The Project Gutenberg eBook of Timber-Wolf, by Jackson Gregory

Copyright, 1923, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
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Copyright, 1923, by Doubleday, Page & Company
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Printed in the United States of America
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Published August, 1923

CHAPTER I

Big Pine, tiny human outpost set well within the rim of the great southwestern wilderness country, was, like other aloof mountain settlements of its type, a place of infinite and monotonous quiet during most days of most years. Infrequently, however, for one reason or another, and at times seemingly for no reason whatever, came days of excitement. And, as those who knew the place said, when the denizens of Big Pine bestirred themselves into excitement they were never content until they skyrocketed into the seventh heaven of turbulence. The old-timers recalled how, back in '82, a dog fight in front of the Gallup House started a riot; in spite of the dictum that it takes only two dogs to make a fight, the two owners present entered with fine esprit into the thing, and before nightfall men were carrying sawed-off shotguns and some of the oldest and wisest citizens had dug themselves in as for a state of siege.

This latest furore in and about Big Pine, however, had for cause an incident which since time was young has electrified both more and less sedate communities. True, it had begun with a fight; men, not dogs; yet it was what chance spilled from the torn coat pocket of one of them that transmuted slumbrous quiet into pandemonium. It was fitting that the Gallup House, centre of local activities, was the scene of the affair.

A mongrel sort of a man, one Joe Nuñez, known by[Pg 2] everybody as Mexicali Joe, came in and demanded corn whiskey and paid for it on the spot. That in itself was interesting; Joe seldom had money. For twenty years he had been content to have his wife support him while he combed the ridges, always prospecting, always begging grub-stakes, always spending the winters telling what he would do, come spring. To-night, looking tired and dirty, he was triumphant. He spent his silver dollars with a flourish, and an onlooker, laughing, announced that Joe must have stolen his wife's money. Joe resented the accusation with dignity; he knew what he knew; he wagged his head and stared insolently and tossed off his drink in solemn silence. Thereafter he dropped innuendoes while he had his second drink. The man, Barny McCuin, who had badgered him in the first place, carelessly called him a liar. Joe, who had accepted the familiar epithet a thousand times in his life, for once bridled up and spat back. From so small a matter grew the fight.

Onlookers laughed and were amused, taking no serious stock in the fracas because it appeared inevitable that in half a dozen minutes big Barny McCuin would have Mexicali Joe whimpering and apologetic. But it chanced that as Barny flung the smaller man about, the Mexican's coat pocket was torn and from it spilled a handful of raw gold. Men pounced upon the scattered bits of quartz, Barny among them; they caught it up and stared from one another to Joe, who became suddenly quiet and tense and alert. Then a great shout rumbled up:

And that was the one word which set all Big Pine ablaze. Here, on the fringe of a gold-mining country, which the latter years had all but worn out, there had been made that fresh discovery which every man of[Pg 3] them always kept somewhere in the bottom of his mind as a possibility for himself.

Gallup, called "Young Gallup," simply because he was the son of "Old Gallup," who had gone to his last rest twenty-five years ago, was a man eminently capable of dealing swiftly with unexpected situations; he did not know the meaning of tact, but he did understand force. This was his house and here his word was law; he broke into the room at the first outcry, took in everything with one flick of his black eyes, and issued his orders.

"Hand that stuff over," he commanded the men who still held bits of the Mexican's specimens. "It belongs to Joe, and no man's going to be robbed here under my nose, Mex or White."

The look which Mexicali Joe shot at his protector had in it far more of suspicion than of gratitude. But his grimy fingers were eager enough in snatching back the pieces of quartz from reluctant palms. Grown sullen, he returned to his corn whiskey, drinking slowly, and holding his tongue. When men asked him the inevitable quick questions he either shrugged impatiently or ignored them altogether. They looked at one another, and an understanding sprang up on the instant between big Barny McCuin and some of the others. Presently Barny went out, followed by the men who had caught his glance. Young Gallup, with eyes narrowing and growing darker, watched them go.

"They'll get you outside, Joe," he said bluntly. "And they'll make you open up for all you know."

Joe shifted uneasily; in his heart he knew himself for a poor fool caught up between the devil, which was Gallup, and the deep sea.

Besides the proprietor and the Mexican there were now but three men left in the room. One of them was[Pg 4] Gallup's man, who cooked, did chores, and, when need was, helped with the still and served drinks. At a look from his employer he left the room. Of the others, one was old man Parker, an ancient to be despised because feebleness made of him a negligible quantity in any affair based upon the prowess of physical manhood; the second was a youngster who stood in awe of Gallup and who looked ill at ease as the hotel man stared at him.

"It's my house," said Gallup. "There's going to be no crooked work here and you know it. Joe goes clear. If he wants to talk later on, why, then he can come out and talk with you boys outside. You know you'll find Barny and his friends not so far away."

Tim's self-pride, unimportant as it was, perked up at the realization that Gallup was actually discussing a matter of import with him. He tried to play the man.

"You make me sick," he grunted disgustedly. "Now shut up and clear out. You, too, Parker. It's closing time anyhow."

"I seen, didn't I?" clucked the old man, tapping nervously on the bare floor with his peeled willow staff. "It was gold! Joe's stuck his pick into the mother lode! Ain't I always told you young fools...."

Gallup, patient no longer, caught him by the thin old arm and jerked him to the door, thrusting him out and unheeding the querulous protests. Then he swung about upon the younger man.

There was that in his voice which discouraged [Pg 5]argument. For Gallup, in the full power of his strength, a big man and heavy and hard, was suddenly flaming with anger and the two great fists were lifting from his sides. Tim, muttering, hastened after old Parker; behind him the oak door was slammed and the bolt shot into its socket. He broke into a run, seeking Barny McCuin and the others.

Gallup strode straight back to Mexicali Joe, clamping a ponderous hand upon the shoulder which sought futilely to jerk free.

"You let me go! I ain't workin' for you. You ain't my boss. What I got, she's mine! Now I goin' home."

Gallup, still holding him with one hand, probed at him with his eyes, seeking to fathom what powers of determination and stubbornness lay within a mongrel soul. Joe looked frightened; there were beads of sweat on his forehead, stealing downward from under his black matted hair. But there was in his look the glint of desperate defiance.... Gallup called softly:

His combination cook and chore man returned through the inner door with an alacrity which must have told his employer that he had never stirred a step from the threshold. He, like the others, was on fire with suddenly stimulated greed.

"Go get Taggart," said Gallup, his eye all the time on Joe. "Slip out the back way and go quiet. He's down at his cabin. I want him here in a hurry."

Ricky, though with obvious reluctance, withdrew. Once out of sight, however, he ran as fast as he could, anxious to be back with no loss of time.

"Why does a man generally send for him?" countered Gallup dryly. "Know who he is, don't you, Joe?"

"Thief?" Gallup having repeated the word thoughtfully, said it a second time: "Thief! I hadn't thought of that."

"Let me go," cried Joe. With a sudden fierce jerk he broke free and started to the door.

But Gallup, shaking his head, was at his side like a flash. He thrust the Mexican aside and stood with his heavy square shoulders against the oak panel. Joe, by now trembling with fury, slipped a hand into his shirt. But before the hastening fingers could close about the sheath-knife which Gallup knew well enough they sought, Gallup drew back a heavy fist and struck the Mexican full in the face. Joe went staggering across the room and fell, his battered lips writhing back from his teeth. Again his hand went into his shirt. Gallup ran across the room and stood over him, one heavy boot drawn back threateningly.

"Make one more move like that," he said coolly, "and I'll smash my boot heel in your dirty mouth."

Outside, grouped expectantly in the middle of the road, Barny McCuin and his friends, joined by old man Parker and Tim, alternately speculated in quiet voices and watched for the door to open and Joe to come forth. Tim, in his anger and excitement, called them crazy fools; he warned them that Young Gallup, left alone with Joe, would be making some deal with the Mexican and that, if they were only half men they would come along of him and smash the door off and get in on whatever was happening. But Tim was only a boy and talked more than he acted; the others, knowing Young[Pg 7] Gallup as they had cause to know him, hesitated to grow violent at his door. Gallup, defending his own property, would just as gladly pour a double-barrel shotgun load of buckshot into them as he would turn up a bottle of bootleg. They were not ready for murder and told Tim to shut up and keep his eye peeled.

But there was not a patient man among them, and to-night was no time for any man's patience. When they had waited as long as they could, perhaps half an hour, they turned back to Gallup's door, Barny leading the way and knocking loudly. In return came Gallup's voice, untroubled and cool.

"Locked up for the night," he said. And then, carelessly: "What do you want, boys?"

"Joe's gone," returned Gallup. He came to the door and opened it, his lamp in hand. "Went about half an hour ago; just after you boys did. Out the back way and on the run!" He laughed. "Guess he's foxy enough to make a circle around you dubs. Oh, come in and look if you think I'm lying to you."

He stepped aside and let them come in. They knew that he was lying and they saw from his eyes that he understood that they were not fools enough to take him at his word. Yet Joe had gone. In that Gallup had told the truth; the lie lay in what he concealed.

Gallup jeered at him. "If I knew I'd tell you, wouldn't I, Timmy? Most likely where little boys like you ought to be by now. Meaning in bed, Timmy dear."

In time they went away; by now, drawn close together by a common burning desire, they were resolved into a[Pg 8] committee with one objective. Late as it was they searched high and low for Mexicali Joe. They went first to his wretched cabin among the pines at the edge of the settlement; they got his wife out of bed and fired questions at her, receiving only blank looks of wonder; clearly she had not seen Joe and had no inkling of his sudden importance. They went away and in turn looked in at every likely place which Big Pine offered. But they found no sign of Joe. In a town of less than fifty houses he had vanished like one shadow engulfed and blotted out by another. They began to fear that he had fled, frightened, into the mountains.

A dozen men had seen Joe's gold. Before midnight no less than twenty tongues had discussed the one matter of moment. Men cautioned other men against letting too many people know; but such was the electric mood swaying them that early the next morning the news began trickling forth through the country surrounding Big Pine. By late afternoon word had penetrated far up into the mountains and, following the stage road, had gone fifty miles toward the distant railroad. And that same day it leaked out that Mexicali Joe, who had so strangely disappeared, had not fled at all but all the time had been in Big Pine. He had been arrested by Sheriff Taggart and thrown into the town jail, charged with disturbing the peace.

Taggart himself had nothing to say. He kept Joe shut up alone and let no one see him.

CHAPTER II

A normal census gave Big Pine a population of about one hundred and twenty inhabitants, and the most normal thing which any census does is to exaggerate. But within forty-eight hours after the tearing of Mexicali Joe's coat pocket between nine and twelve hundred people, variously estimated, poured into the settlement. Wood-choppers and timber jacks and lone prospectors hurried down from the mountains; storekeepers and ranchmen came up from far below Rocky Bend and Red Oak; that strange medley of humanity which always rushes first in the wake of gold news filled Big Pine to overflowing, men and even women; all straining to one purpose back of which lay many motives. Spring was verging on summer; nights were cold, but the air was dry; they found rooms where they could, and when they could not they builded great camp-fires and found what comfort they might in the edges of the pine groves. Gallup doubled his prices and then doubled them again, and still his house was full. There were half a dozen empty houses, ancient disreputable shacks long in disuse; these found usurping tenants the first day. There were some few who had had forethought and took the time to bring tents. Almost in an hour a quiet, sleepy little mountain town was metamorphosed into a noisy, clamorous and sleepless mining camp.

Among the first to arrive was a young man named Deveril. Very tall and good-looking and gay and slender he was, making himself look taller by the boots he wore and the way he pinched his soft hat into a peak. Babe Deveril he was called by those who knew him, saving[Pg 10] one only, who called him Baby Devil and jeered at him with a pair of mocking eyes.

Deveril had been in Big Pine before, though not for some years. Also he had seen his share of mining camps through Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, and knew something of congested conditions and the hardships which accompanied the short-sighted. Before his arrival was ten minutes old, he had cast about him for a shelter. Already the Gallup House was full, but not yet had the disused, tumbled-down shacks been thought of. He found a dilapidated building which once, long ago, had been a log cabin; it stood in the pines set well back from the place of Mexicali Joe; it had a fireplace. Deveril preempted it coolly, neither knowing nor caring who the owner might be; he brought his slim bed-roll here, followed it up with frying-pan, bacon, and coffee-pot and considered himself established. Further, being just now in funds and always yielding to the more fastidious impulses at moments when fortune was kind, he secured a serving-maid. Maria, the dusky daughter of Mexicali Joe, consented gladly to come in and cook and make the bed and keep things tidy. He gave her a couple of silver dollars and made her a bow to bind the bargain, tossing in for fair measure a flashing smile which left the half-breed girl thrilling and sighing. Thereafter, bending his mind to the main issue, he sought to find out for himself how much of fact underlay the glittering rumors which had been pouring forth from Big Pine like rays from the sun.

This heterogeneous mass of humanity occupying Big Pine had broken up into numerous small groups, after the fashion of men who are so prone to break large units down into smaller ones. Cupidity, jealousy, and suspicion flaunted their banners on all hands; men watched one another like so many thieves. The old[Pg 11] inhabitants went about bristling, resenting the presence of these outsiders who were rushing in to steal the golden secret. Among themselves they were divided into two antagonistic factions; there was the Gallup crowd, including Gallup and Sheriff Taggart and the men who did their bidding; and there were those who had heard Barny McCuin's tale and who were out to block the game of Gallup and Taggart, or know the reason why.

Babe Deveril, sauntering here and there, identified himself with no group; it was his preference always to hunt singly. But he went everywhere, his mind and ears and eyes co-ordinating in the work he set them. He listened to rumors and sifted them and went on to newer and always contradictory rumors. It was said that Mexicali Joe had been killed, his body found in a ravine three miles from town; that Gallup had spirited him off last night into the mountains; that Joe had made his strike in the old and long-deserted mining camp of Timkin's Bar; that his specimens had come from Lost Woman's Gulch; that Joe had never stirred a mile from Big Pine in his latter prospecting, and that, therefore, at any moment any one of the thousand gold seekers might stumble upon his prospect hole. It was said that Joe's pay-dirt would run twenty dollars to the ton, and while this was being advanced as though by one who knew all about it, another man was saying that it would run a thousand dollars. Deveril, when he had heard a score of empty though colorful tales, turned at last to the Gallup House; Gallup and Taggart knew all that was to be known, and, although they had the trick of the shut mouth and steady eye, there was always the chance of a sign to be read by the watchful.

He came upon Gallup himself standing in his doorway, looking out thoughtfully upon the road jammed tight with restless men.

"Must have something disturbing on your mind," suggested Deveril as genially as though Gallup's attitude had been exactly opposite what it was. "Haven't looked in on you for half a dozen years, but you ought to remember." Gallup's eyes came back slowly, a frown in them, and the other concluded: "Known as Deveril ... Babe Deveril, formerly of Cherokee...."

Gallup showed a quick, unmistakable sign of interest and Deveril laughed. But Gallup's frown darkened and there came a sudden compression to his lips.

"I got you, Kid," he said sharply. "You said it: There is a thing or two on my mind and I've got no time for gab. Just the same, take this from me: A certain Bruce Standing has been sent word the town can get along without him showing his face; and maybe, being his cousin, you'll trail your luck along with him."

"So you and Bruce Standing are still playing the nice little parlor game of slap-the-wrist, are you?" Deveril jeered at him. But, still highly good-humored, he went on: "He's no cousin of mine, Gallup. You've got the family tree all mussed up. What fault is it of mine if a thousand years ago Bruce Standing and I had the same murdering old pirate for ancestor? At that, Standing descended from him in the straight line and I am somewhat less directly related."

"So you sent him word to stay away? Didn't you know that he'd come, red-hot and raging, as soon as he got your message? Oh, well, you and my crazy kinsman fight it out to your liking; it would be a great thing for the community if you'd both do a clean job, cutting each other's throats.... By the way, where does Taggart fit in? How does he work it to be hand in glove with both of you at the same time?"

Gallup, brooding, appeared not to have heard. Then, making no answer, he turned and went back into his house and into the big main room, where a crowd of men had foregathered. Deveril, his hat far back, his dark eyes keen and bright, followed him, almost at his heels. Gallup saw him out of the tail of his eye but for once gulped down his first hot impulse; his hands were full as things were and there were large stakes to play for, with nothing to be gained just now by a rough-and-tumble fist fight with a man who was obviously highly capable of taking care of himself. So he pretended to let Deveril's entrance go unnoted and thereafter ignored him.

For the first time in many days there were no drinks being served in Gallup's House. With so many strangers in town, one did not know how many federal agents might be snooping about. And, again, this was no time for the main issue to become befogged with side issues; Gallup did not want any unnecessary ruction on his hands. Nevertheless some of the men drank now and then, but from pocket flasks which they had brought in with them; flasks which for the most part came originally from Gallup's stock but which had been sold on the[Pg 14] street by Gallup's man Ricky. The room was thick with heavy tobacco smoke; most of the men remained strangely quiet, watching Gallup or Barny McCuin, who glowered in a corner, or the sheriff who came and went among them. Deveril spent not more than ten minutes here; once more he returned to the street and to his passing from knot to knot of men.

"I'll bet a hat Gallup was lying about that warning to my mad kinsman," he told himself thoughtfully. "I don't believe he's man enough to get rough with Bruce Standing."

It was almost at the moment that Deveril came out of Gallup's place that the first shock of genuine news burst along the crowded road; Mexicali Joe had been located. He was in the stone jail, not five hundred yards from the thickest of his seekers, and had been there since last night, locked up by Taggart! The crowd split asunder as cleanly as though some gigantic axe had cloven its way between the two fragments; one group at full tilt ran to the jail, to prove to their own senses that here at last was a word of truth; the other streamed down to the Gallup House, seeking Taggart and an explanation. With the latter went Babe Deveril, who meant to keep his eye on Taggart and Gallup.

There were three steps leading up to Gallup's side door through which at last came Taggart, when the crowd clamored for him. He stood on the top step, looking stolidly at the faces confronting him. He was a big man, massive of physique, hard-eyed, strong-willed; he had been sheriff for a dozen years and after long office as the chief representative of the law bore in his look the stamp of that unquestioned authority which is the unmistakable brand of the mountain sheriff. He had looked straight into the eyes of many men in many moods and his own glance never wavered.[Pg 15] Never a great talker, he stood now a moment in silence, tugging slowly at his heavy black mustache.

That was all. There was no belligerence in his tone; his look remained untroubled. Babe Deveril, beginning to understand something of what had happened and casting his own swift horoscope of the likely future, wondered to what extent it was in the cards that Jim Taggart should stand in his way. There was big game in the wind, or men like Gallup and Taggart, who were always big-game men, would not be taking things upon their shoulders thus. And to-day Jim Taggart was at his best; he stood as solid and unmoved as a rock, with never a flick of the eyelid, as he made his quiet announcement and awaited the breaking of any storm which his words might evoke.

There was a short lull while men murmured among themselves, and yet, digesting Taggart's statement, impressed by his manner, hesitated to speak the thought which was forming in dozens of brains simultaneously. Presently, however, a man at the far edge of the crowd shouted:

Before the man had gotten his ten words out, the sheriff's keen eyes found him where his lesser form was half hidden by the bigger men in front of him.

"I hear you, Bill Cary," he said quietly. "And the only reason I'm answering a regular none-of-your-business question is that all of you other boys that have stampeded in here on a wild say-so will be worrying your heads off until you know what's what. I pulled Joe on two counts: First for disturbing the peace."

An uproar of laughter boomed out at that and even Jim Taggart smiled. But he went on evenly:

"Of course that was a blind until I got the goods on the second count. And I only got that a few minutes ago. This ain't any trial, exactly, and still I guess it will save trouble if you know all about it. So I'll let Cliff Shipton step up and testify."

Suddenly he stepped aside and a tall, hawk-faced man who had been holding his place at Gallup's side, just behind Taggart's massive bulk, stepped forward. Men craned their necks and crowded closer; nearly all of them knew Cliff Shipton. He was a Gallup man and always had been a Gallup man; for the last two years he had been in charge of a profitless "gold-mine" which Gallup pretended to operate at the head of the Lost Woman's Gulch; a property which, it was generally conceded in and about Big Pine, was merely the proverbial hole in the ground intended for sale to a fool.

"Last week, gents," said Shipton in his easy style, "we hit it rich out at the Gallup Bonanza. Pocket or ledge, we're not saying which right now. But we got the stuff. We been keeping it quiet until we got good and ready to spring something. I had the choice specimens in a box in my shack. That Mexican's been prowling around; I couldn't be sure until I'd glimpsed the specimens, but I just looked 'em over. That's the story; Mexicali, being half drunk and stupid generally, made his haul out of my specimen box."

As the first slow murmur, gathering volume, began, Jim Taggart threw up his hand and shouted:

"Now, men, go slow! I've seen a pack of gents before now get all het-up because they was sore and disappointed. And I can read the eye-signs! But pull off and think things over before you make a lot of howling fools out of yourselves. If you want me any time.... Well, I'll be right on hand!"

For a little while the men remained uncertain. Jim Taggart represented the law; further, he was no man at any time to trifle with. He had offered them an explanation and the worst of it was that it might be the truth. Discussions began on every hand; those who believed were in the minority and lost voice as the other voices, becoming heated, grew louder. Babe Deveril was turning away when a man caught at his sleeve.

"You know those men, Taggart and Gallup and the rest. What do you make of it? What had we ought to do?"

"Go slow until you know what you're doing," he admonished curtly. "Then go like hell."

He skirted the crowd and went up to his cabin to be alone and do a bit of thinking on his own part.

CHAPTER III

There was a crowd of men, tight-jammed, about the little square stone jail as Deveril made his way toward his cabin. Every man of them was striving for a glance through the barred slit of a window behind which Mexicali Joe glared out at them. In the throng Deveril marked a man who wore his deputy-sheriff's badge thrust prominently into notice and who carried a rifle across the hollow of his arm. Deveril shrugged and went on.

"In jail or out, the Mex is going to keep a shut mouth," he meditated. "He'll never spill a word now, unless Taggart gets a chance to give him a rough-and-ready third degree. And Taggart will get no such chance to-night."

Through the dim dusk gathering among the pines he came to the cabin. A light winked at him through the open door; Maria, Joe's daughter, was getting his supper. Well, he was ready for it; blow hot, blow cold, a man must eat.

"Hello, Señorita," he greeted her from the threshold. "How does it feel to be the one and only daughter of the most distinguished gentleman in town?"

Maria did not understand him, but her white teeth flashed and her large southern eyes were warm and friendly.

Deveril laughed and went to wash at the bucket of[Pg 19] water which the girl had placed on a bench in the corner. Maria finished setting his table with the few articles at hand, putting a black pot of red beans in the place of honor before his plate. As he returned from washing and smoothing his hair down, he noted the plate itself; a plain, cracked affair of heavy crockery with a faded design in red roses. Plainly, Maria had raided her mother's home for that. She was looking at him for his approval and received it. At the moment she had both hands occupied and he stooped forward and kissed her. It was lightly and carelessly done; a gay salute to the girl's warm smouldering beauty. For beauty of its kind she did have, that of the young half-bred animal.

She gasped; her face, whether through indignation or pleasure, went a dark burning red. Deveril laughed softly and sat down upon the box which she had drawn up for his chair.

It was only then that he saw that he had a visitor. His eyebrows shot upward as he wondered. Another girl or young woman; in that light, as she stood just outside his door, nothing very definite could be made of her.

He came to his feet almost at the first word, quick and lithe and graceful. Always was Babe Deveril at his best when it was a question of a lady. The voice accosting him was clear and cool and musically modulated. He tried to make out her face, but was baffled by the shadow cast by her wide hat. She was clad in a neat dark outing suit and wore serviceable walking boots; she was slim and trim and young and confident. Beyond that the dusk made a mystery of her.

"Lord love you," he assured her, "you may do anything on earth that pleases you.... Maria, my dear, you may run home to your mama; I have affairs of state. And I'll be delighted to see you again at breakfast time."

"It was no tender scene that you interrupted," he told his visitor. "I was merely seeking expression in a bit of rudimentary human language of my gratitude for the loan of a cracked plate! Look at it!" He held it aloft.

"A gratitude which obviously springs from the heart," she returned as lightly as he had spoken.

She sat down on the door-step. He came toward her, meaning to have a better look at her.

"But you were just beginning your supper," she objected. "Please go on with it while it is hot. Otherwise I shall most certainly leave without talking with you as I had wished."

"Then I eat, though it's putting a hungry man at an unfair advantage to watch him at such a disgusting pastime." He poured himself a cup of coffee, all the while trying to make out her features. He knew already that she was pretty; one sensed a thing like that. But just how pretty, that even Babe Deveril could not decide as long as the light was no better and she hid in the shadows of her provoking hat. "And now, how may I be of service?"

Thus of the two she was the first to be given the [Pg 21]opportunity of clear observation. There were two candles stuck in their own grease on the rough table, and between them his face looking out toward her was unshadowed. A face gay and insouciant, dark and clean-cut, the face of devil-may-care youth. It struck her that there was an evidence of the man's character in the fact that, though she had caught him in the act of kissing his maid of all work, he was not in the least perturbed. She thought that it would be easy to like this man; she was not sure that she could ever trust him.

"I am Lynette Brooke," she said in a moment. "And I thought it possible that, if you cared to do so, you might answer a question for me."

"If I may be of assistance to you," he told her, cordially, watching her narrowly, "you have but to let me know."

"Thank you." He had inclined his head in acknowledgment of her introduction and now her head tipped slightly toward him. "My question has to do, naturally, with the one matter of general interest in Big Pine to-day. You see, I have heard of you; I know that you know some of the men here ... Sheriff Taggart and Mr. Gallup, for example. And ... I once had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Deveril. Small excuse for troubling you, I know, but when one is in earnest...."

"I'd give a whole lot for a good square look at you! I am no hand for names; and I haven't been able to make out your face."

"A whole lot?" It was a fair guess that she was smiling. "Well, then, it's a bargain. You give me an answer to a question!"

With a sudden gesture her two hands went up to her[Pg 22] hat. At the same moment she jumped to her feet and came three steps into his cabin. As she brought the hat down to her side and turned toward him, the candle-light streamed across her face and Babe Deveril sat back on his box and with a sudden lighting up of his eyes collected his share of the obligation by letting his admiring glance rove across her disclosed features. Pretty; yes, far and away more than pretty. He was startled by an unexpected, soft loveliness; an alluring, seductive charm of line and expression. Just now it was her mood to smile at him; and she was one of those rare girls whose smile is sheer tenderness. He marked the curl in her soft brown hair; the sparkle in her big gray eyes; the curve of the lips; in another moment the red mouth would be laughing at him. She held herself erect under his frank inspection; her chin was up; her eyes did not waver; she challenged him with her glance to look his fill and shape his judgment of her.

"I think you are mistaken on one point," he told her quickly. "I never saw you before, for I would not have forgotten."

"Through no fault of mine. You are welcome to know that I have a memory for pretty girls. And that you are absolutely the prettiest girl I ever saw."

"Thank you," she mocked him. She put her hat on again and went back to the door-step. "Nevertheless, it is true that we have met before. Of course," she amended hastily, "I am not going to claim any obligation on either side because of that. But it suggested that I should come to you now instead of taking my chances with utter strangers."

"If you care to do me a very great favor," said Deveril, "you will tell me when you think you and I met."

"Certainly. I have no desire to make a mystery of so common an occurrence. Last May you were in Carson?"

"There was a dance. You went with Mildred Darrel. When you called for her she was out on the porch. Another girl was with her and you were introduced."

"After all, I was right!" he cried triumphantly. "You were in the shadows that the vines threw all over the porch. I don't believe I even heard your name. Most positively I did not catch a glimpse of your face."

"At least I have made my explanation. And now may I ask my question?" And, when he nodded: "Are they telling the truth when they say that Mexicali Joe stole his gold from Mr. Gallup's mine?"

He had expected something like that; all along he had felt that this girl with the bright daring eyes and that eager confident carriage was in Big Pine because she, equally with himself, was concerned with the one occurrence which for the moment made the community a place of interest to such as found no lure in the humdrum.

"Of course, you know that anything I could say in answer would be but one man's opinion?"

"Well, then, I'd gamble my boots that they're lying. And I can advance no reasons whatever for my belief. But there's your question answered."

"As I thought that it would be. I was sure of it before I came here. You make me doubly sure."

He, for the moment, was more interested in her than in Mexicali Joe and his gold.

"You don't belong up here in the mountains? You're a long way from your stamping-ground, aren't you?"

"Of course. I happened to be down in Rocky Bend when the news came and I caught the first stage up."

He tried to make her out. She did not look the type of woman who followed in the wake of such news, adventuring. But then you could never tell what a woman was inside by the outer peach-and-cream softness of her, as Babe Deveril very well understood.

She appeared to be plunged deep into revery. Perhaps there was something of weariness in the droop of her shoulders; if she had come on the early stage, she might have had a hard day of it altogether....

"Yes. I was one of the first, you know. As to how long I can keep my room, I can't tell. Mr. Gallup has doubled his prices and is likely to double them again."

"He's that sort," conceded Deveril. "He plays a big game and all the time has a shrewd eye for the little bets. By the way, do you feel entirely comfortable there?"

"There's as tough a crowd there and spread all over town as I ever saw. Are you alone?"

"You don't mean to say that you, a young girl and not overused to hardship, from the look of you, are up here to mix into such a scrimmage as may be pulled off? To match your wits and your grit and your endurance against the kind of men who go hell-raising into a new gold strike?"

She tilted back her head against the door-jamb and looked up, straight into his eyes. Thus he saw her chin[Pg 25] brought forward prominently. It was delicately turned and joined, softly curving, a full feminine throat; and yet it was a chin which bespoke character and stubbornness.

"When men go rushing after gold," she said quietly, "more likely than not they go with empty pockets if not empty stomachs. There is always a chance, in a new mining-camp, for one who has a little money. A chance to stake a miner, going shares; and always, of course, the chance to stake one's own claim."

"Not much, first-hand, perhaps. But it's in the blood!... You look a very young man, Mr. Deveril, but you and I know that looks are not everything; and it is quite possible that you are old enough to have heard of Olymphe Labelle?"

"Why," he exclaimed, "I have seen her. I was only a boy; it was twenty years ago. That was down at Horseshoe; why, bless your soul, I fell head over heels in love with her! I can tell you how she dressed and how she looked. Big blue eyes; golden hair; a pink dress; a great big picture-hat, with ribbons. I was only eight or nine years old, but forget? Never!"

"My father married her down in Horseshoe! That was the first time he ever saw her and he didn't let her get away! Dick Brooke; maybe you have heard of him, too? If so you won't ask why the daughter of Olymphe Labelle and Dick Brooke has it in her veins to mingle with the first of the crowd when there's word of a new strike!"

There was scarcely a community in all Arizona or New Mexico, certainly none within the broad scope of the great southwestern plateau country, which had not in its time, a generation ago, paid tribute to the gaiety and[Pg 26] grace and beauty of Olymphe Labelle. She danced for them; she sang; she went triumphantly from one mining town or lumber-camp to another and men went mad over her. They packed the houses in which she appeared; they spent their money generously to see her, and night after night, captivated, they tossed to the stage under her pretty high-heeled feet both raw and minted gold. Olymphe was to this country what Lotta was to the camps of California in an earlier day. Then young Dick Brooke, a stalwart and hot-blooded young miner, saw her and that was the end of Olymphe's dancing career. They were married within ten days. And from this union was sprung the superb young creature now sitting upon an adventurer's door-step and looking straight up into his eyes.

"You see, it is only the thing to be expected, after all, that I should follow the gleam!"

She, like himself, was young and eager and unafraid and adventuresome; and within her pulsing arteries was that pioneer blood which, trickling down through the generations is ever prone to set recklessness seething.

There was a man coming up through the pines on horseback. In the gloom all detail was wanting. But obviously he meant to come straight on to the cabin. Deveril, seeing this intent, stepped by the girl and a couple of paces forward. The man, sitting in a strange, sideways fashion in the saddle, drew rein and peered at him.

"Offering to shake hands, to begin with. I'm Winch; Billy Winch. You and me know each other."

He leaned outward from the saddle, putting out his hand. But Deveril ignored it, saying coolly:

Billy Winch sighed, and used his hand to remove his hat and then rumple his bristly hair. Then he laughed softly. His horse, restless and fiery and well-fed, whirled, and for the first time Lynette Brooke made out the reason for that strange, lopsided attitude in the saddle; the man, a little, weazened fellow, had lost his right leg above the knee and managed a sure seat only by throwing his weight upon his left stirrup and thus maintaining his balance.

"Well," said Winch good-naturedly, "he said to start off by shaking hands. Just to show as I was friendly."

The girl sitting in the shadows smiled. Deveril, however, whose profile she could watch, appeared to have no good humor left to spend upon his caller. She marked how his voice hardened and how he bit off his words curtly.

"Well," said Winch cheerfully, "here's the message: You're to meet him in half an hour or so at the Gallup House."

For a moment Deveril was silent; then the girl heard his barely audible muttering and knew that under his breath he was roundly cursing the man who sent him a message like that. In another instant he flared out hotly, forgetful of her or ignoring her:

"You go tell your Bruce Standing that I said that he is a land hog and a thief and a damn' fool, all rolled in one; and that I'll meet him nowhere this side of hell."

"I got a picture of me going to him with a mouthful like that! On the low-down level, Deveril, he means to be friendly, I think...."

"Do your infernal thinking somewhere else," snapped Deveril angrily. "Clear out or I'll throw you out!"

"I told him most likely you'd be sassy, so he won't be disappointed, I guess. Well, I'm travelling, so you don't have to mess your place all up throwing me off!" He was still chuckling good-naturedly as he swung his horse about with a light touch of the reins. Over his shoulder he called back: "He said it was important and he'd see you at Gallup's inside the hour!" The voice was taunting; Billy Winch threw his weight into his one stirrup, and even the attitude, though made necessary through his physical handicap, was vaguely irritating, so carelessly nonchalant did it appear. His horse bolted like a shot as he gave the signal and in a moment bore him out of sight among the shadows under the pines. Babe Deveril, hands on hips, stood staring after him. Then he swung about and came back to the cabin, and the girl on his door-step, seeing his face clearly in the candle-light streaming forth, caught her breath sharply at the outward sign she glimpsed of the rage burning high and hot in his breast.

"I'm of half a mind to meet him after all and break his confounded neck!" he cried out, a passionate tremor in his voice.

All along he had intrigued her, with his handsome face and devil-may-care air and light gracefulness; she estimated coolly that if, as he had said of himself, he had a memory for pretty girls it was something more than likely that more than one pretty girl had carried in her heart the memory of him. Now, suddenly, his good looks were sinister; his gaiety was so utterly gone that it was next door to impossible to imagine that he could[Pg 29] ever be inconsequentially gay. The innate evil in the man stood up naked and ugly. And all because some man, a certain Bruce Standing, had sent a message commanding a meeting at the Gallup House.

It was not exactly the thing to do to put her question, but interest, mounting above mere curiosity, piqued her, and, certain of an answer in his present mood, she offered innocently:

Deveril glared at her and for a brief fragment of a second she was afraid of him; it was as though, by the mere mention of the name, she drew on herself something of the hatred he must have felt for this man Standing.

"You heard me read his title clear enough to his one-legged dog Winch," he told her harshly. "He is a man who came into this country with nothing a dozen years ago and who now rolls in the fat of his ill-gotten gains. He's a land hog who has robbed right and left and who has with him the devil's luck. He owns thousands of acres of land out yonder." A wide sweep of his arm indicated the endlessly rolling wilderness land, sombre ridges and ebony cañons, rising into stony barren crests here, thick timbered yonder where they slumbered under the first stars. "He operates mines; he gambles in gold and copper and lumber ... and life, curse him! And in human souls, his own with the rest. He runs half a dozen lumber-camps and has a thousand of the toughest men in the world working for him at one place and another. Men hate him for what he is, a cold-blooded highwayman. They have sent him a warning not to show his face in Big Pine, and being of the devil's spawn he sends me word to meet him at Gallup's! That's his way and his nerve and his colossal conceit. May hell take him!"

"And," suggested the girl, watchful of him as she ventured to probe at his emotions, "on top of all of this ... your cousin?"

"No!" He shouted the word at her angrily. "No cousin, thank God. Not so closely related as that. A kinsman of a sort, yes; but if you go back far enough to dig out the roots of things, we are all kinsmen since Adam. I claim no relationship with Bruce Standing."

"I should like to meet this wicked kinsman of yours," she said, as though thoughtful and in earnest.

"And," she added, "warned against coming into Big Pine, he will still come openly?"

"At least," he grunted back at her, "there is one thing I have never denied him; he's no coward. No Gallup was ever conceived who can tell him where to head in and get away with it. Of course he will come and in the wide open and on the run."

"I wish you all success in your dealings with your bold, bad kinsman. And I do thank you for your frank answer to my question. And now ... good night."

They heard the clippety-clop of horses' hoofs, running. Not one horse this time, but three, bearing their riders like so many indistinguishable dark blurs through the night, sweeping on to the cabin. A man, one of the riders, was laughing, and Lynette Brooke knew that already here was Billy Winch returning. Babe Deveril, too, must have recognized the voice, for he jerked his head up and stiffened where he stood, oblivious of the fact that she had broken off with an objecting "but," conscious only of a hated man's impertinence.

Those three were expert riders, men who lived in the saddle. They and their horses seemed moulded [Pg 31]centaurs for certainty and the grace of the habitual horseman. They came on at such a break-neck speed and so close that the girl whipped back, thinking that they would run her and her companion down. Then, with that quick light pluck at the reins, they brought their horses down from a mad run to a trembling standstill.

That was Billy Winch, lopsided and cock-sure in the saddle, the chosen messenger of his impudent, reckless chief.

Winch flung out his arm. In the dark they could have made nothing of the gesture had it not been for the sudden sibilant hiss of the rope, swung by an iron wrist, cutting through the air. The noose fell with absolute exactness; Winch was not ten steps away and the rope thrown so unerringly settled about Babe Deveril's shoulders and with a quick jerk grew so tight that it cut into the flesh. On the instant the two men with Winch left their saddles and struck earth, both on the run forward. And, while Lynette Brooke thought with horror to see sudden death dealt, they threw themselves upon the man already fighting against the imprisonment of thirty feet of hemp.

She had never seen men battle as now these three battled while Billy Winch sitting back in his saddle with his rope drawn tight, watched and laughed and cried out in broken phrases expressing his satisfaction with the situation. Babe Deveril, roped as he was, gave her such proof of prowess as to make her admiration for the physical perfection of him leap high. She, too, cried out brokenly; she wanted to see him win against these unfair odds. But the men clung on and Billy Winch sat laughing and tautening his rope; blows and curses and throaty growls, the whole thing lasted not half a[Pg 32] minute. Babe Deveril was down, mastered by three men.

"Again? Robbery?" That was Winch's untroubled voice, always gay. "When was the other time, pardner?"

"Now," said Winch coolly, loosening his rope an inch or two but still on guard, "it's only what I said before: You are to meet him at the Gallup House, and I'm responsible for your coming. So we're taking you."

Deveril lay very still, two brawny men upon him. When he made no immediate reply Winch waited patiently and knew, as the girl knew, that a man must be given a moment in such circumstances to collect his wits. Deveril's panting gradually gave over to more quiet breathing; he lay flat on his back and saw the two heads bending over his own and, beyond them, the stars. He started once to speak, but clamped his lips tight. Still, in high tolerant patience, Billy Winch waited upon him while Lynette Brooke, trembling from head to foot with excitement, waited in burning impatience.

She could scarcely recognize Deveril's voice; at first she thought that it was one of the other men speaking.

"I guess," Deveril went on quietly, "that the three of you, jumping me like that, regular Standing sneak-style, can lead me down to Gallup's. Or, if you care to let me up, I'll save you the trouble, and will go without your help."

The two men holding him down, got to their feet and went back to their horses as if, their bit of work done, they had lost all interest, as perhaps they had. Deveril got to his feet and cast the rope off. Winch drew it in, coiled it, and tied it at his saddle strings.

"Most any time now," he said casually. "He's on his way and due in a dozen minutes. All you got to do is listen for him!"

Deveril stood, both arms stiffening at his sides, his head lifted high, looking straight at Winch.

"Some fine day," he said with low-toned quiet anger, "I'll get you or I'll get him. And it will be a great day!"

The three riders, all seated by now, sped away, their horses kicking up the fine dust fragrant with fallen pine-needles. Deveril remained, rigid and angry, looking after them.

"You don't know," he said heavily, as the pounding hoof beats dwindled and the scurrying blurs of figures faded, "you don't know and can't guess...."

And when he remained where he was, stiff, hands clinched at his sides and face lifted to the stars, she thought that for an instant it was given her to glimpse for the first time in her life something of the realities working in a man's very soul. Almost she could see the hot tears in his angry eyes.

She was very deeply moved. Clearly here was no concern of hers; these men, all of them including Deveril, were strangers to her and their loves and hates had nothing to do with Lynette Brooke. But none the less that current of men's lives ran so strong and swift that[Pg 34] she felt as though she were being actually and physically drawn into it. Nor, though her eyes did not once leave the rigid figure of Deveril, did her thoughts concern themselves exclusively with him. She felt a sudden strange and burning interest in that other man whom she had never seen but of whose wild nature she had heard. She resented the work of Bruce Standing, done for him by his emissaries; she felt that she, no less than Babe Deveril, could hate a man like that. And yet already there had sprung up within her a strong desire to see him for herself.

"How can it be," she wondered, "that if he is the lawbreaker you call him, thief and worse, men allow him to go on his way?"

"He's a man for you to look into, girl with the daring eyes! A cruel, merciless devil if half the tales are true and, to top off his madness, a man who has not hate but an abiding contempt for all your gentle sex. But you wonder why men let him roam free? In the first place, haven't I told you that he rolls in wealth? That's one thing. Another is his cursed craft. You wonder why I say in one breath that he stole three thousand dollars from me and then merely growl that he remains outside jail?"

"Here you go, then: Half a dozen years ago I held that Bruce Standing and I were friends. He sent me word to come up here into his wilderness; I was to bring whatever money I could raise and there was the chance to double it. I came. When I met him, twenty miles off over yonder in a cabin where he lived like a solitary old bear, we talked things out. With all of his big ventures he was on the edge of bankruptcy. He[Pg 35] was grabbing money in both hands from any source and every source. He wanted my three thousand to throw in with the rest, the damned selfish hog that he was and is. I laughed at him and you could have heard him growl a mile. We slept that night in his cabin. In the middle of the night in the pitch black dark, I felt a man on top of me in my bunk, his hands at my throat. I got a tap over the head with something; when I woke up my money belt was gone and it was morning and there was Bruce Standing, singing and grinning and getting breakfast and asking me if I had had bad dreams."

"The law? When he wouldn't either admit or deny? When he just laughed and said, 'Where in this country, my country, will you get a jury to convict me?' And where, by the same token, was any money left in my pockets to do legal battle with a man intrenched as he is in his old mountains?"

"I tell you he was hanging on the rim of nowhere, broke. And he used my three thousand and God knows what other stolen funds, and now again he is the one power across a hundred miles up here!"

There was one other thing she meant to ask. Billy Winch had said just now that Standing was on his way; that all they had to do was listen for him. She supposed that he had meant the clatter of a running horse's hoofs; and yet something in Winch's tone implied something else. No doubt Deveril understood; she was parting her lips to ask when, across the fields of the silent night, Bruce Standing himself answered her. A sudden thrill shot through her blood.

As she was to learn later, there were many wonderful things about Bruce Standing. Among them were his[Pg 36] reckless impudence and his glorious voice. Now, before ever she saw the man, she heard him singing, somewhere far out, under the stars, alone with his wilderness, sending far ahead of him into Big Pine the word of his coming. A coming which was in defiance of the order which had gone forth and which, with his superb assurance, he was ignoring. It was a voice as sweet and clear and true, for the high notes and the low notes alike, as a silver trumpet. She stopped breathing to listen. She felt her heart leap and quicken; a tingling quivered along her nerves. Never had she heard singing like that, wild, free, a voice to haunt and linger echoing in the memory.

And then, all of a sudden, she was set shivering. For the voice had done with the song and, at the end, with a great unexpected upgathering of sound was poured forth into a long-drawn-out call that was like nothing on earth save the howling of a wolf. The night call throbbed and billowed across the disturbed silences and all of a sudden was gone and the night was again hushed and still.

"There you have one of the two good reasons why men call him Timber-Wolf," said Deveril with a grunt.

She scarcely heard. Somewhere, deep down within her, that golden outpouring, that rush of fierceness at the end, echoed and lived on.

CHAPTER IV

Bruce Standing—Timber-Wolf, as he exulted in being called—was a man of few friends and many enemies. In and about Big Pine men disliked him wholeheartedly; many hated him so that they would have been glad to know that he was dead. And this was chiefly because he jeered at them and overrode them; because at every opportunity, going out of his way to make opportunity more often than not, he thrust them aside and trod his unobstructed path through and over them, setting his heel upon many; because he spat upon their laws and made his own. And he, in his turn, held them in high contempt simply because always they stood aside for him. Those few who did not hate him were the handful of hard men whom, in the working out of his wide, overweening ambitions, he had drawn to him like so many feudal henchmen; they were, in their lesser degrees, of his stamp; they belonged in their hearts to an older day and a wider frontier; there were scores taking his pay whose blood ran hot and lawless.

So to-night he came riding down the winding trail from his mountains, singing. Thus he shot his spirit across the miles ahead of him, to invade Big Pine before his coming, to taunt before he brought his hard eyes to mock at them. He had received his word and his warning, and made his retort in the one way possible to him.

The road in front of the Gallup House, leading on to the pines and the aloof jail where Mexicali Joe glared out, was thronged. Half a dozen bonfires had been started, and in the ruddy light men stirred restlessly.[Pg 38] Their talk was becoming purposeful; they gathered in knots about men who were showing impatient signs of initiative; they had murmured and were looking this way and that, over their shoulders, shifting their feet as they gave increasingly free expression to their determination. They were working themselves up to the pitch of defiance of the law, as represented by Sheriff Jim Taggart; as yet no man cared to be first and still they looked frequently at the deputy sheriff with the rifle across his arm, and meant to set Mexicali Joe free. A man broke away from one of these groups and ran back to the Gallup House, to carry warning to Taggart.

It was at this moment that Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf, rode into town. He rode alone, on a powerful red-bay gelding, silent now, a great-bulked man sitting straight in the saddle. One saw nothing of his face under the wide black hat.

He had no word of greeting for any man of them; after his characteristic coldly insolent way, he appeared to ignore them utterly. On the instant he, rather than Mexicali Joe, became the central object of interest. Most knew who he was and what he stood for, and wherein his visit among them was to be regarded as worthy of interest; those who did not know, marked the hush which greeted him, and in lowered voices demanded the explanation which, in voices equally low, was briefly given. They looked for him to draw rein at Gallup's and swing down and go in. But, knowing that you could never be sure of him, they watched to see.

He disappointed them. That, in itself, was like him. No doubt he got his bit of glee out of knowing that, where they had looked to him for one thing, he had given them another. He rode on by Gallup's without turning his head. Where a tree grew at the [Pg 39]road-crossing he dismounted, tying his horse. They saw that his rifle was in its scabbard, slung to the saddle; he left it where it was, and went forward on foot. Bigger than ever he loomed among them, appearing to walk leisurely, yet taking the long, measured strides which carried him along swiftly. They let him go on his way, their eyes following him with growing interest, some of the more curious of the crowd stringing along in his wake. And all this time no man had given him the time of day, and he had not opened his lips.

Meanwhile they saw him turn his head this way and that, as though he sought something. Before he had gone fifty paces he found what he wanted. A man was piling wood on his fire; the axe which he had used a moment ago lay on the ground, glinting in the firelight. Bruce Standing stooped and caught it up and went on—straight toward the jail. A sudden shout from many voices burst out; men came running to see, now that they understood what he meant to do. And those about the jail, when they saw, drew back to right and left hurriedly, leaving only the deputy with the rifle across his arm to block the way.

Now, the axe could mean only one thing in the world, and the deputy saw it, and saw who it was that carried it and called out a sharp, throaty warning. Standing came on, his stride quickened. He was not a dozen steps away, carrying his axe lightly in his right hand. The deputy jerked his rifle up, the butt to his shoulder, shouting:

The man fired, but he was not quick enough. At that distance, had his finger touched the hair-trigger the tenth of a second sooner, he could not have failed to kill. But he was not the man, even though armed, to dictate to Timber-Wolf. For Standing made instant answer to[Pg 40] that command, "Stop!" and hurled his only weapon, a heavy wood-cutter's axe, straight into the deputy's face. The bullet went wild; the man who had fired it, through the rarest chance left alive, went down in a heap, unconscious before he struck ground. For, though the axe blade had very narrowly missed his face, the hard hickory handle had taken him full across the eyebrows and came near being the death of him. His rifle clattered against the rock wall of the jail.

Bruce Standing, who had paused but the briefest moment, came on and stepped over the fallen man, and caught up his axe again. He stooped long enough to make out that the deputy's head was not split open; then he swung up his axe, high above his head, and brought it crashing down against the thick oak padlocked door. The sound of the stroke echoed and the echoes were lost in the striking of the second blow. And, when for the third time the axe rose and fell, flashing in the light of the fires, the door fell.

Standing's deep, full voice rumbled in a sort of rich, placid content. And out like a rabbit, darted Mexicali Joe, looking pinched and starved and frightened.

"The crowd will be after you," said Standing. "And I'm not going to worry about what happens to you after this."

He was turning away when Joe caught his sleeve, and stood on his tiptoes and began a rapid, excited whispering. Standing hesitated, then laughed and shook the man off.

Joe, with never another look behind him, turned and ran, disappearing about the corner of the jail, sending[Pg 41] back an account of himself in the sound of his racing footfalls among the pines.

Once again came a great shouting from the crowd in the road; they had seen, and now that they had their hearts' desire in having Mexicali Joe free, they saw themselves losing all hope of coming at his secret because they were losing him. Their brief interest in Bruce Standing was dead for the present; Joe ran like a scared cat, and they, like so many yelping dogs, set after him. And Timber-Wolf, watching, standing where he was with his big hands on his hips, roared with laughter.

Babe Deveril and the girl, Lynette Brooke, had seen much of all this. They were at the time on their way to the Gallup House, she to her room and he to his meeting with his lawless kinsman. Thus it happened that Deveril's first sight of Timber-Wolf in half a dozen years, and Lynette's first sight of him in all her life, was at a moment when he was engaged in an episode of the type which made him stand apart as the man he was.

"Taggart ought to kill him for that," grunted Deveril. "And he probably will before the night is over."

The girl shivered as she had done just now when she saw a rifle raised and an axe flung. And yet within her, being woman, there was the exultation which would not stay down, and the thought: "He is magnificent.... A brute, maybe, but surely magnificent!" And she knew that she would never be content until she had seen his face and looked into his eyes. Already, being woman, she was concerned with his eyes; whether they would be large or small, set wide apart or close together. She wanted him to be the lion, not the wild boar.

The remainder of the night's happenings was to come, because of the simple arrangement of rooms at the[Pg 42] Gallup House, within the experience of both Deveril and Lynette. They saw Bruce Standing go down the road and followed him. He did not once look back. When he came to his horse, he stopped only long enough to take down his rifle. Plainly now he meant to go direct to the Gallup House. All the while men were streaming by him, hurrying to join in the chase after the escaping Mexicali Joe. So, by the time he came to Gallup's door, there were not over a score of men remaining in the house.

The Gallup House was a long, squat building of two low stories, its three main rooms on the ground floor facing the road. These were the dining-room; a room given over to Gallup's office, and sufficient space for a dozen chairs and a big sheet-iron stove—a sort of living-room for Gallup's guests, when he had any; and, finally, a room which had in older times been the barroom, and which, despite changing conditions, remained in practice a barroom. At this hour both dining-room and sitting-room were deserted, and the score or so of men, Gallup and Taggart among them, were in the bar. Here were round tables, for it was a big room, for games of cards or dice.

Deveril and the girl parted at the centre door through which she entered direct into the general living-room. They saw Bruce Standing go to the last of the three doors and step in unhesitantly, still carrying his rifle lightly. Deveril followed him, and saw the looks on the faces of Taggart and Gallup and some of their following.

