bruce standing, a man of that strong, dominant, and self-centred character which is prone to disregard the feelings of others, held both lynette brooke and babe deveril his prey. but jim taggart, whose professional business it appeared to be to bring in the girl, and whose sore and aching head would not for many a day lose record of the fact that it had been babe deveril who had forcibly put him out of the running, had his own human purposes to serve, and set his nose to the trail like a bloodhound. and yet, with these two bending every energy to run them to earth, the two fugitives plunging headlong into the friendly darkness were for the moment utterly lost to those who plunged into the same darkness and in the same headlong style after them.
hand in hand, chance-caught, and running swiftly, lynette and deveril were in time to escape the first of their pursuers, a crowd of men who got in one another's way, and who were too lately from the lighted room of the house to see clearly outside. behind gallup's house was the little creek which supplied the town with its water; it wound here across a tiny flat, an open space save for its big cottonwoods. the two, knowing that in the first heat of the chase opening at their heels they were running from death, sped like two winged shadows merged into one. after a hundred yards they hurled themselves into breast-high bushes, a thick tangle—a growth which, in such a mad rush as theirs, was no less formidable than a rock wall. they cast quick glances backward; a score of men—appearing, in their widely spread formation and from their cries and the racket of
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scuffling boots, to be a hundred—shut off all retreat and made hopeless any thought to turn to right or left.
"down!" whispered deveril. "crawl for it! and quiet!"
on hands and knees they crawled into the thicket. already hands and faces were scratched, but they did not feel the scratches; already their clothes were torn in many places. in a wild scramble they went on, squeezing through narrow spaces, lying flat, wriggling, getting to hands and knees again. 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 still other voices shouted and, it would seem, every man of them had glimpsed his own tricking shadow and had his own wild opinion.
thus, for a brief enough moment, the pursuit was baffled.
"slow and quiet does it!" it was for the third time babe deveril's whisper, his lips close to her hair. "i see an opening. follow close."
lynette, still lying face down, lifted herself a little way upon her two hands and looked after him.
"string 'em up!" a voice was calling. it was like the voice of a devil down in hell, full of mob malice. she
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shivered. "they're murdering devils. string 'em up!"
"catch 'em first, you fool," called another voice. again pounding boots and ... far more sinister sound ... snapping brush where a man was breaking his way straight into the thicket.
like some grotesque, curiously shaped snake, babe deveril was writhing along, ever deeper into the brush tangle, ahead of her. she began crawling after him. voices everywhere. and now dogs barking. a hundred dogs, it seemed to her taut nerves. she knew dogs; she knew how they went into a frenzy of excited joy when it was a question of a quarry, any quarry; she knew the unfailing certainty of the dog's scent. she began hurrying, struggling to get to her knees again....
"sh! down!"
she dropped down again and lay flat, scarce breathing. but once more she saw the vague blot of deveril's flat form wriggling on ahead of her, almost gone now. it was so dark! she threw herself forward; she threw her arm out and her hand brushed his boot. it was a wonderful thing, to feel that boot. she was not alone. she began again following him; dry, broken, and thorny twigs snared at her; they caught in her clothes and in the laces of her boots; they tore at her skin. yet this time she was as silent a shadow as the shadow in front of her. on and on and on, on endlessly through an eternity of darkness shot through with dim star glimmerings, and pierced with horrible voices, she went. she came out into an opening; she stood up. she was alone! and those voices and the yelping of dogs and the scuffling of heavy, insensate, merciless boots....
a hard, sudden hand caught her by the wrist. she whipped back, a scream shaping her lips. but in time she clapped a hand over her mouth. she was not alone; this was babe deveril, standing upright ... waiting
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for her! she brought her hand down and clasped it, tight, over his hand.
"run for it again," he whispered. "off that way ... to the right. if we can once get among those trees...."
side by side, their hearts leaping, they ran. gradually, but steadily, the harsh noises grew fainter behind them. they gained the fringe of trees; they splashed through the creek; they skirted a second tangle of brush and rounded the crest of a hill. and steadily and swiftly now the sounds of pursuit lessened behind them.
