Lynette heard them shouting at each other, two men who hated each other, two men seeing red as they looked through the spectacles which always heady hatred wears. Men, both of them; masculinity asserting itself triumphantly, belligerently; manhood rampant and, on the spur of the moment, as warlike as two young bulls contending for a herd.... She heard them cursing each other; heard such plain-spoken Anglo-Saxon epithets hurled back and forth as at any other time would have set her ears burning. Just now the epithets meant less than nothing to her; they were but windy words, and a word was less, far less, than a stout club in a man's hand or a stone to hurl. She was of a mind to run while yet she could; but that was only the first natural reaction, lost and forgotten instantly. She stood without moving, watching them. An odd thing, she thought afterward, wondering, that that which at the moment made the strongest, longest-lasting impression upon her was the picture which Timber-Wolf, himself, created as, with the low sun at his back, he came rushing down upon them. Just now the mountain slope had constituted but a quiet landscape in softening tones, like a painting in pastels, with only the sun dropping down into the pine fringe to constitute a brighter focal point; and now, all of a sudden, it was as though the master artist, with impulsive inspiration, had slung with sweeping brush this new element into the picture--that of a great blond giant of a man, young and vigorous, and at this critical hour consumed with hatred and anger and triumphant glee. He was always one to punish his own enemies, was Bruce Standing. And now one felt that he carried vengeance in both big, hard, relentless hands. On he came, almost at a run, so eager was he. Came so close before he stopped that Lynette saw the flash of his blue eyes--eyes which, when she had seen them first in Big Pine had been laughing and _innocent_--which now were the eyes of a blue-eyed devil. He was laughing; it was a devil's laugh, she thought. For he jeered at her and her companion. His mockery made her blood tingle; his eyes said evil things of her. Her cheeks went hot-red under that one flashing look.