"

"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, a