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Core Web Programming Volumes I II Includes index 2nd
ed Edition Hall Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Hall, Marty;Brown, Larry
ISBN(s): 9781941961995, 1941961991
Edition: 2nd ed
File Details: PDF, 9.30 MB
Year: 2001
Language: english
CORE
Web Programming

MARTY HALL
LARRY BROWN

Prentice Hall PTR

Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
www.phptr.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall, Marty.
Core web programming / Marty Hall, Larry Brown.
p. cm.
Only Marty Hall’s name appears on previous edition.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-13-089793-0
1. Internet programming. 2. HTML (Document markup language) 3. Java (Computer
program language) 4. CGI (Computer network protocol) 5. World Wide Web. I. Hall,
Marty. II. Title.
QA76.625 .B757 2001
005.2'76--dc21
2001021692
© 2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc.—
Printed in the United States of America.
901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, California
94303-4900 U.S.A.
All rights reserved. This product and related documentation are protected by copyright and
distributed under licenses restricting its use, copying, distribution, and decompilation. No part
of this product or related documentation may be reproduced in any form by any means without
prior written authorization of Sun and its licensors, if any.
RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND: Use, duplication, or disclosure by the United States
Government is subject to the restrictions set forth in DFARS 252.227-7013 (c)(1)(ii) and
FAR 52.227-19.
The products described may be protected by one or more U.S. patents, foreign patents, or
pending applications.
TRADEMARKS—HotJava, Java, Java Development Kit, Solaris, SPARC, SunOS, and Sunsoft
are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other products or services mentioned in this book
are the trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations
The publisher offers discounts on this book when ordered in bulk quantities.
For more information, contact Corporate Sales Department, Prentice Hall PTR ,
One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. Phone: 800-382-3419; FAX: 201- 236-7141.
E-mail: corpsales@prenhall.com.

Production Editor and Compositor: Vanessa Moore

Project Coordinator: Anne Trowbridge
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 Chapter

INTRODUCTION XXXIII
Real Code for Real Programmers xxxiv
How This Book Is Organized xxxv
Conventions xxxviii
About the Web Site xxxix
About the Authors xxxix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XLI

Part 1
THE HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE 2

C hap t er 1
DESIGNING WEB PAGES WITH HTML 4.0 4
1.1 The HyperText Markup Language 5
1.2 HTML 4.0 and Other HTML Standards 7
1.3 Steps to Publish a Document on the Web 9
Create the Document 9

iii
iv Contents

Put the Document on the Web 10

Validate the Document 12
1.4 The Basic Structure of HTML Documents 12
HTML Document Template 13
DOCTYPE Declarations 14
1.5 HEAD—High-Level Information About the Page 16
Required HEAD Element 17
Optional HEAD Elements 17
1.6 BODY—Creating the Main Document 22
1.7 Summary 25

ChapTer 2
BLOCK-LEVEL ELEMENTS IN HTML 4.0 28
2.1 Headings 30
2.2 Basic Text Elements 32
Basic Paragraphs 32
Paragraphs with White Space Preserved 34
Indented Quotations 35
Addresses 35
2.3 Numbered, Bulleted, and Indented Lists 35
Numbered Lists 36
Bulleted Lists 39
Definition Lists 40
2.4 Tables 41
The Basic Table Structure 42
Defining Table Rows 46
Table Headings and Data Cells 48
Grouping Table Contents 50
2.5 Fill-Out Forms 54
2.6 Miscellaneous Block-Level Elements 54
2.7 Summary 57
 Contents v

ChapTer 3
TEXT-LEVEL ELEMENTS IN HTML 4.0 58
3.1 Physical Character Styles 59
3.2 Logical Character Styles 64
3.3 Specifying Hypertext Links 67
3.4 Embedded Images 70
Animated GIFs 71
The IMG Element 71
3.5 Client-Side Image Maps 75
3.6 Embedding Other Objects in Documents 79
Embedded Applets 80
Embedded Video, Audio, and Other Formats with Plug-ins 82
Embedded ActiveX Controls 83
Embedded Scrolling Text Banners 85
3.7 Controlling Line Breaks 86
3.8 Summary 87

Chapter 4
FRAMES 88
4.1 Frame Document Template 90
4.2 Specifying Frame Layout 91
4.3 Specifying the Content of Frame Cells 96
Examples 98
4.4 Targeting Frame Cells 100
Predefined Frame Names 103
4.5 Solving Common Frame Problems 103
Bookmarking Frames 104
Printing Frames 104
Updating Multiple Frame Cells Simultaneously 105
Preventing Your Documents from Being Framed 108
Creating Empty Frame Cells 109
4.6 Inline Frames 109
4.7 Summary 113
vi Contents

Chapter 5
CASCADING STYLE SHEETS 114
5.1 Specifying Style Rules 116
5.2 Using External and Local Style Sheets 118
External Style Sheets 119
The STYLE Element and JavaScript Style Sheets 120
Inline Style Specification 121
5.3 Selectors 121
HTML Elements 122
User-Defined Classes 123
User-Defined IDs 124
Anchor Pseudoclasses 124
5.4 Cascading: Style Sheet Precedence Rules 125
5.5 Font Properties 126
5.6 Foreground and Background Properties 132
5.7 Text Properties 135
5.8 Properties of the Bounding Box 139
Margins 140
Borders 141
Padding 142
Bounding Box Display Types 143
5.9 Images and Floating Elements 143
5.10 List Properties 146
5.11 Standard Property Units 147
Lengths 147
Colors 147
5.12 Layers 148
Specifying Layers with the LAYER and ILAYER Elements 149
Specifying Layers with Style Sheets 153
5.13 Summary 157
 Contents vii

Part 2
JAVA PROGRAMMING 158

Chapter 6
GETTING STARTED WITH JAVA 160
6.1 Unique Features of Java 162
Java Is Web-Enabled and Network Savvy 162
Java Is Cross-Platform 166
Java Is Simple 168
Java Is Object Oriented 169
Java Is Rich with Powerful Standard Libraries 170
6.2 Myths About Java 171
Java Is Only for the Web 172
Java Is Cross-Platform 172
Java Is Simple 174
Java Is Object Oriented (the One True Way of Programming) 174
Java Is the Programming Language for All Software Development 175
6.3 Java Versions 175
Which Version Should You Use? 177
Whichever Version You Use 177
6.4 Getting Started: Nuts and Bolts 178
Install Java 178
Install a Java-Enabled Browser 179
Bookmark or Install the On-Line Java API 180
Optional: Get an Integrated Development Environment 180
Create and Run a Java Program 181
6.5 Some Simple Java Programs 182
The Basic Hello World Application 182
Command-Line Arguments 183
The Basic Hello World (Wide Web) Applet 183
Applet Customization Parameters 185
6.6 Summary 187
viii Contents