"I stepped in to buy the drinks for the crowd," Timber-Wolf said quietly, all the while his eyes flashing back and forth. "Gents, the treats are on me."

Jim Taggart, his hands on his hips, was eying him like a hawk, and in Taggart's face was a dull, hot flush.[Pg 43] Gallup, however, standing close at Taggart's side, was the first to speak. He cried out angrily:

"About twenty men here," he said, in the same slow, steady voice. "As it's a night of celebration, we'll make it a dollar a drink. That's twenty bucks, easy money, Young Gallup," he wound up with a sneer in his voice. For all men knew Gallup's cupidity, which clutched at small as well as large amounts.

"So? Well, twenty dollars isn't much, after all, is it? Gents, we drink to-night and damn the cost! Two bones for every glass of whiskey; that's forty of the iron men, Gallup. Call Ricky with the bottles."

A couple of men laughed at that. Gallup, however, seeing himself baited, roared out:

"Low bid loses, high bid wins," said Standing. Now he opened his wallet and disclosed a tight pad of bills. "Three dollars for each and every glass of imitation hootch! God, what a pirate you are, Gallup! Now, trot it out."

"Sixty dollars, clean-cut velvet, Gal," said a man at his elbow, willing to drink with the devil so the drink came paid for.

"And at last Young Gallup hesitates, his soul tempted by a row of dirty pennies," gibed Standing. "Look, men, and you'll see that pale-yellow soul of his snared clean out of his stingy hide. Look, Gallup! And if[Pg 44] you can say no this time you have established a new record for yourself!"

Slowly, while they watched him, he counted off ten ten-dollar bank-notes, and, with a careless gesture, tossed them to a table.

"That's for one round of your rotten bootleg liquor," he said contemptuously. "Now, step out, Gallup, and show them the sort of money-grabbing porker you are. You know you haven't got the guts to save your own besmirched pride at the price of a hundred dollars."

Gallup would have sold out for far less, but Timber-Wolf was not the man to haggle over what he termed dirty pennies. He shrugged his heavy shoulders and caught up the money, counting it carefully, stuffing it into his pocket and growling:

"You're not wanted here, Standing; but any time you're fool enough to pay a hundred dollars for the privilege, I'll take the rules down for a round of drinks! Hey, Ricky!"

"I come when I please and where I please, and you know it, Young Gallup! And if you think you are the man to throw me out, hop to it and don't let a little hundred dollars hold you back! Better than that; if you'll tie into me right now and chuck me out of doors, getting all your hangdogs that will take a chance with you to help you, you've got my word that I'll add a second hundred as your bonus! Or a thousand, by heaven! And right now you'll toe the scratch or back down and shut your mouth."

Gallup had never before in his life been faced down like that. And with so many men looking on! Yet in his heart, though no man had ever called him a coward, he was afraid of Timber-Wolf; mortally afraid. There was the look of death itself in the eyes flashing into his[Pg 45] own. He sought to laugh the thing off, saying, with what semblance of fine scorn he could master:

"I am no liar," said Standing wrathfully. "And no man in all Arizona and New Mexico ever called me liar. Do you, Young Gallup?"

"Bruce!" called Sheriff Taggart sharply, for the first time speaking a word. "What's the sense of trying to start a row? Drop all this foolery and let me have a word with you."

"That's fair enough," agreed Standing. "I've no desire to break Gallup's neck so long as he leaves me alone. But make it snappy, as I have another engagement."

"I want to talk with you privately, Bruce." Taggart obviously was angry, and yet it was equally clear that when it came to dealing with the Timber-Wolf, Jim Taggart meant to hold himself well in hand.

"I won't stand for corner-whisperings," Standing told him sternly. "If it happens you've got anything for my set of ears, they're listening. But it's right now or never."

Taggart's black and ominous scowl deepened, and he shuffled his feet back and forth, and in the end stamped them in his anger. But still he held the curb line upon himself.

"You always was a strong-headed man, Bruce, that would have things his way. So be it. And I guess, being a man myself that stands on his own two legs, I can say it all in one mouthful: You and me has always been friends. Are we that yet?"

Now for the first time Lynette Brooke, looking in from the adjoining room through a door just ajar, saw Timber-Wolf clearly, his face under his big hat unhidden as he turned a little in order to look straight at[Pg 46] Taggart. He did not see her, and she looked her fill at him; he gave her a start of surprise, and after that start came a surge of admiration. He was a young, blond giant of a man, eyes very blue and laughing and innocent! And wide-spaced! A man no older than Babe Deveril, one who bore himself like some old buccaneer or Norse Viking, before men who would have given much for the courage and the power to fly at his bared white throat and drag the life out of him; a man who overflowed with his superabundant vital energy, and who stamped his own character, through sheer force of unbroken will, upon others about him; a man who believed in himself and who was at once implacable and gay. Heartless he looked, and yet full of the dancing joy of life. She felt herself on the instant both strongly drawn to him and frightened; the mad vision presented itself to her of herself in his mighty arms. And the odd tremor which shook her body, as she whipped back with flaming face, was compounded of thrill and shiver. He confused her; at once she was amazed that he could be like this and convinced that the owner of that glorious voice which she had heard pulsing out across the fields of night could be no jot different.... While she drew back to a dim corner of the room, she managed not to lose sight of him.

His clear blue eyes kept on laughing; his was that silent laughter which arises from the soul, and which mocked and insulted and was like the cold mirth of Satan. And yet, in some vague way which she was all at loss to plumb, and which troubled her strangely, Lynette Brooke knew that this corsair of a man was laughing because there was cold anger in his heart and because, for some mysterious reason of his own, he was set on holding his anger hidden. It troubled her so that, within herself, she cried out passionately against[Pg 47] knowing through leaping instinct anything of what might be going on within the dark caverns of the Timber-Wolf's mind and heart. She wanted him and herself to be as far apart as north and south; she meant them to be. And all the while that compelling interest which he awoke within her tugged mightily and she yielded to it in that, keeping out of his sight, she lost nothing of the play of expressions upon his face.

As yet she knew nothing of that one thing which Bruce Standing, forthright exponent of untrammelled manhood, held to be his greatest weakness; the one and only thing of which he was bitterly ashamed. A trifle, it amounted to; and a trifle he would have accounted it in any other strong man. Yet within his hard breast it awoke the intensest feeling of shame. And it was a thing which invariably sprang forth upon him and humiliated him whenever once he let his passions fly. A laughable thing, and yet one that put tears into his bright blue eyes. But, on guard against it, he strove to curb his anger.

Of all this and the thing itself she knew nothing. But she felt and she knew that the Timber-Wolf, laughing into Jim Taggart's gloomy face, was fighting down his own anger, as a man may fight wild beasts. She awaited, scarcely breathing, the answer he would make to that question from Taggart: "Are we still friends?"

That was man talk! Straight, simple words—words that left little enough to be said. But Taggart, though his face grew hotter and his eyes seemed burning in their sockets, demanded further:

"And why not, Bruce Standing? You and me have been pardners. You know and I know and a thousand men know what sort of a bond and an understanding has[Pg 48] always, for more than a dozen years, been between us. And now, if that is busted and wiped out, I ask you, as man to man: 'Why?'"

"And as man to man," cried Timber-Wolf, his eyes brightening, "I'll answer you, Jim Taggart. When I knew you for a man who played his game he-man style and stood up and fought hard and took his chances, I was for you! And I went out and shaped things up for you and made you sheriff. And, when men got to know you and wanted no more of you as master of law here in the mountains, I lifted you over their heads and made you sheriff again and again. And now that you are done for and are on your last legs, I would have done the same thing once more. But when you got panicky, thinking that this was your last term of office, and began to feather your dirty nest by running with the breed of this Young Gallup and his crowd, and when I found the sort of contemptible, hide-in-the-brush jobs you were pulling off, I got a bellyful of you and your new kind of ways. And you double-crossed me, thinking I wouldn't know! And on top of everything else, running neck and neck with Gallup, you threw Mexicali Joe into jail ... knowing that Joe, puny blackbird as he is, had been a friend of mine. For that I've done two things, Jim Taggart: I've smashed your damned jail door off its hinges and I've thrown you over. And there, until I'm sick of talk about it, you've got your answer!"

Taggart, too, and with his own ulterior reasons, kept his head cool. He said ponderously:

"You broke the law, Bruce, when you let Joe go. For that I could run you in. But all Joe done was steal a pocketful of nuggets, and we got them back. And there's bigger things than that, anyway. You and me has been friends and so I'll go slow. But we got to have[Pg 49] another talk. You've got me down wrong, old-timer."

Never had Lynette Brooke seen such utter contempt as that which now filled Bruce Standing's eyes. But he made no answer. At this moment the man Ricky came in with a gallon earthen jug and began to pour out the glasses set upon a table. Here was the Timber-Wolf's hundred-dollar treat. Standing himself waved it aside and:

"I drink no poison in this house," he said briefly. And as he spoke he saw for the first time Babe Deveril standing just inside the door, not two steps behind him.

"By the Lord, Babe, I'm glad to see you! Shake!" he shouted, thrusting out his big hand.

"You and I, Bruce Standing," he said in that clear, insolent voice of his, "have gone a long way beyond the point of shaking hands."

"I have come, according to promise, for a word with you. Suppose we make it snappy."

"The same little Baby Devil!" Standing jeered at him, making Deveril stiffen with that look of his eyes. "I'll give you a new dance tune before I'm through with you. Come ahead!"—and with a suddenness which took Lynette Brooke by surprise he struck back the door leading to the room where she was and led the way in, Deveril at his heels.

But, though there were three or four coal-oil lamps burning in the room which he had just quitted, there was but one here where she was. And because its chimney was smoky and the flame burned crookedly and she was in[Pg 50] a dim corner, he could make nothing of the look of her. Had she remained perfectly still he would scarcely have noted her presence. But now she was suddenly impatient to be gone, and went hurrying to a door which led into a hallway, the hallway in turn leading to her room at the back of the house.

"A woman," growled Timber-Wolf disgustedly, getting only a glimpse of a hastily departing figure. "It begins to look as though a man couldn't pick him a spot in the wilderness that the female didn't crowd in."

Lynette heard, and knew with a flash of resentment that he did not care whether she had heard or not, and that with the last word he would be turning to Deveril and forgetting that he had seen her. She went slowly down the hall, three or four paces only. There she paused and lingered; it was no such pale incentive as curiosity which held her now, but a peculiar fascination. Two men like those two, by far the strongest-willed and most dynamic men she had ever known, with the business which lay between them, made her ignore and give no thought to the convention of shut ears against the talk of others. So she stood here in the dim hallway, poised for instant flight if need be to her own door, a couple of yards farther on.

Timber-Wolf's mood softened and the old bright laughter welled up in his dancing blue eyes.

"I pass it to you, Kid," he chuckled. "You've grown a man since last we met. We'll not forget, either one of us ... will we?... that night in my cabin?"

"I'll not forget," returned Deveril coolly. "And some day I'll square the count."

"You'll square the count?" The keen eyes twinkled like bits of deep-blue glass on a frosty morning. "I was under the impression that always you have held that I[Pg 51] was the man to square things. Accusing me, as you did, of so wicked a deed!"

"It was a treacherous thing at best," muttered Deveril, his own eyes bleak with that bitter hatred which never slept. "I didn't know then that you were, among other things, a damned thief."

Timber-Wolf's sudden laughter boomed out joyously, and he smote his thigh so that the sound was sharp and loud, like a gunshot.

"But you knew that always and always and once again always I take what I want! I asked you for the money, and I made you a fair proposition: I would guarantee that you doubled your dinky three thousand, and I'd see you had interest on top of it. And you hadn't the nerve to chip in...."

"And so ... I went and took it! And I took from other quarters the same way. What I wanted I took. And when they all said I was busted in two, like a rotten stick, I fooled 'em, and laughed at the whole crowd. And now I'm whole again—and I've got what I want. That's me, Baby Devil! A man who goes his way and blazes his trail wide. A man you can't stop!"

And still, in the rarest of high good humor, Timber-Wolf laughed, and his rich, deep voice went rumbling through the house.

"Let's chop out the Sunday-school stuff, Kid!" cried Standing impatiently. "I don't need your lecturings. Maybe I'm not what your puling moralists call a good man, and maybe I'm not 'clean-hearted and pure' and all that drivel. But, by God, I'm a man who's got his[Pg 52] own code and who sticks to it, blow high, blow low! A code that, if more men followed it, would give us a world with more men in it and fewer mollycoddle pups!"

"It would appear," sneered Deveril, "that you remain well contented with yourself!"

"Like the rest of humanity—he, she, and it!" said Timber-Wolf equably. "And so much for friendly chatter. Now a word whispered in your pretty ear, since the Lord knoweth how many busybodies are straining their own ears to listen-in on us."

Lynette, in the hallway, stiffened and felt her face grow hot. But, with a strange new-born stubbornness, she remained where she was.

Timber-Wolf came a step closer to Deveril, and, lowering his voice so that Lynette lost the words, he muttered:

"I am under obligations to you, my dear kinsman, and since there is a tough crowd in town, any man of whom would whack you over the head for a handful of silver, I am keeping this between us." He took his wallet from his pocket the second time, and drew from it several bank-notes. These he proffered to Deveril, his eyes still bright with his cold mirth.

"Count it and stick it in your jeans," he said softly. "There's your three thousand. With it is another three thousand, the double of the bet which I promised you. And with that is another two thousand, which is a gain of ten per cent for you for six years, all rough figuring. In all eight thousand in coin of the realm ... and I'm much obliged," he ended mockingly, "for your generous loan!"

Babe Deveril, taken off his feet by the unexpectedness of this, stared at the bank-notes in the great hard palm, and from them to the grinning face. And slowly, from a conflicting tumult of emotions, in which, strangely[Pg 53] enough, anger surged highest, Deveril's face went violently red.

"Damn you and your eternal posings!" Lynette caught those words, clear and high. But she missed the eloquence of the shrug into which Timber-Wolf's shoulders lifted.

"It's up to you, Kid," said Standing, and still he kept his voice low and quiet. The money lay in his outstretched palm. "The minute I make my offer I consider my obligation fulfilled. If you are too proud to take it ... well, then, the devil take you for a fool, and I'll use the money elsewhere."

"My three thousand, I take," he said, "because it is mine. And the two thousand with it, judging that fair interest, considering the risks my money took. As for the rest—" he whipped back, and his voice, because of the emotions near choking him, was little more than a harsh whisper—"you can keep it and go to hell with it! I want none of your cursed charity!"

"By thunder, Baby Devil, you've the makings of a man in you!" he exclaimed. "You and I could be friends!"

"I didn't say we would!" And Bruce Standing glared at him angrily. "I only said we could. There's a difference there, Kid. I could eat tripe, but I'm damned if I ever will!"

As the two men eyed each other, it was impossible to conceive of any earthly happening bringing them within the warm enclosure of man's friendship.

But there was money in sight, and money in the hands[Pg 54] of Timber-Wolf was habitually offered to fate as free money. And always, in the heart of Babe Deveril, when there was money in his pocket and money in sight, there was the impulse to hazard, to win or lose, and know the wild moment of a gambler's pleasure. And so he said swiftly:

"Yes?" And again the heavy eyebrows were lifted as Timber-Wolf's interest was snared.

"If it's mine, it comes to me. If it's yours, you keep it and take three thousand from me to boot. I'll flip a coin with you!"

"Baby Devil!" laughed Standing softly. "Oh, Baby Devil, if your mamma could only see you now!"

Lynette Brooke could catch only enough of all this to set her wondering. The two men were agreeing upon something, and all the while jeering at each other, and, though they checked their words and subdued their voices, anger was directing whatever they did or meant to do.

Both men were eager and tense. For both made of life a game of hazard. With Babe Deveril three thousand dollars, to be won or lost in the flicker of an eyelid, was a large sum of money; to Bruce Standing, a man of millions, it was no great thing. Yet neither of them was more tense and eager than the other. The game was the thing.

Automatically, perhaps subconsciously intending to have a free hand, since his rifle was still held in his left, Bruce Standing stuffed his spurned bank-notes into his[Pg 55] pocket. But it was Deveril who, having conceived the idea, was first to produce a coin; a silver dollar, and mate to those other silver dollars which he had presented to the girl, Maria.

"Heads or tails, Standing?" he demanded, holding the coin ready to toss ceilingward.

"Throw it," said Timber-Wolf, with his characteristic grin, "and I name it while it's in the air. For I don't know what sleight-of-hand you may have acquired these later years, and I don't trust you, my sweet kinsman! And shoot fast, as some one's coming."

For both had heard the rattle of hoofs in the road outside, as some horseman came racing up to the door.

The silver dollar, with such zest had it been pitched upward, struck the ceiling and dropped to the floor, rolling. It rolled half across the room, both men springing after it, stooping to watch and know how fate decided matters between them. And in the end there was no decision at all. For the coin rolled half-way into a crack between the boards and stood thus, on edge, neither heads nor tails.

"Flip her again," growled Bruce Standing, deep in his throat. "And step lively!"

Already the horse's hoofs, as its rider plucked at the reins, were sliding outside. Deveril caught up the coin and tossed it again. And this time, true to his word, and not trusting the other, Bruce Standing called before the silver dollar struck the floor:

And as the silver dollar struck and rolled and stopped, and at last lay flat, and the two stooped over it so close[Pg 56] that almost the black hair of one and the reddish hair of the other brushed, they saw that it was heads. And that Timber-Wolf, repudiating his motto, "Always heads!" had lost three thousand dollars. And at the instant their intruder burst in upon them from the road.

Here, after his own strange fashion, came Billy Winch, Timber-Wolf's one-legged retainer. An able-bodied man and agile had been Billy Winch all of his hard life until, after a horse had fallen on him, the doctor had cut his leg off above the knee. "You'll go on crutches the rest of your life," they told him that day. And Billy Winch, weak and pale and sick and haggard-eyed, muttered at them: "You're a pack of damn liars! I'll cut my throat before I'll be a crutch-man." And he had kept his oath. Seldom did he stir save on the back of his horse. And when needs must that he go horseless some few steps, he went "like a man, one-leg style, hopping!" Now, hopping on his one foot so that, with his pinched, weazened face and small bright eyes, he resembled some uncouth bird, he bounced into the room.

"I won't clear out! This is the real thing. Listen: A man, and it was a man paid by Young Gallup, has just went down the road with a double-barrel shotgun, and the dirty skunk has shot your horse, good old Sunlight ... dead!" By now Billy Winch was whimpering; tears, whether of rage or grief, filled his bright eyes and streamed down his face. And all the while, to maintain his balance, he was hopping unsteadily about, his outflung hand groping for the wall.

And now at last Timber-Wolf's anger, a devastating, all-engulfing rage which mastered him utterly, was unleashed. And with its release came inevitably that[Pg 57] one condition of which he was so terribly ashamed. He cried out aloud, in a great, roaring voice ... and in the fierce grip of his wrath his utterance was so affected that his speech came enunciated in the most incongruous of fashions. For it was Timber-Wolf's burning mortification that he, the strongest man of these mountains, when in the clutch of his mightiest passions ... lisped like an affected school-girl!

"Thunlight dead!" he stormed. "You thay that to me? Yeth? Then, by God, juth ath thure as I live, I'll...."

He cut himself short; his face, instantly red with rage, grew redder with shame. He snapped his great jaws shut, and across the room Deveril heard the grinding of his teeth. He swerved about, charging toward the door, which gave entrance to the room where Gallup was.

But a far more critical moment than Timber-Wolf knew was ticking in the clock of his life. In the hall stood the girl, Lynette. She had heard all of these words of Billy Winch, and she had heard Bruce Standing's bellowed rejoinder. And she, already taut-nerved and keyed up, what with fatigue and a strenuous night, was so struck by the absurdity of a strong man lisping his passionate utterance, that she broke out into uncontrollable laughter. And when Lynette Brooke's laughter caught her unawares, it rang out as clearly as the chiming of silver bells. Now, with nerves quivering, she was almost hysterical....

Timber-Wolf came to as dead a halt as though it had been a bullet instead of the mockery of a girl's laughter which cut into his heart. For only mockery he made of it, he who upon this one point, as upon no other, was so sensitive. And to have a human female laugh at him!

His rage threatened to choke him. But now, even[Pg 58] as he had forgotten his lost bet with Babe Deveril, so did he forget a dead horse and Young Gallup. The entire violence of his anger was deflected, turned upon a woman who had eavesdropped upon his ignominy and then assailed him with the mockery of her mirth. He who held all womankind in such high scorn, to be now a woman's laughing-stock! He, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf! He snatched at the hall door, and under his attack one of the ancient hinges broke, and the door, flung back, leaned crazily against the wall. And all the while, though he kept his teeth so hard set that his jaws bulged with the strain, he was muttering curses in his throat. He burst into the dim hallway, his brain on fire.

She heard him coming. More than that, and before, it seemed to her that her instinct told her that he would come, bearing down upon her like a hurricane, in such violence as would stamp her into the earth. She had not meant to laugh at him; she did not want to laugh. And yet now all that she could do was clap her hands over her mouth and run before him as a blown leaf races before the storm. She sped down the hall, plunged into her room, slammed the door after her.

... And in the hallway she heard the pounding of his heavy boots. Already he was at her door. Before she could shoot the bolt, he had gripped the knob. When he flung his weight against the panel, it flew back, and under the impact she was thrown backward, and would have fallen had it not been that she brought up against her bed. Here she half fell, but was erect before he had stormed across the threshold.

Why had she run from him? She was not afraid of him and she was not afraid of anything on earth. Or, at least, making a sort of religion out of it, that was the[Pg 59] thing which she had always told herself. Just at hand, on the little table by the open window, was her revolver. And she could shoot and shoot true to the mark. She had told Babe Deveril that she could take care of herself. She stood, rigid and defiant, and in her heart unafraid.

On a bracketed shelf over her bed was a kerosene lamp which she had left burning when she had gone out. She could see the working of his lips. And he saw her.

Now those who knew Timber-Wolf best knew this about him—that he had no use for womankind; that he held all of the female of the human race to be weaklings and worse, leeches upon the strength of man, mere outwardly glossed tricks of a scheming nature; things contemptible. And at this moment, surely, Timber-Wolf was in no mood to revise for the better his sweeping and deep-based opinion. But now, despite all trumped-up reasonings, no matter how sincere, his first clear view of this girl gave him pause.

She was superb. Physically, if not otherwise. For the first thing, her hair snared him. Strong men are always caught by films; a big brute of a man who may break his triumphant way through iron bands grows powerless under a frail wisp of a frail woman's hair. In the hall she had held her hat in her hands; her hair, loosely upgathered and insecurely and hastily confined, had tumbled all about her face as she bolted into her room. He saw that first of all. And then he saw her eyes. At the moment, already in her room with the door slammed shut behind him and his back against it, he looked, glowering, into her eyes. And he found them at once soft and still amazingly unafraid; those daring eyes of Lynette Brooke, daughter of a dancing-girl and of the dare-all miner, Brooke. Unafraid, though[Pg 60] he who might have choked the life out of her between finger and thumb, turned his furious face upon her.

He paid her tribute with a flash of his shining blue eyes. That was for the physical beauty of her; that said, "Outwardly, girl, you are superb!" Yet it remained that, his one weakness shaming him, she had laughed at him. For the first time in his life a girl had laughed at him....

She saw the sudden changing fires in his eyes and stepped closer to the table on which lay that small, high-powered implement which puts the weak on a level with the strong....

There came a sudden sharp rapping at the door against which his broad back leaned. There was Babe Deveril, who had lunged after him. Timber-Wolf, growling savagely, flung himself about, for the second ignoring the girl and facing the door. Deveril, just without, heard the bolt shot home. And then he heard the second, the sinister sound. A revolver shot, muffled by the four walls of a room. And he heard Timber-Wolf, whose back had been turned to Lynette Brooke and the gun upon the table, curse deep down in his throat, and heard almost simultaneously the scraping of the heavy boots and the crashing fall of the big body. Deveril shook fiercely at the door. Then he turned and ran back down the hall, meaning to go through the room he had just quitted and on through so as to come to Lynette's room by the rear.

But in the sitting-room Billy Winch, teetering on his one foot, grasped him by the arm, demanding to know what had happened. Deveril savagely shook him off, and Winch, raising the echoes with a shrilling voice, toppled over and fell. But little time had been wasted, and yet, before Deveril could free himself and run on,[Pg 61] Lynette Brooke ran in upon him. Her eyes were wild and staring; in her hand was her revolver, so lately fired that the last wisp of smoke had not cleared from the barrel.

"Stop! In the name of the law! You are under arrest for killing Bruce Standing...."

Babe Deveril carried no weapon upon him. And he saw Taggart's pistols dragging at his belt, the heavy forty-fives which, as sheriff, he was entitled to carry openly. Taggart's hands were almost upon her.

Deveril did the one thing. He caught at the gun in Lynette's hand and wrenched it free, and, having no time for accurate aim, did not fire, but hurled the revolver itself, with all of his might, full into Taggart's face. And Taggart, as though a thunderbolt had struck him, went down, with a steel barrel driven against his skull, near the temple, and lay a crumpled, still heap.

"The house is full of Taggart's friends!" Deveril cried sharply, warning her and, at the same time, thinking for himself.

But already she was running again. She ran out into the road; but there the brisk-burning bonfires made night into day. She dodged back into the shadow cast by the corner of the house, and ran about to the rear. Deveril hesitated only an instant; men were already rushing in from the room where they had been drinking. He followed her through the door, and here again he paused. Men were already stooping over the sheriff; he heard one cry out the single word, "Dead!" His brain caught fire. The girl had killed Timber Wolf; he had killed Jim Taggart. He and she were fugitives.[Pg 62] He followed her again into the shadows, running to the back of the house.

And as he ran one thing angered him: He had won three thousand dollars from Bruce Standing, and that three thousand dollars was at this moment in Standing's pocket. And being Babe Deveril, who dared at least as far as most men dare, he meant to have what fortune allowed him.

And so, when he came to an open and lighted window, and looked in and saw the sprawling body of Timber-Wolf, Babe Deveril unhesitatingly threw his leg over the sill and went in. In his judgment Standing was as good as dead, shot in the back. Well, that was no affair of his, and certainly he was not the man to grieve. Let "Serve him right" be his epitaph. Deveril, in a feverish haste, began to feel in the fallen man's pockets.

He found the bank-notes and stuffed them into his own pocket. At the window, as he turned back to it, while he heard men hammering at the locked door, he saw Lynette Brooke's white face. She had been watching him. Yet even that, in the present need for haste, made no impression. He slipped through, hearing a discordant shouting of many voices.

He caught her hand, and, holding it tight, the two raced into the darkness under the pines.

CHAPTER V

Billy Winch was the first to come to the bolted door. He hopped swiftly down the hall and beat at it with his fists. Snarling and snapping, growling and finally whimpering, for the world like a dog, he cried out through his fierce mutterings:

"I'm the only man here that can save him if he ain't dead already. And if he is dead...."

He hurled himself bodily at the door; he jumped up at it and kicked it with his one heavy boot and, falling, rolled over and crawled to his foot and struck again.

The Gallup House had become a vortex of violent excitement. It was shouted out that two men were dead, Bruce Standing shot by the new adventuress whom many had noted; Jim Taggart killed as he sought to put her under arrest. Voices clashed and so did thoughts and purposes. Men streamed out into the firelit road; they heard running feet marking the way the two fugitives had taken, and started headlong in pursuit, stumbling and falling in the dark, and for the first few moments making slight headway. Others, Gallup among them, were already with Taggart, lifting him up and bearing him off to a bed. Still others, hearkening to the strange word that a woman had killed Bruce Standing, were suddenly charged with the morbid curiosity to look upon this man dead. They found their way to the lighted window through which Lynette Brooke had escaped, and through it made their way into the room, until the small space was thick with their jostling bodies. All the while Billy Winch was beating at the door, yelling curses and, at last, when he heard them within, commanding and imploring to be let in. A man, stepping over[Pg 64] Timber-Wolf's body, obeyed and Billy Winch hopped in. Immediately he was down at his chief's side, squatting, after his own awkward fashion, upon a knee and balanced by a stub of a leg.

"He ain't dead!" Billy Winch's breath was expelled in a long, grateful sigh, which, before his lungs flattened, was choked by a nervous giggle. "I'm here, Timber," he said softly. "You know me, old boy!"

"You damn little fool," was Bruce Standing's grunted answer. Yet his voice was gentle and his eyes for one rare and fleeting instant as soft as a lover's.

Billy Winch, a man of resource, was now himself again, cool and past all silly sentiment. He turned from the fallen man to the crowding onlookers, and his eyes darkened with fury. He snatched up the rifle which Standing had let fall, and, still kneeling, whipped it up over his head, brandishing it like a war club.

"Out of this, every one of you!" he shouted at them. "Give him air and give me room to work in, else I bash your brains out!"

Had he been less in earnest some man of them might have found occasion to mark the absurdity of a cripple, squatting on the floor, waving a gun over his head and ordering them about. But as things were, no man appeared to glimpse this angle of it. One by one, with his eyes and the eyes of Timber-Wolf glaring at them, they went hastily out through the window.

Billy Winch cursed him into silence. For Winch held himself as good a physician and surgeon as any, having served in the veterinary capacity for a score of years and having a natural aptitude for treating bad cuts and gun wounds. Further, he loved this Timber-Wolf; and beyond, with all his heart, Billy Winch distrusted and[Pg 65] hated the breed of doctors. His stump of a leg he attributed to the profound ignorance drawn by the medical and surgical profession from their books of theories.

"You ain't even bad hurt, Timber," he growled, as though disappointed and angered that he had been tricked into a show of affection and fright. His look accused Standing of having wilfully deceived him. "Must have been just the shock, what we call the impack, that knocked you over.... Oh, lie still, can't you!"

But Bruce Standing gave him no heed, and continued in his attempt to draw himself up. While Billy Winch sat on the floor and looked up at him, the bigger man got slowly to his feet and stood leaning against the door.

"Anyway, get over on the bed and lay down and I'll look you over. You're bleeding like a stuck pig. And you're as white as a clean rag."

Bruce Standing's face was already haggard and drawn, his mouth hard with pain. Yet he ignored Winch's command, and walked slowly, forcing his steps to be steady, to the one chair in the room. He sat down upon it heavily, straddling it as though it were a horse, facing the chair-back, and thus leaving his own back clearly proffered for Winch's inspection. Winch got up and hopped to him, railing at him the while for not lying down and obeying orders.

"Help me get my coat off," commanded Timber-Wolf curtly. "Then you can dig around and find out what we're up against."

"Scatter!" commanded Winch, waving the rifle at them. "And tell our boys to come here. Dick Ross and Charley Peters. They ain't far."

Reluctantly the onlookers withdrew, some two or[Pg 66] three of them to pause in the shadows when once out of eye-shot, and look back. But from now on Winch disregarded them. He helped the wounded man off with his coat, yanked his shirts out from his belted waist, tore cloth freely when it was in his way, and thus uncovered the wound.

"Yes, damn her," muttered Timber-Wolf angrily, as Billy Winch's fingers, already scarlet, touched the wound. "Turned my back a second ... she ought to have shot me dead ... either a rotten shot or in an awful hurry...."

"Or scared to death!" Winch's contempt was enormous. "That's the kind that does the most harm, the scared-stiffs that's always shooting the wrong time and the wrong man."

By now he had the shirts torn from top to bottom, and stood back, looking appraisingly at the broad, naked back and the small hole which a bullet had drilled. Against the great area of flesh, as white as a girl's and smooth and clean with vigorous health, the smear of blood, itself red with that same perfection of health, gave the wound an appearance of ten times its real gravity. But Winch was accustomed to blood, and knew that Bruce Standing could lose more of it than could most men and be little the worse for the loss. He diagnosed the case aloud, muttering thoughtfully:

"Thirty-two caliber, to begin with; a thirty-two ain't nothing, Timber. Now, if it had been a forty-five, at that close-up range.... Well, you see you was standing half-way slanting; it took you under that big shoulder muscle and drilled in and hit a rib, one of the high-up ones, and kept on going, sort of skirting round, skating on a rib, and popped out under your arm. Lift it a bit? That's it. A clean hole. I tell you, either you[Pg 67] sort of slipped and fell, or it was the impack that knocked you over.... The boys will be here any minute, and will scare up a bar of castile soap for me and something to make a regular poultice, what we calls a comprest, you know; I can make one out of most anything; remember Sam True's thoroughbred stallion that got all cut to hell last fall, and I made him a comprest out of sawdust! You remind me," added Winch thoughtfully, drawing off one of his hopping paces, to take in with an admiring and practised eye the now virtually nude torso, a white, smooth-running engine of power and endurance, "of a wild stallion mostly as much as a man, anyhow. A good smear of mustang liniment on that shoulder, a application, you know; and a dose of physic and a couple days' rest and careful diet, and you'll be as good as new...."

"What happened in the other room?" demanded Standing, deaf to Winch's mutterings. "After she went through the window?"

"She came busting in where Deveril and I was, her eyes the size of two new dish pans. I put in new because they was shining like it too; I thought she'd seen the devil. She has a gun in her hand and she yells out, 'Save me!' or something like that. And after her, doubled-up running, comes Jim Taggart, yelling at her: 'I got you for killing Bruce Standing!' And then that cool-headed, hot-hearted young Baby Devil of yours grabs the gun out of her hand and whangs Taggart over the head with it so that he drops dead in his tracks. And I hear a man say he is dead, too; but I don't stop to see. Don't seem natural, and yet a man's close to mortal danger if he gets whanged with any hard object, such as steel gun-barrels, on the head, close up to the temple; we call it the parrytal bone, you know, and I've known men and even horses that was killed so quick...."

"Then both him and her beats it like the mill-tails of hell! And that part's natural enough, him figuring he's killed the sheriff, and her figuring she's plumb killed you. They stampeded into the brush, ducking out toward the timber-lands where it was darkest, a bunch of hollering fools after them."

The "boys" whose presence Billy Winch had requested came hurrying in at the hall door, excitement and alarm shining in their eyes. One glance reassured them, and while Dick Ross gave expression to his relief in a windy sigh and sought hastily for materials to build him a cigarette to replace that which he had dropped as he raced here, Charley Peters stood and mopped at his forehead with an enormous dingy blue handkerchief and grinned. Billy Winch, who had the trick of pithy brevity when there was need of it, made his wants known sharply, and the two men, their spurs still dragging and clanking after them, hastened away for basin and soap and whatever else of Winch's first-aid materials might be had at hand. In the meantime, Winch was yanking a sheet off Lynette Brooke's bed, and ripping it into tatters for his bandages and rags and what he termed "mops and applications."

"It ain't necessary to probe for the bullet," he admitted, almost regretfully. "But I might poke around in there a mite, while the hole's good and wide open, to make sure that a piece of your shirt or something didn't get lodged inside...."

"Well," sighed Winch, "all I'll do then is just take a pack-needle and put in a stitch or two. Remember when Dick Ross's horse...."

"You'll take some warm water and soap and wash me off," said Standing emphatically. "Then you'll make me one of your infernal compresses out of clean cloth; and after that you'll leave me alone.... Tell me about my horse, old Sunlight. So Gallup had him killed for me?"

"Somebody pretty near blowed his head off with buckshot," Billy Winch told him, and again twinkling fires of anger flickered in the little man's eyes. "If Gallup didn't have the job done, who did? I ask you!"

Timber-Wolf stared at the wall. Within him, too, rose scorching anger, that resurgent bitter flood which was not lessened now because in the first place it had leaped upon him unexpectedly, and had thus been the cause of his humiliation. But within him there was another emotion, one of deep grief; for he loved a good horse, no man more. And Sunlight was his pet and his trusted friend, and had been, for many a wilderness week, his only companion.

"You didn't leave him suffering any, Bill?" His voice sounded cold and impersonal and matter-of-fact. Yet Billy Winch understood and answered softly:

"I stopped long enough to make sure, Timber. But I didn't have to shoot him; he just rared his head up and looked at me straight in the eye, as man to man, so help me God, and fell back ... dead. No; he didn't suffer much."

Bruce Standing was silent a long time, his eyes brooding, his brows drawn after a fashion which Billy Winch could make nothing certain of; anger and bitterness or a sign of his own bodily pain. They heard spurred boots in the hall, returning. Then a quick look passed between Timber-Wolf and Billy Winch, and Timber-Wolf said hastily, dropping his voice and speaking with a peculiar softness:

"When you get a chance, you take the boys and see that old Sunlight is moved out of this skunk town; he's too fine a little horse to take his last rest here. Out on a hilltop, somewhere; looking toward the east, Bill. And a good, deep hole and ... leave the saddle and bridle on him, Bill."

"I get you," returned Winch gravely. And, by way of thoughtful acknowledgment of the justice of this thing, for Billy Winch, too, loved a horse, he muttered: "That's fair."

With the return of Ross and Peters, Winch gave them their orders, as a stern and dreaded head master might issue commands to a couple of his boys, securing unfailing and immediate obedience. For the one job of both Ross and Peters, and the one job which had been theirs for five or six years, was to do what they were told by Billy Winch and ask no questions, and look sharp that they did not seek to introduce any of their own and original ideas into the carrying out of his behests. For this they were paid by Timber-Wolf, who used them for many things, consigning matters of vital importance into their hands by way of Billy Winch's brains and tongue.

"Stand ready to hand me things when I ask for them, Dick," said Winch. He scrubbed his own hands with soap, and let Dick pitch the water from the basin out the window. Dick obeyed promptly, adding nothing of his own to the simple task beyond making sure that he pitched the whole basinful far out; far enough, in fact, to give a thorough wetting to one of the curious who had lingered outside, watching through the lighted window. "You, Charley," ran on Winch, "go down to where old Sunlight is, and stick there until me and Dick come out. His saddle and bridle ain't to be took off, and you'll have to keep your eye peeled some regular[Pg 71] Big Pine citizen don't snake 'em, for their silver, under your eyes." Charley understood enough to do as he was told, and hurried out. "Now, Dick, stand by with them rags and warm water."

Winch went promptly to work, and, in his rough-and-ready fashion, did a good clean job of bandaging a simple wound. A raw wound like that must of necessity be intensely painful; yet Timber-Wolf's quiet and regular breathing never altered once, and not so much as the breadth of a hair did the muscular back flinch. They had just gotten the torn shirts lapped over into place and the coat thrown over Standing's shoulders, and his hat picked up from the floor for him, when a man walking heavily came down the hall and stopped at the door, knocking sharply.

Bruce Standing himself, holding himself very erect, his head well up and his eyes cold and hard, opened the door.

"So the devil refused to take you, after all," he grumbled. "They had it reported that Deveril had killed you. At that, it looks as though he'd come close to doing a good job of it."

For Jim Taggart's face, too, was white, and there was a broad band about his head, stained in one spot near the left temple.

"The same kind thought rides double," rejoined Taggart, with a sudden flash of the eyes. "That wildcat of a girl came close to marking out your ticket to hell."

"Gone clean, for the present," answered Taggart. "If that fool of a Babe Deveril hadn't butted in, just piling up trouble for himself, and knocked me out while[Pg 72] I wasn't even looking at him, I'd of had her by the heels. And now the two of 'em, two of a kind, if you ask me, are off into the mountains together. And I'm starting after them in ten minutes, and will drag 'em back before to-morrow night, just as sure as you're a foot high."

"I wanted to see if you was dead," returned Taggart coolly. "Now I just pinch both of 'em for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. If you'd of died, it would of been murder for her."

"At least, I'm glad you blew in, Jim Taggart. There are two things it might be just as well to get straight. First: When you and I, a dozen years ago, were sidekicks, prospecting together, bunking together, grubstaking each other, taking chances a lot of the time on a quick, hard finish to the little old game of life, we had it understood that if I died all of my belongings went to you; and if you cashed in first, anything you had went to me."

"The more fool you, then," jeered Standing. "I'm done with you, and my papers are changed already...."

"Since yesterday. Nothing I own, not so much as a wart on a log of mine, ever goes your way."

The bitterness in Taggart's soul overspilled into his voice as he cried out savagely:

"Sure, there you are! That's the way it goes. Now that your luck's been running high and you don't need me, now that my luck's been dragging bottom, why then you're ready to pitch me over...."

"Liar!" Timber-Wolf cut him short with the word[Pg 73] which was like an explosion. But he did not pause to discuss a point of view, but continued immediately: "That's the first thing. Here's the second: You've decided to run neck and neck with Young Gallup. So you can take him a word from me. Tell him"—and Standing's voice, husky with his emotions, made even Jim Taggart wonder what was coming—"that I came into his skunk hole of a town to-night just because he had the nerve to tell me not to. Tell him that I know that was his work that my horse was killed just now. Tell it him that if I ever come into his skunk hole once more in my life, it will be to pull his damned town down about his ears."

Taggart chose to break into contemptuous laughter. But Bruce Standing, lost to all sense of his own pain, caught him angrily by the shoulder and shouted into his ears:

"And this, for the last word ever to be spoken between you and me, Jim Taggart. That rake-hell Jezebel that shot me, shot me and not you! Got that? I'm not asking you, sheriff or no sheriff, to chip in on my affairs; I'll attend to the little hell-cat, and you keep your hands off. And, as for Babe Deveril, since the cursed fool wants to show his hand by cutting in with her and trying to snatch her out of my reach, I'll attend to him at the same time. The likely thing is that they've headed into the wilderness, my wilderness, and I'm going after them. And you are to keep out of my way."

With a violent shove he thrust Taggart out of his way and strode by him, going swiftly down the hall, Dick Ross swinging along close behind him and keeping a watchful eye upon Taggart, little Billy Winch hopping along in the rear and spitting audacious venom at the sheriff with his baneful eyes. In this order the three came out under the shining stars.

CHAPTER VI

Bruce Standing, a man of that strong, dominant, and self-centred character which is prone to disregard the feelings of others, held both Lynette Brooke and Babe Deveril his prey. But Jim Taggart, whose professional business it appeared to be to bring in the girl, and whose sore and aching head would not for many a day lose record of the fact that it had been Babe Deveril who had forcibly put him out of the running, had his own human purposes to serve, and set his nose to the trail like a bloodhound. And yet, with these two bending every energy to run them to earth, the two fugitives plunging headlong into the friendly darkness were for the moment utterly lost to those who plunged into the same darkness and in the same headlong style after them.

Hand in hand, chance-caught, and running swiftly, Lynette and Deveril were in time to escape the first of their pursuers, a crowd of men who got in one another's way, and who were too lately from the lighted room of the house to see clearly outside. Behind Gallup's House was the little creek which supplied the town with its water; it wound here across a tiny flat, an open space save for its big cottonwoods. The two, knowing that in the first heat of the chase opening at their heels they were running from death, sped like two winged shadows merged into one. After a hundred yards they hurled themselves into breast-high bushes, a thick tangle—a growth which, in such a mad rush as theirs, was no less formidable than a rock wall. They cast quick glances backward; a score of men—appearing, in their widely spread formation and from their cries and the racket of[Pg 75] scuffling boots, to be a hundred—shut off all retreat and made hopeless any thought to turn to right or left.

On hands and knees they crawled into the thicket. Already hands and faces were scratched, but they did not feel the scratches; already their clothes were torn in many places. In a wild scramble they went on, squeezing through narrow spaces, lying flat, wriggling, getting to hands and knees again. And all the while with nerves jumping at each breaking of a twig. It was only the shouting voices and the pounding boots behind them that drowned in their pursuers' ears the sounds they made.

And very still they lay, side by side, panting, in the heart of the thicket. A voice called out, not twenty paces behind them:

"They're in there!" And another voice, louder than the first and more insistent, they thanked their stars, boomed:

"No, no! They skirted the brush, off to the left, beating it for the open! After 'em, boys!" And still other voices shouted and, it would seem, every man of them had glimpsed his own tricking shadow and had his own wild opinion.

"Slow and quiet does it!" It was for the third time Babe Deveril's whisper, his lips close to her hair. "I see an opening. Follow close."

Lynette, still lying face down, lifted herself a little way upon her two hands and looked after him.

"String 'em up!" a voice was calling. It was like the voice of a devil down in hell, full of mob malice. She[Pg 76] shivered. "They're murdering devils. String 'em up!"

"Catch 'em first, you fool," called another voice. Again pounding boots and ... far more sinister sound ... snapping brush where a man was breaking his way straight into the thicket.

Like some grotesque, curiously shaped snake, Babe Deveril was writhing along, ever deeper into the brush tangle, ahead of her. She began crawling after him. Voices everywhere. And now dogs barking. A hundred dogs, it seemed to her taut nerves. She knew dogs; she knew how they went into a frenzy of excited joy when it was a question of a quarry, any quarry; she knew the unfailing certainty of the dog's scent. She began hurrying, struggling to get to her knees again....

She dropped down again and lay flat, scarce breathing. But once more she saw the vague blot of Deveril's flat form wriggling on ahead of her, almost gone now. It was so dark! She threw herself forward; she threw her arm out and her hand brushed his boot. It was a wonderful thing, to feel that boot. She was not alone. She began again following him; dry, broken, and thorny twigs snared at her; they caught in her clothes and in the laces of her boots; they tore at her skin. Yet this time she was as silent a shadow as the shadow in front of her. On and on and on, on endlessly through an eternity of darkness shot through with dim star glimmerings, and pierced with horrible voices, she went. She came out into an opening; she stood up. She was alone! And those voices and the yelping of dogs and the scuffling of heavy, insensate, merciless boots....

A hard, sudden hand caught her by the wrist. She whipped back, a scream shaping her lips. But in time she clapped a hand over her mouth. She was not alone; this was Babe Deveril, standing upright ... waiting [Pg 77]for her! She brought her hand down and clasped it, tight, over his hand.

"Run for it again," he whispered. "Off that way ... to the right. If we can once get among those trees...."

Side by side, their hearts leaping, they ran. Gradually, but steadily, the harsh noises grew fainter behind them. They gained the fringe of trees; they splashed through the creek; they skirted a second tangle of brush and rounded the crest of a hill. And steadily and swiftly now the sounds of pursuit lessened behind them.

"And now," muttered Deveril, for the first time forsaking his cautious whisper, "if we use what brains God gave us, we are free of that hell pack."

"Most likely we'd both be swinging from a cottonwood in ten minutes! There's no sanity in that crowd; it's all mob spirit. If it is true that both Bruce Standing and Jim Taggart are dead.... Well, then, Lynette Brooke, this is no place for you and me to-night! Come on!..."

"Babe Deveril," she returned, and now it was her fingers tightening about his, "I'll never forget that you stood by me to-night!"

Babe Deveril, being himself and no other, a man reckless and unafraid and eminently gay, and, so God made him, full of lilting appreciation of the fair daughters of Eve, felt even at this moment her touch, like so much warm quicksilver trickling through him from head to foot. He gave her, in answer, a hearty pressure of the hand and his low, guarded laughter, saying lightly:

"You interfere with the regular beating of a man's heart, Lynette Brooke! But now you'll never remember to-night for any great measure of hours, unless we[Pg 78] step along. They'll hunt us all night. Come, beautiful lady!"

Even then she marvelled at him. He, like herself, was tense and on the qui vive; yet she sensed his utter fearlessness. She knew that if they caught him and put a rope about his neck and led him under a cottonwood branch, he would pay them back to the last with his light, ringing laughter.

In this first wild rush they had had no time to think over what had just happened; no time to cast ahead beyond each step deeper into the night. Where they were going, what they were going to do—these were issues to confront them later; now they were concerned with no consideration other than haste and silence and each other's company. To-night's section of destiny made of them, without any reasoning and merely through an instinctive attraction, trail fellows. True, both carried blurred pictures of what had occurred back there at the Gallup House so few minutes ago, but these were but pictures, and as yet gave rise to no logical speculation. As in a vision, she saw Timber-Wolf sagging and falling as he strove to slew about; Deveril saw Taggart rushing in at her heels, and then going down in a heap as a revolver was flung in his face. Only dully at present were they concerned with the query whether these two men were really dead. When one runs for his life through the woods in a dark night, he has enough to do to avoid limbs and tree trunks and keep on going.

Big Pine occupied the heart of a little upland flat. In ten minutes Lynette and Deveril had traversed the entire stretch of partially level land, and felt the ground begin to pitch sharply under foot. Here was a sudden steep slope leading down into a rugged ravine; their sensation was that of plunging over the brink of some direful precipice, feeling at every instant that they were[Pg 79] about to go tumbling into an abyss. They were forced to go more slowly, sliding on their heels, ploughing through patches of soil, stumbling across flinty areas.

"Down we go, as straight as we can," said Deveril. "And up on the other side as straight as we can. Then we'll be in a bit of forest land where the devil himself couldn't find us on a night like this.... How are you standing the rough-stuff?"

It was the first time that he had given any indication of realizing that her girl's body might not be equal to the work which they were taking upon them. Swiftly she made her answer, saying lightly, despite her labored breathing:

"If I hadn't forgotten my hat ... among other things," he chuckled, "I'd take it off to you right now, Lynette Brooke!"

They paused and stood a moment in the gloom about the base of a big boulder, listening. Now and then a man shouted; dogs still barked. But the sounds were appreciably fainter, now that they had started down the steeply pitching slope into the ravine.

"We can get away from them to-night," she said. "But to-morrow, when it is light?"

"We'll see. For one thing, a chase like this always loses some of its fine enthusiasm after the first spurt. For another, even if they did pick us up to-morrow, they would have had time to cool off a bit; a mob can't stay hot overnight. But give us a full night's head-start, and I've a notion we've seen the last of them. Ready?"

Again they hurried on, straight down into the great cleft through the mountains, swerving into brief détours only for upheaved piles of boulders or for an occasional brushy tangle. In twenty minutes they were[Pg 80] down in the bed of the ravine, and splashing through a little trickle of water; Lynette stooped and drank, while Deveril stood listening; again, climbing now, they went on. The farther side of the cañon was as steep as the one they had come down, and it was tedious labor in the dark to make their way; at times they zigzagged one way and another to lessen the sheerness of their path. And frequently now they stopped and drank deep draughts of the clear mountain air.

Silence shut down about them, ruffled only by the soft wind stirring across the mountain ridges. It was not that they were so soon out of ear-shot of Big Pine; rather, this sudden lull meant that their pursuers, done with the first moments of blind excitement, were now gathering their wits and thinking coolly ... and planning. They would be taking to horseback soon; scouting this way and that, organizing and throwing out their lines like a great net. By now some one man, perhaps Young Gallup, had taken charge and was directing them. The two fugitives, senses sharpened, understood, and again hastened on. They had not won to any degree of security, and felt with quickened nerves the full menace of this new, sinister silence.

Onward and upward they labored, until at last they gained a less steeply sloping timber belt, which stretched close under the peak of the ridge. They walked more swiftly now; breathing was easier; there were more and wider open spaces among the larger, more generously spaced tree trunks.

"We'll strike into the Buck Valley road in a minute now," said Deveril. "Then we'll have easy going...."

"Of course. Any fool ought to have thought of that," he muttered, ashamed that it had been she instead of himself who had foreseen the danger.

So they hearkened to the voice of caution and paralleled the road, keeping a dozen or a score of paces to its side, and often tempted, because of its comparative smoothness and the difficult brokenness of the mountainside over which they elected to travel, to yield utterly to its inviting voice. They turned back and glimpsed the twinkling lights of Big Pine; they lost the lights as they forged on; they found them again, grown fainter and fewer and farther away.

They tramped along in silence, their boots rising and falling regularly. The first tenseness, since human nerves will remain taut only so long, had passed. They had time for thought now, both before and after. Mentally each was reviewing all that had occurred to-night and, building theoretically upon those happenings, was casting forward into the future. The present was a path of hazard, and surely the future lay shut in by black shadows. Yet both of them were young, and youth is the time of golden hopes, no matter how drearily embraced by stony facts. And youth, in both of them, despite the difference of sex, was of the same order: a time of wild blood; youth at its animal best, lusty, vigorous, dauntless, devil-may-care; theirs the spirits which leap, hearts glad and fearless. And when, after a while, now and then they spoke again, there was youth playing up to youth in its own inevitable fashion; confidence asserting itself and begetting more confidence; youth wearing its outer cloakings with its own inimitable swagger.

They had trudged along the narrow mountain road for a full hour or more when they heard the clattering noise of a horse's shod hoofs.

