"Tamed you, has he? So Timber-Wolf has taken a mate after the fashion of wolves! And I, fool that I was, let you slip through my fingers!"
She did not answer him. Had she answered she could have said: "You could have returned to fight with him; man to man and him wounded! Later, when he snatched Mexicali Joe from them, you could have fought with him. You could have followed him here, seeking me; and you followed Joe, seeking gold. You could have fought with him to-day; and instead you held back and spied and killed his dog and waited for him to go!..." So Lynette, stooping low over Thor's battered head, made no answer.
... She knew that Babe Deveril was no coward. She would always remember how he had hurled that gun into Taggart's face and himself into her adventures, reckless and unafraid. Yet Babe Deveril was no such man as Bruce Standing; rather was he like a Jim Taggart, and Taggart was no coward. But it remained that both these men, Deveril and Taggart, were afraid to come to grips with that other man, whose fellows named him Timber-Wolf. And he, the Timber-Wolf, was not afraid of life and all that it bore; and was not afraid of sombre death, in which he did not believe; was not afraid of God, in whom he trusted.
"You've thrown in with him!" Deveril cried it out angrily; his hands were hard upon his club. "Here, I've given days and days trying to see you through, and you've kicked in with him against me! He's had his will with you and he's made you his woman and...."
"You'd better go!"
She was trembling. A spasm shook her, not unlike that which convulsed Thor.
"You won't come with me then? You'll stick with him? After he put a chain on you!"
"At least he did not stand back and see another man put a chain on me!"
"Is that my answer?"