“He’d never — harm me!” gasped Buster Jack, shuddering.

  “He’d kill you — you white-livered pup!” cried Wade, with terrible force. “Kill you before he’d let you go to worse dishonor!... An’ I’m goin’ to save him stainin’ his hands.”

  “I’ll kill you!” burst out Belllounds, ending in a shriek. But this was not the temper that always produced heedless action in him. It was hate. He could not raise the gun. His intelligence still dominated his will. Yet fury had mitigated his terror.

  “You’ll be doin’ me a service, Buster.... But you’re mighty slow at startin’. I reckon I’ll have to play my last trump to make you fight. Oh, by God! I can tell you!... Belllounds, there’re dead men callin’ me now. Callin’ me not to murder you in cold blood! I killed one man once — a man who wouldn’t fight — an innocent man! I killed him with my bare hands, an’ if I tell you my story — an’ how I killed him — an’ that I’ll do the same for you.... You’ll save me that, Buster. No man with a gun in his hands could face what he knew.... But save me more. Save me the tellin’!”

  “No! No! I won’t listen!”

  “Maybe I won’t have to,” replied Wade, mournfully. He paused, breathing heavily. The sober calm was gone.

  Belllounds lowered the half-raised gun, instantly answering to the strange break in Wade’s strained dominance.

  “Don’t tell me — any more! I’ll not listen!... I won’t fight! Wade, you’re crazy! Let me off an’ I swear—”

  “Buster, I told Collie you were three years in jail!” suddenly interrupted Wade.

  A mortal blow dealt Belllounds would not have caused such a shock of amaze, of torture. The secret of the punishment meted out to him by his father! The hideous thing which, instead of reforming, had ruined him! All of hell was expressed in his burning eyes.

  “Ahuh!... I’ve known it long!” cried Wade, tragically. “Buster Jack, you’re the man who must hear my story.... I’ll tell you....”

  In the aspen grove up the slope of Sage Valley Columbine and Wilson were sitting on a log. Whatever had been their discourse, it had left Moore with head bowed in his hands, and with Columbine staring with sad eyes that did not see what they looked at. Columbine’s mind then seemed a dull blank. Suddenly she started.

  “Wils!” she cried. “Did you hear — anything?”

  “No,” he replied, wearily raising his head.

  “I thought I heard a shot,” said Columbine. “It — it sort of made me jump. I’m nervous.”

  Scarcely had she finished speaking when two clear, deep detonations rang out. Gun-shots!

  “There!... Oh, Wils! Did you hear?”

  “Hear!” whispered Moore. He grew singularly white. “Yes — yes!... Collie—”

  “Wils,” she interrupted, wildly, as she began to shake. “Just a little bit ago — I saw Jack riding down the trail!”

  “Collie!... Those two shots came from Wade’s guns I’d know it among a thousand!... Are you sure you heard a shot before?”

  “Oh, something dreadful has happened! Yes, I’m sure. Perfectly sure. A shot not so loud or heavy.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Moore, staring aghast at Columbine.

  “Maybe that’s what Wade meant. I never saw through him.”

  “Tell me. Oh, I don’t understand!” wailed Columbine, wringing her hands.

  Moore did not explain what he meant. For a crippled man, he made quick time in getting to his horse and mounting.

  “Collie, I’ll ride down there. I’m afraid something has happened.... I never understood him!... I forgot he was Hell-Bent Wade! If there’s been a — a fight or any trouble — I’ll ride back and meet you.”

  Then he rode down the trail.

  Columbine had come without her horse, and she started homeward on foot. Her steps dragged. She knew something dreadful had happened. Her heart beat slowly and painfully; there was an oppression upon her breast; her brain whirled with contending tides of thought. She remembered Wade’s face. How blind she had been! It exhausted her to walk, though she went so slowly. There seemed to be a chill and a darkening in the atmosphere, an unreality in the familiar slopes and groves, a strangeness and shadow upon White Slides Valley.