Chapter 7
OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN JAVA 190
7.1 Instance Variables 191
7.2 Methods 194
7.3 Constructors and the “this” Reference 196
Static Initialization Blocks 199
7.4 Destructors 199
7.5 Overloading 200
7.6 Public Version in Separate File 204
7.7 Javadoc 209
Javadoc Tags 211
Javadoc Command-Line Arguments 213
7.8 Inheritance 216
7.9 Interfaces and Abstract Classes 221
7.10 Packages, Classpath, and JAR Archives 230
The CLASSPATH 233
7.11 Modifiers in Declarations 236
Visibility Modifiers 236
Other Modifiers 238
7.12 Summary 239

Chapter 8
BASIC JAVA SYNTAX 242
8.1 Rules of Syntax 243
8.2 Primitive Types 245
Primitive-Type Conversion 247
8.3 Operators, Conditionals, Iteration 248
Arithmetic Operators 248
Conditionals 249
Loops 255
8.4 The Math Class 259
Constants 259
 Contents ix

General-Purpose Methods 259

Trigonometric Methods 261
BigInteger and BigDecimal 261
8.5 Input and Output 263
Printing to Standard Output 263
Printing to Standard Error 265
Reading from Standard Input 265
8.6 Execution of Non-Java Programs 266
8.7 Reference Types 273
Java Argument-Passing Conventions 275
The instanceof Operator 275
8.8 Strings 277
String Methods 278
Constructors 284
8.9 Arrays 284
Two-Step Array Allocation 285
One-Step Array Allocation 286
Multidimensional Arrays 287
8.10 Vectors 288
Constructors 289
Methods 289
8.11 Example: A Simple Binary Tree 291
8.12 Exceptions 296
Basic Form 296
Multiple Catch Clauses 299
The Finally Clause 300
Thrown Exceptions 300
Unchecked Exceptions 302
8.13 Summary 303
x Contents

Chapter 9
APPLETS AND BASIC GRAPHICS 304
9.1 What Are Applets? 305
9.2 Creating an Applet 306
Template for Applets 307
Template for HTML 307
9.3 An Example Applet 309
Redrawing Automatically 311
Reloading Applets During Development 311
9.4 The Applet Life Cycle 312
9.5 Other Applet Methods 314
9.6 The HTML APPLET Element 320
9.7 Reading Applet Parameters 322
Reading Applet Parameters: An Example 323
9.8 HTML OBJECT Element 326
9.9 The Java Plug-In 328
9.10 Graphical Applications 331
9.11 Graphics Operations 332
Drawing Operations 333
Colors and Fonts 336
Drawing Modes 336
Coordinates and Clipping Rectangles 337
9.12 Drawing Images 337
Loading Applet Images from Relative URLs 338
Loading Applet Images from Absolute URLs 340
Loading Images in Applications 342
9.13 Preloading Images 344
9.14 Controlling Image Loading: Waiting for Images and Checking
Status 348
9.15 Summary 355
 Contents xi

Chapter 10
JAVA 2D: GRAPHICS IN JAVA 2 358
10.1 Getting Started with Java 2D 360
Useful Graphics2D Methods 363
10.2 Drawing Shapes 366
Shape Classes 367
10.3 Paint Styles 371
Paint Classes 372
Tiled Images as Fill Patterns 375
10.4 Transparent Drawing 378
10.5 Using Local Fonts 381
10.6 Stroke Styles 383
Stroke Attributes 384
10.7 Coordinate Transformations 390
Shear Transformations 393
10.8 Other Capabilities of Java 2D 394
10.9 Summary 395

Chapter 11
HANDLING MOUSE AND KEYBOARD EVENTS 398
11.1 Handling Events with a Separate Listener 400
Drawing Circles 402
11.2 Handling Events by Implementing a Listener Interface 404
11.3 Handling Events with Named Inner Classes 406
11.4 Handling Events with Anonymous Inner Classes 407
11.5 The Standard Event Listeners 409
11.6 Behind the Scenes: Low-Level Event Processing 415
11.7 A Spelling-Correcting Textfield 418
11.8 A Whiteboard Class 421
A Better Whiteboard 423
11.9 Summary 425
xii Contents

Chapter 12
LAYOUT MANAGERS 426
12.1 The FlowLayout Manager 428
FlowLayout Constructor Options 429
Other FlowLayout Methods 429
12.2 The BorderLayout Manager 430
BorderLayout Constructor Options 432
Other BorderLayout Methods 432
12.3 The GridLayout Manager 433
GridLayout Constructor Options 434
Other GridLayout Methods 435
12.4 The CardLayout Manager 436
CardLayout Constructor Options 440
Other CardLayout Methods 440
12.5 GridBagLayout 441
The GridBagConstraints Object 442
Example 444
GridBagLayout Constructor Options 448
Other GridBagLayout Methods 448
12.6 The BoxLayout Manager 449
BoxLayout Constructor Options 452
Other BoxLayout Methods 453
12.7 Turning Off the Layout Manager 454
12.8 Effective Use of Layout Managers 455
Use Nested Containers 456
Turn Off the Layout Manager for Some Containers 459
Adjust the Empty Space Around Components 461
12.9 Summary 464
 Contents xiii

Chapter 13
AWT COMPONENTS 466
13.1 The Canvas Class 468
Creating and Using a Canvas 469
Example: A Circle Component 469
13.2 The Component Class 472
13.3 Lightweight Components in Java 1.1 479
13.4 The Panel Class 482
Default LayoutManager: FlowLayout 482
Creating and Using a Panel 483
Example: Using a Panel for Grouping 483
13.5 The Container Class 485
13.6 The Applet Class 487
13.7 The ScrollPane Class 487
Creating and Using a ScrollPane 487
Example: ScrollPane with 100-Button Panel 488
13.8 The Frame Class 489
Default LayoutManager: BorderLayout 489
Creating and Using a Frame 490
Frame Examples 491
A Closeable Frame 492
Menus 493
Other Useful Frame Methods 495
13.9 Serializing Windows 497
Writing a Window to Disk 497
Reading a Window from Disk 497
Example: A Saveable Frame 498
13.10 The Dialog Class 501
Creating and Using a Dialog 501
Example: A Quit Confirmation Dialog 502
13.11 The FileDialog Class 504
xiv Contents

Example: Displaying Files in a TextArea 504

13.12 The Window Class 507
Default LayoutManager: BorderLayout 507
Creating and Using a Window 507
13.13 Handling Events in GUI Controls 508
Decentralized Event Processing 509
Centralized Event Processing 511
13.14 The Button Class 512
Constructors 513
Example: Applet with Three Buttons 513
Other Button Methods 514
Handling Button Events 515
13.15 The Checkbox Class 518
Constructors 519
Example: Checked Checkboxes 519
Other Checkbox Methods 520
Handling Checkbox Events 521
13.16 Check Box Groups (Radio Buttons) 521
Constructors 522
Example: Check Boxes vs. Radio Buttons 522
Other CheckboxGroup and Checkbox Methods 523
Handling CheckboxGroup Events 524
13.17 Choice Menus 524
Constructor 525
Example: Simple Choices 525
Other Choice Methods 526
Handling Choice Events 527
13.18 List Boxes 529
Constructors 529
Example: Single and Multiple List Selections 529
Other List Methods 531
Handling List Events 533
 Contents xv

