News of the fight in Williams Cache reached Medicine Bend in the night. Horsemen, filling in the gaps between telephones leading to the north country, made the circuit complete, but the accounts, confused and colored in the repeating, came in a cloud of conflicting rumors. In the streets, little groups of men discussed the fragmentary reports as they came from the railroad offices. Toward morning, Sleepy Cat, nearer the scene of the fight, began sending in telegraphic reports in which truth and rumor were strangely mixed. McCloud waited at the wires all night, hoping for trustworthy advices as to the result, but received none. Even during the morning nothing came, and the silence seemed more ominous than the bad news of the early night. Routine business was almost suspended and McCloud and Rooney Lee kept the wires warm with inquiries, but neither the telephone nor the telegraph would yield any definite word as to what had actually 313 happened in the Williams Cache fight. It was easy to fear the worst.
At the noon hour McCloud was signing letters when Dicksie Dunning walked hurriedly up the hall and hesitated in the passageway before the open door of his office. He gave an exclamation as he pushed back his chair. She was in her riding-suit just as she had slipped from her saddle. “Oh, Mr. McCloud, have you heard the awful news? Whispering Smith was killed yesterday in Williams Cache by Du Sang.”
McCloud stiffened a little. “I hope that can’t be true. We have had nothing here but rumors; perhaps it is these that you have heard.”
“No, no! Blake, one of our men, was in the fight and got back at the ranch at nine o’clock this morning. I heard the story myself, and I rode right in to––to see Marion, and my courage failed me––I came here first. Does she know, do you think? Blake saw him fall from the saddle after he was shot, and everybody ran away, and Du Sang and two other men were firing at him as he lay on the ground. He could not possibly have escaped with his life, Blake said; he must have been riddled with bullets. Isn’t it terrible?” She sobbed suddenly, and McCloud, stunned at her words, led her to his chair and bent over her.
“If his death means this to you, think of what it means to me!”
A flood of sympathy bore them together. The moment was hardly one for interruption, but the despatcher’s door opened and Rooney Lee halted, thunderstruck, on the threshold.
Dicksie’s hand disappeared in her handkerchief. McCloud had been in wrecks before, and gathered himself together unmoved. “What is it, Rooney?”
The very calmness of the two at the table disconcerted the despatcher. He held the message in his hand and shuffled his feet. “Give me your despatch,” said McCloud impatiently.
Quite unable to take his hollow eyes off Dicksie, poor Rooney advanced, handed the telegram to McCloud, and beat an awkward retreat.