"For God's sake, don't kill me!" implored Belllounds, stricken with
terror.

"Why not? Look around! My busy day, Buster!... An' for that Cap Folsom
it's been ten years comin'.... I'm goin' to shoot you in the belly an'
watch you get sick to your stomach!"

Belllounds, with whisper, and hands, and face, begged for his life in an
abjectness of sheer panic.

"What!" roared the hunter. "Didn't you know I come to kill you?"

"Yes--yes! I've seen--that. It's awful!... I never harmed you.... Don't
kill me! Let me live, Wade. I swear to God I'll--I'll never do it
again.... For dad's sake--for Collie's sake--don't kill me!"

"I'm Hell-Bent Wade!... You wouldn't listen to them--when they wanted to
tell you who I am!"

Every word of Wade's drove home to this boy the primal meaning of sudden
death. It inspired him with an unutterable fear. That was what clamped
his brow in a sweaty band and upreared his hair and rolled his eyeballs.
His magnified intelligence, almost ghastly, grasped a hope in Wade's
apparent vacillation and in the utterance of the name of Columbine.
Intuition, a subtle sense, inspired him to beg in that name.

"Swear you'll give up Collie!" demanded Wade, brandishing his guns with
bloody hands.

"Yes--yes! My God, I'll do anything!" moaned Belllounds.

"Swear you'll tell your father you'd had a change of heart. You'll give
Collie up!... Let Moore have her!"

"I swear!... But if you tell dad--I stole his cattle--he'll do for me!"

"We won't squeal that. I'll save you if you give up the girl. Once more,
Buster Jack--try an' make me believe you'll square the deal."

Belllounds had lost his voice. But his mute, fluttering lips were
infinite proof of the vow he could not speak. The boyishness, the
stunted moral force, replaced the manhood in him then. He was only a
factor in the lives of others, protected even from this Nemesis by the
greatness of his father's love.

"Get up, an' take my scarf," said Wade, "an' bandage these bullet-holes
I got."

CHAPTER XVIII

Wade's wounds were not in any way serious, and with Belllounds's
assistance he got to the cabin of Lewis, where weakness from loss of
blood made it necessary that he remain. Belllounds went home.

The next day Wade sent Lewis with pack-horse down to the rustler's
cabin, to bury the dead men and fetch back their effects. Lewis returned
that night, accompanied by Sheriff Burley and two deputies, who had been
busy on their own account. They