another day of wilderness wandering. a cabin sighted, but so far away that it was merely a vague dot upon a distant ridge; miner's shack or sheepman's or wood-cutter's? housing an occupant or deserted for years? no smoke from the rock chimney; no sign of any human being near it. and all view of it so soon lost!... and, afterward, no other human habitation of any kind; no road man-made; only trees and rocks, gorges and ridges and brush, and a winding way to be chosen between them. with, always, bruce standing driving on and on, relentlessly on, ever deeper into the wilderness.
a day of life like a leaf torn out of the book of hell for lynette. he did not speak to her as they went on from dawn to noon and from noon until afternoon shadows gathered; he did not so much as turn his eyes full upon her own; for the most part he seemed altogether forgetful of the fact that, besides himself, there was another of his species in all the wide sweep of this land of mighty solitudes. for his dog, thor, he had a kindly though rough-spoken word now and then; for his horse a word or a rude pat upon the shoulder or hip; for her nothing but his utter, unruffled silence.... at times she hummed little snatches of gay tunes, hoping to irritate him; at times she strove for an aloofness to match his own. countless times she looked over her shoulder, looking for babe deveril. and so the day, a long day, went by until at last it was late afternoon.
"here we stop," said standing abruptly. "get down."
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he would seem to have all advantage over her; yet she understood that in one way, and in one way only, could she rob him of his advantage, and that was by giving him swift and cheerful obedience. so she slipped out of the saddle on the instant, giving him for answer only the light gay words:
"oh, it is beautiful here!" ...
it was beautiful.... he glared at her and led his horse away to unsaddle; his big dog, thor, had trotted along at daylight's heels all day and now slumped down, ears erect and suspicious, while he watched his master and made certain of never losing sight for a second of his master's new companion, whom he tolerated but did not trust. lynette, stiff from so many hours in the saddle, looked about her. they were in the upper, brief space of a valley; above reared the mountains steeply, rugged slopes with pines here and there, with more open spaces and tumbled boulders. the valley itself was a pretty, pleasant place, soft in short green grass, flower-dotted, smoothly curving down into the more open level lands below. yet here was no proper place to pitch camp, especially at so early an hour when it was allowed to seek further; it was too open, it would be unsheltered and cold; there was no water....
"come on!"
she started and turned again toward standing. he had slung his small pack across his shoulders and was going on. she looked forward toward the ridge, which he faced; it rose sheer and forbidding. and she saw that his face was white and drawn; she wondered quickly how sorely his wound hurt him.
"brute?" he could have been far more brutal to her.... he was dead-tired, white-faced; he had fought hard last night, scorning the advantage of an armed man against an unarmed; he had not harmed a
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hair of her head! almost ... almost it lay within her to whisper "poor fellow!" and if only bruce standing could have known that!...
he led the way. she followed, since there was nothing else to think of doing.
they climbed steadily upward out of this narrow green valley, finding a steep but open way among the trees. now and then they paused briefly to breathe, and lynette, looking back, saw more and more of the long, winding valley, as it revealed itself to her from new vantage points. far away she caught the glint of the sunlight upon a little wandering creek. they went on, and came to the crest of the ridge, in full sunshine now; standing led an unhesitating way through a natural pass, and down on the other side, into shadows of a thick grove; through thickets; they splashed across a creek, a thin line of clear, cool water slipping through mountain willows, a tributary of the larger stream in the valley below. down here it was almost dark. but twenty minutes later, climbing another slope where the larger timber stood widely spaced, they came again into the full sunshine.... lynette began to wonder why he had left his horse so far back; how far did the silent, tireless man mean to walk? also, she began to welcome the coming night with an eagerness which she was at all pains to conceal from him; he was always ten steps ahead of her; if he walked on another half-hour, she began to hope that they would come into a place of shadows and clumps of trees among which she might dare make the attempt for escape which had been denied her all day....
they came into a little upland flat, well watered, emerald-carpeted with tender grass, shot through with lingering flowers and studded with magnificent trees; it seemed the very heart of the great wilderness; here was
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such glorious forest land as lynette had never seen and did not know existed in all the broad scope of the great southwest mountain country. she looked upward. dark branches towered into the sky, the tips still shot through with soft summer light. she heard the gush of water—the tumble and splash and fall of water. somewhere above, at the upper end of the flat, where a dark ravine was an ebon-shadow-filled gash through the hills, was a waterfall. she could not see it, but its musical waters proclaimed it through the still air. she looked swiftly down the other way; there it was growing dark. she glanced hurriedly at standing. and he, as though he had read her thought, stopped and turned and, before she could stir, was at her side.
after that, with never a word, they went on, deeper into this shadowy realm of big trees. he watched her at every step. fury filled her heart, but with compressed lips she maintained a silence like his own. thor trotted along with them, now in front of his master, as though this were a way he had travelled before and knew well, now questing far afield, now in the rear, eying his master's captive and setting his dog's brains to the riddle.
