Whispering Smith

by Spearman, Frank H

  Dicksie raised her eyes. “I wanted to ask you whether you would sell us some grain-sacks, Mr. McCloud, to use at the river, if you could spare them?”

  “Sacks? Why, of course, all you want! But how did you ever get here? In all this water, and two lone women! You have been in danger to-night. Indeed you have––don’t tell me! And you are both wet; I know it. Your feet must be wet. Come to the fire. O Bill!” he called to Dancing, “what’s the matter with your wood? Let us have a fire, won’t you?––one worth while; and build another in front of my tent. I can’t believe you have ridden here all the way from the ranch, two of you alone!” exclaimed McCloud, hastening boxes up to the fire for seats.

  Marion laughed. “Dicksie can go anywhere! I couldn’t have ridden from the house to the barns alone.”

  “Then tell me how you could do it?” demanded McCloud, devouring Dicksie with his eyes.

  Dicksie looked at the fire. “I know all the roads pretty well. We did get lost once,” she confessed in a low voice, “but we got out again.”

  “The roads are all underwater, though.”

  “What time is it, please?”

  McCloud looked at his watch. “Two minutes past twelve.”

  Dicksie started. “Past twelve? Oh, this is dreadful! We must start right back, Marion. I had no idea we had been five hours coming five miles.”

  McCloud looked at her, as if still unable to comprehend what she had accomplished in crossing the flooded bottoms. Her eyes fell back to the fire. “What a blaze!” she murmured as the driftwood snapped and roared. “It’s fine for to-night, isn’t it?”

  “I know you both must have been in the water,” he insisted, leaning forward in front of Dicksie to feel Marion’s skirt.

  “I’m not wet!” declared Marion, drawing back.

  “Nonsense, you are wet as a rat! Tell me,” he asked, looking at Dicksie, “about your trouble up at the bend. I know something about it. Are the men there to-night? Given up, have they? Too bad! Do open your jackets and try to dry yourselves, both of you, and I’ll take a look at the river.”

  “Suppose––I only say suppose––you first take a look at me.” The voice came from behind the group at the fire, and the three turned together.

  “By Heaven, Gordon Smith!” exclaimed McCloud. “Where did you come from?”

  Whispering Smith stood in the gloom in patience. “Where do I look as if I had come from? Why don’t you ask me whether I’m wet? And won’t you introduce me––but this is Miss Dicksie Dunning, I am sure.”

  Marion with laughter hastened the introduction.

  “And you are wet, of course,” said McCloud, feeling Smith’s shoulder.

  “No, only soaked. I have fallen into the river two or three times, and the last time a big rhinoceros of yours down the grade, a section foreman named Klein, was obliging enough to pull me out. Oh, no! I was not looking for you,” he ran on, answering McCloud’s question; “not when he pulled me out. I was just looking for a farm or a ladder or something. Klein, for a man named Small, is the biggest Dutchman I ever saw. ‘Tell me, Klein,’ I asked, after he had quit dragging me out––he’s a Hanoverian––‘where did you get your pull? And how about your height? Did your grandfather serve as a grenadier under old Frederick William and was he kidnapped?’ Bill, don’t feed my horse for a while. And Klein tried to light a cigar I had just taken from my pocket and given him––fancy! the Germans are a remarkable people––and sat down to tell me his history, when some friend down the line began bawling through a megaphone, and all that poor Klein had time to say was that he had had no supper, nor dinner, nor yet breakfast, and would be obliged for some by the boat he forwarded me in.” And, in closing, Whispering Smith looked cheerfully around at Marion, at McCloud, and last and longest of all at Dicksie Dunning.

  “Did you come from across the river?” asked Dicksie, adjusting her wet skirt meekly over her knees.

  “You are soaking wet,” observed Whispering Smith. “Across the river?” he echoed. “Well, hardly, my dear Miss Dunning! Every bridge is out down the valley except the railroad bridge and there are a few things I don’t tackle; one is the Crawling Stone on a tear. No, this was across a little break in this man McCloud’s track. I came, to be frank, from the Dunning Ranch to look up two women who rode away from there at seven o’clock to-night, and I want to say that they gave me the ride of my life,” and Whispering Smith looked all around the circle and back again and smiled.

