“John!” said the girl, staring and bewildered.  “In the name of pity, John, in the name of all the goodness you have showed me, don’t do it.”

He laughed wildly.  “I am about to lose the one thing on earth I have ever cared for, and still I can smile.  I am about to die by my own hand, and still I can smile.  For the last time, will you stand up like your old brave self?”

“Mercy!” she cried.  “In Heaven’s name—­”

“Then have it as you are!” he said, and she saw the sun flash on the steel, and he raised the gun.

She closed her eyes—­waited—­heard the distant drumming of hoofs on the turf of the hillside.  Then she caught the report of a gun.

But it was strangely far away, that sound.  She thought at first that the bullet must have numbed, as it struck her.  Presently a shooting pain would pass through her body—­then death.

Opening her bewildered eyes she beheld John Mark staggering, the automatic lying on the ground, his hands clutching at his breast.  Then glancing to one side she saw the form of Ronicky Doone riding as fast as spur would urge his horse, the long Colt balanced in his hand.  That, then, was the shot she had heard—­a long-range chance shot when he saw what was happening on top of the hill.

So swift was Doone’s coming that, by the time she had reached her feet again, he was beside her, and they leaned over John Mark together.  As they did so Mark’s eyes opened, then they closed again, as if with pain.  When he looked again his sight was clear.

“As I expected,” he said dryly, “I see your faces together—­both together, and actually wasting sympathy on me?  Tush, tush!  So rich in happiness that you can waste time on me?”

“John,” said the girl on her knees and weeping beside him, “you know that I have always cared for you, but as a brother, John, and not—­”

“Really,” he said calmly, “you are wasting emotion.  I am not going to die, and I wish you would put a bandage around me and send for some of the men at the house to carry me up there.  That bullet of yours—­by Harry, a very pretty snap shot—­just raked across my breast, as far as I can make out.  Perhaps it broke a bone or two, but that’s all.  Yes, I am to have the pleasure of living.”

His smile was ghastly thing, and, growing suddenly weak, as if for the first time in his life he allowed his indomitable spirit to relax, his head fell to one side, and he lay in a limp faint.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hope Deferred

Time in six months brought the year to the early spring, that time when even the mountain desert forgets its sternness for a month or two.  Six months had not made Bill Gregg rich from his mine, but it had convinced him, on the contrary, that a man with a wife must have a sure income, even if it be a small one.

He squatted on a small piece of land, gathered a little herd, and, having thrown up a four-room shack, he and Caroline lived as happily as king and queen.  Not that domains were very large, but, from their hut on the hill, they could look over a fine sweep of country, which did not all belong to them, to be sure, but which they constantly promised themselves should one day be theirs.