d 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."