Jackson Gregory

“ So, in the cold and dark they chose their sleeping place. Into a tangle of fragrant bushes, not twenty paces from the Buck Valley road, they crawled on hands and knees, as they had crawled into that first thicket when pursuit yelped at their heels. Here they came by chance upon a spot where two big pine-trees, standing close together companionably, upreared from the very heart of the brushy tangle. Lynette could scarcely drag her tired body here, caught and retarded by every twig that clutched at her clothing. ”

“ Joe was gone. Bruce Standing's work was done. He looked grim and implacable, a man of iron heated in the red-hot furnace of rage. He yearned for Taggart to make a move; or for Gallup. Shipton, as a lesser cur, he ignored.
They saw how white, as white as a clean sheet of paper, his face was; they did not fully understand why, since a man's face, when he is in a terrible rage, may whiten, as an effect of the searing emotion; they did not know how he had driven his wounded body all day long nor how sore his wound was. ”

“ Babe Deveril? It might be! Or it might be Mexicali Joe, lurking after his fashion. Or it might, equally well, be Taggart with Gallup and that other man at his heels. By now she was certain of only one thing: There was some one out there.
She stood rigid for ten or fifteen minutes; Standing had become quiet save for his heavy breathing; she strove with all senses upgathered tensely to read the riddle of the night. Once she was sure of a sound outside; but the mystery of a night sound is so baffling! A man's cautious tread? Or a limb stirring gently? Or a bird among leaves, or a rabbit? ”

“ Joe reeled across the threshold; Taggart, not knowing what weapon Joe might have lying on his bunk, sprang nimbly after him. And Gallup and Shipton, to see everything, drew on close behind him. They passed the willows about the spring and, stooping, went in at Joe's door.
Lynette and Deveril lay very still, hesitating to move hand or foot. For both Gallup and Shipton stood on Joe's threshold, and that threshold was a few steps only from their hiding-place. The snapping of a twig, the crackling of a handful of dead leaves must certainly bring swift, searching eyes upon them. ”

“ So great a need for quiet, and, like jeering, mocking voices, there came so many little sounds, loud in their ears—twigs snapping, leaves rustling, tiny stones set rolling. At first, what with the dark and her sole thought to be gone, Lynette failed to understand just how Deveril was directing his course. When she did grasp, she wondered at him. Instead of hurrying straight across the clearing toward the haven of the timber-line, he was drawing nearer and nearer the west end of the dugout! Now she dared not whisper to him; she could not come up with him to catch warningly at his boot. ”

“ And he, Babe Deveril, had stolen her away from Bruce Standing, had tricked him with a pencil scrawl, had lost Lynette to him for all time. The stage carrying her away now was as inevitable an instrument in the hand of fate as death itself.
He turned back for the other horses which he had tethered by the roadside and led them on toward Big Pine.
"What the devil is love, anyway?" he muttered once.
It was not for a man such as Babe Deveril to know clearly; for love is winged with unselfishness and self-sacrifice. ”

“ Another day of wilderness wandering. A cabin sighted, but so far away that it was merely a vague dot upon a distant ridge; miner's shack or sheepman's or wood-cutter's? Housing an occupant or deserted for years? No smoke from the rock chimney; no sign of any human being near it. And all view of it so soon lost!... And, afterward, no other human habitation of any kind; no road man-made; only trees and rocks, gorges and ridges and brush, and a winding way to be chosen between them. With, always, Bruce Standing driving on and on, relentlessly on, ever deeper into the wilderness. ”

“ They knew where Taggart and Gallup were, or at least were confident that there was no immediate danger of Taggart and Gallup overhauling them; they knew where Mexicali Joe was and where he was going. For the moment they were freed from that crushing sense of uncertainty welded to menace which had borne down upon them ever since they fled from Big Pine. And consequently joy of life sprang up as a spring leaps the instant that the weight is plucked from it. ”

“ Then she lifted herself a few inches on her elbow; like a flash Thor was up on his haunches, his growl became a snarl, a quick glint of his teeth showing, a sharp-pointed gleam of menace.
Yet Lynette held her position, steady upon her elbow; she had never known a tenser moment. Her throat contracted with her fear; and yet she kept telling herself stubbornly that yonder was but a dog, a thing of only brute intelligence, while she had the human brain to oppose him with; that, some way, she could outwit him. So she did not lie back; to do so would, she felt, show Thor that she was afraid of him. ”