13.19 The TextField Class 538

Constructors 538
Example: Creating TextFields 539
Other TextField Methods 539
Handling TextField Events 542
13.20 The TextArea Class 543
Constructors 543
Example: Empty and Filled Text Areas 544
Other TextArea Methods 544
Handling TextArea Events 545
13.21 The Label Class 545
Constructors 546
Example: Four Different Labels 546
Other Label Methods 547
Handling Label Events 548
13.22 Scrollbars and Sliders 550
Constructors 550
Example: Variety of Sliders 551
Other Scrollbar Methods 552
Handling Scrollbar Events 554
13.23 Pop-up Menus 556
Constructors 556
Example: Applet Pop-up Menu 556
Other PopupMenu Methods 558
Handling PopupMenu Events 559
13.24 Summary 560

Chapter 14
BASIC SWING 562
14.1 Getting Started with Swing 564
Differences Between Swing and the AWT 564
xvi Contents

14.2 The JApplet Component 572

14.3 The JFrame Component 574
14.4 The JLabel Component 576
New Features: Images, Borders, and HTML Content 576
JLabel Constructors 577
Useful JLabel Methods 578
14.5 The JButton Component 581
New Features: Icons, Alignment, and Mnemonics 581
HTML in Button Labels 582
JButton Constructors 582
Useful JButton (AbstractButton) Methods 582
14.6 The JPanel Component 585
JPanel Constructors 585
New Feature: Borders 585
Useful BorderFactory Methods 586
14.7 The JSlider Component 590
New Features: Tick Marks and Labels 590
JSlider Constructors 590
Useful JSlider Methods 591
14.8 The JColorChooser Component 594
Constructors 595
Useful JColorChooser Methods 595
14.9 Internal Frames 598
JInternalFrame Constructors 598
Useful JInternalFrame Methods 598
14.10 The JOptionPane Component 602
Useful JOptionPane Methods 602
14.11 The JToolBar Component 607
JToolBar Constructors 609
Useful JToolBar Methods 609
14.12 The JEditorPane Component 614
Following Hypertext Links 615
 Contents xvii

JEditorPane Constructors 616

Useful JEditorPane Methods 616
Implementing a Simple Web Browser 618
HTML Support and JavaHelp 621
14.13 Other Simple Swing Components 622
The JCheckBox Component 622
The JRadioButton Component 623
The JTextField Component 625
The JTextArea Component 625
The JFileChooser Component 625
14.14 Summary 626

Chapter 15
ADVANCED SWING 628
15.1 Using Custom Data Models and Renderers 630
15.2 JList 631
JList with a Fixed Set of Choices 631
JLists with Changeable Choices 636
JList with Custom Data Model 639
JList with Custom Renderer 646
15.3 JTree 650
Simple JTree 650
JTree Event Handling 654
15.4 JTable 664
Simple JTable 664
Table Data Models 669
Table Cell Renderers 674
Table Event Handling 676
15.5 Swing Component Printing 680
Printing Basics 681
The Role of Double Buffering 683
xviii Contents

A General-Purpose Component-Printing Routine 684

Printing in JDK 1.3 689
15.6 Swing Threads 691
SwingUtilities Methods 693
15.7 Summary 696

Chapter 16
CONCURRENT PROGRAMMING WITH JAVA THREADS 698
16.1 Starting Threads 700
Mechanism 1: Put Behavior in a Separate Thread Object 700
Mechanism 2: Put Behavior in the Driver Class,
Which Must Implement Runnable 703
16.2 Race Conditions 706
16.3 Synchronization 709
Synchronizing a Section of Code 709
Synchronizing an Entire Method 710
Common Synchronization Bug 710
16.4 Creating a Multithreaded Method 712
16.5 Thread Methods 717
Constructors 718
Constants 719
Methods 719
Stopping a Thread 725
16.6 Thread Groups 727
Constructors 727
Methods 727
16.7 Multithreaded Graphics and Double Buffering 729
Redraw Everything in paint 730
Implement the Dynamic Part as a Separate Component 734
Have Routines Other Than paint Draw Directly 735
Override update and Have paint Do Incremental Updating 737
Use Double Buffering 743
 Contents xix

