Timber-Wolf, his purposes crystallizing, did not attempt to rejoin Winch and Mexicali Joe. By the time he had ridden to the spot where his saddle was hidden and had thrown it upon Daylight's back, drawing his cinch savagely, he had begun to get his proper perspective. He knew that he could trust Billy Winch in all things; that Winch, with all of that persevering patience which the occasion demanded and that veterinary skill and love for animals which marked him, would do all that any man could to get Thor home and to care for him. And now, for Bruce Standing, beyond the stricken dog lay other considerations: There remained Lynette and Babe Deveril! He ground his teeth in savage rage and from Daylight's first leap under him rode hard.
Long before the early sun rose he was back at his own headquarters, a man grim and hard and purposeful. Rough garbed and still booted he strode through his study and into his larger office; and in this environment the man's magnificent virility was strikingly accentuated. Here was his wilderness home, a place of elegance and of palpitant centres of numerous large activities; not a dozen miles from Big Pine and yet, in all appearances, set apart from Young Gallup's crude town as far as the ends of earth. He stood in a great, hard-wooded room of orderly tables and desks and telephones and electric push-buttons. He set an impatient thumb upon a button; at the same moment his other hand caught up a telephone instrument. While the push-button still sent its urgent message he caught a response from his telephone. Into the receiver he called sharply:
"Bristow? In a hurry, Standing speaking: Give me the stables; get Billy Winch!"
All the while that insistent thumb of his upon the button! There came bursting into the big room, half dressed and clutching at his clothes, a young man whose eyes were still heavy with sleep.
"You, Graham," Standing commanded him. "Get busy on our long-distance wire. My lawyers.... Get Ben Brewster! It's the hurry of a lifetime!"
Young Graham, with suspenders dragging, flew to the switchboard. Meantime came a response from the inter-phone connecting him with the stables.
"Billy Winch?" he called.
"No, sir, Mr. Standing," said a voice. "This is Dick Ross. Bill, he got in late and was up all night nearly, working over a bad case that come in. Shall I...."
"That case," Standing told him abruptly, "was my dog, Thor. Find out who was left in charge when Bill went to sleep; call me right away and give me a report on Thor." With that he rang off.
All the while his secretary, Graham, had been plugging away at his switchboard. Standing, pacing up and down, heard his "Hello—hello—hello."
Within three minutes the stable telephone rang sharply. Standing caught it up. It was Dick Ross again, reporting:
"Bill didn't go off the case until three o'clock this morning. Had to operate again at about two; taking out a little piece of skull bone. He left Charley Peters in charge then; Charley's on the job now."
"Thor's alive then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fine! I'll be out in a few minutes to see him. Bill's got him in the 'hospital'?"
"Sure, Mr. Standing. Thor couldn't be gettin' better care if he was King of England."
Standing rang off and came back to Graham from whose eyes now all heaviness of sleep had fled, leaving them keen and quick. Hardly more than a youngster, this Graham, and yet Timber-Wolf's confidential secretary, trained by Standing himself to Standing's ways.
"I've got Mr. Brewster's home on the wire," said Graham looking up. "He's not up yet but they're calling him...."
Standing took the instrument.
"I'll hold it for him. Now, Graham, order breakfast served here for you and me; plenty of extra coffee for the boys I'll be having in.... Get Al Blake on our wire to Red Creek Mine.... Arrange to have Bill Winch show up here as soon as he's awake; he's to bring Ross and Peters with him.... And Mexicali Joe; make sure that Joe didn't see any one to talk with last night. I want Joe here with Winch.... Hello! Hello! Is this Ben Brewster?"
He heard his lawyer's voice over the wire; then, somewhere over the long line something went wrong; Brewster was gone again. An operator at the end of Standing's own private part of the line, seventy-five miles away, was saying:
"Just a minute, Mr. Standing ... I'll get him for you...."
"Thanks, Henry," said Standing. And while he waited for the promised service which was to link him with a man nearly two hundred miles away, he was working hastily with pencil and pad. Graham was already carrying out his string of orders, getting dressed with one hand meantime.
"Brewster?" Standing spoke again into the telephone. "I've got something big and urgent on. Canyou come up right away? Take a car to Placer Hill. I'll have a man meet you there with a saddle-horse, and you'll have to ride the last twenty miles in. We're forming a new mining company; I want to shoot it through one-two-three! Bring what papers we'll want; that will be all the baggage you need to stop for. Graham will have all particulars ready for you. Thanks, Ben. So long.
"Graham!"
Graham swung about expectantly.
"Get the stables. A couple of the best horses...." "I've already got them," said Graham.... It was for such reasons that Graham, though a youngster, could hold so difficult position as private secretary to Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf.
Al Blake was Standing's mining expert, general superintendent of all his mining interests and the one source to which he applied for advice on all mining matters. He was the highest salaried man on the extensive pay-roll and the shrewdest. In a few minutes Graham announced that he had the Red Creek Mine on the wire and that Blake was coming.
"I want you here on the jump, Al," said Standing. "And I need forty of our best men; scare up as many as you can at your diggings; I can fill the number down here. Justgoodmen, understand? Men you know; men who at a pinch will fight like hell; every man with a rifle."
"Sounds like St. Ives!" grunted Blake, wide awake by now. "All right. I'm on my way in ten minutes."
Standing began pacing up and down again, his eyes frowning. He needed Billy Winch right now; needed him the worst way. For here was work to be done of the sort which invariably he placed in Winch's capable hands. But Winch had had a night of it and Standingwas not the man to overlook that fact as long as he could put his hand on another man who would do....
"Have Dick Ross up, on the run," he told Graham.
Breakfast came, served on big massive trays by the Japanese servant. Almost at the same moment, and literally on the run, Dick Ross came in.
"Scare up ten good men for me, Ross. With rifles, all ready to ride. I'll have breakfast ready for them here." Graham caught the alert eye of the Japanese who set down his trays hurriedly and with a quick nod raced off to the kitchen. Standing looked sternly at Ross and said curtly: "I'm handing you a job that would usually go to Winch, Ross, but he's asleep...."
"He was just getting up again, Mr. Standing. Said he wanted to see for himself how Thor was pulling along...."
"Then," said Standing, "hop back and tell Winch what I said. He can tell you the men to pick ... or, if he's busy working with Thor he can leave it to you. Of course I want you to be of the number; Peters also if Winch doesn't need him; Winch, too, if he says the word...."
Standing and Graham ate standing up. Men summoned began coming in. Each of them was given brief clean-cut orders and allowed brief time to gulp a hot breakfast. Billy Winch came first, bringing with him Mexicali Joe.
