CHAPTER XLIII
CLOSING IN
IN the morning the sun rose with a mountain smile. The storm had swept the air till the ranges shone blue and the plain sparkled under a cloudless sky. Bob Scott and Wickwire, riding at daybreak, picked up a trail on the Fence River road. A consultation was held at the bridge, and within half an hour Whispering Smith, with unshaken patience, was in the saddle and following it.
With him were Kennedy and Bob Scott. Sinclair had ridden into the lines, and Whispering Smith, with his best two men, meant to put it up to him to ride out. They meant now to get him, with a trail or without, and were putting horseflesh against horseflesh and craft against craft.
At the forks of the Fence they picked up Wickwire, Kennedy taking him on the up road, while Scott with Whispering Smith crossed to the Crawling Stone. When Smith and Scott reached the Frenchman they parted to cover in turn each of the trails by which it is possible to get out of the river country toward the Park and Williams Cache.
By four o’clock in the afternoon they had all covered the ground so well that the four were able to make their rendezvous on the big Fence divide, south of Crawling Stone Valley. They then found, to their disappointment, that, widely separated as they had been, both parties were following trails they believed to be good. They shot a steer, tagged it, ate dinner and supper in one, and separated under Whispering Smith’s counsel that both the trails be followed into the next morning—in the belief that one of them would run out or that the two would run together. At noon the next day Scott rode through the hills from the Fence, and Kennedy with Wickwire came through Two Feather Pass from the Frenchman with the report that the game had left their valleys.
Without rest they pushed on. At the foot of the Mission Mountains they picked up the tracks of a party of three horsemen. Twice within ten miles afterward the men they were following crossed the river. Each time their trail, with some little difficulty, was found again. At a little ranch in the Mission foothills, Kennedy and Scott, leaving Wickwire with Whispering Smith, took fresh horses and pushed ahead as far as they could ride before dark, but they brought back news. The trail had split again, with one man riding alone to the left, while two had taken the hills to the right, heading for Mission Pass and the Cache. With Gene Johnson and Bob at the mouth of the Cache there was little fear for that outlet. The turn to the left was the unexpected. Over the little fire in the ranch kitchen where they ate supper, the four men were in conference twenty minutes. It was decided that Scott and Kennedy should head for the Mission Pass, while Whispering Smith, with Wickwire to trail with him, should undertake to cut off, somewhere between Fence River and the railroad, the man who had gone south, the man believed to be Sinclair. It was a late moon, and when Scott and Kennedy saddled their horses Whispering Smith and Wickwire were asleep.
With the cowboy, Whispering Smith started at daybreak. No one saw them again for two days. During those two days and nights they were in the saddle almost continuously. For every mile the man ahead of them rode they were forced to ride two miles and often three. Late in the second night they crossed the railroad, and the first word from them came in long despatches sent by Whispering Smith to Medicine Bend and instructions to Kennedy and Scott in the north, which were carried by hard riders straight to Deep Creek.
On the morning of the third day Dicksie Dunning, who had gone home from Medicine Bend and who had been telephoning Marion and George McCloud two days for news, was trying to get Medicine Bend again on the telephone when Puss came in to say that a man at the kitchen door wanted to see her.
“Who is it, Puss?”
“I d’no, Miss Dicksie; ’deed, I never seen him b’fore.”
Dicksie walked around on the porch to the kitchen. A dust-covered man sitting on a limp horse threw back the brim of his hat as he touched it, lifted himself stiffly out of the saddle, and dropped to the ground. He laughed at Dicksie’s startled expression. “Don’t you know me?” he asked, putting out his hand. It was Whispering Smith.
He was a fearful sight. Stained from head to foot with alkali, saddle-cramped and bent, his face scratched and stained, he stood with a smiling appeal in his bloodshot eyes.
Dicksie gave a little uncertain cry, clasped her hands, and, with a scream, threw her arms impulsively around his neck. “Oh, I did not know you! What has happened? I am so glad to see you! Tell me what has happened. Are you hurt?”
