"Oh, Ben! Ben!" she cried, in pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude. "I'll love you--bless you all my life!"

"Hush, la.s.s! I'm not one to bless.... An' now you must do as I say. Go home an' tell them you'll marry Jack in August. Say August thirteenth."

"So long! Oh, why put it off? Wouldn't it be better--safer, to settle it all--once and forever?"

"No man can tell everythin'. But that's my judgment."

"Why August thirteenth?" she queried, with strange curiosity. "An unlucky date!"

"Well, it just happened to come to my mind--that date," replied Wade, in his slow, soft voice of reminiscence. "I was married on August thirteenth--twenty-one years ago.... An', Collie, my wife looked somethin' like you. Isn't that strange, now? It's a little world.... An'

she's been gone eighteen years!"

"Ben, I never dreamed you ever had a wife," said Columbine, softly, with her hands going to his shoulder. "You must tell me of her some day....

But now--if you want time--if you think it best--I'll not marry Jack till August thirteenth."

"That'll give me time," replied Wade. "I'm thinkin' Jack ought to be--reformed, let's call it--before you marry him. If all you say is true--why we can turn him round. Your promise will do most.... So, then, it's settled?"

"Yes--dear--friends," faltered the girl, tremulously, on the verge of a breakdown, now that the ordeal was past.

Wilson Moore stood gazing out of the door, his eyes far away on the gray slopes.

"Queer how things turn out," he said, dreamily. "August thirteenth!...

That's about the time the columbines blow on the hills.... And I always meant columbine-time--"

Here he sharply interrupted himself, and the dreamy musing gave way to pa.s.sion. "But I mean it yet! I'll--I'll die before I give up hope of you!"

CHAPTER XVI

Wade, watching Columbine ride down the slope on her homeward way, did some of the hardest thinking he had yet been called upon to do. It was not necessary to acquaint Wilson Moore with the deeper and more subtle motives that had begun to actuate him. It would not utterly break the cowboy's spirit to live in suspense. Columbine was safe for the present.

He had insured her against fatality. Time was all he needed. Possibility of an actual consummation of her marriage to Jack Belllounds did not lodge for an instant in Wade's consciousness. In Moore's case, however, the present moment seemed critical. What should he tell Moore--what should he conceal from him?

"Son, come in here," he called to the cowboy.

"Pard, it looks--bad!" said Moore, brokenly.

Wade looked at the tragic face and cursed under his breath.

"Buck up! It's never as bad as it looks. Anyway, we _know_ now what to expect, an' that's well."

Moore shook his head. "Couldn't you see how like steel Collie was?...

But I'm on to you, Wade. You think by persuading Collie to put that marriage off that we'll gain time. You're gambling with time. You swear Buster Jack will hang himself. You won't quit fighting this deal."

"Buster Jack has slung the noose over a tree, an' he's about ready to slip his head into it," replied Wade.

"Bah!... You drive me wild," cried Moore, pa.s.sionately. "How can you?

Where's all that feeling you seemed to have for me? You nursed me--you saved my leg--and my life. You must have cared about me. But now--you talk about that dolt--that spoiled old man's pet--that d.a.m.ned cur, as if you believed he'd ruin himself. No such luck! no such hope!... Every day things grow worse. Yet the worse they grow the stronger you seem! It's all out of proportion. It's dreams. Wade, I hate to say it, but I'm sure you're not always--just right in your mind."

"Wils, now ain't that queer?" replied Wade, sadly. "I'm agreein' with you."

"Aw!" Moore shook himself savagely and laid an affectionate and appealing arm on his friend's shoulder. "Forgive me, pard!... It's me who's out of his head.... But my heart's broken."

"That's what you think," rejoined Wade, stoutly. "But a man's heart can't break in a day. I know.... An' the G.o.d's truth is Buster Jack will hang himself!"

Moore raised his head sharply, flinging himself back from his friend so as to scrutinize his face. Wade felt the piercing power of that gaze.

"Wade, what do you mean?"

"Collie told us some interestin' news about Jack, didn't she? Well, she didn't know what I know. Jack Belllounds had laid a cunnin' an' devilish trap to prove you guilty of rustlin' his father's cattle."

"Absurd!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Moore, with white lips.

