Moore smiled another wan smile at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for? Me?” she asked.

  “I mean I’m sorry I was so infernal unlucky — running into you — and bringing all this distress — to you. It was my fault. If I’d only kept — my mouth shut!”

  “You need not be sorry you met me,” she said, with her eyes straight upon his. “I’m glad.... But oh! if your foot is badly hurt I’ll never — never—’

  “Don’t say it,” interrupted Wilson.

  “Lass, you’re bent on doin’ somethin’,” said Wade, in his gentle voice.

  “Bent?” she echoed, with something deep and rich in her voice. “Yes, I’m bent — bent like your name — to speak my mind!”

  Then she ran toward the house and up on the porch, to enter the living-room with heaving breast and flashing eyes. Manifestly the rancher was berating his son. The former gaped at sight of her and the latter shrank.

  “Jack Belllounds,” she cried, “you’re not half a man.... You’re a coward and a brute!”

  One tense moment she stood there, lightning scorn and passion in her gaze, and then she rushed out, impetuously, as she had come.

  CHAPTER VIII

  COLUMBINE DID NOT leave her room any more that day. What she suffered there she did not want any one to know. What it cost her to conquer herself again she had only a faint conception of. She did conquer, however, and that night made up the sleep she had lost the night before.

  Strangely enough, she did not feel afraid to face the rancher and his son. Recent happenings had not only changed her, but had seemed to give her strength. When she presented herself at the breakfast-table Jack was absent. The old rancher greeted her with more thar usual solicitude.

  “Jack’s sick,” he remarked, presently.

  “Indeed,” replied Columbine.

  “Yes. He said it was the drinkin’ he’s not accustomed to. Wal, I reckon it was what you called him. He didn’t take much store on what I called him, which was wuss.... I tell you, lass, Jack’s set his heart so hard on you thet it’s turrible.”

  “Queer way he has of showing the — the affections of his heart,” replied Columbine, shortly.

  “Thet was the drink,” remonstrated the old man, pathetic and earnest in his motive to smooth over the quarrel.

  “But he promised me he would not drink any more.”

  Belllounds shook his gray old head sadly.

  “Ahuh! Jack fires up an’ promises anythin’. He means it at the time. But the next hankerin’ thet comes over him wipes out the promise. I know.... But he’s had good excuse fer this break. The boys in town began celebratin’ fer October first. Great wonder Jack didn’t come home clean drunk.”

  “Dad, you’re as good as gold,” said Columbine, softening. How could she feel hard toward him?

  “Collie, then you’re not agoin’ back on the ole man?”

  “No.”

  “I was afeared you’d change your mind about marryin’ Jack.”

  “When I promised I meant it. I didn’t make it on conditions.”

  “But, lass, promises can be broke,” he said, with the sonorous roll in his voice.

  “I never yet broke one of mine.”

  “Wal, I hev. Not often, mebbe, but I hev.... An’, lass, it’s reasonable. Thar’s times when a man jest can’t live up to what he swore by. An’ fer a girl — why, I can see how easy she’d change an’ grow overnight. It’s only fair fer me to say that no matter what you think you owe me you couldn’t be blamed now fer dislikin’ Jack.”

  “Dad, if by marrying Jack I can help him to be a better son to you, and more of a man, I’ll be glad,” she replied.

  “Lass, I’m beginnin’ to see how big an’ fine you are,” replied Belllounds, with strong feeling. “An’ it’s worryin’ me.... My neighbors hev always accused me of seein’ only my son. Only Buster Jack! I was blind an’ deaf as to him!... Wal, I’m not so damn blind as I used to be. The scales are droppin’ off my ole eyes.... But I’ve got one hope left as far as Jack’s concerned. Thet’s marryin’ him to you. An’ I’m stickin’ to it.”

  “So will I stick to it, dad,” she replied. “I’ll go through with October first!”

  Columbine broke off, vouchsafing no more, and soon left the breakfast-table, to take up the work she had laid out to do. And she accomplished it, though many times her hands dropped idle and her eyes peered out of her window at the drab slides of the old mountain.

  Later, when she went out to ride, she saw the cowboy Lem working in the blacksmith shop.

