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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Border Legion, by Zane Grey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Border Legion
+
+Author: Zane Grey
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4552]
+Posting Date: February 3, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BORDER LEGION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BORDER LEGION
+
+By Zane Grey
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+Joan Randle reined in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and
+with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before
+her at the wild and looming mountain range.
+
+"Jim wasn't fooling me," she said. "He meant it. He's going straight for
+the border... Oh, why did I taunt him!"
+
+It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that year
+was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever known
+in the West. The rush for gold had peopled California with a horde of
+lawless men of every kind and class. And the vigilantes and then the
+rich strikes in Idaho had caused a reflux of that dark tide of humanity.
+Strange tales of blood and gold drifted into the camps, and prospectors
+and hunters met with many unknown men.
+
+Joan had quarreled with Jim Cleve, and she was bitterly regretting it.
+Joan was twenty years old, tall, strong, dark. She had been born in
+Missouri, where her father had been well-to-do and prominent, until,
+like many another man of his day, he had impeded the passage of a
+bullet. Then Joan had become the protegee of an uncle who had responded
+to the call of gold; and the latter part of her life had been spent in
+the wilds.
+
+She had followed Jim's trail for miles out toward the range. And now she
+dismounted to see if his tracks were as fresh as she had believed. He
+had left the little village camp about sunrise. Someone had seen him
+riding away and had told Joan. Then he had tarried on the way, for it
+was now midday. Joan pondered. She had become used to his idle threats
+and disgusted with his vacillations. That had been the trouble--Jim
+was amiable, lovable, but since meeting Joan he had not exhibited any
+strength of character. Joan stood beside her horse and looked away
+toward the dark mountains. She was daring, resourceful, used to horses
+and trails and taking care of herself; and she did not need anyone to
+tell her that she had gone far enough. It had been her hope to come up
+with Jim. Always he had been repentant. But this time was different. She
+recalled his lean, pale face--so pale that freckles she did not know he
+had showed through--and his eyes, usually so soft and mild, had glinted
+like steel. Yes, it had been a bitter, reckless face. What had she said
+to him? She tried to recall it.
+
+The night before at twilight Joan had waited for him. She had given
+him precedence over the few other young men of the village, a fact she
+resentfully believed he did not appreciate. Jim was unsatisfactory in
+every way except in the way he cared for her. And that also--for he
+cared too much.
+
+When Joan thought how Jim loved her, all the details of that night
+became vivid. She sat alone under the spruce-trees near the cabin. The
+shadows thickened, and then lightened under a rising moon. She heard the
+low hum of insects, a distant laugh of some woman of the village, and
+the murmur of the brook. Jim was later than usual. Very likely, as
+her uncle had hinted, Jim had tarried at the saloon that had lately
+disrupted the peace of the village. The village was growing, and
+Joan did not like the change. There were too many strangers, rough,
+loud-voiced, drinking men. Once it had been a pleasure to go to the
+village store; now it was an ordeal. Somehow Jim had seemed to be
+unfavorably influenced by these new conditions. Still, he had never
+amounted to much. Her resentment, or some feeling she had, was reaching
+a climax. She got up from her seat. She would not wait any longer for
+him, and when she did see him it would be to tell him a few blunt facts.
+
+Just then there was a slight rustle behind her. Before she could turn
+someone seized her in powerful arms. She was bent backward in a bearish
+embrace, so that she could neither struggle nor cry out. A dark face
+loomed over hers--came closer. Swift kisses closed her eyes, burned her
+cheeks, and ended passionately on her lips. They had some strange power
+over her. Then she was released.
+
+Joan staggered back, frightened, outraged. She was so dazed she did not
+recognize the man, if indeed she knew him. But a laugh betrayed him. It
+was Jim.
+
+"You thought I had no nerve," he said. "What do you think of that?"
+
+Suddenly Joan was blindly furious. She could have killed him. She had
+never given him any right, never made him any promise, never let him
+believe she cared. And he had dared--! The hot blood boiled in her
+cheeks. She was furious with him, but intolerably so with herself,
+because somehow those kisses she had resented gave her unknown pain
+and shame. They had sent a shock through all her being. She thought she
+hated him.
+
+"You--you--" she broke out. "Jim Cleve, that ends you with me!"
+
+"Reckon I never had a beginning with you," he replied, bitterly. "It was
+worth a good deal... I'm not sorry... By Heaven--I've--kissed you!"
+
+He breathed heavily. She could see how pale he had grown in the shadowy
+moonlight. She sensed a difference in him--a cool, reckless defiance.
+
+"You'll be sorry," she said. "I'll have nothing to do with you any
+more."
+
+"All right. But I'm not, and I won't be sorry."
+
+She wondered whether he had fallen under the influence of drink. Jim
+had never cared for liquor, which virtue was about the only one he
+possessed. Remembering his kisses, she knew he had not been drinking.
+There was a strangeness about him, though, that she could not fathom.
+Had he guessed his kisses would have that power? If he dared again--!
+She trembled, and it was not only rage. But she would teach him a
+lesson.
+
+"Joan, I kissed you because I can't be a hangdog any longer," he said.
+"I love you and I'm no good without you. You must care a little for me.
+Let's marry... I'll--"
+
+"Never!" she replied, like flint. "You're no good at all."
+
+"But I am," he protested, with passion. "I used to do things. But
+since--since I've met you I've lost my nerve. I'm crazy for you. You
+let the other men run after you. Some of them aren't fit to--to--Oh, I'm
+sick all the time! Now it's longing and then it's jealousy. Give me a
+chance, Joan."
+
+"Why?" she queried, coldly. "Why should I? You're shiftless. You won't
+work. When you do find a little gold you squander it. You have nothing
+but a gun. You can't do anything but shoot."
+
+"Maybe that'll come in handy," he said, lightly.
+
+"Jim Cleve, you haven't it in you even to be BAD," she went on,
+stingingly.
+
+At that he made a violent gesture. Then he loomed over her. "Joan
+Handle, do you mean that?" he asked.
+
+"I surely do," she responded. At last she had struck fire from him. The
+fact was interesting. It lessened her anger.
+
+"Then I'm so low, so worthless, so spineless that I can't even be bad?"
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"That's what you think of me--after I've ruined myself for love of you?"
+
+She laughed tauntingly. How strange and hot a glee she felt in hurting
+him!
+
+"By God, I'll show you!" he cried, hoarsely.
+
+"What will you do, Jim?" she asked, mockingly.
+
+"I'll shake this camp. I'll rustle for the border. I'll get in with
+Kells and Gulden... You'll hear of me, Joan Randle!"
+
+These were names of strange, unknown, and wild men of a growing and
+terrible legion on the border. Out there, somewhere, lived desperados,
+robbers, road-agents, murderers. More and more rumor had brought tidings
+of them into the once quiet village. Joan felt a slight cold sinking
+sensation at her heart. But this was only a magnificent threat of Jim's.
+He could not do such a thing. She would never let him, even if he could.
+But after the incomprehensible manner of woman, she did not tell him
+that.
+
+"Bah! You haven't the nerve!" she retorted, with another mocking laugh.
+
+Haggard and fierce, he glared down at her a moment, and then without
+another word he strode away. Joan was amazed, and a little sick, a
+little uncertain: still she did not call him back.
+
+And now at noon of the next day she had tracked him miles toward the
+mountains. It was a broad trail he had taken, one used by prospectors
+and hunters. There was no danger of her getting lost. What risk she
+ran was of meeting some of these border ruffians that had of late been
+frequent visitors in the village. Presently she mounted again and rode
+down the ridge. She would go a mile or so farther.
+
+Behind every rock and cedar she expected to find Jim. Surely he had only
+threatened her. But she had taunted him in a way no man could stand, and
+if there were any strength of character in him he would show it now. Her
+remorse and dread increased. After all, he was only a boy--only a couple
+of years older than she was. Under stress of feeling he might go to any
+extreme. Had she misjudged him? If she had not, she had at least been
+brutal. But he had dared to kiss her! Every time she thought of that
+a tingling, a confusion, a hot shame went over her. And at length Joan
+marveled to find that out of the affront to her pride, and the quarrel,
+and the fact of his going and of her following, and especially out of
+this increasing remorseful dread, there had flourished up a strange and
+reluctant respect for Jim Cleve.
+
+She climbed another ridge and halted again. This time she saw a horse
+and rider down in the green. Her heart leaped. It must be Jim returning.
+After all, then, he had only threatened. She felt relieved and glad, yet
+vaguely sorry. She had been right in her conviction.
+
+She had not watched long, however, before she saw that this was not the
+horse Jim usually rode. She took the precaution then to hide behind some
+bushes, and watched from there. When the horseman approached closer
+she discerned that instead of Jim it was Harvey Roberts, a man of the
+village and a good friend of her uncle's. Therefore she rode out of her
+covert and hailed him. It was a significant thing that at the sound
+of her voice Roberts started suddenly and reached for his gun. Then he
+recognized her.
+
+"Hello, Joan!" he exclaimed, turning her way. "Reckon you give me a
+scare. You ain't alone way out here?"
+
+"Yes. I was trailing Jim when I saw you," she replied. "Thought you were
+Jim."
+
+"Trailin' Jim! What's up?"
+
+"We quarreled. He swore he was going to the devil. Over on the border!
+I was mad and told him to go.... But I'm sorry now--and have been trying
+to catch up with him."
+
+"Ahuh!... So that's Jim's trail. I sure was wonderin'. Joan, it turns
+off a few miles back an' takes the trail for the border. I know. I've
+been in there."
+
+Joan glanced up sharply at Roberts. His scarred and grizzled face seemed
+grave and he avoided her gaze.
+
+"You don't believe--Jim'll really go?" she asked, hurriedly.
+
+"Reckon I do, Joan," he replied, after a pause. "Jim is just fool
+enough. He had been gettrn' recklessler lately. An', Joan, the times
+ain't provocatin' a young feller to be good. Jim had a bad fight the
+other night. He about half killed young Bradley. But I reckon you know."
+
+"I've heard nothing," she replied. "Tell me. Why did they fight?"
+
+"Report was that Bradley talked oncomplementary about you."
+
+Joan experienced a sweet, warm rush of blood--another new and strange
+emotion. She did not like Bradley. He had been persistent and offensive.
+
+"Why didn't Jim tell me?" she queried, half to herself.
+
+"Reckon he wasn't proud of the shape he left Bradley in," replied
+Roberts, with a laugh. "Come on, Joan, an' make back tracks for home."
+
+Joan was silent a moment while she looked over the undulating green
+ridges toward the great gray and black walls. Something stirred deep
+within her. Her father in his youth had been an adventurer. She felt the
+thrill and the call of her blood. And she had been unjust to a man who
+loved her.
+
+"I'm going after him," she said.
+
+Roberts did not show any surprise. He looked at the position of the sun.
+"Reckon we might overtake him an' get home before sundown," he said,
+laconically, as he turned his horse. "We'll make a short cut across here
+a few miles, an' strike his trail. Can't miss it."
+
+Then he set off at a brisk trot and Joan fell in behind. She had a busy
+mind, and it was a sign of her preoccupation that she forgot to thank
+Roberts. Presently they struck into a valley, a narrow depression
+between the foothills and the ridges, and here they made faster time.
+The valley appeared miles long. Toward the middle of it Roberts called
+out to Joan, and, looking down, she saw they had come up with Jim's
+trail. Here Roberts put his mount to a canter, and at that gait they
+trailed Jim out of the valley and up a slope which appeared to be a
+pass into the mountains. Time flew by for Joan, because she was always
+peering ahead in the hope and expectation of seeing Jim off in the
+distance. But she had no glimpse of him. Now and then Roberts would
+glance around at the westering sun. The afternoon had far advanced. Joan
+began to worry about home. She had been so sure of coming up with Jim
+and returning early in the day that she had left no word as to her
+intentions. Probably by this time somebody was out looking for her.
+
+The country grew rougher, rock-strewn, covered with cedars and patches
+of pine. Deer crashed out of the thickets and grouse whirred up from
+under the horses. The warmth of the summer afternoon chilled.
+
+"Reckon we'd better give it up," called Roberts back to her.
+
+"No--no. Go on," replied Joan.
+
+And they urged their horses faster. Finally they reached the summit of
+the slope. From that height they saw down into a round, shallow valley,
+which led on, like all the deceptive reaches, to the ranges. There was
+water down there. It glinted like red ribbon in the sunlight. Not a
+living thing was in sight. Joan grew more discouraged. It seemed there
+was scarcely any hope of overtaking Jim that day. His trail led off
+round to the left and grew difficult to follow. Finally, to make matters
+worse, Roberts's horse slipped in a rocky wash and lamed himself. He did
+not want to go on, and, when urged, could hardly walk.
+
+Roberts got off to examine the injury. "Wal, he didn't break his leg,"
+he said, which was his manner of telling how bad the injury was. "Joan,
+I reckon there'll be some worryin' back home tonight. For your horse
+can't carry double an' I can't walk."
+
+Joan dismounted. There was water in the wash, and she helped Roberts
+bathe the sprained and swelling joint. In the interest and sympathy of
+the moment she forgot her own trouble.
+
+"Reckon we'll have to make camp right here," said Roberts, looking
+around. "Lucky I've a pack on that saddle. I can make you comfortable.
+But we'd better be careful about a fire an' not have one after dark."
+
+"There's no help for it," replied Joan. "Tomorrow we'll go on after
+Jim. He can't be far ahead now." She was glad that it was impossible to
+return home until the next day.
+
+Roberts took the pack off his horse, and then the saddle. And he was
+bending over in the act of loosening the cinches of Joan's saddle when
+suddenly he straightened up with a jerk.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+Joan heard soft, dull thumps on the turf and then the sharp crack of an
+unshod hoof upon stone. Wheeling, she saw three horsemen. They were
+just across the wash and coming toward her. One rider pointed in her
+direction. Silhouetted against the red of the sunset they made dark and
+sinister figures. Joan glanced apprehensively at Roberts. He was staring
+with a look of recognition in his eyes. Under his breath he muttered a
+curse. And although Joan was not certain, she believed that his face had
+shaded gray.
+
+The three horsemen halted on the rim of the wash. One of them was
+leading a mule that carried a pack and a deer carcass. Joan had seen
+many riders apparently just like these, but none had ever so subtly and
+powerfully affected her.
+
+"Howdy," greeted one of the men.
+
+And then Joan was positive that the face of Roberts had turned ashen
+gray.
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+"It ain't you--KELLS?"
+
+Roberts's query was a confirmation of his own recognition. And the
+other's laugh was an answer, if one were needed.
+
+The three horsemen crossed the wash and again halted, leisurely, as if
+time was no object. They were all young, under thirty. The two who had
+not spoken were rough-garbed, coarse-featured, and resembled in general
+a dozen men Joan saw every day. Kells was of a different stamp. Until he
+looked at her he reminded her of someone she had known back in Missouri;
+after he looked at her she was aware, in a curious, sickening way, that
+no such person as he had ever before seen her. He was pale, gray-eyed,
+intelligent, amiable. He appeared to be a man who had been a gentleman.
+But there was something strange, intangible, immense about him. Was that
+the effect of his presence or of his name? Kells! It was only a word to
+Joan. But it carried a nameless and terrible suggestion. During the
+last year many dark tales had gone from camp to camp in Idaho--some too
+strange, too horrible for credence--and with every rumor the fame of
+Kells had grown, and also a fearful certainty of the rapid growth of a
+legion of evil men out on the border. But no one in the village or from
+any of the camps ever admitted having seen this Kells. Had fear kept
+them silent? Joan was amazed that Roberts evidently knew this man.
+
+Kells dismounted and offered his hand. Roberts took it and shook it
+constrainedly.
+
+"Where did we meet last?" asked Kells.
+
+"Reckon it was out of Fresno," replied Roberts, and it was evident that
+he tried to hide the effect of a memory.
+
+Then Kells touched his hat to Joan, giving her the fleetest kind of a
+glance. "Rather off the track aren't you?" he asked Roberts.
+
+"Reckon we are," replied Roberts, and he began to lose some of his
+restraint. His voice sounded clearer and did not halt. "Been trailin'
+Miss Randle's favorite hoss. He's lost. An' we got farther 'n we had any
+idee. Then my hoss went lame. 'Fraid we can't start home to-night."
+
+"Where are you from?"
+
+"Hoadley. Bill Hoadley's town, back thirty miles or so."
+
+"Well, Roberts, if you've no objection we'll camp here with you,"
+continued Kells. "We've got some fresh meat."
+
+With that he addressed a word to his comrades, and they repaired to a
+cedar-tree near-by, where they began to unsaddle and unpack.
+
+Then Roberts, bending nearer Joan, as if intent on his own pack, began
+to whisper, hoarsely: "That's Jack Kells, the California road-agent.
+He's a gun fighter--a hell-bent rattlesnake. When I saw him last he
+had a rope round his neck an' was bein' led away to be hanged. I heerd
+afterward he was rescued by pals. Joan, if the idee comes into his
+head he'll kill me. I don't know what to do. For God's sake think of
+somethin'!... Use your woman's wits!... We couldn't be in a wuss fix!"
+
+Joan felt rather unsteady on her feet, so that it was a relief to sit
+down. She was cold and sick inwardly, almost stunned. Some great peril
+menaced her. Men like Roberts did not talk that way without cause. She
+was brave; she was not unused to danger. But this must be a different
+kind, compared with which all she had experienced was but insignificant.
+She could not grasp Roberts's intimation. Why should he be killed? They
+had no gold, no valuables. Even their horses were nothing to inspire
+robbery. It must be that there was peril to Roberts and to her because
+she was a girl, caught out in the wilds, easy prey for beasts of evil
+men. She had heard of such things happening. Still, she could not
+believe it possible for her. Roberts could protect her. Then this
+amiable, well-spoken Kells, he was no Western rough--he spoke like an
+educated man; surely he would not harm her. So her mind revolved round
+fears, conjectures, possibilities; she could not find her wits. She
+could not think how to meet the situation, even had she divined what the
+situation was to be.
+
+While she sat there in the shade of a cedar the men busied themselves
+with camp duties. None of them appeared to pay any attention to Joan.
+They talked while they worked, as any other group of campers might have
+talked, and jested and laughed. Kells made a fire, and carried water,
+then broke cedar boughs for later camp-fire use; one of the strangers
+whom they called Bill hobbled the horses; the other unrolled the pack,
+spread a tarpaulin, and emptied the greasy sacks; Roberts made biscuit
+dough for the oven.
+
+The sun sank red and a ruddy twilight fell. It soon passed. Darkness had
+about set in when Roberts came over to Joan, carrying bread, coffee, and
+venison.
+
+"Here's your supper, Joan," he called, quite loud and cheerily, and then
+he whispered: "Mebbe it ain't so bad. They-all seem friendly. But I'm
+scared, Joan. If you jest wasn't so dam' handsome, or if only he hadn't
+seen you!"
+
+"Can't we slip off in the dark?" she whispered in return.
+
+"We might try. But it'd be no use if they mean bad. I can't make up my
+mind yet what's comin' off. It's all right for you to pretend you're
+bashful. But don't lose your nerve."
+
+Then he returned to the camp-fire. Joan was hungry. She ate and drank
+what had been given her, and that helped her to realize reality. And
+although dread abided with her, she grew curious. Almost she imagined
+she was fascinated by her predicament. She had always been an emotional
+girl of strong will and self-restraint. She had always longed for she
+knew not what--perhaps freedom. Certain places had haunted her. She had
+felt that something should have happened to her there. Yet nothing ever
+had happened. Certain books had obsessed her, even when a child, and
+often to her mother's dismay; for these books had been of wild places
+and life on the sea, adventure, and bloodshed. It had always been said
+of her that she should have been a boy.
+
+Night settled down black. A pale, narrow cloud, marked by a train of
+stars, extended across the dense blue sky. The wind moaned in the cedars
+and roared in the replenished camp-fire. Sparks flew away into the
+shadows. And on the puffs of smoke that blew toward her came the sweet,
+pungent odor of burning cedar. Coyotes barked off under the brush, and
+from away on the ridge drifted the dismal defiance of a wolf.
+
+Camp-life was no new thing to Joan. She had crossed the plains in
+a wagon-train, that more than once had known the long-drawn yell of
+hostile Indians. She had prospected and hunted in the mountains with her
+uncle, weeks at a time. But never before this night had the wildness,
+the loneliness, been so vivid to her.
+
+Roberts was on his knees, scouring his oven with wet sand. His big,
+shaggy head nodded in the firelight. He seemed pondering and thick and
+slow. There was a burden upon him. The man Bill and his companion lay
+back against stones and conversed low. Kells stood up in the light of
+the blaze. He had a pipe at which he took long pulls and then sent up
+clouds of smoke. There was nothing imposing in his build or striking in
+his face, at that distance; but it took no second look to see here was
+a man remarkably out of the ordinary. Some kind of power and intensity
+emanated from him. From time to time he appeared to glance in Joan's
+direction; still, she could not be sure, for his eyes were but shadows.
+He had cast aside his coat. He wore a vest open all the way, and a
+checked soft shirt, with a black tie hanging untidily. A broad belt
+swung below his hip and in the holster was a heavy gun. That was a
+strange place to carry a gun, Joan thought. It looked awkward to her.
+When he walked it might swing round and bump against his leg. And he
+certainly would have to put it some other place when he rode.
+
+"Say, have you got a blanket for that girl?" asked Kells, removing his
+pipe from his lips to address Roberts.
+
+"I got saddle-blankets," responded Roberts. "You see, we didn't expect
+to be caught out."
+
+"I'll let you have one," said Kells, walking away from the fire. "It
+will be cold." He returned with a blanket, which he threw to Roberts.
+
+"Much obliged," muttered Roberts.
+
+"I'll bunk by the fire," went on the other, and with that he sat down
+and appeared to become absorbed in thought.
+
+Roberts brought the borrowed blanket and several saddle-blankets over to
+where Joan was, and laying them down he began to kick and scrape stones
+and brush aside.
+
+"Pretty rocky place, this here is," he said. "Reckon you'll sleep some,
+though."
+
+Then he began arranging the blankets into a bed. Presently Joan felt a
+tug at her riding-skirt. She looked down.
+
+"I'll be right by you," he whispered, with his big hand to his mouth,
+"an' I ain't a-goin' to sleep none."
+
+Whereupon he returned to the camp-fire. Presently Joan, not because she
+was tired or sleepy, but because she wanted to act naturally, lay down
+on the bed and pulled a blanket up over her. There was no more talking
+among the men. Once she heard the jingle of spurs and the rustle of
+cedar brush. By and by Roberts came back to her, dragging his saddle,
+and lay down near her. Joan raised up a little to see Kells motionless
+and absorbed by the fire. He had a strained and tense position. She sank
+back softly and looked up at the cold bright stars. What was going to
+happen to her? Something terrible! The very night shadows, the silence,
+the presence of strange men, all told her. And a shudder that was a
+thrill ran over and over her.
+
+She would lie awake. It would be impossible to sleep. And suddenly into
+her full mind flashed an idea to slip away in the darkness, find her
+horse, and so escape from any possible menace. This plan occupied her
+thoughts for a long while. If she had not been used to Western ways she
+would have tried just that thing. But she rejected it. She was not
+sure that she could slip away, or find her horse, or elude pursuit,
+and certainly not sure of her way home. It would be best to stay with
+Roberts.
+
+When that was settled her mind ceased to race. She grew languid and
+sleepy. The warmth of the blankets stole over her. She had no idea of
+sleeping, yet she found sleep more and more difficult to resist.
+Time that must have been hours passed. The fire died down and then
+brightened; the shadows darkened and then lightened. Someone now and
+then got up to throw on wood. The thump of hobbled hoofs sounded out in
+the darkness. The wind was still and the coyotes were gone. She could
+no longer open her eyes. They seemed glued shut. And then gradually all
+sense of the night and the wild, of the drowsy warmth, faded.
+
+When she awoke the air was nipping cold. Her eyes snapped open clear and
+bright. The tips of the cedars were ruddy in the sunrise. A camp-fire
+crackled. Blue smoke curled upward. Joan sat up with a rush of memory.
+Roberts and Kells were bustling round the fire. The man Bill was
+carrying water. The other fellow had brought in the horses and was
+taking off the hobbles. No one, apparently, paid any attention to Joan.
+She got up and smoothed out her tangled hair, which she always wore in
+a braid down her back when she rode. She had slept, then, and in her
+boots! That was the first time she had ever done that. When she went
+down to the brook to bathe her face and wash her hands, the men still,
+apparently, took no notice of her. She began to hope that Roberts had
+exaggerated their danger. Her horse was rather skittish and did not care
+for strange hands. He broke away from the bunch. Joan went after him,
+even lost sight of camp. Presently, after she caught him, she led him
+back to camp and tied him up. And then she was so far emboldened as to
+approach the fire and to greet the men.
+
+"Good morning," she said, brightly.
+
+Kells had his back turned at the moment. He did not move or speak or
+give any sign he had heard. The man Bill stared boldly at her, but
+without a word. Roberts returned her greeting, and as she glanced
+quickly at him, drawn by his voice, he turned away. But she had seen
+that his face was dark, haggard, worn.
+
+Joan's cheer and hope sustained a sudden and violent check. There was
+something wrong in this group, and she could not guess what it was. She
+seemed to have a queer, dragging weight at her limbs. She was glad
+to move over to a stone and sink down upon it. Roberts brought her
+breakfast, but he did not speak or look at her. His hands shook. And
+this frightened Joan. What was going to happen? Roberts went back to
+the camp-fire. Joan had to force herself to eat. There was one thing of
+which she was sure--that she would need all the strength and fortitude
+she could summon.
+
+Joan became aware, presently, that Kells was conversing with Roberts,
+but too low for her to hear what was said. She saw Roberts make a
+gesture of fierce protest. About the other man there was an air cool,
+persuading, dominant. He ceased speaking, as if the incident were
+closed. Roberts hurried and blundered through his task with his pack and
+went for his horse. The animal limped slightly, but evidently was not in
+bad shape. Roberts saddled him, tied on the pack. Then he saddled Joan's
+horse. That done, he squared around with the front of a man who had to
+face something he dreaded.
+
+"Come on, Joan. We're ready," he called. His voice was loud, but not
+natural.
+
+Joan started to cross to him when Kells strode between them. She might
+not have been there, for all the sign this ominous man gave of her
+presence. He confronted Roberts in the middle of the camp-circle, and
+halted, perhaps a rod distant.
+
+"Roberts, get on your horse and clear out," he said.
+
+Roberts dropped his halter and straightened up. It was a bolder action
+than any he had heretofore given. Perhaps the mask was off now; he was
+wholly sure of what he had only feared; subterfuge and blindness were
+in vain; and now he could be a man. Some change worked in his face--a
+blanching, a setting.
+
+"No, I won't go without the girl," he said.
+
+"But you can't take her!"
+
+Joan vibrated to a sudden start. So this was what was going to happen.
+Her heart almost stood still. Breathless and quivering, she watched
+these two men, about whom now all was strangely magnified.
+
+"Reckon I'll go along with you, then," replied Roberts.
+
+"Your company's not wanted."
+
+"Wal, I'll go anyway."
+
+This was only play at words, Joan thought. She divined in Roberts a
+cold and grim acceptance of something he had expected. And the voice
+of Kells--what did that convey? Still the man seemed slow, easy, kind,
+amiable.
+
+"Haven't you got any sense, Roberts?" he asked.
+
+Roberts made no reply to that.
+
+"Go on home. Say nothing or anything--whatever you like," continued
+Kells. "You did me a favor once over in California. I like to remember
+favors. Use your head now. Hit the trail."
+
+"Not without her. I'll fight first," declared Roberts, and his hands
+began to twitch and jerk.
+
+Joan did not miss the wonderful intentness of the pale-gray eyes that
+watched Roberts--his face, his glance, his hands.
+
+"What good will it do to fight?" asked Kells. He laughed coolly. "That
+won't help her... You ought to know what you'll get."
+
+"Kells--I'll die before I leave that girl in your clutches," flashed
+Roberts. "An' I ain't a-goin' to stand here an' argue with you. Let her
+come--or--"
+
+"You don't strike me as a fool," interrupted Kells. His voice was suave,
+smooth, persuasive, cool. What strength--what certainty appeared behind
+it! "It's not my habit to argue with fools. Take the chance I offer
+you. Hit the trail. Life is precious, man!... You've no chance here. And
+what's one girl more or less to you?"
+
+"Kells, I may be a fool, but I'm a man," passionately rejoined Roberts.
+"Why, you're somethin' inhuman! I knew that out in the gold-fields. But
+to think you can stand there--an' talk sweet an' pleasant--with no idee
+of manhood!... Let her come now--or--or I'm a-goin' for my gun!"
+
+"Roberts, haven't you a wife--children?"
+
+"Yes, I have," shouted Roberts, huskily. "An' that wife would disown me
+if I left Joan Randle to you. An' I've got a grown girl. Mebbe some day
+she might need a man to stand between her an' such as you, Jack Kells!"
+
+All Roberts' pathos and passion had no effect, unless to bring out by
+contrast the singular and ruthless nature of Jack Kells.
+
+"Will you hit the trail?"
+
+"No!" thundered Roberts.
+
+Until then Joan Randle had been fascinated, held by the swift
+interchange between her friend and enemy. But now she had a convulsion
+of fear. She had seen men fight, but never to the death. Roberts
+crouched like a wolf at bay. There was a madness upon him. He shook like
+a rippling leaf. Suddenly his shoulder lurched--his arm swung.
+
+Joan wheeled away in horror, shutting her eyes, covering her ears,
+running blindly. Then upon her muffled hearing burst the boom of a gun.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+Joan ran on, stumbling over rocks and brush, with a darkness before her
+eyes, the terror in her soul. She was out in the cedars when someone
+grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake.
+Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away,
+stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something
+that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and,
+leaning there, fought her weakness, that cold black horror which seemed
+a physical thing in her mind, her blood, her muscles.
+
+When she recovered enough for the thickness to leave her sight she saw
+Kells coming, leading her horse and his own. At sight of him a strange,
+swift heat shot through her. Then she was confounded with the thought of
+Roberts.
+
+"Ro--Roberts?" she faltered.
+
+Kells gave her a piercing glance. "Miss Randle, I had to take the fight
+out of your friend," he said.
+
+"You--you--Is he--dead?"
+
+"I just crippled his gun arm. If I hadn't he would have hurt somebody.
+He'll ride back to Hoadley and tell your folks about it. So they'll know
+you're safe."
+
+"Safe!" she whispered.
+
+"That's what I said, Miss Randle. If you're going to ride out into the
+border--if it's possible to be safe out there you'll be so with me."
+
+"But I want to go home. Oh, please let me go!"
+
+"I couldn't think of it."
+
+"Then--what will you--do with me?"
+
+Again that gray glance pierced her. His eyes were clear, flawless, like
+crystal, without coldness, warmth, expression. "I'll get a barrel of
+gold out of you."
+
+"How?" she asked, wonderingly.
+
+"I'll hold you for ransom. Sooner or later those prospectors over there
+are going to strike gold. Strike it rich! I know that. I've got to make
+a living some way."
+
+Kells was tightening the cinch on her saddle while he spoke. His voice,
+his manner, the amiable smile on his intelligent face, they all appeared
+to come from sincerity. But for those strange eyes Joan would have
+wholly believed him. As it was, a half doubt troubled her. She
+remembered the character Roberts had given this man. Still, she was
+recovering her nerve. It had been the certainty of disaster to Roberts
+that had made her weaken. As he was only slightly wounded and free to
+ride home safely, she had not the horror of his death upon her.
+Indeed, she was now so immensely uplifted that she faced the situation
+unflinchingly.
+
+"Bill," called Kells to the man standing there with a grin on his coarse
+red face, "you go back and help Halloway pack. Then take my trail."
+
+Bill nodded, and was walking away when Kells called after him: "And say,
+Bill, don't say anything to Roberts. He's easily riled."
+
+"Haw! Haw! Haw!" laughed Bill.
+
+His harsh laughter somehow rang jarringly in Joan's ears. But she was
+used to violent men who expressed mirth over mirthless jokes.
+
+"Get up, Miss Randle," said Kells as he mounted. "We've a long ride.
+You'll need all your strength. So I advise you to come quietly with me
+and not try to get away. It won't be any use trying."
+
+Joan climbed into her saddle and rode after him. Once she looked back
+in hope of seeing Roberts, of waving a hand to him. She saw his horse
+standing saddled, and she saw Bill struggling under a pack, but there
+was no sign of Roberts. Then more cedars intervened and the camp site
+was lost to view. When she glanced ahead her first thought was to take
+in the points of Kells's horse. She had been used to horses all her
+life. Kells rode a big rangy bay--a horse that appeared to snort speed
+and endurance. Her pony could never run away from that big brute. Still
+Joan had the temper to make an attempt to escape, if a favorable way
+presented.
+
+The morning was rosy, clear, cool; there was a sweet, dry tang in
+the air; white-tailed deer bounded out of the open spaces; and the
+gray-domed, glistening mountains, with their bold, black-fringed slopes,
+overshadowed the close foot-hills.
+
+Joan was a victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions.
+She was riding away with a freebooter, a road-agent, to be held for
+ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread
+of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts's words, yet they
+haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, he had said! Joan knew
+she possessed good looks, but they had never caused her any particular
+concern. That Kells had let that influence him--as Roberts had
+imagined--was more than absurd. Kells had scarcely looked at her. It was
+gold such men wanted. She wondered what her ransom would be, where her
+uncle would get it, and if there really was a likelihood of that rich
+strike. Then she remembered her mother, who had died when she was a
+little girl, and a strange, sweet sadness abided with her. It passed.
+She saw her uncle--that great, robust, hearty, splendid old man, with
+his laugh and his kindness, and his love for her, and his everlasting
+unquenchable belief that soon he would make a rich gold-strike. What a
+roar and a stampede he would raise at her loss! The village camp might
+be divided on that score, she thought, because the few young women in
+that little settlement hated her, and the young men would have more
+peace without her. Suddenly her thought shifted to Jim Cleve, the
+cause of her present misfortune. She had forgotten Jim. In the interval
+somehow he had grown. Sweet to remember how he had fought for her and
+kept it secret! After all, she had misjudged him. She had hated him
+because she liked him. Maybe she did more! That gave her a shock. She
+recalled his kisses and then flamed all over. If she did not hate him
+she ought to. He had been so useless; he ran after her so; he was the
+laughing-stock of the village; his actions made her other admirers and
+friends believe she cared for him, was playing fast-and-loose with him.
+Still, there was a difference now. He had terribly transgressed. He had
+frightened her with threats of dire ruin to himself. And because of that
+she had trailed him, to fall herself upon a hazardous experience.
+Where was Jim Cleve now? Like a flash then occurred to her the singular
+possibility. Jim had ridden for the border with the avowed and desperate
+intention of finding Kells and Gulden and the bad men of that trackless
+region. He would do what he had sworn he would. And here she was, the
+cause of it all, a captive of this notorious Kells! She was being led
+into that wild border country. Somewhere out there Kells and Jim Cleve
+would meet. Jim would find her in Kells's hands. Then there would be
+hell, Joan thought. The possibility, the certainty, seemed to strike
+deep into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again; a
+ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth
+in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed
+the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and
+distrust at this new, strange side of her nature.
+
+And while her mind was thus thronged the morning hours passed swiftly,
+the miles of foot-hills were climbed and descended. A green gap of
+canon, wild and yellow-walled, yawned before her, opening into the
+mountain.
+
+Kells halted on the grassy bank of a shallow brook. "Get down. We'll
+noon here and rest the horses," he said to Joan. "I can't say that
+you're anything but game. We've done perhaps twenty-five miles this
+morning."
+
+The mouth of this canon was a wild, green-flowered, beautiful place.
+There were willows and alders and aspens along the brook. The green
+bench was like a grassy meadow. Joan caught a glimpse of a brown object,
+a deer or bear, stealing away through spruce-trees on the slope. She
+dismounted, aware now that her legs ached and it was comfortable
+to stretch them. Looking backward across the valley toward the last
+foot-hill, she saw the other men, with horses and packs, coming. She had
+a habit of close observation, and she thought that either the men with
+the packs had now one more horse than she remembered, or else she had
+not seen the extra one. Her attention shifted then. She watched Kells
+unsaddle the horses. He was wiry, muscular, quick with his hands. The
+big, blue-cylindered gun swung in front of him. That gun had a queer
+kind of attraction for her. The curved black butt made her think of a
+sharp grip of hand upon it. Kells did not hobble the horses. He slapped
+his bay on the haunch and drove him down toward the brook. Joan's pony
+followed. They drank, cracked the stones, climbed the other bank, and
+began to roll in the grass. Then the other men with the packs trotted
+up. Joan was glad. She had not thought of it before, but now she felt
+she would rather not be alone with Kells. She remarked then that there
+was no extra horse in the bunch. It seemed strange, her thinking that,
+and she imagined she was not clear-headed.
+
+"Throw the packs, Bill," said Kells.
+
+Another fire was kindled and preparations made toward a noonday meal.
+Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at
+Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then
+Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook,
+and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared
+not to notice him, and thereafter averted; her gaze. The men chuckled.
+
+"She's the proud hussy! But she ain't foolin' me. I've knowed a heap of
+wimmen." Whereupon Halloway guffawed, and between them, in lower tones,
+they exchanged mysterious remarks. Kells returned with a bucket of
+water.
+
+"What's got into you men?" he queried.
+
+Both of them looked around, blusteringily innocent.
+
+"Reckon it's the same that's ailin' you," replied Bill. He showed that
+among wild, unhampered men how little could inflame and change.
+
+"Boss, it's the onaccustomed company," added Halloway, with a
+conciliatory smile. "Bill sort of warms up. He jest can't help it. An'
+seein' what a thunderin' crab he always is, why I'm glad an' welcome."
+
+Kells vouchsafed no reply to this and, turning away, continued his
+tasks. Joan had a close look at his eyes and again she was startled.
+They were not like eyes, but just gray spaces, opaque openings, with
+nothing visible behind, yet with something terrible there.
+
+The preparations for the meal went on, somewhat constrainedly on the
+part of Bill and Halloway, and presently were ended. Then the men
+attended to it with appetites born of the open and of action. Joan sat
+apart from them on the bank of the brook, and after she had appeased
+her own hunger she rested, leaning back in the shade of an alderbush.
+A sailing shadow crossed near her, and, looking up, she saw an eagle
+flying above the ramparts of the canon. Then she had a drowsy spell, but
+she succumbed to it only to the extent of closing her eyes. Time dragged
+on. She would rather have been in the saddle. These men were leisurely,
+and Kells was provokingly slow. They had nothing to do with time but
+waste it. She tried to combat the desire for hurry, for action; she
+could not gain anything by worry. Nevertheless, resignation would
+not come to her and her hope began to flag. Something portended
+evil--something hung in the balance.
+
+The snort and tramp of horses roused her, and upon sitting up she saw
+the men about to pack and saddle again. Kells had spoken to her only
+twice so far that day. She was grateful for his silence, but could not
+understand it. He seemed to have a preoccupied air that somehow did not
+fit the amiableness of his face. He looked gentle, good-natured; he
+was soft-spoken; he gave an impression of kindness. But Joan began to
+realize that he was not what he seemed. He had something on his mind. It
+was not conscience, nor a burden: it might be a projection, a plan,
+an absorbing scheme, a something that gained food with thought. Joan
+wondered doubtfully if it were the ransom of gold he expected to get.
+
+Presently, when all was about in readiness for a fresh start, she rose
+to her feet. Kells's bay was not tractable at the moment. Bill held
+out Joan's bridle to her and their hands touched. The contact was an
+accident, but it resulted in Bill's grasping back at her hand. She
+jerked it away, scarcely comprehending. Then all under the brown of his
+face she saw creep a dark, ruddy tide. He reached for her then--put
+his hand on her breast. It was an instinctive animal action. He meant
+nothing. She divined that he could not help it. She had lived with rough
+men long enough to know he had no motive--no thought at all. But at the
+profanation of such a touch she shrank back, uttering a cry.
+
+At her elbow she heard a quick step and a sharp-drawn breath or hiss.
+
+"AW, JACK!" cried Bill.
+
+Then Kells, in lithe and savage swiftness, came between them. He swung
+his gun, hitting Bill full in the face. The man fell, limp and heavy,
+and he lay there, with a bloody gash across his brow. Kells stood over
+him a moment, slowly lowering the gun. Joan feared he meant to shoot.
+
+"Oh, don't--don't!" she cried. "He--he didn't hurt me."
+
+Kells pushed her back. When he touched her she seemed to feel the shock
+of an electric current. His face had not changed, but his eyes were
+terrible. On the background of gray were strange, leaping red flecks.
+
+"Take your horse," he ordered. "No. Walk across the brook. There's a
+trail. Go up the canon. I'll come presently. Don't run and don't hide.
+It'll be the worse for you if you do. Hurry!"
+
+Joan obeyed. She flashed past the open-jawed Halloway, and, running down
+to the brook, stepped across from stone to stone. She found the trail
+and hurriedly followed it. She did not look back. It never occurred
+to her to hide, to try to get away. She only obeyed, conscious of some
+force that dominated her. Once she heard loud voices, then the shrill
+neigh of a horse. The trail swung under the left wall of the canon and
+ran along the noisy brook. She thought she heard shots and was startled,
+but she could not be sure. She stopped to listen. Only the babble of
+swift water and the sough of wind in the spruces greeted her ears.
+She went on, beginning to collect her thoughts, to conjecture on the
+significance of Kells's behavior.
+
+But had that been the spring of his motive? She doubted it--she doubted
+all about him, save that subtle essence of violence, of ruthless force
+and intensity, of terrible capacity, which hung round him.
+
+A halloo caused her to stop and turn. Two pack-horses were jogging up
+the trail. Kells was driving them and leading her pony. Nothing could be
+seen of the other men. Kells rapidly overhauled her, and she had to get
+out of the trail to let the pack-animals pass. He threw her bridle to
+her.
+
+"Get up," he said.
+
+She complied. And then she bravely faced him. "Where are--the other
+men?"
+
+"We parted company," he replied, curtly.
+
+"Why?" she persisted.
+
+"Well, if you're anxious to know, it was because you were winning
+their--regard--too much to suit me."
+
+"Winning their regard!" Joan exclaimed, blankly.
+
+Here those gray, piercing eyes went through her, then swiftly shifted.
+She was quick to divine from that the inference in his words--he
+suspected her of flirting with those ruffians, perhaps to escape him
+through them. That had only been his suspicion--groundless after his
+swift glance at her. Perhaps unconsciousness of his meaning, a simulated
+innocence, and ignorance might serve her with this strange man. She
+resolved to try it, to use all her woman's intuition and wit and
+cunning. Here was an educated man who was a criminal--an outcast. Deep
+within him might be memories of a different life. They might be stirred.
+Joan decided in that swift instant that, if she could understand him,
+learn his real intentions toward her, she could cope with him.