With one accord he and she withdrew hastily, slipping into the convenient shadows thrown by a clump of trees, and peered forth through a screen of high brush. The hurrying hoof beats came on, up-grade, hence from the general direction of Big Pine. Two men, and riding neck and neck, driving their horses hard. The riders drew on rapidly; were for a fleeting moment vaguely outlined against a field of stars ... swept on.

They came with a rush, with a rush they were gone. But Deveril, who since he was taller, had seen more clearly than Lynette across the brush, turned back to her eagerly, wondering if she had seen what he had—if she had noted that one of the men loomed unusually large in the saddle, and how the smaller at his side rode lopsidedly. In all reason Bruce Standing should be dead by now or, at the very least, bedridden. But when did Timber-Wolf ever do what other men expected of him? If he were alive and not badly hurt; if Lynette knew this, then what? Deveril would tell her, or would not tell her, as circumstances should decide for him.

"Come on!" he cried sharply, certain that Lynette had not seen. "While the night and the dark last. Let's hurry."

On and on they went until the dragging hours seemed endless. They saw the wheeling progress of the stars; they saw the pools of gloom in the woods deepen and darken; they felt, like thick black padded velvet, the silence grow deeper, until it seemed scarcely ruffled by the thin passing of the night air. Thus they put many a weary, hard-won mile between them and Big Pine. Hours of that monotonous lifting of boot after boot, of stumbling and straightening and driving on; of pushing through brush copses, of winding wearily among the [Pg 83]bigger boles of the forest, of sliding down steep places and climbing up others, with always the lure of the more easy way of the road tempting and mocking.

"We've got to find water again," said Deveril, out of a long silence. "And we've got to dig ourselves in for a day of it. The dawn's coming."

For already the eastern sky stood forth in contrast against west and south and north, a palely glimmering sweep of emptiness charged with the promise of another day. The girl, too tired for speech, agreed with a weary nod. She could think of nothing now, neither of past nor present nor future, save of water, a long, cool bathing of burning mouth and throat, and after that, rest and sleep. Her whole being was resolved into an aching desire for these two simple balms to jaded nature. Water and then sleep. And let the coming day bring what it chose.

Long ago the mountain air, rare and sweet and clean, had grown cold, but their bodies, warmed by exertion, were unaware of the chill. But now, with fatigue working its will upon every laboring muscle, they began to feel the cold. Lynette began shivering first; Deveril, when they stopped a little while for one of their brief rests, began to shiver with her.

Water was not to be found at every step in these mountains; they labored on another three or four miles before they found it. Then they came to a singing brook which shot under a little log bridge, and there they lay flat, side by side, and drank their fill.

"And now, fair lady, to bed," said Deveril, looking at her curiously and making nothing of her expression, since the starlight hid more than it disclosed, and giving her as little glimpse of his own look. "And when, I wonder, did you ever lay you down to sleep as you must to-night?"

But he did see that she shivered. And yet, bravely enough, she answered him, saying:

"Beggars must not be choosers, fair sir; and methinks we should go down on our knees and offer up our thanks to Our Lady that we live and breathe and have the option of choosing our sleeping places this night."

She had caught his cue, and her readiness threw him into a mood of light laughter; he had drunk deep, and his youthful resilience buoyed him up, and he found life, as always, a game far away and more than worth the candle.

"You say truly, my fair lady," he said in mock gravity. "'Tis better to sleep among the bushes than dangling at the end of a brief stretch of rope."

But with all of their lightness of speech, which, after all, was but the symbol of youth playing up to youth, the prospect was dreary enough, and in their hearts there was little laughter. And the cold bit at them with its icy teeth. A fire would have been more than welcome, a thing to cheer as well as to warm; but a fire here, on the mountainside, would have been a visible token of brainlessness; it would throw its warmth five feet and its betraying light as many miles.

So, in the cold and dark they chose their sleeping place. Into a tangle of fragrant bushes, not twenty paces from the Buck Valley road, they crawled on hands and knees, as they had crawled into that first thicket when pursuit yelped at their heels. Here they came by chance upon a spot where two big pine-trees, standing close together companionably, upreared from the very heart of the brushy tangle. Lynette could scarcely drag her tired body here, caught and retarded by every twig that clutched at her clothing. For the first time in her vigorous life she came to understand the meaning of that ancient expression, "tired to death."[Pg 85] She felt herself drooping into unconsciousness almost before her body slumped down upon the earth, thinly covered in fallen leaves.

"Sh! I can't talk any more. I can't think; I can't move; I can scarcely breathe. Whether they find us in the morning or not ... it doesn't matter to me now.... You have been good to me; be good to me still. And ... good-night, Babe Deveril ... Gentleman!"

He saw her, dimly, nestle down, cuddling her cheek against her arm, drawing up her knees a little, snuggling into the very arms of mother earth, like a baby finding its warm place against its mother's breast. He sat down and slowly made himself a cigarette, and forgot for a long time to light it, lost in his thoughts as he stared at her and listened to her quiet breathing. He knew the moment that she went to sleep. And in his heart of hearts he marvelled at her and called her "a dead-game little sport." She, of a beauty which he in all of his light adventurings found incomparable, had ventured with him, a man unknown to her, into the depths of these solitudes and had never, for a second, evinced the least fear of him. True, danger drove; and yet danger always lay in the hands of a man, her sex's truest friend and greatest foe. In his hands reposed her security and her undoing. And yet, knowing all this, as she must, she lay down and sighed and went to sleep. And her last word, ingenuous and yet packed to the brim with human understanding, still rang in his ears.

"It's worth it," he decided, his eyes lingering with her gracefully abandoned figure. "The whole damn thing, and may the devil whistle through his fingers until[Pg 86] his fires burn cold! And she's mine, and I'll make her mine and keep her mine until the world goes dead. And my friend, Wilfred Deveril, if you've ever said anything in your life, you've said it now!"

CHAPTER VII

Glancing sunlight, striking at him through a nest of tumbled boulders upon the ridge, woke Babe Deveril. He sat up sharply, stiff and cold and confused, wondering briefly at finding himself here upon the mountainside. Lynette was already sitting up, a huddling unit of discomfort, her arms about her upgathered knees, her hair tousled, her clothing torn, her eyes showing him that, though she had slept, she, too, had awaked shivering and unrested. And yet, as he gathered his wits, she was striving to smile.

"It's everything!" Emulating him she sprang up, scornfully disregarding cramped body, her triumphant youth ignoring those little pains which shot through her as pricking reminders of last night's endeavors. "To live, to breathe, to be alive ... it's everything!"

"When one thinks back upon the possibilities of last night," he answered, "the reply is 'Yes.' Good morning, and here's hoping that you had no end of sweet dreams."

"Were all of two men. Of you and another man, Timber-Wolf, you call him—Bruce Standing. I heard him call you 'Baby Devil'! That got into my dreams. I thought that we three...."

She broke off, and still her eyes, fathomless, mysterious, regarded him strangely.

"Dreams are nothing by the time they're told," she answered swiftly. "So why tell them? And the fire?"

"No," he told her, suddenly stubborn, and resentful that he could not have free entrance into her sleeping-life. "We went without it when we needed it most; now the sun's up and we don't need it; since, above everything, there's no breakfast to cook."

"Hungry? I was eating my supper when first you showed upon my horizon. And, what with looking at you or trying to look at you, I let half of my supper go by me! I'd give a hundred dollars right this minute for coffee and bacon and eggs!"

"You want a lot for a hundred dollars," she smiled back at him. Her hands were already busy with her tumbled hair, for always was Lynette purely feminine to her dainty finger-tips. "I'd give all of that just for coffee alone."

"To move on? Somewhere, anywhere? And to search for breakfast? Yes; in a minute."

First, she worked her way back through the brush, down into the creek bed, and for a little while, as she bathed her face and neck and arms, and did the most that circumstances permitted at making her morning toilet, she was lost to his following eyes. Slowly he rolled himself a cigarette; that, with a man, may take[Pg 89] the place of breakfast, serving to blunt the edge of a gnawing appetite. Long draughts of icy cold water served her similarly. She stamped her feet and swung her arms and twisted her body back and forth, striving to drive the cold out and get her blood to leaping warmly. Then, before coming back to him, she stood for a long time looking about her.

All the wilderness world was waking; she saw the scampering flash of a rabbit; the little fellow came to a dead halt in a grassy open space, and sat up with drooping forepaws and erect ears; she could fancy his twitching nose as he investigated the morning air to inform himself as to what scents, pleasurable, friendly, inimical, lay upon it.

"In case he is hungry, after nibbling about half the night," she mused, "he knows just where to go for his breakfast."

The rabbit flapped his long ears and went about his business, whatever it may have been, popping into the thicket. There grew in a pretty grove both willows and wild cherry; beyond them a tall scattering of cottonwoods; on the rising slope scrub-pines and juniper. And while she stood there, looking down, she heard some quail calling, and saw half a dozen sparrows busily beginning office hours, as it were, going about their day's affairs. And one and all of these little fellows knew just what he was about, and where to turn to a satisfying menu. When, returning to Deveril, she confided in him something of her findings, which would go to indicate that man was a pretty inefficient creature when stood alongside the creatures of the wild, Deveril retorted:

"I could run a scared rabbit to death, I'm that starved! And now suppose we get out of this."

The sun was striking at the tops of the yellow pines on the distant ridge; the light was filtering downward; shadows were thinning about them and even in the ravine below. Walking stiffly, until their bodies gradually grew warm with the exertion, and always keeping to the thickest clump of trees or tallest patch of brush, they began to work their way down into the cañon. The sun ran them a race, but theirs was the victory; it was still half night in the great cleft among the mountains when they slid down the last few feet and found more level land underfoot, and the greensward of the wild-grass meadow fringing the lower stream. The cañon creek went slithering by them, cold and glassy-clear, whitening over the riffles, falling musically into the pools, dimpling and ever ready to break into widening circles, a smiling, happy stream. And in it, they knew, were trout. They stood for a moment, catching breath after the steep descent, looking into it.

She pondered the matter, struck immediately by the aptness of the suggestion; he could see how she wrinkled her brows as she tried to remember if possibly she had made use of a pin in getting dressed the last time.

In putting her tumbled hair straight just now she had discovered two pins, which, even when her hair had come down about her shoulders, had happened to catch in a little snarl in the thick tresses; these she had saved and used in making her morning toilet. Now she took her hair down again and presented him with the two pins, gathering her hair up in two thick, loose braids, while[Pg 91] with curious eyes he watched her; and as curiously, the thing done, she watched him busy himself with the pins.

A few paces farther on, creeping forward under the willow branches, they came to a spot where the creek banks were clear of brush along a narrow grassy strip, which, however, was screened from the mountainside by a growth of taller trees. Here Deveril went to work on his improvised fish-hook. One hairpin he put carefully into his pocket; the other he bent rudely into the required shape, making an eye in one end by looping and twisting. The other end, that intended for the hungry mouth of a greedy trout, he regarded long and without enthusiasm.

"Too blunt, to begin with; next, no barb, too smooth; and, finally, the thing bends too easily. Hairpins should be made of steel!"

But at least two of the defects could be simply remedied up to a certain though not entirely satisfactory point. He squatted down and, employing two hard stones, hammered gently at the malleable wire until he flattened out the end of it into a thin blade with sharp, jagged edges. Then, using his pocket-knife, he managed to cut several little slots in this thin blade, so that there resulted a series of roughnesses which were not unlike barbs; whereas he could put no great faith in any one of them holding very securely, at least, taken all together, they would tend toward keeping his hook, if once taken, from slipping out so smoothly. He re-bent his pin and suddenly looked up at her with a flashing grin.

He robbed one of his boots of its string; he cut the first likely willow wand. Without stirring from his spot he dug in the moist earth and got his worm. And then, motioning her to be very still, he crept a few feet farther along the brook, found a pool which pleased him, hid behind a clump of bushes and gently lowered his baited[Pg 92] hook toward the shadowy surface. And before the worm touched the water, a big trout saw and leaped and struck ... and did a clean job of snatching the worm off without having appeared to so much as touch the bent hairpin!

Three quiet sounds came simultaneously: the splash of the falling fish, a grunt from Deveril, a gasp from Lynette. Deveril, thinking she was about to speak, glared at her in savage admonition for silence; she understood and remained motionless. Slowly he crept back to the spot where he had dug his worm, and scratched about until he had two more. One of them went promptly to his hook, while he held the other in reserve. Again he approached his pool, again he lowered his bait about the bush. This time the offering barely touched the water before the trout struck again. Now Deveril was ready for him, deftly manœuvring his pole; his string tautened, his wallow bent, the fat, glistening trout swung above the racing water.... Lynette was already wondering how they were going to cook it!... There was again a splash, and Deveril stood staring at a silly-looking hairpin, dangling at the end of an absurd boot-lace. For now the hairpin failed to present the vaguest resemblance to any kind of a hook; the trout's weight had been more than sufficient to straighten it out so that the fish slipped off.

Gradually, moving on noiseless feet, the girl withdrew; her last glimpse of Deveril, before she slipped out of sight among the willows, showed her his face, grim in its set purpose. He was trying the third time, and she believed that he would stand there without moving all day long, if necessary. In the meantime she was done with inactivity and watching; doing nothing when there was much to be done irked her.

Withdrawn far enough to make her certain that no[Pg 93] chance sound made by her would disturb his trout, she went on through the grove and across little grassy open spaces flooring the cañon, making her way further up-stream. When a hundred yards above him, she turned about a tangled thicket and came upon the creek where it flashed through shallows. All of her life she had lived in the mountains; as a little girl, many a day had she followed a stream like this, bickering away down the most tempting of wild places; and more than once, lying by a tiny clear pool, had she caught in her hands one of the quick fishes, just to set him in a little lakelet of her own construction, where she played with him before letting him go again. To-day ... if she could catch her fish first! While Deveril, man-like, taking all such responsibilities upon his own shoulders, cursed silently and achieved nothing beyond loss of bait and loss of temper!

Up-stream, always keeping close to the merrily musical water, she made her slow way until she found a likely spot. At the base of a tiny waterfall was a big smooth rock; the water from above, glassily smooth in its well-worn channel, struck upon the rock and was divided briefly into two streams. One of them, the lesser, poured down into a small, rock-rimmed pool; the other, deflected sharply, sped down another course, to rejoin its fellow a few feet below the pool.

It was to the pool itself, half shut off from the main current, that Lynette gave her quickened attention. She crept closer, noiseless, peeping over. A sudden dark gleam, the quick, nervous steering of a trout rewarded her. She stood still, making a profound study of what lay before her; in what the rock-edged pool aided and wherein it would present difficulties. Scarcely more than a trickle of water poured out at the lower side; she could hastily pile up a few stones there, and so construct a[Pg 94] wall insurmountable to the trout if minded to escape down-stream. Then she looked to the far side, where the water slipped in. She could lay a few broken limbs across the rock there and build up a rampart of stones and turf upon it, and so deflect nearly all of the incoming water. Both these things done, she could, if need be, bail the pool out, and so come with certainty upon whatever fish had blundered into it. She began to hope that she would find a dozen!

Twice, standing upon the glassy rocks, she slipped; once she got soaking wet to her knee; another time she saved herself from a thorough drenching in the ice-cold stream only at the cost of plunging one arm down into it, elbow-deep. She shivered but kept steadily on.

She heard a bird among the bushes and started, thinking that here came Deveril; she fancied him with a string of fish in his hand, laughing at her. Impulsively she called to him.

The close walls of the ravine shut in her voice; the thickets muffled it; the splash and gurgle of the tumbling water drowned it out. She stood very still, hushed; now suddenly the silence, the loneliness, the bigness of the wilderness closed in about her. She looked about fearfully, half expecting to see men spring out from behind every boulder or tree trunk. She longed suddenly to see Babe Deveril coming up along the creek to her. She was tempted to break into a run racing back to him.

She caught herself up short. All this was only a foolish flurry in her breast, conjured up by that sudden realization of loneliness when her quickened voice died away into the whispered hush of the still solitudes. For an instant that feeling of being alone had overpowered her, or threatened to do so; then her only thought had been of Babe Deveril; she could have rushed fairly into[Pg 95] his arms, so did her emotions drive her. Now she found time to puzzle over herself; it struck her now, for the first time, how she had fled unquestioningly into this wilderness with a man. A man whom she did not even know. That hasty headlong act of hers would seem to indicate a trust of a sort. But did she actually trust Babe Deveril, with those keen, cutting eyes of his and the way he had of looking at a girl, and the whole of his reckless and dare-devil personality? Lynette Brooke had not lived in a cave all of her brief span of life; nor had she grown into slim girlhood and the full bud of her glorious youth without more than one look into a mirror. Vapidly vain she was not; but clear-visioned she was, and she knew and was glad for the vital, vivid beauty which was hers and thanked God for it. And she glimpsed, if somewhat vaguely, that to a man like Babe Deveril, taking life lightly, there was no lure beyond that of red lips and sparkling eyes. How far could she be sure of him? She went back with slow steps to her trout; she was glad that Babe Deveril had not heard and come running to her just then. But when Deveril did come, carrying two gleaming trout, she masked her misgivings and lifted a laughing face toward his triumphant one.

Suddenly his eyes warmed to the picture she made, paying swift tribute to the tousled, flushed beauty of her. His glance left her face and ran swiftly down her form; she felt suddenly as though her wet clothing were plastered tight to her.

"You can finish this," she told him swiftly, "if you want to take any more fish."

She fled, and called herself a fool for growing scarlet, as she knew that she did; as though two burning rays had been directed full upon her back, she could feel his look as she ran from him; she could not quickly enough vanish from his keen eyes, beyond the thicket. And how on earth she was going to get dry again until the sun stood high in the sky, she did not in the least know. She could wring out the free water; she could make flails of her arms and run up and down until she got warm.... If only she had a fire; but that would be foolhardy, the smoke arising to stand a signal for miles of their whereabouts....

And until this moment she had not thought of how they were to convert freshly caught fish into an edible breakfast! How, without fire? She began to shiver again, from head to foot now, and, confronted by her own problem, that of getting warm and dry, she was content to leave all other solutions to Deveril.

When half an hour later she returned to him, she found him smoking a cigarette and crouching over a bed of dying coals, whereon certain tempting morsels lay; Deveril was turning them this way and that; with the savory odor of the grilling fish there arose from the embers a whiff of the green sage-leaves which he had plucked at the slope of the cañon and laid first on his bed of coals. Crisp mountain-trout, garnished with sage! And plenty of clear, cold, sparkling water to drink thereafter! Truly a morning repast for king and queen.

"I hope they keep us on the run for a month!" Deveril greeted her. "I haven't had this much fun for a dozen years!"

"Where there's smoke, there's always fire," he told her lightly. "But when a man's on the dodge, as we are, he can have a fire that gives out almighty little smoke! It's all bone-dry wood, with only the handful of sage and a few crisscross willow sticks. Look up, and see how much smoke you can see!"

He had built his small blaze, ringed about by some rocks, in the heart of a small grove of trees which stood forty or fifty feet high; he had got his fire burning with strong, clean flames, from a handful of dry leaves and twigs; Lynette, looking up, could make out only the faintest bluish-gray wisp of smoke against the gray-green of the leaves. She understood; always it was inevitable that they must accept whatever chances the moment brought them, yet it was not at all likely that their faint plume of smoke, vanishing among the treetops, would ever draw the glance of any human eye other than their own.

"I'll tell you ..." began Deveril, and broke short off there, as she and he, alert and tense once more, reminded that they were fugitives, listened to a sudden sound disturbing their silence. A sound unmistakable—a man at no great distance from them, but, fortunately, upon the farther side of the stream, and thus beyond the double screen of willows, was breaking his way through the brush. Both Deveril and Lynette crouched low, peering through the bushes. They could only make out that the man was coming up-stream. Once they caught a vague, blurred glimpse of his legs, faded overalls and ragged boots. Then they lost him entirely. They knew when he stopped and both waited breathlessly to know if he had come upon some sign of their own trail. But once more he went on, but now in such silence, as he crossed a little open spot, that they could scarcely make out a sound. Had it not been for the willows [Pg 98]intervening, they could then have answered their own question, "Who is it?"—a question just now of supreme importance, of the importance of life and death. They lay lower; they strove as never before to catch some glimpse that would tell them what they wanted to know. The man stopped again; again went on. There was something guarded about his movements; they felt that he must have seen their tracks, that he was seeking in a roundabout way to come unexpectedly upon them. And then, because there was a narrow natural avenue through the brush, they were given one clear, though fleeting glimpse, of him ... of his face—a face as tense and watchful as their own had been ... the face of Mexicali Joe.

CHAPTER VIII

A glimpse, scarcely more it was, had been given them of Mexicali Joe's face. And at a considerable distance, at least for the reading of a man's look. But yet they marked how the face was haggard and drawn and furtive. Joe had no inkling of their presence. He had not seen their wisp of smoke; there was no wind setting toward him to carry him the smell of cooking trout. Plainly he had no desire for company other than his own. He, no less than they, fled from all pursuit. Again he was lost to them; he vanished, gone up-stream, beyond the thickets, no faintest sound of his footfalls coming back to them. From him they turned to each other, the same expression from the same flooding thought in their eyes.

"We're on the jump and we'll keep on the jump!" said Deveril softly. "And at the same time, Lynette Brooke, we'll stick as close as the Lord'll let us to Mexicali Joe's coat-tails! Don't you worry; he'll go back as sure as shooting to his gold-mine, if only to make certain that no one else has squatted on it. And where he drives a stake, we'll drive ours right alongside!"

"It's funny ... that he hasn't gotten any further ... that he should come this way, too...."

"No telling how long he had to lie still while the pack yelped about his hiding-place; that he came this way means only one thing. And that is that our luck is with us, and we're headed as straight as he is toward his prospect hole. Ready? Let's follow him!"

She jumped up. But before they started they gathered up, to the last small bit, what was left of their fish;[Pg 100] Deveril made the small bundle, fish enwrapped in leaves, with a handkerchief about the whole.

"If he should hear us?" she whispered. "If he should lie in waiting and see us?"

"In any case, we'll have it on him! He can't know that we're on the run, too; he got away too fast for that. And even if he should know, what would he do about it? He has no love for Taggart, anyway; and he has no wish to get himself into the hands of that mob that he has just ducked away from, like a rabbit dodging a pack of hounds. If he catches us ... why, then, we catch him at the same time! Come on."

Thus began the second lap of their journey; thus they, fleeing, followed like shadows upon the traces of one who fled. For Mexicali Joe would obviously keep to the bed of the cañon; if he forsook it in order to climb up either slope to a ridge above, he must of necessity pass through the more sparsely timbered spaces, where he would run constantly into danger of being seen. The only danger to their plans lay with the possibility that he might overhear sounds of their following and might draw a little to one side and hide in some dense copse, and so let them go by. But they had the advantage from the beginning; they knew he was ahead, and he did not know that they followed; so long as they, listening always, did not hear him ahead, there was little danger of him hearing them coming after him. With all the noise of the water, tumbling over falls and splashing along over rocks, singing cheerily to itself at every step, there was small likelihood of any one of the three cautious footfalls being heard....

There were the times, so intent were they following the Mexican, when they forgot what was after all the main issue; forgot that they, too, were followed. For the[Pg 101] newer phase of the game was more zestful just now than the other; they had neither glimpsed nor heard anything since the passing of the two riders last night to hint that any danger of discovery threatened them. They spoke seldom, only now and then, pausing briefly, in lowered voices, as the speculations which had been occupying both minds, demanded expression. Thus they were always confronted by some new problem; at first, and for a mile or more, they had full confidence that they had Joe straight ahead of them. But presently they approached a fork of the cañon; it became imperative to know if Joe had gone up the right or the left ravine. And here, where most they wanted a glimpse of him, they had scant hope of seeing him, so dense was the timber growth; he would keep close to the bed of the stream, at times walking in the water so that the network of branches from the brushy tangle on both banks would make for him a dim alleyway, like a tunnel. They could not hope to hear him; they could not count on finding his tracks, since none would be left upon the rocks and the rushing water held none.

But they were alert, ears critical of the slightest rustling, eyes never keener. And, their good fortune holding firm, when they came to the forking of the ways, that which they had not hoped for, a track upon a hard rock, set them right. For here Joe, but a few score yards ahead of them, had slipped, and had crawled up over a boulder, and there was still the wet trace of his passing, a sign to vanish, drying, while they looked on it. Joe had gone on into the deeper cañon, headed in the direction which last night they had elected for their own, driving on toward the heart of the wilderness country.

They were no less relieved at finding what was the man's likely general direction than at making sure that they were still almost at his heels. For they had come[Pg 102] to realize that, to explain Joe's presence here, there were two directly opposing possibilities to consider: It was imaginable that Joe would be making straight for his gold; and it was just as reasonable that his craft might have suggested to him to head in an opposite direction. Now that they might follow him and still be going direct upon their own business, they were for the moment content upon all points.

Deveril, for the most part, went ahead; now and then he paused a moment for the girl to come up with him. But never did he have to wait long. He began to wonder at her; they had covered many hard miles last night; more hard miles this morning. How long, he asked himself, as his eyes sought to read hers, could such a slender, altogether feminine, blush-pink girl stand up under such relentless hardship as this flight promised to give them? And always he went on again, reassured and admiring; her eyes remained clear, her regard straight and cool. A girl unafraid; the true daughter of dauntless, hot-blooded parents.

And she, watching his tall, always graceful form leading the way, found ample time to wonder about him. She had seen him last night burst in through a window and take the time coolly, though already the hue and cry was breaking at his contemptuous heels, to rifle a man's pockets. There was an indelible picture: the debonair Babe Deveril, who had stepped unquestioningly into her fight, going down on his knees before his fallen kinsman ... calmly bent upon robbery. For she had seen the bank-notes in his hand.

The sun rose high and crested all the ridges with glorious light, and poured its golden warmth down into the steep cañons. But, now that shadows began to shrink and the little open spaces lay revealed in detail, fresh labor was added in that they were steadily harder[Pg 103] driven to keep to cover; all day long, at intervals, they were to have glimpses of the Buck Valley road, high above upon the mountain flank, and at each view of the road they understood that a man up there might have caught a glimpse of them. Ten o'clock came and found them doggedly following along the way which they held the viewless Mexicali Joe must have taken before them. They paused and stooped to the invitation of the creek, and thereafter ate what was left them of their grilled trout. Having eaten, they drank again; and having drunk, they again took up the trail....

"If you can stand the pace?" queried Deveril over his shoulder. And she read in the gleam in his eyes that he was set on seeing this thing through; on sticking close to Mexicali Joe until he came, with Joe, upon his secret.

It was not over an hour later when they set their feet in a trail which they were confident Mexicali Joe had followed; from the moment they stepped into the trail they watched for some trace of him, but the hard, rain-washed, rocky way which only a mountaineer could have recognized as a trail, was such as to hold scant sign, if the one who travelled it but exercised precaution. Babe Deveril, with his small knowledge of these mountains, held it the old short-cut trail from Timkin's Bar, long disused, since Timkin's Bar itself had a score of years ago died the death of short-lived mining towns. Brush grew over it, and again and again it vanished underfoot, and they were hard beset to grope forward to it again. Yet trail of a sort it was, and it set them to meditating: Timkin's Bar, in the late '80's, had created a gold furor, and then, after its short and hectic life, had been abandoned, as an orange, sucked dry by[Pg 104] a child, is thrown aside. Was it possible that among the old diggings Mexicali Joe had stumbled upon a vein which the old-timers had overlooked?

At any rate, the trail lured them along, winding in their own general direction; and Mexicali Joe still fled ahead. Of this latter fact they had evidence when they came to the unmistakable sign ... to watchful eyes ... of his recent passing: here, on the steep, ill-defined trail he had slipped, and had caught at the branches of a wild cherry. They saw the furrow made by his boot-heel and the scattered leaves and broken twigs.

Gradually the trail led them up out of the cañon-bed, snaking along the flank of the mountain. And gradually they were entering the great forest land of yellow pines. If not already in Timber-Wolf's country, here was the border-line of his monster holdings: few men could draw the line exactly between the wide-reaching acres which were his and those contiguous acres which were a portion of the government reserve. Standing himself had quarrelled with the government upon the matter and what was more, after no end of litigation, had won a point or two.

Once they diverged from the trail to climb and slide to the bottom of the cañon for a long drink. But this and the sheer ascent took them in their hurry only a few minutes. Again they took up the trail. It was high noon and they were tired. But, alike disdainful of fatigue, driven and lured, they pressed on.

In another moment, drawing back from the trail, they were hidden among the wild cherries in a little side ravine.

"Where?" he demanded, his voice hushed like hers,[Pg 105] as he peered back along the way they had come. "Who? How many of them?"

"Nothing ... I just know ... I felt that some one was trailing us just as we are trailing Mexicali Joe! I feel it now; I know!"

She shook her head. And he saw, wondering at her, that she was very deeply in earnest as she admitted:

"No. Nothing! But I know. I tell you, I know. Can't you feel that there is some one back there, following us, spying on us, hiding and yet dogging every step we take? Can't you feel it?"

She saw him shaken with silent laughter. She understood that he, a man, was convulsed with laughter at the imaginings of her, a maid. And yet, also, since she was quick-minded, she noted how his laughter was silent! He meant her to see that he put no credence in her suspicions; and yet, for all that, he was impressed, and he did take care that no one, who might follow them, should overhear him!

"One doesn't feel things like that," he told her, as though positive. But in the telling he kept his voice low, so that it was scarcely louder than her own whisper.

"But," he challenged her, "were you right, and were there a man or several men back there tracking us, why all this caution on their parts? What would they be waiting for, being armed themselves and knowing us unarmed? What better place than this to take us in? Why give us a minute's chance to slip away in the brush?"

"I don't know." She shrugged, and again he marvelled at her; she looked like one who had little vital concern in what any others, pursuing, might or might not do.

Despite his cool determination to adhere to calm reason and to discount feminine impressionism, which he held to be fostered by a nervous condition brought about by overexertion, Babe Deveril began to feel, as she felt, that there was something more than imagination in her contention. How does a man sense things which no one of his five senses can explain to him? He could not see any reason in this abrupt change in both their moods; and yet, none the less, it seemed to him, all of a sudden, as though eyes were spying on him from behind every pine trunk, and from the screen of every thicket.

"Joe won't escape us in a hurry," he muttered. "Not in this cañon. And we'll see this thing through. Let's sit tight and watch."

And so, with that inexplicable sense that here in the wilderness they were not yet free from pursuit, they crouched in the bushes and bent every force of every sense to detect their fancied pursuers. But the forest land, sun-smitten, a playland of light and shadow and tremulous breeze, lay steeped in quiet about them, and they saw nothing moving save the gently stirring leaves and occasional birds; half a dozen sparrows briefly stayed their flight upon a shrub in flower with pale-pink blossoms; a bevy of quail, forty strong, marched away through the narrow roadways under the low, drooping branches, with crested topknots bobbing; the forest land murmured and whispered and sang softly, and seemed empty of any other human presence than their own. And yet they waited, and at the end of their waiting, grown nervous despite themselves, though they had had[Pg 107] no slightest evidence that pursuit was drawing close upon their heels, they were not able to shake from them that feeling that danger, the danger from which they fled, was become a near-drawn menace. And all the more to be feared in that it approached so silently, covertly, hidden and ready to strike when their guard was down.

"Just the same," said Deveril, deep in his own musings, "it can't be Jim Taggart, for that's not Taggart's way, having the goods on a man, and, besides, I fancy I put him out of the running." Then he looked at her curiously, and added: "And it can't be Bruce Standing, since you put him down and out and...."

It was the first time that such a reference to the past had been made. Now she startled him by the quick vehemence of her denial, saying:

He looked at her steadily, and she broke off, as she saw dawning in his eyes a look which was to be read as readily as were white stones to be glimpsed in the bottom of a clear pool. She had made her statement, and, whether true or false, he held it to be a lie.

"In case they should somehow lay us by the heels," he said dryly, "you would come a lot closer to clearing yourself by saying that you shot him in self-defense than in denying everything. But they haven't got their ropes over our running horns yet!... Do you still feel that we are followed?"

His look angered her; his words angered her still further. So to his question she made no reply. He looked at her again curiously. She refused to meet his eyes, coolly ignoring him. A little smile twitched at his lips.

"It's a poor time for good friends to fall out," he said lightly. "I don't care the snap of my fingers who shot him, or why. He ought to have been shot a dozen years[Pg 108] ago. And now I'll tell you what, I think, explains this business of some one being close behind us, if you are right in it. The big chance is that some one has been trailing Mexicali Joe all along; and dropped in behind us when we dropped in behind Joe. We've been doing a first-class job of sticking to cover; mind you, we haven't caught a second glimpse of Joe all this time, and therefore it is as likely as not that the gent whom you feel to be trailing us hasn't caught a glimpse of us. If this is right, we've got a bully chance right now to prove it. We lie close where we are for ten minutes, and see if your hombre doesn't slip on by us, nosing along after Joe."

In silence she acquiesced. That sense of the nearness of another unseen human being was insistent upon her. For a long time, as still as the deep-rooted trees about them, they crouched, listening, watching. She heard the watch ticking in Babe Deveril's pocket. She heard her own breathing and his. She heard the brownie birds threshing among dead leaves. Then there was the eternal whispering of the pines and the faint murmurings from the stream far down in the cañon. At last it would have been a relief to straining nerves if a man, or two or three men, had stepped into sight in the trail from which she and Deveril had withdrawn. For more certain than ever was Lynette Brooke, though she could give neither rhyme nor reason for that certainty, that her instincts had not tricked her. Therefore, instead of being reassured at seeing or hearing no one, she was depressed and made anxious; the silence became sinister, filled with vague threat; that she saw no one was explicable to her by but the one ominous condition: that person or those persons were watching even now, and knew where she and Babe Deveril hid, and did not mean to stir until first their quarry stirred.[Pg 109] Why all this caution? She could not explain that to herself; if some one followed, why should that some one hide? Why not step out with gun levelled, and put an end to this grim game of hide-and-seek.

They had not moved for a full twenty minutes, and by now he began to convict her of nervous imaginings, fancies of an overwrought girl. But she answered him, saying with unshaken certainty:

"I tell you, I know! Some one has been following us, and now is hiding and waiting for us to go on."

"Well, you are right or wrong, and in either case I don't fancy this job of sitting so tight I feel as though I were growing roots. If you should happen to be right, we'll know in time, I suppose. Let's go!"

To her, in her present mood, anything was better than inaction. They left their hiding-place, found a silent and hidden way a bit farther down the slope, went forward a hundred yards and stepped back into the faint trail. Their concern, each said inwardly, was to forge on and to follow Joe; thus they pretended within themselves to ignore that nebulous warning that they, like Joe, were followed.

And so the day wore on, a day made up of uncertainty and vague threat. How full the silent forest lands were of little sounds! For therein lies the greatest of all forest-land mysteries; that silence in the solitudes may be made audible. Uncertainty struck the key-note of their long day. They sought to follow Mexicali Joe; they did not see him, they did not hear him, they did not know where he was. Was he still ahead of them, hastening on? How far ahead? A mile by now, not having paused while they lost time? A hundred yards? Or had he turned aside? Or had he thrown himself[Pg 110] down flat somewhere, watching them go by? Was he following them, or had he struck out east or west, while they went on north? And was there some one following them? One man? Two? More? Or none at all? Uncertainty. And as they grew tired and hungry, the great silence oppressed them, and most of all this uncertainty of all things began to bite in upon their nerves as acid eats into glass, etching its own sign.

"I'm getting jumpy," muttered Deveril, glaring at her, his eyes looking savage and stern. "This nonsense of yours...."

"Anyway, it's getting on my nerves! There's no sense in this sort of thing. We're scaring ourselves like two kids in the dark. What's more, we are allowing a pace-setter to get us to going too hard and steady a clip; we'll be done in, the first thing we know. And we've got to begin figuring on where the next meal comes from. What I mean is, that we've got enough to do without wasting any more nerve force on what may or may not follow after us."

"Joe is still ahead of us," she reminded him; "or, at any rate, we think that he is. He left last night in as big a hurry as we did; and he, too, came away without gun and fishing-tackle, and didn't stop to get Young Gallup to put him up a lunch. Then, on top of all that, Joe knows this country better than we do."

"I get you!" he told her quickly. "Joe's as ready for food and lodging as we are, and Joe, unless we're wrong all along, is hiking ahead of us. Who knows but we'll invite ourselves to dine with Señor Joe before the day's done!... Is that it?"

"I don't know how it may work out.... I hadn't gotten that far yet.... But if Joe is headed toward his secret, and if he does have a provision cache [Pg 111]somewhere in the mountains ... a few items in tinned goods and, maybe, even coffee and sugar and canned milk...."

"Let's go!" broke in Deveril, half in laughter and half in eagerness. "You make my mouth water with your surmisings."

Here in these steep-walled narrow gorges the shadows lengthened swiftly after the sun had passed the zenith, and already, when now and then they looked searchingly at what lay ahead, it was difficult to distinguish the shadows from the substance. They must come close to Joe if they meant to see him, and, by the same token, if a man followed them, he was confronted by the same difficulty. So they hurried on, walking more freely, keeping in the trail, climbing at times along the ridge flank, frequently dipping down into the lower cañon. Babe Deveril cut himself a green cudgel from a scrub-oak, trimming off the twigs as he walked on. If it came to argument with Mexicali Joe, a club like that might bring persuasion. And he fully meant that the Mexican should show himself generous, even to the division of a last crust. Always buoyed up by optimism, he was counting strongly on Joe's provision cache.

When they dropped down into the cañon again, they saw the first star. Lynette looked up at it; it trembled in its field of deep blue. She was faint, almost dizzy; her muscles ached; fatigue bore hard upon her spirit; she was footsore. But, most of all, like Deveril before her, she was concerned with imaginings of supper. She pictured bacon and a tin of tomatoes and shoe-string potatoes sizzling in the bacon grease ... and coffee. Whether with milk or sugar, or without both, no longer mattered. Then she sighed wearily, and had no other physical nor mental occupation than that which had to do with the putting of one foot before the other, plodding on and on and on. And all the while the shadows[Pg 112] deepened and thickened in the cañons, and the stars multiplied, and the little evening breeze sharpened; she began to shiver.

She could mark no trail underfoot; always Deveril, before her, was breaking through a tangle, always at his heels, she kept his form in sight; but she began to think that he had lost the way, and a new fear gripped her. Instead of dining with Joe, they were losing him, and now, with the utter dark already on the way, they would see no sign of him. And in the dark they would not be able to snare a trout or anything else that might be eaten. She got into the habit of breaking off twigs and chewing at them....

And all the while Deveril was rushing on, faster and faster. It was hard work keeping up with him.

It was Deveril's whisper, sharp and eager; there was Deveril himself just ahead of her, pausing briefly.

Her heart leaped up; her life fires burned bright and warm again; the pain went out of her. She began to run....

On the mountain slope just ahead of them she marked the clearing and, since there, too, the shadows were darkening, she saw nothing else. She wondered what he saw or thought that he saw. He pointed, and she, with straining eyes, made out a shadow which moved; Joe, going up a steep, open trail. And just ahead of Joe a dark, square-cornered blot....

"A dirty dugout, most likely, and from the look of it. But, as sure as you're born, there's Mexicali Joe's mountain headquarters. A clump of bushes, willows,[Pg 113] you can be sure, not ten feet from his door; that will be his spring. And inside his shack ... a box of grub, Lady Lynette! And if Joe doesn't have company for dinner, I'll eat your hat."

"I haven't any," said Lynette. "But we'd probably have to eat our own shoes. Come on; let's hurry.... What are you waiting for?"

"I want to whet my appetite by loitering a while.... Listen, Lynette; after all, there's no great hurry any longer. First thing, a hot supper is what is needed, and Joe can make as good a fire as we can. You can gamble that he won't waste any time, and that he'll cook a panful!"

"And if he has only that limited amount and it belongs to him and he wants it, you don't mean to say that you would seek to take it away from him? That's robbery...."

"We'll play square with him, Babe Deveril, and give him exactly one-third. And man may call it robbery, but God and nature won't. Come...."

"I'll come with you a few steps farther. And then we will possess our souls in patience and will sit down among the bushes and will wait until we smell coffee. And I'll tell you why."

She looked at him, wondering. And then suddenly she guessed somewhat of his thought, though not all of it. She had forgotten her own certainty that some one followed them; it surged back upon her now.

"Yes," he said, when she had spoken, "you're on the right track. We are going to wait a few minutes to make sure. If some one was following and wanted you and me, he could have had no object in hanging back, spying on us. But if that same gent were following Mexicali Joe, he[Pg 114] would want to hang back, trusting to Joe to lead him to something worth coming at. So, out of your feeling I've built my theory: That this gent thinks all the time he's trailing Joe, and doesn't know we are here at all; tracks in the rocky trail wouldn't show him whether one or a dozen had gone over it. And I get to this point: How did this gent pick up Joe's trail in the dark? And I answer it by saying that he could have known that Joe had a dugout up here, and so lay in wait for him. And, that being true, by now he would be sure that Joe was going straight to his camp, and so, at almost any moment, he would give up his sneak-thief style of travelling and would come hurrying along. And, if that's right, you and I can get a glimpse of this new hombre before he does of us. It may come in handy, you know," he concluded dryly, "to get the first swing at him if he's an ugly gent with a rifle. At short range, and in the dark, and stepping lively, this club of mine is way up. And, if we can take his rifle from him ... why, then into the wilderness we go, without fear of starving. Which is a long speech for the end of a perfect day, but I'm right!"

So insistent was he and so utterly weary she, they drew a few lagging steps out of the trail, and sank down in the shadows. She lay flat; she saw the stars swimming in the deepening purple; her eyes closed; she felt two big tears of exhaustion slip out between the closed lids. There was a faint drumming in her ears; she no longer cared for food.

... "Get up!" Deveril was saying curtly. "I guess we're both wrong. And I'm going to eat, if the devil drops in to join us."

She didn't think she had been asleep. Nor yet that she had fallen prey to swift, all-engulfing unconsciousness. Only that she had been in a mood of utter [Pg 115]indifference to all earthly matters. She tried, when he commanded the second time, to rise. He helped her. She sat up.... She saw a little sprinkling of sparks tossed upward from Joe's chimney; stars at first she thought them—stars wavering and blurred and uncertain.

She rose wearily, making no answer. He went ahead, she followed. Her whole body cried out for rest; this brief, altogether too brief, lingering had stiffened her and made her sore from head to foot. She saw that Deveril was going up the steep trail slowly; he still strove for caution, no doubt planning to burst in unexpectedly upon Mexicali Joe. For Joe might have a gun there in his dugout; and he might have no great stock of provisions and be of no mind to share with others. So she, too, strove for silence.... A strangely familiar odor was afloat on the night air ... coffee! Joe's coffee was boiling.

And then, at that moment of moments, jarring upon their nerves as a sudden pistol-shot might have done, there came up to them from the cañon they had just quitted the sharp sound made by a man breaking in the dark through brush. And, with that sound, another; a man's voice, a voice which both knew and yet on the instant were unable to place, crying sharply, unguardedly:

She dropped in her tracks, he at her side. They were in the little clearing; if they went back it would be to run into the arms of the men down there; if they went ahead it was to go straight on to Joe's dugout. If they sought to turn to right or left, they must go through the longest arms of the clearing, and must certainly be seen.[Pg 116] The only shadows into which they might slip were cast by the clump of willows grouped in a span of half a dozen yards, and not over as many steps, from Joe's door....

They crawled, wriggling forward, inching, but inching swiftly. Behind them they heard voices, and a sudden running of heavy boots; before them they heard a pot or pan dropped against Joe's stove, and then Joe's excited muttering and the scuffle of Joe's boots. They scrambled on; Deveril dragged himself, with a sudden heave, into the fringe of the willow thicket; at his side, so close that elbow brushed elbow, Lynette threw herself. They saw Joe come running out of his dugout; they saw him pause a second; he could have seen them, surely, had he looked down. But his eyes were for the cañon below, from which the sudden voices had boomed up to him. And now came a voice again, that first voice, shouting threateningly:

"I got you covered, Joe! With my rifle. And I'll drop you dead if you move! You know me, Joe ... me, Jim Taggart!"

Still Joe hesitated ... and was lost. Up the steep slope came Jim Taggart, and behind him Young Gallup; and after Gallup, Gallup's man, Cliff Shipton. And every man of them carried a rifle, held in readiness. Joe began to swear in Spanish, his voice shaken, quavering with the fear upon him.

Deveril put out his hand until it lay upon Lynette's arm; his fingers gave her a quick, warning squeeze. Taggart and the others were coming on swiftly; it was almost too much to hope that they could pass and not see the two figures outstretched in the willows. Still, there was the chance, slim chance as it was....

If only Joe, poor stupid fool, as Deveril savagely called[Pg 117] him in his heart, would make a bolt for it! Then there'd surely be such a drawing of their eyes to him that they would not see a white elephant tethered at the door! But Joe stood as if his feet had grown into the ground. Save for his continued mutterings, as Joe poured forth his eloquent Spanish curses, he would have appeared a man bereft of all volition. And Taggart and Young Gallup and Shipton came on at a run. Deveril clutched his club; he turned an inch or two to be ready. Lynette, lying so close to him, felt his body stiffen and guessed his purpose, and this time it was her hand closing tight upon his forearm, warning him to hold to caution as long as there was hope.

The three came steadily on, hastening all that they could up the steep slope. A moment ago, when first Taggart called out, Joe might have eluded them had he been lightning-swift and ready to take chances. But now that he had hesitated, it was clear that his most shadowy hope of escape was gone. He stood motionless, cursing them and his luck.

Babe Deveril's fingers were tight, as tight as rage could weld them about his oak stick. At that moment he could have welcomed the excuse to leap out with the unexpectedness of a cataclysm and the rush of a catapult, to heave his club upward and bring it down, full force, upon Taggart's head. For now he had the added rancour in his heart that Jim Taggart, with his following, had chosen this one moment to come up with them, just as Babe Deveril was counting in full confidence upon the first square meal in twenty-four hours. Taggart, less than threatening his safety, was stealing the supper which he had counted on having from Mexicali Joe.

Jim Taggart began to laugh, more in malice than in mirth, and, most of all, in an evil, gloating triumph. He came on, hurrying; he almost trod on Lynette's boot. Instinctively she jerked away from him; yet only [Pg 118]because Taggart was so gloatingly bent upon his quarry he did not note her movement, or must have supposed that he had set a stone rolling.

"Ho!" cried Taggart. "Joe's a good kid after all, boys! He's waited for us, and he's got us a piping-hot supper! Wonder how he guessed we were starved like wildcats?"

"Damn him!" Lynette heard Deveril, and her fingers gripped him with a new agony of warning and supplication for silence.

"You robbers!" cried Joe nervously. "Already you tryin' rob me, las' night. Now you tryin' rob me! I tell you...."

"Shut up!" snapped Taggart. "Back into your dirty den and we'll have a nice little talk with you."

Taggart was close upon him now and caught him by the shoulder, flinging him about, shoving him through the squat door of his dugout. Slight enough was the diversion, but both Lynette and Deveril were thankful for it, for the two figures drew the eyes of both Gallup and Shipton and held them. Joe reeled across the threshold; Taggart, not knowing what weapon Joe might have lying on his bunk, sprang nimbly after him. And Gallup and Shipton, to see everything, drew on close behind him. They passed the willows about the spring and, stooping, went in at Joe's door.

Lynette and Deveril lay very still, hesitating to move hand or foot. For both Gallup and Shipton stood on Joe's threshold, and that threshold was a few steps only from their hiding-place. The snapping of a twig, the crackling of a handful of dead leaves must certainly bring swift, searching eyes upon them.

CHAPTER IX

"The first half chance we get," whispered Deveril, guardedly, "we've got to sneak out of this! Lie still; I can see them without moving. That man with the hawk face is turned this way."

He could see neither Joe nor Taggart in the dugout. Gallup he could see, barely across the threshold now, watching Taggart and the Mexican. The man Shipton, evidently fagged from a hard day of it, had slumped down on the log that served as door-step, and faced outward, save when now and then he half turned to glance curiously at the sheriff and his captive.

"So we nabbed you, eh, Mexico?" gibed Taggart. "You damn little tricky shrimp! To think you could put one across on me!"

"Gatham you!" shrilled Joe. "You big t'ief, you try one time an' you see! I ain't do nothin' to you; I got the right...."

"Oh, shut up!" muttered Taggart impatiently. "Dry your palaver for once. I'll give you chance enough to spill over when I get good and ready." Outside Lynette and Deveril heard a sound which, in their hunger, they were quick to read aright; Taggart, also hungry, had stepped to the stove and had dragged a heavy iron frying-pan to him, investigating its content. "Phew!" growled Taggart. "You infernal garlic hound! Well, the jerked meat ought to go all right. And coffee, huh? Come on, boys; we'll feed up, and then we'll tell Joe what's in the wind."

"I ain't got much grub," Joe shouted back at him. "An' I need it mysel'. You go...."

There was the sound of a blow and of scuffling feet, the thudding of a body against the wall.

"Take that," Taggart told him viciously. And, his ugly voice thick with threat: "And thank your Dago saints I only used my fist! Next time, so help me, I'll bash you with a rifle barrel. Say, Cliff...."

"Scare up some dry wood; the fire's near out. And, Joe, you dig up a candle or lamp or something. I'd like a little light in this stinking hole."

Joe, though with infuriated mutterings, did as bid. Slowly the gaunt form of Cliff Shipton rose from the rough-hewn log.

"God, I'm tired," he said. And then, when no one thought to sympathize, he demanded querulously: "Say, Mex, where's your wood-pile?"

"Imagine the lazy hound having a wood-pile! Skirmish around, Cliff, and pick up some dead sticks."

Joe had found a stub of candle, and now its pale light vaguely illuminated the dugout's interior. Since there was but the one opening, the squat door, Deveril still saw only Gallup. Gallup by now was sitting upon the narrow bunk at the back of the room, his rifle between his knees, the shadow of his hat hiding his face. Shipton set his own rifle down against the outside wall and began groping with his feet for bits of wood.

"It's getting awful dark for this kind of thing," he was telling himself in his eternally complaining voice. "Ain't he got a box or a chair or a table or something in there that'll burn?" he called.

No one paid any attention to him and Shipton, scuffling gropingly with his feet, widened his search. And now Lynette and Deveril scarcely breathed. For it seemed inevitable that he was coming straight toward[Pg 121] the brushy-fringed spring where they lay. Deveril was now on his left elbow, his body raised slightly, his legs drawn up under him, so that he could readily fling himself to his feet, his oak club in his right hand. Lynette understood and was ready, too; if Shipton came dangerously near, she knew that it was Deveril's intent to drop him in his tracks. Then there would remain but the one thing to do; to leap up and run for it, run blindly, plunging into the nearest shadows, to run on and on while men shot after them.

Shipton came nearer. She felt Babe Deveril stir, ever so slightly. Her only concern now was: Would he strike just at the very second that he should? Would he strike a second too early, before it was necessary, and thus needlessly give himself away? Would he strike just a second too late, giving Shipton first the time to see and cry out?

His foot struck something, and he reached down, thinking it was a bit of wood. But it was a stone, dirt-covered, and he kicked at it and came on. Now he was not two steps away. Again he stooped; as he stooped, Babe Deveril raised himself an inch or two higher. But now Shipton found a fragment of a pine log, half rotted and of little use as fuel. But in his present mood it served him; he picked it up and turned back to the dug-out. Lynette heard Deveril's slowly expelled breath.

Within there was a scraping of frying-pan on stove top. They saw a tin plate handed to Gallup on his bunk; Gallup began eating, noisy about it; eating like a dog. Shipton went in with his log. Taggart caught it from him, broke it up by striking it against the hard-packed dirt floor, and began stoking the stove. A fresh gush of sparks shot up from Joe's chimney. Shipton[Pg 122] was demanding to be fed ... and for God's sake give him a shot of coffee.

"Now's our chance," whispered Deveril. "None too good, but the best we're going to have! Ready?"

"Now," he whispered. "Off to the right; slow and quiet; if once we can snake across this open place and into the timber over there...."

"And now, Señor Joe," came Taggart's voice, and they knew from the sound that Taggart, mouth full, was eating ravenously, "we got you!"

