"I went back to Dodge to have a little quiet smoke with these men who had ruined me. They were gone. The trail led to Colorado. Nearly a year later I rounded them all up in a big wagon-train post north of Denver. Another brother of my wife's, an' her father, had come West, an' by accident or fate we all met there. We had a family quarrel. My wife would not forgive me--would not speak to me, an' her people backed her up. I made the great mistake to take her father an' other brothers to belong to the same brand as Spencer. In this I wronged them an' her. "What I did to them, Belllounds, is one story I'll never tell to any man who might live to repeat it. But it drove my wife near crazy. An' it made me Hell-Bent Wade!... She ran off from me there, an' I trailed her all over Colorado. An' the end of that trail was not a hundred miles from where we stand now. The last trace I had was of the burnin' of a prairie-schooner by Arapahoes as they were goin' home from a foray on the Utes.... The little girl might have toddled off the trail. But I reckon she was hidden or dropped by her mother, or some one fleein' for life. Your men found her in the columbines." Belllounds drew a long, deep breath. "What a man never expects always comes true.... Wade, the lass is yours. I can see it in the way you look at me. I can feel it.... She's been like my own. I've done my best, accordin' to my conscience. An' I've loved her, for all they say I couldn't see aught but Jack.... You'll take her away from me?" "No. Never," was the melancholy reply. "What! Why not?" "Because she loves you.... I could never reveal myself to Collie. I couldn't win her love with a lie. An' I'd have to lie, to be false as hell.... False to her mother an' to Collie an' to all I hold high! I'd have to tell Collie the truth--the wrong I did her mother--the _hell_ I visited upon her mother's people.... She'd fear me." "Ahuh!... An' you'll never change--I reckon that!" exclaimed Belllounds. "No. I changed once, eighteen years ago. I can't go back.... I can't undo all I hoped was good." "You think Collie'd fear you?" "She'd never _love_ me as she does you, or as she loves me even now. That is my rock of refuge." "She'd hate you, Wade." "I reckon. An' so she must never know." "Ahuh!... Wal, wal, life is a hell of a deal! Wade, if you could live yours over again, knowin' what you know now, an' that you'd love an' suffer the same--would you want to do it?" "Yes. I love life, with all it brings. I wouldn't have the joy without the pain. But I reckon only men who've come to our years would want it over again." "Wal, I'm with you thar. I'd take what came. Rain an' sun!... But all this you tell, an' the hell you hint at, ain't changin' this hyar deal of Jack's an' Collie's. Not one jot!... If she remains my adopted daughter she marries my son.... Wade, I'm haltered like the north star in that." "Belllounds, will you take a day to think it over?" appealed Wade.