"He's going to be all right,I think," said Winch by way of greeting, and Standing understood that he was reporting on Thor. "I never saw man or animal worse shot-all-to-hell, either. I got him in bed now, strapped down; he's conscious this morning and had a fair night, all things considered. There's nothing more to be done right away, just be kept quiet...."
"I was coming out in a minute...."
"I can't have folks running in on him, Timber," said Winch, with a slow shake of the head, mumbling over a mouthful of ham and egg. "But if you'd just run in on him one second, to sort of let him know you was with him, you know, and then beat it, it might do him good."
"Can you leave for two or three hours? To go down with Al Blake and some of the boys to stake a string of mining claims down in Light Ladies' Gulch?"
"That's why the rifles?" said Winch. "Sure, I can go, leaving Charley Peters with full instructions. But I'll have to be back in, say, four hours at latest."
Standing turned to Mexicali Joe.
"Joe," he said, "how many friends have you got that we can put on the pay-roll for a few days at twenty-five dollars a day? To stake claims down in the Gulch?"
"Jesus Maria!" gasped Joe. "Twenty-five dollars a day? For each man? There would be one meelion men, Señor Caballero...."
"Take him in tow, Graham! Get a list of names from him, men to be reached in an hour's ride. As many as you can get, twenty or thirty or forty. And get them here ... quick."
Al Blake arrived from the Red Creek Mine. Stringing along after him came a dozen men of his choosing; big, uncouth, unshaved, rough-looking customers to the last man of them and yet ... as Standing and Blake agreed ...all good men!Good to carry out orders; to put up a fight against odds; to hang on and fight to the last ditch. Graham saw to it that every man Jack of them was fed and had his cigar from the Chief's private stock. The men grouped outside and looked at one another, but for the greater part wasted little breath in speculations and questionings, each realizing that his fellows knew as little as himself.
It was a busy morning for Bruce Standing. Yet threetimes he found the time ... rather he made it ... to go out to the "hospital" to stand over old Thor and speak softly to him. Thor lay upon a white-enamelled bed; his bed was softened for him by many downy pillows; at the bedside sat Charley Peters, his face as grave, his eye as watchful, as could have been had it been Timber-Wolf himself who lay there. And when Standing came in Thor heard his step and tried to move; tried to lift his poor battered head. But at the master's low voice, "Down, Thor! Down, sir ... good old dog!" Thor lay back and his tired sigh was like the sigh of a man. Standing's big hand rested gently upon the old fellow ... then Standing went out, walking softly and Thor lay still a very long while, waiting for him to come again....
Al Blake left within fifteen minutes of his arrival, a little army of armed men at his back. With him, on the fastest horse in Standing's stables, rode a man whose sole responsibility was to race back with word of conditions. Fully Standing counted on hearing that already at least two claims had been staked. But he was not ready to see Lynette again so soon; he was not ready yet to see Babe Deveril. Never for a single instant since seeing that bit of paper hung to a tree with a girl's mockery upon it, had he doubted that this girl, whom he had thought that he loved, had cast in with the Baby Devil, the two racing side by side to steal Mexicali Joe's gold. He had said to Al Blake:
"Put them off ... but don't hurt either of them. Leave them to me."
Attorney Ben Brewster, a man much shaken, arrived in record time. He could scarcely speak a word until Graham poured out for him a generous glass of whiskey. Then he glared at Standing as though he would highly enjoy killing him.
"You've got a fee to pay this trip," he groaned, "that will make you sit up and stretch your eyes! Good God, man...."
"Give him another drink, Graham," said Standing. "He's a lawyer and there's no danger of such getting drunk!... Curse your fees, Brewster. What do I care so you make an iron-clad job of it."
"And the job?"
Graham saw that he had a cigar.
"Something crooked!" muttered Brewster. "I'll bet a hat!"
"Otherwise," jeered Standing, "why send for you!... Now shut up, Ben, and get that infected brain of yours working. Here's the tale."
Ben Brewster, a man who knew his business ... and his client ... went into action. That day he took in businesslike shape all possible steps toward forming a new corporation, The Mexicali Joe Gold Mining Company.
"Lord, what a fool name!" he growled.
"Never mind the name," retorted Standing.
During the day many other men came in; among them no less than seventeen swarthy men of Mexicali Joe's breed. Brewster took signatures, and the men, showing their glistening white teeth, knew nothing of what was happening save that each man of them was to draw twenty-five dollars a day for driving a stake and sitting snug over it, rifle in hand and cigarette in mouth! Brewster got other signatures going down to Light Ladies' Gulch and among the men there. In all, he signed names of about sixty men. The Mexicali Joe Gold Mining Company was born. And the greater part of the stock, and the magnificently shining title of president was invested in ... Mexicali Joe! Suddenly, though all day he had been a man as dark-browed asa thunder-storm, Standing burst out into that golden laughter of his. Not a single share in his name; all immediate expenses to be paid by him, and they were to be heavy; and yet he counted himself the man to draw a full ninety-nine per cent of the dividends of sheer triumph! For it was to be a cold shut-out to Taggart and Gallup and Shipton and all Big Pine! And, most of all, for Babe Deveril and that girl! For early had come back the report from Al Blake: "Neither of them here; no claims staked!"
Standing could only estimate that the girl had misunderstood; that, hearing Joe's description of the place, she had not grasped the true sense of his words. He lingered over the picture of her and Deveril, hastening, driving their stakes somewhere else!
When Mexicali Joe came to understand, after much eloquence from Graham, how matters stood ... how he swaggered! This, a day in a lifetime, was Mexicali Joe's day.
"Me, I'm President!"
President of a gold-mining company! Mexicali Joe! And of a real mine; for Al Blake had sent back the curt word: "He's got it; he's got a mine that I'd advise you to buy in for a hundred thousand while you can. It may run to anything. The best thing I've seen up here anywhere!"
Mexicali Joe on the high-road to become a millionaire ... through the efforts of Bruce Standing.
To be sure, Joe, a man very profoundly bewildered, more dumfounded even than elated, took never a single step and said never a single word without going first to his friend "Señor Caballero." Before the end of that glorious day Joe was dead-drunk; didn't know "whether he was afoot or horseback." But in his crafty Latin way, he kept his mouth shut.
And then Bruce Standing, with an eye not to further wealth, but toward the confounding of all hopes of such as Young Gallup and Jim Taggart and Babe Deveril ...and a certain girl... sprang his coup. With Ben Brewster guarding his rear in every advance, he "swallowed whole," as Brewster put it, every bit of available land above and below and on every side of Joe's claims. He recked neither of present difficulties and expenses nor of lawsuits to come. He wanted the land ... and he got it! And he issued his proclamation:
"There's atownthere, on Light Ladies' Gulch. You don't see it? It's there!...Graham, get busy!A contractor; lumber; building materials; carpenters! We build a town as big as Big Pine and we build it faster than ever a town grew before! A store, blacksmith shop, hotel. Shacks of all sorts.Graham!"
