Dicksie answered quite in earnest: “Oh, but we are. We must!”
“Why did you come, then? It’s taken half the night to get here, and will take a night and a half at least to get back.”
“We came to ask Mr. McCloud for some grain-sacks––you know, they have nothing to work with at the ranch,” said Marion; “and he said we might have some and we are to send for them in the morning.”
“I see. But we may as well talk plainly.” Smith looked at Dicksie. “You are as brave and as game as a girl can be, I know, or you couldn’t have done this. Sacks full of sand, with the boys at the ranch to handle them, would do no more good to-morrow at the bend than bladders. The river is flowing into Squaw Lake above there now. A hundred men that know the game might check things yet if they’re there by daylight. Nobody else, and nothing else on God’s earth, can.”
There was silence before the fire. McCloud 192 broke it: “I can put the hundred men there at daylight, Gordon, if Miss Dunning and her cousin want them,” said McCloud.
Marion sprang to her feet. “Oh, will you do that, Mr. McCloud?”
McCloud looked at Dicksie. “If they are wanted.”
Dicksie tried to look at the fire. “We have hardly deserved help from Mr. McCloud at the ranch,” she said at last.
He put out his hand. “I must object. The first wreck I ever had on this division Miss Dunning rode twenty miles to offer help. Isn’t that true? Why, I would walk a hundred miles to return the offer to her. Perhaps your cousin would object,” he suggested, turning to Dicksie; “but no, I think we can manage that. Now what are we going to do? You two can’t go back to-night, that is certain.”
“We must.”