r. Bucks undertook to open up this country to settlers, he needed a
man of patience and endurance and with courage and skill in dealing
with lawless men, and no man has ever succeeded so well as this
terrible man you have heard about. He is terrible, my dear, to lawless
men, not to any one else. He is terrible in resource and in daring,
but not in anything else I know of, and I knew him when he was a boy
and wore a big pink worsted scarf when he went skating."

"I should like to have seen that scarf," said Dicksie reflectively.
She rose and looked around the tent. In a few minutes she made Marion
lie down on one of the cots. Then she walked to the front of the tent,
opened the flap, and looked out.

Whispering Smith was sitting before the fire. Rain was falling, but
Dicksie put on her close-fitting black coat, raised the door-flap, and
walked noiselessly from the tent and up behind him. "Alone in the
rain?" she asked.

She had expected to see him start at her voice, but he did not, though
he rose and turned around. "Not now," he answered as he offered her
his box with a smile.

"Are you taking your hat off for me in the rain? Put it on again!" she
insisted with a little tone of command, and she was conscious of
gratification when he obeyed amiably.

"I won't take your box unless you can find another!" she said. "Oh,
you have another! I came out to tell you what a dreadful man I
thought you were, and to apologize."

"Never mind apologizing. Lots of people think worse than that of me
and don't apologize. I'm sorry I have no shelter to offer you, except
to sit on this side and take the rain."

"Why should you take the rain for me?"

"You are a woman."

"But a stranger to you."

"Only in a way."

Dicksie gazed for a moment at the fire. "You won't think me abrupt,
will you?" she said, turning to him, "but, as truly as I live, I
cannot account for you, Mr. Smith. I guess at the ranch we don't know
what goes on in the world. Everything I see of you contradicts
everything I have heard of you."

"You haven't seen much of me yet, you know, and you may have heard
much better accounts of me than I deserve. Still, it isn't surprising
you can't account for me; in fact, it would be surprising if you
could. Nobody pretends to do that. You must not be shocked if I can't
even account for myself. Do you know what a derelict is? A ship that
has been abandoned but never wholly sinks."

"Please don't make fun of me! How did