Graham, like a man with an electric current shot through him, jumped out of his chair.
"Send a man on the run to Big Pine with a message for Young Gallup! And the message is this: 'Bruce Standing promised to pull your damned town down about your ears ... and the pulling has begun!'"
"Yes, Mr. Standing," said Graham. And sent a man on a running horse.
And then took swift dictation. Standing made a budget of fifty thousand dollars, as a "starter." Even Graham wondered what impulses were rioting in his mad heart!
"We want scrapers and ploughs, a crew of road-makers! We build a new road ...on this side of Light Ladies' Gulch! Got the idea, Graham? We cut Big Pine out. We go by them, giving a shorter road to the outside, a better road. We boycott Gallup's dinky town! Keep in mind we'll double that first fifty thousand any time we need to. Get this word around: 'Any man who buysa nickel's worth of tobacco in Big Pine can't buy anything, even if he has his pockets full of clinking gold, in our town! No man, once seen setting his foot down in Gallup's town, is going to be tolerated two minutes in our town.' Get the idea, Graham?"
"Yes, Mr. Standing!"
Standing smote him then so mightily upon the shoulder that Graham, a small man, went pale, shot through with pain.
"Raise your own salary, Graham.And earn it now!"
What Bruce Standing could not know was that those few words signedLynetteand saying with such cruel curtness: "I have gone back to Babe Deveril," had been written not by Lynette, but by Deveril himself. Nor could he know that Lynette had not gone freely but under the harsh coercion of four men.
Deveril, when Lynette refused to go with him, had hurried away through the woods, his heart burning with jealous rage. Was the hated Timber-Wolf to win again, not only in the game for gold but in another game which was coming to be the one greatest consideration in Babe Deveril's life?
"Not while I live!" he muttered to himself over and over. And once out of sight of Lynette who still sat bowed over the dog he had struck down, he broke into a run. Jim Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton were not so far away that he could not hope to reach them and to bring them back before Standing returned.
Thus, not over fifteen minutes before Bruce Standing came back, bringing Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe with him, Deveril had appeared before Lynette a second time. And now she leaped to her feet, seeing who his companions were and reading at one quick glance what lay unhidden in their faces. Greed was there and savage gloating and mercilessness; she knew that at least three of those men would stamp her into the ground under their heavy boots if thus they might walk over her body through the golden gates of Mexicali Joe's secret.
"You're arrested!" cried Taggart. "Come, get a move on. We clear out of this on the run!"
"It was you who shot him, not I! And I'll not go with you. In a minute he'll be back...."
Taggart was of no mind for delay and talk; he caught her roughly by the arm. Her eyes went swiftly to Deveril's; of his look she could make nothing. He shrugged and said only:
"Taggart's sheriff; he'll take you along, anyway. You might as well go without a fuss."
Gallup, his face ugly with the emotions swaying him, was at her other side. She looked to the hawk-faced man and then away with a shudder. Then, trying to jerk away, she screamed out:
"Help! Bruce...."
Taggart's big hairy hand was over her mouth.
"Come along," he commanded angrily. "Get a move on."
Half dragging her the first few steps they led her out of camp, down into the cañon and across among the trees. She gave over struggling; they watched her so that she could not call again; Taggart threatened to stuff his dirty bandana handkerchief into her mouth. Deveril alone held back for a little; she did not know what he was doing; did not see him as he wrote in a hand which he strove to give a girlish semblance those few words to which he signed her name. She scarcely marked his delay; she was trying now to think fast and logically.
These men were brutes, all of them; she had had ample evidence of that already and had that evidence been lacking the information was there emblazoned in their faces. Even Babe Deveril, in whom once she had trusted, began to show the brutal lining of his insolent character. And yet need she be afraid of any of them just now? If she openly thwarted them, yes. They would show no mercy to a girl. But at the momenttheir thoughts were set not upon her undoing, but upon Mexicali Joe's gold. And she knew where it was and they knew that she knew.... Taggart was speaking, growling into her ear:
"We followed Mexicali; we saw him come up here; Deveril followed him into camp. He told where his gold was. And you heard it all!"
"Well?" said Lynette, striving with herself for calmness. She was thinking: "If only I can have a little time. He will come for me.... If only I can have a little time."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded Taggart. "The whole earth ain't Joe's because he picked up a nugget or two. Anybody's got a right to stake a claim; I got a right and so has the boys ... and so have you."
"Suppose," offered Lynette as coolly as she could, "that I refused to tell?"
There came a look into Taggart's hard eyes which answered her more eloquently than any words from the man could have done, which put certain knowledge and icy fear into her.
Always, when nervous or frightened, Lynette's laughter came easily to her and now without awaiting any other answer from this man she began laughing in such a fashion as to perplex him and bring a dragging frown across his brows.
"Are you going to tell us?" he asked.
"If I do," she temporized, "do I have the chance to drive the first stakes?"
"By God, yes! And say, little one, you're a peach into the bargain."
She did not appear to hear; she was thinking over and over: "Bruce Standing will come after us as soon as he finds I am gone. I must gain a little time, that is all."
If only she could make them think that the gold was somewhere near by so that Standing must readily find them. But now Deveril had rejoined them and she recalled how he had heard something, though not all, of Joe's triumphant announcement. For Joe had shouted out at the top of his voice, to catch and hold Timber-Wolf's attention: "Light Ladies' Gulch!" Deveril had heard that; and Light Ladies' Gulch was many miles away, down toward Big Pine....
Deveril was looking at her with eyes which were bright and hard and told no tales of the man's thoughts.
"This lovely and altogether too charming young woman," Deveril said lightly, his eyes still upon her, though his words were for the others, "has a mind of her own. It would be as well to hear what she has to say and learn what she intends to do."
"Will you try to lie to us?" demanded Taggart. "Or will you tell us the truth?"
She, too, strove for lightness, saying:
"Think that out for yourself, Mr. Taggart. Bruce Standing knows where the gold is now; both you and I know the sort of man he is and we can imagine that if he drives the first stake he will see to it that he takes the whole thing. Do you really think that after I came into this country for gold myself I am going to miss my one chance now?" She puzzled them again with her laughter and said: "Not that it would not be a simple matter to trick you, were I minded to let my own chances go for the sake of spoiling yours; Mexicali Joe fooled you so easily."
"Yet you yelled for Standing just now...."
