He would seem to have all advantage over her; yet she understood that in one way, and in one way only, could she rob him of his advantage, and that was by giving him swift and cheerful obedience. So she slipped out of the saddle on the instant, giving him for answer only the light gay words:
"Oh, it is beautiful here!" ...
It was beautiful.... He glared at her and led his horse away to unsaddle; his big dog, Thor, had trotted along at Daylight's heels all day and now slumped down, ears erect and suspicious, while he watched his master and made certain of never losing sight for a second of his master's new companion, whom he tolerated but did not trust. Lynette, stiff from so many hours in the saddle, looked about her. They were in the upper, brief space of a valley; above reared the mountains steeply, rugged slopes with pines here and there, with more open spaces and tumbled boulders. The valley itself was a pretty, pleasant place, soft in short green grass, flower-dotted, smoothly curving down into the more open level lands below. Yet here was no proper place to pitch camp, especially at so early an hour when it was allowed to seek further; it was too open, it would be unsheltered and cold; there was no water....
"Come on!"
She started and turned again toward Standing. He had slung his small pack across his shoulders and was going on. She looked forward toward the ridge, which he faced; it rose sheer and forbidding. And she saw that his face was white and drawn; she wondered quickly how sorely his wound hurt him.
"Brute?" He could have been far more brutal to her.... He was dead-tired, white-faced; he had fought hard last night, scorning the advantage of an armed man against an unarmed; he had not harmed a hair of her head! Almost ... almost it lay within her to whisper "Poor fellow!" And if only Bruce Standing could have known that!...
He led the way. She followed, since there was nothing else to think of doing.
They climbed steadily upward out of this narrow green valley, finding a steep but open way among the trees. Now and then they paused briefly to breathe, and Lynette, looking back, saw more and more of the long, winding valley, as it revealed itself to her from new vantage points. Far away she caught the glint of the sunlight upon a little wandering creek. They went on, and came to the crest of the ridge, in full sunshine now; Standing led an unhesitating way through a natural pass, and down on the other side, into shadows of a thick grove; through thickets; they splashed across a creek, a thin line of clear, cool water slipping through mountain willows, a tributary of the larger stream in the valley below. Down here it was almost dark. But twenty minutes later, climbing another slope where the larger timber stood widely spaced, they came again into the full sunshine.... Lynette began to wonder why he had left his horse so far back; how far did the silent, tireless man mean to walk? Also, she began to welcome the coming night with an eagerness which she was at all pains to conceal from him; he was always ten steps ahead of her; if he walked on another half-hour, she began to hope that they would come into a place of shadows and clumps of trees among which she might dare make the attempt for escape which had been denied her all day....
They came into a little upland flat, well watered, emerald-carpeted with tender grass, shot through with lingering flowers and studded with magnificent trees; it seemed the very heart of the great wilderness; here was such glorious forest land as Lynette had never seen and did not know existed in all the broad scope of the great Southwest mountain country. She looked upward. Dark branches towered into the sky, the tips still shot through with soft summer light. She heard the gush of water—the tumble and splash and fall of water. Somewhere above, at the upper end of the flat, where a dark ravine was an ebon-shadow-filled gash through the hills, was a waterfall. She could not see it, but its musical waters proclaimed it through the still air. She looked swiftly down the other way; there it was growing dark. She glanced hurriedly at Standing. And he, as though he had read her thought, stopped and turned and, before she could stir, was at her side.