hat he might have leisure for
his peculiar seeking. He spent an hour each night with the cowboys,
listening to their recounting of the day and to their homely and shrewd
opinions. He haunted the vicinity of the ranch-house at night, watching
and listening for that moment which was to aid him in the crisis that
was impending. Many a time he had been near when Columbine passed from
the living-room to her corner of the house. He had heard her sigh and
could almost have touched her.

Buster Jack had suffered a regurgitation of the old driving and
insatiate temper, and there was gloom in the house of Belllounds.
Trouble clouded the old man's eyes.

May came with the spring round-up. Wade was called to use a rope and
brand calves under the order of Jack Belllounds, foreman of White
Slides. That round-up showed a loss of one hundred head of stock, some
branded steers, and yearlings, and many calves, in all a mixed herd.
Belllounds received the amazing news with a roar. He had been ready for
something to roar at. The cowboys gave as reasons winter-kill, and
lions, and perhaps some head stolen since the thaw. Wade emphatically
denied this. Very few cattle had fallen prey to the big cats, and none,
so far as he could find, had been frozen or caught in drifts. It was the
young foreman who stunned them all. "Rustled," he said, darkly. "There's
too many loafers and homesteaders in these hills!" And he stalked out to
leave his hearers food for reflection.

Jack Belllounds drank, but no one saw him drunk, and no one could tell
where he got the liquor. He rode hard and fast; he drove the cowboys one
way while he went another; he had grown shifty, cunning, more intolerant
than ever. Some nights he rode to Kremmling, or said he had been there,
when next day the cowboys found another spent and broken horse to turn
out. On other nights he coaxed and bullied them into playing poker. They
won more of his money than they cared to count.

Columbine confided to Wade, with mournful whisper, that Jack paid no
attention to her whatever, and that the old rancher attributed this
coldness, and Jack's backsliding, to her irresponsiveness and her
tardiness in setting the wedding-day that must be set. To this Wade had
whispered in reply, "Don't ever forget what I said to you an' Wils
that day!"

So Wade upheld Columbine with his subtle dominance, and watched over
her, as it were, from afar. No longer was he welcome in the big
living-room. Bellloun