Besides, Stewart’s a lovable chap when he’s going straight.  I hope Stillwell brings him back.  We do need him, Majesty.  He’s a born leader.  Once I saw him ride into a bunch of Mexicans whom we suspected of rustling.  It was fine to see him.  Well, I’m sorry to tell you that we are worried about Don Carlos.  Some of his vaqueros came into my yard the other day when I had left Flo alone.  She had a bad scare.  These vaqueros have been different since Don Carlos sold the ranch.  For that matter, I never would have trusted a white woman alone with them.  But they are bolder now.  Something’s in the wind.  They’ve got assurance.  They can ride off any night and cross the border.”

During the succeeding week Madeline discovered that a good deal of her sympathy for Stillwell in his hunt for the reckless Stewart had insensibly grown to be sympathy for the cowboy.  It was rather a paradox, she thought, that opposed to the continual reports of Stewart’s wildness as he caroused from town to town were the continual expressions of good will and faith and hope universally given out by those near her at the ranch.  Stillwell loved the cowboy; Florence was fond of him; Alfred liked and admired him, pitied him; the cowboys swore their regard for him the more he disgraced himself.  The Mexicans called him El Gran Capitan.  Madeline’s personal opinion of Stewart had not changed in the least since the night it had been formed.  But certain attributes of his, not clearly defined in her mind, and the gift of his beautiful horse, his valor with the fighting rebels, and all this strange regard for him, especially that of her brother, made her exceedingly regret the cowboy’s present behavior.

Meanwhile Stillwell was so earnest and zealous that one not familiar with the situation would have believed he was trying to find and reclaim his own son.  He made several trips to little stations in the valley, and from these he returned with a gloomy face.  Madeline got the details from Alfred.  Stewart was going from bad to worse—­drunk, disorderly, savage, sure to land in the penitentiary.  Then came a report that hurried Stillwell off to Rodeo.  He returned on the third day, a crushed man.  He had been so bitterly hurt that no one, not even Madeline, could get out of him what had happened.  He admitted finding Stewart, failing to influence him; and when the old cattleman got so far he turned purple in the face and talked to himself, as if dazed:  “But Gene was drunk.  He was drunk, or he couldn’t hev treated old Bill like thet!”

Madeline was stirred with an anger toward the brutal cowboy that was as strong as her sorrow for the loyal old cattleman.  And it was when Stillwell gave up that she resolved to take a hand.  The persistent faith of Stillwell, his pathetic excuses in the face of what must have been Stewart’s violence, perhaps baseness, actuated her powerfully, gave her new insight into human nature.  She honored a faith that remained unshaken.  And the strange thought came to her that Stewart must somehow be worthy of such a faith, or he never could have inspired it.  Madeline discovered that she wanted to believe that somewhere deep down in the most depraved and sinful wretch upon earth there was some grain of good.  She yearned to have the faith in human nature that Stillwell had in Stewart.