“He did it—­all this inside,” burst out Moore, delighted with her delight.  “Quicker than a flash!  Collie, isn’t this great?  I don’t mind being down on my back.  And he says they call him Hell-Bent Wade.  I call him Heaven-Sent Wade!”

When Columbine turned to the hunter, bursting with her pleasure and gratitude, he suddenly dropped the forked stick he used as a lift, and she saw his hand shake when he stooped to recover it.  How strangely that struck her!

“Ben, it’s perfectly possible that you’ve been sent by Heaven,” she remarked, with a humor which still held gravity in it.

“Me!  A good angel?  That’d be a new job for Bent Wade,” he replied, with a queer laugh.  “But I reckon I’d try to live up to it.”

There were small sprigs of golden aspen leaves and crimson oak leaves on the wall above the foot of Wilson’s bed.  Beneath them, on pegs, hung a rifle.  And on the window-sill stood a glass jar containing columbines.  They were fresh.  They had just been picked.  They waved gently in the breeze, sweetly white and blue, strangely significant to the girl.

Moore laughed defiantly.

“Wade thought to fetch these flowers in,” he explained.  “They’re his favorites as well as mine.  It won’t be long now till the frost kills them ... and I want to be happy while I may!”

Again Columbine felt that deep surge within her, beyond her control, beyond her understanding, but now gathering and swelling, soon to be reckoned with.  She did not look at Wilson’s face then.  Her downcast gaze saw that his right hand was bandaged, and she touched it with an unconscious tenderness.

“Your hand!  Why is it all wrapped up?”

The cowboy laughed with grim humor.

“Have you seen Jack this morning?”

“No,” she replied, shortly.

“Well, if you had, you’d know what happened to my fist.”

“Did you hurt it on him?” she asked, with a queer little shudder that was not unpleasant.

“Collie, I busted that fist on his handsome face.”

“Oh, it was dreadful!” she murmured.  “Wilson, he meant to kill you.”

“Sure.  And I’d cheerfully have killed him.”

“You two must never meet again,” she went on.

“I hope to Heaven we never do,” replied Moore, with a dark earnestness that meant more than his actual words.

“Wilson, will you avoid him—­for my sake?” implored Columbine, unconsciously clasping the bandaged hand.

“I will.  I’ll take the back trails.  I’ll sneak like a coyote.  I’ll hide and I’ll watch....  But, Columbine Belllounds, if he ever corners me again—­”

“Why, you’ll leave him to Hell-Bent Wade,” interrupted the hunter, and he looked up from where he knelt, fixing those great, inscrutable eyes upon the cowboy.  Columbine saw something beyond his face, deeper than the gloom, a passion and a spirit that drew her like a magnet.  “An’ now, Miss Collie,” he went on, “I reckon you’ll want to wait on our invalid.  He’s got to be fed.”