“Because dad will kill him!” she cried.

“My God! what are you saying?” exclaimed Moore, incredulously.  “Old Bill would roar and rage, but hurt that boy of his—­never!”

“Wils, I reckon Collie is right.  You haven’t got Old Bill figured.  I know,” interposed Wade, with one of his forceful gestures.

“Wilson, listen, and don’t set your heart against me.  For I must do this thing,” pleaded Columbine.  “I heard dad swear he’d kill Jack.  Oh, I’ll never forget!  He was terrible!  If he ever finds out that Jack stole from his own father—­stole cattle like a common rustler, and sold them for gold to gamble and drink with—­he will kill him!...  That’s as true as fate....  Think how horrible that would be for me!  Because I’m to blame here, mostly.  I fell in love with you, Wilson Moore, otherwise I could have saved Jack already.

“But it’s not that I think of myself.  Dad has loved me.  He has been as a father to me.  You know he’s not my real father.  Oh, if I only had a real one!...  And I owe him so much.  But then it’s not because I owe him or because I love him.  It’s because of his own soul!...  That splendid, noble old man, who has been so good to every one—­who had only one fault, and that love of his son—­must he be let go in blinded and insane rage at the failure of his life, the ruin of his son—­must he be allowed to kill his own flesh and blood?...  It would be murder! It would damn dad’s soul to everlasting torment.  No!  No!  I’ll not let that be!”

“Collie—­how about—­your own soul?” whispered Moore, lifting himself as if about to expend a tremendous breath.

“That doesn’t matter,” she replied.

“Collie—­Collie—­” he stammered, but could not go on.

Then it seemed to Wade that they both turned to him unconscious of the inevitableness of his relation to this catastrophe, yet looking to him for the spirit, the guidance that became habitual to them.  It brought the warm blood back to Wade’s cold heart.  It was his great reward.  How intensely and implacably did his soul mount to that crisis!

“Collie, I’ll never fail you,” he said, and his gentle voice was deep and full.  “If Jack can be scared into haltin’ in his mad ride to hell—­then I’ll do it.  I’m not promisin’ so much for him.  But I’ll swear to you that Old Belllounds’s hands will never be stained with his son’s blood!”

“Oh, Ben!  Ben!” she cried, in passionate gratitude.  “I’ll love you—­bless you all my life!”

“Hush, lass!  I’m not one to bless....  An’ now you must do as I say.  Go home an’ tell them you’ll marry Jack in August.  Say August thirteenth.”

“So long!  Oh, why put it off?  Wouldn’t it be better—­safer, to settle it all—­once and forever?”

“No man can tell everythin’.  But that’s my judgment.”

“Why August thirteenth?” she queried, with strange curiosity.  “An unlucky date!”

“Well, it just happened to come to my mind—­that date,” replied Wade, in his slow, soft voice of reminiscence.  “I was married on August thirteenth—­twenty-one years ago....  An’, Collie, my wife looked somethin’ like you.  Isn’t that strange, now?  It’s a little world....  An’ she’s been gone eighteen years!”