  “Wal, Miss Collie, air you-all still hangin’ round this hyar ranch?” he asked, with welcoming smile.

  “Lem, I’m almost ashamed now to face my good friends, I’ve neglected them so long,” she replied.

  “Aw, now, what’re friends fer but to go to?... You’re lookin’ pale, I reckon. More like thet thar flower I see so much on the hills.”

  “Lem, I want to ride Pronto. Do you think he’s all right, now?”

  “I reckon some movin’ round will do Pronto good. He’s eatin’ his haid off.”

  The cowboy went with her to the pasture gate and whistled Pronto up. The mustang came trotting, evidently none the worse for his injuries, and eager to resume the old climbs with his mistress. Lem saddled him, paying particular attention to the cinch.

  “Reckon we’d better not cinch him tight,” said Lem. “You jest be careful an’ remember your saddle’s loose.”

  “All right, Lem,” replied Columbine, as she mounted. “Where are the boys this morning?”

  “Blud an’ Jim air repairin’ fence up the crick.”

  “And where’s Ben?”

  “Ben? Oh, you mean Wade. Wal, I ‘ain’t seen him since yestidday. He was skinnin’ a lion then, over hyar on the ridge. Thet was in the mawnin’. I reckon he’s around, fer I seen some of the hounds.”

  “Then, Lem — you haven’t heard about the fight yesterday between Jack and Wilson Moore?”

  Lem straightened up quickly. “Nope, I ‘ain’t heerd a word.”

  “Well, they fought, all right,” said Columbine, hurriedly. “I saw it. I was the only one there. Wilson was badly used up before dad and Ben got there. Ben drove off with him.”

  “But, Miss Collie, how’d it come off? I seen Wils the other day. Was up to his homestead. An’ the boy jest manages to rustle round on a crutch. He couldn’t fight.”

  “That was just it. Jack saw his opportunity, and he forced Wilson to fight — accused him of stealing. Wils tried to avoid trouble. Then Jack jumped him. Wilson fought and held his own until Jack began to kick his injured foot. Then Wilson fainted and — and Jack beat him.”

  Lem dropped his head, evidently to hide his expression. “Wal, dog-gone me!” he ejaculated. “Thet’s too bad.”

  Columbine left the cowboy and rode up the lane toward Wade’s cabin. She did not analyze her deliberate desire to tell the truth about that fight, but she would have liked to proclaim it to the whole range and to the world. Once clear of the house she felt free, unburdened, and to talk seemed to relieve some congestion of her thoughts.

  The hounds heralded Columbine’s approach with a deep and booming chorus. Sampson and Jim lay upon the porch, unleashed. The other hounds were chained separately in the aspen grove a few rods distant. Sampson thumped the boards with his big tail, but he did not get up, which laziness attested to the fact that there had been a lion chase the day before and he was weary and stiff. If Wade had been at home he would have come out to see what had occasioned the clamor. As Columbine rode by she saw another fresh lion-pelt pegged upon the wall of the cabin.

  She followed the brook. It had cleared since the rains and was shining and sparkling in the rough, swift places, and limpid and green in the eddies. She passed the dam made by the solitary beaver that inhabited the valley. Freshly cut willows showed how the beaver was preparing for the long winter ahead. Columbine remembered then how greatly pleased Wade had been to learn about this old beaver; and more than once Wade had talked about trapping some younger beavers and bringing them there to make company for the old fellow.

  The trail led across the brook at a wide, shallow place, where the splashing made by Pronto sent the trout scurrying for deeper water. Columbine kept to that trail, knowing that it led up into Sage Valley, where Wilson Moore had taken up the homestead property. Fresh horse tracks told her that Wade had ridden along there some time earlier. Pronto shied at the whirring of sage-hens. Presently Columbine ascertained they were flushed by the hound Kane, that had broken loose and followed her. He had done so before, and the fact had not displeased her.

  “Kane! Kane! come here!” she called. He came readily, but halted a rod or so away, and made an attempt at wagging his tail, a function evidently somewhat difficult for him. When she resumed trotting he followed her.

