Ballard, riding ahead of his posse, reined in his horse sharply at the head of the trail leading down to the stream as a shot crackled viciously in the depths of the caÑon below. There was no mistaking that crisp, whip-like report of a small-calibered, high-pressure rifle cartridge, and he wondered much that it was not accompanied by the whine of the long metal-cased bullet about his ears. For the last twenty-four hours had he been in momentary expectation of that sinister song, of a possible succeeding agony of blindness, for he realized that he was now in the hands of the gods, and more or less at the mercy of the desperate man whom he had been relentlessly pursuing for the last three days, a man who would just as relentlessly kill him if the opportunity offered, a man who knew every inch of these mountain fastnesses in which he had taken refuge in his last extremity.

But despite all hazards of ambush he had kept doggedly on the trail, and now he was within reach of his quarry. Hurriedly directing two of his best mounted followers to cover the caÑon's mouth below, and the remaining two to guard the only other possible exit above, he rode at breakneck speed down the precipitous trail, spurred to recklessness by a woman's wailing scream.

Four days before, the Gunnison Express had been boarded at a watering tank, some fifty miles out of the city, by a particularly villainous band of desperadoes who, not content with looting the passengers, mails and express matter, had maliciously aggravated their crime with murder, deliberately shooting down the conductor and express messenger after the robbery had been accomplished. It was an unheard-of brutality, the men being helpless, unarmed and unresisting, and pursuit of the wretches had been so prompt and successful that every member of the gang, save the one now in the caÑon before him, was presently decorating a series of telegraph posts on the outskirts of the city, their captors having given them but exceedingly short shrift. And one of them, in an unavailing attempt to enlist the mercy of his grim executioners, had confessed that Matlock was the leader of the gang; but with characteristic cowardice had refrained from personal active participation in the robbery, merely directing their operations from a safe distance as arch plotter. His trail was soon found and had been skillfully followed so far by the expert marshal, whose long experience in trailing cattle on the cow range had made him one of the best trackers in the mountains.

Ballard was at a loss to account for the fatal recklessness of that shot. Matlock must certainly have known that It would betray his whereabouts and he was far too shrewd a villain to so unnecessarily expose himself to the risk of possible capture. There was but one explanation, and the marshal sent the spurs home with a great foreboding at heart.

"He had to fire that shot!" was the quick conjecture. "But why? He is either in a tight place or else Is up to some fearful deviltry. That was certainly a woman's cry!" He was using both spur and cuerto now, and his gallant horse was responding grandly.

But before he reached the little glade, the echoes wakened to a rumbling roar at the duller concussion of a revolver shot. Then followed that most unnerving thing, the mourning of a woman for her dead. With a magnificent leap the horse cleared the brawling torrent and in the edge of the glade Ballard checked him with a savage oath. Flinging himself from the saddle, he ran eagerly forward, pulling his revolver as he went.

In the middle of the glade, beside a little spring which bubbled up amidst the grass, sat a stylishly-gowned woman holding to her bosom the head of his best friend. Across the white forehead trickled down a thin crimson stream which sadly stained and discolored the fawn-colored riding habit and left its grewsome horror on the lips passionately pressed to those of the man lying so still and quiet in her rocking arms.

And ten feet away, with his sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky, his shirt still smouldering from a powder burn above his heart, lay Matlock, still clutching the Mauser in his stiffening hand.

Douglass, on dismounting, had picketed the horses and thrown himself at full length on the grass with his head in Constance's lap. She had temporarily regained dominion over him and was deliriously happy in consequence, lavishing upon him all the tenderness of her really unselfish affection. With tact she induced him to talk of his earlier life and its vicissitudes, and in the relation he was so frank and confiding that he was invested with a new glory in her sight. Of his amours he was considerately reticent, his innate chivalry prompting him to repress anything which would give her pain, and she was wise enough to refrain from any embarrassing questions. Their communion was intimate, and she had not been so happy in many months.

Then by some unfortunate vagary she chanced to refer to his first difficulty with Matlock, asking him for the real facts in the case, and the man crouched in the clematis gnashed his teeth at Douglass's contemptuous reflections upon his cowardice.

"Oh, I took no particular risk," Douglass said carelessly; "the man was not only a cowardly cur, but a blundering fool as well, as was plainly shown in his foolish sale of that apex mine. Why, he might just as well have got the million out of it that I did, if he had been honest and only ordinarily intelligent. I knew the vein was there all the time, and I really think he had a suspicion of it. But his great mistake was his insane hatred of me, and he bungled his revenge badly. He really thought he was cleverly swindling me, when the fact was that he was playing directly into my hand."

He laughed scornfully and drew down the fair head to his.

"Let us forget about the fool. I had sworn to kill him once, but now that he was unconsciously the cause of all my good fortune I feel only pity for him."

Over in the clematis the sun was gleaming on a polished tube of steel that was leveled directly at his heart, the eyes aligned along its sights malignant with insane fury. But the finger crooked about the trigger was restrained by a fiendish thought and with a chuckle Matlock waited.

The distance was absurdly short and at that range he could clip the head of a match. Just two more inches of elevation of that hated head and he could send the jacketed bullet shearing just through the bridge of the aquiline nose, splitting both eyeballs and blinding his enemy for the little space of life he would thereafter accord him. It would be passing sweet to have that helpless, sightless thing listen unseeingly to his maltreatment of the woman.

At that moment his horse, which had been picketed some distance away in the brush, discovered the presence of the two horses in the glade and gave a loud whinny of salutation. Douglass was on his feet in a second, his hand upon his revolver butt. The presence of another horse in that caÑon was a suspicious thing and as he inclined his head toward the direction from which the whinny had come, his sharp eye discerned the gleam in the clematis.

Instantly the gun leaped from its scabbard, but in the moment of its release there came a faint haze from the leafy screen, a sharp report, and Douglass pitched forward, face down, beside the little spring, the revolver falling from his nerveless hand directly into the lap of the screaming woman.

Baffled of his proposed torture, and intent now only on making sure of the man he feared even in death, Matlock came running forward, working the bolt of his rifle as he ran. At the side of his victim he paused and thrust the muzzle of the weapon against the motionless head. He would not bungle this job, at any rate.

But even as his finger closed about the trigger, Constance Brevoort was upon him with a spring like that of a lioness fighting for her mate, her arms fully extended and both hands clutching the butt of the heavy .44 Colt. Instinctively he raised his weapon to fend off this new and unlooked-for antagonist; but he was a moment too late. As the flame leaped from the muzzle to his breast he numbly lowered the rifle, turned half around, and walking forward a few steps, clutched blindly at the air and sank limply to the ground. One spasmodic struggle in which he turned over on his back and then he lay very still, his mouth distorted by a ghastly grin.

At Ballard's signaling call, he was hastily rejoined by his posse and a hurried examination of Douglass's wound was made. The bullet had entered the skull just above the left temple, making its exit at the back of the head just where the parting of the hair ended. From all appearances it had passed directly through the upper portion of the brain, and Ballard shook his head hopelessly. But the heart was still beating vigorously and there was a very perceptible pulse.

A rider was dispatched instantly to the nearest ranch, some two miles away, for a conveyance, returning quickly with a buckboard. A rude stretcher was improvised, on which Douglass was tenderly carried to the head of the trail, and with his head in Constance's lap he was carefully but quickly driven to the hotel. A dozen riders were soon scouring the suburbs for the doctor, who was out making his round of daily calls, and just at noon he came riding post-haste. As it most fortunately happened, he was a practitioner of ability and experience, having filled for years the responsible position of operating surgeon in one of the East's most famous hospitals.

"It's an extra thousand on the side from me if you save him, Doc," said Ballard earnestly. "Don't you let my pard die!" The surgeon paused long enough from his examination to give him an assuring hand-grip.

"That was superfluous, Ballard," he said quietly. "He is my friend, too." And there was an appeal in the eyes of Constance Brevoort that outweighed all the treasures of Golconda.

Ballard, looking at her sympathetically, suddenly received an inspiration. Taking her quietly to one side he coughed apologetically and finally stammered out:

"I don't want to butt in, Mrs. Brevoort, but there will have to be a more or less rigid investigation of this affair by the coroner and—well, there is no use of your being put to any annoyance or embarrassment. And I reckon you really don't know what happened after Ken was shot. The coroner is a friend of ours and will not deem It necessary to question you at all; you will not have to appear at the inquest. It's a lucky thing I happened to get there in time to kill Matlock before he could do any further mischief."