+
+"Bill and his pard were thinking too much of--of the ransom I'm after,"
+went on Kells, with a short laugh. "Come on now. Ride close to me."
+
+Joan turned into the trail with his laugh ringing in her ears. Did she
+only imagine a mockery in it? Was there any reason to believe a word
+this man said? She appeared as helpless to see through him as she was in
+her predicament.
+
+They had entered a canon, such as was typical of that mountain range,
+and the winding trail which ran beneath the yellow walls was one unused
+to travel. Joan could not make out any old tracks, except those of deer
+and cougar. The crashing of wild animals into the chaparral, and
+the scarcely frightened flight of rabbits and grouse attested to the
+wildness of the place. They passed an old tumbledown log cabin, once
+used, no doubt, by prospectors and hunters. Here the trail ended. Yet
+Kells kept on up the canon. And for all Joan could tell the walls grew
+only the higher and the timber heavier and the space wilder.
+
+At a turn, when the second pack-horse, that appeared unused to his task,
+came fully into Joan's sight, she was struck with his resemblance to
+some horse with which she was familiar. It was scarcely an impression
+which she might have received from seeing Kells's horse or Bill's or any
+one's a few times. Therefore she watched this animal, studying his gait
+and behavior. It did not take long for her to discover that he was not
+a pack-horse. He resented that burden. He did not know how to swing it.
+This made her deeply thoughtful and she watched closer than ever. All
+at once there dawned on her the fact that the resemblance here was to
+Roberts's horse. She caught her breath and felt again that cold gnawing
+of fear within her. Then she closed her eyes the better to remember
+significant points about Roberts's sorrel--a white left front foot, an
+old diamond brand, a ragged forelock, and an unusual marking, a light
+bar across his face. When Joan had recalled these, she felt so certain
+that she would find them on this pack-horse that she was afraid to open
+her eyes. She forced herself to look, and it seemed that in one glance
+she saw three of them. Still she clung to hope. Then the horse, picking
+his way, partially turning toward her, disclosed the bar across his
+face.
+
+Joan recognized it. Roberts was not on his way home. Kells had lied.
+Kells had killed him. How plain and fearful the proof! It verified
+Roberts's gloomy prophecy. Joan suddenly grew sick and dizzy. She reeled
+in her saddle. It was only by dint of the last effort of strength and
+self-control that she kept her seat. She fought the horror as if it were
+a beast. Hanging over the pommel, with shut eyes, letting her pony
+find the way, she sustained this shock of discovery and did not let it
+utterly overwhelm her. And as she conquered the sickening weakness her
+mind quickened to the changed aspect of her situation. She understood
+Kells and the appalling nature of her peril. She did not know how she
+understood him now, but doubt had utterly fled. All was clear, real,
+grim, present. Like a child she had been deceived, for no reason she
+could see. That talk of ransom was false. Likewise Kells's assertion
+that he had parted company with Halloway and Bill because he would not
+share the ransom--that, too, was false. The idea of a ransom, in this
+light, was now ridiculous. From that first moment Kells had wanted her;
+he had tried to persuade Roberts to leave her, and, failing, had killed
+him; he had rid himself of the other two men--and now Joan knew she had
+heard shots back there. Kells's intention loomed out of all his
+dark brooding, and it stood clear now to her, dastardly, worse than
+captivity, or torture, or death--the worst fate that could befall a
+woman.
+
+The reality of it now was so astounding. True--as true as those stories
+she had deemed impossible! Because she and her people and friends had
+appeared secure in their mountain camp and happy in their work and
+trustful of good, they had scarcely credited the rumors of just such
+things as had happened to her. The stage held up by roadagents, a lonely
+prospector murdered and robbed, fights in the saloons and on the trails,
+and useless pursuit of hardriding men out there on the border, elusive
+as Arabs, swift as Apaches--these facts had been terrible enough,
+without the dread of worse. The truth of her capture, the meaning of
+it, were raw, shocking spurs to Joan Randle's intelligence and courage.
+Since she still lived, which was strange indeed in the illuminating
+light of her later insight into Kells and his kind, she had to meet him
+with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a
+woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him--or go to her death. She
+was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and
+made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into
+the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before
+required in her scheme of life. She had no longer any fear. She matched
+herself against this man. She anticipated him. And she felt like a woman
+who had lately been a thoughtless girl, who, in turn, had dreamed
+of vague old happenings of a past before she was born, of impossible
+adventures in her own future. Hate and wrath and outraged womanhood were
+not wholly the secret of Joan Randle's flaming spirit.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+Joan Randle rode on and on, through the canon, out at its head and over
+a pass into another canon, and never did she let it be possible for
+Kells to see her eyes until she knew beyond peradventure of a doubt that
+they hid the strength and spirit and secret of her soul.
+
+The time came when traveling was so steep and rough that she must think
+first of her horse and her own safety. Kells led up over a rock-jumbled
+spur of range, where she had sometimes to follow on foot. It seemed
+miles across that wilderness of stone. Foxes and wolves trotted over
+open places, watching stealthily. All around dark mountain peaks stood
+up. The afternoon was far advanced when Kells started to descend again,
+and he rode a zigzag course on weathered slopes and over brushy benches,
+down and down into the canons again.
+
+A lonely peak was visible, sunset-flushed against the blue, from the
+point where Kells finally halted. That ended the longest ride Joan had
+ever made in one day. For miles and miles they had climbed and descended
+and wound into the mountains. Joan had scarcely any idea of direction.
+She was completely turned around and lost. This spot was the wildest and
+most beautiful she had ever seen. A canon headed here. It was narrow,
+low-walled, and luxuriant with grass and wild roses and willow and
+spruce and balsam. There were deer standing with long ears erect,
+motionless, curious, tame as cattle. There were moving streaks through
+the long grass, showing the course of smaller animals slipping away.
+
+Then under a giant balsam, that reached aloft to the rim-wall, Joan saw
+a little log cabin, open in front. It had not been built very long; some
+of the log ends still showed yellow. It did not resemble the hunters'
+and prospectors' cabins she had seen on her trips with her uncle.
+
+In a sweeping glance Joan had taken in these features. Kells had
+dismounted and approached her. She looked frankly, but not directly, at
+him.
+
+"I'm tired--almost too tired to get off," she said.
+
+"Fifty miles of rock and brush, up and down! Without a kick!" he
+exclaimed, admiringly. "You've got sand, girl!"
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"This is Lost Canon. Only a few men know of it. And they are--attached
+to me. I intend to keep you here."
+
+"How long?" She felt the intensity of his gaze.
+
+"Why--as long as--" he replied, slowly, "till I get my ransom."
+
+"What amount will you ask?"
+
+"You're worth a hundred thousand in gold right now... Maybe later I
+might let you go for less."
+
+Joan's keen-wrought perception registered his covert, scarcely veiled
+implication. He was studying her.
+
+"Oh, poor uncle. He'll never, never get so much."
+
+"Sure he will," replied Kells, bluntly.
+
+Then he helped her out of the saddle. She was stiff and awkward, and she
+let herself slide. Kells handled her gently and like a gentleman,
+and for Joan the first agonizing moment of her ordeal was past. Her
+intuition had guided her correctly. Kells might have been and probably
+was the most depraved of outcast men; but the presence of a girl like
+her, however it affected him, must also have brought up associations
+of a time when by family and breeding and habit he had been infinitely
+different. His action here, just like the ruffian Bill's, was
+instinctive, beyond his control. Just this slight thing, this frail link
+that joined Kells to his past and better life, immeasurably inspirited
+Joan and outlined the difficult game she had to play.
+
+"You're a very gallant robber," she said.
+
+He appeared not to hear that or to note it; he was eying her up and
+down; and he moved closer, perhaps to estimate her height compared to
+his own.
+
+"I didn't know you were so tall. You're above my shoulder."
+
+"Yes, I'm very lanky."
+
+"Lanky! Why you're not that. You've a splendid figure--tall, supple,
+strong; you're like a Nez Perce girl I knew once.... You're a beautiful
+thing. Didn't you know that?"
+
+"Not particularly. My friends don't dare flatter me. I suppose I'll have
+to stand it from you. But I didn't expect compliments from Jack Kells of
+the Border Legion."
+
+"Border Legion? Where'd you hear that name?"
+
+"I didn't hear it. I made it up--thought of it myself."
+
+"Well, you've invented something I'll use.... And what's your name--your
+first name? I heard Roberts use it."
+
+Joan felt a cold contraction of all her internal being, but outwardly
+she never so much as nicked an eyelash. "My name's Joan."
+
+"Joan!" He placed heavy, compelling hands on her shoulders and turned
+her squarely toward him.
+
+Again she felt his gaze, strangely, like the reflection of sunlight from
+ice. She had to look at him. This was her supreme test. For hours
+she had prepared for it, steeled herself, wrought upon all that was
+sensitive in her; and now she prayed, and swiftly looked up into his
+eyes. They were windows of a gray hell. And she gazed into that naked
+abyss, at that dark, uncovered soul, with only the timid anxiety and
+fear and the unconsciousness of an innocent, ignorant girl.
+
+"Joan! You know why I brought you here?"
+
+"Yes, of course; you told me," she replied, steadily. "You want to
+ransom me for gold.... And I'm afraid you'll have to take me home
+without getting any."
+
+"You know what I mean to do to you," he went on, thickly.
+
+"Do to me?" she echoed, and she never quivered a muscle. "You--you
+didn't say.... I haven't thought.... But you won't hurt me, will you?
+It's not my fault if there's no gold to ransom me."
+
+He shook her. His face changed, grew darker. "You KNOW what I mean."
+
+"I don't." With some show of spirit she essayed to slip out of his
+grasp. He held her the tighter.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+It was only in her height and development that Joan looked anywhere near
+her age. Often she had been taken for a very young girl.
+
+"I'm seventeen," she replied. This was not the truth. It was a lie that
+did not falter on lips which had scorned falsehood.
+
+"Seventeen!" he ejaculated in amaze. "Honestly, now?"
+
+She lifted her chin scornfully and remained silent.
+
+"Well, I thought you were a woman. I took you to be twenty-five--at
+least twenty-two. Seventeen, with that shape! You're only a girl--a kid.
+You don't know anything."
+
+Then he released her, almost with violence, as if angered at her or
+himself, and he turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little
+cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under
+his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained
+her poise. There might be, probably would be, infinitely more trying
+ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however,
+that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror and knowledge
+and self.
+
+The scene of her isolation had a curious fascination for her.
+Something--and she shuddered--was to happen to her here in this lonely,
+silent gorge. There were some flat stones made into a rude seat under
+the balsam-tree, and a swift, yard-wide stream of clear water ran by.
+Observing something white against the tree, Joan went closer. A card,
+the ace of hearts, had been pinned to the bark by a small cluster of
+bullet-holes, every one of which touched the red heart, and one of them
+had obliterated it. Below the circle of bulletholes, scrawled in rude
+letters with a lead-pencil, was the name "Gulden." How little, a few
+nights back, when Jim Cleve had menaced Joan with the names of Kells and
+Gulden, had she imagined they were actual men she was to meet and fear!
+And here she was the prisoner of one of them. She would ask Kells who
+and what this Gulden was. The log cabin was merely a shed, without
+fireplace or window, and the floor was a covering of balsam boughs, long
+dried out and withered. A dim trail led away from it down the canon.
+If Joan was any judge of trails, this one had not seen the imprint of
+a horse track for many months. Kells had indeed brought her to a hiding
+place, one of those, perhaps, that camp gossip said was inaccessible to
+any save a border hawk. Joan knew that only an Indian could follow the
+tortuous and rocky trail by which Kells had brought her in. She would
+never be tracked there by her own people.
+
+The long ride had left her hot, dusty, scratched, with tangled hair and
+torn habit. She went over to her saddle, which Kells had removed
+from her pony, and, opening the saddlebag, she took inventory of her
+possessions. They were few enough, but now, in view of an unexpected and
+enforced sojourn in the wilds, beyond all calculation of value. And
+they included towel, soap, toothbrush, mirror and comb and brush, a red
+scarf, and gloves. It occurred to her how seldom she carried that bag on
+her saddle, and, thinking back, referred the fact to accident, and
+then with honest amusement owned that the motive might have been also
+a little vanity. Taking the bag, she went to a flat stone by the brook
+and, rolling up her sleeves, proceeded to improve her appearance. With
+deft fingers she rebraided her hair and arranged it as she had worn
+it when only sixteen. Then, resolutely, she got up and crossed over to
+where Kells was unpacking.
+
+"I'll help you get supper," she said.
+
+He was on his knees in the midst of a jumble of camp duffle that had
+been hastily thrown together. He looked up at her--from her shapely,
+strong, brown arms to the face she had rubbed rosy.
+
+"Say, but you're a pretty girl!"
+
+He said it enthusiastically, in unstinted admiration, without the
+slightest subtlety or suggestion; and if he had been the devil himself
+it would have been no less a compliment, given spontaneously to youth
+and beauty.
+
+"I'm glad if it's so, but please don't tell me," she rejoined, simply.
+
+Then with swift and business-like movements she set to helping him with
+the mess the inexperienced pack-horse had made of that particular pack.
+And when that was straightened out she began with the biscuit dough
+while he lighted a fire. It appeared to be her skill, rather than her
+willingness, that he yielded to. He said very little, but he looked at
+her often. And he had little periods of abstraction. The situation was
+novel, strange to him. Sometimes Joan read his mind and sometimes he
+was an enigma. But she divined when he was thinking what a picture she
+looked there, on her knees before the bread-pan, with flour on her
+arms; of the difference a girl brought into any place; of how strange it
+seemed that this girl, instead of lying a limp and disheveled rag under
+a tree, weeping and praying for home, made the best of a bad situation
+and unproved it wonderfully by being a thoroughbred.
+
+Presently they sat down, cross-legged, one on each side of the
+tarpaulin, and began the meal. That was the strangest supper Joan ever
+sat down to; it was like a dream where there was danger that tortured
+her; but she knew she was dreaming and would soon wake up. Kells was
+almost imperceptibly changing. The amiability of his face seemed to have
+stiffened. The only time he addressed her was when he offered to help
+her to more meat or bread or coffee. After the meal was finished he
+would not let her wash the pans and pots, and attended to that himself.
+
+Joan went to the seat by the tree, near the camp-fire. A purple twilight
+was shadowing the canon. Far above, on the bold peak the last warmth of
+the afterglow was fading. There was no wind, no sound, no movement. Joan
+wondered where Jim Cleve was then. They had often sat in the twilight.
+She felt an unreasonable resentment toward him, knowing she was to
+blame, but blaming him for her plight. Then suddenly she thought of her
+uncle, of home, of her kindly old aunt who always worried so about her.
+Indeed, there was cause to worry. She felt sorrier for them than for
+herself. And that broke her spirit momentarily. Forlorn, and with a wave
+of sudden sorrow and dread and hopelessness, she dropped her head upon
+her knees and covered her face. Tears were a relief. She forgot Kells
+and the part she must play. But she remembered swiftly--at the rude
+touch of his hand.
+
+"Here! Are you crying?" he asked, roughly.
+
+"Do you think I'm laughing?" Joan retorted. Her wet eyes, as she raised
+them, were proof enough.
+
+"Stop it."
+
+"I can't help--but cry--a little. I was th--thinking of home--of those
+who've been father and mother to me--since I was a baby. I wasn't
+crying--for myself. But they--they'll be so miserable. They loved me
+so."
+
+"It won't help matters to cry."
+
+Joan stood up then, no longer sincere and forgetful, but the girl with
+her deep and cunning game. She leaned close to him in the twilight.
+
+"Did you ever love any one? Did you ever have a sister--a girl like me?"
+
+Kells stalked away into the gloom.
+
+Joan was left alone. She did not know whether to interpret his
+abstraction, his temper, and his action as favorable or not. Still she
+hoped and prayed they meant that he had some good in him. If she could
+only hide her terror, her abhorrence, her knowledge of him and his
+motive! She built up a bright camp-fire. There was an abundance of wood.
+She dreaded the darkness and the night. Besides, the air was growing
+chilly. So, arranging her saddle and blankets near the fire, she
+composed herself in a comfortable seat to await Kells's return and
+developments. It struck her forcibly that she had lost some of her fear
+of Kells and she did not know why. She ought to fear him more every
+hour--every minute. Presently she heard his step brushing the grass
+and then he emerged out of the gloom. He had a load of fire-wood on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Did you get over your grief?" he asked, glancing down upon her.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+Kells stooped for a red ember, with which he lighted his pipe, and then
+he seated himself a little back from the fire. The blaze threw a bright
+glare over him, and in it he looked neither formidable nor vicious nor
+ruthless. He asked her where she was born, and upon receiving an answer
+he followed that up with another question. And he kept this up until
+Joan divined that he was not so much interested in what he apparently
+wished to learn as he was in her presence, her voice, her personality.
+She sensed in him loneliness, hunger for the sound of a voice. She had
+heard her uncle speak of the loneliness of lonely camp-fires and how all
+men working or hiding or lost in the wilderness would see sweet faces
+in the embers and be haunted by soft voices. After all, Kells was
+human. And she talked as never before in her life, brightly, willingly,
+eloquently, telling the facts of her eventful youth and girlhood--the
+sorrow and the joy and some of the dreams--up to the time she had come
+to Camp Hoadley.
+
+"Did you leave any sweethearts over there at Hoadley?" he asked, after a
+silence.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"A whole campful," she replied, with a laugh, "but admirers is a better
+name for them."
+
+"Then there's no one fellow?"
+
+"Hardly--yet."
+
+"How would you like being kept here in this lonesome place for--well,
+say for ever?"
+
+"I wouldn't like that," replied Joan. "I'd like this--camping out like
+this now--if my folks only knew I am alive and well and safe. I love
+lonely, dreamy places. I've dreamed of being in just such a one as this.
+It seems so far away here--so shut in by the walls and the blackness.
+So silent and sweet! I love the stars. They speak to me. And the wind
+in the spruces. Hear it.... Very low, mournful! That whispers to
+me--to-morrow I'd like it here if I had no worry. I've never grown
+up yet. I explore and climb trees and hunt for little birds and
+rabbits--young things just born, all fuzzy and sweet, frightened, piping
+or squealing for their mothers. But I won't touch one for worlds. I
+simply can't hurt anything. I can't spur my horse or beat him. Oh, I
+HATE pain!"
+
+"You're a strange girl to live out here on this border," he said.
+
+"I'm no different from other girls. You don't know girls."
+
+"I knew one pretty well. She put a rope round my neck," he replied,
+grimly.
+
+"A rope!"
+
+"Yes, I mean a halter, a hangman's noose. But I balked her!"
+
+"Oh!... A good girl?"
+
+"Bad! Bad to the core of her black heart--bad as I am!" he exclaimed,
+with fierce, low passion.
+
+Joan trembled. The man, in an instant, seemed transformed, somber as
+death. She could not look at him, but she must keep on talking.
+
+"Bad? You don't seem bad to me--only violent, perhaps, or wild.... Tell
+me about yourself."
+
+She had stirred him. His neglected pipe fell from his hand. In the gloom
+of the camp-fire he must have seen faces or ghosts of his past.
+
+"Why not?" he queried, strangely. "Why not do what's been impossible for
+years--open my lips? It'll not matter--to a girl who can never tell!...
+Have I forgotten? God!--I have not! Listen, so that you'll KNOW I'm bad.
+My name's not Kells. I was born in the East, and went to school there
+till I ran away. I was young, ambitious, wild. I stole. I ran away--came
+West in 'fifty-one to the gold-fields in California. There I became a
+prospector, miner, gambler, robber--and road-agent. I had evil in me, as
+all men have, and those wild years brought it out. I had no chance. Evil
+and gold and blood--they are one and the same thing. I committed every
+crime till no place, bad as it might be, was safe for me. Driven and
+hunted and shot and starved--almost hanged!... And now I'm--Kells! of
+that outcast crew you named 'the Border Legion!' Every black crime but
+one--the blackest--and that haunting me, itching my hands to-night."
+
+"Oh, you speak so--so dreadfully!" cried Joan. "What can I say? I'm
+sorry for you. I don't believe it all. What--what black crime haunts
+you? Oh! what could be possible tonight--here in this lonely canon--with
+only me?"
+
+Dark and terrible the man arose.
+
+"Girl," he said, hoarsely. "To-night--to-night--I'll.... What have you
+done to me? One more day--and I'll be mad to do right by you--instead of
+WRONG.... Do you understand that?"
+
+Joan leaned forward in the camp-fire light with outstretched hands
+and quivering lips, as overcome by his halting confession of one last
+remnant of honor as she was by the dark hint of his passion.
+
+"No--no--I don't understand--nor believe!" she cried. "But you frighten
+me--so! I am all--all alone with you here. You said I'd be safe.
+Don't--don't--"
+
+Her voice broke then and she sank back exhausted in her seat. Probably
+Kells had heard only the first words of her appeal, for he took to
+striding back and forth in the circle of the camp-fire light. The
+scabbard with the big gun swung against his leg. It grew to be a dark
+and monstrous thing in Joan's sight. A marvelous intuition born of that
+hour warned her of Kells's subjection to the beast in him, even while,
+with all the manhood left to him, he still battled against it. Her
+girlish sweetness and innocence had availed nothing, except mock him
+with the ghost of dead memories. He could not be won or foiled. She must
+get her hands on that gun--kill him--or--! The alternative was death for
+herself. And she leaned there, slowly gathering all the unconquerable
+and unquenchable forces of a woman's nature, waiting, to make one
+desperate, supreme, and final effort.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+Kells strode there, a black, silent shadow, plodding with bent head, as
+if all about and above him were demons and furies.
+
+Joan's perceptions of him, of the night, of the inanimate and
+imponderable black walls, and of herself, were exquisitely and
+abnormally keen. She saw him there, bowed under his burden, gloomy and
+wroth and sick with himself because the man in him despised the coward.
+Men of his stamp were seldom or never cowards. Their lives did not breed
+cowardice or baseness. Joan knew the burning in her breast--that thing
+which inflamed and swept through her like a wind of fire--was hate. Yet
+her heart held a grain of pity for him. She measured his forbearance,
+his struggle, against the monstrous cruelty and passion engendered by
+a wild life among wild men at a wild time. And, considering his
+opportunities of the long hours and lonely miles, she was grateful, and
+did not in the least underestimate what it cost him, how different from
+Bill or Halloway he had been. But all this was nothing, and her thinking
+of it useless, unless he conquered himself. She only waited, holding on
+to that steel-like control of her nerves, motionless and silent.
+
+She leaned back against her saddle, a blanket covering her, with
+wide-open eyes, and despite the presence of that stalking figure and the
+fact of her mind being locked round one terrible and inevitable thought,
+she saw the changing beautiful glow of the fire-logs and the cold,
+pitiless stars and the mustering shadows under the walls. She heard,
+too, the low rising sigh of the wind in the balsam and the silvery
+tinkle of the brook, and sounds only imagined or nameless. Yet a stern
+and insupportable silence weighed her down. This dark canon seemed
+at the ends of the earth. She felt encompassed by illimitable and
+stupendous upflung mountains, insulated in a vast, dark, silent tomb.
+
+Kells suddenly came to her, treading noiselessly, and he leaned over
+her. His visage was a dark blur, but the posture of him was that of a
+wolf about to spring. Lower he leaned--slowly--and yet lower. Joan
+saw the heavy gun swing away from his leg; she saw it black and clear
+against the blaze; a cold, blue light glinted from its handle. And then
+Kells was near enough for her to see his face and his eyes that were but
+shadows of flames. She gazed up at him steadily, open-eyed, with no fear
+or shrinking. His breathing was quick and loud. He looked down at her
+for an endless moment, then, straightening his bent form, he resumed his
+walk to and fro.
+
+After that for Joan time might have consisted of moments or hours, each
+of which was marked by Kells looming over her. He appeared to approach
+her from all sides; he round her wide-eyed, sleepless; his shadowy
+glance gloated over her lithe, slender shape; and then he strode away
+into the gloom. Sometimes she could no longer hear his steps and then
+she was quiveringly alert, listening, fearful that he might creep upon
+her like a panther. At times he kept the camp-fire blazing brightly; at
+others he let it die down. And these dark intervals were frightful
+for her. The night seemed treacherous, in league with her foe. It was
+endless. She prayed for dawn--yet with a blank hopelessness for what
+the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours?
+Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she
+wavered and shook like a leaf in the wind, when the beating of her heart
+was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were
+other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible like things in a
+nightmare. But when Kells was near or approached to look at her, like
+a cat returned to watch a captive mouse, she was again strong, waiting,
+with ever a strange and cold sense of the nearness of that swinging gun.
+Late in the night she missed him, for how long she had no idea. She had
+less trust in his absence than his presence. The nearer he came to her
+the stronger she grew and the clearer of purpose. At last the black void
+of canon lost its blackness and turned to gray. Dawn was at hand. The
+horrible endless night, in which she had aged from girl to woman, had
+passed. Joan had never closed her eyes a single instant.
+
+When day broke she got up. The long hours in which she had rested
+motionlessly had left her muscles cramped and dead. She began to walk
+off the feeling. Kells had just stirred from his blanket under the
+balsam-tree. His face was dark, haggard, lined. She saw him go down to
+the brook and plunge his hands into the water and bathe his face with a
+kind of fury. Then he went up to the smoldering fire. There was a gloom,
+a somberness, a hardness about him that had not been noticeable the day
+before.
+
+Joan found the water cold as ice, soothing to the burn beneath her skin.
+She walked away then, aware that Kells did not appear to care, and went
+up to where the brook brawled from under the cliff. This was a hundred
+paces from camp, though in plain sight. Joan looked round for her
+horse, but he was not to be seen. She decided to slip away the first
+opportunity that offered, and on foot or horseback, any way, to get out
+of Kells's clutches if she had to wander, lost in the mountains, till
+she starved. Possibly the day might be endurable, but another night
+would drive her crazy. She sat on a ledge, planning and brooding, till
+she was startled by a call from Kells. Then slowly she retraced her
+steps.
+
+"Don't you want to eat?" he asked.
+
+"I'm not hungry," she replied.
+
+"Well, eat anyhow--if it chokes you," he ordered.
+
+Joan seated herself while he placed food and drink before her. She did
+not look at him and did not feel his gaze upon her. Far asunder as they
+had been yesterday the distance between them to-day was incalculably
+greater. She ate as much as she could swallow and pushed the rest
+away. Leaving the camp-fire, she began walking again, here and there,
+aimlessly, scarcely seeing what she looked at. There was a shadow over
+her, an impending portent of catastrophe, a moment standing dark and
+sharp out of the age-long hour. She leaned against the balsam and then
+she rested in the stone seat, and then she had to walk again. It might
+have been long, that time; she never knew how long or short. There came
+a strange flagging, sinking of her spirit, accompanied by vibrating,
+restless, uncontrollable muscular activity. Her nerves were on the verge
+of collapse.
+
+It was then that a call from Kells, clear and ringing, thrilled all the
+weakness from her in a flash, and left her limp and cold. She saw him
+coming. His face looked amiable again, bright against what seemed a
+vague and veiled background. Like a mountaineer he strode. And she
+looked into his strange, gray glance to see unmasked the ruthless power,
+the leaping devil, the ungovernable passion she had sensed in him.
+
+He grasped her arm and with a single pull swung her to him. "YOU'VE got
+to pay that ransom!"
+
+He handled her as if he thought she resisted, but she was unresisting.
+She hung her head to hide her eyes. Then he placed an arm round her
+shoulders and half led, half dragged her toward the cabin.
+
+
+
+Joan saw with startling distinctness the bits of balsam and pine at
+her feet and pale pink daisies in the grass, and then the dry withered
+boughs. She was in the cabin.
+
+"Girl!... I'm hungry--for you!" he breathed, hoarsely. And turning her
+toward him, he embraced her, as if his nature was savage and he had to
+use a savage force.
+
+If Joan struggled at all, it was only slightly, when she writhed and
+slipped, like a snake, to get her arm under his as it clasped her
+neck. Then she let herself go. He crushed her to him. He bent her
+backward--tilted her face with hard and eager hand. Like a madman, with
+hot working lips, he kissed her. She felt blinded--scorched. But her
+purpose was as swift and sure and wonderful as his passion was wild. The
+first reach of her groping hand found his gun-belt. Swift as light her
+hand slipped down. Her fingers touched the cold gun--grasped with thrill
+on thrill--slipped farther down, strong and sure to raise the hammer.
+Then with a leaping, strung intensity that matched his own she drew the
+gun. She raised it while her eyes were shut. She lay passive under his
+kisses--the devouring kisses of one whose manhood had been denied the
+sweetness, the glory, the fire, the life of woman's lips. It was a
+moment in which she met his primitive fury of possession with a woman's
+primitive fury of profanation. She pressed the gun against his side and
+pulled the trigger.
+
+A thundering, muffled, hollow boom! The odor of burned powder stung
+her nostrils. Kells's hold on her tightened convulsively, loosened
+with strange, lessening power. She swayed back free of him, still with
+tight-shut eyes. A horrible cry escaped him--a cry of mortal agony. It
+wrenched her. And she looked to see him staggering amazed, stricken, at
+bay, like a wolf caught in cruel steel jaws. His hands came away from
+both sides, dripping with blood. They shook till the crimson drops
+spattered on the wall, on the boughs. Then he seemed to realize and he
+clutched at her with these bloody hands.
+
+"God Almighty!" he panted. "You shot me!... You--you girl!... You
+she-cat... You knew--all the time... You she-cat!... Give me--that gun!"
+
+"Kells, get back! I'll kill you!" she cried. The big gun, outstretched
+between them, began to waver.
+
+Kells did not see the gun. In his madness he tried to move, to reach
+her, but he could not; he was sinking. His legs sagged under him, let
+him down to his knees, and but for the wall he would have fallen. Then a
+change transformed him. The black, turgid, convulsed face grew white and
+ghastly, with beads of clammy sweat and lines of torture. His strange
+eyes showed swiftly passing thought--wonder, fear, scorn--even
+admiration.
+
+"Joan, you've done--for me!" he gasped. "You've broken my back!... It'll
+kill me! Oh the pain--the pain! And I can't stand pain! You--you
+girl! You innocent seventeen-year-old girl! You that couldn't hurt any
+creature! You so tender--so gentle!... Bah! you fooled me. The cunning
+of a woman! I ought--to know. A good woman's--more terrible than
+a--bad woman.... But I deserved this. Once I used--to be.... Only, the
+torture!... Why didn't you--kill me outright?... Joan--Randle--watch
+me--die! Since I had--to die--by rope or bullet--I'm glad you--you--did
+for me.... Man or beast--I believe--I loved you!"
+
+Joan dropped the gun and sank beside him, helpless, horror-stricken,
+wringing her hands. She wanted to tell him she was sorry, that he drove
+her to it, that he must let her pray for him. But she could not speak.
+Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth and she seemed strangling.
+
+Another change, slower and more subtle, passed over Kells. He did not
+see Joan. He forgot her. The white shaded out of his face, leaving a
+gray like that of his somber eyes. Spirit, sense, life, were fading from
+him. The quivering of a racked body ceased. And all that seemed left was
+a lonely soul groping on the verge of the dim borderland between life
+and death. Presently his shoulders slipped along the wall and he fell,
+to lie limp and motionless before Joan. Then she fainted.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+When Joan returned to consciousness she was lying half outside the
+opening of the cabin and above her was a drift of blue gun-smoke, slowly
+floating upward. Almost as swiftly as perception of that smoke came a
+shuddering memory. She lay still, listening. She did not hear a sound
+except the tinkle and babble and gentle rush of the brook. Kells was
+dead, then. And overmastering the horror of her act was a relief, a
+freedom, a lifting of her soul out of the dark dread, a something that
+whispered justification of the fatal deed.
+
+She got up and, avoiding to look within the cabin, walked away. The sun
+was almost at the zenith. Where had the morning hours gone?
+
+"I must get away," she said, suddenly. The thought quickened her. Down
+the canon the horses were grazing. She hurried along the trail, trying
+to decide whether to follow this dim old trail or endeavor to get out
+the way she had been brought in. She decided upon the latter. If she
+traveled slowly, and watched for familiar landmarks, things she had seen
+once, and hunted carefully for the tracks, she believed she might be
+successful. She had the courage to try. Then she caught her pony and led
+him back to camp.
+
+"What shall I take?" she pondered. She decided upon very little--a
+blanket, a sack of bread and meat, and a canteen of water. She might
+need a weapon, also. There was only one, the gun with which she had
+killed Kells. It seemed utterly impossible to touch that hateful thing.
+But now that she had liberated herself, and at such cost, she must not
+yield to sentiment. Resolutely she started for the cabin, but when she
+reached it her steps were dragging. The long, dull-blue gun lay where
+she had dropped it. And out of the tail of averted eyes she saw a
+huddled shape along the wall. It was a sickening moment when she reached
+a shaking hand for the gun. And at that instant a low moan transfixed
+her.
+
+She seemed frozen rigid. Was the place already haunted? Her heart
+swelled in her throat and a dimness came before her eyes. But another
+moan brought a swift realization--Kells was alive. And the cold,
+clamping sickness, the strangle in her throat, all the feelings of
+terror, changed and were lost in a flood of instinctive joy. He was not
+dead. She had not killed him. She did not have blood on her hands. She
+was not a murderer.
+
+She whirled to look at him. There he lay, ghastly as a corpse. And all
+her woman's gladness fled. But there was compassion left to her, and,
+forgetting all else, she knelt beside him. He was as cold as stone. She
+felt no stir, no beat of pulse in temple or wrist. Then she placed her
+ear against his breast. His heart beat weakly.
+
+"He's alive," she whispered. "But--he's dying.... What shall I do?"
+
+Many thoughts flashed across her mind. She could not help him now; he
+would be dead soon; she did not need to wait there beside him; there was
+a risk of some of his comrades riding into that rendezvous. Suppose his
+back was not broken after all! Suppose she stopped the flow of blood,
+tended him, nursed him, saved his life? For if there were one chance of
+his living, which she doubted, it must be through her. Would he not be
+the same savage the hour he was well and strong again? What difference
+could she make in such a nature? The man was evil. He could not conquer
+evil. She had been witness to that. He had driven Roberts to draw and
+had killed him. No doubt he had deliberately and coldly murdered the two
+ruffians, Bill and Halloway, just so he could be free of their glances
+at her and be alone with her. He deserved to die there like a dog.
+
+What Joan Randle did was surely a woman's choice. Carefully she rolled
+Kells over. The back of his vest and shirt was wet with blood. She got
+up to find a knife, towel, and water. As she returned to the cabin he
+moaned again.
+
+Joan had dressed many a wound. She was not afraid of blood. The
+difference was that she had shed it. She felt sick, but her hands were
+firm as she cut open the vest and shirt, rolled them aside, and bathed
+his back. The big bullet had made a gaping wound, having apparently gone
+through the small of his back. The blood still flowed. She could not
+tell whether or not Kell's spine was broken, but she believed that the
+bullet had gone between bone and muscle, or had glanced. There was a
+blue welt just over his spine, in line with the course of the wound. She
+tore her scarf into strips and used it for compresses and bandages.
+Then she laid him back upon a saddle-blanket. She had done all that was
+possible for the present, and it gave her a strange sense of comfort.
+She even prayed for his life, and, if that must go, for his soul. Then
+she got up. He was unconscious, white, death-like. It seemed that his
+torture, his near approach to death, had robbed his face of ferocity,
+of ruthlessness, and of that strange amiable expression. But then, his
+eyes, those furnace-windows, were closed.
+
+Joan waited for the end to come. The afternoon passed and she did not
+leave the cabin. It was possible that he might come to and want water.
+She had once administered to a miner who had been fatally crushed in
+an avalanche; and never could forget his husky call for water and the
+gratitude in his eyes.
+
+Sunset, twilight, and night fell upon the canon. And she began to feel
+solitude as something tangible. Bringing saddle and blankets into the
+cabin, she made a bed just inside, and, facing the opening and the
+stars, she lay down to rest, if not to sleep. The darkness did not keep
+her from seeing the prostrate figure of Kells. He lay there as silent
+as if he were already dead. She was exhausted, weary for sleep, and
+unstrung. In the night her courage fled and she was frightened at
+shadows. The murmuring of insects seemed augmented into a roar; the
+mourn of wolf and scream of cougar made her start; the rising wind
+moaned like a lost spirit. Dark fancies beset her. Troop on troop of
+specters moved out of the black night, assembling there, waiting for
+Kells to join them. She thought she was riding homeward over the back
+trail, sure of her way, remembering every rod of that rough travel,
+until she got out of the mountains, only to be turned back by dead men.
+Then fancy and dream, and all the haunted gloom of canon and cabin,
+seemed slowly to merge into one immense blackness.
+
+The sun, rimming the east wall, shining into Joan's face, awakened
+her. She had slept hours. She felt rested, stronger. Like the night,
+something dark had passed away from her. It did not seem strange to
+her that she should feel that Kells still lived. She knew it. And
+examination proved her right. In him there had been no change except
+that he had ceased to bleed. There was just a flickering of life in him,
+manifest only in his slow, faint heart-beats.
+
+Joan spent most of that day in sitting beside Kells. The whole day
+seemed only an hour. Sometimes she would look down the canon trail, half
+expecting to see horsemen riding up. If any of Kells's comrades happened
+to come, what could she tell them? They would be as bad as he, without
+that one trait which had kept him human for a day. Joan pondered upon
+this. It would never do to let them suspect she had shot Kells. So,
+carefully cleaning the gun, she reloaded it. If any men came, she would
+tell them that Bill had done the shooting.
+
+Kells lingered. Joan began to feel that he would live, though everything
+indicated the contrary. Her intelligence told her he would die, and her
+feeling said he would not. At times she lifted his head and got water
+into his mouth with a spoon. When she did this he would moan. That
+night, during the hours she lay awake, she gathered courage out of the
+very solitude and loneliness. She had nothing to fear, unless someone
+came to the canon. The next day in no wise differed from the preceding.
+And then there came the third day, with no change in Kells till near
+evening, when she thought he was returning to consciousness. But she
+must have been mistaken. For hours she watched patiently. He might
+return to consciousness just before the end, and want to speak, to send
+a message, to ask a prayer, to feel a human hand at the last.
+
+That night the crescent moon hung over the canon. In the faint light
+Joan could see the blanched face of Kells, strange and sad, no longer
+seeming evil. The time came when his lips stirred. He tried to talk. She
+moistened his lips and gave him a drink. He murmured incoherently, sank
+again into a stupor, to rouse once more and babble tike a madman. Then
+he lay quietly for long--so long that sleep was claiming Joan. Suddenly
+he startled her by calling very faintly but distinctly: "Water! Water!"
+
+Joan bent over him, lifting his head, helping him to drink. She could
+see his eyes, like dark holes in something white.
+
+"Is--that--you--mother?" he whispered.
+
+"Yes," replied Joan.
+
+He sank immediately into another stupor or sleep, from which he did not
+rouse. That whisper of his--mother--touched Joan. Bad men had mothers
+just the same as any other kind of men. Even this Kells had a mother. He
+was still a young man. He had been youth, boy, child, baby. Some mother
+had loved him, cradled him, kissed his rosy baby hands, watched him grow
+with pride and glory, built castles in her dreams of his manhood, and
+perhaps prayed for him still, trusting he was strong and honored among
+men. And here he lay, a shattered wreck, dying for a wicked act, the
+last of many crimes. It was a tragedy. It made Joan think of the hard
+lot of mothers, and then of this unsettled Western wild, where men
+flocked in packs like wolves, and spilled blood like water, and held
+life nothing.
+
+Joan sought her rest and soon slept. In the morning she did not at once
+go to Kells. Somehow she dreaded finding him conscious, almost as much
+as she dreaded the thought of finding him dead. When she did bend over
+him he was awake, and at sight of her he showed a faint amaze.
+
+"Joan!" he whispered.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"Are you--with me still?"
+
+"Of course, I couldn't leave you."
+
+The pale eyes shadowed strangely, darkly. "I'm alive yet. And you
+stayed!... Was it yesterday--you threw my gun--on me?"
+
+"No. Four days ago."
+
+"Four! Is my back broken?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't think so. It's a terrible wound. I--I did all I
+could."
+
+"You tried to kill me--then tried to save me?"
+
+She was silent to that.
+
+"You're good--and you've been noble," he said. "But I wish--you'd only
+been bad. Then I'd curse you--and strangle you--presently."
+
+"Perhaps you had best be quiet," replied Joan.
+
+"No. I've been shot before. I'll get over this--if my back's not broken.
+How can we tell?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Lift me up."
+
+"But you might open your wound," protested Joan.
+
+"Lift me up!" The force of the man spoke even in his low whisper.
+
+"But why--why?" asked Joan.
+
+"I want to see--if I can sit up. If I can't--give me my gun."
+
+"I won't let you have it," replied Joan. Then she slipped her arms under
+his and, carefully raising him to a sitting posture, released her hold.
+
+"I'm--a--rank coward--about pain," he gasped, with thick drops standing
+out on his white face. "I can't--stand it."
+
+But tortured or not, he sat up alone, and even had the will to bend his
+back. Then with a groan he fainted and fell into Joan's arms. She laid
+him down and worked over him for some time before she could bring him
+to. Then he was wan, suffering, speechless. But she believed he would
+live and told him so. He received that with a strange smile. Later, when
+she came to him with broth, he drank it gratefully.
+
+"I'll beat this out," he said, weakly. "I'll recover. My back's not
+broken. I'll get well. Now you bring water and food in here--then go."
+
+"Go?" she echoed.
+
+"Yes. Don't go down the canon. You'd be worse off.... Take the back
+trail. You've got a chance to get out.... Go!"
+
+"Leave you here? So weak you can't lift a cup! I won't."
+
+"I'd rather you did."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because in a few days I'll begin to mend. Then I'll grow
+like--myself.... I think--I'm afraid I loved you.... It could only be
+hell for you. Go now, before it's too late!... If you stay--till I'm
+well--I'll never let you go!"
+
+"Kells, I believe it would be cowardly for me to leave you here alone,"
+she replied, earnestly. "You can't help yourself. You'd die."
+
+"All the better. But I won't die. I'm hard to kill. Go, I tell you."
+
+She shook her head. "This is bad for you--arguing. You're excited.
+Please be quiet."
+
+"Joan Randle, if you stay--I'll halter you--keep you naked in a
+cave--curse you--beat you--murder you! Oh, it's in me!... Go, I tell
+you!"
+
+"You're out of your head. Once for all--no!" she replied, firmly.
+
+"You--you--" His voice failed in a terrible whisper....
+
+In the succeeding days Kells did not often speak. His recovery was
+slow--a matter of doubt. Nothing was any plainer than the fact that if
+Joan had left him he would not have lived long. She knew it. And he knew
+it. When he was awake, and she came to him, a mournful and beautiful
+smile lit his eyes. The sight of her apparently hurt him and uplifted
+him. But he slept twenty hours out of every day, and while he slept he
+did not need Joan.
