the most perfect of the summer months in this secluded mountain nook, not inaptly named "eden" by standing, was a period of time measuring itself in soft, fragrant loveliness. the days were balmy, perfect, halcyon; gentle hours of blue cloudlessness and golden sunshine and little breezes which scarcely ruffled the clear water in the bigger pools; night as clear as crystal, with flaring stars like distant torches above the yellow pine tops; nature in her gentlest mood here among the ruggedness of the wilderness, expressing herself in the most delightful of odors wafted through the woods, in the tenderest tiniest blossoms of wild flowers; a time of infinite hush and infinite solitude and peace.

to have chafed and been unhappy here, to a spirit like either bruce standing's or lynette brooke's, would have seemed next door to an impossibility. even the girl, though restrained, a prisoner of a man's will when the bright star of her life had ever been one of splendid independence, found it easier to smile or laugh aloud at the sober-faced antics of thor ... when she and thor were alone with none to see!... than to sigh. she knew her periods of restiveness and bitter rebellion; they were due not to her environment, but to the thought that another than herself was dictating to her. but for one reason or another these periods were rarer and briefer than her other hours of a strange sort of peacefulness.

"it's because i've been worn out and only now am resting," she tried to tell herself. "recuperating from a condition of exhausted mind and body."

thus four days and nights passed. there had been, during all that time, not the slightest opportunity to

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escape. the first day standing had hurled the chain from him, as far as he could send it. but he had not lost sight of her for more than a few minutes at a time, saving such times that she gave him her promise that she would wait for him to come back. he accepted her word as he expected all the world to accept his. on other occasions, when he allowed her briefer freedoms, he had said merely: "no chance to run for it, girl! i'd overtake you, you know, in no time. even if you hid, here'd be old thor, nosing you out!" then he laughed, adding: "for his own sake, the renegade, as well as for his master's! he's fallen in love with you, too." he made her bed in the rock-and-tree grotto; he labored, one-handed, over it for hours. with his heavy clasp knife he cut the tender tips of resinous branches; he heaped them high; he covered all with great handfuls of fragrant grass, thick with the tall red flowers that grew down by the creek, odorous with the tender white blossoms which shyly lifted their little heads to dot the grassy slopes.... he made her a bathing-pool: stiff and sore all up and down his left side, he worked with his right hand, dragging big boulders up out of their ancient beds, piling them in a ring about the pool, plastering them over the top with great handfuls of that carpet-like moss which thrived in these cool places.

"if you'd let me go!"

"no; not yet.... what man can read the mind of a girl? how do i know what you would do? where you would go? my wounds are healing; until they heal i am only half a man. you might whisk away from me, i tell you; and i'd have to follow and seek you, if you led me through hell on the way to heaven; and i must be whole again. and i've got to get everything straight...."

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always when he left her he returned before the end of the time she had promised to wait for him. and always he sent, as herald of his approach, his golden voice forward to her. at times in an echoing shout. more than once in an outburst of singing which thrilled her strangely. what a voice the man had! and once, when he had elected to bathe in the starlight, he sent down to her that cry which she had heard the first time from the door of babe deveril's cabin in big pine ... the wild, fierce call of the timber-wolf which, despite her naming herself "fool," sent a shiver into her blood.... once this happened: he had left her in the forenoon, accepting her word that she would not stir until high noon. usually he came well in advance; this time she watched the climbing sun and the creeping shade and suddenly her heart began its wild beating; it was almost noon and he was not here; no sound of his coming. when he shouted to her and then came rushing into camp, he found that she had been working frenziedly with a stick and a stone; driving the sliver of wood like a stake into the ground.... she started up, her face crimson.

"well?" he said, his hands on his hips, staring down at her. "what's that?"

she blurted out the explanation and then was angry with herself for telling him. she had meant to stay until the tip end of the giant pine's shadow fell where it marked midday; she had meant there to drive in her stake; for him it would be a marker, an assurance from her that she had kept her word with him, that she had waited as she had promised to wait ... that then, scorning him, she had snatched at her rights and had fled!

his first impulse was toward laughter. and then, strangely quiet, he stood looking at her and she saw a gathering mist in his eyes!

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"girl!" he muttered. "oh, girl!... god, i love you!"

"i hate you...."

