There was no more sleep through what was left of the night, and scarcely more of talk. Standing piled his fire high, and, unmindful of his discarded rifle, went out for more wood; Lynette dropped down on the blanket in her corner and named herself a silly fool. He came back, carefully relocking his door; kept his fire blazing, and made his coffee and smoked his pipe. And then, in that great golden voice of his, he began singing. And, through its wild rhythm, she knew the song for the same as that which she had heard for the first time when he had hurled himself both into Big Pine and into her life. His voice rose and swelled and filled the poor cabin to overflowing, and must have filtered through chinks and cracks and spilled out through the forest land, and for great distances through the quiet solitudes. And, at the end, in a sudden upgathering into all that tremendous resounding volume of sound of which his magnificent voice was capable, came that unforgettable wolf cry. If she required any reminding, here she had it, that she was housed in the same cabin with Timber-Wolf! A fierce outcry, to go resounding and echoing across miles and miles of forest lands, meant, as she was quick to realize, to carry both defiance and challenge to his enemies.
"You have had your choice, girl!" he shouted at her. "You could have gone free! I gave you your freedom. But you would not go. And that was because it was in the cards, in the fates, in the stars, if you like, that you and I are not to part yet! The door is locked; I stand between you and it. So, you stay here with me!"
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For the first time she was truly and deeply afraid of him. But he went back to his place by the fire, and sat on the old stump seat, and filled his pipe again with hard, nervous fingers and glared at the fire. For a little he seemed to have forgotten that she was there. And then at last, when she saw that he was going to speak again, she forestalled him, saying swiftly:
"I am tired and sleepy. I am going to sleep."
He checked his speech, saving whatever he had to say to her. She lay back on her blankets, and, though she had had no such intention, soon drifted off to sleep. And he, with pipe grown cold, sat and glowered over his fire, and put to himself many a question, growing fierce over his inability to answer any one of them. But, at least, in his groping he forgot the pain of his wounds.
"You are not asleep," he said after a very long time. "I know that; I can tell. You are pretending. And you are thinking, thinking hard and fast! And so am I thinking! As I never did before now. You might as well save yourself the labor of struggling with your problems, since I am doing the planning for both of us right now; since everything is in my hands and I mean to keep it there."
She heard but gave no sign of hearing; she kept her face averted from him so that he could not see whether her eyes were open or shut. Open they were, and the man appeared to know it.
"Am I wise man or fool?" he cried. "He only is wise who knows what he knows and steers his craft by the one steady star in his sky!"
She would not answer him when he spoke; she could not just now. She lay still, as if asleep. He relapsed into a long silence, his eyes now on her, now on his fire.
"This neck o' the woods is getting all cluttered up with folks!" he muttered abruptly, with such
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suddenness that he startled her. "I've a notion to run the whole crowd in for trespassing!... Or better, girl, you and I move on. Where there's elbow room; room to talk in. We've got to quarry out our own blocks of stone and build up our own lives, and we want a bit of the world to ourselves. What's more, we're going to have it!"
She knew, as every girl knows when that mighty moment comes ... and her girl-heart beat hard and fast ... that after hi............