He stammered like a school-boy. “Nothing has happened. What’s this? Don’t cry; nothing at all has happened. I didn’t realize what a tramp I look or I shouldn’t have come. But I was only a mile away and I had heard nothing for four days from Medicine Bend. And how are you? Did your ride make you ill? No? By Heaven, you are a game girl. That was a ride! How are they all? Where’s your cousin? In town, is he? I thought I might get some news if I rode up, and oh, Miss Dicksie—jiminy! some coffee. But I’ve got only two minutes for it all, only two minutes; do you think Puss has any on the stove?”
Dicksie with coaxing and pulling got him into the kitchen, and Puss tumbled over herself to set out coffee and rolls. He showed himself ravenously hungry, and ate with a simple directness that speedily accounted for everything in sight. “You have saved my life. Now I am going, and thank you a thousand times. There, by Heaven, I’ve forgotten Wickwire! He is with me—waiting down in the cottonwoods at the fork. Could Puss put up a lunch I could take to him? He hasn’t had a scrap for twenty-four hours. But, Dicksie, your tramp is a hummer! I’ve tried to ride him down and wear him out and lose him, and, by Heaven, he turns up every time and has been of more use to me than two men.”
She put her hand on Whispering Smith’s arm. “I told him if he would stop drinking he could be foreman here next season.” Puss was putting up the lunch. “Why need you hurry away?” persisted Dicksie. “I’ve a thousand things to say.”
He looked at her amiably. “This is really a case of must.”
“Then, tell me, what favor may I do for you?” She looked appealingly into his tired eyes. “I want to do something for you. I must! don’t deny me. Only, what shall it be?”
“Something for me? What can I say? You’ll be kind to Marion—I shouldn’t have to ask that. What can I ask? Stop! there is one thing. I’ve got a poor little devil of an orphan up in the Deep Creek country. Du Sang murdered his father. You are rich and generous, Dicksie; do something for him, will you? Kennedy or Bob Scott will know all about him. Bring him down here, will you, and see he doesn’t go to the dogs? You’re a good girl. What’s this, crying? Now you are frightened. Things are not so bad as that. You want to know everything—I see it in your eyes. Very well, let’s trade. You tell me everything and I’ll tell you everything. Now then: Are you engaged?”
They were standing under the low porch with the sunshine breaking through the trees. She turned away her face and threw all of her happiness into a laugh. “I won’t tell.”
“Oh, that’s enough. You have told!” declared Whispering Smith. “I knew—why, of course I knew—but I wanted to make you own up. Well, here’s the way things are. Sinclair has run us all over God’s creation for two days to give his pals a chance to break into Williams Cache to get the Tower W money they left with Rebstock. For a fact, we have ridden completely around Sleepy Cat and been down in the Spanish Sinks since I saw you. He doesn’t want to leave without the money, and doesn’t know it is in Kennedy’s hands, and can’t get into the Cache to find out. Now the three—whoever the other two are—and Sinclair—are trying to join forces somewhere up this valley, and Kennedy, Scott, Wickwire, and I are after them; and every outlet is watched, and it must all be over, my dear, before sunset to-night. Isn’t that fine? I mean to have the thing wound up somehow. Don’t look worried.”
“Do not—do not let him kill you,” she cried with a sob.
“He will not kill me; don’t be afraid.”
“I am afraid. Remember what your life is to all of us!”
“Then, of course, I’ve got to think of what it is to myself—being the only one I’ve got. Sometimes I don’t think much of it; but when I get a welcome like this it sets me up. If I can once get out of this accursed man-slaughtering business, Dicksie— How old are you? Nineteen? Well, you’ve got the finest chap in all these mountains, and George McCloud has the finest”
With a bubbling laugh she shook her finger at him. “Now you are caught. Say the finest woman in these mountains if you dare! Say the finest woman!”
“The finest woman of nineteen in all creation!” He swung with a laugh into the saddle and waved his hat. She watched him ride down the road and around the hill. When he reappeared she was still looking and he was galloping along the lower road. A man rode out at the fork to meet him and trotted with him over the bridge. Riding leisurely across the creek, their broad hats bobbing unevenly in the sunshine, they spurred swiftly past the grove of quaking asps, and in a moment were lost beyond the trees.