"After you came rushing upon me as if you meant to tear me to pieces, frightening the wits out of me."
"Well, then, tell us."
"If I told you now, then what? You'd desert me ina minute; you would race on ahead; when I caught up with you there would be nothing left."
Deveril's eyes flashed and he said quickly:
"And give you the chance to send us to the wrong place, were you so minded, so that you could slip off alone and be first at the other spot! Very clever, Miss Lynette, but that won't work. You go with us."
And all the while she was trying so hard to think; and all the while listening so eagerly for a certain glorious, golden voice shouting after her. Deveril had heard part of Joe's exclamation....
"It is in Light Ladies' Gulch," she said quietly.
"Yes!" Here was Young Gallup speaking, his covetous soul aflame. "We know that; Deveril heard. But Light Ladies' Gulch is forty miles long. Where abouts in the gulch?"
She told herself that she would die before she led them aright. And yet she realized to the full the danger to herself if she tricked them as Joe had done and they discovered her trickery before Standing came. Yet most of all was she confident that he would come and swiftly.... Joe's words still rang in her memory; he had told first of the Red Cliffs, how he had found color there last year; how he had made prospect holes; how his real mine lay removed three or four miles. Still she temporized, saying:
"Bruce Standing and Billy Winch and Joe have horses. We are on foot. Tell me how we can hope to come to the spot first?"
"We'll have horses ourselves in a jiffy," said Taggart. "Stepping lively, we're not more than a couple of hours from a cattle outfit over the ridge. We'll get all the horses we want and we'll ride like hell!"
"You know where the Red Cliffs are? At the foot of the cliffs I'll show you Joe's prospect holes...."
The pale-eyed, hawk-faced Cliff Shipton spoke for the first time.
"Not half a dozen miles out of Big Pine! I told you last year, Gallup...."
Deveril, the keenest of them all, the one who knew her best, suspected her from the beginning. His eyes never once left her face.
"How do we know," he said quietly, "that there's any gold there? That Joe's gold is not somewhere else?"
"You will have to make your own decision," she told him as coolly as she could. "If you think that I am mistaken or that I am trying to play with you as Joe did, you are free to go where you please."
Taggart began cursing; his grip tightened on her arm so that he hurt her terribly as he shouted at her:
"I'll give you one word of warning, little one! If you put up a game on us now, you cut your own throat. In the first place I'll make it my business that if we get shut out, you get shut out along with us. And in the second place when I'm through with you no other man in the world will have any use for you. Got that?"
She knew what he had done to Mexicali Joe; she could guess what other unthinkable things he would have done. And she knew that if now she tricked Jim Taggart and he found her out ...before Bruce Standing came... she could only pray to die.
And yet at this, the supreme test in her life, she held steady to a swiftly taken purpose. She would not put the game into these men's hands. And she held steadfastly to her certainty, knowing the man, that Bruce Standing would come. Therefore, though her face went a little pale, and her mouth was so dry that she did not dare speak, she shrugged her shoulders.
"Come, then," said Taggart. "Enough palaver. We're on our way."
And of them all, only Babe Deveril was still distrustful.
And thus Lynette, accepting her own grave risk with clear-eyed comprehension and yet with unswerving determination, led these four men to a spot where she knew that they would not find that gold for which every man of them had striven so doggedly; thus it was she who made it possible for Bruce Standing to be before all others and to triumph and strike the death-blow to Big Pine and to begin that relentless campaign which was to end in humbling his ancient enemy, Young Gallup. Yet there was little exultation in Lynette's heart, but a growing fear, when, after hours of furious haste, she and the four men came at last into Light Ladies' Gulch and to the base of the towering red cliffs.
Cliff Shipton knew more of gold-mining than any of the others and Lynette watched him narrowly as he went up and down under the high cliffs. And she knew that she in turn was watched; in the first excitement of coming to the long-sought spot she had hoped that she might escape. But both Taggart and Deveril followed her at every step with their eyes.
Desperately she clung to her assurance that Bruce Standing would come for her. He had said that he would come "though it were ten thousand mile." He might have difficulties in finding her; she might have to wait a little while, an hour or two, or three hours. But it remained that he was a man to surmount obstacles insurmountable to other men; a man to pin faith upon. Yet time passed and he did not come.
They found indications of Mexicali Joe's labors, rock ledges at which he had chipped and hammered, prospect holes lower on the steep slope. And Cliff Shipton acknowledged that "the signs were all right." But theydid not find the gold and they did not find anything to show that Joe or another had worked here recently.
"All this work," said Shipton, staring and frowning, "was done a year ago."
"He'd be crafty enough," muttered Gallup, "to hide his real signs. We got to look around every clump of brush and in every gully where maybe he's covered things up.... You're sure," and he whipped about upon Lynette, "that you got straight all he said?"
"I'm sure," said Lynette. And she was afraid that the men would hear the beating of her heart.
"I am going up to the top of the cliffs again and see what I can see," she said.
"If there's gold anywhere it's down here," said Shipton. "There's nothing on the top."
"Just the same I'm going!"
"Where the horses are?" jeered Taggart. "By God, if you have...."
"If you think I am trying to run away you can follow and watch me. I am going!"
She turned. Deveril was watching her with keen, shrewd eyes. Taggart took a quick stride toward her, his hand lifted to drag her back. Deveril stepped before him, saying coolly:
"I'll go up with her, Taggart. And I guess you know how I stand on this, don't you?"
"All right," conceded the sheriff. "Only keep your eye peeled. I'm getting leery."
It was a long climb to the cliff tops and neither Lynette nor Deveril at her heels spoke during the climb. They were silent when at last they stood side by side near the tethered horses. Deveril's eyes were upon her pale face; her own eyes ran swiftly, eagerly across the deep cañon to the wooded lands beyond. She prayed with the fervor of growing despair for the sight of a certainyoung blond giant of a man racing headlong to her relief.
"Well?" said Deveril presently in a tone so strange, so vibrant with suppressed emotion that he made her start and drew her wondering eyes swiftly. "What are you looking for now?"
"Why do you talk like that ... what is the matter?"
His bitter laughter set her nerves quivering.
"Is the gold here, Lynette? Or is it some miles away, with Bruce Standing already sinking his claws into it, Standing style?"
Again her eyes left him, returning across the gorge to the farther wooded lands. Over there was a road, the road into which she and Babe Deveril had turned briefly that night, a thousand years ago, when they had fled from Big Pine in the dark; a road which led to Bruce Standing's headquarters. From the top of the cliffs she caught a glimpse of the road, winding among the trees; her eyes were fixedly upon it; her lips were moving softly, though the words were not for Babe Deveril's ears.
