Dicksie, sitting on the piano-bench, looked up with resolution. "Bravely!" she exclaimed. "Mr. McCloud came to our rescue with bags and mattresses and a hundred men, and he has put in a revetement a thousand feet long. Oh, we are regular river experts at our house now! Had you any trouble here, Mr. Sinclair?"
"No, the Frenchman behaves pretty well in the rock. We had forty feet of water here one day, though; forty feet, that's right. McCloud, yes; able fellow, I guess, too, though he and I don't hit it off." Sinclair sat back in his chair, and as he spoke he spoke magnanimously. "He doesn't like me, but that is no fault of his; railroad men, and good ones, too, sometimes get started wrong with one another. Well, I'm glad he took care of you. Try that piano, Miss Dicksie, will you? I don't know much about pianos, but that ought to be a good one. I would wheel the player over for you, but any one that plays as beautifully as you do ought not to be allowed to use a player. Marion, I want to talk a few minutes with you, may I? Do you mind going out under the cottonwood?"
Dicksie's heart jumped. "Don't be gone long, Marion," she exclaimed impulsively, "for you know, Mr. Sinclair, we _must_ get back by two o'clock." And Dicksie, pale with apprehension, looked at them both. Marion, quite composed, nodded reassuringly and followed Sinclair out of doors into the sunshine.
For a few minutes Dicksie fingered wildly on the piano at some half-forgotten air, and in a fever of excitement walked out on the porch to see where they were. To her relief, she saw Marion sitting near Sinclair under the big tree in front of the house, where the horses stood. Dicksie, with her hands on her girdle, walked forlornly back and forth, hummed a tune, sat down in a rocking-chair, fanned herself, rose, walked back and forth again, and reflected that she was perfectly helpless, and that Sinclair might kill Marion a hundred times before she could reach her. And the thought that Marion was perhaps wholly unconscious of danger increased her anxiety.
She sat down in despair. How could Whispering Smith have allowed any one he had a care for to be exposed in this dreadful way? Trying to think what to do, Dicksie hurried back into the living-room, walked to the piano, took the pile of sheet-music from the top, and sat down to thumb it over. She threw song after song on the chair beside her. They were sheets of gaudy coon songs and ragtime with flaring covers, and they seemed to give off odors of cheap perfume. Dicksie hardly saw the titles as she passed them over, but of a sudden she stopped. Between two sheets of the music lay a small handkerchief. It was mussed, and in the corner of it "Nellie" was written conspicuously in a laundry mark. The odor of musk became in an instant sickening. Dicksie threw the music disdainfully aside, and sprang up with a flushed face to leave the room. Sinclair's remark about the first woman to cross his threshold came back to her. From that moment Dicksie hated him. But no sooner had she seated herself on the porch than she remembered she had left her hat in the house, and rose to go in after it. She was resolved not to leave it under the roof another moment, and she had resolved to go over and wait where her horse was tied. As she reëntered the doorway she stopped. In the room she had just left a cowboy sat at the table, taking apart a revolver to clean it. The revolver was spread in its parts before him, but across the table lay a rifle. The man had not been in the room when she left it a moment before.