n miles apart." Bucks opened his eyes in benevolent
surprise. Dicksie, unabashed, kept right on: "Well, do you know how
traffic is increasing over there, with the trains running only two
months now? Why, the settlers are fairly pouring into the country."

"Will you give me a corner lot if we put another station on the
ranch?"

"I will give you two if you will give us excursions and run some of
the Overland passenger trains through the valley."

Bucks threw back his head and laughed in his tremendous way. "I don't
know about that; I daren't promise offhand, Mrs. McCloud. But if you
can get Whispering Smith to come back you might lay the matter before
him. He is to take charge of all the colonist business when he
returns; he promised to do that before he went away for his vacation.
Whispering Smith is really the man you will have to stand in with."

* * * * *

Whispering Smith, lying on his iron bed in the hospital, professed not
to be able quite to understand why they had made such a fuss about it.
He underwent the excitement of the appearance of Barnhardt and the
first talk with McCloud and Dicksie with hardly a rise in his
temperature, and, lying in the sunshine of the afternoon, he was
waiting for Marion. When she opened the door his face was turned
wistfully toward it. He held out his hands with the old smile. She ran
half blinded across the room and dropped on her knee beside him.

"My dear Marion, why did they drag you away out here?"

"They did not drag me away out here. Did you expect me to sit with
folded hands when I heard you were ill anywhere in the wide world?"

He looked hungrily at her. "I didn't suppose any one in the wide world
would take it very seriously."

"Mr. McCloud is crushed this afternoon to think you have said you
would not go back with him. You would not believe how he misses you."

"It has been pretty lonesome for the last year. I didn't think it
_could_ be so lonesome anywhere."

"Nor did I."

"Have you noticed it? I shouldn't think you could in the mountains.
Was there much water last spring? Heavens, I'd like to see the
Crawling Stone again!"

"Why don't you come back?"

He folded her hands in his own. "Marion, it is you. I've been afraid I
couldn't stand it to be near you and not tell you----"

"What need you be afraid to tell me?"

"That I have loved you so long."

Her head sunk close to his. "Don't you know you have said it