There was a moment of silence. "Dicksie understood you to say that you were in doubt as to whether you ought to go away with him when he asked you to go. That is why I was unsettled in my mind." "The only reason why I doubted was that I thought by going I might save better lives than mine. I could willingly give up my life to do that. But to stain it by going back to such a man--God help me!" "I think I understand. If the unfortunate should happen before I come back I hope only this: that you will not hate me because I am the man on whom the responsibility has fallen. I haven't sought it. And if I should not come back at all, it is only--good-by." He saw her clasp her hands convulsively. "I will not say it! I will pray on my knees that you do come back." "Good-night, Marion. Some one is at the cottage door." "It is probably Mr. McCloud and Dicksie. I will let them in." CHAPTER XXXVII WICKWIRE McCloud and Dicksie met them at the porch door. Marion, unnerved, went directly to her room. Whispering Smith stopped to speak to Dicksie and McCloud interposed. "Bob Scott telephoned the office just now he had a man from Oroville who wanted to see you right away, Gordon," said he. "I told him to send him over here. It is Wickwire." "Wickwire," repeated Whispering Smith. "Wickwire has no business here that I know of; no doubt it is something I ought to know of. And, by the way, you ought to see this man," he said, turning again to Dicksie. "If McCloud tells the story right, Wickwire is a sort of protege of yours, Miss Dicksie, though neither of you seems to have known it. He is the tramp cowboy who was smashed up in the wreck at Smoky Creek. He is not a bad man, but whiskey, you know, beats some decent men." A footstep fell on the porch. "There he comes now, I reckon. Shall I let him in a minute?" "Oh, I should like to see him! He has been at the ranch at different times, you know." Smith opened the door and stepping out on the porch, talked with the new-comer. In a moment he brought him in. Dicksie had seated herself on the sofa, McCloud stood in the doorway of the dining-room, and Whispering Smith laid one arm on the table as he sat down beside it with his face above the dark shade of the lamp. Before him stood Wickwire. The half-light threw him up tall and dark, but it showed the heavy shock of black hair falling over his forehead, and the broad, thin face of a mountain man. "He has just been telling me that Seagrue is loose," Whispering Smith explained pleasantly. "Who turned the trick, Wickwire?"