  Dicksie spoke in amazement. “How did you know we rode away? You were not at the ranch when we left.”

  “Oh, don’t ask him!” cried Marion.

  “He knows everything,” explained McCloud.

  Whispering Smith turned to Dicksie. “I was interested in knowing that they got safely to their destination––whatever it might be, which was none of my business. I happened to see a man that had seen them start, that was all. You don’t understand? Well, if you want it in plain English, I made it my business to see a man who made it his business to see them. It’s all very simple, but these people like to make a mystery of it. Good women are scarcer than riches, and more to be prized than fine gold––in my judgment––so I rode after them.”

  Marion put her hand for a moment on his coat sleeve; he looked at Dicksie with another laugh and spoke to her because he dared not look toward Marion. “Going back to-night, do you say? You never are.”

  Dicksie answered quite in earnest: “Oh, but we are. We must!”

  “Why did you come, then? It’s taken half the night to get here, and will take a night and a half at least to get back.”

  “We came to ask Mr. McCloud for some grain-sacks––you know, they have nothing to work with at the ranch,” said Marion; “and he said we might have some and we are to send for them in the morning.”

  “I see. But we may as well talk plainly.” Smith looked at Dicksie. “You are as brave and as game as a girl can be, I know, or you couldn’t have done this. Sacks full of sand, with the boys at the ranch to handle them, would do no more good to-morrow at the bend than bladders. The river is flowing into Squaw Lake above there now. A hundred men that know the game might check things yet if they’re there by daylight. Nobody else, and nothing else on God’s earth, can.”

  There was silence before the fire. McCloud broke it: “I can put the hundred men there at daylight, Gordon, if Miss Dunning and her cousin want them,” said McCloud.

  Marion sprang to her feet. “Oh, will you do that, Mr. McCloud?”

  McCloud looked at Dicksie. “If they are wanted.”

  Dicksie tried to look at the fire. “We have hardly deserved help from Mr. McCloud at the ranch,” she said at last.

  He put out his hand. “I must object. The first wreck I ever had on this division Miss Dunning rode twenty miles to offer help. Isn’t that true? Why, I would walk a hundred miles to return the offer to her. Perhaps your cousin would object,” he suggested, turning to Dicksie; “but no, I think we can manage that. Now what are we going to do? You two can’t go back to-night, that is certain.”

  “We must.”

  “Then you will have to go in boats,” said Whispering Smith.

  “But the hill road?”

  “There is five feet of water across it in half a dozen places. I swam my horse through, so I ought to know.”

  “It is all back-water, of course, Miss Dunning,” explained McCloud. “Not dangerous.”

  “But moist,” suggested Whispering Smith, “especially in the dark.”

  McCloud looked at Marion. “Then let’s be sensible,” he said. “You and Miss Dunning can have my tent as soon as we have supper.”

  “Supper!”

  “Supper is served to all on duty at twelve o’clock, and we’re on duty, aren’t we? They’re about ready to serve now; we eat in the tent,” he added, holding out his hand as he heard the patter of raindrops. “Rain again! No matter, we shall be dry under canvas.”

  Dicksie had never seen an engineers’ field headquarters. Lan
terns lighted the interior, and the folding-table in the middle was strewn with papers which McCloud swept off into a camp-chest. Two double cots with an aisle between them stood at the head of the tent, and, spread with bright Hudson Bay blankets, looked fresh and undisturbed. A box-table near the head-pole held an alarm-clock, a telegraph key, and a telephone, and the wires ran up the pole behind it. Leather jackets and sweaters lay on boxes under the tent-walls, and heavy boots stood in disorderly array along the foot of the cots. These McCloud, with apologies, kicked into the corners.

  “Is this where you stay?” asked Dicksie.

  “Four of us sleep in the cots, when we can, and an indefinite number lie on the ground when it rains.”

