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"I'll ride, yes, but never the old way." "Oh!" Columbine's tone, and the exquisite softness and tenderness with which she placed a hand on the rude crutch would have been enlightening to any one but these two absorbed in themselves. "I can't bear to believe that." "I'm afraid it's true. Bad smash, Columbine! I just missed being club-footed." "You should have care.
"I've seen many a drunk chap in my time," he said, "but never anyone so cryin' drunk as that cove. He was at the gate when I came out, a-leanin' up agin the railings, and a-singin' at the pitch o' his lungs about Columbine's New-fangled Banner, or some such stuff. He couldn't stand, far less help." "What sort of a man was he?" asked Sherlock Holmes.
Columbine stood where he had left her: dubious, yet with the blood still hot in her cheeks. "Jealous?... He wins the girl?" she murmured in repetition to herself. "What ever could he have meant? He didn't mean he didn't " The simple, logical interpretation of Wilson's words opened Columbine's mind to a disturbing possibility of which she had never dreamed. That he might love her!
The snow was not so deep there, having blown considerably in the open places. Some one was pounding iron in the blacksmith shop; horses were cavorting in the corrals; cattle were bawling round the hay-ricks in the barn-yard. The hunter knocked on Columbine's door. "Come in," she called. Wade entered, to find her alone.
"Ah!" The word was a wrung sound, half cry, half sob. His roses fell suddenly and scattered upon the floor between them. Columbine's hands covered her face. She stood for a second or two in tense silence, then under her breath she spoke. "You don't believe that of me!" "I do, then," asserted Rufus, in his deep voice a note that was almost aggressive.
His soul was steeped in gloom, but his intelligence had not yet succumbed to passion. The beauty of Columbine's character and the nobility of Moore's were not illusions to Wade. They were true. These two were of the finest fiber of human nature. They loved. They represented youth and hope a progress through the ages toward a better race. Wade believed in the good to be, in the future of men.
"I'm seven kinds of a fool. Left my wallet in that old coat Shelby let me wear round the stable! Now that's the limit, ain't it? I got to go back. Ain't got a cent with me. You ride on slow and stop at the Pine Cliff Inn up the road a-piece, and wait there till I come. Columbine's fresh as a daisy and the three miles or so will be just a warm-up for her this night. Now wait there.
I'll keep my word," replied Columbine, steadily. "So far so good," went on the rancher. "I'm respectin' you fer what you say.... An' now, when will you marry him?" The little room drifted around in Columbine's vague, blank sight. All seemed to be drifting. She had no solid anchor. "Any day you say the sooner the better," she whispered.
"Wal, are you lyin'?" he repeated, either blind to or unaware of her distress. "I could not lie to you," she faltered, "even if I wanted to." The heavy, shadowed gaze of his big eyes was bent upon her as if she had become a new and perplexing problem. "But you seen Moore?" "Yes sir." Columbine's spirit rose. "An' talked with him?" "Of course."
"Thank goodness, she's not one to run after the men!" was her verdict after the first six months of Columbine's sojourn. That the men would have run after her had they received the smallest encouragement to do so was a fact that not one of them would have disputed.
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