"Most likely we'd both be swinging from a cottonwood in ten minutes! There's no sanity in that crowd; it's all mob spirit. If it is true that both Bruce Standing and Jim Taggart are dead.... Well, then, Lynette Brooke, this is no place for you and me to-night! Come on!..."
"Babe Deveril," she returned, and now it was her fingers tightening about his, "I'll never forget that you stood by me to-night!"
Babe Deveril, being himself and no other, a man reckless and unafraid and eminently gay, and, so God made him, full of lilting appreciation of the fair daughters of Eve, felt even at this moment her touch, like so much warm quicksilver trickling through him from head to foot. He gave her, in answer, a hearty pressure of the hand and his low, guarded laughter, saying lightly:
"You interfere with the regular beating of a man's heart, Lynette Brooke! But now you'll never remember to-night for any great measure of hours, unless we step along. They'll hunt us all night. Come, beautiful lady!"
Even then she marvelled at him. He, like herself, was tense and on the qui vive; yet she sensed his utter fearlessness. She knew that if they caught him and put a rope about his neck and led him under a cottonwood branch, he would pay them back to the last with his light, ringing laughter.
In this first wild rush they had had no time to think over what had just happened; no time to cast ahead beyond each step deeper into the night. Where they were going, what they were going to do—these were issues to confront them later; now they were concerned with no consideration other than haste and silence and each other's company. To-night's section of destiny made of them, without any reasoning and merely through an instinctive attraction, trail fellows. True, both carried blurred pictures of what had occurred back there at the Gallup House so few minutes ago, but these were but pictures, and as yet gave rise to no logical speculation. As in a vision, she saw Timber-Wolf sagging and falling as he strove to slew about; Deveril saw Taggart rushing in at her heels, and then going down in a heap as a revolver was flung in his face. Only dully at present were they concerned with the query whether these two men were really dead. When one runs for his life through the woods in a dark night, he has enough to do to avoid limbs and tree trunks and keep on going.
Big Pine occupied the heart of a little upland flat. In ten minutes Lynette and Deveril had traversed the entire stretch of partially level land, and felt the ground begin to pitch sharply under foot. Here was a sudden steep slope leading down into a rugged ravine; their sensation was that of plunging over the brink of some direful precipice, feeling at every instant that they were about to go tumbling into an abyss. They were forced to go more slowly, sliding on their heels, ploughing through patches of soil, stumbling across flinty areas.
"Down we go, as straight as we can," said Deveril. "And up on the other side as straight as we can. Then we'll be in a bit of forest land where the devil himself couldn't find us on a night like this.... How are you standing the rough-stuff?"
It was the first time that he had given any indication of realizing that her girl's body might not be equal to the work which they were taking upon them. Swiftly she made her answer, saying lightly, despite her labored breathing:
"Fine. This is nothing."