"and now," muttered deveril, for the first time forsaking his cautious whisper, "if we use what brains god gave us, we are free of that hell pack."
"if they caught up with us?" she questioned him sharply.
"most likely we'd both be swinging from a cottonwood in ten minutes! there's no sanity in that crowd; it's all mob spirit. if it is true that both bruce standing and jim taggart are dead.... well, then, lynette brooke, this is no place for you and me to-night! come on!..."
"babe deveril," she returned, and now it was her fingers tightening about his, "i'll never forget that you stood by me to-night!"
babe deveril, being himself and no other, a man reckless and unafraid and eminently gay, and, so god made him, full of lilting appreciation of the fair daughters of eve, felt even at this moment her touch, like so much warm quicksilver trickling through him from head to foot. he gave her, in answer, a hearty pressure of the hand and his low, guarded laughter, saying lightly:
"you interfere with the regular beating of a man's heart, lynette brooke! but now you'll never remember to-night for any great measure of hours, unless we
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step along. they'll hunt us all night. come, beautiful lady!"
even then she marvelled at him. he, like herself, was tense and on the qui vive; yet she sensed his utter fearlessness. she knew that if they caught him and put a rope about his neck and led him under a cottonwood branch, he would pay them back to the last with his light, ringing laughter.
in this first wild rush they had had no time to think over what had just happened; no time to cast ahead beyond each step deeper into the night. where they were going, what they were going to do—these were issues to confront them later; now they were concerned with no consideration other than haste and silence and each other's company. to-night's section of destiny made of them, without any reasoning and merely through an instinctive attraction, trail fellows. true, both carried blurred pictures of what had occurred back there at the gallup house so few minutes ago, but these were but pictures, and as yet gave rise to no logical speculation. as in a vision, she saw timber-wolf sagging and falling as he strove to slew about; deveril saw taggart rushing in at her heels, and then going down in a heap as a revolver was flung in his face. only dully at present were they concerned with the query whether these two men were really dead. when one runs for his life through the woods in a dark night, he has enough to do to avoid limbs and tree trunks and keep on going.
big pine occupied the heart of a little upland flat. in ten minutes lynette and deveril had traversed the entire stretch of partially level land, and felt the ground begin to pitch sharply under foot. here was a sudden steep slope leading down into a rugged ravine; their sensation was that of plunging over the brink of some direful precipice, feeling at every instant that they were
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about to go tumbling into an abyss. they were forced to go more slowly, sliding on their heels, ploughing through patches of soil, stumbling across flinty areas.
"down we go, as straight as we can," said deveril. "and up on the other side as straight as we can. then we'll be in a bit of forest land where the devil himself couldn't find us on a night like this.... how are you standing the rough-stuff?"
it was the first time that he had given any indication of realizing that her girl's body might not be equal to the work which they were taking upon them. swiftly she made her answer, saying lightly, despite her labored breathing:
"fine. this is nothing."
"if i hadn't forgotten my hat ... among other things," he chuckled, "i'd take it off to you right now, lynette brooke!"
they paused and stood a moment in the gloom about the base of a big boulder, listening. now and then a man shouted; dogs still barked. but the sounds were appreciably fainter, now that they had started down the steeply pitching slope into the ravine.
"we can get away from them to-night," she said. "but to-morrow, when it is light?"
"we'll see. for one thing, a chase like this always loses some of its fine enthusiasm after the first spurt. for another, even if they did pick us up to-morrow, they would have had time to cool off a bit; a mob can't stay hot overnight. but give us a full night's head-start, and i've a notion we've seen the last of them. ready?"
