“I told you I’d go,” said Snap Naab.

“I don’t want you to,” replied his father.  “I guess it can wait till spring, then we’ll all go in.  I might have thought to bring you boys out some clothes and boots.  You’re pretty ragged.  Jack there, especially, looks like a scarecrow.  Has he worked as hard as he looks?”

“Father, he never lost a day,” replied Dave, warmly, “and you know what riding is in these canyons.”

August Naab looked at Hare and laughed.  “It’d be funny, wouldn’t it, if Holderness tried to slap you now?  I always knew you’d do, Jack, and now you’re one of us, and you’ll have a share with my sons in the cattle.”

But the generous promise failed to offset the feeling aroused by the presence of Snap Naab.  With the first sight of Snap’s sharp face and strange eyes Hare became conscious of an inward heat, which he had felt before, but never as now, when there seemed to be an actual flame within his breast.  Yet Snap seemed greatly changed; the red flush, the swollen lines no longer showed in his face; evidently in his absence on the Navajo desert he had had no liquor; he was good-natured, lively, much inclined to joking, and he seemed to have entirely forgotten his animosity toward Hare.  It was easy for Hare to see that the man’s evil nature was in the ascendancy only when he was under the dominance of drink.  But he could not forgive; he could not forget.  Mescal’s dark, beautiful eyes haunted him.  Even now she might be married to this man.  Perhaps that was why Snap appeared to be in such cheerful spirits.  Suspense added its burdensome insistent question, but he could not bring himself to ask August if the marriage had taken place.  For a day he fought to resign himself to the inevitability of the Mormon custom, to forget Mescal, and then he gave up trying.  This surrender he felt to be something crucial in his life, though he could not wholly understand it.  It was the darkening of his spirit; the death of boyish gentleness; the concluding step from youth into a forced manhood.  The desert regeneration had not stopped at turning weak lungs, vitiated blood, and flaccid muscles into a powerful man; it was at work on his mind, his heart, his soul.  They answered more and more to the call of some outside, ever-present, fiercely subtle thing.

Thenceforth he no longer vexed himself by trying to forget Mescal; if she came to mind he told himself the truth, that the weeks and months had only added to his love.  And though it was bitter-sweet there was relief in speaking the truth to himself.  He no longer blinded himself by hoping, striving to have generous feelings toward Snap Naab; he called the inward fire by its real name—­jealousy—­and knew that in the end it would become hatred.

On the third morning after leaving Silver Cup the riders were working slowly along the slope of Coconina; and Hare having driven down a bunch of cattle, found himself on an open ridge near the temporary camp.  Happening to glance up the valley he saw what appeared to be smoke hanging over Seeping Springs.