"No!" she cried, remembering. "No! Drive on!"
"You bet your sweet life I'll drive on!" the driver burst out. And to Standing: "Stand aside."
Then Standing put his hands out suddenly, dropping his rifle in the road, and caught Lynette to him, lifting her out of her seat despite her efforts to cling to the stage, and took up his rifle again, saying sternly to the stage-driver:
"Now drive on!"
"No!" screamed Lynette, struggling against the one hand restraining her ... and against herself! "He can't do this ... don't let him...."
But in the end she knew how it would be. The stage-driver was no man to stand out against Bruce Standing ... she wondered if anywhere on earth there lived a man to gainsay him when that light was in his eyes and that tone vibrated in his voice.
"He's got the drop on me ... he'd drop me dead soon as not.... I'll go, Miss; but I'll send back word...." And Lynette and Bruce Standing, in the gathering dusk, were alone again in the quiet lands at the bases of the mountains.
"Girl ... I did not know how I loved you until to-day!"
She whipped away from him, her eyes scornful.
"Love! You talk of love! And you leave me in the hands of those men while you go looking for gold!"