THE CRAWLING STONE RISE
So sudden was the onset of the river that the trained riders of the
big ranch were taken completely aback, and hundreds of head of Dunning
cattle were swept away before they could be removed to points of
safety. Fresh alarms came with every hour of the day and night, and
the telephones up and down the valley rang incessantly with appeals
from neighbor to neighbor. Lance Dunning, calling out the reserves of
his vocabulary, swore tremendously and directed the operations against
the river. These seemed, indeed, to consist mainly of hard riding and
hard language on the part of everybody. Murray Sinclair, although he
had sold his ranch on the Crawling Stone and was concentrating his
holdings on the Frenchman, was everywhere in evidence. He was the
first at a point of danger and the last to ride away from the slipping
acres where the muddy flood undercut; but no defiance seemed to
disturb the Crawling Stone, which kept alarmingly at work.
Above the alfalfa lands on the long bench north of the house the
river, in changing its course many years earlier, had left a
depression known as Mud Lake. It had become separated from the main
channel of the Crawling Stone by a high, narrow barrier in the form of
a bench deposited by the receding waters of some earlier flood, and
added to by sand-storms sweeping among the willows that overspread it.
Without an effective head or definite system of work the efforts of
the men at the Stone Ranch were of no more consequence than if they
had spent their time in waving blankets at the river. Twenty men
riding in together to tell Lance Dunning that the river was washing
out the tree claims above Mud Lake made no perceptible difference in
the event. Dicksie, though an inexperienced girl, saw with helpless
clearness the futility of it all. The alarms and the continual
failures of the army of able-bodied men directed by Sinclair and her
cousin wore on her spirit. The river rose until each succeeding inch
became a menace to the life and property of the ranch, and in the
midst of it came the word that the river was cutting into the willows
and heading for Mud Lake. All knew what that meant. If the Crawling
Stone should take its old channel, not alone were the two square miles
of alfalfa doomed: it would sweep away every vestige of the long
stacks below the corrals, take the barns, and lap the slope in front
of the ranch-house itself.
Terror seized Dicksie. She telephoned in her distress for Marion,
begging her to come up before they should all be swept away; and
Marion, turning the shop over to Katie Dancing, got into the
ranch-wagon that Dicksie had sent and started for the Crawling Stone.
The confusion along the river road as the wagon approached the ranch
showed Marion the seriousness of the situation. Settlers driven from
their homes in the upper valley formed almost a procession of
misery-stricken people, making their way on horseback, on foot, and in
wagons toward Medicine Bend. With them they were bringing all they had
saved from the flood--the little bunch of cows, the wagonload of hogs,
the household effects, the ponies--as if war or pestilence had struck
the valley.
At noon Marion arrived. The ranch-house was deserted, and the men were
all at the river. Puss stuck her head out of the kitchen window, and
Dicksie ran out and threw herself into Marion's arms. Late news from
the front had been the worst: the cutting above Mud Lake had weakened
the last barrier that held off the river, and every available man was
fighting the current at that point.
Marion heard it all while eating a luncheon. Dicksie, beset with
anxiety, could not stay in the house. The man that had driven Marion
over, saddled horses in the afternoon and the two women rode up above
Mud Lake, now become through rainfall and seepage from the river a
long, shallow lagoon. For an hour they watched the shovelling and
carrying of sandbags, and rode toward the river to the very edge of
the disappearing willows, where the bank was melting away before the
undercut of the resistless current. They rode away with a common
feeling--a conviction that the fight was a losing one, and that
another day would see the ruin complete.
"Dicksie," exclaimed Marion--they were riding to the house as she
spoke--"I'll tell you what we _can_ do!" She hesitated a moment. "I
will tell you what we _can_ do! Are you plucky?"
Dicksie looked at Marion pathetically.
"If you are plucky enough to do it, we can keep the river off yet. I
have an idea. I will go, but you must come along."
"Marion, what do you mean? Don't you think I would go anywhere to save
the ranch? I should like to know where you dare go in this country
that I dare not!"
"Then ride with me over to the railroad camp by the new bridge. We
will ask Mr. McCloud to bring some of his men over. He can stop the
river; he knows how."
Dicksie caught her breath. "Oh, Marion! that would do no good, even if
I could do it. Why, the railroad has been all swept away in the lower
valley."
"How do you know?"
"So every one says."
"Who is every one?"
"Cousin Lance, Mr. Sinclair--all the men. I heard that a week ago."
"Dicksie, don't believe it. You don't know these railroad men. They
understand this kind of thing; cattlemen, you know, don't. If you will
go with me we can get help. I feel just as sure that those men can
control the river as I do that I am looking at you--that is, if
anybody can. The question is, do you want to make the effort?"
They talked until they left the horses and entered the house. When
they sat down, Dicksie put her hands to her face. "Oh, I wish you had
said nothing about it! How _can_ I go to him and ask for help
now--after Cousin Lance has gone into court about the line and
everything? And of course my name is in it all."