He looked meaningly at her and she gasped with relief and wonder as the significance of his words dawned upon her.

"And you would do that for me, a stranger!" she said incredulously. "How noble you are!"

"Well," he said slowly, confused by the gratitude streaming from her eyes, "you are a friend of his, and I think he would prefer it so. So don't discuss the matter at all with anyone; just stand 'em all off somehow. Say you fainted when the first shot was fired. And let me do all the explaining. I was justified in doing it in my official capacity, you know, and my statement will end the matter."

And so the world was none the wiser. In the days to come two others were to learn the truth, and to these four alone was It restricted for all time. That night after the inquest the body of the dead desperado was taken to Gunnison, and Justice was satisfied.

To the woman waiting in the darkened room that afternoon it seemed an age before the surgeon returned with the implements necessary for the operation he had promptly determined on. Ever and anon she would look fearfully at her hands and shudder at what she thought she saw there. It would be easier to bear if she could only be assured that it had not all been in vain; the figure on the bed lay so alarmingly still. A dozen times she placed her ear to his heart to convince herself that it was still beating.

The door creaked shrilly on its rusty hinges and the doctor entered. After him followed Blount and Ballard, bearing between them a long deal table requisitioned from the dining-room. Raising the curtains, the room was flooded with a strong white light, in which the table was placed.

When the wounded man had been removed thereto, the surgeon turned to Constance.

"All operations are more or less attended with unpleasant features, Madam," he said kindly. "Had you not better retire?"

She begged piteously to be allowed to remain, even insisting upon her ability to render any necessary assistance. But he saw her shudder of apprehension as he opened the case of glittering instruments and he hesitated dubiously. She clasped her hands in prayerful entreaty and he turned to his work.

A few skillful strokes of the scalpel and he nodded his satisfaction.

"Merely a scalp wound with a slight depression of the parietal bone," he said reassuringly. "It will require trephining but that is at the worst only a minor operation. As soon as the pressure on the brain is relieved he will recover consciousness. The bullet did not penetrate the skull at all, being deflected by its acute angle of impact. It was an exceedingly close call, but in six weeks he will never know he was shot at all, provided no unforeseen complications arise."

A half hour later Douglass opened his eyes. His vision was still uncertain and he blinked uncomprehendingly at the white faces about him. Then he caught sight of the woman kneeling at the bedside in an agony of thanksgiving, her face hidden in her hands. He half rose from the table where he was lying and held out his arms pleadingly through the mists that clouded brain and eyes alike:

"Gracie, sweetheart, forgive—!"

As he fell back fainting in the arms of the irate doctor, who was taken unawares by his patient's unexpected action, and who was savagely cursing his own remissness in not having strapped him to the table, the woman rose from her knees and with one hand pressed to her heart, tottered unsteadily towards the door. Ballard, springing to her assistance, recoiled at the hopeless despair and misery written on that face. At the threshold she hesitated a moment, steadying herself with one hand braced against the casing. Then of a sudden she turned and walked firmly to the table; disregarding the surgeon's indignant remonstrance, she leaned over the unconscious man and laid her lips on his. For a full minute she held them there, her form as motionless as his, then with the slowness of one who is wearied unto death, she raised her head and stood with closed eyes beside him.

The men's faces were averted and their heads bowed as she went silently out. For not a one of them but was fully conversant with her relations to Douglass, and one of them at least knew of his engagement to Grace Carter.

But all of them were awed by the tragedy of this woman's misspent love, all reverently silenced by the atoning sacrifice offered up in that heart-breaking kiss of renunciation.

A week later when Douglass had regained full consciousness he was informed that Mr. and Mrs. Brevoort had returned to New York. He felt not a little hurt at her unceremonious departure without a word of farewell to him and was inclined to be morose and splenetic during the succeeding fortnight of convalescence. From Red McVey he had learned of Grace's departure on the day of his mishap, and was much relieved to know that she was probably unaware of his injury at the time of leaving, it being very doubtful if she had even heard of it up to the present time; her foreign address being unknown to any of her western friends, there had been no interchange of correspondence, and local happenings of this nature were not of sufficient Interest to the eastern public to receive insertion in the New York papers. At least that is what he thought, forgetting that a robbery of the mails is an item of universal interest and also overlooking the fact that he was now a millionaire, whose attempted assassination by a ringleader of the desperadoes had been the welcome justification for glaring scare-heads in all the metropolitan dailies. It would have cut him to the quick had she been cognizant of his trouble and evinced no interest. He was also cynically resentful of Constance's apparent defection, ungenerously attributing it to her fear of being compromised.