“ And all the while with nerves jumping at each breaking of a twig. It was only the shouting voices and the pounding boots behind them that drowned in their pursuers' ears the sounds they made.
"Still!" admonished Babe Deveril in a whisper.
And very still they lay, side by side, panting, in the heart of the thicket. A voice called out, not twenty paces behind them:
"They're in there!" And another voice, louder than the first and more insistent, they thanked their stars, boomed:
"No, no! They skirted the brush, off to the left, beating it for the open! After 'em, boys!" ”

“ And alone! Alone with the wilderness for the first moment since she had fled the menace yelping at her heels in Big Pine. Alone.
And walled about by the wildest and most impenetrably blackly dark solitudes. She had but the one impulse; to flee from this man whose fellows termed him a wolf; but the one clear thought, that she must hasten in search of the very man from whom originally she had fled, Jim Taggart. For, since Bruce Standing had not been killed by that shot fired in her room at the Gallup House, she, like Babe Deveril, was no longer threatened with the most serious charge of murder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Standing led an unhesitating way through a natural pass, and down on the other side, into shadows of a thick grove; through thickets; they splashed across a creek, a thin line of clear, cool water slipping through mountain willows, a tributary of the larger stream in the valley below. Down here it was almost dark. But twenty minutes later, climbing another slope where the larger timber stood widely spaced, they came again into the full sunshine.... Lynette began to wonder why he had left his horse so far back; how far did the silent, tireless man mean to walk? ”

“ If Mexicali Joe, she had nothing to fear. If Taggart and Gallup and the other? What had she to fear from them? Merely arrest, at most, and not so long ago she had been eager for that! And if some prowling animal?
"There's nothing to hurt me," she told herself, fighting to throttle down that trepidation which had leaped upon her when she first awoke with the wildly beating heart of one threatened in sleep. "If I only had that revolver now ... if it chanced to be wolf or bear or mountain-cat, one shot at it would send it scurrying. And, if a man, there is none for me to be afraid of." ”

“ Deveril lay very still, two brawny men upon him. When he made no immediate reply Winch waited patiently and knew, as the girl knew, that a man must be given a moment in such circumstances to collect his wits. Deveril's panting gradually gave over to more quiet breathing; he lay flat on his back and saw the two heads bending over his own and, beyond them, the stars. He started once to speak, but clamped his lips tight. Still, in high tolerant patience, Billy Winch waited upon him while Lynette Brooke, trembling from head to foot with excitement, waited in burning impatience. ”

“ The great cloud of dust rose and thinned and disappeared.
"That road will bring them down into Light Ladies' Gulch where it makes the wide loop about three miles from here," said Deveril. "Have you an idea who they are, Lynette?"
"No," she said, her lips dry; "I don't understand."
"I think that I do understand," he told her, with a flash of anger. "Those are Standing's men and they are riding, armed, like the mill-tails of hell. Listen to me while you've got the chance! That's not the first bunch of men who have ridden over there like that to-day. ”

“ Deveril looked into her eyes and laughed softly; her eyes smiled back into his.... She felt as though she had had a bad dream, but was awake now; as though last night her nerves had tricked her into wrongly judging her companion. Doubtings always flock in the night; joy is never more joyous than when breaking forth with the new day.
"It isn't so bad, after all," said Deveril. "Now, if we only had a pack-mule and a roll of blankets and a bit of canvas.... What more would you ask, Lynette Brooke, for a lark and a holiday to remember pleasantly when we grew to be doddering old folks?" ”

