e'll have outgrown that wildness. He'll come
home a man."

"Bah!" cried Moore, harshly.

Columbine felt a sinking within her. Where was her strength? She, who
could walk and ride so many miles, to become sick with an inward
quaking! It was childish. She struggled to hide her weakness from him.

"It's not like you to be this way," she said. "You used to be generous.
Am I to blame? Did I choose my life?"

Moore looked quickly away from her, and, standing with a hand on his
horse, he was silent for a moment. The squaring of his shoulders bore
testimony to his thought. Presently he swung up into the saddle. The
mustang snorted and champed the bit and tossed his head, ready to bolt.

"Forget my temper," begged the cowboy, looking down upon Columbine. "I
take it all back. I'm sorry. Don't let a word of mine worry you. I was
only jealous."

"Jealous!" exclaimed Columbine, wonderingly.

"Yes. That makes a fellow see red and green. Bad medicine! You never
felt it."

"What were you jealous of?" asked Columbine.

The cowboy had himself in hand now and he regarded her with a grim
amusement.

"Well, Columbine, it's like a story," he replied. "I'm the fellow
disowned by his family--a wanderer of the wilds--no good--and no
prospects.... Now our friend Jack, he's handsome and rich. He has a
doting old dad. Cattle, horses--ranches! He wins the girl. See!"

Spurring his mustang, the cowboy rode away. At the edge of the slope he
turned in the saddle. "I've got to drive in this bunch of cattle. It's
late. You hurry home." Then he was gone. The stones cracked and rolled
down under the side of the bluff.

Columbine stood where he had left her: dubious, yet with the blood still
hot in her cheeks.

"Jealous?... He wins the girl?" she murmured in repetition to herself.
"What ever could he have meant? He didn't mean--he didn't--"

The simple, logical interpretation of Wilson's words opened Columbine's
mind to a disturbing possibility of which she had never dreamed. That
he might love her! If he did, why had he not said so? Jealous, maybe,
but he did not love her! The next throb of thought was like a knock at a
door of her heart--a door never yet opened, inside which seemed a
mystery of feeling, of hope, despair, unknown longing, and clamorous
voices. The woman just born in her, instinctive and self-preservative,
shut that door before she had more than a glimpse inside. But then she
felt her heart swell with its nameless burdens