before they had walked another ten minutes, standing threw down his pack and said abruptly:
"this is as far as we go."
she sat down, her back to a tree, her face averted from him. she was very tired and now she could have put her face into her hands and cried from very weariness. but instead she caught her lip up between her teeth and hid her face from him and ignored him. but in her heart she was wondering; had he travelled all day long and then this far from the spot where he had released his horse, just to pitch camp in a clump of trees? was this the spot toward which he had striven on so
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stubbornly since daylight? where was he going? why? old queries and doubts rushed back upon her.... she was vaguely grateful that they were questions which he and not she had to answer; that responsibilities were his instead of hers. she was tired enough to lie down where she was and cease to care what happened.... it was not as yet pitch-dark; the sun was not down on the heights. but here, among the tall pines, in this hollow, the shadows were thick; nothing stood out in detail to her slowly closing eyes; here was a place of black blots, distorted glooms, the weird formless outriders of the night.... she had not the remotest suspicion that, where she had slumped down, she was almost at the door of a cabin.
rather, it would have been surprising had she known. for surely there was never cabin like this hermit camp of bruce standing's! two sky-scraping pines stood close together; between them was the door, framed by their own straight trunks. smaller trees grew about the ancient parents; these hid the walls which to escape notice required little enough hiding at any time; a man might have passed here within a few yards at noonday and not noticed all this which lynette failed to see in the dusk. for the walls of the tiny cabin were of rough logs from which the bark had never been stripped, walls which blended so perfectly with the greater note struck by the woodland that they failed to draw the eye; the chimney, of loose-piled rocks, was viewless at this time of day behind the tree trunks and inconspicuous at any time. and low, over the flat roof drooped the concealing branches of the trees. of all this lynette glimpsed nothing until timber-wolf said, looking down at her:
"when all the tavern is prepared within,
why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?"
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she had striven in one way and another since she had had her first view of him, axe in hand, for a clew to the real bruce standing. now, again, he set her jaded faculties to work: bruce standing, timber-wolf, and man of violence, quoting poetry to her! and at such a moment and under such circumstances!... it is not merely the feminine soul which is indeterminable, mystifying, intriguing into the ultimate bournes of speculation; rather the human soul....
"i don't fancy guessing riddles this evening," she told him. "all that i can think of by way of repartee is: 'what meanest thou, sir tent-maker?'"
she thought that she heard him stifle a chuckle!
but, in this thickening gloom and through those heavy shadows which lay across her soul in an hour of doubtings and uncertainties, she could be certain of nothing.... he was saying merely:
"if you're not clean done in, i'd suggest you walk three steps into my cabin. on the other hand, if you can't make it, i'll pick you up and carry you in!"
at that she sprang to her feet; through the gathering dark he could feel the burning look in her eyes.
then, groping mentally and physically, it was given to her to understand. for already he stood upon the rude threshold. she followed after him.
she gasped, astonished, when she realized that already, in so few steps, she had passed into the embrasure of four walls! sturdy walls; walls rude and unbeautiful, but rising stalwart bulwarks against the cold of night mountain air. he, a blurred, gigantic form in the dusk, was before her; his wolfish dog was at her heels. she heard the scratch, she saw the blue and yellow spurt of a sulphur match. his form suddenly loomed larger, leaped into grotesque giganticness; the tiny room sprang waveringly out of darkness into the
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unreality of half-light; he found a candle; a steady golden flame sent the shadows racing into limbo; she looked about her wonderingly....
a room, bound in rough logs; a hastily, roughly hewn log set on other logs, offering its surly service as table; a stump which obviously made pretense at being a stool; a bunk against a wall, thick-padded with the tips from pines; a tin cup, a tin plate, an imitation of a box against a wall. and, hanging over a pole ... her first certainty that bruce standing, though animal as she named him in her heart, was a clean animal ... two or three blankets which, on last leaving this hut of his, he had stretched to air.... a primitive room, and yet clean. and, across from the narrow bunk, a deep, wide-mouthed fireplace made of big rocks.... he himself must have made that fireplace, for what other man could have lifted those rocks into place?
"i'm hungry," said standing. "as hungry as a bear."
already she was sitting on the edge of the bunk. she expected to hear for his next words: "get me my dinner." but, instead, he said, his voice harsher than she had ever heard it before:
"and that's why i'm cooking for myself instead of making you do it! i don't want you to get it into your head it's because i'm getting sorry for you...."
she lay back, unanswering, and watched him. and presently, though not for him to see, a little smile touched her lips and for a short instant lighted her big gray eyes.... and in her heart she said: "he is so obvious, with all his thinking that he is a man whom a girl cannot see through! all day he has made me ride, while he walked! he said that that was to make better time! and, with every opportunity to harm me, he has not harmed a hair of my head! he has not even
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touched me with his big, blundering hands!... and he looks white and sick from his hurt...."
he rummaged in a corner; he made a fire in his fireplace; he ripped open a couple of cans and set coffee to boil in a battered pot as black as an african negro. suddenly lynette, who had been silent a long while, exclaimed:
"i know now! we are still on your land. this is the very cabin where, six years ago, you robbed babe deveril of three thousand dollars!"