  Old White Slides had lost all but the drabs and dull yellows and greens, and of course those pale, light slopes that had given the mountain its name. Sage Valley was only one of the valleys at its base. It opened out half a mile wide, dominated by the looming peak, and bordered on the far side by an aspen-thicketed slope. The brook babbled along under the edge of this thicket. Cattle and horses grazed here and there on the rich, grassy levels, Columbine was surprised to see so many cattle and wondered to whom they belonged. All of Belllounds’s stock had been driven lower down for the winter. There among the several horses that whistled at her approach she espied the white mustang Belllounds had given to Moore. It thrilled her to see him. And next, she suffered a pang to think that perhaps his owner might never ride him again. But Columbine held her emotions in abeyance.

  The cabin stood high upon a level terrace, with clusters of aspens behind it, and was sheltered from winter blasts by a gray cliff, picturesque and crumbling, with its face overgrown by creeping vines and colorful shrubs, Wilson Moore could not have chosen a more secluded and beautiful valley for his homesteading adventure. The little gray cabin, with smoke curling from the stone chimney, had lost its look of dilapidation and disuse, yet there was nothing new that Columbine could see. The last quarter of the ascent of the slope, and the few rods across the level terrace, seemed extraordinarily long to Columbine. As she dismounted and tied Pronto her heart was beating and her breath was coming fast.

  The door of the cabin was open. Kane trotted past the hesitating Columbine and went in.

  “You son-of-a-hound-dog!” came to Columbine’s listening ears in Wade’s well-known voice. “I’ll have to beat you — sure as you’re born.”

  “I heard a horse,” came in a lower voice, that was Wilson’s.

  “Darn me if I’m not gettin’ deafer every day,” was the reply.

  Then Wade appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s nobody but Miss Collie,” he announced, as he made way for her to enter.

  “Good morning!” said Columbine, in a voice that had more than cheerfulness in it.

  “Collie!... Did you come to see me?”

  She heard this incredulous query just an instant before she saw Wilson at the far end of the room, lying under the light of a window. The inside of the cabin seemed vague and unfamiliar.

  “I surely did,” she replied, advancing. “How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. Tickled to death, right now. Only, I hate to have you see this battered mug of mine.”

  “You needn’t — care,” said Columbine, unsteadily. And indeed, in that first glance she did not see him clearly. A mist blurred her sight and there was a lump in her throat. Then, to recover herself, she looked around the cabin.

  “Well — Wils Moore — if this isn’t fine!” she ejaculated, in amaze and delight. Columbine sustained an absolute surprise. A magic hand had transformed the interior of that rude old prospector’s abode. A carpenter and a mason and a decorator had been wonderfully at work. From one end to the other Columbine gazed; from the big window under which Wilson lay on a blanketed couch to the open fireplace where Wade grinned she looked and looked, and then up to the clean, aspen-poled roof and down to the floor, carpeted with deer hides. The chinks between the logs of the walls were plastered with red clay; the dust and dirt were gone; the place smelled like sage and wood-smoke and fragrant, frying meat. Indeed, there were a glowing bed of embers and a steaming kettle and a smoking pot; and the way the smoke and steam curled up into the gray old chimney attested to its splendid draught. In each corner hung a deer-head, from the antlers of which depended accoutrements of a cowboy — spurs, ropes, belts, scarfs, guns. One corner contained cupboard, ceiling high, with new, clean doors of wood, neatly made; and next to it stood a table, just as new. On the blank wall beyond that were pegs holding saddles, bridles, blankets, clothes.

  “He did it — all this inside,” burst out Moore, delighted with her delight. “Quicker than a flash! Collie, isn’t this great? I don’t mind being down on my back. And he says they call him Hell-Bent Wade. I call him Heaven-Sent Wade!”

  When Columbine turned to the hunter, bursting with her pleasure and gratitude, he suddenly dropped the forked stick he used as a lift, and she saw his hand shake when he stooped to recover it. How strangely that struck her!

  “Ben, it’s perfectly possible that you’ve been sent by Heaven,” she remarked, with a humor which still held gravity in it.

  “Me! A good angel? That’d be a new job for Bent Wade,” he replied, with a queer laugh. “But I reckon I’d try to live up to it.”

  There were small sprigs of golden aspen leaves and crimson oak leaves on the wall above the foot of Wilson’s bed. Beneath them, on pegs, hung a rifle. And on the window-sill stood a glass jar containing columbines. They were fresh. They had just been picked. They waved gently in the breeze, sweetly white and blue, strangely significant to the girl.