+
+She came to know the meaning of solitude. There were days when she did
+not hear the sound of her own voice. A habit of silence, one of the
+significant forces of solitude, had grown upon her. Daily she thought
+less and felt more. For hours she did nothing. When she roused herself,
+compelled herself to think of these encompassing peaks of the lonely
+canon walls, the stately trees, all those eternally silent and changless
+features of her solitude, she hated them with a blind and unreasoning
+passion. She hated them because she was losing her love for them,
+because they were becoming a part of her, because they were fixed and
+content and passionless. She liked to sit in the sun, feel its warmth,
+see its brightness; and sometimes she almost forgot to go back to her
+patient. She fought at times against an insidious change--a growing
+older--a going backward; at other times she drifted through hours that
+seemed quiet and golden, in which nothing happened. And by and by when
+she realized that the drifting hours were gradually swallowing up the
+restless and active hours, then strangely, she remembered Jim Cleve.
+Memory of him came to save her. She dreamed of him during the long,
+lonely, solemn days, and in the dark, silent climax of unbearable
+solitude--the night. She remembered his kisses, forgot her anger
+and shame, accepted the sweetness of their meaning, and so in the
+interminable hours of her solitude she dreamed herself into love for
+him.
+
+Joan kept some record of days, until three weeks or thereabout passed,
+and then she lost track of time. It dragged along, yet looked at as the
+past, it seemed to have sped swiftly. The change in her, the growing
+old, the revelation and responsibility of serf, as a woman, made this
+experience appear to have extended over months.
+
+Kells slowly became convalescent and then he had a relapse. Something
+happened, the nature of which Joan could not tell, and he almost died.
+There were days when his life hung in the balance, when he could not
+talk; and then came a perceptible turn for the better.
+
+The store of provisions grew low, and Joan began to face another serious
+situation. Deer and rabbit were plentiful in the canon, but she could
+not kill one with a revolver. She thought she would be forced to
+sacrifice one of the horses. The fact that Kells suddenly showed a
+craving for meat brought this aspect of the situation to a climax. And
+that very morning while Joan was pondering the matter she saw a number
+of horsemen riding up the canon toward the cabin. At the moment she was
+relieved, and experienced nothing of the dread she had formerly felt
+while anticipating this very event.
+
+"Kells," she said, quickly, "there are men riding up the trail."
+
+"Good," he exclaimed, weakly, with a light on his drawn face. "They've
+been long in--getting here. How many?"
+
+Joan counted them--five riders, and several pack-animals.
+
+"Yes. It's Gulden."
+
+"Gulden!" cried Joan, with a start.
+
+Her exclamation and tone made Kells regard her attentively.
+
+"You've heard of him? He's the toughest nut--on this border.... I never
+saw his like. You won't be safe. I'm so helpless.... What to say--to
+tell him!... Joan, if I should happen to croak--you want to get away
+quick... or shoot yourself."
+
+How strange to hear this bandit warn her of peril the like of which she
+had encountered through him! Joan secured the gun and hid it in a niche
+between the logs. Then she looked out again.
+
+The riders were close at hand now. The foremost one, a man of Herculean
+build, jumped his mount across the brook, and leaped off while he hauled
+the horse to a stop. The second rider came close behind him; the others
+approached leisurely, with the gait of the pack-animals.
+
+"Ho, Kells!" called the big man. His voice had a loud, bold, sonorous
+kind of ring.
+
+"Reckon he's here somewheres," said the other man, presently.
+
+"Sure. I seen his hoss. Jack ain't goin' to be far from thet hoss."
+
+Then both of them approached the cabin. Joan had never before seen two
+such striking, vicious-looking, awesome men. The one was huge--so wide
+and heavy and deep-set that he looked short--and he resembled a gorilla.
+The other was tall, slim, with a face as red as flame, and an expression
+of fierce keenness. He was stoop shouldered, yet he held his head erect
+in a manner that suggested a wolf scenting blood.
+
+"Someone here, Pearce," boomed the big man.
+
+"Why, Gul, if it ain't a girl!"
+
+Joan moved out of the shadow of the wall of the cabin, and she pointed
+to the prostrate figure on the blankets.
+
+"Howdy boys!" said Kells, wanly.
+
+Gulden cursed in amaze while Pearce dropped to his knee with an
+exclamation of concern. Then both began to talk at once. Kells
+interrupted them by lifting a weak hand.
+
+"No, I'm not going--to cash," he said. "I'm only starved--and in need of
+stimulants. Had my back half shot off."
+
+"Who plugged you, Jack?"
+
+"Gulden, it was your side-partner, Bill."
+
+"Bill?" Gulden's voice held a queer, coarse constraint. Then he added,
+gruffly. "Thought you and him pulled together."
+
+"Well, we didn't."
+
+"And--where's Bill now?" This time Joan heard a slow, curious, cold note
+in the heavy voice, and she interpreted it as either doubt or deceit.
+
+"Bill's dead and Halloway, too," replied Kells.
+
+Gulden turned his massive, shaggy head in the direction of Joan. She had
+not the courage to meet the gaze upon her. The other man spoke:
+
+"Split over the girl, Jack?"
+
+"No," replied Kells, sharply. "They tried to get familiar with--MY
+WIFE--and I shot them both."
+
+Joan felt a swift leap of hot blood all over her and then a coldness, a
+sickening, a hateful weakness.
+
+"Wife!" ejaculated Gulden.
+
+"Your real wife, Jack?" queried Pearce.
+
+"Well, I guess, I'll introduce you... Joan, here are two of my
+friends--Sam Gulden and Red Pearce."
+
+Gulden grunted something.
+
+"Mrs. Kells, I'm glad to meet you," said Pearce.
+
+Just then the other three men entered the cabin and Joan took advantage
+of the commotion they made to get out into the air. She felt sick,
+frightened, and yet terribly enraged. She staggered a little as she
+went out, and she knew she was as pale as death. These visitors thrust
+reality upon her with a cruel suddenness. There was something terrible
+in the mere presence of this Gulden. She had not yet dared to take a
+good look at him. But what she felt was overwhelming. She wanted to
+run. Yet escape now was infinitely more of a menace than before. If she
+slipped away it would be these new enemies who would pursue her, track
+her like hounds. She understood why Kells had introduced her as his
+wife. She hated the idea with a shameful and burning hate, but a
+moment's reflection taught her that Kells had answered once more to
+a good instinct. At the moment he had meant that to protect her.
+And further reflection persuaded Joan that she would be wise to act
+naturally and to carry out the deception as far as it was possible for
+her. It was her only hope. Her position had again grown perilous. She
+thought of the gun she had secreted, and it gave her strength to control
+her agitation and to return to the cabin outwardly calm.
+
+The men had Kells half turned over with the flesh of his back exposed.
+
+"Aw, Gul, it's whisky he needs," said one.
+
+"If you let out any more blood he'll croak sure," protested another.
+
+"Look how weak he is," said Red Pearce.
+
+"It's a hell of a lot you know," roared Gulden. "I served my time--but
+that's none of your business.... Look here! See that blue spot!" Gulden
+pressed a huge finger down upon the blue welt on Kells's back. The
+bandit moaned. "That's lead--that's the bullet," declared Gulden.
+
+"Wall, if you ain't correct!" exclaimed Pearce.
+
+Kells turned his head. "When you punched that place--it made me numb all
+over. Gul, if you've located the bullet, cut it out."
+
+Joan did not watch the operation. As she went away to the seat under the
+balsam she heard a sharp cry and then cheers. Evidently the grim Gulden
+had been both swift and successful.
+
+Presently the men came out of the cabin and began to attend to their
+horses and the pack-train.
+
+Pearce looked for Joan, and upon seeing her called out, "Kells wants
+you."
+
+Joan found the bandit half propped up against a saddle with a damp and
+pallid face, but an altogether different look.
+
+"Joan, that bullet was pressing on my spine," he said. "Now it's out,
+all that deadness is gone. I feel alive. I'll get well, soon.... Gulden
+was curious over the bullet. It's a forty-four caliber, and neither Bill
+Bailey nor Halloway used that caliber of gun. Gulden remembered. He's
+cunning. Bill was as near being a friend to this Gulden as any man I
+know of. I can't trust any of these men, particularly Gulden. You stay
+pretty close by me."
+
+"Kells, you'll let me go soon--help me to get home?" implored Joan in a
+low voice.
+
+"Girl, it'd never be safe now," he replied.
+
+"Then later--soon--when it is safe?"
+
+"We'll see.... But you're my wife now!"
+
+With the latter words the man subtly changed. Something of the power she
+had felt in him before his illness began again to be manifested. Joan
+divined that these comrades had caused the difference in him.
+
+"You won't dare--!" Joan was unable to conclude her meaning. A tight
+band compressed her breast and throat, and she trembled.
+
+"Will you dare go out there and tell them you're NOT my wife?" he
+queried. His voice had grown stronger and his eyes were blending shadows
+of thought.
+
+Joan knew that she dared not. She must choose the lesser of two evils.
+"No man--could be such a beast to a woman--after she'd saved his life,"
+she whispered.
+
+"I could be anything. You had your chance. I told you to go. I said if I
+ever got well I'd be as I was--before."
+
+"But you'd have died."
+
+"That would have been better for you..... Joan, I'll do this. Marry
+you honestly and leave the country. I've gold. I'm young. I love you. I
+intend to have you. And I'll begin life over again. What do you say?"
+
+"Say? I'd die before--I'd marry you!" she panted.
+
+"All right, Joan Randle," he replied, bitterly. "For a moment I saw a
+ghost. My old dead better self!... It's gone.... And you stay with me."
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+After dark Kells had his men build a fire before the open side of the
+cabin. He lay propped up on blankets and his saddle, while the others
+lounged or sat in a half-circle in the light, facing him.
+
+Joan drew her blankets into a corner where the shadows were thick and
+she could see without being seen. She wondered how she would ever sleep
+near all these wild men--if she could ever sleep again. Yet she seemed
+more curious and wakeful than frightened. She had no way to explain
+it, but she felt the fact that her presence in the camp had a subtle
+influence, at once restraining and exciting. So she looked out upon the
+scene with wide-open eyes.
+
+And she received more strongly than ever an impression of wildness. Even
+the camp-fire seemed to burn wildly; it did not glow and sputter and
+pale and brighten and sing like an honest camp-fire. It blazed in red,
+fierce, hurried flames, wild to consume the logs. It cast a baleful
+and sinister color upon the hard faces there. Then the blackness of the
+enveloping night was pitchy, without any bold outline of canon wall
+or companionship of stars. The coyotes were out in force and from all
+around came their wild sharp barks. The wind rose and mourned weirdly
+through the balsams.
+
+But it was in the men that Joan felt mostly that element of wildness.
+Kells lay with his ghastly face clear in the play of the moving flare
+of light. It was an intelligent, keen, strong face, but evil. Evil power
+stood out in the lines, in the strange eyes, stranger then ever, now
+in shadow; and it seemed once more the face of an alert, listening,
+implacable man, with wild projects in mind, driving him to the doom he
+meant for others. Pearce's red face shone redder in that ruddy light. It
+was hard, lean, almost fleshless, a red mask stretched over a grinning
+skull. The one they called Frenchy was little, dark, small-featured,
+with piercing gimlet-like eyes, and a mouth ready to gush forth hate
+and violence. The next two were not particularly individualized by any
+striking aspect, merely looking border ruffians after the type of Bill
+and Halloway. But Gulden, who sat at the end of the half-circle, was
+an object that Joan could scarcely bring her gaze to study. Somehow her
+first glance at him put into her mind a strange idea--that she was a
+woman and therefore of all creatures or things in the world the farthest
+removed from him. She looked away, and found her gaze returning,
+fascinated, as if she were a bird and he a snake. The man was of huge
+frame, a giant whose every move suggested the acme of physical power. He
+was an animal--a gorilla with a shock of light instead of black hair,
+of pale instead of black skin. His features might have been hewn and
+hammered out with coarse, dull, broken chisels. And upon his face, in
+the lines and cords, in the huge caverns where his eyes hid, and in the
+huge gash that held strong, white fangs, had been stamped by nature
+and by life a terrible ferocity. Here was a man or a monster in whose
+presence Joan felt that she would rather be dead. He did not smoke; he
+did not indulge in the coarse, good-natured raillery, he sat there like
+a huge engine of destruction that needed no rest, but was forced to rest
+because of weaker attachments. On the other hand, he was not sullen or
+brooding. It was that he did not seem to think.
+
+Kells had been rapidly gaining strength since the extraction of
+the bullet, and it was evident that his interest was growing
+proportionately. He asked questions and received most of his replies
+from Red Pearce. Joan did not listen attentively at first, but presently
+she regretted that she had not. She gathered that Kells's fame as
+the master bandit of the whole gold region of Idaho, Nevada, and
+northeastern California was a fame that he loved as much as the gold he
+stole. Joan sensed, through the replies of these men and their attitude
+toward Kells, that his power was supreme. He ruled the robbers and
+ruffians in his bands, and evidently they were scattered from Bannack
+to Lewiston and all along the border. He had power, likewise, over the
+border hawks not directly under his leadership. During the weeks of his
+enforced stay in the canon there had been a cessation of operations--the
+nature of which Joan merely guessed--and a gradual accumulation of
+idle wailing men in the main camp. Also she gathered, but vaguely, that
+though Kells had supreme power, the organization he desired was yet
+far from being consummated. He showed thoughtfulness and irritation by
+turns, and it was the subject of gold that drew his intensest interest.
+
+"Reckon you figgered right, Jack," said Red Pearce, and paused as
+if before a long talk, while he refilled his pipe. "Sooner or later
+there'll be the biggest gold strike ever made in the West. Wagon-trains
+are met every day comin' across from Salt Lake. Prospectors are workin'
+in hordes down from Bannack. All the gulches an' valleys in the Bear
+Mountains have their camps. Surface gold everywhere an' easy to get
+where there's water. But there's diggin's all over. No big strike yet.
+It's bound to come sooner or later. An' then when the news hits the
+main-traveled roads an' reaches back into the mountains there's goin' to
+be a rush that'll make '49 an' '51 look sick. What do you say, Bate?"
+
+"Shore will," replied a grizzled individual whom Kells had called Bate
+Wood. He was not so young as his companions, more sober, less wild,
+and slower of speech. "I saw both '49 and '51. Them was days! But I'm
+agreein' with Red. There shore will be hell on this Idaho border sooner
+or later. I've been a prospector, though I never hankered after the hard
+work of diggin' gold. Gold is hard to dig, easy to lose, an' easy to get
+from some other feller. I see the signs of a comin' strike somewhere in
+this region. Mebbe it's on now. There's thousands of prospectors in twos
+an' threes an' groups, out in the hills all over. They ain't a-goin' to
+tell when they do make a strike. But the gold must be brought out. An'
+gold is heavy. It ain't easy hid. Thet's how strikes are discovered. I
+shore reckon thet this year will beat '49 an' '51. An' fer two reasons.
+There's a steady stream of broken an' disappointed gold-seekers
+back-trailin' from California. There's a bigger stream of hopeful an'
+crazy fortune hunters travelin' in from the East. Then there's the
+wimmen an' gamblers an' such thet hang on. An' last the men thet the
+war is drivin' out here. Whenever an' wherever these streams meet, if
+there's a big gold strike, there'll be the hellishest time the world
+ever saw!"
+
+"Boys," said Kells, with a ring in his weak voice, "it'll be a harvest
+for my Border Legion."
+
+"Fer what?" queried Bate Wood, curiously.
+
+All the others except Gulden turned inquiring and interested faces
+toward the bandit.
+
+"The Border Legion," replied Kells.
+
+"An' what's that?" asked Red Pearce, bluntly.
+
+"Well, if the time's ripe for the great gold fever you say is coming,
+then it's ripe for the greatest band ever organized. I'll organize. I'll
+call it the Border Legion."
+
+"Count me in as right-hand, pard," replied Red, with enthusiasm.
+
+"An' shore me, boss," added Bate Wood.
+
+The idea was received vociferously, at which demonstration the giant
+Gulden raised his massive head and asked, or rather growled, in a heavy
+voice what the fuss was about. His query, his roused presence, seemed to
+act upon the others, even Kells, with a strange, disquieting or halting
+force, as if here was a character or an obstacle to be considered. After
+a moment of silence Red Pearce explained the project.
+
+"Huh! Nothing new in that," replied Gulden. "I belonged to one once. It
+was in Algiers. They called it the Royal Legion."
+
+"Algiers. What's thet?" asked Bate Wood.
+
+"Africa," replied Gulden.
+
+"Say, Gul, you've been around some," said Red Pearce, admiringly. "What
+was the Royal Legion?"
+
+"Nothing but a lot of devils from all over. The border there was the
+last place. Every criminal was safe from pursuit."
+
+"What'd you do?"
+
+"Fought among ourselves. Wasn't many in the Legion when I left."
+
+"Shore thet ain't strange!" exclaimed Wood, significantly. But his
+inference was lost upon Gulden.
+
+"I won't allow fighting in my Legion," said Kells, coolly. "I'll pick
+this band myself."
+
+"Thet's the secret," rejoined Wood. "The right fellers. I've been in all
+kinds of bands. Why, I even was a vigilante in '51."
+
+This elicited a laugh from his fellows, except the wooden-faced Gulden.
+
+"How many do we want?" asked Red Pearce.
+
+"The number doesn't matter. But they must be men I can trust and
+control. Then as lieutenants I'll need a few young fellows, like you,
+Red. Nervy, daring, cool, quick of wits."
+
+Red Pearce enjoyed the praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders
+a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who
+rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place,
+where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off
+we all thought he was a guy who had a grievance, an' some of us was for
+pluggin' him. But I kinda liked him an' I cooled the gang down. Glad
+I did that. He wasn't wantin' to throw a gun. His intentions were
+friendly. Of course I didn't show curious about who or what he was.
+Reckoned he was a young feller who'd gone bad sudden-like an' was
+huntin' friends. An' I'm here to say, boss, that he was wild."
+
+"What's his name?" asked Kells.
+
+"Jim Cleve, he said," replied Pearce.
+
+Joan Randle, hidden back in the shadows, forgotten or ignored by this
+bandit group, heard the name Jim Cleve with pain and fear, but not
+amaze. From the moment Pearce began his speech she had been prepared
+for the revelation of her runaway lover's name. She trembled, and grew
+a little sick. Jim had made no idle threat. What would she have given to
+live over again the moment that had alienated him?
+
+"Jim Cleve," mused Kells. "Never heard of him. And I never forget a name
+or a face. What's he like?"
+
+"Clean, rangy chap, big, but not too big," replied Pearce. "All muscle.
+Not more'n twenty three. Hard rider, hard fighter, hard gambler an'
+drinker--reckless as hell. If only you can steady him, boss! Ask Bate
+what he thinks."
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Kells in surprise. "Strangers are everyday occurrences
+on this border. But I never knew one to impress you fellows as this
+Cleve.... Bate, what do you say? What's this Cleve done? You're an old
+head. Talk, sense, now."
+
+"Done?" echoed Wood, scratching his grizzled head. "What in the hell
+ain't he done?... He rode in brazener than any feller thet ever stacked
+up against this outfit. An' straight-off he wins the outfit. I don't
+know how he done it. Mebbe it was because you seen he didn't care fer
+anythin' or anybody on earth. He stirred us up. He won all the money we
+had in camp--broke most of us--an' give it all back. He drank more'n the
+whole outfit, yet didn't get drunk. He threw his gun on Beady Jones
+fer cheatin' an' then on Beady's pard, Chick Williams. Didn't shoot to
+kill--jest winged 'em. But say, he's the quickest and smoothest hand to
+throw a gun thet ever hit this border. Don't overlook thet.... Kells,
+this Jim Cleve's a great youngster goin' bad quick. An' I'm here to add
+that he'll take some company along."
+
+"Bate, you forgot to tell how he handled Luce," said Red Pearee. "You
+was there. I wasn't. Tell Kells that."
+
+"Luce. I know the man. Go ahead, Bate," responded Kells.
+
+"Mebbe it ain't any recommendation fer said Jim Cleve," replied Wood.
+"Though it did sorta warm me to him.... Boss, of course, you recollect
+thet little Brander girl over at Bear Lake village. She's old Brander's
+girl--worked in his store there. I've seen you talk sweet to her myself.
+Wal, it seems the old man an' some of his boys took to prospectin' an'
+fetched the girl along. Thet's how I understood it. Luce came bracin' in
+over at Cabin Gulch one day. As usual, we was drinkin' an' playin'. But
+young Cleve wasn't doin' neither. He had a strange, moody spell thet
+day, as I recollect. Luce sprung a job on us. We never worked with him
+or his outfit, but mebbe--you can't tell what'd come off if it hadn't
+been for Cleve. Luce had a job put up to ride down where ole Brander was
+washin' fer gold, take what he had--AN' the girl. Fact was the gold was
+only incidental. When somebody cornered Luce he couldn't swear there was
+gold worth goin' after. An' about then Jim Cleve woke up. He cussed Luce
+somethin' fearful. An' when Luce went for his gun, natural-like, why
+this Jim Cleve took it away from him. An' then he jumped Luce. He
+knocked an' threw him around an' he near beat him to death before we
+could interfere. Luce was shore near dead. All battered up--broken
+bones--an' what-all I can't say. We put him to bed an' he's there yet,
+an' he'll never be the same man he was."
+
+A significant silence fell upon the group at the conclusion of Wood's
+narrative. Wood had liked the telling, and it made his listeners
+thoughtful. All at once the pale face of Kells turned slightly toward
+Gulden.
+
+"Gulden, did you hear that?" asked Kells.
+
+"Yes," replied the man.
+
+"What do you think about this Jim Cleve--and the job he prevented?"
+
+"Never saw Cleve. I'll look him up when we get back to camp. Then I'll
+go after the Brander girl."
+
+How strangely his brutal assurance marked a line between him and his
+companions! There was something wrong, something perverse in this
+Gulden. Had Kells meant to bring that point out or to get an impression
+of Cleve?
+
+Joan could not decide. She divined that there was antagonism between
+Gulden and all the others. And there was something else, vague and
+intangible, that might have been fear. Apparently Gulden was a
+criminal for the sake of crime. Joan regarded him with a growing
+terror--augmented the more because he alone kept eyes upon the corner
+where she was hidden--and she felt that compared with him the
+others, even Kells, of whose cold villainy she was assured, were but
+insignificant men of evil. She covered her head with a blanket to shut
+out sight of that shaggy, massive head and the great dark caves of eyes.
+
+Thereupon Joan did not see or hear any more of the bandits. Evidently
+the conversation died down, or she, in the absorption of new thoughts,
+no longer heard. She relaxed, and suddenly seemed to quiver all over
+with the name she whispered to herself. "Jim! Jim! Oh, Jim!" And the
+last whisper was an inward sob. What he had done was terrible. It
+tortured her. She had not believed it in him. Yet, now she thought, how
+like him. All for her--in despair and spite--he had ruined himself. He
+would be killed out there in some drunken brawl, or, still worse, he
+would become a member of this bandit crew and drift into crime. That was
+a great blow to Joan--that the curse she had put upon him. How silly,
+false, and vain had been her coquetry, her indifference! She loved Jim
+Cleve. She had not known that when she started out to trail him, to
+fetch him back, but she knew it now. She ought to have known before.
+
+The situation she had foreseen loomed dark and monstrous and terrible in
+prospect. Just to think of it made her body creep and shudder with cold
+terror. Yet there was that strange, inward, thrilling burn round her
+heart. Somewhere and soon she was coming face to face with this changed
+Jim Cleve--this boy who had become a reckless devil. What would he
+do? What could she do? Might he not despise her, scorn her, curse her,
+taking her at Kells's word, the wife of a bandit? But no! he would
+divine the truth in the flash of an eye. And then! She could not think
+what might happen, but it must mean blood-death. If he escaped Kells,
+how could he ever escape this Gulden--this huge vulture of prey?
+
+Still, with the horror thick upon her, Joan could not wholly give up.
+The moment Jim Cleve's name and his ruin burst upon her ears, in the
+gossip of these bandits, she had become another girl--a girl wholly
+become a woman, and one with a driving passion to save if it cost her
+life. She lost her fear of Kells, of the others, of all except Gulden.
+He was not human, and instinctively she knew she could do nothing with
+him. She might influence the others, but never Gulden.
+
+The torment in her brain eased then, and gradually she quieted down,
+with only a pang and a weight in her breast. The past seemed far away.
+The present was nothing. Only the future, that contained Jim Cleve,
+mattered to her. She would not have left the clutches of Kells, if at
+that moment she could have walked forth free and safe. She was going on
+to Cabin Gulch. And that thought was the last one in her weary mind as
+she dropped to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+In three days--during which time Joan attended Kells as faithfully as if
+she were indeed his wife--he thought that he had gained sufficiently to
+undertake the journey to the main camp, Cabin Gulch. He was eager to get
+back there and imperious in his overruling of any opposition. The men
+could take turns at propping him in a saddle. So on the morning of the
+fourth day they packed for the ride.
+
+During these few days Joan had verified her suspicion that Kells had
+two sides to his character; or it seemed, rather, that her presence
+developed a latent or a long-dead side. When she was with him, thereby
+distracting his attention, he was entirely different from what he was
+when his men surrounded him. Apparently he had no knowledge of this. He
+showed surprise and gratitude at Joan's kindness though never pity or
+compassion for her. That he had become infatuated with her Joan could no
+longer doubt. His strange eyes followed her; there was a dreamy light in
+them; he was mostly silent with her.
+
+Before those few days had come to an end he had developed two things--a
+reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance of the
+presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan felt the
+eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances, except
+Gulden's. The giant studied her with slow, cavernous stare, without
+curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman was a new and
+strange creature to him and he was experiencing unfamiliar sensations.
+Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze--for she avoided it as much as
+possible--she shuddered with sick memory of a story she had heard--how
+a huge and ferocious gorilla had stolen into an African village and run
+off with a white woman. She could not shake the memory. And it was this
+that made her kinder to Kells than otherwise would have been possible.
+
+All Joan's faculties sharpened in this period. She felt her own
+development--the beginning of a bitter and hard education--an
+instinctive assimilation of all that nature taught its wild people
+and creatures, the first thing in elemental life--self-preservation.
+Parallel in her heart and mind ran a hopeless despair and a driving,
+unquenchable spirit. The former was fear, the latter love. She believed
+beyond a doubt that she had doomed herself along with Jim Cleve; she
+felt that she had the courage, the power, the love to save him, if
+not herself. And the reason that she did not falter and fail in this
+terrible situation was because her despair, great as it was, did not
+equal her love.
+
+That morning, before being lifted upon his horse, Kells buckled on his
+gun-belt. The sheath and full round of shells and the gun made this belt
+a burden for a weak man. And so Red Pearce insisted. But Kells laughed
+in his face. The men, always excepting Gulden, were unfailing in
+kindness and care. Apparently they would have fought for Kells to the
+death. They were simple and direct in their rough feelings. But in
+Kells, Joan thought, was a character who was a product of this border
+wildness, yet one who could stand aloof from himself and see the
+possibilities, the unexpected, the meaning of that life. Kells knew that
+a man and yet another might show kindness and faithfulness one moment,
+but the very next, out of a manhood retrograded to the savage, out
+of the circumstance or chance, might respond to a primitive force far
+sundered from thought or reason, and rise to unbridled action. Joan
+divined that Kells buckled on his gun to be ready to protect her. But
+his men never dreamed his motive. Kells was a strong, bad man set among
+men like him, yet he was infinitely different because he had brains.
+
+On the start of the journey Joan was instructed to ride before Kells
+and Pearce, who supported the leader in his saddle. The pack-drivers
+and Bate Wood and Frenchy rode ahead; Gulden held to the rear. And this
+order was preserved till noon, when the cavalcade halted for a rest in
+a shady, grassy, and well-watered nook. Kells was haggard, and his
+brow wet with clammy dew, and lined with pain. Yet he was cheerful and
+patient. Still he hurried the men through their tasks.
+
+In an hour the afternoon travel was begun. The canon and its
+surroundings grew more rugged and of larger dimensions. Yet the
+trail appeared to get broader and better all the time. Joan noticed
+intersecting trails, running down from side canons and gulches. The
+descent was gradual, and scarcely evident in any way except in the
+running water and warmer air.
+
+Kells, tired before the middle of the afternoon, and he would have
+fallen from his saddle but for the support of his fellows. One by one
+they held him up. And it was not easy work to ride alongside, holding
+him up. Joan observed that Gulden did not offer his services. He seemed
+a part of this gang, yet not of it. Joan never lost a feeling of his
+presence behind her, and from time to time, when he rode closer, the
+feeling grew stronger. Toward the close of that afternoon she became
+aware of Gulden's strange attention. And when a halt was made for camp
+she dreaded something nameless.
+
+This halt occurred early, before sunset, and had been necessitated by
+the fact that Kells was fainting. They laid him out on blankets, with
+his head in his saddle. Joan tended him, and he recovered somewhat,
+though he lacked the usual keenness.
+
+It was a busy hour with saddles, packs, horses, with wood to cut and
+fire to build and meal to cook. Kells drank thirstily, but refused food.
+
+"Joan," he whispered, at an opportune moment, "I'm only tired--dead for
+sleep. You stay beside me. Wake me quick--if you want to!"
+
+He closed his eyes wearily, without explaining, and soon slumbered.
+Joan did not choose to allow these men to see that she feared them or
+distrusted them or disliked them. She ate with them beside the fire.
+And this was their first opportunity to be close to her. The fact had
+an immediate and singular influence. Joan had no vanity, though she knew
+she was handsome. She forced herself to be pleasant, agreeable, even
+sweet. Their response was instant and growing. At first they were bold,
+then familiar and coarse. For years she had been used to rough men
+of the camps. These however, were different, and their jokes and
+suggestions had no effect because they were beyond her. And when this
+became manifest to them that aspect of their relation to her changed.
+She grasped the fact intuitively, and then she verified it by proof. Her
+heart beat strong and high. If she could hide her hate, her fear, her
+abhorrence, she could influence these wild men. But it all depended upon
+her charm, her strangeness, her femininity. Insensibly they had been
+influenced, and it proved that in the worst of men there yet survived
+some good. Gulden alone presented a contrast and a problem. He appeared
+aware of her presence while he sat there eating like a wolf, but it was
+as if she were only an object. The man watched as might have an animal.
+
+Her experience at the camp-fire meal inclined her to the belief that,
+if there were such a possibility as her being safe at all, it would be
+owing to an unconscious and friendly attitude toward the companions she
+had been forced to accept. Those men were pleased, stirred at being in
+her vicinity. Joan came to a melancholy and fearful cognizance of her
+attraction. While at home she seldom had borne upon her a reality--that
+she was a woman. Her place, her person were merely natural. Here it
+was all different. To these wild men, developed by loneliness,
+fierce-blooded, with pulses like whips, a woman was something that
+thrilled, charmed, soothed, that incited a strange, insatiable,
+inexplicable hunger for the very sight of her. They did not realize it,
+but Joan did.
+
+Presently Joan finished her supper and said: "I'll go hobble my horse.
+He strays sometimes."
+
+"Shore I'll go, miss," said Bate Wood. He had never called her Mrs.
+Kells, but Joan believed he had not thought of the significance.
+Hardened old ruffian that he was. Joan regarded him as the best of a bad
+lot. He had lived long, and some of his life had not been bad.
+
+"Let me go," added Pearce.
+
+"No, thanks. I'll go myself," she replied.
+
+She took the rope hobble off her saddle and boldly swung down the trail.
+Suddenly she heard two or more of the men speak at once, and then, low
+and clear: "Gulden, where'n hell are you goin'?" This was Red Pearce's
+voice.
+
+Joan glanced back. Gulden had started down the trail after her. Her
+heart quaked, her knees shook, and she was ready to run back. Gulden
+halted, then turned away, growling. He acted as if caught in something
+surprising to himself.
+
+"We're on to you, Gulden," continued Pearce, deliberately. "Be careful
+or we'll put Kells on."
+
+A booming, angry curse was the response. The men grouped closer and a
+loud altercation followed. Joan almost ran down the trail and heard no
+more. If any one of them had started her way now she would have plunged
+into the thickets like a frightened deer. Evidently, however, they meant
+to let her alone. Joan found her horse, and before hobbling him she was
+assailed by a temptation to mount him and ride away. This she did not
+want to do and would not do under any circumstances; still, she could
+not prevent the natural instinctive impulse of a woman.
+
+She crossed to the other side of the brook and returned toward camp
+under the spruce and balsam trees, She did not hurry. It was good to
+be alone, out of sight of those violent men, away from that constant
+wearing physical proof of catastrophe. Nevertheless, she did not feel
+free or safe for a moment; she peered fearfully into the shadows of the
+rocks and trees; and presently it was a relief to get back to the side
+of the sleeping Kells. He lay in a deep slumber of exhaustion. She
+arranged her own saddle and blankets near him, and prepared to meet the
+night as best she could. Instinctively she took a position where in one
+swift snatch she could get possession of Kells's gun.
+
+It was about time of sunset, warm and still in the canon, with rosy
+lights fading upon the peaks. The men were all busy with one thing and
+another. Strange it was to see that Gulden, who Joan thought might be
+a shirker, did twice the work of any man, especially the heavy work. He
+seemed to enjoy carrying a log that would have overweighted two ordinary
+men. He was so huge, so active, so powerful that it was fascinating to
+watch him. They built the camp-fire for the night uncomfortably near
+Joan's position; however, remembering how cold the air would become
+later, she made no objection. Twilight set in and the men, through for
+the day, gathered near the fire.
+
+Then Joan was not long in discovering that the situation had begun
+to impinge upon the feelings of each of these men. They looked at her
+differently. Some of them invented pretexts to approach her, to ask
+something, to offer service--anything to get near her. A personal and
+individual note had been injected into the attitude of each. Intuitively
+Joan guessed that Gulden's arising to follow her had turned their eyes
+inward. Gulden remained silent and inactive at the edge of the camp-fire
+circle of light, which flickered fitfully around him, making him seem a
+huge, gloomy ape of a man. So far as Joan could tell, Gulden never cast
+his eyes in her direction. That was a difference which left cause for
+reflection. Had that hulk of brawn and bone begun to think? Bate Wood's
+overtures to Joan were rough, but inexplicable to her because she dared
+not wholly trust him.
+
+"An' shore, miss," he had concluded, in a hoarse whisper, "we-all know
+you ain't Kells's wife. Thet bandit wouldn't marry no woman. He's a
+woman-hater. He was famous fer thet over in California. He's run off
+with you--kidnapped you, thet's shore.... An' Gulden swears he shot his
+own men an' was in turn shot by you. Thet bullet-hole in his back was
+full of powder. There's liable to be a muss-up any time.... Shore, miss,
+you'd better sneak off with me tonight when they're all asleep. I'll git
+grub an' hosses, an' take you off to some prospector's camp. Then you
+can git home."
+
+Joan only shook her head. Even if she could have felt trust in Wood--and
+she was of half a mind to believe him--it was too late. Whatever befell
+her mattered little if in suffering it she could save Jim Cleve from the
+ruin she had wrought.
+
+Since this wild experience of Joan's had begun she had been sick so
+many times with raw and naked emotions hitherto unknown to her, that
+she believed she could not feel another new fear or torture. But these
+strange sensations grew by what they had been fed upon.
+
+The man called Frenchy, was audacious, persistent, smiling,
+amorous-eyed, and rudely gallant. He cared no more for his companions
+than if they had not been there. He vied with Pearce in his attention,
+and the two of them discomfited the others. The situation might have
+been amusing had it not been so terrible. Always the portent was a
+shadow behind their interest and amiability and jealousy. Except for
+that one abrupt and sinister move of Gulden's--that of a natural man
+beyond deceit--there was no word, no look, no act at which Joan could
+have been offended. They were joking, sarcastic, ironical, and sullen
+in their relation to each other; but to Joan each one presented what was
+naturally or what he considered his kindest and most friendly front. A
+young and attractive woman had dropped into the camp of lonely wild men;
+and in their wild hearts was a rebirth of egotism, vanity, hunger
+for notice. They seemed as foolish as a lot of cock grouse preening
+themselves and parading before a single female. Surely in some heart was
+born real brotherhood for a helpless girl in peril. Inevitably in some
+of them would burst a flame of passion as it had in Kells.
+
+Between this amiable contest for Joan's glances and replies, with its
+possibility of latent good to her, and the dark, lurking, unspoken
+meaning, such as lay in Gulden's brooding, Joan found another new and
+sickening torture.
+
+"Say, Frenchy, you're no lady's man," declared Red Pearce, "an' you,
+Bate, you're too old. Move--pass by--sashay!" Pearce, good-naturedly,
+but deliberately, pushed the two men back.
+
+"Shore she's Kells's lady, ain't she?" drawled Wood. "Ain't you all
+forgettin' thet?"
+
+"Kells is asleep or dead," replied Pearce, and he succeeded in getting
+the field to himself.
+
+"Where'd you meet Kells anyway?" he asked Joan, with his red face
+bending near hers.
+
+Joan had her part to play. It was difficult, because she divined
+Pearce's curiosity held a trap to catch her in a falsehood. He
+knew--they all knew she was not Kells's wife. But if she were a prisoner
+she seemed a willing and contented one. The query that breathed in
+Pearce's presence was how was he to reconcile the fact of her submission
+with what he and his comrades had potently felt as her goodness?
+
+"That doesn't concern anybody," replied Joan.
+
+"Reckon not," said Pearce. Then he leaned nearer with intense face.
+"What I want to know--is Gulden right? Did you shoot Kells?"
+
+In the dusk Joan reached back and clasped Kells hand.
+
+For a man as weak and weary as he had been, it was remarkable how
+quickly a touch awakened him. He lifted his head.
+
+"Hello! Who's that?" he called out, sharply.
+
+Pearce rose guardedly, startled, but not confused. "It's only me,
+boss," he replied. "I was about to turn in, an' I wanted to know how you
+are--if I could do anythin'."
+
+"I'm all right, Red," replied Kells, coolly. "Clear out and let me
+alone. All of you."
+
+Pearce moved away with an amiable good-night and joined the others at
+the camp-fire. Presently they sought their blankets, leaving Gulden
+hunching there silent in the gloom.
+
+"Joan, why did you wake me?" whispered Kells.
+
+"Pearce asked me if I shot you," replied Joan. "I woke you instead of
+answering him."
+
+"He did!" exclaimed Kells under his breath. Then he laughed. "Can't fool
+that gang. I guess it doesn't matter. Maybe it'd be well if they knew
+you shot me."
+
+He appeared thoughtful, and lay there with the fading flare of the fire
+on his pale face. But he did not speak again. Presently he fell asleep.
+
+Joan leaned back, within reach of him, with her head in her saddle, and
+pulling a blanket up over her, relaxed her limbs to rest. Sleep seemed
+the furthest thing from her. She wondered that she dared to think of it.
+The night had grown chilly; the wind was sweeping with low roar through
+the balsams; the fire burned dull and red. Joan watched the black,
+shapeless hulk that she knew to be Gulden. For a long time he remained
+motionless. By and by he moved, approached the fire, stood one moment
+in the dying ruddy glow, his great breadth and bulk magnified, with
+all about him vague and shadowy, but the more sinister for that. The
+cavernous eyes were only black spaces in that vast face, yet Joan saw
+them upon her. He lay down then among the other men and soon his deep
+and heavy breathing denoted the tranquil slumber of an ox.
+
+For hours through changing shadows and starlight Joan lay awake, while
+a thousand thoughts besieged her, all centering round that vital and
+compelling one of Jim Cleve.
+
+Only upon awakening, with the sun in her face, did Joan realize that she
+had actually slept.
+
+The camp was bustling with activity. The horses were in, fresh and
+quarrelsome, with ears laid back. Kells was sitting upon a rock near the
+fire with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was looking better. When
+he greeted Joan his voice sounded stronger. She walked by Pearce and
+Frenchy and Gulden on her way to the brook, but they took no notice of
+her. Bate Wood, however, touched his sombrero and said: "Mornin', miss."
+Joan wondered if her memory of the preceding night were only a bad
+dream. There was a different atmosphere by daylight, and it was
+dominated by Kells. Presently she returned to camp refreshed and hungry.
+Gulden was throwing a pack, which action he performed with ease and
+dexterity. Pearce was cinching her saddle. Kells was talking, more like
+his old self than at any time since his injury.
+
+Soon they were on the trail. For Joan time always passed swiftly on
+horseback. Movement and changing scene were pleasurable to her. The
+passing of time now held a strange expectancy, a mingled fear and hope
+and pain, for at the end of this trail was Jim Cleve. In other days she
+had flouted him, made fun of him, dominated him, everything except loved
+and feared him. And now she was assured of her love and almost convinced
+of her fear. The reputation these wild bandits gave Jim was astounding
+and inexplicable to Joan. She rode the miles thinking of Jim, dreading
+to meet him, longing to see him, and praying and planning for him.
+
+About noon the cavalcade rode out of the mouth of a canon into a wide
+valley, surrounded by high, rounded foot-hills. Horses and cattle were
+grazing on the green levels. A wide, shallow, noisy stream split the
+valley. Joan could tell from the tracks at the crossing that this place,
+whatever and wherever it was, saw considerable travel; and she concluded
+the main rendezvous of the bandits was close at hand.
+
+The pack drivers led across the stream and the valley to enter an
+intersecting ravine. It was narrow, rough-sided, and floored, but the
+trail was good. Presently it opened out into a beautiful V-shaped gulch,
+very different from the high-walled, shut-in canons. It had a level
+floor, through which a brook flowed, and clumps of spruce and pine, with
+here and there a giant balsam. Huge patches of wild flowers gave rosy
+color to the grassy slopes. At the upper end of this gulch Joan saw a
+number of widely separated cabins. This place, then, was Cabin Gulch.
+
+Upon reaching the first cabin the cavalcade split up. There were men
+here who hallooed a welcome. Gulden halted with his pack-horse. Some of
+the others rode on. Wood drove other pack-animals off to the right, up
+the gentle slope. And Red Pearce, who was beside Kells, instructed Joan
+to follow them. They rode up to a bench of straggling spruce-trees, in
+the midst of which stood a large log cabin. It was new, as in fact all
+the structures in the Gulch appeared to be, and none of them had seen a
+winter. The chinks between the logs were yet open. This cabin was of
+the rudest make of notched logs one upon another, and roof of brush
+and earth. It was low and flat, but very long, and extending before
+the whole of it was a porch roof supported by posts. At one end was
+a corral. There were doors and windows with nothing in them. Upon the
+front wall, outside, hung saddles and bridles.
+
+Joan had a swift, sharp gaze for the men who rose from their lounging
+to greet the travelers. Jim Cleve was not among them. Her heart left her
+throat then, and she breathed easier. How could she meet him?
