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...."
And he, too, was wondering about Babe Deveril!
"We go this way," he said. "I'll lead; you follow."
"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.
She only laughed at him.
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.
"Here we stop," said Standing abruptly. "Get down."
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:
"Oh, it is beautiful here!" ...
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....
"Come on!"
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 ahair of her head! Almost ...almostit lay within her to whisper "Poor fellow!" And if only Bruce Standing could have known that!...
He led the way. She followed, since there was nothing else to think of doing.
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 wassuch 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:
"This is as far as we go."
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 sostubbornly 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:
"When all the tavern is prepared within,Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"
"When all the tavern is prepared within,Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"
"When all the tavern is prepared within,Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"
"When all the tavern is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"
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?'"
She thought that she heard him stifle a chuckle!
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 theunreality 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?
"I'm hungry," said Standing. "As hungry as a bear."
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 eventouched 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?"
"He told me that one."
"And did he tell you the sequel? How I squared with him?"
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.
He laughed at her—become suddenly harsh.
"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 airthrough 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?"
"Yes!" she cried out at him. "Yes! I am not afraid of you, Bruce Standing!"
"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...."
"But you won't!" she dared fling at him. "And that is why I am not afraid!"
"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 adozen 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:
"Watch her, Thor! Watch her!"
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?"
And she cried quickly:
"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-outugly 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.
And Bruce Standing, regarding her fixedly, demanded sharply:
"Well, what is it?"
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 someanswer, and so at last she prefaced her reply by asking him:
"You say that we are not on your land?"
"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?"
She, too, rose swiftly.
"Yes!"
He took up his rifle, caught her hand and extinguished the candle.
"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 inlying 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 andanother man caught up with Joe at his cabin; they made him bring them here ... to show them his gold ... Taggart threatened him with torture...."
"Come! Hurry! Why in hell's name didn't you tell me?"
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.
"Don't you move from that bunk until I get back!" Standing told her sternly.
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.
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! Sheshuddered. 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!" she said quietly. And again: "Thor. Good old Thor. Good old dog!"
... Thor had set her down as an enemy; his master'senemy; 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:
"No, Thor! No! No, I tell you!"
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.
"Watch it, Thor!" she cried out loudly. "Watch it, sir!"
The big dog stared at her; at the fallen morsels; back at her, plainly at loss. And then again, more sharply, she commanded him:
"Watch it, Thor!... Lie down, Thor!"
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 makethat 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'samigo, 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:
"This time, I tell you the true! I tell you ever'thing...."
"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.
"I tell you the true!" he screamed. "This time, before God, I tell——"
"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.
"My God!" roared Standing. "My God!... You, Jim Taggart!..."
Shipton's rifle stood in a corner; Shipton, as lithe as a cat, leaped for it. Gallup's was in his hand; he whippedit 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 incongruouslispingwhich 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 youoncewere,before you went yellow clean through ... and I'll show you, yourself, 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, inlessthan tenseconds 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 yourchance, Jim Taggart! Your lastchance! To fight it out, or say, forthesemen 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 smashthat 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!'"
"By God...."
"Yes, Jim Taggart, ... by God, you're a dirty 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 guninto 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 allthese 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 againstit. 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.
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 flungher 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?
"Back!" he stormed at her. "Back!"
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;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 ofthe 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....
She had not meant to speak, but now she cried out hotly:
"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....
"Liar!" he flung at her. "To lie about it ... that's worse than the shot...."
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.
"I could shoot you now ... with no one to see...."
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 feelthe 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...."