anch, and you, I might settle down now, but then you couldn't
stand even a ranch with nearest neighbors ten miles away." He turned to
take his hat. "I wanted to see you--I didn't plan for anything
else--I've seen you and so----"

"Oh, you're not going now!" she cried. "You haven't told me your story."

"Oh, yes, I have; all that you'd care to hear. It don't amount to much,
except the murder charges, and they are wrong. It wasn't my fault. They
crowded me too hard, and I had to defend myself. What is a man to do
when it's kill or be killed? That's all over and past, anyway. From this
time on I camp high. The roosters and church bells are getting too thick
on the Arickaree."

He crushed his hat in his hand as he turned to her, and tears were in
her eyes as she said:

"Please don't go; I expected you to stay to dinner with me."

"The quicker I get out o' here the better," he replied hoarsely, and she
saw that he was trembling. "What's the good of it? I'm out of it."

She looked up at him in silence, her mind filled with the confused
struggle between her passion and her reason. He allured her, this grave
and stern outlaw, appealing to some primitive longing within her.

"I hate to see you go," she said slowly. "But--I--suppose it is best. I
don't like to have you forget me--I shall not forget you, and I will
sing for you every Sunday afternoon, and no matter where you are, in a
deep canon, or anywhere, or among the Indians, you just stop and listen
and think of me, and maybe you'll hear my voice."

Tears were in her eyes as she spoke, and he took a man's advantage of
her emotion.

"Perhaps if I come back--if I make a strike somewhere--if you'd say
so----"

She shook her head sadly but conclusively. "No, no, I can't promise
anything."

"All right--that settles it. Good-by."

And she had nothing better to say than just "Good-by, good-by."

CHAPTER XIV

THE YOUNG EAGLE RETURNS TO HIS EYRIE

It was good to face the West again. The wild heart of the youth flung
off all doubt, all regret. Not for him were the quiet joys of village
life. No lane or street could measure his flight. His were the gleaming,
immeasurable walls of the Sangre de Cristo range, his the grassy
mountain parks and the silent canons, and the peaks. "To hell with the
East, and all it owns," was his mood, and in that mood he renounced all
claim to Mary.

He sat with meditative head against the windowpane, listless as a caged
and sull