What he could not know was that a revolver which had once already shot him in the back had followed him all these miles through the wilderness and was now lying on the bunk in the cabin he had just quitted; he could not know how, at the Gallup House after Babe Deveril had flung it in Taggart's face, Lynette's pistol had lain there on the floor until Taggart had been aroused to consciousness; nor how Gallup had picked it up, nor how Taggart had muttered: "Save it, Young. It may come in handy for evidence in court." Gallup had stuck it into his pocket; he had brought it with him; he had tossed it down among the blankets....

Taggart stared after him with terrible eyes; Taggart remembered and, when he dared, flung himself across the room, snatching for it among the covers. Standing, hastening, strode on. Taggart found the weapon; he ran out of the cabin with it in his hand; dodged to one side of the open door to be out of way of the firelight. Standing hurried on, he had not seen Taggart; Taggart could scarcely see him, could but make out vaguely a blur where he heard heavy footfalls.... It was all chance; but now no longer was Taggart himself running the desperate chances. He fired, one shot after another, until he emptied the little gun—four shots altogether; the hammer clicked down on the fifth, the empty shell.

Chance, pure chance; and yet chance is ironical and loves its own grim jest. The first bullet, the only one of them all to find its target, struck Timber-Wolf. And it was as though this questing bit of lead were seeking to tread the same path blazed by its angry brother down at the Gallup House in Big Pine. For it, like the other from the same muzzle, struck him from behind; and it, too, struck him upon the left side, in the outer shoulder, not half a dozen inches from the spot where he had been shot before....

Standing staggered and caught his breath with a grunt; he lurched into a tree and stood leaning against it. For a moment he was dizzied and could not see clearly. Then, turning, he made out the cabin behind him; the bright rectangle of the door; two dark running forms leaping through it, gone into the gulf of the black night. He jerked up his rifle, holding it in one hand, unsupported by the other, his shoulder, the right, against the tree. But they were gone before he could shoot. He waited. He heard a breaking through brush; men running. They were running away! They did not know that they had hit him; they could not tell, and they were afraid of his return! He lifted his voice and shouted at them in the sudden grip of a terrible anger. He listened to the noise they made and strove to judge their positions and began shooting after them. He fired until the rifle clip was empty. Then, while awkwardly, with one hand, he put in a fresh clip, he listened again. Silence only.

... He was strangely weak and uncertain; he had to draw his brows down with a steely effort to clear his thoughts. They were gone ... they would not come back ... it was too dark to look for them. And he had left that girl overlong ... and he was shot full of pain. A surge of anger for every surge of weakness....

He started on toward his hidden cabin and Lynette. He blundered into a tree. He could feel the hot blood down his shoulder. He began using his rifle as a man may use a cane, leaning on it heavily.

CHAPTER XVI

Bruce Standing came, weaving his way, like a drunken man, through the woods. He was sick; sick and weak. He muttered to himself constantly. Lynette was at the top of his thought and at the bottom; she dominated his whole mind. He was used through long years to such as Jim Taggart and their crooked ways; he was not used to such as Lynette Brooke, a girl like a flower and yet fearless. It had been his way to hold all women in scorn, since it had not been given unto him during the hard years of his life to know the finer women, the true women worth while, more than worth the while of a mere man. He had held his head high; he had mocked and jeered at them; he had been no man to doff his hat with the flattering elegance of a Babe Deveril for every fair face seen. So now the one thing which in his fiery and feverish mood galled him most was the thought of being seen by Lynette as a man borne down and crushed and made weak and sick. For most of all he hated weaklings.