She tried to toss back her fearless laughter, but at that look of his and at that stern tone of his voice her laughter caught in her throat.
"You've got nerve," he said grudgingly. "More nerve than I thought any girl could have ... since it's far and away more than most men have. But just the same there's one thing you are afraid of! I've seen it a dozen times to-day, no matter how well you thought you hid it! You are afraid to death of old Thor, there!"
She shivered; she laid a quick command upon her muscles as upon her spirit, but they failed her; she tried to tell herself and to show him through her bearing, head up, eyes steady, that it was only fatigue and the growing chill of the coming night that put that tremor upon her. But he laughed at her and called his big dog to him and said heavily:
"Watch her, Thor! Watch her!"
Thor growled, a growl coming from deep down in the powerful throat; the red eyes grew hot; bristles stood up along neck and back; there came the gleam of the wolfish teeth. She shrank back against the wall.
"I have my appointment!... In an hour I must go. I give you your choice of coming along with me, in leash! or of staying here, with only Thor to guard, and taking your chances with him! Which is it?"
And she cried quickly:
"I'll go with you!" And then, lest he should think that he had triumphed, she added swiftly: "For I, too, am interested in Mexicali Joe!"
He caught down the blankets which had hung airing since last he came here and tossed two of them to the bunk where she half lay; the third he folded and placed on the floor, stretching out his own great bulk upon it, his shoulders against the wall. He found his pipe, filled and lighted it, and lay staring into the fire....
And she, drawing a blanket over her knees, crouched, looking into the same dancing flames, overwhelmed for the moment by a total sense-engulfing feeling of unreality. Could all of this which had happened, which was still happening, be an actual experience for her, Lynette Brooke? More did it resemble a long-drawn-out ugly dream than actuality! To be here to-night, so far from the world, her own world, in the heart of a gigantic wilderness, in a rude cabin; a giant of a man who, as he had said truly, might have crushed her between his powerful forefinger and thumb; a savage wolf of a dog watching her with unblinking eyes; another man, somewhere, with vengeance in his heart, following them; another man, clutching to his breast his golden secret, not far away; ... nightmare ingredients! Did this man, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf as men called him, really know where to find Mexicali Joe? And, when he found him, would he come upon Taggart and Gallup and that hawk-faced man whom they called Cliff Shipton? And with them would there be Babe Deveril, who must have gone somewhere in his mad, hungering hope to have a rifle in his hands?... Above all else, was she the plaything of fate? Or the director of fate? Now it lay within the scope of her power to cry out to Bruce Standing: "When you find Mexicali Joe you will find others, no friends of yours, with him! With them, probably, Babe Deveril! And more than one rifle ready to stand between you and the Mexican!" ... If she kept her silence, there might be bloodshed before morning; if she spoke her warning, she might be doubly arming Timber-Wolf. She grew restless; so restless that Thor, distrusting her, began growling.