“Miss, I’m arrestin’ him.”

“Oh!...  For what?”

“Rustlin’ your father’s cattle.”

For a moment Columbine was speechless.  Then she burst out, “Oh, there’s a terrible mistake!”

“Miss Columbine, I shore hope so,” replied Burley, much embarrassed and distressed.  Like most men of his kind, he could not bear to hurt a woman.  “But it looks bad fer Moore....  See hyar!  There!  Look at the tracks of his hoss—­left front foot-shoe all crooked.  Thet’s his hoss’s.  He acknowledges thet.  An’, see hyar.  Look at the little circles an’ dots....  I found these ’way over at Gore Peak, with the tracks of the stolen cattle.  An’ no other tracks, Miss Columbine!”

“Who put you on that trail?” she asked, piercingly.

“Jack, hyar.  He found it fust, an’ rode to Kremmlin’ fer me.”

“Jack!  Jack Belllounds!” she cried, bursting into wild and furious laughter.  Like a tigress she leaped at Jack as if to tear him to pieces.  “You put the sheriff on that trail!  You accuse Wilson Moore of stealing dad’s cattle!”

“Yes, and I proved it,” replied Jack, hoarsely.

“You! You proved it?  So that’s your revenge?...  But you’re to reckon with me, Jack Belllounds!  You villain!  You devil!  You—­” Suddenly she shrank back with a strong shudder.  She gasped.  Her face grew ghastly white. “Oh, my God! ... horrible—­unspeakable!"...  She covered her face with her hands, and every muscle of her seemed to contract until she was stiff.  Then her hands shot out to Moore.

“Wilson Moore, what have you to say—­to this sheriff—­to Jack Belllounds—­to me?”

Moore bent upon her a gaze that must have pierced her soul, so like it was to a lightning flash of love and meaning and eloquence.

“Collie, they’ve got the proof.  I’ll take my medicine....  Your dad is good.  He’ll be easy on me!’

“You lie!” she whispered.  “And I will tell why you lie!”

Moore did not show the shame and guilt that should have been natural with his confession.  But he showed an agony of distress.  His hand sought Wade and dragged at him.

It did not need this mute appeal to tell Wade that in another moment Columbine would have flung the shameful truth into the face of Jack Belllounds.  She was rising to that.  She was terrible and beautiful to see.

“Collie,” said Wade, with that voice he knew had strange power over her, with a clasp of her outflung hand, “no more!  This is a man’s game.  It’s not for a woman to judge.  Not here!  It’s Wils’s game—­an’ it’s mine.  I’m his friend.  Whatever his trouble or guilt, I take it on my shoulders.  An’ it will be as if it were not!”

Moaning and wringing her hands, Columbine staggered with the burden of the struggle in her.

“I’m quite—­quite mad—­or dreaming.  Oh, Ben!” she cried.

“Brace up, Collie.  It’s sure hard.  Wils, your friend and playmate so many years—­it’s hard to believe!  We all understand, Collie.  Now you go in, an’ don’t listen to any more or look any more.”