CHAPTER I.

After the celebration.

There is a land where a man, to live, must be a man.  It is a land of granite and marble and porphyry and gold—­and a man’s strength must be as the strength of the primeval hills.  It is a land of oaks and cedars and pines—­and a man’s mental grace must be as the grace of the untamed trees.  It is a land of far-arched and unstained skies, where the wind sweeps free and untainted, and the atmosphere is the atmosphere of those places that remain as God made them—­and a man’s soul must be as the unstained skies, the unburdened wind, and the untainted atmosphere.  It is a land of wide mesas, of wild, rolling pastures and broad, untilled, valley meadows—­and a man’s freedom must be that freedom which is not bounded by the fences of a too weak and timid conventionalism.

In this land every man is—­by divine right—­his own king; he is his own jury, his own counsel, his own judge, and—­if it must be—­his own executioner.  And in this land where a man, to live, must be a man, a woman, if she be not a woman, must surely perish.

This is the story of a man who regained that which in his youth had been lost to him; and of how, even when he had recovered that which had been taken from him, he still paid the price of his loss.  It is the story of a woman who was saved from herself; and of how she was led to hold fast to those things, the loss of which cost the man so great a price.

The story, as I have put it down here, begins at Prescott, Arizona, on the day following the annual Fourth-of-July celebration in one of those far-western years that saw the passing of the Indian and the coming of the automobile.

The man was walking along one of the few roads that lead out from the little city, through the mountain gaps and passes, to the wide, unfenced ranges, and to the lonely scattered ranches on the creeks and flats and valleys of the great open country that lies beyond.

From the fact that he was walking in that land where the distances are such that men most commonly ride, and from the many marks that environment and training leave upon us all, it was evident that the pedestrian was a stranger.  He was a man in the prime of young manhood—­tall and exceedingly well proportioned—­and as he went forward along the dusty road he bore himself with the unconscious air of one more accustomed to crowded streets than to that rude and unpaved highway.  His clothing bore the unmistakable stamp of a tailor of rank.  His person was groomed with that nicety of detail that is permitted only to those who possess both means and leisure, as well as taste.  It was evident, too, from his movement and bearing, that he had not sought the mile-high atmosphere of Prescott with the hope that it holds out to those in need of health.  But, still, there was a something about him that suggested a lack of the manly vigor and strength that should have been his.