“Yes, How,” she said slowly.  “I have thought of it all and I wish to marry you.  I’ve no place else in the world to go.  There’s no one in the world that I trust as I trust you.  I wish to marry you to-day, How.”

Then, indeed, it was the man’s moment.  Then, and not until then, he accepted his reward.

“Bess!” She was in his arms.  “Bess!” He tasted Paradise.  “Bess!” That was all.

* * * * *

For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with portent of the unusual.  For the second time a crowd was gathered; only now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister import, within and in front of the “Lost Hope” saloon.  Again in personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first occasion.  The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them, were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time and place.  A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of gathering.  For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had brought them together now.  On the contrary they had at last, these dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously.  Rumour, inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to haunt the station at the time of the incoming train.  The incident of the morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip.  Hard upon this had followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become certainty.  Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its place.  So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a prairie dog town.  So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note.  Not as on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous familiarity.  Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace.  Not once did he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise—­and that soon, very, very soon.