Scott, leaving
Wickwire with Whispering Smith, took fresh horses and pushed ahead as
far as they could ride before dark, but they brought back news. The
trail had split again, with one man riding alone to the left, while
two had taken the hills to the right, heading for Mission Pass and the
Cache. With Gene Johnson and Bob at the mouth of the Cache there was
little fear for that outlet. The turn to the left was the unexpected.
Over the little fire in the ranch kitchen where they ate supper, the
four men were in conference twenty minutes. It was decided that Scott
and Kennedy should head for the Mission Pass, while Whispering Smith,
with Wickwire to trail with him, should undertake to cut off,
somewhere between Fence River and the railroad, the man who had gone
south, the man believed to be Sinclair. It was a late moon, and when
Scott and Kennedy saddled their horses Whispering Smith and Wickwire
were asleep.

With the cowboy, Whispering Smith started at daybreak. No one saw them
again for two days. During those two days and nights they were in the
saddle almost continuously. For every mile the man ahead of them rode
they were forced to ride two miles and often three. Late in the second
night they crossed the railroad, and the first word from them came in
long despatches sent by Whispering Smith to Medicine Bend and
instructions to Kennedy and Scott in the north, which were carried by
hard riders straight to Deep Creek.

On the morning of the third day Dicksie Dunning, who had gone home
from Medicine Bend and who had been telephoning Marion and George
McCloud two days for news, was trying to get Medicine Bend again on
the telephone when Puss came in to say that a man at the kitchen door
wanted to see her.

"Who is it, Puss?"

"I d'no, Miss Dicksie; 'deed, I never seen him b'fore."

Dicksie walked around on the porch to the kitchen. A dust-covered man
sitting on a limp horse threw back the brim of his hat as he touched
it, lifted himself stiffly out of the saddle, and dropped to the
ground. He laughed at Dicksie's startled expression. "Don't you know
me?" he asked, putting out his hand. It was Whispering Smith.

He was a fearful sight. Stained from head to foot with alkali,
saddle-cramped and bent, his face scratched and stained, he stood with
a smiling appeal in his bloodshot eyes.

Dicksie gave a little uncertain cry, clasped her hands, and, with a
scream, threw her arms impulsively around his neck. "Oh, I did