n the Cache, who was willing to take a message to the
boss.

Whispering Smith gave his instructions explicitly, facing the
messenger, as the two sat in their saddles, with an importunate eye.
"Say to Rebstock exactly these words," he insisted. "This is from
Whispering Smith: I want Du Sang. He killed a friend of mine last
night at Mission Springs. I happened to be near there and know he rode
in last night. He can't get out; the Canadian is plugged. I won't
stand for the killing, and it is Du Sang or a clean-up in the Cache
all around, and then I'll get Du Sang anyway. Regards."

Riding circumspectly in and about the entrance to the Cache, the
party waited an hour for an answer. When the answer came, it was
unsatisfactory. Rebstock declined to appear upon so trivial a matter,
and Whispering Smith refused to specify a further grievance. More
parley and stronger messages were necessary to stir the Deep Creek
monarch, but at last he sent word asking Whispering Smith to come
to his cabin accompanied only by Kennedy.

The two railroad men rode up the canyon together. "And now I will show
you a lean and hungry thief grown monstrous and miserly, Farrell,"
said Whispering Smith.

At the head of a short pocket between two sheer granite walls they saw
Rebstock's weather-beaten cabin, and he stood in front of it smoking.
He looked moodily at his visitors out of eyes buried between rolls of
fat. Whispering Smith was a little harsh as the two shook hands, but
he dismounted and followed Rebstock into the house.

"What are you so high and mighty about?" he demanded, throwing his hat
on the table near which Rebstock had seated himself. "Why don't you
come out when I send a man to you, or send word what you will do? What
have you got to kick about? Haven't you been treated right?"

Being in no position to complain, but shrewdly aware that much
unpleasantness was in the wind, Rebstock beat about the bush. He had
had rheumatism; he couldn't ride; he had been in bed three weeks and
hadn't seen Du Sang for three months. "You ain't chasing up here after
Du Sang because he killed a man at Mission Springs. I know better than
that. That ain't the first man he's killed, and it ain't a' goin' to
be the last."

Whispering Smith lifted his finger and for the first time smiled. "Now
there you err, Rebstock--it is 'a goin' to be' the last. So you think
I'm after you, do you? Well, if I were, what are you going to do about
it? Rebstock, do you