“Now listen, Collie.  I’ve had ideas lately.  I’ve begun to eat and get stronger and to feel good.  The pain is gone.  And to think I swore to Wade I’d forgive Jack Belllounds and never hate him—­or kill him!...  There, that’s letting the cat out of the bag, and it’s done now.  But no matter.  The truth is, though, that I never could stop hating Jack while the pain lasted.  Now I could shake hands with him and smile at him.

“Well, as I said, I’ve ideas.  They’re great.  Grab hold of the pommel now so you won’t get thrown!  I’m going to pitch!...  When I get well—­able to ride and go about, which Ben says will be in the spring—­I’ll send for my father to come to White Slides.  He’ll come.  Then I’ll tell him everything, and if Ben and I can’t win him to our side then you can.  Father never could resist you.  When he has fallen in love with you, which won’t take long, then we’ll go to old Bill Belllounds and lay the case before him.  Are you still in the saddle, Collie?

“Well, if you are, be sure to get a better hold, for I’m going to run some next.  Ben Wade approved of my plan.  He says Belllounds can be brought to reason.  He says he can make him see the ruin for everybody were you forced to marry Jack.  Strange, Collie, how Wade included himself with, you, me, Jack, and the old man, in the foreshadowed ruin!  Wade is as deep as the canon there.  Sometimes when he’s thoughtful he gives me a creepy feeling.  At others, when he comes out with one of his easy, cool assurances that we are all right—­that we will get each other—­why, then something grim takes possession of me.  I believe him, I’m happy, but there crosses my mind a fleeting realization—­not of what our friend is now, but what he has been.  And it disturbs me, chills me.  I don’t understand it.  For, Collie, though I understand your feeling of what he is, I don’t understand mine.  You see, I’m a man.  I’ve been a cowboy for ten years and more.  I’ve seen some hard experiences and worked with a good many rough boys and men.  Cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, miners, prospectors, ranchers, hunters—­some of whom were bad medicine.  So I’ve come to see men as you couldn’t see them.  And Bent Wade has been everything a man could be.  He seems all men in one.  And despite all his kindness and goodness and hopefulness, there is the sense I have of something deadly and terrible and inevitable in him.

“It makes my heart almost stop beating to know I have this man on my side.  Because I sense in him the man element, the physical—­oh, I can’t put it in words, but I mean something great in him that can’t be beaten.  What he says must come true!...  And so I’ve already begun to dream and to think of you as my wife.  If you ever are—­no! when you are, then I will owe it to Bent Wade.  No man ever owed another for so precious a gift.  But, Collie, I can’t help a little vague dread—­of what, I don’t know, unless it’s a sense of the possibilities of Hell—­Bent Wade....