"Sure you got me," Joe rasped out at him, and still there remained defiance in little Mexicali Joe. "Fine! But what you do with me? You can't eat me, an' nobody ever yet put any bounty on my hide, an' when you got me ... you no got nothin'. An', cabrone, what I got I keep him!"

"Talk big, little hombre, while you can! And now let me tell you something: To-night, right now, inside ten minutes, you're going to tell me just exactly where you got that stuff you spilled out of your pocket last night. And in the morning, bright and early, you're going to take me there!"

"You'll be a long time dying! Think I'm fool enough to kill you ... now? Know what the third degree is, Joe?" Taggart's voice was terrible with its insinuation. "Me, when I give the third degree to any man, he spills his guts before I'm done with him! You'll cough up everything you know and be damn glad afterward to crawl off in the woods and die! That's me, Joe."

Gallup, who must have found amusement in watching Mexicali Joe's expression, laughed. After him Cliff[Pg 123] Shipton laughed like an echo. Joe began cursing nervously.

"Ready?" whispered Lynette. Taggart's threats horrified her and set her trembling.

"No!... Don't you see? Taggart will make him tell everything he knows, if he has to knock his teeth out one by one and break every bone in his body! And I'm going to hear!... You crawl ahead while there's a chance; I can up and run for it after you if I have to."

She was silent. There was excitement in his utterance and another quality which sent a sudden chill to her heart. She stared at him through the dark as at a stranger; the gold fever was rampant in his veins, and she knew that he would lie here, never lifting hand or voice, while Taggart tortured his captive until Joe shrieked out his golden secret.

Before Lynette could speak or move, Taggart's voice once more cut harshly through the silence.

"You wouldn't know, Joe, unless you'd been sheriff as long as me, how many nice little ways there are of making a man hurry up about spitting up all he knows!" Taggart was steadily cramming into his mouth the half-cooked dried beef stew, appearing to have entirely forgotten his dislike for garlic. "Me, I'm a man of brains and what you call invention; I look around and see what I've got handy, and out of it I make what I need! Now, look here. You see us boys eating hearty, and, if I know what that look means in a man's eye, you got an appetite yourself? Well, you don't get a scrap to eat nor a drink to drink until you open up."

"Next, you see the stove with its hot lids? All right, pretty quick we hold you so the palms of your hands stick to the hot lids and the skin burns off. Oh, I know[Pg 124] that don't hurt so much a man can't stand it; sure not. But it does sort to set him to thinking things over in a new fashion! And then, what next?"

"Make him eat salt," put in Shipton with a snicker. "And don't give him any water! Lots of salt does the trick, Jimmie."

"Maybe you can tell gold when you see it, Cliff," he said briefly. "But that's all you do know.... Listen to me, Mexico. We got our rifles, ain't we? We stand you with your back to the wall and dare you to move! Then we practise shooting; just to see how close we can come! We don't hit you, us three being good shots. Anyway, we don't hit you often, and then it's only grazes! We make a game out of it; every man takes a shot and him that comes closest gets a dollar every time; him that draws blood puts up two dollars in the pot. And, pretty soon.... What are you looking so sick for, Joe? Nobody ain't hurt you yet!"

Joe's curses were suddenly faint, for Joe's mouth and throat were dry and he had grown limp and dizzy and sick.

"The brute!" whispered Lynette, her own flesh set twitching. "The horrible brute!"

"I don't believe he'd actually do that! He is just frightening Joe—bluffing...."

"You the sheriff!" cried Joe, desperate. "You the one bigges' robber in all these mount'!"

Again they heard the sound of the blow, struck fiercely by Jim Taggart, who, as he let all men understand, was the last man to brook an insult. And they heard Joe's slight body hurled back, so that he toppled and fell. And, thereafter, Taggart's brutish laughter. To-night,[Pg 125] Jim Taggart, no matter how disgruntled he had been during so many hours, was at last enjoying himself. For to-night he was secure in his expectations.

"You bleed awful easy, Joe," he jeered. "Ought to go get your teeth straightened up, too! Cup of coffee? No? Then I'll take one; gracias, mi amigo!"

"So?" And Taggart, swinging heavily, knocked him down again, and then reached out for the can that held sugar and sweetened his coffee. Shipton sniggered.

"Me," acknowledged Taggart heavily, "I am what I am. But I never laid down for a Mex breed yet, and I ain't going to."

Joe lay where he had fallen. His body was pain-wracked, for when Jim Taggart struck in wrath he struck mightily, being a mighty man physically, and hard. Joe's swart skin had paled; his eyes started from his head; he feared, and not without reason, that a third blow like that would kill him. And he knew that Jim Taggart was no man to lie awake because he had killed another man.

"I got thirs'," said Joe thickly. He was sitting up, on the floor. "Give me cup water!"

"I got you, Joe," said Taggart speculatively. No mockery now; just a vast, deep satisfaction. "I half believe one good kick in the belly would settle you and you'd tell all you know. I got a hunch...."

"Go slow, Jim." This from the avaricious Young Gallup. "No sense killing him, seeing you haven't found out a thing."

"You're right, Gal. Well, give him a drink, then; half a cup of water and let him think things over.... If he opens up then, O. K. If he don't we'll find the way to open him up."

"Let me go to the spring," said Joe. By now he was on his feet. "I was jus' goin' for water when you come. The spring, she's right there. You can see I don't run away...."

"Go scoop him up a can of water, Cliff," said Taggart. "You sit tight, Joe. You don't go out to-night unless we take you out to put you in a hole!"

"I'm tired out, and I'm sore and stiff and stove-up. Let him go without his water."

"I'll go get him his water. After that, like you say, Jim, he'll open up—wide! Or, if he don't, I'll break his jaw-bone with my boot heel.... Where's a can?"

Already Babe Deveril had wormed his way out of the willows and began creeping about the edge of the tiny thicket that was farthest from Joe's cabin. Lynette, feeling weak and sick, followed him like his own shadow. Thus they skirted the brushy fringe of the spring.

Then Gallup, carrying his can, came out. Deveril dropped flat and lay motionless, his body hidden, at least to careless eyes, by the spring willows. Lynette dropped flat just behind him. She knew that again Deveril was ready to leap and strike, mercilessly hard, if Gallup came too near. It was almost an even chance whether Gallup would come their way or not....[Pg 127] Lynette, cold and tired and hungry and at last afraid, shivered.

But, almost immediately, it became obvious to both of them that Gallup had been here before and knew his way about. He turned, as they had hoped that he would, to the right; they heard him reach the spring and dip his pan and fill it and turn back to the dugout, slopping water after him. They saw him step on the threshold; already Deveril was crawling cautiously again, and, after him, Lynette.

It was like life in a nightmare. So tortuously slow. So great a need for quiet, and, like jeering, mocking voices, there came so many little sounds, loud in their ears—twigs snapping, leaves rustling, tiny stones set rolling. At first, what with the dark and her sole thought to be gone, Lynette failed to understand just how Deveril was directing his course. When she did grasp, she wondered at him. Instead of hurrying straight across the clearing toward the haven of the timber-line, he was drawing nearer and nearer the west end of the dugout! Now she dared not whisper to him; she could not come up with him to catch warningly at his boot. So she followed, striving with all her caution to overtake him. And before she could do so, she glimpsed his purpose.

True to type, Joe's dugout had but the one door, and the rear of the building was a sort of timbered hole in the mountainside. Deveril planned that if he could gain the back of the dugout he could hear what was going on and run little danger of being detected; further, that in that direction, did he elect to up and run for cover, he and Lynette would have as good a chance as any to get away in the rim of the forest. If they moved with all possible silence, and especially if Taggart and the others within kept up their noise-making, snapping[Pg 128] and snarling and knocking things about, it was more than an even break that neither Taggart nor any of his companions would come to suspect that they were being spied upon; and when did Babe Deveril ever ask more than the even break? Then ... there remained one other consideration, one of exceedingly great importance in Deveril's estimation, of which as yet Lynette had no inkling: while in hiding down by the spring Deveril had made a discovery, or believed that he had, and no opportunity had been given him either to speak of it or yet to investigate.

Clearly now was the moment when Taggart and Gallup and the complaining Cliff Shipton concentrated every thought upon their captive; Joe showed signs of weakening, and every man of them held that if only Joe could be led to "open up" they would all be made rich at his expense.

Meanwhile Gallup had given Joe his water; Joe had drunk rapidly, gulping noisily. Taggart and Gallup and Shipton were eying him eagerly. Joe had taken a deep breath; again he started to drink. Taggart struck the can away from his mouth, commanding: "No more. You've got to talk first; fast and straight and no lies! Understand?"

"How you goin' tell if I lie?" muttered Joe, something of his stubbornness restored.

"Right now you tell us where the gold is. In the morning you take us to the place. And if you make a little mistake and don't take us straight, I'll make you sorry you were ever born!"

Deveril and Lynette passed within a few yards of the dugout's nearest front corner; they groped onward up the steep slope; they came in a brief détour to the rear, where the rude timbers supporting the shed roof were at this end embedded in the earth. Here they stopped[Pg 129] and lay flat and listened. And they heard Joe mumbling: "If I tell, I tell true. But I don't think I tell. You kick me out; you steal everything; you get rich an' me—I die poor. Maybe better I die and fool you!"

"Listen, Joe." Gallup speaking—Gallup, who feared that Joe might be fool enough to die with locked lips rather than be robbed of his new fortune; Gallup, a man who could understand another man doing anything, standing any torture, rather than lose the one golden thing in life. "We'll make you a fair proposition, us three men. You found the gold; all right, you got a right to a share. You can't hog it anyhow; other men will come rushing in as soon as you drop a pick in it; they'll stake claims all around you; more'n likely they'll cop off the very cream of it, and you'll have just a pocket that will peter out on you. We brought Cliff along; he knows pockets and veins and all kind of gold signs, from stock to barrel. Now, you show sense; you take us along; we form a company, just us four. And you get one-fourth the rake-off. And we got the money to develop it; to make a big thing out of it. You ain't got the money and you ain't got the business brains, and you'd lose on it sooner or later, anyhow."

Silence. A long silence while three men watched him and while Deveril and Lynette listened. A long silence during which all that strangely blended craft which flowed into Mexicali Joe's veins from a mixture of Latin and Indian ancestry was hard at work ... though this no one could guess now, so immobile was Joe's face, so guarded his tone when he spoke.

"That sound fine, Gallup! But how I know you don't cheat me? For why you don't hit me in the head with a pick when I tell? For why you don't take all ... everything?"

"I'm telling you why!" cried Gallup. "Look here.[Pg 130] Suppose we did that and croaked you and dug a hole and stuck you in. All right. Next thing we pop up with a new gold-mine! And there'll be men to say: 'That ore looks like the ore Mexicali Joe showed that night down to Gallup's house!' And they'll say: 'Where's Joe?' And they'll begin making trouble, all kinds; they'll want to run us out. They'll have us up for killing you. There'll be a lot of talk, and always the chance, as long's we live, they might pin something on us. And what would we make by that sort of work? Only a one-quarter interest in your diggings! Why, man, it ain't worth it! We got too much sense to kill any man for the sake of a little ante like that. Sure, Joe; dead on the level, if you play square with us, we play square with you."

Silence again. A longer silence than before. Then, while Joe must have appeared to hesitate, Taggart said abruptly:

"And if you don't take our proposition and talk fast and straight, I'm going to make you talk! And then you don't get no thanks but a kick and a get-the-hell-out! That's my way, you little greaser."

"All right!" cried Joe, seeming eager now. "I take the chance! You boys just tell me 'So help me God, I play square!' and I take the chance!"

"So help me God!" cried Young Gallup, first of all. "I play square with you, Joe!"

And after him, while Joe waited, both Taggart and Cliff Shipton said, with a semblance of deep gravity: "So help me God."

"We pardners now? Us four?" demanded Joe. And when he had had his three immediate, emphatic assurances—Deveril misjudged him a fool—Joe began, speaking rapidly: "Bueno! Now we talk. An' in the[Pg 131] mornin' we start an' to-morrow I show you! I got the bigges' mine you can't beat in all New Mexico an' Arizona an' Nevada, too! For why I care take on three pardners? I tell you, we got the money to devil-him-up, we all rich like hell!..."

"Get going, Joe," growled Taggart. "Where? Down Light Ladies' Cañon, and not more'n three or four miles from Big Pine?"

"Me, I fool ever'body!" he said gleefully. "Me, I'm damn smart man, Señor Taggart! Nowhere near Light Ladies'. The other way. We go all day to-morrow, way back up in the mountains. One long, hard day, walkin'. Maybe day an' a half. You know where Buck Valley? All right; you know, on other side, Big Bear Creek? An' then you know, little bit more far, two-t'ree mile, Grub Stake Cañon? You know...."

"By the living Lord," broke in Taggart. "That's right square in Bruce Standing's country!"

"You know whole lot; you don't know ever'thing! Timber-Wolf's lands run like this." (One could imagine a grimy forefinger set in a dirty palm.) "His line, here. My mine, she's just the other side. Nobody's land; gover'ment land." He chuckled. "An' ol' big Timber-Wolf, he goin' cry ... boo-hoo-hoo! ... when he find out we got gold not mile an' half from his line!"

Deveril was twitching at Lynette's sleeve. He began edging away. When she came up with him he was standing; she rose and, together they hurried across the clearing, and in a few moments were in the deep dark of the embracing forest land.

"I know that country like a map!" he told her excitedly. "We were already headed that way, and on we[Pg 132] go! Why, it was right up by Big Bear Creek that I spent a night with Bruce Standing six years ago and he robbed me of my roll!... They start in the morning; we start to-night! We'll be there when they come; there are ten thousand places to hide out; we'll have a place on a ridge where we can watch them. And they'll never have the vaguest idea that any one, you and I least of all, is ahead of them. Somehow, Lynette Brooke, our luck is with us and this whole game is going to play into our hands."

"If a little food would only play into them!... The smell of that coffee ... the meat cooking...."

"Wait! Right here, by this tree. Don't move a step, no matter what happens. I'll be back with you in two shakes."

She was almost too tired and faint from hunger to wonder at him. She saw him go, and then she sank down, her back to the big yellow pine. He went as straight as a string toward the spring; she saw him walking swiftly, though with footfalls so guarded that she could not hear him when he had gone ten steps. She knew that he was recklessly counting upon a deal of quick chatter in the dugout, secure in his own bravado that no man of the four there would at this electrically charged moment have thought of anything but gold. He disappeared in the dark; he was gone so long that she jumped up and stood staring in all directions; but at last he was back at her side, chuckling, and then she knew he had not been away ten minutes.

"I struck it with my elbow, while we were hiding down there," he told her triumphantly. "Mexicali Joe's real cache!"

He had a square tin biscuit-box in his hands. She put her hand in quickly. The box, which had been[Pg 133] half buried in the cool earth by the spring, was half full of tins and small packages.

Fatigue fled out of them. Hurriedly they went up over the ridge, deeper and deeper into the forest land. And when, in half an hour, they came down into the dark, tree-walled bed of another ravine, they made them their small fire and tumbled out into its light their newly acquired treasure-trove—sardines, beans, tinned milk ... yes, coffee!

CHAPTER X

Deveril looked across their tiny fire at her, a strange expression in his eyes, and said quietly:

"No; he is not dead. All along I judged that unlikely. Though I slung your gun at him hard enough, if it hit a lucky spot. It's hard to kill a man, you know.... And, to finish your thought, I am not running wild with a hangman's noose hanging about my neck! And you...."

He took a certain devilish glee in concluding with an echo of her own words. And with the added insinuation poured into them from his own. He saw her jerk her head up defiantly.

Again she broke off. He made no remark, but sat looking at her intently. They had eaten and drunk their fill; there remained to them a goodly stock of provisions; Deveril was smoking his cigarette.

"What now?" demanded Lynette, as one tired of a subject and impatient to look forward.

"All troubles have slipped off my shoulders. The worst they could do to me, if they could lay me by the heels, would be to charge me with assault and battery! And we're in a neck of the woods where men laugh at a charge like that, and ask the assaulted one why the devil he didn't hit back! What now? For you I'd advise keeping right on travelling. For if Bruce [Pg 135]Standing is dead it's up to you to keep on the move! As for me, I never met up with a sweeter travelling companion, nor yet with a nervier, nor yet, by God, with a lovelier! Say the word, Lynette Brooke, and we strike on together, over the ridge and deeper into the wilderness, headed for the land beyond Buck Valley, beyond Big Bear Creek. For the wild lands beyond the last holdings of the late Timber-Wolf, to be on the ground when Mexicali Joe leads Taggart and Gallup and Shipton to his gold!"

She understood how Babe Deveril, as any man should be, was relieved at knowing that the man he had stricken down was not dead; that he, himself, was not hunted as a murderer. And yet she was vaguely distressed and uneasy. She felt a change in him, and in his attitude toward her.... When he awaited her reply, she made none. Again fatigue swept over her, and with it a new stirring of uneasiness....

There was a drop of coffee left; she leaned forward and took it, thinking: "He had his tobacco, and it has bolstered up his nerves." She drank and then sat back, leaning against a tree, her face hidden from him, while she searched his face in the dim light, searched it with a stubborn desire to read the most hidden thought in his brain.

"I am tired," she said after a long while. He could make nothing of her voice, low and impersonal, and with no inflection to give it expression beyond the brief meanings of the words themselves. "Very tired. Yet necessity drives. And it is not safe here, so near them. I can go on for another hour, perhaps two or three hours. That will mean ... how far? Four or five miles; maybe six, seven?"

Not only for one hour, not alone for just two or three hours did they push on. But for half of that silent,[Pg 136] starry night. A score of times Babe Deveril said to her: "We've done our stunt; if any girl on earth ever earned rest, you've done it." But always there was that driving force and that allure, and another ridge just ahead, and her answer: "Another mile.... I can do it."

They found a sheltered spot among the tall pines; above them the keen edge of an up-thrust ridge; just below a thick-grown clump of underbrush; underfoot dry needles, fallen and drifted from the pines. Again he was all courtesy and kindliness toward her, seeing her hard pressed, judging her, despite her mask of hardihood, near collapse. So he cut pine boughs with his knife and broke them with his hands, and of them piled her a couch. She thanked him gently; impulsively she gave him her hand ... though, as his caught it eagerly, she jerked it away quickly.... He watched her lie down, snuggling her cheek against the curve of her arm. Near by he lay down on his back, his two hands under his head, his eyes on the stars. A curious smile twitched at his lips.

And then, just as they were dropping off to sleep, they heard far off a long-drawn, howling cry piercing through the great hush. Lynette started up, her blood quickening; as she had heard Bruce Standing's warning call that first time, so now did she think to hear it again. Deveril leaped to his feet, no less startled. A moment later he called softly to her, and it seemed to Lynette that he forced a tone of lightness which did not ring true:

"A timber wolf ... but one that runs on four legs! It won't come near." Then, as she made no answer[Pg 137] and he could not see her face, he asked sharply: "What did you think it was?"

Here among the uplands it was a night of piercing cold. The nearer the dawn drew on, the icier grew the fingers of the wind which swept the ridges and probed into the cañons. For a little while both Lynette and Deveril slept the heavy sleep of exhaustion. But, after the first couple of hours, neither slept beyond brief, uncomfortable dozes. They shivered and woke and stirred; they found a growing torture in the rude couches they slept upon, in the hard ground and stones, which seemed always thrusting up in new places. Long before the night had begun to thin to the first of daybreak's hint, Lynette was sitting, her back to a tree, torn between the two impossibilities, that of remaining awake, that of remaining asleep. Deveril got up and began stamping about, trying to get warm and drive the cramp and soreness out of his muscles.

"A few more days and nights like this," he grumbled, "would be enough to kill a pair of Esquimos! We've got to find us some sort of half-way decent shelter for another night, and we've got to arrange to take a holiday and rest up."

It was all that she could do to keep her teeth from chattering by shutting them hard together; her only answer was a shivery sigh. She could scarcely make him out, where he trod back and forth, the darkness held so thick. She began to think so longingly of a fire that in comparison with its cheer and warmth she felt that possible discovery by Taggart would be a small misfortune. She could almost welcome being put under[Pg 138] arrest; taken back to Big Pine and jail; given a bed and covers and one long sleep.

She nodded, as though he could see her nod through the dark. Then, with an effort, she said an uncertain: "Y-e-s."

"I'll tell you," he said presently, coming close to her and looking down upon the blot in the darkness which her huddled figure made at the base of the pine. "Taggart will be on his way soon; he'll hardly wait for day. He'll go the straightest, quickest way to the Big Bear country. That means he'll steer on straight into Buck Valley. If you and I went that way, we'd have him and his crowd at our heels all day, and never know how close they were; and I, for one, am damned sick of that feeling that somebody's creeping up on us all the time! So we swerve out from the direct way as soon as we start; we curve off to the north for a couple of miles; then we make a bend around toward the upper end of what I fancy must be the Grub Stake Cañon Joe is headed for. That way we'll always have two or three miles between our trail and theirs; at times we'll be five or six miles off to the side. That means, of course, that they're pretty sure to get to Joe's diggings ahead of us; not over half a day at that. For we're well ahead of them now. And, in any case, you can bet the last sardine we've got that they'll be a day or two just poking around, prospecting and trying to make sure of what they've grabbed off.... Agreed, pardner?"

"Yes. I could even start now, just to get those few miles between our trail and theirs. Then, when the sun was up and it was warm, we could have a rest and an hour's sleep."

So, walking slowly, painfully, carrying what was left of their small stock of provisions, they started on in the[Pg 139] dark. Up a ridge they went and into the thinning edge of the coming dawn; they picked their way among trees and rocks; little by little they were able to see in more detail what lay about them. Along the ridge they tramped northward. They were warmer now that they walked; or, rather, they were some degrees less cold. Gradually their paces grew swifter, as some of the stiffness went out of their bodies; gradually the shadows thinned; the stars paled, the east asserted itself above the other points of the compass, softly tinted. The sleeping world began to awake all about them; birds stirred with the first drowsy twitterings. The pallid eastern tints grew brighter; as from a wine-cup, life was spilled again upon the mountain tops. A bird began a clear-noted, joyous singing; all of a sudden the morning breeze seemed sweeter and softer; there came a brilliant, flaming glory in the sky which drew their eyes; all life forces which had been at ebb began to flow strongly once more; the sun thrust a gleaming golden edge up into the upper world, rolling majestically from the under world. Deveril looked into her eyes and laughed softly; her eyes smiled back into his.... She felt as though she had had a bad dream, but was awake now; as though last night her nerves had tricked her into wrongly judging her companion. Doubtings always flock in the night; joy is never more joyous than when breaking forth with the new day.

"It isn't so bad, after all," said Deveril. "Now, if we only had a pack-mule and a roll of blankets and a bit of canvas.... What more would you ask, Lynette Brooke, for a lark and a holiday to remember pleasantly when we grew to be doddering old folks?"

"As long as you are wishing," returned Lynette lightly, "why not place an order with the King of Ifs for a gun and some fishing-tackle and a frying-pan and[Pg 140] some more coffee? And a couple of hats; an outing suit for me." She looked down at her suit; it was torn in numerous places; it was gummed and sticky here and there with the resin from pines; it caught upon every bush. "Then, you know, a needle and some thread; a dozen fresh eggs, bread, and butter...."

"If so, I am in ideal training to get unspoiled in short order!" she laughed back.

And for all of this was the rising sun and the new, bright day responsible; for the ancient way of youth playing up to youth.

What was happening within both of them was a great nervous relaxation. They knew where Taggart and Gallup were, or at least were confident that there was no immediate danger of Taggart and Gallup overhauling them; they knew where Mexicali Joe was and where he was going. For the moment they were freed from that crushing sense of uncertainty welded to menace which had borne down upon them ever since they fled from Big Pine. And consequently joy of life sprang up as a spring leaps the instant that the weight is plucked from it.

For the sun was scarcely up when a plump young rabbit hopped square into their path, and Deveril, with a lucky throw, killed it with a rock. And just as they were speaking of thirst, they came to a tiny trickle of water among the rocks; and while Lynette was boiling coffee over a tiny blaze, Deveril was preparing grilled cottontail for breakfast. Savory odors floating out through the woodlands. Lynette was singing softly:

They ate and rested and the sun warmed them. For[Pg 141] a full two hours they scarcely stirred. Then they drank again; Lynette bathed her hands and face and arms; she set her hair in order, refashioning the two thick braids. She shut one eye and then the other, striving to make certain that there was not a black smudge somewhere upon her nose. They were starting on when Deveril said soberly:

"A few more days of this sort of life, and My Lady Linnet is going to require a new gown! Perhaps rabbit furs, if hunting is good, will do it!"

She laughed at him, and her eyes were daring as she sang, improvising as to melody:

A flash from her gay mood had set his eyes on fire. He sprang up and came toward her, his two hands out. But as a black cloud can run over the face of the young moon, so did a sudden change of mood wipe the tempting look out of her eyes and darken them. Her spirit had peeped forth at him, merry-making; as quick as bird-flight it was gone, and she stepped back and looked at him steadily, cool now and aloof and dampening to a man's ardent nonsense.

"You have a way of saying something, Babe Deveril," she told him coolly, "which appeals to me. In your own upstanding words: 'Let's go!'"

He laughed back at her lightly, hiding under a light cloak his own chagrin. At that moment he had wanted her in his arms; had wanted that as he wanted neither[Pg 142] Mexicali Joe's gold nor any other coldly glittering thing. Now he felt himself growing angry with her....

He made short work of catching up the few articles they were to carry with them and of stamping into dead coals the few remaining glowing embers of their fire. Then, striding ahead, he led the way. And for a matter of a mile or more she was hard beset to keep up with him.

The day was filled with happenings to divert their thoughts from any one channel. They startled, in a tiny meadow, three deer, which shot away through a tangle of brush, leaping, plunging, shooting forward and down a slope like great, gleaming, graceful arrows. "A man could live like a king here, with a rifle," said Deveril longingly. They saw a tall, thin wisp of smoke an hour before noon; it stood against the sky to the southwest of them, at a distance of perhaps two miles. "Taggart's noonday camp," they decided, deciding further that Taggart must have insisted on an early start, and therefore had found his stomach demanding lunch well before midday. Later, some two or three hours after twelve, they heard the long, reverberating crack and rumble and echo of a rifle-shot. "Taggart's crowd, killing a deer or bear or rabbit," they imagined. And all along they were contented, making what time they could through the open spaces, over the ridges, down through tiny green valleys and up long, dreary slopes, resting frequently, never hastening beyond their powers, secure in knowing that the Taggart trail and the Lynette-Deveril trail, though paralleling, would have no common point of contact before both trails ran into the country in the vicinity of the Big Bear Creek, the rim of the Timber-Wolf country.

"The whole thing," exulted Babe Deveril, "lies in the fact that we know where they are and they haven't the least idea where we are! We know where they are going, and they haven't a guess which way we are steering...."

"Do you know," said Lynette thoughtfully, "I don't believe that Mexicali Joe intends for a minute to lead them to his gold!"

"You don't! Why, couldn't you see that Taggart put the fear of the Lord into him? That Gallup, slick as wet soap, tricked him? That...."

"Yet Joe.... He seemed to me to give in to them in something too much of a hurry ... as though he had his own wits about him, his own last card in the hole, as dad used to say. I wonder...."

"When you feel things," he muttered, none too pleasantly, "you get me guessing. I don't know yet how you came to know that the Taggart bunch was at our heels yesterday. But you did know; and you were right. As to this other hunch of yours...."

"You'll see," said Lynette serenely. "Joe isn't the biggest fool in that crowd of four. You wait and see."

They both laughed and went on—through brushy tangles; over rocky ridges; through spacious forests; across soft, springy meadows; up slope, down slope; on and on and endlessly on. Once they frightened a young bear that was tearing away as if its life depended upon it upon an old stump; the bear snorted and went lumbering away, as Deveril said, like a young freight-train gone mad; Lynette, as she admitted afterward, was[Pg 144] twice as frightened, but did not run, herself, because the bear ran first and because she couldn't get the hang of her feet as quickly as he could! They came upon several bands of mountain-quail, which shot away, buzzing like overgrown bees; Deveril hurled stones and curses at many a scampering rabbit; once she and once he caught a glimpse of that dark gleam, come and gone in a flash, which might have been coyote or timber-wolf.... They did not speak of Bruce Standing. But they wondered, both of them....

Toward four o'clock in the afternoon they heard for the second time the crack of a rifle-shot. Farther to the south of them this time; a hint farther eastward; fainter than when first heard. Taggart, they held in full confidence, was following the trail which they had mapped for him; he was going on steadily; he was forging ahead of them. And yet they were content that this was so. They rested more often; they relaxed more and more.

And before the brief reverberations of a distant rifle-shot had done echoing through the gorges, they came to a full stop and determined to make camp. Not for a second, all day long, had Deveril swerved from his determination to "dig in in comfort for the night." They were, as both were willing to admit, "done in."

Deveril employed his pocket-knife, long ago dulled, and now whetted after a fashion upon a rough stone, to whack off small pine and willow and the more leafy of sage branches. He made of them a goodly heap. Then he gathered dead limbs, fallen from the parent trees, making his second pile. All the while Lynette kept a small dry-wood and pine-cone fire going hotly; little smoke, little swirl of sparks to rise above the grove in which they were encamping; plenty of heat for body warmth and for cooking. She was preoccupied, moving[Pg 145] about listlessly. So this was Bruce Standing's country? She looked about her with an ever-deepening interest; this was a fitting land for such a man. Bigness and dominance and a certain vital freshness struck altogether the key-note here—and suggested Timber-Wolf. If he were not dead after all—— Well, then, he would be somewhere near now for like a wounded animal, he would have returned to his solitudes.

Deveril found near by a level space under the pines. Here he sought out a scraggly tree which expressed an earth-loving soul in low-drooped branches. Against a low arm which ran out horizontally from the trunk he began placing his longer dead limbs, the butts in the ground, sloping, the effect soon that of a tent. Against these a high-piled wall of leafy branches. He stood back, judging from which direction the wind would come. He piled more branches. Into his nostrils, filled with the resinous incense of broken pine twigs, floated the tempting aromas which spread out in all directions from Lynette's cooking. He cocked his eye at the slanting sun; it was still early. He yielded to the insistent invitation, and came down into the little cup of a meadow to her, and she watched him coming: a picturesque figure in the forest land, his black hair rumpled, his slender figure swinging on, his sleeves rolled back, his eyes full of the flicker of his lively spirit.

When Deveril was hard pressed along the trail, worn out and on the alert for oncoming danger from any quarter, he was impersonal; a mere ally on whom she could depend. At moments like this one, when he was rested and relaxed, and grasped in his eager hands a bit of the swift life flowing by, he became different. A man now—a young man—one with quick lights in his eyes and a lilting eagerness in his voice.

"It would be great sport," he said, "all life long ... [Pg 146]to come home to you and find you waiting ... with a smile and a wee cup o' tea! And...."

He was half serious, half laughing; she made a hasty light rejoinder, and invited him to a hot supper waiting him.

They made a merry, frivolously light meal of it. There was plenty to eat; water near by; there was coffee; above them the infinity of blue, darkening skies, about them the peace and silence of the solitudes. And within their souls security, if only for the swiftly passing moment. They chose to be gay; they laughed often; Deveril asked her where she had learned to quote Scott and she asked him, in obvious retort, if he thought that she had never been to school! He sang for her, low-voiced and musically, a Spanish love-song; she made high pretense at missing the significance of the impassioned southern words. He, having finished eating and having nearly finished his cigarette, lying back upon the thick-padded pine-needles, jerked himself up, of a mood for free translation; she, being quick of intuition, forestalled him, crying out: "While I clean up our can dishes, if you will finish making camp...."

He laughed at her, but got up and went back, whistling his love-song refrain to his house-building. She, busied over her own labors, found time more than once to glance at him through the trees ... wondering about him, trying to probe her own instinctive distrust of one who had all along befriended her.

When she joined him a few minutes later, coming up the slope slowly, she looked tired, he thought, and listless. She sat down and watched him finishing his labors; all of her spontaneous gaiety had fled; she was silent and did not smile and appeared preoccupied. She sighed two or three times, unconsciously, but her sighs did not escape him. Always he had held her sex to be[Pg 147] an utterly baffling, though none the less an equally fascinating one. Now he would have given more than a little for a clew to her thoughts ... or dreamings ... or vague preoccupation....

A truly bowery little shelter it was, on leaning poles in an inverted V, with leafy boughs making thick walls, through which only slender sun-rays slipped in a golden dust; within a high-heaped pile of fragrant boughs, with a heap of smaller green twigs and resinous pine-tips for her couch.

And not altogether did her answer please him, for a quick hint of frown touched his eyes, though he banished it almost before she was sure of it. Those words of hers, though they thanked him, most of all reminded him of his goodness and gentleness with her, and thus went farther and assured him that she still counted upon his goodness and gentleness.

"I am afraid, Babe Deveril," she added quickly, though still her eyes were grave and her lips unsmiling, "that I am pretty well tired out ... all sort of let-down like, as an old miner I once knew used to say! It's going to be sundown in a few minutes; can't we treat ourselves to the luxury of a good blazing camp-fire, and sit by it, and get good and warm and rested?"

"What troubles me, Babe Deveril, is that I am half afraid of you. And, all of a sudden, of the wilderness. And of life and of all the mysteries of the unknown! I am as near screaming from sheer nervousness at this instant as I ever was in my life."

But Deveril, who could glean of her emotions only what she allowed to lie among her spoken words, cried heartily:

"You just bet your sweet life we'll have a crackling, roaring fire. Taggart and his crowd are half a dozen miles away right now and still going; our fire down in that hollow will never cast a gleam over the big ridge yonder and the other ridges which lie in between him and us. Come ahead, my dear; here's for a real bonfire."

That "my dear" escaped him; but she did not appear to have noted it. She rose and followed him back to their dying fire. He began piling on dead branches; they caught and crackled and shot showering sparks aloft. He brought more fuel, laying it close by. Already the blaze had driven her back; she sat down by a pine, her knees in her hands, her head tipped forward so that her face was shadowed, her two curly braids over her shoulders.

"Tell me, pretty maiden," he said lightly, "how far to the nearest barber shop?"

"And tell me," she returned, looking at her fingers, "if in that same shop they have a manicurist?"

Having glanced at her hands, she sighed, and then began working with her hair; there was one thing which must not be utterly neglected. She knew that if once it became snarled, she had small hope of saving it; no comb, no brush, no scissors to snip off a troublesome lock; only the inevitable result of such an utter snarl that she, too, in a week of this sort of thing, must needs seek a barber who understood bobbing a maid's hair. And with hair such as Lynette's, glorious, bronzy, with all the brighter glowing colors of the sunlight snared in it, any true girl should shudder at the barber's scissors.

All without warning a great booming voice crashed into their ears, shattering the silence, as Bruce Standing bore down upon them from the ridge, shouting:

"So, now I've got you! Got both of you! Got you where I want you, by the living God!"

CHAPTER XI

The one first thought, bursting into full form and expression in Lynette's brain, with the suddenness, and the shock of an explosion, was: "He is alive!" And in Babe Deveril's mind the thought: "Bruce Standing at last!... And drunk with rage!"

And Bruce Standing's one thought, as both understood somewhat as they leaped to their feet:

"Into my hands, of all my enemies are those two whom I hate most delivered!" For it had been almost like a religion with him, his certainty that he would come up with them—the girl who had laughed and shot him; the man who had stolen her away, cheating his vengeance.

Babe Deveril, on the alert in the first flash of comprehension, stooped, groping among the shadows for his club, his only weapon. He saw the sun glinting upon Bruce Standing's rifle barrel. That club of his ... where was it? Dropped somewhere; perhaps while he was building a leafy bower for a pretty lady; forgotten in a gush of other thoughts ... he couldn't find it. He stood straight again; his hands, clinched and lifted, imitated clubs. The first weapons of the first men....

Lynette heard them shouting at each other, two men who hated each other, two men seeing red as they looked through the spectacles which always heady hatred wears. Men, both of them; masculinity asserting itself triumphantly, belligerently; manhood rampant and, on the spur of the moment, as warlike as two young bulls contending for a herd.... She heard them cursing each other; heard such plain-spoken Anglo-Saxon epithets[Pg 151] hurled back and forth as at any other time would have set her ears burning. Just now the epithets meant less than nothing to her; they were but windy words, and a word was less, far less, than a stout club in a man's hand or a stone to hurl. She was of a mind to run while yet she could; but that was only the first natural reaction, lost and forgotten instantly. She stood without moving, watching them. An odd thing, she thought afterward, wondering, that that which at the moment made the strongest, longest-lasting impression upon her was the picture which Timber-Wolf, himself, created as, with the low sun at his back, he came rushing down upon them. Just now the mountain slope had constituted but a quiet landscape in softening tones, like a painting in pastels, with only the sun dropping down into the pine fringe to constitute a brighter focal point; and now, all of a sudden, it was as though the master artist, with impulsive inspiration, had slung with sweeping brush this new element into the picture—that of a great blond giant of a man, young and vigorous, and at this critical hour consumed with hatred and anger and triumphant glee. He was always one to punish his own enemies, was Bruce Standing. And now one felt that he carried vengeance in both big, hard, relentless hands.

On he came, almost at a run, so eager was he. Came so close before he stopped that Lynette saw the flash of his blue eyes—eyes which, when she had seen them first in Big Pine had been laughing and innocent—which now were the eyes of a blue-eyed devil. He was laughing; it was a devil's laugh, she thought. For he jeered at her and her companion. His mockery made her blood tingle; his eyes said evil things of her. Her cheeks went hot-red under that one flashing look.

But he was not just now concerned with her! He[Pg 152] meant to ignore her until he had given his mind to other matters! He was still shouting in that wonderful, golden voice of his; to every name in a calendar not of saints he laid his tongue as he read Babe Deveril's title clear for him. And, name to name, Babe Deveril checked off with him, hurling back anathema and epithet as good as came his way.... Lynette understood that both men had forgotten her. To them, passion-gripped as they were, it was as though she did not exist and had never existed. And yet it was largely because of her that they were gathering themselves to fly at each other! Man inconsistent and therefore man. Otherwise something either higher or lower; either of a devil-order or a god-order. But as it is ... better as it is ... something of god and devil and altogether—man.

And children of a sort, in their hearts. For, before a blow was struck, they called names! So fast did the words fly, so hot and furious were they, that she had the curious sense that their battle would end as it began, in insults and mutterings. But when Timber-Wolf had shouted: "Sneak and cur and coward ... a man to rifle another man's pockets, after that other had played square and been generous with you...." And when Deveril, his hands still lifted, while in his heart he could have wept for a club lost, shouted back: "Cur and coward yourself ... with a rifle against a man who has nothing ..." then she saw that the last word had been spoken and that blows were inevitable. She drew back swiftly, as any onlooker must give room to two big wild-wood beasts.

Bruce Standing caught his rifle by the end of the barrel; at first Lynette, and Deveril also, thought that he[Pg 153] meant to use it as a club. But instead he flourished it about his head but the once, and hurled it so far from him that it went, flashing in the sunlight, above a pine top and fell far away somewhere down the slope. Never in all his life had Bruce Standing had any man even think of naming him coward. As well name sunlight darkness. For all men who knew Bruce Standing, and all men who for the first and only time looked him square in the eyes, knew of him that he was fearless.

Thus with a gesture ... he abandoned wordy outpourings of wrath and hurled himself into flesh-and-blood combat. He did not turn to right or left for the dwindling camp-fire; he came straight through it, his two long arms outstretched, seeking Deveril. And Babe Deveril, the moment he saw how the rifle sped through the air and understood his kinsman's challenge, leaped forward eagerly to the meeting with him. Their four boots began scattering firebrands....

Lynette, with all her fast-beating heart, wanted to come to Babe Deveril's aid. The one thing which mattered was that, at her hour of need, he had stood up for her; her soul was tumultuously crying out for the opportunity to demonstrate beyond lip-service the meaning of gratitude. She caught up a stone, and throughout the fight held it gripped so hard that before the end her fingers were bleeding. But never an opportunity did she have to hurl it as long as those two contended.

Once it entered her thought that she must have dreamed of Bruce Standing, shot and bleeding and senseless on the floor at the Gallup House. For now, so few hours after, he gave no slightest hint of being a man recently badly wounded. There was more of common sense in a man's dying of such a wound as his than in his striking such great, hammer-hard blows with both arms. He created within her from that moment an[Pg 154] odd sensation which grew with her later; the man was not of the common mould. Something beyond and above mere flesh and blood and the routine of human qualifications inspired him. There was something inevitable about Bruce Standing....

Babe Deveril fought like a young, lissome tiger.... He fought with all of the might that lay within him, muscle and mind and controlling spirit. When he struck a blow he put into it, with a little coughing grunt, every last ounce of hostility which was at his command; with every blow he longed to kill. And, as though the two were blood-brothers, Bruce Standing fought as did Babe Deveril. Straight, hard, merciless blow to answer blow as straight and hard and merciless....

Timber-Wolf was a man to laugh at his own mine muckers when they could not thrust a boulder aside, and to stoop and set his hands and arms and back to the labor and pluck the thing up and hurl it above their bewildered heads. He smote as though he carried a war-club in each hand; he received a crashing blow full in the face, and, though the blood came, he did not feel it; he struck back, and his great iron fist beat through Deveril's guarding arms. No man, or at least no man whom Bruce Standing in his wild life had ever met, could have stood up against that blow. Babe Deveril, with the life almost jarred out of his body, went down. And Bruce Standing, growling like an angry bear, caught him up and lifted him high in air and flung him far away from him, as lightly as though he flung but a fifty-pound weight. And where Babe Deveril fell he lay still.... Lynette ran to him and knelt and put her hands at his shoulders, thinking him dead.

A short fight it had been, but already had the swift end come. So hard had that blow been, so tremendous had been the crash against rock and earth when the[Pg 155] flung body struck, there appeared to be but a pale flame of life, flickering wanly, in Deveril's body. Timber-Wolf came and stood over him and over Lynette, gloating, mumbling; muttering while his great chest heaved: "Little rat that he is! A man to take advantage when he found me down; a man to cheat me of the she-cat that shot me. I could crush him into the dirt with my boot heel...."

It was then that she sprang to her feet and, almost inarticulate with her own warring emotions, grief and fear and anger and hatred, flung the jagged stone full into his face. He was unprepared; the stone struck him full upon the forehead; he staggered backward, stumbling, almost falling; his hands flew to his face. He was near-stunned; blinded. Deveril was on his elbow....

"Treacherous devil-cat!" There was his thunderous voice shouting so that she, so near him, was almost deafened.

Bruce Standing, wiping the blood from his eyes, his two arms out before him, came back to the attack. Deveril, on his knees, surged to his feet; Standing struck and Deveril went down like a poorly balanced timber falling. Lynette was groping for another stone. Suddenly she felt upon her wrist a grip like a circlet of cutting steel. She was whisked about; Timber-Wolf held her, drawn close, staring face into face. His other hand was lifted slowly; suddenly she felt it caught in her loose hair....

And then, inexplicable to her now and ever after, there was in her ear the sound of Bruce Standing's laughter. The hand at her hair fell away. It went up to his eyes, wiping them clear. And then she saw in the eyes what she had read in the voice ... laughter.

Again Deveril was on his feet. He swayed; his face was dead-white; it was easy to see how fiercely he bent every energy at his command to remain upright. There was a queer look in the eyes he turned upon Timber-Wolf.

He spoke with effort; he was like a man far gone in some devastating lung trouble; his voice was windy and vibrant and weak.

"Baby Devil!" jeered Standing. "Oh, Baby Devil! And, when it comes to dealing with a real man.... Why, then, less devil than baby! Ho!..."

"God aids the righteous!" Standing told him sternly. "You go. To hell with you and your kind."

God aids the righteous! This from the lips of Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf!... Lynette, her nerves like wires smitten in an electric storm, could have burst into wild laughter.... She wrenched at her wrist; Standing's big hand neither tightened nor relaxed, giving her the feeling of despair which a thick steel chain would have given had she been locked and deserted in a dungeon.

Deveril was looking over his shoulder. In his glance ... the sun was near setting among the pines, and they saw his face as his head jerked about ... any one might read his thought: down there, somewhere among the bushes, lay a rifle!

Standing laughed at him. And Standing, dragging Lynette along with him as easily as he might have drawn a child of six, went down the slope first. And first he came to the fallen rifle and caught it up and brought it back to the trampled camp-fire.

"You're sneak enough for that, Baby Devil!" he[Pg 157] taunted. "For that or any other coward act. And so is this woman of yours. So I spike the artillery. God! If the earth were only populated by men!... Now I've got this word for your crafty ear: listen well." Instantly his voice became as hard as flint and carried assurance that every word he was going to say would be a word meant with all his heart and soul. And all the while he gripped Lynette by the wrist and seemed unconscious of that fact or that she struggled to be free. "I've given you a fair fight, you who don't fight fair. And I've knocked the daylights out of you. And now I'm sick of you. You can go. You can sneak off through the timber and be out of sight inside of two minutes. Yet I'll give you five. And at the end of that time, if you're in sight, I am going to shoot you dead!"

Deveril glared at him, his glance laid upon Standing's as one rapier may clash across another.

Timber-Wolf looked at him in surprise; he began to cast about him for a fresh and clearer comprehension of a man whom he despised. He strove with all his power of clean vision to see to the bottom of Deveril's most hidden thought.

"Now," said Standing slowly, "I am almost sorry for what I said. It strikes into me, Kid, that you are not afraid!"

Deveril, breathless, panting, holding himself erect only through a great call upon his will, made no spoken answer, but again laid the blade of his glance shiningly across that of Timber-Wolf.

"You die just the same," said Standing coldly. "It's only because I gave my word; that you can take in man-to-man style from me, Kid; for once I am not ashamed[Pg 158] to be related to you. Either you travel or, in five minutes, you are a dead man."

Slowly Deveril's haggard eyes roved to Lynette's face ... Lynette chained to Bruce Standing in that crushing grip....

"I am going," he said. And both knew he said it in fearlessness but also in understanding of the power which lay in a rifle bullet and the weakness of the barricade offered to it by a human skull. And both understood, further, that it was to Lynette that he spoke. "I am coming back!"

"Hurry!" Bruce Standing, with his own word of honor in the balance against the weight of the life of a man whom he began to respect, was all anxiety to have his kinsman gone.

"A man who doesn't know when he's beat is a fool.... But you can be sure of this: I'll be back!"

He went, walking crookedly at first among the knee-high bushes; then growing straighter as he passed into the demesne of the tall, straight pines. Not swiftly, since there was no possibility of any swift play of muscles left within him; but steadily.

"A man!" grunted Timber-Wolf. Whether in admiration or disgust, Lynette could not guess from his tone.

He had his watch in the palm of his hand; her gaze was riveted on it. It seemed so tiny a thing in that great valley of his hand; a bauble. Yet its even more insignificant minute-hand was assuming the office of arbiter of human life; she knew that the moment the fifth minute was ticked off Bruce Standing, true to his sworn word, would relinquish her wrist just long enough[Pg 159] to whip his rifle to his shoulder and fire ... in case the uncertain form of Babe Deveril, going up over the ridge, were still in sight. And she knew within her soul that just so sure as gun butt struck shoulder and finger found trigger, so sure would Babe Deveril toss his arms up and fall dead....

All the while Timber-Wolf was muttering and glaring at his watch and clinching her wrist; all the while forgetting that he held her. And, this also she knew, regretting that he had the job set before him of shooting down another man.

Lynette, her whole body atingle, every sense keyed up to its highest stressing, knew as soon as did Bruce Standing when he was going to drop her wrist and jerk his gun up. The five minutes were passing; still, though at a distance far up on the ridge, seen only by glimpses now and then under the setting sun, Babe Deveril was driving on, a man half bereft of his sober senses, his brain reeling from savage blows and on fire with rage and mortification; they saw him among the pines; they lost him; they saw him again. Never once had he turned to look back. Yet it did not seem that he hastened....

Timber-Wolf, growling deep down in his throat, lifted his rifle. But Lynette, before the act, knew! She flung herself with sudden fury upon his uplifted arm; she caught it, and with the weight of her body dragged it down. He sought to fling her off; she wrapped both of her arms about his right arm; she jerked at it so that he could have no slightest hope of a steady aim....

He turned and looked down into her eyes; deep ... deep. For what seemed to her a long, long time he stood looking down into her eyes.

Then, with sudden anger, he thrust her aside. [Pg 160]Without looking to see if she had fallen or stumbled and run, he raised his rifle again.

CHAPTER XII

"And now that you're half scared to death, you'd like to make a man believe that you are not afraid of the devil himself!"

"At least, thank God, I am not afraid of you, Bruce Standing!... Big brute and bully and ... Yes!... Coward!"

And yet, as never before in her life, her heart was beating wildly, leaping against her side like an imprisoned thing struggling to break through the walls which shut it in. His fingers were still locked about her wrist; his grip tightened; he drew her closer in order to look the more clearly into her eyes. Then his slow, mocking laughter smote across her nerves like a rude hand brushing across harp-strings, making clashing discords.

"Let me go!" She jerked back; she twisted and dragged at her wrist, trying wildly to break free. His mockery stung her into desperation. With her one free hand she struck him across the face.

She struck hard, with all her might, with trebled strength through her fury. And, maddening her, he gave no sign that she had hurt him. Still jeering at her, all that he did was drop his rifle, so that with his other hand he could take captive the hand which had struck him. And then it was so easy a thing for him to take both her wrists into the grip of his one, right hand; held thus, no matter how she fought, hers was the sensation[Pg 162] of utter powerlessness which is a child's when an elder person, teasing, catches its two hands in one and lets it cry and kick.... Suddenly she grew quiet....

"Well?" she demanded, panting, forcing her eyes to a steady meeting with his. "What do you intend to do with me, now you've got me? There doesn't appear to be any one near to keep you from woman-beating!"

"What am I going to do with you? If I knew, I'd tell you! When I do know, I'll show you.... If I could catch you by the hair and drag you through hell after me.... I pay all of my debts, girl! I have followed you; I have found you; I have taken you, prying you loose from your running mate.... You thought it fun to laugh at me once, did you? Before I have done with you, you would give your soul for the power and the will to laugh...."

"Less for that than for the other. I allow it any man's privilege to shoot at me if he doesn't like me; but no man's nor woman's privilege to laugh."

"Had I seen, I should not have held it against you; for that would have meant that you struck in the open, any man's or woman's right! But to shoot a man in the back.... Here; help me!"

She was perplexed to know what he meant. He dragged her after him, a dozen paces from the fire; still holding her two hands caught in his one, he sat down upon a big stone. Suddenly it struck her that all this time, since he had dropped his rifle, his left arm had been hanging limply at his side.

"When I let go of you," he said, very stern, "if you try to run for it I'll catch you and drag you back. And I'm in no mood for gentleness!" At that he let her go. He put his right hand to his shirt collar and began unbuttoning it.

"My wound has broken open," he said, with a grunt of disgust. "That Baby Devil of yours didn't care where he hit a man!... Here; there's a bandage that has slipped. And I'm losing blood again. See what you can do."

"Why should I?" she demanded coolly. "What is it to me whether or not you bleed to death?"

"Then, as I live, I'll make you! One way or another, girl, I'll make you. That's Bruce Standing's word for you. Now hurry!"

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder; she was on the verge of breaking into wild, headlong flight.... But certain knowledge restrained her; she knew that he would overtake her, that he would drag her back and ... that he was in no mood for gentleness. Therefore, while her whole soul rebelled, she came closer, as he commanded.

... She had never dreamed that any man born could have a chest like that; nor such shoulders, massive and yet beautiful as the pure-lined expression of power; nor such skin, soft and smooth and white as a girl's, the outward sign of another beauty, that of clean health. Clean, hard, triumphant physical manhood.... It struck her at the time, so that she marvelled at herself and wondered dully if she were taking leave of her sober senses, that there was truer, finer beauty in the body of[Pg 164] such a man than in any girl's; that here was a true artist's true triumph.... Physically he was splendid, superb.... In his own image did God make man....

With his right hand he was working with the bandage where it was taped about the bulge of his left breast; on the white cloth were fresh gouts of blood. Impatiently he tore at his shirt collar; on the bandage, where it passed about his left shoulder-blade, were red stains.

"Wait a minute," he commanded. "In my pocket I've got some sort of salve; some idiotic mess that Billy Winch cooked up; the Lord knows what it is or what he made it of; iodine and soap and flaxseed and cobwebs, most likely! But it will chink up the leak ... and it feels good and hasn't poisoned me so far! Here, smear it on."

