Whispering Smith/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
AT THE DIKE
MARION caught her closely to her heart. “I knew you would go if I got you angry, dear. But you are so slow to anger. Mr. McCloud is just the same way. Mr. Smith says when he does get angry he can do anything. He is very like you in so many ways.”
Dicksie was wiping her eyes. “Is he, Marion? Well, what shall I wear?”
“Just your riding-clothes, dear, and a smile. He won’t know what you have on. It is you he will want to see. But I’ve been thinking of something else. What will your Cousin Lance say? Suppose he should object?”
“Object! I should like to see him object after losing the fight himself.” Marion laughed. “Well, do you think you can find the way down there for us?”
“I can find any way anywhere within a hundred miles of here.”
On the 20th of June McCloud did have something of an army of men in the Crawling Stone Valley. Of these, two hundred and fifty were in the vicinity of the bridge, the abutments and piers of which were being put in just below the Dunning ranch. Near at hand Bill Dancing, with a big gang, had been for some time watching the ice and dynamiting the jams. McCloud brought in more men as the river continued to rise. The danger line on the gauges was at length submerged, and for three days the main-line construction camps had been robbed of men to guard the soft grades above and below the bridge. The new track up and down the valley had become a highway of escape from the flood, and the track patrols were met at every curve by cattle, horses, deer, wolves, and coyotes fleeing from the waste of waters that spread over the bottoms.
Through the Dunning ranch the Crawling Stone River makes a far bend across the valley to the north and east. The extraordinary volume of water now pouring through the Box Canyon exposed ten thousand acres of the ranch to the caprice of the river, and if at the point of its tremendous sweep to the north it should cut back into its old channel the change would wipe the entire body of ranch alfalfa lands off the face of the valley. With the heat of the lengthening June days a vast steam rose from the chill waters of the river, marking in ominous windings the channel of the main stream through a yellow sea which, ignoring the usual landmarks of trees and dunes, flanked the current broadly on either side. Late in the afternoon of the day that Dicksie with Marion sought McCloud, a storm drifted down the Topah Topah Hills, and heavy showers broke across the valley.
At nightfall the rain had passed and the mist lifted from the river. Above the bluffs rolling patches of cloud obscured the face of the moon, but the distant thunder had ceased, and at midnight the valley near the bridge lay in a stillness broken only by the hoarse calls of the patrols and far-off megaphones. From the bridge camp, which lay on high ground near the grade, the distant lamps of the track-walkers could be seen moving dimly.
Before the camp-fire in front of McCloud’s tent a group of men, smoking and talking, sat or lay sprawled on tarpaulins, drying themselves after the long day. Among them were the weather-beaten remnants of the old guard of the mountain-river workers, men who had ridden in the caboose the night that Hailey went to his death, and had fought the Spider Water with Glover. Bill Dancing, huge, lumbering, awkward as a bear and as shifty, was talking, because with no apparent effort he could talk all night, and was a valuable man at keeping the camp awake. Bill Dancing talked and, after Sinclair’s name had been dropped from the roll, ate and drank more than any two men on the division. A little apart, McCloud lay on a leather caboose cushion trying to get a nap.
“It was the day George McCloud came,” continued Dancing, spinning a continuous story. “Nobody was drinking—Murray Sinclair started that yarn. I was getting fixed up a little for to meet George McCloud, so I asked the barber for some tonic, and he understood me for to say dye for my whiskers, and he gets out the dye and begins to dye my whiskers. My cigar went out whilst he was shampooing me, and my whiskers was wet up with the dye. He turned around to put down th’ bottle, and I started for to light my cigar with a parlor-match, and, by gum! away went my whiskers on fire—burnt jus’ like a tumbleweed. There was the barbers all running around at once trying for to choke me with towels, and running for water, and me sitting there blazing like a tar-barrel. That’s all there was to that story. I went over to Doc Torpy’s and got bandaged up, and he wanted me for to go to the hospit’l—but I was going for to meet George McCloud.” Bill raised his voice a little and threw his tones carelessly over toward the caboose cushion: “And I was the on’y man on the platform when his train pulled in. His car was on the hind end. I walked back and waited for some one to come out. It was about seven o’clock in the evening and they was eating dinner inside, so I set up on the fence for a minute, and who do you think got out of the car? That boy laying right over there. ‘Where’s your dad?’ says I; that’s exactly what I said. ‘Dead,’ says he. ‘Dead!’ says I, surprised-like. ‘Dead,’ says he, ‘for many years.’ ‘Where’s the new superintendent?’ says I. ‘I’m the new superintendent,’ says he. Well, sir, you could have blowed me over with a air-hose. ‘Go ’way,’ I says. ‘What’s the matter with your face, Bill?’ he says, while I was looking at him; now that’s straight. That was George McCloud, right over there, the first time I ever set eyes on him or him on me. The assertion was met with silence such as might be termed marked.
