repared."

"If you'd do thet--wal, I'd never forgit it," replied the rancher,
slowly. "Jack's been away fer three years. Only got back a week or so
ago. I calkilated he'd be sobered, steadied, by--thet--thet work I put
him to. But I'm not sure. He's changed. When he gits his own way he's
all I could ask. But thet way he wants ain't always what it ought to be.
An' so thar's been clashes. But Jack's a fine young man. An' he'll
outgrow his temper an' crazy notions. Work'll do it."

"Boys will be boys," replied Wade, philosophically. "I've not forgotten
when I was a boy."

"Neither hev I. Wal, I'll be goin', Wade. I reckon Columbine will be up
to call on you. Bein' the only woman-folk in my house, she sort of runs
it. An' she's sure interested in thet pack of hounds."

Belllounds trudged away, his fine old head erect, his gray hair shining
in the sun.

Wade sat down upon the step of his cabin, pondering over the rancher's
remarks about his son. Recalling the young man's physiognomy, Wade began
to feel that it was familiar to him. He had seen Jack Belllounds before.
Wade never made mistakes in faces, though he often had a task to recall
names. And he began to go over the recent past, recalling all that he
could remember of Meeker, and Cripple Creek, where he had worked for
several months, and so on, until he had gone back as far as his last
trip to Denver.

"Must have been there," mused Wade, thoughtfully, and he tried to recall
all the faces he had seen. This was impossible, of course, yet he
remembered many. Then he visualized the places in Denver that for one
reason or another had struck him particularly. Suddenly into one of
these flashed the pale, sullen, bold face of Jack Belllounds.

"It was _there!_" he exclaimed, incredulously. "Well!... If thet's not
the strangest yet! Could I be mistaken? No. I saw him.... Belllounds
must have known it--must have let him stay there.... Maybe put him
there! He's just the kind of a man to go to extremes to reform his son."

Singular as was this circumstance, Wade dwelt only momentarily on it. He
dismissed it with the conviction that it was another strange happening
in the string of events that had turned his steps toward White Slides
Ranch. Wade's mind stirred to the probability of an early sight of
Columbine Belllounds. He would welcome it, both as interesting and
pleasurable, and surely as a relief. The sooner a meeting with her was
over the better. His life had been one