"If not, his gang was there. The quick get-away, the short turn on Van Horn, killing two men to rattle the _posse_--it all bears Sinclair's ear-marks. He has gone too far. He has piled up plunder till he is reckless. He is crazy with greed and insane with revenge. He thinks he can gallop over this division and scare Bucks till he gets down on his knees to him. Bucks will never do it. I know him, and I tell you Bucks will never do it. He is like that man in Washington: he will fight it to the death. He would fight Sinclair if he had to come up here and meet him single-handed, but, he will never have to do it. He put you here, George, to round that man up. This is the price for your advancement, and you must pay it."
"It is all right for me to pay it, but I don't want you to pay it. Will you have a care for yourself, Gordon?"
"You need never ask me to be careful," Smith went on. "That is my business. I asked you to watch your window-shades at night, and when I came in just now I found one up. It is you who are likely to forget, and in this kind of a game a man never forgets but once. I'll lie down on the Lincoln lounge, George."
"No; I like the lounge, and I'm off early."
In the private room of the superintendent, provided as a sleeping apartment in the old headquarters building many years before hotel facilities reached Medicine Bend, stood the only curio the Wickiup possessed--the Lincoln lounge. When the car that carried the remains of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield was dismantled, the Wickiup fell heir to one piece of its elaborate furnishings, the lounge, and the lounge still remains as an early-day relic. Whispering Smith walked into the bedroom and disposed himself in an incredibly short time. "I've borrowed one of your pillows, George," he called out presently.
"One's enough. I hope," he went on, rolling himself like a hen into the double blanket, "the horse Kennedy has left me will be all right; he got three from Bill Dancing. Bill Dancing," he snorted, driving his nose into the pillow as if in final memorandum for the night, "he will get himself killed if he fools around Sinclair too much now."
McCloud, under a light shaded above his desk, opened a roll of blue-prints. He was going to follow a construction gang up the Crawling Stone in the morning and wanted to look over the surveys. Whispering Smith, breathing regularly, lay not far away. It was late when McCloud put away his maps, entered the inner room, and looked at his friend.