"Lynette," he said in that strangely tense and quiet voice, "if you have been fool enough to try to put something over on this crowd.... Can't you guess how you'd fare in Jim Taggart's hands?"
She was not looking at him; she did not appear to mark his words. He saw a sudden change in her expression; she started and the blood rushed back into her cheeks and her eyes brightened. He looked where she was looking. Far across the cañon, rising up among the trees, was a cloud of dust. Some one was riding there, riding furiously....
Together they watched, waiting for thatsome oneto appear in the one spot where the winding road could be glimpsed through the trees. And in a moment they saw not one man only, but a dozen or a score of men,men stooping in their saddles and riding hard, veiled in the rising dust puffing up under their horses' flying feet. Now and then came a pale glint of the sun striking upon the rifles which, to the last man, they carried. They came into view with a rush, were gone with a rush. The great cloud of dust rose and thinned and disappeared.
"That road will bring them down into Light Ladies' Gulch where it makes the wide loop about three miles from here," said Deveril. "Have you an idea who they are, Lynette?"
"No," she said, her lips dry; "I don't understand."
"I think that I do understand," he told her, with a flash of anger. "Those are Standing's men and they are riding, armed, like the mill-tails of hell. Listen to me while you've got the chance! That's not the first bunch of men who have ridden over there like that to-day. Two hours ago, when you went down the cliffs with the others and I stopped up here, I saw the same sort of thing happening. If you're so innocent," he sneered at her, "I'll read you the riddle. I've told you those are Standing's men; then why the devil are they riding like that and in such numbers? They're going straight down into the Gulch where the gold is while you hold us back, up here. And Standing is paying off an old grudge and jamming more gold into his bulging pockets.... And you've got some men to reckon with in ten minutes who'll make you sorry that you were ever born a girl!"
"No!" she cried hoarsely. "No. I won't believe it...."
He failed to catch just what she was thinking. She refused to believe that Bruce Standing, instead of coming to her had raced instead to Mexicali Joe's gold; that instead of scattering his men across fifty miles ofcountry seeking her, he was massing them at a new gold-mine. Bruce Standing was not like that! She cried it passionately within her spirit. She had stood loyally by him; she had, at all costs, kept her word to him ... she had come to believe in his love for her and to long for his return....
"If you saw men before ... if you thought the thing that you think now ... why didn't you rush on after them? It's not true!"
"I didn't rush after them," he returned curtly, "because I'd be a fool for my pains and would only give that wolf-devil another chance to laugh in my face. For if he's got this lead on us ... why, then, the game is his."
"But I won't believe...."
"If you will watch you will see. I'll bet a thousand dollars he has a hundred men down there already and that they'll be riding by all day; they'll be staking claims which he will buy back from them at the price of a day's work; he'll work a clean shut-out for Gallup and Taggart. That's what he'd give his right hand to do. You watch a minute."
They watched. Once Taggart shouted up to them.
"Down in a minute, Taggart." Deveril called back.
Before long Lynette saw another cloud of dust; this time three or four men rode into sight and sped away after the others; before the dust had cleared another two or three men rode by. And at last Lynette felt despair in her heart, rising into her throat, choking her. For she understood that in her hour of direst need Bruce Standing had failed her.
"Taggart will be wanting you in a minute," said Deveril. He spoke casually; he appeared calm and untroubled; he took out tobacco and papers and began rolling a cigarette. But Lynette saw that the man was atremble with rage. "Before you go down to him, tellme: did you know what you were doing when you brought us to the wrong place?"
"Yes!" It was scarcely above a whisper, yet she strove with all her might to make it defiant. She was afraid and yet she fought with herself, seeking to hide her fear from him.
He shrugged elaborately, as though the matter were of no great interest and no longer concerned him.
"Then your blood be on your own head," he said carelessly. "I, for one, will not raise my hand against you; what Taggart does to you concerns only you and Taggart."
"Babe Deveril!"
She called to him with a new voice; she was afraid and no longer strove to hide her fear. Until now she had carried on, head high, in full confidence; confidence in a man. And that man, like Babe Deveril before him, had thought first of gold instead of her. Bruce Standing had spoken of love and had turned aside for gold; with both hands full of the yellow stuff he thought only of more to be had, and not of her.
"Babe Deveril! Listen to me! I have been a fool ... oh, such a fool! I knew so little of the real world and of men, and I thought that I knew it all. My mother had me raised in a convent, thinking thus to protect me against all the hardships she had endured; but she did not take into consideration that her blood and Dick Brooke's blood was my blood! This was all a glorious adventure to me; I thought ... I thought I could do anything; I was not afraid of men, not of you nor of Bruce Standing nor of any man. Now I am afraid ... of Jim Taggart! You helped me to run from him once; help me again. Now. Let me have one of the horses ... let me go...."
All the while he stood looking at her curiously.Toward the end there was a look in his eyes which hinted at a sudden spiritual conflagration within.
"You're not used to this sort of thing?" And when she shook her head vehemently, he added sternly: "And you are not Bruce Standing's? And have never been?"
"No, no!" she cried wildly, drawing back from him. "You don't think that...."
Now he came to her and caught her two hands fiercely.
"Lynette!" he said eagerly. "Lynette, I love you! To-day you have stood between me and a fortune, and I tell you ... I love you! Since first you came to the door of my cabin I have loved you, you girl with the daring eyes!"
"Don't!" she pleaded. "Let me go. Can't you see...."
"Tell me, Lynette," he said sternly, still holding her hands tight in his, "is there any chance for me? I had never thought to marry; but now I'd rather have you mine than have all the gold that ever came out of the earth. Tell me and tell me the truth; we know each other rather well for so few days, Lynette. So tell me; tell me, Lynette."
Again she shook her head.
"Let me go," she pleaded. "Let me have a horse and go. Before they come up for me...."
"Then there's no chance, ever, for me?"
"Neither for you nor for any other man.... I have had enough of all men.... Let me go, Babe Deveril!"
Still he held her, his hands hardening on her, as he demanded:
"And what of Bruce Standing?"
"I don't know ... I can't understand men ... I thought there never was another man like him, a hardman who could be tender, a man who ... I don't know; I want to go."
"Go?" There came a sudden gleam into his eyes. "And where? Back to Bruce Standing maybe?"
"No! Anywhere on earth but back to him. To the stage which will be leaving Big Pine in a little while; back to a land where trains run, trains which can take me a thousand miles away. Oh, Babe Deveril...."
Taggart's voice rose up to them, sounding savage.
"What in hell's name are you doing up there?"
Then Deveril released her hands.
