Madeline watched him, with pride, love, pain, glory combating for a mastery over her.  This walk of his seemingly took longer than all her hours of awakening, of strife, of remorse, longer than the ride to find him.  She felt that it would be impossible for her to wait till he reached the end of the road.  Yet in the hurry and riot of her feelings she had fleeting panics.  What could she say to him?  How meet him?  Well she remembered the tall, powerful form now growing close enough to distinguish its dress.  Stewart’s face was yet only a dark gleam.  Soon she would see it—­long before he could know she was there.  She wanted to run to meet him.  Nevertheless, she stood rooted to her covert behind the window, living that terrible walk with him to the uttermost thought of home, sister, mother, sweetheart, wife, life itself—­every thought that could come to a man stalking to meet his executioners.  With all that tumult in her mind and heart Madeline still fell prey to the incomprehensible variations of emotion possible to a woman.  Every step Stewart took thrilled her.  She had some strange, subtle intuition that he was not unhappy, and that he believed beyond shadow of doubt that he was walking to his death.  His steps dragged a little, though they had begun to be swift.  The old, hard, physical, wild nerve of the cowboy was perhaps in conflict with spiritual growth of the finer man, realizing too late that life ought not to be sacrificed.

Then the dark gleam that was his face took shape, grew sharper and clearer.  He was stalking now, and there was a suggestion of impatience in his stride.  It took these hidden Mexicans a long time to kill him!  At a point in the middle of the road, even with the corner of a house and opposite to Madeline’s position, Stewart halted stock-still.  He presented a fair, bold mark to his executioners, and he stood there motionless a full moment.

Only silence greeted him.  Plain it was to Madeline, and she thought to all who had eyes to see, that to Stewart, since for some reason he had been spared all along his walk, this was the moment when he ought to be mercifully shot.  But as no shots came a rugged dignity left him for a reckless scorn manifest in the way he strolled, across to the corner of the house, rolled yet another cigarette, and, presenting a broad breast to the window, smoked and waited.

That wait was almost unendurable for Madeline.  Perhaps it was only a moment, several moments at the longest, but the time seemed a year.  Stewart’s face was scornful, hard.  Did he suspect treachery on the part of his captors, that they meant to play with him as a cat with a mouse, to murder him at leisure?  Madeline was sure she caught the old, inscrutable, mocking smile fleeting across his lips.  He held that position for what must have been a reasonable time to his mind, then with a laugh and a shrug he threw the cigarette into the road.  He shook his head as if at the incomprehensible motives of men who could have no fair reasons now for delay.