"always ready!"
again they hurried on, straight down into the great cleft through the mountains, swerving into brief détours only for upheaved piles of boulders or for an occasional brushy tangle. in twenty minutes they were
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down in the bed of the ravine, and splashing through a little trickle of water; lynette stooped and drank, while deveril stood listening; again, climbing now, they went on. the farther side of the cañon was as steep as the one they had come down, and it was tedious labor in the dark to make their way; at times they zigzagged one way and another to lessen the sheerness of their path. and frequently now they stopped and drank deep draughts of the clear mountain air.
silence shut down about them, ruffled only by the soft wind stirring across the mountain ridges. it was not that they were so soon out of ear-shot of big pine; rather, this sudden lull meant that their pursuers, done with the first moments of blind excitement, were now gathering their wits and thinking coolly ... and planning. they would be taking to horseback soon; scouting this way and that, organizing and throwing out their lines like a great net. by now some one man, perhaps young gallup, had taken charge and was directing them. the two fugitives, senses sharpened, understood, and again hastened on. they had not won to any degree of security, and felt with quickened nerves the full menace of this new, sinister silence.
onward and upward they labored, until at last they gained a less steeply sloping timber belt, which stretched close under the peak of the ridge. they walked more swiftly now; breathing was easier; there were more and wider open spaces among the larger, more generously spaced tree trunks.
"we'll strike into the buck valley road in a minute now," said deveril. "then we'll have easy going...."
"and will leave tracks that they'll see in the morning!"
"of course. any fool ought to have thought of that," he muttered, ashamed that it had been she instead of himself who had foreseen the danger.
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so they hearkened to the voice of caution and paralleled the road, keeping a dozen or a score of paces to its side, and often tempted, because of its comparative smoothness and the difficult brokenness of the mountainside over which they elected to travel, to yield utterly to its inviting voice. they turned back and glimpsed the twinkling lights of big pine; they lost the lights as they forged on; they found them again, grown fainter and fewer and farther away.
"can you go on walking this way all night?" he asked her once.
"all night, if we have to," she told him simply.
they tramped along in silence, their boots rising and falling regularly. the first tenseness, since human nerves will remain taut only so long, had passed. they had time for thought now, both before and after. mentally each was reviewing all that had occurred to-night and, building theoretically upon those happenings, was casting forward into the future. the present was a path of hazard, and surely the future lay shut in by black shadows. yet both of them were young, and youth is the time of golden hopes, no matter how drearily embraced by stony facts. and youth, in both of them, despite the difference of sex, was of the same order: a time of wild blood; youth at its animal best, lusty, vigorous, dauntless, devil-may-care; theirs the spirits which leap, hearts glad and fearless. and when, after a while, now and then they spoke again, there was youth playing up to youth in its own inevitable fashion; confidence asserting itself and begetting more confidence; youth wearing its outer cloakings with its own inimitable swagger.
they had trudged along the narrow mountain road for a full hour or more when they heard the clattering noise of a horse's shod hoofs.
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"i knew it," said deveril sharply. "damn them."
with one accord he and she withdrew hastily, slipping into the convenient shadows thrown by a clump of trees, and peered forth through a screen of high brush. the hurrying hoof beats came on, up-grade, hence from the general direction of big pine. two men, and riding neck and neck, driving their horses hard. the riders drew on rapidly; were for a fleeting moment vaguely outlined against a field of stars ... swept on.
they came with a rush, with a rush they were gone. but deveril, who since he was taller, had seen more clearly than lynette across the brush, turned back to her eagerly, wondering if she had seen what he had—if she had noted that one of the men loomed unusually large in the saddle, and how the smaller at his side rode lopsidedly. in all reason bruce standing should be dead by now or, at the very least, bedridden. but when did timber-wolf ever do what other men expected of him? if he were alive and not badly hurt; if lynette knew this, then what? deveril would tell her, or would not tell her, as circumstances should decide for him.
"come on!" he cried sharply, certain that lynette had not seen. "while the night and the dark last. let's hurry."
on and on they went until the dragging hours seemed endless. they saw the wheeling progress of the stars; they saw the pools of gloom in the woods deepen and darken; they felt, like thick black padded velvet, the silence grow deeper, until it seemed scarcely ruffled by the thin passing of the night air. thus they put many a weary, hard-won mile between them and big pine. hours of that monotonous lifting of boot after boot, of stumbling and straightening and driving on; of pushing through brush copses, of winding wearily among the
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bigger boles of the forest, of sliding down steep places and climbing up others, with always the lure of the more easy way of the road tempting and mocking.