... how many times had she cried out in those words! and how much of that did she mean? in her heart, in her soul ... in the most hidden recesses of her most hidden being?

thus she had hours to herself. and, therefore, had bruce standing hours to himself. for he wanted them. he wanted to be away from her, where he could not see her, could not hear that low music of her voice, could not catch that soft lure of her eyes, could not be tempted to have it happen that his rude hand brushed her hand.... her hand, though she had been all these days and nights outdoors, roughing it, seemed to him a maddening realm of crumpled rose-leaves ... pink-and-white rose-leaves. he left her, secure in her pledge that she would wait for him, and threw himself down on his back and stared up through slowly shifting branches and mused on her. he thought how like a flower she was, the queen of flowers ... and he could have wept that he was so big and ungentle. he thought of babe deveril, and cursed him for being so slender and debonair; graceful and light of mood; gentle-voiced, with the knack of pretty words to pretty ladies. and babe deveril had befriended her; stood champion to her against him! he ground his teeth. he leaped up and paced back and forth, forgetful of all such insignificant nothings as trifling wounds of the flesh. he recalled how, man to man, he had broken babe deveril, and he laughed out loud.... yet it remained that babe deveril had stood her friend and protector when he had pursued them both, linking them but the closer, with his wrath. she and deveril had travelled together, side by side and hand in hand, miles and other miles of the open

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solitudes; they had been drawn close together, driven closer together. he, bruce standing, timber-wolf, and fool, had done that! and what spark had been struck out of the flint of the adversity which he had hurled at them?... had they loved ... had they kissed ... was she now longing with a sick heart for the return of babe deveril?

"oh, lord!" he cried out, his great iron fingers crooking as his arms were thrown out. "deliver him into these hands!"

lynette had no mirror. standing began to grow a lusty young beard, as blond as his hair, shot through with red gleams. she knew the need of fresh clothing. when he was away she did her washing as best she could, pounding garments against the rocks in the creek; she dried them and hid them and donned them without his knowing ... though of course he knew as she knew that he did his own rude washings. there was a spring at the side of the cañon, one of the many sources which fed the stream; a shadowed, tranquil place. of this she made her pier-glass! she stooped and looked down into its glassily smooth surface. it gave back her own image; it reflected the dark green of the pines, the lighter green of the willows. even the subdued colors of her worn suit. she washed her hair and groomed it; no comb, no brush, but agile fingers. most of all, when secure through his promise in return for her own, did she enjoy her plunge in the pool he had made for her. the slender whiteness of her slipped hastily down under the translucent cover of the cool, flowing water; she was as swift in her movements as any slim-bodied trout that darted about her, scurrying into its retreat; the water shot a thrill through her; she emerged, dripping, charged with all the electric currents of well-being.

"if this were only a holiday ... instead of imprisonment!"

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she, too, thought of babe deveril, as was inevitable. and in many ways: one, always recurrent, was: "could she have been as sure of babe deveril as she was of bruce standing? as secure in her utter conviction of safety?" and here was a question to which she found no ready answer. babe deveril, leaping full-breastedly into the stream which had swept her off her feet, had been a friend to her from the beginning; from the beginning bruce standing had been a menace.

... best of all she loved the waterfall. it was her shower-bath. but, more than that, it was her friend and confidante, and, beyond aught else, a living, glimmering, varicolored thing of gossamer beauty. it talked with her, it was at once handmaiden and musician and troubadour; it plashed and sang and poured its cadences into quiet harmonies which sank into her soul. it had leapt and sparkled and poured itself onward unstintedly, unafraid, for a thousand years; for a thousand years would it keep up its merry dancings, uncaring if only the tall pines watched or if men and maids brought hither their loves and hates and hopes and fears. unstable it was always, always falling; secure was it in its diaphanous veilings of its own merry immortality. she loved it for its abandon, for its recklessness, for its translucent myriad beauties. it lived; it sang and sparkled; it filled the moment with musical murmurings and recked not of all those vague threats and shadows of a vague future.... she sat here, quiet under the spell of its dashings and splashings and eerie flutings ... musing, her soul drawn forth into all those vague and troublous musings which beset the heart of youth.

youth? young, too, was bruce standing! he hearkened to the cascading waters; he listened to the harp-tongued whisperings of the pines.... he had done everything wrong; he told himself that a thousand, thousand times. yet he told himself savagely that

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throughout the insanities, the veritable madnesses of constricted human life there flowed always, onward and sweepingly upward, the great, triumphal, eternal forces of destiny. and, in the end ... in the end ... it all made for good. for eternal and triumphant good.

