“ What a wonderful change—spiritually and physically—a little love can effect! Gone were all poor Mary’s dark shadows, pallor, and weary despondency. Once again her laughing long-lashed hazel eyes shone with the happy lights of yore. Locked in each other’s arms, for the time being, in a rose-tinted world of their own and completely oblivious to their surroundings, they happened to sway up against Johnny who, turning his head, with a mildly inquiring eye, tucked up his nigh fetlock and nibbled at them for sugar, nickering softly the while. ”

“ Ellis glanced up sharply, but the rancher’s face was set like an ugly, expressionless mask, and he gleaned nothing there.
“Why?” he inquired.
“Pitches some,” said the other drily and, with calculating inference, “the sorrel, he’s gentle. I kin ride him.”
Ellis hesitated a moment. He was hardly to be classed in the same category as a greenhorn, whom ignorance, taunt, or bravado will often provoke into climbing onto a bad horse, with equally bad results, but his reputation as a rider was at stake, for he knew Gallagher’s tongue was prone to wag at times. ”

“ Three miles or so beyond Gallagher’s the trail veered slightly west, then south, skirting the dense brush and timbered slopes of the foot-hills. Emerging from a patch of poplar that fringed the base of a small butte around which his trail led, a moving object suddenly appeared above him, sharply defined against the sky-line. Glancing up quickly he instantly recognized the tawny-gray, dog-like form of a coyote. Benton, in common with most range men, loathed the slinking, carrion-fed brutes and always shot them down remorselessly whenever opportunity offered. ”

“ The eternal solace of the weary and heavy-laden, the Divine appeal to all poor struggling souls rose and fell, finally melting away into nothingness, save where the deep, cloister-like silence flung back a faint far echo. Beside the bowed female figure there became visible a vague shimmering something which, almost imperceptibly, began to assume the outlines of a human form. Disturbed strangely at what he knew not, the wayward, reckless soul of Ellis Benton became filled with a great and reverential awe. ”

“ He was no vain, smirking Lothario, but he instinctively guessed how that strong mouth of hers could set, and those hazel eyes blaze and scintillate with dangerous anger at times; and that the man who was ill-advised and—ignorant enough—to ever make the foolish break of misconstruing her careless geniality for anything else but that, was only inviting disaster of the most ignominious and humiliating kind.
Her gaze flitted around the room continually as she appeased her appetite, and he was subjected to an exacting and minute inquisition anent the duties and life of a Mounted Policeman. ”

“ The dark eyes of more than one ranch beauty had looked approvingly—perhaps lovingly—on the somber, handsome face and slimly-powerful frame of the reckless young bronco-buster, wondering, half-pityingly, what should make so youthful a countenance so stern. And more than once the inviting loneliness of many whom ties bound had been made only too apparent for his benefit. But the remnants of a nearly forgotten family pride, rather than shyness or coldness, kept Ellis’s feet clear of the snares. ”

“ And yet, strange to say, in spite of his hard-bitten, cynical exterior and characteristics that verged sometimes on actual brutality, deep, deep down in his complex soul Ellis Benton hid an almost womanish tenderness, coupled with a sensitive artistic temperament that few were aware of or would have credited. In figure he was splendidly proportioned. Not overly tall, but with the lean, wiry flanks, broad, square shoulders, and slim waist of the trained athlete that denoted great activity, and the possession of immense concentrated strength whenever he chose to use it. ”

“ Every wayfarer through this world must needs encounter certain points in his journey where the main trail divides. For awhile the two tracks may run so near to each other that they may seem still almost one, but they will diverge more and more till, ere they end, their issues lie as widely apart as those of good and evil, light and darkness, life and death. So it was now with Ellis Benton, for a chance episode occurred in that young man’s life which was fated to bring about a material change in his fortunes and surroundings. ”