16.8 Animating Images 748

16.9 Timers 753
Constructor 757
Other Timer Methods 757
16.10 Summary 759

Chapter 17
NETWORK PROGRAMMING 760
17.1 Implementing a Client 762
Example: A Generic Network Client 765
17.2 Parsing Strings by Using StringTokenizer 768
The StringTokenizer Class 768
Constructors 769
Methods 769
Example: Interactive Tokenizer 770
17.3 Example: A Client to Verify E-Mail Addresses 771
17.4 Example: A Network Client That Retrieves URLs 774
A Class to Retrieve a Given URI from a Given Host 775
A Class to Retrieve a Given URL 777
UrlRetriever Output 778
17.5 The URL Class 779
Reading from a URL 779
Other Useful Methods of the URL Class 781
17.6 WebClient: Talking to Web Servers Interactively 783
17.7 Implementing a Server 791
Example: A Generic Network Server 793
Connecting NetworkClient and NetworkServer 797
17.8 Example: A Simple HTTP Server 797
ThreadedEchoServer: Adding Multithreading 802
17.9 RMI: Remote Method Invocation 804
Steps to Build an RMI Application 805
A Simple Example 806
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
"I struck it with my elbow, while we were hiding down there," he
told her triumphantly. "Mexicali Joe's real cache!"
He had a square tin biscuit-box in his hands. She put her hand in
quickly. The box, which had been half buried in the cool earth by the
spring, was half full of tins and small packages.
Fatigue fled out of them. Hurriedly they went up over the ridge,
deeper and deeper into the forest land. And when, in half an hour,
they came down into the dark, tree-walled bed of another ravine,
they made them their small fire and tumbled out into its light their
newly acquired treasure-trove—sardines, beans, tinned milk ... yes,
coffee!
 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!"
She understood how Babe Deveril, as any man should be, was
relieved at knowing that the man he had stricken down was not
dead; that he, himself, was not hunted as a murderer. And yet she
was vaguely distressed and uneasy. She felt a change in him, and in
his attitude toward her.... When he awaited her reply, she made
none. Again fatigue swept over her, and with it a new stirring of
uneasiness....
There was a drop of coffee left; she leaned forward and took it,
thinking: "He had his tobacco, and it has bolstered up his nerves."
She drank and then sat back, leaning against a tree, her face hidden
from him, while she searched his face in the dim light, searched it
with a stubborn desire to read the most hidden thought in his brain.
"I am tired," she said after a long while. He could make nothing of
her voice, low and impersonal, and with no inflection to give it
expression beyond the brief meanings of the words themselves.
"Very tired. Yet necessity drives. And it is not safe here, so near
them. I can go on for another hour, perhaps two or three hours.
That will mean ... how far? Four or five miles; maybe six, seven?"
Not only for one hour, not alone for just two or three hours did they
push on. But for half of that silent, starry night. A score of times
Babe Deveril said to her: "We've done our stunt; if any girl on earth
ever earned rest, you've done it." But always there was that driving
force and that allure, and another ridge just ahead, and her answer:
"Another mile.... I can do it."
Deveril, with a lighted match cupped in his hand, looked at his
watch.
"It's long after midnight; nearly one o'clock."
They found a sheltered spot among the tall pines; above them the
keen edge of an up-thrust ridge; just below a thick-grown clump of
underbrush; underfoot dry needles, fallen and drifted from the pines.
Again he was all courtesy and kindliness toward her, seeing her hard
pressed, judging her, despite her mask of hardihood, near collapse.
So he cut pine boughs with his knife and broke them with his hands,
and of them piled her a couch. She thanked him gently; impulsively
she gave him her hand ... though, as his caught it eagerly, she
jerked it away quickly.... He watched her lie down, snuggling her
cheek against the curve of her arm. Near by he lay down on his
back, his two hands under his head, his eyes on the stars. A curious
smile twitched at his lips.
And then, just as they were dropping off to sleep, they heard far off
a long-drawn, howling cry piercing through the great hush. Lynette
started up, her blood quickening; as she had heard Bruce Standing's
warning call that first time, so now did she think to hear it again.
Deveril leaped to his feet, no less startled. A moment later he called
softly to her, and it seemed to Lynette that he forced a tone of
lightness which did not ring true:
"A timber wolf ... but one that runs on four legs! It won't come
near." Then, as she made no answer and he could not see her face,
he asked sharply: "What did you think it was?"
She shivered and lay back.
"I didn't know."
And to herself she whispered:
"And I don't know now!"
Here among the uplands it was a night of piercing cold. The nearer
the dawn drew on, the icier grew the fingers of the wind which
swept the ridges and probed into the cañons. For a little while both
Lynette and Deveril slept the heavy sleep of exhaustion. But, after
the first couple of hours, neither slept beyond brief, uncomfortable
dozes. They shivered and woke and stirred; they found a growing
torture in the rude couches they slept upon, in the hard ground and
stones, which seemed always thrusting up in new places. Long
before the night had begun to thin to the first of daybreak's hint,
Lynette was sitting, her back to a tree, torn between the two
impossibilities, that of remaining awake, that of remaining asleep.
Deveril got up and began stamping about, trying to get warm and
drive the cramp and soreness out of his muscles.
"A few more days and nights like this," he grumbled, "would be
enough to kill a pair of Esquimos! We've got to find us some sort of
half-way decent shelter for another night, and we've got to arrange
to take a holiday and rest up."
It was all that she could do to keep her teeth from chattering by
shutting them hard together; her only answer was a shivery sigh.
She could scarcely make him out, where he trod back and forth, the
darkness held so thick. She began to think so longingly of a fire that
in comparison with its cheer and warmth she felt that possible
discovery by Taggart would be a small misfortune. She could almost
welcome being put under arrest; taken back to Big Pine and jail;
given a bed and covers and one long sleep.
"Awake?" queried Deveril.
She nodded, as though he could see her nod through the dark.
Then, with an effort, she said an uncertain: "Y-e-s."
"I'll tell you," he said presently, coming close to her and looking
down upon the blot in the darkness which her huddled figure made
at the base of the pine. "Taggart will be on his way soon; he'll hardly
wait for day. He'll go the straightest, quickest way to the Big Bear
country. That means he'll steer on straight into Buck Valley. If you
and I went that way, we'd have him and his crowd at our heels all
day, and never know how close they were; and I, for one, am
damned sick of that feeling that somebody's creeping up on us all
the time! So we swerve out from the direct way as soon as we start;
we curve off to the north for a couple of miles; then we make a
bend around toward the upper end of what I fancy must be the
Grub Stake Cañon Joe is headed for. That way we'll always have two
or three miles between our trail and theirs; at times we'll be five or
six miles off to the side. That means, of course, that they're pretty
sure to get to Joe's diggings ahead of us; not over half a day at that.
For we're well ahead of them now. And, in any case, you can bet the
last sardine we've got that they'll be a day or two just poking
around, prospecting and trying to make sure of what they've
grabbed off.... Agreed, pardner?"
"Yes. I could even start now, just to get those few miles between
our trail and theirs. Then, when the sun was up and it was warm, we
could have a rest and an hour's sleep."
So, walking slowly, painfully, carrying what was left of their small
stock of provisions, they started on in the dark. Up a ridge they went
and into the thinning edge of the coming dawn; they picked their
way among trees and rocks; little by little they were able to see in
more detail what lay about them. Along the ridge they tramped
northward. They were warmer now that they walked; or, rather, they
were some degrees less cold. Gradually their paces grew swifter, as
some of the stiffness went out of their bodies; gradually the
shadows thinned; the stars paled, the east asserted itself above the
other points of the compass, softly tinted. The sleeping world began
to awake all about them; birds stirred with the first drowsy
twitterings. The pallid eastern tints grew brighter; as from a wine-
cup, life was spilled again upon the mountain tops. A bird began a
clear-noted, joyous singing; all of a sudden the morning breeze
seemed sweeter and softer; there came a brilliant, flaming glory in
the sky which drew their eyes; all life forces which had been at ebb
began to flow strongly once more; the sun thrust a gleaming golden
edge up into the upper world, rolling majestically from the under
world. Deveril looked into her eyes and laughed softly; her eyes
smiled back into his.... She felt as though she had had a bad dream,
but was awake now; as though last night her nerves had tricked her
into wrongly judging her companion. Doubtings always flock in the
night; joy is never more joyous than when breaking forth with the
new day.
"It isn't so bad, after all," said Deveril. "Now, if we only had a pack-
mule and a roll of blankets and a bit of canvas.... What more would
you ask, Lynette Brooke, for a lark and a holiday to remember
pleasantly when we grew to be doddering old folks?"
"As long as you are wishing," returned Lynette lightly, "why not place
an order with the King of Ifs for a gun and some fishing-tackle and a
frying-pan and some more coffee? And a couple of hats; an outing
suit for me." She looked down at her suit; it was torn in numerous
places; it was gummed and sticky here and there with the resin from
pines; it caught upon every bush. "Then, you know, a needle and
some thread; a dozen fresh eggs, bread, and butter...."
"Too much soft living has spoiled you!" he laughed.
"If so, I am in ideal training to get unspoiled in short order!" she
laughed back.
And for all of this was the rising sun and the new, bright day
responsible; for the ancient way of youth playing up to youth.
What was happening within both of them was a great nervous
relaxation. They knew where Taggart and Gallup were, or at least
were confident that there was no immediate danger of Taggart and
Gallup overhauling them; they knew where Mexicali Joe was and
where he was going. For the moment they were freed from that
crushing sense of uncertainty welded to menace which had borne
down upon them ever since they fled from Big Pine. And
consequently joy of life sprang up as a spring leaps the instant that
the weight is plucked from it.
"It's our lucky day!" said Deveril.
For the sun was scarcely up when a plump young rabbit hopped
square into their path, and Deveril, with a lucky throw, killed it with
a rock. And just as they were speaking of thirst, they came to a tiny
trickle of water among the rocks; and while Lynette was boiling
coffee over a tiny blaze, Deveril was preparing grilled cottontail for
breakfast. Savory odors floating out through the woodlands. Lynette
was singing softly:

"Merry it is in the good Greenwood!"

