Bruce Standing came, weaving his way, like a drunken man, through the
woods. He was sick; sick and weak. He muttered to himself constantly.
Lynette was at the top of his thought and at the bottom; she dominated
his whole mind. He was used through long years to such as Jim Taggart
and their crooked ways; he was not used to such as Lynette Brooke, a
girl like a flower and yet fearless. It had been his way to hold all
women in scorn, since it had not been given unto him during the hard
years of his life to know the finer women, the true women worth while,
more than worth the while of a mere man. He had held his head high; he
had mocked and jeered at them; he had been no man to doff his hat with
the flattering elegance of a Babe Deveril for every fair face seen.
So now the one thing which in his fiery and feverish mood galled him
most was the thought of being seen by Lynette as a man borne down and
crushed and made weak and sick. For most of all he hated weaklings.
"She laughed at me ... damn her," he muttered. And, as an afterthought:
"She shot me in the back, after the fashion of her treacherous sex!"
He had driven himself harder all day long than any sane man, wounded,
should have thought of doing. Now the thought, working its way
uppermost through the fomenting confusion of teeming thoughts, was:
"I'll let her go. I'll be rid of her." For already, deep down in the
depths of his heart, he knew that already a girl, a girl whom he
despised and had meant to pay in full for her wickedness, had intrigued
him; she had flung her defiant fearlessness into his face; she had
kept a lifted head and straightforward eyes; and ... those eyes of
Lynette Brooke! Deep, fathomless, gray, tender, alluring, the eyes of
the one woman for each man! Almost he could have forgotten, not merely
forgiven, her greater fault of laughing at his infirmity; if only she
had not been of the species, like Jim Taggart's, to shoot a man in the
back.
He meant to let her go free and he had his own reasons for his change
of front. Though she had laughed and galled him, though she had sunk to
a cowardly act and shot him when he was not looking, at least she was
not the coward which he had counted upon finding her; he gave credit
where credit was due. He had humiliated her sufficiently, dragging
her after him, humbling a spirit as proud as his own, making her his
handmaiden, calling her his slave. That was one thing. And another,
befogged as it was, was even clearer: In letting her go, in being
rid for all time of her and the lure of her eyes, he was protecting
himself, Bruce Standing, and none other! ... Fearless, he honored her
for that. And yet a treacherous she-animal; so he wanted no more of
her, no more of the look of her, the fragrance of her, the pressure
of her upon his own spirit. He held himself a man; a man he meant
to remain. And, for the first time in all his life he was a little
afraid....
And then, just at the moment when it would have been better for them
both if he had not come ... or when it was best that he should come ...
these are questions and the answers of all questions fate holds in her
lap, hidden by the films of the future ... he came staggering up to the
door of the hidden cabin. And, at the sight of her, he pulled himself
up, stiffening, as taut as a bowstring the instant that the arrow
thrills to the command to speed.
There, in the doorway framed by the two big-boled pines she stood,
vividly outlined by the firelight from within the cabin, superbly,
gloriously feminine, her own slender soft loveliness thrown into
tremendous contrast by the figure at her side, the figure of old Thor
on whose head her hand rested as light as a fallen leaf! Her hand
on Thor's head! She and Thor standing side by side, her hand on his
head....
Sudden rage flared up in Timber-Wolf's heart; he gripped his rifle
in both hands, contemptuously ignoring the pains which shot through
his left shoulder; at that moment he could have thanked God for
excuse enough to shoot her dead. She had seduced the loyalty and
trustworthiness of Thor; she had done that! If a man like Standing
could not trust his dog, when that dog was old Thor, then where on this
green earth could he plant his trust?
"Back!" he stormed at her. "Back!"
She was poised for flight. He came at the instant of her victory over
the brute intelligence of a dog, at the moment of her high hopes, when
her heart hot in rebellion throbbed with triumph. She, too, at that
moment, could she have commanded the lightnings, would have stricken
him dead. Her hatred of him reached in a flash such heights as it had
never aspired to before.
Back? He commanded her to turn back? Shouted his dictates at her in
that first moment when she sensed escape and freedom and victory
over him who had been victor long enough? Back? Not now; not though
he flourished his rifle, threatening her with that while he shouted
angrily at her. Briefly the sight of him had unnerved her, had created
within her an utter powerlessness to move hand or foot. But before he
could shout "Back!" the second time defiance, like a flood of fire,
broke along her veins, warming her from head to foot; she sprang out
from the area of light at the cabin door and, running more swiftly than
Bruce Standing had deemed any girl could ever run, she sped away among
the trees....
A moment ago he had but the one firm intention: To set her free and
be rid of her for all time. Now, not ten seconds after holding that
purpose, he was rushing after her, forgetful of everything, his wounds
and sick weariness, except his one determination to drag her back! He
was angry; in his anger, not admitting to himself the true explanation,
he felt that he must blame her for a third crime ... she had trifled
with the integrity of his dog's loyalty ... she had corrupted old
Thor's sturdy honesty....
She ran like a deer. The moment that she broke into headlong flight
that very act released within her a full tide of fright; it became a
panic like that of soldiers once they have thrown down their arms and
plunged into the delirium of disordered retreat. She ran as she had
never done before, even when she and Babe Deveril had fled through the
night. And Bruce Standing would never have come up with her that night
had it not been that in the dark she fell, stumbling over the low mound
left to mark the place where an ancient log had disintegrated. As she
floundered to her feet she felt his hand on her shoulder. She screamed,
she struck at him....
