“You drive me mad!” she whispered.

The heavy tread of the rancher, like the last of successive steps of fate in Wade’s tragic expectancy, sounded on the porch.

“Wal, lass, hyar you are,” he said, with a gladness deep in his voice.  “Now, whar’s the boy?”

“Dad—­I’ve not—­seen Jack since breakfast,” replied Columbine, tremulously.

“Sort of a laggard in love on his weddin’-day,” rejoined the rancher.  His gladness and forgetfulness were as big as his heart.  “Wade, have you seen Jack?”

“No—­I haven’t,” replied the hunter, with slow, long-drawn utterance.  “But—­I see—­him now.”

Wade pointed to the figure of Jack Belllounds approaching from the direction of the cabins.  He was not walking straight.

Old man Belllounds shot out his gray head like a striking eagle.

“What the hell?” he muttered, as if bewildered at this strange, uneven gait of his son.  “Wade, what’s the matter with Jack?”

Wade did not reply.  That moment had its sorrow for him as well as understanding of the wonder expressed by Columbine’s cold little hand trembling in his.

The rancher suddenly recoiled.

“So help me Gawd—­he’s drunk!” he gasped, in a distress that unmanned him.

Then the parson and the invited relatives came out upon the porch, with gay voices and laughter that suddenly stilled when old Belllounds cried, brokenly:  “Lass—­go—­in—­the house.”

But Columbine did not move, and Wade felt her shaking as she leaned against him.

The bridegroom approached.  Drunk indeed he was; not hilariously, as one who celebrated his good fortune, but sullenly, tragically, hideously drunk.

Old Belllounds leaped off the porch.  His gray hair stood up like the mane of a lion.  Like a giant’s were his strides.  With a lunge he met his reeling son, swinging a huge fist into the sodden red face.  Limply Jack fell to the ground.

“Lay there, you damned prodigal!” he roared, terrible in his rage.  “You disgrace me—­an’ you disgrace the girl who’s been a daughter to me!... if you ever have another weddin’-day it’ll not be me who sets it!”

CHAPTER XII

November was well advanced before there came indications that winter was near at hand.

One morning, when Wade rode up to Moore’s cabin, the whole world seemed obscured in a dense gray fog, through which he could not see a rod ahead of him.  Later, as he left, the fog had lifted shoulder-high to the mountains, and was breaking to let the blue sky show.  Another morning it was worse, and apparently thicker and grayer.  As Wade climbed the trail up toward the mountain-basin, where he hunted most these days, he expected the fog to lift.  But it did not.  The trail under the hoofs of the horse was scarcely perceptible to him, and he seemed lost in a dense, gray, soundless obscurity.