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.