“ Leaving these two well-meaning, if cynical, worthies to console each other with the bitter philosophy which retrospection of past irremedial misfortunes has caused many better, and worse, men than them to revert to, let us return to the detachment at Cherry Creek, where at this particular moment the object of their commiseration is leaning back in his favorite chair, with his head resting in its customary position against the leopard-skin kaross. Tired out by a long and uneventful four days’ patrol, Ellis lit a pipe and gazed wearily out through the open door into the gathering dusk. ”

“ Gradually the stock depredations in the Sergeant’s district grew more and more infrequent, until they practically ceased altogether for, by this time, men who had hitherto been inclined to step aside from the straight trail grew afraid of him. Afraid of that sneering, merciless tongue that stung them to the quick with its bitter venom—of the heavy hand that struck by night as well as day—and, of that scheming, cunning brain which, outclassing theirs in its superior knowledge of ways that are dark on the range, seemed to anticipate and forestall every crooked move that they made. ”

“ The Rustler’s Lament After giving the buckskin a light feed of grain and attending to Johnny’s hoof carefully, Ellis despatched an early lunch, saddled up Shakem, and struck out for Tucker’s ranch, which was about eight miles distant. It was a glorious day and, feeling fully recovered from the effects of his morning’s shake-up, he rode slowly on through the golden haze with that ease and contentment that comes to a man who feels that he has earned it, and has sound health and a good horse under him. ”

“ Ellis never forgot those words, nor the weary, bitter, hopeless look that accompanied them; and, long years afterwards, their remembrance rushed back to his mind with vivid distinctness, as he held poor Musgrave’s dying head.
Drearily he wended his way up the main street, his mind preoccupied with the problem of fulfilling the coroner’s final request. He knew comparatively few of the male—let alone, the female, community, of the little town and, somehow, he instinctively shrank at the thought of having to approach strange women anent such a delicate duty. ”

“ Somebody’s got to do it. But there it is—trouble, trouble, trouble, the whole time. All my life, with the exception of the time I deliberately struck into the fighting game, I’ve wanted to live peaceably; but it seems to have been my luck, somehow, to always get the reverse. Especially on this job. No matter how quiet and easy-going you try to rub along there are always some nasty, bullying, ignorant, cunning beggars who, just because you’re a bit decent to them, take it for granted you’re easy and try to impose on you. ”

“ Benton got up and, leaning out of the open window, looked dreamily away over the sun-scorched prairie.
“Aye,” he muttered slowly, half to himself; “I don’t think—I know. I saw the look on her face the night she died ... an’ I saw her again—afterwards. That should stop me from worrying. See here; look, Charley,” he went on, in a steadier voice, turning to his companion: “You must have seen many deaths in your time—lots more than I have, I guess ... an’ God knows I’ve seen enough, one way an’ another. I tell you—people in their last stages see something that we can’t. ”

“ The powerful animal carried his substantially-built rider as if she were only a child, flattening his ears and biting with equine playfulness meanwhile at Billy, the big, upstanding, well-coupled-up bay that Ellis was riding. ”

“ And this—love such as this, had the dead man gained, then spurned brutally from him, and cast away.
The Soul—to the last, could still triumph over the poor broken Body, and Love—glorious, all-forgiving Love—arise, victorious and conquering; through life—through death—aye—beyond the grave itself—to the very Resurrection Morn.
The sands of the poor sufferer’s existence were running out fast now. Benton shuddered when he thought of the horror that would surely come into those shining, steadfast eyes if she were told whose blood was upon his hands. ”

“ A stuffed meerkat crouched half raised, like a gigantic gopher, and that ugly bald-headed vulture, known in the Taal as an aasvogel, looked down with unpitying eyes. Two magnificent leopard skin karosses were flung over the armchairs, and a Zulu oxhide war shield was suspended in an angle of the walls, flanked crosswise with its companion weapons—a heavy knob-kerrie and a short, broad-bladed, stabbing assegai, whilst above hung those one-time sinister symbols of authority north of the Vaal—a rhinoceros-hide sjambok, a Mauser rifle, and a captured “Vierkleur” flag. ”

