ruined unless you give me Collie—­make her love me.  That will save me.  And I want it for your sake and hers—­not for my own.  Even if I do love her madly I’m not wanting her for that.  I’m no good.  I’m not fit to touch her....  I’ve just come to tell you the truth.  I feel for Collie—­I’d do for Collie—­as you did for my mother!  Can’t you understand?  I’m your son.  I’ve some of you in me.  And I’ve found out what it is.  Do you and Collie want to take me at my word?’

“I think it took dad longer to read something strange and convincing in Jack than it took me.  Anyway, dad got the stunning consciousness that Jack knew by some divine or intuitive power that his reformation was inevitable, if I loved him.  Never have I had such a distressing and terrible moment as that revelation brought to me!  I felt the truth.  I could save Jack Belllounds.  No woman is ever fooled at such critical moments of life.  Ben Wade once said that I could have reformed Jack were it possible to love him.  Now the truth of that came home to me, and somehow it was overwhelming.

“Dad received this truth—­and it was beyond me to realize what it meant to him.  He must have seen all his earlier hopes fulfilled, his pride vindicated, his shame forgotten, his love rewarded.  Yet he must have seen all that, as would a man leaning with one foot over a bottomless abyss.  He looked transfigured, yet conscious of terrible peril.  His great heart seemed to leap to meet this last opportunity, with all forgiveness, with all gratitude; but his will yielded with a final and irrevocable resolve.  A resolve dark and sinister!

“He raised his huge fists higher and higher, and all his body lifted and strained, towering and trembling, while his face was that of a righteous and angry god.

“‘My son, I take your word!’ he rolled out, his voice filling the room and reverberating through the house.  ’I give you Collie!...  She will be yours!...  But, by the love I bore your mother—­I swear—­if you ever steal again—­I’ll kill you!’

“I can’t say any more—­

     “COLUMBINE.”

CHAPTER XIV

Spring came early that year at White Slides Ranch.  The snow melted off the valleys, and the wild flowers peeped from the greening grass while yet the mountain domes were white.  The long stone slides were glistening wet, and the brooks ran full-banked, noisy and turbulent and roily.

Soft and fresh of color the gray old sage slopes came out from under their winter mantle; the bleached tufts of grass waved in the wind and showed tiny blades of green at the roots; the aspens and oaks, and the vines on fences and cliffs, and the round-clumped, brook-bordering willows took on a hue of spring.

The mustangs and colts in the pastures snorted and ran and kicked and cavorted; and on the hillsides the cows began to climb higher, searching for the tender greens, bawling for the new-born calves.  Eagles shrieked the release of the snow-bound peaks, and the elks bugled their piercing calls.  The grouse-cocks spread their gorgeous brown plumage in parade before their twittering mates, and the jays screeched in the woods, and the sage-hens sailed along the bosom of the gray slopes.