"He'd never know how to love her as I do!" That ancient cry of all true lovers!
But all the while there bit into him doubtings, fears, those manifold darts flung from love's alter ego, jealousy. He stood ready to give this girl full-handedly everything; from her he craved with that direst of all cravings, everything.... And when he could no longer hold back the tumult within him and demanded: "What of this Baby Devil?" putting a sneer into his voice, always she cried out warmly: "A true friend and a gentleman!"
All unexpected by both of them, the less by him than her, Billy Winch, Timber-Wolf's one-legged retainer, rode full tilt into camp. They were lunching; they sat under a tree in the noonday shadow like two at picnic. He had been saying: "We're running short of rations." Then it was that Billy Winch, anxiously spurring a big roan saddle-horse, rode down upon them and, seeing them, began waving his hat high over his head in sweeping, joyous circles and shouting:
"So you're still alive! That's something!"
Standing leaped to his feet; he was hot with anger.
"I knew where to find you, Timber!" cried Billy Winch gleefully. "Unless, a fair bet, the devil had claimed you and taken you down under, I knew I'd find you here!... How's the sick wing? Been usin' my salve? Night and morning, keepin' it clean and...."
Billy Winch, headlong, stopping his horse with a sudden pluck of the reins when the gaunt roan had come near setting his four flickering hoofs in their midday fire, chose to ignore the fact that the Timber-Wolf was not alone.
But Standing, springing up, strode out to meet him, his mien anything but friendly.
"Damn you, Billy Winch," he muttered between his teeth, too low for the wondering Lynette to hear. She, too, had sprung up and stood leaning against the valiant pine-tree, wondering swiftly how this latest happening, the coming of Billy Winch into the wild-wood, was to affect her.
Billy Winch, as gay-hearted a rascal as ever stumped on one leg or rode a wild, half-broken horse in carelessly lopsided fashion, laughed gleefully.
"Ho, Timber!" he cried. "If I was a whole man, 'stead of half a one, I'd just jump down and naturally beat you to death! Bein' what I am, all carved to thunder, you're too much all gone to proud flesh to jerk me out of the saddle to stomp on me! So I got the age on you! And I asks you, Johnny Wolf, man-eater, how's tricks?"