of the moment—­the tangle of life that he was about to enter.  Old Bill Belllounds, big and fine, victim of love for a wayward son; Buster Jack, the waster, the tearer-down, the destroyer, the wild youth at a wild time; Columbine, the girl of unknown birth, good and loyal, subject to a condition sure to ruin her.  Wade’s strange mind revolved a hundred outcomes to this conflict of characters, but not one of them was the one that was written.  That remained dark.  Never had he received so strong a call out of the unknown, nor had he ever felt such intense curiosity.  Hope had long been dead in him, except the one that he might atone in some way for the wrong he had done his wife.  So the pangs of emotion that recurred, in spite of reason and bitterness, were not recognized by him as lingering hopes.  Wade denied the human in him, but he thrilled at the thought of meeting Columbine Belllounds.  There was something here beyond all his comprehension.

“It might—­be true!” he whispered.  “I’ll know when I see her.”

Then he walked back toward the inn.  On the way he looked into the barroom of the hotel run by Smith.  It was a hard-looking place, half full of idle men, whose faces were as open pages to Bent Wade.  Curiosity did not wholly control the impulse that made him wait at the door till he could have a look at the man Smith.  Somewhere, at some time, Wade had met most of the veterans of western Colorado.  So much he had traveled!  But the impulse that held him was answered and explained when Smith came in—­a burly man, with an ugly scar marring one eye.  Bent Wade recognized Smith.  He recognized the scar.  For that scar was his own mark, dealt to this man, whose name was not Smith, and who had been as evil as he looked, and whose nomadic life was not due to remorse or love of travel.

Wade passed on without being seen.  This recognition meant less to him than it would have ten years ago, as he was not now the kind of man who hunted old enemies for revenge or who went to great lengths to keep out of their way.  Men there were in Colorado who would shoot at him on sight.  There had been more than one that had shot to his cost.

* * * * *

That night Wade camped in the foothills east of Elgeria, and upon the following day, at sunrise, his horses were breaking the frosty grass and ferns of the timbered range.  This he crossed, rode down into a valley where a lonely cabin nestled, and followed an old, blazed trail that wound up the course of a brook.  The water was of a color that made rock and sand and moss seem like gold.  He saw no signs or tracks of game.  A gray jay now and then screeched his approach to unseen denizens of the woods.  The stream babbled past him over mossy ledges, under the dark shade of clumps of spruces, and it grew smaller as he progressed toward its source.  At length it was lost in a swale of high, rank grass, and the blazed trail led on through heavy pine woods.  At noon he reached the crest of the divide, and, halting upon an open, rocky eminence, he gazed down over a green and black forest, slow-descending to a great irregular park that was his destination for the night.