“Belllounds, I reckon I am,” replied Moore, turning white. “I did tell Columbine what I thought she knew— what I ought to have told long ago.”
“Ahuh! Well, I don't want to hear it. But I'm going to search that wagon.”
“What!” ejaculated the cowboy, dropping his reins as if they stung him.
“You just hold on till I see what you've got in there,” went on Belllounds, and he reached over into the wagon and pulled at a saddle.
“Say, do you mean anything?... This stuff's mine, every strap of it. Take your hands off.”
Belllounds leaned on the wagon and looked up with insolent, dark intent.
“Moore, I wouldn't trust you. I think you'd steal anything you got your hands on.”
Columbine uttered a passionate little cry of shame and protest.
“Jack, how dare you!”
“You shut up! Go in the house!” he ordered.
“You insult me,” she replied, in bitter humiliation.
“Will you go in?” he shouted.
“No, I won't.”
“All right, look on, then. I'd just as lief have you.” Then he turned to the cowboy. “Moore, show up that wagon-load of stuff unless you want me to throw it out in the road.”
“Belllounds, you know I can't do that,” replied Moore, coldly. “And I'll give you a hunch. You'd better shut up yourself and let me drive on.... If not for her sake, then for your own.”
Belllounds grasped the reins, and with a sudden jerk pulled them out of the cowboy's hands.
“You damn club-foot! Your gift of gab doesn't go with me,” yelled Belllounds, as he swung up on the hub of the wheel. But it was manifest that his desire to search the wagon was only a pretense, for while he pulled at this and that his evil gaze was on the cowboy, keen to meet any move that might give excuse for violence. Moore evidently read this, for, gazing at Columbine, he shook his head, as if to acquaint her with a situation impossible to help.
“Columbine, please hand me up the reins,” he said. “I'm lame, you know. Then I'll be going.”
Columbine stepped forward to comply, when Belllounds, leaping down from the wheel, pushed her hack with masterful hand. Opposition to him was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull. Columbine recoiled from his look as well as touch.
“You keep out of this or I'll teach you who's boss here,” he said, stridently.
“You're going too far!” burst out Columbine.
Meanwhile Wilson had laboriously climbed down out of the wagon, and, utilizing his crutch, he hobbled to where Belllounds had thrown the reins, and stooped to pick them up. Belllounds shoved Columbine farther back, and then he leaped to confront the cowboy.
“I've got you now, Moore,” he said, hoarse and low. Stripped of all pretense, he showed the ungovernable nature of his temper. His face grew corded and black. The hand he thrust out shook like a leaf. “You smooth- tongued liar! I'm on to your game. I know you'd put her against me. I know you'd try to win her—less than a week before her wedding-day.... But it's not for that I'm going to beat hell out of you! It's because I hate you! Ever since I can remember my father held you up to me! And he sent me to—to—he sent me away because of you. By God! that's why I hate you!”
All that was primitive and violent and base came out with strange frankness in Belllounds's tirade. Only when calm could his mind be capable of hidden calculation. The devil that was in him now seemed rampant.
“Belllounds, you're mighty brave to stack up this way against a one-legged man,” declared the cowboy, with biting sarcasm.
“If you had two club-feet I'd only be the gladder,” yelled Belllounds, and swinging his arm, he slapped Moore so that it nearly toppled him over. Only the injured foot, coming down hard, saved him.
When Columbine saw that, and then how Wilson winced and grew deathly pale, she uttered a low cry, and she seemed suddenly rooted to the spot, weak, terrified at what was now inevitable, and growing sick and cold and faint.
“It's a damn lucky thing for you I'm not packing a gun,” said Moore, grimly. “But you knew—or you'd never hit me—you coward.”
“I'll make you swallow that,” snarled Belllounds, and this time he swung his fist, aiming a heavy blow at Moore.
Then the cowboy whirled aloft the heavy crutch. “If you hit at me again I'll let out what little brains you've got. God knows that's little enough!... Belllounds, I'm going to call you to your face—before this girl your bat-eyed old man means to give you. You're not drunk. You're only ugly—mean. You've got a chance now to lick me because I'm crippled. And you're going to make the most of it. Why, you cur, I could come near licking you with only one leg. But if you touch me again I'll brain you!... You never were any good. You're no good now. You never will be anything but Buster Jack—half dotty, selfish as hell, bull-headed and mean!... And that's the last word I'll ever waste on you.”
“I'll kill you!” bawled Belllounds, black with fury.
Moore wielded the crutch menacingly, but as he was not steady on his feet he was at the disadvantage his adversary had calculated upon. Belllounds ran around the cowboy, and suddenly plunged in to grapple with him. The crutch descended, but to little purpose. Belllounds's heavy onslaught threw Moore to the ground. Before he could rise Belllounds pounced upon him.
Columbine saw all this dazedly. As Wilson fell she closed her eyes, fighting a faintness that almost overcame