+
+Kells was in better shape than at noon of the preceding day. Still, he
+had to be lifted off his horse. Joan heard all the men talking at once.
+They crowded round Pearce, each lending a hand. However, Kells appeared
+able to walk into the cabin. It was Bate Wood who led Joan inside.
+
+There was a long room, with stone fireplace, rude benches and a table,
+skins and blankets on the floor, and lanterns and weapons on the
+wall. At one end Joan saw a litter of cooking utensils and shelves of
+supplies.
+
+Suddenly Kells's impatient voice silenced the clamor of questions. "I'm
+not hurt," he said. "I'm all right--only weak and tired. Fellows, this
+girl is my wife.... Joan, you'll find a room there--at the back of the
+cabin. Make yourself comfortable."
+
+Joan was only too glad to act upon his suggestion. A door had been cut
+through the back wall. It was covered with a blanket. When she swept
+this aside she came upon several steep steps that led up to a smaller,
+lighter cabin of two rooms, separated by a partition of boughs. She
+dropped the blanket behind her and went up the steps. Then she saw
+that the new cabin had been built against an old one. It had no door or
+opening except the one by which she had entered. It was light because
+the chinks between the logs were open. The furnishings were a wide bench
+of boughs covered with blankets, a shelf with a blurred and cracked
+mirror hanging above it, a table made of boxes, and a lantern. This
+room was four feet higher than the floor of the other cabin. And at
+the bottom of the steps leaned a half-dozen slender trimmed poles. She
+gathered presently that these poles were intended to be slipped under
+crosspieces above and fastened by a bar below, which means effectually
+barricaded the opening. Joan could stand at the head of the steps and
+peep under an edge of the swinging blanket into the large room, but that
+was the only place she could see through, for the openings between
+the logs of each wall were not level. These quarters were comfortable,
+private, and could be shut off from intruders. Joan had not expected so
+much consideration from Kells and she was grateful.
+
+She lay down to rest and think. It was really very pleasant here. There
+were birds nesting in the chinks; a ground squirrel ran along one of the
+logs and chirped at her; through an opening near her face she saw a
+wild rose-bush and the green slope of the gulch; a soft, warm, fragrant
+breeze blew in, stirring her hair. How strange that there could be
+beautiful and pleasant things here in this robber den; that time was
+the same here as elsewhere; that the sun shone and the sky gleamed blue.
+Presently she discovered that a lassitude weighted upon her and she
+could not keep her eyes open. She ceased trying, but intended to remain
+awake--to think, to listen, to wait. Nevertheless, she did fall asleep
+and did not awaken till disturbed by some noise. The color of the
+western sky told her that the afternoon was far spent. She had slept
+hours. Someone was knocking. She got up and drew aside the blanket. Bate
+Wood was standing near the door.
+
+"Now, miss, I've supper ready," he said, "an' I was reckonin' you'd like
+me to fetch yours."
+
+"Yes, thank you, I would," replied Joan.
+
+In a few moments Wood returned carrying the top of a box upon which were
+steaming pans and cups. He handed this rude tray up to Joan.
+
+"Shore I'm a first-rate cook, miss, when I've somethin' to cook," he
+said with a smile that changed his hard face.
+
+She returned the smile with her thanks. Evidently Kells had a
+well-filled larder, and as Joan had fared on coarse and hard food for
+long, this supper was a luxury and exceedingly appetizing. While she was
+eating, the blanket curtain moved aside and Kells appeared. He dropped
+it behind him, but did not step up into the room. He was in his
+shirt-sleeves, had been clean shaven, and looked a different man.
+
+"How do you like your--home?" he inquired, with a hint of his former
+mockery.
+
+"I'm grateful for the privacy," she replied.
+
+"You think you could be worse off, then?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+"Suppose Gulden kills me--and rules the gang--and takes you?... There's
+a story about him, the worst I've heard on this border. I'll tell you
+some day when I want to scare you bad."
+
+"Gulden!" Joan shivered as she pronounced the name. "Are you and he
+enemies?"
+
+"No man can have a friend on this border. We flock together like
+buzzards. There's safety in numbers, but we fight together, like
+buzzards over carrion."
+
+"Kells, you hate this life?"
+
+"I've always hated my life, everywhere. The only life I ever loved was
+adventure.... I'm willing to try a new one, if you'll go with me."
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"Why not? I'll marry you," he went on, speaking lower. "I've got gold;
+I'll get more."
+
+"Where did you get the gold?" she asked
+
+"I've relieved a good many overburdened travelers and prospectors," he
+replied.
+
+"Kells, you're a--a villain!" exclaimed Joan, unable to contain her
+sudden heat. "You must be utterly mad--to ask me to marry you."
+
+"No, I'm not mad," he rejoined, with a laugh. "Gulden's the mad one.
+He's crazy. He's got a twist in his brain. I'm no fool.... I've only
+lost my head over you. But compare marrying me, living and traveling
+among decent people and comfort, to camps like this. If I don't get
+drunk I'll be half decent to you. But I'll get shot sooner or later.
+Then you'll be left to Gulden."
+
+"Why do you say HIM?" she queried, in a shudder of curiosity.
+
+"Well, Gulden haunts me."
+
+"He does me, too. He makes me lose my sense of proportion. Beside him
+you and the others seem good. But you ARE wicked."
+
+"Then you won't marry me and go away somewhere?... Your choice is
+strange. Because I tell you the truth."
+
+"Kells! I'm a woman. Something deep in me says you won't keep me
+here--you can't be so base. Not now, after I saved your life! It would
+be horrible--inhuman. I can't believe any man born of a woman could do
+it."
+
+"But I want you--I love you!" he said, low and hard.
+
+"Love! That's not love," she replied in scorn. "God only knows what it
+is."
+
+"Call it what you like," he went on, bitterly. "You're a young,
+beautiful, sweet woman. It's wonderful to be near you. My life has been
+hell. I've had nothing. There's only hell to look forward to--and hell
+at the end. Why shouldn't I keep you here?"
+
+"But, Kells, listen," she whispered, earnestly, "suppose I am young
+and beautiful and sweet--as you said. I'm utterly in your power. I'm
+compelled to seek your protection from even worse men. You're different
+from these others. You're educated. You must have had--a--a good mother.
+Now you're bitter, desperate, terrible. You hate life. You seem to think
+this charm you see in me will bring you something. Maybe a glimpse of
+joy! But how can it? You know better. How can it... unless I--I love
+you?"
+
+Kells stared at her, the evil and hardness of his passion corded in
+his face. And the shadows of comprehending thought in his strange eyes
+showed the other side of the man. He was still staring at her while he
+reached to put aside the curtains; then he dropped his head and went
+out.
+
+Joan sat motionless, watching the door where he had disappeared,
+listening to the mounting beats of her heart. She had only been frank
+and earnest with Kells. But he had taken a meaning from her last
+few words that she had not intended to convey. All that was woman in
+her--mounting, righting, hating--leaped to the power she sensed in
+herself. If she could be deceitful, cunning, shameless in holding out to
+Kells a possible return of his love, she could do anything with him. She
+knew it. She did not need to marry him or sacrifice herself. Joan was
+amazed that the idea remained an instant before her consciousness. But
+something had told her this was another kind of life than she had known,
+and all that was precious to her hung in the balance. Any falsity
+was justifiable, even righteous, under the circumstances. Could she
+formulate a plan that this keen bandit would not see through? The
+remotest possibility of her even caring for Kells--that was as much as
+she dared hint. But that, together with all the charm and seductiveness
+she could summon, might be enough. Dared she try it? If she tried and
+failed Kells would despise her, and then she was utterly lost. She was
+caught between doubt and hope. All that was natural and true in her
+shrank from such unwomanly deception; all that had been born of her wild
+experience inflamed her to play the game, to match Kells's villainy with
+a woman's unfathomable duplicity.
+
+And while Joan was absorbed in thought the sun set, the light failed,
+twilight stole into the cabin, and then darkness. All this hour there
+had been a continual sound of men's voices in the large cabin, sometimes
+low and at other times loud. It was only when Joan distinctly heard the
+name Jim Cleve that she was startled out of her absorption, thrilling
+and flushing. In her eagerness she nearly fell as she stepped and
+gropped through the darkness to the door, and as she drew aside the
+blanket her hand shook.
+
+The large room was lighted by a fire and half a dozen lanterns. Through
+a faint tinge of blue smoke Joan saw men standing and sitting and
+lounging around Kells, who had a seat where the light fell full upon
+him. Evidently a lull had intervened in the talk. The dark faces Joan
+could see were all turned toward the door expectantly.
+
+"Bring him in, Bate, and let's look him over," said Kells.
+
+Then Bate Wood appeared, elbowing his way in, and he had his hand on the
+arm of a tall, lithe fellow. When they got into the light Joan quivered
+as if she had been stabbed. That stranger with Wood was Jim Cleve--Jim
+Cleve in frame and feature, yet not the same she knew.
+
+"Cleve, glad to meet you," greeted Kells, extending his hand.
+
+"Thanks. Same to you," replied Cleve, and he met the proffered hand. His
+voice was cold and colorless, unfamiliar to Joan. Was this man really
+Jim Cleve?
+
+The meeting of Kells and Cleve was significant because of Kells's
+interest and the silent attention of the men of his clan. It did not
+seem to mean anything to the white-faced, tragic-eyed Cleve. Joan gazed
+at him with utter amazement. She remembered a heavily built, florid Jim
+Cleve, an overgrown boy with a good-natured, lazy smile on his full
+face and sleepy eyes. She all but failed to recognize him in the man who
+stood there now, lithe and powerful, with muscles bulging in his coarse,
+white shirt. Joan's gaze swept over him, up and down, shivering at the
+two heavy guns he packed, till it was transfixed on his face. The old,
+or the other, Jim Cleve had been homely, with too much flesh on his face
+to show force or fire. This man seemed beautiful. But it was a beauty of
+tragedy. He was as white as Kells, but smoothly, purely white,
+without shadow or sunburn. His lips seemed to have set with a bitter,
+indifferent laugh. His eyes looked straight out, piercing, intent,
+haunted, and as dark as night. Great blue circles lay under them,
+lending still further depth and mystery. It was a sad, reckless face
+that wrung Joan's very heartstrings. She had come too late to save his
+happiness, but she prayed that it was not too late to save his honor and
+his soul.
+
+While she gazed there had been further exchange of speech between Kells
+and Cleve, and she had heard, though not distinguished, what was said.
+Kells was unmistakably friendly, as were the other men within range of
+Joan's sight. Cleve was surrounded; there were jesting and laughter;
+and then he was led to the long table where several men were already
+gambling.
+
+Joan dropped the curtain, and in the darkness of her cabin she saw that
+white, haunting face, and when she covered her eyes she still saw it.
+The pain, the reckless violence, the hopeless indifference, the wreck
+and ruin in that face had been her doing. Why? How had Jim Cleve wronged
+her? He had loved her at her displeasure and had kissed her against her
+will. She had furiously upbraided him, and when he had finally turned
+upon her, threatening to prove he was no coward, she had scorned him
+with a girl's merciless injustice. All her strength and resolve left
+her, momentarily, after seeing Jim there. Like a woman, she weakened.
+She lay on the bed and writhed. Doubt, hopelessness, despair, again
+seized upon her, and some strange, yearning maddening emotion. What had
+she sacrificed? His happiness and her own--and both their lives!
+
+The clamor in the other cabin grew so boisterous that suddenly when it
+stilled Joan was brought sharply to the significance of it. Again she
+drew aside the curtain and peered out.
+
+Gulden, huge, stolid, gloomy, was entering the cabin. The man fell into
+the circle and faced Kell with the fire-light dancing in his cavernous
+eyes.
+
+"Hello, Gulden!" said Kells, coolly. "What ails you?"
+
+"Anybody tell you about Bill Bailey?" asked Gulden, heavily.
+
+Kells did not show the least concern. "Tell me what?"
+
+"That he died in a cabin, down in the valley?"
+
+Kells gave a slight start and his eyes narrowed and shot steely glints.
+"No. It's news to me."
+
+"Kells, you left Bailey for dead. But he lived. He was shot through,
+but he got there somehow--nobody knows. He was far gone when Beady Jones
+happened along. Before he died he sent word to me by Beady.... Are you
+curious to know what it was?"
+
+"Not the least," replied Kells. "Bailey was--well, offensive to my wife.
+I shot him."
+
+"He swore you drew on him in cold blood," thundered Gulden. "He swore it
+was for nothing--just so you could be alone with that girl!"
+
+Kells rose in wonderful calmness, with only his pallor and a slight
+shaking of his hands to betray excitement. An uneasy stir and murmur ran
+through the room. Red Pearce, nearest at hand, stepped to Kells's side.
+All in a moment there was a deadly surcharged atmosphere there.
+
+"Well, he swore right!... Now what's it to you?"
+
+Apparently the fact and its confession were nothing particular to
+Gulden, or else he was deep where all considered him only dense and
+shallow.
+
+"It's done. Bill's dead," continued Gulden. "But why do you double-cross
+the gang? What's the game? You never did it before.... That girl isn't
+your--"
+
+"Shut up!" hissed Kells. Like a flash his hand flew out with his gun,
+and all about him was dark menace.
+
+Gulden made no attempt to draw. He did not show surprise nor fear nor
+any emotion. He appeared plodding in mind. Red Pearce stepped between
+Kells and Gulden. There was a realization in the crowd, loud breaths,
+scraping of feet. Gulden turned away. Then Kells resumed his seat and
+his pipe as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+Joan turned away from the door in a cold clamp of relief. The shadow
+of death hovered over these men. She must fortify herself to live
+under that shadow, to be prepared for any sudden violence, to stand a
+succession of shocks that inevitably would come. She listened. The men
+were talking and laughing now; there came a click of chips, the spat of
+a thrown card, the thump of a little sack of gold. Ahead of her lay the
+long hours of night in which these men would hold revel. Only a faint
+ray of light penetrated her cabin, but it was sufficient for her
+to distinguish objects. She set about putting the poles in place to
+barricade the opening. When she had finished she knew she was safe at
+least from intrusion. Who had constructed that rude door and for what
+purpose? Then she yielded to the temptation to peep once more under the
+edge of the curtain.
+
+The room was cloudy and blue with smoke. She saw Jim Cleve at a table
+gambling with several ruffians. His back was turned, yet Joan felt the
+contrast of his attitude toward the game, compared with that of the
+others. They were tense, fierce, and intent upon every throw of a
+card. Cleve's very poise of head and movement of arm betrayed his
+indifference. One of the gamblers howled his disgust, slammed down his
+cards, and got up.
+
+"He's cleaned out," said one, in devilish glee.
+
+"Naw, he ain't," voiced another. "He's got two fruit-cans full of dust.
+I saw 'em.... He's just lay down--like a poisoned coyote."
+
+"Shore I'm glad Cleve's got the luck, fer mebbe he'll give my gold
+back," spoke up another gamester, with a laugh.
+
+"Wal, he certainlee is the chilvalus card sharp," rejoined the last
+player. "Jim, was you allus as lucky in love as in cards?"
+
+"Lucky in love?... Sure!" answered Jim Cleve, with a mocking, reckless
+ring in his voice.
+
+"Funny, ain't thet, boys? Now there's the boss. Kells can sure win the
+gurls, but he's a pore gambler." Kells heard this speech, and he laughed
+with the others. "Hey, you greaser, you never won any of my money," he
+said.
+
+"Come an' set in, boss. Come an' see your gold fade away. You can't
+stop this Jim Cleve. Luck--bull luck straddles his neck. He'll win your
+gold--your hosses an' saddles an' spurs an' guns--an' your shirt, if
+you've nerve enough to bet it."
+
+The speaker slapped his cards upon the table while he gazed at Cleve in
+grieved admiration. Kells walked over to the group and he put his hand
+on Cleve's shoulder.
+
+"Say youngster," he said, genially, "you said you were just as lucky in
+love.... Now I had a hunch some BAD luck with a girl drove you out here
+to the border."
+
+Kells spoke jestingly, in a way that could give no offense, even to the
+wildest of boys, yet there was curiosity, keenness, penetration, in his
+speech. It had not the slightest effect upon Jim Cleve.
+
+"Bad luck and a girl?... To hell with both!" he said.
+
+"Shore you're talkin' religion. Thet's where both luck an' gurls come
+from," replied the unlucky gamester. "Will one of you hawgs pass the
+whiskey?"
+
+The increased interest with which Kells looked down upon Jim Cleve was
+not lost upon Joan. But she had seen enough, and, turning away, she
+stumbled to the bed and lay there with an ache in her heart.
+
+"Oh," she whispered to herself, "he is ruined--ruined--ruined!... God
+forgive me!" She saw bright, cold stars shining between the logs. The
+night wind swept in cold and pure, with the dew of the mountain in it.
+She heard the mourn of wolves, the hoot of an owl, the distant cry of
+a panther, weird and wild. Yet outside there was a thick and lonely
+silence. In that other cabin, from which she was mercifully shut out,
+there were different sounds, hideous by contrast. By and by she covered
+her ears, and at length, weary from thought and sorrow, she drifted into
+slumber.
+
+Next morning, long after she had awakened, the cabin remained quiet,
+with no one stirring. Morning had half gone before Wood knocked and
+gave her a bucket of water, a basin and towels. Later he came with her
+breakfast. After that she had nothing to do but pace the floor of her
+two rooms. One appeared to be only an empty shed, long in disuse. Her
+view from both rooms was restricted to the green slope of the gulch up
+to yellow crags and the sky. But she would rather have had this to watch
+than an outlook upon the cabins and the doings of these bandits.
+
+About noon she heard the voice of Kells in low and earnest conversation
+with someone; she could not, however, understand what was said. That
+ceased, and then she heard Kells moving around. There came a clatter
+of hoofs as a horse galloped away from the cabin, after which a knock
+sounded on the wall.
+
+"Joan," called Kells. Then the curtain was swept aside and Kells,
+appearing pale and troubled, stepped into her room.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Joan, hurriedly.
+
+"Gulden shot two men this morning. One's dead. The other's in bad shape,
+so Red tells me. I haven't seen him."
+
+"Who--who are they?" faltered Joan. She could not think of any man
+except Jim Cleve.
+
+"Dan Small's the one's dead. The other they call Dick. Never heard his
+last name."
+
+"Was it a fight?"
+
+"Of course. And Gulden picked it. He's a quarrelsome man. Nobody can
+go against him. He's all the time like some men when they're drunk. I'm
+sorry I didn't bore him last night. I would have done it if it hadn't
+been for Red Pearce."
+
+Kells seemed gloomy and concentrated on his situation and he talked
+naturally to Joan, as if she were one to sympathize. A bandit, then, in
+the details of his life, the schemes, troubles, friendships, relations,
+was no different from any other kind of a man. He was human, and things
+that might constitute black evil for observers were dear to him, a part
+of him. Joan feigned the sympathy she could not feel.
+
+"I thought Gulden was your enemy."
+
+Kells sat down on one of the box seats, and his heavy gun-sheath rested
+upon the floor. He looked at Joan now, forgetting she was a woman and
+his prisoner.
+
+"I never thought of that till now," he said. "We always got along
+because I understood him. I managed him. The man hasn't changed in the
+least. He's always what he is. But there's a difference. I noticed that
+first over in Lost Canon. And Joan, I believe it's because Gulden saw
+you."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried Joan, trembling.
+
+"Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway something's wrong. Gulden never had a friend or
+a partner. I don't misunderstand his position regarding Bailey. What did
+he care for that soak? Gulden's cross-grained. He opposes anything or
+anybody. He's got a twist in his mind that makes him dangerous.... I
+wanted to get rid of him. I decided to--after last night. But now it
+seems that's no easy job."
+
+"Why?" asked Joan, curiously.
+
+"Pearce and Wood and Beard, all men I rely on, said it won't do. They
+hint Gulden is strong with my gang here, and all through the border.
+I was wild. I don't believe it. But as I'm not sure--what can I do?...
+They're all afraid of Gulden. That's it.... And I believe I am, too."
+
+"You!" exclaimed Joan.
+
+Kells actually looked ashamed. "I believe I am, Joan," he replied. "That
+Gulden is not a man. I never was afraid of a real man. He's--he's an
+animal."
+
+"He made me think of a gorrilla," said Joan.
+
+"There's only one man I know who's not afraid of Gulden. He's a
+new-comer here on the border. Jim Cleve he calls himself. A youngster I
+can't figure! But he'd slap the devil himself in the face. Cleve won't
+last long out here. Yet you can never tell. Men like him, who laugh at
+death, sometimes avert it for long. I was that way once.... Cleve heard
+me talking to Pearce about Gulden. And he said, 'Kells, I'll pick a
+fight with this Gulden and drive him out of the camp or kill him.'"
+
+"What did you say?" queried Joan, trying to steady her voice as she
+averted her eyes.
+
+"I said 'Jim, that wins me. But I don't want you killed.'... It
+certainly was nervy of the youngster. Said it just the same as--as he'd
+offer to cinch my saddle. Gulden can whip a roomful of men. He's done
+it. And as for a killer--I've heard of no man with his record."
+
+"And that's why you fear him?"
+
+"It's not," replied Kells, passionately, as if his manhood had been
+affronted. "It's because he's Gulden. There's something uncanny about
+him.... Gulden's a cannibal!"
+
+Joan looked as if she had not heard aright.
+
+"It's a cold fact. Known all over the border. Gulden's no braggart.
+But he's been known to talk. He was a sailor--a pirate. Once he was
+shipwrecked. Starvation forced him to be a cannibal. He told this in
+California, and in Nevada camps. But no one believed him. A few years
+ago he got snowed-up in the mountains back of Lewiston. He had two
+companions with him. They all began to starve. It was absolutely
+necessary to try to get out. They started out in the snow. Travel
+was desperately hard. Gulden told that his companions dropped. But he
+murdered them--and again saved his life by being a cannibal. After this
+became known his sailor yarns were no longer doubted.... There's another
+story about him. Once he got hold of a girl and took her into the
+mountains. After a winter he returned alone. He told that he'd kept her
+tied in a cave, without any clothes, and she froze to death."
+
+"Oh, horrible!" moaned Joan.
+
+"I don't know how true it is. But I believe it. Gulden is not a man. The
+worst of us have a conscience. We can tell right from wrong. But Gulden
+can't. He's beneath morals. He has no conception of manhood, such as
+I've seen in the lowest of outcasts. That cave story with the girl--that
+betrays him. He belongs back in the Stone Age. He's a thing.... And here
+on the border, if he wants, he can have all the more power because of
+what he is."
+
+"Kells, don't let him see me!" entreated Joan.
+
+The bandit appeared not to catch the fear in Joan's tone and look. She
+had been only a listener. Presently with preoccupied and gloomy mien, he
+left her alone.
+
+Joan did not see him again, except for glimpses under the curtain, for
+three days. She kept the door barred and saw no one except Bate Wood,
+who brought her meals. She paced her cabin like a caged creature. During
+this period few men visited Kells's cabin, and these few did not remain
+long. Joan was aware that Kells was not always at home. Evidently he
+was able to go out. Upon the fourth day he called to her and knocked for
+admittance. Joan let him in, and saw that he was now almost well again,
+once more cool, easy, cheerful, with his strange, forceful air.
+
+"Good day, Joan. You don't seem to be pining for your--negligent
+husband."
+
+He laughed as if he mocked himself, but there was gladness in the very
+sight of her, and some indefinable tone in his voice that suggested
+respect.
+
+"I didn't miss you," replied Joan. Yet it was a relief to see him.
+
+"No, I imagine not," he said, dryly. "Well, I've been busy with
+men--with plans. Things are working out to my satisfaction. Red Pearce
+got around Gulden. There's been no split. Besides, Gulden rode off.
+Someone said he went after a little girl named Brander. I hope he gets
+shot.... Joan, we'll be leaving Cabin Gulch soon. I'm expecting news
+that'll change things. I won't leave you here. You'll have to ride the
+roughest trails. And your clothes are in tatters now. You've got to have
+something to wear."
+
+"I should think so," replied Joan, fingering the thin, worn, ragged
+habit that had gone to pieces. "The first brush I ride through will tear
+this off."
+
+"That's annoying," said Kells, with exasperation at himself. "Where on
+earth can I get you a dress? We're two hundred miles from everywhere.
+The wildest kind of country.... Say, did you ever wear a man's outfit?"
+
+"Ye-es, when I went prospecting and hunting with my uncle," she replied,
+reluctantly.
+
+Suddenly he had a daring and brilliant smile that changed his face
+completely. He rubbed his palms together. He laughed as if at a huge
+joke. He cast a measuring glance up and down her slender form.
+
+"Just wait till I come back," he said.
+
+He left her and she heard him rummaging around in the pile of trappings
+she had noted in a corner of the other cabin. Presently he returned
+carrying a bundle. This he unrolled on the bed and spread out the
+articles.
+
+"Dandy Dale's outfit," he said, with animation. "Dandy was a would-be
+knight of the road. He dressed the part. But he tried to hold up a stage
+over here and an unappreciative passenger shot him. He wasn't killed
+outright. He crawled away and died. Some of my men found him and they
+fetched his clothes. That outfit cost a fortune. But not a man among us
+could get into it."
+
+There was a black sombrero with heavy silver band; a dark-blue blouse
+and an embroidered buckskin vest; a belt full of cartridges and a
+pearl-handled gun; trousers of corduroy; high-top leather boots and gold
+mounted spurs, all of the finest material and workmanship.
+
+"Joan, I'll make you a black mask out of the rim of a felt hat, and then
+you'll be grand." He spoke with the impulse and enthusiasm of a boy.
+
+"Kells, you don't mean me to wear these?" asked Joan, incredulously.
+
+"Certainly. Why not? Just the thing. A little fancy, but then you're a
+girl. We can't hide that. I don't want to hide it."
+
+"I won't wear them," declared Joan.
+
+"Excuse me--but you will," he replied, coolly and pleasantly.
+
+"I won't!" cried Joan. She could not keep cool.
+
+"Joan, you've got to take long rides with me. At night sometimes. Wild
+rides to elude pursuers sometimes. You'll go into camps with me. You'll
+have to wear strong, easy, free clothes. You'll have to be masked. Here
+the outfit is--as if made for you. Why, you're dead lucky. For this
+stuff is good and strong. It'll stand the wear, yet it's fit for a
+girl.... You put the outfit on, right now."
+
+"I said I wouldn't!" Joan snapped.
+
+"But what do you care if it belonged to a fellow who's dead?... There!
+See that hole in the shirt. That's a bullet-hole. Don't be squeamish.
+It'll only make your part harder."
+
+"Mr. Kells, you seem to have forgotten entirely that I'm a--a girl."
+
+He looked blank astonishment. "Maybe I have.... I'll remember. But you
+said you'd worn a man's things."
+
+"I wore my brother's coat and overalls, and was lost in them," replied
+Joan.
+
+His face began to work. Then he laughed uproariously. "I--under--stand.
+This'll fit--you--like a glove.... Fine! I'm dying to see you."
+
+"You never will."
+
+At that he grew sober and his eyes glinted. "You can't take a little
+fun. I'll leave you now for a while. When I come back you'll have that
+suit on!"
+
+There was that in his voice then which she had heard when he ordered
+men.
+
+Joan looked her defiance.
+
+"If you don't have it on when I come I'll--I'll tear your rags off!... I
+can do that. You're a strong little devil, and maybe I'm not well enough
+yet to put this outfit on you. But I can get help.... If you anger me I
+might wait for--Gulden!"
+
+Joan's legs grew weak under her, so that she had to sink on the
+bed. Kells would do absolutely and literally what he threatened. She
+understood now the changing secret in his eyes. One moment he was a
+certain kind of a man and the very next he was incalculably different.
+She instinctively recognized this latter personality as her enemy. She
+must use all the strength and wit and cunning and charm to keep his
+other personality in the ascendancy, else all was futile.
+
+"Since you force me so--then I must," she said.
+
+Kells left her without another word.
+
+Joan removed her stained and torn dress and her worn-out boots; then
+hurriedly, for fear Kells might return, she put on the dead boy-bandit's
+outfit. Dandy Dale assuredly must have been her counterpart, for his
+things fitted her perfectly. Joan felt so strange that she scarcely had
+courage enough to look into the mirror. When she did look she gave a
+start that was of both amaze and shame. But for her face she never could
+have recognized herself. What had become of her height, her slenderness?
+She looked like an audacious girl in a dashing boy masquerade. Her
+shame was singular, inasmuch as it consisted of a burning hateful
+consciousness that she had not been able to repress a thrill of delight
+at her appearance, and that this costume strangely magnified every curve
+and swell of her body, betraying her feminity as nothing had ever done.
+
+And just at that moment Kells knocked on the door and called, "Joan, are
+you dressed?"
+
+"Yes," she replied. But the word seemed involuntary.
+
+Then Kells came in.
+
+It was an instinctive and frantic impulse that made Joan snatch up a
+blanket and half envelop herself in it. She stood with scarlet face
+and dilating eyes, trembling in every limb. Kells had entered with
+an expectant smile and that mocking light in his gaze. Both faded. He
+stared at the blanket--then at her face. Then he seemed to comprehend
+this ordeal. And he looked sorry for her.
+
+"Why you--you little--fool!" he exclaimed, with emotion. And that
+emotion seemed to exasperate him. Turning away from her, he gazed out
+between the logs. Again, as so many times before, he appeared to be
+remembering something that was hard to recall, and vague.
+
+Joan, agitated as she was, could not help but see the effect of her
+unexpected and unconscious girlishness. She comprehended that with the
+mind of the woman which had matured in her. Like Kells, she too, had
+different personalities.
+
+"I'm trying to be decent to you," went on Kells, without turning. "I
+want to give you a chance to make the best of a bad situation. But
+you're a kid--a girl!... And I'm a bandit. A man lost to all good, who
+means to have you!"
+
+"But you're NOT lost to all good," replied Joan, earnestly. "I can't
+understand what I do feel. But I know--if it had been Gulden instead of
+you--that I wouldn't have tried to hide my--myself behind this blanket.
+I'm no longer--AFRAID of you. That's why I acted--so--just like a girl
+caught.... Oh! can't you see!"
+
+"No, I can't see," he replied. "I wish I hadn't fetched you here. I wish
+the thing hadn't happened. Now it's too late."
+
+"It's never too late.... You--you haven't harmed me yet."
+
+"But I love you," he burst out. "Not like I have. Oh! I see this--that
+I never really loved any woman before. Something's gripped me. It feels
+like that rope at my throat--when they were going to hang me."
+
+Then Joan trembled in the realization that a tremendous passion had
+seized upon this strange, strong man. In the face of it she did not know
+how to answer him. Yet somehow she gathered courage in the knowledge.
+
+Kells stood silent a long moment, looking out at the green slope. And
+then, as if speaking to himself, he said: "I stacked the deck and dealt
+myself a hand--a losing hand--and now I've got to play it!"
+
+With that he turned to Joan. It was the piercing gaze he bent upon her
+that hastened her decision to resume the part she had to play. And she
+dropped the blanket. Kells's gloom and that iron hardness vanished.
+He smiled as she had never seen him smile. In that and his speechless
+delight she read his estimate of her appearance; and, notwithstanding
+the unwomanliness of her costume, and the fact of his notorious
+character, she knew she had never received so great a compliment.
+Finally he found his voice.
+
+"Joan, if you're not the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!"
+
+"I can't get used to this outfit," said Joan. "I can't--I won't go away
+from this room in it."
+
+"Sure you will. See here, this'll make a difference, maybe. You're so
+shy."
+
+He held out a wide piece of black felt that evidently he had cut from a
+sombrero. This he measured over her forehead and eyes, and then taking
+his knife he cut it to a desired shape. Next he cut eyeholes in it and
+fastened to it a loop made of a short strip of buckskin.
+
+"Try that.... Pull it down--even with your eyes. There!--take a look at
+yourself."
+
+Joan faced the mirror and saw merely a masked stranger. She was no
+longer Joan Randle. Her identity had been absolutely lost.
+
+"No one--who ever knew me--could recognize me now," she murmured, and
+the relieving thought centered round Jim Cleve.
+
+"I hadn't figured on that," replied Kells. "But you're right.... Joan,
+if I don't miss my guess, it won't be long till you'll be the talk of
+mining-towns and camp-fires."
+
+This remark of Kells's brought to Joan proof of his singular pride in
+the name he bore, and proof of many strange stories about bandits and
+wild women of the border. She had never believed any of these stories.
+They had seemed merely a part of the life of this unsettled wild
+country. A prospector would spend a night at a camp-fire and tell a
+weird story and pass on, never to be seen there again. Could there have
+been a stranger story than her life seemed destined to be? Her mind
+whirled with vague, circling thought--Kells and his gang, the wild
+trails, the camps, and towns, gold and stage-coaches, robbery, fights,
+murder, mad rides in the dark, and back to Jim Cleve and his ruin.
+
+Suddenly Kells stepped to her from behind and put his arms around her.
+Joan grew stiff. She had been taken off her guard. She was in his arms
+and could not face him.
+
+"Joan, kiss me," he whispered, with a softness, a richer, deeper note in
+his voice.
+
+"No!" cried Joan, violently.
+
+There was a moment of silence in which she felt his grasp slowly
+tighten--the heave of his breast.
+
+"Then I'll make you," he said. So different was the voice now that
+another man might have spoken. Then he bent her backward, and, freeing
+one hand, brought it under her chin and tried to lift her face.
+
+But Joan broke into fierce, violent resistance. She believed she was
+doomed, but that only made her the fiercer, the stronger. And with her
+head down, her arms straining, her body hard and rigidly unyielding
+she fought him all over the room, knocking over the table and seats,
+wrestling from wall to wall, till at last they fell across the bed and
+she broke his hold. Then she sprang up, panting, disheveled, and backed
+away from him. It had been a sharp, desperate struggle on her part and
+she was stronger than he. He was not a well man. He raised himself and
+put one hand to his breast. His face was haggard, wet, working with
+passion, gray with pain. In the struggle she had hurt him, perhaps
+reopened his wound.
+
+"Did you--knife me--that it hurts so?" he panted, raising a hand that
+shook.
+
+"I had--nothing.... I just--fought," cried Joan, breathlessly.
+
+"You hurt me--again--damn you! I'm never free--from pain. But this's
+worse.... And I'm a coward.... And I'm a dog, too! Not half a man!--You
+slip of a girl--and I couldn't--hold you!"
+
+His pain and shame were dreadful for Joan to see, because she felt sorry
+for him, and divined that behind them would rise the darker, grimmer
+force of the man. And she was right, for suddenly he changed. That
+which had seemed almost to make him abject gave way to a pale and bitter
+dignity. He took up Dandy Dale's belt, which Joan had left on the bed,
+and, drawing the gun from its sheath, he opened the cylinder to see if
+it was loaded, and then threw the gun at Joan's feet.
+
+"There! Take it--and make a better job this time," he said.
+
+The power in his voice seemed to force Joan to pick up the gun.
+
+"What do--you mean?" she queried, haltingly.
+
+"Shoot me again! Put me out of my pain--my misery.... I'm sick of it
+all. I'd be glad to have you kill me!"
+
+"Kells!" exclaimed Joan, weakly.
+
+"Take your chance--now--when I've no strength--to force you.... Throw
+the gun on me.... Kill me!"
+
+He spoke with a terrible impelling earnestness, and the strength of his
+will almost hypnotized Joan into execution of his demand.
+
+"You are mad," she said. "I don't want to kill you. I couldn't.... I
+just want you to--to be--decent to me."
+
+"I have been--for me. I was only in fun this time--when I grabbed you.
+But the FEEL of you!... I can't be decent any more. I see things clear
+now.... Joan Randle, it's my life or your soul!"
+
+He rose now, dark, shaken, stripped of all save the truth.
+
+Joan dropped the gun from nerveless grasp.
+
+"Is that your choice?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"I can't murder you!"
+
+"Are you afraid of the other men--of Gulden? Is that why you can't kill
+me? You're afraid to be left--to try to get away?"
+
+"I never thought of them."
+
+"Then--my life or your soul!"
+
+He stalked toward her, loomed over her, so that she put out trembling
+hands. After the struggle a reaction was coming to her. She was
+weakening. She had forgotten her plan.
+
+"If you're merciless--then it must be--my soul," she whispered. "For I
+CAN'T murder you.... Could you take that gun now--and press it here--and
+murder ME?"
+
+"No. For I love you."
+
+"You don't love me. It's a blacker crime to murder the soul than the
+body."
+
+Something in his strange eyes inspired Joan with a flashing, reviving
+divination. Back upon her flooded all that tide of woman's subtle
+incalculable power to allure, to charge, to hold. Swiftly she went
+close to Kells. She stretched out her hands. One was bleeding from rough
+contract with the log wall during the struggle. Her wrists were red,
+swollen, bruised from his fierce grasp.
+
+"Look! See what you've done. You were a beast. You made me fight like a
+beast. My hands were claws--my whole body one hard knot of muscle. You
+couldn't hold me--you couldn't kiss me.... Suppose you ARE able to hold
+me--later. I'll only be the husk of a woman. I'll just be a cold shell,
+doubled-up, unrelaxed, a callous thing never to yield.... All that's
+ME, the girl, the woman you say you love--will be inside, shrinking,
+loathing, hating, sickened to death. You will only kiss--embrace--a
+thing you've degraded. The warmth, the sweetness, the quiver, the
+thrill, the response, the life--all that is the soul of a woman and
+makes her lovable will be murdered."
+
+Then she drew still closer to Kells, and with all the wondrous subtlety
+of a woman in a supreme moment where a life and a soul hang in the
+balance, she made of herself an absolute contrast to the fierce, wild,
+unyielding creature who had fought him off.
+
+"Let me show--you the difference," she whispered, leaning to him,
+glowing, soft, eager, terrible, with her woman's charm. "Something tells
+me--gives me strength.... What MIGHT be!... Only barely possible--if
+in my awful plight--you turned out to be a man, good instead of bad!...
+And--if it were possible--see the differences--in the woman.... I show
+you--to save my soul!"
+
+She gave the fascinated Kells her hands, slipped into his arms, to
+press against his breast, and leaned against him an instant, all one
+quivering, surrendered body; and then lifting a white face, true in
+its radiance to her honest and supreme purpose to give him one fleeting
+glimpse of the beauty and tenderness and soul of love, she put warm and
+tremulous lips to his.
+
+Then she fell away from him, shrinking and terrified. But he stood there
+as if something beyond belief had happened to him, and the evil of his
+face, the hard lines, the brute softened and vanished in a light of
+transformation.
+
+"My God!" he breathed softly. Then he awakened as if from a trance,
+and, leaping down the steps, he violently swept aside the curtain and
+disappeared.
+
+Joan threw herself upon the bed and spent the last of her strength in
+the relief of blinding tears. She had won. She believed she need never
+fear Kells again. In that one moment of abandon she had exalted him. But
+at what cost!
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+Next day, when Kells called Joan out into the other cabin, she verified
+her hope and belief, not so much in the almost indefinable aging and
+sadness of the man, as in the strong intuitive sense that her attraction
+had magnified for him and had uplifted him.
+
+"You mustn't stay shut up in there any longer," he said. "You've lost
+weight and you're pale. Go out in the air and sun. You might as well get
+used to the gang. Bate Wood came to me this morning and said he thought
+you were the ghost of Dandy Dale. That name will stick to you. I don't
+care how you treat my men. But if you're friendly you'll fare better.
+Don't go far from the cabin. And if any man says or does a thing you
+don't like--flash your gun. Don't yell for me. You can bluff this gang
+to a standstill."
+
+That was a trial for Joan, when she walked out into the light in Dandy
+Dale's clothes. She did not step very straight, and she could feel the
+cold prick of her face under the mask. It was not shame, but fear that
+gripped her. She would rather die than have Jim Cleve recognize her
+in that bold disguise. A line of dusty saddled horses stood heads and
+bridles down before the cabin, and a number of lounging men ceased
+talking when she appeared. It was a crowd that smelled of dust and
+horses and leather and whisky and tobacco. Joan did not recognize any
+one there, which fact aided her in a quick recovery of her composure.
+Then she found amusement in the absolute sensation she made upon these
+loungers. They stared, open-mouthed and motionless. One old fellow
+dropped his pipe from bearded lips and did not seem to note the loss. A
+dark young man, dissipated and wild-looking, with years of lawlessness
+stamped upon his face, was the first to move; and he, with awkward
+gallantry, but with amiable disposition. Joan wanted to run, yet she
+forced herself to stand there, apparently unconcerned before this
+battery of bold and curious eyes. That, once done, made the rest
+easier. She was grateful for the mask. And with her first low, almost
+incoherent, words in reply Joan entered upon the second phase of her
+experience with these bandits. Naturalness did not come soon, but it did
+come, and with it her wit and courage.
+
+Used as she had become to the villainous countenances of the border
+ruffians, she yet upon closer study discovered wilder and more abandoned
+ones. Yet despite that, and a brazen, unconcealed admiration, there
+was not lacking kindliness and sympathy and good nature. Presently Joan
+sauntered away, and she went among the tired, shaggy horses and made
+friends with them. An occasional rider swung up the trail to dismount
+before Kells's cabin, and once two riders rode in, both staring--all
+eyes--at her. The meaning of her intent alertness dawned upon her then.
+Always, whatever she was doing or thinking or saying, behind it all hid
+the driving watchfulness for Jim Cleve. And the consciousness of this
+fixed her mind upon him. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he drunk
+or gambling or fighting or sleeping? Was he still honest? When she did
+meet him what would happen? How could she make herself and circumstances
+known to him before he killed somebody? A new fear had birth and
+grew--Cleve would recognize her in that disguise, mask and all.
+
+She walked up and down for a while, absorbed with this new idea. Then
+an unusual commotion among the loungers drew her attention to a group of
+men on foot surrounding and evidently escorting several horsemen. Joan
+recognized Red Pearce and Frenchy, and then, with a start, Jim Cleve.
+They were riding up the trail. Joan's heart began to pound. She could
+not meet Jim; she dared not trust this disguise; all her plans were as
+if they had never been. She forgot Kells. She even forgot her fear of
+what Cleve might do. The meeting--the inevitable recognition--the pain
+Jim Cleve must suffer when the fact and apparent significance of her
+presence there burst upon him, these drove all else from Joan's mind.
+Mask or no mask, she could not face his piercing eyes, and like a little
+coward she turned to enter the cabin.
+
+Before she got in, however, it was forced upon her that something
+unusual had roused the loungers. They had arisen and were interested in
+the approaching group. Loud talk dinned in Joan's ears. Then she went
+in the door as Kells stalked by, eyes agleam, without even noticing her.
+Once inside her cabin, with the curtain drawn, Joan's fear gave place to
+anxiety and curiosity.
+
+There was no one in the large cabin. Through the outer door she caught
+sight of a part of the crowd, close together, heads up, all noisy. Then
+she heard Kells's authoritative voice, but she could understand nothing.
