lynette, in a mood to expect anything of fate, wondered vaguely where the steep trail of adventure now led. she would not have been surprised had standing set his plans for some spot a hundred miles distant. but she was surprised to arrive so soon, after only two or three hours, at their destination. he looked at her, exulting.

"here is eden!" he cried out joyously. "remember the name, girl; bestowed upon this spot no longer ago than this very minute! eden! and as far from the world as that other distant eden. here we stop and here no man finds us!"

he had led the way, upward along a rocky slope. he had brought her into a spot which she would have named "the land of waterfalls!" a tiny valley with a sparkling mountain creek cleaving like flowing crystal through a grassy meadow; tall trees, noble patriarchs bounding it. steep cañon walls shutting in the timber growth; a narrow ravine above with the water leaping, plunging, tumbling translucent green over jagged rocks, splashing into a series of pools, turned into rainbow spray here and there in its wild cascadings. the world all about was murmurous with living waters, with bees, with the eternal whisperings of the pines.

and here began an idyl; a strange idyl. a man asserting his power as captor; a maid made captive; two souls wide awake, questing, swung from certainty to uncertainty, gathered up in doubt. life grown a thing of tremendous import.

all morning had standing been wracked with pain. yet none the less did he hold unswervingly to his

[pg 249]

purpose. now he sat down, his back to a tree. thor came and lay at his feet. lynette stood looking down upon the two.

"rest," he said. "here is your home for a time. a day? ten days? who knows? not i, girl! all that i know i have told you; here we rest and here we take life into our hands and mould it ... as we have always moulded it! we are at the gates; we enter or we turn to one side! we go on or we go back. which? when we know that, we know everything."

he had brought with him, slung across his back, a great roll from the hidden cabin. his rifle lay across his knees. he looked up into her face with eyes which, though haggard, shone wonderfully. she sat down, ten steps from him; her clasped hands were in her lap; her eyes were veiled mysteries.

"taggart won't look for us here," he said. "he hasn't the brains of a little gray seed-tick! he'll be sure we've made a big jump, forward or back, ten times this distance. besides, he has to go somewhere to get himself a new set of guns! imagine him tackling anything with an ounce of risk in it unless he was heeled like an army corps! i begin to lose respect for that man."

lynette was thinking but one thing: "she was not afraid of this man; not afraid to be alone with him in pathless solitudes. she might choose to be elsewhere ... yet she was safe with him. for, above all, he was a man; and never need a true girl fear a true man." and, when she stole a swift glance at his face, it lay in her heart to be a bit sorry for him. sympathy? it lies close to another eternal human emotion! he looked like one whom fate had crushed and yet whose spirit refused to be crushed. he looked a sick man who, scorning all the commands laid upon the flesh, carried on.

after a while he turned to look upon her, and for the

[pg 250]

first time she saw a new and strange look in his eyes, a look of pleading.

"don't misjudge me, girl," he said heavily. "rather than see your little finger bruised i'd have a man drive a knife in me! i'm just blundering along now ... blundering ... trying to see daylight. i won't hurt you. there's nothing on earth or in heaven so sure as that. but don't ask me to let you go!"

she made him no answer. she began thinking of his wounds; he gave them such scant attention! he should be caring for them; what he should do was to hasten to a surgeon. she wondered if still he clung to his conviction, the natural one after all, that she had shot him? and she wondered, as she had done so many a time before: "who had shot him?" whose hand that which she had seen reach through her window and snatch up her revolver and fire the cowardly shot? taggart, only a few hours ago, had said: "i saw! i was right there!" ...

"was it jim taggart who shot you in the back last night?" she demanded suddenly.

"yes," he said. "at least, i think so."

"is he that kind of man?"

now his eyes were keen and hard upon hers.

"i begin to think that he is, girl," he said shortly. "why?"

she shrugged and again turned away.

he lumbered to his feet. thor, knowing where he was going, barked and leaped ahead.

"come, i'll show you where we pitch camp."

she looked about her. mere madness to attempt flight now; he would bear down upon her before she had run twenty steps. and did she want to run just now? she had her own measure of curiosity.... was it only that?... and she had, locked away securely in

[pg 251]

her breast, her absolute positive knowledge that she had nothing to fear at his hands. she rose and followed him.

suddenly he swerved about, confronting her, his eyes stern, his voice hard with the emotion riding him.

"madman i may be," he said. "fool, i am not, praise god! last night i heard; you could have chucked that rifle into taggart's hands and could have gone free yourself ... and by now i'd be a dead man! but, glory be, there isn't a streak of yellow in your whole glorious being!"

the blood ran up into her face; it made her hot throughout her whole body. praise, from him, to stir her like that! her eyes flashed back angrily, for she was angry with herself.

