you happen to come into the
mountains? I do want to understand things better."

"Why, you are in real earnest, aren't you? But I am not making fun of
you. Do you know President Bucks? No? Too bad! He's a very handsome
old bachelor. And he is one of those men who get all sorts of men to
do all sorts of things for them. You know, building and operating
railroads in this part of the country is no joke. The mountains are
filled with men that don't care for God, man, or the devil. Sometimes
they furnish their own ammunition to fight with and don't bother the
railroad for years; at such times the railroad leaves them alone. For
my part, I never quarrel with a man that doesn't quarrel with the
road. Then comes a time when they get after us, shooting our men or
robbing our agents or stopping our trains. Of course we have to get
busy then. A few years ago they worried Bucks till they nearly turned
his hair gray. At that unfortunate time I happened into his office
with a letter of introduction from his closest Chicago friend, Willis
Howard, prince of good men, the man that made the Palmer House
famous--yes. Now I had come out here, Miss Dunning--I almost said Miss
Dicksie, because I hear it so much----"

"I should be greatly set up to hear you call me Dicksie. And I have
wondered a thousand times about your name. Dare I ask--_why_ do they
call you Whispering Smith? You don't whisper."

He laughed with abundance of good-humor. "That is a ridiculous
accident, and it all came about when I lived in Chicago. Do you
know anything about the infernal climate there? Well, in Chicago I
used to lose my voice whenever I caught a cold--sometimes for
weeks together. So they began calling me Whispering Smith, and I've
never been able to shake the name. Odd, isn't it? But I came out to go
into the real-estate business. I was looking for some gold-bearing
farm lands where I could raise quartz, don't you know, and such
things--yes. I don't mind telling you this, though I wouldn't tell
it to everybody----"

"Certainly not," assented Dicksie, drawing her skirt around to sit in
closer confidence.

"I wanted to get rich quick," murmured Whispering Smith, confidentially.

"Almost criminal, wasn't it?"

"I wanted to have evening clothes."

"Yes."

"And for once in my life two pairs of suspenders--a modest ambition,
but a gnawing one. Would you believe it? Before I left Bucks's office
he had hired me for a railroad man. When he asked me what