+The babel of hoarse voices grew louder. Kells appeared, entering the
+door with Pearce. Jim Cleve came next, and, once the three were inside,
+the crowd spilled itself after them like angry bees. Kells was talking,
+Pearce was talking, but their voices were lost. Suddenly Kells vented
+his temper.
+
+"Shut up--the lot of you!" he yelled, and his power and position might
+have been measured by the menace he showed.
+
+The gang became suddenly quiet.
+
+"Now--what's up?" demanded Kells.
+
+"Keep your shirt on, boss," replied Pearce, with good humor. "There
+ain't much wrong.... Cleve, here, throwed a gun on Gulden, that's all."
+
+Kells gave a slight start, barely perceptible, but the intensity of it,
+and a fleeting tigerish gleam across his face, impressed Joan with the
+idea that he felt a fiendish joy. Her own heart clamped in a cold amaze.
+
+"Gulden!" Kells's exclamation was likewise a passionate query.
+
+"No, he ain't cashed," replied Pearce. "You can't kill that bull so
+easy. But he's shot up some. He's layin' over at Beard's. Reckon you'd
+better go over an' dress them shots."
+
+"He can rot before I doctor him," replied Kells. "Where's Bate Wood?...
+Bate, you can take my kit and go fix Gulden up. And now, Red, what was
+all the roar about?"
+
+"Reckon that was Gulden's particular pards tryin' to mix it with Cleve
+an' Cleve tryin' to mix it with them--an' ME in between!... I'm here to
+say, boss, that I had a time stavin' off a scrap."
+
+During this rapid exchange between Kells and his lieutenant, Jim Cleve
+sat on the edge of the table, one dusty boot swinging so that his spur
+jangled, a wisp of a cigarette in his lips. His face was white except
+where there seemed to be bruises under his eyes. Joan had never seen him
+look like this. She guessed that he had been drunk--perhaps was still
+drunk. That utterly abandoned face Joan was so keen to read made her
+bite her tongue to keep from crying out. Yes, Jim was lost.
+
+"What'd they fight about?" queried Kells.
+
+"Ask Cleve," replied Pearce. "Reckon I'd just as lief not talk any more
+about him."
+
+Then Kells turned to Cleve and stepped before him. Somehow these two men
+face to face thrilled Joan to her depths. They presented such contrasts.
+Kells was keen, imperious, vital, strong, and complex, with an
+unmistakable friendly regard for this young outcast. Cleve seemed aloof,
+detached, indifferent to everything, with a white, weary, reckless
+scorn. Both men were far above the gaping ruffians around them.
+
+"Cleve, why'd you draw on Gulden?" asked Kells, sharply.
+
+"That's my business," replied Cleve, slowly, and with his piercing eyes
+on Kells he blew a long, thin, blue stream of smoke upward.
+
+"Sure.... But I remember what you asked me the other day--about Gulden.
+Was that why?"
+
+"Nope," replied Cleve. "This was my affair."
+
+"All right. But I'd like to know. Pearce says you're in bad with
+Gulden's friends. If I can't make peace between you I'll have to take
+sides."
+
+"Kells, I don't need any one on my side," said Cleve, and he flung the
+cigarette away.
+
+"Yes, you do," replied Kells, persuasively. "Every man on this border
+needs that. And he's lucky when he gets it."
+
+"Well, I don't ask for it; I don't want it."
+
+"That's your own business, too. I'm not insisting or advising."
+
+Kells's force and ability to control men manifested itself in his
+speech and attitude. Nothing could have been easier than to rouse the
+antagonism of Jim Cleve, abnormally responding as he was to the wild
+conditions of this border environment.
+
+"Then you're not calling my hand?" queried Cleve, with his dark,
+piercing glance on Kells.
+
+"I pass, Jim," replied the bandit, easily.
+
+Cleve began to roll another cigarette. Joan saw his strong, brown hands
+tremble, and she realized that this came from his nervous condition, not
+from agitation. Her heart ached for him. What a white, somber face, so
+terribly expressive of the overthrow of his soul! He had fled to the
+border in reckless fury at her--at himself. There in its wildness he
+had, perhaps, lost thought of himself and memory of her. He had plunged
+into the unrestrained border life. Its changing, raw, and fateful
+excitement might have made him forget, but behind all was the terrible
+seeking to destroy and be destroyed. Joan shuddered when she remembered
+how she had mocked this boy's wounded vanity--how scathingly she had
+said he did not possess manhood and nerve enough even to be bad.
+
+"See here, Red," said Kells to Pearce, "tell me what happened--what you
+saw. Jim can't object to that."
+
+"Sure," replied Pearce, thus admonished. "We was all over at Beard's
+an' several games was on. Gulden rode into camp last night. He's always
+sore, but last night it seemed more'n usual. But he didn't say much an'
+nothin' happened. We all reckoned his trip fell through. Today he was
+restless. He walked an' walked just like a cougar in a pen. You know how
+Gulden has to be on the move. Well, we let him alone, you can bet. But
+suddenlike he comes up to our table--me an' Cleve an' Beard an' Texas
+was playin' cards--an' he nearly kicks the table over. I grabbed the
+gold an' Cleve he saved the whisky. We'd been drinkin' an' Cleve most of
+all. Beard was white at the gills with rage an' Texas was soffocatin'.
+But we all was afraid of Gulden, except Cleve, as it turned out. But he
+didn't move or look mean. An' Gulden pounded on the table an' addressed
+himself to Cleve.
+
+"'I've a job you'll like. Come on.'
+
+"'Job? Say, man, you couldn't have a job I'd like,' replied Cleve, slow
+an' cool.
+
+"You know how Gulden gets when them spells come over him. It's just
+plain cussedness. I've seen gunfighters lookin' for trouble--for someone
+to kill. But Gulden was worse than that. You all take my hunch--he's got
+a screw loose in his nut.
+
+"'Cleve,' he said, 'I located the Brander gold-diggin's--an' the girl
+was there.'
+
+"Some kind of a white flash went over Cleve. An' we all, rememberin'
+Luce, began to bend low, ready to duck. Gulden didn't look no different
+from usual. You can't see any change in him. But I for one felt all hell
+burnin' in him.
+
+"'Oho! You have,' said Cleve, quick, like he was pleased. 'An' did you
+get her?'
+
+"'Not yet. Just looked over the ground. I'm pickin' you to go with me.
+We'll split on the gold, an' I'll take the girl.'
+
+"Cleve swung the whisky-bottle an' it smashed on Gulden's mug, knockin'
+him flat. Cleve was up, like a cat, gun burnin' red. The other fellers
+were dodgin' low. An' as I ducked I seen Gulden, flat on his back,
+draggin' at his gun. He stopped short an' his hand flopped. The side of
+his face went all bloody. I made sure he'd cashed, so I leaped up an'
+grabbed Cleve.
+
+"It'd been all right if Gulden had only cashed. But he hadn't. He came
+to an' bellered fer his gun an' fer his pards. Why, you could have heard
+him for a mile.... Then, as I told you, I had trouble in holdin' back a
+general mix-up. An' while he was hollerin' about it I led them all over
+to you. Gulden is layin' back there with his ear shot off. An' that's
+all."
+
+Kells, with thoughtful mien, turned from Pearce to the group of
+dark-faced men. "This fight settles one thing," he said to them. "We've
+got to have organization. If you're not all a lot of fools you'll see
+that. You need a head. Most of you swear by me, but some of you are for
+Gulden. Just because he's a bloody devil. These times are the wildest
+the West ever knew, and they're growing wilder. Gulden is a great
+machine for execution. He has no sense of fear. He's a giant. He loves
+to fight--to kill. But Gulden's all but crazy. This last deal proves
+that. I leave it to your common sense. He rides around hunting for some
+lone camp to rob. Or some girl to make off with. He does not plan with
+me or the men whose judgment I have confidence in. He's always without
+gold. And so are most of his followers. I don't know who they are. And
+I don't care. But here we split--unless they and Gulden take advice and
+orders from me. I'm not so much siding with Cleve. Any of you ought to
+admit that Gulden's kind of work will disorganize a gang. He's been with
+us for long. And he approaches Cleve with a job. Cleve is a stranger.
+He may belong here, but he's not yet one of us. Gulden oughtn't have
+approached him. It was no straight deal. We can't figure what Gulden
+meant exactly, but it isn't likely he wanted Cleve to go. It was a
+bluff. He got called.... You men think this over--whether you'll stick
+to Gulden or to me. Clear out now."
+
+His strong, direct talk evidently impressed them, and in silence they
+crowded out of the cabin, leaving Pearce and Cleve behind.
+
+"Jim, are you just hell-bent on fighting or do you mean to make yourself
+the champion of every poor girl in these wilds?"
+
+Cleve puffed a cloud of smoke that enveloped his head "I don't pick
+quarrels," he replied.
+
+"Then you get red-headed at the very mention of a girl."
+
+A savage gesture of Cleve's suggested that Kells was right.
+
+"Here, don't get red-headed at me," called Kells, with piercing
+sharpness. "I'll be your friend if you let me.... But declare yourself
+like a man--if you want me for a friend!"
+
+"Kells, I'm much obliged," replied Cleve, with a semblance of
+earnestness. "I'm no good or I wouldn't be out here... But I can't stand
+for these--these deals with girls."
+
+"You'll change," rejoined Kells, bitterly. "Wait till you live a few
+lonely years out here! You don't understand the border. You're young.
+I've seen the gold-fields of California and Nevada. Men go crazy with
+the gold fever. It's gold that makes men wild. If you don't get killed
+you'll change. If you live you'll see life on this border. War debases
+the moral force of a man, but nothing like what you'll experience here
+the next few years. Men with their wives and daughters are pouring
+into this range. They're all over. They're finding gold. They've tasted
+blood. Wait till the great gold strike comes! Then you'll see men and
+women go back ten thousand years... And then what'll one girl more or
+less matter?"
+
+"Well, you see, Kells, I was loved so devotedly by one and made such a
+hero of--that I just can't bear to see any girl mistreated."
+
+He almost drawled the words, and he was suave and cool, and his face was
+inscrutable, but a bitterness in his tone gave the lie to all he said
+and looked.
+
+Pearce caught the broader inference and laughed as if at a great joke.
+Kells shook his head doubtfully, as if Cleve's transparent speech only
+added to the complexity. And Cleve turned away, as if in an instant he
+had forgotten his comrades.
+
+Afterward, in the silence and darkness of night, Joan Randle lay
+upon her bed sleepless, haunted by Jim's white face, amazed at the
+magnificent madness of him, thrilled to her soul by the meaning of his
+attack on Gulden, and tortured by a love that had grown immeasurably
+full of the strength of these hours of suspense and the passion of this
+wild border.
+
+Even in her dreams Joan seemed to be bending all her will toward that
+inevitable and fateful moment when she must stand before Jim Cleve. It
+had to be. Therefore she would absolutely compel herself to meet it,
+regardless of the tumult that must rise within her. When all had been
+said, her experience so far among the bandits, in spite of the shocks
+and suspense that had made her a different girl, had been infinitely
+more fortunate than might have been expected. She prayed for this luck
+to continue and forced herself into a belief that it would.
+
+That night she had slept in Dandy Dale's clothes, except for the boots;
+and sometimes while turning in restless slumber she had been awakened by
+rolling on the heavy gun, which she had not removed from the belt. And
+at such moments, she had to ponder in the darkness, to realize that
+she, Joan Randle, lay a captive in a bandit's camp, dressed in a dead
+bandit's garb, and packing his gun--even while she slept. It was such an
+improbable, impossible thing. Yet the cold feel of the polished gun sent
+a thrill of certainty through her.
+
+In the morning she at least did not have to suffer the shame of getting
+into Dandy Dale's clothes, for she was already in them. She found a
+grain of comfort even in that. When she had put on the mask and sombrero
+she studied the effect in her little mirror. And she again decided
+that no one, not even Jim Cleve, could recognize her in that disguise.
+Likewise she gathered courage from the fact that even her best girl
+friend would have found her figure unfamiliar and striking where once
+it had been merely tall and slender and strong, ordinarily dressed. Then
+how would Jim Cleve ever recognize her? She remembered her voice that
+had been called a contralto, low and deep; and how she used to sing the
+simple songs she knew. She could not disguise that voice. But she need
+not let Jim hear it. Then there was a return of the idea that he would
+instinctively recognize her--that no disguise could be proof to a lover
+who had ruined himself for her. Suddenly she realized how futile all
+her worry and shame. Sooner or later she must reveal her identity to Jim
+Cleve. Out of all this complexity of emotion Joan divined that what
+she yearned most for was to spare Cleve the shame consequent upon
+recognition of her and then the agony he must suffer at a false
+conception of her presence there. It was a weakness in her. When death
+menaced her lover and the most inconceivably horrible situation yawned
+for her, still she could only think of her passionate yearning to have
+him know, all in a flash, that she loved him, that she had followed him
+in remorse, that she was true to him and would die before being anything
+else.
+
+And when she left her cabin she was in a mood to force an issue.
+
+Kells was sitting at the table and being served by Bate Wood.
+
+"Hello, Dandy!" he greeted her, in surprise and pleasure. "This's early
+for you."
+
+Joan returned his greeting and said that she could not sleep all the
+time.
+
+"You're coming round. I'll bet you hold up a stage before a month is
+out."
+
+"Hold up a stage?" echoed Joan.
+
+"Sure. It'll be great fun," replied Kells, with a laugh. "Here--sit down
+and eat with me.... Bate, come along lively with breakfast.... It's
+fine to see you there. That mask changes you, though. No one can see how
+pretty you are.... Joan, your admirer, Gulden, has been incapacitated
+for the present."
+
+Then in evident satisfaction Kells repeated the story that Joan had
+heard Red Pearce tell the night before; and in the telling Kells
+enlarged somewhat upon Jim Cleve.
+
+"I've taken a liking to Cleve," said Kells. "He's a strange youngster.
+But he's more man than boy. I think he's broken-hearted over some rotten
+girl who's been faithless or something. Most women are no good, Joan. A
+while ago I'd have said ALL women were that, but since I've known you I
+think--I know different. Still, one girl out of a million doesn't change
+a world."
+
+"What will this J--jim C--cleve do--when he sees--me?" asked Joan, and
+she choked over the name.
+
+"Don't eat so fast, girl," said Kells. "You're only seventeen years old
+and you've plenty of time.... Well, I've thought some about Cleve.
+He's not crazy like Gulden, but he's just as dangerous. He's dangerous
+because he doesn't know what he's doing--has absolutely no fear of
+death--and then he's swift with a gun. That's a bad combination. Cleve
+will kill a man presently. He's shot three already, and in Gulden's
+case he meant to kill. If once he kills a man--that'll make him a
+gun-fighter. I've worried a little about his seeing you. But I can
+manage him, I guess. He can't be scared or driven. But he may be led.
+I've had Red Pearce tell him you are my wife. I hope he believes it,
+for none of the other fellows believe it. Anyway, you'll meet this
+Cleve soon, maybe to-day, and I want you to be friendly. If I can steady
+him--stop his drinking--he'll be the best man for me on this border."
+
+"I'm to help persuade him to join your band?" asked Joan, and she could
+not yet control her voice.
+
+"Is that so black a thing?" queried Kells, evidently nettled, and he
+glared at her.
+
+"I--I don't know," faltered Joan. "Is this--this boy a criminal yet?"
+
+"No. He's only a fine, decent young chap gone wild--gone bad for some
+girl. I told you that. You don't seem to grasp the point. If I can
+control him he'll be of value to me--he'll be a bold and clever and
+dangerous man--he'll last out here. If I can't win him, why, he won't
+last a week longer. He'll be shot or knifed in a brawl. Without my
+control Cleve'll go straight to the hell he's headed for."
+
+Joan pushed back her plate and, looking up, steadily eyed the bandit.
+
+"Kells, I'd rather he ended his--his career quick--and went to--to--than
+live to be a bandit and murderer at your command."
+
+Kells laughed mockingly, yet the savage action with which he threw his
+cup against the wall attested to the fact that Joan had strange power to
+hurt him.
+
+"That's your sympathy, because I told you some girl drove him out here,"
+said the bandit. "He's done for. You'll know that the moment you see
+him. I really think he or any man out here would be the better for my
+interest. Now, I want to know if you'll stand by me--put in a word to
+help influence this wild boy."
+
+"I'll--I'll have to see him first," replied Joan.
+
+"Well, you take it sort of hard," growled Kells. Then presently he
+brightened. "I seem always to forget that you're only a kid. Listen! Now
+you do as you like. But I want to warn you that you've got to get back
+the same kind of nerve"--here he lowered his voice and glanced at
+Bate Wood--"that you showed when you shot me. You're going to see some
+sights.... A great gold strike! Men grown gold-mad! Woman of no more
+account than a puff of cottonseed!... Hunger, toil, pain, disease,
+starvation, robbery, blood, murder, hanging, death--all nothing,
+nothing! There will be only gold. Sleepless nights--days of hell--rush
+and rush--all strangers with greedy eyes! The things that made life
+will be forgotten and life itself will be cheap. There will be only that
+yellow stuff--gold--over which men go mad and women sell their souls!"
+
+After breakfast Kells had Joan's horse brought out of the corral and
+saddled.
+
+"You must ride some every day. You must keep in condition," he said.
+"Pretty soon we may have a chase, and I don't want it to tear you to
+pieces."
+
+"Where shall I ride?" asked Joan.
+
+"Anywhere you like up and down the gulch."
+
+"Are you going to have me watched?"
+
+"Not if you say you won't run off."
+
+"You trust me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All right. I promise. And if I change my mind I'll tell you."
+
+"Lord! don't do it, Joan. I--I--Well, you've come to mean a good deal
+to me. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you." As she mounted the horse
+Kells added, "Don't stand any raw talk from any of the gang."
+
+Joan rode away, pondering in mind the strange fact that though she hated
+this bandit, yet she had softened toward him. His eyes lit when he saw
+her; his voice mellowed; his manner changed. He had meant to tell her
+again that he loved her, yet he controlled it. Was he ashamed? Had he
+seen into the depths of himself and despised what he had imagined love?
+There were antagonistic forces at war within him.
+
+It was early morning and a rosy light tinged the fresh green. She let
+the eager horse break into a canter and then a gallop; and she rode up
+the gulch till the trail started into rough ground. Then turning, she
+went back, down under the pines and by the cabins, to where the gulch
+narrowed its outlet into the wide valley. Here she met several dusty
+horsemen driving a pack-train. One, a jovial ruffian, threw up his hands
+in mock surrender.
+
+"Hands up, pards!" he exclaimed. "Reckon we've run agin' Dandy Dale come
+to life."
+
+His companions made haste to comply and then the three regarded her with
+bold and roguish eyes. Joan had run square into them round a corner of
+slope and, as there was no room to pass, she had halted.
+
+"Shore it's the Dandy Dale we heerd of," vouchsafed another.
+
+"Thet's Dandy's outfit with a girl inside," added the third.
+
+Joan wheeled her horse and rode back up the trail. The glances of these
+ruffians seemed to scorch her with the reality of her appearance. She
+wore a disguise, but her womanhood was more manifest in it than in her
+feminine garb. It attracted the bold glances of these men. If there were
+any possible decency among them, this outrageous bandit costume rendered
+it null. How could she ever continue to wear it? Would not something
+good and sacred within her be sullied by a constant exposure to the
+effect she had upon these vile border men? She did not think it could
+while she loved Jim Cleve; and with thought of him came a mighty throb
+of her heart to assure her that nothing mattered if only she could save
+him.
+
+Upon the return trip up the gulch Joan found men in sight leading
+horses, chopping wood, stretching arms in cabin doors. Joan avoided
+riding near them, yet even at a distance she was aware of their gaze.
+One rowdy, half hidden by a window, curved hands round his mouth and
+called, softly, "Hullo, sweetheart!"
+
+Joan was ashamed that she could feel insulted. She was amazed at the
+temper which seemed roused in her. This border had caused her feelings
+she had never dreamed possible to her. Avoiding the trail, she headed
+for the other side of the gulch. There were clumps of willows along
+the brook through which she threaded a way, looking for a good place to
+cross. The horse snorted for water. Apparently she was not going to find
+any better crossing, so she turned the horse into a narrow lane through
+the willows and, dismounting on a mossy bank, she slipped the bridle so
+the horse could drink.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she was not alone. But she saw no one
+in front of her or on the other side of her horse. Then she turned. Jim
+Cleve was in the act of rising from his knees. He had a towel in his
+hand. His face was wet. He stood no more than ten steps from her.
+
+Joan could not have repressed a little cry to save her life. The
+surprise was tremendous. She could not move a finger. She expected to
+hear him call her name.
+
+Cleve stared at her. His face, in the morning light, was as drawn and
+white as that of a corpse. Only his eyes seemed alive and they were
+flames. A lightning flash of scorn leaped to them. He only recognized
+in her a woman, and his scorn was for the creature that bandit garb
+proclaimed her to be. A sad and bitter smile crossed his face; and then
+it was followed by an expression that was a lash upon Joan's bleeding
+spirit. He looked at her shapely person with something of the brazen
+and evil glance that had been so revolting to her in the eyes of those
+ruffians. That was the unexpected--the impossible--in connection with
+Jim Cleve. How could she stand there under it--and live?
+
+She jerked at the bridle, and, wading blindly across the brook, she
+mounted somehow, and rode with blurred sight back to the cabin. Kells
+appeared busy with men outside and did not accost her. She fled to her
+cabin and barricaded the door.
+
+Then she hid her face on her bed, covered herself to shut out the light,
+and lay there, broken-hearted. What had been that other thing she had
+imagined was shame--that shrinking and burning she had suffered through
+Kells and his men? What was that compared to this awful thing? A brand
+of red-hot pitch, blacker and bitterer than death, had been struck
+brutally across her soul. By the man she loved--whom she would have died
+to save! Jim Cleve had seen in her only an abandoned creature of the
+camps. His sad and bitter smile had been for the thought that he could
+have loved anything of her sex. His scorn had been for the betrayed
+youth and womanhood suggested by her appearance. And then the thing
+that struck into Joan's heart was the fact that her grace and charm
+of person, revealed by this costume forced upon her, had aroused Jim
+Cleve's first response to the evil surrounding him, the first call to
+that baseness he must be assimilating from these border ruffians. That
+he could look at her so! The girl he had loved! Joan's agony lay not
+in the circumstance of his being as mistaken in her character as he had
+been in her identity, but that she, of all women, had to be the one who
+made him answer, like Kells and Gulden and all those ruffians, to the
+instincts of a beast.
+
+"Oh, he'd been drunk--he was drunk!" whispered Joan. "He isn't to be
+blamed. He's not my old Jim. He's suffering--he's changed--he doesn't
+care. What could I expect--standing there like a hussy before him--in
+this--this indecent rig?... I must see him. I must tell him. If he
+recognized me now--and I had no chance to tell him why I'm here--why I
+look like this--that I love him--am still good--and true to him--if I
+couldn't tell him I'd--I'd shoot myself!"
+
+Joan sobbed out the final words and then broke down. And when the spell
+had exercised its sway, leaving her limp and shaken and weak, she was
+the better for it. Slowly calmness returned so that she could look at
+her wild and furious rush from the spot where she had faced Jim Cleve,
+at the storm of shame ending in her collapse. She realized that if she
+had met Jim Cleve here in the dress in which she had left home there
+would have been the same shock of surprise and fear and love. She owed
+part of that breakdown to the suspense she had been under and then the
+suddenness of the meeting. Looking back at her agitation, she felt that
+it had been natural--that if she could only tell the truth to Jim Cleve
+the situation was not impossible. But the meeting, and all following it,
+bore tremendous revelation of how through all this wild experience she
+had learned to love Jim Cleve. But for his reckless flight and her blind
+pursuit, and then the anxiety, fear, pain, toil, and despair, she would
+never have known her woman's heart and its capacity for love.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+Following that meeting, with all its power to change and strengthen
+Joan, there were uneventful days in which she rode the gulch trails
+and grew able to stand the jests and glances of the bandit's gang. She
+thought she saw and heard everything, yet insulated her true self in a
+callous and unreceptive aloofness from all that affronted her.
+
+The days were uneventful because, while always looking for Jim Cleve,
+she never once saw him. Several times she heard his name mentioned. He
+was here and there--at Beard's off in the mountains. But he did not come
+to Kells's cabin, which fact, Joan gathered, had made Kells anxious. He
+did not want to lose Cleve. Joan peered from her covert in the evenings,
+and watched for Jim, and grew weary of the loud talk and laughter, the
+gambling and smoking and drinking. When there seemed no more chance of
+Cleve's coming, then Joan went to bed.
+
+On these occasions Joan learned that Kells was passionately keen to
+gamble, that he was a weak hand at cards, an honest gambler, and,
+strangely enough, a poor loser. Moreover, when he lost he drank heavily,
+and under the influence of drink he was dangerous. There were quarrels
+when curses rang throughout the cabin, when guns were drawn, but
+whatever Kells's weaknesses might be, he was strong and implacable in
+the governing of these men.
+
+That night when Gulden strode into the cabin was certainly not
+uneventful for Joan. Sight of him sent a chill to her marrow while a
+strange thrill of fire inflamed her. Was that great hulk of a gorilla
+prowling about to meet Jim Cleve? Joan thought that it might be the
+worse for him if he were. Then she shuddered a little to think that she
+had already been influenced by the wildness around her.
+
+Gulden appeared well and strong, and but for the bandage on his head
+would have been as she remembered him. He manifested interest in the
+gambling of the players by surly grunts. Presently he said something to
+Kells.
+
+"What?" queried the bandit, sharply, wheeling, the better to see Gulden.
+
+The noise subsided. One gamester laughed knowingly.
+
+"Lend me a sack of dust?" asked Gulden.
+
+Kells's face showed amaze and then a sudden brightness.
+
+"What! You want gold from me?"
+
+"Yes. I'll pay it back."
+
+"Gulden, I wasn't doubting that. But does your asking mean you've taken
+kindly to my proposition?"
+
+"You can take it that way," growled Gulden. "I want gold." "I'm mighty
+glad, Gulden," replied Kells, and he looked as if he meant it. "I need
+you. We ought to get along.... Here."
+
+He handed a small buckskin sack to Gulden. Someone made room for him
+on the other side of the table, and the game was resumed. It was
+interesting to watch them gamble. Red Pearce had a scale at his end of
+the table, and he was always measuring and weighing out gold-dust. The
+value of the gold appeared to be fifteen dollars to the ounce, but the
+real value of money did not actuate the gamblers. They spilled the dust
+on the table and ground as if it were as common as sand. Still there did
+not seem to be any great quantity of gold in sight. Evidently these were
+not profitable times for the bandits. More than once Joan heard them
+speak of a gold strike as honest people spoke of good fortune. And these
+robbers could only have meant that in case of a rich strike there would
+be gold to steal. Gulden gambled as he did everything else. At first
+he won and then he lost, and then he borrowed more from Kells, to
+win again. He paid back as he had borrowed and lost and won--without
+feeling. He had no excitement. Joan's intuition convinced her that if
+Gulden had any motive at all in gambling it was only an antagonism to
+men of his breed. Gambling was a contest, a kind of fight.
+
+Most of the men except Gulden drank heavily that night. There had been
+fresh liquor come with the last pack-train. Many of them were drunk when
+the game broke up. Red Pearce and Wood remained behind with Kells after
+the others had gone, and Pearce was clever enough to cheat Kells before
+he left.
+
+"Boss--thet there Red double--crossed you," said Bate Wood.
+
+Kells had lost heavily, and he was under the influence of drink. He
+drove Wood out of the cabin, cursing him sullenly. Then he put in place
+the several bars that served as a door of his cabin. After that he
+walked unsteadily around, and all about his action and manner that was
+not aimless seemed to be dark and intermittent staring toward Joan's
+cabin. She felt sickened again with this new aspect of her situation,
+but she was not in the least afraid of Kells. She watched him till he
+approached her door and then she drew back a little. He paused before
+the blanket as if he had been impelled to halt from fear. He seemed to
+be groping in thought. Then he cautiously and gradually, by degrees,
+drew aside the blanket. He could not see Joan in the darkness, but she
+saw him plainly. He fumbled at the poles, and, finding that he could not
+budge them, he ceased trying. There was nothing forceful or strong about
+him, such as was manifest when he was sober. He stood there a moment,
+breathing heavily, in a kind of forlorn, undecided way, and then he
+turned back. Joan heard him snap the lanterns. The lights went out and
+all grew dark and silent.
+
+Next morning at breakfast he was himself again, and if he had any
+knowledge whatever of his actions while he was drunk, he effectually
+concealed it from Joan.
+
+Later, when Joan went outside to take her usual morning exercise, she
+was interested to see a rider tearing up the slope on a foam-flecked
+horse. Men shouted at him from the cabins and then followed without
+hats or coats. Bate Wood dropped Joan's saddle and called to Kells. The
+bandit came hurriedly out.
+
+"Blicky!" he exclaimed, and then he swore under his breath in elation.
+
+"Shore is Blicky!" said Wood, and his unusually mild eyes snapped with a
+glint unpleasant for Joan to see.
+
+The arrival of this Blicky appeared to be occasion for excitement and
+Joan recalled the name as belonging to one of Kells's trusted men. He
+swung his leg and leaped from his saddle as the horse plunged to a halt.
+Blicky was a lean, bronzed young man, scarcely out of his teens, but
+there were years of hard life in his face. He slapped the dust in little
+puffs from his gloves. At sight of Kells he threw the gloves aloft and
+took no note of them when they fell. "STRIKE!" he called, piercingly.
+
+"No!" ejaculated Kells, intensely.
+
+Bate Wood let out a whoop which was answered by the men hurrying up the
+slope.
+
+"Been on--for weeks!" panted Blicky. "It's big. Can't tell how big. Me
+an' Jesse Smith an' Handy Oliver hit a new road--over here fifty miles
+as a crow flies--a hundred by trail. We was plumb surprised. An' when
+we met pack-trains an' riders an' prairie-schooners an' a stage-coach we
+knew there was doin's over in the Bear Mountain range. When we came
+to the edge of the diggin's an' seen a whalin' big camp--like a
+beehive--Jesse an' Handy went on to get the lay of the land an' I
+hit the trail back to you. I've been a-comin' on an' off since before
+sundown yesterday.... Jesse gave one look an' then hollered. He said,
+'Tell Jack it's big an' he wants to plan big. We'll be back there in a
+day or so with all details.'"
+
+Joan watched Kells intently while he listened to this breathless
+narrative of a gold strike, and she was repelled by the singular flash
+of brightness--a radiance--that seemed to be in his eyes and on his
+face. He did not say a word, but his men shouted hoarsely around Blicky.
+He walked a few paces to and fro with hands strongly clenched, his lips
+slightly parted, showing teeth close-shut like those of a mastiff.
+He looked eager, passionate, cunning, hard as steel, and that strange
+brightness of elation slowly shaded to a dark, brooding menace. Suddenly
+he wheeled to silence the noisy men.
+
+"Where're Pearce and Gulden? Do they know?" he demanded.
+
+"Reckon no one knows but who's right here," replied Blicky.
+
+"Red an' Gul are sleepin' off last night's luck," said Bate Wood.
+
+"Have any of you seen young Cleve?" Kells went on. His voice rang quick
+and sharp.
+
+No one spoke, and presently Kells cracked his fist into his open hand.
+
+"Come on. Get the gang together at Beard's.... Boys, the time we've been
+gambling on has come. Jesse Smith saw '49 and '51. He wouldn't send me
+word like this--unless there was hell to pay.... Come on!"
+
+He strode off down the slope with the men close around him, and they
+met other men on the way, all of whom crowded into the group, jostling,
+eager, gesticulating.
+
+Joan was left alone. She felt considerably perturbed, especially at
+Kells's sharp inquiry for Jim Cleve. Kells might persuade him to join
+that bandit legion. These men made Joan think of wolves, with Kells the
+keen and savage leader. No one had given a thought to Blicky's horse
+and that neglect in border men was a sign of unusual preoccupation. The
+horse was in bad shape. Joan took off his saddle and bridle, and rubbed
+the dust-caked lather from his flanks, and led him into the corral. Then
+she fetched a bucket of water and let him drink sparingly, a little at a
+time.
+
+Joan did not take her ride that morning. Anxious and curious, she waited
+for the return of Kells. But he did not come. All afternoon Joan waited
+and watched, and saw no sign of him or any of the other men. She knew
+Kells was forging with red-hot iron and blood that organization which
+she undesignedly had given a name--the Border Legion. It would be a
+terrible legion, of that she was assured. Kells was the evil genius to
+create an unparalleled scheme of crime; this wild and remote border,
+with its inaccessible fastness for hiding-places, was the place;
+all that was wanting was the time, which evidently had arrived. She
+remembered how her uncle had always claimed that the Bear Mountain range
+would see a gold strike which would disrupt the whole West and amaze the
+world. And Blicky had said a big strike had been on for weeks. Kells's
+prophecy of the wild life Joan would see had not been without warrant.
+She had already seen enough to whiten her hair, she thought, yet she
+divined her experience would shrink in comparison with what was to come.
+Always she lived in the future. She spent sleeping and waking hours
+in dreams, thoughts, actions, broodings, over all of which hung an
+ever-present shadow of suspense. When would she meet Jim Cleve again?
+When would he recognize her? What would he do? What could she do? Would
+Kells be a devil or a man at the end? Was there any justification of her
+haunting fear of Gulden--of her suspicion that she alone was the
+cause of his attitude toward Kells--of her horror at the unshakable
+presentiment and fancy that he was a gorilla and meant to make off with
+her? These, and a thousand other fears, some groundless, but many real
+and present, besieged Joan and left her little peace. What would happen
+next?
+
+Toward sunset she grew tired of waiting, and hungry, besides, so she
+went into the cabin and prepared her own meal. About dark Kells strode
+in, and it took but a glance for Joan to see that matters had not gone
+to his liking. The man seemed to be burning inwardly. Sight of Joan
+absolutely surprised him. Evidently in the fever of this momentous hour
+he had forgotten his prisoner. Then, whatever his obsession, he looked
+like a man whose eyes were gladdened at sight of her and who was sorry
+to behold her there. He apologized that her supper had not been
+provided for her and explained that he had forgotten. The men had been
+crazy--hard to manage--the issue was not yet settled. He spoke gently.
+Suddenly he had that thoughtful mien which Joan had become used to
+associating with weakness in him.
+
+"I wish I hadn't dragged you here," he said, taking her hands. "It's too
+late. I CAN'T lose you.... But the--OTHER WAY--isn't too late!"
+
+"What way? What do you mean?" asked Joan.
+
+"Girl, will you ride off with me to-night?" he whispered, hoarsely. "I
+swear I'll marry you--and become an honest man. To-morrow will be too
+late!... Will you?"
+
+Joan shook her head. She was sorry for him. When he talked like this he
+was not Kells, the bandit. She could not resist a strange agitation
+at the intensity of his emotion. One moment he had entered--a bandit
+leader, planning blood, murder; the next, as his gaze found her, he
+seemed weakened, broken in the shaking grip of a hopeless love for her.
+
+"Speak, Joan!" he said, with his hands tightening and his brow clouding.
+
+"No, Kells," she replied.
+
+"Why? Because I'm a red-handed bandit?"
+
+"No. Because I--I don't love you."
+
+"But wouldn't you rather be my wife--and have me honest--than become
+a slave here, eventually abandoned to--to Gulden and his cave and his
+rope?" Kells's voice rose as that other side of him gained dominance.
+
+"Yes, I would.... But I KNOW you'll never harm me--or abandon me to--to
+that Gulden."
+
+"HOW do you know?" he cried, with the blood thick at his temples.
+
+"Because you're no beast any more.... And you--you do love me."
+
+Kells thrust her from him so fiercely that she nearly fell.
+
+"I'll get over it.... Then--look out!" he said, with dark bitterness.
+
+With that he waved her back, apparently ordering her to her cabin, and
+turned to the door, through which the deep voices of men sounded nearer
+and nearer.
+
+Joan stumbled in the darkness up the rude steps to her room, and, softly
+placing the poles in readiness to close her door, she composed herself
+to watch and wait. The keen edge of her nerves, almost amounting to
+pain, told her that this night of such moment for Kells would be one of
+singular strain and significance for her. But why she could not fathom.
+She felt herself caught by the changing tide of events--a tide that must
+sweep her on to flood. Kells had gone outside. The strong, deep voices'
+grew less distinct. Evidently the men were walking away. In her suspense
+Joan was disappointed. Presently, however, they returned; they had been
+walking to and fro. After a few moments Kells entered alone. The cabin
+was now so dark that Joan could barely distinguish the bandit. Then he
+lighted the lanterns. He hung up several on the wall and placed two upon
+the table. From somewhere among his effects he produced a small book and
+a pencil; these, with a heavy, gold-mounted gun, he laid on the table
+before the seat he manifestly meant to occupy. That done, he began a
+slow pacing up and down the room, his hands behind his back, his head
+bent in deep and absorbing thought. What a dark, sinister, plotting
+figure! Joan had seen many men in different attitudes of thought, but
+here was a man whose mind seemed to give forth intangible yet terrible
+manifestations of evil. The inside of that gloomy cabin took on another
+aspect; there was a meaning in the saddles and bridles and weapons on
+the wall; that book and pencil and gun seemed to contain the dark deeds
+of wild men; and all about the bandit hovered a power sinister in its
+menace to the unknown and distant toilers for gold.
+
+Kells lifted his head, as if listening, and then the whole manner of the
+man changed. The burden that weighed upon him was thrown aside. Like a
+general about to inspect a line of soldiers Kells faced the door, keen,
+stern, commanding. The heavy tread of booted men, the clink of spurs,
+the low, muffled sound of voices, warned Joan that the gang had arrived.
+Would Jim Cleve be among them?
+
+Joan wanted a better position in which to watch and listen. She thought
+a moment, and then carefully felt her way around to the other side of
+the steps, and here, sitting down with her feet hanging over the drop,
+she leaned against the wall and through a chink between the logs had
+a perfect view of the large cabin. The men were filing in silent and
+intense. Joan counted twenty-seven in all. They appeared to fall into
+two groups, and it was significant that the larger group lined up on the
+side nearest Kells, and the smaller back of Gulden. He had removed the
+bandage, and with a raw, red blotch where his right ear had been shot
+away, he was hideous. There was some kind of power emanating from him,
+but it was not that which, was so keenly vital and impelling in Kells.
+It was brute ferocity, dominating by sheer physical force. In any but
+muscular clash between Kells and Gulden the latter must lose. The men
+back of Gulden were a bearded, check-shirted, heavily armed group, the
+worst of that bad lot. All the younger, cleaner-cut men like Red Pearce
+and Frenchy and Beady Jones and Williams and the scout Blicky, were
+on the other side. There were two factions here, yet scarcely an
+antagonism, except possibly in the case of Kells. Joan felt that
+the atmosphere was supercharged with suspense and fatality and
+possibility--and anything might happen. To her great joy, Jim Cleve was
+not present.
+
+"Where're Beard and Wood?" queried Kells.
+
+"Workin' over Beard's sick hoss," replied Pearce. "They'll show up by
+an' by. Anythin' you say goes with them, you know."
+
+"Did you find young Cleve?"
+
+"No. He camps up in the timber somewheres. Reckon he'll be along, too."
+
+Kells sat down at the head of the table, and, taking up the little book,
+he began to finger it while his pale eyes studied the men before him.
+
+"We shuffled the deck pretty well over at Beard's," he said. "Now for
+the deal.... Who wants cards?... I've organized my Border Legion. I'll
+have absolute control, whether there're ten men or a hundred. Now, whose
+names go down in my book?"
+
+Red Pearce stepped up and labored over the writing of his name. Blicky,
+Jones, Williams, and others followed suit. They did not speak, but
+each shook hands with the leader. Evidently Kells exacted no oath, but
+accepted each man's free action and his word of honor. There was that
+about the bandit which made such action as binding as ties of blood. He
+did not want men in his Legion who had not loyalty to him. He seemed the
+kind of leader to whom men would be true.
+
+"Kells, say them conditions over again," requested one of the men, less
+eager to hurry with the matter.
+
+At this juncture Joan was at once thrilled and frightened to see Jim
+Cleve enter the cabin. He appeared whiter of face, almost ghastly, and
+his piercing eyes swept the room, from Kells to Gulden, from men to men.
+Then he leaned against the wall, indistinct in the shadow. Kells gave no
+sign that he had noted the advent of Cleve.
+
+"I'm the leader," replied Kells, deliberately. "I'll make the plans.
+I'll issue orders. No jobs without my knowledge. Equal shares in
+gold--man to man.... Your word to stand by me!"
+
+A muttering of approval ran through the listening group.
+
+"Reckon I'll join," said the man who had wished the conditions repeated.
+With that he advanced to the table and, apparently not being able to
+write, he made his mark in the book. Kells wrote the name below.
+The other men of this contingent one by one complied with Kells's
+requirements. This action left Gulden and his group to be dealt with.
+
+"Gulden, are you still on the fence?" demanded Kells, coolly.
+
+The giant strode stolidly forward to the table. As always before to
+Joan, he seemed to be a ponderous hulk, slow, heavy, plodding, with a
+mind to match.
+
+"Kells, if we can agree I'll join," he said in his sonorous voice.
+
+"You can bet you won't join unless we do agree," snapped Kells.
+"But--see here, Gulden. Let's be friendly. The border is big enough for
+both of us. I want you. I need you. Still, if we can't agree, let's not
+split and be enemies. How about it?"
+
+Another muttering among the men attested to the good sense and good will
+of Kells's suggestion.
+
+"Tell me what you're going to do--how you'll operate," replied Gulden.
+
+Keils had difficulty in restraining his impatience and annoyance.
+
+"What's that to you or any of you?" he queried. "You all know I'm the
+man to think of things. That's been proved. First it takes brains. I'll
+furnish them. Then it takes execution. You and Pearce and the gang will
+furnish that. What more do you need to know?"
+
+"How're you going to operate?" persisted Gulden.
+
+Kells threw up both hands as if it was useless to argue or reason with
+this desperado.
+
+"All right, I'll tell you," he replied. "Listen.... I can't say what
+definite plans I'll make till Jesse Smith reports, and then when I get
+on the diggings. But here's a working basis. Now don't miss a word of
+this, Gulden--nor any of you men. We'll pack our outfits down to this
+gold strike. We'll build cabins on the outskirts of the town, and we
+won't hang together. The gang will be spread out. Most of you must make
+a bluff at digging gold. Be like other miners. Get in with cliques and
+clans. Dig, drink, gamble like the rest of them. Beard will start a
+gambling-place. Red Pearce will find some other kind of work. I'll buy
+up claims--employ miners to work them. I'll disguise myself and get
+in with the influential men and have a voice in matters. You'll all be
+scouts. You'll come to my cabin at night to report. We'll not tackle
+any little jobs. Miners going out with fifty or a hundred pounds of
+gold--the wagons--the stage-coach--these we'll have timed to rights, and
+whoever I detail on the job will hold them up. You must all keep sober,
+if that's possible. You must all absolutely trust to my judgment. You
+must all go masked while on a job. You must never speak a word that
+might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer
+without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous.
