He left them playing and strode out to return to his cabin. The night was still, cold, starlit, and black in the shadows. A lonesome coyote barked, to be answered by a wakeful hound. Wade halted at his porch, and lingered there a moment, peering up at the gray old peak, bare and star-crowned.
“I'm sorry for the old man,” muttered the hunter, “but I'd see Jack Belllounds in hell before I'd let Columbine marry him.”
* * * * *
October first was a holiday at White Slides Ranch. It happened to be a glorious autumn day, with the sunlight streaming gold and amber over the grassy slopes. Far off the purple ranges loomed hauntingly.
Wade had come down from Wilson Moore's cabin, his ears ringing with the crippled boy's words of poignant fear.
Fox favored his master with unusually knowing gaze. There was not going to be any lion-chasing or elk- hunting this day. Something was in the wind. And Fox, as a privileged dog, manifested his interest and wonder.
Before noon a buckboard with team of sweating horses halted in the yard of the ranch-house. Besides the driver it contained two women whom Belllounds greeted as relatives, and a stranger, a pale man whose dark garb proclaimed him a minister.
“Come right in, folks,” welcomed Belllounds, with hearty excitement.
It was Wade who showed the driver where to put the horses. Strangely, not a cowboy was in sight, an omission of duty the rancher had noted. Wade might have informed him where they were.
The door of the big living-room stood open, and from it came the sound of laughter and voices. Wade, who had returned to his seat on the end of the porch, listened to them, while his keen gaze seemed fixed down the lane toward the cabins. How intent must he have been not to hear Columbine's step behind him!
“Good morning, Ben,” she said.
Wade wheeled as if internal violence had ordered his movement.
“Lass, good mornin',” he replied. “You sure look sweet this October first—like the flower for which you're named.”
“My friend, it
Wade felt her intensity, and he thrilled to the brave, sweet resignation of her face. Hope and faith were unquenchable in her, yet she had fortified herself to the wreck of dreams and love.
“I'd seen you before now, but I had some job with Wils, persuadin' him that we'd not have to offer you congratulations yet awhile,” replied Wade, in his slow, gentle voice.
“
Wade saw her full breast swell and the leaping blood wave over her pale face. She bent to him to see his eyes. And for Wade, when she peered with straining heart and soul, all at once to become transfigured, that instant was a sweet and all-fulfilling reward for his years of pain.
“You drive me mad!” she whispered.
The heavy tread of the rancher, like the last of successive steps of fate in Wade's tragic expectancy, sounded on the porch.
“Wal, lass, hyar you are,” he said, with a gladness deep in his voice. “Now, whar's the boy?”
“Dad—I've not—seen Jack since breakfast,” replied Columbine, tremulously.
“Sort of a laggard in love on his weddin'-day,” rejoined the rancher. His gladness and forgetfulness were as big as his heart. “Wade, have you seen Jack?”
“No—I haven't,” replied the hunter, with slow, long-drawn utterance. “But—I see—him now.”
Wade pointed to the figure of Jack Belllounds approaching from the direction of the cabins. He was not walking straight.
Old man Belllounds shot out his gray head like a striking eagle.
“What the hell?” he muttered, as if bewildered at this strange, uneven gait of his son. “Wade, what's the matter with Jack?”
Wade did not reply. That moment had its sorrow for him as well as understanding of the wonder expressed by Columbine's cold little hand trembling in his.
The rancher suddenly recoiled.
“So help me Gawd—he's drunk!” he gasped, in a distress that unmanned him.
Then the parson and the invited relatives came out upon the porch, with gay voices and laughter that suddenly stilled when old Belllounds cried, brokenly: “Lass—go—in—the house.”
But Columbine did not move, and Wade felt her shaking as she leaned against him.
The bridegroom approached. Drunk indeed he was; not hilariously, as one who celebrated his good fortune, but sullenly, tragically, hideously drunk.
Old Belllounds leaped off the porch. His gray hair stood up like the mane of a lion. Like a giant's were his strides. With a lunge he met his reeling son, swinging a huge fist into the sodden red face. Limply Jack fell to the ground.
“Lay there, you damned prodigal!” he roared, terrible in his rage. “You disgrace me—an' you disgrace the girl who's been a daughter to me!... if you ever have another weddin'-day it'll not be me who sets it!”
