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 shemusthasten 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 alooflairs 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, hehad 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 asloyally 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; shecaught 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.
"You have been cruel...."
He mocked her with his haggard eyes.
"That," she ran on swiftly, "is what you expected me to say to you, Bruce Standing, that you have beencruel! 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 itseemedto 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.Hadshe smiled? In thisuncertain 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.
"When I am in need of your help ... you who shot me...."
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 turnedyour 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...."
Again he demanded fiercely:
"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...."
"But you had the revolver in your hand as you went through the window!"
"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 carryherself like one; she had yet to show the first streak of yellow which is in the warp and woof of lying souls.
But Lynette curbed her quick temper and said only:
"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!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?"
"I have my own idea about both," he said curtly. And had nothing to add.
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.
"It's a strange thing that you came back," said Standing.
"Where better had I to go?"
"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.
"I have no greater liking for Sheriff Taggart than you have," she said.
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. Hebegan 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 herloose 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!"
He stared at her unsmilingly for a long time.
"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...."
"Unless ...what?" asked Lynette.
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....
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?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 toknow! 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....
"Sh! Come here!"
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.
"Who are you?" her own whisper answered him.
"Is Standing in there?"
"Who are you?" she insisted.
There was a pause, a silence; a long silence. Then:
"Come with me ... just a few feet. So we won't be overheard."
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, thatinborn desireto 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!"
"You're a game kid! Dead game and I don't mind saying so!"
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."
"Well? What can I do for you, Mr. 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?"
"I've seen Babe Deveril. He's told me all about everything."
"Babe Deveril! When? Where is he?"
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:
"Well?"
"I've got to talk fast!" growled Taggart. "He's in there, I know. Is he hurt?"
"You know that he is...."
"I don't mean that shot at Gallup's ... that you gave him...."
"I did not shoot him!" she cried out hotly, sick of accusation.
Taggart sneered at her, muttering threateningly:
"You did! For I saw you! I was right there, close by...."
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...."
"You say you saw me!" gasped Lynette. "You!"
"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 himhardfor 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!
"Where is he?" she demanded swiftly. "When did you see him? Where has he gone?"
"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."
"But now," demanded Lynette. "Now!Where is he?"
"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."
Underfoot, all this time, Lynette felt Bruce Standing's rifle....
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 masterartist 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!
"Well?" said Taggart.
"Suppose I were fool enough to refuse what you ask?"
"Then you'd go to jail as sure as hell! It's you or him! And I guess I know the answer."
Then Lynette said hurriedly:
"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...."
"There's no sense in that!"
"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.
"By God!" he shouted.
He let her go and sought the rifle. She was first to find it and put it into his searching hand.
"He is a contemptible coward!" she cried. "As if...."
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:
"Come ahead, Taggart! I'm waiting and ready for you! Come ahead!"
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 avoice 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.
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:
"I am tired and sleepy. I am going to sleep."
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 suchsuddenness 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? Shewasafraid of him.
"You told me that I might go! Where I pleased, when I pleased!"
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.
There was a boarded-up window. A thin slit of light showed.
"We breakfast and go," he told her.
"And if I refuse to go with you?"
"I have my chain and my good right arm!"
Then, as once before, tingling with anger born of foreseen humiliation, she cried out:
"I hate you, brute that you are!"
"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:
"I love you!"
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;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!"
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 hispurpose. 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 thefirst 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.
"Yes," he said. "At least, I think so."
"Is he that kind of man?"
Now his eyes were keen and hard upon hers.
"I begin to think that he is, girl," he said shortly. "Why?"
She shrugged and again turned away.
He lumbered to his feet. Thor, knowing where he was going, barked and leaped ahead.
"Come, I'll show you where we pitch camp."
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 inher 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 cavemade 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:
"At least I have two hands...."
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.
"Girl!" he said huskily.
"Don't!" she cried in alarm.
He dropped her hand and rose swiftly to his feet.
"You are right," he muttered. "Not yet...."
How could this man at a touch make her heart beat like mad? She was afraid ... she knew that she was not afraid ofhim... 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?"
His eyes met hers steadily; he answered promptly:
"You have told me ... and I believe.I know!"
A rush of gladness, an intoxication of gladness, swept over her. Her eyes were shining, soft and bright and happy like stars.
"But," she said, "if not I, then who?"
"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!"
"But...."
"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 knowthatwill hold you tighter than any chain that was ever forged!"
Lynette, without hesitating, answered:
"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."
"Until high noon," he said. "And, girl, you pledge me your word on that?"
"Yes!"
"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 swiftthoughts 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.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.
He came to her, splashing across the creek, water flying about his boot-tops.
"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 beclean, isn't it?"
She flushed and was ashamed for it. She bit her lip and made no answer.
"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.
"I promised to wait for you; I make no more promises!"
"That's fair enough! I watch you then!"
"Do you want to make me hate you?"
"Rather, I want you to come to love me."
"Could any girl come to love a man who treats her as you have done me?"
"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?"