"If I told you now, then what? You'd desert me in a minute; you would race on ahead; when I caught up with you there would be nothing left."
Deveril's eyes flashed and he said quickly:
"And give you the chance to send us to the wrong place, were you so minded, so that you could slip off alone and be first at the other spot! Very clever, Miss Lynette, but that won't work. You go with us."
And all the while she was trying so hard to think; and all the while listening so eagerly for a certain glorious, golden voice shouting after her. Deveril had heard part of Joe's exclamation....
"It is in Light Ladies' Gulch," she said quietly.
"Yes!" Here was Young Gallup speaking, his covetous soul aflame. "We know that; Deveril heard. But Light Ladies' Gulch is forty miles long. Where abouts in the gulch?"
She told herself that she would die before she led them aright. And yet she realized to the full the danger to herself if she tricked them as Joe had done and they discovered her trickery before Standing came. Yet most of all was she confident that he would come and swiftly.... Joe's words still rang in her memory; he had told first of the Red Cliffs, how he had found color there last year; how he had made prospect holes; how his real mine lay removed three or four miles. Still she temporized, saying:
"Bruce Standing and Billy Winch and Joe have horses. We are on foot. Tell me how we can hope to come to the spot first?"
"We'll have horses ourselves in a jiffy," said Taggart. "Stepping lively, we're not more than a couple of hours from a cattle outfit over the ridge. We'll get all the horses we want and we'll ride like hell!"
"You know where the Red Cliffs are? At the foot of the cliffs I'll show you Joe's prospect holes...."