go to bed.”
Lance, however, was obdurate.
“It seems to be a family characteristic of the Dunnings to have their own way,” ventured McCloud, after some further dispute. “If you will have it so, Mr. Dunning, you may stand watch to-night and I will go to the house.”
Riding back with McCloud, Dicksie and Whispering Smith discussed the flood. McCloud disclaimed credit for the improvement in the situation. “If the current had held against us as it did yesterday, nothing I could have done would have turned it,” he said.
“Honesty is the best policy, of course,” observed Whispering Smith. “I like to see a modest man—and you want to remind him of all this when he sends in his bill,” he suggested, speaking to Dicksie in the dark. “But,” he added, turning to McCloud, “admitting that you are right, don’t take the trouble to advertise your view of it around here. It would be only decent strategy for us in the valley just now to take a little of the credit due to the wind.”