"And," suggested the girl, watchful of him as she ventured to probe at his emotions, "on top of all of this ... your cousin?"
"_No!_" He shouted the word at her angrily. "No cousin, thank God. Not so closely related as that. A kinsman of a sort, yes; but if you go back far enough to dig out the roots of things, we are all kinsmen since Adam. I claim no relationship with Bruce Standing."
"I should like to meet this wicked kinsman of yours," she said, as though thoughtful and in earnest.
"And," she added, "warned against coming into Big Pine, he will still come openly?"
"At least," he grunted back at her, "there is one thing I have never denied him; he's no coward. No Gallup was ever conceived who can tell him where to head in and get away with it. Of course he will come and in the wide open and on the run."
"I wish you all success in your dealings with your bold, bad kinsman. And I do thank you for your frank answer to my question. And now ... good night."
"I'll walk with you ... if you will let me?"
They heard the clippety-clop of horses' hoofs, running. Not one horse this time, but three, bearing their riders like so many indistinguishable dark blurs through the night, sweeping on to the cabin. A man, one of the riders, was laughing, and Lynette Brooke knew that already here was Billy Winch returning. Babe Deveril, too, must have recognized the voice, for he jerked his head up and stiffened where he stood, oblivious of the fact that she had broken off with an objecting "but," conscious only of a hated man's impertinence.
Those three were expert riders, men who lived in the saddle. They and their horses seemed moulded centaurs for certainty and the grace of the habitual horseman. They came on at such a break-neck speed and so close that the girl whipped back, thinking that they would run her and her companion down. Then, with that quick light pluck at the reins, they brought their horses down from a mad run to a trembling standstill.
"He said you was to meet him ... _about now!_"
That was Billy Winch, lopsided and cock-sure in the saddle, the chosen messenger of his impudent, reckless chief.
Winch flung out his arm. In the dark they could have made nothing of the gesture had it not been for the sudden sibilant hiss of the rope, swung by an iron wrist, cutting through the air. The noose fell with absolute exactness; Winch was not ten steps away and the rope thrown so unerringly settled about Babe Deveril's shoulders and with a quick jerk grew so tight that it cut into the flesh. On the instant the two men with Winch left their saddles and struck earth, both on the run forward. And, while Lynette Brooke thought with horror to see sudden death dealt, they threw themselves upon the man already fighting against the imprisonment of thirty feet of hemp.