when he did what he would do with her.

She solved that problem; she insisted on staying with the actors. She
liked the life, she could sing, they told her she had a future. She had
fixed and settled everything, even to her name; she would retain that of
Lopez, which she was already known by in Bakersfield. There was nothing
for it but to let her have her way; a man without home, money or
prospects has no authority. But the sense of his own failure, of the
hopelessness of his desire to shelter and enrich her, fell on his
conscience like a foot on a spark and crushed it out. He returned to the
mountains, his hand against all men, already an outlaw, love for his own
all that was left of the original man. That governed him, gave him the
will to act, stimulated his brain, and lent his mind an unfailing
cunning. The meeting with Knapp crystallized into a partnership, but when
Garland the bandit rose on the horizon, no one, least of all Pancha, knew
he was Michaels the miner.

He stood up in the boat and again reconnoitered; he was near the shore.
The country slept under the stars, gray rollings of hills and black
blotches of trees, very still in its somber repose. Dropping back to the
seat, he plied the paddle with extraordinary softness, wary, listening,
alert. Soon, in a week or two, if he could settle the sale, he would be
on his way to San Francisco to tell Pancha he had sold his claim at last
and had bought the ranch. Under his caution the pleasure of this thought
pervaded him with an exquisite satisfaction. He could not forbear its
indulgence and, leaning on the paddle, allowed himself a last, delightful
vision--the ranch house piazza with Pancha--her make-up off--sitting on
the steps at his feet.

That night he slept in the cowshed of an abandoned ranch. A billet of