“Oh, it can’t be as bad as all that!” cried Columbine.  “Oh, I knew—­I knew there was something....  Ben, you mean even at best now—­he’ll be a—­” She broke off, unable to finish.

“Miss Collie, in any case Wils’ll never ride again—­not like a cowboy.”

That for Columbine seemed the worst and the last straw.  Hot tears blinded her, hot blood gushed over her, hot heart-beats throbbed in her throat.

“Poor boy!  That’ll—­ruin him,” she cried.  “He loved—­a horse.  He loved to ride.  He was the—­best rider of them all.  And now he’s ruined!  He’ll be lame—­a cripple—­club-footed!...  All because of that Jack Belllounds!  The brute—­the coward!  I hate him!  Oh, I hate him!...  And I’ve got to marry him—­on October first!  Oh, God pity me!”

Blindly Columbine reeled out of her saddle and slowly dropped to the grass, where she burst into a violent storm of sobs and tears.  It shook her every fiber.  It was hopeless, terrible grief.  The dry grass received her flood of tears and her incoherent words.

Wade dismounted and, kneeling beside her, placed a gentle hand upon her heaving shoulder, but he spoke no word.  By and by, when the storm had begun to subside, he raised her head.

“Lass, nothin’ is ever so bad as it seems,” he said, softly.  “Come, sit up.  Let me talk to you.”

“Oh, Ben, something terrible has happened,” she cried.  “It’s in me!  I don’t know what it is.  But it’ll kill me.”

“I know,” he replied, as her head fell upon his shoulder.  “Miss Collie, I’m an old fellow that’s had everythin’ happen to him, an’ I’m livin’ yet, tryin’ to help people along.  No one dies so easy.  Why, you’re a fine, strong girl—­an’ somethin’ tells me you was made for happiness.  I know how things turn out.  Listen—­”

“But, Ben—­you don’t know—­about me,” she sobbed.  “I’ve told you—­I—­hate Jack Belllounds.  But I’ve—­got to marry him!...  His father raised me—­from a baby.  He brought me up.  I owe him—­my life....  I’ve no relation—­no mother—­no father!  No one loves me—­for myself!”

“Nobody loves you!” echoed Wade, with an exquisite tone of repudiation.  “Strange how people fool themselves!  Lass, you’re huggin’ your troubles too hard.  An’ you’re wrong.  Why, everybody loves you!  Lem an’ Jim—­why you just brighten the hard world they live in.  An’ that poor, hot-headed Jack—­he loves you as well as he can love anythin’.  An’ the old man—­no daughter could be loved more....  An’ I—­I love you, lass, just like—­as if you—­might have been my own.  I’m goin’ to be the friend—­the brother you need.  An’ I reckon I can come somewheres near bein’ a mother, if you’ll let me.”

Something, some subtle power or charm, stole over Columbine, assuaging her terrible sense of loss, of grief.  There was tenderness in this man’s hands, in his voice, and through them throbbed strong and passionate life and spirit.

“Do you really love me—­love me?” she whispered, somehow comforted, somehow feeling that what he offered was what she had missed as a child.  “And you want to be all that for me?”