s of the friends you protect if you were
killed?"

"You say you care for Marion Sinclair. I should like to think if
anything should happen to me you wouldn't forget her?"

"I never will."

He smiled. "Then I put her in charge of the man closest to me, George
McCloud, and the woman she thinks the most of in the world--except her
mother. What is this, are they back? Yonder they come."

"We found nothing serious," McCloud said, answering their questions
as he approached with Lance Dunning. "The current is really swinging
away, but the bank is caving in where it was undermined last night."
He stopped before Dicksie. "I am trying to get your cousin to go to
the house and go to bed. I am going to stay all night, but there is no
necessity for his staying."

"Damn it, McCloud, it's not right," protested Lance, taking off his
hat and wiping his forehead. "You need the sleep more than I do. I say
he is the one to go to bed to-night," continued Lance, putting it up
to Whispering Smith. "And I insist, by the Almighty, that you two take
him back to the house with you now!"

Whispering Smith raised his hand. "If this is merely a family quarrel
about who shall go to bed, let us compromise. You two stay up all
night and let me go to bed."

Lance, however, was obdurate.

"It seems to be a family characteristic of the Dunnings to have their
own way," ventured McCloud, after some further dispute. "If you will
have it so, Mr. Dunning, you may stand watch to-night and I will go to
the house."

Riding back with McCloud, Dicksie and Whispering Smith discussed the
flood. McCloud disclaimed credit for the improvement in the situation.
"If the current had held against us as it did yesterday, nothing I
could have done would have turned it," he said.

"Honesty is the best policy, of course," observed Whispering Smith. "I
like to see a modest man--and you want to remind him of all this when
he sends in his bill," he suggested, speaking to Dicksie in the dark.
"But," he added, turning to McCloud, "admitting that you are right,
don't take the trouble to advertise your view of it around here. It
would be only decent strategy for us in the valley just now to take a
little of the credit due to the wind."

CHAPTER XXV

THE MAN ON THE FRENCHMAN

Sinclair's place on the Frenchman backed up on a sharp rise against
the foothills of the Bridger range, and the ranch buildings were
strung along the creek. The ranch-house stood on groun