... She felt as though she were dreaming all this! That wild, uncontrollable laughter of hers which swept over her at times of taut nerves and absurd situations, threatened to master her. She fought it down. She touched his back. She, Lynette, administering to Timber-Wolf ... it would be better for her, far better for her, if his wound were poisoned and he died!... Yet, as she touched his back, it was with wondrously gentle fingers. There was a wound there; the ugly wound made by a bullet, half healed, broken open anew under heavy blows. A little shiver, a strange, new sort of shiver, ran through her; here she was down to elementals, she, who with just cause and leaping instinct hated this man, ministering to him....

"Smear the stuff on, I tell you. Over the wound. Enough of it to shut out any infernal infection.... What in the devil's name is holding you? Waiting for the sun to go down and come up again?"

She bit her lips; he looked suddenly into her face, and[Pg 165] could have no clew to her thought or emotion; he could not guess whether she bit her lip to keep from laughing or crying!... She spread over the gaping wound a thin film of Billy Winch's pungent salve. As she touched the wound she looked for a muscular contraction, for the flinching from pain. He did not move; there was not so much as the involuntary quiver of a muscle. She wondered if the man felt as other human beings did?

... "Now a fresh piece of tape. That idiot Winch packed me off with my pockets loaded like a drug-store shelf! That's all for this time; we'll make a new dressing and bathe the wound in the morning. Now.... Here! Let me look at you!"

He crimsoned her face with that way of his. She whipped back from him and her eyes brightened with defiance. He sat looking at her a long time, while with slow fingers he buttoned his collar; his face showed not so much as a flicker of expression; his eyes were keen, but gave no clew to his thought.

The sun was already down beyond the ridge; shadows here in the little hollow had gathered swiftly; dark was on the way. He rose and went to the fire, for an instant turning his back upon her as he piled on the dead-wood which Deveril had gathered. But over his shoulder he called to her coolly:

And from his tone she knew that he had easily guessed her thought; for the impulse to attempt flight had been strong upon her the moment that he turned. She remained where she stood; if only it were pitch-dark, if only he went on a few paces farther away from her, if only the fringe of trees offering refuge were a few paces nearer.... She was quick to see the folly of making a premature dash; the wisdom in allowing him to think that she could be looked to for obedience! Thus, later,[Pg 166] when her chance came and his watchfulness nodded, she'd be up and away like a shot....

The fire caught the fresh fuel and crackled and blazed, sparks showering about her where she stood. Now Standing, his face looking ruddy in the glow, turned toward her, saying curtly:

"Brute and bully!" she cried, struggling with herself for an outward semblance of calm. "You hold the high card. But the game isn't played out between you and me yet, Bruce Standing." While speaking she came closer, so that she too stood in the red fire glow. She held her head up; she returned his unswerving gaze unswervingly.

"You've got the vocabulary of a gambler's daughter," he said. "That's what you are, eh? A gambler's girl and, in your own penny-ante way, a gambler yourself!"

"I am the daughter of Dick Brooke!" she told him proudly. "Dick Brooke was a man and a miner and after that, if you like, a gambler."

"Dick Brooke? Dick Brooke's daughter? Why, then ... the daughter also of a dancing-girl!"

"It is a cruel lie. Olymphe Labelle was not a dancing-girl.... She was an artist! And a woman among ten thousand...."

The firelight cast its warm glow over her face. She lifted her chin defiantly. Her hair fell in loose, rippling strands of bronze and over her shoulders. She was very beautiful thus; no woman on whom Bruce Standing had ever looked was half so beautiful. And haughty, like a[Pg 167] princess ... like a high-bred lady made captive, yet scorning to show sign of fear....

"You are Lynette Brooke," he muttered; "you are the girl who laughed at me, shaming me; you are the girl who shot me in the back! Those are the things to remember. A treacherous cat of a woman; a gun woman! One to go sneaking around with a revolver at hand to shoot a man in the back with...."

"I'll tell you this," he muttered. "I'm a fair judge of men, if not of women. And when it's a case of a man ... why just show me a man who carries a pocket-gun and I'll show you a cheap ragamuffin, a tin horn, or an overgrown kid ... or a dirty coward. A man's weapon is a rifle carried in the open; give me a good pair of boots and I'll stamp the white livers out of a whole crowd of your little gunmen.... As for women, gun-toting women...." He broke off with a heavy shrug. "Now, girl, I'm hungry. The smell of your coffee has been in my nostrils a long time. See what you can give me to eat."

"To be my slave!" he shouted at her. "Proud, are you? So much the better. I swore to make you pay, and you begin paying now. Yes, as my slave as long as I like!"

"I call myself the best man that ever came into this wilderness country," he told her impudently. "If you are in doubt, bring on any other man of your choice and ask him, with your pretty smiles, if he cares to stand up against me! Yes, a man who goes rough-shod over everything and anything and anybody who stands in his way...."

"I am no boaster and in your heart you know it!... There's another damn-fool convention for you, that business of great modesty! A man who is sure of himself doesn't have to walk easy and talk easy, but can tell other men what he is, and then, by glory, show 'em!"

Still she was scornful of him ... though she could not keep out of her thought that picture which he had made when, axe in hand, he had laid an armed jailer in the dust, and single-handed had made a jail delivery which hundreds of other men wanted to make and held back from ... through lack of that unrestricted confidence which was Bruce Standing's.

"You, too ... for a woman ... have courage," he muttered. And then, with a sudden arm flung out: "I'm hungry, I tell you."

"It's easy to die ... for any one who is not a coward. And I just told you that you had courage." He came suddenly close to her. "But there are other things that are not so easy! What if I put my two arms about you? If I hold you tight ... and set my lips to yours ... and...."

She went hot and cold; she cast a quick glance toward the forest land where the night was thickening; she cast another glance at his rifle where it lay, a few feet from the fire. Then, her lower lip caught between her teeth, she went to the tin can in which she and Babe Deveril had made coffee.

"A funny thing," said Bruce Standing, watching her; "you skipped out, hot-foot, from Big Pine, thinking you[Pg 169] had killed me! And your little friend, meaning Baby Devil, skipped along, thinking he had done Jim Taggart in! And, after all, nobody much hurt!... Glad to hear that Taggart did not die?"

"I knew it already," she said, just to cheat him of any satisfaction in telling her.

"Mexicali Joe skipped this way, too," he went on swiftly, so swiftly that he succeeded in tricking her into saying:

"Now there remains little for you to tell me. You knew Taggart was still on his feet and you knew Joe was travelling this way, and you've come up from the general direction of Joe's dugout! Which tells me one thing: where you and Baby Devil got the coffee and this tinned stuff. Now let's hear details!"

"You've told me that before. And...." He burst into booming laughter. And then, still laughter-choked, he cried: "Like a good old-time two-handled sword is the man Bruce Standing! And yet his wit, like a Spanish dagger, is good match for a girl's!"

She made no reply, though her blood tingled, and though her hand, with a will of its own, must be held back from striking him across the face again. She brought him his coffee and thereafter food which he called for from among the tins.

"What do you think has happened to your gentleman friend?" he mocked her. And when she refused to reply, he told her: "He's gone on ... where? After Taggart? To get a rifle and come back? Planning to hide behind a tree and pop me off while I'm not looking? That would make a hit with you, wouldn't it? Like your own best game of shooting a man in the back![Pg 170] Or has he forgotten a pair of bright eyes and warm arms and red lips? And is he content to trail Mexicali, spying on him, trying to get in on the new gold diggings? Which, girl?"

"He hates you!... with cause. And he is no coward; he is as good a man, if less brute, as you, Bruce Standing!..."

Here was her first, altogether too vague clew to his intentions. Quickly she asked:

He supposed that he had told her nothing. And yet she, quick-witted, having never let slip from her mind a certain suspicion when Mexicali Joe had too readily succumbed to Taggart, cried out:

She pretended to laugh at him. He ate in silence; drank his coffee; thereafter, stuffing a pipe full of crude black tobacco, smoked thoughtfully. All the while the fire burned lower and the darkness, ringing them around, drew closer in. She had been on the alert, while looking to be hopelessly bowed where she sat. Suddenly he was at her side, his grip like a steel bracelet about her wrist.

"About ready to jump and run for it?" he taunted her. "Not to-night, my girl; and not to-morrow night nor yet for many a day to come. I've got my own plans for you."

"Are you going to take me back to Big Pine? To hand me over to the law, with a charge of attempted murder against me?"

"I am going to take you with me on into the wilderness. Into a country which is absolutely the kingdom of Bruce Standing. Haven't I told you that I have my own plans for you? I can hand you over to the cheap degradation of a trial and conviction and jail sentence whenever I am ready for it...."

"But I can! I am master here, understand? And you.... By heaven, you are nothing but my slave so long as I tolerate you!... Look here, what I brought for you!... For I knew I'd find you!"

He began unwinding from his big body a thin steel chain, a chain which he had brought with him from his ranch headquarters, where it had served as leash for a wolf-hound. With a quick movement he snapped the end of it about her waist; there was a steel padlock scarcely bigger than a silver half-dollar; she heard the click as he locked it. Then he stood back from her, the other end of the slight chain in his hand ... and laughed at her!

"The sign of your servitude!... Proud? One way to make you pay! Will you laugh again, girl? Will you, do you think, ever have the second chance to shoot me in the back?... Come; we must be on our way before daylight."

He caught up his rifle; that, together with the end of her chain, he held in his hand. He began putting out the fire, stamping on the living coals. Making her follow him, he went to the creek several times for water, which he carried in his big hat, which held so much more than any tin can in camp. When the fire was out, he turned with her toward the bowery shelter which Babe Deveril, working and singing, had made for her. With his shuffling boots he kicked the culled branches into two heaps. He wrapped the end of her chain[Pg 172] about his wrist; she heard the snap as he fastened it. He thrust his rifle under him.

"I am going to sleep," he told her bluntly and cast himself down. "You with your payment just begun, may lie awake all night ... wondering...."

... But it was a long, long while, a weary time of darkness sprinkled with stars before he went to sleep. She sat up on her couch of boughs, the chain about her waist galling her....

CHAPTER XIII

It may appear a strange thing that Lynette Brooke slept at all that night. But a fatigued body, healthy and young, demanded its right, and she did sleep and sleep well. A far stranger thing was that, after she had sat in the dark a long time, there had at last come a queer little smile upon her lips and into her eyes, and she had gone to sleep smiling!

For in the deep black silence her quick mind had been busy, never so busy; out of tiny scraps it had constructed a mental patchwork. Nor were all dark-hued threads weaving in and out of it; here and there the sombre pattern had bright-hued spots. Her courage was high, her hopes always at surging high tide; her senses keen. And, after all, Bruce Standing was a blunt, forthright man, in no degree subtle....

He had given her the impression an hour ago of being entirely brute beast. That was true. Further, she told herself with growing conviction, that it had been his great intent to make her regard him as brute and beast; she had angered him, she had drawn upon herself his vengeful wrath; he meant to make her pay; and his first step had been to make her afraid of him.... She went on to other thoughts; Bruce Standing was the man to defy Gallup in his own lair; the man to defy the sheriff; to hurl an axe at an armed deputy ... and yet the only man in Big Pine to lift an angry hand against the unfair play of shutting little Mexicali Joe up in jail! He, alone, had not sought to steal Joe's secret; he alone was ready, against all odds, to throw[Pg 174] the door back and let Joe go. Not altogether that the part of the brute and beast!

Another thing: Bruce Standing did not lie. She knew that. And he was not a coward; he did not do petty, cowardly things.... He meant her to believe that there was nothing too cruel and merciless for him to inflict upon her. Yet she had struck him in the face with a stone; she had struck him with her hands, and he had not so much as bruised the skin of her wrists with his big hard hands!... Eager he had been to humiliate her, calling her his slave; eagerly, as soon as he had read her pride, he grasped at the first means of torturing it. Why that great eagerness ... unless he, despite his threat, was casting about in rather blind fashion for means to make her pay?... He wanted her to be afraid of him ... and it came to her in the dark, so that she smiled, that this was because there was little for her to fear!

"In his rage," she told herself, and, fettered as she was, a first gleam of triumph visited her, "he came roaring after me. And, now he has me, he doesn't know what to do with me! To make me his unwilling slave ... unwilling!... that is all that he can think of now."

"If he meant to harm me, why should he have let me go to-night? An angry man, bent upon real brute vengeance, would have struck at the first opportunity. The opportunity was when he sent Babe Deveril away and had me to do what he pleased with. And he only played the perfectly silly game of making me his slave ... unwilling...."

It was the thoughts which rose with the word that put the little smile into her eyes and brought the first softening of her troubled lips.... Several times she[Pg 175] heard him stirring restlessly; once he awakened her with his muttering, and she knew that he was asleep, but that either his wound pained him or his sleep was disturbed by unwelcome dreams—perhaps both.

Bruce Standing woke and sat up in the early chill dawn. He looked swiftly to where Lynette lay. She appeared to be plunged in deep, restful sleep. She lay comfortably snuggled in among the boughs; the curve of one arm was up about her face, so that he could not see her eyes. Naturally he believed them shut; her breathing was low and quiet, exactly as it should have been were she really fast asleep.... She looked pretty and tiny and tired out, but resting. Suddenly he frowned savagely. But he sat for a long time without stirring.

Lynette put up her arms and stretched and yawned sleepily, and then, like a little girl of six, put her knuckles into her eyes. Then she, too, sat up quickly.

"Oh," she said brightly. "Are you awake already? And making not a bit of noise, so as to let me have my sleep out? Good morning, Mr. Timber-Wolf!"

"If you'll get the fire started, I'll have breakfast in a minute! There isn't much in the larder, but you'll see what a nice breakfast I can make of it. Then I'll dress your wound and we'll be on our way."

"Look here," muttered Standing, swinging about to stare at her, "what the devil are you up to?"

"I mean this cheap play-acting stuff ... as though you were as happy as a bird!"

"Why, I always believe in making the best of a bad mess, don't you?" she retorted. "And, after all, how do you know that I'm not as happy as a bird? I nearly always am."

His eyes were blazing, his face flushed; she saw that she was lashing him into rage. She began to fear that she had gone too far; for the present she would go no farther. But meanwhile she gave him no hint of any trepidation, but kept the clear, unconcerned look in her eyes.

He strode away from her, toward the charred remains of last night's fire. He held her chain in his hand; she hurried along after him, so that not once could the links tighten; so that not once could he feel that he was dragging an unwilling captive behind him. Her heart was beating like mad; she was aquiver with excitement over the working out of her scheme, yet she gave him no inkling of any kind of nervousness.

"I don't know what you are up to and I don't care," he said abruptly. "You are to do what you are told, girl."

"I am going to take the chain off you now, simply because I don't need it during daylight. But you're not to run away; if you try it I'll run you down and drag you back. Do you understand? And after that I'll keep you chained up."

"I understand," she nodded again. And, when he had removed the chain from her waist, all the time not looking at her while she, all the time, stood smiling, she said a quiet "Thank you."

"While I get some wood," he went on, "you can take[Pg 177] some cans and go down to the creek for water. I'll trust you that far ... and don't you trust too much to the screen of willows to give you a chance for a getaway! I tell you, I'd overhaul you as sure as there is a God in heaven!"

She caught up two cans and went down the slope toward the creek. To keep him from guessing how, all of a sudden, her heart was fluttering again, she sang a little song as she went. He stared after her, puzzled and wondering. Then with a short, savage grunt, he began gathering wood.

Was now her time? This her chance? She sang more loudly, clearly and cheerily. She wanted to look back to see if he was watching her every step; yet she beat down the temptation, knowing that if he did watch and did see her turn he would know that she was overeager for flight. She came to the creek; she passed carelessly about a little clump of willows. Now she looked back, peering through the branches. He was stooping, gathering wood; his back was to her!

She looked about her hurriedly, in all directions. There was so much open country here; big pines, wide-spaced. If she ran down the slope he must surely see her when she had gone fifty or a hundred yards. And then he'd be after her! If she turned to right or left, the case was almost the same. If it were only dark! But the sun was rising....

She began singing again, so that he might hear. A sudden anger blazed up within her. With all his blunt ways, the man was not without his own sort of shrewdness; he had known that she had no chance here to escape him; no chance for such a head start as to give her an even break in a race with him.

... After ten minutes she came back to him; she [Pg 178]carried a dripping can in each hand; she had bathed hands and arms and face and throat; she had combed her hair out through her fingers, making new thick braids, with loosely curling ends. She had taken time to twist those soft ends about her fingers. He was standing over his newly built fire; his rifle, with the chain tossed across it, lay against a rock; he gave no sign of noting her approach.... Yet, while they ate a hurriedly warmed breakfast, she caught him several times looking at her curiously....

Her heart began again to beat happily; never was hope long departed from the breast of Lynette Brooke. She kept telling herself, over and over, that he was not going to be brute and beast to her. Soon or late she would find her chance for escape from him; she would let him think her that weakling which it was his way to regard women in general; there would come the time when, once more free, she could laugh at him.... And she, when he did not observe, looked curiously at him many a time.

When they had eaten and he had gathered up the few scraps of food and had very carefully extinguished the last ember of their fire, he wound the chain about his middle again, caught up the rifle and said briefly and still without looking at her:

She followed him, neither hesitating nor questioning; thus she was gleefully sure she angered him.... She wondered what the day held in store for her; she wondered what of good and bad lay ahead; and yet she was now less filled with terror than with the burning zest for life itself. Bruce Standing had told her that he was going to keep an appointment; he had been the man to release Mexicali Joe; Mexicali Joe had whispered something and Standing had laughed; Mexicali Joe was now[Pg 179] ahead of them, pretending to lead Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton to his gold! Her thoughts were busy enough and she, like her silent companion, had small need for talk.

She wondered about Babe Deveril; how badly hurt he had been after Bruce Standing's mauling; what he was doing now; where he was? A hundred times that morning, hearing bird or squirrel and once a leaping buck, she looked to see Babe Deveril bursting back upon them.... Had he not gone far, last night? Had he remained near their camp and was he following them to-day?...

They passed over a ridge and turned into a little cup of a green valley; Standing, stalking ahead of her, went to a thicket and drew from it a saddle and bridle and saddle blankets and a small canvas pack. Then, standing with his hands on his hips, staring off in all directions, he whistled shrilly. Whistled, and waited listening, and whistled again. Lynette heard, from far off, the quick, glad whicker of a horse. And here came the horse galloping; kicking up its heels; shaking its head with flying mane; circling, snorting, with lowered head; at standstill for a moment, a golden sorrel with snow-white mane and tail; a mount for even Timber-Wolf, lover of horses, to be proud to own and ride and whistle to through the forest land.... Lynette looked swiftly at Standing's face; he was smiling; his eyes were bright.

He went forward and stroked his horse's satiny nose and wreathed a hand in the mane and led the animal to the saddle, calling him softly, "Good old Daylight." The horse nosed him; Standing laughed out loud and smote the great shoulder with open palm.... Lynette saw with clear vision that there was a great love between man and animal; and she thought of another horse, Sunlight, slaughtered at Young Gallup's orders,[Pg 180] and of Standing's lisping rage and of her own nervous, uncontrollable laughter....

There came a deep, ugly growling—a throaty, wolfish menace, almost at her heels. She whirled about and cried out in sudden startled fright.

Lynette had never seen a dog like this one, big and lean and forbidding; as tall as a calf in her suddenly frightened eyes, wolfish looking, with stiff bristles rising along powerful neck and back, and eyes red-rimmed, and sharp-toothed mouth slavering. At Standing's command the great dog, which had come upon her on such noiseless pads, dropped to the ground as though a bullet instead of a commanding voice had drilled its heart. But still the steady eyes filled with suspicion and menace were fixed on her.

"He'd tear your throat out if I gave the word," said Standing. "Now you do what I tell you; go to him and set your hand on his head!"

"I won't!" she cried out sharply, drawing back. The deep, throaty growl came again; the dog's lips trembled and withdrew from the long, wolfish teeth; the whole gaunt form was aquiver....

"But you will! Otherwise.... He'll not hurt you when once I tell him not to. Go to him; put your hand on his head.... Afraid?" he jeered.

She was afraid. Sick-afraid. And yet she gave her taunter one withering glance and stepped swiftly, though her flesh quivered, to the dog.

The dog growled and the teeth were like evil, poisonous fangs. Yet Lynette came another step toward him; she stooped; she put forward her hand....

Lynette put her hand upon the big head. Thor trembled. Suddenly he lay flat, belly down; the head between the outstretched fore paws. He whined again. Standing laughed and began bridling and saddling his horse. Thor jumped up and frisked about his master; Standing fondled him, as he had fondled Daylight, by striking him resoundingly.

When she had drawn close Standing stooped and patted the dog's head. Then, while Thor, snarling, looked on, he put out his hand and placed it for a fleeting instant upon Lynette's shoulder.

"Good dog," he said again. And then he told Lynette to call the dog. She did so, saying in an uncertain voice:

Thor trembled, but he went to her. He allowed her to pat him. Then, with a suddenness which startled her, he shot out a red tongue to lick her hand. Standing burst into sudden pleased laughter.

He laughed again and finished drawing tight cinch and strapping latigo. He tied his small pack at the strings behind the saddle and said briefly:

"Since we're in a hurry, suppose you ride while I walk alongside? We'll make better time that way."

She was ashamed of herself—that she should have been afraid of a dog! Now she was Lynette again, quick and capable and confident. He was going to lend her a hand to mount; she forestalled him and went up into the saddle like a flash. It was in her thought to take him by surprise; to give Daylight his head and race away out of sight among the pines....

But he was scarcely less quick; his hand shot out, catching Daylight's reins; he unwound the chain from about his middle and snapped the catch into the horse's bit.... And she began to analyze, thinking:

"He took time to explain why he let me ride while he walked! He is less beast and brute than he knows himself!... Less beast and brute than ... simple humbug!" And, before they had gone ten steps, he heard her humming the air which she had sung at breakfast time.

"Damn it," he muttered under his breath, not for her to hear. "The little devil ... she's taking advantage of me, every advantage. She.... Just the same ... just the same...."

"I know!" cried Lynette; she could not hold the words back. "Toward Buck Valley and Big Bear Creek ... and Mexicali Joe. And...."

"And what?" he demanded, snatching at her chain, sensing that something of import lay behind the abruptly checked words.

CHAPTER XIV

Another day of wilderness wandering. A cabin sighted, but so far away that it was merely a vague dot upon a distant ridge; miner's shack or sheepman's or wood-cutter's? Housing an occupant or deserted for years? No smoke from the rock chimney; no sign of any human being near it. And all view of it so soon lost!... And, afterward, no other human habitation of any kind; no road man-made; only trees and rocks, gorges and ridges and brush, and a winding way to be chosen between them. With, always, Bruce Standing driving on and on, relentlessly on, ever deeper into the wilderness.

A day of life like a leaf torn out of the book of hell for Lynette. He did not speak to her as they went on from dawn to noon and from noon until afternoon shadows gathered; he did not so much as turn his eyes full upon her own; for the most part he seemed altogether forgetful of the fact that, besides himself, there was another of his species in all the wide sweep of this land of mighty solitudes. For his dog, Thor, he had a kindly though rough-spoken word now and then; for his horse a word or a rude pat upon the shoulder or hip; for her nothing but his utter, unruffled silence.... At times she hummed little snatches of gay tunes, hoping to irritate him; at times she strove for an aloofness to match his own. Countless times she looked over her shoulder, looking for Babe Deveril. And so the day, a long day, went by until at last it was late afternoon.

He would seem to have all advantage over her; yet she understood that in one way, and in one way only, could she rob him of his advantage, and that was by giving him swift and cheerful obedience. So she slipped out of the saddle on the instant, giving him for answer only the light gay words:

It was beautiful.... He glared at her and led his horse away to unsaddle; his big dog, Thor, had trotted along at Daylight's heels all day and now slumped down, ears erect and suspicious, while he watched his master and made certain of never losing sight for a second of his master's new companion, whom he tolerated but did not trust. Lynette, stiff from so many hours in the saddle, looked about her. They were in the upper, brief space of a valley; above reared the mountains steeply, rugged slopes with pines here and there, with more open spaces and tumbled boulders. The valley itself was a pretty, pleasant place, soft in short green grass, flower-dotted, smoothly curving down into the more open level lands below. Yet here was no proper place to pitch camp, especially at so early an hour when it was allowed to seek further; it was too open, it would be unsheltered and cold; there was no water....

She started and turned again toward Standing. He had slung his small pack across his shoulders and was going on. She looked forward toward the ridge, which he faced; it rose sheer and forbidding. And she saw that his face was white and drawn; she wondered quickly how sorely his wound hurt him.

"Brute?" He could have been far more brutal to her.... He was dead-tired, white-faced; he had fought hard last night, scorning the advantage of an armed man against an unarmed; he had not harmed a[Pg 185] hair of her head! Almost ... almost it lay within her to whisper "Poor fellow!" And if only Bruce Standing could have known that!...

They climbed steadily upward out of this narrow green valley, finding a steep but open way among the trees. Now and then they paused briefly to breathe, and Lynette, looking back, saw more and more of the long, winding valley, as it revealed itself to her from new vantage points. Far away she caught the glint of the sunlight upon a little wandering creek. They went on, and came to the crest of the ridge, in full sunshine now; Standing led an unhesitating way through a natural pass, and down on the other side, into shadows of a thick grove; through thickets; they splashed across a creek, a thin line of clear, cool water slipping through mountain willows, a tributary of the larger stream in the valley below. Down here it was almost dark. But twenty minutes later, climbing another slope where the larger timber stood widely spaced, they came again into the full sunshine.... Lynette began to wonder why he had left his horse so far back; how far did the silent, tireless man mean to walk? Also, she began to welcome the coming night with an eagerness which she was at all pains to conceal from him; he was always ten steps ahead of her; if he walked on another half-hour, she began to hope that they would come into a place of shadows and clumps of trees among which she might dare make the attempt for escape which had been denied her all day....

They came into a little upland flat, well watered, emerald-carpeted with tender grass, shot through with lingering flowers and studded with magnificent trees; it seemed the very heart of the great wilderness; here was[Pg 186] such glorious forest land as Lynette had never seen and did not know existed in all the broad scope of the great Southwest mountain country. She looked upward. Dark branches towered into the sky, the tips still shot through with soft summer light. She heard the gush of water—the tumble and splash and fall of water. Somewhere above, at the upper end of the flat, where a dark ravine was an ebon-shadow-filled gash through the hills, was a waterfall. She could not see it, but its musical waters proclaimed it through the still air. She looked swiftly down the other way; there it was growing dark. She glanced hurriedly at Standing. And he, as though he had read her thought, stopped and turned and, before she could stir, was at her side.

After that, with never a word, they went on, deeper into this shadowy realm of big trees. He watched her at every step. Fury filled her heart, but with compressed lips she maintained a silence like his own. Thor trotted along with them, now in front of his master, as though this were a way he had travelled before and knew well, now questing far afield, now in the rear, eying his master's captive and setting his dog's brains to the riddle.

Before they had walked another ten minutes, Standing threw down his pack and said abruptly:

She sat down, her back to a tree, her face averted from him. She was very tired and now she could have put her face into her hands and cried from very weariness. But instead she caught her lip up between her teeth and hid her face from him and ignored him. But in her heart she was wondering; had he travelled all day long and then this far from the spot where he had released his horse, just to pitch camp in a clump of trees? Was this the spot toward which he had striven on so[Pg 187] stubbornly since daylight? Where was he going? Why? Old queries and doubts rushed back upon her.... She was vaguely grateful that they were questions which he and not she had to answer; that responsibilities were his instead of hers. She was tired enough to lie down where she was and cease to care what happened.... It was not as yet pitch-dark; the sun was not down on the heights. But here, among the tall pines, in this hollow, the shadows were thick; nothing stood out in detail to her slowly closing eyes; here was a place of black blots, distorted glooms, the weird formless outriders of the night.... She had not the remotest suspicion that, where she had slumped down, she was almost at the door of a cabin.

Rather, it would have been surprising had she known. For surely there was never cabin like this hermit camp of Bruce Standing's! Two sky-scraping pines stood close together; between them was the door, framed by their own straight trunks. Smaller trees grew about the ancient parents; these hid the walls which to escape notice required little enough hiding at any time; a man might have passed here within a few yards at noonday and not noticed all this which Lynette failed to see in the dusk. For the walls of the tiny cabin were of rough logs from which the bark had never been stripped, walls which blended so perfectly with the greater note struck by the woodland that they failed to draw the eye; the chimney, of loose-piled rocks, was viewless at this time of day behind the tree trunks and inconspicuous at any time. And low, over the flat roof drooped the concealing branches of the trees. Of all this Lynette glimpsed nothing until Timber-Wolf said, looking down at her:

She had striven in one way and another since she had had her first view of him, axe in hand, for a clew to the real Bruce Standing. Now, again, he set her jaded faculties to work: Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf, and man of violence, quoting poetry to her! And at such a moment and under such circumstances!... It is not merely the feminine soul which is indeterminable, mystifying, intriguing into the ultimate bournes of speculation; rather the human soul....

"I don't fancy guessing riddles this evening," she told him. "All that I can think of by way of repartee is: 'What meanest thou, Sir Tent-maker?'"

But, in this thickening gloom and through those heavy shadows which lay across her soul in an hour of doubtings and uncertainties, she could be certain of nothing.... He was saying merely:

"If you're not clean done in, I'd suggest you walk three steps into my cabin. On the other hand, if you can't make it, I'll pick you up and carry you in!"

At that she sprang to her feet; through the gathering dark he could feel the burning look in her eyes.

Then, groping mentally and physically, it was given to her to understand. For already he stood upon the rude threshold. She followed after him.

She gasped, astonished, when she realized that already, in so few steps, she had passed into the embrasure of four walls! Sturdy walls; walls rude and unbeautiful, but rising stalwart bulwarks against the cold of night mountain air. He, a blurred, gigantic form in the dusk, was before her; his wolfish dog was at her heels. She heard the scratch, she saw the blue and yellow spurt of a sulphur match. His form suddenly loomed larger, leaped into grotesque giganticness; the tiny room sprang waveringly out of darkness into the[Pg 189] unreality of half-light; he found a candle; a steady golden flame sent the shadows racing into limbo; she looked about her wonderingly....

A room, bound in rough logs; a hastily, roughly hewn log set on other logs, offering its surly service as table; a stump which obviously made pretense at being a stool; a bunk against a wall, thick-padded with the tips from pines; a tin cup, a tin plate, an imitation of a box against a wall. And, hanging over a pole ... her first certainty that Bruce Standing, though animal as she named him in her heart, was a clean animal ... two or three blankets which, on last leaving this hut of his, he had stretched to air.... A primitive room, and yet clean. And, across from the narrow bunk, a deep, wide-mouthed fireplace made of big rocks.... He himself must have made that fireplace, for what other man could have lifted those rocks into place?

Already she was sitting on the edge of the bunk. She expected to hear for his next words: "Get me my dinner." But, instead, he said, his voice harsher than she had ever heard it before:

"And that's why I'm cooking for myself instead of making you do it! I don't want you to get it into your head it's because I'm getting sorry for you...."

She lay back, unanswering, and watched him. And presently, though not for him to see, a little smile touched her lips and for a short instant lighted her big gray eyes.... And in her heart she said: "He is so obvious, with all his thinking that he is a man whom a girl cannot see through! All day he has made me ride, while he walked! He said that that was to make better time! And, with every opportunity to harm me, he has not harmed a hair of my head! He has not even[Pg 190] touched me with his big, blundering hands!... And he looks white and sick from his hurt...."

He rummaged in a corner; he made a fire in his fireplace; he ripped open a couple of cans and set coffee to boil in a battered pot as black as an African negro. Suddenly Lynette, who had been silent a long while, exclaimed:

"I know now! We are still on your land. This is the very cabin where, six years ago, you robbed Babe Deveril of three thousand dollars!"

"No!" he said. "You have guessed wrong!" And then: "So your little friend, Baby Devil, told you many a tale about my wickedness?"

So he wanted her to think well of him! She made herself comfortable, leaning back against the wall.

"Have you the vaguest inkling of the difference between right and wrong, Bruce Standing?" she asked him impudently.

"Come," he said, "it is time for food. And then, for a man who does not break his word, blow high, blow low, to keep an appointment."

With that conversation ceased. He drove Thor into a corner, and with a word and a glance made the dog lie down. He boiled his coffee and set a hurried meal; he caught up a tin plate and brought it to Lynette. She was about to thank him when she saw how he was planning to serve a tin platter like hers to his dog; then she could have screamed at him in nerve-pent-up anger.

The three—master, captive, and dog—ate their late dinners while the candle flame, pale yellow with its bluish centre, swayed gently in the mild draft of air[Pg 191] through the open door. Windows there were none, saving the one square aperture over the bunk, boarded up now.

"What about Jim Taggart?" said Standing brusquely out of a long silence toward the end of which the weary girl was near dozing. "What do you know about him? Did he overhaul Mexicali Joe after all?"

She looked at him steadily; suddenly she was glad when a pine branch in the fireplace, full of pitch, flared up so that he must have seen her face more clearly than he could have done by mere pale candle-light; she wanted him to see it and read something of the defiance which she meant to offer him.

"So, after all, you have your engagement with Mexicali Joe? It was for that that you set him free? That you, instead of others, might steal his golden secret!"

"Then you won't answer, girl? You, whom I could crush between thumb and finger, refuse to answer me?"

"Not afraid?" He glared at her, his flashing blue eyes full of threat. Then he laughed contemptuously, saying: "And yet, were I minded to, I could in a second have you on your knees, begging, pleading...."

"I am not so sure!" he muttered. "Not so sure. Before morning, girl, you may come to know what fear is!"

She tried to toss back her fearless laughter, but at that look of his and at that stern tone of his voice her laughter caught in her throat.

"You've got nerve," he said grudgingly. "More nerve than I thought any girl could have ... since it's far and away more than most men have. But just the same there's one thing you are afraid of! I've seen it a[Pg 192] dozen times to-day, no matter how well you thought you hid it! You are afraid to death of old Thor, there!"

She shivered; she laid a quick command upon her muscles as upon her spirit, but they failed her; she tried to tell herself and to show him through her bearing, head up, eyes steady, that it was only fatigue and the growing chill of the coming night that put that tremor upon her. But he laughed at her and called his big dog to him and said heavily:

Thor growled, a growl coming from deep down in the powerful throat; the red eyes grew hot; bristles stood up along neck and back; there came the gleam of the wolfish teeth. She shrank back against the wall.

"I have my appointment!... In an hour I must go. I give you your choice of coming along with me, in leash! or of staying here, with only Thor to guard, and taking your chances with him! Which is it?"

"I'll go with you!" And then, lest he should think that he had triumphed, she added swiftly: "For I, too, am interested in Mexicali Joe!"

He caught down the blankets which had hung airing since last he came here and tossed two of them to the bunk where she half lay; the third he folded and placed on the floor, stretching out his own great bulk upon it, his shoulders against the wall. He found his pipe, filled and lighted it, and lay staring into the fire....

And she, drawing a blanket over her knees, crouched, looking into the same dancing flames, overwhelmed for the moment by a total sense-engulfing feeling of unreality. Could all of this which had happened, which was still happening, be an actual experience for her, Lynette Brooke? More did it resemble a long-drawn-out [Pg 193]ugly dream than actuality! To be here to-night, so far from the world, her own world, in the heart of a gigantic wilderness, in a rude cabin; a giant of a man who, as he had said truly, might have crushed her between his powerful forefinger and thumb; a savage wolf of a dog watching her with unblinking eyes; another man, somewhere, with vengeance in his heart, following them; another man, clutching to his breast his golden secret, not far away; ... nightmare ingredients! Did this man, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf as men called him, really know where to find Mexicali Joe? And, when he found him, would he come upon Taggart and Gallup and that hawk-faced man whom they called Cliff Shipton? And with them would there be Babe Deveril, who must have gone somewhere in his mad, hungering hope to have a rifle in his hands?... Above all else, was she the plaything of fate? Or the director of fate? Now it lay within the scope of her power to cry out to Bruce Standing: "When you find Mexicali Joe you will find others, no friends of yours, with him! With them, probably, Babe Deveril! And more than one rifle ready to stand between you and the Mexican!" ... If she kept her silence, there might be bloodshed before morning; if she spoke her warning, she might be doubly arming Timber-Wolf. She grew restless; so restless that Thor, distrusting her, began growling.

Well ... what should she say? Anything or nothing? If she kept her silence, would she in after-days know herself to blame for to-night's bloodshed in that, keeping shut lips, she allowed him to stumble upon all Taggart's crowd.

He was eying her sharply. She must make some [Pg 194]answer, and so at last she prefaced her reply by asking him:

"I did not say that. I said that this is not the cabin in which I had some years ago the pleasant experience of borrowing some money from Babe Deveril. He has never been here; has never heard of this place. No man other than myself, and until now no woman ever came here."

"That narrow end of a valley we crossed this afternoon ... that was the upper end of Buck Valley? And the creek which came next was Big Bear Creek? And, right near us somewhere is Grub Stake Cañon?"

"You know the country like a map!" He spoke carelessly enough and yet was puzzled to understand how she knew; of course Deveril could have told her something of it and yet Deveril's knowledge was restricted to the slim gleanings of one short excursion of years ago, and he did not believe that even Deveril had ever heard of Grub Stake Cañon.

"And," she ran on swiftly, "you were to meet Mexicali Joe to-night at that other cabin of yours? Is that it?"

"Witch, are you? Picker of thoughts from men's brains?" He laughed shortly and got to his feet. "And so you elect to go along and see what happens? Rather than rest here with Thor to keep you company?"

"Down, Thor, old boy," he said as he might have spoken to a man, without raising his voice. "Wait for me. Good dog, Thor."

Thor whined, but Lynette heard the sound he made in[Pg 195] lying down obediently; heard the thumping of his tail as he whined again. Standing began leading the way through the dark among the big trees, his fingers about her wrist.... She wondered how far they must go; suddenly as her great weariness bore down upon her spirit that was become the greatest of all considerations; greater, even, than what they should find at the end of their walk. Almost she regretted not having remained in the cabin ... with Thor.

Standing, despite the dark and the uneven ground underfoot, seemed to have no difficulty in finding his way; he walked swiftly; she could sense his eager impatience. She began wondering listlessly if he were late to his appointment....

She had faint idea how far they had gone, a mile or two miles or but half a mile, a weary time of heavily dragging footsteps, when suddenly the silence was broken by men's voices. Far away, dimmed and all but utterly hidden by the interval of forest, was a vague glow of light. Standing came to a dead stop; she stumbled against him. There came, throbbing through the night, a man's scream. Standing stiffened; she felt a tremor run through his big body. A voice again, an evil voice in evil laughter; a deeper voice, too far away for the words to carry any meaning, not too far for the voice itself to be recognized by a man who hated it.

"Taggart and Young Gallup," Standing muttered. "They've got Joe! They'd cut his throat for ten cents!... Look here; what do you know about all this?"

She answered hurriedly; that thin scream still echoed in her ears; she remembered only too vividly Taggart's treatment of Joe at the dugout and Taggart's threats; she shivered, saying:

"All I know.... Jim Taggart and Gallup and [Pg 196]another man caught up with Joe at his cabin; they made him bring them here ... to show them his gold ... Taggart threatened him with torture...."

Still with her hand caught in his own he turned and ran, making her run with him, back to his own cabin. Again they heard, fainter now since the distance was greater, that thin cry bursting from Joe's lips; she felt the hand on her own shut down, mercilessly hard.... Running, they returned to his hidden cabin.

He went in with her; hurriedly he lighted the candle; the fire was almost out. Wondering, she sank down upon the bunk.

"Down, Thor," he commanded; he made the dog lie again across the threshold. "Watch her, Thor!" Thor growled; the red eyes watched her.

He ran out of the cabin. She heard him breaking through brush, going the shortest, straightest way down toward the spot from which voices had come up to them. Thor growled. She looked at the dog, fascinated with fear of him. The big head was down now, resting between the big fore paws; the unwinking eyes were on her.... She lay back on the bunk, staring up at the smoke-blackened rafters.

It was very quiet. No longer could she hear the sound of Timber-Wolf's running.... He, one man, pitting himself in blazing anger against at least three men, ... perhaps four!... What if he were killed? Leaving her here, under the relentless guard of Thor? She was taken with a long fit of shivering. Thor growled.

CHAPTER XV

Every experience through which Lynette Brooke had gone until now seemed suddenly dwarfed into insignificance by the present. She was so utterly wearied out physically that muscles all over her body, demanding their hour of relaxation and having that relaxation denied them through the nervous stress laid upon her, quivered piteously. Hers was that frame of mind which distorts and magnifies, whipping out of its true semblance all actual conditions or building them up into monstrous, grotesque shapes. She was afraid of that great, staring dog on the threshold; more afraid of him than she had ever been of any man, Thor's master not excepted. For here was a fear which she could not throttle down. She would have sighed in content and have gone to sleep, her turbulent emotions quieted, if only it had been Bruce Standing's hard hand on the chain denying her her liberty instead of a great dog lying across the door-step.... Enough here to make her clinch her teeth to hold back a scream of panic-swept nerves; yet this was not all. For still that cry, heard through the woods, rang in her ears; still she built up in the picture which her quick fancy limned the vision of Mexicali Joe at the mercy of merciless men; Joe, who had lied to them, hoping to deliver them into the hands of one greater than they; Joe, who at the end, with them demanding to see what he had to show them, must be driven to the last extremity to fight for time.... And, blurring everything else at times, there swept over her another picture; that of Timber-Wolf, wounded and white-faced, stalking in that fearless way of his among them, confronting three armed men ... or four?... and then man-killing.... They were all wolves! She [Pg 198]shuddered. And Thor, watching her, filled the quiet cabin with the sound of his low suspicious growling.

"Thor!" she called him, hardly above a whisper. Her lips were dry. "Good old Thor!"

His throaty rumble of a growl, telling her of his distrust as eloquently as it could have done had Thor the words of man at his command, was her answer.

"Thor!" She called him again, her voice soft, pleading, coaxing. Then she lifted herself a few inches on her elbow; like a flash Thor was up on his haunches, his growl became a snarl, a quick glint of his teeth showing, a sharp-pointed gleam of menace.

Yet Lynette held her position, steady upon her elbow; she had never known a tenser moment. Her throat contracted with her fear; and yet she kept telling herself stubbornly that yonder was but a dog, a thing of only brute intelligence, while she had the human brain to oppose him with; that, some way, she could outwit him. So she did not lie back; to do so would, she felt, show Thor that she was afraid of him. She made no further forward movement but she held what she had been suffered to gain.

And then she set herself to dominate Thor, a wolf-like dog. She spoke to him; but first she waited until she could be sure of her voice. That brute instinct of Thor's would know the slightest quaver of fear when he heard it. She controlled herself and her voice; she made her tones low and soft and gentle; she kept them firm. She told herself: "Thor is but doing his master's bidding because he loves his master! I'll make him love me! He distrusts.... I'll make him trust instead!" And all the while she kept her own eyes steady upon Thor's.

... Thor had set her down as an enemy; his master's [Pg 199]enemy; his master had commanded him: "Watch her, Thor!" Thor's knowledge was not wide; yet what he knew he did know thoroughly. And yet Thor had had no evidence, beyond that offered by a chain, of any open enmity between his master and this captive; master and girl had travelled all day long together and neither had flown at the other's throat. More than that, it had been at the master's own command this very morning that Thor had felt her hand upon his head; a hand as light as a falling leaf. And now she spoke to him in his master's own words, but with such a different voice, calling him Thor, good old dog....

It was a soothing voice, a voice made for tender caresses. She spoke again and again and again. And she was not afraid; Thor could see no flickering sign of fear in her. A voice softer than had been the touch of her hand.

"Thor!" she called him. And his growl was scarcely more growl than whine. For Thor, before Bruce Standing had been gone twenty minutes, was growing uncertain. Lynette had had dogs of her own; she knew the ways of dogs, and in this she had the advantage, since Thor knew nothing of the ways of women nor of their guile. The dog was restless; his eyes, upon hers, were no longer so steady. Now and then Thor shook his head and his eyes wandered.

"Thor," said Lynette, and now, though her voice, as before, was low and gentle, there was the note of command in it, "lie down!"

There was an experiment ... and it failed. Thor was on four feet in a flash; his growl was unmistakable now; the snarling note came back into it threateningly. She thought that he was going to fly at her throat....

Yet already was the lesser intelligence, though coupled with the greater physical power, confused.

Lynette moved slowly; she put her hands up above her head and stretched out her arms and yawned; Thor growled, but there was little threat in the growl; just suspicion. Again she moved slowly; close enough, in the restricted area embraced by the cabin walls, was the table; on it some morsels of food left from their dinner. Without rising from the bunk, she reached the tin plate; she took it up, all the while moving with unhastening slowness. Thor's eyes followed her straying hand; Thor had been fed, and yet the dog's capacity for food was enormous. He understood the meaning of her gesture; his eyes hungered.

She dropped the plate to the floor but, before it struck, not three feet in front of the dog, she cried out sharply, her voice ringing, her command at last emphatic:

Had she offered the dog the food she would have but awaked within him a new and violent distrust; he was not so easily to be tricked. But when she tossed before him something that he was slavering for, and then laid her command upon him to hold back, she achieved something over him; he would have held back in any case, but now he held back at her command.

The big dog stared at her; at the fallen morsels; back at her, plainly at loss. And then again, more sharply, she commanded him:

And Thor, though he growled, lay down.... And his wolfish eyes now were upon the plate and its spilled contents rather than upon her.

"If I can but have time!" Lynette was telling herself excitedly. "If only I can have time ... I can make [Pg 201]that dog do what I say to do!... God, give me time!"

When Bruce Standing, rushing through the forest land, came upon them ... Taggart and the others ... they were grouped about a despairing, hopeless Mexicali Joe. For Mexicali Joe's amigo, the great Timber-Wolf, in whom next to God he put all trust, had failed him. And Joe had come to the end of his tether, the end of lies and excuses and empty explanations. And now Taggart, as brutal a man as ever wore the badge of the law, was impatient, and meant to make an end of all procrastinations. It was his intention to give Mexicali Joe such a "third degree" as never any man had lived to experience before to-night. Rage, chagrin, disappointment, and natural, innate brutality spurred him on. Even Young Gallup, who was no chicken-hearted man at best, demurred; but Taggart cursed him off and told him to hold his tongue, and planned matters to his own liking.

"Jim Taggart's got Injun blood in him, you know," muttered Gallup uneasily to Cliff Shipton ... as though that might explain anything.

Even to such as Young Gallup, a man of whose humanity little was to be said, explanations were logical requirements. For Jim Taggart was at his evil worst. With cruelly hard fist he had knocked the little Mexican down; before Joe could get to his feet he booted him; when Joe stood, tottering, Taggart knocked him down again, jarring the quivering flame of life within him. And only at that did Jim Taggart, a man of no imagination but of colossal brutality, count that he was beginning. Then it was that Joe cried out; that his scream pierced through the night's stillness; that he pleaded with Taggart, saying:

"You're damned right you will," shouted Taggart, beside himself with his long baffled rage. "When I get good and ready to listen. And I'm not listening now, you Mexico pup! First you go through hell, and then I'll know that you tell the truth! Fool with me, would you; with me, Jim Taggart? You——"

Then Taggart began his third degree, listening to neither Joe's pleadings nor yet to the voice of Young Gallup.

The four men were in Bruce Standing's old cabin; the door was wide open, since here, so far from the world, in the dense outer fringes of Timber-Wolf's isolated wilderness kingdom, no man of them ... saving Joe alone, who had now given up hope ... had a thought of another human eye to see; Shipton, at a curt word from Taggart, had piled the mouth of the fireplace full of dead-wood, for the sole sake of light, and it was hot in the small room. Taggart had bound the Mexican's hands behind him, drawing the thong so tight that it cut cruelly into the flesh.... Taggart had knocked Joe down and had booted him to his heart's content; the swarthy face had turned a sick white. Taggart's eyes were glowing like coals raked out from hell's own sulphurous fires; he was sure of the outcome, sure of swift success, and yet now, in pure fiendishness, more absorbed in his own unleashed deviltry than in the mere matter of raw gold, which he counted securely his as soon as he was ready for it. Whether or not Indian blood ran in his veins, elemental savagery did.

Mexicali Joe, unable to rise, or in fear for his life if he stirred, lay on the floor, his eyes dilated with terror, staring up into Taggart's convulsed face.

"Shut up, you greaser-dog!" Taggart, a man of full measure, kicked him, and under the driving pain inflicted by that heavy boot, Joe's eyes flickered and closed, and Joe's brain staggered upon the dizzy black verge of unconsciousness. Taggart saw and understood and pitched a dipperful of water in his face. Joe gasped faintly. Taggart stepped to the fireplace, and snatched out a blazing pine branch.

"I've put my brand on more'n one treacherous dog!" he jeered. "You'll find my stock running across the wild places in seven States! Here's where I plant the sign of the cross on you, Mexico! Right square between the eyes!"

Suddenly he thrust the burning brand toward Joe's forehead. Joe cried out in terror:

"For the love of God!..." His two hands were behind him, but, galvanized, he fought the pine fagot with his whole body. He strove to thrust it aside; he fought against his weakness to roll over; Taggart's heavy foot was in his middle, holding him down; the burning branch in Taggart's heavy hands was as steady as a steel rod set in concrete; Joe's threshing panic disturbed it scarcely more than the wind would have done.... Another scream, shrilling through the night; the smell of burnt flesh; a red wound on Joe's forehead; Taggart's ugly laugh; and then suddenly, from just without the open doorway, a terrible shout from Bruce Standing, and then, in two seconds, Bruce Standing's great bulk among them.

Shipton's rifle stood in a corner; Shipton, as lithe as a cat, leaped for it. Gallup's was in his hand; he whipped[Pg 204] it to his shoulder. Taggart for one instant was stupefied; then he swept high above his head the smoke-emitting, redly glowing pine limb. Joe, weeping hysterically, writhing on the floor, was gasping: "Jesus Maria!" ... God had heard his prayers; God and Bruce Standing.

But in to-night's game of hazard it was Timber-Wolf who chose to shuffle, cut, and deal the cards; his rifle was in his hands; it required but the gentlest touch of his finger to send any man of them to his last repose. His eyes, the roving eyes of rage, were everywhere at once.

"I'd kill you, Taggart, and be glad of the chanth! You, too, Gallup! Drop that gun!"

First of them all, it was Cliff Shipton who came to the motionless halt of shocked consternation; he lifted his hands, his face blanched; he tried to speak, and only succeeded in making the noise of air gushing through dry lips. Gallup stopped midway in his purpose of firing, for Timber Wolf's rifle barrel was trained square upon his chest; at the look in Standing's eye and the timbre of his voice, Gallup's gun fell clattering to the floor. Taggart mouthed and cursed, and slowly let his blazing fagot sink toward the floor.

For every man of them knew Timber-Wolf well; and they knew that incongruous lisping which surprised him and mastered his utterance only when his rage was of the greatest. When Timber-Wolf lisped it was because such a fiery storm raged through his breast as to make of him a man who would kill and kill and kill and glory in the killing.

"And I'd have given a million dollars to thee any man of you put up a fight!" he was saying harshly. "God, what a thet of cowardly curth! And you, Jim Taggart, I onth had for bunk-mate and onth thought a man!"

He reached out suddenly, and with his bare, open palm slapped Taggart's face; and Taggart staggered backward under the blow until his thick shoulders brought up against the wall with such a thud that the cabin shuddered under the impact.

"Get up, Joe!" growled Standing. "You're another yellow dog, but ... get up and come here!"

Joe scrambled to his feet and came hurrying. Standing kept his rifle in his right hand. Using his left stiffly, he got out his knife and cut the Mexican's bonds.

"Go!" he cried savagely. "While you've got legth under you! And thith time keep clear, or hell take you! I'm through with you ... you make me thick!..."

Mexicali Joe, with one last frightened look over his shoulder, fled; they heard his running feet outside. He was jabbering unintelligibly as he fled: "Señor Caballero! ... Dios! ... those devils!..."

