"I'd rather die...."
"It's easy to die ... for any one who is not a coward. And I just told you that you had courage." He came suddenly close to her. "But there are other things that are not so easy! What if I put my two arms about you? If I hold you tight ... and set my lips to yours ... and...."
"You beast...."
"But my dinner?" he jeered at her.
She went hot and cold; she cast a quick glance toward the forest land where the night was thickening; she cast another glance at his rifle where it lay, a few feet from the fire. Then, her lower lip caught between her teeth, she went to the tin can in which she and Babe Deveril had made coffee.
"A funny thing," said Bruce Standing, watching her; "you skipped out, hot-foot, from Big Pine, thinking you had killed me! And your little friend, meaning Baby Devil, skipped along, thinking he had done Jim Taggart in! And, after all, nobody much hurt!... Glad to hear that Taggart did not die?"
"I knew it already," she said, just to cheat him of any satisfaction in telling her.
"Mexicali Joe skipped this way, too," he went on swiftly, so swiftly that he succeeded in tricking her into saying:
"I knew that, too!"
Then he laughed at her, informing her: