Marion heard it all while eating a luncheon. Dicksie, beset with anxiety, could not stay in the house. The man that had driven Marion over, saddled horses in the afternoon and the two women rode up above Mud Lake, now become through rainfall and seepage from the river a long, shallow lagoon. For an hour they watched the shovelling and carrying of sandbags, and rode toward the river to the very edge of the disappearing willows, where the bank was melting away before the undercut of the resistless current. They rode away with a common feeling--a conviction that the fight was a losing one, and that another day would see the ruin complete. "Dicksie," exclaimed Marion--they were riding to the house as she spoke--"I'll tell you what we _can_ do!" She hesitated a moment. "I will tell you what we _can_ do! Are you plucky?" Dicksie looked at Marion pathetically. "If you are plucky enough to do it, we can keep the river off yet. I have an idea. I will go, but you must come along." "Marion, what do you mean? Don't you think I would go anywhere to save the ranch? I should like to know where you dare go in this country that I dare not!" "Then ride with me over to the railroad camp by the new bridge. We will ask Mr. McCloud to bring some of his men over. He can stop the river; he knows how." Dicksie caught her breath. "Oh, Marion! that would do no good, even if I could do it. Why, the railroad has been all swept away in the lower valley." "How do you know?" "So every one says." "Who is every one?" "Cousin Lance, Mr. Sinclair--all the men. I heard that a week ago." "Dicksie, don't believe it. You don't know these railroad men. They understand this kind of thing; cattlemen, you know, don't. If you will go with me we can get help. I feel just as sure that those men can control the river as I do that I am looking at you--that is, if anybody can. The question is, do you want to make the effort?" They talked until they left the horses and entered the house. When they sat down, Dicksie put her hands to her face. "Oh, I wish you had said nothing about it! How _can_ I go to him and ask for help now--after Cousin Lance has gone into court about the line and everything? And of course my name is in it all." "Dicksie, don't raise spectres that have nothing to do with the case. If we go to him and ask him for help he will give it to us if he can; if he can't, what harm is done? He has been up and down the river for three weeks, and he has an army of men camped over by the bridge. I know that, because Mr. Smith rode in from there a few days ago." "What, Whispering Smith? Oh, if he is there I would not go for worlds!" "Pray, why not?" "Why, he is such an awful man!" "That is absurd, Dicksie." Dicksie looked grave. "Marion, no man in this part of the country has a good word to say for Whispering Smith."