Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/263

 railroad wants decent people here and doesn’t want the other kind, and it falls on me, unfortunately, to keep the other kind moving. I don’t like it, but we can none of us do quite what we please in making a living. Let me tell you this”—he turned to fix his eyes seriously on hers: “Believe anything you hear of me except that I have ever taken human life willingly or save in discharge of my duty. But this kind of work makes my own life an uncertainty, as you can see. I do almost literally carry my life in my hand, for if my hand is not quicker every time than a man’s eye, I am done for then and there.”

“It is dreadful to think of.”

“Not exactly that, but it is something I can’t afford to forget.”

“What would become of the lives of the friends you protect if you were killed?”

“You say you care for Marion Sinclair. I should like to think if anything should happen to me you wouldn’t forget her?”

“I never will.”

He smiled. “Then I put her in charge of the man closest to me, George McCloud, and the woman she thinks the most of in the world—except her mother. What is this, are they back? Yonder they come.”

“We found nothing serious,” McCloud said, 239