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.