Joe was gone. Bruce Standing's work was done. He looked grim and implacable, a man of iron heated in the red-hot furnace of rage. He yearned for Taggart to make a move; or for Gallup. Shipton, as a lesser cur, he ignored.

They saw how white, as white as a clean sheet of paper, his face was; they did not fully understand why, since a man's face, when he is in a terrible rage, may whiten, as an effect of the searing emotion; they did not know how he had driven his wounded body all day long nor how sore his wound was. They could not guess that even now he was holding himself upright and towering among them through the fierce bending of his indomitable will. That same will he bent terribly for clean-cut articulation.

"Taggart!" he said, and his voice rang as clear as the striking of an iron hammer upon a resounding anvil. "I'll tempt you to be a man such as you once were, [Pg 206]before you went yellow clean through ... and I'll show you, your self, how dirty a yellow you've gone! Pick up Young Gallup's rifle!"

Taggart glared at him and muttered and hesitated, tugged one way by hatred and the madness of wrath, tugged the other way by his fear of the certainty of death. Lights, bluish lights, flickered in Timber-Wolf's eyes. He said again:

"Pick up that rifle! Otherwise, in less than ten seconds you are a dead man!"

Taggart's face was red when Standing began to speak; ashen by the last word. Nervously and in great haste he stooped and caught up the gun.

"You've got your chance, Jim Taggart! Your last chance! To fight it out, or say, for these men to hear: 'I'm a dirty yellow dog!' If you're game we'll fight it out. I'll give you an even break; and we'll kill each other!"

Taggart held the rifle, not lifted quite to his waist; his hands were rigid upon it and did not tremble. He was not a coward; on many an occasion, when he had borne his sheriff's badge recklessly through violence, he had shown himself a brave man. He knew now that it lay within his power, if he were quick and sure, to kill Bruce Standing, whom he had come to hate, so that his hatred was like a running sore. And he knew, too, that killing, he would be killed. If it were any man on earth whom he confronted save Bruce Standing....

So he hesitated, for brave man as Jim Taggart always was, he was a man who did not want to die. And Standing laughed at him and said:

"You've had your chance; you still have it. Now, fight it out or tuck your tail between your legs and do my bidding! And my bidding to you, so that I needn't expect a bullet in the back when I leave you, is to smash[Pg 207] that rifle into flinders against the rock chimney. And step lively!"

The last words came sharp and sudden, and Taggart started. And then, hesitating no longer, he whirled the rifle up by the barrel and brought it with all his might crashing against the fireplace; the fragments fell from his tingling fingers. And again Standing laughed at him and again commanded him, saying:

"There are two more rifles; do the same for each one! And remember, Jim Taggart, every time you touch a gun you've got the even break to fight it out; and every time you smash a gun you are saying out loud: 'I'm a dirty yellow dog!' Only make it snappy, Jim Taggart!"

One after the other, and hastily, Jim Taggart smashed the butts off two rifles and jammed trigger and trigger-guard so that from firearms the weapons were resolved into the estate of so much scrap-iron and splintered wood.

"I'll take your two toy guns, Jim," said Standing. "And remember this; at short range the man with the revolver has the edge! When you drag a gun out you've got your chance to come up shooting! Don't overlook that! And remember along with it, that when you hand me a gun, butt-end first, you are saying aloud for the world to hear: 'I'm a dirty yellow dog!'"

Lingeringly Taggart drew forth the heavy side-arms dragging at his holsters; all the while he was tempted almost beyond resistance to avail himself of his opportunity and of that quick sure skill of his; to shoot from the hip, as he could do with the swiftness of a flash of the wrist; he could shoot and kill. And within his heart, knowing Bruce Standing as he did, he knew, too, that though he shot true to a hair line, none the less, Bruce Standing would kill him.... He gave a gun[Pg 208] into Standing's left hand and saw it thrust into his belt. Then was Taggart's time to snatch out his other weapon and drill that hole through the big body in front of him which would surely let the life run out; now was his chance, while for an instant one of Standing's hands was busy at his belt!... If it had been any other man in the world there confronting him! Any man but Bruce Standing! Jim Taggart was near weeping. But he drew out his second revolver and saw it bestowed as its fellow had been.

"Four times you've said it, plainer than words!" cried Standing ringingly. "Gallup will never forget; and he'll tell the tale! Shipton will remember and will blab! And, what's worse for the soul of a man, Jim Taggart, you'll remember to the last day you live!... And now you three can consider yourselves as so many mongrel curs whose back-biting teeth I've knocked down your throats for you! I'll leave you to your growlings and whinings!"

He swung about and went out. He knew both Gallup and Shipton, knew them and their habits well, and knew that neither man had the habit of carrying a pistol. Further, their coats were off, and he had seen that neither had a holster at his belt. So he turned his back on them to emphasize his contempt and did not turn his head as he plunged into the outside night and into the thick dark under the trees, going back to his hidden cabin and Lynette and Thor. He realized that he himself, despite a herculean physique, was near the tether's end of his endurance; he realized that Lynette was also heavily borne down by all that she, a girl, had gone through and that he had left her overlong with his wolfish dog.

What he could not know was that a revolver which had once already shot him in the back had followed him all[Pg 209] these miles through the wilderness and was now lying on the bunk in the cabin he had just quitted; he could not know how, at the Gallup House after Babe Deveril had flung it in Taggart's face, Lynette's pistol had lain there on the floor until Taggart had been aroused to consciousness; nor how Gallup had picked it up, nor how Taggart had muttered: "Save it, Young. It may come in handy for evidence in court." Gallup had stuck it into his pocket; he had brought it with him; he had tossed it down among the blankets....

Taggart stared after him with terrible eyes; Taggart remembered and, when he dared, flung himself across the room, snatching for it among the covers. Standing, hastening, strode on. Taggart found the weapon; he ran out of the cabin with it in his hand; dodged to one side of the open door to be out of way of the firelight. Standing hurried on, he had not seen Taggart; Taggart could scarcely see him, could but make out vaguely a blur where he heard heavy footfalls.... It was all chance; but now no longer was Taggart himself running the desperate chances. He fired, one shot after another, until he emptied the little gun—four shots altogether; the hammer clicked down on the fifth, the empty shell.

Chance, pure chance; and yet chance is ironical and loves its own grim jest. The first bullet, the only one of them all to find its target, struck Timber-Wolf. And it was as though this questing bit of lead were seeking to tread the same path blazed by its angry brother down at the Gallup House in Big Pine. For it, like the other from the same muzzle, struck him from behind; and it, too, struck him upon the left side, in the outer shoulder, not half a dozen inches from the spot where he had been shot before....

Standing staggered and caught his breath with a grunt; he lurched into a tree and stood leaning against[Pg 210] it. For a moment he was dizzied and could not see clearly. Then, turning, he made out the cabin behind him; the bright rectangle of the door; two dark running forms leaping through it, gone into the gulf of the black night. He jerked up his rifle, holding it in one hand, unsupported by the other, his shoulder, the right, against the tree. But they were gone before he could shoot. He waited. He heard a breaking through brush; men running. They were running away! They did not know that they had hit him; they could not tell, and they were afraid of his return! He lifted his voice and shouted at them in the sudden grip of a terrible anger. He listened to the noise they made and strove to judge their positions and began shooting after them. He fired until the rifle clip was empty. Then, while awkwardly, with one hand, he put in a fresh clip, he listened again. Silence only.

... He was strangely weak and uncertain; he had to draw his brows down with a steely effort to clear his thoughts. They were gone ... they would not come back ... it was too dark to look for them. And he had left that girl overlong ... and he was shot full of pain. A surge of anger for every surge of weakness....

He started on toward his hidden cabin and Lynette. He blundered into a tree. He could feel the hot blood down his shoulder. He began using his rifle as a man may use a cane, leaning on it heavily.

CHAPTER XVI

Bruce Standing came, weaving his way, like a drunken man, through the woods. He was sick; sick and weak. He muttered to himself constantly. Lynette was at the top of his thought and at the bottom; she dominated his whole mind. He was used through long years to such as Jim Taggart and their crooked ways; he was not used to such as Lynette Brooke, a girl like a flower and yet fearless. It had been his way to hold all women in scorn, since it had not been given unto him during the hard years of his life to know the finer women, the true women worth while, more than worth the while of a mere man. He had held his head high; he had mocked and jeered at them; he had been no man to doff his hat with the flattering elegance of a Babe Deveril for every fair face seen. So now the one thing which in his fiery and feverish mood galled him most was the thought of being seen by Lynette as a man borne down and crushed and made weak and sick. For most of all he hated weaklings.

"She laughed at me ... damn her," he muttered. And, as an afterthought: "She shot me in the back, after the fashion of her treacherous sex!"

He had driven himself harder all day long than any sane man, wounded, should have thought of doing. Now the thought, working its way uppermost through the fomenting confusion of teeming thoughts, was: "I'll let her go. I'll be rid of her." For already, deep down in the depths of his heart, he knew that already a girl, a girl whom he despised and had meant to pay in full for her wickedness, had intrigued him; she had flung[Pg 212] her defiant fearlessness into his face; she had kept a lifted head and straightforward eyes; and ... those eyes of Lynette Brooke! Deep, fathomless, gray, tender, alluring, the eyes of the one woman for each man! Almost he could have forgotten, not merely forgiven, her greater fault of laughing at his infirmity; if only she had not been of the species, like Jim Taggart's, to shoot a man in the back.

He meant to let her go free and he had his own reasons for his change of front. Though she had laughed and galled him, though she had sunk to a cowardly act and shot him when he was not looking, at least she was not the coward which he had counted upon finding her; he gave credit where credit was due. He had humiliated her sufficiently, dragging her after him, humbling a spirit as proud as his own, making her his handmaiden, calling her his slave. That was one thing. And another, befogged as it was, was even clearer: In letting her go, in being rid for all time of her and the lure of her eyes, he was protecting himself, Bruce Standing, and none other! ... Fearless, he honored her for that. And yet a treacherous she-animal; so he wanted no more of her, no more of the look of her, the fragrance of her, the pressure of her upon his own spirit. He held himself a man; a man he meant to remain. And, for the first time in all his life he was a little afraid....

And then, just at the moment when it would have been better for them both if he had not come ... or when it was best that he should come ... these are questions and the answers of all questions fate holds in her lap, hidden by the films of the future ... he came staggering up to the door of the hidden cabin. And, at the sight of her, he pulled himself up, stiffening, as taut as a bowstring the instant that the arrow thrills to the command to speed.

There, in the doorway framed by the two big-boled pines she stood, vividly outlined by the firelight from within the cabin, superbly, gloriously feminine, her own slender soft loveliness thrown into tremendous contrast by the figure at her side, the figure of old Thor on whose head her hand rested as light as a fallen leaf! Her hand on Thor's head! She and Thor standing side by side, her hand on his head....

Sudden rage flared up in Timber-Wolf's heart; he gripped his rifle in both hands, contemptuously ignoring the pains which shot through his left shoulder; at that moment he could have thanked God for excuse enough to shoot her dead. She had seduced the loyalty and trustworthiness of Thor; she had done that! If a man like Standing could not trust his dog, when that dog was old Thor, then where on this green earth could he plant his trust?

She was poised for flight. He came at the instant of her victory over the brute intelligence of a dog, at the moment of her high hopes, when her heart hot in rebellion throbbed with triumph. She, too, at that moment, could she have commanded the lightnings, would have stricken him dead. Her hatred of him reached in a flash such heights as it had never aspired to before.

Back? He commanded her to turn back? Shouted his dictates at her in that first moment when she sensed escape and freedom and victory over him who had been victor long enough? Back? Not now; not though he flourished his rifle, threatening her with that while he shouted angrily at her. Briefly the sight of him had unnerved her, had created within her an utter powerlessness to move hand or foot. But before he could shout "Back!" the second time defiance, like a flood of fire, broke along her veins, warming her from head to foot;[Pg 214] she sprang out from the area of light at the cabin door and, running more swiftly than Bruce Standing had deemed any girl could ever run, she sped away among the trees....

A moment ago he had but the one firm intention: To set her free and be rid of her for all time. Now, not ten seconds after holding that purpose, he was rushing after her, forgetful of everything, his wounds and sick weariness, except his one determination to drag her back! He was angry; in his anger, not admitting to himself the true explanation, he felt that he must blame her for a third crime ... she had trifled with the integrity of his dog's loyalty ... she had corrupted old Thor's sturdy honesty....

She ran like a deer. The moment that she broke into headlong flight that very act released within her a full tide of fright; it became a panic like that of soldiers once they have thrown down their arms and plunged into the delirium of disordered retreat. She ran as she had never done before, even when she and Babe Deveril had fled through the night. And Bruce Standing would never have come up with her that night had it not been that in the dark she fell, stumbling over the low mound left to mark the place where an ancient log had disintegrated. As she floundered to her feet she felt his hand on her shoulder. She screamed, she struck at him....

He caught her two hands as he had done once before; she could have no inkling of the tremendous call he put upon himself, body and will; she could hear his heavy, labored breathing, but she, too, was breathing in gasps. She could see neither the whiteness of his face nor yet the blood soaking his shirt. He did not speak. He was not thinking clearly. He merely said within himself: "I got her!" That was everything. Until, as they came again into the outward-pouring firelight in front of[Pg 215] the cabin door, he wondered somewhat uneasily: "What am I going to do with her?"

Lynette, panting and piteously shaken, dropped down on the edge of the bunk, overborne by disaster, hopeless, her face in her hands; she was fighting with herself against a burst of tears. Thus she did not see Bruce Standing as he stood at the threshold, looking at her. She heard his step; it shuffled and was uncertain, but she did not at the moment mark this. She heard a whine from old Thor, a Thor perplexed and ill at ease.

... Suddenly she thought: "He hasn't moved; he hasn't spoken!" She dropped her hands then and looked up swiftly. And, thus, she surprised a queer look in his eyes; his own thoughts were all chaotic and yet there was beginning to burn one steady thought among them like one bright flame in a whirl of smoke. He had closed the door when they came in; he had sat down upon the up-ended log which served here as a chair; Thor's head was on the master's knee and absently Standing's hand was stroking it. He had dropped his rifle outside when he started to run after her; he had not stopped to look for it as they came in. She saw that a revolver was half in and half out of his pocket.... Then she marked, with a start, the dead-white of his face and the way his left arm hung limp, and the red stain on his wrist and the back of his hand where the blood had run down his sleeve. Her first thought was of his old wound and how he was not the man to give a wound a chance to heal, but rather would break it open again and again through his violence. Then she recalled what, during these last few minutes she had forgotten—the shots which she had heard a little while ago. And she knew that, though he sat upright and stared at her with the old look again in his eyes, he had been shot the second time.

"I brought you back, girl," he said at last, and she knew that he was bending a vast resource of will to keep his tone clear and steady, "not because I mean to keep you any longer ... but just to show you that with all the tricks of your sex you can take no step that I do not tell you to take! Now, I've the idea that I'd like best to be alone. You can go."

In a flash she jumped to her feet; she would scarcely credit her ears, and yet one look at the man told her reassuringly that he was in earnest.

"I don't know where you'll go," he said. "And I don't care. But I can tell you you'll find some good men and true, men of your own kind, since they shoot in the back, down below my other cabin; Taggart and Gallup and Shipton.... No, your friend Baby Devil isn't there! And Mexicali Joe has skipped out. If you like to take your chances with those birds...." He jerked out the revolver which recently had been Taggart's and tossed it to the bunk. "You can take that along, if you like."

She flushed up, her face as hot as fire, as he jeered at her, saying: "Men of your own kind, since they shoot in the back!" ... She could come close to an accurate guess of what had happened; since Mexicali Joe was gone it must be that Standing had set him free; since Standing returned with a fresh wound, it must be that Taggart or one of his crowd had shot him in the back....

"I did not shoot you! You didn't see ... if you had seen you would know. My pistol lay on the table ... the window was open ... some one reached in and picked it up and shot you ... I was frightened, and when the pistol was dropped back to the table, I caught it up...."

His eyes grew brilliant with the intensity of the look he turned upon her.... But his brain was reeling, his weakness overpowered him ... he was set with all the steel of his character against showing before her the first sign of weakness....

He leaned back against the wall. "You're free now," he said. "I would to God I had never seen you!"

For answer she flung her bright laughter back at him; defiant, angry, bitter laughter. She caught up the heavy revolver he had thrown to her.

His own laughter, hard and ugly, answered while he found the strength to say sternly:

"But with me looking you straight in the eyes ... you'd lose your nerve at that!"

She flung the weapon down to the floor, scorning any gift of his. Without another word, with never another glance toward him, she passed to the door, jerked it open and went out.

He sat staring into the fire. Thor began sniffing at the limp hand. Standing got to his feet; the fire was dying down and a sudden shiver of cold prompted him to pile on fresh fuel. He kicked Taggart's revolver viciously out of his way. He was going to the fireplace, but in doing so passed the bunk. He sat down a moment, wiping the sweat from his forehead ... cold and sweating at the same time. He lay back, flat on his back, and shut his eyes. He wondered vaguely how much blood he had lost coming up through the woods from the lower cabin where he had been shot; how much blood he had lost while he ran like a madman after that girl.... His eyes were shut doggedly tight and yet it seemed to his dizzied senses as though he could feel[Pg 218] the look of her eyes, bending over him.... Now, that was a strange thing.... Never once had she given him a look from those eyes of hers to show a single spasm of fear.... Fearless? She, a girl? Did fearlessness and cowardice blend, then, that the incomprehensible result might be known as woman? For it was the supreme stroke of cowardice to shoot a man in the back. And yet ... she had said: "I did not shoot you!" While she spoke, he had believed!... He lay jeering at himself.... And all the while, as in a vision, he saw a pair of big gray eyes, soft and tender and alluring, bending over him....

"There's just one thing in the world," muttered Bruce Standing aloud, as a man may do when hard driven by perplexity and safe in solitary isolation from other ears than his own, "that I'd give everything to know! To know for sure!... Just one thing...."

CHAPTER XVII

Lynette, running like one blind out into the dark silent forest land, her own soul storm-tossed, stopped with sudden abruptness, staring about her, striving to see what lay before her, about her. Free! As free as the wind, to roam where she listed. And alone! Alone with the wilderness for the first moment since she had fled the menace yelping at her heels in Big Pine. Alone.

And walled about by the wildest and most impenetrably blackly dark solitudes. She had but the one impulse; to flee from this man whose fellows termed him a wolf; but the one clear thought, that she must hasten in search of the very man from whom originally she had fled, Jim Taggart. For, since Bruce Standing had not been killed by that shot fired in her room at the Gallup House, she, like Babe Deveril, was no longer threatened with the most serious charge of murder. Let Taggart place her under arrest; let him take her back into the region of towns and stages and lamp-lit homes; let him accuse her. Suddenly it seemed to her, wearied with endless exertion and privation and nervous tension, that there could be no peace greater than that of being taken back and placed in custody in Big Pine!

Now she had to guide her but a general, a very vague, sense of direction. It was so absolutely dark! There were stars, but they seemed little sparks of cold distant light, blurred and almost lost beyond the tops of the pines. Standing had led her after him, on his way to his lower cabin, down the gentle slope. Yes; she knew the general direction. And the distance? She had little impression of the distance between these two aloof[Pg 220] lairs of Timber-Wolf; half a mile or two miles, she did not know. She would go on and on, seeking a way among the trees; on and on and on, stumbling in the dark. Then, after a while, she would call; call and call again, praying that Taggart and the others were lurking somewhere within ear-shot; that they would hear and come to her ... and place her under arrest! And she wondered, as she had done so many a time to-day, where was Babe Deveril? Was he near? Would he, by any chance, hear her? Would he, too, come to her? And, then, what?

She began hastening on; to be farther from him, though that meant to come at every step nearer Jim Taggart and Young Gallup and that other man with the hawk face. She could not be absolutely certain that the direction she set her course by would ever lead her to the lower cabin; but on one point she was assured: at every step she was getting farther from wolf-man and wolf-dog. What a brute, what a beast he was! And yet ... and yet.... There swept across her, like a clean, cold wind out of the north, a sudden appreciation of those finer qualities of manhood which his nature and his fate had allowed to dwell on in that anomaly, Bruce Standing. His absolute honesty, itself like a north wind, was not to be gainsaid even by his bitterest enemy; his courage, in any woman's eyes, was invested with sheer nobility. How he had befriended poor little Mexicali Joe; how, to-night for the second time, though handicapped by his wound, he had gone to Joe's relief; how he, one against three, had had his way, like a lion among curs. Wolf or lion?... And, finally, she abode wonderingly on that queer, distorted chivalry which resided in the heart of him, his brutally chivalrous way with her. For, no matter how harsh and bitter his tongue had been and no matter how hard his eye, he[Pg 221] had not harmed her; when his hands had been like steel upon hers, commanding her while he jeered at her, they had not once so much as bruised her soft skin. In no way had he harmed her while it had been at his command, had he desired, to harm her in all ways.... She thought of being alone with any man like Taggart or Gallup or that hawk-faced hanger-on of theirs ... and shuddered. Even Babe Deveril; he had looked at her last night, insinuating.... She remembered how Bruce Standing, rushing down upon them, had thrown his own rifle away to grapple with Deveril, man to man and no odds stolen; she would never forget the picture of him with his axe, attacking the jail and defying the law.... Her mind raced, her thoughts switched into a new groove: how he had set her free just now and tossed her the revolver....

And then came the most vivid picture of all, the latest one, that of Bruce Standing glaring at her just before she ran out of the cabin. A second time she came to a sudden stop. He had looked like a man dying! Too proud, with that vainglorious pride of his, to have her, a girl, watch him, a man, die. Too unyieldingly proud and defiant to have her, a weakling, look on while he, the strongest man she had ever glimpsed, yielded in anything, if even to death itself. What a man he was! A man wrong-minded, maybe; a man who overrode others and bore them down; a man who set up his own standards, such as they were, and battled for them wholeheartedly. Even in the matter of high-handed robbery ... he had robbed Babe Deveril of three thousand dollars, and yet voluntarily, when he was ready to make restitution and not before, he had returned the full amount, estimating in his own way that he had merely borrowed it! There was the man disclosed; one who made his own laws, and yet who abode by them as [Pg 222]loyally and as unswervingly as a true priest may abide by God's....

And he had looked like a man dying. She turned her head. The door of his cabin was still wide open, as she had left it; light, though failing, still gushed out. She told herself that it was only a natural curiosity, surely her sex's most irrefutable prerogative, that made her turn and look. She caught no sight of him; he was not striding up and down. And he had not come outside for his fallen rifle....

Her breast rose and fell to a deep sigh. Of relief, perhaps; perhaps for another emotion. Still she remained where she was, pondering. Which way lay the path to the other cabin, where Taggart and Gallup and the other man were? And what was Bruce Standing doing? He had named her "Liar!" He did not believe when she had cried out passionately: "I did not shoot you!" Darting considerations, flashing through her consciousness. The one question was: "Was Bruce Standing mortally wounded?" Shot in the back a second time; he had as much as told her that.

Babe Deveril was what the world names a ladies' man. Bruce Standing was a man's man. And the strange part of it is that the feminine soul is drawn to the man's man inevitably more urgently than to the ladies' man....

And all the while Lynette was saying to herself: "He is a brute and a beast and yet ... he has not harmed me once and he has set me free and there is some good in him and ... and he may be dying! Alone."

She had turned her head to look back; now, hesitatingly, her whole body turned. Slowly, silently, she retraced her steps. She came closer and closer to the hidden cabin; the light outlining the open door grew fainter, dimmer as the fire died down; she heard no sound; she[Pg 223] caught no glimpse of a man within. She drew still closer; she heard the strange whining of his dog. Even Thor she could not see until, lingering at every step, she came close to the door. Then she saw both, the man on his back, his lax hand on the floor; the dog whining, distressed, licking the hand one instant and then looking wistfully into the master's face. A face bloodlessly white, save for one smear of blood, where a hand had sought to wipe his eyes clear of a gathering film.

Hesitating no longer, she stepped across the threshold. Thor looked at her and broke into a new whining, a note of sudden joyousness in it. Standing did not hear and did not know that she had returned; his eyes were shut and there was the pulse as of distant seas in his ears. She hurried to the fireplace and tossed into it the last of the wood he had gathered; then she came swiftly to where he lay. Her heart was beating wildly....

She saw that his jaw was set, hard and stubborn. She stood, uncertain, troubled, half regretful that she had come back, hence half of a mind to go hurriedly. But she did not stir for a long time, and then only to come the last step closer. His eyes flew open; he looked up at her. And, as the fire she had freshly piled blazed higher, she saw a sudden flash of his eyes ... whether the reflection of the fire or the flash of the spirit within him, she could not tell.

"I thought you'd gone," he said. He sat up; it was a struggle for him to do so, yet here was a man who made of all his life a struggle and who thought nothing of a trifling victory over either nature itself or his fellow man.

"That," she ran on swiftly, "is what you expected me to say to you, Bruce Standing, that you have been[Pg 224] cruel! And, what I came back to say is: 'You have been good to me!'"

She had not meant to say anything of the kind. But when she looked into his eyes, when she saw the clear-as-crystal soul of him, a soul as simple as a child's and ... yes!... as clean; and when she remembered how she had ridden all day long while he had walked, and how he had steadfastly refused to so much as harm a hair of her head, the words gushed forth.

He eyed her queerly; suspicion in his look and confusion. She could have laughed out aloud suddenly, since her whole emotional being was aquiver; for he, Timber-Wolf, like his own wolf-dog, Thor, distrusted her and regarded her with fierce eyes and yet ... and yet....

"Your wound has not been dressed since morning," she said quietly. "And now you've got yourself another wound. I am going to help you with them."

His slave.... He had commanded her once to help him with his wound.... But his slave no longer, since he himself had set her free! Yet here she was, saying that she stood ready to help him care for his wounds. More, already she was getting warm water, and his old piece of castile soap ... she was rolling up her sleeves....

He glared at her through a mist. He could be sure of nothing, since it seemed to him that she was half smiling! A tender, wistful sort of smile ... as if she had it in her heart to forget injuries done, to forgive him who had done them, and to succor him now that there was little of man-strength left in his body.... Curse her! What right had she to forgive, to look at a man that way? He had asked nothing from her, save that she leave him....

He stirred uneasily. Had she smiled? In this [Pg 225]uncertain light one could be certain of nothing; the flickering of the wood fire, casting quick-racing little shadows, breaking into their play with sudden warm, rosy gleamings, made it impossible for him to know if she had smiled, or if that semblance of a smile were but the effect of shifting lights. He held himself rigid, his back to the wall now, his right hand clinched on his knee.

She came to him unafraid; she set down the can of warm water on the floor; she began unbuttoning the neck of his shirt. He threw up his hand, the right, hard-clinched, as though he would strike her in the face; but he let the hand fall back to his side. She heard a great sigh.

"I told you once," she said quietly, "that I did not shoot you. And I am no more liar than you are, Bruce Standing."

He cursed himself for a fool; he was tired and weak and dizzy; his mind was the abode of confusions; he no longer knew what was fact and what illusion. One thing alone he did know, a marvellous thing; there was in her low voice the ring of utter honesty when she said: "I did not shoot you!" ... Liars; all her sex, waging their weak wars from ambush, holding their place in the world through seduction and deceit, all were liars. And yet she troubled him, and with that voice and those eyes she bred uncertainty on top of uncertainty in his uncertain soul. Her steady fingers were unbuttoning his collar....

"Then why," he muttered, jeering and challenging, "did you run as you did after the shot? And how, since you and I were alone in the room...."

"The window was open! Under it was the table, my pistol where I had dropped it on the table. You turned[Pg 226] your back; I was going to jump out the window and run because for the moment I was afraid! But some one, some man, was there; I saw his hand; it caught up the pistol. It was he who shot you in the back! And when he dropped the pistol back to the table...."

"But you ran ... why? And with the gun in your hand! Why? Why, girl, if you are not lying to me?"

"Haven't I told you?" Suddenly she was aflame with passionate vehemence. "I was frightened; ready to run; keyed up to run! There came that shot, and you were hit; I thought you were killed! It flashed over me that I would be suspected and all evidence would point to me and I would be convicted of murder! Cowardly murder!... One does not think at such a time; there is only the rush of instinct and impulse. I was all ready to run; I had no time to think...."

"Impulse and instinct, I tell you!" she cried. "Instinct to flee; and to snatch at the first weapon for protection, even though it was the weapon that had just shot you! I was a fool, maybe; and maybe by acting as I did I saved my own life!"

He was looking up into her face queerly; she saw the savage gathering of his brows; with all his might he strove for clear vision and clear thought. With a new, terrible keenness, he fixed his eyes upon her; then he said deliberately: "Liar!"

He saw the flash of her eyes, the angry set of her mouth; her hands were clinched now, and for a moment it was he who believed that he was to be struck full across the face. And thereupon his own eyes brightened; this girl did not speak like a liar; she did not carry[Pg 227] herself like one; she had yet to show the first streak of yellow which is in the warp and woof of lying souls.

"You have no right to call me that; my word is as good as your word, Bruce Standing. Had I shot you I should not have waited for you to turn your back. One thing I did do for which I was sorry even while I did it, and ashamed; I laughed at you even while I sympathized with your anger against a man who, to be little and mean, could have your horse killed. And it was not at you that I laughed, after all ... there come times when I can't help laughing, though there is nothing to laugh at ... it was the shock, I think ... the incongruousness, to hear you...."

She ended there, sparing him any further reference to his lisping of which he was so desperately ashamed; once more she began working at his collar.... And again there came into the blue eyes of Bruce Standing a flash as of blue fire, though he hid it from her; and a sudden great, utterly mysterious gladness blossomed magically. For, though he did not understand and though he would never rest until he did understand, yet already he began to believe that this girl with the fearless look spoke the truth! And this, because of the ring of her voice and the tip of her head, erect on its white throat, and the flash of her own eyes, as though the spirit of man and maid had struck fire, one from the other.

"If you'll help me ..." said Lynette. "If you can sit a little bit forward?... Your shirt will have to be torn or cut; I can't get to your shoulder otherwise...."

He put up his right hand; as he jerked vigorously there was the sound of tearing and ripping; he thrust the cloth down from the left side and laid bare his great chest and the powerfully muscled left shoulder and upper arm. Lynette shuddered; he had lost so much blood![Pg 228] And against the smooth perfect whiteness of his healthy skin the blood was so emphasized. She found the new wound....

"Shot in the back ... twice shot in the back," she said, and again she shivered. "And you don't know who shot you either time?"

With the warm water and soap she cleansed the fresh wound and then the older one. Then, with gentle fingers, she did as he bade her with Billy Winch's salve, applying it generously.

When the thing was done they looked at each other strangely; man and maid in the wild-wood, with much lying between them, with each asking swift unanswerable questions, with the night in the solitudes advancing.

"I told you that Taggart and his friends were down there. You might have found them."

She turned from him abruptly and went back to the fireplace; he could see only the curve of her cheek and a curl and her shoulder.

He wanted to see her face, but she was stubborn in refusing to turn. He said curiously:

"Your friend, Baby Devil, ought to be overhauling them before long! If you think he decided to come this way?"

She did not answer. He began to grow angry with her for that; for refusing to reply when he spoke; for refusing to discuss Babe Deveril. But he kept a shut mouth, though with the effort his jaws bulged. He [Pg 229]began feeling in his pocket for pipe and tobacco; he felt the need of it....

He would have sworn that she had not looked and could not have seen, but when he struggled over the difficulty of doing everything with one hand she whirled and came forward impulsively and finished the task for him, packing the tobacco into the black bowl of his pipe and handing him a lighted splinter from the fire.

He muttered something; she had gone back to her place at the fire and did not know whether his muttering was of thanks or curses; her attitude would have seemed to imply that either would find her indifferent. He smoked slowly; the strong tobacco, sharp and acrid, did him good; a man of steady nerve, he had come to a point where his nerves needed steadying; just now he wanted silence and his pipe and time to grope for certain readjustments. Sweeping in all his ways was Bruce Standing; in building up, tearing down, building up again; and always with him was the sheerest joy in building up.... And Lynette, for the first time in many hours, experienced a moment of bright happiness.

He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, rapping the black bowl sharply against his boot heel. Heavily he got to his feet. From the bunk he dragged a blanket tossing it on the floor in a corner by the fireplace. Obviously he was intending it for his bed....

"You must lie on the bunk," she cried impulsively. "You are worse hurt than you seem to know. In any case, I give you my word I'll not use it!"

"Why should I care what you do, girl?" he demanded, staring at her fiercely. "The bunk is there; take it or leave it."

Defiantly she snatched up a second blanket and folded it into the opposite corner, sitting down on it with her feet tucked under her, beginning swiftly to rebraid her[Pg 230] loose hair. He turned from her to lie down. But since he had chosen the corner which he had, and since because of his wounds he was forced to lie on his right side, he faced toward her. She appeared not to notice him, having brooding eyes only for the fire; and yet she had had her clear view of his haggard face. Thor came to lie close to his master's feet.

There were three blankets. Lynette, only asking herself curiously what explosion of wrath she might bring upon herself, rose and went for the third, and, without saying anything, spread it over Standing. He looked at her amazed. But he did not speak. Instead, after the briefest of hesitations, he floundered to his feet, set one boot heel upon the edge of the blanket while in his good hand he gripped a corner; with one sudden effort he ripped the blanket fairly in two. He tramped across the small room and dropped half by her side; he went back to his own corner and lay down, dragging the other fragment up over his shoulders, like a shawl....

Lynette was tired almost to the end of endurance; further, this night had been no less a tax upon her than had the other nights. Now, suddenly, she burst into that inimitable laughter of hers, sounding as light and gay and mirthful as the laugh of a delighted child....

"Behold! The acme of politeness!" she cried merrily. "A perfectly good bunk and the two travellers going to sleep on the floor!"

"I haven't thanked you, girl, for what you've done for me to-night. I am not without gratitude, but I'm no man for pretty speeches, I am afraid. At any rate here's this: I came hunting a cowardly sneak of a she-cat and I found a true sport. And I think I'm done with making war on you!... Unless...."

But he was lying back now, his eyes closed. He did not appear to have heard. She, too, lay down with a little weary sigh. Her last thoughts were three; they mingled and grew confused as all thoughts faded. But before they blurred they were these: Bruce Standing had dropped his rifle outside and had not gone out for it; Babe Deveril had not returned for her, but no doubt was still seeking her; and Bruce Standing was done making war on her, unless....

CHAPTER XVIII

Lynette awoke, shivering. It was pitch-dark; the fire had burned out; it must be very late, as she was stiff and cold. She had been dreaming and her shivering was half a shudder of fear. Her nightmare had been one of herself attacked and pursued hideously by wild animals; lions which in the fashion of dreams, changed into wolves, then into savages. She sat up, gathering her blanket about her. She heard Standing breathing heavily; she could hear, now and then, his mutterings of uneasy sleep. Perhaps it had been this which had awaked her? She began listening as one, startled out of slumber, inevitably does to another's incoherencies. It was hard to catch a word despite the cabin's hushed silence into which every slightest sound penetrated. The sounds were like those of a man babbling in fever. Once it seemed to her that he had hardly more than whispered "Girl!"

Always must the mind of one who listens thus be held under the spell of another spirit winging its way among dreams; the moment is uncanny if only because it brings in such close contact the commonplace of every day and the inexplicable of dreams. In the night, in the silence, under this queer spell, her own mind groping, she stirred uneasily.

It flashed across Lynette that it had not been Timber-Wolf's mumbling voice that had awakened her. That there had been something else, a new sound from without. She listened intently, straining her ears. There was some one or something outside! She started to her feet, though clinging to the security offered by her corner.

The door was open; it was a mere degree less dark outside than within. As she stared into the blackness she made out vaguely the mass of trees. A black wall in a black night. Some one out there? Then who? Babe Deveril?

All along she had held tenaciously to the thought that Babe Deveril would come for her. Perhaps he had come now; perhaps he lingered outside, not knowing positively that she was here, not knowing if Standing were awake or asleep, not knowing if Standing were sick of his wound or ready with rifle in hand.

Her thoughts began to fly like stabs of lightning; briefly they made everything clear only to plunge her whole world of thought back into even more profound darkness. Babe Deveril? It might be! Or it might be Mexicali Joe, lurking after his fashion. Or it might, equally well, be Taggart with Gallup and that other man at his heels. By now she was certain of only one thing: There was some one out there.

She stood rigid for ten or fifteen minutes; Standing had become quiet save for his heavy breathing; she strove with all senses upgathered tensely to read the riddle of the night. Once she was sure of a sound outside; but the mystery of a night sound is so baffling! A man's cautious tread? Or a limb stirring gently? Or a bird among leaves, or a rabbit? It was so easy a matter, with her senses so freshly aroused from a nightmare of wild animals and savage pursuers, to people the night with fantastic menaces.

Bruce Standing was unarmed; his rifle dropped somewhere outside when he had dashed after her. She, too, was without a weapon. He had given her the big revolver; she had refused it; she had flung it angrily to the floor, near the bunk. She remembered seeing it there, almost out of sight, under the bunk....

If it were Babe Deveril, she had nothing to fear. If Mexicali Joe, she had nothing to fear. If Taggart and Gallup and the other? What had she to fear from them? Merely arrest, at most, and not so long ago she had been eager for that! And if some prowling animal?

"There's nothing to hurt me," she told herself, fighting to throttle down that trepidation which had leaped upon her when she first awoke with the wildly beating heart of one threatened in sleep. "If I only had that revolver now ... if it chanced to be wolf or bear or mountain-cat, one shot at it would send it scurrying. And, if a man, there is none for me to be afraid of."

She began, ever so slowly and guardedly, tiptoeing across the floor. She came to the bunk; she stooped and groped, and at last her fingers closed about the fallen revolver. She clinched it tightly and stood up, again rigid. This time she was sure of the sound which came again; a man's step, as guarded as her own had been, but betrayed by a little dry twig snapping.

Again she waited, without moving, a long time. And not another sound; only Standing's deep breathing. Once she thought that his breathing had changed; that he, too, was awake. But after a moment she persuaded herself that she had imagined that; that he was still sleeping heavily. But no further sound outside. What a cautious man, or what a cowardly, was he out there! What did he want?

Suddenly she thought of Thor. How was it that Thor, a dog, hence man's superior in as many matters as he was man's inferior, a thing of keenest senses, had given no sign? Why had not Thor stirred when she did; why had he not heard what she heard; why was he not already rushing out, growling, demanding to know what intruder lurked in such stealth at his master's door?[Pg 235] Had there been a ray of light in the cabin she would have had her answer; for Bruce Standing was sitting up, his arms were about Thor, one big hand was at Thor's muzzle, commanding quiet. And when Standing commanded, Thor obeyed.

Some girls, some men ... perhaps most girls and most men ... would have remained in the protection of the four walls, resigned to uncertainty, until daybreak. Of their number was not Lynette Brooke, a girl little given to fear and greatly moved by a desire to know! She waited as long as she could bear to wait. Then, holding Taggart's revolver well before her and walking with one silent footfall distanced patiently from the other, she gained the door and stepped outside. She was trembling; that she could not help. But she was determined to go on. And on she did go, cautiously, until she had gone ten steps toward the sound which she had heard. She paused, turning in all directions, ready to fire and ready to run....

A whisper through the dark. And one man's whisper is much like another's. It could have been Deveril's or Taggart's or even Mexicali Joe's.

She found herself frowning. Was it Babe Deveril? She did not fancy a man's whispering; she could not imagine a man like Bruce Standing whispering at a moment like this! More like him, like any man who was a man, to roar out what he had to say rather than whisper in the dark. But that curiosity of hers, that[Pg 236] inborn desire to know, lured her on. But under guard. She held her weapon so that it menaced the vague form so close to her and she whispered again, not realizing that she, too, whispered, but because she was under the spell of the moment.

"I'll go with you another ten steps ... count them! And I have a revolver in my hand, aimed at the middle of your body!"

They had stopped; the whisper was dropped for a low-toned voice. It was not Babe Deveril! Not Mexicali Joe. Then Taggart?

"I want to talk to you. I take it he is in there. Asleep? So much the better. I'm Taggart."

"That gun of yours," he said. "I don't know how used you are to guns. Knowing who I am you can point it down!"

"Knowing who you are," she returned coolly, "I keep it just as it is! I have asked what I could do for you?"

Jim Taggart, had time and opportunity afforded, would have laughed at her quickened exclamation, being an evil-thoughted individual with restricted mental horizons. She appeared interested. He had his own mind of her sex and it was not high, since those of her sex with whom such as Jim Taggart consorted were not such as to give a man a high idea of femininity. In the words which, had he spoken his thought aloud, would have been his, Taggart estimated that "he had this dame's number, street, and telephone."

"I'll tell you about Babe Deveril later; and what's more, kid, I'll give you your show to throw in with him again. Now I'm cutting things short; you know why. I was after him for hammering me over the head with a gun; I was on your trail for killing a man. Now, since the man you killed ain't dead at all and since I've had a good talk with Deveril, I'm ready to let you both go. And just to take in a man named Standing."

Through one of those odd tricks by which chance asserts itself at times, Lynette made a discovery while Taggart was talking. She had felt something underfoot—and that something turned out to be Bruce Standing's rifle.

... What had this lost rifle to do with matters as they stood? Why all Jim Taggart's caution, if he were armed? But then Standing had brought Taggart's revolver back to the cabin with him.... What part in to-night's game was this fallen rifle to play? Her thoughts had been withdrawn; so, standing so that for the present Taggart could not possibly touch with his own foot that which she had stumbled on in the dark, she made him repeat what he had said.

Thus she caught a free instant for thought; thus also she grasped all that he had to say and to insinuate. And at the end she answered him with a baffling, feminine:

Within the cabin Bruce Standing, sitting very tense and straight, nearly choking his big dog into silence, grew tenser and harder. So, Taggart claimed to have seen her.... Taggart was "right there, close by...."

"I tell you this is no time for palaver," said Taggart impatiently. "What do you care, so long as I agree to let you go free? And to let Deveril go free along with you! I guess that means something to you, don't it? If it don't mean enough, let me show you: I can grab you right now; me, I'm not afraid of any gun any woman ever waved! And I can put you across for a good little vacation in jail. But I'm letting that go by, wanting to get my hooks in one Bruce Standing, good and deep. And I got just that! Seeing as Deveril told me what happened; how Standing swooped down on you, how he beat Deveril up, how he put a chain on you and dragged you away after him! If you'll step into court and swear to that.... Why, kid, I got him! Got him right! Any jury in this country will land on him hard for doing to a woman like that. And you can tell the other things he's done to you by now, you and him all alone up here, him a brutal devil...."

Illogically enough it swept over her that it was she herself, Lynette, whom the man was insulting, and her finger trembled so upon the trigger that all unknowing Jim Taggart stood for the instant close upon the verge of the great final blackness. But, steadying herself, she managed to say:

"Babe Deveril told you that? That Bruce Standing had put a chain about me? How did he know? That was after he had gone!"

"But," muttered Taggart harshly, "he did not go so fast! He went up over a ridge and he stopped and rested, and in the dark he came back a bit and he hid and saw! Anyway, it's the truth, ain't it? And I know? So he must have come back to see!"

That thought became on the instant the only thought, one to rise up and obstruct all others. Deveril had seen; he had lingered, hidden in the forest land; he had watched her humiliation; he had known that Bruce Standing, though armed, was a man sorely wounded ... and he had not come to her then!

"He came just as Standing, damn him, had jumped us to-night! All unawares Standing took us ... when we were busy with other things. He had the drop on us and he made us let the Mexico breed go. Deveril was watching but he didn't have a gun and he couldn't step up and take a hand, knowing his cousin for a dead shot and a man who'd rather kill than not."

"He's a wised-up kid and I'm with him, tooth and toenail! He came up then and he said his say ... and I let him go! And he told me to look out for you and he hit the trail, dog-tired as he was, after Mexicali Joe! If there's gold to be had, why Babe Deveril means to be in on it. And me, so do I! And you, if you're on."

There are times in life for methodical thought, other times for swift decisions, bred of impulse and instinctive urge....

She lived again through a certain pregnant crisis, saw in mind the whole scene as though some master[Pg 240] artist with sweeping, bold brush had created the perfect vision anew for her, the struggle which had been hers and Babe Deveril's and Bruce Standing's, when Standing, with the sun glowing red over his head, had come rushing down on them by their camp-fire. She saw his rifle ... the one she now felt underfoot!... go swirling over a pine top as he hurled from him any such advantage in fair fight as it spelled; again she watched the fight ... she saw Babe Deveril go up over the ridge; she saw herself, striking in fury against Standing's arm, beating the rifle down....

"Well?" It was Taggart who spoke the brief word now. "Which is it? Jail for you ... or a good long spell in the pen for him?"

... And Babe Deveril had come this close ... she had proof of that in Taggart's knowledge of the chain! ... and had gone on, following the golden lure of Mexicali Joe's trail!

"Then you'd go to jail as sure as hell! It's you or him! And I guess I know the answer."

"Step back ... a little farther from the cabin. Let me make sure that he is asleep! There never was a man like him.... Back a few steps and wait...."

"If you don't I'll scream out that you're here! Then you'll never take him; you know the man he is!"

Taggart mistrusted, and yet, hard-driven and urged by her voice, obeyed to the extent of drawing back a few steps. Not far, yet far enough for Lynette to stoop and grope and find the rifle. She caught it up and whirled and ran, ran as for her life, back to the cabin door. And she threw the rifle inside, crying out:

"Wake up, Bruce Standing! There's your rifle ... and here's Jim Taggart outside, looking for you!"

She came bursting into the cabin and full into Bruce Standing's arms. For he was up on his feet, both arms, despite a sore side, lifted.

He let her go and sought the rifle. She was first to find it and put it into his searching hand.

Standing had the rifle now, and thrust by her and rushed into the open doorway, Thor snarling at his side; and Standing's voice, lifted mightily, shouted:

Later he laughed at himself for that, and thereafter explained his laughter to Lynette, saying:

"He hasn't a gun on him! I cleaned him out, all but one pocket gun, and I fancy he emptied that at me ... in the back. Come—we'll have a fire!"

Hastily she shut the door, lest Taggart might have one shot left. Standing set his rifle down against the wall; she heard the thud of the stock upon the floor. Clearly he had no fear of Taggart's return. He began gathering up bits of wood, kneeling to get a fire started. Presently under his hands the blaze leaped up and brought detail vividly blossoming from the dark of the room; his face, white, with the most eager, shining eyes she had ever seen; her own face scarcely less pale; the homely appointments of the place. He was still on his knees at the fireplace; he threw on the last bit of wood and watched the quick flames lick at it; he swerved about, and it seemed that his eyes, no less than the inflammable wood, had caught fire as he cried out in a[Pg 242] voice which startled her and in words which set her wondering:

"I told you, girl, I'd let you go scot-free ... unless! And here I bogged down like a broken-legged steer in the quicksands! But now ... Now! I've got it all figured out. I don't let you go! Neither to-night ..." and he was on his feet, towering over her—"or ever!"

And, as quick as thought, he was at the door and had shot a bolt home and had clicked a padlock, and, swinging about again, stood looking down at her, his eyes filled with dancing lights.

CHAPTER XIX

There was no more sleep through what was left of the night, and scarcely more of talk. Standing piled his fire high, and, unmindful of his discarded rifle, went out for more wood; Lynette dropped down on the blanket in her corner and named herself a silly fool. He came back, carefully relocking his door; kept his fire blazing, and made his coffee and smoked his pipe. And then, in that great golden voice of his, he began singing. And, through its wild rhythm, she knew the song for the same as that which she had heard for the first time when he had hurled himself both into Big Pine and into her life. His voice rose and swelled and filled the poor cabin to overflowing, and must have filtered through chinks and cracks and spilled out through the forest land, and for great distances through the quiet solitudes. And, at the end, in a sudden upgathering into all that tremendous resounding volume of sound of which his magnificent voice was capable, came that unforgettable wolf cry. If she required any reminding, here she had it, that she was housed in the same cabin with Timber-Wolf! A fierce outcry, to go resounding and echoing across miles and miles of forest lands, meant, as she was quick to realize, to carry both defiance and challenge to his enemies.

"You have had your choice, girl!" he shouted at her. "You could have gone free! I gave you your freedom. But you would not go. And that was because it was in the cards, in the fates, in the stars, if you like, that you and I are not to part yet! The door is locked; I stand between you and it. So, you stay here with me!"

For the first time she was truly and deeply afraid of him. But he went back to his place by the fire, and sat on the old stump seat, and filled his pipe again with hard, nervous fingers and glared at the fire. For a little he seemed to have forgotten that she was there. And then at last, when she saw that he was going to speak again, she forestalled him, saying swiftly:

He checked his speech, saving whatever he had to say to her. She lay back on her blankets, and, though she had had no such intention, soon drifted off to sleep. And he, with pipe grown cold, sat and glowered over his fire, and put to himself many a question, growing fierce over his inability to answer any one of them. But, at least, in his groping he forgot the pain of his wounds.

"You are not asleep," he said after a very long time. "I know that; I can tell. You are pretending. And you are thinking, thinking hard and fast! And so am I thinking! As I never did before now. You might as well save yourself the labor of struggling with your problems, since I am doing the planning for both of us right now; since everything is in my hands and I mean to keep it there."

She heard but gave no sign of hearing; she kept her face averted from him so that he could not see whether her eyes were open or shut. Open they were, and the man appeared to know it.

"Am I wise man or fool?" he cried. "He only is wise who knows what he knows and steers his craft by the one steady star in his sky!"

She would not answer him when he spoke; she could not just now. She lay still, as if asleep. He relapsed into a long silence, his eyes now on her, now on his fire.

"This neck o' the woods is getting all cluttered up with folks!" he muttered abruptly, with such [Pg 245]suddenness that he startled her. "I've a notion to run the whole crowd in for trespassing!... Or better, girl, you and I move on. Where there's elbow room; room to talk in. We've got to quarry out our own blocks of stone and build up our own lives, and we want a bit of the world to ourselves. What's more, we're going to have it!"

She knew, as every girl knows when that mighty moment comes ... and her girl-heart beat hard and fast ... that after his own fashion Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf, was making love to her.

"Dawn!" he said, and she understood that he spoke with himself as much as with her. "That's all we're waiting for, the first streak of dawn. Then we move on. Where? I know where, and no other man knows!"

He began impatiently stalking up and down; he seemed to have forgotten his wounds, and yet, stealing her swift glances at him, she could see that his face had lost little of its whiteness and that his whole left side was stiff. Again, bestowing mentally a strange epithet upon him, she regarded the man as "inevitable." Could anything stop him or divert his career into any channel but that of his own choosing? She was afraid of him.

He swung about and turned on her a face of whose expression in that dim, flickering light she could make nothing.

"You had your choice! You came back! Now I know something which I did not know before."

He began pacing up and down again, making the cabin's smallness further dwarfed by his great strides. He fascinated her; she watched him, and her fear, formless and nameless, grew until it seemed that it would choke her.

Then, as once before, tingling with anger born of foreseen humiliation, she cried out:

"Not brute, but man," he told her sternly. "And, ever since the world was young, men, when they were men, claimed their mates and took and held them!"

Again for a long time he was silent. And then, on his feet, his arms thrown out, he cried in a strange voice:

He made strange mad music in her soul. She tried again to cry out: "I hate you!" She knew that still she was afraid of him, more afraid than ever. Yet he strode up and down and looked a young valiant god, and his golden voice found singing echoes within her soul and his wild extravagances awoke throbbing extravagances in her.... What can one know? What misdoubt? We are like babes in the dark. Of what can one be sure? Of the stars above?... Our hopes are like stars....

"I am no poet, though next to a strong fighting man I'd rather be a true poet than anything else God ever created! Were I a poet I'd build a song for you, girl! A song to ring through the eternal ages; going back to the roots of things when You and I were first You and I! It would be a song like one of the old troubadours', telling of great deeds and great loves only ... for you and I have never been the ones for cowardly littlenesses! I'd make a song to hang about the world's memory of you like a golden chain. And I'd carry on, having the poet's soul and vision, into ten thousand lives to come;[Pg 247] down to the end of time when eternity is only at its beginnings!... But I am only plain Bruce Standing, a simple fighting man, and no poet; one who at best can but mouth the voicings of the true poets. So I can only pour all my heart and soul, girl, into my brief poem: I love you. I have always loved you! Always and always I shall love you!... And I'll crack any man's skull that so much as looks at you!"

