pon, without
speaking, Burrell struck another and held it for him. The trader drew a
noisy puff or two in silence and shot his host a grateful glance.

"Her plan was for me to take the youngster away that night, and for her
to join us later, because pursuit was certain, and three could be
traced where one might disappear; she would follow when the opportunity
offered. I saw that he had instilled a terror into her, and that she
feared him like death; but, as I thought it over, her scheme seemed
feasible, so I agreed. I was to ride west that hour with the sleeping
babe, and conceal myself at a place we selected, while she would say
that the little one had wandered away and been lost in the canon, or
anything else to throw Bennett off. After a time she would join us.
Well--the little girl never waked when I took her in my arms, nor when
the mother broke down again and talked to me like a crazy woman. Her
collapse showed the terrible strain she had been living under, and the
ragged edge where her reason stood. She had been brave enough to plan
coolly till the hour for giving up her baby, but when that came she was
seized with a thousand dreads, and made me swear by my love for her,
which was and is the holiest thing in all my life, that if anything
happened I would live for the other Merridy. I begged her again to come
with me, but her fears held her back. She vowed, however, that Bennett
should never touch her again, and I made her swear by her love for the
babe that she would die before he ever laid hands on her. It woke a
savage joy in me to think I had bested him, after all.

"I never thought of what I was giving up, of the clean name I was
soiling, of the mine back there that meant a fortune anytime I cared to
take it, for things like that don't count when a man's blood is hot, so
I rode away in the yellow moonlight with a sleeping baby on my breast,
where no child or woman had ever lain except for that minute before I
left. She stood out from beneath the porch shadow and smiled her
good-bye--the last I ever saw of her....

"I travelled hard that night and swapped horses at daylight; then,
leaving the wild country behind, I came into a region I didn't know,
and found a Mexican woman who tended the child for me, for I was close
by the place where Merridy was to come. Every night I went into the
village in hopes that some word had arrived, and I waited patiently for
a week. Then I got the blow. I heard it from the loaf