I

The husband who shows suspicions of his wife gives everybody to hope that she is dissolute. I never showed or felt suspicion concerning the Señora de la Mancha. While a ship's pump runs foul there may be suspicion, but when the stream clears all doubts are at an end, and it is best to run her aground out of temptation. At Lonely Valley, the señora was free from temptation.

In summer, I earned my living as a riding man, in winter as a wolfer and trapper on the Montana ranges; but all the year round my earnings went to the land and fencing, the stock and implements, for our homestead in Lonely Valley.

I could not become an American citizen without perjuring my oath of allegiance to Her Brittanic Majesty, so my señora was sole owner of that homestead.

Until I could get a livelihood out of the ranch, she had to face the tragic loneliness of all pioneer women out on the frontier. And that was her probation, test of her womanhood, measure of her reality, if she would be my wife. I hoped that, with the advent of our son Ernesto, the woman would find her soul. For the soul has no life in itself, can not be born except in love for others, or can not live save in self-sacrifice.

For the first two years, I think, I was half-dead with pain, for I could not see the wilderness in which I rode, or feel the glamour of the sky-line, or taste the freshness of the air, or scent the perfume of the plains or mountains. Then came a third year, when poignant memories dulled down to bearing point, and I began to live.

All of us, I suppose, have known some usual hazards of battle, thirst, famine, cold, pestilence, fire, flood, storm or sickness, perils of the body appealing to our courage and leaving quite pleasant memories. I, for one, have found these things good for me, yet look back only with dread, with horror, to perils of the mind. There are sorrows of which even remembrance is screaming agony, and of that kind was my default from the mounted police. To forget or go mad, to fight devils and drive them out, to be reminded and have to fight again, to beat aside expedients of drugs, of drinking, of suicide, and face naked the terrors of memory—all that was part of my training, the best part, the ordeal by torture.

I had no hope. Unless the señora went blind, unable to see my faults, or I went deaf, unable to hear her tongue, the future had become impossible for both. Yet desperation is mistress of the impossible, and there was one way to make the señora's life an easier burden. I had found out what dollars were worth when I tried to borrow some. But I need not borrow. I was twenty-five, so it was time for my swindling trustees to render the Brat's estate and mine into my keeping. So at the end of my third year as a cowboy, after the beef round-up, I let the señora suppose I had gone to the hills with my traps, but spent every dollar on a passage by rail to New York. I lived on crackers. From Philadelphia, I earned my passage as a stiff on a cattle boat to Liverpool, thence tramped to Cardiff, and signed on as deck hand with the Bilbao tramp. Spain I crossed afoot, but at Madrid made myself known to friends of my house, who lent me clothes, and obtained my presentation to the Queen Regent. By Her Majesty's aid, I recovered all that was left of my stolen inheritance, a thousand dollars a year, with some small arrears. Then it was difficult to get away, but my return to Montana was made in comfort. At Fort Benton, I opened bank-accounts for my brother's share and my own, letting him know by letter of his succession. Brat used to address me by mail as Mr. Crucible.

So I put on the good old cowboy kit once more, saddled my horse and rode for Lonely Valley in the first of the winter storms.

II