Wade had to release his hands from her clasp and urge her gently back.  How pale and tragic her face gleamed!

* * * * *

Wade took his horses, his outfit, and the dog Fox, and made his abode with Wilson Moore.  The cowboy hailed Wade’s coming with joy and pestered him with endless questions.

From that day Wade haunted the hills above White Slides, early and late, alone with his thoughts, his plans, more and more feeling the suspense of happenings to come.  It was on a June day when Jack Belllounds rode to Kremmling that Wade met Columbine on the Buffalo Park trail.  She needed to see him, to find comfort and strength.  Wade far exceeded his own confidence in his effort to uphold her.  Columbine was in a strange state, not of vacillation between two courses, but of a standstill, as if her will had become obstructed and waited for some force to upset the hindrance.  She did not inquire as to the welfare of Wilson Moore, and Wade vouchsafed no word of him.  But she importuned the hunter to see her every day or no more at all.  And Wade answered her appeal and her need by assuring her that he would see her, come what might.  So she was to risk more frequent rides.

During the second week of June Wade rode up to visit the prospector, Lewis, and learned that which complicated the matter of the rustlers.  Lewis had been suspicious, and active on his own account.  According to the best of his evidence and judgment there had been a gang of rough men come of late to Gore Peak, where they presumably were prospecting.  This gang was composed of strangers to Lewis.  They had ridden to his cabin, bought and borrowed of him, and, during his absence, had stolen from him.  He believed they were in hiding, probably being guilty of some depredation in another locality.  They gave both Kremmling and Elgeria a wide berth.  On the other hand, the Smith gang from Elgeria rode to and fro, like ranchers searching for lost horses.  There were only three in this gang, including Smith.  Lewis had seen these men driving unbranded stock.  And lastly, Lewis casually imparted the information, highly interesting to Wade, that he had seen Jack Belllounds riding through the forest.  The prospector did not in the least, however, connect the appearance of the son of Belllounds with the other facts so peculiarly interesting to Wade.  Cowboys and hunters rode trails across the range, and though they did so rather infrequently, there was nothing unusual about encountering them.

Wade remained all night with Lewis, and next morning rode six miles along the divide, and then down into a valley, where at length he found a cabin described by the prospector.  It was well hidden in the edge of the forest, where a spring gushed from under a low cliff.  But for water and horse tracks Wade would not have found it easily.  Rifle in hand, and on foot, he slipped around in the woods, as a hunter might have, to stalk drinking deer.  There