  Marion looked around her. “What do you do when it thunders?”

  The two men were pulling boxes out for seats; McCloud did not stop to look up. “I crawl under the bed––the others don’t seem to mind it.”

  “Which is your bed?”

  “Whichever I can crawl under quickest. I usually sleep there.” He pointed to the one on the right.

  “I thought so. It has the blanket folded back so neatly, just as if there were sheets under it. I’ll bet there aren’t any.”

  “Do you think this is a summer resort? Knisely, my assistant, sleeps there, but of course we are never both in bed at the same time; he’s down the river to-night. It’s a sort of continuous performance, you know.” McCloud looked at Dicksie. “Take off your coat, won’t you, please?”

  Whispering Smith was trying to drag a chest from the foot of the cot, and Marion stood watching. “What are you trying to do?”

  “Get this over to the table for a seat.”

  “Silly man! why don’t you move the table?”

  Dicksie was taking off her coat. “How inviting it all is!” she smiled. “And this is where you stay?”

  “When it rains,” answered McCloud. “Let me have your hat, too.”

  “My hair is a sight, I know. We rode over rocks and up gullies into the brush–––”

  “And through lakes––oh, I know! I can’t conceive how you ever got here at all. Your hair is all right. This is camp, anyway. But if you want a glass you can have one. Knisely is a great swell; he’s just from school, and has no end of things. I’ll rob his bag.”

  “Don’t disturb Mr. Knisely’s bag for the world!”

  “But you are not taking off your hat. You seem to have something on your mind.”

  “Help me to get it off my mind, will you, please?”

  “If you will let me.”

  “Tell me how to thank you for your generosity. I came all the way over here to-night to ask you for just the help you have offered, and I could not––it stuck in my throat. But that wasn’t what was on my mind. Tell me what you thought when I acted so dreadfully at Marion’s.”

  “I didn’t deserve anything better after placing myself in such a fool position. Why don’t you ask me what I thought the day you acted so beautifully at Crawling Stone Ranch? I thought that the finest thing I ever saw.”

  “You were not to blame at Marion’s.”

  “I seemed to be, which is just as bad. I am going to start the ‘phones going. It’s up to me to make good, you know, in about four hours with a lot of men and material. Aren’t you going to take off your hat?––and your gloves are soaking wet.”

  McCloud took down the receiver, and Dicksie put her hands slowly to her head to unpin her hat. It was a broad hat of scarlet felt rolled high above her forehead, and an eagle’s quill caught in the black rosette swept across the front. As she stood in her clinging riding-skirt and her severely plain scarlet waist with only a black ascot falling over it, Whispering Smith looked at her. His eyes did not rest on the picture too long, but his glance was searching. He spoke in an aside to Marion. Marion laughed as she turned her head from where Dicksie was talking again with McCloud. “The best of it is,” murmured Marion, “she hasn’t a suspicion of how lovely she really is.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  SUPPER IN CAMP

  “Will you never be done with your telephoning?” asked Marion. McCloud was still planning the assembling of the men and teams for the morning. Breakfast and transportation were to be arranged for, and the men and teams and material were to be selected from where they could best be spared. Dicksie, with the fingers of one hand moving softly over the telegraph key, sat on a box listening to McCloud’s conferences and orders.

  “Cherry says everything is served. Isn’t it, Cherry?” Marion called to the Japanese boy.

  Cherry laughed with a guttural joy.

  “We are ready for it,” announced McCloud, rising. “How are we to sit?”

  “You are to sit at the head of your own table,” said Marion. “I serve the coffee, so I sit at the foot; and Mr. Smith may pass the beans over there, and Dicksie, you are to pour the condensed milk into the cups.”

  “Or into the river, just as you like,” suggested Whispering Smith.

  McCloud looked at Marion Sinclair. “Really,” he exclaimed, “wherever you are it’s fair weather! When I see you, no matter how tangled up things are, I feel right away they are coming out. And this man is another.”

  “Another what?” demanded Whispering Smith.

