Belllounds drew a long, deep breath.

“What a man never expects always comes true....  Wade, the lass is yours.  I can see it in the way you look at me.  I can feel it....  She’s been like my own.  I’ve done my best, accordin’ to my conscience.  An’ I’ve loved her, for all they say I couldn’t see aught but Jack....  You’ll take her away from me?”

“No.  Never,” was the melancholy reply.

“What!  Why not?”

“Because she loves you....  I could never reveal myself to Collie.  I couldn’t win her love with a lie.  An’ I’d have to lie, to be false as hell....  False to her mother an’ to Collie an’ to all I hold high!  I’d have to tell Collie the truth—­the wrong I did her mother—­the hell I visited upon her mother’s people....  She’d fear me.”

“Ahuh!...  An’ you’ll never change—­I reckon that!” exclaimed Belllounds.

“No.  I changed once, eighteen years ago.  I can’t go back....  I can’t undo all I hoped was good.”

“You think Collie’d fear you?”

“She’d never love me as she does you, or as she loves me even now.  That is my rock of refuge.”

“She’d hate you, Wade.”

“I reckon.  An’ so she must never know.”

“Ahuh!...  Wal, wal, life is a hell of a deal!  Wade, if you could live yours over again, knowin’ what you know now, an’ that you’d love an’ suffer the same—­would you want to do it?”

“Yes.  I love life, with all it brings.  I wouldn’t have the joy without the pain.  But I reckon only men who’ve come to our years would want it over again.”

“Wal, I’m with you thar.  I’d take what came.  Rain an’ sun!...  But all this you tell, an’ the hell you hint at, ain’t changin’ this hyar deal of Jack’s an’ Collie’s.  Not one jot!...  If she remains my adopted daughter she marries my son....  Wade, I’m haltered like the north star in that.”

“Belllounds, will you take a day to think it over?” appealed Wade.

“Ahuh!  But that won’t change me.”

“Won’t it change you to know that if you force this marriage you’ll lose all?”

“All!  Ain’t that more queer talk?”

“I mean lose all—­your son, your adopted daughter—­his chance of reformin’, her hope of happiness.  These ought to be all in life left to you.”

“Wal, they are.  But I can’t see your argument.  You’re beyond me, Wade.  You’re holdin’ back, like you did with your hell-bent story.”

Ponderously, as if the burden and the doom of the world weighed him down, the hunter got up and fronted Belllounds.

“When I’m driven to tell I’ll come....  But, once more, old man, choose between generosity an’ selfishness.  Between blood tie an’ noble loyalty to your good deed in its beginnin’....  Will you give up this marriage for your son—­so that Collie can have the man she loves?”

“You mean your young pard an’ two-bit of a rustler—­Wils Moore?”

“Wils Moore, yes.  My friend, an’ a man, Belllounds, such as you or I never was.”