"You will have to make your own decision," she told him as coolly as she could. "If you think that I am mistaken or that I am trying to play with you as Joe did, you are free to go where you please." Taggart began cursing; his grip tightened on her arm so that he hurt her terribly as he shouted at her: "I'll give you one word of warning, little one! If you put up a game on us now, you cut your own throat. In the first place I'll make it my business that if we get shut out, you get shut out along with us. And in the second place when I'm through with you no other man in the world will have any use for you. Got that?" She knew what he had done to Mexicali Joe; she could guess what other unthinkable things he would have done. And she knew that if now she tricked Jim Taggart and he found her out ... _before Bruce Standing came_ ... she could only pray to die. And yet at this, the supreme test in her life, she held steady to a swiftly taken purpose. She would not put the game into these men's hands. And she held steadfastly to her certainty, knowing the man, that Bruce Standing would come. Therefore, though her face went a little pale, and her mouth was so dry that she did not dare speak, she shrugged her shoulders. "Come, then," said Taggart. "Enough palaver. We're on our way." And of them all, only Babe Deveril was still distrustful. And thus Lynette, accepting her own grave risk with clear-eyed comprehension and yet with unswerving determination, led these four men to a spot where she knew that they would not find that gold for which every man of them had striven so doggedly; thus it was she who made it possible for Bruce Standing to be before all others and to triumph and strike the death-blow to Big Pine and to begin that relentless campaign which was to end in humbling his ancient enemy, Young Gallup. Yet there was little exultation in Lynette's heart, but a growing fear, when, after hours of furious haste, she and the four men came at last into Light Ladies' Gulch and to the base of the towering red cliffs. Cliff Shipton knew more of gold-mining than any of the others and Lynette watched him narrowly as he went up and down under the high cliffs. And she knew that she in turn was watched; in the first excitement of coming to the long-sought spot she had hoped that she might escape. But both Taggart and Deveril followed her at every step with their eyes. Desperately she clung to her assurance that Bruce Standing would come for her. He had said that he would come "though it were ten thousand mile." He might have difficulties in finding her; she might have to wait a little while, an hour or two, or three hours. But it remained that he was a man to surmount obstacles insurmountable to other men; a man to pin faith upon. Yet time passed and he did not come.