the one first thought, bursting into full form and expression in lynette's brain, with the suddenness, and the shock of an explosion, was: "he is alive!" and in babe deveril's mind the thought: "bruce standing at last!... and drunk with rage!"
and bruce standing's one thought, as both understood somewhat as they leaped to their feet:
"into my hands, of all my enemies are those two whom i hate most delivered!" for it had been almost like a religion with him, his certainty that he would come up with them—the girl who had laughed and shot him; the man who had stolen her away, cheating his vengeance.
babe deveril, on the alert in the first flash of comprehension, stooped, groping among the shadows for his club, his only weapon. he saw the sun glinting upon bruce standing's rifle barrel. that club of his ... where was it? dropped somewhere; perhaps while he was building a leafy bower for a pretty lady; forgotten in a gush of other thoughts ... he couldn't find it. he stood straight again; his hands, clinched and lifted, imitated clubs. the first weapons of the first men....
lynette heard them shouting at each other, two men who hated each other, two men seeing red as they looked through the spectacles which always heady hatred wears. men, both of them; masculinity asserting itself triumphantly, belligerently; manhood rampant and, on the spur of the moment, as warlike as two young bulls contending for a herd.... she heard them cursing each other; heard such plain-spoken anglo-saxon epithets
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hurled back and forth as at any other time would have set her ears burning. just now the epithets meant less than nothing to her; they were but windy words, and a word was less, far less, than a stout club in a man's hand or a stone to hurl. she was of a mind to run while yet she could; but that was only the first natural reaction, lost and forgotten instantly. she stood without moving, watching them. an odd thing, she thought afterward, wondering, that that which at the moment made the strongest, longest-lasting impression upon her was the picture which timber-wolf, himself, created as, with the low sun at his back, he came rushing down upon them. just now the mountain slope had constituted but a quiet landscape in softening tones, like a painting in pastels, with only the sun dropping down into the pine fringe to constitute a brighter focal point; and now, all of a sudden, it was as though the master artist, with impulsive inspiration, had slung with sweeping brush this new element into the picture—that of a great blond giant of a man, young and vigorous, and at this critical hour consumed with hatred and anger and triumphant glee. he was always one to punish his own enemies, was bruce standing. and now one felt that he carried vengeance in both big, hard, relentless hands.
on he came, almost at a run, so eager was he. came so close before he stopped that lynette saw the flash of his blue eyes—eyes which, when she had seen them first in big pine had been laughing and innocent—which now were the eyes of a blue-eyed devil. he was laughing; it was a devil's laugh, she thought. for he jeered at her and her companion. his mockery made her blood tingle; his eyes said evil things of her. her cheeks went hot-red under that one flashing look.
but he was not just now concerned with her! he
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meant to ignore her until he had given his mind to other matters! he was still shouting in that wonderful, golden voice of his; to every name in a calendar not of saints he laid his tongue as he read babe deveril's title clear for him. and, name to name, babe deveril checked off with him, hurling back anathema and epithet as good as came his way.... lynette understood that both men had forgotten her. to them, passion-gripped as they were, it was as though she did not exist and had never existed. and yet it was largely because of her that they were gathering themselves to fly at each other! man inconsistent and therefore man. otherwise something either higher or lower; either of a devil-order or a god-order. but as it is ... better as it is ... something of god and devil and altogether—man.
and children of a sort, in their hearts. for, before a blow was struck, they called names! so fast did the words fly, so hot and furious were they, that she had the curious sense that their battle would end as it began, in insults and mutterings. but when timber-wolf had shouted: "sneak and cur and coward ... a man to rifle another man's pockets, after that other had played square and been generous with you...." and when deveril, his hands still lifted, while in his heart he could have wept for a club lost, shouted back: "cur and coward yourself ... with a rifle against a man who has nothing ..." then she saw that the last word had been spoken and that blows were inevitable. she drew back swiftly, as any onlooker must give room to two big wild-wood beasts.
"coward? bruce standing a coward? why, damn your dirty soul...."
bruce standing caught his rifle by the end of the barrel; at first lynette, and deveril also, thought that he
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meant to use it as a club. but instead he flourished it about his head but the once, and hurled it so far from him that it went, flashing in the sunlight, above a pine top and fell far away somewhere down the slope. never in all his life had bruce standing had any man even think of naming him coward. as well name sunlight darkness. for all men who knew bruce standing, and all men who for the first and only time looked him square in the eyes, knew of him that he was fearless.
thus with a gesture ... he abandoned wordy outpourings of wrath and hurled himself into flesh-and-blood combat. he did not turn to right or left for the dwindling camp-fire; he came straight through it, his two long arms outstretched, seeking deveril. and babe deveril, the moment he saw how the rifle sped through the air and understood his kinsman's challenge, leaped forward eagerly to the meeting with him. their four boots began scattering firebrands....
