“Young fellar, you need to be talked to, so if you’ve got any sense at all it’ll get a wedge in your brain,” went on Wade.  “I’m a stranger here.  But I happen to be a man who sees through things, an’ I see how your dad handles you wrong.  You don’t know who I am an’ you don’t care.  But if you’ll listen you’ll learn what might help you....  No boy can answer to all his wild impulses without ruinin’ himself.  It’s not natural.  There are other people—­people who have wills an’ desires, same as you have.  You’ve got to live with people.  Here’s your dad an’ Miss Columbine, an’ the cowboys, an’ me, an’ all the ranchers, so down to Kremmlin’ an’ other places.  These are the people you’ve got to live with.  You can’t go on as you’ve begun, without ruinin’ yourself an’ your dad an’ the—­the girl....  It’s never too late to begin to be better.  I know that.  But it gets too late, sometimes, to save the happiness of others.  Now I see where you’re headin’ as clear as if I had pictures of the future.  I’ve got a gift that way....  An’, Belllounds, you’ll not last.  Unless you begin to control your temper, to forget yourself, to kill your wild impulses, to be kind, to learn what love is—­you’ll never last!...  In the very nature of things, one comin’ after another like your fights with Moore, an’ your scarin’ of Pronto, an’ your drinkin’ at Kremmlin’, an’ just now your r’arin’ at me—­it’s in the very nature of life that goin’ on so you’ll sooner or later meet with hell!  You’ve got to change, Belllounds.  No half-way, spoiled-boy changin’, but the straight right-about-face of a man!...  It means you must see you’re no good an’ have a change of heart.  Men have revolutions like that.  I was no good.  I did worse than you’ll ever do, because you’re not big enough to be really bad, an’ yet I’ve turned out worth livin’....  There, I’m through, an’ I’m offerin’ to be your friend an’ to help you.”

Belllounds stood with arms spread outside the door, still astounded, still pale; but as the long admonition and appeal ended he exploded stridently.  “Who the hell are you?...  If I hadn’t been so surprised—­if I’d had a chance to get a word in—­I’d shut your trap!  Are you a preacher masquerading here as hunter?  Let me tell you, I won’t be talked to like that—­not by any man.  Keep your advice an’ friendship to yourself.”

“You don’t want me, then?”

“No,” Belllounds snapped.

“Reckon you don’t need either advice or friend, hey?”

“No, you owl-eyed, soft-voiced fool!” yelled Belllounds.

It was then Wade felt a singular and familiar sensation, a cold, creeping thing, physical and elemental, that had not visited him since he had been at White Slides.

“I reckoned so,” he said, with low and gloomy voice, and he knew, if Belllounds did not know, that he was not acquiescing with the other’s harsh epithet, but only greeting the advent of something in himself.

Belllounds shrugged his burly shoulders and slouched away.