Marion laughed--a troubled little laugh of surprise and sadness. "Dear, he isn't pitiless at all. He has unpleasant things to do, and does them. He is the man on whom the railroad relies to repress the lawlessness that breaks out in the mountains at times and interferes with the operating of the road. It frightens people away, and prevents others from coming in to settle. Railroads want law and order. Robbery and murders don't make business for railroads. They depend on settlers for developing a country, don't you know; otherwise they would have no traffic, not to speak of wanting their trains and men let alone. When Mr. Bucks undertook to open up this country to settlers, he needed a man of patience and endurance and with courage and skill in dealing with lawless men, and no man has ever succeeded so well as this terrible man you have heard about. He is terrible, my dear, to lawless men, not to any one else. He is terrible in resource and in daring, but not in anything else I know of, and I knew him when he was a boy and wore a big pink worsted scarf when he went skating." "I should like to have seen that scarf," said Dicksie reflectively. She rose and looked around the tent. In a few minutes she made Marion lie down on one of the cots. Then she walked to the front of the tent, opened the flap, and looked out. Whispering Smith was sitting before the fire. Rain was falling, but Dicksie put on her close-fitting black coat, raised the door-flap, and walked noiselessly from the tent and up behind him. "Alone in the rain?" she asked. She had expected to see him start at her voice, but he did not, though he rose and turned around. "Not now," he answered as he offered her his box with a smile. "Are you taking your hat off for me in the rain? Put it on again!" she insisted with a little tone of command, and she was conscious of gratification when he obeyed amiably. "I won't take your box unless you can find another!" she said. "Oh, you have another! I came out to tell you what a dreadful man I thought you were, and to apologize." "Never mind apologizing. Lots of people think worse than that of me and don't apologize. I'm sorry I have no shelter to offer you, except to sit on this side and take the rain." "Why should you take the rain for me?" "You are a woman." "But a stranger to you." "Only in a way." Dicksie gazed for a moment at the fire. "You won't think me abrupt, will you?" she said, turning to him, "but, as truly as I live, I cannot account for you, Mr. Smith. I guess at the ranch we don't know what goes on in the world. Everything I see of you contradicts everything I have heard of you."