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The cowboys looked at one another, not embarrassed, but just a little taken aback, as if they had forgotten something that they should have remembered. "You object to my playin'?" asked Wade, quietly. "I certainly do," replied Belllounds. "Why, may I ask?" "For all I know, what Montana said about you may be true," returned Belllounds, insolently.

Belllounds also stirred, and gulped, as if to breathe. The three prostrate rustlers lay inert, their positions singularly tragic and settled. The smoke again began to lift, to float out of the door and windows. In another moment the big room seemed less hazy. Wade rose, not without effort, and he had a gun in each hand.

"No, you owl-eyed, soft-voiced fool!" yelled Belllounds. It was then Wade felt a singular and familiar sensation, a cold, creeping thing, physical and elemental, that had not visited him since he had been at White Slides.

Whereupon Belllounds turned to Moore with a gesture and a look of a man who, in justice to something in himself, had to speak. "Wils, it's onlucky you clashed with Jack right off," he said. "But thet was to be expected. I reckon Jack was in the wrong. Thet hoss was yours by all a cowboy holds right an' square. Mebbe by law Spottie belonged to White Slides Ranch to me.

Old Belllounds braced his huge shoulders against the wall in the attitude of a man driven to his last stand. "Ahuh!" he rolled, sonorously. "So hyar you are again?... Wal, tell your worst, Hell-Bent Wade, an' let's have an end to your croakin'." Belllounds had fortified himself, not with convictions or with illusions, but with the last desperate courage of a man true to himself.

Bent Wade was hiding in the willows along the trail that followed one of the brooks. Of late, on several mornings, he had skulked like an Indian under cover, watching for some one. On this morning, when Columbine Belllounds came riding along, he stepped out into the trail in front of her. "Oh, Ben! you startled me!" she exclaimed, as she held hard on the frightened horse.

One day Wade remarked to Belllounds: "You can never tell what a dog is until you know him. Dogs are like men. Some of 'em look good, but they're really bad. An' that works the other way round. If a dog's born to run wild an' be a sheep-killer, that's what he'll be. I've known dogs that loved men as no humans could have loved them.

Not improbably, if this large amount had been shown earlier, before the change in the sentiment, Lem would have looked aghast and begged for mercy. As it was, he accepted it as if he were accustomed to borrowing that much every day. Belllounds had rendered futile the easy-going, friendly advances of the cowboys, as he had made it impossible to play a jolly little game for fun.

Wade dropped the bar in place, and then, removing his sombrero, he wiped his moist brow. "Do you see an enemy in me?" he asked, curiously. "Speakin' out fair, Wade, there ain't any reason I can see that you're an enemy to me," replied Belllounds. "But I feel somethin'. It ain't because I'm takin' my son's side. It's more than that. A queer feelin', an' one I never had before.

"Aw, hell! Thet's different. Every new rancher drives in a few unbranded calves an' keeps them. But stealin' stock thet's different. An' I'd as soon suspect my own son of rustlin' as Wils Moore." Belllounds spoke with a sincere and frank ardor of defense for a young man once employed by him and known to be honest. The significance of the comparison he used had not struck him.