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Jack Belllounds!" she cried, bursting into wild and furious laughter. Like a tigress she leaped at Jack as if to tear him to pieces. "You put the sheriff on that trail! You accuse Wilson Moore of stealing dad's cattle!" "Yes, and I proved it," replied Jack, hoarsely. "You! You proved it? So that's your revenge?... But you're to reckon with me, Jack Belllounds! You villain! You devil!
Offered me big wages to kill off the wolves an' lions." "That's the job I'm goin' to take." "Good!" exclaimed Lewis. "I'm sure glad. Belllounds is a nice fellar. I felt sort of cheap till I told him I wasn't really a hunter. You see, I'm prospectin' up here, an' pretendin' to be a hunter." "What do you make that bluff for?" queried Wade. "You couldn't fool any one who'd ever prospected for gold.
"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.
"Might I throw my pack here?" "Sure. Get down," answered the other. "I calkilate I never seen you in these diggin's." "No. I'm Bent Wade, an' on my way to White Slides to work for Belllounds." "Glad to meet you. I'm new hereabouts, myself, but I know Belllounds. My name's Lewis. I was jest cookin' grub. An' it'll burn, too, if I don't rustle. Turn your hosses loose an' come in."
His cowboys took advantage of him, his neighbors imposed upon him, but none were there who did not make good their debts of service or stock. Belllounds was one of the great pioneers of the frontier days to whom the West owed its settlement; and he was finer than most, because he proved that the Indians, if not robbed or driven, would respond to friendliness.
"Come in," called the rancher. Columbine went in. "Hello, dad! Do you want me?" Belllounds sat at an old table, bending over a soiled ledger, with a stubby pencil in his huge hand. When he looked up Columbine gave a little start. "Where've you been?" he asked, gruffly. "I've been calling on Mrs. Andrews," replied Columbine. "Did you go thar to see her?"
On the morrow, she drowsily thought, she would persuade Wilson not to kill all the coyotes; to leave a few, because she loved them. Bill Belllounds had settled in Middle Park in 1860. It was wild country, a home of the Ute Indians, and a natural paradise for elk, deer, antelope, buffalo. The mountain ranges harbored bear.
Suddenly it dawned upon Wade that Jack Belllounds was stealing cattle from his father. "Whew!" he whistled softly. "Awful hard on the old man! Who's to tell him when all this comes out? Aw, I'd hate to do it. I wouldn't. There's some things even I'd not tell." Straightway this strange aspect of the case confronted Wade and gripped his soul.
"Columbine is my daughter!" replied the hunter. "Ah!" breathed Belllounds. "She loves Wils Moore, who's as white a man as you are black." Across the pallid, convulsed face of Belllounds spread a slow, dull crimson. "Aha, Buster Jack! I struck home there," flashed Wade, his voice rising. "That gives your eyes the ugly look.... I hate them lyin', bulgin' eyes of yours.
It was on a June day when Jack Belllounds rode to Kremmling that Wade met Columbine on the Buffalo Park trail. She needed to see him, to find comfort and strength. Wade far exceeded his own confidence in his effort to uphold her.
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