lynette, with all her fast-beating heart, wanted to come to babe deveril's aid. the one thing which mattered was that, at her hour of need, he had stood up for her; her soul was tumultuously crying out for the opportunity to demonstrate beyond lip-service the meaning of gratitude. she caught up a stone, and throughout the fight held it gripped so hard that before the end her fingers were bleeding. but never an opportunity did she have to hurl it as long as those two contended.
once it entered her thought that she must have dreamed of bruce standing, shot and bleeding and senseless on the floor at the gallup house. for now, so few hours after, he gave no slightest hint of being a man recently badly wounded. there was more of common sense in a man's dying of such a wound as his than in his striking such great, hammer-hard blows with both arms. he created within her from that moment an
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odd sensation which grew with her later; the man was not of the common mould. something beyond and above mere flesh and blood and the routine of human qualifications inspired him. there was something inevitable about bruce standing....
babe deveril fought like a young, lissome tiger.... he fought with all of the might that lay within him, muscle and mind and controlling spirit. when he struck a blow he put into it, with a little coughing grunt, every last ounce of hostility which was at his command; with every blow he longed to kill. and, as though the two were blood-brothers, bruce standing fought as did babe deveril. straight, hard, merciless blow to answer blow as straight and hard and merciless....
timber-wolf was a man to laugh at his own mine muckers when they could not thrust a boulder aside, and to stoop and set his hands and arms and back to the labor and pluck the thing up and hurl it above their bewildered heads. he smote as though he carried a war-club in each hand; he received a crashing blow full in the face, and, though the blood came, he did not feel it; he struck back, and his great iron fist beat through deveril's guarding arms. no man, or at least no man whom bruce standing in his wild life had ever met, could have stood up against that blow. babe deveril, with the life almost jarred out of his body, went down. and bruce standing, growling like an angry bear, caught him up and lifted him high in air and flung him far away from him, as lightly as though he flung but a fifty-pound weight. and where babe deveril fell he lay still.... lynette ran to him and knelt and put her hands at his shoulders, thinking him dead.
a short fight it had been, but already had the swift end come. so hard had that blow been, so tremendous had been the crash against rock and earth when the
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flung body struck, there appeared to be but a pale flame of life, flickering wanly, in deveril's body. timber-wolf came and stood over him and over lynette, gloating, mumbling; muttering while his great chest heaved: "little rat that he is! a man to take advantage when he found me down; a man to cheat me of the she-cat that shot me. i could crush him into the dirt with my boot heel...."
"you great big brute!..."
it was then that she sprang to her feet and, almost inarticulate with her own warring emotions, grief and fear and anger and hatred, flung the jagged stone full into his face. he was unprepared; the stone struck him full upon the forehead; he staggered backward, stumbling, almost falling; his hands flew to his face. he was near-stunned; blinded. deveril was on his elbow....
"come!" she screamed wildly. "quick! you and i...."
"treacherous devil-cat!" there was his thunderous voice shouting so that she, so near him, was almost deafened.
bruce standing, wiping the blood from his eyes, his two arms out before him, came back to the attack. deveril, on his knees, surged to his feet; standing struck and deveril went down like a poorly balanced timber falling. lynette was groping for another stone. suddenly she felt upon her wrist a grip like a circlet of cutting steel. she was whisked about; timber-wolf held her, drawn close, staring face into face. his other hand was lifted slowly; suddenly she felt it caught in her loose hair....
and then, inexplicable to her now and ever after, there was in her ear the sound of bruce standing's laughter. the hand at her hair fell away. it went up to his eyes, wiping them clear. and then she saw in the eyes what she had read in the voice ... laughter.
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"well, deveril, what now?"
again deveril was on his feet. he swayed; his face was dead-white; it was easy to see how fiercely he bent every energy at his command to remain upright. there was a queer look in the eyes he turned upon timber-wolf.
"i never saw a man ... like you."
he spoke with effort; he was like a man far gone in some devastating lung trouble; his voice was windy and vibrant and weak.
"baby devil!" jeered standing. "oh, baby devil! and, when it comes to dealing with a real man.... why, then, less devil than baby! ho!..."
"i am going to kill you...."
"god aids the righteous!" standing told him sternly. "you go. to hell with you and your kind."
god aids the righteous! this from the lips of bruce standing, timber-wolf!... lynette, her nerves like wires smitten in an electric storm, could have burst into wild laughter.... she wrenched at her wrist; standing's big hand neither tightened nor relaxed, giving her the feeling of despair which a thick steel chain would have given had she been locked and deserted in a dungeon.
deveril was looking over his shoulder. in his glance ... the sun was near setting among the pines, and they saw his face as his head jerked about ... any one might read his thought: down there, somewhere among the bushes, lay a rifle!
standing laughed at him. and standing, dragging lynette along with him as easily as he might have drawn a child of six, went down the slope first. and first he came to the fallen rifle and caught it up and brought it back to the trampled camp-fire.