+It will appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The
+more secretive we are the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In
+gold-camps, when there's a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each
+other. They can't organize. We shall have them helpless.... And in
+short, if it's as rich a strike as looks due here in these hills, before
+winter we can pack out all the gold our horses can carry."
+
+Kells had begun under restraint, but the sound of his voice, the
+liberation of his great idea, roused him to a passion. The man radiated
+with passion. This, then, was his dream--the empire he aspired to.
+
+He had a powerful effect upon his listeners, except Gulden; and it was
+evident to Joan that the keen bandit was conscious of his influence.
+Gulden, however, showed nothing that he had not already showed. He
+was always a strange, dominating figure. He contested the relations of
+things. Kells watched him--the men watched him--and Jim Cleve's piercing
+eyes glittered in the shadow, fixed upon that massive face. Manifestly
+Gulden meant to speak, but in his slowness there was no laboring, no
+pause from emotion. He had an idea and it moved like he moved.
+
+"DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES!" The words boomed deep from his cavernous
+chest, a mutter that was a rumble, with something almost solemn in its
+note and certainly menacing, breathing murder. As Kells had propounded
+his ideas, revealing his power to devise a remarkable scheme and
+his passion for gold, so Gulden struck out with the driving inhuman
+blood-lust that must have been the twist, the knot, the clot in his
+brain. Kells craved notoriety and gold; Gulden craved to kill. In the
+silence that followed his speech these wild border ruffians judged him,
+measured him, understood him, and though some of them grew farther
+aloof from him, more of them sensed the safety that hid in his terrible
+implication.
+
+But Kells rose against him.
+
+"Gulden, you mean when we steal gold--to leave only dead men behind?" he
+queried, with a hiss in his voice.
+
+The giant nodded grimly.
+
+"But only fools kill--unless in self-defense," declared Kells,
+passionately.
+
+"We'd last longer," replied Gulden, imperturbably.
+
+"No--no. We'd never last so long. Killings rouse a mining-camp after a
+while--gold fever or no. That means a vigilante band."
+
+"We can belong to the vigilantes, just as well as to your Legion," said
+Gulden.
+
+The effect of this was to make Gulden appear less of a fool than
+Kells supposed him. The ruffians nodded to one another. They stirred
+restlessly. They were animated by a strange and provocative influence.
+Even Red Pearce and the others caught its subtlety. It was evil
+predominating in evil hearts. Blood and death loomed like a shadow here.
+The keen Kells saw the change working toward a transformation and he
+seemed craftily fighting something within him that opposed this cold
+ruthlessness of his men.
+
+"Gulden, suppose I don't see it your way?" he asked.
+
+"Then I won't join your Legion."
+
+"What WILL you do?"
+
+"I'll take the men who stand by me and go clean up that gold-camp."
+
+From the fleeting expression on Kells's face Joan read that he knew
+Gulden's project would defeat his own and render both enterprises fatal.
+
+"Gulden, I don't want to lose you," he said.
+
+"You won't lose me if you see this thing right," replied Gulden. "You've
+got the brains to direct us. But, Kells, you're losing your nerve....
+It's this girl you've got here!"
+
+Gulden spoke without rancor or fear or feeling of any kind. He merely
+spoke the truth. And it shook Kells with an almost ungovernable fury.
+
+Joan saw the green glare of his eyes--his gray working face--the flutter
+of his hand. She had an almost superhuman insight into the workings of
+his mind. She knew that then--he was fighting whether or not to kill
+Gulden on the spot. And she recognized that this was the time when Kells
+must kill Gulden or from that moment see a gradual diminishing of his
+power on the border. But Kells did not recognize that crucial height of
+his career. His struggle with his fury and hate showed that the thing
+uppermost in his mind was the need of conciliating Gulden and thus
+regaining a hold over the men.
+
+"Gulden, suppose we waive the question till we're on the grounds?" he
+suggested.
+
+"Waive nothing. It's one or the other with me," declared Gulden.
+
+"Do you want to be leader of this Border Legion?" went on Kells,
+deliberately.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what do you want?"
+
+Gulden appeared at a loss for an instant reply. "I want plenty to do,"
+he replied, presently. "I want to be in on everything. I want to be free
+to kill a man when I like."
+
+"When you like!" retorted Kells, and added a curse. Then as if by magic
+his dark face cleared and there was infinite depth and craftiness in
+him. His opposition, and that hint of hate and loathing which detached
+him from Gulden, faded from his bearing. "Gulden, I'll split the
+difference between us. I'll leave you free to do as you like. But all
+the others--every man--must take orders from me."
+
+Gulden reached out a huge hand. His instant acceptance evidently amazed
+Kells and the others.
+
+"LET HER RIP!" Gulden exclaimed. He shook Kells's hand and then
+laboriously wrote his name in the little book.
+
+In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild abandoned
+men. What were Kells and this Legion to him? What was the stealing of
+more or less gold?
+
+"Free to do as you like except fight my men," said Kells. "That's
+understood."
+
+"If they don't pick a fight with me," added the giant, and he grinned.
+
+One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that
+Kells's personality made a serious and binding compact.
+
+"Anybody else?" called Kells, glancing round. The somberness was leaving
+his face.
+
+"Here's Jim Cleve," said Pearce, pointing toward the wall.
+
+"Hello, youngster! Come here. I'm wanting you bad," said Kells.
+
+Cleve sauntered out of the shadow, and his glittering eyes were fixed
+on Gulden. There was an instant of waiting. Gulden looked at Cleve. Then
+Kells quickly strode between them.
+
+"Say, I forgot you fellows had trouble," he said. He attended solely
+to Gulden. "You can't renew your quarrel now. Gulden, we've all fought
+together more or less, and then been good friends. I want Cleve to join
+us, but not against your ill will. How about it?"
+
+"I've no ill will," replied the giant, and the strangeness of his remark
+lay in its evident truth. "But I won't stand to lose my other ear!"
+
+Then the ruffians guffawed in hoarse mirth. Gulden, however, did not
+seem to see any humor in his remark. Kells laughed with the rest. Even
+Cleve's white face relaxed into a semblance of a smile.
+
+"That's good. We're getting together," declared Kells. Then he faced
+Cleve, all about him expressive of elation, of assurance, of power.
+"Jim, will you draw cards in this deal?"
+
+"What's the deal?" asked Cleve.
+
+Then in swift, eloquent speech Kells launched the idea of his Border
+Legion, its advantages to any loose-footed, young outcast, and he ended
+his brief talk with much the same argument he had given Joan. Back there
+in her covert Joan listened and watched, mindful of the great need of
+controlling her emotions. The instant Jim Cleve had stalked into the
+light she had been seized by a spasm of trembling.
+
+"Kells, I don't care two straws one way or another," replied Cleve.
+
+The bandit appeared nonplussed. "You don't care whether you join my
+Legion or whether you don't?"
+
+"Not a damn," was the indifferent answer.
+
+"Then do me a favor," went on Kells. "Join to please me. We'll be good
+friends. You're in bad out here on the border. You might as well fall in
+with us."
+
+"I'd rather go alone."
+
+"But you won't last."
+
+"It's a lot I care."
+
+The bandit studied the reckless, white face. "See here, Cleve--haven't
+you got the nerve to be bad--thoroughly bad?"
+
+Cleve gave a start as if he had been stung. Joan shut her eyes to blot
+out what she saw in his face. Kells had used part of the very speech
+with which she had driven Jim Cleve to his ruin. And those words
+galvanized him. The fatality of all this! Joan hated herself. Those
+very words of hers would drive this maddened and heartbroken boy to join
+Kells's band. She knew what to expect from Jim even before she opened
+her eyes; yet when she did open them it was to see him transformed and
+blazing.
+
+Then Kells either gave way to leaping passion or simulated it in the
+interest of his cunning.
+
+"Cleve, you're going down for a woman?" he queried, with that sharp,
+mocking ring in his voice.
+
+"If you don't shut up you'll get there first," replied Cleve,
+menacingly.
+
+"Bah!... Why do you want to throw a gun on me? I'm your friend: You're
+sick. You're like a poisoned pup. I say if you've got nerve you won't
+quit. You'll take a run for your money. You'll see life. You'll fight.
+You'll win some gold. There are other women. Once I thought I would quit
+for a woman. But I didn't. I never found the right one till I had gone
+to hell--out here on this border.... If you've got nerve, show me. Be a
+man instead of a crazy youngster. Spit out the poison.... Tell it before
+us all!... Some girl drove you to us?"
+
+"Yes--a girl!" replied Cleve, hoarsely, as if goaded.
+
+"It's too late to go back?"
+
+"Too late!"
+
+"There's nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?"
+
+"Nothing.... Only I--can't forget!" he panted.
+
+Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness. Joan saw how
+Kells worked upon Jim's feelings. He was only a hopeless, passionate
+boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man. He would be like wax to a
+sculptor's touch. Jim would bend to this bandit's will, and through his
+very tenacity of love and memory be driven farther on the road to drink,
+to gaming, and to crime.
+
+Joan got to her feet, and with all her woman's soul uplifting and
+inflaming her she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.
+
+Kells made a gesture of savage violence. "Show your nerve!... Join
+with me!... You'll make a name on this border that the West will never
+forget!"
+
+That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit's best trump. And
+it won. Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from
+his damp brow. The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from
+him. He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as
+his own cowardice.
+
+"Sure, Kells," he said, recklessly. "Let me in the game.... And--by
+God--I'll play--the hand out!" He reached for the pencil and bent over
+the book.
+
+"Wait!... Oh, WAIT!" cried Joan. The passion of that moment, the
+consciousness of its fateful portent and her situation, as desperate
+as Cleve's, gave her voice a singularly high and piercingly sweet
+intensity. She glided from behind the blanket--out of the shadow--into
+the glare of the lanterns--to face Kells and Cleve.
+
+Kells gave one astounded glance at her, and then, divining her purpose,
+he laughed thrillingly and mockingly, as if the sight of her was a spur,
+as if her courage was a thing to admire, to permit, and to regret.
+
+"Cleve, my wife, Dandy Dale," he said, suave and cool. "Let her persuade
+you--one way or another!"
+
+The presence of a woman, however disguised, following her singular
+appeal, transformed Cleve. He stiffened erect and the flush died out of
+his face, leaving it whiter than ever, and the eyes that had grown dull
+quickened and began to burn. Joan felt her cheeks blanch. She all but
+fainted under that gaze. But he did not recognize her, though he was
+strangely affected.
+
+"Wait!" she cried again, and she held to that high voice, so different
+from her natural tone. "I've been listening. I've heard all that's been
+said. Don't join this Border Legion.... You're young--and still, honest.
+For God's sake--don't go the way of these men! Kells will make you a
+bandit.... Go home--boy--go home!"
+
+"Who are you--to speak to me of honesty--of home?" Cleve demanded.
+
+"I'm only a--a woman.... But I can feel how wrong you are.... Go back
+to that girl--who--who drove you to the border.... She must repent. In
+a day you'll be too late.... Oh, boy, go home! Girls never know their
+minds--their hearts. Maybe your girl--loved you!... Oh, maybe her heart
+is breaking now!"
+
+A strong, muscular ripple went over Cleve, ending in a gesture of fierce
+protest. Was it pain her words caused, or disgust that such as she dared
+mention the girl he had loved? Joan could not tell. She only knew
+that Cleve was drawn by her presence, fascinated and repelled, subtly
+responding to the spirit of her, doubting what he heard and believing
+with his eyes.
+
+"You beg me not to become a bandit?" he asked, slowly, as if revolving a
+strange idea.
+
+"Oh, I implore you!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I told you. Because you're still good at heart. You've only been
+wild.... Because--"
+
+"Are you the wife of Kells?" he flashed at her.
+
+A reply seemed slowly wrenched from Joan's reluctant lips. "No!"
+
+The denial left a silence behind it. The truth that all knew when spoken
+by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention.
+Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon
+the face of Cleve shone an immeasurable scorn.
+
+"Not his wife!" exclaimed Cleve, softly.
+
+His tone was unendurable to Joan. She began to shrink. A flame curled
+within her. How he must hate any creature of her sex!
+
+"And you appeal to me!" he went on. Suddenly a weariness came over him.
+The complexity of women was beyond him. Almost he turned his back upon
+her. "I reckon such as you can't keep me from Kells--or blood--or hell!"
+
+"Then you're a narrow-souled weakling--born to crime!" she burst out in
+magnificent wrath. "For however appearances are against me--I am a good
+woman!"
+
+That stunned him, just as it drew Kells upright, white and watchful.
+Cleve seemed long in grasping its significance. His face was half
+averted. Then he turned slowly, all strung, and his hands clutched
+quiveringly at the air. No man of coolness and judgment would have
+addressed him or moved a step in that strained moment. All expected some
+such action as had marked his encounter with Luce and Gulden.
+
+Then Cleve's gaze in unmistakable meaning swept over Joan's person. How
+could her appearance and her appeal be reconciled? One was a lie! And
+his burning eyes robbed Joan of spirit.
+
+"He forced me to--to wear these," she faltered. "I'm his prisoner. I'm
+helpless."
+
+With catlike agility Cleve leaped backward, so that he faced all the
+men, and when his hands swept to a level they held gleaming guns. His
+utter abandon of daring transfixed these bandits in surprise as much as
+fear. Kells appeared to take most to himself the menace.
+
+"_I_ CRAWL!" he said, huskily. "She speaks the God's truth.... But you
+can't help matters by killing me. Maybe she'd be worse off!"
+
+He expected this wild boy to break loose, yet his wit directed him to
+speak the one thing calculated to check Cleve.
+
+"Oh, don't shoot!" moaned Joan.
+
+"You go outside," ordered Cleve. "Get on a horse and lead another near
+the door.... Go! I'll take you away from this."
+
+Both temptation and terror assailed Joan. Surely that venture would mean
+only death to Jim and worse for her. She thrilled at the thought--at the
+possibility of escape--at the strange front of this erstwhile nerveless
+boy. But she had not the courage for what seemed only desperate folly.
+
+"I'll stay," she whispered. "You go!"
+
+"Hurry, woman!"
+
+"No! No!"
+
+"Do you want to stay with this bandit?"
+
+"Oh, I must!"
+
+"Then you love him?"
+
+All the fire of Joan's heart flared up to deny the insult and all her
+woman's cunning fought to keep back words that inevitably must lead to
+revelation. She drooped, unable to hold up under her shame, yet strong
+to let him think vilely of her, for his sake. That way she had a barest
+chance.
+
+"Get out of my sight!" he ejaculated, thickly. "I'd have fought for
+you."
+
+Again that white, weary scorn radiated from him. Joan bit her tongue to
+keep from screaming. How could she live under this torment? It was she,
+Joan Randle, that had earned that scorn, whether he knew her or not. She
+shrank back, step by step, almost dazed, sick with a terrible inward,
+coldness, blinded by scalding tears. She found her door and stumbled in.
+
+"Kells, I'm what you called me." She heard Cleve's voice, strangely far
+off. "There's no excuse... unless I'm not just right in my head about
+women.... Overlook my break or don't--as you like. But if you want me
+I'm ready for your Border Legion!"
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+Those bitter words of Cleve's, as if he mocked himself, were the last
+Joan heard, and they rang in her ears and seemed to reverberate through
+her dazed mind like a knell of doom. She lay there, all blackness about
+her, weighed upon by an insupportable burden; and she prayed that day
+might never dawn for her; a nightmare of oblivion ended at last with her
+eyes opening to the morning light.
+
+She was cold and stiff. She had lain uncovered all the long hours of
+night. She had not moved a finger since she had fallen upon the bed,
+crushed by those bitter words with which Cleve had consented to join
+Kells's Legion. Since then Joan felt that she had lived years. She could
+not remember a single thought she might have had during those black
+hours; nevertheless, a decision had been formed in her mind, and it was
+that to-day she would reveal herself to Jim Cleve if it cost both their
+lives. Death was infinitely better than the suspense and fear and agony
+she had endured; and as for Jim, it would at least save him from crime.
+
+Joan got up, a little dizzy and unsteady upon her feet. Her hands
+appeared clumsy and shaky. All the blood in her seemed to surge from
+heart to brain and it hurt her to breathe. Removing her mask, she bathed
+her face and combed her hair. At first she conceived an idea to go out
+without her face covered, but she thought better of it. Cleve's reckless
+defiance had communicated itself to her. She could not now be stopped.
+
+Kells was gay and excited that morning. He paid her compliments. He said
+they would soon be out of this lonely gulch and she would see the sight
+of her life--a gold strike. She would see men wager a fortune on the
+turn of a card, lose, laugh, and go back to the digging. He said he
+would take her to Sacramento and 'Frisco and buy her everything any
+girl could desire. He was wild, voluble, unreasoning--obsessed by the
+anticipated fulfilment of his dream.
+
+It was rather late in the morning and there were a dozen or more men in
+and around the cabin, all as excited as Kells. Preparations were already
+under way for the expected journey to the gold-field. Packs were being
+laid out, overhauled, and repacked; saddles and bridles and weapons
+were being worked over; clothes were being awkwardly mended. Horses
+were being shod, and the job was as hard and disagreeable for men as for
+horses. Whenever a rider swung up the slope, and one came every now and
+then, all the robbers would leave off their tasks and start eagerly for
+the newcomer. The name Jesse Smith was on everybody's lips. Any hour he
+might be expected to arrive and corroborate Blicky's alluring tale.
+
+Joan saw or imagined she saw that the glances in the eyes of these men
+were yellow, like gold fire. She had seen miners and prospectors whose
+eyes shone with a strange glory of light that gold inspired, but never
+as those of Kells's bandit Legion. Presently Joan discovered that,
+despite the excitement, her effect upon them was more marked then ever,
+and by a difference that she was quick to feel. But she could not tell
+what this difference was--how their attitude had changed. Then she set
+herself the task of being useful. First she helped Bate Wood. He was
+roughly kind. She had not realized that there was sadness about her
+until he whispered: "Don't be downcast, miss. Mebbe it'll come out
+right yet!" That amazed Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances,
+the sympathy she felt in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She
+grew keen to learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in
+all the men. Then she went to Pearce and with all a woman's craft she
+exaggerated the silent sadness that had brought quick response from
+Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her
+proximity as that of a feminine thing which roused the devil in him.
+Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity
+in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This
+lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan
+mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud
+of her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then as she
+finished he glanced furtively round; he pressed her hand: "I had a
+sister once!" he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate:
+"Kells!--he'll get his over in the gold-camp!"
+
+Joan turned away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange, deep
+undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for
+Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of
+fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her
+situation? What was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the
+bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for
+evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate and faithlessness fostered by
+this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant's notice to break
+out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragical nature of Kell's
+great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or
+weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold, of riotous gambling, but by its
+very nature it was doomed. It embraced failure and death.
+
+Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this inexplicable
+change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each; and it was not till she
+encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was revealed. Frenchy
+was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his being inculcated a
+sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the darkness of a wicked life,
+and now that something came fleeting out of the depths--and it was
+respect for a woman. To Joan it was a flash of light. Yesterday these
+ruffians despised her; to-day they respected her. So they had believed
+what she had so desperately flung at Jim Cleve. They believed her good,
+they pitied her, they respected her, they responded to her effort
+to turn a boy back from a bad career. They were bandits, desperados,
+murderers, lost, but each remembered in her a mother or a sister. What
+each might have felt or done had he possessed her, as Kells possessed
+her, did not alter the case as it stood. A strange inconsistency of
+character made them hate Kells for what they might not have hated in
+themselves. Her appeal to Cleve, her outburst of truth, her youth
+and misfortune, had discovered to each a human quality. As in Kells
+something of nobility still lingered, a ghost among his ruined ideals,
+so in the others some goodness remained. Joan sustained an uplifting
+divination--no man was utterly bad. Then came the hideous image of the
+giant Gulden, the utter absence of soul in him, and she shuddered.
+Then came the thought of Jim Cleve, who had not believed her, who had
+bitterly made the fatal step, who might in the strange reversion of his
+character be beyond influence.
+
+And it was at the precise moment when this thought rose to counteract
+the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men that Joan looked out
+to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between
+his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon him the stamp of
+abandonment. Joan suffered a contraction of heart that benumbed her
+breast. She stood a moment battling with herself. She was brave enough,
+desperate enough, to walk straight up to Cleve, remove her mask and say,
+"I am Joan!" But that must be a last resource. She had no plan, yet she
+might force an opportunity to see Cleve alone.
+
+A shout rose above the hubbub of voices. A tall man was pointing across
+the gulch where dust-clouds showed above the willows. Men crowded round
+him, all gazing in the direction of his hand, all talking at once.
+
+"Jesse Smith's hoss, I swear!" shouted the tall man. "Kells, come out
+here!"
+
+Kells appeared, dark and eager, at the door, and nimbly he leaped to the
+excited group. Pearce and Wood and others followed.
+
+"What's up?" called the bandit. "Hello! Who's that riding bareback?"
+
+"He's shore cuttin' the wind," said Wood.
+
+"Blicky!" exclaimed the tall man. "Kells, there's news. I seen Jesse's
+hoss."
+
+Kells let out a strange, exultant cry. The excited talk among the men
+gave place, to a subdued murmur, then subsided. Blicky was running a
+horse up the road, hanging low over him, like an Indian. He clattered to
+the bench, scattered the men in all directions. The fiery horse plunged
+and pounded. Blicky was gray of face and wild of aspect.
+
+"Jesse's come!" he yelled, hoarsely, at Kells. "He jest fell off his
+hoss--all in! He wants you--an' all the gang! He's seen a million
+dollars in gold-dust!"
+
+Absolute silence ensued after that last swift and startling speech. It
+broke to a commingling of yells and shouts. Blicky wheeled his horse and
+Kells started on a run. And there was a stampede and rush after him.
+
+Joan grasped her opportunity. She had seen all this excitement, but she
+had not lost sight of Cleve. He got up from a log and started after the
+others. Joan flew to him, grasped him, startled him with the suddenness
+of her onslaught. But her tongue seemed cloven to the roof of her mouth,
+her lips weak and mute. Twice she strove to speak.
+
+"Meet me--there!--among the pines--right away!" she whispered, with
+breathless earnestness. "It's life--or death--for me!"
+
+As she released his arm he snatched at her mask. But she eluded him.
+
+"Who ARE you?" he flashed.
+
+Kells and his men were piling into the willows, leaping the brook,
+hurrying on. They had no thought but to get to Jesse Smith to hear of
+the gold strike. That news to them was as finding gold in the earth was
+to honest miners.
+
+"Come!" cried Joan. She hurried away toward the corner of the cabin,
+then halted to see if he was following. He was, indeed. She ran round
+behind the cabin, out on the slope, halting at the first trees. Cleve
+came striding after her. She ran on, beginning to pant and stumble. The
+way he strode, the white grimness of him, frightened her. What would he,
+do? Again she went on, but not running now. There were straggling pines
+and spruces that soon hid the cabins. Beyond, a few rods, was a dense
+clump of pines, and she made for that. As she reached it she turned
+fearfully. Only Cleve was in sight. She uttered a sob of mingled relief,
+joy, and thankfulness. She and Cleve had not been observed. They would
+be out of sight in this little pine grove. At last! She could reveal
+herself, tell him why she was there, that she loved him, that she was as
+good as ever she had been. Why was she shaking like a leaf in the wind?
+She saw Cleve through a blur. He was almost running now. Involuntarily
+she fled into the grove. It was dark and cool; it smelled sweetly of
+pine; there were narrow aisles and little sunlit glades. She hurried
+on till a fallen tree blocked her passage. Here she turned--she would
+wait--the tree was good to lean against. There came Cleve, a dark,
+stalking shadow. She did not remember him like that. He entered the
+glade.
+
+"Speak again!" he said, thickly. "Either I'm drunk or crazy!"
+
+But Joan could not speak. She held out hands that shook--swept them to
+her face--tore at the mask. Then with a gasp she stood revealed.
+
+If she had stabbed him straight through the heart he could not have been
+more ghastly. Joan saw him, in all the terrible transfiguration
+that came over him, but she had no conceptions, no thought of what
+constituted that change. After that check to her mind came a surge of
+joy.
+
+"Jim!... Jim! It's Joan!" she breathed, with lips almost mute.
+
+"JOAN!" he gasped, and the sound of his voice seemed to be the passing
+from horrible doubt to certainty.
+
+Like a panther he leaped at her, fastened a powerful hand at the neck of
+her blouse, jerked her to her knees, and began to drag her. Joan fought
+his iron grasp. The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her
+utterance. He did not look down upon her, but she could see him, the
+rigidity of his body set in violence, the awful shade upon his face, the
+upstanding hair on his head. He dragged her as if she had been an empty
+sack. Like a beast he was seeking a dark place--a hole to hide her.
+She was strangling; a distorted sight made objects dim; and now she
+struggled instinctively. Suddenly the clutch at her neck loosened;
+gaspingly came the intake of air to her lungs; the dark-red veil left
+her eyes. She was still upon her knees. Cleve stood before her, like a
+gray-faced demon, holding his gun level, ready to fire.
+
+"Pray for your soul--and mine!"
+
+"Jim! Oh Jim!... Will you kill yourself, too?"
+
+"Yes! But pray, girl--quick!"
+
+"Then I pray to God--not for my soul--but just for one more moment of
+life... TO TELL YOU, JIM!"
+
+Cleve's face worked and the gun began to waver. Her reply had been a
+stroke of lightning into the dark abyss of his jealous agony.
+
+Joan saw it, and she raised her quivering face, and she held up her arms
+to him. "To tell--you--Jim!" she entreated.
+
+"What?" he rasped out.
+
+"That I'm innocent--that I'm as good--a girl--as ever.. ever.... Let me
+tell you.... Oh, you're mistaken--terribly mistaken."
+
+"Now, I know I'm drunk.... You, Joan Randle! You in that rig! You
+the companion of Jack Kells! Not even his wife! The jest of these
+foul-mouthed bandits! And you say you're innocent--good?... When you
+refused to leave him!"
+
+"I was afraid to go--afraid you'd be killed," she moaned, beating her
+breast.
+
+It must have seemed madness to him, a monstrous nightmare, a delirium of
+drink, that Joan Randle was there on her knees in a brazen male attire,
+lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to
+believe in her innocence.
+
+Joan burst into swift, broken utterance: "Only listen! I trailed you
+out--twenty miles from Hoadley. I met Roberts. He came with me. He lamed
+his horse--we had to camp. Kells rode down on us. He had two men. They
+camped there. Next morning he--killed Roberts--made off with me.... Then
+he killed his men--just to have me--alone to himself.... We crossed a
+range--camped in the canon. There he attacked me--and I--I shot him!...
+But I couldn't leave him--to die!" Joan hurried on with her narrative,
+gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve. "First
+he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden--and the others," she went
+on. "He meant to save me from them. But they guessed or found out....
+Kells forced me into these bandit clothes. He's depraved, somehow. And
+I had to wear something. Kells hasn't harmed me--no one has. I've
+influence over him. He can't resist it. He's tried to force me to marry
+him. And he's tried to give up to his evil intentions. But he can't.
+There's good in him. I can make him feel it.... Oh, he loves me, and I'm
+not afraid of him any more.... It has been a terrible time for me, Jim,
+but I'm still--the same girl you knew--you used to--"
+
+Cleve dropped the gun and he waved his hand before his eyes as if to
+dispel a blindness.
+
+"But why--why?" he asked, incredulously. "Why did you leave Hoadley?
+That's forbidden. You knew the risk."
+
+Joan gazed steadily up at him, to see the whiteness slowly fade out of
+his face. She had imagined it would be an overcoming of pride to
+betray her love, but she had been wrong. The moment was so full, so
+overpowering, that she seemed dumb. He had ruined himself for her, and
+out of that ruin had come the glory of her love. Perhaps it was all too
+late, but at least he would know that for love of him she had in turn
+sacrificed herself.
+
+"Jim," she whispered, and with the first word of that betrayal a thrill,
+a tremble, a rush went over her, and all her blood seemed hot at her
+neck and face, "that night when you kissed me I was furious. But the
+moment you had gone I repented. I must have--cared for you then, but I
+didn't know.... Remorse seized me. And I set out on your trail to save
+you from yourself. And with the pain and fear and terror there was
+sometimes--the--the sweetness of your kisses. Then I knew I cared....
+And with the added days of suspense and agony--all that told me of your
+throwing your life away--there came love.... Such love as otherwise I'd
+never have been big enough for! I meant to find you--to save you--to
+send you home!... I have found you, maybe too late to save your life,
+but not your soul, thank God!... That's why I've been strong enough to
+hold back Kells. I love you, Jim!... I love you! I couldn't tell you
+enough. My heart is bursting.... Say you believe me! Say you know I'm
+good--true to you--your Joan!... And kiss me--like you did that night
+when we were such blind fools. A boy and a girl who didn't know--and
+couldn't tell!--Oh, the sadness of it!.... Kiss me, Jim, before
+I--drop--at your feet!... If only you--believe--"
+
+Joan was blinded by tears and whispering she knew not what when
+Cleve broke from his trance and caught her to his breast. She was
+fainting--hovering at the border of unconsciousness when his violence
+held her back from oblivion. She seemed wrapped to him and held so
+tightly there was no breath in her body, no motion, no stir of
+pulse. That vague, dreamy moment passed. She heard his husky, broken
+accents--she felt the pound of his heart against her breast. And he
+began to kiss her as she had begged him to. She quickened to thrilling,
+revivifying life. And she lifted her face, and clung round his neck, and
+kissed him, blindly, sweetly, passionately, with all her heart and soul
+in her lips, wanting only one thing in the world--to give that which she
+had denied him.
+
+"Joan!... Joan!... Joan!" he murmured when their lips parted. "Am I
+dreaming--drunk--or crazy?"
+
+"Oh, Jim, I'm real--you have me in your arms," she whispered. "Dear
+Jim--kiss me again--and say you believe me."
+
+"Believe you?... I'm out of my mind with joy.... You loved me! You
+followed me!... And--that idea of mine--only an absurd, vile suspicion!
+I might have known--had I been sane!"
+
+"There.... Oh, Jim!... Enough of madness. We've got to plan. Remember
+where we are. There's Kells, and this terrible situation to meet!"
+
+He stared at her, slowly realizing, and then it was his turn to shake.
+"My God! I'd forgotten. I'll HAVE to kill you now!"
+
+A reaction set in. If he had any self-control left he lost it, and like
+a boy whose fling into manhood had exhausted his courage he sank beside
+her and buried his face against her. And he cried in a low, tense,
+heartbroken way. For Joan it was terrible to hear him. She held his hand
+to her breast and implored him not to weaken now. But he was stricken
+with remorse--he had run off like a coward, he had brought her to this
+calamity--and he could not rise under it. Joan realized that he had long
+labored under stress of morbid emotion. Only a supreme effort could lift
+him out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that must come
+from her.
+
+She pushed him away from her, and held him back where he must see her,
+and white-hot with passionate purpose, she kissed him. "Jim Cleve, if
+you've NERVE enough to be BAD you've nerve enough to save the girl who
+LOVES you--who BELONGS to you!"
+
+He raised his face and it flashed from red to white. He caught the
+subtlety of her antithesis. With the very two words which had driven him
+away under the sting of cowardice she uplifted him; and with all that
+was tender and faithful and passionate in her meaning of surrender she
+settled at once and forever the doubt of his manhood. He arose trembling
+in every limb. Like a dog he shook himself. His breast heaved. The
+shades of scorn and bitterness and abandon might never have haunted his
+face. In that moment he had passed from the reckless and wild, sick rage
+of a weakling to the stern, realizing courage of a man. His suffering
+on this wild border had developed a different fiber of character; and at
+the great moment, the climax, when his moral force hung balanced
+between elevation and destruction, the woman had called to him, and her
+unquenchable spirit passed into him.
+
+"There's only one thing--to get away," he said.
+
+"Yes, but that's a terrible risk," she replied.
+
+"We've a good chance now. I'll get horses. We can slip away while
+they're all excited."
+
+"No--no. I daren't risk so much. Kells would find out at once. He'd be
+like a hound on our trail. But that's not all. I've a horror of Gulden.
+I can't explain. I FEEL it. He would know--he would take the trail. I'd
+never try to escape with Gulden in camp.... Jim, do you know what he's
+done?"
+
+"He's a cannibal. I hate the sight of him. I tried to kill him. I wish I
+had killed him."
+
+"I'm never safe while he's near."
+
+"Then I will kill him."
+
+"Hush! you'll not be desperate unless you have to be.... Listen. I'm
+safe with Kells for the present. And he's friendly to you. Let us wait.
+I'll keep trying to influence him. I have won the friendship of some of
+his men. We'll stay with him--travel with him. Surely we'd have a better
+chance to excape after we reach that gold-camp. You must play your part.
+But do it without drinking and fighting. I couldn't bear that. We'll see
+each other somehow. We'll plan. Then we'll take the first chance to get
+away."
+
+"We might never have a better chance than we've got right now," he
+remonstrated.
+
+"It may seem so to you. But I KNOW. I haven't watched these ruffians for
+nothing. I tell you Gulden has split with Kells because of me. I don't
+know how I know. And I think I'd die of terror out on the trail with two
+hundred miles to go--and that gorilla after me."
+
+"But, Joan, if we once got away Gulden would never take you alive," said
+Jim, earnestly. "So you needn't fear that."
+
+"I've uncanny horror of him. It's as if he were a gorilla--and would
+take me off even if I were dead!... No, Jim, let us wait. Let me select
+the time. I can do it. Trust me. Oh, Jim, now that I've saved you
+from being a bandit, I can do anything. I can fool Kells or Pearce or
+Wood--any of them, except Gulden."
+
+"If Kells had to choose now between trailing you and rushing for the
+gold-camp, which would he do?"
+
+"He'd trail me," she said.
+
+"But Kells is crazy over gold. He has two passions. To steal gold, and
+to gamble with it."
+
+"That may be. But he'd go after me first. So would Gulden. We can't ride
+these hills as they do. We don't know the trails--the water. We'd get
+lost. We'd be caught. And somehow I know that Gulden and his gang would
+find us first."
+
+"You're probably right, Joan," replied Cleve. "But you condemn me to a
+living death.... To let you out of my sight with Kells or any of them!
+It'll be worse almost than my life was before."
+
+"But, Jim, I'll be safe," she entreated. "It's the better choice of two
+evils. Our lives depend on reason, waiting, planning. And, Jim, I want
+to live for you."
+
+"My brave darling, to hear you say that!" he exclaimed, with deep
+emotion. "When I never expected to see you again!... But the past is
+past. I begin over from this hour. I'll be what you want--do what you
+want."
+
+Joan seemed irresistibly drawn to him again, and the supplication, as
+she lifted her blushing face, and the yielding, were perilously sweet.
+
+"Jim, kiss me and hold me--the way--you did that night!"
+
+And it was not Joan who first broke that embrace.
+
+"Find my mask," she said.
+
+Cleve picked up his gun and presently the piece of black felt. He held
+it as if it were a deadly thing.
+
+"Put it on me."
+
+He slipped the cord over her head and adjusted the mask so the holes
+came right for her eyes.
+
+"Joan, it hides the--the GOODNESS of you," he cried. "No one can see
+your eyes now. No one will look at your face. That rig shows your--shows
+you off so! It's not decent.... But, O Lord! I'm bound to confess how
+pretty, how devilish, how seductive you are! And I hate it."
+
+"Jim, I hate it, too. But we must stand it. Try not to shame me any
+more.... And now good-by. Keep watch for me--as I will for you--all the
+time."
+
+Joan broke from him and glided out of the grove, away under the
+straggling pines, along the slope. She came upon her horse and she led
+him back to the corral. Many of the horses had strayed. There was no one
+at the cabin, but she saw men striding up the slope, Kells in the lead.
+She had been fortunate. Her absence could hardly have been noted. She
+had just strength left to get to her room, where she fell upon the bed,
+weak and trembling and dizzy and unutterably grateful at her deliverance
+from the hateful, unbearable falsity of her situation.
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+It was afternoon before Joan could trust herself sufficiently to go out
+again, and when she did she saw that she attracted very little attention
+from the bandits.
+
+Kells had a springy step, a bright eye, a lifted head, and he seemed to
+be listening. Perhaps he was--to the music of his sordid dreams.
+Joan watched him sometimes with wonder. Even a bandit--plotting gold
+robberies, with violence and blood merely means to an end--built castles
+in the air and lived with joy!
+
+All that afternoon the bandits left camp in twos and threes, each party
+with pack burros and horses, packed as Joan had not seen them before on
+the border. Shovels and picks and old sieves and pans, these swinging or
+tied in prominent places, were evidence that the bandits meant to assume
+the characters of miners and prospectors. They whistled and sang. It was
+a lark. The excitement had subsided and the action begun. Only in Kells,
+under his radiance, could be felt the dark and sinister plot. He was the
+heart of the machine.
+
+By sundown Kells, Pearce, Wood, Jim Cleve, and a robust, grizzled
+bandit, Jesse Smith, were left in camp. Smith was lame from his ride,
+and Joan gathered that Kells would have left camp but for the fact that
+Smith needed rest. He and Kells were together all the time, talking
+endlessly. Joan heard them argue a disputed point--would the men abide
+by Kells's plan and go by twos and threes into the gold-camp, and hide
+their relations as a larger band? Kells contended they would and Smith
+had his doubts.
+
+"Jack, wait till you see Alder Creek!" ejaculated Smith, wagging his
+grizzled head. "Three thousand men, old an' young, of all kinds--gone
+gold--crazy! Alder Creek has got California's '49 and' '51 cinched to
+the last hole!" And the bandit leader rubbed his palms in great glee.
+
+That evening they all had supper together in Kell's cabin. Bate Wood
+grumbled because he had packed most of his outfit. It so chanced that
+Joan sat directly opposite Jim Cleve, and while he ate he pressed her
+foot with his under the table. The touch thrilled Joan. Jim did not
+glance at her, but there was such a change in him that she feared it
+might rouse Kells's curiosity. This night, however, the bandit could not
+have seen anything except a gleam of yellow. He talked, he sat at table,
+but did not eat. After supper he sent Joan to her cabin, saying they
+would be on the trail at daylight. Joan watched them awhile from
+her covert. They had evidently talked themselves out, and Kells grew
+thoughtful. Smith and Pearce went outside, apparently to roll their beds
+on the ground under the porch roof. Wood, who said he was never a good
+sleeper, smoked his pipe. And Jim Cleve spread blankets along the wall
+in the shadow and and lay down. Joan could see his eyes shining toward
+the door. Of course he was thinking of her. But could he see her eyes?
+Watching her chance, she slipped a hand from behind the curtain, and she
+knew Cleve saw it. What a comfort that was! Joan's heart swelled. All
+might yet be well. Jim Cleve would be near her while she slept. She
+could sleep now without those dark dreams--without dreading to awaken to
+the light. Again she saw Kells pacing the room, silent, bent, absorbed,
+hands behind his back, weighted with his burden. It was impossible not
+to feel sorry for him. With all his intelligence and cunning power,
+his cause was hopeless. Joan knew that as she knew so many other things
+without understanding why. She had not yet sounded Jesse Smith, but not
+a man of all the others was true to Kells. They would be of his Border
+Legion, do his bidding, revel in their ill-gotten gains, and then, when
+he needed them most, be false to him.
+
+When Joan was awakened her room was shrouded in gray gloom. A bustle
+sound from the big cabin, and outside horses stamped and men talked.
+
+She sat alone at breakfast and ate by lantern-light. It was necessary
+to take a lantern back to her cabin, and she was so long in her
+preparations there that Kells called again. Somehow she did not want to
+leave this cabin. It seemed protective and private, and she feared she
+might not find such quarters again. Besides, upon the moment of leaving
+she discovered that she had grown attached to the place where she had
+suffered and thought and grown so much.
+
+Kells had put out the lights. Joan hurried through the cabin and
+outside. The gray obscurity had given way to dawn. The air was cold,
+sweet, bracing with the touch of mountain purity in it. The men, except
+Kells, were all mounted, and the pack-train was in motion. Kells dragged
+the rude door into position, and then, mounting, he called to Joan to
+follow. She trotted her horse after him, down the slope, across the
+brook and through the wet willows, and out upon the wide trail. She
+glanced ahead, discerning that the third man from her was Jim Cleve; and
+that fact, in the start for Alder Creek, made all the difference in the
+world.
+
+When they rode out of the narrow defile into the valley the sun was
+rising red and bright in a notch of the mountains. Clouds hung over
+distant peaks, and the patches of snow in the high canons shone blue and
+pink. Smith in the lead turned westward up the valley. Horses trooped
+after the cavalcade and had to be driven back. There were also cattle in
+the valley, and all these Kells left behind like an honest rancher
+who had no fear for his stock. Deer stood off with long ears pointed
+forward, watching the horses go by. There were flocks of quail, and
+whirring grouse, and bounding jack-rabbits, and occasionally a brace
+of sneaking coyotes. These and the wild flowers, and the waving
+meadow-grass, the yellow-stemmed willows, and the patches of alder, all
+were pleasurable to Joan's eyes and restful to her mind.
+
+Smith soon led away from this valley up out of the head of a ravine,
+across a rough rock-strewn ridge, down again into a hollow that grew to
+be a canon. The trail was bad. Part of the time it was the bottom of a
+boulder-strewn brook where the horses slipped on the wet, round stones.
+Progress was slow and time passed. For Joan, however, it was a relief;
+and the slower they might travel the better she would like it. At the
+end of that journey there were Gulden and the others, and the gold-camp
+with its illimitable possibilities for such men.
+
+At noon the party halted for a rest. The camp site was pleasant and the
+men were all agreeable. During the meal Kells found occasion to remark
+to Cleve:
+
+"Say youngster, you've brightened up. Must be because of our prospects
+over here."
+
+"Not that so much," replied Cleve. "I quit the whisky. To be honest,
+Kells, I was almost seeing snakes."
+
+"I'm glad you quit. When you're drinking you're wild. I never yet saw
+the man who could drink hard and keep his head. I can't. But I don't
+drink much."
+
+His last remark brought a response in laughter. Evidently his companions
+thought he was joking. He laughed himself and actually winked at Joan.
+
+It happened to be Cleve whom Kells told to saddle Joan's horse, and as
+Joan tried the cinches, to see if they were too tight to suit her, Jim's
+hand came in contact with hers. That touch was like a message. Joan was
+thrilling all over as she looked at Jim, but he kept his face averted.
+Perhaps he did not trust his eyes.
+
+Travel was resumed up the canon and continued steadily, though
+leisurely. But the trail was so rough, and so winding, that Joan
+believed the progress did not exceed three miles an hour. It was the
+kind of travel in which a horse could be helped and that entailed
+attention to the lay of the ground. Before Joan realized the hours were
+flying, the afternoon had waned. Smith kept on, however, until nearly
+dark before halting for camp.
