Every experience through which Lynette Brooke had gone until now seemed suddenly dwarfed into insignificance by the present. She was so utterly wearied out physically that muscles all over her body, demanding their hour of relaxation and having that relaxation denied them through the nervous stress laid upon her, quivered piteously. Hers was that frame of mind which distorts and magnifies, whipping out of its true semblance all actual conditions or building them up into monstrous, grotesque shapes. She was afraid of that great, staring dog on the threshold; more afraid of him than she had ever been of any man, Thor's master not excepted. For here was a fear which she could not throttle down. She would have sighed in content and have gone to sleep, her turbulent emotions quieted, if only it had been Bruce Standing's hard hand on the chain denying her her liberty instead of a great dog lying across the door-step.... Enough here to make her clinch her teeth to hold back a scream of panic-swept nerves; yet this was not all. For still that cry, heard through the woods, rang in her ears; still she built up in the picture which her quick fancy limned the vision of Mexicali Joe at the mercy of merciless men; Joe, who had lied to them, hoping to deliver them into the hands of one greater than they; Joe, who at the end, with them demanding to see what he had to show them, must be driven to the last extremity to fight for time.... And, blurring everything else at times, there swept over her another picture; that of Timber-Wolf, wounded and white-faced, stalking in that fearless way of his among them, confronting three armed men ... or four?... and then man-killing.... They were all wolves! She shuddered. And Thor, watching her, filled the quiet cabin with the sound of his low suspicious growling.
"Thor!" she called him, hardly above a whisper. Her lips were dry. "Good old Thor!"
His throaty rumble of a growl, telling her of his distrust as eloquently as it could have done had Thor the words of man at his command, was her answer.
"Thor!" She called him again, her voice soft, pleading, coaxing. Then she lifted herself a few inches on her elbow; like a flash Thor was up on his haunches, his growl became a snarl, a quick glint of his teeth showing, a sharp-pointed gleam of menace.
Yet Lynette held her position, steady upon her elbow; she had never known a tenser moment. Her throat contracted with her fear; and yet she kept telling herself stubbornly that yonder was but a dog, a thing of only brute intelligence, while she had the human brain to oppose him with; that, some way, she could outwit him. So she did not lie back; to do so would, she felt, show Thor that she was afraid of him. She made no further forward movement but she held what she had been suffered to gain.
And then she set herself to dominate Thor, a wolf-like dog. She spoke to him; but first she waited until she could be sure of her voice. That brute instinct of Thor's would know the slightest quaver of fear when he heard it. She controlled herself and her voice; she made her tones low and soft and gentle; she kept them firm. She told herself: "Thor is but doing his master's bidding because he loves his master! I'll make him love me! He distrusts.... I'll make him trust instead!" And all the while she kept her own eyes steady upon Thor's.
"Thor!" she said quietly. And again: "Thor. Good old Thor. Good old dog!"
... Thor had set her down as an enemy; his master's enemy; his master had commanded him: "Watch her, Thor!" Thor's knowledge was not wide; yet what he knew he did know thoroughly. And yet Thor had had no evidence, beyond that offered by a chain, of any open enmity between his master and this captive; master and girl had travelled all day long together and neither had flown at the other's throat. More than that, it had been at the master's own command this very morning that Thor had felt her hand upon his head; a hand as light as a falling leaf. And now she spoke to him in his master's own words, but with such a different voice, calling him Thor, good old dog....
It was a soothing voice, a voice made for tender caresses. She spoke again and again and again. And she was not afraid; Thor could see no flickering sign of fear in her. A voice softer than had been the touch of her hand.
"Thor!" she called him. And his growl was scarcely more growl than whine. For Thor, before Bruce Standing had been gone twenty minutes, was growing uncertain. Lynette had had dogs of her own; she knew the ways of dogs, and in this she had the advantage, since Thor knew nothing of the ways of women nor of their guile. The dog was restless; his eyes, upon hers, were no longer so steady. Now and then Thor shook his head and his eyes wandered.