... after all, but the old, old story of man and maid, converging to the one gleaming, focal point though across distances oceans-wide removed.

he had his point of view; lynette brooke had her point of view. yet it remains that from two widely separated peaks two eager hearts may see the same sun rise.

"tell me," he said once. "what manner of man is this babe deveril? i know him as a man may know a man; you know him otherwise. tell me; what have you found him to be?"

never would she have been lynette, had she not been ever quick of instinct ... instinct leaping, never looking, yet so certain to strike true! she read the thought under a thought; there came a living, joyous gloating; she cried warmly, all the while watching him:

"a true friend and a gentleman! a man unafraid ... one like a loyal knight of the olden time! like one of the king arthur's knights...."

"like one," he growled, deep down in his throat, angrily, "who saw another lynette across the four fords? that's not true, girl; else he would not have forsaken you so long! nor would he have given up so easily when, in your view, i beat him down and sent him up over the ridge!"

"he'll come back!"

"you think so?"

"i know!"

chance remarks of hers ... this one above all others ... rankled. she seemed so confident that babe deveril would come again, that he would carry in his

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breast the memory of sweet hours with her, that he would never rest until he, with her pleading eyes tender upon his, could rescue her from the bondage which bruce standing had set upon her! so it came about that nightly, and all night long, bruce standing dreamed of babe deveril and of battling with him and of beating him finally into such definite defeat as had not resulted from that other fierce struggle before her widening eyes.

another day went by and another, with bruce standing obsessed, knowing himself for a man who yearned with all his soul for one thing and one thing only, a mere slip of a gray-eyed girl who made madness in his pulses. he had his moods of fierceness; on their heels came those other moods of tenderness. more than once he came toward her, striding through the woods, his mind made up to set her free, asking only her happiness. and then he saw her; and in his heated fancies he saw babe deveril; and he named deveril a man of slight manhood and swore by his own manhood that never would he show so lax and flabby a hand as to let this priceless girl, drop into the graceful, careless hand of any babe deveril who ever lived.

"he'd never know how to love her as i do!" that ancient cry of all true lovers!

but all the while there bit into him doubtings, fears, those manifold darts flung from love's alter ego, jealousy. he stood ready to give this girl full-handedly everything; from her he craved with that direst of all cravings, everything.... and when he could no longer hold back the tumult within him and demanded: "what of this baby devil?" putting a sneer into his voice, always she cried out warmly: "a true friend and a gentleman!"

all unexpected by both of them, the less by him than her, billy winch, timber-wolf's one-legged retainer,

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rode full tilt into camp. they were lunching; they sat under a tree in the noonday shadow like two at picnic. he had been saying: "we're running short of rations." then it was that billy winch, anxiously spurring a big roan saddle-horse, rode down upon them and, seeing them, began waving his hat high over his head in sweeping, joyous circles and shouting:

"so you're still alive! that's something!"

"you fool! who told you to come here!"

standing leaped to his feet; he was hot with anger.

"i knew where to find you, timber!" cried billy winch gleefully. "unless, a fair bet, the devil had claimed you and taken you down under, i knew i'd find you here!... how's the sick wing? been usin' my salve? night and morning, keepin' it clean and...."

billy winch, headlong, stopping his horse with a sudden pluck of the reins when the gaunt roan had come near setting his four flickering hoofs in their midday fire, chose to ignore the fact that the timber-wolf was not alone.

but standing, springing up, strode out to meet him, his mien anything but friendly.

"damn you, billy winch," he muttered between his teeth, too low for the wondering lynette to hear. she, too, had sprung up and stood leaning against the valiant pine-tree, wondering swiftly how this latest happening, the coming of billy winch into the wild-wood, was to affect her.

billy winch, as gay-hearted a rascal as ever stumped on one leg or rode a wild, half-broken horse in carelessly lopsided fashion, laughed gleefully.

"ho, timber!" he cried. "if i was a whole man, 'stead of half a one, i'd just jump down and naturally beat you to death! bein' what i am, all carved to thunder, you're too much all gone to proud flesh to

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jerk me out of the saddle to stomp on me! so i got the age on you! and i asks you, johnny wolf, man-eater, how's tricks?"

"by god, winch!" standing in upstarting wrath had the roan horse by the bit, shoving it back with one savage hand so that it fell back on its haunches. "just because i've stood a lot off you...."

