“When you were shot,” she reminded him, “you made no move whatever to find out who waylaid you. You allowed that tramp, The Whimperer, to bully you and steal your most priceless treasure. And when you found him at Ragtown you let him go scot-free. You know in your heart as well as I do that Slim Wolfgang shot you—and he’s at large. It seems to me that you’re entirely too easy-going—a little bit too long-suffering. I’ve never seen you mad. I’ve never heard you cuss a horse or a mule—or even speak an impetuous word to them. Sometimes I admire your restraint; but just now I am beginning to wonder if— Well, I’m wondering whether you have any masculine traits at all—if you have any pep in you, which is so necessary to holding one’s own in this world—so necessary to success.”
He regarded her gravely, the distant rifleman for the time forgotten.
“Yes, I have masculine traits,” he assured her. “For one thing, I love you devotedly. But, Madge, a student hasn’t time to fight. Misunderstandings, petty wranglings—such things—interrupt his studies. How could I concentrate if I had always on my mind some puny difficulty with my fellowman, which in the end amounts to nothing? My astronomy is the big thing in my life. Everything must give way before that—everything must be sacrificed to that. I must, and will, give up everything else for that.”
“Would you give up me?”
“I’ve already done so, haven’t I, dear?” he asked softly. “If I had accepted Demarest’s offer after I stopped the slide, you would be my wife to-day. I knew what I was doing when I refused. And now you’re going to Los Angeles, to be close to a man who loves you and can give you what you think you want. Yet I refuse to neglect my studies and throw myself into the work on my homestead, which might convince you that I am at least willing to try to earn for you what you want. Yes, Madge, I’ve already given you up as a sacrifice to the stars. It has to be—I must fulfill my destiny.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
Joshua Cole started to laugh, but checked himself as he remembered the bewhiskered rifleman on the rocky shelf, who for some reason had withheld his fire.
“Fiddlesticks, eh?”—and he smiled broadly. “Yes, fiddlesticks, Madge. Fiddlesticks for you, because you don’t mean what you say; you refuse to listen to your heart. And fiddlesticks for me, because I know I haven’t given you up except for now and the immediate future. Go to Los Angeles. I’m willing that you should go. It may be for the best—even if—even if you should marry Jack. But remember what I told you up there when we finished the building of the trail. You’ll come back to Spyglass Mountain.”
Sweet’s rifle rang out again, and then he walked from the shelf, mounted his horse, and the little cavalcade filed away in the direction they had come.
“I may as well tell you now, Joshua,” said Madge, just a trace of haughtiness in her voice, “that I may not come back. I’ll come back to the homestead, of course. But I mean I may not come back to Spyglass Mountain in the meaning that we have given that phrase.”