“Ben, I suspect dad has the queerest notion you want to tell him some awful bloody story about the rustlers.”

“Ahuh!  Well, not yet....  An’ how’s Jack Belllounds actin’ these days?”

Wade felt the momentousness of that query, but it seemed her face had been telltale enough, without confirmation of words.

“My friend, somehow I hate to tell you.  You’re always so hopeful, so ready to think good instead of evil....  But Jack has been rough with me, almost brutal.  He was drunk once.  Every day he drinks, sometimes a little, sometimes more.  But drink changes him.  And it’s dragging dad down.  Dad doesn’t say so, yet I feel he’s afraid of what will come next....  Jack has nagged me to marry him right off.  He wanted to the day he came back from Kremmling.  He’s eager to leave White Slides.  Dad knows that, also, and it worries him.  But of course I refused.”

The presence of Columbine, so vivid and sweet and stirring, and all about her the sunlight, the golden gleams on the sage hills, and Wade’s heart and brain and spirit sustained a subtle transformation.  It was as if what had been beautiful with light had suddenly, strangely darkened.  Then Wade imagined he stood alone in a gloomy house, which was his own heart, and he was listening to the arrival of a tragic messenger whose foot sounded heavy on the stairs, whose hand turned slowly upon the knob, whose gray presence opened the door and crossed the threshold.

“Buster Jack didn’t break off with you, Collie?” asked the hunter.

“Break off with me!...  No, indeed!  Whatever possessed you to say that?”

“An’ he didn’t offer to give you up to Wils Moore?”

“Ben, are you crazy?” cried Columbine.

“Collie; listen.  I’ll tell you.”  The old urge knocked at Wade’s mind.  “Buster Jack was in the cabin, gamblin’ with the rustlers, when I cornered them.  You remember I meant to scare Buster Jack within an inch of his life?  Well, I made use of my opportunity.  I worked up the rustlers.  Then I told Jack I’d give away his secret.  He made to jump an’ run, I reckon.  But he hadn’t the nerve.  I shot a piece out of his ear, just to begin the fun.  An’ then I told the rustlers how Jack had double-crossed them.  Folsom, the boss rustler, roared like a mad steer.  He was wild to kill Jack.  He begged for a gun to shoot out Jack’s eyes.  An’ so were the other rustlers burnin’ to kill him.  Bad outfit.  There was a fight, which, I’m bound to confess, was not short an’ sweet.  There was a lot of shootin’.  An’ in a cabin gun-shots almost lift the roof.  Folsom was on his knees, dyin’, wavin’ his gun, whisperin’ in fiendish glee that he had done for me.  When he saw Jack an’ remembered he shook so with fury that he scattered blood all over.  An’ he took long aim at Jack, tryin’ to steady his gun.  He couldn’t, an’ he missed, an’ then fell over dead with his head on Jack’s knees.  That left the red-bearded rustler, who had hid behind the chimney.  Jack