Sunset Pass (1990) Page 13

  "Then came the story, torn from his most secret heart. Ash was not his son, but the illegitimate son of a girl he had loved long ago, who abandoned and dying, gave him her child. Dad said he was what his father had been. Next day I went to mother, and she corroborated dad's story. It seemed I was delivered from hellish bonds."

  "Thiry, darlin'--there must be somethin' in prayer," cried Rock.

  "I was to learn how you had bought Slagle's silence--how you persuaded Dabb and Lincoln to force Hesbitt to settle out of court--oh, how from the very beginning you had meant good by all of us! Yet I could not drag myself to you. It took time. I had such dreadful fear of seeing you lying in danger of death, bloody, pale with awful eyes that would have accused me. Oh, I suffered! But now I'm here--on my knees."

  "Please get up," said Rock, lifting her to a seat beside him.

  "Now will you accept Dabb's offer and take me back to Sunset Pass?" she asked.

  "Yes, Thiry, if you will have it so," he replied. "If you love me that well."

  She gave him passionate proof of that "Dear, Dad told me you were one of the marked men of the ranges. Our West is in the making. Such men as Ash--and those others you--"

  Sol Winter came in. He beamed down upon them. "Son an' lass, I'm glad to see you holden' each other thet way--as if now you'd never let go. For I've grown old on the frontier, an' I've seen but little of the love you have for each other. We Westerners are a hard pioneering outfit. I see in you, an Allie, an' some more of our young friends, a leanin' more to finer, better things."

  THE END