ss.

"Love him! Love Wilson Moore? Yes, you fool! I love him! Yes! _Yes!_
YES!"

That voice would have pierced the heart of a wooden image, so Wade
thought, as all his strung nerves quivered and thrilled.

Belllounds uttered a low cry of realization, and all his instinctive
energy seemed on the verge of collapse. He grew limp, he sagged, he
tottered. His sensorial perceptions seemed momentarily blunted.

Wade divined the tragedy, and a pang of great compassion overcame him.
Whatever Jack Belllounds was in character, he had inherited his father's
power to love, and he was human. Wade felt the death in that stricken
soul, and it was the last flash of pity he ever had for Jack Belllounds.

"You--you--" muttered Belllounds, raising a hand that gathered speed and
strength in the action. The moment of a great blow had passed, like a
storm-blast through a leafless tree. Now the thousand devils of his
nature leaped into ascendancy. "You!--" He could not articulate. Dark
and terrible became his energy. It was like a resistless current forced
through leaping thought and leaping muscle.

He struck her on the mouth, a cruel blow that would have felled her but
for Wade: and then he lunged away, bowed and trembling, yet with fierce,
instinctive motion, as if driven to run with the spirit of his rage.

CHAPTER XV

Wade noticed that after her trying experience with him and Wilson and
Belllounds Columbine did not ride frequently.

He managed to get a word or two with her whenever he went to the
ranch-house, and he needed only look at her to read her sensitive mind.
All was well with Columbine, despite her trouble. She remained upheld in
spirit, while yet she seemed to brood over an unsolvable problem. She
had said, "But--let what will come!"--and she was waiting.

Wade hunted for more than lions and wolves these days. Like an Indian
scout who scented peril or heard an unknown step upon his trail, Wade
rode the hills, and spent long hours hidden on the lonely slopes,
watching with somber, keen eyes. They were eyes that knew what they were
looking for. They had marked the strange sight of the son of Bill
Belllounds, gliding along that trail where Moore had met Columbine,
sneaking and stooping, at last with many a covert glance about, to kneel
in the trail and compare the horse tracks there with horseshoes he took
from his pocket. That alone made Bent Wade eternally vigilant. He kept
his counsel. He worked more swiftly, so t