"i want a good long drink of fresh water," said standing. "and you, after this lunch of ours, will be thirsty. let's go down to the creek; down there, by the waterfall, after we've drunk, i want to talk with you."
he had turned to her, that flash still in his eyes, before billy winch and mexicali joe had ridden a dozen yards out of camp. she looked at him in silence, wondering what lay in his thoughts; what had been the sudden, compelling, and triumphant motive to actuate him when with his great shout of laughter he had dismissed the two men. he had joe's secret now; she shared it herself: the gold was far from here and very near big pine; in light ladies' cañon! the strange part of it was that taggart's first surmise, when he and his companions had trapped mexicali joe at the dugout, was that it was in light ladies' cañon that he had made his strike!... how many men and at least one girl had travelled how many wilderness miles from big pine, when the gold lay so snugly close to the starting-point! how joe had tricked his captors, leading them so far afield!
"if i should escape from you now," lynette could not help crying, "what is there to prevent me from staking the first claim? and bringing my friends ... to stake claims!"
"if you should happen to escape me!" he laughed back at her.
then he stepped to the tree where his rifle stood and called to thor as he did always when he left the dog in camp: "watch, thor! watch, sir."
[pg 275]
it was not always that he carried his rifle. he explained, while he looked to her to come with him.
"we'll talk things over; but in any case it's clear that we're getting short of food. maybe, while we talk, we can bring down something in the way of provisions with a lucky shot."
willing enough was she to-day for talk; at least to listen to whatever he might say. she followed, stopping only to stoop and pat old thor's head; already she counted the faithful brute a friend. thor tried to lick her hand; for already thor, like thor's master, had bestowed an abiding love to the first true girl who had ever intimately entered the life of either. thor wanted to follow; he whined and looked anxious, ears pricked forward, tail wagging.
"down, thor," commanded standing, if only because already he had issued his command. "you watch camp for us; watch, thor."
thor dropped down at the entrance of lynette's grotto; for one instant his great head lay between his forepaws; then he jerked it up again so that he might watch them as they went through the thickets to the creek.
standing carried a cup with him. when they came to the waterfall leaping down a twenty-foot rocky spillway, glassily clear, making a pigmy thunder in the narrow-walled ravine, he rinsed and filled his cup and gave it to lynette. she drank. thereafter, and with no further rinsing, he drank. she sat upon a big rock, leaning back against a leaning tree trunk; he sat down close enough to her to allow of words carrying above the thunder of the falling waters and filled his after-lunch pipe.
"i know as much as you do of the place to find the gold!" she told him again. "and i, though a girl, have as much interest in a fortune to be made as any
[pg 276]
man can have. that's fair warning to you, bruce standing!"
he laughed carelessly. then he said:
"it's neither your gold nor mine. by right of discovery, it belongs to a little shrimp named mexicali joe alguna-cosa. our hands are off, so far as our own pockets are concerned."
"but.... you took quick interest when you learned where it was! you have some plan ... you commanded your friend billy winch to keep joe well guarded!"
his eyes were twinkling; and greed does not light twinkling lights!
"i've got gold of my own, girl! gold enough to last me my life and you your life and both of us together our lives! and to leave a decent residuum after us.... but let's talk of mexicali joe's gold some other time. to-day.... we have ourselves!"
"you have yourself!" cried lynette with sudden bitterness. "i have not even my own personal liberty!"
"and what if i let you go, girl? as i have a mind to do to-day? what then? where would you go? where would i find you again? for find you i must and will though 'it were ten thousand mile.'"
"am i to suffer your dictation during the days of actual imprisonment at your hands, and then, for all time afterward, render you an accounting of my actions!"
"why do you try to hate me so, girl?"
"why should i not hate you?"