"Go to the horses," he commanded. "Untie all four. I'll ride with you to the stage ... and we'll take the other horses along!"
She had scarcely hoped for this; for an instant she stood staring at him, half afraid that he was jeering at her. Then she ran to the horses and began wildly untying their ropes. Deveril, smoking his cigarette, appeared on the edge of the cliff for Taggart to see, and called down carelessly:
"What's all the excitement, Taggart?"
"Keep your eye on that girl. Shipton thinks she's fooled us. I want her down here."
Deveril laughed at him and turned away. Once out of Taggart's sight he ran. Lynette already was in the saddle; he mounted and took from her the tie ropes of the other horses.
"On our way," he said crisply. "They'll be after us like bees out of a jostled hive."
They did not ride into Big Pine, but into the road two or three miles below where the stage would pass. Deveril hailed the stage when it came and the driver took Lynette on as his solitary passenger. At the last minute she caught Babe Deveril's hand in both of hers.
"There is good and bad in you, Babe Deveril, as I suppose there is in all of us. But you have been good to me! I will never forget how you have stood my friend twice; I will always remember that you werea man; a man who never did little, mean things. And I shall always thank God for that memory. And now, good-by, Babe Deveril and good luck go with you!"
"And Standing?" he demanded at the end. "You are done with him, too?"
Suddenly she looked wearier than he had ever seen her even during their days and nights together in the mountains. She looked a poor little broken-hearted girl; there was a quick gathering of tears in her eyes, which she strove to smile away. But despite the smile, the tears ran down. She waved her hand; the stage driver cracked his long whip.... Deveril stood in the dusty road, his hat in his hand, staring down a winding roadway. A clatter of hoofs, a rattle of wheels, a mist of dust ... and Lynette was gone.
Deveril went back to his horse, mounting listlessly like a very tired man. The spring had gone out of his step and something of the elasticity out of that ever-young spirit which had always been his no matter from what quarter blew the variable winds of chance. Lynette was gone and he could not hold back his thoughts from winging back along the trail he and she had trod together; there had been the time, and now he knew it, when all things were possible; the time before Bruce Standing came into her life, when Babe Deveril, had he then understood both himself and her, might have won a thing more golden than any man's mere gold. In his blindness he had judged her the light adventuress which she seemed; now that it was given him to understand that in Lynette Brooke he had found a pure-hearted girl whose inherited adventuresome blood had led her into tangled paths, he understood that in her there had come that one girl who comes once to all men ... and that she had passed on and out of his life.
He caught up the reins of the horse she had left behind. His face grew grim; he still had Jim Taggart to deal with and, therefore, it was as well to take this horse and the others back to Big Pine and leave them there for Taggart. For the first thing which would suggest itself to the enraged sheriff would be to press a charge against him of horse stealing, and in this country horse thieves were treated with no gentle consideration.
"I'll leave the horses there ... and go."
Where? It did not matter. There was nothing left for him in these mountains; Bruce Standing had the gold and the girl was on the stage.
But in his bleak broodings there remained one gleam of gloating satisfaction: he had tricked Standing out of the girl! That Lynette already loved his kinsman or at the least stood upon the very brink of giving her heart unreservedly into his keeping, Deveril's keen eyes, the eyes of jealous love, had been quick to read. It did not once suggest itself to him that Standing could by any possibility have failed to love Lynette. The two had been for days together, alone in the mountains; why should Standing have kept her and have been gentle with her, as he must have been, save for the one reason that he loved her? Further, what man could have lived so long with Lynette of the daring eyes and not love her? And he, Babe Deveril, had stolen her away from Bruce Standing, had tricked him with a pencil scrawl, had lost Lynette to him for all time. The stage carrying her away now was as inevitable an instrument in the hand of fate as death itself.
He turned back for the other horses which he had tethered by the roadside and led them on toward Big Pine.
"What the devil is love, anyway?" he muttered once.
It was not for a man such as Babe Deveril to know clearly; for love is winged with unselfishness and self-sacrifice. And yet, after his own fashion, he loved her and would love her always, though other pretty faces came and went and he laughed into other eyes. She was lost to him; there was the one great certainty like a rock wall across his path. And she had said at the parting ... her last words to him were to ring in his memory for many a long day ... that there was both good and bad in him; and she chose to remember the good! He tried to laugh at that; what did he care for good and bad? He, a man who went his way and made reckoning to none?
And she had said that she knew him fora man; one who, whatever else he might have done, had never stooped to a mean, contemptible act; she thought of him and would always think of him as a man who, though he struck unrighteous blows, dealt them in the open, man-style.... And yet ... the one deed of a significance so profound that it had directed the currents of three lives, that writing of seven words, that signing of her name under them....
"I am glad that I did that!" he triumphed. And gladdest of all, in his heart, was he that Lynette did not know ... would never know.
Thus Babe Deveril, riding with drooping head, found certain living fires among the ashes of dead hopes: A row to come with Taggart? He could look forward to it with fierce eagerness. Standing and Lynette separated; vindictive satisfaction there. He'd got his knife in Standing's heart at last! He'd like to wait a year or a dozen until some time Lynette forgot and another man came despite her sweeping avowal and she married; he would like then to come back to Bruce Standing and tell him the fool he had been and how it had been none other than Baby Devil who had knifed him.
... And yet, all the while, Lynette's farewell words were in his mind. And he saw before him, wherever he looked, her face as he had seen it last, her eyes blurred with her tears. And he fought stubbornly with himself against the insistent admission: It was Babe Deveril and none other who, saying that he loved her, had put those tears there. Good and bad? What the devil had he to do with sticking those labelling tags upon what he or others did?
Bruce Standing was still in his office. He was a man who had won another victory and yet one who had thetaste of despair in his mouth. Gallup's town was doomed; it was one of those little mountain towns which had already outlived its period of usefulness and now with a man like Timber-Wolf waging merciless war against it, Big Pine had its back broken almost at the first savage blow struck. But Standing strode up and down restlessly like a man broken by defeat rather than one whose standards went flying on triumphantly; he knew that a new rival town, his own town, was springing into being in a few hours; he had the brief satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping an ancient promise and striking a body blow from which there would be no recovery, making Big Pine take the count and drop out of all men's consideration; he knew, from having seen it many times, that pitiful spectacle which a dead and deserted town presents; so, briefly, just as his kinsman was doing at the same moment, he extracted what satisfaction he could from the hour. He even had word sent to Gallup: "I am killing your town very much as a man may kill an ugly snake. I shall see to it that goods are sold cheaper here than at your store; there will be a better hotel here, with a better shorter road leading to it. And I will build cabins as fast as they are called for, to house deserters from your dying town. And I will see to it that men from my town never set foot in your town. This from me, Young Gallup: 'For the last time I have set foot upon your dung heap. I'm through with you and the world is through with you. You're dead and buried.'"