"come," he muttered. "talk's cheap at any time. and i'm to show you where we make our first home."

with her teeth sharply catching up her underlip, she held her silence. he went on some two-score paces and stopped; with a sudden gesture he said:

"here i've spent, god knows how many nights, when i had to be off by myself! no roof for us, girl, but who wants a roof with that sky above us?"

here was a natural grotto which at another time would have made her exclaim in delight: a nook, set apart, thresholded in tender grass shot through with those tiny delicate blooms of mountain flowers. on one side a cliff, outjutting, thrusting forward a great overhanging shelf of rock which looked as though it must fall and yet which, obviously, had held securely through the centuries. three big pine-trees, two of them leaning strangely toward the cliff, as though yearning to lean against the sturdy rock and rest there upon its iron breast. the whole ringed about by a dense copse of brush, thick as a wall and rearing high above her head. almost a cave

[pg 252]

made of cliff and growing things, cosy and warm, with its opening fronting the stream which was never silent. thor ran ahead into the dusky seclusion and barked his invitation to them to follow. a thick, dry mat, under thor's feet, of fallen pine-needles.

standing tossed his roll inside; he began, with one hand, to work with the knotted rope. lynette came forward swiftly, saying:

"at least i have two hands...."

their hands brushed over the labor. again the hot blood raced through her, and again sudden anger, anger at herself, flashed through her being.

and a tingling, like that which shot through her, was in bruce standing's veins. he caught her hand.

"girl!" he said huskily.

"don't!" she cried in alarm.

he dropped her hand and rose swiftly to his feet.

"you are right," he muttered. "not yet...."

how could this man at a touch make her heart beat like mad? she was afraid ... she knew that she was not afraid of him ... yet she was afraid.

"i'm sorry," he said roughly. actually, marvelling, she saw that the big man looked embarrassed. "look here, girl: i've come to know you a bit and, thinking what i think, i hold that i know you well! i'll take my chance that you are no petty crook, that you are no coward, that you are no liar! so...."

"then," she cried, jumping to her feet, all eagerness, "do you believe me when i say that i did not shoot you?"

his eyes met hers steadily; he answered promptly:

"you have told me ... and i believe. i know!"

a rush of gladness, an intoxication of gladness, swept over her. her eyes were shining, soft and bright and happy like stars.

"but," she said, "if not i, then who?"

[pg 253]

"jim taggart," he said as unhesitatingly as he had spoken before. "jim told you that he saw, didn't he? that he was johnny on the spot? of course he was! and we'd had our plain talk. and he figured it out, that unless that very day i had changed my papers, i still named him in them my old bunk-mate and friend, and that i'd not forget him with a legacy! if i had died under that bullet, jim taggart would have had it doped out that he'd stand to win about a hundred thousand dollars! and for a tenth of that he'd crucify christ!"

"but...."

"there are no buts about it! you did not do it; then jim taggart did. he shot me last night, a second time and the second time in the back! he was once a man; now he's a gallup dog, a man gone to seed, a cur and one for such as you and me to forget about. i hope to high heaven i never see the man again; for the sake of what has been between jim taggart and me, when both of us were younger, i'd rather let the past bury its dead. for if he ever comes trailing his filth across my trail again, i'll smash him into the earth." he made a wide angry gesture, as though he would wipe an episode and a man out of his life. "but you interrupt me; i was going to say something. just this: i'll leave you alone. for an hour, for a dozen hours! you want rest, you want solitude and a chance to think. so do i. i can chain you to a tree and be sure of you! or i can ask you to give me your word that you'll wait here until i come back to you ... and i already know you well enough to know that will hold you tighter than any chain that was ever forged!"

lynette, without hesitating, answered:

"i do want rest and i do want to be alone. is that to be wondered at? until noon i'll wait for you to come back."

[pg 254]

"until high noon," he said. "and, girl, you pledge me your word on that?"

"yes!"

"come, thor!" he turned and left her, his great dog at his heels, going up the narrowing cañon.

"i'll not spy on you!" he called back, when he had gone a hundred yards. "you'll hear me shouting to you well before i come within eye-shot."

and then she lost him, gone among the lesser, denser trees thick about the creek's margins.

she turned her back on the grotto of his choosing, and went out into the full sunlight. she found a spot in the open, ringed about by the majestic pines, a grassy sward with the cleaving silver line of the creek cutting across it. for the first time in hours ... how many endless hours? how many days?... she was alone! no man at her side, either protecting or dominating. her lungs filled with a deep sigh. alone and secure in her aloneness for a matter of several hours.

there was a certain singing happiness, electric within her, and it sprang, bright-winged, from her own characteristic pride. bruce standing had left her to an absolute physical freedom, knowing her bound by that intangible and unbreakable bond of her promise. he, a man who did not break his own word knew her for a girl who did not break hers! and he knew, at last, that it had not been her hand that had fired that cowardly shot.