He caught her two hands as he had done once before; she could have no
inkling of the tremendous call he put upon himself, body and will; she
could hear his heavy, labored breathing, but she, too, was breathing
in gasps. She could see neither the whiteness of his face nor yet the
blood soaking his shirt. He did not speak. He was not thinking clearly.
He merely said within himself: "I got her!" That was everything. Until,
as they came again into the outward-pouring firelight in front of the
cabin door, he wondered somewhat uneasily: "What am I going to do with
her?"
Lynette, panting and piteously shaken, dropped down on the edge of the
bunk, overborne by disaster, hopeless, her face in her hands; she was
fighting with herself against a burst of tears. Thus she did not see
Bruce Standing as he stood at the threshold, looking at her. She heard
his step; it shuffled and was uncertain, but she did not at the moment
mark this. She heard a whine from old Thor, a Thor perplexed and ill at
ease.
... Suddenly she thought: "He hasn't moved; he hasn't spoken!" She
dropped her hands then and looked up swiftly. And, thus, she surprised
a queer look in his eyes; his own thoughts were all chaotic and yet
there was beginning to burn one steady thought among them like one
bright flame in a whirl of smoke. He had closed the door when they
came in; he had sat down upon the up-ended log which served here as a
chair; Thor's head was on the master's knee and absently Standing's
hand was stroking it. He had dropped his rifle outside when he started
to run after her; he had not stopped to look for it as they came in.
She saw that a revolver was half in and half out of his pocket.... Then
she marked, with a start, the dead-white of his face and the way his
left arm hung limp, and the red stain on his wrist and the back of his
hand where the blood had run down his sleeve. Her first thought was
of his old wound and how he was not the man to give a wound a chance
to heal, but rather would break it open again and again through his
violence. Then she recalled what, during these last few minutes she had
forgotten--the shots which she had heard a little while ago. And she
knew that, though he sat upright and stared at her with the old look
again in his eyes, he had been shot the second time.
"I brought you back, girl," he said at last, and she knew that he was
bending a vast resource of will to keep his tone clear and steady, "not
because I mean to keep you any longer ... but just to show you that
with all the tricks of your sex you can take no step that I do not tell
you to take! Now, I've the idea that I'd like best to be alone. You can
go."
In a flash she jumped to her feet; she would scarcely credit her ears,
and yet one look at the man told her reassuringly that he was in
earnest.
"I don't know where you'll go," he said. "And I don't care. But I can
tell you you'll find some good men and true, men of your own kind,
since they shoot in the back, down below my other cabin; Taggart and
Gallup and Shipton.... No, your friend Baby Devil isn't there! And
Mexicali Joe has skipped out. If you like to take your chances with
those birds...." He jerked out the revolver which recently had been
Taggart's and tossed it to the bunk. "You can take that along, if you
like."
She flushed up, her face as hot as fire, as he jeered at her, saying:
"Men of your own kind, since they shoot in the back!" ... She could
come close to an accurate guess of what had happened; since Mexicali
Joe was gone it must be that Standing had set him free; since Standing
returned with a fresh wound, it must be that Taggart or one of his
crowd had shot him in the back....
She had not meant to speak, but now she cried out hotly:
"I did not shoot you! You didn't see ... if you had seen you would
know. My pistol lay on the table ... the window was open ... some one
reached in and picked it up and shot you ... I was frightened, and when
the pistol was dropped back to the table, I caught it up...."
His eyes grew brilliant with the intensity of the look he turned upon
her.... But his brain was reeling, his weakness overpowered him ... he
was set with all the steel of his character against showing before her
the first sign of weakness....
"Liar!" he flung at her. "To lie about it ... that's worse than the
shot...."
He leaned back against the wall. "You're free now," he said. "I would
to God I had never seen you!"
For answer she flung her bright laughter back at him; defiant, angry,
bitter laughter. She caught up the heavy revolver he had thrown to her.
"I could shoot you now ... with no one to see...."
His own laughter, hard and ugly, answered while he found the strength
to say sternly:
"But with me looking you straight in the eyes ... you'd lose your nerve
at that!"
She flung the weapon down to the floor, scorning any gift of his.
Without another word, with never another glance toward him, she passed
to the door, jerked it open and went out.
He sat staring into the fire. Thor began sniffing at the limp hand.
Standing got to his feet; the fire was dying down and a sudden shiver
of cold prompted him to pile on fresh fuel. He kicked Taggart's
revolver viciously out of his way. He was going to the fireplace, but
in doing so passed the bunk. He sat down a moment, wiping the sweat
from his forehead ... cold and sweating at the same time. He lay back,
flat on his back, and shut his eyes. He wondered vaguely how much blood
he had lost coming up through the woods from the lower cabin where he
had been shot; how much blood he had lost while he ran like a madman
after that girl.... His eyes were shut doggedly tight and yet it seemed
to his dizzied senses as though he could feel the look of her eyes,
bending over him.... Now, that was a strange thing.... Never once had
she given him a look from those eyes of hers to show a single spasm of
fear.... Fearless? She, a girl? Did fearlessness and cowardice blend,
then, that the incomprehensible result might be known as woman? For it
was the supreme stroke of cowardice to shoot a man in the back. And
yet ... she had said: "I did not shoot you!" While she spoke, he had
believed!... He lay jeering at himself.... And all the while, as in a
vision, he saw a pair of big gray eyes, soft and tender and alluring,
bending over him....
"There's just one thing in the world," muttered Bruce Standing aloud,
as a man may do when hard driven by perplexity and safe in solitary
isolation from other ears than his own, "that I'd give everything to
know! To know for sure!... Just one thing...."