Billy Winch, galvanized, went hopping to his horse; he flipped after his own fashion up into the saddle; he loosened the rifle in its holster strapped conveniently; he called to Joe:
"Quick does it, Mexico! We're on our way!"
Bruce Standing watched them ride away among the trees and stood laughing! He had succeeded in puzzling two men; most of all had he set Lynette wondering....
CHAPTER XXII
"I want a good long drink of fresh water," said Standing. "And you, after this lunch of ours, will be thirsty. Let's go down to the creek; down there, by the waterfall, after we've drunk, I want to talk with you."
He had turned to her, that flash still in his eyes, before Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe had ridden a dozen yards out of camp. She looked at him in silence, wondering what lay in his thoughts; what had been the sudden, compelling, and triumphant motive to actuate him when with his great shout of laughter he had dismissed the two men. He had Joe's secret now; she shared it herself: The gold was far from here and very near Big Pine; in Light Ladies' Cañon! The strange part of it was that Taggart's first surmise, when he and his companions had trapped Mexicali Joe at the dugout, was that it was in Light Ladies' Cañon that he had made his strike!... How many men and at least one girl had travelled how many wilderness miles from Big Pine, when the gold lay so snugly close to the starting-point! How Joe had tricked his captors, leading them so far afield!
"If I should escape from you now," Lynette could not help crying, "what is there to prevent me from staking the first claim? And bringing my friends ... to stake claims!"
"If you should happen to escape me!" he laughed back at her.