"Girl!" he muttered. "Oh, girl!... God, I love you!"
"I hate you...."
... How many times had she cried out in those words! And how much of that did she mean? In her heart, in her soul ... in the most hidden recesses of her most hidden being?
Thus she had hours to herself. And, therefore, had Bruce Standing hours to himself. For he wanted them. He wanted to be away from her, where he could not see her, could not hear that low music of her voice, could not catch that soft lure of her eyes, could not be tempted to have it happen that his rude hand brushed her hand.... Her hand, though she had been all these days and nights outdoors, roughing it, seemed to him a maddening realm of crumpled rose-leaves ... pink-and-white rose-leaves. He left her, secure in her pledge that she would wait for him, and threw himself down on his back and stared up through slowly shifting branches and mused on her. He thought how like a flower she was, the queen of flowers ... and he could have wept that he was so big and ungentle. He thought of Babe Deveril, and cursed him for being so slender and debonair; graceful and light of mood; gentle-voiced, with the knack of pretty words to pretty ladies. And Babe Deveril had befriended her; stood champion to her against him! He ground his teeth. He leaped up and paced back and forth, forgetful of all such insignificant nothings as trifling wounds of the flesh. He recalled how, man to man, he had broken Babe Deveril, and he laughed out loud.... Yet it remained that Babe Deveril had stood her friend and protector when he had pursued them both, linking them but the closer, with his wrath. She and Deveril had travelled together, side by side and hand in hand, miles and other miles of the open solitudes; they had been drawn close together, driven closer together. He, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf, and Fool, had done that! And what spark had been struck out of the flint of the adversity which he had hurled at them?... Had they loved ... had they kissed ... was she now longing with a sick heart for the return of Babe Deveril?
"Oh, Lord!" he cried out, his great iron fingers crooking as his arms were thrown out. "Deliver him into these hands!"
Lynette had no mirror. Standing began to grow a lusty young beard, as blond as his hair, shot through with red gleams. She knew the need of fresh clothing. When he was away she did her washing as best she could, pounding garments against the rocks in the creek; she dried them and hid them and donned them without his knowing ... though of course he knew as she knew that he did his own rude washings. There was a spring at the side of the cañon, one of the many sources which fed the stream; a shadowed, tranquil place. Of this she made her pier-glass! She stooped and looked down into its glassily smooth surface. It gave back her own image; it reflected the dark green of the pines, the lighter green of the willows. Even the subdued colors of her worn suit. She washed her hair and groomed it; no comb, no brush, but agile fingers. Most of all, when secure through his promise in return for her own, did she enjoy her plunge in the pool he had made for her. The slender whiteness of her slipped hastily down under the translucent cover of the cool, flowing water; she was as swift in her movements as any slim-bodied trout that darted about her, scurrying into its retreat; the water shot a thrill through her; she emerged, dripping, charged with all the electric currents of well-being.
"If this were only a holiday ... instead of imprisonment!"
She, too, thought of Babe Deveril, as was inevitable. And in many ways: One, always recurrent, was: "Could she have been as sure of Babe Deveril as she was of Bruce Standing? As secure in her utter conviction of safety?" And here was a question to which she found no ready answer. Babe Deveril, leaping full-breastedly into the stream which had swept her off her feet, had been a friend to her from the beginning; from the beginning Bruce Standing had been a menace.