"Oh, you noble thing!" she whispered to him. "When you die, is all that strength of yours to be wasted? Can't it be given to some one else?" She looked full on VB, then down at the ground, and said: "You've never told me how you broke the Captain. No one in the country knows. They know that he almost killed you; that you fought him a whole week. But no one knows how. Won't--won't you tell me? I want to know, because it was a real achievement--and _yours_." He met her gaze when it turned upward, and for many heartbeats they stood so, looking at each other. Then VB's eyes wavered and he moved a step, leaning on the bars and staring moodily at the stallion. "It hurts to think about it," he said. "I don't like to remember. That is why I have never told any one. It hurt him and it hurt me." She waited through the silence that followed for him to go on. "I've worked and rubbed it and curried it, and nursed the hair to grow over the place. It looks just like a cinch mark now--like the mark of service. No one would ever notice. But it isn't a mark of labor. _I_ marked the Captain--I had to do it--had to make him understand me. It laid his side open, and all the nursing, all the care I could give wouldn't make up for it. It's there. The Captain knows it; so do I." She followed his gaze to the little rough spot far down on the sleek side. "All wild things have to be broken," she said. "None of them ever become tame of their own volition. And in the breaking a mark is invariably left. The memory hurts, but the mark means nothing of itself, once it is healed. Don't you realize that? "We all bear marks. The marks of our environment, the marks of our friends, the marks of those we--we love. Some of them hurt for a time, but in the end it is all good. Don't you believe that? We see those who are very dear to us suffer, and it marks us; sometimes just loving leaves its mark. But--those are the greatest things in the world. They're sacred. "The marks on a woman who goes through fire for a man, say; the marks of a--a mother. They hurt, but in the end they make the bond tighter, more holy." She waited. Then asked again: "Don't you believe that?" After a long pause VB answered in a peculiarly bitter voice: "I wish I knew what I believe--if I do believe!" CHAPTER XVIII The Lie VB's eyes burned after Gail as she drove away. He followed the car in its flight until it disappeared over the hump in the road; then continued staring in that direction with eyes that did not see--that merely burned like his throat. Jed came up the gulch with a load of wood, and VB still stood by the gate. "I never can get used to these here city ways," he grumbled, "no more'n can these ponies." VB noticed casually that a tug had been broken and was patched with rope. "Runaway?" he asked, scarcely conscious of putting the question.