  Moore did not return to meet her. His white horse grazed in the pasture opposite the first clump of willows, where Sage Valley merged into the larger valley. Then she saw other horses, among them Lem Billings’s bay mustang. Columbine faltered on, when suddenly she recognized the horse Jack had ridden — a sorrel, spent and foam-covered, standing saddled, with bridle down and riderless — then certainty of something awful clamped her with horror. Men’s husky voices reached her throbbing ears. Some one was running. Footsteps thudded and died away. Then she saw Lem Billings come out of the willows, look her way, and hurry toward her. His awkward, cowboy gait seemed too slow for his earnestness. Columbine felt the piercing gaze of his eyes as her own became dim.

  “Miss Collie, thar’s been — turrible fight!” he panted.

  “Oh, Lem!... I know. It was Ben — and Jack,” she cried.

  “Shore. Your hunch’s correct. An’ it couldn’t be no wuss!”

  Columbine tried to see his face, the meaning that must have accompanied his hoarse voice; but she seemed going blind.

  “Then — then—” she whispered, reaching out for Lem.

  “Hyar, Miss Collie,” he said, in great concern, as he took kind and gentle hold of her. “Reckon you’d better wait. Let me take you home.”

  “Yes. But tell — tell me first,” she cried, frantically. She could not bear suspense, and she felt her senses slipping away from her.

  “My Gawd! who’d ever have thought such hell would come to White Slides!” exclaimed Lem, with strong emotion. “Miss Collie, I’m powerful sorry fer you. But mebbe it’s best so.... They’re both dead!... Wade just died with his head on Wils’s lap. But Jack never knowed what hit him. He was shot plumb center — both his eyes shot out!... Wade was shot low down.... Montana an’ me agreed thet Jack throwed his gun first an’ Wade killed him after bein’ mortal shot himself.”

  Late that afternoon, as Columbine lay upon her bed, the strange stillness of the house was disturbed by a heavy tread. It passed out of the living-room and came down the porch toward her door. Then followed a knock.

  “Dad!” she called, swiftly rising.

  Belllounds entered, leaving the door ajar. The sunlight streamed in.

  “Wal, Collie, I see you’re bracin’ up,” he said.

  “Oh yes, dad, I’m — I’m all right,” she replied, eager to help or comfort him.

  The old rancher seemed different from the man of the past months. The pallor of a great shock, the havoc of spent passion, the agony of terrible hours, showed in his face. But Old Bill Belllounds had come into his own again — back to the calm, iron pioneer who had lived all events, over whom storm of years had broken, whose great spirit had accepted this crowning catastrophe as it had all the others, who saw his own life clearly, now that its bitterest lesson was told.

  “Are you strong enough to bear another shock, my lass, an’ bear it now — so to make an end — so to-morrer we can begin anew?” he asked, with the voice she had not heard for many a day. It was the voice that told of consideration for her.

  “Yes, dad,” she replied, going to him.

  “Wal, come with me. I want you to see Wade.”

  He led her out upon the porch, and thence into the living-room, and from there into the room where lay the two dead men, one on each side. Blankets covered the prone, quiet forms.

  Columbine had meant to beg to see Wade once before he was laid away forever. She dreaded the ordeal, yet strangely longed for it. And here she was self-contained, ready for some nameless shock and uplift, which she divined was coming as she had divined the change in Belllounds.

  Then he stripped back the blanket, disclosing Wade’s face. Columbine thrilled to the core of her heart. Death was there, white and cold and merciless, but as it had released the tragic soul, the instant of deliverance had been stamped on the rugged, cadaverous visage, by a beautiful light; not of peace, nor of joy, nor of grief, but of hope! Hope had been the last emotion of Hell-Bent Wade.

