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...."