  “Another care-killer.” McCloud, speaking to Dicksie, nodded toward his companion. “Troubles slip from your shoulders when he swaggers in, though he’s not of the slightest use in the world. I have only one thing against him. It is a physical peculiarity, but an indefensible one. You may not have noticed it, but he is bowlegged.”

  “From riding your scrub railroad horses. I feel like a sailor ashore when I get off one. Are you going to eat all the bacon, Mr. McCloud, or do we draw a portion of it? I didn’t start out with supper to-night.”

  “Take it all. I suppose it would be useless to ask where you have been to-day?”

  “Not in the least, but it would be useless to tell. I am violating no confidence, though, in saying I’m hungry. I certainly shouldn’t eat this stuff if I weren’t, should you, Miss Dunning? And I don’t believe you are eating, by the way. Where is your appetite? Your ride ought to have sharpened it. I’m afraid you are downcast. Oh, don’t deny it; it is very plain: but your worry is unnecessary.”

  “If the rain would only stop,” said Marion, “everybody would cheer up. They haven’t seen the sun at the ranch for ten days.”

  “This rain doesn’t count so far as the high water is concerned,” said McCloud. “It is the weather two hundred and fifty miles above here that is of more consequence to us, and there it is clear to-night. As long as the tent doesn’t leak I rather like it. Sing your song about fair weather, Gordon.”

  “But can the men work in such a downpour?” ventured Dicksie.

  The two men looked serious and Marion laughed.

  “In the morning you will see a hundred of them marching forward with umbrellas, Mr. McCloud leading. The Japs carry fans, of course.”

  “I wish I could forget we are in trouble at home,” said Dicksie, taking the badinage gracefully. “Worrying people are such a nuisance. Don’t protest, for every one knows they are.”

  “But we are all in trouble,” insisted Whispering Smith. “Trouble! Why, bless you, it really is a blessing; pretty successfully disguised, I admit, sometimes, but still a blessing. I’m in trouble all the time, right now, up to my neck in trouble, and the water rising this minute. Look at this man,” he nodded toward McCloud. “He is in trouble, and the five hundred under him, they are in all kinds of trouble. I shouldn’t know how to sleep without trouble,” continued Whispering Smith, warming to the contention. “Without trouble I lose my appetite. McCloud, don’t be tight; pass the bread.”

  “Never heard him do so well,” declared McCloud, looking at Marion.

  “Seriously, now,” Whispering Smith went on, “don’t you know people who, if they were thoroughly prosperous, would be intolerable––simply intolerable? I know several such. All thoroughly prosperous peop
le are a nuisance. That is a general proposition, and I stand by it. Go over your list of acquaintances and you will admit it is true. Here’s to trouble! May it always chasten and never overwhelm us: our greatest bugbear and our best friend! It sifts our friends and unmasks our enemies. Like a lovely woman, it woos us–––”

  “Oh, never!” exclaimed Marion. “A lovely woman doesn’t woo, she is wooed!”

  “What are you looking for, perfection in rhetorical figure? This is extemporaneous.”

  “But it won’t do!”

  “And asks to be conquered,” suggested Whispering Smith.

  “Asks! Oh, scandalous, Mr. Smith!”

  “It is easy to see why he never could get any one to marry him,” declared McCloud over the bacon.

  “Hold on, then! Like lovely woman, it does not seek us, we seek it,” persisted the orator, “That at least is so, isn’t it?”

  “It is better,” assented Marion.

  “And it waits to be conquered. How is that?”

  Marion turned to Dicksie. “You are not helping a bit. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think woman and trouble ought to be associated even in figure; and I think ‘waits’ is horrid,” and Dicksie looked gravely at Whispering Smith.

  McCloud, too, looked at him. “You’re in trouble now yourself.”

  “And I brought it on myself. So we do seek it, don’t we? And trouble, I must hold, is like woman. ‘Waits’ I strike out as unpleasantly suggestive; let it go. So, then, trouble is like a lovely woman, loveliest when conquered. Now, Miss Dunning, if you have a spark of human kindness you won’t turn me down on that proposition. By the way, I have something put down about trouble.”