Bruce Standing came, weaving his way, like a drunken man, through the woods. He was sick; sick and weak. He muttered to himself constantly. Lynette was at the top of his thought and at the bottom; she dominated his whole mind. He was used through long years to such as Jim Taggart and their crooked ways; he was not used to such as Lynette Brooke, a girl like a flower and yet fearless. It had been his way to hold all women in scorn, since it had not been given unto him during the hard years of his life to know the finer women, the true women worth while, more than worth the while of a mere man. He had held his head high; he had mocked and jeered at them; he had been no man to doff his hat with the flattering elegance of a Babe Deveril for every fair face seen. So now the one thing which in his fiery and feverish mood galled him most was the thought of being seen by Lynette as a man borne down and crushed and made weak and sick. For most of all he hated weaklings.
"She laughed at me ... damn her," he muttered. And, as an afterthought: "She shot me in the back, after the fashion of her treacherous sex!"
He had driven himself harder all day long than any sane man, wounded, should have thought of doing. Now the thought, working its way uppermost through the fomenting confusion of teeming thoughts, was: "I'll let her go. I'll be rid of her." For already, deep down in the depths of his heart, he knew that already a girl, a girl whom he despised and had meant to pay in full for her wickedness, had intrigued him; she had flung
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 her defiant fearlessness into his face; she had kept a lifted head and straightforward eyes; and ... those eyes of Lynette Brooke! Deep, fathomless, gray, tender, alluring, the eyes of the one woman for each man! Almost he could have forgotten, not merely forgiven, her greater fault of laughing at his infirmity; if only she had not been of the species, like Jim Taggart's, to shoot a man in the back.
He meant to let her go free and he had his own reasons for his change of front. Though she had laughed and galled him, though she had sunk to a cowardly act and shot him when he was not looking, at least she was not the coward which he had counted upon finding her; he gave credit where credit was due. He had humiliated her sufficiently, dragging her after him, humbling a spirit as proud as his own, making her his handmaiden, calling her his slave. That was one thing. And another, befogged as it was, was even clearer: In letting her go, in being rid for all time of her and the lure of her eyes, he was protecting himself, Bruce Standing, and none other! ... Fearless, he honored her for that. And yet a treacherous she-animal; so he wanted no more of her, no more of the look of her, the fragrance of her, the pressure of her upon his own spirit. He held himself a man; a man he meant to remain. And, for the first time in all his life he was a little afraid....
And then, just at the moment when it would have been better for them both if he had not come ... or when it was best that he should come ... these are questions and the answers of all questions fate holds in her lap, hidden by the films of the future ... he came staggering up to the door of the hidden cabin. And, at the sight of her, he pulled himself up, stiffening, as taut as a bowstring the instant that the arrow thrills to the command to speed.
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There, in the doorway framed by the two big-boled pines she stood, vividly outlined by the firelight from within the cabin, superbly, gloriously feminine, her own slender soft loveliness thrown into tremendous contrast by the figure at her side, the figure of old Thor on whose head her hand rested as light as a fallen leaf! Her hand on Thor's head! She and Thor standing side by side, her hand on his head....
Sudden rage flared up in Timber-Wolf's heart; he gripped his rifle in both hands, contemptuously ignoring the pains which shot through his left shoulder; at that moment he could have thanked God for excuse enough to shoot her dead. She had seduced the loyalty and trustworthiness of Thor; she had done that! If a man like Standing could not trust his dog, when that dog was old Thor, then where on this green earth could he plant his trust?
"Back!" he stormed at her. "Back!"
She was poised for flight. He came at the instant of her victory over the brute intelligence of a dog, at the moment of her high hopes, when her heart hot in rebellion throbbed with triumph. She, too, at that moment, could she have commanded the lightnings, would have stricken him dead. Her hatred of him reached in a flash such heights as it had never aspired to before.
Back? He commanded her to turn back? Shouted his dictates at her in that first moment when she sensed escape and freedom and victory over him who had been victor long enough? Back? Not now; not though he flourished his rifle, threatening her with that while he shouted angrily at her. Briefly the sight of him had unnerved her, had created within her an utter powerlessness to move hand or foot. But before he could shout "Back!" the second time defiance, like a flood of fire, broke along her veins, warming her from head to foot;
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 she sprang out from the area of light at the cabin door and, running more swiftly than Bruce Standing had deemed any girl could ever run, she sped away among the trees....
A moment ago he had but the one firm intention: To set her free and be rid of her for all time. Now, not ten seconds after holding that purpose, he was rushing after her, forgetful of everything, his wounds and sick weariness, except his one determination to drag her back! He was angry; in his anger, not admitting to himself the true explanation, he felt that he must blame her for a third crime ... she had trifled with the integrity of his dog's loyalty ... she had corrupted old Thor's sturdy honesty....
She ran like a deer. The moment that she broke into headlong flight that very act released within her a full tide of fright; it became a panic like that of soldiers once they have thrown down their arms and plunged into the delirium of disordered retreat. She ran as she had never done before, even when she and Babe Deveril had fled through the night. And Bruce Standing would never have come up with her that night had it not been that in the dark she fell, stumbling over the low mound left to mark the place where an ancient log had disintegrated. As she floundered to her feet she felt his hand on her shoulder. She screamed, she struck at him....
He caught her two hands as he had done once before; she could have no inkling of the tremendous call he put upon himself, body............