All along he had intrigued her, with his handsome face and devil-may-care air and light gracefulness; she estimated coolly that if, as he had said of himself, he had a memory for pretty girls it was something more than likely that more than one pretty girl had carried in her heart the memory of him. Now, suddenly, his good looks were sinister; his gaiety was so utterly gone that it was next door to impossible to imagine that he could ever be inconsequentially gay. The innate evil in the man stood up naked and ugly. And all because some man, a certain Bruce Standing, had sent a message commanding a meeting at the Gallup House. It was not exactly the thing to do to put her question, but interest, mounting above mere curiosity, piqued her, and, certain of an answer in his present mood, she offered innocently: "It seems to me I have heard the name Bruce Standing. Just who is he?" Deveril glared at her and for a brief fragment of a second she was afraid of him; it was as though, by the mere mention of the name, she drew on herself something of the hatred he must have felt for this man Standing. "You heard me read his title clear enough to his one-legged dog Winch," he told her harshly. "He is a man who came into this country with nothing a dozen years ago and who now rolls in the fat of his ill-gotten gains. He's a land hog who has robbed right and left and who has with him the devil's luck. He owns thousands of acres of land out yonder." A wide sweep of his arm indicated the endlessly rolling wilderness land, sombre ridges and ebony cañons, rising into stony barren crests here, thick timbered yonder where they slumbered under the first stars. "He operates mines; he gambles in gold and copper and lumber ... and life, curse him! And in human souls, his own with the rest. He runs half a dozen lumber-camps and has a thousand of the toughest men in the world working for him at one place and another. Men hate him for what he is, a cold-blooded highwayman. They have sent him a warning not to show his face in Big Pine, and being of the devil's spawn he sends me word to meet him at Gallup's! That's his way and his nerve and his colossal conceit. May hell take him!" "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?"