and then the rancher seemed taciturn. Columbine did the
serving, and most all of the talking. Wade felt strangely at ease. Some
subtle difference was at work in him, transforming him, but the moment
had not yet come for him to question himself. He enjoyed the supper. And
when he ventured to look up at Columbine, to see her strong, capable
hands and her warm, blue glance, glad for his presence, sweetly
expressive of their common secret and darker with a shadow of meaning
beyond her power to guess, then Wade felt havoc within him, the strife
and pain and joy of the truth he never could reveal. For he could never
reveal his identity to her without betraying his baseness to her mother.
Otherwise, to hear her call him father would have been earning that
happiness with a lie. Besides, she loved Belllounds as her father, and
were this trouble of the present removed she would grow still closer to
the old man in his declining days. Wade accepted the inevitable, She
must never know. If she might love him it must be as the stranger who
came to her gates, it must be through the mysterious affinity between
them and through the service he meant to render.

Wade did not linger after the meal was ended despite the fact that
Belllounds recovered his cordiality. It was dark when he went out.
Columbine followed him, talking cheerfully. Once outside she squeezed
his hand and whispered, "How's Wilson?"

The hunter nodded his reply, and, pausing at the porch step, he pressed
her hand to make his assurance stronger. His reward was instant. In the
bright starlight she stood white and eloquent, staring down at him with
dark, wide eyes.

Presently she whispered: "Oh, my friend! It wants only three days till
October first!"

"Lass, it might be a thousand years for all you need worry," he replied,
his voice low and full. Then it seemed, as she flung up her arms, that
she was about to embrace him. But her gesture was an appeal to the
stars, to Heaven above, for something she did not speak.

Wade bade her good night and went his way.

* * * * *

The cowboys and the rancher's son were about to engage in a game of
poker when Wade entered the dimly lighted, smoke-hazed room. Montana Jim
was sticking tallow candles in the middle of a rude table; Lem was
searching his clothes, manifestly for money; Bludsoe shuffled a greasy
deck of cards, and Jack Belllounds was filling his pipe before a fire of
blazing logs on the