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 protégé 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.