"Well, if you had, you'd know what happened to my fist."
"Did you hurt it on him?" she asked, with a queer little shudder that was not unpleasant.
"Collie, I busted that fist on his handsome face."
"Oh, it was dreadful!" she murmured. "Wilson, he meant to kill you."
"Sure. And I'd cheerfully have killed him."
"You two must never meet again," she went on.
"I hope to Heaven we never do," replied Moore, with a dark earnestness that meant more than his actual words.
"Wilson, will you avoid him--for my sake?" implored Columbine, unconsciously clasping the bandaged hand.
"I will. I'll take the back trails. I'll sneak like a coyote. I'll hide and I'll watch.... But, Columbine Belllounds, if he ever corners me again--"
"Why, you'll leave him to Hell-Bent Wade," interrupted the hunter, and he looked up from where he knelt, fixing those great, inscrutable eyes upon the cowboy. Columbine saw something beyond his face, deeper than the gloom, a passion and a spirit that drew her like a magnet. "An' now, Miss Collie," he went on, "I reckon you'll want to wait on our invalid. He's got to be fed."