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[Illustration: "And whom may I say the message is from?"]
WHISPERING SMITH
BY
FRANK H. SPEARMAN
ILLUSTRATED BY N. C. WYETH AND
WITH SCENES FROM THE PHOTO-PLAY
PRODUCED BY THE SIGNAL
FILM CORPORATION
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published, September, 1906
TO MY SON
THOMAS CLARK SPEARMAN
IN MEMORY OF
A PIEDMONT WINTER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Wrecking Boss 1
II. At Smoky Creek 10
III. Dicksie 23
IV. George McCloud 33
V. The Crawling Stone 51
VI. The Final Appeal 60
VII. In Marion's Shop 64
VIII. Smoky Creek Bridge 71
IX. The Misunderstanding 76
X. Sweeping Orders 88
XI. At the Three Horses 93
XII. Parley 103
XIII. The Turn in the Storm 122
XIV. The Quarrel 131
XV. The Shot in the Pass 141
XVI. At the Wickiup 148
XVII. A Test 155
XVIII. New Plans 162
XIX. The Crawling Stone Rise 169
XX. At the Dike 179
XXI. Supper in Camp 197
XXII. A Talk With Whispering Smith 207
XXIII. At the River 217
XXIV. Between Girlhood and Womanhood 225
XXV. The Man on the Frenchman 242
XXVI. Tower W 256
XXVII. Pursuit 262
XXVIII. The Sunday Murder 271
XXIX. Williams Cache 281
XXX. The Fight in the Cache 292
XXXI. The Death of Du Sang 305
XXXII. Mcloud and Dicksie 312
XXXIII. The Laugh of a Woman 320
XXXIV. A Midnight Visit 327
XXXV. The Call 334
XXXVI. Duty 340
XXXVII. Wickwire 346
XXXVIII. Into the North 352
XXXIX. Among the Coyotes 361
XL. A Sympathetic Ear 373
XLI. Dicksie's Ride 379
XLII. At the Door 389
XLIII. Closing In 395
XLIV. Crawling Stone Wash 403
XLV. Back to the Mountains 413
WHISPERING SMITH
CHAPTER I
THE WRECKING BOSS
News of the wreck at Smoky Creek reached Medicine Bend from Point of
Rocks at five o'clock. Sinclair, in person, was overseeing the making
up of his wrecking train, and the yard, usually quiet at that hour of
the morning, was alive with the hurry of men and engines. In the
trainmaster's room of the weather-beaten headquarters building,
nicknamed by railroad men "The Wickiup," early comers--sleepy-faced,
keen-eyed trainmen--lounged on the tables and in chairs discussing the
reports from Point of Rocks, and among them crew-callers and
messengers moved in and out. From the door of the big operators' room,
pushed at intervals abruptly open, burst a blaze of light and the
current crash of many keys; within, behind glass screens, alert,
smooth-faced boys in shirt sleeves rained calls over the wires or bent
with flying pens above clips, taking incoming messages. At one end of
the room, heedless of the strain on the division, press despatches and
cablegrams clicked in monotonous relay over commercial wires; while at
the other, operators were taking from the despatchers' room the train
orders and the hurried dispositions made for the wreck emergency by
Anderson, the assistant superintendent. At a table in the alcove the
chief operator was trying to reach the division superintendent,
McCloud, at Sleepy Cat; at his elbow, his best man was ringing the
insistent calls of the despatcher and clearing the line for Sinclair
and the wrecking gang. Two minutes after the wrecking train reported
ready they had their orders and were pulling out of the upper yard,
with right of way over everything to Point of Rocks.
The wreck had occurred just west of the creek. A fast east-bound
freight train, double-headed, had left the track on the long curve
around the hill, and when the wrecking train backed through Ten Shed
Cut the sun streamed over the heaps of jammed and twisted cars strung
all the way from the point of the curve to the foot of Smoky Hill. The
crew of the train that lay in the ditch walked slowly up the track to
where the wreckers had pulled up, and the freight conductor asked for
Sinclair. Men rigging the derrick pointed to the hind car. The
conductor, swinging up the caboose steps, made his way inside among
the men that were passing out tools. The air within was bluish-thick
with tobacco smoke, but through the haze the freightman saw facing
him, in the far corner of the den-like interior, a man seated behind
an old dining-car table, finishing his breakfast; one glimpse was
enough to identify the dark beard of Sinclair, foreman of the bridges
and boss of the wrecking gang.
Beside him stood a steaming coffee-tank, and in his right hand he held
an enormous tin cup that he was about to raise to his mouth when he
saw the freight conductor. With a laugh, Sinclair threw up his left
hand and beckoned him over. Then he shook his hair just a little,
tossed back his head, opened an unusual mouth, drained the cup at a
gulp, and cursing the freightman fraternally, exclaimed, "How many
cars have you ditched this time?"
The trainman, a sober-faced fellow, answered dryly, "All I had."
"Running too fast, eh?" glared Sinclair.
With the box cars piled forty feet high on the track, the conductor
was too old a hand to begin a controversy. "Our time's fast," was all
he said.
Sinclair rose and exclaimed, "Come on!" And the two, leaving the car,
started up the track. The wrecking boss paid no attention to his
companion as they forged ahead, but where the train had hit the curve
he scanned the track as he would a blue print. "They'll have your
scalp for this," he declared abruptly.
"I reckon they will."
"What's your name?"
"Stevens."
"Looks like all day for you, doesn't it? No matter; I guess I can help
you out."
