For in the deep black silence her quick mind had been busy, never so busy; out of tiny scraps it had constructed a mental patchwork. Nor were all dark-hued threads weaving in and out of it; here and there the sombre pattern had bright-hued spots. Her courage was high, her hopes always at surging high tide; her senses keen. And, after all, Bruce Standing was a blunt, forthright man, in no degree subtle....
He had given her the impression an hour ago of being entirely brute beast. That was true. Further, she told herself with growing conviction, that it had been his great intent to make her regard him as brute and beast; she had angered him, she had drawn upon herself his vengeful wrath; he meant to make her pay; and his first step had been to make her afraid of him.... She went on to other thoughts; 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, alone, had not sought to steal Joe's secret; he alone was ready, against all odds, to throw the door back and let Joe go. Not altogether that the part of the brute and beast!
Another thing: Bruce Standing did not lie. She knew that. And he was not a coward; he did not do petty, cowardly things.... He meant her to believe that there was nothing too cruel and merciless for him to inflict upon her. Yet she had struck him in the face with a stone; she had struck him with her hands, and he had not so much as bruised the skin of her wrists with his big hard hands!... Eager he had been to humiliate her, calling her his slave; eagerly, as soon as he had read her pride, he grasped at the first means of torturing it. Why that great eagerness ... unless he, despite his threat, was casting about in rather blind fashion for means to make her pay?... He wanted her to be afraid of him ... and it came to her in the dark, so that she smiled, that this was because there was little for her to fear!
"In his rage," she told herself, and, fettered as she was, a first gleam of triumph visited her, "he came roaring after me. And, now he has me, he doesn't know what to do with me! To make me his unwilling slave ... unwilling!... that is all that he can think of now."
And again there was comfort in the thought:
"If he meant to harm me, why should he have let me go to-night? An angry man, bent upon real brute vengeance, would have struck at the first opportunity. The opportunity was when he sent Babe Deveril away and had me to do what he pleased with. And he only played the perfectly silly game of making me his slave ... unwilling...."
It was the thoughts which rose with the word that put the little smile into her eyes and brought the first softening of her troubled lips.... Several times she heard him stirring restlessly; once he awakened her with his muttering, and she knew that he was asleep, but that either his wound pained him or his sleep was disturbed by unwelcome dreams—perhaps both.
Bruce Standing woke and sat up in the early chill dawn. He looked swiftly to where Lynette lay. She appeared to be plunged in deep, restful sleep. She lay comfortably snuggled in among the boughs; the curve of one arm was up about her face, so that he could not see her eyes. Naturally he believed them shut; her breathing was low and quiet, exactly as it should have been were she really fast asleep.... She looked pretty and tiny and tired out, but resting. Suddenly he frowned savagely. But he sat for a long time without stirring.
Lynette put up her arms and stretched and yawned sleepily, and then, like a little girl of six, put her knuckles into her eyes. Then she, too, sat up quickly.
"Oh," she said brightly. "Are you awake already? And making not a bit of noise, so as to let me have my sleep out? Good morning, Mr. Timber-Wolf!"