Читать книгу Timber-Wolf онлайн

44 страница из 95

"But...."

"The law? When he wouldn't either admit or deny? When he just laughed and said, 'Where in this country, my country, will you get a jury to convict me?' And where, by the same token, was any money left in my pockets to do legal battle with a man intrenched as he is in his old mountains?"

"And he goes on prospering?"

"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.