They ate and rested and the sun warmed them. For a full two hours
they scarcely stirred. Then they drank again; Lynette bathed her
hands and face and arms; she set her hair in order, refashioning the
two thick braids. She shut one eye and then the other, striving to
make certain that there was not a black smudge somewhere upon
her nose. They were starting on when Deveril said soberly:
"Shall I save the rabbit skin?"
"Why?" she asked innocently.
A twinkle came into his eyes.
"A few more days of this sort of life, and My Lady Linnet is going to
require a new gown! Perhaps rabbit furs, if hunting is good, will do
it!"
She laughed at him, and her eyes were daring as she sang,
improvising as to melody:

"And for vest of pall, thy fingers small,

That wont on harp to stray,
A cloak must sheer from the slaughtered deer,
To keep the cold away!"

"Lynette!"
A flash from her gay mood had set his eyes on fire. He sprang up
and came toward her, his two hands out. But as a black cloud can
run over the face of the young moon, so did a sudden change of
mood wipe the tempting look out of her eyes and darken them. Her
spirit had peeped forth at him, merry-making; as quick as bird-flight
it was gone, and she stepped back and looked at him steadily, cool
now and aloof and dampening to a man's ardent nonsense.
"You have a way of saying something, Babe Deveril," she told him
coolly, "which appeals to me. In your own upstanding words: 'Let's
go!'"
He laughed back at her lightly, hiding under a light cloak his own
chagrin. At that moment he had wanted her in his arms; had wanted
that as he wanted neither Mexicali Joe's gold nor any other coldly
glittering thing. Now he felt himself growing angry with her....
"Right. You've said it. Let's go."
He made short work of catching up the few articles they were to
carry with them and of stamping into dead coals the few remaining
glowing embers of their fire. Then, striding ahead, he led the way.
And for a matter of a mile or more she was hard beset to keep up
with him.

