“It’s nothing,” he returned easily, “except that Sinclair has stirred up your cousin and the ranchers as well as the Williams Cache gang, and that makes talk about me. I have to do what I can to make this a peaceable country to live in. The 239 railroad wants decent people here and doesn’t want the other kind, and it falls on me, unfortunately, to keep the other kind moving. I don’t like it, but we can none of us do quite what we please in making a living. Let me tell you this”––he turned to fix his eyes seriously on hers: “Believe anything you hear of me except that I have ever taken human life willingly or save in discharge of my duty. But this kind of work makes my own life an uncertainty, as you can see. I do almost literally carry my life in my hand, for if my hand is not quicker every time than a man’s eye, I am done for then and there.”
“It is dreadful to think of.”
“Not exactly that, but it is something I can’t afford to forget.”
“What would become of the lives of the friends you protect if you were killed?”
“You say you care for Marion Sinclair. I should like to think if anything should happen to me you wouldn’t forget her?”
“I never will.”
He smiled. “Then I put her in charge of the man closest to me, George McCloud, and the woman she thinks the most of in the world––except her mother. What is this, are they back? Yonder they come.”
“We found nothing serious,” McCloud said, 240 answering their questions as he approached with Lance Dunning. “The current is really swinging away, but the bank is caving in where it was undermined last night.” He stopped before Dicksie. “I am trying to get your cousin to go to the house and go to bed. I am going to stay all night, but there is no necessity for his staying.”
“Damn it, McCloud, it’s not right,” protested Lance, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead. “You need the sleep more than I do. I say he is the one to go to bed to-night,” continued Lance, putting it up to Whispering Smith. “And I insist, by the Almighty, that you two take him back to the house with you now!”
Whispering Smith raised his hand. “If this is merely a family quarrel about who shall go to bed, let us compromise. You two stay up all night and let me go to bed.”