"Damn it, McCloud, it's not right," protested Lance, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead. "You need the sleep more than I do. I say he is the one to go to bed to-night," continued Lance, putting it up to Whispering Smith. "And I insist, by the Almighty, that you two take him back to the house with you now!"
Whispering Smith raised his hand. "If this is merely a family quarrel about who shall go to bed, let us compromise. You two stay up all night and let me go to bed."
"It seems to be a family characteristic of the Dunnings to have their own way," ventured McCloud, after some further dispute. "If you will have it so, Mr. Dunning, you may stand watch to-night and I will go to the house."
Riding back with McCloud, Dicksie and Whispering Smith discussed the flood. McCloud disclaimed credit for the improvement in the situation. "If the current had held against us as it did yesterday, nothing I could have done would have turned it," he said.
"Honesty is the best policy, of course," observed Whispering Smith. "I like to see a modest man--and you want to remind him of all this when he sends in his bill," he suggested, speaking to Dicksie in the dark. "But," he added, turning to McCloud, "admitting that you are right, don't take the trouble to advertise your view of it around here. It would be only decent strategy for us in the valley just now to take a little of the credit due to the wind."
Sinclair's place on the Frenchman backed up on a sharp rise against the foothills of the Bridger range, and the ranch buildings were strung along the creek. The ranch-house stood on ground high enough to command the country for miles up and down the valley.
Only two roads lead from Medicine Bend and the south into the Frenchman country: one a wagon-road following Smoky Creek and running through Dale Canyon; the other a pack-road, known as the Gridley trail, crossing the Topah Topah Hills and making a short cut from the Dunning ranch on the Crawling Stone to the Frenchman. The entire valley is, in fact, so difficult of access, save by the long and roundabout wagon-road, that the sight of a complete outfit of buildings such as that put up by Sinclair always came as a surprise to the traveller who, reaching the crest of the hills, looked suddenly down a thousand feet on his well-ordered sheds and barns and corrals.