What Bruce Standing could not know was that those few words signed Lynette and saying with such cruel curtness: "I have gone back to Babe Deveril," had been written not by Lynette, but by Deveril himself. Nor could he know that Lynette had not gone freely but under the harsh coercion of four men.
Deveril, when Lynette refused to go with him, had hurried away through the woods, his heart burning with jealous rage. Was the hated Timber-Wolf to win again, not only in the game for gold but in another game which was coming to be the one greatest consideration in Babe Deveril's life?
"Not while I live!" he muttered to himself over and over. And once out of sight of Lynette who still sat bowed over the dog he had struck down, he broke into a run. Jim Taggart and Gallup and Cliff Shipton were not so far away that he could not hope to reach them and to bring them back before Standing returned.
Thus, not over fifteen minutes before Bruce Standing came back, bringing Billy Winch and Mexicali Joe with him, Deveril had appeared before Lynette a second time. And now she leaped to her feet, seeing who his companions were and reading at one quick glance what lay unhidden in their faces. Greed was there and savage gloating and mercilessness; she knew that at least three of those men would stamp her into the ground under their heavy boots if thus they might walk over her body through the golden gates of Mexicali Joe's secret.
"You're arrested!" cried Taggart. "Come, get a move on. We clear out of this on the run!"
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"It was you who shot him, not I! And I'll not go with you. In a minute he'll be back...."
Taggart was of no mind for delay and talk; he caught her roughly by the arm. Her eyes went swiftly to Deveril's; of his look she could make nothing. He shrugged and said only:
"Taggart's sheriff; he'll take you along, anyway. You might as well go without a fuss."
Gallup, his face ugly with the emotions swaying him, was at her other side. She looked to the hawk-faced man and then away with a shudder. Then, trying to jerk away, she screamed out:
"Help! Bruce...."
Taggart's big hairy hand was over her mouth.
"Come along," he commanded angrily. "Get a move on."
Half dragging her the first few steps they led her out of camp, down into the cañon and across among the trees. She gave over struggling; they watched her so that she could not call again; Taggart threatened to stuff his dirty bandana handkerchief into her mouth. Deveril alone held back for a little; she did not know what he was doing; did not see him as he wrote in a hand which he strove to give a girlish semblance those few words to which he signed her name. She scarcely marked his delay; she was trying now to think fast and logically.
These men were brutes, all of them; she had had ample evidence of that already and had that evidence been lacking the information was there emblazoned in their faces. Even Babe Deveril, in whom once she had trusted, began to show the brutal lining of his insolent character. And yet need she be afraid of any of them just now? If she openly thwarted them, yes. They would show no mercy to a girl. But at the moment
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 their thoughts were set not upon her undoing, but upon Mexicali Joe's gold. And she knew where it was and they knew that she knew.... Taggart was speaking, growling into her ear:
"We followed Mexicali; we saw him come up here; Deveril followed him into camp. He told where his gold was. And you heard it all!"
"Well?" said Lynette, striving with herself for calmness. She was thinking: "If only I can have a little time. He will come for me.... If only I can have a little time."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded Taggart. "The whole earth ain't Joe's because he picked up a nugget or two. Anybody's got a right to stake a claim; I got a right and so has the boys ... and so have you."
"Suppose," offered Lynette as coolly as she could, "that I refused to tell?"
There came a look into Taggart's hard eyes which answered her more eloquently than any words from the man could have done, which put certain knowledge and icy fear into her.
Always, when nervous or frightened, Lynette's laughter came easily to her and now without awaiting any other answer from this man she began laughing in such a fashion as to perplex him and bring a dragging frown across his brows.
"Are you going to tell us?" he asked.
"If I do," she temporized, "do I have the chance to drive the first stakes?"
"By God, yes! And say, little one, you're a peach into the bargain."
She did not appear to hear; she was thinking over and over: "Bruce Standing will come after us as soon as he finds I am gone. I must gain a little time, that is all."
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If only she could make them think that the gold was somewhere near by so that Standing must readily find them. But now Deveril had rejoined them and she recalled how he had heard something, though not all, of Joe's triumphant announcement. For Joe had shouted out at the top of his voice, to catch and hold Timber-Wolf's attention: "Light Ladies' Gulch!" Deveril had heard that; and Light Ladies' Gulch was many miles away, down toward Big Pine....
Deveril was looking at her with eyes which were bright and hard and told no tales of the man's thoughts.
"This lovely and altogether too charming young woman," Deveril said lightly, his eyes still upon her, though his words were for the others, "has a mind of her own. It would be as well to hear what she has to say and learn what she intends to do."
"Will you try to lie to us?" demanded Taggart. "Or will you tell us the truth?"
She, too, strove for lightness, saying:
"Think that out for yourself, Mr. Taggart. Bruce Standing knows where the gold is now; both you and I know the sort of man he is and we can imagine that if he drives the first stake he will see to it that he takes the whole thing. Do you really think that after I came into this country for gold myself I am going to miss my one chance now?" She puzzled them again with her laughter and said: "Not that it would not be a simple matter to trick you, were I minded to let my own chances go for the sake of spoiling yours; Mexicali Joe fooled you so easily."
