“Ahuh!...  I’ve known it long!” cried Wade, tragically.  “Buster Jack, you’re the man who must hear my story.... I’ll tell you....”

* * * * *

In the aspen grove up the slope of Sage Valley Columbine and Wilson were sitting on a log.  Whatever had been their discourse, it had left Moore with head bowed in his hands, and with Columbine staring with sad eyes that did not see what they looked at.  Columbine’s mind then seemed a dull blank.  Suddenly she started.

“Wils!” she cried.  “Did you hear—­anything?”

“No,” he replied, wearily raising his head.

“I thought I heard a shot,” said Columbine.  “It—­it sort of made me jump.  I’m nervous.”

Scarcely had she finished speaking when two clear, deep detonations rang out.  Gun-shots!

“There!...  Oh, Wils!  Did you hear?”

“Hear!” whispered Moore.  He grew singularly white.  “Yes—­yes!...  Collie—­”

“Wils,” she interrupted, wildly, as she began to shake.  “Just a little bit ago—­I saw Jack riding down the trail!”

“Collie!...  Those two shots came from Wade’s guns I’d know it among a thousand!...  Are you sure you heard a shot before?”

“Oh, something dreadful has happened!  Yes, I’m sure.  Perfectly sure.  A shot not so loud or heavy.”

“My God!” exclaimed Moore, staring aghast at Columbine.

“Maybe that’s what Wade meant.  I never saw through him.”

“Tell me.  Oh, I don’t understand!” wailed Columbine, wringing her hands.

Moore did not explain what he meant.  For a crippled man, he made quick time in getting to his horse and mounting.

“Collie, I’ll ride down there.  I’m afraid something has happened....  I never understood him!...  I forgot he was Hell-Bent Wade!  If there’s been a—­a fight or any trouble—­I’ll ride back and meet you.”

Then he rode down the trail.

Columbine had come without her horse, and she started homeward on foot.  Her steps dragged.  She knew something dreadful had happened.  Her heart beat slowly and painfully; there was an oppression upon her breast; her brain whirled with contending tides of thought.  She remembered Wade’s face.  How blind she had been!  It exhausted her to walk, though she went so slowly.  There seemed to be a chill and a darkening in the atmosphere, an unreality in the familiar slopes and groves, a strangeness and shadow upon White Slides Valley.

Moore did not return to meet her.  His white horse grazed in the pasture opposite the first clump of willows, where Sage Valley merged into the larger valley.  Then she saw other horses, among them Lem Billings’s bay mustang.  Columbine faltered on, when suddenly she recognized the horse Jack had ridden—­a sorrel, spent and foam-covered, standing saddled, with bridle down and riderless—­then certainty of something awful clamped her with horror.  Men’s husky voices reached her throbbing ears.  Some one was running.  Footsteps thudded and died away.  Then she saw Lem Billings come out of the willows, look her way, and hurry toward her.  His awkward, cowboy gait seemed too slow for his earnestness.  Columbine felt the piercing gaze of his eyes as her own became dim.