“The girl quieted down after a spell, but her mind never come back.  She wasn’t just to say plumb crazy, but she seemed kind o’ dazed and lost like, and wouldn’t take no notice of nobody.  Acted all the time like she was expectin’ him to come.  And she’d stand out there by the gate for hours at a time, watchin’ the Old Trail and talkin’ low to herself.

“Pete is her boy, Mr. Howitt, and as you’ve seen he ain’t just right.  Seems like he was marked some way in his mind like you’ve seen other folks marked in their bodies.  We’ve done our best by the boy, sir, but I don’t guess he’ll ever be any better.  Once for a spell we tried keepin’ him to home, but he got right sick and would o’ died sure, if we hadn’t let him go; it was pitiful to see him.  Everybody ‘lows there won’t nothin’ in the woods hurt him nohow; so we let him come and go, as he likes; and he just stops with the neighbors wherever he happens in.  Folks are all as good to him as they can be, ’cause everybody knows how it is.  You see, sir, people here don’t think nothin’ of a wood’s colt, nohow, but we was raised different.  As wife says, we’ve most forgot civilized ways, but I guess there’s some things a man that’s been raised right can’t never forget.

“She died when Pete was born, and the last thing she said was, ‘He’ll come, Daddy, he’ll sure come.’  Pete says the wind singin’ in that big pine over her grave is her a callin’ for him yet.  It’s mighty queer how the boy got that notion, but you see that’s the way it is with him.

“And that ain’t all, sir.”  The big man moved his chair nearer the other, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper; “Folks say she’s come back.  There’s them that swears they’ve seen her ’round the old cabin where they used to meet when he painted her picture, the big one, you know.  Just before I bought the ranch, it was first; and that’s why we can’t get no one to stay with the sheep.

“I don’t know, Mr. Howitt; I don’t know.  I’ve thought a heap about it, I ain’t never seen it myself, and it ’pears to me that if she could come back at all, she’d sure come to her old Daddy.  Then again I figure it that bein’ took the way she was, part of her dead, so to speak, from the time she got that letter, and her mind so set on his comin’ back, that maybe somehow—­you see—­that maybe she is sort a waitin’ for him there.  Many’s the time I have prayed all night that God would let me meet him again just once, or that proud father of his’n, just once, sir; I’d glad go to Hell if I could only meet them first.  If she is waitin’ for him down there, he’ll come; he’ll sure come.  Hell couldn’t hold him against such as that, and when he comes—­”

Unconsciously, as he spoke the last sentences, the giant’s voice took a tone of terrible meaning, and he slowly rose from his seat.  When he uttered the last word he was standing erect, his muscles tense, his powerful frame shaken with passion.

There was an inarticulate cry of horror, as the mountaineer’s guest started to his feet.  A moment he stood, then sank back into his chair, a cowering, shivering heap.