ce: there was
more than this for McCloud to feed on. He was forced to confess to
himself as he walked back to the Wickiup that the most annoying
feature of the incident was the least important, namely, that his only
enemy in the country should be intrusted with commissions from the
Stone Ranch and be carrying packages for Dicksie Dunning. It was
Sinclair's trick to do things for people, and to make himself so
useful that they must like first his obligingness and afterward
himself. Sinclair, McCloud knew, was close in many ways to Lance
Dunning. It was said to have been his influence that won Dunning's
consent to sell a right of way across the ranch for the new Crawling
Stone Line. But McCloud felt it useless to disguise the fact to
himself that he now had a second keen interest in the Crawling Stone
country--not alone a dream of a line, but a dream of a girl. Sitting
moodily in his office, with his feet on the desk, a few nights after
his encounter with Sinclair, he recalled her nod as she said good-by.
It had seemed the least bit encouraging, and he meditated anew on the
only twenty minutes of real pleasurable excitement he had ever felt in
his life, the twenty minutes with Dicksie Dunning at Smoky Creek. Her
intimates, he had heard, called her Dicksie, and he was vaguely
envying her intimates when the night despatcher, Rooney Lee, opened
the door and disturbed his reflections.

"How is Number One, Rooney?" called McCloud, as if nothing but the
thought of a train movement ever entered his head.

Rooney Lee paused. In his hand he held a message. Rooney's cheeks were
hollow and his sunken eyes were large. His face, which was singularly
a night face, would shock a stranger, but any man on the division
would have given his life for Rooney. The simple fellow had but two
living interests--his train-sheets and his chewing tobacco. Sometimes
I think that every railroad man earns his salary--even the president.
But Rooney was a Past Worthy Master in that unnumbered lodge of
railroad slaves who do killing work and have left, when they die, only
a little tobacco to show for it. It was on Rooney's account that
McCloud's order banishing cuspidors from his office had been
rescinded. A few evenings of agony on the despatcher's part when in
consultation with his chief, the mournful wandering of his
uncomplaining eyes, his struggle to raise an obstinate window before
he could answer a question, would have moved a heart harder than
M