“Look out,” replied Wade, as he began to fill his pipe.

“Heavens!  It’s Collie!  Look at her riding!  Uphill, too!”

Wade followed him outdoors.  Columbine was not long in arriving at the cabin, and she threw the bridle and swung off in the same motion, landing with a light thud.  Then she faced them, pale, resolute, stern, all the sweetness gone to bitter strength—­another and a strange Columbine.

“I’ve not slept a wink!” she said.  “And I came as soon as I could get away.”

Moore had no word for her, not even a greeting.  The look of her had stricken him.  It could have only one meaning.

“Mornin’, lass,” said the hunter, and he took her hand.  “I couldn’t tell you looked sleepy, for all you said.  Let’s go into the cabin.”

So he led Columbine in, and Moore followed.  The girl manifestly was in a high state of agitation, but she was neither trembling nor frightened nor sorrowful.  Nor did she betray any lack of an unflinching and indomitable spirit.  Wade read the truth of what she imagined was her doom in the white glow of her, in the matured lines of womanhood that had come since yesternight, in the sustained passion of her look.

“Ben!  Wilson!  The worst has come!” she announced.

Moore could not speak.  Wade held Columbine’s hand in both of his.

“Worst!  Now, Collie, that’s a terrible word.  I’ve heard it many times.  An’ all my life the worst’s been comin’.  An’ it hasn’t come yet.  You—­only twenty years old—­talkin’ wild—­the worst has come!...  Tell me your trouble now an’ I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”

“Jack’s a thief—­a cattle-thief!” rang Columbine’s voice, high and clear.

“Ahuh!  Well, go on,” said Wade.

“Jack has taken money from rustlers—­for cattle stolen from his father!”

Wade felt the lift of her passion, and he vibrated to it.

“Reckon that’s no news to me,” he replied.

Then she quivered up to a strong and passionate delivery of the thing that had transformed her.

“I’M GOING TO MARRY JACK BELLLOUNDS!”

Wilson Moore leaped toward her with a cry, to be held back by Wade’s hand.

“Now, Collie,” he soothed, “tell us all about it.”

Columbine, still upheld by the strength of her spirit, related how she had ridden out the day before, early in the afternoon, in the hope of meeting Wade.  She rode over the sage hills, along the edges of the aspen benches, everywhere that she might expect to meet or see the hunter, but as he did not appear, and as she was greatly desirous of talking with him, she went on up into the woods, following the line of the Buffalo Park trail, though keeping aside from it.  She rode very slowly and cautiously, remembering Wade’s instructions.  In this way she ascended the aspen benches, and the spruce-bordered ridges, and then the first rise of the black forest.  Finally she had gone farther than ever before and farther than was wise.