“For all the heart-ache I have caused you I beg forgiveness. Kindness has always been your hobby, kindness to everything, even the dumb brutes; and now I think you ought to be a little bit kind to me, when I come to you and tell you that I am sorry for everything, for all that has been and all that you have believed.” “I forgive you,” he said, breathing hard. “I forgave you from the first.” “But I want your love again. It isn’t often that a woman comes to a man begging in this way.” “You have always had my love, and you have it now; I never loved any one else. I have never looked on any woman with thought of love since I left you and came to this valley.” The dust cloud had thickened, and from the mesa before them came shouts and confused cries. Then from the right, out of the deep trough-like depression which the cowboys called “the draw,” there heaved suddenly a line of moving backs and clicking horns. Sibyl was putting on the glove she had carried in her jeweled hand and was arranging her veil. She had kept the hand ungloved that its beauty might be displayed, but had begun to feel that both face and hand needed protection from the hot sunshine. Clayton drew rein, when that heaving line rose before him, apparently out of the earth. Until then he had forgotten where he was, had forgotten everything but the woman beside him. Sibyl’s face whitened when she saw those tossing horns; and the veil, escaping in her agitation, was blown toward the cattle. Startled by having come so suddenly on these riders, the cattle were halting in confusion. The fluttering veil, whirled into their midst by the wind, completed the work of fear. The rustle of a leaf as it scrapes and bobs over the ground, a flash of sunlight from a bit of broken glass, the scampering of a coyote to his covert, or the tumbling to earth of an unhorsed cowboy, will sometimes throw a moving herd into a panic of fright and bring on a wild stampede, though at other times all these things combined would not have the slightest effect. The reason must be sought in the psychology of fear. The cattle in front whirled to race away from that fluttering object of terror, while those behind crowded them on. In the midst of the confusion, the larger herd plunged into view out of the dust cloud, hurried along by the cowboys. A quiver of fright ran through the entire heaving mass, and in an instant the stampede madness was born. “We must get out of this!” Clayton shifted the reins to his stiff left hand and turned her horse about. “You used to be a good horsewoman, and we may have to do some sharp riding.” CHAPTER XX THE RIDE WITH DEATH “So steady and firm, leaning low to the mane, With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein, Rode we on; Reaching low, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows; Yet we spoke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer; There was work to be done, there was death in the air; And the chance was as one to a thousand.”