st time I saw
him--in that little open glade in the timber. He had lost, and he knew
it--and he stood there with his arm thrown over the neck of his horse,
staring out over the broad bench toward the mountains that showed
hazy-blue in the distance. He was game to the last fibre of him. He
tried to conceal his hurt, but he could not conceal it. He spoke highly
of you--said you were a _man_--and that I had made no mistake in my
choice--and then he spoke the words that filled my cup of happiness to
the brim--he told me that you had not killed Purdy--that there was no
blood on your hands--and that you were not a fugitive from the law.

"Win, dear--we must find him--we've got to find him!"

"We'll find him--little girl," answered her husband as his arm stole
about her shoulders; "I'm just as anxious to find him as you are--_and
in ten days we will start_!"

CHAPTER I

AN ANNIVERSARY

The Texan drew up in the centre of a tiny glade that formed an opening
in the bull pine woods. Haze purpled the distant mountains of cow-land,
and the cowpuncher's gaze strayed slowly from the serried peaks of the
Bear Paws to rest upon the broad expanse of the barren, mica-studded bad
lands with their dazzling white alkali beds, and their brilliant red and
black mosaic of lava rock that trembled and danced and shimmered in the
crinkly waves of heat. For a long time he stared at the Missouri whose
yellow-brown waters rolled wide and deep from recent rains. From the
silver and gold of the flashing waters his eyes strayed to the
smoke-grey sage flats that intervened, and then to the cool dark green
of the pines.

Very deliberately he slipped from the saddle, letting the reins fall to
the ground. He took off his Stetson and removed its thin powdering of
white alkali dust by slapping it noisily against his leather chaps. A
light breeze fanned his face and involuntarily his eyes sought the base
of a huge rock fragment that jutted boldly into the glade, and as he
looked, he was conscious that the air was heavy with the scent of the
little blue and white prairie flowers that carpeted the ground at his
feet. His thin lips twisted into a cynical smile--a smile that added an
unpleasant touch to the clean-cut weather-tanned features. In the space
of a second he seemed to have aged ten years--not physically, but--he
had aged.

He spoke half aloud, with his grey eyes upon the rock: "It--hurts--like
hell. I knew it would hurt, an' I came--rod