"It's worth it," he decided, his eyes lingering with her gracefully abandoned figure. "The whole damn thing, and may the devil whistle through his fingers until his fires burn cold! And she's mine, and I'll make her mine and keep her mine until the world goes dead. And my friend, Wilfred Deveril, if you've ever said anything in your life, you've said it now!" CHAPTER VII Glancing sunlight, striking at him through a nest of tumbled boulders upon the ridge, woke Babe Deveril. He sat up sharply, stiff and cold and confused, wondering briefly at finding himself here upon the mountainside. Lynette was already sitting up, a huddling unit of discomfort, her arms about her upgathered knees, her hair tousled, her clothing torn, her eyes showing him that, though she had slept, she, too, had awaked shivering and unrested. And yet, as he gathered his wits, she was striving to smile. "Good morning to you, my friend." He got stiffly to his feet, stretching his arms up high above his head. "At least, we're alive yet. That's something, Lynette." "It's everything!" Emulating him she sprang up, scornfully disregarding cramped body, her triumphant youth ignoring those little pains which shot through her as pricking reminders of last night's endeavors. "To live, to breathe, to be alive ... it's everything!" "When one thinks back upon the possibilities of last night," he answered, "the reply is 'Yes.' Good morning, and here's hoping that you had no end of sweet dreams." She looked at him curiously. "I did dream," she said. "Did you?" "No. When I slept, I slept hard. And your dreams?" "Were all of two men. Of you and another man, Timber-Wolf, you call him--Bruce Standing. I heard him call you 'Baby Devil'! That got into my dreams. I thought that we three...." She broke off, and still her eyes, fathomless, mysterious, regarded him strangely. "Well?" he demanded. "We three?" She shivered. And, knowing that he had seen, she exclaimed quickly: "That's because I'm cold! I'm near frozen. Can't we have a fire?" "But the dream?" he insisted. "Dreams are nothing by the time they're told," she answered swiftly. "So why tell them? And the fire?" "No," he told her, suddenly stubborn, and resentful that he could not have free entrance into her sleeping-life. "We went without it when we needed it most; now the sun's up and we don't need it; since, above everything, there's no breakfast to cook." "So you woke up hungry, too?" "Hungry? I was eating my supper when first you showed upon my horizon. And, what with looking at you or trying to look at you, I let half of my supper go by me! I'd give a hundred dollars right this minute for coffee and bacon and eggs!" "You want a lot for a hundred dollars," she smiled back at him. Her hands were already busy with her tumbled hair, for always was Lynette purely feminine to her dainty finger-tips. "I'd give all of that just for coffee alone." "Come," said Deveril, "Let's go. Are you ready?"