"I'd never given him credit for brains to hatch such a plot," went on Wade. "Now listen. Not long ago Buster Jack made a remark in front of the whole outfit, includin' his father, that the homesteaders on the range were rustlin' cattle. It fell sort of flat, that remark. But no one could calculate on his infernal cunnin'. I quit workin' for Belllounds that night, an' I've put my time in spyin' on the boy. In my day I've done a good deal of spyin', but I've never run across any one slicker than Buster Jack. To cut it short--he got himself a white-speckled mustang that's a dead ringer for Spottie. He measured the tracks of your horse's left front foot--the bad hoof, you know, an' he made a shoe exactly the same as Spottie wears. Also, he made some kind of a contraption that's like the end of your crutch. These he packs with him. I saw him ride across the pasture to hide his tracks, climb up the sage for the same reason, an' then hide in that grove of aspens over there near the trail you use. Here, you can bet, he changed shoes on the left front foot of his horse. Then he took to the trail, an' he left tracks for a while, an' then he was careful to hide them again. He stole his father's stock an' drove it up over the gra.s.sy benches where even you or I couldn't track him next day. But up on top, when it suited him, he left some horse tracks, an' in the mud near a spring-hole he gets off his horse, steppin' with one foot--an' makin' little circles with dots like those made by the end of your crutch. Then 'way over in the woods there's a cabin where he meets his accomplices. Here he leaves the same horse tracks an' crutch tracks.... Simple as a b c, Wils, when you see how he did it. But I'll tell you straight--if I hadn't been suspicious of Buster Jack--that trick of his would have made you a rustler!"

"d.a.m.n him!" hissed the cowboy, in utter consternation and fury.

"Ahuh! That's my sentiment exactly."

"I swore to Collie I'd never kill him!"

"Sure you did, son. An' you've got to keep that oath. I pin you down to it. You can't break faith with Collie.... An' you don't want his bad blood on your hands."

"No! No!" he replied, violently. "Of course I don't. I won't. But G.o.d!

how sweet it would be to tear out his lying tongue--to--"

"I reckon it would. Only don't talk about that," interrupted Wade, bluntly. "You see, now, don't you, how he's about hanged himself."

"No, pard, I don't. We can't squeal that on him, any more than we can squeal what Collie told us."

"Son, you're young in dealin' with crooked men. You don't get the drift of motives. Buster Jack is not only robbin' his father an' hatchin' a dirty trap for you, but he's double-crossin' the rustlers he's sellin'

the cattle to. He's riskin' their necks. He's goin' to find _your_ tracks, showin' you dealt with them. Sure, he won't give them away, an'

he's figurin' on their gettin' out of it, maybe by leavin' the range, or a shootin'-fray, or some way. The big thing with Jack is that he's goin'

to accuse you of rustlin' an' show your tracks to his father. Well, that's a risk he's given the rustlers. It happens that I know this scar-face Smith. We've met before. Now it's easy to see from what Collie heard that Smith is not trustin' Buster Jack. So, all underneath this Jack Belllounds's game, there's forces workin' unbeknown to him, beyond his control, an' sure to ruin him."

"I see. I see. By Heaven! Wade, nothing else but ruin seems possible!...

But suppose it works out his way!... What then? What of Collie?"

"Son, I've not got that far along in my reckonin'," replied Wade.

"But for my sake--think. If Buster Jack gets away with his trick--if he doesn't hang himself by some blunder or fit of temper or spree--what then of Collie?"

Wade could not answer this natural and inevitable query for the reason that he had found it impossible of consideration.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," he replied.

"Wade, you've said that before. It helped me. But now I need more than a few words from the Bible. My faith is low. I ... oh, I tried to pray because Collie told me she had prayed! But what are prayers? We're dealing with a stubborn, iron-willed old man who idolizes his son; we're dealing with a crazy boy, absolutely self-centered, crafty, and vicious, who'll stop at nothing. And, lastly, we're dealing with a girl who's so n.o.ble and high-souled that she'll sacrifice her all--her life to pay her debt. If she were really Bill Belllounds's daughter she'd _never_ marry Jack, saying, of course, that he was not her brother.... Do you know that it will _kill_ her, if she marries him?"