Bruce Standing himself, holding himself very erect, his head well up and his eyes cold and hard, opened the door. "So the devil refused to take you, after all," he grumbled. "They had it reported that Deveril had killed you. At that, it looks as though he'd come close to doing a good job of it." For Jim Taggart's face, too, was white, and there was a broad band about his head, stained in one spot near the left temple. "The same kind thought rides double," rejoined Taggart, with a sudden flash of the eyes. "That wildcat of a girl came close to marking out your ticket to hell." "Where is she now?" asked Standing eagerly. "Did they bring her back?" "Gone clean, for the present," answered Taggart. "If that fool of a Babe Deveril hadn't butted in, just piling up trouble for himself, and knocked me out while I wasn't even looking at him, I'd of had her by the heels. And now the two of 'em, two of a kind, if you ask me, are off into the mountains together. And I'm starting after them in ten minutes, and will drag 'em back before to-morrow night, just as sure as you're a foot high." "What have you come to sling all this at me for?" snapped Standing. "I wanted to see if you was dead," returned Taggart coolly. "Now I just pinch both of 'em for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. If you'd of died, it would of been murder for her." "At least, I'm glad you blew in, Jim Taggart. There are two things it might be just as well to get straight. First: When you and I, a dozen years ago, were sidekicks, prospecting together, bunking together, grubstaking each other, taking chances a lot of the time on a quick, hard finish to the little old game of life, we had it understood that if I died all of my belongings went to you; and if you cashed in first, anything you had went to me." Taggart nodded and said swiftly: "My papers stand that way to this day! I never go back...." "The more fool you, then," jeered Standing. "I'm done with you, and my papers are changed already...." "Already?" Taggart started visibly. "Since when?" "Since yesterday. Nothing I own, not so much as a wart on a log of mine, ever goes your way." The bitterness in Taggart's soul overspilled into his voice as he cried out savagely: "Sure, there you are! That's the way it goes. Now that your luck's been running high and you don't need me, now that my luck's been dragging bottom, why then you're ready to pitch me over...."