He paused as if it was an effort to speak, and a long, thin, shapely hand went to his throat.  “Your mother?” he asked, hoarsely.  Suddenly his face had turned white.

Allie gazed straight into his eyes, with wonder, pain, suspicion.  “My mother!  I’ve not seen her for nearly two years.”

“My God!  What happened?  You lost her?  You became separated? ...  Indians—­bandits? ...  Tell me!”

“I have—­no—­more to tell,” said Allie.  His pain revived her own.  She pitied Durade.  He had changed—­aged—­there were lines in his face that were new to her.

“I spent a year in and around Ogden, searching,” went on Durade.  “Tell me—­more.”

“No!” cried Allie.

“Do you know, then?” he asked, very low.

“I’m not your daughter—­and mother ran off from you.  Yes, I know that,” replied Allie, bitterly.

“But I brought you up—­took care of you—­helped educate you,” protested Durade, with agitation.  “You were my own child, I thought.  I was always kind to you.  I—­I loved the mother in the daughter.”

“Yes, I know....  But you were wicked.”

“If you won’t tell me it must mean she’s still alive,” he replied, swiftly.  “She’s not dead; ...  I’ll find her.  I’ll make her come back to me—­or kill her ...  After all these years—­to leave me!”

He seemed wrestling with mingled emotions.  The man was proud and strong, but defeat in life, in the crowning passion of life, showed in his white face.  The evil in him was not manifest then.

“Where have you lived all this time?” he asked, presently.

“Back in the hills with a trapper.”

“You have grown.  When I saw you I thought it was the ghost of your mother.  You are just as she was when we met.”

He seemed lost in sad retrospection.  Allie saw streaks of gray in his once jet-black hair.

“What will you do?” asked Allie.

He was startled.  The softness left him.  A blaze seemed to leap under skin and eyes, and suddenly he was different—­he was Durade the gambler, instinct with the lust of gold and life.

“Your mother left me for you,” he said, with terrible bitterness.  “And the game has played you into my hands.  I’ll keep you.  I’ll hold you to get even with her.”

Allie felt stir in her the fear she had had of him in her childhood when she disobeyed.  “But you can’t keep me against my will—­not among people we’ll meet eastward.”

“I can, and I will!” he declared, softly, but implacably.  “We’re not going East.  We’ll be in rougher places than the gold-camps of California.  There’s no law but gold and guns out here ...  But—­if you speak of me to any one may your God have mercy on you!”

The blaze of him betrayed the Spaniard.  He meant more than dishonor, torture, and death.  The evil in him was rampant.  The love that had been the only good in an abnormal and disordered mind had turned to hate.