at I can for you. Don't talk to anybody."

CHAPTER XXXII

McLOUD AND DICKSIE

News of the fight in Williams Cache reached Medicine Bend in the
night. Horsemen, filling in the gaps between telephones leading to the
north country, made the circuit complete, but the accounts, confused
and colored in the repeating, came in a cloud of conflicting rumors.
In the streets, little groups of men discussed the fragmentary reports
as they came from the railroad offices. Toward morning, Sleepy Cat,
nearer the scene of the fight, began sending in telegraphic reports in
which truth and rumor were strangely mixed. McCloud waited at the
wires all night, hoping for trustworthy advices as to the result, but
received none. Even during the morning nothing came, and the silence
seemed more ominous than the bad news of the early night. Routine
business was almost suspended and McCloud and Rooney Lee kept the
wires warm with inquiries, but neither the telephone nor the telegraph
would yield any definite word as to what had actually happened in the
Williams Cache fight. It was easy to fear the worst.

At the noon hour McCloud was signing letters when Dicksie Dunning
walked hurriedly up the hall and hesitated in the passageway before
the open door of his office. He gave an exclamation as he pushed back
his chair. She was in her riding-suit just as she had slipped from her
saddle. "Oh, Mr. McCloud, have you heard the awful news? Whispering
Smith was killed yesterday in Williams Cache by Du Sang."

McCloud stiffened a little. "I hope that can't be true. We have had
nothing here but rumors; perhaps it is these that you have heard."

"No, no! Blake, one of our men, was in the fight and got back at the
ranch at nine o'clock this morning. I heard the story myself, and I
rode right in to--to see Marion, and my courage failed me--I came here
first. Does she know, do you think? Blake saw him fall from the saddle
after he was shot, and everybody ran away, and Du Sang and two other
men were firing at him as he lay on the ground. He could not possibly
have escaped with his life, Blake said; he must have been riddled with
bullets. Isn't it terrible?" She sobbed suddenly, and McCloud, stunned
at her words, led her to his chair and bent over her.

"If his death means this to you, think of what it means to me!"

A flood of sympathy bore them together. The moment was hardly one for
interruption, but the despatcher's door opened and Rooney Lee hal