During the day, word came to him that several men and one girl had been seen hastily occupied at the foot of the Red Cliffs; the girl Lynette; one of the men, Deveril. And it seemed very clear to Standing that Lynette had led Deveril and the others in hot haste to the Red Cliffs only because she had misunderstoodMexicali Joe's directions, confused by his mention of these cliffs where he had prospected last year.
"I'll go get them." Standing told himself a score of times. "Just as soon as I know how to handle them. When I know how I can hurt him most and her...."
Mexicali Joe swelled about the landscape all day like a bursting balloon, a man swept up in a moment from a condition of less than mediocrity to one, as Mexicali regarded it, of monumental magnificence and the highest degree of earthly joy. Graham could not keep him out of Standing's office; the second time he came in Timber-Wolf lifted him upon his boot hurling him out through the door and promising him seven kinds of ugly death if he ever came back. Whereupon Mexicali Joe, shaking his head, went away without grumbling; for in the sky of his adoration stood just two: God and Bruce Standing.
Graham was still laughing, when another man rode up to the door, and Graham on the instant became alert and concerned. He hastened to Standing, saying quickly:
"Mr. Deveril to see you. He has ridden his horse nearly to death. And I don't like the look on his face."
"Show him in!" shouted Standing. "You fool ... don't you know he's the one man in the world...."
Graham hurried out. Deveril, his face pale and hard, his eyes burning as though the man were fever-ridden, came into the room. The door closed after him.
"Well?" snapped Standing.
"Not so well, thanks," retorted Deveril with an attempt at his characteristic inconsequential insolence. "Here's hoping the same to you ... damn you!"
"If you've got anything to say, get it done with," commanded Standing angrily.
"I'll say it," Deveril muttered. "But first I'll say this, though I fancy it goes without saying: there is no man on earth I hate as I hate you. As far as you and Iare concerned I'd rather see you dead than any other sight I'll ever see. And now, in spite of all that, I've come to do you a good turn."
Standing scoffed at him, crying out: "I want none of your good turns; I am satisfied to have your hate."
Deveril, with eyes which puzzled Timber-Wolf, was staring at him curiously.
"Tell me, Bruce Standing," he demanded, "do you love her?"
"Love her?" cried Standing. "Rather I hate the ground she walks on! She is your kind, Baby Devil; not mine." And he laughed his scorn of her. But now there was no chiming of golden bells in that great volume of laughter but rather a sinister ring like the angry clash of iron. All the while Babe Deveril looked him straight in the eye ... and understood!
"For onceyou lie! You love her and what is more ... and worse!... she loves you! And that is why...."
"Loves me?Are you drunk, man, or crazy? Loves me and leaves me for you; leads you and your crowd to the Gulch, trying to stake on Joe's claim, trying to...."
"She did not leave you for me! I took Taggart and Gallup to her, and Taggart put her under arrest ... for shooting you! And she did not lead us to the spot where she knew Joe's claim was; she made fools of us and led us to the Red Cliffs, miles away!"
Standing's face was suddenly as tense as Deveril's, almost as white.
"She left a note; saying that she was going back to you...."
Deveril strode by him to a table on which lay some letter paper and wrote slowly and with great care, laboring over each letter:
I am going back to Babe Deveril.Lynette.
I am going back to Babe Deveril.Lynette.
And then he threw the pencil down and stood looking at Standing. And he saw an expression of bewilderment, and then one of amazement wiping it out, and then a great light leaping into Standing's eyes.
"You made her go! You dragged her away! And you wrote that!"
Deveril turned toward the door.
"I have told you that she loves you. So it is for her happiness, much as I hate you, that I have told you.... She, thinking that you preferred gold to her, has just gone out on the down stage...."
"By the Lord, man," and now Standing's voice rang out joyously, clear and golden once more, "you've done a wonderful thing to-day! I wonder if I could have done what you are doing? By thunder, Babe Deveril, you should be killed for the thing you did ... but you've wiped it out. After this ... need there be hatred between us?"
He put out his hand. Deveril drew back and went out through the door. His horse, wet with sweat and flecked with foam, was waiting for him. As he set foot into the stirrup he called back in a voice which rang queerly in Standing's ears:
"She doesn't know I wrote that. Unless it's necessary ... You see, I'd like her to think as well...." He didn't finish, but rode away. And as long as he was in sight he sat very erect in the saddle and sent back for any listening ears a light and lively whistled tune.
The stage, carrying its one passenger came rocking and clattering about the last bend in the grade where the road crosses that other road which comes down from the mountains farther to the east, from the region of Bruce Standing's holdings. The girl's figure drooped listlessly; her eyes were dry and tired and blank withutter hopelessness. Long ago the garrulous driver had given over trying to talk with her. Now she was stooping forward, so that she saw nothing in all the dreary world but the dusty dashboard before her ... and in her fancy, moving across this like pictures on a screen, the images of faces ... Bruce Standing's face when he had chained her; when he had cried out that he loved her....
The driver slammed on his brakes, muttering; the wheels dragged; the stage came to an abrupt halt. She looked up, without interest. And there in the road, so close to the wheel that she could have put out a hand and touched him, was Bruce Standing.
"Lynette!" he called to her.
She saw that he had a rifle in his hand; that a buckboard with a restive span of colts was at the side of the road. The driver was cursing; he understood that Standing, taking no chances, had meant to stop him in any case.
"What's this?" he demanded. "Hold up?"
Standing ignored him. His arms were out; there was the gladdest look in his eyes Lynette had ever seen in any man's; when he called to her he sent a thrill like a shiver through her. He had come for her; he wanted her....
"No!" she cried, remembering. "No! Drive on!"
"You bet your sweet life I'll drive on!" the driver burst out. And to Standing: "Stand aside."
Then Standing put his hands out suddenly, dropping his rifle in the road, and caught Lynette to him, lifting her out of her seat despite her efforts to cling to the stage, and took up his rifle again, saying sternly to the stage-driver:
"Now drive on!"
"No!" screamed Lynette, struggling against the onehand restraining her ... and against herself! "He can't do this ... don't let him...."
But in the end she knew how it would be. The stage-driver was no man to stand out against Bruce Standing ... she wondered if anywhere on earth there lived a man to gainsay him when that light was in his eyes and that tone vibrated in his voice.
"He's got the drop on me ... he'd drop me dead soon as not.... I'll go, Miss; but I'll send back word...." And Lynette and Bruce Standing, in the gathering dusk, were alone again in the quiet lands at the bases of the mountains.