“ That Lynette already loved his kinsman or at the least stood upon the very brink of giving her heart unreservedly into his keeping, Deveril's keen eyes, the eyes of jealous love, had been quick to read. It did not once suggest itself to him that Standing could by any possibility have failed to love Lynette. The two had been for days together, alone in the mountains; why should Standing have kept her and have been gentle with her, as he must have been, save for the one reason that he loved her? Further, what man could have lived so long with Lynette of the daring eyes and not love her? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before Lynette could speak or move, Taggart's voice once more cut harshly through the silence.
"You wouldn't know, Joe, unless you'd been sheriff as long as me, how many nice little ways there are of making a man hurry up about spitting up all he knows!" Taggart was steadily cramming into his mouth the half-cooked dried beef stew, appearing to have entirely forgotten his dislike for garlic. "Me, I'm a man of brains and what you call invention; I look around and see what I've got handy, and out of it I make what I need! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Deveril, with eyes which puzzled Timber-Wolf, was staring at him curiously.
"Tell me, Bruce Standing," he demanded, "do you love her?"
"Love her?" cried Standing. "Rather I hate the ground she walks on! She is your kind, Baby Devil; not mine." And he laughed his scorn of her. But now there was no chiming of golden bells in that great volume of laughter but rather a sinister ring like the angry clash of iron. All the while Babe Deveril looked him straight in the eye ... and understood!
"For once you lie! You love her and what is more ... and worse!... she loves you! ”

“ And I am no more liar than you are, Bruce Standing."
He cursed himself for a fool; he was tired and weak and dizzy; his mind was the abode of confusions; he no longer knew what was fact and what illusion. One thing alone he did know, a marvellous thing; there was in her low voice the ring of utter honesty when she said: "I did not shoot you!" ... Liars; all her sex, waging their weak wars from ambush, holding their place in the world through seduction and deceit, all were liars. ”

“ When Deveril was hard pressed along the trail, worn out and on the alert for oncoming danger from any quarter, he was impersonal; a mere ally on whom she could depend. At moments like this one, when he was rested and relaxed, and grasped in his eager hands a bit of the swift life flowing by, he became different. A man now—a young man—one with quick lights in his eyes and a lilting eagerness in his voice. ”

“ They startled, in a tiny meadow, three deer, which shot away through a tangle of brush, leaping, plunging, shooting forward and down a slope like great, gleaming, graceful arrows. "A man could live like a king here, with a rifle," said Deveril longingly. They saw a tall, thin wisp of smoke an hour before noon; it stood against the sky to the southwest of them, at a distance of perhaps two miles. "Taggart's noonday camp," they decided, deciding further that Taggart must have insisted on an early start, and therefore had found his stomach demanding lunch well before midday. ”

“ Against the great area of flesh, as white as a girl's and smooth and clean with vigorous health, the smear of blood, itself red with that same perfection of health, gave the wound an appearance of ten times its real gravity. But Winch was accustomed to blood, and knew that Bruce Standing could lose more of it than could most men and be little the worse for the loss. ”

“ Bruce Standing was the man to defy Gallup in his own lair; the man to defy the sheriff; to hurl an axe at an armed deputy ... and yet the only man in Big Pine to lift an angry hand against the unfair play of shutting little Mexicali Joe up in jail! ”

“ He knew that he could trust Billy Winch in all things; that Winch, with all of that persevering patience which the occasion demanded and that veterinary skill and love for animals which marked him, would do all that any man could to get Thor home and to care for him. And now, for Bruce Standing, beyond the stricken dog lay other considerations: There remained Lynette and Babe Deveril! He ground his teeth in savage rage and from Daylight's first leap under him rode hard.
Long before the early sun rose he was back at his own headquarters, a man grim and hard and purposeful. ”

“ Bruce Standing caught his rifle by the end of the barrel; at first Lynette, and Deveril also, thought that he [Pg 153] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It's there!... Graham, get busy! A contractor; lumber; building materials; carpenters! We build a town as big as Big Pine and we build it faster than ever a town grew before! A store, blacksmith shop, hotel. Shacks of all sorts. Graham!"
Graham, like a man with an electric current shot through him, jumped out of his chair.
"Send a man on the run to Big Pine with a message for Young Gallup! And the message is this: 'Bruce Standing promised to pull your damned town down about your ears ... and the pulling has begun!'"
"Yes, Mr. Standing," said Graham. And sent a man on a running horse. ”

“ Taggart. Bruce Standing knows where the gold is now; both you and I know the sort of man he is and we can imagine that if he drives the first stake he will see to it that he takes the whole thing. Do you really think that after I came into this country for gold myself I am going to miss my one chance now?" She puzzled them again with her laughter and said: "Not that it would not be a simple matter to trick you, were I minded to let my own chances go for the sake of spoiling yours; Mexicali Joe fooled you so easily." ”