"no!" he said. "you have guessed wrong!" and then: "so your little friend, baby devil, told you many a tale about my wickedness?"
"he told me that one."
"and did he tell you the sequel? how i squared with him?"
so he wanted her to think well of him! she made herself comfortable, leaning back against the wall.
"have you the vaguest inkling of the difference between right and wrong, bruce standing?" she asked him impudently.
he laughed at her—become suddenly harsh.
"come," he said, "it is time for food. and then, for a man who does not break his word, blow high, blow low, to keep an appointment."
with that conversation ceased. he drove thor into a corner, and with a word and a glance made the dog lie down. he boiled his coffee and set a hurried meal; he caught up a tin plate and brought it to lynette. she was about to thank him when she saw how he was planning to serve a tin platter like hers to his dog; then she could have screamed at him in nerve-pent-up anger.
the three—master, captive, and dog—ate their late dinners while the candle flame, pale yellow with its bluish centre, swayed gently in the mild draft of air
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through the open door. windows there were none, saving the one square aperture over the bunk, boarded up now.
"what about jim taggart?" said standing brusquely out of a long silence toward the end of which the weary girl was near dozing. "what do you know about him? did he overhaul mexicali joe after all?"
she looked at him steadily; suddenly she was glad when a pine branch in the fireplace, full of pitch, flared up so that he must have seen her face more clearly than he could have done by mere pale candle-light; she wanted him to see it and read something of the defiance which she meant to offer him.
"so, after all, you have your engagement with mexicali joe? it was for that that you set him free? that you, instead of others, might steal his golden secret!"
"then you won't answer, girl? you, whom i could crush between thumb and finger, refuse to answer me?"
"yes!" she cried out at him. "yes! i am not afraid of you, bruce standing!"
"not afraid?" he glared at her, his flashing blue eyes full of threat. then he laughed contemptuously, saying: "and yet, were i minded to, i could in a second have you on your knees, begging, pleading...."
"but you won't!" she dared fling at him. "and that is why i am not afraid!"
"i am not so sure!" he muttered. "not so sure. before morning, girl, you may come to know what fear is!"
she tried to toss back her fearless laughter, but at that look of his and at that stern tone of his voice her laughter caught in her throat.
"you've got nerve," he said grudgingly. "more nerve than i thought any girl could have ... since it's far and away more than most men have. but just the same there's one thing you are afraid of! i've seen it a
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dozen times to-day, no matter how well you thought you hid it! you are afraid to death of old thor, there!"
she shivered; she laid a quick command upon her muscles as upon her spirit, but they failed her; she tried to tell herself and to show him through her bearing, head up, eyes steady, that it was only fatigue and the growing chill of the coming night that put that tremor upon her. but he laughed at her and called his big dog to him and said heavily:
"watch her, thor! watch her!"
thor growled, a growl coming from deep down in the powerful throat; the red eyes grew hot; bristles stood up along neck and back; there came the gleam of the wolfish teeth. she shrank back against the wall.
"i have my appointment!... in an hour i must go. i give you your choice of coming along with me, in leash! or of staying here, with only thor to guard, and taking your chances with him! which is it?"
and she cried quickly:
"i'll go with you!" and then, lest he should think that he had triumphed, she added swiftly: "for i, too, am interested in mexicali joe!"
he caught down the blankets which had hung airing since last he came here and tossed two of them to the bunk where she half lay; the third he folded and placed on the floor, stretching out his own great bulk upon it, his shoulders against the wall. he found his pipe, filled and lighted it, and lay staring into the fire....
and she, drawing a blanket over her knees, crouched, looking into the same dancing flames, overwhelmed for the moment by a total sense-engulfing feeling of unreality. could all of this which had happened, which was still happening, be an actual experience for her, lynette brooke? more did it resemble a long-drawn-out
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ugly dream than actuality! to be here to-night, so far from the world, her own world, in the heart of a gigantic wilderness, in a rude cabin; a giant of a man who, as he had said truly, might have crushed her between his powerful forefinger and thumb; a savage wolf of a dog watching her with unblinking eyes; another man, somewhere, with vengeance in his heart, following them; another man, clutching to his breast his golden secret, not far away; ... nightmare ingredients! did this man, bruce standing, timber-wolf as men called him, really know where to find mexicali joe? and, when he found him, would he come upon taggart and gallup and that hawk-faced man whom they called cliff shipton? and with them would there be babe deveril, who must have gone somewhere in his mad, hungering hope to have a rifle in his hands?... above all else, was she the plaything of fate? or the director of fate? now it lay within the scope of her power to cry out to bruce standing: "when you find mexicali joe you will find others, no friends of yours, with him! with them, probably, babe deveril! and more than one rifle ready to stand between you and the mexican!" ... if she kept her silence, there might be bloodshed before morning; if she spoke her warning, she might be doubly arming timber-wolf. she grew restless; so restless that thor, distrusting her, began growling.
