CHAPTER X
"So the sheriff, Jim Taggart, is not dead, after all. And you...."
Deveril looked across their tiny fire at her, a strange expression in his eyes, and said quietly:
"No; he is not dead. All along I judged that unlikely. Though I slung your gun at him hard enough, if it hit a lucky spot. It's hard to kill a man, you know.... And, to finish your thought, I am not running wild with a hangman's noose hanging about my neck! And you...."
He took a certain devilish glee in concluding with an echo of her own words. And with the added insinuation poured into them from his own. He saw her jerk her head up defiantly.
"I told you...."
Again she broke off. He made no remark, but sat looking at her intently. They had eaten and drunk their fill; there remained to them a goodly stock of provisions; Deveril was smoking his cigarette.
"What now?" demanded Lynette, as one tired of a subject and impatient to look forward.
He shrugged.
"All troubles have slipped off my shoulders. The worst they could do to me, if they could lay me by the heels, would be to charge me with assault and battery! And we're in a neck of the woods where men laugh at a charge like that, and ask the assaulted one why the devil he didn't hit back! What now? For you I'd advise keeping right on travelling. For if Bruce Standing is dead it's up to you to keep on the move! As for me, I never met up with a sweeter travelling companion, nor yet with a nervier, nor yet, by God, with a lovelier! Say the word, Lynette Brooke, and we strike on together, over the ridge and deeper into the wilderness, headed for the land beyond Buck Valley, beyond Big Bear Creek. For the wild lands beyond the last holdings of the late Timber-Wolf, to be on the ground when Mexicali Joe leads Taggart and Gallup and Shipton to his gold!"