Here, after his own strange fashion, came Billy Winch, Timber-Wolf's one-legged retainer. An able-bodied man and agile had been Billy Winch all of his hard life until, after a horse had fallen on him, the doctor had cut his leg off above the knee. "You'll go on crutches the rest of your life," they told him that day. And Billy Winch, weak and pale and sick and haggard-eyed, muttered at them: "You're a pack of damn liars! I'll cut my throat before I'll be a crutch-man." And he had kept his oath. Seldom did he stir save on the back of his horse. And when needs must that he go horseless some few steps, he went "like a man, one-leg style, hopping!" Now, hopping on his one foot so that, with his pinched, weazened face and small bright eyes, he resembled some uncouth bird, he bounced into the room.
"I got word for you, Bruce Standing!" he cried excitedly.
"Clear out, you fool...."
"I won't clear out! This is the real thing. Listen: A man, and it was a man paid by Young Gallup, has just went down the road with a double-barrel shotgun, and the dirty skunk has shot your horse, good old Sunlight ... dead!" By now Billy Winch was whimpering; tears, whether of rage or grief, filled his bright eyes and streamed down his face. And all the while, to maintain his balance, he was hopping unsteadily about, his outflung hand groping for the wall.
And now at last Timber-Wolf's anger, a devastating, all-engulfing rage which mastered him utterly, was unleashed. And with its release came inevitably that one condition of which he was so terribly ashamed. He cried out aloud, in a great, roaring voice ... and in the fierce grip of his wrath his utterance was so affected that his speech came enunciated in the most incongruous of fashions. For it was Timber-Wolf's burning mortification that he, the strongest man of these mountains, when in the clutch of his mightiest passions ... lisped like an affected school-girl!
"Thunlight dead!" he stormed. "You thay that to me? Yeth? Then, by God, juth ath thure as I live, I'll...."
He cut himself short; his face, instantly red with rage, grew redder with shame. He snapped his great jaws shut, and across the room Deveril heard the grinding of his teeth. He swerved about, charging toward the door, which gave entrance to the room where Gallup was.
But a far more critical moment than Timber-Wolf knew was ticking in the clock of his life. In the hall stood the girl, Lynette. She had heard all of these words of Billy Winch, and she had heard Bruce Standing's bellowed rejoinder. And she, already taut-nerved and keyed up, what with fatigue and a strenuous night, was so struck by the absurdity of a strong man lisping his passionate utterance, that she broke out into uncontrollable laughter. And when Lynette Brooke's laughter caught her unawares, it rang out as clearly as the chiming of silver bells. Now, with nerves quivering, she was almost hysterical....
Timber-Wolf came to as dead a halt as though it had been a bullet instead of the mockery of a girl's laughter which cut into his heart. For only mockery he made of it, he who upon this one point, as upon no other, was so sensitive. And to have a human female laugh at him!
His rage threatened to choke him. But now, even as he had forgotten his lost bet with Babe Deveril, so did he forget a dead horse and Young Gallup. The entire violence of his anger was deflected, turned upon a woman who had eavesdropped upon his ignominy and then assailed him with the mockery of her mirth. He who held all womankind in such high scorn, to be now a woman's laughing-stock! He, Bruce Standing, Timber-Wolf! He snatched at the hall door, and under his attack one of the ancient hinges broke, and the door, flung back, leaned crazily against the wall. And all the while, though he kept his teeth so hard set that his jaws bulged with the strain, he was muttering curses in his throat. He burst into the dim hallway, his brain on fire.