And then came the most vivid picture of all, the latest one, that of Bruce Standing glaring at her just before she ran out of the cabin. A second time she came to a sudden stop. He had looked like a man dying! Too proud, with that vainglorious pride of his, to have her, a girl, watch him, a man, die. Too unyieldingly proud and defiant to have her, a weakling, look on while he, the strongest man she had ever glimpsed, yielded in anything, if even to death itself. What a man he was! A man wrong-minded, maybe; a man who overrode others and bore them down; a man who set up his own standards, such as they were, and battled for them wholeheartedly. Even in the matter of high-handed robbery ... he had robbed Babe Deveril of three thousand dollars, and yet voluntarily, when he was ready to make restitution and not before, he had returned the full amount, estimating in his own way that he had merely borrowed it! There was the man disclosed; one who made his own laws, and yet who abode by them as loyally and as unswervingly as a true priest may abide by God's....
And he had looked like a man dying. She turned her head. The door of his cabin was still wide open, as she had left it; light, though failing, still gushed out. She told herself that it was only a natural curiosity, surely her sex's most irrefutable prerogative, that made her turn and look. She caught no sight of him; he was not striding up and down. And he had not come outside for his fallen rifle....
Her breast rose and fell to a deep sigh. Of relief, perhaps; perhaps for another emotion. Still she remained where she was, pondering. Which way lay the path to the other cabin, where Taggart and Gallup and the other man were? And what was Bruce Standing doing? He had named her "Liar!" He did not believe when she had cried out passionately: "I did not shoot you!" Darting considerations, flashing through her consciousness. The one question was: "Was Bruce Standing mortally wounded?" Shot in the back a second time; he had as much as told her that.
Babe Deveril was what the world names a ladies' man. Bruce Standing was a man's man. And the strange part of it is that the feminine soul is drawn to the man's man inevitably more urgently than to the ladies' man....
And all the while Lynette was saying to herself: "He is a brute and a beast and yet ... he has not harmed me once and he has set me free and there is some good in him and ... and he may be dying! Alone."
She had turned her head to look back; now, hesitatingly, her whole body turned. Slowly, silently, she retraced her steps. She came closer and closer to the hidden cabin; the light outlining the open door grew fainter, dimmer as the fire died down; she heard no sound; she caught no glimpse of a man within. She drew still closer; she heard the strange whining of his dog. Even Thor she could not see until, lingering at every step, she came close to the door. Then she saw both, the man on his back, his lax hand on the floor; the dog whining, distressed, licking the hand one instant and then looking wistfully into the master's face. A face bloodlessly white, save for one smear of blood, where a hand had sought to wipe his eyes clear of a gathering film.
Hesitating no longer, she stepped across the threshold. Thor looked at her and broke into a new whining, a note of sudden joyousness in it. Standing did not hear and did not know that she had returned; his eyes were shut and there was the pulse as of distant seas in his ears. She hurried to the fireplace and tossed into it the last of the wood he had gathered; then she came swiftly to where he lay. Her heart was beating wildly....
She saw that his jaw was set, hard and stubborn. She stood, uncertain, troubled, half regretful that she had come back, hence half of a mind to go hurriedly. But she did not stir for a long time, and then only to come the last step closer. His eyes flew open; he looked up at her. And, as the fire she had freshly piled blazed higher, she saw a sudden flash of his eyes ... whether the reflection of the fire or the flash of the spirit within him, she could not tell.
"I thought you'd gone," he said. He sat up; it was a struggle for him to do so, yet here was a man who made of all his life a struggle and who thought nothing of a trifling victory over either nature itself or his fellow man.
"You have been cruel...."