The man fired, but he was not quick enough. At that distance, had his finger touched the hair-trigger the tenth of a second sooner, he could not have failed to kill. But he was not the man, even though armed, to dictate to Timber-Wolf. For Standing made instant answer to that command, "Stop!" and hurled his only weapon, a heavy wood-cutter's axe, straight into the deputy's face. The bullet went wild; the man who had fired it, through the rarest chance left alive, went down in a heap, unconscious before he struck ground. For, though the axe blade had very narrowly missed his face, the hard hickory handle had taken him full across the eyebrows and came near being the death of him. His rifle clattered against the rock wall of the jail. Bruce Standing, who had paused but the briefest moment, came on and stepped over the fallen man, and caught up his axe again. He stooped long enough to make out that the deputy's head was not split open; then he swung up his axe, high above his head, and brought it crashing down against the thick oak padlocked door. The sound of the stroke echoed and the echoes were lost in the striking of the second blow. And, when for the third time the axe rose and fell, flashing in the light of the fires, the door fell. "Out you come, Joe." Standing's deep, full voice rumbled in a sort of rich, placid content. And out like a rabbit, darted Mexicali Joe, looking pinched and starved and frightened. "It is you, Señor!" he gasped. "The crowd will be after you," said Standing. "And I'm not going to worry about what happens to you after this." He was turning away when Joe caught his sleeve, and stood on his tiptoes and began a rapid, excited whispering. Standing hesitated, then laughed and shook the man off. "You are a good little sport, Mexico," he chuckled. "Now, on your way." Joe, with never another look behind him, turned and ran, disappearing about the corner of the jail, sending back an account of himself in the sound of his racing footfalls among the pines. Once again came a great shouting from the crowd in the road; they had seen, and now that they had their hearts' desire in having Mexicali Joe free, they saw themselves losing all hope of coming at his secret because they were losing him. Their brief interest in Bruce Standing was dead for the present; Joe ran like a scared cat, and they, like so many yelping dogs, set after him. And Timber-Wolf, watching, standing where he was with his big hands on his hips, roared with laughter. Babe Deveril and the girl, Lynette Brooke, had seen much of all this. They were at the time on their way to the Gallup House, she to her room and he to his meeting with his lawless kinsman. Thus it happened that Deveril's first sight of Timber-Wolf in half a dozen years, and Lynette's first sight of him in all her life, was at a moment when he was engaged in an episode of the type which made him stand apart as the man he was.