ain't imposin' on
no man, no matter how I need help. You're sure a jack of all range
trades. An' I wish you was a hunter."

"I was comin' to that. You didn't give me time."

"Say, do you know hounds?" queried Belllounds, eagerly.

"Yes. Was raised where everybody had packs. I'm from Kentucky. An' I've
run hounds off an' on for years. I'll tell you--"

Belllounds interrupted Wade.

"By all that's lucky! An' last, can you handle guns? We 'ain't had a
good shot on this range fer Lord knows how long. I used to hit plumb
center with a rifle. My eyes are pore now. An' my son can't hit a flock
of haystacks. An' the cowpunchers are 'most as bad. Sometimes right hyar
where you could hit elk with a club we're out of fresh meat."

"Yes, I can handle guns," replied Wade, with a quiet smile and a
lowering of his head. "Reckon you didn't catch my name."

"Wal--no, I didn't," slowly replied Belllounds, and his pause, with the
keener look he bestowed upon Wade, told how the latter's query had
struck home.

"Wade--Bent Wade," said Wade, with quiet distinctness.

"_Not Hell-Bent Wade!_" ejaculated Belllounds.

"The same.... I ain't proud of the handle, but I never sail under false
colors."

"Wal, I'll be damned!" went on the rancher. "Wade, I've heerd of you fer
years. Some bad, but most good, an' I reckon I'm jest as glad to meet
you as if you'd been somebody else."

"You'll give me the job?"

"I should smile."

"I'm thankin' you. Reckon I was some worried. Jobs are hard for me to
get an' harder to keep."

"Thet's not onnatural, considerin' the hell which's said to camp on your
trail," replied Belllounds, dryly. "Wade, I can't say I take a hell of a
lot of stock in such talk. Fifty years I've been west of the Missouri. I
know the West an' I know men. Talk flies from camp to ranch, from
diggin's to town, an' always some one adds a little more. Now I trust my
judgment an' I trust men. No one ever betrayed me yet."

"I'm that way, too," replied Wade. "But it doesn't pay, an' yet I still
kept on bein' that way.... Belllounds, my name's as bad as good all over
western Colorado. But as man to man I tell you--I never did a low-down
trick in my life.... Never but once."

"An' what was thet?" queried the rancher, gruffly.

"I killed a man who was innocent," replied Wade, with quivering lips,
"an'--an' drove the woman I loved to her death."

"Aw! we all make mistakes some time in our lives," said Belllounds,
hurriedly. "I