"slow does it, timber!" cried winch. "this is business. i've got a man back there, just out of sight, ready to go clean crazy unless he can have a word with you. to put a name to him ... well, then, mexicali joe!"

now standing, deep down within him, knew why billy winch had come. never did more faithful heart beat in human breast than that heart thrumming away beneath billy winch's faded blue shirt. winch, having always a shrewd guess where to find his chief, when standing took it upon himself to disappear from headquarters, had caught at the first excuse to come in person and make sure with his own keen eyes that all went well with a man whom many hated and whom he, above all men, loved.

"hang mexicali joe to the first stout limb you come to!"

lynette, of impulses ungovernable, could have broken into laughter. for the amazing thing was that what bruce standing, impatient almost to fury, said he meant. he had suffered enough inconvenience at mexicali joe's hands; he wanted nothing of the man nor of his dross of gold.

winch did laugh aloud. and then, keen-eyed to see the play of his employer's expression, he grew sober and said earnestly:

"on the level, mr. standing, how's the hurt comin' along? been usin' the salve i told you to?"

lynette, though he had ignored her presence or

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because of this very attitude of his, could not hold back from exclaiming:

"he has two wounds now! another shot in the back! and he gives them less attention than a sane man would give a cut finger!"

"the old fool! no more sense than a rabbit! shot again? twice in the back? plugged a second time? the old fool!"

like a flash in his quick movements he was down from the saddle; he left his horse with dragging reins to wait for him; over the uneven ground he came forward rapidly, queerly, hopping like an oddly oversized bird. he caught at standing's shoulder, crying out:

"let me see them hurts! i tell you, i got to see them hurts! shot twice from behind? you bloody baby. let me look at 'em. blood poison most likely settin' in!"

"i could kill you ... you interfering fool...."

but just then billy winch's one foot caught at a root and he came near falling, and standing, instead of carrying out a threat, sprang toward him and steadied him; and lynette saw a sincere rough affection in the way the big arms closed about winch's body. friends, these two.

"who plugged you, timber? and for the love of mike, how come you to let it happen ... twice? but tell me: who plugged you the second time?"

"taggart," said standing; "at least that's my bet. and," he added hastily, "it was taggart that shot me the first time, through the window at gallup's!"

billy winch looked sharp incredulity; his eyes flickered away to lynette as he gave sign of seeing her for the first time.

"but, man! i thought...."

"you thought wrong! she did not shoot me. you've got my word for that, bill. she did not shoot me!"

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winch looked perplexed.

"sure, timber?" he demanded. "dead sure?"

"yes," said standing. "taggart didn't believe i had already changed my papers, ruling his name out. if he could have dropped me and made it seem clear that she had done it.... see it, bill?"

"well," said winch slowly, "i guess you know or you wouldn't say so. and jim taggart was a real man once. but i've seen signs of late; he's mildewed inside, clean through. as comes of running with such as young gallup."

suddenly he whipped off his battered hat and turned a pair of bright and smiling, and at last warmly admiring eyes upon lynette.

"i beg your pardon, miss," he said genially.

"now," said standing. "about this mexicali joe. you go back and tell him for me...."

winch interrupted quickly, saying:

"no use, timber. you got to see him. i tell you he's clean crazy to see you; he'll stick on your trail until he finds you. he wants only ten minutes; five would do it."

lynette was mildly surprised to see standing so easily persuaded; but she had no way of knowing the relationship of this man and his chief henchman nor how billy winch never took it upon himself to suggest unless he knew what he was about.

"all right," said standing, though he frowned as he spoke. "go get your man."

winch jerked his head about and shouted; his long, halloing call pierced clear through the woodland silences.

"hi, joe! this way, on the run! pronto, hombre!"

joe came almost immediately, mounted on a scrawny mulish-looking horse, breaking an impatient way through the brush. his dark face still carried a frightened,

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furtive expression which had not been absent from it for a matter of days; not since a handful of raw gold had been spilled from his torn pocket.

"señor!" he cried ringingly from a distance. "señor caballero! i tell you, they keel me! i got no chances! for sure, they keel me, robbers!"

standing answered roughly: "and what do i care? serve you right for the fool you are!"

"now, he's here," said winch. "look here, timber: you can take your time talking to him. let me look you over. i want to see that second bullet hole."