"you're sneak enough for that, baby devil!" he
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taunted. "for that or any other coward act. and so is this woman of yours. so i spike the artillery. god! if the earth were only populated by men!... now i've got this word for your crafty ear: listen well." instantly his voice became as hard as flint and carried assurance that every word he was going to say would be a word meant with all his heart and soul. and all the while he gripped lynette by the wrist and seemed unconscious of that fact or that she struggled to be free. "i've given you a fair fight, you who don't fight fair. and i've knocked the daylights out of you. and now i'm sick of you. you can go. you can sneak off through the timber and be out of sight inside of two minutes. yet i'll give you five. and at the end of that time, if you're in sight, i am going to shoot you dead!"
deveril glared at him, his glance laid upon standing's as one rapier may clash across another.
"do your dirty killing and be damned to you!" said deveril briefly.
timber-wolf looked at him in surprise; he began to cast about him for a fresh and clearer comprehension of a man whom he despised. he strove with all his power of clean vision to see to the bottom of deveril's most hidden thought.
"now," said standing slowly, "i am almost sorry for what i said. it strikes into me, kid, that you are not afraid!"
deveril, breathless, panting, holding himself erect only through a great call upon his will, made no spoken answer, but again laid the blade of his glance shiningly across that of timber-wolf.
"you die just the same," said standing coldly. "it's only because i gave my word; that you can take in man-to-man style from me, kid; for once i am not ashamed
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to be related to you. either you travel or, in five minutes, you are a dead man."
slowly deveril's haggard eyes roved to lynette's face ... lynette chained to bruce standing in that crushing grip....
"i am going," he said. and both knew he said it in fearlessness but also in understanding of the power which lay in a rifle bullet and the weakness of the barricade offered to it by a human skull. and both understood, further, that it was to lynette that he spoke. "i am coming back!"
"for god's sake!" she screamed. "go! hurry!"
"hurry!" bruce standing, with his own word of honor in the balance against the weight of the life of a man whom he began to respect, was all anxiety to have his kinsman gone.
deveril's last word, with his last look, was for lynette.
"a man who doesn't know when he's beat is a fool.... but you can be sure of this: i'll be back!"
he went, walking crookedly at first among the knee-high bushes; then growing straighter as he passed into the demesne of the tall, straight pines. not swiftly, since there was no possibility of any swift play of muscles left within him; but steadily.
"a man!" grunted timber-wolf. whether in admiration or disgust, lynette could not guess from his tone.
he had his watch in the palm of his hand; her gaze was riveted on it. it seemed so tiny a thing in that great valley of his hand; a bauble. yet its even more insignificant minute-hand was assuming the office of arbiter of human life; she knew that the moment the fifth minute was ticked off bruce standing, true to his sworn word, would relinquish her wrist just long enough
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to whip his rifle to his shoulder and fire ... in case the uncertain form of babe deveril, going up over the ridge, were still in sight. and she knew within her soul that just so sure as gun butt struck shoulder and finger found trigger, so sure would babe deveril toss his arms up and fall dead....
"hurry, kid ... you damn' fool ... hurry...."
all the while timber-wolf was muttering and glaring at his watch and clinching her wrist; all the while forgetting that he held her. and, this also she knew, regretting that he had the job set before him of shooting down another man.
lynette, her whole body atingle, every sense keyed up to its highest stressing, knew as soon as did bruce standing when he was going to drop her wrist and jerk his gun up. the five minutes were passing; still, though at a distance far up on the ridge, seen only by glimpses now and then under the setting sun, babe deveril was driving on, a man half bereft of his sober senses, his brain reeling from savage blows and on fire with rage and mortification; they saw him among the pines; they lost him; they saw him again. never once had he turned to look back. yet it did not seem that he hastened....
timber-wolf, growling deep down in his throat, lifted his rifle. but lynette, before the act, knew! she flung herself with sudden fury upon his uplifted arm; she caught it, and with the weight of her body dragged it down. he sought to fling her off; she wrapped both of her arms about his right arm; she jerked at it so that he could have no slightest hope of a steady aim....
he turned and looked down into her eyes; deep ... deep. for what seemed to her a long, long time he stood looking down into her eyes.
then, with sudden anger, he thrust her aside.
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without looking to see if she had fallen or stumbled and run, he raised his rifle again.
but just in time babe deveril was gone, over the ridge....
