a cowboy on the ranch
named Karg--he is called Flat Nose. Karg was a railroad man. He is a
cattle-thief, a train-robber, a murderer, and a spy. I should not tell
you this if you were not game to the last drop of your blood. But I
think I know you better than you know yourself, though you never saw
me until last night. Karg is Sinclair's spy at your ranch, and you
must never feel it or know it; but he is there to keep your cousin's
sympathy with Sinclair, and to lure your cousin his way. And Karg will
try to kill George McCloud every time he sets foot on this ranch,
remember that."

"Then Mr. McCloud ought not to be here. I don't want him to stay if he
is in danger!" exclaimed Dicksie.

"But I do want him to come here as if it mattered nothing, and I shall
try to take care of him. I have a man among your own men, a cowboy
named Wickwire, who will be watching Karg, and who is just as quick,
and Karg, not knowing he was watched, would be taken unawares. If
Wickwire goes elsewhere to work some one else will take his place
here. Karg is not on the ranch now; he is up North, hunting up some of
your steers that were run off last month by his own cronies. Now do
you think I am giving you confidence?"

She looked at him steadily. "If I can only deserve it all." In the
distance she heard the calling of the men at the river borne on the
wind. The shock of what had been told her, the strangeness of the
night and of the scene, left her calm. Fear had given way to
responsibility and Dicksie seemed to know herself.

"You have nothing whatever to do to deserve it but keep your own
counsel. But listen a moment longer--for this is what I have been
leading up to," he said. "Marion will get a message to-morrow, a
message from Sinclair, asking her to come to see him at his
ranch-house before she goes back. I don't know what he wants--but she
is his wife. He has treated her infamously; that is why she will not
live with him and does not speak of him. But you know how strange a
woman is--or perhaps you don't: she doesn't always cease to care for a
man when she ceases to trust him. I am not in Marion's confidence,
Miss Dicksie. She is another man's wife. I cannot tell how she feels
toward him; I know she has often tried to reclaim him from his
deviltry. She may try again, that is, she may, for one reason or
another, go to him as he asks. I could not interfere, if I would. I
have no right to if I could, and I will not. Now this is what I'm