and bruce standing, regarding her fixedly, demanded sharply:
"well, what is it?"
well ... what should she say? anything or nothing? if she kept her silence, would she in after-days know herself to blame for to-night's bloodshed in that, keeping shut lips, she allowed him to stumble upon all taggart's crowd.
he was eying her sharply. she must make some
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answer, and so at last she prefaced her reply by asking him:
"you say that we are not on your land?"
"i did not say that. i said that this is not the cabin in which i had some years ago the pleasant experience of borrowing some money from babe deveril. he has never been here; has never heard of this place. no man other than myself, and until now no woman ever came here."
"that narrow end of a valley we crossed this afternoon ... that was the upper end of buck valley? and the creek which came next was big bear creek? and, right near us somewhere is grub stake cañon?"
"you know the country like a map!" he spoke carelessly enough and yet was puzzled to understand how she knew; of course deveril could have told her something of it and yet deveril's knowledge was restricted to the slim gleanings of one short excursion of years ago, and he did not believe that even deveril had ever heard of grub stake cañon.
"and," she ran on swiftly, "you were to meet mexicali joe to-night at that other cabin of yours? is that it?"
"witch, are you? picker of thoughts from men's brains?" he laughed shortly and got to his feet. "and so you elect to go along and see what happens? rather than rest here with thor to keep you company?"
she, too, rose swiftly.
"yes!"
he took up his rifle, caught her hand and extinguished the candle.
"down, thor, old boy," he said as he might have spoken to a man, without raising his voice. "wait for me. good dog, thor."
thor whined, but lynette heard the sound he made in
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lying down obediently; heard the thumping of his tail as he whined again. standing began leading the way through the dark among the big trees, his fingers about her wrist.... she wondered how far they must go; suddenly as her great weariness bore down upon her spirit that was become the greatest of all considerations; greater, even, than what they should find at the end of their walk. almost she regretted not having remained in the cabin ... with thor.
standing, despite the dark and the uneven ground underfoot, seemed to have no difficulty in finding his way; he walked swiftly; she could sense his eager impatience. she began wondering listlessly if he were late to his appointment....
she had faint idea how far they had gone, a mile or two miles or but half a mile, a weary time of heavily dragging footsteps, when suddenly the silence was broken by men's voices. far away, dimmed and all but utterly hidden by the interval of forest, was a vague glow of light. standing came to a dead stop; she stumbled against him. there came, throbbing through the night, a man's scream. standing stiffened; she felt a tremor run through his big body. a voice again, an evil voice in evil laughter; a deeper voice, too far away for the words to carry any meaning, not too far for the voice itself to be recognized by a man who hated it.
"taggart and young gallup," standing muttered. "they've got joe! they'd cut his throat for ten cents!... look here; what do you know about all this?"
she answered hurriedly; that thin scream still echoed in her ears; she remembered only too vividly taggart's treatment of joe at the dugout and taggart's threats; she shivered, saying:
"all i know.... jim taggart and gallup and
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another man caught up with joe at his cabin; they made him bring them here ... to show them his gold ... taggart threatened him with torture...."
"come! hurry! why in hell's name didn't you tell me?"
still with her hand caught in his own he turned and ran, making her run with him, back to his own cabin. again they heard, fainter now since the distance was greater, that thin cry bursting from joe's lips; she felt the hand on her own shut down, mercilessly hard.... running, they returned to his hidden cabin.
he went in with her; hurriedly he lighted the candle; the fire was almost out. wondering, she sank down upon the bunk.
"down, thor," he commanded; he made the dog lie again across the threshold. "watch her, thor!" thor growled; the red eyes watched her.
"don't you move from that bunk until i get back!" standing told her sternly.
he ran out of the cabin. she heard him breaking through brush, going the shortest, straightest way down toward the spot from which voices had come up to them. thor growled. she looked at the dog, fascinated with fear of him. the big head was down now, resting between the big fore paws; the unwinking eyes were on her.... she lay back on the bunk, staring up at the smoke-blackened rafters.
it was very quiet. no longer could she hear the sound of timber-wolf's running.... he, one man, pitting himself in blazing anger against at least three men, ... perhaps four!... what if he were killed? leaving her here, under the relentless guard of thor? she was taken with a long fit of shivering. thor growled.
