She rested. She drank deep, thankfully, of the hour. To be alone, to be secure in the moment, to have no danger pressing down upon her, above all to have no mind save her own dictating to her. It was glorious and life was good and glad and golden, infinitely worth the living. So passed an hour. It was so quiet here; so unutterably lonely. Only the voice of the creek and the million-tongued murmuring pines. Her swift thoughts raced ten thousand ways. They touched upon Big Pine; on Taggart; Mexicali Joe; a gold-mine still for men to find; Maria, the Indian girl whom Deveril had kissed; Deveril himself; that one-legged man who rode horseback and carried forth the word and the law of his master; Thor, a dog; Bruce Standing. Most of all, Bruce Standing. She wondered where he was, what doing? Caring for his own wounds? Lying on his back, his white face turned up, his eyes shut, tight shut? And he loved her?
Bruce Standing loved her, Lynette? Was that true? What was love? Whence came love? For what purpose? What did it do to the hearts and souls and bodies of men ... and girls? Was love for her? She had never experienced it, not true, abiding love. Did Babe Deveril....
Another hour. Shadows slowly shifting, moving like gigantic hands of eternal clocks. Time passing, time that answers all questions, man's and maid's, saint's and sinner's. She stirred uneasily and sat up. She looked at the pine tops and, beyond them, at the sun. It was almost noon!
Come noon.... What then? Come high noon before Bruce Standing, and she was free! Released from her promise, all bonds snapped! Free!
She jumped to her feet. Her eyes went questing, questing, everywhere. To be free again; to be her own self, Lynette, untrammelled.... And she felt awondering illogically: "Can it be that, after all, he was driving himself beyond any man's endurance? that he is more badly hurt than either he or I knew?"
But he returned a full half-hour before even the most eager could name it noon. True to his word, he sent his voice, like a glorious herald, ahead of him. She heard him call, not the wolf cry, but a rollicking shout. And ten minutes later he himself came, plainly in the highest of good humors. He was still pale and looked haggard, but his eyes were flashing and triumphant and untroubled.
He came to her, splashing across the creek, water flying about his boot-tops.
"I've had a bath," he announced from afar. "And I've plastered myself with the worst that Billy Winch can concoct, and Richard is himself again!" He came closer, towered above her and said: "You, too, have bathed! You look it, as fresh from the plunge as any Diana! It's good to be clean, isn't it?"
She flushed and was ashamed for it. She bit her lip and made no answer.
"Come," he said. "We'll lunch. And now, and from now on for some sixty years, my girl, it will be I who waits on you! The slave rôle reversed!" and he laughed.