Standing smote him then so mightily upon the shoulder that Graham, a small man, went pale, shot through with pain.
"Raise your own salary, Graham. And earn it now!"
CHAPTER XXV
What Bruce Standing could not know was that those few words signed Lynette and saying with such cruel curtness: "I have gone back to Babe Deveril," had been written not by Lynette, but by Deveril himself. Nor could he know that Lynette had not gone freely but under the harsh coercion of four men.
Deveril, when Lynette refused to go with him, had hurried away through the woods, his heart burning with jealous rage. Was the hated Timber-Wolf to win again, not only in the game for gold but in another game which was coming to be the one greatest consideration in Babe Deveril's life?
"Not while I live!" he muttered to himself over and over. And once out of sight of Lynette who still sat bowed over the dog he had struck down, he broke into a run. Jim Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton were not so far away that he could not hope to reach them and to bring them back before Standing returned.
Thus, not over fifteen minutes before Bruce Standing came back, bringing Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe with him, Deveril had appeared before Lynette a second time. And now she leaped to her feet, seeing who his companions were and reading at one quick glance what lay unhidden in their faces. Greed was there and savage gloating and mercilessness; she knew that at least three of those men would stamp her into the ground under their heavy boots if thus they might walk over her body through the golden gates of Mexicali Joe's secret.
"You're arrested!" cried Taggart. "Come, get a move on. We clear out of this on the run!"