"No, only soaked. I have fallen into the river two or three times, and the last time a big rhinoceros of yours down the grade, a section foreman named Klein, was obliging enough to pull me out. Oh, no! I was not looking for you," he ran on, answering McCloud's question; "not when he pulled me out. I was just looking for a farm or a ladder or something. Klein, for a man named Small, is the biggest Dutchman I ever saw. 'Tell me, Klein,' I asked, after he had quit dragging me out--he's a Hanoverian--'where did you get your pull? And how about your height? Did your grandfather serve as a grenadier under old Frederick William and was he kidnapped?' Bill, don't feed my horse for a while. And Klein tried to light a cigar I had just taken from my pocket and given him--fancy! the Germans are a remarkable people--and sat down to tell me his history, when some friend down the line began bawling through a megaphone, and all that poor Klein had time to say was that he had had no supper, nor dinner, nor yet breakfast, and would be obliged for some by the boat he forwarded me in." And, in closing, Whispering Smith looked cheerfully around at Marion, at McCloud, and last and longest of all at Dicksie Dunning. "Did you come from across the river?" asked Dicksie, adjusting her wet skirt meekly over her knees. "You are soaking wet," observed Whispering Smith. "Across the river?" he echoed. "Well, hardly, my dear Miss Dunning! Every bridge is out down the valley except the railroad bridge and there are a few things I don't tackle; one is the Crawling Stone on a tear. No, this was across a little break in this man McCloud's track. I came, to be frank, from the Dunning Ranch to look up two women who rode away from there at seven o'clock to-night, and I want to say that they gave me the ride of my life," and Whispering Smith looked all around the circle and back again and smiled. Dicksie spoke in amazement. "How did you know we rode away? You were not at the ranch when we left." "Oh, don't ask him!" cried Marion. "He knows everything," explained McCloud. Whispering Smith turned to Dicksie. "I was interested in knowing that they got safely to their destination--whatever it might be, which was none of my business. I happened to see a man that had seen them start, that was all. You don't understand? Well, if you want it in plain English, I made it my business to see a man who made it _his_ business to see them. It's all very simple, but these people like to make a mystery of it. Good women are scarcer than riches, and more to be prized than fine gold--in my judgment--so I rode after them." Marion put her hand for a moment on his coat sleeve; he looked at Dicksie with another laugh and spoke to her because he dared not look toward Marion. "Going back to-night, do you say? You never are." Dicksie answered quite in earnest: "Oh, but we are. We must!"