Where the merchandise cars lay, below the switch, the train crew knew
that a tramp had been caught. At intervals they heard groans under the
wreckage, which was piled high there. Sinclair stopped at the derrick,
and the freight conductor went on to where his brakeman had enlisted
two of Sinclair's giants to help get out the tramp. A brake beam had
crushed the man's legs, and the pallor of his face showed that he was
hurt internally, but he was conscious and moaned softly. The men had
started to carry him to the way car when Sinclair came up, asked what
they were doing, and ordered them back to the wreck. They hastily laid
the tramp down. "But he wants water," protested a brakeman who was
walking behind, carrying his arm in a sling.
"Water!" bawled Sinclair. "Have my men got nothing to do but carry a
tramp to water? Get ahead there and help unload those refrigerators.
He'll find water fast enough. Let the damned hobo crawl down to the
creek after it."
The tramp was too far gone for resentment; he had fainted when they
laid him down, and his half-glazed eyes, staring at the sky, gave no
evidence that he heard anything.
The sun rose hot, for in the Red Desert sky there is rarely a cloud.
Sinclair took the little hill nearest the switch to bellow his orders
from, running down among the men whenever necessary to help carry them
out. Within thirty minutes, though apparently no impression had been
made on the great heaps of wrenched and splintered equipment, Sinclair
had the job in hand.
Work such as this was the man's genius. In handling a wreck Sinclair
was a marvel among mountain men. He was tall but not stout, with
flashing brown eyes and a strength always equal to that of the best
man in his crew. But his inspiration lay in destruction, and the more
complete the better. There were no futile moves under Sinclair's quick
eyes, no useless pulling and hauling, no false grappling; but like a
raven at a feast, every time his derrick-beak plucked at the wreck he
brought something worth while away. Whether he was righting a tender,
rerailing an engine, tearing out a car-body, or swinging a set of
trucks into the clear, Sinclair, men said, had luck, and no confusion
in day or night was great enough to drown his heavy tones or blur his
rapid thinking.
Just below where the wrecking boss stood lay the tramp. The sun
scorched his drawn face, but he made no effort to turn from it.
Sometimes he opened his eyes, but Sinclair was not a promising source
of help, and no one that might have helped dared venture within
speaking distance of the injured man. When the heat and the pain at
last extorted a groan and an appeal, Sinclair turned. "Damn you, ain't
you dead yet? What? Water?" He pointed to a butt standing in the shade
of a car that had been thrown out near the switch. "There's water; go
get it!" The cracking of a box car as the derrick wrenched it from the
wreck was engaging the attention of the boss, and as he saw the
grapple slip he yelled to his men and pointed to the chains.
The tramp lay still a long time. At last he began to drag himself
toward the butt. In the glare of the sun timbers strained and snapped,
and men with bars and axes chopped and wrenched at the massive frames
and twisted iron on the track. The wrecking gang moved like ants in
and out of the shapeless debris, and at intervals, as the sun rose
higher, the tramp dragged himself nearer the butt. He lay on the
burning sand like a crippled insect, crawling, and waiting for
strength to crawl. To him there was no railroad and no wreck, but only
the blinding sun, the hot sand, the torture of thirst, and somewhere
water, if he could reach it.
The freight conductor, Stevens, afraid of no man, had come up to
speak to Sinclair, and Sinclair, with a smile, laid a cordial hand
on his shoulder. "Stevens, it's all right. I'll get you out of this.
Come here." He led the conductor down the track where they had walked
in the morning. He pointed to flange-marks on the ties. "See
there--there's where the first wheels left the track, and they left on
the inside of the curve; a thin flange under the first refrigerator
broke. I've got the wheel itself back there for evidence. They can't
talk fast running against that. Damn a private car-line, anyway!
Give me a cigar--haven't got any? Great guns, man, there's a case
of Key Wests open up ahead; go fill your pockets and your grip. Don't
be bashful; you've got friends on the division if you are Irish, eh?"
"Sure, only I don't smoke," said Stevens, with diplomacy.
"Well, you drink, don't you? There's a barrel of brandy open at the
switch."
The brandy-cask stood up-ended near the water-butt, and the men dipped
out of both with cups. They were working now half naked at the wreck.
The sun hung in a cloudless sky, the air was still, and along the
right of way huge wrecking fires added to the scorching heat. Ten feet
from the water-butt lay a flattened mass of rags. Crusted in smoke and
blood and dirt, crushed by a vise of beams and wheels out of human
semblance, and left now an aimless, twitching thing, the tramp
clutched at Stevens's foot as he passed. "Water!"
"Hello, old boy, how the devil did you get here?" exclaimed Stevens,
retreating in alarm.
"Water!"
Stevens stepped to the butt and filled a cup. The tramp's eyes were
closed. Stevens poured the water over his face; then he lifted the
man's head and put a cupful to his lips.
"Is that hobo alive yet?" asked Sinclair, coming back smoking a cigar.
"What does he want now? Water? Don't waste any time on him."
"It's bad luck refusing water," muttered Stevens, holding the cup.
"He'll be dead in a minute," growled Sinclair.
The sound of his voice roused the failing man to a fury. He opened his
bloodshot eyes, and with the dregs of an ebbing vitality cursed
Sinclair with a frenzy that made Stevens draw back. If Sinclair was
startled he gave no sign. "Go to hell!" he exclaimed harshly.
With a ghastly effort the man made his retort. He held up his
blood-soaked fingers. "I'm going all right--I know that," he gasped,
with a curse, "but I'll come back for you!"
Sinclair, unshaken, stood his ground. He repeated his imprecation more
violently; but Stevens, swallowing, stole out of hearing. As he
disappeared, a train whistled in the west.