“ I have drunk deeply of the joys of life in my time, and I possess many good and true friends. My days, thank God, have been, for the most part, passed cleanly as a man—in the open, breathing His fresh air. Through it I have had ever your dear mother’s memory to keep my conscience clear, and have striven steadfastly to adhere and live up to, most all, I trust, of the precepts that are embodied in the formula, “An officer, and a gentleman.” ”

“ I’ll hand yu’ over to Mary, begad!... she’ll teach yu’ to ‘soldier,’ yu’ old sucker!”
It was a glorious sunshiny afternoon, and the light cool breeze sent the occasional little tufts of fleecy-white clouds scudding across the turquoise-blue sky, and waved and brushed the surface of the long prairie grass as if with an invisible hand. To the gait of his horse Ellis whistled to himself—happily—half dreamily, as if he voiced some inner thought—an old, long-forgotten air, presently breaking into its words:
“Sae kind, kind and gentle it she,
Kind is my Mary ”

“ People see us patrolling around in a smart uniform, and riding the pick of the country in horseflesh, thinking, I suppose, what a fine time we have of it. They little guess it’s one continual round of worry and trouble. All the way from murder and robbery to settling neighbors’ trivial squabbles over dogging each other’s cattle, paying the cost of divisional fences, and all those kind of petty disturbances. Either that, or being chased around from one detachment to another, though in that respect I must say this Division isn’t as bad as some of ’em. ”

“ As in the sunset of my life I sit alone in my chair in the twilight, dreaming of bygone days, it seems to me that I can see the shining welcome of many long-lost and well-remembered faces. They come and go, and I love them well enough, but one—especially beloved above the rest is with me always. ”

“ The foreman’s rough championing, and his own ability to take care of himself, in course of time discouraged this systematic baiting, and ere long he received the degree of comradeship. Possessing an inborn love for music, which from childhood up his mother had always sedulously encouraged, Ellis was a pianist of no mean ability. This, coupled with a sweet, boyish voice—which in later years was to develop into a magnificent baritone—caused him to be in constant request as a performer on the battered old piano which the ranch-owner’s dwelling boasted. ”

“ With the recollection of such a woman as your mother lingering still in my remembrance,—whose dear face—God grant, I may behold again, shortly—can you wonder that none other has come into my life to take her place, and that I have been true to the memory of my first, and only love. ”

“ Bronco-Buster’s Chorus Morning came, and with it a visit from one Gallagher, a middle-aged bachelor, his nearest neighbor, whose ranch lay about a mile distant. The Sergeant, seated outside the door, in the sun, smoking an after-breakfast pipe, greeted the newcomer civilly as he lowered himself stiffly out of the saddle, and waited for the other to divulge his business.
Nature had not been kind to Mr. Gallagher in regard to his physiognomy, and Ellis, whenever he contemplated that homely visage, from certain canine peculiarities therein, always mentally labeled him “Old Dog-face.” ”

“ No more gloomy outlooks upon life in general, or pessimistic forebodings arising from the consciousness of straightened means. Free at last to wander around the earth at will and visit all its beauty spots that he had read or heard about. Free to enjoy all the pleasures of the world that money can command. He was still only a comparatively young man, strong and active far beyond the average.
And, above all, it meant—and the very thought of his presumption stirred him strangely and caused a mighty wave of long-pent-up love to surge through his heart—perhaps also it meant—Mary. ”

“ Oh, the Trainors know I’m jolly well able to take care of my little self,” she added, with a slight suggestion of defiant challenge in her tones and look which stirred the fiery Benton blood in his veins strangely.
“Yes, you just bet you are!” he ejaculated admiringly, as he appraised her strong, splendid figure. “You’re away taller than I am, and I shouldn’t wonder if you don’t weigh heavier, too. Riding keeps my weight down, though. I don’t suppose I go more’n a hundred and seventy-five; but that’s plenty heavy enough for a horse.” ”