Whispering Smith
Page 43
CHAPTER XLII
AT THE DOOR
She woke in a dream of hoofs beating at her brain. Distracted wordsfell from her lips, and when she opened her swollen eyes and saw thoseabout her she could only scream.
Marion had called up the stable, but the stablemen could only tell herthat Dicksie's horse, in terrible condition, had come in riderless.While Barnhardt, the railway surgeon, at the bedside administeredrestoratives, Marion talked with him of Dicksie's sudden andmysterious coming. Dicksie, lying in pain and quite conscious, heardall, but, unable to explain, moaned in her helplessness. She heardMarion at length tell the doctor that McCloud was out of town, and thenews seemed to bring back her senses. Then, rising in the bed, whilethe surgeon and Marion coaxed her to lie down, she clutched at theirarms and, looking from one to the other, told her story. When it wasdone she swooned, but she woke to hear voices at the door of the shop.She heard as if she dreamed, but at the door the words were dreadreality. Sinclair had made good his word, and had come out of thestorm with a summons upon Marion and it was the surgeon who threw openthe door and saw Sinclair standing in the snow.
No man in Medicine Bend knew Sinclair more thoroughly or feared himless than Barnhardt. No man could better meet him or speak to him withless of hesitation. Sinclair, as he faced Barnhardt, was not easy inspite of his dogged self-control; and he was standing, much to hisannoyance, in the glare of an arc-light that swung across the streetin front of the shop. He was well aware that no such light had everswung within a block of the shop before and in it he saw the hand ofWhispering Smith. The light was unexpected, Barnhardt was a surprise,and even the falling snow, which protected him from being seen twentyfeet away, angered him. He asked curtly who was ill, and withoutawaiting an answer asked for his wife.
The surgeon eyed him coldly. "Sinclair, what are you doing in MedicineBend? Have you come to surrender yourself?"
"Surrender myself? Yes, I'm ready any time to surrender myself. Takeme along yourself, Barnhardt, if you think I've done worse than anyman would that has been hounded as I've been hounded. I want to see mywife."
"Sinclair, you can't see your wife."
"What's the matter--is she sick?"
"No, but you can't see her."
"Who says I can't see her?"
"I say so."
Sinclair swept the ice furiously from his beard and his right handfell to his hip as he stepped back. "You've turned against me too,have you, you gray-haired wolf? Can't see her! Get out of that door."
The surgeon pointed his finger at the murderer. "No, I won't get outof this door. Shoot, you coward! Shoot an unarmed man. You will notlive to get a hundred feet away. This place is watched for you; youcould not have got within a hundred yards of it to-night except forthis snow." Barnhardt pointed through the storm. "Sinclair, you willhang in the court-house square, and I will take the last beat of yourpulse with these fingers, and when I pronounce you dead they will cutyou down. You want to see your wife. You want to kill her. Don't lie;you want to kill her. You were heard to say as much to-night at theDunning ranch. You were watched and tracked, and you are expected andlooked for here. Your best friends have gone back on you. Ay, curseagain and over again, but that will not put Ed Banks on his feet."
Sinclair stamped with frenzied oaths. "You're too hard on me," hecried, clenching his hands. "I say you're too hard. You've heard oneside of it. Is that the way you put judgment on a man that's got nofriends left because they start a new lie on him every day? Who is itthat's watching me? Let them stand out like men in the open. If theywant me, let them come like men and take me!"
"Sinclair, this storm gives you a chance to get away; take it. Bad asyou are, there are men in Medicine Bend who knew you when you were aman. Don't stay here for some of them to sit on the jury that hangsyou. If you can get away, get away. If I were your friend--and Godknows whom you can call friend in Medicine Bend to-night--I couldn'tsay more. Get away before it is too late."
He was never again seen alive in Medicine Bend. They tracked him nextday over every foot of ground he had covered. They found where he hadleft his spent horse and where afterward he had got the fresh one.They learned how he had eluded all the picketing planned for preciselysuch a contingency, got into the Wickiup, got upstairs and burst openthe very door of McCloud's room. But Dicksie had on her side thatnight One greater than her invincible will or her faithful horse.McCloud was two hundred miles away.
Barnhardt lost no time in telephoning the Wickiup that Sinclair was intown, but within an hour, while the two women were still under thesurgeon's protection, a knock at the cottage door gave them a secondfright. Barnhardt answered the summons. He opened the door and, as theman outside paused to shake the snow off his hat, the surgeon caughthim by the shoulder and dragged into the house Whispering Smith.
Picking the icicles from his hair, Smith listened to all thatBarnhardt said, his eyes roving meantime over everything within theroom and mentally over many things outside it. He congratulatedBarnhardt, and when Marion came into the room he apologized for thesnow he had brought in. Dicksie heard his voice and cried out from thebedroom. They could not keep her away, and she ran out to catch hishands and plead with him not to go away. He tried to assure her thatthe danger was over; that guards were now outside everywhere, andwould be until morning. But Dicksie clung to him and would take norefusal.
Whispering Smith looked at her in amazement and in admiration. "Youare captain to-night, Miss Dicksie, by Heaven. If you say the wordI'll lie here on a rug till morning. But that man will not be backto-night. You are a queen. If I had a mountain girl that would do asmuch as that for me I would----"
"What would you do?" asked Marion.
"Say good-by to this accursed country forever."