“I didn’t deserve anything better after placing myself in such a fool position. Why don’t you ask me what I thought the day you acted so beautifully 196 at Crawling Stone Ranch? I thought that the finest thing I ever saw.”
“You were not to blame at Marion’s.”
“I seemed to be, which is just as bad. I am going to start the ‘phones going. It’s up to me to make good, you know, in about four hours with a lot of men and material. Aren’t you going to take off your hat?––and your gloves are soaking wet.”
McCloud took down the receiver, and Dicksie put her hands slowly to her head to unpin her hat. It was a broad hat of scarlet felt rolled high above her forehead, and an eagle’s quill caught in the black rosette swept across the front. As she stood in her clinging riding-skirt and her severely plain scarlet waist with only a black ascot falling over it, Whispering Smith looked at her. His eyes did not rest on the picture too long, but his glance was searching. He spoke in an aside to Marion. Marion laughed as she turned her head from where Dicksie was talking again with McCloud. “The best of it is,” murmured Marion, “she hasn’t a suspicion of how lovely she really is.”
CHAPTER XXI
SUPPER IN CAMP
“Will you never be done with your telephoning?” asked Marion. McCloud was still planning the assembling of the men and teams for the morning. Breakfast and transportation were to be arranged for, and the men and teams and material were to be selected from where they could best be spared. Dicksie, with the fingers of one hand moving softly over the telegraph key, sat on a box listening to McCloud’s conferences and orders.
“Cherry says everything is served. Isn’t it, Cherry?” Marion called to the Japanese boy.