The day was filled with happenings to divert their thoughts from any
one channel. They startled, in a tiny meadow, three deer, which shot
away through a tangle of brush, leaping, plunging, shooting forward
and down a slope like great, gleaming, graceful arrows. "A man
could live like a king here, with a rifle," said Deveril longingly. They
saw a tall, thin wisp of smoke an hour before noon; it stood against
the sky to the southwest of them, at a distance of perhaps two
miles. "Taggart's noonday camp," they decided, deciding further that
Taggart must have insisted on an early start, and therefore had
found his stomach demanding lunch well before midday. Later, some
two or three hours after twelve, they heard the long, reverberating
crack and rumble and echo of a rifle-shot. "Taggart's crowd, killing a
deer or bear or rabbit," they imagined. And all along they were
contented, making what time they could through the open spaces,
over the ridges, down through tiny green valleys and up long, dreary
slopes, resting frequently, never hastening beyond their powers,
secure in knowing that the Taggart trail and the Lynette-Deveril trail,
though paralleling, would have no common point of contact before
both trails ran into the country in the vicinity of the Big Bear Creek,
the rim of the Timber-Wolf country.
"The whole thing," exulted Babe Deveril, "lies in the fact that we
know where they are and they haven't the least idea where we are!
We know where they are going, and they haven't a guess which way
we are steering...."
"Do you know," said Lynette thoughtfully, "I don't believe that
Mexicali Joe intends for a minute to lead them to his gold!"
Deveril looked at her in astonishment.
"You don't! Why, couldn't you see that Taggart put the fear of the
Lord into him? That Gallup, slick as wet soap, tricked him? That...."
She broke in impatiently, saying:
"Yet Joe.... He seemed to me to give in to them in something too
much of a hurry ... as though he had his own wits about him, his
own last card in the hole, as dad used to say. I wonder...."
He stared at her, puzzled.
"When you feel things," he muttered, none too pleasantly, "you get
me guessing. I don't know yet how you came to know that the
Taggart bunch was at our heels yesterday. But you did know; and
you were right. As to this other hunch of yours...."
"You'll see," said Lynette serenely. "Joe isn't the biggest fool in that
crowd of four. You wait and see."
"You'll give me the creeps yet," said Deveril.
They both laughed and went on—through brushy tangles; over rocky
ridges; through spacious forests; across soft, springy meadows; up
slope, down slope; on and on and endlessly on. Once they
frightened a young bear that was tearing away as if its life depended
upon it upon an old stump; the bear snorted and went lumbering
away, as Deveril said, like a young freight-train gone mad; Lynette,
as she admitted afterward, was twice as frightened, but did not run,
herself, because the bear ran first and because she couldn't get the
hang of her feet as quickly as he could! They came upon several
bands of mountain-quail, which shot away, buzzing like overgrown
bees; Deveril hurled stones and curses at many a scampering rabbit;
once she and once he caught a glimpse of that dark gleam, come
and gone in a flash, which might have been coyote or timber-wolf....
They did not speak of Bruce Standing. But they wondered, both of
them....
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon they heard for the second time
the crack of a rifle-shot. Farther to the south of them this time; a
hint farther eastward; fainter than when first heard. Taggart, they
held in full confidence, was following the trail which they had
mapped for him; he was going on steadily; he was forging ahead of
them. And yet they were content that this was so. They rested more
often; they relaxed more and more.
And before the brief reverberations of a distant rifle-shot had done
echoing through the gorges, they came to a full stop and
determined to make camp. Not for a second, all day long, had
Deveril swerved from his determination to "dig in in comfort for the
night." They were, as both were willing to admit, "done in."
Deveril employed his pocket-knife, long ago dulled, and now whetted
after a fashion upon a rough stone, to whack off small pine and
willow and the more leafy of sage branches. He made of them a
goodly heap. Then he gathered dead limbs, fallen from the parent
trees, making his second pile. All the while Lynette kept a small dry-
wood and pine-cone fire going hotly; little smoke, little swirl of
sparks to rise above the grove in which they were encamping; plenty
of heat for body warmth and for cooking. She was preoccupied,
moving about listlessly. So this was Bruce Standing's country? She
looked about her with an ever-deepening interest; this was a fitting
land for such a man. Bigness and dominance and a certain vital
freshness struck altogether the key-note here—and suggested
Timber-Wolf. If he were not dead after all—— Well, then, he would
be somewhere near now for like a wounded animal, he would have
returned to his solitudes.
Deveril found near by a level space under the pines. Here he sought
out a scraggly tree which expressed an earth-loving soul in low-
drooped branches. Against a low arm which ran out horizontally
from the trunk he began placing his longer dead limbs, the butts in
the ground, sloping, the effect soon that of a tent. Against these a
high-piled wall of leafy branches. He stood back, judging from which
direction the wind would come. He piled more branches. Into his
nostrils, filled with the resinous incense of broken pine twigs, floated
the tempting aromas which spread out in all directions from
Lynette's cooking. He cocked his eye at the slanting sun; it was still
early. He yielded to the insistent invitation, and came down into the
little cup of a meadow to her, and she watched him coming: a
picturesque figure in the forest land, his black hair rumpled, his
slender figure swinging on, his sleeves rolled back, his eyes full of
the flicker of his lively spirit.
When Deveril was hard pressed along the trail, worn out and on the
alert for oncoming danger from any quarter, he was impersonal; a
mere ally on whom she could depend. At moments like this one,
when he was rested and relaxed, and grasped in his eager hands a
bit of the swift life flowing by, he became different. A man now—a
young man—one with quick lights in his eyes and a lilting eagerness
in his voice.
"It would be great sport," he said, "all life long ... to come home to
you and find you waiting ... with a smile and a wee cup o' tea!
And...."
He was half serious, half laughing; she made a hasty light rejoinder,
and invited him to a hot supper waiting him.
They made a merry, frivolously light meal of it. There was plenty to
eat; water near by; there was coffee; above them the infinity of
blue, darkening skies, about them the peace and silence of the
solitudes. And within their souls security, if only for the swiftly
passing moment. They chose to be gay; they laughed often; Deveril
asked her where she had learned to quote Scott and she asked him,
in obvious retort, if he thought that she had never been to school!
He sang for her, low-voiced and musically, a Spanish love-song; she
made high pretense at missing the significance of the impassioned
southern words. He, having finished eating and having nearly
finished his cigarette, lying back upon the thick-padded pine-
needles, jerked himself up, of a mood for free translation; she, being
quick of intuition, forestalled him, crying out: "While I clean up our
can dishes, if you will finish making camp...."
He laughed at her, but got up and went back, whistling his love-song
refrain to his house-building. She, busied over her own labors, found
time more than once to glance at him through the trees ...
wondering about him, trying to probe her own instinctive distrust of
one who had all along befriended her.
When she joined him a few minutes later, coming up the slope
slowly, she looked tired, he thought, and listless. She sat down and
watched him finishing his labors; all of her spontaneous gaiety had
fled; she was silent and did not smile and appeared preoccupied.
She sighed two or three times, unconsciously, but her sighs did not
escape him. Always he had held her sex to be an utterly baffling,
though none the less an equally fascinating one. Now he would have
given more than a little for a clew to her thoughts ... or dreamings
... or vague preoccupation....
"My lady's bower!" he said lightly. "And what does my lady have to
say of it?"
A truly bowery little shelter it was, on leaning poles in an inverted V,
with leafy boughs making thick walls, through which only slender
sun-rays slipped in a golden dust; within a high-heaped pile of
fragrant boughs, with a heap of smaller green twigs and resinous
pine-tips for her couch.
"You are so good to me, Babe Deveril," was her grave answer.
And not altogether did her answer please him, for a quick hint of
frown touched his eyes, though he banished it almost before she
was sure of it. Those words of hers, though they thanked him, most
of all reminded him of his goodness and gentleness with her, and
thus went farther and assured him that she still counted upon his
goodness and gentleness.
"I am afraid, Babe Deveril," she added quickly, though still her eyes
were grave and her lips unsmiling, "that I am pretty well tired out ...
all sort of let-down like, as an old miner I once knew used to say!
It's going to be sundown in a few minutes; can't we treat ourselves
to the luxury of a good blazing camp-fire, and sit by it, and get good
and warm and rested?"
Had she spoken her true thought she would have cried out instead:
"What troubles me, Babe Deveril, is that I am half afraid of you.
And, all of a sudden, of the wilderness. And of life and of all the
mysteries of the unknown! I am as near screaming from sheer
nervousness at this instant as I ever was in my life."
But Deveril, who could glean of her emotions only what she allowed
to lie among her spoken words, cried heartily:
"You just bet your sweet life we'll have a crackling, roaring fire.
Taggart and his crowd are half a dozen miles away right now and
