"What do I care for you or your gold!" cried Standing. "I don't need it, do I? I don't ask you anything about it, do I? I don't want to know anything about it! Go wallow in your gold and leave me alone!"
But Joe explained, growing vehement to the point of wildness; as Winch had put it, "he was clean crazy over the thing." How could Joe wallow in it, much as he would like to, when always there were men like ugly hounds on his trail? What chance had he, poor devil that he styled himself, against such men as Jim Taggart and Young Gallup and Cliff Shipton and Babe Deveril and Barny McCuin.... He named a score. At the name of Babe Deveril Standing's eyes flashed and sped to a meeting with Lynette's; into hers, too, came a quick light. Joe had caught Standing's interest.
"What about these men?" he asked. "What about Deveril?"
"Him? The worst of them all!" wailed Joe. He went on, bursting with all the things he had to tell. That night when, for a second time, like God himself, the grand Señor Caballero had burst into the cabin and set him free, he had run! God, how he had run! But then he had thought of his savior alone against so many hard, merciless men; he had come to a sudden stop, saying to himself: "Joe, mi amigo, you must not desert him!" And then, of a sudden, had that young devil Deveril burst from the bushes upon him ... and Joe had fled again and Deveril had sought after him. There was no shaking off this man; twice since then in the forest Joe had barely escaped him.... Lynette had come close, was listening breathlessly.
"I tell you where my gold is!" cried Joe. "You take what you like, I don't care! You give me what you like ... I know you for one fair man. That way we save it. Any other way, they get me; they burn me with fire; they break my teeth and my fingers; they make me tell! And they get it all. Taggart and Gallup and Deveril and...."
He broke off, half whimpering, cursing them with all the eloquence of the Latin tongue.
Clearly Standing hesitated. Then, amazing them all, but with his own mind clear, he said bluntly:
"Clear out! It's your game. I don't want to know anything about it."
"It's down in Light Ladies' Gulch!" screamed Joe. "Not two mile from Big Pine! I lied to them ... a big pine, with crooked roots sticking out ... a washout.... Last year I make mistake; I think down under the Red Cliffs. But this time I find ... four miles the other side...."
"Why, you shrivelled-souled...."