“They call him Hell-Bent Wade.  I seen him in Wyomin’, whar he were a stage-driver.  But I never heerd who he was an’ what he was till years after.  Thet was onct I dropped down into Boulder.  Wade was thar, all shot up, bein’ nussed by Sam Coles.  Sam’s dead now.  He was a friend of Wade’s an’ knowed him fer long.  Wal, I heerd all thet anybody ever heerd about him, I reckon.  Accordin’ to Coles this hyar Hell-Bent Wade was a strange, wonderful sort of fellar.  He had the most amazin’ ways.  He could do anythin’ under the sun better’n any one else.  Bad with guns!  He never stayed in one place fer long.  He never hunted trouble, but trouble follered him.  As I remember Coles, thet was Wade’s queer idee—­he couldn’t shake trouble.  No matter whar he went, always thar was hell.  Thet’s what gave him the name Hell-Bent....  An’ Coles swore thet Wade was the whitest man he ever knew.  Heart of gold, he said.  Always savin’ somebody, helpin’ somebody, givin’ his money or time—­never thinkin’ of himself a-tall....  When he began to tell thet story about Cripple Creek then my ole head begun to ache with rememberin’.  Fer I’d heerd Bent Wade talk before.  Jest the same kind of story he told hyar, only wuss.  Lordy! but thet fellar has seen times.  An’ queerest of all is thet idee he has how hell’s on his trail an’ everywhere he roams it ketches up with him, an’ thar he meets the man who’s got to hear his tale!”

* * * * *

Sunset found Bent Wade far up the valley of White River under the shadow of the Flat Top Mountains.  It was beautiful country.  Grassy hills, with colored aspen groves, swelled up on his left, and across the brawling stream rose a league-long slope of black spruce, above which the bare red-and-gray walls of the range towered, glorious with the blaze of sinking sun.  White patches of snow showed in the sheltered nooks.  Wade’s gaze rested longest on the colored heights.

By and by the narrow valley opened into a park, at the upper end of which stood a log cabin.  A few cattle and horses grazed in an inclosed pasture.  The trail led by the cabin.  As Wade rode up a bushy-haired man came out of the door, rifle in hand.  He might have been going out to hunt, but his scrutiny of Wade was that of a lone settler in a wild land.

“Howdy, stranger!” he said.

“Good evenin’,” replied Wade.  “Reckon you’re Blair an’ I’m nigh the headwaters of this river?”

“Yep, a matter of three miles to Trapper’s Lake.”

“My name’s Wade.  I’m packin’ over to take a job with Bill Belllounds.”

“Git down an’ come in,” returned Blair.  “Bill’s man stopped with me some time ago.”

“Obliged, I’m sure, but I’ll be goin’ on,” responded Wade.  “Do you happen to have a hunk of deer meat?  Game powerful scarce comin’ up this valley.”

“Lots of deer an’ elk higher up.  I chased a bunch of more’n thirty, I reckon, right out of my pasture this mornin’.”