"what have i done to you? have i done anything more than put out a hand to stop time, to snatch time for you and me, for us to know!... look you, girl, a man, at least a man of my sort, may go a third of his
[pg 277]
life or a fourth or a full half, and know much less than nothing of what a true girl is! how can he know? already i have learned that you have instincts which leap; a man gropes like a blind mole and it takes him a long time to teach himself to see the stars ... the star! now it's a fair bet, and no odds given or taken, that one bruce standing happened to be an unruly devil, a blunt man, a man who has as a part and parcel of his religion to shoot square and to hit hard, so long as god lets him. i've done wrong and i've done right, and i'm doing as all the rest of the great mass, in a state of flux, is doing; growing up from the mud into something better. if not in this life or the next, well then, since the mills grind with exceeding patience, in some other life. at least i'm honest; at least, in plain english, i do my damnedest! take it or leave it, there's the truth. if it happens that i'm a man of few friends.... almost you can count 'em on billy winch's one leg!... if few men love me and many men hate...."
"yes!" cried lynette, and her own earnestness was caught and compelled by his own. "most men, many, many men, hate you!... and yet you have it within you to make them love you!"
"love and hate! what have i to do with the loves and hates of men as i know them? shall i step to right or to left for all that? i play out my part in the eternal game. i live my life!"
"but you don't live your life! you miss ... everything! if you would but be kind instead of cruel; open-hearted and generous always ... you have in you the seeds of all that. then men might come to know the real you; you could make them love instead of hate...."
but his eyes stabbed at her like quickened blue flames.
"so!" he said, and his tone was one of bitter mockery. "if i choose to pay them for the pretty, empty
[pg 278]
compliment, they will call me a good fellow and ... love me! if i kick them they will call me villain and hate me. and there you have the epitome of that so-called love and hate of mankind which sickens me. i'll be eternally damned before i prostitute my immortal soul to pitch pennies out for a peck of treacherous hearts. for, i tell you, girl ... only girl ... the love that is to be bought is to be spat upon. i'll have none of it. even your love, that i'd give my soul to have freely, i'd have none of if it were to be bought."
lynette looked at him strangely, half pityingly. and she answered him softly:
"you twist things out of all reason to make, to yourself, your own acts appear something other than they are."
"a girl trying to turn logician?" he laughed at her, teasing.
little effort on his part was required to set fire to her quick inflammable temper.
"it's magnanimous of you to jeer at me," she retorted hotly. "because you have the physical strength of a beast and the beast's lack of understanding...."
now his golden outburst of laughter stopped her. he shouted:
"see! there you go! as if to preach me the final word of love and hate! you'd hate me now, just because i tease you! if i said, with poets' roses twining through the saying, that you were most beautiful and no-end intellectual and beyond that of the heart of an angel, could you not better tolerate me? and thus we come to the open pathway to most human loves and hates; two little doors standing side by side. for, i ask you, going back to your challenge to make men love rather than despise me, what in the devil's name is that sort of love but transplanted self-love? a damned-fool
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sort of selfishness masking like a hypocrite as something quite different.... if you loved a man who beat you there would be something worth while in that sort of loving; something divorced from plain selfishness and the eternal i-want-to-get-all-i-can-out-of-everything! now, i love you! i love you so that my love for you comes near killing me! it gets me by the throat at night. that's love; and there's less of self in it, i swear to you, than there is of ... you!"
"you! you talk of love. to me!"
she broke into her light, taunting laughter. and yet he had set her heart beating and the ancient fear ... not fear of him ... was upon her. "you, talking of love, are like a blind man lecturing on the colors of the rainbow! you...."
but he had started to his feet; his eyes went suddenly toward the camp, all sight of which they had lost on coming down into the creek bed.
"listen!" he cried. "what was that?"
she had heard nothing; nothing above the splash and fall of water ... and the beating of her own heart.
"listen!" he said the second time.
"what is it?"
he caught up his rifle and leaped across the creek. he began running, back toward their camp.
"it's old thor ... there's some one...."
and now, lynette realized clearly, had come her first opportunity to be free again! while bruce standing, because of something he had heard above the merry-mad music of the waterfall, or had thought he had heard, was running back to their encampment, she could run in the opposite direction. she stood balancing, of this mind and that. what had he heard in camp? what was happening there? as always, because of that volatile nature of hers which was en rapport with life's
[pg 280]
pulsings, she wanted to know! and then there was a certain assurance in her heart that after all these days the budding intention in bruce standing's heart was bursting into full flower to set her free again! she hesitated; she saw him running up the steep bank, charging back toward camp, vanishing among the trees higher up on the slope.
and, then, she followed him.
