"I am glad that I did that!" he triumphed. And gladdest of all, in his heart, was he that Lynette did not know ... would never know.
Thus Babe Deveril, riding with drooping head, found certain living fires among the ashes of dead hopes: A row to come with Taggart? He could look forward to it with fierce eagerness. Standing and Lynette separated; vindictive satisfaction there. He'd got his knife in Standing's heart at last! He'd like to wait a year or a dozen until some time Lynette forgot and another man came despite her sweeping avowal and she married; he would like then to come back to Bruce Standing and tell him the fool he had been and how it had been none other than Baby Devil who had knifed him.
... And yet, all the while, Lynette's farewell words were in his mind. And he saw before him, wherever he looked, her face as he had seen it last, her eyes blurred with her tears. And he fought stubbornly with himself against the insistent admission: It was Babe Deveril and none other who, saying that he loved her, had put those tears there. Good and bad? What the devil had he to do with sticking those labelling tags upon what he or others did?
Bruce Standing was still in his office. He was a man who had won another victory and yet one who had the taste of despair in his mouth. Gallup's town was doomed; it was one of those little mountain towns which had already outlived its period of usefulness and now with a man like Timber-Wolf waging merciless war against it, Big Pine had its back broken almost at the first savage blow struck. But Standing strode up and down restlessly like a man broken by defeat rather than one whose standards went flying on triumphantly; he knew that a new rival town, his own town, was springing into being in a few hours; he had the brief satisfaction of knowing that he was keeping an ancient promise and striking a body blow from which there would be no recovery, making Big Pine take the count and drop out of all men's consideration; he knew, from having seen it many times, that pitiful spectacle which a dead and deserted town presents; so, briefly, just as his kinsman was doing at the same moment, he extracted what satisfaction he could from the hour. He even had word sent to Gallup: "I am killing your town very much as a man may kill an ugly snake. I shall see to it that goods are sold cheaper here than at your store; there will be a better hotel here, with a better shorter road leading to it. And I will build cabins as fast as they are called for, to house deserters from your dying town. And I will see to it that men from my town never set foot in your town. This from me, Young Gallup: 'For the last time I have set foot upon your dung heap. I'm through with you and the world is through with you. You're dead and buried.'"
During the day, word came to him that several men and one girl had been seen hastily occupied at the foot of the Red Cliffs; the girl Lynette; one of the men, Deveril. And it seemed very clear to Standing that Lynette had led Deveril and the others in hot haste to the Red Cliffs only because she had misunderstood Mexicali Joe's directions, confused by his mention of these cliffs where he had prospected last year.
"I'll go get them." Standing told himself a score of times. "Just as soon as I know how to handle them. When I know how I can hurt him most and her...."
Mexicali Joe swelled about the landscape all day like a bursting balloon, a man swept up in a moment from a condition of less than mediocrity to one, as Mexicali regarded it, of monumental magnificence and the highest degree of earthly joy. Graham could not keep him out of Standing's office; the second time he came in Timber-Wolf lifted him upon his boot hurling him out through the door and promising him seven kinds of ugly death if he ever came back. Whereupon Mexicali Joe, shaking his head, went away without grumbling; for in the sky of his adoration stood just two: God and Bruce Standing.
Graham was still laughing, when another man rode up to the door, and Graham on the instant became alert and concerned. He hastened to Standing, saying quickly:
"Mr. Deveril to see you. He has ridden his horse nearly to death. And I don't like the look on his face."
"Show him in!" shouted Standing. "You fool ... don't you know he's the one man in the world...."