The rider who reaches the Topah Topah crest 243 on the Gridley trail now sees in the valley below only traces of what was so laboriously planned and perfectly maintained a few years ago. But even the ruins left on the Frenchman show the herculean labor undertaken by the man in setting up a comfortable and even an elaborate establishment in so inaccessible a spot. His defiance of all ordinary means of doing things was shown in his preference for bringing much of his building-material over the trail instead of around by the Smoky Creek road. A good part of the lumber that went into his house was packed over the Gridley trail. His piano was brought through the canyon on a wagon, but the mechanical player for the piano and his wagons themselves were packed over the trail on the backs of mules. A heavy steel range for the kitchen had been brought over the same way. For Sinclair no work was hard enough, none went fast enough, and revelry never rose high enough. During the time of his activity in the Frenchman Valley Sinclair had the best-appointed place between Williams Cache and the Crawling Stone, and in the Crawling Stone only the Dunning ranch would bear comparison with his own. On the Frenchman Sinclair kept an establishment the fame of which is still foremost in mountain story. Here his cows ranged the canyons and the hills for miles, and his horses were known from 244 Medicine Bend to Fort Tracy. Here he rallied his men, laid snares for his enemies, dispensed a reckless hospitality, ruled his men with an oath and a blow, and carried a six-shooter to explain orders and answer questions with.
Over the Gridley trail from the Crawling Stone Marion and Dicksie Dunning rode early in the morning the day after McCloud and his men left the Stone Ranch with their work done. The trail is a good three hours long, and they reached Sinclair’s place at about ten o’clock. He was waiting for Marion––she had sent word she should come––and he came out of the front door into the sunshine with a smile of welcome when he saw Dicksie with her. Dicksie, long an admirer of Sinclair’s, as women usually were, had recast somewhat violently her opinions of him. She faced him now with a criminal consciousness that she knew too much. The weight of the dreadful secret weighed on her, and her responsibility in the issue of the day ahead did not help to make her greeting an easy one. One thing only was fixed in her mind and reflected in the tension of her lips and her eyes: the resolve to keep at every cost the promise she had given. For Dicksie had fallen under the spell of a man even more compelling than Sinclair, and felt strangely bounden to what she had said.
Sinclair, however, had spirit enough to smooth quite away every embarrassment. “Bachelor’s quarters,” he explained roughly and pleasantly, as he led the two women toward the house. “Cowmen make poor housekeepers, but you must feel at home.” And when Dicksie, looking at his Indian rugs on the floors, the walls, and the couches, said she thought he had little to apologize for, Sinclair looked gratified and took off his hat again. “Just a moment,” he said, standing at the side of the door. “I’ve never been able to get Marion over here before, so it happens that a woman’s foot has never entered the new house. I want to watch one of you cross the threshold for the first time.”
Dicksie, moving ahead, retreated with a laugh. “You first, then, Marion.”
“No, Dicksie, you.”
“Never! you first.” So Marion, quite red and wretchedly ill at ease, walked into the ranch-house first.
Sinclair shone nowhere better than as a host. When he had placed his guests comfortably in the living-room he told them the story of the building of the house. Then he made a cicerone of himself, and explained, with running comments, each feature of his plan as he showed how it had been carried out through the various rooms. Surprised at the attractiveness of things, Dicksie found 246 herself making mental notes for her own use, and began asking questions. Sinclair was superb in answering, but the danger of admiring things became at once apparent, for when Dicksie exclaimed over a handsome bearskin, a rich dark brown grizzly-skin of unusual size, Sinclair told the story of the killing, bared his tremendous forearm to show where the polished claws had ripped him, and, disregarding Dicksie’s protests, insisted on sending the skin over to Crawling Stone Ranch as a souvenir of her visit.
“I live a great deal alone over here,” he said, waving Dicksie’s continued refusal magnificently aside as he moved into the next room. “I’ve got a few good dogs, and I hunt just enough to keep my hand in with a rifle.” Dicksie quailed a little at the smile that went with the words. “The men, at least the kind I mix with, don’t care for grizzly-skins, and to enjoy anything you’ve got to have sympathetic company––don’t you know that?” he asked, looking admiringly at Dicksie. “I’ve got another skin for you––a silver-tip,” he added in deep, gentle tones, addressing Marion. “It has a fine head, as fine as I ever saw in the Smithsonian. It is down at Medicine Bend now, being dressed and mounted. By the way, I’ve forgotten to ask you, Miss Dicksie, about the high water. How did you get through at the ranch?”