you to Kremmlin' fer trial."

"All right. I'll go."

The old rancher seemed genuinely shocked. Red tinged his cheek and a
flame flared in his eyes.

"Wils, you done me dirt," he said, wrathfully. "An' I always swore by
you.... Make a clean breast of the whole damn bizness, if you want me to
treat you white. You must have been locoed or drunk, to double-cross me
thet way. Come on, out with it."

"I've nothing to say," replied Moore.

"You act amazin' strange fer a cowboy I've knowed to lean toward
fightin' at the drop of a hat. I tell you, speak out an' I'll do right
by you.... I ain't forgettin' thet White Slides gave you a hard knock.
An' I was young once an' had hot blood."

The old rancher's wrathful pathos stirred the cowboy to a
straining-point of his unnatural, almost haughty composure. He seemed
about to break into violent utterance. Grief and horror and anger seemed
at the back of his trembling lips. The look he gave Belllounds was
assuredly a strange one, to come from a cowboy who was supposed to have
stolen his former employer's cattle. Whatever he might have replied was
cut off by the sudden appearance of Columbine.

"Dad, I heard you!" she cried, as she swept upon them, fearful and
wide-eyed. "What has Wilson Moore done--that you'll do right by him?"

"Collie, go back in the house," he ordered.

"No. There's something wrong here," she said, with mounting dread in the
swift glance she shot from man to man. "Oh! You're--Sheriff Burley!"
she gasped.

"I reckon I am, miss, an' if young Moore's a friend of yours I'm sorry I
came," replied Burley.

Wade himself reacted subtly and thrillingly to the presence of the girl.
She was alive, keen, strung, growing white, with darkening eyes of blue
fire, beginning to grasp intuitively the meaning here.

"My friend! He _was_ more than that--not long ago.... What has he done?
Why are you here?"

"Miss, I'm arrestin' him."

"Oh!... For what?"

"Rustlin' your father's cattle."

For a moment Columbine was speechless. Then she burst out, "Oh, there's
a terrible mistake!"

"Miss Columbine, I shore hope so," replied Burley, much embarrassed and
distressed. Like most men of his kind, he could not bear to hurt a
woman. "But it looks bad fer Moore.... See hyar! There! Look at the
tracks of his hoss--left front foot-shoe all crooked. Thet's his hoss's.
He acknowledges thet. An', see hyar. Look at the little circles an'
dots.... I found these 'way over at Gore