shame and drooping head.

"What do I care who she is or what she was!" he cried, passionately. And
he knew it was not his old self speaking. It was this softer, gentler
man who had awakened to new thoughts in the quiet valley. Tenderness,
masterful in him now, matched the absence of joy and blunted the
knife-edge of entering jealousy. Strong and passionate effort of will,
surprising to him, held back the poison from piercing his soul.

"Wait!... Wait!" he cried, as if calling. His hand pressed his breast,
and he might have called to the pang there. "Wait! It's all so
strange--so wonderful. Anything can happen. Who am I to judge her? I'll
glory in my love for her. But I can't tell it--can't give up to it."

Certainly he could not then decide her future. Marrying her was
impossible in Surprise Valley and in any village south of Sterling. Even
without the mask she had once worn she would easily have been recognized
as Oldring's Rider. No man who had ever seen her would forget her,
regardless of his ignorance as to her sex. Then more poignant than all
other argument was the fact that he did not want to take her away from
Surprise Valley. He resisted all thought of that. He had brought her to
the most beautiful and wildest place of the uplands; he had saved her,
nursed her back to strength, watched her bloom as one of the valley
lilies; he knew her life there to be pure and sweet--she belonged to
him, and he loved her. Still these were not all the reasons why he
did not want to take her away. Where could they go? He feared the
rustlers--he feared the riders--he feared the Mormons. And if he should
ever succeed in getting Bess safely away from these immediate perils, he
feared the sharp eyes of women and their tongues, the big outside world
with its problems of existence. He must wait to decide her future,
which, after all, was deciding his own. But between her future and his
something hung impending. Like Balancing Rock, which waited darkly over
the steep gorge, ready to close forever the outlet to Deception Pass,
that nameless thing, as certain yet intangible as fate, must fall and
close forever all doubts and fears of the future.

"I've dreamed," muttered Venters, as he rose. "Well, why not?... To dream
is happiness! But let me just once see this clearly wholly; then I can
go on dreaming till the thing falls. I've got to tell Jane Withersteen.
I've dangerous trips to take. I've work here to make comfort for this
girl. S