"Yet you yelled for Standing just now...."
"After you came rushing upon me as if you meant to tear me to pieces, frightening the wits out of me."
"Well, then, tell us."
"If I told you now, then what? You'd desert me in
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 a minute; you would race on ahead; when I caught up with you there would be nothing left."
Deveril's eyes flashed and he said quickly:
"And give you the chance to send us to the wrong place, were you so minded, so that you could slip off alone and be first at the other spot! Very clever, Miss Lynette, but that won't work. You go with us."
And all the while she was trying so hard to think; and all the while listening so eagerly for a certain glorious, golden voice shouting after her. Deveril had heard part of Joe's exclamation....
"It is in Light Ladies' Gulch," she said quietly.
"Yes!" Here was Young Gallup speaking, his covetous soul aflame. "We know that; Deveril heard. But Light Ladies' Gulch is forty miles long. Where abouts in the gulch?"
She told herself that she would die before she led them aright. And yet she realized to the full the danger to herself if she tricked them as Joe had done and they discovered her trickery before Standing came. Yet most of all was she confident that he would come and swiftly.... Joe's words still rang in her memory; he had told first of the Red Cliffs, how he had found color there last year; how he had made prospect holes; how his real mine lay removed three or four miles. Still she temporized, saying:
"Bruce Standing and Billy Winch and Joe have horses. We are on foot. Tell me how we can hope to come to the spot first?"
"We'll have horses ourselves in a jiffy," said Taggart. "Stepping lively, we're not more than a couple of hours from a cattle outfit over the ridge. We'll get all the horses we want and we'll ride like hell!"
"You know where the Red Cliffs are? At the foot of the cliffs I'll show you Joe's prospect holes...."
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The pale-eyed, hawk-faced Cliff Shipton spoke for the first time.
"Not half a dozen miles out of Big Pine! I told you last year, Gallup...."
Deveril, the keenest of them all, the one who knew her best, suspected her from the beginning. His eyes never once left her face.
"How do we know," he said quietly, "that there's any gold there? That Joe's gold is not somewhere else?"
"You will have to make your own decision," she told him as coolly as she could. "If you think that I am mistaken or that I am trying to play with you as Joe did, you are free to go where you please."
Taggart began cursing; his grip tightened on her arm so that he hurt her terribly as he shouted at her:
"I'll give you one word of warning, little one! If you put up a game on us now, you cut your own throat. In the first place I'll make it my business that if we get shut out, you get shut out along with us. And in the second place when I'm through with you no other man in the world will have any use for you. Got that?"
She knew what he had done to Mexicali Joe; she could guess what other unthinkable things he would have done. And she knew that if now she tricked Jim Taggart and he found her out ... before Bruce Standing came ... she could only pray to die.
And yet at this, the supreme test in her life, she held steady to a swiftly taken purpose. She would not put the game into these men's hands. And she held steadfastly to her certainty, knowing the man, that Bruce Standing would come. Therefore, though her face went a little pale, and her mouth was so dry that she did not dare speak, she shrugged her shoulders.
"Come, then," said Taggart. "Enough palaver. We're on our way."
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And of them all, only Babe Deveril was still distrustful.
And thus Lynette, accepting her own grave risk with clear-eyed comprehension and yet with unswerving determination, led these four men to a spot where she knew that they would not find that gold for which every man of them had striven so doggedly; thus it was she who made it possible for Bruce Standing to be before all others and to triumph and strike the death-blow to Big Pine and to begin that relentless campaign which was to end in humbling his ancient enemy, Young Gallup. Yet there was little exultation in Lynette's heart, but a growing fear, when, after hours of furious haste, she and the four men came at last into Light Ladies' Gulch and to the base of the towering red cliffs.
Cliff Shipton knew more of gold-mining than any of the others and Lynette watched him narrowly as he went up and down under the high cliffs. And she knew that she in turn was watched; in the first excitement of coming to the long-sought spot she had hoped that she might escape. But both Taggart and Deveril followed her at every step with their eyes.
Desperately she clung to her assurance that Bruce Standing would come for her. He had said that he would come "though it were ten thousand mile." He might have difficulties in finding her; she might have to wait a little while, an hour or two, or three hours. But it remained that he was a man to surmount obstacles insurmountable to other men; a man to pin faith upon. Yet time passed and he did not come.
They found indications of Mexicali Joe's labors, rock ledges at which he had chipped and hammered, prospect holes lower on the steep slope. And Cliff Shipton acknowledged that "the signs were all right." But they
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 did not find the gold and they did not find anything to show that Joe or another had worked here recently.
"All this work," said Shipton, staring and frowning, "was done a year ago."
"He'd be crafty enough," muttered Gallup, "to hide his real signs. We got to look around every clump of brush and in every gully where maybe he's covered things up.... You're sure," and he whipped about upon Lynette, "that you got straight all he said?"
"I'm sure," said Lynette. And she was afraid that the men would hear the beating of her heart.
............