I tried it time and again, but
the smell of its darkness drove me out; every foot of its ragged walls
had left its mark on me, and my heart was torn and gouged and shivered
worse than its seams and ledges. I could have sold it, but there was no
place for me to go, and what did I want with money? I was shy of the
world, like a crippled child that dreads the daylight, and I shrank
from going out where people might see my scars; so I stayed there by
myself nursing the hurt that never got any better. You see, I'd been
raised among the hills and rocks, and I was like them in a way; I
couldn't grow and alter and heal up.

"From time to time I heard of her, but the news, instead of gladdening
me, as it would have gladdened some men, wrung out what bits of
suffering were left in me, and I fairly ached for her. Nobody comes to
see clearer than a woman deceived, so it didn't take her long to find
out the kind of man Bennett was. He wasn't like her at all, and the
reason he had courted her so hotly was just that he had had everything
that rightly belongs to a man like him, and had sickened of it, so he
wanted her because she was clean and pure and different; and realizing
that he couldn't get her any other way, he had married her. But she was
a treasure no bad man could appreciate, and so he tired quickly, even
before the little one came.

"When I heard that she had borne him a daughter I wrote her a letter,
which took me a month to compose, and which I tore up. One day a story
came to me that made me saddle my horse to ride down and kill him--and,
mind you, I was a man who made pets of little wild, trusting things.
But I knew she would surely send for me when her pain became too great,
so I uncinched my gear and hung it up, and waited and waited and
waited. Three long, endless years I waited, almost within sound of her
voice, without a word from her, without a glimpse of her, and every
hour of that time went by as slowly as if I had held my breath. Then
she called to me, and I went.

"I tell you, I was thankful that day for the fortune that had made me
take good care of my horse, for I rode like Death on a wind-storm. It
grew moonlight as I raced down the valley, and the foam from the
animal's muzzle lodged on my clothes, and made me laugh and swear that
the morning sun would show Dan Bennett's blood in its place. I rode
through the streets of Mesa, where they lived, and past the lights of
his big saloon, where I heard the so