he terrible superhuman
striving of his spirit to speak. Oldring shot through the heart, had
fought and forced back death, not for a moment in which to shoot or
curse, but to whisper strange words.

What words for a dying man to whisper! Why had not Venters waited? For
what? That was no plea for life. It was regret that there was not a
moment of life left in which to speak. Bess was--Herein lay renewed
torture for Venters. What had Bess been to Oldring? The old question,
like a specter, stalked from its grave to haunt him. He had overlooked,
he had forgiven, he had loved and he had forgotten; and now, out of the
mystery of a dying man's whisper rose again that perverse, unsatisfied,
jealous uncertainty. Bess had loved that splendid, black-crowned
giant--by her own confession she had loved him; and in Venters's soul
again flamed up the jealous hell. Then into the clamoring hell burst the
shot that had killed Oldring, and it rang in a wild fiendish gladness,
a hateful, vengeful joy. That passed to the memory of the love and
light in Oldring's eyes and the mystery in his whisper. So the changing,
swaying emotions fluctuated in Venters's heart.

This was the climax of his year of suffering and the crucial struggle
of his life. And when the gray dawn came he rose, a gloomy, almost
heartbroken man, but victor over evil passions. He could not change the
past; and, even if he had not loved Bess with all his soul, he had grown
into a man who would not change the future he had planned for her. Only,
and once for all, he must know the truth, know the worst, stifle all
these insistent doubts and subtle hopes and jealous fancies, and kill
the past by knowing truly what Bess had been to Oldring. For that matter
he knew--he had always known, but he must hear it spoken. Then, when
they had safely gotten out of that wild country to take up a new and an
absorbing life, she would forget, she would be happy, and through that,
in the years to come, he could not but find life worth living.

All day he rode slowly and cautiously up the Pass, taking time to peer
around corners, to pick out hard ground and grassy patches, and to make
sure there was no one in pursuit. In the night sometime he came to the
smooth, scrawled rocks dividing the valley, and here set the burro at
liberty. He walked beyond, climbed the slope and the dim, starlit gorge.
Then, weary to the point of exhaustion, he crept into a shallow cave and
fell asleep.

In the morni