She was not sure of his sanity; not certain that a fever, bred of his wounds, was not burning into his marrow. And yet——

"It's dawn, I tell you! We boil our coffee, we pick up a mouthful of food. And then we move on! And why? Because we're sure to have callers here in another day or so, and just now I don't want other people; I want you, girl, and only you and the rest of the world can go to pot!... And now we go!"

CHAPTER XX

Lynette, in a mood to expect anything of fate, wondered vaguely where the steep trail of adventure now led. She would not have been surprised had Standing set his plans for some spot a hundred miles distant. But she was surprised to arrive so soon, after only two or three hours, at their destination. He looked at her, exulting.

"Here is Eden!" he cried out joyously. "Remember the name, girl; bestowed upon this spot no longer ago than this very minute! Eden! And as far from the world as that other distant Eden. Here we stop and here no man finds us!"

He had led the way, upward along a rocky slope. He had brought her into a spot which she would have named "The Land of Waterfalls!" A tiny valley with a sparkling mountain creek cleaving like flowing crystal through a grassy meadow; tall trees, noble patriarchs bounding it. Steep cañon walls shutting in the timber growth; a narrow ravine above with the water leaping, plunging, tumbling translucent green over jagged rocks, splashing into a series of pools, turned into rainbow spray here and there in its wild cascadings. The world all about was murmurous with living waters, with bees, with the eternal whisperings of the pines.

And here began an idyl; a strange idyl. A man asserting his power as captor; a maid made captive; two souls wide awake, questing, swung from certainty to uncertainty, gathered up in doubt. Life grown a thing of tremendous import.

All morning had Standing been wracked with pain. Yet none the less did he hold unswervingly to his [Pg 249]purpose. Now he sat down, his back to a tree. Thor came and lay at his feet. Lynette stood looking down upon the two.

"Rest," he said. "Here is your home for a time. A day? Ten days? Who knows? Not I, girl! All that I know I have told you; here we rest and here we take life into our hands and mould it ... as we have always moulded it! We are at the gates; we enter or we turn to one side! We go on or we go back. Which? When we know that, we know everything."

He had brought with him, slung across his back, a great roll from the hidden cabin. His rifle lay across his knees. He looked up into her face with eyes which, though haggard, shone wonderfully. She sat down, ten steps from him; her clasped hands were in her lap; her eyes were veiled mysteries.

"Taggart won't look for us here," he said. "He hasn't the brains of a little gray seed-tick! He'll be sure we've made a big jump, forward or back, ten times this distance. Besides, he has to go somewhere to get himself a new set of guns! Imagine him tackling anything with an ounce of risk in it unless he was heeled like an army corps! I begin to lose respect for that man."

Lynette was thinking but one thing: "She was not afraid of this man; not afraid to be alone with him in pathless solitudes. She might choose to be elsewhere ... yet she was safe with him. For, above all, he was a man; and never need a true girl fear a true man." And, when she stole a swift glance at his face, it lay in her heart to be a bit sorry for him. Sympathy? It lies close to another eternal human emotion! He looked like one whom fate had crushed and yet whose spirit refused to be crushed. He looked a sick man who, scorning all the commands laid upon the flesh, carried on.

After a while he turned to look upon her, and for the[Pg 250] first time she saw a new and strange look in his eyes, a look of pleading.

"Don't misjudge me, girl," he said heavily. "Rather than see your little finger bruised I'd have a man drive a knife in me! I'm just blundering along now ... blundering ... trying to see daylight. I won't hurt you. There's nothing on earth or in Heaven so sure as that. But don't ask me to let you go!"

She made him no answer. She began thinking of his wounds; he gave them such scant attention! He should be caring for them; what he should do was to hasten to a surgeon. She wondered if still he clung to his conviction, the natural one after all, that she had shot him? And she wondered, as she had done so many a time before: "Who had shot him?" Whose hand that which she had seen reach through her window and snatch up her revolver and fire the cowardly shot? Taggart, only a few hours ago, had said: "I saw! I was right there!" ...

"Was it Jim Taggart who shot you in the back last night?" she demanded suddenly.

He lumbered to his feet. Thor, knowing where he was going, barked and leaped ahead.

She looked about her. Mere madness to attempt flight now; he would bear down upon her before she had run twenty steps. And did she want to run just now? She had her own measure of curiosity.... Was it only that?... and she had, locked away securely in[Pg 251] her breast, her absolute positive knowledge that she had nothing to fear at his hands. She rose and followed him.

Suddenly he swerved about, confronting her, his eyes stern, his voice hard with the emotion riding him.

"Madman I may be," he said. "Fool, I am not, praise God! Last night I heard; you could have chucked that rifle into Taggart's hands and could have gone free yourself ... and by now I'd be a dead man! But, glory be, there isn't a streak of yellow in your whole glorious being!"

The blood ran up into her face; it made her hot throughout her whole body. Praise, from him, to stir her like that! Her eyes flashed back angrily, for she was angry with herself.

"Come," he muttered. "Talk's cheap at any time. And I'm to show you where we make our first home."

With her teeth sharply catching up her underlip, she held her silence. He went on some two-score paces and stopped; with a sudden gesture he said:

"Here I've spent, God knows how many nights, when I had to be off by myself! No roof for us, girl, but who wants a roof with that sky above us?"

Here was a natural grotto which at another time would have made her exclaim in delight: a nook, set apart, thresholded in tender grass shot through with those tiny delicate blooms of mountain flowers. On one side a cliff, outjutting, thrusting forward a great overhanging shelf of rock which looked as though it must fall and yet which, obviously, had held securely through the centuries. Three big pine-trees, two of them leaning strangely toward the cliff, as though yearning to lean against the sturdy rock and rest there upon its iron breast. The whole ringed about by a dense copse of brush, thick as a wall and rearing high above her head. Almost a cave[Pg 252] made of cliff and growing things, cosy and warm, with its opening fronting the stream which was never silent. Thor ran ahead into the dusky seclusion and barked his invitation to them to follow. A thick, dry mat, under Thor's feet, of fallen pine-needles.

Standing tossed his roll inside; he began, with one hand, to work with the knotted rope. Lynette came forward swiftly, saying:

Their hands brushed over the labor. Again the hot blood raced through her, and again sudden anger, anger at herself, flashed through her being.

And a tingling, like that which shot through her, was in Bruce Standing's veins. He caught her hand.

How could this man at a touch make her heart beat like mad? She was afraid ... she knew that she was not afraid of him ... yet she was afraid.

"I'm sorry," he said roughly. Actually, marvelling, she saw that the big man looked embarrassed. "Look here, girl: I've come to know you a bit and, thinking what I think, I hold that I know you well! I'll take my chance that you are no petty crook, that you are no coward, that you are no liar! So...."

"Then," she cried, jumping to her feet, all eagerness, "do you believe me when I say that I did not shoot you?"

A rush of gladness, an intoxication of gladness, swept over her. Her eyes were shining, soft and bright and happy like stars.

"Jim Taggart," he said as unhesitatingly as he had spoken before. "Jim told you that he saw, didn't he? That he was Johnny on the spot? Of course he was! And we'd had our plain talk. And he figured it out, that unless that very day I had changed my papers, I still named him in them my old bunk-mate and friend, and that I'd not forget him with a legacy! If I had died under that bullet, Jim Taggart would have had it doped out that he'd stand to win about a hundred thousand dollars! And for a tenth of that he'd crucify Christ!"

"There are no buts about it! You did not do it; then Jim Taggart did. He shot me last night, a second time and the second time in the back! He was once a man; now he's a Gallup dog, a man gone to seed, a cur and one for such as you and me to forget about. I hope to high heaven I never see the man again; for the sake of what has been between Jim Taggart and me, when both of us were younger, I'd rather let the past bury its dead. For if he ever comes trailing his filth across my trail again, I'll smash him into the earth." He made a wide angry gesture, as though he would wipe an episode and a man out of his life. "But you interrupt me; I was going to say something. Just this: I'll leave you alone. For an hour, for a dozen hours! You want rest, you want solitude and a chance to think. So do I. I can chain you to a tree and be sure of you! Or I can ask you to give me your word that you'll wait here until I come back to you ... and I already know you well enough to know that will hold you tighter than any chain that was ever forged!"

"I do want rest and I do want to be alone. Is that to be wondered at? Until noon I'll wait for you to come back."

"Come, Thor!" He turned and left her, his great dog at his heels, going up the narrowing cañon.

"I'll not spy on you!" he called back, when he had gone a hundred yards. "You'll hear me shouting to you well before I come within eye-shot."

And then she lost him, gone among the lesser, denser trees thick about the creek's margins.

She turned her back on the grotto of his choosing, and went out into the full sunlight. She found a spot in the open, ringed about by the majestic pines, a grassy sward with the cleaving silver line of the creek cutting across it. For the first time in hours ... how many endless hours? how many days?... she was alone! No man at her side, either protecting or dominating. Her lungs filled with a deep sigh. Alone and secure in her aloneness for a matter of several hours.

There was a certain singing happiness, electric within her, and it sprang, bright-winged, from her own characteristic pride. Bruce Standing had left her to an absolute physical freedom, knowing her bound by that intangible and unbreakable bond of her promise. He, a man who did not break his own word knew her for a girl who did not break hers! And he knew, at last, that it had not been her hand that had fired that cowardly shot.

"It was cruel ... to have laughed at him. I did not mean to laugh. Would to God...."

But if she had not laughed? Then what? Then how much of her adventure would have followed? How much of it did she, after all, regret?... She fell to wondering dreamily on Babe Deveril. Where was he? And would she see him again? And, if she should see him....

A thousand riddles and, as always, no answer to the riddles which spring from eternity. Only the merry voice of the purling creek to talk back to her, that and the rustling whisper ebbing and flowing through the pine tops. The stream, like a companionable human voice, called to her insistently. She rose and went down to it and stooped to drink; she bathed her hands and arms and face. How lonely it was here! She cast a quick glance up-stream; long ago Standing, with his big dog at his heels, had passed out of sight. And he had given her gage of promise for promise given ... he would send his shouting voice ahead of him before he came back....

So she bathed fearlessly, watched only by the solitudes, guarded by their sombre depths; she plunged, with a little shivery gasp, into the deep, cool pool below the slithering waterfall; the water slipped, gleaming like a bejewelled film over her pure-white body, making it rosy when she emerged, like rose petals.... She dressed in furious haste, all ablush and yet steeped in a confident knowledge that no eye, save the bright eye of a curious brown bird, had seen. She felt new-born; refreshed beyond belief. She ran back up the bank and sat down in the very spot where she had dropped first when Standing had left her. She began, always hurrying, to comb out her hair with her fingers. Sitting there in the open she let it sun....

She rested. She drank deep, thankfully, of the hour. To be alone, to be secure in the moment, to have no danger pressing down upon her, above all to have no mind save her own dictating to her. It was glorious and life was good and glad and golden, infinitely worth the living. So passed an hour. It was so quiet here; so unutterably lonely. Only the voice of the creek and the million-tongued murmuring pines. Her swift[Pg 256] thoughts raced ten thousand ways. They touched upon Big Pine; on Taggart; Mexicali Joe; a gold-mine still for men to find; Maria, the Indian girl whom Deveril had kissed; Deveril himself; that one-legged man who rode horseback and carried forth the word and the law of his master; Thor, a dog; Bruce Standing. Most of all, Bruce Standing. She wondered where he was, what doing? Caring for his own wounds? Lying on his back, his white face turned up, his eyes shut, tight shut? And he loved her?

Bruce Standing loved her, Lynette? Was that true? What was love? Whence came love? For what purpose? What did it do to the hearts and souls and bodies of men ... and girls? Was love for her? She had never experienced it, not true, abiding love. Did Babe Deveril....

Another hour. Shadows slowly shifting, moving like gigantic hands of eternal clocks. Time passing, time that answers all questions, man's and maid's, saint's and sinner's. She stirred uneasily and sat up. She looked at the pine tops and, beyond them, at the sun. It was almost noon!

Come noon.... What then? Come high noon before Bruce Standing, and she was free! Released from her promise, all bonds snapped! Free!

She jumped to her feet. Her eyes went questing, questing, everywhere. To be free again; to be her own self, Lynette, untrammelled.... And she felt awondering illogically: "Can it be that, after all, he was driving himself beyond any man's endurance? that he is more badly hurt than either he or I knew?"

But he returned a full half-hour before even the most eager could name it noon. True to his word, he sent his voice, like a glorious herald, ahead of him. She heard him call, not the wolf cry, but a rollicking shout.[Pg 257] And ten minutes later he himself came, plainly in the highest of good humors. He was still pale and looked haggard, but his eyes were flashing and triumphant and untroubled.

"I've had a bath," he announced from afar. "And I've plastered myself with the worst that Billy Winch can concoct, and Richard is himself again!" He came closer, towered above her and said: "You, too, have bathed! You look it, as fresh from the plunge as any Diana! It's good to be clean, isn't it?"

"Come," he said. "We'll lunch. And now, and from now on for some sixty years, my girl, it will be I who waits on you! The slave rôle reversed!" and he laughed.

"Could any girl come to love a man," he demanded earnestly, "who thought so little of her as to let her escape him when once destiny had brought her and him together?"

CHAPTER XXI

The most perfect of the summer months in this secluded mountain nook, not inaptly named "Eden" by Standing, was a period of time measuring itself in soft, fragrant loveliness. The days were balmy, perfect, halcyon; gentle hours of blue cloudlessness and golden sunshine and little breezes which scarcely ruffled the clear water in the bigger pools; night as clear as crystal, with flaring stars like distant torches above the yellow pine tops; nature in her gentlest mood here among the ruggedness of the wilderness, expressing herself in the most delightful of odors wafted through the woods, in the tenderest tiniest blossoms of wild flowers; a time of infinite hush and infinite solitude and peace.

To have chafed and been unhappy here, to a spirit like either Bruce Standing's or Lynette Brooke's, would have seemed next door to an impossibility. Even the girl, though restrained, a prisoner of a man's will when the bright star of her life had ever been one of splendid independence, found it easier to smile or laugh aloud at the sober-faced antics of Thor ... when she and Thor were alone with none to see!... than to sigh. She knew her periods of restiveness and bitter rebellion; they were due not to her environment, but to the thought that another than herself was dictating to her. But for one reason or another these periods were rarer and briefer than her other hours of a strange sort of peacefulness.

"It's because I've been worn out and only now am resting," she tried to tell herself. "Recuperating from a condition of exhausted mind and body."

Thus four days and nights passed. There had been, during all that time, not the slightest opportunity to[Pg 259] escape. The first day Standing had hurled the chain from him, as far as he could send it. But he had not lost sight of her for more than a few minutes at a time, saving such times that she gave him her promise that she would wait for him to come back. He accepted her word as he expected all the world to accept his. On other occasions, when he allowed her briefer freedoms, he had said merely: "No chance to run for it, girl! I'd overtake you, you know, in no time. Even if you hid, here'd be old Thor, nosing you out!" Then he laughed, adding: "For his own sake, the renegade, as well as for his master's! He's fallen in love with you, too." He made her bed in the rock-and-tree grotto; he labored, one-handed, over it for hours. With his heavy clasp knife he cut the tender tips of resinous branches; he heaped them high; he covered all with great handfuls of fragrant grass, thick with the tall red flowers that grew down by the creek, odorous with the tender white blossoms which shyly lifted their little heads to dot the grassy slopes.... He made her a bathing-pool: stiff and sore all up and down his left side, he worked with his right hand, dragging big boulders up out of their ancient beds, piling them in a ring about the pool, plastering them over the top with great handfuls of that carpet-like moss which thrived in these cool places.

"No; not yet.... What man can read the mind of a girl? How do I know what you would do? Where you would go? My wounds are healing; until they heal I am only half a man. You might whisk away from me, I tell you; and I'd have to follow and seek you, if you led me through hell on the way to heaven; and I must be whole again. And I've got to get everything straight...."

Always when he left her he returned before the end of the time she had promised to wait for him. And always he sent, as herald of his approach, his golden voice forward to her. At times in an echoing shout. More than once in an outburst of singing which thrilled her strangely. What a voice the man had! And once, when he had elected to bathe in the starlight, he sent down to her that cry which she had heard the first time from the door of Babe Deveril's cabin in Big Pine ... the wild, fierce call of the timber-wolf which, despite her naming herself "fool," sent a shiver into her blood.... Once this happened: He had left her in the forenoon, accepting her word that she would not stir until high noon. Usually he came well in advance; this time she watched the climbing sun and the creeping shade and suddenly her heart began its wild beating; it was almost noon and he was not here; no sound of his coming. When he shouted to her and then came rushing into camp, he found that she had been working frenziedly with a stick and a stone; driving the sliver of wood like a stake into the ground.... She started up, her face crimson.

She blurted out the explanation and then was angry with herself for telling him. She had meant to stay until the tip end of the giant pine's shadow fell where it marked midday; she had meant there to drive in her stake; for him it would be a marker, an assurance from her that she had kept her word with him, that she had waited as she had promised to wait ... that then, scorning him, she had snatched at her rights and had fled!

His first impulse was toward laughter. And then, strangely quiet, he stood looking at her and she saw a gathering mist in his eyes!

... How many times had she cried out in those words! And how much of that did she mean? In her heart, in her soul ... in the most hidden recesses of her most hidden being?

Thus she had hours to herself. And, therefore, had Bruce Standing hours to himself. For he wanted them. He wanted to be away from her, where he could not see her, could not hear that low music of her voice, could not catch that soft lure of her eyes, could not be tempted to have it happen that his rude hand brushed her hand.... Her hand, though she had been all these days and nights outdoors, roughing it, seemed to him a maddening realm of crumpled rose-leaves ... pink-and-white rose-leaves. He left her, secure in her pledge that she would wait for him, and threw himself down on his back and stared up through slowly shifting branches and mused on her. He thought how like a flower she was, the queen of flowers ... and he could have wept that he was so big and ungentle. He thought of Babe Deveril, and cursed him for being so slender and debonair; graceful and light of mood; gentle-voiced, with the knack of pretty words to pretty ladies. And Babe Deveril had befriended her; stood champion to her against him! He ground his teeth. He leaped up and paced back and forth, forgetful of all such insignificant nothings as trifling wounds of the flesh. He recalled how, man to man, he had broken Babe Deveril, and he laughed out loud.... Yet it remained that Babe Deveril had stood her friend and protector when he had pursued them both, linking them but the closer, with his wrath. She and Deveril had travelled together, side by side and hand in hand, miles and other miles of the open [Pg 262]solitudes; they had been drawn close together, driven closer together. He, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf, and Fool, had done that! And what spark had been struck out of the flint of the adversity which he had hurled at them?... Had they loved ... had they kissed ... was she now longing with a sick heart for the return of Babe Deveril?

"Oh, Lord!" he cried out, his great iron fingers crooking as his arms were thrown out. "Deliver him into these hands!"

Lynette had no mirror. Standing began to grow a lusty young beard, as blond as his hair, shot through with red gleams. She knew the need of fresh clothing. When he was away she did her washing as best she could, pounding garments against the rocks in the creek; she dried them and hid them and donned them without his knowing ... though of course he knew as she knew that he did his own rude washings. There was a spring at the side of the cañon, one of the many sources which fed the stream; a shadowed, tranquil place. Of this she made her pier-glass! She stooped and looked down into its glassily smooth surface. It gave back her own image; it reflected the dark green of the pines, the lighter green of the willows. Even the subdued colors of her worn suit. She washed her hair and groomed it; no comb, no brush, but agile fingers. Most of all, when secure through his promise in return for her own, did she enjoy her plunge in the pool he had made for her. The slender whiteness of her slipped hastily down under the translucent cover of the cool, flowing water; she was as swift in her movements as any slim-bodied trout that darted about her, scurrying into its retreat; the water shot a thrill through her; she emerged, dripping, charged with all the electric currents of well-being.

She, too, thought of Babe Deveril, as was inevitable. And in many ways: One, always recurrent, was: "Could she have been as sure of Babe Deveril as she was of Bruce Standing? As secure in her utter conviction of safety?" And here was a question to which she found no ready answer. Babe Deveril, leaping full-breastedly into the stream which had swept her off her feet, had been a friend to her from the beginning; from the beginning Bruce Standing had been a menace.

... Best of all she loved the waterfall. It was her shower-bath. But, more than that, it was her friend and confidante, and, beyond aught else, a living, glimmering, varicolored thing of gossamer beauty. It talked with her, it was at once handmaiden and musician and troubadour; it plashed and sang and poured its cadences into quiet harmonies which sank into her soul. It had leapt and sparkled and poured itself onward unstintedly, unafraid, for a thousand years; for a thousand years would it keep up its merry dancings, uncaring if only the tall pines watched or if men and maids brought hither their loves and hates and hopes and fears. Unstable it was always, always falling; secure was it in its diaphanous veilings of its own merry immortality. She loved it for its abandon, for its recklessness, for its translucent myriad beauties. It lived; it sang and sparkled; it filled the moment with musical murmurings and recked not of all those vague threats and shadows of a vague future.... She sat here, quiet under the spell of its dashings and splashings and eerie flutings ... musing, her soul drawn forth into all those vague and troublous musings which beset the heart of youth.

Youth? Young, too, was Bruce Standing! He hearkened to the cascading waters; he listened to the harp-tongued whisperings of the pines.... He had done everything wrong; he told himself that a thousand, thousand times. Yet he told himself savagely that[Pg 264] throughout the insanities, the veritable madnesses of constricted human life there flowed always, onward and sweepingly upward, the great, triumphal, eternal forces of destiny. And, in the end ... in the end ... it all made for good. For eternal and triumphant good.

... After all, but the old, old story of man and maid, converging to the one gleaming, focal point though across distances oceans-wide removed.

He had his point of view; Lynette Brooke had her point of view. Yet it remains that from two widely separated peaks two eager hearts may see the same sun rise.

"Tell me," he said once. "What manner of man is this Babe Deveril? I know him as a man may know a man; you know him otherwise. Tell me; what have you found him to be?"

Never would she have been Lynette, had she not been ever quick of instinct ... instinct leaping, never looking, yet so certain to strike true! She read the thought under a thought; there came a living, joyous gloating; she cried warmly, all the while watching him:

"A true friend and a gentleman! A man unafraid ... one like a loyal knight of the olden time! Like one of the King Arthur's knights...."

"Like one," he growled, deep down in his throat, angrily, "who saw another Lynette across the four fords? That's not true, girl; else he would not have forsaken you so long! Nor would he have given up so easily when, in your view, I beat him down and sent him up over the ridge!"

Chance remarks of hers ... this one above all others ... rankled. She seemed so confident that Babe Deveril would come again, that he would carry in his[Pg 265] breast the memory of sweet hours with her, that he would never rest until he, with her pleading eyes tender upon his, could rescue her from the bondage which Bruce Standing had set upon her! So it came about that nightly, and all night long, Bruce Standing dreamed of Babe Deveril and of battling with him and of beating him finally into such definite defeat as had not resulted from that other fierce struggle before her widening eyes.

Another day went by and another, with Bruce Standing obsessed, knowing himself for a man who yearned with all his soul for one thing and one thing only, a mere slip of a gray-eyed girl who made madness in his pulses. He had his moods of fierceness; on their heels came those other moods of tenderness. More than once he came toward her, striding through the woods, his mind made up to set her free, asking only her happiness. And then he saw her; and in his heated fancies he saw Babe Deveril; and he named Deveril a man of slight manhood and swore by his own manhood that never would he show so lax and flabby a hand as to let this priceless girl, drop into the graceful, careless hand of any Babe Deveril who ever lived.

But all the while there bit into him doubtings, fears, those manifold darts flung from love's alter ego, jealousy. He stood ready to give this girl full-handedly everything; from her he craved with that direst of all cravings, everything.... And when he could no longer hold back the tumult within him and demanded: "What of this Baby Devil?" putting a sneer into his voice, always she cried out warmly: "A true friend and a gentleman!"

All unexpected by both of them, the less by him than her, Billy Winch, Timber-Wolf's one-legged retainer,[Pg 266] rode full tilt into camp. They were lunching; they sat under a tree in the noonday shadow like two at picnic. He had been saying: "We're running short of rations." Then it was that Billy Winch, anxiously spurring a big roan saddle-horse, rode down upon them and, seeing them, began waving his hat high over his head in sweeping, joyous circles and shouting:

"I knew where to find you, Timber!" cried Billy Winch gleefully. "Unless, a fair bet, the devil had claimed you and taken you down under, I knew I'd find you here!... How's the sick wing? Been usin' my salve? Night and morning, keepin' it clean and...."

Billy Winch, headlong, stopping his horse with a sudden pluck of the reins when the gaunt roan had come near setting his four flickering hoofs in their midday fire, chose to ignore the fact that the Timber-Wolf was not alone.

But Standing, springing up, strode out to meet him, his mien anything but friendly.

"Damn you, Billy Winch," he muttered between his teeth, too low for the wondering Lynette to hear. She, too, had sprung up and stood leaning against the valiant pine-tree, wondering swiftly how this latest happening, the coming of Billy Winch into the wild-wood, was to affect her.

Billy Winch, as gay-hearted a rascal as ever stumped on one leg or rode a wild, half-broken horse in carelessly lopsided fashion, laughed gleefully.

"Ho, Timber!" he cried. "If I was a whole man, 'stead of half a one, I'd just jump down and naturally beat you to death! Bein' what I am, all carved to thunder, you're too much all gone to proud flesh to[Pg 267] jerk me out of the saddle to stomp on me! So I got the age on you! And I asks you, Johnny Wolf, man-eater, how's tricks?"

"By God, Winch!" Standing in upstarting wrath had the roan horse by the bit, shoving it back with one savage hand so that it fell back on its haunches. "Just because I've stood a lot off you...."

"Slow does it, Timber!" cried Winch. "This is business. I've got a man back there, just out of sight, ready to go clean crazy unless he can have a word with you. To put a name to him ... well, then, Mexicali Joe!"

Now Standing, deep down within him, knew why Billy Winch had come. Never did more faithful heart beat in human breast than that heart thrumming away beneath Billy Winch's faded blue shirt. Winch, having always a shrewd guess where to find his chief, when Standing took it upon himself to disappear from headquarters, had caught at the first excuse to come in person and make sure with his own keen eyes that all went well with a man whom many hated and whom he, above all men, loved.

Lynette, of impulses ungovernable, could have broken into laughter. For the amazing thing was that what Bruce Standing, impatient almost to fury, said he meant. He had suffered enough inconvenience at Mexicali Joe's hands; he wanted nothing of the man nor of his dross of gold.

Winch did laugh aloud. And then, keen-eyed to see the play of his employer's expression, he grew sober and said earnestly:

"On the level, Mr. Standing, how's the hurt comin' along? Been usin' the salve I told you to?"

Lynette, though he had ignored her presence or [Pg 268]because of this very attitude of his, could not hold back from exclaiming:

"He has two wounds now! Another shot in the back! And he gives them less attention than a sane man would give a cut finger!"

"The old fool! No more sense than a rabbit! Shot again? Twice in the back? Plugged a second time? The old fool!"

Like a flash in his quick movements he was down from the saddle; he left his horse with dragging reins to wait for him; over the uneven ground he came forward rapidly, queerly, hopping like an oddly oversized bird. He caught at Standing's shoulder, crying out:

"Let me see them hurts! I tell you, I got to see them hurts! Shot twice from behind? You bloody baby. Let me look at 'em. Blood poison most likely settin' in!"

But just then Billy Winch's one foot caught at a root and he came near falling, and Standing, instead of carrying out a threat, sprang toward him and steadied him; and Lynette saw a sincere rough affection in the way the big arms closed about Winch's body. Friends, these two.

"Who plugged you, Timber? And for the love of Mike, how come you to let it happen ... twice? But tell me: Who plugged you the second time?"

"Taggart," said Standing; "at least that's my bet. And," he added hastily, "it was Taggart that shot me the first time, through the window at Gallup's!"

Billy Winch looked sharp incredulity; his eyes flickered away to Lynette as he gave sign of seeing her for the first time.

"You thought wrong! She did not shoot me. You've got my word for that, Bill. She did not shoot me!"

"Yes," said Standing. "Taggart didn't believe I had already changed my papers, ruling his name out. If he could have dropped me and made it seem clear that she had done it.... See it, Bill?"

"Well," said Winch slowly, "I guess you know or you wouldn't say so. And Jim Taggart was a real man once. But I've seen signs of late; he's mildewed inside, clean through. As comes of running with such as Young Gallup."

Suddenly he whipped off his battered hat and turned a pair of bright and smiling, and at last warmly admiring eyes upon Lynette.

"Now," said Standing. "About this Mexicali Joe. You go back and tell him for me...."

"No use, Timber. You got to see him. I tell you he's clean crazy to see you; he'll stick on your trail until he finds you. He wants only ten minutes; five would do it."

Lynette was mildly surprised to see Standing so easily persuaded; but she had no way of knowing the relationship of this man and his chief henchman nor how Billy Winch never took it upon himself to suggest unless he knew what he was about.

Winch jerked his head about and shouted; his long, halloing call pierced clear through the woodland silences.

Joe came almost immediately, mounted on a scrawny mulish-looking horse, breaking an impatient way through the brush. His dark face still carried a frightened, [Pg 270]furtive expression which had not been absent from it for a matter of days; not since a handful of raw gold had been spilled from his torn pocket.

"Señor!" he cried ringingly from a distance. "Señor Caballero! I tell you, they keel me! I got no chances! For sure, they keel me, robbers!"

Standing answered roughly: "And what do I care? Serve you right for the fool you are!"

"Now, he's here," said Winch. "Look here, Timber: you can take your time talking to him. Let me look you over. I want to see that second bullet hole."

"Winch, you idiot," Standing growled at him; "I got it close to a week ago. I've tended to it myself; it's all right. I don't look like a dying man, do I?"

"And you're out of it now!" With a triumphant flourish Winch dipped into a pocket and extracted a small package. "Here you are, Timber! And this is extra special! I got all the ingredients this time; tried it out day before yesterday on that new pinto pony you bought from Ferguson; got cut in the wire fence down by the pasture. Say, it works like magic...."

Standing groaned. "Winch, some fine day I'll carve you all up with a hand-axe, just to give you a chance to use your own filthy mess...."

"I wouldn't have been shy a leg, would I, if that fool doctor had had a pint of this?"

"Señor!" Joe was crying. "You got to listen; you got to hear what I goin' tell you! My gold, my gold that I find, me, myself, all alone...."

"What do I care for you or your gold!" cried [Pg 271]Standing. "I don't need it, do I? I don't ask you anything about it, do I? I don't want to know anything about it! Go wallow in your gold and leave me alone!"

But Joe explained, growing vehement to the point of wildness; as Winch had put it, "he was clean crazy over the thing." How could Joe wallow in it, much as he would like to, when always there were men like ugly hounds on his trail? What chance had he, poor devil that he styled himself, against such men as Jim Taggart and Young Gallup and Cliff Shipton and Babe Deveril and Barny McCuin.... He named a score. At the name of Babe Deveril Standing's eyes flashed and sped to a meeting with Lynette's; into hers, too, came a quick light. Joe had caught Standing's interest.

"Him? The worst of them all!" wailed Joe. He went on, bursting with all the things he had to tell. That night when, for a second time, like God himself, the grand Señor Caballero had burst into the cabin and set him free, he had run! God, how he had run! But then he had thought of his savior alone against so many hard, merciless men; he had come to a sudden stop, saying to himself: "Joe, mi amigo, you must not desert him!" And then, of a sudden, had that young devil Deveril burst from the bushes upon him ... and Joe had fled again and Deveril had sought after him. There was no shaking off this man; twice since then in the forest Joe had barely escaped him.... Lynette had come close, was listening breathlessly.

"I tell you where my gold is!" cried Joe. "You take what you like, I don't care! You give me what you like ... I know you for one fair man. That way we save it. Any other way, they get me; they burn me with fire; they break my teeth and my fingers; they make[Pg 272] me tell! And they get it all. Taggart and Gallup and Deveril and...."

He broke off, half whimpering, cursing them with all the eloquence of the Latin tongue.

Clearly Standing hesitated. Then, amazing them all, but with his own mind clear, he said bluntly:

"It's down in Light Ladies' Gulch!" screamed Joe. "Not two mile from Big Pine! I lied to them ... a big pine, with crooked roots sticking out ... a washout.... Last year I make mistake; I think down under the Red Cliffs. But this time I find ... four miles the other side...."

Then suddenly Standing caught himself up short; there came a new look into his eyes; he shouted, catching Joe by the shoulder:

Standing broke into sudden laughter. He clapped Joe upon the shoulder so that the little man staggered and paled under the jovial blow.

"With bells on! With bells, Mexico! By high Heaven.... Here, you, Winch! On the run, back to headquarters. Take Joe with you; mount guard over him night and day with a rifle. No man to have a word with him. And wait for me. And, all the while, Bill Winch, keep your mouth shut!"

"I guess I know how to take orders, Mr. Standing," he said, and his tone sounded angry. "You don't need...."

"Why, God bless you, Bill Winch, you're the only man on earth I'd trust! Those last words weren't necessary.... You're right and I apologize for them! But now, go! Go, I tell you; I'll do anything you say; I'll use your poison on me three times a day.... I'll eat it, if you say so! Only hit the high spots and keep Mexicali under cover until I come! No matter when or how long; there's your job ... old friend!"

Billy Winch, galvanized, went hopping to his horse; he flipped after his own fashion up into the saddle; he loosened the rifle in its holster strapped conveniently; he called to Joe:

Bruce Standing watched them ride away among the trees and stood laughing! He had succeeded in puzzling two men; most of all had he set Lynette wondering....

CHAPTER XXII

"I want a good long drink of fresh water," said Standing. "And you, after this lunch of ours, will be thirsty. Let's go down to the creek; down there, by the waterfall, after we've drunk, I want to talk with you."

He had turned to her, that flash still in his eyes, before Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe had ridden a dozen yards out of camp. She looked at him in silence, wondering what lay in his thoughts; what had been the sudden, compelling, and triumphant motive to actuate him when with his great shout of laughter he had dismissed the two men. He had Joe's secret now; she shared it herself: The gold was far from here and very near Big Pine; in Light Ladies' Cañon! The strange part of it was that Taggart's first surmise, when he and his companions had trapped Mexicali Joe at the dugout, was that it was in Light Ladies' Cañon that he had made his strike!... How many men and at least one girl had travelled how many wilderness miles from Big Pine, when the gold lay so snugly close to the starting-point! How Joe had tricked his captors, leading them so far afield!

"If I should escape from you now," Lynette could not help crying, "what is there to prevent me from staking the first claim? And bringing my friends ... to stake claims!"

Then he stepped to the tree where his rifle stood and called to Thor as he did always when he left the dog in camp: "Watch, Thor! Watch, sir."

It was not always that he carried his rifle. He explained, while he looked to her to come with him.

"We'll talk things over; but in any case it's clear that we're getting short of food. Maybe, while we talk, we can bring down something in the way of provisions with a lucky shot."

Willing enough was she to-day for talk; at least to listen to whatever he might say. She followed, stopping only to stoop and pat old Thor's head; already she counted the faithful brute a friend. Thor tried to lick her hand; for already Thor, like Thor's master, had bestowed an abiding love to the first true girl who had ever intimately entered the life of either. Thor wanted to follow; he whined and looked anxious, ears pricked forward, tail wagging.

"Down, Thor," commanded Standing, if only because already he had issued his command. "You watch camp for us; watch, Thor."

Thor dropped down at the entrance of Lynette's grotto; for one instant his great head lay between his forepaws; then he jerked it up again so that he might watch them as they went through the thickets to the creek.

Standing carried a cup with him. When they came to the waterfall leaping down a twenty-foot rocky spillway, glassily clear, making a pigmy thunder in the narrow-walled ravine, he rinsed and filled his cup and gave it to Lynette. She drank. Thereafter, and with no further rinsing, he drank. She sat upon a big rock, leaning back against a leaning tree trunk; he sat down close enough to her to allow of words carrying above the thunder of the falling waters and filled his after-lunch pipe.

"I know as much as you do of the place to find the gold!" she told him again. "And I, though a girl, have as much interest in a fortune to be made as any[Pg 276] man can have. That's fair warning to you, Bruce Standing!"

"It's neither your gold nor mine. By right of discovery, it belongs to a little shrimp named Mexicali Joe Alguna-Cosa. Our hands are off, so far as our own pockets are concerned."

"But.... You took quick interest when you learned where it was! You have some plan ... you commanded your friend Billy Winch to keep Joe well guarded!"

"I've got gold of my own, girl! Gold enough to last me my life and you your life and both of us together our lives! And to leave a decent residuum after us.... But let's talk of Mexicali Joe's gold some other time. To-day.... We have ourselves!"

"You have yourself!" cried Lynette with sudden bitterness. "I have not even my own personal liberty!"

"And what if I let you go, girl? As I have a mind to do to-day? What then? Where would you go? Where would I find you again? For find you I must and will though 'it were ten thousand mile.'"

"Am I to suffer your dictation during the days of actual imprisonment at your hands, and then, for all time afterward, render you an accounting of my actions!"

"What have I done to you? Have I done anything more than put out a hand to stop time, to snatch time for you and me, for us to know!... Look you, girl, a man, at least a man of my sort, may go a third of his[Pg 277] life or a fourth or a full half, and know much less than nothing of what a true girl is! How can he know? Already I have learned that you have instincts which leap; a man gropes like a blind mole and it takes him a long time to teach himself to see the stars ... the star! Now it's a fair bet, and no odds given or taken, that one Bruce Standing happened to be an unruly devil, a blunt man, a man who has as a part and parcel of his religion to shoot square and to hit hard, so long as God lets him. I've done wrong and I've done right, and I'm doing as all the rest of the great mass, in a state of flux, is doing; growing up from the mud into something better. If not in this life or the next, well then, since the mills grind with exceeding patience, in some other life. At least I'm honest; at least, in plain English, I do my damnedest! Take it or leave it, there's the truth. If it happens that I'm a man of few friends.... Almost you can count 'em on Billy Winch's one leg!... if few men love me and many men hate...."

"Yes!" cried Lynette, and her own earnestness was caught and compelled by his own. "Most men, many, many men, hate you!... And yet you have it within you to make them love you!"

"Love and hate! What have I to do with the loves and hates of men as I know them? Shall I step to right or to left for all that? I play out my part in the eternal game. I live my life!"

"But you don't live your life! You miss ... everything! If you would but be kind instead of cruel; open-hearted and generous always ... you have in you the seeds of all that. Then men might come to know the real you; you could make them love instead of hate...."

"So!" he said, and his tone was one of bitter mockery. "If I choose to pay them for the pretty, empty [Pg 278]compliment, they will call me a good fellow and ... love me! If I kick them they will call me villain and hate me. And there you have the epitome of that so-called love and hate of mankind which sickens me. I'll be eternally damned before I prostitute my immortal soul to pitch pennies out for a peck of treacherous hearts. For, I tell you, girl ... Only Girl ... the love that is to be bought is to be spat upon. I'll have none of it. Even your love, that I'd give my soul to have freely, I'd have none of if it were to be bought."

"You twist things out of all reason to make, to yourself, your own acts appear something other than they are."

Little effort on his part was required to set fire to her quick inflammable temper.

"It's magnanimous of you to jeer at me," she retorted hotly. "Because you have the physical strength of a beast and the beast's lack of understanding...."

"See! There you go! As if to preach me the final word of love and hate! You'd hate me now, just because I tease you! If I said, with poets' roses twining through the saying, that you were most beautiful and no-end intellectual and beyond that of the heart of an angel, could you not better tolerate me? And thus we come to the open pathway to most human loves and hates; two little doors standing side by side. For, I ask you, going back to your challenge to make men love rather than despise me, what in the devil's name is that sort of love but transplanted self-love? A damned-fool[Pg 279] sort of selfishness masking like a hypocrite as something quite different.... If you loved a man who beat you there would be something worth while in that sort of loving; something divorced from plain selfishness and the eternal I-want-to-get-all-I-can-out-of-everything! Now, I love you! I love you so that my love for you comes near killing me! It gets me by the throat at night. That's love; and there's less of self in it, I swear to you, than there is of ... you!"

She broke into her light, taunting laughter. And yet he had set her heart beating and the ancient fear ... not fear of him ... was upon her. "You, talking of love, are like a blind man lecturing on the colors of the rainbow! You...."

But he had started to his feet; his eyes went suddenly toward the camp, all sight of which they had lost on coming down into the creek bed.

She had heard nothing; nothing above the splash and fall of water ... and the beating of her own heart.

He caught up his rifle and leaped across the creek. He began running, back toward their camp.

And now, Lynette realized clearly, had come her first opportunity to be free again! While Bruce Standing, because of something he had heard above the merry-mad music of the waterfall, or had thought he had heard, was running back to their encampment, she could run in the opposite direction. She stood balancing, of this mind and that. What had he heard in camp? What was happening there? As always, because of that volatile nature of hers which was en rapport with life's [Pg 280]pulsings, she wanted to know! And then there was a certain assurance in her heart that after all these days the budding intention in Bruce Standing's heart was bursting into full flower to set her free again! She hesitated; she saw him running up the steep bank, charging back toward camp, vanishing among the trees higher up on the slope.

... Before Lynette came, through the trees, within sight of the grotto which Standing had given over to her, she heard a sound which brought her, wondering, from swift haste to lingering; she stood, her breathing stilled, listening, groping a moment blindly for an interpretation of that sound for its explanation. Harsh it was ... terrible ... never had she heard anything like it. At first she did not recognize it as a sound man-made. She paused; she came a step nearer, peering through the trees....

It was an inarticulate, stifled sound coming from the lips of Bruce Standing! He was kneeling on the ground, bending forward. He had dropped his rifle. There was something in his arms, upgathered into his embrace, something held as a baby is held in its mother's arms....

And those sounds from Bruce Standing's lips! There were tears in them; his voice was shaken. He held Thor to him in a fierce agony of sorrow....

Lynette came closer, tiptoeing. She heard the sounds as they seemed to choke him, clutching like hands at his throat. And then suddenly, before she caught her first clear view, she knew when, into that first emotion there swept the second; when with the shock of deep grief there mingled white-hot rage. He began to mutter again ... he was lisping ... lisping as she had heard him do only once before ... lisping because his [Pg 281]one weakness had leaped out and caught him unaware. Lisping curses....

She ran closer. She saw old Thor, Thor who had learned to love her and whom she had learned to love, lying limp in Standing's arms. Thor dead? Some one had killed him, then, and Standing, above the booming of the waterfall, had heard? A sight, perhaps, to stir that wild, uncontrollable laughter of Lynette! The sight of a big, strong man half weeping over a dead dog in his arms.... Yet, when she came running to him and dropped down on her knees and put out her quick hand and Standing turned his face toward her ... he saw that this time there was no laughter in her. Instead, her eyes were wet with a sudden dash of tears.

She did not realize that she had put her warm, sympathetic hand on Standing's arm before her other hand found the old dog's head.

Thor looked up at her; at Standing. The dog tried to stir; the faithful tongue strove to overmaster the terrible inertia laid upon it; to grant in last adulation the last farewell. For a stricken dog, like a stricken man, knows after the way of all creatures which have the spark of eternity within them, when the day's end is in doubt....

Standing tried to speak ... and grew silent. How she hated herself then for that other time when he had slipped, through sorrowing rage, into his one unmanly failing ... and she had laughed! Her tears began running down. He saw; he jerked his head about, focussing his eyes upon the eyes of a dog that he loved; a dog that had been faithful to him.

"Where is he hurt? He can't be shot," cried Lynette. "We would have heard a shot! If he is poisoned...."

Thor was not dead; his body jerked and quivered now and again, in spasms. Yet he seemed to be dying. And it grew clear to Lynette, as, at a glance, it had been clear to Standing, what had happened. Thor had been left in charge of camp; but the one word had rung in the faithful head: "Watch!" And then some one had come; Thor had been true to his trust; some man had struck him down with club or a rifle barrel; had struck and struck again. Thor's fore leg was broken; he had been battered over the head ... bones were broken, the skull seemed crushed ... the dog stiffened; fell back....

"Dying," said Standing, still on his knees. He placed old Thor very gently on the ground, striving after his own rough fashion to make a dog's last few minutes of breathing no more tormenting than was inevitable.

The dog tried to rouse. The old faithful head on Standing's knee stirred ever so little. The old steadfast eyes, red-rimmed but clear-sighted, were on Standing's. If ever a dog could have spoken....

"There's a chance for him yet! There is Billy Winch, the one man on earth to save a dying dog or horse.... Yes, or man!"

He cupped his hands at his mouth and sent forth, piercing through the leafy silences, that wild wolf-call which must bring Winch about in short order ... if he was not already too far to hear it.

"He may be too far," cried Lynette. Already she was down upon her knees, taking his place and [Pg 283]gathering Thor's head into her lap. "Hurry. If you can find your horse and ride after him, surely you can overtake him."

"God bless you!" He began running. But before a dozen swift steps were taken he stopped and came back to her, muttering: "But the man who did this for Thor? He'll not be far away; I can't leave you...."

"I am not afraid of a man like him," said Lynette. "A coward, or he would not have done this.... Leave me your rifle and hurry!"

He placed his rifle at her side and with never a backward look was away again on a run, breaking through breast-high brush; splashing once again across the creek, calling to Winch as he ran.... He would be back with her almost immediately....

So he plowed through the thickets; plunged down a slope, sped up a slope, raced over a ridge. And, now with what breath was left in his lungs, he began to send out his whistled call. That summons, which his horse, if still lingering in these upland meadows, would welcome with quick response.

Lynette stooped and laid her cheek against the grizzled old face of Thor. And then, with a sudden access of emotion, she burst into fresh tears.... Thor tried to wag his tail.... Lynette, like Standing before her, felt that the dog was dying.

"Thor!" she whispered. "Can't you hold on? Can't you carry on? He will bring Billy Winch and Billy Winch will help us...."

Then there burst upon her a surprise which moved her immeasurably. There, almost at her side, stood Babe Deveril! A moment ago she was alone in the [Pg 284]wilderness with a dying dog; now Babe Deveril stood close to her. With Thor's head still held in her lap she looked up into his face. She saw that it was tense, the muscles drawn, the eyes hard and bright.

"Lynette!" he cried softly. "Lynette! I've followed you half around the world! And now.... Come quick! We go free and the world is ours!"

"I came to do what I could for you. That ugly brute stood up against me. I had no gun; I knew Standing was armed. I thought that maybe he had left his rifle in camp."

"Thor? That dog? He showed teeth and ... Look here, Lynette Brooke; now's your one chance. I've gone through hell to come to you...."

Deveril was as tense as a finely drawn steel wire. Again she marked that hard glint in his dark eyes.

"It is up to you to do the telling!" he shot back at her. "I stood back there in the trees; I saw that damned henchman of his and Mexicali Joe come up to you! Joe, I've been following for days! I had no rifle; no weapon of any kind and both Standing and Winch were armed. But I could watch! Joe was terribly excited; I saw his waving arms. I heard him yelling...."

"And then?" exclaimed Deveril. "What then? You know what we came for, don't you? You as well as I?"

"Come! On the run. Before that madman gets back. We'll clean up on the whole crowd of them!"

"There are certain things I don't understand.... Did you see the other night when he took Mexicali Joe out of their hands?"

"I saw; yes. It happened that I had just overhauled them at that minute! I could have cried for rage! He had a rifle, damn him, and was aching to use it! They laid down before him like pups...."

"To-day?" His hands hardened in his grip upon his club. "To-day, I tell you, I followed them into your camp and I saw. Mexicali Joe...."

"As you are! That brought us both into Big Pine in the beginning and then into the rest of it."

"And you were ... afraid to come into camp while Bruce Standing was still here?"

"Afraid? Call it that if you like." He shrugged carelessly. "Yet, with an oak club against a man with a modern rifle...."

"Want with you? I want you to come, to be free from this Timber-Wolf. Is he coming back soon?"

"For one thing," she told him without looking up, "because I told him that I would wait for him. For another...."

"But you'll tell me.... You and I have been friends; we've stood side by side...." He broke off to demand: "You'll tell me about Mexicali Joe's gold?"

"Then listen: Taggart and Gallup and Shipton and a thousand other men are going crazy to find out! You and I can turn the whole trick if luck is good.... Why, we'll quit millionaires, Lynette!"

A shudder shot through the tortured body of old Thor. Lynette's long lashes lifted, wet with her tears.

"Why did you kill this dog? What good did it do you? What harm had he ever done you?"

"He was in my way. I thought, I told you, that a rifle might have been left behind. And ... it's Standing's dog, anyway! And, beyond that, no matter how you look at it, only a dog...."

"I think," said Lynette, and there was no music in her voice now and no warmth in the eyes which she lifted briefly to his, "that you had better go! Had you come, without rifle, upon Bruce Standing, at least he would have thrown his rifle away to fight with you! You know that. And ... and I am not going to go with you, having given my promise. And I'll warn you of this: If he comes back and finds you here and knows you for the man who killed Thor.... He will kill you!"

Never in all his daredevil life had Babe Deveril made pretense at striking the angelic attitude. Now, in a rush of feeling, he grew black with anger and there came a look into his eyes which put the hottest flush of all her life into Lynette's cheeks, as he cried out:

"Tamed you, has he? So Timber-Wolf has taken a mate after the fashion of wolves! And I, fool that I was, let you slip through my fingers!"

She did not answer him. Had she answered she could have said: "You could have returned to fight with him; man to man and him wounded! Later, when he snatched Mexicali Joe from them, you could have fought with him. You could have followed him here, seeking me; and you followed Joe, seeking gold. You could have fought with him to-day; and instead you held back and spied and killed his dog and waited for him to go!..." So Lynette, stooping low over Thor's battered head, made no answer.

... She knew that Babe Deveril was no coward. She would always remember how he had hurled that gun into Taggart's face and himself into her adventures, reckless and unafraid. Yet Babe Deveril was no such man as Bruce Standing; rather was he like a Jim Taggart, and Taggart was no coward. But it remained that both these men, Deveril and Taggart, were afraid to come to grips with that other man, whose fellows named him Timber-Wolf. And he, the Timber-Wolf, was not afraid of life and all that it bore; and was not afraid of sombre death, in which he did not believe; was not afraid of God, in whom he trusted.

"You've thrown in with him!" Deveril cried it out angrily; his hands were hard upon his club. "Here, I've given days and days trying to see you through, and you've kicked in with him against me! He's had his will with you and he's made you his woman and...."

"You won't come with me then? You'll stick with him? After he put a chain on you!"

"I'll go, all right," said Deveril. And began to laugh. All that old light laughter of his, gay and untroubled, which so many a time had made dancing echoes in the souls of those who heard, bubbled up again. He looked, as he had done when first she saw him, a slender, darkly handsome and utterly care-free incarnation of debonair insolence. Still striking the right note, he shrugged his shoulders and tossed his club away as he said insolently:

"What need of all this heavy artillery ... since the Queen of my Heart says Nay? I'll travel light after this!"

"I have a guess where Billy Winch will be taking Mexicali Joe! And I'll be in on the final settlement. If you, with a rush of blood to the head, throw in with Standing, I'll play the game out! And what will you have left to trade to me for the pile I'm going to make out of this?... For I heard, too, when Mexicali yelled out! And I'm throwing in with Taggart and Gallup, headed straight for Light Ladies' Gulch!"

Lynette, unable to see anything in all the wide world clearly, could only stoop her head over the stricken dog. Her arms tightened about Thor.... If only Billy Winch would come in time, if only Billy Winch would save that flickering little fire of life ... then, though she hated all the rest of the world she'd love Billy Winch....

CHAPTER XXIII

Bruce Standing running, breaking a straight path through the brush, came swiftly into the little upper valley. When in answer to his whistling his horse came trotting up to him, he did not tarry to saddle; he had picked up his bridle on his way and now mounted and struck off bareback through the woods with no second's delay.

From a distance Billy Winch, hurrying homeward, heard that long call he knew so well. He pulled his horse down from a steady canter and turned, calling to Mexicali Joe to come back with him. Once within sight Standing waved and shouted again; Winch and Joe sensed urgency and dipped their spurs, riding back to a meeting with him. Winch stared and frowned while his employer made his curt explanation; Mexicali Joe gasped. But neither man had a word to say; Standing laid his brief command upon them and the three turned back, riding hard, into the mountains.

