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