  Moore laughed defiantly.

  “Wade thought to fetch these flowers in,” he explained. “They’re his favorites as well as mine. It won’t be long now till the frost kills them ... and I want to be happy while I may!”

  Again Columbine felt that deep surge within her, beyond her control, beyond her understanding, but now gathering and swelling, soon to be reckoned with. She did not look at Wilson’s face then. Her downcast gaze saw that his right hand was bandaged, and she touched it with an unconscious tenderness.

  “Your hand! Why is it all wrapped up?”

  The cowboy laughed with grim humor.

  “Have you seen Jack this morning?”

  “No,” she replied, shortly.

  “Well, if you had, you’d know what happened to my fist.”

  “Did you hurt it on him?” she asked, with a queer little shudder that was not unpleasant.

  “Collie, I busted that fist on his handsome face.”

  “Oh, it was dreadful!” she murmured. “Wilson, he meant to kill you.”

  “Sure. And I’d cheerfully have killed him.”

  “You two must never meet again,” she went on.

  “I hope to Heaven we never do,” replied Moore, with a dark earnestness that meant more than his actual words.

  “Wilson, will you avoid him — for my sake?” implored Columbine, unconsciously clasping the bandaged hand.

  “I will. I’ll take the back trails. I’ll sneak like a coyote. I’ll hide and I’ll watch.... But, Columbine Belllounds, if he ever corners me again—”

  “Why, you’ll leave him to Hell-Bent Wade,” interrupted the hunter, and he looked up from where he knelt, fixing those great, inscrutable eyes upon the cowboy. Columbine saw something beyond his face, deeper than the gloom, a passion and a spirit that drew her like a magnet. “An’ now, Miss Collie,” he went on, “I reckon you’ll want to wait on our invalid. He’s got to be fed.”

  “I surely will,” replied Columbine, gladly, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. “Ben, you fetch that box and put his dinner on it.”

  While Wade complied, Columbine, shyly aware of her nearness to the cowboy, sought to keep up conversation. “Couldn’t you help yourself with your left hand?” she inquired.

  “That’s one worse,” he answered, taking it from under the blanket, where it had been concealed.

  “Oh!” cried Columbine, in dismay.

  “Broke two bones in this one,” said Wilson, with animation. “Say, Collie, our friend Wade is a doctor, too. Never saw his beat!”

  “And a cook, too, for here’s your dinner. You must sit up,” ordered Columbine.

  “Fold that blanket and help me up on it,” replied Moore.

  How strange and disturbing for Columbine to bend over him, to slip her arms under him and lift him! It recalled a long-forgotten motherliness of her doll-playing days. And her face flushed hot.

  “Can’t you move?” she asked, suddenly becoming aware of how dead a weight the cowboy appeared.

  “Not — very much,” he replied. Drops of sweat appeared on his bruised brow. It must have hurt him to move.

  “You said your foot was all right.”

  “It is,” he returned. “It’s still on my leg, as I know darned well.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Columbine, dubiously. Without further comment she began to feed him.

  “It’s worth getting licked to have this treat,” he said.

  “Nonsense!” she rejoined.

  “I’d stand it again — to have you come here and feed me.... But not from him.”

  “Wilson, I never knew you to be facetious before. Here, take this.”

  Apparently he did not see her outstretched hand.

  “Collie, you’ve changed. You’re older. You’re a woman, now — and the prettiest—”

  “Are you going to eat?” demanded Columbine.

  “Huh!” exclaimed the cowboy, blankly. “Eat? Oh yes, sure. I’m powerful hungry. And maybe Heaven-Sent Wade can’t cook!”

  But Columbine had trouble in feeding him. What with his helplessness, and his propensity to watch her face instead of her hands, and her own mounting sensations of a sweet, natural joy and fitness in her proximity to him, she was hard put to it to show some dexterity as a nurse. And all the time she was aware of Wade, with his quiet, forceful presence, hovering near. Could he not see her hands trembling? And would he not think that weakness strange? Then driftingly came the thought that she would not shrink from Wade’s reading her mind. Perhaps even now he understood her better than she understood herself.