"Dicksie, don't raise spectres that have nothing to do with the case.
If we go to him and ask him for help he will give it to us if he can;
if he can't, what harm is done? He has been up and down the river for
three weeks, and he has an army of men camped over by the bridge. I
know that, because Mr. Smith rode in from there a few days ago."
"What, Whispering Smith? Oh, if he is there I would not go for
worlds!"
"Pray, why not?"
"Why, he is such an awful man!"
"That is absurd, Dicksie."
Dicksie looked grave. "Marion, no man in this part of the country has
a good word to say for Whispering Smith."
"Perhaps you have forgotten, Dicksie, that you live in a very rough
part of the country," returned Marion coolly. "No man that he has ever
hunted down would have anything pleasant to say about him; nor would
the friends of such a man be likely to say a good word of him. There
are many on the range, Dicksie, that have no respect for life or law
or anything else, and they naturally hate a man like Whispering
Smith----"
"But, Marion, he killed----"
"I know. He killed a man named Williams a few years ago, while you
were at school--one of the worst men that ever infested this country.
Williams Cache is named after that man; he made the most beautiful
spot in all these mountains a nest of thieves and murderers. But did
you know that Williams shot down Gordon Smith's only brother, a
trainmaster, in cold blood in front of the Wickiup at Medicine Bend?
No, you never heard that in this part of the country, did you? They
had a cow-thief for sheriff then, and no officer in Medicine Bend
would go after the murderer. He rode in and out of town as if he owned
it, and no one dared say a word, and, mind you, Gordon Smith's brother
had never seen the man in his life until he walked up and shot him
dead. Oh, this was a peaceful country a few years ago! Gordon Smith
was right-of-way man in the mountains then. He buried his brother, and
asked the officers what they were going to do about getting the
murderer. They laughed at him. He made no protest, except to ask for a
deputy United States marshal's commission. When he got it he started
for Williams Cache after Williams in a buckboard--think of it,
Dicksie--and didn't they laugh at him! He did not even know the
trails, and imagine riding two hundred miles in a buckboard to arrest
a man in the mountains! He was gone six weeks, and came back with
Williams's body strapped to the buckboard behind him. He never told
the story; all he said when he handed in his commission and went back
to his work was that the man was killed in a fair fight. Hate him! No
wonder they hate him--the Williams Cache gang and all their friends
on the range! Your cousin thinks it policy to placate that element,
hoping that they won't steal your cattle if you are friendly with
them. I know nothing about that, but I do know something about
Whispering Smith. It will be a bad day for Williams Cache when they
start him up again. But what has that to do with your trouble? He will
not eat you up if you go to the camp, Dicksie. You are just raising
bogies."
They had moved to the front porch and Marion was sitting in the
rocking-chair. Dicksie stood with her back against one of the pillars
and looked at her. As Marion finished Dicksie turned and, with her
hand on her forehead, looked in wretchedness of mind out on the
valley. As far, in many directions, as the eye could reach the waters
spread yellow in the flood of sunshine across the lowlands. There was
a moment of silence. Dicksie turned her back on the alarming sight.
"Marion, I can't do it!"
"Oh, yes, you can if you want to, Dicksie!" Dicksie looked at her with
tearless eyes. "It is only a question of being plucky enough,"
insisted Marion.
"Pluck has nothing to do with it!" exclaimed Dicksie in fiery tones.
"I should like to know why you are always talking about my not having
courage! This isn't a question of courage. How can I go to a man that
I talked to as I talked to him in your house and ask for help? How can
I go to him after my cousin has threatened to kill him, and gone into
court to prevent his coming on our land? Shouldn't I look beautiful
asking help from him?"
Marion rocked with perfect composure. "No, dear, you would not look
beautiful asking help, but you would look sensible. It is so easy to
be beautiful and so hard to be sensible."
"You are just as horrid as you can be, Marion Sinclair!"
"I know that, too, dear. All I wanted to say is that you would look
very sensible just now in asking help from Mr. McCloud."
"I don't care--I won't do it. I will never do it, not if every foot of
the ranch tumbles into the river. I hope it will! Nobody cares
anything about me. I have no friends but thieves and outlaws."
"Dicksie!" Marion rose.
"That is what you said."
"I did not. I am your friend. How dare you call me names?" demanded
Marion, taking the petulant girl in her arms. "Don't you think I care
anything about you? There are people in this country that you have
never seen who know you and love you almost as much as I do. Don't
let any silly pride prevent your being sensible, dear." Dicksie burst
into tears. Marion drew her over to the settee, and she had her cry
out. When it was over they changed the subject. Dicksie went to her
room. It was a long time before she came down again, but Marion rocked
in patience: she was resolved to let Dicksie fight it out herself.
When Dicksie came down, Marion stood at the foot of the stairs. The
young mistress of Crawling Stone Ranch descended step by step very
slowly. "Marion," she said simply, "I will go with you."