Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/232

 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 208