still going; our fire down in that hollow will never cast a gleam over
the big ridge yonder and the other ridges which lie in between him
and us. Come ahead, my dear; here's for a real bonfire."
That "my dear" escaped him; but she did not appear to have noted
it. She rose and followed him back to their dying fire. He began
piling on dead branches; they caught and crackled and shot
showering sparks aloft. He brought more fuel, laying it close by.
Already the blaze had driven her back; she sat down by a pine, her
knees in her hands, her head tipped forward so that her face was
shadowed, her two curly braids over her shoulders.
Deveril lay near her, his hand palming his chin.
"Tell me, pretty maiden," he said lightly, "how far to the nearest
barber shop?"
"And tell me," she returned, looking at her fingers, "if in that same
shop they have a manicurist?"
Having glanced at her hands, she sighed, and then began working
with her hair; there was one thing which must not be utterly
neglected. She knew that if once it became snarled, she had small
hope of saving it; no comb, no brush, no scissors to snip off a
troublesome lock; only the inevitable result of such an utter snarl
that she, too, in a week of this sort of thing, must needs seek a
barber who understood bobbing a maid's hair. And with hair such as
Lynette's, glorious, bronzy, with all the brighter glowing colors of the
sunlight snared in it, any true girl should shudder at the barber's
scissors.
All without warning a great booming voice crashed into their ears,
shattering the silence, as Bruce Standing bore down upon them from
the ridge, shouting:
"So, now I've got you! Got both of you! Got you where I want you,
by the living God!"
 CHAPTER XI
The one first thought, bursting into full form and expression in
Lynette's brain, with the suddenness, and the shock of an explosion,
was: "He is alive!" And in Babe Deveril's mind the thought: "Bruce
Standing at last!... And drunk with rage!"
And Bruce Standing's one thought, as both understood somewhat as
they leaped to their feet:
"Into my hands, of all my enemies are those two whom I hate most
delivered!" For it had been almost like a religion with him, his
certainty that he would come up with them—the girl who had
laughed and shot him; the man who had stolen her away, cheating
his vengeance.
Babe Deveril, on the alert in the first flash of comprehension,
stooped, groping among the shadows for his club, his only weapon.
He saw the sun glinting upon Bruce Standing's rifle barrel. That club
of his ... where was it? Dropped somewhere; perhaps while he was
building a leafy bower for a pretty lady; forgotten in a gush of other
thoughts ... he couldn't find it. He stood straight again; his hands,
clinched and lifted, imitated clubs. The first weapons of the first
men....
Lynette heard them shouting at each other, two men who hated
each other, two men seeing red as they looked through the
spectacles which always heady hatred wears. Men, both of them;
masculinity asserting itself triumphantly, belligerently; manhood
rampant and, on the spur of the moment, as warlike as two young
bulls contending for a herd.... She heard them cursing each other;
heard such plain-spoken Anglo-Saxon epithets hurled back and forth
as at any other time would have set her ears burning. Just now the
epithets meant less than nothing to her; they were but windy words,
and a word was less, far less, than a stout club in a man's hand or a
stone to hurl. She was of a mind to run while yet she could; but that
was only the first natural reaction, lost and forgotten instantly. She
stood without moving, watching them. An odd thing, she thought
afterward, wondering, that that which at the moment made the
strongest, longest-lasting impression upon her was the picture which
Timber-Wolf, himself, created as, with the low sun at his back, he
came rushing down upon them. Just now the mountain slope had
constituted but a quiet landscape in softening tones, like a painting
in pastels, with only the sun dropping down into the pine fringe to
constitute a brighter focal point; and now, all of a sudden, it was as
though the master artist, with impulsive inspiration, had slung with
sweeping brush this new element into the picture—that of a great
blond giant of a man, young and vigorous, and at this critical hour
consumed with hatred and anger and triumphant glee. He was
always one to punish his own enemies, was Bruce Standing. And
now one felt that he carried vengeance in both big, hard, relentless
hands.
On he came, almost at a run, so eager was he. Came so close before
he stopped that Lynette saw the flash of his blue eyes—eyes which,
when she had seen them first in Big Pine had been laughing and
innocent—which now were the eyes of a blue-eyed devil. He was
laughing; it was a devil's laugh, she thought. For he jeered at her
and her companion. His mockery made her blood tingle; his eyes
said evil things of her. Her cheeks went hot-red under that one
flashing look.
But he was not just now concerned with her! He meant to ignore her
until he had given his mind to other matters! He was still shouting in
that wonderful, golden voice of his; to every name in a calendar not
of saints he laid his tongue as he read Babe Deveril's title clear for
him. And, name to name, Babe Deveril checked off with him, hurling
back anathema and epithet as good as came his way.... Lynette
understood that both men had forgotten her. To them, passion-
gripped as they were, it was as though she did not exist and had
never existed. And yet it was largely because of her that they were
gathering themselves to fly at each other! Man inconsistent and
therefore man. Otherwise something either higher or lower; either of
a devil-order or a god-order. But as it is ... better as it is ...
something of god and devil and altogether—man.
And children of a sort, in their hearts. For, before a blow was struck,
they called names! So fast did the words fly, so hot and furious were
they, that she had the curious sense that their battle would end as it
began, in insults and mutterings. But when Timber-Wolf had
shouted: "Sneak and cur and coward ... a man to rifle another man's
pockets, after that other had played square and been generous with
you...." And when Deveril, his hands still lifted, while in his heart he
could have wept for a club lost, shouted back: "Cur and coward
yourself ... with a rifle against a man who has nothing ..." then she
saw that the last word had been spoken and that blows were
inevitable. She drew back swiftly, as any onlooker must give room to
two big wild-wood beasts.
"Coward? Bruce Standing a coward? Why, damn your dirty soul...."
Bruce Standing caught his rifle by the end of the barrel; at first
Lynette, and Deveril also, thought that he meant to use it as a club.
But instead he flourished it about his head but the once, and hurled
it so far from him that it went, flashing in the sunlight, above a pine
top and fell far away somewhere down the slope. Never in all his life
had Bruce Standing had any man even think of naming him coward.
As well name sunlight darkness. For all men who knew Bruce
Standing, and all men who for the first and only time looked him
square in the eyes, knew of him that he was fearless.
Thus with a gesture ... he abandoned wordy outpourings of wrath
and hurled himself into flesh-and-blood combat. He did not turn to
right or left for the dwindling camp-fire; he came straight through it,
his two long arms outstretched, seeking Deveril. And Babe Deveril,
the moment he saw how the rifle sped through the air and
understood his kinsman's challenge, leaped forward eagerly to the
meeting with him. Their four boots began scattering firebrands....
Lynette, with all her fast-beating heart, wanted to come to Babe
Deveril's aid. The one thing which mattered was that, at her hour of
need, he had stood up for her; her soul was tumultuously crying out
for the opportunity to demonstrate beyond lip-service the meaning
of gratitude. She caught up a stone, and throughout the fight held it
gripped so hard that before the end her fingers were bleeding. But
never an opportunity did she have to hurl it as long as those two
contended.
Once it entered her thought that she must have dreamed of Bruce
Standing, shot and bleeding and senseless on the floor at the Gallup
House. For now, so few hours after, he gave no slightest hint of
being a man recently badly wounded. There was more of common
sense in a man's dying of such a wound as his than in his striking
such great, hammer-hard blows with both arms. He created within
her from that moment an odd sensation which grew with her later;
the man was not of the common mould. Something beyond and
above mere flesh and blood and the routine of human qualifications
inspired him. There was something inevitable about Bruce
Standing....
Babe Deveril fought like a young, lissome tiger.... He fought with all
of the might that lay within him, muscle and mind and controlling
spirit. When he struck a blow he put into it, with a little coughing
grunt, every last ounce of hostility which was at his command; with
every blow he longed to kill. And, as though the two were blood-
brothers, Bruce Standing fought as did Babe Deveril. Straight, hard,
merciless blow to answer blow as straight and hard and merciless....
Timber-Wolf was a man to laugh at his own mine muckers when
they could not thrust a boulder aside, and to stoop and set his hands
and arms and back to the labor and pluck the thing up and hurl it
above their bewildered heads. He smote as though he carried a war-
club in each hand; he received a crashing blow full in the face, and,
though the blood came, he did not feel it; he struck back, and his
great iron fist beat through Deveril's guarding arms. No man, or at
least no man whom Bruce Standing in his wild life had ever met,
could have stood up against that blow. Babe Deveril, with the life
almost jarred out of his body, went down. And Bruce Standing,
growling like an angry bear, caught him up and lifted him high in air
and flung him far away from him, as lightly as though he flung but a
fifty-pound weight. And where Babe Deveril fell he lay still.... Lynette
ran to him and knelt and put her hands at his shoulders, thinking
