"How about the mining?"
Whispering Smith waved his hand in something of the proud manner in which Bucks could wave his presidential hand. "My business, Bucks said, need not interfere with that, not in the least; he said that I could do all the mining I wanted to, and I _have_ done all the mining I wanted to. But here is the singular thing that happened: I opened up my office and had nothing to do; they didn"t seem to want any right of way just then. I kept getting my check every month, and wasn"t doing a hand"s turn but riding over the country and shooting jack-rabbits. But, Lord, I love this country! Did you know I used to be a cowboy in the mountains years ago? Indeed I did.
I know it almost as well as you do. I mined more or less in the meantime. Occasionally I would go to Bucks--you say you don"t know him?--too bad!--and tell him candidly I wasn"t doing a thing to earn my salary. At such times he would only ask me how I liked the job," and Whispering Smith"s heavy eyebrows rose in mild surprise at the recollection. "One day when I was talking with him he handed me a telegram from the desert saying that a night operator at a lonely station had been shot and a switch misplaced and a train nearly wrecked. He asked me what I thought of it. I discovered that the poor fellow had shot himself, and in the end we had to put him in the insane asylum to save him from the penitentiary--but that was where my trouble began.
"It ended in my having to organize the special service on the whole road to look after a thousand and one things that n.o.body else had--well, let us say time or inclination to look after: fraud and theft and violence and all that sort of disagreeable thing. Then one day the cat crawled out of the bag. What do you think? That man who is now president of this road had somewhere seen a highly colored story about me in a magazine, a ten-cent magazine, you know. He had spotted me the first time I walked into his office, and told me a long time afterward it was just like seeing a man walk out of a book, and that he had hard work to keep from falling on my neck. He knew what he wanted me for; it was just this thing. I left Chicago to get away from it, and this is the result. It is not all that kind of thing, oh, no!
When they want to cross a reservation I have a winter in Washington with our attorneys and dine with old friends in the White House, and the next winter I may be on snowshoes chasing a band of rustlers. I swore long ago I would do no more of it--that I couldn"t and wouldn"t.
But it is Bucks. I can"t go back on him. He is amiable and I am soft.
He says he is going to have a crown and harp for me some day, but I fancy--that is, I have an intimation--that there will be a red-hot protest at the bar of Heaven," he lowered his tone, "from a certain unmentionable quarter when I undertake to put the vestments on. By the way, I hear you are interested in chickens. Oh, yes, I"ve heard a lot about you! Bob Johnson, over at Oroville, has some pretty bantams I want to tell you about."
Whether he talked railroad or chickens, it was all one: d.i.c.ksie sat spellbound; and when he announced it was half-past three o"clock and time to rouse Marion, she was amazed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE FROM THE PHOTO-PLAY PRODUCTION OF "WHISPERING SMITH." _American Mutual Studio_.]
Dawn showed in the east. The men eating breakfast in tents were to be sent on a work-train up a piece of Y-track that led as near as they could be taken to where they were needed. The train had pulled out when d.i.c.ksie, Marion, McCloud, and Whispering Smith took horses to get across to the hills and through to the ranch-house. They had ridden slowly for some distance when McCloud was called back. The party returned and rode together into the mists that hung below the bridge.
They came out upon a little party of men standing with lanterns on a piece of track where the river had taken the entire grade and raced furiously through the gap. Fog shrouded the light of the lanterns and lent gloom to the silence, but the women could see the group that McCloud had joined. Standing above his companions on a pile of ties, a tall young man holding a megaphone waited. Out of the darkness there came presently a loud calling. The tall young man at intervals bawled vigorously into the fog in answer. Far away could be heard, in the intervals of silence, the faint clang of the work-train engine-bell.
Again the voice came out of the fog. McCloud took the megaphone and called repeatedly. Two men rowed a boat out of the back-water behind the grade, and when McCloud stepped into it, it was released on a line while the oarsmen guided it across the flood until it disappeared. The two megaphone voices could still be heard. After a time the boat was pulled back again, and McCloud stepped out of it. He spoke a moment with the men, rejoined his party, and climbed into the saddle. "Now we are off," said he.
"What was it all about?" asked Whispering Smith.
"Your friend Klein is over there. n.o.body could understand what he said except that he wanted me. When I got here I couldn"t make out what he was talking about, so they let us out in the boat on a line. Half-way across the break I made out what was troubling him. He said he was going to lose three hundred feet of track, and wanted to know what to do."
"And you told him, of course?"
"Yes."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him to lose it."
"I could have done that myself."
"Why didn"t you?"
CHAPTER XXIII
AT THE RIVER
They found the ranch-house as Marion and d.i.c.ksie had left it, deserted. Puss told them every one was at the river. McCloud did not approve d.i.c.ksie"s plan of going down to see her cousin first. "Why not let me ride down and manage it without bringing you into it at all?"
he suggested. "It can be done." And after further discussion it was so arranged.
McCloud and Smith had been joined by Dancing on horseback, and they made their way around Squaw Lake and across the fields. The fog was rolling up from the willows at the bend. Men were chopping in the brush, and McCloud and his companion soon met Lance Dunning riding up the narrow strip of sand that held the river off the ranch.
McCloud greeted Dunning, regardless of his amazement, as if he had parted from him the day before. "How are you making it over here?" he asked. "We are in pretty good shape at the moment down below, and I thought I would ride over to see if we could do anything for you.
This is what you call pretty fair water for this part of the valley, isn"t it?"