+
+The evening camp was a scene of activity, and all except Joan had work
+to do. She tried to lend a hand, but Wood told her to rest. This she was
+glad to do. When called to supper she had almost fallen asleep. After
+a long day's ride the business of eating precluded conversation. Later,
+however, the men began to talk between puffs on their pipes, and from
+the talk no one could have guessed that here was a band of robbers
+on their way to a gold camp. Jesse Smith had a sore foot and he was
+compared to a tenderfoot on his first ride. Smith retaliated in kind.
+Every consideration was shown Joan, and Wood particularly appeared
+assiduous in his desire for her comfort. All the men except Cleve paid
+her some kind attention; and he, of course, neglected her because he was
+afraid to go near her. Again she felt in Red Pearce a condemnation of
+the bandit leader who was dragging a girl over hard trails, making her
+sleep in the open, exposing her to danger and to men like himself and
+Gulden. In his own estimate Pearce, like every one of his kind, was not
+so slow as the others.
+
+Joan watched and listened from her blankets, under a leafy tree, some
+few yards from the camp-fire. Once Kells turned to see how far distant
+she was, and then, lowering his voice, he told a story. The others
+laughed. Pearce followed with another, and he, too, took care that Joan
+could not hear. They grew closer for the mirth, and Smith, who evidently
+was a jolly fellow, set them to roaring. Jim Cleve laughed with them.
+
+"Say, Jim, you're getting over it," remarked Kells.
+
+"Over what?"
+
+Kells paused, rather embarrassed for a reply, as evidently in the humor
+of the hour he had spoken a thought better left unsaid. But there was no
+more forbidding atmosphere about Cleve. He appeared to have rounded to
+good-fellowship after a moody and quarrelsome drinking spell.
+
+"Why, over what drove you out here--and gave me a lucky chance at you,"
+replied Kells, with a constrained laugh.
+
+"Oh, you mean the girl?... Sure, I'm getting over that, except when I
+drink."
+
+"Tell us, Jim," said Kells, curiously.
+
+"Aw, you'll give me the laugh!" retorted Cleve.
+
+"No, we won't unless your story's funny."
+
+"You can gamble it wasn't funny," put in Red Pearce.
+
+They all coaxed him, yet none of them, except Kells, was particularly
+curious; it was just that hour when men of their ilk were lazy and
+comfortable and full fed and good-humored round the warm, blazing
+camp-fire.
+
+"All right," replied Cleve, and apparently, for all his complaisance, a
+call upon memory had its pain. "I'm from Montana. Range-rider in winter
+and in summer I prospected. Saved quite a little money, in spite of a
+fling now and then at faro and whisky.... Yes, there was a girl, I guess
+yes. She was pretty. I had a bad case over her. Not long ago I left all
+I had--money and gold and things--in her keeping, and I went prospecting
+again. We were to get married on my return. I stayed out six months, did
+well, and got robbed of all my dust."
+
+Cleve was telling this fabrication in a matter-of-fact way, growing a
+little less frank as he proceeded, and he paused while he lifted sand
+and let it drift through his fingers, watching it curiously. All the men
+were interested and Kells hung on every word.
+
+"When I got back," went on Cleve, "my girl had married another fellow.
+She'd given him all I left with her. Then I got drunk. While I was drunk
+they put up a job on me. It was her word that disgraced me and run me
+out of town.... So I struck west and drifted to the border."
+
+"That's not all," said Kells, bluntly.
+
+"Jim, I reckon you ain't tellin' what you did to thet lyin' girl an' the
+feller. How'd you leave them?" added Pearce.
+
+But Cleve appeared to become gloomy and reticent.
+
+"Wimmen can hand the double-cross to a man, hey, Kells?" queried Smith,
+with a broad grin.
+
+"By gosh! I thought you'd been treated powerful mean!" exclaimed Bate
+Wood, and he was full of wrath.
+
+"A treacherous woman!" exclaimed Kells, passionately. He had taken
+Cleve's story hard. The man must have been betrayed by women, and
+Cleve's story had irritated old wounds.
+
+Directly Kells left the fire and repaired to his blankets, near where
+Joan lay. Probably he believed her asleep, for he neither looked nor
+spoke. Cleve sought his bed, and likewise Wood and Smith. Pearce was the
+last to leave, and as he stood up the light fell upon his red face, lean
+and bold like an Indian's. Then he passed Joan, looking down upon her
+and then upon the recumbent figure of Kells; and if his glance was not
+baleful and malignant, as it swept over the bandit, Joan believed her
+imagination must be vividly weird, and running away with her judgment.
+
+The next morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the
+mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan spared
+her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a trail Smith
+alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others. They climbed out
+of the notched head of the canon, and up a long slope of weathered shale
+that let the horses slide back a foot for every yard gained, and through
+a labyrinth of broken cliffs, and over bench and ridge to the height of
+the divide. From there Joan had a magnificent view. Foot-hills rolled
+round heads below, and miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened
+Bear Lake. The rest here at this height was counteracted by the fact
+that the altitude affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again,
+and now the travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was
+difficult, for horses were more easily lamed in a descent. It took
+two hours to descend the distance that had consumed all the morning to
+ascend. Smith led through valley after valley between foot-hills, and
+late in the afternoon halted by a spring in a timbered spot.
+
+Joan ached in every muscle and she was too tired to care what happened
+round the camp-fire. Jim had been close to her all day and that had kept
+up her spirit. It was not yet dark when she lay down for the night.
+
+"Sleep well, Dandy Dale," said Kells, cheerfully, yet not without
+pathos. "Alder Creek to-morrow!... Then you'll never sleep again!"
+
+At times she seemed to feel that he regretted her presence, and always
+this fancy came to her with mocking or bantering suggestion that the
+costume and mask she wore made her a bandit's consort, and she could not
+escape the wildness of this gold-seeking life. The truth was that Kells
+saw the insuperable barrier between them, and in the bitterness of his
+love he lied to himself, and hated himself for the lie.
+
+About the middle of the afternoon of the next day the tired cavalcade
+rode down out of the brush and rock into a new, broad, dusty road. It
+was so new that the stems of the cut brush along the borders were still
+white. But that road had been traveled by a multitude.
+
+Out across the valley in the rear Joan saw a canvas-topped wagon, and
+she had not ridden far on the road when she saw a bobbing pack-burros to
+the fore. Kells had called Wood and Smith and Pearce and Cleve together,
+and now they went on in a bunch, all driving the pack-train. Excitement
+again claimed Kells; Pearce was alert and hawk-eyed; Smith looked like a
+hound on a scent; Cleve showed genuine feeling. Only Bate Wood remained
+proof to the meaning of that broad road.
+
+All along, on either side, Joan saw wrecks of wagons, wheels, harness,
+boxes, old rags of tents blown into the brush, dead mules and burros.
+It seemed almost as if an army had passed that way. Presently the road
+crossed a wide, shallow brook of water, half clear and half muddy; and
+on the other side the road followed the course of the brook. Joan heard
+Smith call the stream Alder Creek, and he asked Kells if he knew what
+muddied water meant. The bandit's eyes flashed fire. Joan thrilled, for
+she, too, knew that up-stream there were miners washing earth for gold.
+
+A couple of miles farther on creek and road entered the mouth of a wide
+spruce-timbered gulch. These trees hid any view of the slopes or floor
+of the gulch, and it was not till several more miles had been passed
+that the bandit rode out into what Joan first thought was a hideous
+slash in the forest made by fire. But it was only the devastation
+wrought by men. As far as she could see the timber was down, and
+everywhere began to be manifested signs that led her to expect
+habitations. No cabins showed, however, in the next mile. They passed
+out of the timbered part of the gulch into one of rugged, bare, and
+stony slopes, with bunches of sparse alder here and there. The gulch
+turned at right angles and a great gray slope shut out sight of what
+lay beyond. But, once round that obstruction, Kells halted his men with
+short, tense exclamation.
+
+Joan saw that she stood high up on the slope, looking down upon the
+gold-camp. It was an interesting scene, but not beautiful. To Kells it
+must have been so, but to Joan it was even more hideous than the slash
+in the forest. Here and there, everywhere, were rude dugouts, little
+huts of brush, an occasional tent, and an occasional log cabin; and
+as she looked farther and farther these crude habitations of miners
+magnified in number and in dimensions till the white and black broken,
+mass of the town choked the narrow gulch.
+
+"Wal, boss, what do you say to thet diggin's?" demanded Jesse Smith.
+
+Kells drew a deep breath. "Old forty-niner, this beats all I ever saw!"
+
+"Shore I've seen Sacramento look like thet!" added Bate Wood.
+
+Pearce and Cleve gazed with fixed eyes, and, however different their
+emotions, they rivaled each other in attention.
+
+"Jesse, what's the word?" queried Kells, with a sharp return to the
+business of the matter.
+
+"I've picked a site on the other side of camp. Best fer us," he replied.
+
+"Shall we keep to the road?"
+
+"Certain-lee," he returned, with his grin.
+
+Kells hesitated, and felt of his beard, probably conjecturing the
+possibilities of recognition.
+
+"Whiskers make another man of you. Reckon you needn't expect to be known
+over here."
+
+That decided Kells. He pulled his sombrero well down, shadowing his
+face. Then he remembered Joan and made a slight significant gesture at
+her mask.
+
+"Kells, the people in this here camp wouldn't look at an army ridin'
+through," responded Smith. "It's every man fer hisself. An' wimmen, say!
+there's all kinds. I seen a dozen with veils, an' them's the same
+as masks." Nevertheless, Kells had Joan remove the mask and pull her
+sombrero down, and instructed her to ride in the midst of the group.
+Then they trotted on, soon catching up with the jogging pack-train.
+
+What a strange ride that was for Joan! The slope resembled a magnified
+ant-hill with a horde of frantic ants in action. As she drew closer she
+saw these ants were men, digging for gold. Those near at hand could be
+plainly seen--rough, ragged, bearded men and smooth-faced boys. Farther
+on and up the slope, along the waterways and ravines, were miners so
+close they seemed almost to interfere with one another. The creek
+bottom was alive with busy, silent, violent men, bending over the water,
+washing and shaking and paddling, all desperately intent upon something.
+They had not time to look up. They were ragged, unkempt, barearmed and
+bare-legged, every last one of them with back bent. For a mile or more
+Kells's party trotted through this part of the diggings, and everywhere,
+on rocky bench and gravel bar and gray slope, were holes with men
+picking and shoveling in them. Some were deep and some were shallow;
+some long trenches and others mere pits. If all of these prospectors
+were finding gold, then gold was everywhere. And presently Joan did not
+need to have Kells tell her that all of these diggers were finding dust.
+How silent they were--how tense! They were not mechanical. It was a soul
+that drove them. Joan had seen many men dig for gold, and find a little
+now and then, but she had never seen men dig when they knew they were
+going to strike gold. That made the strange difference.
+
+Joan calculated she must have seen a thousand miners in less than two
+miles of the gulch, and then she could not see up the draws and washes
+that intersected the slope, and she could not see beyond the camp.
+
+But it was not a camp which she was entering; it was a tent-walled
+town, a city of squat log cabins, a long, motley, checkered jumble of
+structures thrown up and together in mad haste. The wide road split it
+in the middle and seemed a stream of color and life. Joan rode
+between two lines of horses, burros, oxen, mules, packs and loads and
+canvas-domed wagons and gaudy vehicles resembling gipsy caravans. The
+street was as busy as a beehive and as noisy as a bedlam. The sidewalks
+were rough-hewn planks and they rattled under the tread of booted men.
+There were tents on the ground and tents on floors and tents on log
+walls. And farther on began the lines of cabins-stores and shops and
+saloons--and then a great, square, flat structure with a flaring sign in
+crude gold letters, "Last Nugget," from which came the creak of iddles
+and scrape of boots, and hoarse mirth. Joan saw strange, wild-looking
+creatures--women that made her shrink; and several others of her sex,
+hurrying along, carrying sacks or buckets, worn and bewildered-looking
+women, the sight of whom gave her a pang. She saw lounging Indians and
+groups of lazy, bearded men, just like Kells's band, and gamblers in
+long, black coats, and frontiersmen in fringed buckskin, and Mexicans
+with swarthy faces under wide, peaked sombreros; and then in great
+majority, dominating that stream of life, the lean and stalwart miners,
+of all ages, in their check shirts and high boots, all packing guns,
+jostling along, dark-browed, somber, and intent. These last were the
+workers of this vast beehive; the others were the drones, the parasites.
+
+Kell's party rode on through the town, and Smith halted them beyond the
+outskirts, near a grove of spruce-trees, where camp was to be made.
+
+Joan pondered over her impression of Alder Creek. It was confused; she
+had seen too much. But out of what she had seen and heard loomed two
+contrasting features: a throng of toiling miners, slaves to their lust
+for gold and actuated by ambitions, hopes, and aims, honest, rugged,
+tireless workers, but frenzied in that strange pursuit; and a lesser
+crowd, like leeches, living for and off the gold they did not dig with
+blood of hand and sweat of brow.
+
+Manifestly Jesse Smith had selected the spot for Kells's permanent
+location at Alder Creek with an eye for the bandit's peculiar needs. It
+was out of sight of town, yet within a hundred rods of the nearest huts,
+and closer than that to a sawmill. It could be approached by a shallow
+ravine that wound away toward the creek. It was backed up against a
+rugged bluff in which there was a narrow gorge, choked with pieces of
+weathered cliff; and no doubt the bandits could go and come in that
+direction. There was a spring near at hand and a grove of spruce-trees.
+The ground was rocky, and apparently unfit for the digging of gold.
+
+While Bate Wood began preparations for supper, and Cleve built the fire,
+and Smith looked after the horses, Kells and Pearce stepped off the
+ground where the cabin was to be erected. They selected a level bench
+down upon which a huge cracked rock, as large as a house, had rolled.
+The cabin was to be backed up against this stone, and in the rear, under
+cover of it, a secret exit could be made and hidden. The bandit wanted
+two holes to his burrow.
+
+When the group sat down to the meal the gulch was full of sunset colors.
+And, strangely, they were all some shade of gold. Beautiful golden
+veils, misty, ethereal, shone in rays across the gulch from the broken
+ramparts; and they seemed so brilliant, so rich, prophetic of the
+treasures of the hills. But that golden sunset changed. The sun went
+down red, leaving a sinister shadow over the gulch, growing darker and
+darker. Joan saw Cleve thoughtfully watching this transformation, and
+she wondered if he had caught the subtle mood of nature. For whatever
+had been the hope and brightness, the golden glory of this new Eldorado,
+this sudden uprising Alder Creek with its horde of brave and toiling
+miners, the truth was that Jack Kells and Gulden had ridden into the
+camp and the sun had gone down red. Joan knew that great mining-camps
+were always happy, rich, free, lucky, honest places till the fame of
+gold brought evil men. And she had not the slightest doubt that the sun
+of Alder Creek's brief and glad day had set forever.
+
+Twilight was stealing down from the hills when Kells announced to his
+party: "Bate, you and Jesse keep camp. Pearce, you look out for any of
+the gang. But meet in the dark!... Cleve, you can go with me." Then he
+turned to Joan. "Do you want to go with us to see the sights or would
+you rather stay here?"
+
+"I'd like to go, if only I didn't look so--so dreadful in this suit,"
+she replied.
+
+Kells laughed, and the camp-fire glare lighted the smiling faces of
+Pearce and Smith.
+
+"Why, you'll not be seen. And you look far from dreadful."
+
+"Can't you give me a--a longer coat?" faltered Joan.
+
+Cleve heard, and without speaking he went to his saddle and unrolled his
+pack. Inside a slicker he had a gray coat. Joan had seen it many a time,
+and it brought a pang with memories of Hoadley. Had that been years ago?
+Cleve handed this coat to Joan.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+Kells held the coat for her and she slipped into it. She seemed lost. It
+was long, coming way below her hips, and for the first time in days she
+felt she was Joan Randle again.
+
+"Modesty is all very well in a woman, but it's not always
+becoming," remarked Kells. "Turn up your collar.... Pull down your
+hat--farther--There! If you won't go as a youngster now I'll eat Dandy
+Dale's outfit and get you silk dresses. Ha-ha!"
+
+Joan was not deceived by his humor. He might like to look at her in
+that outrageous bandit costume; it might have pleased certain vain
+and notoriety-seeking proclivities of his, habits of his California
+road-agent days; but she felt that notwithstanding this, once she had
+donned the long coat he was relieved and glad in spite of himself. Joan
+had a little rush of feeling. Sometimes she almost liked this bandit.
+Once he must have been something very different.
+
+They set out, Joan between Kells and Cleve. How strange for her! She
+had daring enough to feel for Jim's hand in the dark and to give it a
+squeeze. Then he nearly broke her fingers. She felt the fire in him. It
+was indeed a hard situation for him. The walking was rough, owing to the
+uneven road and the stones. Several times Joan stumbled and her spurs
+jangled. They passed ruddy camp-fires, where steam and smoke arose with
+savory odors, where red-faced men were eating; and they passed other
+camp-fires, burned out and smoldering. Some tents had dim lights,
+throwing shadows on the canvas, and others were dark. There were men on
+the road, all headed for town, gay, noisy and profane.
+
+Then Joan saw uneven rows of lights, some dim and some bright, and
+crossing before them were moving dark figures. Again Kells bethought
+himself of his own disguise, and buried his chin in his scarf and pulled
+his wide-brimmed hat down so that hardly a glimpse of his face could be
+seen. Joan could not have recognized him at the distance of a yard.
+
+They walked down the middle of the road, past the noisy saloons,
+past the big, flat structure with its sign "Last Nugget" and its open
+windows, where shafts of light shone forth, and all the way down to the
+end of town. Then Kells turned back. He scrutinized each group of men he
+met. He was looking for members of his Border Legion. Several times he
+left Cleve and Joan standing in the road while he peered into saloons.
+At these brief intervals Joan looked at Cleve with all her heart in her
+eyes. He never spoke. He seemed under a strain. Upon the return, when
+they reached the Last Nugget, Kells said:
+
+"Jim, hang on to her like grim death! She's worth more than all the gold
+in Alder Creek!"
+
+Then they started for the door.
+
+Joan clung to Cleve on one side, and on the other, instinctively with a
+frightened girl's action, she let go Kells's arm and slipped her hand in
+his. He seemed startled. He bent to her ear, for the din made ordinary
+talk indistinguishable. That involuntary hand in his evidently had
+pleased and touched him, even hurt him, for his whisper was husky.
+
+"It's all right--you're perfectly safe."
+
+First Joan made out a glare of smoky lamps, a huge place full of smoke
+and men and sounds. Kells led the way slowly. He had his own reason for
+observance. There was a stench that sickened Joan--a blended odor of
+tobacco and rum and wet sawdust and smoking oil. There was a noise that
+appeared almost deafening--the loud talk and vacant laughter of drinking
+men, and a din of creaky fiddles and scraping boots and boisterous
+mirth. This last and dominating sound came from an adjoining room, which
+Joan could see through a wide opening. There was dancing, but Joan could
+not see the dancers because of the intervening crowd. Then her gaze came
+back to the features nearer at hand. Men and youths were lined up to a
+long bar nearly as high as her head. Then there were excited shouting
+groups round gambling games. There were men in clusters, sitting on
+upturned kegs, round a box for a table, and dirty bags of gold-dust were
+in evidence. The gamblers at the cards were silent, in strange contrast
+with the others; and in each group was at least one dark-garbed,
+hard-eyed gambler who was not a miner. Joan saw boys not yet of age,
+flushed and haggard, wild with the frenzy of winning and cast down in
+defeat. There were jovial, grizzled, old prospectors to whom this
+scene and company were pleasant reminders of bygone days. There were
+desperados whose glittering eyes showed they had no gold with which to
+gamble.
+
+Joan suddenly felt Kells start and she believed she heard a low, hissing
+exclamation. And she looked for the cause. Then she saw familiar dark
+faces; they belonged to men of Kells's Legion. And with his broad back
+to her there sat the giant Gulden. Already he and his allies had gotten
+together in defiance of or indifference to Kells's orders. Some of them
+were already under the influence of drink, but, though they saw Kells,
+they gave no sign of recognition. Gulden did not see Joan, and for that
+she was thankful. And whether or not his presence caused it, the fact
+was that she suddenly felt as much of a captive as she had in Cabin
+Gulch, and feared that here escape would be harder because in a
+community like this Kells would watch her closely.
+
+Kells led Joan and Cleve from one part of the smoky hall to another, and
+they looked on at the games and the strange raw life manifested there.
+The place was getting packed with men. Kells's party encountered Blicky
+and Beady Jones together. They passed by as strangers. Then Joan saw
+Beard and Chick Williams arm in arm, strolling about, like roystering
+miners. Williams telegraphed a keen, fleeting glance at Kells, then went
+on, to be lost in the crowd. Handy Oliver brushed by Kells, jostled him,
+apparently by accident, and he said, "Excuse me, mister!" There were
+other familiar faces. Kells's gang were all in Alder Creek and the dark
+machinations of the bandit leader had been put into operation.
+What struck Joan forcibly was that, though there were hilarity and
+comradeship, they were not manifested in any general way. These miners
+were strangers to one another; the groups were strangers; the gamblers
+were strangers; the newcomers were strangers; and over all hung an
+atmosphere of distrust. Good fellowship abided only in the many small
+companies of men who stuck together. The mining-camps that Joan had
+visited had been composed of an assortment of prospectors and hunters
+who made one big, jolly family. This was a gold strike, and the
+difference was obvious. The hunting for gold was one thing, in its
+relation to the searchers; after it had been found, in a rich field,
+the conditions of life and character changed. Gold had always seemed
+wonderful and beautiful to Joan; she absorbed here something that was
+the nucleus of hate. Why could not these miners, young and old, stay in
+their camps and keep their gold? That was the fatality. The pursuit
+was a dream--a glittering allurement; the possession incited a lust for
+more, and that was madness. Joan felt that in these reckless, honest
+miners there was a liberation of the same wild element which was the
+driving passion of Kells's Border Legion. Gold, then, was a terrible
+thing.
+
+"Take me in there," said Joan, conscious of her own excitement, and she
+indicated the dance-hall.
+
+Kells laughed as if at her audacity. But he appeared reluctant.
+
+"Please take me--unless--" Joan did not know what to add, but she meant
+unless it was not right for her to see any more. A strange curiosity
+had stirred in her. After all, this place where she now stood was not
+greatly different from the picture imagination had conjured up. That
+dance-hall, however, was beyond any creation of Joan's mind.
+
+"Let me have a look first," said Kells, and he left Joan with Cleve.
+
+When he had gone Joan spoke without looking at Cleve, though she held
+fast to his arm.
+
+"Jim, it could be dreadful here--all in a minute!" she whispered.
+
+"You've struck it exactly," he replied. "All Alder Creek needed to make
+it hell was Kells and his gang."
+
+"Thank Heaven I turned you back in time!... Jim, you'd have--have gone
+the pace here."
+
+He nodded grimly. Then Kells returned and led them back through the room
+to another door where spectators were fewer. Joan saw perhaps a dozen
+couples of rough, whirling, jigging dancers in a half-circle of watching
+men. The hall was a wide platform of boards with posts holding a canvas
+roof. The sides, were open; the lights were situated at each end-huge,
+round, circus tent lamps. There were rude benches and tables where
+reeling men surrounded a woman. Joan saw a young miner in dusty boots
+and corduroys lying drunk or dead in the sawdust. Her eyes were drawn
+back to the dancers, and to the dance that bore some semblance to a
+waltz. In the din the music could scarcely be heard. As far as the
+men were concerned this dance was a bold and violent expression of
+excitement on the part of some, and for the rest a drunken, mad fling.
+Sight of the women gave Joan's curiosity a blunt check. She felt queer.
+She had not seen women like these, and their dancing, their actions,
+their looks, were beyond her understanding. Nevertheless, they shocked
+her, disgusted her, sickened her. And suddenly when it dawned upon her
+in unbelievable vivid suggestion that they were the wildest and most
+terrible element of this dark stream of humanity lured by gold, then she
+was appalled.
+
+"Take me out of here!" she besought Kells, and he led her out instantly.
+They went through the gambling-hall and into the crowded street, back
+toward camp.
+
+"You saw enough," said Kells, "but nothing to what will break out by and
+by. This camp is new. It's rich. Gold is the cheapest thing. It passes
+from hand to hand. Ten dollars an ounce. Buyers don't look at the
+scales. Only the gamblers are crooked. But all this will change."
+
+Kells did not say what that change might be, but the click of his teeth
+was expressive. Joan did not, however, gather from it, and the dark
+meaning of his tone, that the Border Legion would cause this change.
+That was in the nature of events. A great strike of gold might enrich
+the world, but it was a catastrophe.
+
+Long into the night Joan lay awake, and at times, stirring the silence,
+there was wafted to her on a breeze the low, strange murmur of the
+gold-camp's strife.
+
+Joan slept late next morning, and was awakened by the unloading of
+lumber. Teams were drawing planks from the sawmill. Already a skeleton
+framework for Kells's cabin had been erected. Jim Cleve was working with
+the others, and they were sacrificing thoroughness to haste. Joan had
+to cook her own breakfast, which task was welcome, and after it had been
+finished she wished for something more to occupy her mind. But nothing
+offered. Finding a comfortable seat among some rocks where she would be
+inconspicuous, she looked on at the building of Kells's cabin. It seemed
+strange, and somehow comforting, to watch Jim Cleve work. He had never
+been a great worker. Would this experience on the border make a man of
+him? She felt assured of that.
+
+If ever a cabin sprang up like a mushroom, that bandit rendezvous was
+the one. Kells worked himself, and appeared no mean hand. By noon the
+roof of clapboards was on, and the siding of the same material had been
+started. Evidently there was not to a be a fireplace inside.
+
+Then a teamster drove up with a wagon-load of purchases Kells had
+ordered. Kells helped unload this and evidently was in search of
+articles. Presently he found them, and then approached Joan, to deposit
+before her an assortment of bundles little and big.
+
+"There Miss Modestly," he said. "Make yourself some clothes. You can
+shake Dandy Dale's outfit, except when we're on the trail.... And, say,
+if you knew what I had to pay for this stuff you'd think there was a
+bigger robber in Alder Creek than Jack Kells.... And, come to think of
+it, my name's now Blight. You're my daughter, if any one asks." Joan was
+so grateful to him for the goods and the permission to get out of Dandy
+Dale's suit as soon as possible, that she could only smile her thanks.
+Kells stared at her, then turned abruptly away. Those little unconscious
+acts of hers seemed to affect him strangely. Joan remembered that he
+had intended to parade her in Dandy Dale's costume to gratify some vain
+abnormal side of his bandit's proclivities. He had weakened. Here was
+another subtle indication of the deterioration of the evil of him. How
+far would it go? Joan thought dreamily, and with a swelling heart, of
+her influence upon this hardened bandit, upon that wild boy, Jim Cleve.
+
+All that afternoon, and part of the evening in the campfire light, and
+all of the next day Joan sewed, so busy that she scarcely lifted her
+eyes from her work. The following day she finished her dress, and with
+no little pride, for she had both taste and skill. Of the men, Bate Wood
+had been most interested in her task; and he would let things burn on
+the fire to watch her.
+
+That day the rude cabin was completed. It contained one long room; and
+at the back a small compartment partitioned off from the rest, and built
+against and around a shallow cavern in the huge rock. This compartment
+was for Joan. There were a rude board door with padlock and key, a bench
+upon which blankets had been flung, a small square hole cut in the wall
+to serve as a window. What with her own few belongings and the articles
+of furniture that Kells bought for her, Joan soon had a comfortable
+room, even a luxury compared to what she had been used to for weeks.
+Certain it was that Kells meant to keep her a prisoner, or virtually
+so. Joan had no sooner spied the little window than she thought that it
+would be possible for Jim Cleve to talk to her there from the outside.
+
+Kells verified Joan's suspicion by telling her that she was not to leave
+the cabin of her own accord, as she had been permitted to do back in
+Cabin Gulch; and Joan retorted that there she had made him a promise not
+to run away, which promise she now took back. That promise had worried
+her. She was glad to be honest with Kells. He gazed at her somberly.
+
+"You'll be worse off it you do--and I'll be better off," he said. And
+then as an afterthought he added: "Gulden might not think you--a white
+elephant on his hands!... Remember his way, the cave and the rope!"
+
+So, instinctively or cruelly he chose the right name to bring shuddering
+terror into Joan's soul.
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+Joan's opportunity for watching Kells and his men and overhearing
+their colloquies was as good as it had been back in Cabin Gulch. But it
+developed that where Kells had been open and frank he now became secret
+and cautious. She was aware that men, singly and in couples, visited him
+during the early hours of the night, and they had conferences in low,
+earnest tones. She could peer out of her little window and see dark,
+silent forms come up from the ravine at the back of the cabin, and leave
+the same way. None of them went round to the front door, where Bate
+Wood smoked and kept guard. Joan was able to hear only scraps of these
+earnest talks; and from part of one she gathered that for some reason
+or other Kells desired to bring himself into notice. Alder Creek must
+be made to know that a man of importance had arrived. It seemed to
+Joan that this was the very last thing which Kells ought to do.
+What magnificent daring the bandit had! Famous years before in
+California--with a price set upon his life in Nevada--and now the noted,
+if unknown, leader of border robbers in Idaho, he sought to make himself
+prominent, respected, and powerful. Joan found that in spite of her
+horror at the sinister and deadly nature of the bandit's enterprise she
+could not avoid an absorbing interest in his fortunes.
+
+Next day Joan watched for an opportunity to tell Jim Cleve that he might
+come to her little window any time after dark to talk and plan with her.
+No chance presented itself. Joan wore the dress she had made, to the
+evident pleasure of Bate Wood and Pearce. They had conceived as strong
+an interest in her fortunes as she had in Kells's. Wood nodded his
+approval and Pearce said she was a lady once more. Strange it was to
+Joan that this villain Pearce, whom she could not have dared trust, grew
+open in his insinuating hints of Kells's blackguardism. Strange because
+Pearce was absolutely sincere!
+
+When Jim Cleve did see Joan in her dress the first time he appeared so
+glad and relieved and grateful that she feared he might betray himself,
+so she got out of his sight.
+
+Not long after that Kells called her from her room. He wore his somber
+and thoughtful cast of countenance. Red Pearce and Jesse Smith were
+standing at attention. Cleve was sitting on the threshold of the door
+and Wood leaned against the wall.
+
+"Is there anything in the pack of stuff I bought you that you could use
+for a veil?" asked Kells of Joan.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"Get it," he ordered. "And your hat, too."
+
+Joan went to her room and returned with the designated articles, the hat
+being that which she had worn when she left Hoadley.
+
+"That'll do. Put it on--over your face--and let's see how you look."
+
+Joan complied with this request, all the time wondering what Kells
+meant.
+
+"I want it to disguise you, but not to hide your youth--your good
+looks," he said, and he arranged it differently about her face.
+"There!... You'd sure make any man curious to see you now.... Put on the
+hat."
+
+Joan did so. Then Kells appeared to become more forcible.
+
+"You're to go down into the town. Walk slow as far as the Last Nugget.
+Cross the road and come back. Look at every man you meet or see standing
+by. Don't be in the least frightened. Pearce and Smith will be right
+behind you. They'd get to you before anything could happen.... Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes," replied Joan.
+
+Red Pearce stirred uneasily. "Jack, I'm thinkin' some rough talk'll come
+her way," he said, darkly.
+
+"Will you shut up!" replied Kells in quick passion. He resented some
+implication. "I've thought of that. She won't hear what's said to
+her.... Here," and he turned again to Joan, "take some cotton--or
+anything--and stuff up your ears. Make a good job of it."
+
+Joan went back to her room and, looking about for something with which
+to execute Kells's last order, she stripped some soft, woolly bits from
+a fleece-lined piece of cloth. With these she essayed to deaden her
+hearing. Then she returned. Kells spoke to her, but, though she seemed
+dully to hear his voice, she could not distinguish what he said. She
+shook her head. With that Kells waved her out upon her strange errand.
+
+Joan brushed against Cleve as she crossed the threshold. What would he
+think of this? She would not see his face. When she reached the first
+tents she could not resist the desire to look back. Pearce was within
+twenty yards of her and Smith about the same distance farther back. Joan
+was more curious than anything else. She divined that Kells wanted her
+to attract attention, but for what reason she was at a loss to say. It
+was significant that he did not intend to let her suffer any indignity
+while fulfilling this mysterious mission.
+
+Not until Joan got well down the road toward the Last Nugget did any one
+pay any attention to her. A Mexican jabbered at her, showing his white
+teeth, flashing his sloe-black eyes. Young miners eyed her curiously,
+and some of them spoke. She met all kinds of men along the plank walk,
+most of whom passed by, apparently unobserving. She obeyed Kells to the
+letter. But for some reason she was unable to explain, when she got to
+the row of saloons, where lounging, evil-eyed rowdies accosted her, she
+found she had to disobey him, at least in one particular. She walked
+faster. Still that did not make her task much easier. It began to be an
+ordeal. The farther she got the bolder men grew. Could it have been that
+Kells wanted this sort of thing to happen to her? Joan had no idea what
+these men meant, but she believed that was because for the time being
+she was deaf. Assuredly their looks were not a compliment to any girl.
+Joan wanted to hurry now, and she had to force herself to walk at a
+reasonable gait. One persistent fellow walked beside her for several
+steps. Joan was not fool enough not to realize now that these wayfarers
+wanted to make her acquaintance. And she decided she would have
+something to say to Kells when she got back.
+
+Below the Last Nugget she crossed the road and started upon the return
+trip. In front of this gambling-hell there were scattered groups of men,
+standing, and going in. A tall man in black detached himself and started
+out, as if to intercept her. He wore a long black coat, a black bow tie,
+and a black sombrero. He had little, hard, piercing eyes, as black as
+his dress. He wore gloves and looked immaculate, compared with the
+other men. He, too, spoke to Joan, turned to walk with her. She looked
+straight ahead now, frightened, and she wanted to run. He kept beside
+her, apparently talking. Joan heard only the low sound of his voice.
+Then he took her arm, gently, but with familiarity. Joan broke from him
+and quickened her pace.
+
+"Say, there! Leave thet girl alone!"
+
+This must have been yelled, for Joan certainly heard it. She recognized
+Red Pearce's voice. And she wheeled to look. Pearce had overhauled the
+gambler, and already men were approaching. Involuntarily Joan halted.
+What would happen? The gambler spoke to Pearce, made what appeared
+deprecating gestures, as if to explain. But Pearce looked angry.
+
+"I'll tell her daddy!" he shouted.
+
+Joan waited for no more. She almost ran. There would surely be a fight.
+Could that have been Kells's intention? Whatever it was, she had been
+subjected to a mortifying and embarrassing affront. She was angry, and
+she thought it might be just as well to pretend to be furious. Kells
+must not use her for his nefarious schemes. She hurried on, and, to her
+surprise, when she got within sight of the cabin both Pearce and Smith
+had almost caught up with her. Jim Cleve sat where she had last seen
+him. Also Kells was outside. The way he strode to and fro showed Joan
+his anxiety. There was more to this incident than she could fathom.
+She took the padding from her ears, to her intense relief, and, soon
+reaching the cabin, she tore off the veil and confronted Kells.
+
+"Wasn't that a--a fine thing for you to do?" she demanded, furiously.
+And with the outburst she felt her face blazing. "If I'd any idea what
+you meant--you couldn't--have driven me!... I trusted you. And you sent
+me down there on some--shameful errand of yours. You're no gentleman!"
+
+Joan realized that her speech, especially the latter part, was absurd.
+But it had a remarkable effect upon Kells. His face actually turned red.
+He stammered something and halted, seemingly at a loss for words. How
+singularly the slightest hint of any act or word of hers that approached
+a possible respect or tolerance worked upon this bandit! He started
+toward Joan appealingly, but she passed him in contempt and went to
+her room. She heard him cursing Pearce in a rage, evidently blaming his
+lieutenant for whatever had angered her.
+
+"But you wanted her insulted!" protested Pearce, hotly.
+
+"You mullet-head!" roared Kells. "I wanted some man--any man--to get
+just near enough to her so I could swear she'd been insulted. You let
+her go through that camp to meet real insult!... Why--! Pearce, I've a
+mind to shoot you!"
+
+"Shoot!" retorted Pearce. "I obeyed orders as I saw them.... An' I want
+to say right here thet when it comes to anythin' concernin' this girl
+you're plumb off your nut. That's what. An' you can like it or lump it!
+I said before you'd split over this girl. An' I say it now!"
+
+Through the door Joan had a glimpse of Cleve stepping between the angry
+men. This seemed unnecessary, however, for Pearce's stinging assertion
+had brought Kells to himself. There were a few more words, too low for
+Joan's ears, and then, accompanied by Smith, the three started off,
+evidently for the camp. Joan left her room and watched them from the
+cabin door. Bate Wood sat outside smoking.
+
+"I'm declarin' my hand," he said to Joan, feelingly. "I'd never hev
+stood for thet scurvy trick. Now, miss, this's the toughest camp I ever
+seen. I mean tough as to wimmen! For it ain't begun to fan guns an'
+steal gold yet."
+
+"Why did Kells want me insulted?" asked Joan.
+
+"Wal, he's got to hev a reason for raisin' an orful fuss," replied Wood.
+
+"Fuss?"
+
+"Shore," replied Wood, dryly.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Jest so he can walk out on the stage," rejoined Wood, evasively.
+
+"It's mighty strange," said Joan.
+
+"I reckon all about Mr. Kells is some strange these days. Red Pearce had
+it correct. Kells is a-goin' to split on you!"
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Wal, he'll go one way an' the gang another."
+
+"Why?" asked Joan, earnestly.
+
+"Miss, there's some lot of reasons," said Wood, deliberately. "Fust, he
+did for Halloway an' Bailey, not because they wanted to treat you as he
+meant to, but just because he wanted to be alone. We're all wise thet
+you shot him--an' thet you wasn't his wife. An' since then we've seen
+him gradually lose his nerve. He organized his Legion an' makes his plan
+to run this Alder Creek red. He still hangs on to you. He'd kill any
+man thet batted an eye at you.... An' through all this, because he's
+not Jack Kells of old, he's lost his pull with the gang. Sooner or later
+he'll split."
+
+"Have I any real friends among you?" asked Joan.
+
+"Wal, I reckon."
+
+"Are you my friend, Bate Wood?" she went on in sweet wistfulness.
+
+The grizzled old bandit removed his pipe and looked at her with a glint
+in his bloodshot eyes,
+
+"I shore am. I'll sneak you off now if you'll go. I'll stick a knife in
+Kells if you say so."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm afraid to run off--and you needn't harm Kells. After all,
+he's good to me."
+
+"Good to you!... When he keeps you captive like an Indian would? When
+he's given me orders to watch you--keep you locked up?"
+
+Wood's snort of disgust and wrath was thoroughly genuine. Still Joan
+knew that she dared not trust him, any more than Pearce or the others.
+Their raw emotions would undergo a change if Kells's possession of her
+were transferred to them. It occurred to Joan, however, that she might
+use Wood's friendliness to some advantage.
+
+"So I'm to be locked up?" she asked.
+
+"You're supposed to be."
+
+"Without any one to talk to?"
+
+"Wal, you'll hev me, when you want. I reckon thet ain't much to look
+forward to. But I can tell you a heap of stories. An' when Kells ain't
+around, if you're careful not to get me ketched, you can do as you
+want."
+
+"Thank you, Bate. I'm going to like you," replied Joan, sincerely, and
+then she went back to her room. There was sewing to do, and while she
+worked she thought, so that the hours sped. When the light got so poor
+that she could sew no longer she put the work aside and stood at her
+little window, watching the sunset. From the front of the cabin came the
+sound of subdued voices. Probably Kells and his men had returned, and
+she was sure of this when she heard the ring of Bate Wood's ax.
+
+All at once an object darker than the stones arrested Joan's gaze. There
+was a man sitting on the far side of the little ravine. Instantly she
+recognized Jim Cleve. He was looking at the little window--at her. Joan
+believed he was there for just that purpose. Making sure that no one
+else was near to see, she put out her hand and waved it. Jim gave a
+guarded perceptible sign that he had observed her action, and almost
+directly got up and left. Joan needed no more than that to tell her how
+Jim's idea of communicating with her corresponded with her own. That
+night she would talk with him and she was thrilled through. The secrecy,
+the peril, somehow lent this prospect a sweetness, a zest, a delicious
+fear. Indeed, she was not only responding to love, but to daring, to
+defiance, to a wilder nameless element born of her environment and the
+needs of the hour.
+
+Presently, Bate Wood called her in to supper. Pearce, Smith, and Cleve
+were finding seats at the table, but Kells looked rather sick. Joan
+observed him then more closely. His face was pale and damp, strangely
+shaded as if there were something dark under the pale skin. Joan had
+never seen him appear like this, and she shrank as from another and
+forbidding side of the man. Pearce and Smith acted naturally, ate with
+relish, and talked about the gold-diggings. Cleve, however, was not
+as usual; and Joan could not quite make out what constituted the
+dissimilarity. She hurried through her own supper and back to her room.
+
+Already it was dark outside. Joan lay down to listen and wait. It seemed
+long, but probably was not long before she heard the men go outside, and
+the low thump of their footsteps as they went away. Then came the rattle
+and bang of Bate Wood's attack on the pans and pots. Bate liked to cook,
+but he hated to clean up afterward. By and by he settled down outside
+for his evening smoke and there was absolute quiet. Then Joan rose to
+stand at the window. She could see the dark mass of rock overhanging the
+cabin, the bluff beyond, and the stars. For the rest all was gloom.
+
+She did not have to wait long. A soft step, almost indistinguishable,
+made her pulse beat quicker. She put her face out of the window, and on
+the instant a dark form seemed to loom up to meet her out of the shadow.
+She could not recognize that shape, yet she knew it belonged to Cleve.
+
+"Joan," he whispered.
+
+"Jim," she replied, just as low and gladly.
+
+He moved closer, so that the hand she had gropingly put out touched him,
+then seemed naturally to slip along his shoulder, round his neck. And
+his face grew clearer in the shadow. His lips met hers, and Joan closed
+her eyes to that kiss. What hope, what strength for him and for her now
+in that meeting of lips!
+
+"Oh, Jim! I'm so glad--to have you near--to touch you," she whispered.
+
+"Do you love me still?" he whispered back, tensely.
+
+"Still? More--more!"
+
+"Say it, then."
+
+"Jim, I love you!"
+
+And their lips met again and clung, and it was he who drew back first.
+
+"Dearest, why didn't you let me make a break to get away with
+you--before we came to this camp?"
