But he was lying back now, his eyes closed. He did not appear to have heard. She, too, lay down with a little weary sigh. Her last thoughts were three; they mingled and grew confused as all thoughts faded. But before they blurred they were these: Bruce Standing had dropped his rifle outside and had not gone out for it; Babe Deveril had not returned for her, but no doubt was still seeking her; and Bruce Standing was done making war on her, unless....
CHAPTER XVIII
Lynette awoke, shivering. It was pitch-dark; the fire had burned out; it must be very late, as she was stiff and cold. She had been dreaming and her shivering was half a shudder of fear. Her nightmare had been one of herself attacked and pursued hideously by wild animals; lions which in the fashion of dreams, changed into wolves, then into savages. She sat up, gathering her blanket about her. She heard Standing breathing heavily; she could hear, now and then, his mutterings of uneasy sleep. Perhaps it had been this which had awaked her? She began listening as one, startled out of slumber, inevitably does to another's incoherencies. It was hard to catch a word despite the cabin's hushed silence into which every slightest sound penetrated. The sounds were like those of a man babbling in fever. Once it seemed to her that he had hardly more than whispered "Girl!"
Always must the mind of one who listens thus be held under the spell of another spirit winging its way among dreams; the moment is uncanny if only because it brings in such close contact the commonplace of every day and the inexplicable of dreams. In the night, in the silence, under this queer spell, her own mind groping, she stirred uneasily.
It flashed across Lynette that it had not been Timber-Wolf's mumbling voice that had awakened her. That there had been something else, a new sound from without. She listened intently, straining her ears. There was some one or something outside! She started to her feet, though clinging to the security offered by her corner.
The door was open; it was a mere degree less dark outside than within. As she stared into the blackness she made out vaguely the mass of trees. A black wall in a black night. Some one out there? Then who? Babe Deveril?