"we've got to find water again," said deveril, out of a long silence. "and we've got to dig ourselves in for a day of it. the dawn's coming."
for already the eastern sky stood forth in contrast against west and south and north, a palely glimmering sweep of emptiness charged with the promise of another day. the girl, too tired for speech, agreed with a weary nod. she could think of nothing now, neither of past nor present nor future, save of water, a long, cool bathing of burning mouth and throat, and after that, rest and sleep. her whole being was resolved into an aching desire for these two simple balms to jaded nature. water and then sleep. and let the coming day bring what it chose.
long ago the mountain air, rare and sweet and clean, had grown cold, but their bodies, warmed by exertion, were unaware of the chill. but now, with fatigue working its will upon every laboring muscle, they began to feel the cold. lynette began shivering first; deveril, when they stopped a little while for one of their brief rests, began to shiver with her.
water was not to be found at every step in these mountains; they labored on another three or four miles before they found it. then they came to a singing brook which shot under a little log bridge, and there they lay flat, side by side, and drank their fill.
"and now, fair lady, to bed," said deveril, looking at her curiously and making nothing of her expression, since the starlight hid more than it disclosed, and giving her as little glimpse of his own look. "and when, i wonder, did you ever lay you down to sleep as you must to-night?"
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but he did see that she shivered. and yet, bravely enough, she answered him, saying:
"beggars must not be choosers, fair sir; and methinks we should go down on our knees and offer up our thanks to our lady that we live and breathe and have the option of choosing our sleeping places this night."
she had caught his cue, and her readiness threw him into a mood of light laughter; he had drunk deep, and his youthful resilience buoyed him up, and he found life, as always, a game far away and more than worth the candle.
"you say truly, my fair lady," he said in mock gravity. "'tis better to sleep among the bushes than dangling at the end of a brief stretch of rope."
but with all of their lightness of speech, which, after all, was but the symbol of youth playing up to youth, the prospect was dreary enough, and in their hearts there was little laughter. and the cold bit at them with its icy teeth. a fire would have been more than welcome, a thing to cheer as well as to warm; but a fire here, on the mountainside, would have been a visible token of brainlessness; it would throw its warmth five feet and its betraying light as many miles.
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. for the first time in her vigorous life she came to understand the meaning of that ancient expression, "tired to death."
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she felt herself drooping into unconsciousness almost before her body slumped down upon the earth, thinly covered in fallen leaves.
"i am sleepy," she murmured. "almost dead for sleep...."
"you wonderful girl...."
"sh! i can't talk any more. i can't think; i can't move; i can scarcely breathe. whether they find us in the morning or not ... it doesn't matter to me now.... you have been good to me; be good to me still. and ... good-night, babe deveril ... gentleman!"
he saw her, dimly, nestle down, cuddling her cheek against her arm, drawing up her knees a little, snuggling into the very arms of mother earth, like a baby finding its warm place against its mother's breast. he sat down and slowly made himself a cigarette, and forgot for a long time to light it, lost in his thoughts as he stared at her and listened to her quiet breathing. he knew the moment that she went to sleep. and in his heart of hearts he marvelled at her and called her "a dead-game little sport." she, of a beauty which he in all of his light adventurings found incomparable, had ventured with him, a man unknown to her, into the depths of these solitudes and had never, for a second, evinced the least fear of him. true, danger drove; and yet danger always lay in the hands of a man, her sex's truest friend and greatest foe. in his hands reposed her security and her undoing. and yet, knowing all this, as she must, she lay down and sighed and went to sleep. and her last word, ingenuous and yet packed to the brim with human understanding, still rang in his ears.
"it's worth it," he decided, his eyes lingering with her gracefully abandoned figure. "the whole damn thing, and may the devil whistle through his fingers until
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his fires burn cold! and she's mine, and i'll make her mine and keep her mine until the world goes dead. and my friend, wilfred deveril, if you've ever said anything in your life, you've said it now!"
