too, they had come on
other innumerable occasions when absolute privacy was the desire of
both, and it was to this place of tender associations and more or less
compelling memories that she diplomatically led the way. Here, in the
great outdoor temple of this pantheist's loving, with no other goddess
to divert him from her own homage, was the place of all places to regain
her fast waning influence over him. If she could only hold him for a
little time longer success was assured.

Cleverly disregarding his taciturnity she kept up a merry chatter as
they rode along, finally drawing him skillfully into a discussion of the
geological features of the interesting region which they were slowly
traversing; like every mining expert he was a bit professionally
pedantic on this subject, and to this woman of abnormally clear
perceptions it was a positive pleasure to him to impart the really great
information with which his mind was stored. Once she got him warmed up
to his subject he waxed enthusiastic in his dissertation on dykes,
fissures, blanket veins and the like, even riding out of their course to
point out confirming formations and collect specimens of their
characteristic components. By the time they reached the embowered little
glade in the canyon his sullenness was completely dissipated, and he
kissed her very passionately as he lifted her from her horse. There was
much of the old fire in him as she clung distractingly about his neck,
and her eyes gleamed with triumph.

So absorbed had they become in each other that neither noticed the
slinking figure which stole out of the glade at the sound of their
approach, or the charcoal of a hastily-extinguished fire swirling in the
eddies of the little pool. And mercifully they did not know, as they
stood there in close-held rapture, drinking with clinging lips the Lethe
of all things save love, that twenty feet away, from the vantage of a
dense clematis tangle veiling a clump of dwarf box-elder, a pair of evil
eyes burned above a snarling mouth, as a grimy hand drew cautiously back
the firing bolt of a Mauser.

CHAPTER XXII

THE RENUNCIATION

Ballard, riding ahead of his posse, reined in his horse sharply at the
head of the trail leading down to the stream as a shot crackled
viciously in the depths of the canyon below. There was no mistaking
that crisp, whip-like report of a small-calibered, high-pressure rifle
cartridge, and he wondered much that it was not accompa