he had lost or alienated a powerful affection, to make him thoroughly miserable.  He returned his friend’s grasp convulsively and buried his face upon his shoulder.  But he was not above feeling a certain exultation in the effect of his misery upon the dog-like, unreasoning affection of Patterson, nor could he entirely refrain from slightly posing his affliction before that sympathetic but melancholy man.  Suddenly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand into his bosom with a theatrical gesture.

“What’s to keep me from killing Poindexter in his tracks?” he said wildly.

“Nothin’ but his shooting first,” returned Patterson, with dismal practicality.  “He’s mighty quick, like all them army men.  It’s about even, I reckon, that he don’t get me first,” he added in an ominous voice.

“No!” returned Tucker, grasping his hand again.  “This is not your affair, Patterson; leave him to me when I come back.”

“If he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won’t wait,” continued Patterson lugubriously.  “He seems to object to my passin’ criticism on your wife, as if she was a queen or an angel.”

The blood came to Spencer’s cheek, and he turned uneasily to the window.  “It’s dark enough now for a start,” he said hurriedly, “and if I could get across the mountain without lying over at the summit, it would be a day gained.”

Patterson arose without a word, filled a flask of spirit, handed it to his friend, and silently led the way through the slowly falling rain and the now settled darkness.  The mustang was quickly secured and saddled, a heavy poncho afforded Tucker a disguise as well as a protection from the rain.  With a few hurried, disconnected words, and an abstracted air, he once more shook his friend’s hand and issued cautiously from the corral.  When out of earshot from the house he put spurs to the mustang, and dashed into a gallop.

To intersect the mountain road he was obliged to traverse part of the highway his wife had walked that afternoon, and to pass within a mile of the casa where she was.  Long before he reached that point his eyes were straining the darkness in that direction for some indication of the house which was to him familiar.  Becoming now accustomed to the even obscurity, less trying to the vision than the alternate light and shadow of cloud or the full glare of the moonlight, he fancied he could distinguish its low walls over the monotonous level.  One of those impulses which had so often taken the place of resolution in his character suddenly possessed him to diverge from his course and approach the house.  Why, he could not have explained.  It was not from any feeling of jealous suspicion or contemplated revenge—­that had passed with the presence of Patterson; it was not from any vague lingering sentiment for the woman he had wronged—­he would have shrunk from meeting her at that moment.  But it was full of these and more possibilities by which he might or might not be guided, and was at least a movement towards some vague end, and a distraction from certain thoughts he dared not entertain and could not entirely dismiss.  Inconceivable and inexplicable to human reason, it might have been acceptable to the Divine omniscience for its predestined result.