She looked about her hurriedly, in all directions. There was so much open country here; big pines, wide-spaced. If she ran down the slope he must surely see her when she had gone fifty or a hundred yards. And then he'd be after her! If she turned to right or left, the case was almost the same. If it were only dark! But the sun was rising....
She began singing again, so that he might hear. A sudden anger blazed up within her. With all his blunt ways, the man was not without his own sort of shrewdness; he had known that she had no chance here to escape him; no chance for such a head start as to give her an even break in a race with him.
... After ten minutes she came back to him; she carried a dripping can in each hand; she had bathed hands and arms and face and throat; she had combed her hair out through her fingers, making new thick braids, with loosely curling ends. She had taken time to twist those soft ends about her fingers. He was standing over his newly built fire; his rifle, with the chain tossed across it, lay against a rock; he gave no sign of noting her approach.... Yet, while they ate a hurriedly warmed breakfast, she caught him several times looking at her curiously....
Her heart began again to beat happily; never was hope long departed from the breast of Lynette Brooke. She kept telling herself, over and over, that he was not going to be brute and beast to her. Soon or late she would find her chance for escape from him; she would let him think her that weakling which it was his way to regard women in general; there would come the time when, once more free, she could laugh at him.... And she, when he did not observe, looked curiously at him many a time.
When they had eaten and he had gathered up the few scraps of food and had very carefully extinguished the last ember of their fire, he wound the chain about his middle again, caught up the rifle and said briefly and still without looking at her:
"Come."
She followed him, neither hesitating nor questioning; thus she was gleefully sure she angered him.... She wondered what the day held in store for her; she wondered what of good and bad lay ahead; and yet she was now less filled with terror than with the burning zest for life itself. Bruce Standing had told her that he was going to keep an appointment; he had been the man to release Mexicali Joe; Mexicali Joe had whispered something and Standing had laughed; Mexicali Joe was now ahead of them, pretending to lead Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton to his gold! Her thoughts were busy enough and she, like her silent companion, had small need for talk.
She wondered about Babe Deveril; how badly hurt he had been after Bruce Standing's mauling; what he was doing now; where he was? A hundred times that morning, hearing bird or squirrel and once a leaping buck, she looked to see Babe Deveril bursting back upon them.... Had he not gone far, last night? Had he remained near their camp and was he following them to-day?...
They passed over a ridge and turned into a little cup of a green valley; Standing, stalking ahead of her, went to a thicket and drew from it a saddle and bridle and saddle blankets and a small canvas pack. Then, standing with his hands on his hips, staring off in all directions, he whistled shrilly. Whistled, and waited listening, and whistled again. Lynette heard, from far off, the quick, glad whicker of a horse. And here came the horse galloping; kicking up its heels; shaking its head with flying mane; circling, snorting, with lowered head; at standstill for a moment, a golden sorrel with snow-white mane and tail; a mount for even Timber-Wolf, lover of horses, to be proud to own and ride and whistle to through the forest land.... Lynette looked swiftly at Standing's face; he was smiling; his eyes were bright.
He went forward and stroked his horse's satiny nose and wreathed a hand in the mane and led the animal to the saddle, calling him softly, "Good old Daylight." The horse nosed him; Standing laughed out loud and smote the great shoulder with open palm.... Lynette saw with clear vision that there was a great love between man and animal; and she thought of another horse, Sunlight, slaughtered at Young Gallup's orders, and of Standing's lisping rage and of her own nervous, uncontrollable laughter....