She was not looking at him; she did not appear to mark his words. He saw a sudden change in her expression; she started and the blood rushed back into her cheeks and her eyes brightened. He looked where she was looking. Far across the cañon, rising up among the trees, was a cloud of dust. Some one was riding there, riding furiously.... Together they watched, waiting for that _some one_ to appear in the one spot where the winding road could be glimpsed through the trees. And in a moment they saw not one man only, but a dozen or a score of men, men stooping in their saddles and riding hard, veiled in the rising dust puffing up under their horses' flying feet. Now and then came a pale glint of the sun striking upon the rifles which, to the last man, they carried. They came into view with a rush, were gone with a rush. The great cloud of dust rose and thinned and disappeared. "That road will bring them down into Light Ladies' Gulch where it makes the wide loop about three miles from here," said Deveril. "Have you an idea who they are, Lynette?" "No," she said, her lips dry; "I don't understand." "I think that I do understand," he told her, with a flash of anger. "Those are Standing's men and they are riding, armed, like the mill-tails of hell. Listen to me while you've got the chance! That's not the first bunch of men who have ridden over there like that to-day. Two hours ago, when you went down the cliffs with the others and I stopped up here, I saw the same sort of thing happening. If you're so innocent," he sneered at her, "I'll read you the riddle. I've told you those are Standing's men; then why the devil are they riding like that and in such numbers? They're going straight down into the Gulch where the gold is while you hold us back, up here. And Standing is paying off an old grudge and jamming more gold into his bulging pockets.... And you've got some men to reckon with in ten minutes who'll make you sorry that you were ever born a girl!" "No!" she cried hoarsely. "No. I won't believe it...." He failed to catch just what she was thinking. She refused to believe that Bruce Standing, instead of coming to her had raced instead to Mexicali Joe's gold; that instead of scattering his men across fifty miles of country seeking her, he was massing them at a new gold-mine. Bruce Standing was not like that! She cried it passionately within her spirit. She had stood loyally by him; she had, at all costs, kept her word to him ... she had come to believe in his love for her and to long for his return.... "If you saw men before ... if you thought the thing that you think now ... why didn't you rush on after them? It's not true!" "I didn't rush after them," he returned curtly, "because I'd be a fool for my pains and would only give that wolf-devil another chance to laugh in my face. For if he's got this lead on us ... why, then, the game is his." "But I won't believe...."