  “Collie, listen,” said the old rancher, in deep and trembling tones. “When a man’s dead, what he’s been comes to us with startlin’ truth. Wade was the whitest man I ever knew. He had a queer idee — a twist in his mind — an’ it was thet his steps were bent toward hell. He imagined thet everywhere he traveled there he fetched hell. But he was wrong. His own trouble led him to the trouble of others. He saw through life. An’ he was as big in his hope fer the good as he was terrible in his dealin’ with the bad. I never saw his like.... He loved you, Collie, better than you ever knew. Better than Jack, or Wils, or me! You know what the Bible says about him who gives his life fer his friend. Wal, Wade was my friend, an’ Jack’s, only we never could see!... An’ he was Wils’s friend. An’ to you he must have been more than words can tell.... We all know what child’s play it would have been fer Wade to kill Jack without bein’ hurt himself. But he wouldn’t do it. So he spared me an’ Jack, an’ I reckon himself. Somehow he made Jack fight an’ die like a man. God only knows how he did that. But it saved me from — from hell — an’ you an’ Wils from misery.... Wade could have taken you from me an’ Jack. He had only to tell you his secret, an’ he wouldn’t. He saw how you loved me, as if you were my real child.... But. Collie, lass, it was he who was your father!”

  With bursting heart Columbine fell upon her knees beside that cold, still form.

  Belllounds softly left the room and closed the door behind him.

  CHAPTER XX

  NATURE WAS PRODIGAL with her colors that autumn. The frosts came late, so that the leaves did not gradually change their green. One day, as if by magic, there was gold among the green, and in another there was purple and red. Then the hilltops blazed with their crowns of aspen groves; and the slopes of sage shone mellow gray in the sunlight; and the vines on the stone fences straggled away in lines of bronze; and the patches of ferns under the cliffs faded fast; and the great rock slides and black-timbered reaches stood out in their somber shades.

  Columbines bloomed in all the dells among the spruces, beautiful stalks with heavy blossoms, the sweetest and palest of blue-white flowers. Motionless they lifted their faces to the light. Out in the aspen groves, where the grass was turning gold, the columbines blew gracefully in the wind, nodding and swaying. The most exquisite and finest of these columbines hid in the shaded nooks, star-sweet in the silent gloom of the woods.

  Wade’s last few whispered words to Moore had been interpreted that the hunter desired to be buried among the columbines in the aspen grove on the slope above Sage Valley. Here, then, had been made his grave.

  One day Belllounds sent Columbine to fetch Moore down to White Slides. It was a warm, Indian-summer afternoon, and the old rancher sat out on the porch in his shirt-sleeves. His hair was white now, but no other change was visible in him. No restraint attended his greeting to the cowboy.

  “Wils, I reckon I’d be glad if you’d take your old job as foreman of White Slides,” he said.

  “Are you asking me?” queried Moore, eagerly.

  “Wal, I reckon so.”

  “Yes, I’ll come,” replied the cowboy.

  “What’ll your dad say?”

  “I don’t know. That worries me. He’s coming to visit me. I heard from him again lately, and he means to take stage for Kremmling soon.”

  “Wal, that’s fine. I’ll be glad to see him.... Wils, you’re goin’ to be a big cattleman before you know it. Hey, Collie?”

  “If you say so, dad, it’ll come true,” replied Columbine, with her hand on his shoulder.

  “Wils, you’ll be runnin’ White Slides Ranch before long, unless Collie runs you. Haw! Haw!”

  Collie could not reply to this startling announcement from the old rancher, and Moore appeared distressed with embarrassment.

  “Wal, I reckon you young folks had better ride down to Kremmlin’ an’ get married.”

  This kindly, matter-of-fact suggestion completely stunned the cowboy, and all Columbine could do was to gaze at the rancher.

  “Say, I hope I ain’t intrudin’ my wishes on a young couple that’s got over dyin’ fer each other,” dryly continued Belllounds, with his huge smile.

  “Dad!” cried Columbine, and then she threw her arms around him and buried her head on his shoulder.

  “Wal, wal, I reckon that answers that,” he said, holding her close. “Moore, she’s yours, with my blessin’ an’ all I have.... An’ you must understand I’m glad things have worked out to your good an’ to Collie’s happiness.... Life’s not over fer me yet. But I reckon the storms are past, thank God!... We learn as we live. I’d hold it onworthy not to look forward an’ to hope. I’m wantin’ peace an’ quiet now, with grandchildren around me in my old age.... So ride along to Kremmlin’ an’ hurry home.”