“Bucks told him,” continued Bill Dancing, in corroborative detail, “that when he got to Medicine Bend one man would be waiting for to meet him. ‘He met me,’ says Bucks; ‘he’s met every superintendent since my time; he’ll meet you. Go right up and speak to him,’ Bucks says; ‘it’ll be all right.’”
“Oh, hell, Bill!” protested an indignant chorus.
“Well, what’s er matter with you fellows? Didn’t you ask me to tell the story?” demanded Dancing angrily. “If you know it better than I do, tell it! Give me some tobacco, Chris,” said Bill, honoring with the request the only man in the circle who had shown no scepticism, because he spoke English with difficulty. “And say, Chris, go down and read the bridge gauge, will you? It’s close on twelve o’clock, and he’s to be called when it reaches twenty-eight feet. I said the boy could never run the division without help from every man on it, and that’s what I’m giving him, and I don’t care who knows it,” said Bill Dancing, raising his voice not too much. “Bucks says that any man that c’n run this division c’n run any railroad on earth. Shoo! now who’s this coming here on horseback? Clouding up again, too, by gum!”
The man sent to the bridge had turned back, and behind his lantern Dancing heard the tread of horses. He stood at one side of the camp-fire while two visitors rode up; they were women. Dancing stood dumb as they advanced into the firelight. The one ahead spoke: “Mr. Dancing, don’t you know me?” As she stopped her horse the light of the fire struck her face. “Why, Mis’ Sinclair!”
“Yes, and Miss Dunning is with me,” returned Marion. Bill staggered. “This is an awful place to get to; we have been nearly drowned, and we want to see Mr. McCloud.”
McCloud, roused by Marion’s voice, came forward. “You were asleep,” said she as he greeted her. “I am so sorry we have disturbed you!” She looked careworn and a little forlorn, yet but a little considering the struggle she and Dicksie had made to reach the camp.
Light blazed from the camp-fire, where Dicksie stood talking with Dancing about horses.
“They are in desperate straits up at the ranch,” Marion went on, when McCloud had assured her of her welcome. “I don’t see how they can save it. The river is starting to flow into the old channel and there’s a big pond right in the alfalfa fields.”
“It will play the deuce with things if it gets through there,” mused McCloud. “I wonder how the river is? I’ve been asleep. O Bill!” he called to Dancing, “what water have you got?”
“Twenty-eight six just now, sir. She’s a-raising very, very slow, Mr. McCloud.”
“So I am responsible for this invasion,” continued Marion calmly. “I’ve been up with Dicksie at the ranch; she sent for me. Just think of it—no woman but old Puss within ten miles of the poor child! And they have been trying everywhere to get bags, and you have all the bags, and the men have been buzzing around over there for a week like bumblebees and doing just about as much good. She and I talked it all over this afternoon, and I told her I was coming over here to see you, and we started out together—and merciful goodness, such a time as we have had!”
“But you started out together; where did you leave her?”
“There she stands the other side of the fire. O Dicksie!”
“Why did you not tell me she was here!” exclaimed McCloud.
Dicksie came into the light as he hastened over. If she was uncertain in manner, he was not. He met her, laughing just enough to relieve the tension of which both for an instant were conscious. She gave him her hand when he put his out, though he felt that it trembled a little. “Such a ride as you have had! Why did you not send me word? I would have come to you!” he exclaimed, throwing reproach into the words.
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 under water, 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. Lanterns 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 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.”