"it was cruel ... to have laughed at him. i did not mean to laugh. would to god...."

but if she had not laughed? then what? then how much of her adventure would have followed? how much of it did she, after all, regret?... she fell to wondering dreamily on babe deveril. where was he? and would she see him again? and, if she should see him....

[pg 255]

a thousand riddles and, as always, no answer to the riddles which spring from eternity. only the merry voice of the purling creek to talk back to her, that and the rustling whisper ebbing and flowing through the pine tops. the stream, like a companionable human voice, called to her insistently. she rose and went down to it and stooped to drink; she bathed her hands and arms and face. how lonely it was here! she cast a quick glance up-stream; long ago standing, with his big dog at his heels, had passed out of sight. and he had given her gage of promise for promise given ... he would send his shouting voice ahead of him before he came back....

so she bathed fearlessly, watched only by the solitudes, guarded by their sombre depths; she plunged, with a little shivery gasp, into the deep, cool pool below the slithering waterfall; the water slipped, gleaming like a bejewelled film over her pure-white body, making it rosy when she emerged, like rose petals.... she dressed in furious haste, all ablush and yet steeped in a confident knowledge that no eye, save the bright eye of a curious brown bird, had seen. she felt new-born; refreshed beyond belief. she ran back up the bank and sat down in the very spot where she had dropped first when standing had left her. she began, always hurrying, to comb out her hair with her fingers. sitting there in the open she let it sun....

she rested. she drank deep, thankfully, of the hour. to be alone, to be secure in the moment, to have no danger pressing down upon her, above all to have no mind save her own dictating to her. it was glorious and life was good and glad and golden, infinitely worth the living. so passed an hour. it was so quiet here; so unutterably lonely. only the voice of the creek and the million-tongued murmuring pines. her swift

[pg 256]

thoughts raced ten thousand ways. they touched upon big pine; on taggart; mexicali joe; a gold-mine still for men to find; maria, the indian girl whom deveril had kissed; deveril himself; that one-legged man who rode horseback and carried forth the word and the law of his master; thor, a dog; bruce standing. most of all, bruce standing. she wondered where he was, what doing? caring for his own wounds? lying on his back, his white face turned up, his eyes shut, tight shut? and he loved her?

bruce standing loved her, lynette? was that true? what was love? whence came love? for what purpose? what did it do to the hearts and souls and bodies of men ... and girls? was love for her? she had never experienced it, not true, abiding love. did babe deveril....

another hour. shadows slowly shifting, moving like gigantic hands of eternal clocks. time passing, time that answers all questions, man's and maid's, saint's and sinner's. she stirred uneasily and sat up. she looked at the pine tops and, beyond them, at the sun. it was almost noon!

come noon.... what then? come high noon before bruce standing, and she was free! released from her promise, all bonds snapped! free!

she jumped to her feet. her eyes went questing, questing, everywhere. to be free again; to be her own self, lynette, untrammelled.... and she felt awondering illogically: "can it be that, after all, he was driving himself beyond any man's endurance? that he is more badly hurt than either he or i knew?"

but he returned a full half-hour before even the most eager could name it noon. true to his word, he sent his voice, like a glorious herald, ahead of him. she heard him call, not the wolf cry, but a rollicking shout.

[pg 257]

and ten minutes later he himself came, plainly in the highest of good humors. he was still pale and looked haggard, but his eyes were flashing and triumphant and untroubled.

he came to her, splashing across the creek, water flying about his boot-tops.

"i've had a bath," he announced from afar. "and i've plastered myself with the worst that billy winch can concoct, and richard is himself again!" he came closer, towered above her and said: "you, too, have bathed! you look it, as fresh from the plunge as any diana! it's good to be clean, isn't it?"

she flushed and was ashamed for it. she bit her lip and made no answer.

"come," he said. "we'll lunch. and now, and from now on for some sixty years, my girl, it will be i who waits on you! the slave rôle reversed!" and he laughed.

"i promised to wait for you; i make no more promises!"

"that's fair enough! i watch you then!"

"do you want to make me hate you?"

"rather, i want you to come to love me."

"could any girl come to love a man who treats her as you have done me?"

"could any girl come to love a man," he demanded earnestly, "who thought so little of her as to let her escape him when once destiny had brought her and him together?"