"I have told you that she loves you. So it is for her happiness, much as I hate you, that I have told you.... She, thinking that you preferred gold to her, has just gone out on the down stage...."
"By the Lord, man," and now Standing's voice rang out joyously, clear and golden once more, "you've done a wonderful thing to-day! I wonder if I could have done what you are doing? By thunder, Babe Deveril, you should be killed for the thing you did ... but you've wiped it out. After this ... need there be hatred between us?"
He put out his hand. Deveril drew back and went out through the door. His horse, wet with sweat and flecked with foam, was waiting for him. As he set foot into the stirrup he called back in a voice which rang queerly in Standing's ears:
"She doesn't know I wrote that. Unless it's necessary ... You see, I'd like her to think as well...." He didn't finish, but rode away. And as long as he was in sight he sat very erect in the saddle and sent back for any listening ears a light and lively whistled tune.
The stage, carrying its one passenger came rocking and clattering about the last bend in the grade where the road crosses that other road which comes down from the mountains farther to the east, from the region of Bruce Standing's holdings. The girl's figure drooped listlessly; her eyes were dry and tired and blank with utter hopelessness. Long ago the garrulous driver had given over trying to talk with her. Now she was stooping forward, so that she saw nothing in all the dreary world but the dusty dashboard before her ... and in her fancy, moving across this like pictures on a screen, the images of faces ... Bruce Standing's face when he had chained her; when he had cried out that he loved her....
The driver slammed on his brakes, muttering; the wheels dragged; the stage came to an abrupt halt. She looked up, without interest. And there in the road, so close to the wheel that she could have put out a hand and touched him, was Bruce Standing.
"Lynette!" he called to her.
She saw that he had a rifle in his hand; that a buckboard with a restive span of colts was at the side of the road. The driver was cursing; he understood that Standing, taking no chances, had meant to stop him in any case.
"What's this?" he demanded. "Hold up?"
Standing ignored him. His arms were out; there was the gladdest look in his eyes Lynette had ever seen in any man's; when he called to her he sent a thrill like a shiver through her. He had come for her; he wanted her....