Lance swallowed his astonishment. "This isn"t water, McCloud; this is h.e.l.l." He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "Well, I call this white, anyway, and no mistake--I do indeed, sir! This is Whispering Smith, isn"t it? Glad to see you at Crawling Stone, sir." Which served not only to surprise but to please Whispering Smith.
"Some of my men were free," continued McCloud; "I switched some mattresses and sacks around the Y, thinking they might come in play here for you at the bend. They are at your service if you think you need them."
"Need them!" Lance swore fiercely and from the bottom of his heart. He was glad to get help from any quarter and made no bones about it.
Moreover, McCloud lessened the embarra.s.sment by explaining that he had a personal interest in holding the channel where it ran, lest a change above might threaten the approaches already built to the bridge; and Whispering Smith, who would have been on terms with the catfish if he had been flung into the middle of the Crawling Stone, contributed at once, like a reenforced spring, to the ease of the situation.
Lance again took off his hat and wiped the sweat of anxiety from his dripping forehead. "Whatever differences of opinion I may have with your d.a.m.ned company, I have no lack of esteem personally, McCloud, for you, sir, by Heaven! How many men did you bring?"
"And whatever wheels you Crawling Stone ranchers may have in your heads on the subject of irrigation," returned McCloud evenly, "I have no lack of esteem personally, Mr. Dunning, for you. I brought a hundred."
"Do you want to take charge here? I"m frank, sir; you understand this game and I don"t."
"Suppose we look the situation over; meantime, all our supplies have to be brought across from the Y. What should you think, Mr. Dunning, of putting all the teams you can at that end of the work?"
"Every man that can be spared from the river shall go at it. Come over here and look at our work and judge for yourself."
They rode to where the forces a.s.sembled by Lance were throwing up embankments and riprapping. There was hurried running to and fro, a violent dragging about of willows, and a good deal of shouting.
Dunning, with some excitement, watched McCloud"s face to note the effect of the activity on him, but McCloud"s expression, naturally reserved, reflected nothing of his views on the subject. Dunning waved his hand at the lively scene. "They"ve been at it all night. How many would you take away, sir?"
"You might take them all away, as far as the river is concerned," said McCloud after a moment.
"What? h.e.l.l! All?"
"They are not doing anything, are they, but running around in a circle? And those fellows over there might as well be making mud pies as riprapping at that point. What we need there is a mattress and sandbags--and plenty of them. Bill," directed McCloud in an even tone of business as he turned to Dancing, "see how quick you can get your gangs over here with what sacks they can carry and walk fast. If you will put your men on horses, Mr. Dunning, they can help like everything. That bank won"t last a great while the way the river is getting under it now." Dancing wheeled like an elephant on his bronco and clattered away through the mud. Lance Dunning, recovering from his surprise, started his men back for the wagons, and McCloud, dismounting, walked with him to the water"s edge to plan the fight for what was left of the strip in front of the alfalfa fields.
When Whispering Smith got back to the house he was in good-humor. He joined d.i.c.ksie and Marion in the dining-room, where they were drinking coffee. Afterward d.i.c.ksie ordered horses saddled and the three rode to the river. Up and down the bank as far as they could see in the misty rain, men were moving slowly about--more men, it seemed to d.i.c.ksie, than she had ever seen together in her life. The confusion and the noise had disappeared. No one appeared to hurry, but every one had something to do, and, from the gangs who with sledges were sinking "dead-men" among the trees to hold the cables of the mattress that was about to be sunk, and the j.a.ps who were diligently preparing to float and load it, to the men that were filling and wheeling the sandbags, no one appeared excited. McCloud joined the visitors for a few moments and then went back to where Dancing and his men on life-lines were guiding the mattress to its resting-place. In spite of the gloom of the rain, which Whispering Smith said was breaking, d.i.c.ksie rode back to the house in much better spirits with her two guests; and when they came from luncheon the sun, as Smith had predicted, was shining.
"Oh, come out!" cried d.i.c.ksie, at the door. Marion had a letter to write and went upstairs, but Whispering Smith followed d.i.c.ksie. "Does everything you say come true?" she demanded as she stood in the sunshine.
She was demure with light-heartedness and he looked at her approvingly. "I hope nothing I may say ever will come true unless it makes you happy," he answered lightly. "It would be a shame if it did anything else."
She pointed two accusing fingers at him. "Do you know what you promised last night? You have forgotten already! You said you would tell me why my leghorns are eating their feathers off."
"Let me talk with them."
"Just what I should like. Come on!" said d.i.c.ksie, leading the way to the chicken-yard. "I want you to see my bantams too. I have three of the dearest little things. One is setting. They are over the way. Come see them first. And, oh, you must see my new game chickens. Truly, you never saw anything as handsome as Caesar--he"s the rooster; and I have six pullets. Caesar is perfectly superb."
When the two reached the chicken-houses d.i.c.ksie examined the nest where she was setting the bantam hen. "This miserable hen will not set," she exclaimed in despair. "See here, Mr. Smith, she has left her nest again and is scratching around on the ground. Isn"t it a shame?
I"ve tied a cord around her leg so she couldn"t run away, and she is hobbling around like a scrub pony."
"Perhaps the eggs are too warm," suggested her companion. "I have had great success in cases like this with powdered ice--not using too much, of course; just shave the ice gently and rub it over the eggs one at a time; it will often result in refreshing the attention of the hen."
d.i.c.ksie looked grave. "Aren"t you ashamed to make fun of me?"
Whispering Smith seemed taken aback. "Is it really serious business?"
"Of course."