Imagine his contrition when Ballard one day sought him out and delivered unto him an envelope addressed in Constance's familiar dainty chirography, admitting its detention for over three weeks by her express command.

"I was not to give it to you until you were fairly off the puny list," said the marshal gravely, "and there is something else that you should know before you read that letter."

And he proceeded to relate without any embellishment the facts in the matter of Matlock's taking off, supplementing them with other details of interest to the man who sat for hours after his friend had gone in bitter self-communion. It was quite dark when he went supperless to his room and opened the cream-tinted envelope.

The hours came and passed unrecked, and the gray dawn found him still sitting by the rickety little table, head in hands, poring dully over the lines that to his disordered fancy seemed written in her heart's blood.

"I am going away to-morrow, out into the pitiful Nothing in which all things end; and soon I will be even less than a memory to you. It is best so, for I would not have you hampered by a single regret in your enjoyment of the happiness that the future holds for you.

"You owe me nothing, although I have given you all—and gloried in the giving. For you at least vouchsafed me, through barred windows, a glimpse into the sanctuary where such as I may not enter. I realize now that it was impossible for me to have ever entered into the holy of holies; and yet, dear, can you blame me for hoping?

"I know now that I could never have entered fully into your life; the clay of my being leans too awry for that. But am I to blame for the shaking of the Potter's hand? I sought with all the assiduity of a weak woman's love, but there was a door to which I never found the key, a veil behind which I could not peer. Yet to me was given the rapture of the outer temple—and it was the bread of life.

"Be generous to me in this, the hour of my bitter atonement, and believe that my love was as pure and unselfish as it is possible for a woman to give. The proof of it is that I am giving you up now when I know that by a little finesse I could pull you down to hell with me. For I have spilled the Red Wine for you, my Wolf, and the reek of it would have been a bond and heel-rope between us.

"It is because of my love for you that I am giving you up, giving you into the hands of another woman. I have been but a flame to you, burning out the dross from your nature so that she might pour into her heart's crucible only the pure gold. God grant she mold the chalice aright.

"And now farewell while I have yet strength to say it. Forget me if you can. But if from the heights you ever look backward and downward, and in the sea of memory catch one faint reflection of me, let the thought be a kindly one.

"For oh, Man, who was more than God to me, I loved you too well!"

Very reverently he kissed the letter, then burned it in the flame of the smoky lamp. It was a long and weary ride to the nearest telegraph office at Gunnison, yet he never dismounted from his staggering horse until he heard the clicking of the sounders in the dingy little office.

"My life is yours alone," he wrote firmly; "let me make amends. Will you mold the chalice?"

Feverishly he strode up and down his apartment at the hotel until her answering wire was laid in his hand:

"You are even more noble than I thought, and shall have your reward. Grace waits you at Cairo. Have written her all that she must ever know. Go at once and God bless you both!"

He left that night for the East, and at the house of the Brevoorts learned that Mr. Brevoort and his wife had taken their departure two days before on an extended tour of the Orient. Yes, Mrs. Brevoort had left an enclosure for him.

It contained only a little note from Grace Carter to Constance and in his misery he could not understand why the latter had urged him to go to Cairo:

"I forgive you, even as I think God has forgiven you," Grace wrote, "for I, too, have been whirled in the maelstrom of his irresistible passion. I do not presume to sit in judgment of you, for you have given him his life—and at what an awful price! May God grant you forgetfulness, the boon that has been denied me."

Underneath this was written in Mrs. Carter's angular hand:

"I found this on my daughter's table the day after she was stricken down by brain fever, and an investigation of her correspondence shows it to have been intended for you. Now that the danger is passed and she is on the way to recovery, I send it to you with my contempt. Deem yourself fortunate that it is not my curse, instead."

On the forward deck of the great ocean grayhound that was cleaving the waters at record speed, a man stood that night with his face turned ever to the East. It would be ten days more before he could kiss the hem of her garment in supplication, ten days of hell in whose torturing fires his soul shriveled with a sickening fear.

If he had lost her, after all!