... before lynette came, through the trees, within sight of the grotto which standing had given over to her, she heard a sound which brought her, wondering, from swift haste to lingering; she stood, her breathing stilled, listening, groping a moment blindly for an interpretation of that sound for its explanation. harsh it was ... terrible ... never had she heard anything like it. at first she did not recognize it as a sound man-made. she paused; she came a step nearer, peering through the trees....
it was an inarticulate, stifled sound coming from the lips of bruce standing! he was kneeling on the ground, bending forward. he had dropped his rifle. there was something in his arms, upgathered into his embrace, something held as a baby is held in its mother's arms....
thor....
and those sounds from bruce standing's lips! there were tears in them; his voice was shaken. he held thor to him in a fierce agony of sorrow....
lynette came closer, tiptoeing. she heard the sounds as they seemed to choke him, clutching like hands at his throat. and then suddenly, before she caught her first clear view, she knew when, into that first emotion there swept the second; when with the shock of deep grief there mingled white-hot rage. he began to mutter again ... he was lisping ... lisping as she had heard him do only once before ... lisping because his
[pg 281]
one weakness had leaped out and caught him unaware. lisping curses....
she ran closer. she saw old thor, thor who had learned to love her and whom she had learned to love, lying limp in standing's arms. thor dead? some one had killed him, then, and standing, above the booming of the waterfall, had heard? a sight, perhaps, to stir that wild, uncontrollable laughter of lynette! the sight of a big, strong man half weeping over a dead dog in his arms.... yet, when she came running to him and dropped down on her knees and put out her quick hand and standing turned his face toward her ... he saw that this time there was no laughter in her. instead, her eyes were wet with a sudden dash of tears.
"he's not dead ... we won't have it that he's dead! thor!" she cried softly.
she did not realize that she had put her warm, sympathetic hand on standing's arm before her other hand found the old dog's head.
"thor!... thor!"
thor looked up at her; at standing. the dog tried to stir; the faithful tongue strove to overmaster the terrible inertia laid upon it; to grant in last adulation the last farewell. for a stricken dog, like a stricken man, knows after the way of all creatures which have the spark of eternity within them, when the day's end is in doubt....
standing tried to speak ... and grew silent. how she hated herself then for that other time when he had slipped, through sorrowing rage, into his one unmanly failing ... and she had laughed! her tears began running down. he saw; he jerked his head about, focussing his eyes upon the eyes of a dog that he loved; a dog that had been faithful to him.
"where is he hurt? he can't be shot," cried lynette. "we would have heard a shot! if he is poisoned...."
[pg 282]
standing had mastered himself. he said coldly.
"look!"
"who did ... that?"
"if i only knew! my god, if i only knew!"
thor was not dead; his body jerked and quivered now and again, in spasms. yet he seemed to be dying. and it grew clear to lynette, as, at a glance, it had been clear to standing, what had happened. thor had been left in charge of camp; but the one word had rung in the faithful head: "watch!" and then some one had come; thor had been true to his trust; some man had struck him down with club or a rifle barrel; had struck and struck again. thor's fore leg was broken; he had been battered over the head ... bones were broken, the skull seemed crushed ... the dog stiffened; fell back....
"dying," said standing, still on his knees. he placed old thor very gently on the ground, striving after his own rough fashion to make a dog's last few minutes of breathing no more tormenting than was inevitable.
"thor," said standing gently. "good old thor!"
the dog tried to rouse. the old faithful head on standing's knee stirred ever so little. the old steadfast eyes, red-rimmed but clear-sighted, were on standing's. if ever a dog could have spoken....
standing, with sudden thought, jumped to his feet.
"there's a chance for him yet! there is billy winch, the one man on earth to save a dying dog or horse.... yes, or man!"
he cupped his hands at his mouth and sent forth, piercing through the leafy silences, that wild wolf-call which must bring winch about in short order ... if he was not already too far to hear it.
"he may be too far," cried lynette. already she was down upon her knees, taking his place and
[pg 283]
gathering thor's head into her lap. "hurry. if you can find your horse and ride after him, surely you can overtake him."
"god bless you!" he began running. but before a dozen swift steps were taken he stopped and came back to her, muttering: "but the man who did this for thor? he'll not be far away; i can't leave you...."