Again Standing called, when near enough to camp to hope that his voice would carry above the noise of the tumbling waterfalls; this time to Lynette, to tell her of their coming. He rode ahead; again and again he shouted to her; he leaned out to right and left from his horse's back, seeking a glimpse of her through the trees. And yet, when they were almost in the camp, there still came no answer to his shoutings and he caught no glimpse of her.... Suddenly, to his fancies, the woods seemed strangely hushed—and empty.

"No!" said Standing with such brusque emphasis that Winch looked at him wonderingly. "She said she'd wait for us, Bill."

But when they drew closer, so close that the various familiar camp objects were revealed, and still there was no response and no sight of her, Winch muttered:

"I tell you, man," snapped Standing, "she said she would wait. And what she says she will do, she will do!"

Now the three dismounted in the heart of the camp and still there was no sign of Lynette.

"Anyhow," said Winch, "it's a dog and not a girl we come looking for. Thor'll be here ... if he's alive yet."

"He will be right where I left him." Standing led the way among the big trees, an arm about Billy Winch, hopping at his side the last few steps; they saw him looking in all directions and understood that while he led them toward Thor he was seeking the girl. But they found only the dog lying where he had been struck down; Thor barely able to lift his bloody head, his sight dim, but his dog's intelligence telling him that his master had come back to him; Thor whining weakly. Winch squatted down at the dog's side, become upon the instant an impressive diagnostician.

Standing stood a moment over the two, looking down upon them. Then he turned away, leaving Thor in the skilful hands of Winch and hurrying down to the creek, seeking Lynette. It was possible, he told himself, that she had gone down for a drink; that so near the waterfall she had not heard him calling. So he called again as he went on and looked everywhere for her.

But she was not down by the creek and she did not[Pg 292] answer him from the woods. He came back, up into camp, perplexed. Winch was still bending over Thor; he was snapping out brusque orders to Joe for hot water and soap; Standing heard Mexicali Joe's mutterings:

"Por Dios, I no understan'. Somebody hurt one dog an' we wait, an' we look for one girl ... an' all the time I got one meelion dollar gol'-mine down yonder...."

"Shut up," Winch grunted at him. And, seeing Standing coming back: "Say, Timber, we better take this dog home with us right away. We can make a sling of that canvas of yours, tying either end to our saddle horns, making a sort of stretcher; some blankets in it and old Thor on top of 'em. And I'll tell you this: if we get him home alive, and I think we will, I'll keep the life in him."

Thor was whining piteously; Winch shook his head; if only he had his instruments, his antiseptics, and a bottle of chloroform! For here he foresaw such an operation as did not come his way every day.

"Diagnosin' off-hand," Winch was telling the uninterested Joe, "I'd say here's the two important facts: first, old Thor has been beat unmerciful; his head's been whanged bad, but I don't believe the skull's fractured; his left fore leg is busted and he may have a cracked rib. Second and most important, after all that the old devil is alive."

Bruce Standing, still seeking Lynette, more than satisfied to have Thor in Billy Winch's capable hands, turned toward the grotto which he had set apart for Lynette. And thus upon his first discovery. There was a piece of paper tied with a bit of string so that it fluttered gently from a low limb where it was inevitable that it must be seen. He caught it down eagerly. On the scrap of paper were a few pencilled words, written in a girlish-looking hand. At one sweeping glance he read:

He stood staring incredulously at the thing in his hand. Here was a shock which for a moment confused him; here was something beyond credence. Lynette gone ... to Deveril? For that first second his brain groped blindly rather than functioned normally. Lynette gone to Babe Deveril ... that cursed Baby Devil! A handsome, graceful, and altogether irresistible young devil of a fellow to fill any girl's eye, to stir vague romantic longings in her heart. So she had gone to him? He had the proof of it in his hand; a word from her, signed with her name. A cruel, chill, heartless message of seven meagre words.... And she had broken her word; she had promised to wait for his return and she had not waited. She had left a dying dog to die alone and had gone to her lover ... and she carried with her the key to Mexicali Joe's golden secret ... to turn it over to Deveril!

Standing tossed the scrap of paper away. And then suddenly he laughed and both Winch and Joe were startled. Bill Winch had heard that laugh once before and knew vaguely the sort of emotion which prompted it: Standing's soul was suddenly steeped in rage ... and anguish....

"We'll be on our way pretty quick, Timber," said Winch. "We'll ride slow and you can pick us up in no time. And ... if you've got anything on your chest, any of your own private rat-killing to do, why, me and Mexicali will make out fine as far as headquarters, and once there I'll see old Thor through."

CHAPTER XXIV

Timber-Wolf, his purposes crystallizing, did not attempt to rejoin Winch and Mexicali Joe. By the time he had ridden to the spot where his saddle was hidden and had thrown it upon Daylight's back, drawing his cinch savagely, he had begun to get his proper perspective. He knew that he could trust Billy Winch in all things; that Winch, with all of that persevering patience which the occasion demanded and that veterinary skill and love for animals which marked him, would do all that any man could to get Thor home and to care for him. And now, for Bruce Standing, beyond the stricken dog lay other considerations: There remained Lynette and Babe Deveril! He ground his teeth in savage rage and from Daylight's first leap under him rode hard.

Long before the early sun rose he was back at his own headquarters, a man grim and hard and purposeful. Rough garbed and still booted he strode through his study and into his larger office; and in this environment the man's magnificent virility was strikingly accentuated. Here was his wilderness home, a place of elegance and of palpitant centres of numerous large activities; not a dozen miles from Big Pine and yet, in all appearances, set apart from Young Gallup's crude town as far as the ends of earth. He stood in a great, hard-wooded room of orderly tables and desks and telephones and electric push-buttons. He set an impatient thumb upon a button; at the same moment his other hand caught up a telephone instrument. While the push-button still sent its urgent message he caught a response from his telephone. Into the receiver he called sharply:

All the while that insistent thumb of his upon the button! There came bursting into the big room, half dressed and clutching at his clothes, a young man whose eyes were still heavy with sleep.

"You, Graham," Standing commanded him. "Get busy on our long-distance wire. My lawyers.... Get Ben Brewster! It's the hurry of a lifetime!"

Young Graham, with suspenders dragging, flew to the switchboard. Meantime came a response from the inter-phone connecting him with the stables.

"No, sir, Mr. Standing," said a voice. "This is Dick Ross. Bill, he got in late and was up all night nearly, working over a bad case that come in. Shall I...."

"That case," Standing told him abruptly, "was my dog, Thor. Find out who was left in charge when Bill went to sleep; call me right away and give me a report on Thor." With that he rang off.

All the while his secretary, Graham, had been plugging away at his switchboard. Standing, pacing up and down, heard his "Hello—hello—hello."

Within three minutes the stable telephone rang sharply. Standing caught it up. It was Dick Ross again, reporting:

"Bill didn't go off the case until three o'clock this morning. Had to operate again at about two; taking out a little piece of skull bone. He left Charley Peters in charge then; Charley's on the job now."

"Fine! I'll be out in a few minutes to see him. Bill's got him in the 'hospital'?"

"Sure, Mr. Standing. Thor couldn't be gettin' better care if he was King of England."

Standing rang off and came back to Graham from whose eyes now all heaviness of sleep had fled, leaving them keen and quick. Hardly more than a youngster, this Graham, and yet Timber-Wolf's confidential secretary, trained by Standing himself to Standing's ways.

"I've got Mr. Brewster's home on the wire," said Graham looking up. "He's not up yet but they're calling him...."

"I'll hold it for him. Now, Graham, order breakfast served here for you and me; plenty of extra coffee for the boys I'll be having in.... Get Al Blake on our wire to Red Creek Mine.... Arrange to have Bill Winch show up here as soon as he's awake; he's to bring Ross and Peters with him.... And Mexicali Joe; make sure that Joe didn't see any one to talk with last night. I want Joe here with Winch.... Hello! Hello! Is this Ben Brewster?"

He heard his lawyer's voice over the wire; then, somewhere over the long line something went wrong; Brewster was gone again. An operator at the end of Standing's own private part of the line, seventy-five miles away, was saying:

"Thanks, Henry," said Standing. And while he waited for the promised service which was to link him with a man nearly two hundred miles away, he was working hastily with pencil and pad. Graham was already carrying out his string of orders, getting dressed with one hand meantime.

"Brewster?" Standing spoke again into the telephone. "I've got something big and urgent on. Can[Pg 297] you come up right away? Take a car to Placer Hill. I'll have a man meet you there with a saddle-horse, and you'll have to ride the last twenty miles in. We're forming a new mining company; I want to shoot it through one-two-three! Bring what papers we'll want; that will be all the baggage you need to stop for. Graham will have all particulars ready for you. Thanks, Ben. So long.

"Get the stables. A couple of the best horses...." "I've already got them," said Graham.... It was for such reasons that Graham, though a youngster, could hold so difficult position as private secretary to Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf.

Al Blake was Standing's mining expert, general superintendent of all his mining interests and the one source to which he applied for advice on all mining matters. He was the highest salaried man on the extensive pay-roll and the shrewdest. In a few minutes Graham announced that he had the Red Creek Mine on the wire and that Blake was coming.

"I want you here on the jump, Al," said Standing. "And I need forty of our best men; scare up as many as you can at your diggings; I can fill the number down here. Just good men, understand? Men you know; men who at a pinch will fight like hell; every man with a rifle."

"Sounds like St. Ives!" grunted Blake, wide awake by now. "All right. I'm on my way in ten minutes."

Standing began pacing up and down again, his eyes frowning. He needed Billy Winch right now; needed him the worst way. For here was work to be done of the sort which invariably he placed in Winch's capable hands. But Winch had had a night of it and Standing[Pg 298] was not the man to overlook that fact as long as he could put his hand on another man who would do....

Breakfast came, served on big massive trays by the Japanese servant. Almost at the same moment, and literally on the run, Dick Ross came in.

"Scare up ten good men for me, Ross. With rifles, all ready to ride. I'll have breakfast ready for them here." Graham caught the alert eye of the Japanese who set down his trays hurriedly and with a quick nod raced off to the kitchen. Standing looked sternly at Ross and said curtly: "I'm handing you a job that would usually go to Winch, Ross, but he's asleep...."

"He was just getting up again, Mr. Standing. Said he wanted to see for himself how Thor was pulling along...."

"Then," said Standing, "hop back and tell Winch what I said. He can tell you the men to pick ... or, if he's busy working with Thor he can leave it to you. Of course I want you to be of the number; Peters also if Winch doesn't need him; Winch, too, if he says the word...."

Standing and Graham ate standing up. Men summoned began coming in. Each of them was given brief clean-cut orders and allowed brief time to gulp a hot breakfast. Billy Winch came first, bringing with him Mexicali Joe.

"He's going to be all right, I think," said Winch by way of greeting, and Standing understood that he was reporting on Thor. "I never saw man or animal worse shot-all-to-hell, either. I got him in bed now, strapped down; he's conscious this morning and had a fair night, all things considered. There's nothing more to be done right away, just be kept quiet...."

"I can't have folks running in on him, Timber," said Winch, with a slow shake of the head, mumbling over a mouthful of ham and egg. "But if you'd just run in on him one second, to sort of let him know you was with him, you know, and then beat it, it might do him good."

"Can you leave for two or three hours? To go down with Al Blake and some of the boys to stake a string of mining claims down in Light Ladies' Gulch?"

"That's why the rifles?" said Winch. "Sure, I can go, leaving Charley Peters with full instructions. But I'll have to be back in, say, four hours at latest."

"Joe," he said, "how many friends have you got that we can put on the pay-roll for a few days at twenty-five dollars a day? To stake claims down in the Gulch?"

"Jesus Maria!" gasped Joe. "Twenty-five dollars a day? For each man? There would be one meelion men, Señor Caballero...."

"Take him in tow, Graham! Get a list of names from him, men to be reached in an hour's ride. As many as you can get, twenty or thirty or forty. And get them here ... quick."

Al Blake arrived from the Red Creek Mine. Stringing along after him came a dozen men of his choosing; big, uncouth, unshaved, rough-looking customers to the last man of them and yet ... as Standing and Blake agreed ... all good men! Good to carry out orders; to put up a fight against odds; to hang on and fight to the last ditch. Graham saw to it that every man Jack of them was fed and had his cigar from the Chief's private stock. The men grouped outside and looked at one another, but for the greater part wasted little breath in speculations and questionings, each realizing that his fellows knew as little as himself.

It was a busy morning for Bruce Standing. Yet three[Pg 300] times he found the time ... rather he made it ... to go out to the "hospital" to stand over old Thor and speak softly to him. Thor lay upon a white-enamelled bed; his bed was softened for him by many downy pillows; at the bedside sat Charley Peters, his face as grave, his eye as watchful, as could have been had it been Timber-Wolf himself who lay there. And when Standing came in Thor heard his step and tried to move; tried to lift his poor battered head. But at the master's low voice, "Down, Thor! Down, sir ... good old dog!" Thor lay back and his tired sigh was like the sigh of a man. Standing's big hand rested gently upon the old fellow ... then Standing went out, walking softly and Thor lay still a very long while, waiting for him to come again....

Al Blake left within fifteen minutes of his arrival, a little army of armed men at his back. With him, on the fastest horse in Standing's stables, rode a man whose sole responsibility was to race back with word of conditions. Fully Standing counted on hearing that already at least two claims had been staked. But he was not ready to see Lynette again so soon; he was not ready yet to see Babe Deveril. Never for a single instant since seeing that bit of paper hung to a tree with a girl's mockery upon it, had he doubted that this girl, whom he had thought that he loved, had cast in with the Baby Devil, the two racing side by side to steal Mexicali Joe's gold. He had said to Al Blake:

Attorney Ben Brewster, a man much shaken, arrived in record time. He could scarcely speak a word until Graham poured out for him a generous glass of whiskey. Then he glared at Standing as though he would highly enjoy killing him.

"You've got a fee to pay this trip," he groaned, "that will make you sit up and stretch your eyes! Good God, man...."

"Give him another drink, Graham," said Standing. "He's a lawyer and there's no danger of such getting drunk!... Curse your fees, Brewster. What do I care so you make an iron-clad job of it."

"Otherwise," jeered Standing, "why send for you!... Now shut up, Ben, and get that infected brain of yours working. Here's the tale."

Ben Brewster, a man who knew his business ... and his client ... went into action. That day he took in businesslike shape all possible steps toward forming a new corporation, The Mexicali Joe Gold Mining Company.

During the day many other men came in; among them no less than seventeen swarthy men of Mexicali Joe's breed. Brewster took signatures, and the men, showing their glistening white teeth, knew nothing of what was happening save that each man of them was to draw twenty-five dollars a day for driving a stake and sitting snug over it, rifle in hand and cigarette in mouth! Brewster got other signatures going down to Light Ladies' Gulch and among the men there. In all, he signed names of about sixty men. The Mexicali Joe Gold Mining Company was born. And the greater part of the stock, and the magnificently shining title of president was invested in ... Mexicali Joe! Suddenly, though all day he had been a man as dark-browed as[Pg 302] a thunder-storm, Standing burst out into that golden laughter of his. Not a single share in his name; all immediate expenses to be paid by him, and they were to be heavy; and yet he counted himself the man to draw a full ninety-nine per cent of the dividends of sheer triumph! For it was to be a cold shut-out to Taggart and Gallup and Shipton and all Big Pine! And, most of all, for Babe Deveril and that girl! For early had come back the report from Al Blake: "Neither of them here; no claims staked!"

Standing could only estimate that the girl had misunderstood; that, hearing Joe's description of the place, she had not grasped the true sense of his words. He lingered over the picture of her and Deveril, hastening, driving their stakes somewhere else!

When Mexicali Joe came to understand, after much eloquence from Graham, how matters stood ... how he swaggered! This, a day in a lifetime, was Mexicali Joe's day.

President of a gold-mining company! Mexicali Joe! And of a real mine; for Al Blake had sent back the curt word: "He's got it; he's got a mine that I'd advise you to buy in for a hundred thousand while you can. It may run to anything. The best thing I've seen up here anywhere!"

Mexicali Joe on the high-road to become a millionaire ... through the efforts of Bruce Standing.

To be sure, Joe, a man very profoundly bewildered, more dumfounded even than elated, took never a single step and said never a single word without going first to his friend "Señor Caballero." Before the end of that glorious day Joe was dead-drunk; didn't know "whether he was afoot or horseback." But in his crafty Latin way, he kept his mouth shut.

And then Bruce Standing, with an eye not to further wealth, but toward the confounding of all hopes of such as Young Gallup and Jim Taggart and Babe Deveril ... and a certain girl ... sprang his coup. With Ben Brewster guarding his rear in every advance, he "swallowed whole," as Brewster put it, every bit of available land above and below and on every side of Joe's claims. He recked neither of present difficulties and expenses nor of lawsuits to come. He wanted the land ... and he got it! And he issued his proclamation:

"There's a town there, on Light Ladies' Gulch. You don't see it? It's there!... Graham, get busy! A contractor; lumber; building materials; carpenters! We build a town as big as Big Pine and we build it faster than ever a town grew before! A store, blacksmith shop, hotel. Shacks of all sorts. Graham!"

Graham, like a man with an electric current shot through him, jumped out of his chair.

"Send a man on the run to Big Pine with a message for Young Gallup! And the message is this: 'Bruce Standing promised to pull your damned town down about your ears ... and the pulling has begun!'"

And then took swift dictation. Standing made a budget of fifty thousand dollars, as a "starter." Even Graham wondered what impulses were rioting in his mad heart!

"We want scrapers and ploughs, a crew of road-makers! We build a new road ... on this side of Light Ladies' Gulch! Got the idea, Graham? We cut Big Pine out. We go by them, giving a shorter road to the outside, a better road. We boycott Gallup's dinky town! Keep in mind we'll double that first fifty thousand any time we need to. Get this word around: 'Any man who buys[Pg 304] a nickel's worth of tobacco in Big Pine can't buy anything, even if he has his pockets full of clinking gold, in our town! No man, once seen setting his foot down in Gallup's town, is going to be tolerated two minutes in our town.' Get the idea, Graham?"

Standing smote him then so mightily upon the shoulder that Graham, a small man, went pale, shot through with pain.

CHAPTER XXV

What Bruce Standing could not know was that those few words signed Lynette and saying with such cruel curtness: "I have gone back to Babe Deveril," had been written not by Lynette, but by Deveril himself. Nor could he know that Lynette had not gone freely but under the harsh coercion of four men.

Deveril, when Lynette refused to go with him, had hurried away through the woods, his heart burning with jealous rage. Was the hated Timber-Wolf to win again, not only in the game for gold but in another game which was coming to be the one greatest consideration in Babe Deveril's life?

"Not while I live!" he muttered to himself over and over. And once out of sight of Lynette who still sat bowed over the dog he had struck down, he broke into a run. Jim Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton were not so far away that he could not hope to reach them and to bring them back before Standing returned.

Thus, not over fifteen minutes before Bruce Standing came back, bringing Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe with him, Deveril had appeared before Lynette a second time. And now she leaped to her feet, seeing who his companions were and reading at one quick glance what lay unhidden in their faces. Greed was there and savage gloating and mercilessness; she knew that at least three of those men would stamp her into the ground under their heavy boots if thus they might walk over her body through the golden gates of Mexicali Joe's secret.

"You're arrested!" cried Taggart. "Come, get a move on. We clear out of this on the run!"

"It was you who shot him, not I! And I'll not go with you. In a minute he'll be back...."

Taggart was of no mind for delay and talk; he caught her roughly by the arm. Her eyes went swiftly to Deveril's; of his look she could make nothing. He shrugged and said only:

"Taggart's sheriff; he'll take you along, anyway. You might as well go without a fuss."

Gallup, his face ugly with the emotions swaying him, was at her other side. She looked to the hawk-faced man and then away with a shudder. Then, trying to jerk away, she screamed out:

Half dragging her the first few steps they led her out of camp, down into the cañon and across among the trees. She gave over struggling; they watched her so that she could not call again; Taggart threatened to stuff his dirty bandana handkerchief into her mouth. Deveril alone held back for a little; she did not know what he was doing; did not see him as he wrote in a hand which he strove to give a girlish semblance those few words to which he signed her name. She scarcely marked his delay; she was trying now to think fast and logically.

These men were brutes, all of them; she had had ample evidence of that already and had that evidence been lacking the information was there emblazoned in their faces. Even Babe Deveril, in whom once she had trusted, began to show the brutal lining of his insolent character. And yet need she be afraid of any of them just now? If she openly thwarted them, yes. They would show no mercy to a girl. But at the moment[Pg 307] their thoughts were set not upon her undoing, but upon Mexicali Joe's gold. And she knew where it was and they knew that she knew.... Taggart was speaking, growling into her ear:

"We followed Mexicali; we saw him come up here; Deveril followed him into camp. He told where his gold was. And you heard it all!"

"Well?" said Lynette, striving with herself for calmness. She was thinking: "If only I can have a little time. He will come for me.... If only I can have a little time."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Taggart. "The whole earth ain't Joe's because he picked up a nugget or two. Anybody's got a right to stake a claim; I got a right and so has the boys ... and so have you."

There came a look into Taggart's hard eyes which answered her more eloquently than any words from the man could have done, which put certain knowledge and icy fear into her.

Always, when nervous or frightened, Lynette's laughter came easily to her and now without awaiting any other answer from this man she began laughing in such a fashion as to perplex him and bring a dragging frown across his brows.

She did not appear to hear; she was thinking over and over: "Bruce Standing will come after us as soon as he finds I am gone. I must gain a little time, that is all."

If only she could make them think that the gold was somewhere near by so that Standing must readily find them. But now Deveril had rejoined them and she recalled how he had heard something, though not all, of Joe's triumphant announcement. For Joe had shouted out at the top of his voice, to catch and hold Timber-Wolf's attention: "Light Ladies' Gulch!" Deveril had heard that; and Light Ladies' Gulch was many miles away, down toward Big Pine....

Deveril was looking at her with eyes which were bright and hard and told no tales of the man's thoughts.

"This lovely and altogether too charming young woman," Deveril said lightly, his eyes still upon her, though his words were for the others, "has a mind of her own. It would be as well to hear what she has to say and learn what she intends to do."

"Think that out for yourself, Mr. Taggart. Bruce Standing knows where the gold is now; both you and I know the sort of man he is and we can imagine that if he drives the first stake he will see to it that he takes the whole thing. Do you really think that after I came into this country for gold myself I am going to miss my one chance now?" She puzzled them again with her laughter and said: "Not that it would not be a simple matter to trick you, were I minded to let my own chances go for the sake of spoiling yours; Mexicali Joe fooled you so easily."

"After you came rushing upon me as if you meant to tear me to pieces, frightening the wits out of me."

"If I told you now, then what? You'd desert me in[Pg 309] a minute; you would race on ahead; when I caught up with you there would be nothing left."

"And give you the chance to send us to the wrong place, were you so minded, so that you could slip off alone and be first at the other spot! Very clever, Miss Lynette, but that won't work. You go with us."

And all the while she was trying so hard to think; and all the while listening so eagerly for a certain glorious, golden voice shouting after her. Deveril had heard part of Joe's exclamation....

"Yes!" Here was Young Gallup speaking, his covetous soul aflame. "We know that; Deveril heard. But Light Ladies' Gulch is forty miles long. Where abouts in the gulch?"

She told herself that she would die before she led them aright. And yet she realized to the full the danger to herself if she tricked them as Joe had done and they discovered her trickery before Standing came. Yet most of all was she confident that he would come and swiftly.... Joe's words still rang in her memory; he had told first of the Red Cliffs, how he had found color there last year; how he had made prospect holes; how his real mine lay removed three or four miles. Still she temporized, saying:

"Bruce Standing and Billy Winch and Joe have horses. We are on foot. Tell me how we can hope to come to the spot first?"

"We'll have horses ourselves in a jiffy," said Taggart. "Stepping lively, we're not more than a couple of hours from a cattle outfit over the ridge. We'll get all the horses we want and we'll ride like hell!"

"You know where the Red Cliffs are? At the foot of the cliffs I'll show you Joe's prospect holes...."

Deveril, the keenest of them all, the one who knew her best, suspected her from the beginning. His eyes never once left her face.

"How do we know," he said quietly, "that there's any gold there? That Joe's gold is not somewhere else?"

"You will have to make your own decision," she told him as coolly as she could. "If you think that I am mistaken or that I am trying to play with you as Joe did, you are free to go where you please."

Taggart began cursing; his grip tightened on her arm so that he hurt her terribly as he shouted at her:

"I'll give you one word of warning, little one! If you put up a game on us now, you cut your own throat. In the first place I'll make it my business that if we get shut out, you get shut out along with us. And in the second place when I'm through with you no other man in the world will have any use for you. Got that?"

She knew what he had done to Mexicali Joe; she could guess what other unthinkable things he would have done. And she knew that if now she tricked Jim Taggart and he found her out ... before Bruce Standing came ... she could only pray to die.

And yet at this, the supreme test in her life, she held steady to a swiftly taken purpose. She would not put the game into these men's hands. And she held steadfastly to her certainty, knowing the man, that Bruce Standing would come. Therefore, though her face went a little pale, and her mouth was so dry that she did not dare speak, she shrugged her shoulders.

And thus Lynette, accepting her own grave risk with clear-eyed comprehension and yet with unswerving determination, led these four men to a spot where she knew that they would not find that gold for which every man of them had striven so doggedly; thus it was she who made it possible for Bruce Standing to be before all others and to triumph and strike the death-blow to Big Pine and to begin that relentless campaign which was to end in humbling his ancient enemy, Young Gallup. Yet there was little exultation in Lynette's heart, but a growing fear, when, after hours of furious haste, she and the four men came at last into Light Ladies' Gulch and to the base of the towering red cliffs.

Cliff Shipton knew more of gold-mining than any of the others and Lynette watched him narrowly as he went up and down under the high cliffs. And she knew that she in turn was watched; in the first excitement of coming to the long-sought spot she had hoped that she might escape. But both Taggart and Deveril followed her at every step with their eyes.

Desperately she clung to her assurance that Bruce Standing would come for her. He had said that he would come "though it were ten thousand mile." He might have difficulties in finding her; she might have to wait a little while, an hour or two, or three hours. But it remained that he was a man to surmount obstacles insurmountable to other men; a man to pin faith upon. Yet time passed and he did not come.

They found indications of Mexicali Joe's labors, rock ledges at which he had chipped and hammered, prospect holes lower on the steep slope. And Cliff Shipton acknowledged that "the signs were all right." But they[Pg 312] did not find the gold and they did not find anything to show that Joe or another had worked here recently.

"He'd be crafty enough," muttered Gallup, "to hide his real signs. We got to look around every clump of brush and in every gully where maybe he's covered things up.... You're sure," and he whipped about upon Lynette, "that you got straight all he said?"

"I'm sure," said Lynette. And she was afraid that the men would hear the beating of her heart.

"I am going up to the top of the cliffs again and see what I can see," she said.

"If there's gold anywhere it's down here," said Shipton. "There's nothing on the top."

She turned. Deveril was watching her with keen, shrewd eyes. Taggart took a quick stride toward her, his hand lifted to drag her back. Deveril stepped before him, saying coolly:

"I'll go up with her, Taggart. And I guess you know how I stand on this, don't you?"

"All right," conceded the sheriff. "Only keep your eye peeled. I'm getting leery."

It was a long climb to the cliff tops and neither Lynette nor Deveril at her heels spoke during the climb. They were silent when at last they stood side by side near the tethered horses. Deveril's eyes were upon her pale face; her own eyes ran swiftly, eagerly across the deep cañon to the wooded lands beyond. She prayed with the fervor of growing despair for the sight of a certain[Pg 313] young blond giant of a man racing headlong to her relief.

"Well?" said Deveril presently in a tone so strange, so vibrant with suppressed emotion that he made her start and drew her wondering eyes swiftly. "What are you looking for now?"

"Is the gold here, Lynette? Or is it some miles away, with Bruce Standing already sinking his claws into it, Standing style?"

Again her eyes left him, returning across the gorge to the farther wooded lands. Over there was a road, the road into which she and Babe Deveril had turned briefly that night, a thousand years ago, when they had fled from Big Pine in the dark; a road which led to Bruce Standing's headquarters. From the top of the cliffs she caught a glimpse of the road, winding among the trees; her eyes were fixedly upon it; her lips were moving softly, though the words were not for Babe Deveril's ears.

"Lynette," he said in that strangely tense and quiet voice, "if you have been fool enough to try to put something over on this crowd.... Can't you guess how you'd fare in Jim Taggart's hands?"

She was not looking at him; she did not appear to mark his words. He saw a sudden change in her expression; she started and the blood rushed back into her cheeks and her eyes brightened. He looked where she was looking. Far across the cañon, rising up among the trees, was a cloud of dust. Some one was riding there, riding furiously....

Together they watched, waiting for that some one to appear in the one spot where the winding road could be glimpsed through the trees. And in a moment they saw not one man only, but a dozen or a score of men,[Pg 314] men stooping in their saddles and riding hard, veiled in the rising dust puffing up under their horses' flying feet. Now and then came a pale glint of the sun striking upon the rifles which, to the last man, they carried. They came into view with a rush, were gone with a rush. The great cloud of dust rose and thinned and disappeared.

"That road will bring them down into Light Ladies' Gulch where it makes the wide loop about three miles from here," said Deveril. "Have you an idea who they are, Lynette?"

"I think that I do understand," he told her, with a flash of anger. "Those are Standing's men and they are riding, armed, like the mill-tails of hell. Listen to me while you've got the chance! That's not the first bunch of men who have ridden over there like that to-day. Two hours ago, when you went down the cliffs with the others and I stopped up here, I saw the same sort of thing happening. If you're so innocent," he sneered at her, "I'll read you the riddle. I've told you those are Standing's men; then why the devil are they riding like that and in such numbers? They're going straight down into the Gulch where the gold is while you hold us back, up here. And Standing is paying off an old grudge and jamming more gold into his bulging pockets.... And you've got some men to reckon with in ten minutes who'll make you sorry that you were ever born a girl!"

He failed to catch just what she was thinking. She refused to believe that Bruce Standing, instead of coming to her had raced instead to Mexicali Joe's gold; that instead of scattering his men across fifty miles of [Pg 315]country seeking her, he was massing them at a new gold-mine. Bruce Standing was not like that! She cried it passionately within her spirit. She had stood loyally by him; she had, at all costs, kept her word to him ... she had come to believe in his love for her and to long for his return....

"If you saw men before ... if you thought the thing that you think now ... why didn't you rush on after them? It's not true!"

"I didn't rush after them," he returned curtly, "because I'd be a fool for my pains and would only give that wolf-devil another chance to laugh in my face. For if he's got this lead on us ... why, then, the game is his."

"If you will watch you will see. I'll bet a thousand dollars he has a hundred men down there already and that they'll be riding by all day; they'll be staking claims which he will buy back from them at the price of a day's work; he'll work a clean shut-out for Gallup and Taggart. That's what he'd give his right hand to do. You watch a minute."

Before long Lynette saw another cloud of dust; this time three or four men rode into sight and sped away after the others; before the dust had cleared another two or three men rode by. And at last Lynette felt despair in her heart, rising into her throat, choking her. For she understood that in her hour of direst need Bruce Standing had failed her.

"Taggart will be wanting you in a minute," said Deveril. He spoke casually; he appeared calm and untroubled; he took out tobacco and papers and began rolling a cigarette. But Lynette saw that the man was atremble with rage. "Before you go down to him, tell[Pg 316] me: did you know what you were doing when you brought us to the wrong place?"

"Yes!" It was scarcely above a whisper, yet she strove with all her might to make it defiant. She was afraid and yet she fought with herself, seeking to hide her fear from him.

He shrugged elaborately, as though the matter were of no great interest and no longer concerned him.

"Then your blood be on your own head," he said carelessly. "I, for one, will not raise my hand against you; what Taggart does to you concerns only you and Taggart."

She called to him with a new voice; she was afraid and no longer strove to hide her fear. Until now she had carried on, head high, in full confidence; confidence in a man. And that man, like Babe Deveril before him, had thought first of gold instead of her. Bruce Standing had spoken of love and had turned aside for gold; with both hands full of the yellow stuff he thought only of more to be had, and not of her.

"Babe Deveril! Listen to me! I have been a fool ... oh, such a fool! I knew so little of the real world and of men, and I thought that I knew it all. My mother had me raised in a convent, thinking thus to protect me against all the hardships she had endured; but she did not take into consideration that her blood and Dick Brooke's blood was my blood! This was all a glorious adventure to me; I thought ... I thought I could do anything; I was not afraid of men, not of you nor of Bruce Standing nor of any man. Now I am afraid ... of Jim Taggart! You helped me to run from him once; help me again. Now. Let me have one of the horses ... let me go...."

All the while he stood looking at her curiously.[Pg 317] Toward the end there was a look in his eyes which hinted at a sudden spiritual conflagration within.

"You're not used to this sort of thing?" And when she shook her head vehemently, he added sternly: "And you are not Bruce Standing's? And have never been?"

"Lynette!" he said eagerly. "Lynette, I love you! To-day you have stood between me and a fortune, and I tell you ... I love you! Since first you came to the door of my cabin I have loved you, you girl with the daring eyes!"

"Tell me, Lynette," he said sternly, still holding her hands tight in his, "is there any chance for me? I had never thought to marry; but now I'd rather have you mine than have all the gold that ever came out of the earth. Tell me and tell me the truth; we know each other rather well for so few days, Lynette. So tell me; tell me, Lynette."

"Let me go," she pleaded. "Let me have a horse and go. Before they come up for me...."

"Neither for you nor for any other man.... I have had enough of all men.... Let me go, Babe Deveril!"

"I don't know ... I can't understand men ... I thought there never was another man like him, a hard[Pg 318] man who could be tender, a man who ... I don't know; I want to go."

"Go?" There came a sudden gleam into his eyes. "And where? Back to Bruce Standing maybe?"

"No! Anywhere on earth but back to him. To the stage which will be leaving Big Pine in a little while; back to a land where trains run, trains which can take me a thousand miles away. Oh, Babe Deveril...."

"Go to the horses," he commanded. "Untie all four. I'll ride with you to the stage ... and we'll take the other horses along!"

She had scarcely hoped for this; for an instant she stood staring at him, half afraid that he was jeering at her. Then she ran to the horses and began wildly untying their ropes. Deveril, smoking his cigarette, appeared on the edge of the cliff for Taggart to see, and called down carelessly:

"Keep your eye on that girl. Shipton thinks she's fooled us. I want her down here."

Deveril laughed at him and turned away. Once out of Taggart's sight he ran. Lynette already was in the saddle; he mounted and took from her the tie ropes of the other horses.

"On our way," he said crisply. "They'll be after us like bees out of a jostled hive."

They did not ride into Big Pine, but into the road two or three miles below where the stage would pass. Deveril hailed the stage when it came and the driver took Lynette on as his solitary passenger. At the last minute she caught Babe Deveril's hand in both of hers.

"There is good and bad in you, Babe Deveril, as I suppose there is in all of us. But you have been good to me! I will never forget how you have stood my friend twice; I will always remember that you were a man; a man who never did little, mean things. And I shall always thank God for that memory. And now, good-by, Babe Deveril and good luck go with you!"

Suddenly she looked wearier than he had ever seen her even during their days and nights together in the mountains. She looked a poor little broken-hearted girl; there was a quick gathering of tears in her eyes, which she strove to smile away. But despite the smile, the tears ran down. She waved her hand; the stage driver cracked his long whip.... Deveril stood in the dusty road, his hat in his hand, staring down a winding roadway. A clatter of hoofs, a rattle of wheels, a mist of dust ... and Lynette was gone.

CHAPTER XXVI

Deveril went back to his horse, mounting listlessly like a very tired man. The spring had gone out of his step and something of the elasticity out of that ever-young spirit which had always been his no matter from what quarter blew the variable winds of chance. Lynette was gone and he could not hold back his thoughts from winging back along the trail he and she had trod together; there had been the time, and now he knew it, when all things were possible; the time before Bruce Standing came into her life, when Babe Deveril, had he then understood both himself and her, might have won a thing more golden than any man's mere gold. In his blindness he had judged her the light adventuress which she seemed; now that it was given him to understand that in Lynette Brooke he had found a pure-hearted girl whose inherited adventuresome blood had led her into tangled paths, he understood that in her there had come that one girl who comes once to all men ... and that she had passed on and out of his life.

He caught up the reins of the horse she had left behind. His face grew grim; he still had Jim Taggart to deal with and, therefore, it was as well to take this horse and the others back to Big Pine and leave them there for Taggart. For the first thing which would suggest itself to the enraged sheriff would be to press a charge against him of horse stealing, and in this country horse thieves were treated with no gentle consideration.

Where? It did not matter. There was nothing left for him in these mountains; Bruce Standing had the gold and the girl was on the stage.

But in his bleak broodings there remained one gleam of gloating satisfaction: he had tricked Standing out of the girl! That Lynette already loved his kinsman or at the least stood upon the very brink of giving her heart unreservedly into his keeping, Deveril's keen eyes, the eyes of jealous love, had been quick to read. It did not once suggest itself to him that Standing could by any possibility have failed to love Lynette. The two had been for days together, alone in the mountains; why should Standing have kept her and have been gentle with her, as he must have been, save for the one reason that he loved her? Further, what man could have lived so long with Lynette of the daring eyes and not love her? And he, Babe Deveril, had stolen her away from Bruce Standing, had tricked him with a pencil scrawl, had lost Lynette to him for all time. The stage carrying her away now was as inevitable an instrument in the hand of fate as death itself.

He turned back for the other horses which he had tethered by the roadside and led them on toward Big Pine.

It was not for a man such as Babe Deveril to know clearly; for love is winged with unselfishness and self-sacrifice. And yet, after his own fashion, he loved her and would love her always, though other pretty faces came and went and he laughed into other eyes. She was lost to him; there was the one great certainty like a rock wall across his path. And she had said at the parting ... her last words to him were to ring in his memory for many a long day ... that there was both good and bad in him; and she chose to remember the good! He tried to laugh at that; what did he care for good and bad? He, a man who went his way and made reckoning to none?

And she had said that she knew him for a man; one who, whatever else he might have done, had never stooped to a mean, contemptible act; she thought of him and would always think of him as a man who, though he struck unrighteous blows, dealt them in the open, man-style.... And yet ... the one deed of a significance so profound that it had directed the currents of three lives, that writing of seven words, that signing of her name under them....

"I am glad that I did that!" he triumphed. And gladdest of all, in his heart, was he that Lynette did not know ... would never know.

Thus Babe Deveril, riding with drooping head, found certain living fires among the ashes of dead hopes: A row to come with Taggart? He could look forward to it with fierce eagerness. Standing and Lynette separated; vindictive satisfaction there. He'd got his knife in Standing's heart at last! He'd like to wait a year or a dozen until some time Lynette forgot and another man came despite her sweeping avowal and she married; he would like then to come back to Bruce Standing and tell him the fool he had been and how it had been none other than Baby Devil who had knifed him.

... And yet, all the while, Lynette's farewell words were in his mind. And he saw before him, wherever he looked, her face as he had seen it last, her eyes blurred with her tears. And he fought stubbornly with himself against the insistent admission: It was Babe Deveril and none other who, saying that he loved her, had put those tears there. Good and bad? What the devil had he to do with sticking those labelling tags upon what he or others did?

Bruce Standing was still in his office. He was a man who had won another victory and yet one who had the[Pg 323] taste of despair in his mouth. Gallup's town was doomed; it was one of those little mountain towns which had already outlived its period of usefulness and now with a man like Timber-Wolf waging merciless war against it, Big Pine had its back broken almost at the first savage blow struck. But Standing strode up and down restlessly like a man broken by defeat rather than one whose standards went flying on triumphantly; he knew that a new rival town, his own town, was springing into being in a few hours; he had the brief satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping an ancient promise and striking a body blow from which there would be no recovery, making Big Pine take the count and drop out of all men's consideration; he knew, from having seen it many times, that pitiful spectacle which a dead and deserted town presents; so, briefly, just as his kinsman was doing at the same moment, he extracted what satisfaction he could from the hour. He even had word sent to Gallup: "I am killing your town very much as a man may kill an ugly snake. I shall see to it that goods are sold cheaper here than at your store; there will be a better hotel here, with a better shorter road leading to it. And I will build cabins as fast as they are called for, to house deserters from your dying town. And I will see to it that men from my town never set foot in your town. This from me, Young Gallup: 'For the last time I have set foot upon your dung heap. I'm through with you and the world is through with you. You're dead and buried.'"

During the day, word came to him that several men and one girl had been seen hastily occupied at the foot of the Red Cliffs; the girl Lynette; one of the men, Deveril. And it seemed very clear to Standing that Lynette had led Deveril and the others in hot haste to the Red Cliffs only because she had misunderstood[Pg 324] Mexicali Joe's directions, confused by his mention of these cliffs where he had prospected last year.

"I'll go get them." Standing told himself a score of times. "Just as soon as I know how to handle them. When I know how I can hurt him most and her...."

Mexicali Joe swelled about the landscape all day like a bursting balloon, a man swept up in a moment from a condition of less than mediocrity to one, as Mexicali regarded it, of monumental magnificence and the highest degree of earthly joy. Graham could not keep him out of Standing's office; the second time he came in Timber-Wolf lifted him upon his boot hurling him out through the door and promising him seven kinds of ugly death if he ever came back. Whereupon Mexicali Joe, shaking his head, went away without grumbling; for in the sky of his adoration stood just two: God and Bruce Standing.

Graham was still laughing, when another man rode up to the door, and Graham on the instant became alert and concerned. He hastened to Standing, saying quickly:

"Mr. Deveril to see you. He has ridden his horse nearly to death. And I don't like the look on his face."

"Show him in!" shouted Standing. "You fool ... don't you know he's the one man in the world...."

Graham hurried out. Deveril, his face pale and hard, his eyes burning as though the man were fever-ridden, came into the room. The door closed after him.

"Not so well, thanks," retorted Deveril with an attempt at his characteristic inconsequential insolence. "Here's hoping the same to you ... damn you!"

"I'll say it," Deveril muttered. "But first I'll say this, though I fancy it goes without saying: there is no man on earth I hate as I hate you. As far as you and I[Pg 325] are concerned I'd rather see you dead than any other sight I'll ever see. And now, in spite of all that, I've come to do you a good turn."

Standing scoffed at him, crying out: "I want none of your good turns; I am satisfied to have your hate."

"Love her?" cried Standing. "Rather I hate the ground she walks on! She is your kind, Baby Devil; not mine." And he laughed his scorn of her. But now there was no chiming of golden bells in that great volume of laughter but rather a sinister ring like the angry clash of iron. All the while Babe Deveril looked him straight in the eye ... and understood!

"For once you lie! You love her and what is more ... and worse!... she loves you! And that is why...."

"Loves me? Are you drunk, man, or crazy? Loves me and leaves me for you; leads you and your crowd to the Gulch, trying to stake on Joe's claim, trying to...."

"She did not leave you for me! I took Taggart and Gallup to her, and Taggart put her under arrest ... for shooting you! And she did not lead us to the spot where she knew Joe's claim was; she made fools of us and led us to the Red Cliffs, miles away!"

Deveril strode by him to a table on which lay some letter paper and wrote slowly and with great care, laboring over each letter:

And then he threw the pencil down and stood looking at Standing. And he saw an expression of bewilderment, and then one of amazement wiping it out, and then a great light leaping into Standing's eyes.

"I have told you that she loves you. So it is for her happiness, much as I hate you, that I have told you.... She, thinking that you preferred gold to her, has just gone out on the down stage...."

"By the Lord, man," and now Standing's voice rang out joyously, clear and golden once more, "you've done a wonderful thing to-day! I wonder if I could have done what you are doing? By thunder, Babe Deveril, you should be killed for the thing you did ... but you've wiped it out. After this ... need there be hatred between us?"

He put out his hand. Deveril drew back and went out through the door. His horse, wet with sweat and flecked with foam, was waiting for him. As he set foot into the stirrup he called back in a voice which rang queerly in Standing's ears:

"She doesn't know I wrote that. Unless it's necessary ... You see, I'd like her to think as well...." He didn't finish, but rode away. And as long as he was in sight he sat very erect in the saddle and sent back for any listening ears a light and lively whistled tune.

The stage, carrying its one passenger came rocking and clattering about the last bend in the grade where the road crosses that other road which comes down from the mountains farther to the east, from the region of Bruce Standing's holdings. The girl's figure drooped listlessly; her eyes were dry and tired and blank with[Pg 327] utter hopelessness. Long ago the garrulous driver had given over trying to talk with her. Now she was stooping forward, so that she saw nothing in all the dreary world but the dusty dashboard before her ... and in her fancy, moving across this like pictures on a screen, the images of faces ... Bruce Standing's face when he had chained her; when he had cried out that he loved her....

The driver slammed on his brakes, muttering; the wheels dragged; the stage came to an abrupt halt. She looked up, without interest. And there in the road, so close to the wheel that she could have put out a hand and touched him, was Bruce Standing.

She saw that he had a rifle in his hand; that a buckboard with a restive span of colts was at the side of the road. The driver was cursing; he understood that Standing, taking no chances, had meant to stop him in any case.

Standing ignored him. His arms were out; there was the gladdest look in his eyes Lynette had ever seen in any man's; when he called to her he sent a thrill like a shiver through her. He had come for her; he wanted her....

"You bet your sweet life I'll drive on!" the driver burst out. And to Standing: "Stand aside."

Then Standing put his hands out suddenly, dropping his rifle in the road, and caught Lynette to him, lifting her out of her seat despite her efforts to cling to the stage, and took up his rifle again, saying sternly to the stage-driver:

"No!" screamed Lynette, struggling against the one[Pg 328] hand restraining her ... and against herself! "He can't do this ... don't let him...."

But in the end she knew how it would be. The stage-driver was no man to stand out against Bruce Standing ... she wondered if anywhere on earth there lived a man to gainsay him when that light was in his eyes and that tone vibrated in his voice.

"He's got the drop on me ... he'd drop me dead soon as not.... I'll go, Miss; but I'll send back word...." And Lynette and Bruce Standing, in the gathering dusk, were alone again in the quiet lands at the bases of the mountains.

"Love! You talk of love! And you leave me in the hands of those men while you go looking for gold!"

"No," he said, "it wasn't that. I thought that you had no further use for me; that you loved Deveril; that you had gone back to him; that you were trying to lead him and the rest to Joe's gold; that...."

There was now no sign of weariness in a pair of gray eyes which flashed in hot anger.

"What right had you to think that of me?" she challenged him. "That I was a liar, breaking a promise I had made; and worse than a liar, to betray a confidence? What right have you to think a thing like that, Bruce Standing ... and talk to me of love!"

He could have told her; he could have quoted to her that message which had been left behind, signed with her name. But, after all, in the end he had Babe Deveril to think of, a man who had shown himself a man, who had done his part for love of her, whose one reward if Bruce Standing himself were a man, must lie in the meagre consolation that Lynette held him above so[Pg 329] petty an act as that one which he had committed. So for a moment Standing was silent; and then he could only say earnestly:

"I am sorry, Lynette. I wronged you and I was a fool and worse. But there were reasons why I thought that.... And after all we have misunderstood each other; that is all. Joe's gold is still Joe's gold; I have made it safe for him and not one cent of it is mine or will ever be mine...."

"That, at least, I can make you believe." He was very stern-faced now and began wondering if Deveril had been mad when he had told him that Lynette loved him. How could Deveril know that? There was little enough of the light of love in her eyes now. And yet....

"Are you willing to come back to headquarters with me?" he asked gently. "There, at least, you can learn that I have told you the truth about Mexicali Joe's gold. No matter how things go, girl, I don't want you to think of me that I did a trick like that ... forgetting you to go money-grabbing...."

"You can make me come," she said bitterly. "You have put a chain on me before now. But you can never make me love you, Bruce Standing."

Now she saw in his face a look which stirred her to the depths; a look of profound sadness.

"No," he said, "I'll never put chain on you again, girl; I'll never lift my hand to make you do anything on earth; I would rather die than force you to anything. But I shall go on loving you always. And now," and for the first time she heard him pleading! "is it so great a thing that I ask? If you will not love me, at least I want you to think as well of me as you can. That is[Pg 330] only justice, girl; and you are very just. If you will only come with me and learn from Mexicali Joe himself that I have touched and shall touch no single ounce of his gold."

She knew that he was speaking truth; and yet she could not admit it to him ... since she would not admit it to herself! And she wanted to believe, and yet told herself that she would never believe. She was glad that he was not dragging her back with him as she had been so certain that he would ... and she did not know that she was not sorry.

"Yes," she said stiffly. And then she laughed nervously, saying in a hard, suppressed voice: "What choice have I, after all? The stage has gone and I have to go somewhere and find a stage again or a horse...."

"No. That is not necessary. If you will not come with me freely, I will take you now where you wish; to overtake the stage."

And thus, when already it was hard enough for her, he unwittingly made it harder. She wanted to go ... she did not want to go ... most of all she did not want him to know what she wanted or did not want. She cried out quickly:

"Let us go then! I don't believe you! And, if you dare let me talk alone with Mexicali Joe, I shall know you for what you are!"

Lynette was in Bruce Standing's study. He had gone for Mexicali Joe. She looked about her, seeing on all hands as she had seen during their racing drive, an expression of the man himself. Here was a vital centre of enormous activities; Standing was its very heart. The biggest man she had ever known or dreamed of[Pg 331] knowing; one who did big things; one who was himself untrammelled by the dictates and conventions of others. And in her heart she did believe every word that he spoke; and thus she knew that he, this man among men, loved her!... And she loved him! She knew that; she had known it ... how long? Perhaps with clear definiteness for the first time while she spoke of him with Deveril, yearning for his coming; certainly when she had started at the sight of him at the stage wheel. So she held at last that it was for no selfish mercenary gain that he had been so long coming to her, but rather because he had lost faith in her, thinking ill of her. That was what hurt; that was what held her back from his arms, since she would not admit that he could love her truly and misdoubt her at the same time. For certainly where one loved as she herself could love, one gave all, even unto the last dregs of loyal, confident faith. How confident all day she had been that he would come to her!

Lynette, restless, walked up and down, back and forth through the big rooms, waiting. Her wandering eyes were everywhere ... upon only one of the shining table tops was a scrap of paper. In her abstraction she glanced at it. Her own name! Written as though signed to a note.

In a flash her quickened fancies pictured much of all that had happened: Deveril to-day had told Standing she was going out on the stage; Deveril had told Standing all that had happened ... because Deveril, too, loved her and knew that she loved his kinsman. She recalled now how Deveril had stopped a little while in camp after Taggart had dragged her away. So Deveril had left this note behind? And Standing knew now; he had said there were reasons why he had been so sure she had gone to Deveril. She understood how now[Pg 332] it would be with him; Deveril had told him everything and he, accepting a rich, free gift from the hand of a man he hated was not the man in turn to speak ill of one who had striven to make restitution, though by speaking the truth he might gain everything! These were men, these two; and to be loved by two such men was like having the tribute of kings.... She heard Standing at the door, bringing Mexicali Joe. There was a little fire in the fireplace; she ran to it and dropped the paper into the flames behind the big log. The door opened to Standing's hand. At his heels she saw Mexicali Joe.

"No!" she cried, and he saw and marvelled at the new, shining look in her eyes; a look which made him stop, his heart leaping as he cried out wonderingly:

"Don't bring Joe in! I don't want to talk with him; I want your word, just yours alone, on everything!"

Now it was Mexicali Joe who was set wondering. For Standing, with a sudden vigorous sweep of his arm, slammed the door in Joe's perplexed face and came with swift eager strides to Lynette.

"It is I who have been of little faith and disloyal," she said softly. "I was ungrateful enough to forget how you were big enough to take my unproven word that it was not I who shot you, a thing I could never prove! And yet I asked proof of you! I should have known all the time that ... 'though it were ten thousand mile....'"

She was smiling now and yet her eyes were wet. She lifted them to his that he might look down into them, through them into her heart.

"Let me say this ... first ..." she ran on hastily. "Babe Deveril saved me the second time to-day from Taggart. And he told you where to find me. I think that he has made amends."

"He wiped his slate clean," said Standing heartily. "Henceforth I am no enemy of his. But it is not of Deveril now that we must talk. Girl, can't you see...."

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