eyond
all his comprehension.

"It _might_--be true!" he whispered. "I'll know when I see her."

Then he walked back toward the inn. On the way he looked into the
barroom of the hotel run by Smith. It was a hard-looking place, half
full of idle men, whose faces were as open pages to Bent Wade. Curiosity
did not wholly control the impulse that made him wait at the door till
he could have a look at the man Smith. Somewhere, at some time, Wade had
met most of the veterans of western Colorado. So much he had traveled!
But the impulse that held him was answered and explained when Smith came
in--a burly man, with an ugly scar marring one eye. Bent Wade recognized
Smith. He recognized the scar. For that scar was his own mark, dealt to
this man, whose name was not Smith, and who had been as evil as he
looked, and whose nomadic life was not due to remorse or love of travel.

Wade passed on without being seen. This recognition meant less to him
than it would have ten years ago, as he was not now the kind of man who
hunted old enemies for revenge or who went to great lengths to keep out
of their way. Men there were in Colorado who would shoot at him on
sight. There had been more than one that had shot to his cost.

* * * * *

That night Wade camped in the foothills east of Elgeria, and upon the
following day, at sunrise, his horses were breaking the frosty grass and
ferns of the timbered range. This he crossed, rode down into a valley
where a lonely cabin nestled, and followed an old, blazed trail that
wound up the course of a brook. The water was of a color that made rock
and sand and moss seem like gold. He saw no signs or tracks of game. A
gray jay now and then screeched his approach to unseen denizens of the
woods. The stream babbled past him over mossy ledges, under the dark
shade of clumps of spruces, and it grew smaller as he progressed toward
its source. At length it was lost in a swale of high, rank grass, and
the blazed trail led on through heavy pine woods. At noon he reached the
crest of the divide, and, halting upon an open, rocky eminence, he gazed
down over a green and black forest, slow-descending to a great irregular
park that was his destination for the night.

Wade needed meat, and to that end, as he went on, he kept a sharp
lookout for deer, especially after he espied fresh tracks crossing the
trail. Slipping along ahead of his horses, that followed, him almost too
closely to