aithful battle
for it, and that wedding journey he had arranged: for there were the
mountains in sight, the woods and canyons where he had planned to go
with her after the bishop had joined them; the solitudes where only the
wild animals would be, besides themselves. His horses, his tent, his
rifle, his rod, all were waiting ready in the town for their start
to-morrow. He had provided many dainty things to make her comfortable.
Well, he could wait a little more, having waited three years. It would
not be what his heart most desired: there would be the "public eye and
the talking of tongues"--but he could wait. The hour would come when he
could be alone with his bride at last. And so he spoke as if he urged
it.

"Never!" she cried. "Never, never!"

She pushed it from her. She would not brook such sacrifice on his part.
Were they not going to her mother in four weeks? If her family had
warmly accepted him--but they had not; and in any case, it had gone too
far, it was too late. She told her lover that she would not hear him,
that if he said any more she would gallop into town separately from him.
And for his sake she would hide deep from him this loneliness of hers,
and the hurt that he had given her in refusing to share with her his
trouble with Trampas, when others must know of it.

Accordingly, they descended the hill slowly together, lingering to spin
out these last miles long. Many rides had taught their horses to go
side by side, and so they went now: the girl sweet and thoughtful in her
sedate gray habit; and the man in his leathern chaps and cartridge belt
and flannel shirt, looking gravely into the distance with the level gaze
of the frontier.

Having read his sweetheart's mind very plainly, the lover now broke his
dearest custom. It was his code never to speak ill of any man to any
woman. Men's quarrels were not for women's ears. In his scheme, good
women were to know only a fragment of men's lives. He had lived many
outlaw years, and his wide knowledge of evil made innocence doubly
precious to him. But to-day he must depart from his code, having read
her mind well. He would speak evil of one man to one woman, because his
reticence had hurt her--and was she not far from her mother, and very
lonely, do what he could? She should know the story of his quarrel in
language as light and casual as he could veil it with.

He made an oblique start. He did not say to her: "I'll tell you about
this. You saw me get re