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?" "By God, Winch!" Standing in upstarting wrath had the roan horse by the bit, shoving it back with one savage hand so that it fell back on its haunches. "Just because I've stood a lot off you...." "Slow does it, Timber!" cried Winch. "This is business. I've got a man back there, just out of sight, ready to go clean crazy unless he can have a word with you. To put a name to him ... well, then, Mexicali Joe!" Now Standing, deep down within him, knew why Billy Winch had come. Never did more faithful heart beat in human breast than that heart thrumming away beneath Billy Winch's faded blue shirt. Winch, having always a shrewd guess where to find his chief, when Standing took it upon himself to disappear from headquarters, had caught at the first excuse to come in person and make sure with his own keen eyes that all went well with a man whom many hated and whom he, above all men, loved. "Hang Mexicali Joe to the first stout limb you come to!" Lynette, of impulses ungovernable, could have broken into laughter. For the amazing thing was that what Bruce Standing, impatient almost to fury, said he meant. He had suffered enough inconvenience at Mexicali Joe's hands; he wanted nothing of the man nor of his dross of gold. Winch did laugh aloud. And then, keen-eyed to see the play of his employer's expression, he grew sober and said earnestly: "On the level, Mr. Standing, how's the hurt comin' along? Been usin' the salve I told you to?" Lynette, though he had ignored her presence or because of this very attitude of his, could not hold back from exclaiming: "He has two wounds now! Another shot in the back! And he gives them less attention than a sane man would give a cut finger!" "The old fool! No more sense than a rabbit! Shot again? Twice in the back? Plugged a second time? The old fool!" Like a flash in his quick movements he was down from the saddle; he left his horse with dragging reins to wait for him; over the uneven ground he came forward rapidly, queerly, hopping like an oddly oversized bird. He caught at Standing's shoulder, crying out: