"I tell you he was hanging on the rim of nowhere, broke. And he used my three thousand and God knows what other stolen funds, and now again he is the one power across a hundred miles up here!" There was one other thing she meant to ask. Billy Winch had said just now that Standing was on his way; that all they had to do was _listen_ for him. She supposed that he had meant the clatter of a running horse's hoofs; and yet something in Winch's tone implied something else. No doubt Deveril understood; she was parting her lips to ask when, across the fields of the silent night, Bruce Standing himself answered her. A sudden thrill shot through her blood. As she was to learn later, there were many wonderful things about Bruce Standing. Among them were his reckless impudence and his glorious voice. Now, before ever she saw the man, she heard him singing, somewhere far out, under the stars, alone with his wilderness, sending far ahead of him into Big Pine the word of his coming. A coming which was in defiance of the order which had gone forth and which, with his superb assurance, he was ignoring. It was a voice as sweet and clear and true, for the high notes and the low notes alike, as a silver trumpet. She stopped breathing to listen. She felt her heart leap and quicken; a tingling quivered along her nerves. Never had she heard singing like that, wild, free, a voice to haunt and linger echoing in the memory. And then, all of a sudden, she was set shivering. For the voice had done with the song and, at the end, with a great unexpected upgathering of sound was poured forth into a long-drawn-out call that was like nothing on earth save the howling of a wolf. The night call throbbed and billowed across the disturbed silences and all of a sudden was gone and the night was again hushed and still. "There you have one of the two good reasons why men call him Timber-Wolf," said Deveril with a grunt. She scarcely heard. Somewhere, deep down within her, that golden outpouring, that rush of fierceness at the end, echoed and lived on. CHAPTER IV