"winch, you idiot," standing growled at him; "i got it close to a week ago. i've tended to it myself; it's all right. i don't look like a dying man, do i?"

"señor!" joe was crying, down on the ground now, tremendously excited.

"are you usin' my salve?" demanded winch. "plenty of it, night and morning?"

"i have been using it...."

"and you're out of it now!" with a triumphant flourish winch dipped into a pocket and extracted a small package. "here you are, timber! and this is extra special! i got all the ingredients this time; tried it out day before yesterday on that new pinto pony you bought from ferguson; got cut in the wire fence down by the pasture. say, it works like magic...."

standing groaned. "winch, some fine day i'll carve you all up with a hand-axe, just to give you a chance to use your own filthy mess...."

"i wouldn't have been shy a leg, would i, if that fool doctor had had a pint of this?"

"señor!" joe was crying. "you got to listen; you got to hear what i goin' tell you! my gold, my gold that i find, me, myself, all alone...."

"what do i care for you or your gold!" cried

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standing. "i don't need it, do i? i don't ask you anything about it, do i? i don't want to know anything about it! go wallow in your gold and leave me alone!"

but joe explained, growing vehement to the point of wildness; as winch had put it, "he was clean crazy over the thing." how could joe wallow in it, much as he would like to, when always there were men like ugly hounds on his trail? what chance had he, poor devil that he styled himself, against such men as jim taggart and young gallup and cliff shipton and babe deveril and barny mccuin.... he named a score. at the name of babe deveril standing's eyes flashed and sped to a meeting with lynette's; into hers, too, came a quick light. joe had caught standing's interest.

"what about these men?" he asked. "what about deveril?"

"him? the worst of them all!" wailed joe. he went on, bursting with all the things he had to tell. that night when, for a second time, like god himself, the grand señor caballero had burst into the cabin and set him free, he had run! god, how he had run! but then he had thought of his savior alone against so many hard, merciless men; he had come to a sudden stop, saying to himself: "joe, mi amigo, you must not desert him!" and then, of a sudden, had that young devil deveril burst from the bushes upon him ... and joe had fled again and deveril had sought after him. there was no shaking off this man; twice since then in the forest joe had barely escaped him.... lynette had come close, was listening breathlessly.

"i tell you where my gold is!" cried joe. "you take what you like, i don't care! you give me what you like ... i know you for one fair man. that way we save it. any other way, they get me; they burn me with fire; they break my teeth and my fingers; they make

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me tell! and they get it all. taggart and gallup and deveril and...."

he broke off, half whimpering, cursing them with all the eloquence of the latin tongue.

clearly standing hesitated. then, amazing them all, but with his own mind clear, he said bluntly:

"clear out! it's your game. i don't want to know anything about it."

"it's down in light ladies' gulch!" screamed joe. "not two mile from big pine! i lied to them ... a big pine, with crooked roots sticking out ... a washout.... last year i make mistake; i think down under the red cliffs. but this time i find ... four miles the other side...."

"why, you shrivelled-souled...."

then suddenly standing caught himself up short; there came a new look into his eyes; he shouted, catching joe by the shoulder:

"light ladies' cañon! just across from big pine? only a mile or two!"

"as god hears me, señor!"

standing broke into sudden laughter. he clapped joe upon the shoulder so that the little man staggered and paled under the jovial blow.

"with bells on! with bells, mexico! by high heaven.... here, you, winch! on the run, back to headquarters. take joe with you; mount guard over him night and day with a rifle. no man to have a word with him. and wait for me. and, all the while, bill winch, keep your mouth shut!"

winch, with one arm out as a brace against a pine, stiffened.

"i guess i know how to take orders, mr. standing," he said, and his tone sounded angry. "you don't need...."

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him also standing smote on the shoulder.

"why, god bless you, bill winch, you're the only man on earth i'd trust! those last words weren't necessary.... you're right and i apologize for them! but now, go! go, i tell you; i'll do anything you say; i'll use your poison on me three times a day.... i'll eat it, if you say so! only hit the high spots and keep mexicali under cover until i come! no matter when or how long; there's your job ... old friend!"

billy winch, galvanized, went hopping to his horse; he flipped after his own fashion up into the saddle; he loosened the rifle in its holster strapped conveniently; he called to joe:

"quick does it, mexico! we're on our way!"

bruce standing watched them ride away among the trees and stood laughing! he had succeeded in puzzling two men; most of all had he set lynette wondering....