"Then Mr. McCloud ought not to be here. I don't want him to stay if he is in danger!" exclaimed Dicksie.
"But I do want him to come here as if it mattered nothing, and I shall try to take care of him. I have a man among your own men, a cowboy named Wickwire, who will be watching Karg, and who is just as quick, and Karg, not knowing he was watched, would be taken unawares. If Wickwire goes elsewhere to work some one else will take his place here. Karg is not on the ranch now; he is up North, hunting up some of your steers that were run off last month by his own cronies. Now do you think I am giving you confidence?"
She looked at him steadily. "If I can only deserve it all." In the distance she heard the calling of the men at the river borne on the wind. The shock of what had been told her, the strangeness of the night and of the scene, left her calm. Fear had given way to responsibility and Dicksie seemed to know herself.
"You have nothing whatever to do to deserve it but keep your own counsel. But listen a moment longer--for this is what I have been leading up to," he said. "Marion will get a message to-morrow, a message from Sinclair, asking her to come to see him at his ranch-house before she goes back. I don't know what he wants--but she is his wife. He has treated her infamously; that is why she will not live with him and does not speak of him. But you know how strange a woman is--or perhaps you don't: she doesn't always cease to care for a man when she ceases to trust him. I am not in Marion's confidence, Miss Dicksie. She is another man's wife. I cannot tell how she feels toward him; I know she has often tried to reclaim him from his deviltry. She may try again, that is, she may, for one reason or another, go to him as he asks. I could not interfere, if I would. I have no right to if I could, and I will not. Now this is what I'm trying to get up the courage to ask you. Should you dare to go with her to Sinclair's ranch if she decides to go to him?"
"Then in case she does go and you go with her, you will know nothing whatever about anything, of course, unless you get the story from her. What I fear is that which possibly may come of their interview. He may try to kill her--don't be frightened. He will not succeed if you can only make sure he doesn't lead her away on horseback from the ranch-house or get her alone in a room. She has few friends. I respect and honor her because she and I grew up as children together in the same little town in Wisconsin. I know her folks, all of them, and I've promised them--you know--to have a kind of care of her."