elp himself!

But this spring was different--so different that he asked himself
wonderingly if other springs had been like it; and to-day, as he sat in
the sunshine and looked about him, he saw for the first time grandeur in
the saw-toothed, snow-covered peaks outlined against the dazzling blue of
the western sky. For the first time he saw the awing vastness of the
desert, and the soft pastel shades which made their desolation beautiful.
He breathed deep of the odorous air and stared about him like a blind man
who suddenly sees.

During a silence, Smith looked at Dora with his curiously intent gaze; his
characteristic stare which held nothing of impertinence--only interest,
intense, absorbing interest--and as he looked a thought came to him, a
thought so unexpected, so startling, that he blinked as if some one had
struck him in the face. It sent a bright red rushing over him, coloring
his neck, his ears, his white, broad forehead.

He thought of her as the mother of children--his children--bearing his
name, miniatures of himself and of her. He never had thought of this
before. He never had met a woman who inspired in him any such desire. He
followed the thought further. What if he should have a permanent home--a
ranch that belonged to him exclusively--"Smith's Ranch"--where there were
white curtains at the windows, and little ones who came tumbling through
the door to greet him when he rode into the yard? A place where people
came to visit, people who reckoned him a person of consequence because he
stood for something. He must have seen a place like it somewhere, the
picture was so vivid in his mind.

The thought of living like others never before had entered into the scheme
of his calculations. Since the time when he had "quit the flat" back in
the country where they slept between sheets, the world had been lined up
against him in its own defense. Life had been a constant game of hare and
hounds, with the pack frequently close at his heels. He had been ever on
the move, both for reasons of safety and as a matter of taste. His point
of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world
was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased
and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be
known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he
craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad
Man." In this he had found g