him dead.
A short fight it had been, but already had the swift end come. So
hard had that blow been, so tremendous had been the crash against
rock and earth when the flung body struck, there appeared to be but
a pale flame of life, flickering wanly, in Deveril's body. Timber-Wolf
came and stood over him and over Lynette, gloating, mumbling;
muttering while his great chest heaved: "Little rat that he is! A man
to take advantage when he found me down; a man to cheat me of
the she-cat that shot me. I could crush him into the dirt with my
boot heel...."
"You great big brute!..."
It was then that she sprang to her feet and, almost inarticulate with
her own warring emotions, grief and fear and anger and hatred,
flung the jagged stone full into his face. He was unprepared; the
stone struck him full upon the forehead; he staggered backward,
stumbling, almost falling; his hands flew to his face. He was near-
stunned; blinded. Deveril was on his elbow....
"Come!" she screamed wildly. "Quick! You and I...."
"Treacherous devil-cat!" There was his thunderous voice shouting so
that she, so near him, was almost deafened.
Bruce Standing, wiping the blood from his eyes, his two arms out
before him, came back to the attack. Deveril, on his knees, surged
to his feet; Standing struck and Deveril went down like a poorly
balanced timber falling. Lynette was groping for another stone.
Suddenly she felt upon her wrist a grip like a circlet of cutting steel.
She was whisked about; Timber-Wolf held her, drawn close, staring
face into face. His other hand was lifted slowly; suddenly she felt it
caught in her loose hair....
And then, inexplicable to her now and ever after, there was in her
ear the sound of Bruce Standing's laughter. The hand at her hair fell
away. It went up to his eyes, wiping them clear. And then she saw in
the eyes what she had read in the voice ... laughter.
"Well, Deveril, what now?"
Again Deveril was on his feet. He swayed; his face was dead-white;
it was easy to see how fiercely he bent every energy at his
command to remain upright. There was a queer look in the eyes he
turned upon Timber-Wolf.
"I never saw a man ... like you."
He spoke with effort; he was like a man far gone in some
devastating lung trouble; his voice was windy and vibrant and weak.
"Baby Devil!" jeered Standing. "Oh, Baby Devil! And, when it comes
to dealing with a real man.... Why, then, less devil than baby! Ho!..."
"I am going to kill you...."
"God aids the righteous!" Standing told him sternly. "You go. To hell
with you and your kind."
God aids the righteous! This from the lips of Bruce Standing, Timber-
Wolf!... Lynette, her nerves like wires smitten in an electric storm,
could have burst into wild laughter.... She wrenched at her wrist;
Standing's big hand neither tightened nor relaxed, giving her the
feeling of despair which a thick steel chain would have given had she
been locked and deserted in a dungeon.
Deveril was looking over his shoulder. In his glance ... the sun was
near setting among the pines, and they saw his face as his head
jerked about ... any one might read his thought: down there,
somewhere among the bushes, lay a rifle!
Standing laughed at him. And Standing, dragging Lynette along with
him as easily as he might have drawn a child of six, went down the
slope first. And first he came to the fallen rifle and caught it up and
brought it back to the trampled camp-fire.
"You're sneak enough for that, Baby Devil!" he taunted. "For that or
any other coward act. And so is this woman of yours. So I spike the
artillery. God! If the earth were only populated by men!... Now I've
got this word for your crafty ear: listen well." Instantly his voice
became as hard as flint and carried assurance that every word he
was going to say would be a word meant with all his heart and soul.
And all the while he gripped Lynette by the wrist and seemed
unconscious of that fact or that she struggled to be free. "I've given
you a fair fight, you who don't fight fair. And I've knocked the
daylights out of you. And now I'm sick of you. You can go. You can
sneak off through the timber and be out of sight inside of two
minutes. Yet I'll give you five. And at the end of that time, if you're
in sight, I am going to shoot you dead!"
Deveril glared at him, his glance laid upon Standing's as one rapier
may clash across another.
"Do your dirty killing and be damned to you!" said Deveril briefly.
Timber-Wolf looked at him in surprise; he began to cast about him
for a fresh and clearer comprehension of a man whom he despised.
He strove with all his power of clean vision to see to the bottom of
Deveril's most hidden thought.
"Now," said Standing slowly, "I am almost sorry for what I said. It
strikes into me, Kid, that you are not afraid!"
Deveril, breathless, panting, holding himself erect only through a
great call upon his will, made no spoken answer, but again laid the
blade of his glance shiningly across that of Timber-Wolf.
"You die just the same," said Standing coldly. "It's only because I
gave my word; that you can take in man-to-man style from me, Kid;
for once I am not ashamed to be related to you. Either you travel or,
in five minutes, you are a dead man."
Slowly Deveril's haggard eyes roved to Lynette's face ... Lynette
chained to Bruce Standing in that crushing grip....
"I am going," he said. And both knew he said it in fearlessness but
also in understanding of the power which lay in a rifle bullet and the
weakness of the barricade offered to it by a human skull. And both
understood, further, that it was to Lynette that he spoke. "I am
coming back!"
"For God's sake!" she screamed. "Go! Hurry!"
"Hurry!" Bruce Standing, with his own word of honor in the balance
against the weight of the life of a man whom he began to respect,
was all anxiety to have his kinsman gone.
Deveril's last word, with his last look, was for Lynette.
"A man who doesn't know when he's beat is a fool.... But you can be
sure of this: I'll be back!"
He went, walking crookedly at first among the knee-high bushes;
then growing straighter as he passed into the demesne of the tall,
straight pines. Not swiftly, since there was no possibility of any swift
play of muscles left within him; but steadily.
"A man!" grunted Timber-Wolf. Whether in admiration or disgust,
Lynette could not guess from his tone.
He had his watch in the palm of his hand; her gaze was riveted on
it. It seemed so tiny a thing in that great valley of his hand; a
bauble. Yet its even more insignificant minute-hand was assuming
the office of arbiter of human life; she knew that the moment the
fifth minute was ticked off Bruce Standing, true to his sworn word,
would relinquish her wrist just long enough to whip his rifle to his
shoulder and fire ... in case the uncertain form of Babe Deveril,
going up over the ridge, were still in sight. And she knew within her
soul that just so sure as gun butt struck shoulder and finger found
trigger, so sure would Babe Deveril toss his arms up and fall dead....
"Hurry, Kid ... you damn' fool ... hurry...."
All the while Timber-Wolf was muttering and glaring at his watch
and clinching her wrist; all the while forgetting that he held her. And,
this also she knew, regretting that he had the job set before him of
shooting down another man.
Lynette, her whole body atingle, every sense keyed up to its highest
stressing, knew as soon as did Bruce Standing when he was going to
drop her wrist and jerk his gun up. The five minutes were passing;
still, though at a distance far up on the ridge, seen only by glimpses
now and then under the setting sun, Babe Deveril was driving on, a
man half bereft of his sober senses, his brain reeling from savage
blows and on fire with rage and mortification; they saw him among
the pines; they lost him; they saw him again. Never once had he
turned to look back. Yet it did not seem that he hastened....
Timber-Wolf, growling deep down in his throat, lifted his rifle. But
Lynette, before the act, knew! She flung herself with sudden fury
upon his uplifted arm; she caught it, and with the weight of her
body dragged it down. He sought to fling her off; she wrapped both
of her arms about his right arm; she jerked at it so that he could
have no slightest hope of a steady aim....
He turned and looked down into her eyes; deep ... deep. For what
seemed to her a long, long time he stood looking down into her
eyes.
Then, with sudden anger, he thrust her aside. Without looking to see
if she had fallen or stumbled and run, he raised his rifle again.
But just in time Babe Deveril was gone, over the ridge....
 CHAPTER XII
"And now that you're half scared to death, you'd like to make a man
believe that you are not afraid of the devil himself!"
She flashed a burning look at him; chokingly she cried:
"At least, thank God, I am not afraid of you, Bruce Standing!... Big
brute and bully and ... Yes!... Coward!"
And yet, as never before in her life, her heart was beating wildly,
leaping against her side like an imprisoned thing struggling to break
through the walls which shut it in. His fingers were still locked about
her wrist; his grip tightened; he drew her closer in order to look the
more clearly into her eyes. Then his slow, mocking laughter smote
across her nerves like a rude hand brushing across harp-strings,
making clashing discords.
"You begin well!" he jeered at her. "We are going to see how you
end."
"Let me go!" She jerked back; she twisted and dragged at her wrist,
trying wildly to break free. His mockery stung her into desperation.
With her one free hand she struck him across the face.
She struck hard, with all her might, with trebled strength through
her fury. And, maddening her, he gave no sign that she had hurt
him. Still jeering at her, all that he did was drop his rifle, so that with
his other hand he could take captive the hand which had struck him.
And then it was so easy a thing for him to take both her wrists into
the grip of his one, right hand; held thus, no matter how she fought,
hers was the sensation of utter powerlessness which is a child's
when an elder person, teasing, catches its two hands in one and lets
it cry and kick.... Suddenly she grew quiet....
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