"It's old Thor ... there's some one...."
And now, Lynette realized clearly, had come her first opportunity to be free again! While Bruce Standing, because of something he had heard above the merry-mad music of the waterfall, or had thought he had heard, was running back to their encampment, she could run in the opposite direction. She stood balancing, of this mind and that. What had he heard in camp? What was happening there? As always, because of that volatile nature of hers which was en rapport with life's pulsings, she wanted to know! And then there was a certain assurance in her heart that after all these days the budding intention in Bruce Standing's heart was bursting into full flower to set her free again! She hesitated; she saw him running up the steep bank, charging back toward camp, vanishing among the trees higher up on the slope.
And, then, she followed him.
... Before Lynette came, through the trees, within sight of the grotto which Standing had given over to her, she heard a sound which brought her, wondering, from swift haste to lingering; she stood, her breathing stilled, listening, groping a moment blindly for an interpretation of that sound for its explanation. Harsh it was ... terrible ... never had she heard anything like it. At first she did not recognize it as a sound man-made. She paused; she came a step nearer, peering through the trees....
It was an inarticulate, stifled sound coming from the lips of Bruce Standing! He was kneeling on the ground, bending forward. He had dropped his rifle. There was something in his arms, upgathered into his embrace, something held as a baby is held in its mother's arms....
Thor....
And those sounds from Bruce Standing's lips! There were tears in them; his voice was shaken. He held Thor to him in a fierce agony of sorrow....
Lynette came closer, tiptoeing. She heard the sounds as they seemed to choke him, clutching like hands at his throat. And then suddenly, before she caught her first clear view, she knew when, into that first emotion there swept the second; when with the shock of deep grief there mingled white-hot rage. He began to mutter again ... he was lisping ... lisping as she had heard him do only once before ... lisping because his one weakness had leaped out and caught him unaware. Lisping curses....
She ran closer. She saw old Thor, Thor who had learned to love her and whom she had learned to love, lying limp in Standing's arms. Thor dead? Some one had killed him, then, and Standing, above the booming of the waterfall, had heard? A sight, perhaps, to stir that wild, uncontrollable laughter of Lynette! The sight of a big, strong man half weeping over a dead dog in his arms.... Yet, when she came running to him and dropped down on her knees and put out her quick hand and Standing turned his face toward her ... he saw that this time there was no laughter in her. Instead, her eyes were wet with a sudden dash of tears.
"He's not dead ... we won't have it that he's dead! Thor!" she cried softly.