"Girl ... I did not know how I loved you until to-day!"
She whipped away from him, her eyes scornful.
"Love! You talk of love! And you leave me in the hands of those men while you go looking for gold!"
"No," he said, "it wasn't that. I thought that you had no further use for me; that you loved Deveril; that you had gone back to him; that you were trying to lead him and the rest to Joe's gold; that...."
There was now no sign of weariness in a pair of gray eyes which flashed in hot anger.
"What right had you to think that of me?" she challenged him. "That I was a liar, breaking a promise I had made; and worse than a liar, to betray a confidence? What right have you to think a thing like that, Bruce Standing ... and talk to me of love!"
He could have told her; he could have quoted to her that message which had been left behind, signed with her name. But, after all, in the end he had Babe Deveril to think of, a man who had shown himself a man, who had done his part for love of her, whose one reward if Bruce Standing himself were a man, must lie in the meagre consolation that Lynette held him above sopetty an act as that one which he had committed. So for a moment Standing was silent; and then he could only say earnestly:
"I am sorry, Lynette. I wronged you and I was a fool and worse. But there were reasons why I thought that.... And after all we have misunderstood each other; that is all. Joe's gold is still Joe's gold; I have made it safe for him and not one cent of it is mine or will ever be mine...."
"Nor do I believe that!" she cried. "Nor any other thing you may ever tell me!"
"That, at least, I can make you believe." He was very stern-faced now and began wondering if Deveril had been mad when he had told him that Lynette loved him. How could Deveril know that? There was little enough of the light of love in her eyes now. And yet....
"Are you willing to come back to headquarters with me?" he asked gently. "There, at least, you can learn that I have told you the truth about Mexicali Joe's gold. No matter how things go, girl, I don't want you to think of me that I did a trick like that ... forgetting you to go money-grabbing...."
"You can make me come," she said bitterly. "You have put a chain on me before now. But you can never make me love you, Bruce Standing."
Now she saw in his face a look which stirred her to the depths; a look of profound sadness.
"No," he said, "I'll never put chain on you again, girl; I'll never lift my hand to make you do anything on earth; I would rather die than force you to anything. But I shall go on loving you always. And now," and for the first time she heard him pleading! "is it so great a thing that I ask? If you will not love me, at least I want you to think as well of me as you can. That isonly justice, girl; and you are very just. If you will only come with me and learn from Mexicali Joe himself that I have touched and shall touch no single ounce of his gold."
She knew that he was speaking truth; and yet she could not admit it to him ... since she would not admit it to herself! And she wanted to believe, and yet told herself that she would never believe. She was glad that he was not dragging her back with him as she had been so certain that he would ... and she did not know that she was not sorry.
"Will you do that one thing? I shall not try to hold you...."
"Yes," she said stiffly. And then she laughed nervously, saying in a hard, suppressed voice: "What choice have I, after all? The stage has gone and I have to go somewhere and find a stage again or a horse...."
"No. That is not necessary. If you will not come with me freely, I will take you now where you wish; to overtake the stage."
And thus, when already it was hard enough for her, he unwittingly made it harder. She wanted to go ... she did not want to go ... most of all she did not want him to know what she wanted or did not want. She cried out quickly:
"Let us go then! I don't believe you! And, if you dare let me talk alone with Mexicali Joe, I shall know you for what you are!"
Lynette was in Bruce Standing's study. He had gone for Mexicali Joe. She looked about her, seeing on all hands as she had seen during their racing drive, an expression of the man himself. Here was a vital centre of enormous activities; Standing was its very heart. The biggest man she had ever known or dreamed ofknowing; one who did big things; one who was himself untrammelled by the dictates and conventions of others. And in her heart she did believe every word that he spoke; and thus she knew that he, this man among men, loved her!... And she loved him! She knew that; she had known it ... how long? Perhaps with clear definiteness for the first time while she spoke of him with Deveril, yearning for his coming; certainly when she had started at the sight of him at the stage wheel. So she held at last that it was for no selfish mercenary gain that he had been so long coming to her, but rather because he had lost faith in her, thinking ill of her. That was what hurt; that was what held her back from his arms, since she would not admit that he could love her truly and misdoubt her at the same time. For certainly where one loved as she herself could love, one gave all, even unto the last dregs of loyal, confident faith. How confident all day she had been that he would come to her!
Lynette, restless, walked up and down, back and forth through the big rooms, waiting. Her wandering eyes were everywhere ... upon only one of the shining table tops was a scrap of paper. In her abstraction she glanced at it. Her own name! Written as though signed to a note.
In a flash her quickened fancies pictured much of all that had happened: Deveril to-day had told Standing she was going out on the stage; Deveril had told Standing all that had happened ... because Deveril, too, loved her and knew that she loved his kinsman. She recalled now how Deveril had stopped a little while in camp after Taggart had dragged her away. So Deveril had left this note behind? And Standing knew now; he had said there were reasons why he had been so sure she had gone to Deveril. She understood how nowit would be with him; Deveril had told him everything and he, accepting a rich, free gift from the hand of a man he hated was not the man in turn to speak ill of one who had striven to make restitution, though by speaking the truth he might gain everything! These were men, these two; and to be loved by two such men was like having the tribute of kings.... She heard Standing at the door, bringing Mexicali Joe. There was a little fire in the fireplace; she ran to it and dropped the paper into the flames behind the big log. The door opened to Standing's hand. At his heels she saw Mexicali Joe.
"No!" she cried, and he saw and marvelled at the new, shining look in her eyes; a look which made him stop, his heart leaping as he cried out wonderingly:
"Girl! oh, girl ... at last?"
"Don't bring Joe in! I don't want to talk with him; I want your word, just yours alone, on everything!"
Now it was Mexicali Joe who was set wondering. For Standing, with a sudden vigorous sweep of his arm, slammed the door in Joe's perplexed face and came with swift eager strides to Lynette.
"It is I who have been of little faith and disloyal," she said softly. "I was ungrateful enough to forget how you were big enough to take my unproven word that it was not I who shot you, a thing I could never prove! And yet I asked proof of you! I should have known all the time that ... 'though it were ten thousand mile....'"
She was smiling now and yet her eyes were wet. She lifted them to his that he might look down into them, through them into her heart.
"Let me say this ... first ..." she ran on hastily. "Babe Deveril saved me the second time to-day from Taggart. And he told you where to find me. I think that he has made amends."
"He wiped his slate clean," said Standing heartily. "Henceforth I am no enemy of his. But it is not of Deveril now that we must talk. Girl, can't you see...."
"Am I blind?" laughed Lynette happily.