  The evening of the day Columbine came home to White Slides the bride of Wilson Moore she slipped away from the simple festivities in her honor and climbed to the aspen grove on the hill to spend a little while beside the grave of her father.

  The afterglow of sunset burned dull gold and rose in the western sky, rendering glorious the veil of purple over the ranges. Down in the lowlands twilight had come, softly gray. The owls were hooting; a coyote barked; from far away floated the mourn of a wolf.

  Under the aspens it was silent and lonely and sad. The leaves quivered without any sound of rustling. Columbine’s heart was full of a happiness that she longed to express somehow, there beside this lonely grave. It was what she owed the strange man who slept here in the shadows. Grief abided with her, and always there would be an eternal remorse and regret. Yet she had loved him. She had been his, all unconsciously. His life had been terrible, but it had been great. As the hours of quiet thinking had multiplied, Columbine had grown in her divination of Wade’s meaning. His had been the spirit of man lighting the dark places; his had been the ruthless hand against all evil, terrible to destroy.

  Her father! After all, how closely was she linked to the past! How closely protected, even in the hours of most helpless despair! Thus she understood him. Love was the food of life, and hope was its spirituality, and beauty was its reward to the seeing eye. Wade had lived these great virtues, even while he had earned a tragic name.

  “I will live them. I will have faith and hope and love, for I am his daughter,” she said. A faint, cool breeze strayed through the aspens, rustling the leaves whisperingly, and the slender columbines, gleaming pale in the twilight, lifted their sweet faces.

  THE END

  Wanderer of the Wasteland

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER I

  ADAM LAREY GAZED with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert.

  The Rio Colorado was no river to trust. It chafed at its banks as if to engulf them; muddy and thick it swirled and glided along in flood, sweeping in curves back and forth from Arizona to California shore. Majestic and gleaming under the hot sky, it swung southward between wide green borders of willow and cottonwood toward a stark and naked upflung wilderness of mountain peaks, the red ramparts of the unknown and trackless desert.

  Adam rushed down the bank and threw his pack into a boat. There his rapid action seemed checked by the same violence that had inspired his haste. He looked back, up at the dusty adobe town of Ehrenberg, asleep now under the glaring noonday heat. It would not wake out of that siesta till the return of the weary gold diggers, or the arrival of the stagecoach or the steamer. A tall Indian, swarthy and unkempt, stood motionless in the shade of a wall, watching stolidly.

  Adam broke down then. Sobs made his utterance incoherent. “Guerd is no brother — of mine — any more!” he burst out. His accent was one of humiliation and cheated love. “And as for — for her — I’ll never — never think of her — again.”

  When once more he turned to the river, a spirit wrestled with the emotion that had unnerved him. Adam Larey appeared to be a boy of eighteen, with darkly tanned, clear-cut and comely face, and a lofty stature, straight and spare and wide. Untying the boat from its mooring, he became conscious of a singular thrill. Sight of the silent river fascinated him. If it had been drink that had fortified his reckless resolve, it was some strange call to the wildness in him that had stirred exaltation in the prospect of adventure. But there was more. Never again to be dominated by that selfish Guerd, his brother who had taken all and given nothing. Guerd would be stung by this desertion. Perhaps he would be sorry. That thought gave Adam a pang. Long habit of being influenced, and strength of love fostered in playmate days, these made him waver. But the tide of resentment surged up once more; and there flowed the red Colorado, rolling away to the southwest, a gateway to the illimitable wastes of desert land, with its mystery, its adventure, its gold and alluring freedom.

  “I’ll go,” he declared, passionately, and with a shove he sent the boat adrift and leaped over the prow to the rowing seat. The boat floated lazily, half circling, till it edged into the current; then, as if grasped by unseen power, it glided downstream. Adam seemed to feel the resistless current of this mysterious river take hold of his heart. There would be no coming back — no breasting that mighty flood with puny oars. The moment was sudden and poignant in its revelation. How swiftly receded the cluster of brown adobe huts, the sombre, motionless Indian! He had left Ehrenberg behind, and a brother who was his only near relative, and a little sum of love that had failed him.