"i am not afraid of a man like him," said lynette. "a coward, or he would not have done this.... leave me your rifle and hurry!"
"you'll wait for me, no matter what happens?"
"of course i'll wait. now, hurry!"
he placed his rifle at her side and with never a backward look was away again on a run, breaking through breast-high brush; splashing once again across the creek, calling to winch as he ran.... he would be back with her almost immediately....
so he plowed through the thickets; plunged down a slope, sped up a slope, raced over a ridge. and, now with what breath was left in his lungs, he began to send out his whistled call. that summons, which his horse, if still lingering in these upland meadows, would welcome with quick response.
lynette stooped and laid her cheek against the grizzled old face of thor. and then, with a sudden access of emotion, she burst into fresh tears.... thor tried to wag his tail.... lynette, like standing before her, felt that the dog was dying.
"thor!" she whispered. "can't you hold on? can't you carry on? he will bring billy winch and billy winch will help us...."
then there burst upon her a surprise which moved her immeasurably. there, almost at her side, stood babe deveril! a moment ago she was alone in the
[pg 284]
wilderness with a dying dog; now babe deveril stood close to her. with thor's head still held in her lap she looked up into his face. she saw that it was tense, the muscles drawn, the eyes hard and bright.
"lynette!" he cried softly. "lynette! i've followed you half around the world! and now.... come quick! we go free and the world is ours!"
she sat, staring up at him, still bewildered.
"you!" she whispered. "and ... then it was you ... who did this?"
he caught her meaning; he glanced down at the thick green club in his hands.
"i came to do what i could for you. that ugly brute stood up against me. i had no gun; i knew standing was armed. i thought that maybe he had left his rifle in camp."
"what did thor do to you that you should have done this to him?"
"thor? that dog? he showed teeth and ... look here, lynette brooke; now's your one chance. i've gone through hell to come to you...."
"tell me," she cried. "when did you come?..."
deveril was as tense as a finely drawn steel wire. again she marked that hard glint in his dark eyes.
"it is up to you to do the telling!" he shot back at her. "i stood back there in the trees; i saw that damned henchman of his and mexicali joe come up to you! joe, i've been following for days! i had no rifle; no weapon of any kind and both standing and winch were armed. but i could watch! joe was terribly excited; i saw his waving arms. i heard him yelling...."
"yes," said lynette. "and then?"
"and then?" exclaimed deveril. "what then? you know what we came for, don't you? you as well as i?"
[pg 285]
"yes! i know...."
he caught at her hand.
"come! on the run. before that madman gets back. we'll clean up on the whole crowd of them!"
but she jerked her hand away.
"there are certain things i don't understand.... did you see the other night when he took mexicali joe out of their hands?"
"i saw; yes. it happened that i had just overhauled them at that minute! i could have cried for rage! he had a rifle, damn him, and was aching to use it! they laid down before him like pups...."
"and you?"
"what could i do, with a rotten stick in my hands!"
she looked up at him curiously.
"and, to-day?"
"to-day?" his hands hardened in his grip upon his club. "to-day, i tell you, i followed them into your camp and i saw. mexicali joe...."
"you are after mexicali joe's gold, babe deveril?"
"as you are! that brought us both into big pine in the beginning and then into the rest of it."
"and you were ... afraid to come into camp while bruce standing was still here?"
he laughed at her, the old light laughter of debonair babe deveril.
"afraid? call it that if you like." he shrugged carelessly. "yet, with an oak club against a man with a modern rifle...."
"do you remember the last time? how he threw his rifle away?"
deveril flushed hotly.
"some day," he muttered, "when it's an even break...."
"what do you want with me, babe deveril?"
[pg 286]
he stared at her.
"want with you? i want you to come, to be free from this timber-wolf. is he coming back soon?"
"i think so."
"then hurry. lynette...."
"well?"
"are you coming?"
she stooped over thor.
"no," she said quietly.
"what! after all this.... you're not coming?"
"no!"
"but.... then why?" he demanded with a sudden flare of anger.
"for one thing," she told him without looking up, "because i told him that i would wait for him. for another...."
"and that is?..."
she only shook her head, brown hair tumbling about her hidden face.
