With that conversation ceased. He drove Thor into a corner, and with a word and a glance made the dog lie down. He boiled his coffee and set a hurried meal; he caught up a tin plate and brought it to Lynette. She was about to thank him when she saw how he was planning to serve a tin platter like hers to his dog; then she could have screamed at him in nerve-pent-up anger.
The three—master, captive, and dog—ate their late dinners while the candle flame, pale yellow with its bluish centre, swayed gently in the mild draft of air through the open door. Windows there were none, saving the one square aperture over the bunk, boarded up now.
"What about Jim Taggart?" said Standing brusquely out of a long silence toward the end of which the weary girl was near dozing. "What do you know about him? Did he overhaul Mexicali Joe after all?"
She looked at him steadily; suddenly she was glad when a pine branch in the fireplace, full of pitch, flared up so that he must have seen her face more clearly than he could have done by mere pale candle-light; she wanted him to see it and read something of the defiance which she meant to offer him.
"So, after all, you have your engagement with Mexicali Joe? It was for that that you set him free? That you, instead of others, might steal his golden secret!"
"Then you won't answer, girl? You, whom I could crush between thumb and finger, refuse to answer me?"
"Yes!" she cried out at him. "Yes! I am not afraid of you, Bruce Standing!"
"Not afraid?" He glared at her, his flashing blue eyes full of threat. Then he laughed contemptuously, saying: "And yet, were I minded to, I could in a second have you on your knees, begging, pleading...."
"But you won't!" she dared fling at him. "And that is why I am not afraid!"
"I am not so sure!" he muttered. "Not so sure. Before morning, girl, you may come to know what fear is!"