"i'll stay with old thor," she said.
she had him cast away among the lost isles of bewilderment.
"but you'll tell me.... you and i have been friends; we've stood side by side...." he broke off to demand: "you'll tell me about mexicali joe's gold?"
"gold?" she said. "is gold the greatest thing in life?"
"but you know?"
"yes! i know."
"then listen: taggart and gallup and shipton and a thousand other men are going crazy to find out! you and i can turn the whole trick if luck is good.... why, we'll quit millionaires, lynette!"
a shudder shot through the tortured body of old thor. lynette's long lashes lifted, wet with her tears.
[pg 287]
"there are things ... beyond millions...."
"i don't get you to-day!"
"why did you kill this dog? what good did it do you? what harm had he ever done you?"
"he was in my way. i thought, i told you, that a rifle might have been left behind. and ... it's standing's dog, anyway! and, beyond that, no matter how you look at it, only a dog...."
"i think," said lynette, and there was no music in her voice now and no warmth in the eyes which she lifted briefly to his, "that you had better go! had you come, without rifle, upon bruce standing, at least he would have thrown his rifle away to fight with you! you know that. and ... and i am not going to go with you, having given my promise. and i'll warn you of this: if he comes back and finds you here and knows you for the man who killed thor.... he will kill you!"
never in all his daredevil life had babe deveril made pretense at striking the angelic attitude. now, in a rush of feeling, he grew black with anger and there came a look into his eyes which put the hottest flush of all her life into lynette's cheeks, as he cried out:
"tamed you, has he? so timber-wolf has taken a mate after the fashion of wolves! and i, fool that i was, let you slip through my fingers!"
she did not answer him. had she answered she could have said: "you could have returned to fight with him; man to man and him wounded! later, when he snatched mexicali joe from them, you could have fought with him. you could have followed him here, seeking me; and you followed joe, seeking gold. you could have fought with him to-day; and instead you held back and spied and killed his dog and waited for him to go!..." so lynette, stooping low over thor's battered head, made no answer.
[pg 288]
... she knew that babe deveril was no coward. she would always remember how he had hurled that gun into taggart's face and himself into her adventures, reckless and unafraid. yet babe deveril was no such man as bruce standing; rather was he like a jim taggart, and taggart was no coward. but it remained that both these men, deveril and taggart, were afraid to come to grips with that other man, whose fellows named him timber-wolf. and he, the timber-wolf, was not afraid of life and all that it bore; and was not afraid of sombre death, in which he did not believe; was not afraid of god, in whom he trusted.
"you've thrown in with him!" deveril cried it out angrily; his hands were hard upon his club. "here, i've given days and days trying to see you through, and you've kicked in with him against me! he's had his will with you and he's made you his woman and...."
"you'd better go!"
she was trembling. a spasm shook her, not unlike that which convulsed thor.
"you won't come with me then? you'll stick with him? after he put a chain on you!"
"at least he did not stand back and see another man put a chain on me!"
"is that my answer?"
"yes!" she cried in sudden fury. "and now ... go!"
"i'll go, all right," said deveril. and began to laugh. all that old light laughter of his, gay and untroubled, which so many a time had made dancing echoes in the souls of those who heard, bubbled up again. he looked, as he had done when first she saw him, a slender, darkly handsome and utterly care-free incarnation of debonair insolence. still striking the right note, he shrugged his shoulders and tossed his club away as he said insolently:
[pg 289]
"what need of all this heavy artillery ... since the queen of my heart says nay? i'll travel light after this!"
he turned away. but at the second step he stopped and swung about and told her:
"i have a guess where billy winch will be taking mexicali joe! and i'll be in on the final settlement. if you, with a rush of blood to the head, throw in with standing, i'll play the game out! and what will you have left to trade to me for the pile i'm going to make out of this?... for i heard, too, when mexicali yelled out! and i'm throwing in with taggart and gallup, headed straight for light ladies' gulch!"
lynette, unable to see anything in all the wide world clearly, could only stoop her head over the stricken dog. her arms tightened about thor.... if only billy winch would come in time, if only billy winch would save that flickering little fire of life ... then, though she hated all the rest of the world she'd love billy winch....