+
+"Oh, Jim, I told you. I was afraid. We'd have been caught. And Gulden--"
+
+"We'll never have half the chance here. Kells means to keep you closely
+guarded. I heard the order. He's different now. He's grown crafty and
+hard. And the miners of this Alder Creek! Why, I'm more afraid to trust
+them than men like Wood or Pearce. They've gone clean crazy. Gold-mad!
+If you shouted for your life they wouldn't hear you. And if you could
+make them hear they wouldn't believe. This camp has sprung up in a
+night. It's not like any place I ever heard of. It's not human. It's so
+strange--so--Oh, I don't know what to say. I think I mean that men in a
+great gold strike become like coyotes at a carcass. You've seen that. No
+relation at all!"
+
+"I'm frightened, too, Jim. I wish I'd had the courage to run when we
+were back in Cabin Gulch, But don't ever give up, not for a second! We
+can get away. We must plan and wait. Find out where we are--how far from
+Hoadley--what we must expect--whether it's safe to approach any one in
+this camp."
+
+"Safe! I guess not, after to-day," he whispered, grimly.
+
+"Why? What's happened?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Joan, have you guessed yet why Kells sent you down into camp alone?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Listen.... I went with Kells and Smith and Pearce. They hurried
+straight to the Last Nugget. There was a crowd of men in front of the
+place. Pearce walked straight up to one--a gambler by his clothes.
+And he said in a loud voice. 'Here's the man!'... The gambler looked
+startled, turned pale, and went for his gun. But Kells shot him!... He
+fell dead, without a word. There was a big shout, then silence. Kells
+stood there with his smoking gun. I never saw the man so cool--so
+masterful. Then he addressed the crowd: 'This gambler insulted my
+daughter! My men here saw him. My name's Blight. I came here to buy up
+gold claims. And I want to say this: Your Alder Creek has got the gold.
+But it needs some of your best citizens to run it right, so a girl can
+be safe on the street.'"
+
+"Joan, I tell you it was a magnificent bluff," went on Jim, excitedly.
+"And it worked. Kells walked away amid cheers. He meant to give an
+impression of character and importance. He succeeded. So far as I could
+tell, there wasn't a man present who did not show admiration for him. I
+saw that dead gambler kicked."
+
+"Jim!" breathed Joan. "He killed him--just for that?"
+
+"Just for that--the bloody devil!"
+
+"But still--what for? Oh, it was cold-blooded murder."
+
+"No, an even break. Kells made the gambler go for his gun. I'll have to
+say that for Kells."
+
+"It doesn't change the thing. I'd forgotten what a monster he is."
+
+"Joan, his motive is plain. This new gold-camp has not reached the
+blood-spilling stage yet. It hadn't, I should say. The news of this
+killing will fly. It'll focus minds on this claim-buyer, Blight. His
+deed rings true--like that of an honest man with a daughter to protect.
+He'll win sympathy. Then he talks as if he were prosperous. Soon
+he'll be represented in this changing, growing population as a man of
+importance. He'll play the card for all he's worth. Meanwhile, secretly
+he'll begin to rob the miners. It'll be hard to suspect him. His plot is
+just like the man--great!"
+
+"Jim, oughtn't we tell?" whispered Joan, trembling.
+
+"I've thought of that. Somehow I seem to feel guilty. But whom on
+earth could we tell? We wouldn't dare speak here.... Remember--you're a
+prisoner. I'm supposed to be a bandit--one of the Border Legion. How to
+get away from here and save our lives--that's what tortures me."
+
+"Something tells me we'll escape, if only we can plan the right way.
+Jim, I'll have to be penned here, with nothing to do but wait. You must
+come every night!... Won't you?"
+
+For an answer he kissed her again.
+
+"Jim, what'll you do meanwhile?" she asked, anxiously.
+
+"I'm going to work a claim. Dig for gold. I told Kells so to-day, and he
+was delighted. He said he was afraid his men wouldn't like the working
+part of his plan. It's hard to dig gold. Easy to steal it. But I'll dig
+a hole as big as a hill!... Wouldn't it be funny if I struck it rich?"
+
+"Jim, you're getting the fever."
+
+"Joan, if I did happen to run into a gold-pocket--there're lots of them
+found--would--you--marry me?"
+
+The tenderness, the timidity, and the yearning in Cleve's voice told
+Joan as never before how he had hoped and feared and despaired. She
+patted his cheek with her hand, and in the darkness, with her heart
+swelling to make up for what she had done to him, she felt a boldness
+and a recklessness, sweet, tumultuous, irresistible.
+
+"Jim, I'll marry you--whether you strike gold or not," she whispered.
+
+And there was another blind, sweet moment. Then Cleve tore himself away,
+and Joan leaned at the window, watching the shadow, with tears in her
+eyes and an ache in her breast.
+
+From that day Joan lived a life of seclusion in the small room. Kells
+wanted it so, and Joan thought best for the time being not to take
+advantage of Bate Wood's duplicity. Her meals were brought to her by
+Wood, who was supposed to unlock and lock her door. But Wood never
+turned the key in that padlock.
+
+Prisoner though Joan was, the days and nights sped swiftly.
+
+Kells was always up till late in the night and slept half of the next
+morning. It was his wont to see Joan every day about noon. He had a care
+for his appearance. When he came in he was dark, forbidding, weary, and
+cold. Manifestly he came to her to get rid of the imponderable burden
+of the present. He left it behind him. He never spoke a word of Alder
+Creek, of gold, of the Border Legion. Always he began by inquiring for
+her welfare, by asking what he could do for her, what he could bring
+her. Joan had an abhorrence of Keils in his absence that she never felt
+when he was with her; and the reason must have been that she thought of
+him, remembered him as the bandit, and saw him as another and growing
+character. Always mindful of her influence, she was as companionable,
+as sympathetic, as cheerful, and sweet as it was possible for her to be.
+Slowly he would warm and change under her charm, and the grim gloom, the
+dark strain, would pass from him. When that left he was indeed another
+person. Frankly he told Joan that the glimpse of real love she had
+simulated back there in Cabin Gulch was seldom out of his mind. No woman
+had ever kissed him like she had. That kiss had transfigured him. It
+haunted him. If he could not win kisses like that from Joan's lips, of
+her own free will, then he wanted none. No other woman's lips would ever
+touch his. And he begged Joan in the terrible earnestness of a stern and
+hungering outcast for her love. And Joan could only sadly shake her head
+and tell him she was sorry for him, that the more she really believed
+he loved her the surer she was that he would give her up. Then always
+he passionately refused. He must have her to keep, to look at as his
+treasure, to dream over, and hope against hope that she would love him
+some day. Women sometimes learned to love their captors, he said; and if
+she only learned, then he would take her away to Australia, to distant
+lands. But most of all he begged her to show him again what it meant to
+be loved by a good woman. And Joan, who knew that her power now lay in
+her unattainableness, feigned a wavering reluctance, when in truth any
+surrender was impossible. He left her with a spirit that her presence
+gave him, in a kind of trance, radiant, yet with mocking smile, as if he
+foresaw the overthrow of his soul through her, and in the light of that
+his waning power over his Legion was as nothing.
+
+In the afternoon he went down into camp to strengthen the associations
+he had made, to buy claims, and to gamble. Upon his return Joan, peeping
+through a crack between the boards, could always tell whether he had
+been gambling, whether he had won or lost.
+
+Most of the evenings he remained in his cabin, which after dark became
+a place of mysterious and stealthy action. The members of his Legion
+visited him, sometimes alone, never more than two together. Joan could
+hear them slipping in at the hidden aperture in the back of the cabin;
+she could hear the low voices, but seldom what was said; she could hear
+these night prowlers as they departed. Afterward Kells would have the
+lights lit, and then Joan could see into the cabin. Was that dark,
+haggard man Kells? She saw him take little buckskin sacks full of
+gold-dust and hide them under the floor. Then he would pace the room
+in his old familiar manner, like a caged tiger. Later his mood usually
+changed with the advent of Wood and Pearce and Smith and Cleve, who took
+turns at guard and going down into camp. Then Kells would join them in
+a friendly game for small stakes. Gambler though he was, he refused to
+allow any game there that might lead to heavy wagering. From the talk
+sometimes Joan learned that he played for exceedingly large stakes with
+gamblers and prosperous miners, usually with the same result--a loss.
+Sometimes he won, however, and then he would crow over Pearce and Smith,
+and delight in telling them how cunningly he had played.
+
+Jim Cleve had his bed up under the bulge of bluff, in a sheltered nook.
+Kells had appeared to like this idea, for some reason relative to his
+scout system, which he did not explain. And Cleve was happy about it
+because this arrangement left him absolutely free to have his nightly
+rendezvous with Joan at her window, sometime between dark and midnight.
+Her bed was right under the window: if awake she could rest on her knees
+and look out; and if she was asleep he could thrust a slender stick
+between the boards to awaken her. But the fact was that Joan lived for
+these stolen meetings, and unless he could not come until very late she
+waited wide-eyed and listening for him. Then, besides, as long as Kells
+was stirring in the cabin she spent her time spying upon him.
+
+Jim Cleve had gone to an unfrequented part of the gulch, for no
+particular reason, and here he had located his claim. The very first
+day he struck gold. And Kells, more for advertisement than for any
+other motive, had his men stake out a number of claims near Cleve's, and
+bought them. Then they had a little field of their own. All found the
+rich pay-dirt, but it was Cleve to whom the goddess of fortune turned
+her bright face. As he had been lucky at cards, so he was lucky at
+digging. His claim paid big returns. Kells spread the news, and that
+part of the gulch saw a rush of miners.
+
+Every night Joan had her whispered hour with Cleve, and each succeeding
+one was the sweeter. Jim had become a victim of the gold fever. But,
+having Joan to steady him, he did not lose his head. If he gambled
+it was to help out with his part. He was generous to his comrades. He
+pretended to drink, but did not drink at all. Jim seemed to regard his
+good fortune as Joan's also. He believed if he struck it rich he could
+buy his sweetheart's freedom. He claimed that Kells was drunk for gold
+to gamble away. Joan let Jim talk, but she coaxed him and persuaded him
+to follow a certain line of behavior, she planned for him, she thought
+for him, she influenced him to hide the greater part of his gold-dust,
+and let it be known that he wore no gold-belt. She had a growing fear
+that Jim's success was likely to develop a temper in him inimical to
+the cool, waiting, tolerant policy needed to outwit Kells in the end.
+It seemed the more gold Jim acquired the more passionate he became, the
+more he importuned Joan, the more he hated Kells. Gold had gotten into
+his blood, and it was Joan's task to keep him sane. Naturally she gained
+more by yielding herself to Jim's caresses than by any direct advice or
+admonishment. It was her love that held Jim in check.
+
+One night, the instant their hands met Joan knew that Jim was greatly
+excited or perturbed.
+
+"Joan," he whispered, thrillingly, with his lips at her ear, "I've made
+myself solid with Kells! Oh, the luck of it!"
+
+"Tell me!" whispered Joan, and she leaned against those lips.
+
+"It was early to-night at the Nugget. I dropped in as usual. Kells was
+playing faro again with that gambler they call Flash. He's won a lot of
+Kells's gold--a crooked gambler. I looked on. And some of the gang
+were there--Pearce, Blicky, Handy Oliver, and of course Gulden, but all
+separated. Kells was losing and sore. But he was game. All at once he
+caught Flash in a crooked trick, and he yelled in a rage. He sure had
+the gang and everybody else looking. I expected--and so did all the
+gang--to see Kells pull his gun. But strange how gambling affects him!
+He only cursed Flash--called him right. You know that's about as bad as
+death to a professional gambler in a place like Alder Creek. Flash threw
+a derringer on Kells. He had it up his sleeve. He meant to kill Kells,
+and Kells had no chance. But Flash, having the drop, took time to talk,
+to make his bluff go strong with the crowd. And that's where he made
+a mistake. I jumped and knocked the gun out of his hand. It went
+off--burned my wrist. Then I slugged Mr. Flash good--he didn't get
+up.... Kells called the crowd around and, showing the cards as they lay,
+coolly proved that Flash was what everybody suspected. Then Kells said
+to me--I'll never forget how he looked: 'Youngster, he meant to do for
+me. I never thought of my gun. You see!... I'll kill him the next time
+we meet.... I've owed my life to men more than once. I never forget. You
+stood pat with me before. And now you're ace high!'"
+
+"Was it fair of you?" asked Joan.
+
+"Yes. Flash is a crooked gambler. I'd rather be a bandit.... Besides,
+all's fair in love! And I was thinking of you when I saved Kells!"
+
+"Flash will be looking for you," said Joan, fearfully.
+
+"Likely. And if he finds me he wants to be quick. But Kells will drive
+him out of camp or kill him. I tell you, Kells is the biggest man in
+Alder Creek. There's talk of office--a mayor and all that--and if
+the miners can forget gold long enough they'll elect Kells. But the
+riffraff, these bloodsuckers who live off the miners, they'd rather not
+have any office in Alder Creek."
+
+And upon another night Cleve in serious and somber mood talked about
+the Border Legion and its mysterious workings. The name had found
+prominence, no one knew how, and Alder Creek knew no more peaceful
+sleep. This Legion was supposed to consist of a strange, secret band of
+unknown bandits and road-agents, drawing its members from all that
+wild and trackless region called the border. Rumor gave it a leader of
+cunning and ruthless nature. It operated all over the country at the
+same time, and must have been composed of numerous smaller bands,
+impossible to detect. Because its victims never lived to tell how or by
+whom they had been robbed! This Legion worked slowly and in the dark.
+It did not bother to rob for little gain. It had strange and unerring
+information of large quantities of gold-dust. Two prospectors going out
+on the Bannack road, packing fifty pounds of gold, were found shot
+to pieces. A miner named Black, who would not trust his gold to the
+stage-express, and who left Adler Creek against advice, was never
+seen or heard of again. Four other miners of the camp, known to carry
+considerable gold, were robbed and killed at night on their way to their
+cabins. And another was found dead in his bed. Robbers had crept to his
+tent, slashed the canvas, murdered him while he slept, and made off with
+his belt of gold.
+
+An evil day of blood had fallen upon Alder Creek. There were terrible
+and implacable men in the midst of the miners, by day at honest toil,
+learning who had gold, and murdering by night. The camp had never been
+united, but this dread fact disrupted any possible unity. Every man, or
+every little group of men, distrusted the other, watched and spied and
+lay awake at night. But the robberies continued, one every few days, and
+each one left no trace. For dead men could not talk.
+
+Thus was ushered in at Alder Creek a regime of wildness that had
+no parallel in the earlier days of '49 and '51. Men frenzied by the
+possession of gold or greed for it responded to the wildness of that
+time and took their cue from this deadly and mysterious Border Legion.
+The gold-lust created its own blood-lust. Daily the population of Alder
+Creek grew in the new gold-seekers and its dark records kept pace. With
+distrust came suspicion and with suspicion came fear, and with fear came
+hate--and these, in already distorted minds, inflamed a hell. So that
+the most primitive passions of mankind found outlet and held sway. The
+operations of the Border Legion were lost in deeds done in the gambling
+dens, in the saloons, and on the street, in broad day. Men fought for
+no other reason than that the incentive was in the charged air. Men
+were shot at gaming-tables--and the game went on. Men were killed in the
+dance-halls, dragged out, marking a line of blood on the rude floor--and
+the dance went on. Still the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than
+ever, and still the greater and richer claims were struck. The price of
+gold soared and the commodities of life were almost beyond the dreams
+of avarice. It was a tune in which the worst of men's natures stalked
+forth, hydra-headed and deaf, roaring for gold, spitting fire, and
+shedding blood. It was a time when gold and fire and blood were one. It
+was a tune when a horde of men from every class and nation, of all ages
+and characters, met on a field were motives and ambitions and faiths and
+traits merged into one mad instinct of gain. It was worse than the
+time of the medieval crimes of religion; it made war seem a brave and
+honorable thing; it robbed manhood of that splendid and noble trait,
+always seen in shipwrecked men or those hopelessly lost in the barren
+north, the divine will not to retrograde to the savage. It was a time,
+for all it enriched the world with yellow treasure, when might was
+right, when men were hopeless, when death stalked rampant. The sun rose
+gold and it set red. It was the hour of Gold!
+
+One afternoon late, while Joan was half dreaming, half dozing the hours
+away, she was thoroughly aroused by the tramp of boots and loud voices
+of excited men. Joan slipped to the peephole in the partition. Bate Wood
+had raised a warning hand to Kells, who stood up, facing the door. Red
+Pearce came bursting in, wild-eyed and violent. Joan imagined he was
+about to cry out that Kells had been betrayed.
+
+"Kells, have you--heard?" he panted.
+
+"Not so loud, you--!" replied Kells, coolly. "My name's Blight.... Who's
+with you?"
+
+"Only Jesse an' some of the gang. I couldn't steer them away. But
+there's nothin' to fear."
+
+"What's happened? What haven't I heard?"
+
+"The camp's gone plumb ravin' crazy.... Jim Cleve found the biggest
+nugget ever dug in Idaho!... THIRTY POUNDS!"
+
+Kells seemed suddenly to inflame, to blaze with white passion. "Good for
+Jim!" he yelled, ringingly. He could scarcely have been more elated if
+he had made the strike himself.
+
+Jesse Smith came stamping in, with a crowd elbowing their way behind
+him. Joan had a start of the old panic at sight of Gulden. For once the
+giant was not slow nor indifferent. His big eyes glared. He brought
+back to Joan the sickening sense of the brute strength of his massive
+presence. Some of his cronies were with him. For the rest, there
+were Blicky and Handy Oliver and Chick Williams. The whole group bore
+resemblance to a pack of wolves about to leap upon its prey. Yet,
+in each man, excepting Gulden, there was that striking aspect of
+exultation.
+
+"Where's Jim?" demanded Kells.
+
+"He's comin' along," replied Pearce. "He's sure been runnin' a gantlet.
+His strike stopped work in the diggin's. What do you think of that,
+Kells? The news spread like smoke before wind. Every last miner in camp
+has jest got to see thet lump of gold."
+
+"Maybe I don't want to see it!" exclaimed Kells. "A thirty-pounder! I
+heard of one once, sixty pounds, but I never saw it. You can't believe
+till you see."
+
+"Jim's comin' up the road now," said one of the men near the door. "Thet
+crowd hangs on.... But I reckon he's shakin' them."
+
+"What'll Cleve do with this nugget?"
+
+Gulden's big voice, so powerful, yet feelingless, caused a momentary
+silence. The expression of many faces changed. Kells looked startled,
+then annoyed.
+
+"Why, Gulden, that's not my affair--nor yours," replied Kells. "Cleve
+dug it and it belongs to him."
+
+"Dug or stole--it's all the same," responded Gulden.
+
+Kell's threw up his hands as if it were useless and impossible to reason
+with this man.
+
+Then the crowd surged round the door with shuffling boots and hoarse,
+mingled greetings to Cleve, who presently came plunging in out of the
+melee.
+
+His face wore a flush of radiance; his eyes were like diamonds. Joan
+thrilled and thrilled at sight of him. He was beautiful. Yet there was
+about him a more striking wildness. He carried a gun in one hand and in
+the other an object wrapped in his scarf. He flung this upon the table
+in front of Kells. It made a heavy, solid thump. The ends of the scarf
+flew aside, and there lay a magnificent nugget of gold, black and rusty
+in parts, but with a dull, yellow glitter in others.
+
+"Boss, what'll you bet against that?" cried Cleve, with exulting laugh.
+He was like a boy.
+
+Kells reached for the nugget as if it were not an actual object, and
+when his hands closed on it he fondled it and weighed it and dug his
+nails into it and tasted it.
+
+"My God!" he ejaculated, in wondering ecstasy. Then this, and the
+excitement, and the obsession all changed into sincere gladness. "Jim,
+you're born lucky. You, the youngster born unlucky in love! Why, you
+could buy any woman with this!"
+
+"Could I? Find me one," responded Cleve, with swift boldness.
+
+Kells laughed. "I don't know any worth so much."
+
+"What'll I do with it?" queried Cleve.
+
+"Why, you fool youngster! Has it turned your head, too? What'd you do
+with the rest of your dust? You've certainly been striking it rich."
+
+"I spent it--lost it--lent it--gave some away and--saved a little."
+
+"Probably you'll do the same with this. You're a good fellow, Jim."
+
+"But this nugget means a lot of money. Between six and seven thousand
+dollars."
+
+"You won't need advice how to spend it, even if it was a million....
+Tell me, Jim, how'd you strike it?"
+
+"Funny about that," replied Cleve. "Things were poor for several days.
+Dug off branches into my claim. One grew to be a deep hole in gravel,
+hard to dig. My claim was once the bed of a stream, full of rocks that
+the water had rolled down once. This hole sort of haunted me. I'd leave
+it when my back got so sore I couldn't bend, but always I'd return. I'd
+say there wasn't a darned grain of gold in that gravel; then like a fool
+I'd go back and dig for all I was worth. No chance of finding blue dirt
+down there! But I kept on. And to-day when my pick hit what felt like a
+soft rock--I looked and saw the gleam of gold!... You ought to have seen
+me claw out that nugget! I whooped and brought everybody around. The
+rest was a parade.... Now I'm embarrassed by riches. What to do with
+it?"
+
+"Wal, go back to Montana an' make thet fool girl sick," suggested one of
+the men who had heard Jim's fictitious story of himself.
+
+"Dug or stole is all the same!" boomed the imperturbable Gulden.
+
+Kells turned white with rage, and Cleve swept a swift and shrewd glance
+at the giant.
+
+"Sure, that's my idea," declared Cleve. "I'll divide as--as we planned."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind," retorted Kells. "You dug for that gold
+and it's yours."
+
+"Well, boss, then say a quarter share to you and the same to me--and
+divide the rest among the gang."
+
+"No!" exclaimed Kells, violently.
+
+Joan imagined he was actuated as much by justice to Cleve as opposition
+to Gulden.
+
+"Jim Cleve, you're a square pard if I ever seen one," declared Pearce,
+admiringly. "An' I'm here to say thet I wouldn't hev a share of your
+nugget."
+
+"Nor me," spoke up Jesse Smith.
+
+"I pass, too," said Chick Williams.
+
+"Jim, if I was dyin' fer a drink I wouldn't stand fer thet deal," added
+Blicky, with a fine scorn.
+
+These men, and others who spoke or signified their refusal, attested to
+the living truth that there was honor even among robbers. But there was
+not the slightest suggestion of change in Gulden's attitude or of those
+back of him.
+
+"Share and share alike for me!" he muttered, grimly, with those great
+eyes upon the nugget.
+
+Kells, with an agile bound, reached the table and pounded it with his
+fist, confronting the giant.
+
+"So you say!" he hissed in dark passion. "You've gone too far, Gulden.
+Here's where I call you!... You don't get a gram of that gold nugget.
+Jim's worked like a dog. If he digs up a million I'll see he gets it
+all. Maybe you loafers haven't a hunch what Jim's done for you. He's
+helped our big deal more than you or I. His honest work has made it easy
+for me to look honest. He's supposed to be engaged to marry my daughter.
+That more than anything was a blind. It made my stand, and I tell you
+that stand is high in this camp. Go down there and swear Blight is Jack
+Kells! See what you get!... That's all.... I'm dealing the cards in this
+game!"
+
+Kells did not cow Gulden--for it was likely the giant lacked the feeling
+of fear--but he overruled him by sheer strength of spirit.
+
+Gulden backed away stolidly, apparently dazed by his own movements; then
+he plunged out the door, and the ruffians who had given silent but sure
+expression of their loyalty tramped after him.
+
+"Reckon thet starts the split!" declared Red Pearce.
+
+"Suppose you'd been in Jim's place!" flashed Kells.
+
+"Jack, I ain't sayin' a word. You was square. I'd want you to do the
+same by me.... But fetchin' the girl into the deal--"
+
+Kells's passionate and menacing gesture shut Pearce's lips. He lifted a
+hand, resignedly, and went out.
+
+"Jim," said Kells, earnestly, "take my hunch. Hide your nugget. Don't
+send it out with the stage to Bannack. It'd never get there.... And
+change the place where you sleep!"
+
+"Thanks," replied Cleve, brightly. "I'll hide my nugget all right. And
+I'll take care of myself."
+
+Later that night Joan waited at her window for Jim. It was so quiet that
+she could hear the faint murmur of the shallow creek. The sky was dusky
+blue; the stars were white, the night breeze sweet and cool. Her first
+flush of elation for Jim having passed, she experienced a sinking of
+courage. Were they not in peril enough without Jim's finding a fortune?
+How dark and significant had been Kells's hint! There was something
+splendid in the bandit. Never had Joan felt so grateful to him. He was
+a villain, yet he was a man. What hatred he showed for Gulden! These
+rivals would surely meet in a terrible conflict--for power--for gold.
+And for her!--she added, involuntarily, with a deep, inward shudder.
+Once the thought had flashed through her mind, it seemed like a word of
+revelation.
+
+Then she started as a dark form rose out of the shadow under her and a
+hand clasped hers. Jim! and she lifted her face.
+
+"Joan! Joan! I'm rich! rich!" he babbled, wildly.
+
+"Ssssh!" whispered Joan, softly, in his ear. "Be careful. You're wild
+to-night.... I saw you come in with the nugget. I heard you.... Oh, you
+lucky Jim! I'll tell you what to do with it!"
+
+"Darling! It's all yours. You'll marry me now?"
+
+"Sir! Do you take me for a fortune-hunter? I marry you for your gold?
+Never!"
+
+"Joan!"
+
+"I've promised," she said.
+
+"I won't go away now. I'll work my claim," he began, excitedly. And he
+went on so rapidly that Joan could not keep track of his words. He
+was not so cautious as formerly. She remonstrated with him, all to
+no purpose. Not only was he carried away by possession of gold
+and assurance of more, but he had become masterful, obstinate, and
+illogical. He was indeed hopeless to-night--the gold had gotten into his
+blood. Joan grew afraid he would betray their secret and realized there
+had come still greater need for a woman's wit. So she resorted to a
+never-failing means of silencing him, of controlling him--her lips on
+his.
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+For several nights these stolen interviews were apparently the safer
+because of Joan's tender blinding of her lover. But it seemed that in
+Jim's condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of
+love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation
+perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim's case she had added the spark
+to the powder. She realized her blunder when it was too late. And the
+fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost
+herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her again that she, too,
+was answering to the wildness of the time and place. Joan's intelligence
+had broadened wonderfully in this period of her life, just as all
+her feelings had quickened. If gold had developed and intensified and
+liberated the worst passions of men, so the spirit of that atmosphere
+had its baneful effect upon her. Joan deplored this, yet she had the
+keenness to understand that it was nature fitting her to survive.
+
+Back upon her fell that weight of suspense--what would happen next?
+Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same peril
+which had menaced her before, but she would suffer through fatality to
+Cleve or Kells. And these two slept at night under a shadow that held
+death, and by day they walked on a thin crust over a volcano. Joan grew
+more and more fearful of the disclosures made when Kells met his men
+nightly in the cabin. She feared to hear, but she must hear, and even
+if she had not felt it necessary to keep informed of events, the
+fascination of the game would have impelled her to listen. And gradually
+the suspense she suffered augmented into a magnified, though vague,
+assurance of catastrophe, of impending doom. She could not shake off
+the gloomy presentiment. Something terrible was going to happen. An
+experience begun as tragically as hers could only end in a final and
+annihilating stroke. Yet hope was unquenchable, and with her fear kept
+pace a driving and relentless spirit.
+
+One night at the end of a week of these interviews, when Joan attempted
+to resist Jim, to plead with him, lest in his growing boldness he betray
+them, she found him a madman.
+
+"I'll pull you right out of this window," he said, roughly, and then
+with his hot face pressed against hers tried to accomplish the thing he
+threatened.
+
+"Go on--pull me to pieces!" replied Joan, in despair and pain. "I'd be
+better off dead! And--you--hurt me--so!"
+
+"Hurt you!" he whispered, hoarsely, as if he had never dreamed of such
+possibility. And then suddenly he was remorseful. He begged her to
+forgive him. His voice was broken, husky, pleading. His remorse, like
+every feeling of his these days, was exaggerated, wild, with that raw
+tinge of gold-blood in it. He made so much noise that Joan, more fearful
+than ever of discovery, quieted him with difficulty.
+
+"Does Kells see you often--these days?" asked Jim, suddenly.
+
+Joan had dreaded this question, which she had known would inevitably
+come. She wanted to lie; she knew she ought to lie; but it was
+impossible.
+
+"Every day," she whispered. "Please--Jim--never mind that. Kells
+is good--he's all right to me.... And you and I have so little time
+together."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Cleve. Joan felt the leap of his body under her touch.
+"Why, if I'd tell you what he sends that gang to do--you'd--you'd kill
+him in his sleep."
+
+"Tell me," replied Joan. She had a morbid, irresistible desire to learn.
+
+"No.... And WHAT does Kells do--when he sees you every day?"
+
+"He talks."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Oh, everything except about what holds him here. He talks to me to
+forget himself."
+
+"Does he make love to you?"
+
+Joan maintained silence. What would she do with this changed and
+hopeless Jim Cleve?
+
+"Tell me!" Jim's hands gripped her with a force that made her wince.
+And now she grew as afraid of him as she had been for him. But she had
+spirit enough to grow angry, also.
+
+"Certainly he does."
+
+Jim Cleve echoed her first word, and then through grinding teeth he
+cursed. "I'm going to--stop it!" he panted, and his eyes looked big and
+dark and wild in the starlight.
+
+"You can't. I belong to Kells. You at least ought to have sense enough
+to see that."
+
+"Belong to him!... For God's sake! By what right?"
+
+"By the right of possession. Might is right here on the border. Haven't
+you told me that a hundred times? Don't you hold your claim--your
+gold--by the right of your strength? It's the law of this border. To be
+sure Kells stole me. But just now I belong to him. And lately I see his
+consideration--his kindness in the light of what he could do if he held
+to that border law.... And of all the men I've met out here Kells is the
+least wild with this gold fever. He sends his men out to do murder for
+gold; he'd sell his soul to gamble for gold; but just the same, he's
+more of a man than---"
+
+"Joan!" he interrupted, piercingly. "You love this bandit!"
+
+"You're a fool!" burst out Joan.
+
+"I guess--I--am," he replied in terrible, slow earnestness. He raised
+himself and appeared to loom over her and released his hold.
+
+But Joan fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged to
+get away she was hard put to it to hold him.
+
+"Jim! Where are you going?"
+
+He stood there a moment, a dark form against the night shadow, like an
+outline of a man cut from black stone.
+
+"I'll just step around--there."
+
+"Oh, what for?" whispered Joan.
+
+"I'm going to kill Kells."
+
+Joan got both arms round his neck and with her head against him she
+held him tightly, trying, praying to think how to meet this long-dreaded
+moment. After all, what was the use to try? This was the hour of Gold!
+Sacrifice, hope, courage, nobility, fidelity--these had no place here
+now. Men were the embodiment of passion--ferocity. They breathed only
+possession, and the thing in the balance was death. Women were creatures
+to hunger and fight for, but womanhood was nothing. Joan knew all this
+with a desperate hardening certainty, and almost she gave in. Strangely,
+thought of Gulden flashed up to make her again strong! Then she raised
+her face and began the old pleading with Jim, but different this time,
+when it seemed that absolutely all was at stake. She begged him, she
+importuned him, to listen to reason, to be guided by her, to fight the
+wildness that had obsessed him, to make sure that she would not be left
+alone. All in vain! He swore he would kill Kells and any other bandit
+who stood in the way of his leading her free out of that cabin. He was
+wild to fight. He might never have felt fear of these robbers. He would
+not listen to any possibility of defeat for himself, or the possibility
+that in the event of Kells's death she would be worse off. He laughed at
+her strange, morbid fears of Gulden. He was immovable.
+
+"Jim!... Jim! You'll break my heart!" she whispered, wailingly. "Oh!
+WHAT can I do?"
+
+Then Joan released her clasp and gave up to utter defeat. Cleve was
+silent. He did not seem to hear the shuddering little sobs that shook
+her. Suddenly he bent close to her.
+
+"There's one thing you can do. If you'll do it I won't kill Kells. I'll
+obey your every word."
+
+"What is it? Tell me!"
+
+"Marry me!" he whispered, and his voice trembled.
+
+"MARRY YOU!" exclaimed Joan. She was confounded. She began to fear Jim
+was out of his head.
+
+"I mean it. Marry me. Oh, Joan, will you--will you? It'll make the
+difference. That'll steady me. Don't you want to?"
+
+"Jim, I'd be the happiest girl in the world if--if I only COULD marry
+you!" she breathed, passionately.
+
+"But will you--will you? Say yes! Say yes!"
+
+"YES!" replied Joan in her desperation. "I hope that pleases you. But
+what on earth is the use to talk about it now?"
+
+Cleve seemed to expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous
+hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness,
+a happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was
+spiritual, and somehow she received an uplift of hope.
+
+"Listen," he whispered. "There's a preacher down in camp. I've seen
+him--talked with him. He's trying to do good in that hell down there.
+I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him--enough. I'll fetch him up
+here tomorrow night--about this time. Oh, I'll be careful--very careful.
+And he can marry us right here by the window. Joan, will you do it?...
+Somehow, whatever threatens you or me--that'll be my salvation!... I've
+suffered so. It's been burned in my heart that YOU would never marry me.
+Yet you say you love me!... Prove it!... MY WIFE!... Now, girl, a word
+will make a man of me!"
+
+"Yes!" And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart in
+them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from him.
+
+"Look for me to-morrow about this time," he whispered. "Keep your
+nerve.... Good night."
+
+That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The next
+day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was brought
+to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and she only
+vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the murmur of
+voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a quarrel
+between Kells and his men did not distract her.
+
+At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with the
+gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the bluff, did
+she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud caught the glory
+of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden radiance like that. It
+faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained. At twilight and then at dusk
+this glow lingered.
+
+Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of
+light and shadow, of sound and silence, of dread and hope, of sadness
+and joy.
+
+That pale, ruddy glow lingered over the bold heave of the range in
+the west. It was like a fire that would not go out, that would live
+to-morrow, and burn golden. The sky shone with deep, rich blue color
+fired with a thousand stars, radiant, speaking, hopeful. And there was a
+white track across the heavens. The mountains flung down their shadows,
+impenetrable, like the gloomy minds of men; and everywhere under
+the bluffs and slopes, in the hollows and ravines, lay an enveloping
+blackness, hiding its depth and secret and mystery.
+
+Joan listened. Was there sound or silence? A faint and indescribably
+low roar, so low that it might have been real or false, came on the soft
+night breeze. It was the roar of the camp down there--the strife, the
+agony, the wild life in ceaseless action--the strange voice of gold,
+roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above
+that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow
+of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men,
+for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and
+clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its
+murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this
+was only a fleeting day of men and gold.
+
+Only by straining her ears could Joan hear these sounds, and when she
+ceased that, then she seemed to be weighed upon and claimed by silence.
+It was not a silence like that of Lost Canon, but a silence of solitude
+where her soul stood alone. She was there on earth, yet no one could
+hear her mortal cry. The thunder of avalanches or the boom of the sea
+might have lessened her sense of utter loneliness.
+
+And that silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of dread.
+They spoke to her. She breathed dread on that silent air and it filled
+her breast. There was nothing stable in the night shadows. The ravine
+seemed to send forth stealthy, noiseless shapes, specter and human, man
+and phantom, each on the other's trail.
+
+If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the hour! A
+hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than the shadows.
+She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and dread might be lost.
+Love was something beyond the grasp of mind. Love had confounded Jim
+Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor from the black depths of a
+bandit's heart; it had transformed her from a girl into a woman. Surely
+with all its greatness it could not be lost; surely in the end it must
+triumph over evil.
+
+Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock of
+intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. And when she gave rein to
+it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness. To hope was to
+think! Poor Jim! It was his fool's paradise. Just to let her be his
+wife! That was the apex of his dream. Joan divined that he might yield
+to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony would be greater.
+Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so different that she could
+not but feel joy in his joy.
+
+Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow Joan's mingled
+emotions merged into a poignant sense of the pain and suspense and
+tenderness of the actual moment.
+
+"Joan--Joan," came the soft whisper.
+
+She answered, and there was a catch in her breath.
+
+The moving shadow split into two shadows that stole closer, loomed
+before her. She could not tell which belonged to Jim till he touched
+her. His touch was potent. It seemed to electrify her.
+
+"Dearest, we're here--this is the parson," said Jim, like a happy boy.
+"I--"
+
+"Ssssh!" whispered Joan. "Not so loud.... Listen!"
+
+Kells was holding a rendezvous with members of his Legion. Joan even
+recognized his hard and somber tone, and the sharp voice of Red Pearce,
+and the drawl of Handy Oliver.
+
+"All right. I'll be quiet," responded Cleve, cautiously. "Joan, you're
+to answer a few questions."
+
+Then a soft hand touched Joan, and a voice differently keyed from any
+she had heard on the border addressed her.
+
+"What is your name?" asked the preacher.
+
+Joan told him.
+
+"Can you tell anything about yourself? This young man is--is almost
+violent. I'm not sure. Still I want to--"
+
+"I can't tell much," replied Joan, hurriedly. "I'm an honest girl. I'm
+free to--to marry him. I--I love him!... Oh, I want to help him. We--we
+are in trouble here. I daren't say how."
+
+"Are you over eighteen?" "Yes, sir."
+
+"Do your parents object to this young man?"
+
+"I have no parents. And my uncle, with whom I lived before I was brought
+to this awful place, he loves Jim. He always wanted me to marry him."
+
+"Take his hand, then."
+
+Joan felt the strong clasp of Jim's fingers, and that was all which
+seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy round these two
+black forms in front of her window. She heard a mournful wail of a lone
+wolf and it intensified the weird dream that bound her. She heard her
+shaking, whispered voice repeating the preacher's words. She caught a
+phrase of a low-murmured prayer. Then one dark form moved silently away.
+She was alone with Jim.
+
+"Dearest Joan!" he whispered. "It's over! It's done!... Kiss me!"
+
+She lifted her lips and Jim seemed to kiss her more sweetly, with less
+violence.
+
+"Oh, Joan, that you'd really have me! I can't believe it.... Your
+HUSBAND."
+
+That word dispelled the dream and the pain which had held Joan, leaving
+only the tenderness, magnified now a hundredfold.
+
+And that instant when she was locked in Cleve's arms, when the silence
+was so beautiful and full, she heard the heavy pound of a gun-butt upon
+the table in Kells's room.
+
+"Where is Cleve?" That was the voice of Kells, stern, demanding.
+
+Joan felt a start, a tremor run over Jim. Then he stiffened.
+
+"I can't locate him," replied Red Pearce. "It was the same last night
+an' the one before. Cleve jest disappears these nights--about this
+time.... Some woman's got him!"
+
+"He goes to bed. Can't you find where he sleeps?"
+
+"No."
+
+"This job's got to go through and he's got to do it."
+
+"Bah!" taunted Pearce. "Gulden swears you can't make Cleve do a job. And
+so do I!"
+
+"Go out and yell for Cleve!... Damn you all! I'll show you!"
+
+Then Joan heard the tramp of heavy boots, then a softer tramp on the
+ground outside the cabin. Joan waited, holding her breath. She felt
+Jim's heart beating. He stood like a post. He, like Joan, was listening,
+as if for a trumpet of doom.
+
+"HALLO, JIM!" rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the
+silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped in echo, and wound away,
+mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild borderland the
+breaking-point of the bandit's power.
+
+So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and she
+let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she realized it,
+and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan waited, listening with
+abated breathing. On this side of the cabin there was absolute silence.
+She believed that Jim would slip around under cover of night and return
+by the road from camp. Then what would he do? The question seemed to
+puzzle her.
+
+Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from those
+vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that had left
+her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the voice of Kells
+had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was returning now to reality.
+Presently she would peer through the crevice between the boards into the
+other room, and she shrank from the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with
+him, maintained silence. Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot
+and a creak of the loose floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear
+compelled her to look.
+
+The lamps were burning; the door was wide open. Apparently Kells's rule
+of secrecy had been abandoned. One glance at Kells was enough to show
+Joan that he was sick and desperate. Handy Oliver did not wear his usual
+lazy good humor. Red Pearce sat silent and sullen, a smoking, unheeded
+pipe in his hand. Jesse Smith was gloomy. The only other present was
+Bate Wood, and whatever had happened had in no wise affected him. These
+bandits were all waiting. Presently quick footsteps on the path outside
+caused them all to look toward the door. That tread was familiar to
+Joan, and suddenly her mouth was dry, her tongue stiff. What was Jim
+Cleve coming to meet? How sharp and decided his walk! Then his dark
+form crossed the bar of light outside the door, and he entered, bold and
+cool, and with a weariness that must have been simulated.
+
+"Howdy boys!" he said.
+
+Only Kells greeted him in response. The bandit eyed him curiously. The
+others added suspicion to their glances.
+
+"Did you hear Red's yell?" queried Kells, presently.
+
+"I'd have heard that roar if I'd been dead," replied Cleve, bluntly.
+"And I didn't like it!... I was coming up the road and I heard Pearce
+yell. I'll bet every man in camp heard it."
+
+"How'd you know Pearce yelled for you?"
+
+"I recognized his voice."
+
+Cleve's manner recalled to Joan her first sight of him over in Cabin
+Gulch. He was not so white or haggard, but his eyes were piercing,
+and what had once been recklessness now seemed to be boldness. He
+deliberately studied Pearce. Joan trembled, for she divined what none of
+these robbers knew, and it was that Pearce was perilously near death. It
+was there for Joan to read in Jim's dark glance.
+
+"Where've you been all these nights?" queried the bandit leader.
+
+"Is that any of your business--when you haven't had need of me?"
+returned Cleve.
+
+"Yes, it's my business. And I've sent for you. You couldn't be found."
+
+"I've been here for supper every night."
+
+"I don't talk to any men in daylight. You know my hours for meeting. And
+you've not come."
+
+"You should have told me. How was I to know?"
+
+"I guess you're right. But where've you been?"
+
+"Down in camp. Faro, most of the time. Bad luck, too."
+
+Red Pearce's coarse face twisted into a scornful sneer. It must have
+been a lash to Kells.
+
+"Pearce says you're chasing a woman," retorted the bandit leader.
+
+"Pearce lies!" flashed Cleve. His action was as swift. And there he
+stood with a gun thrust hard against Pearce's side.
+
+"JIM! Don't kill him!" yelled Kells, rising.
+
+Pearce's red face turned white. He stood still as a stone, with his gaze
+fixed in fascinated fear upon Cleve's gun.
+
+A paralyzing surprise appeared to hold the group.
+
+"Can you prove what you said?" asked Cleve, low and hard.
+
+Joan knew that if Pearce did have the proof which would implicate her he
+would never live to tell it.
+
+"Cleve--I don't--know nothin'," choked out Pearce. "I jest figgered--it
+was a woman!"
+
+Cleve slowly lowered the gun and stepped back. Evidently that satisfied
+him. But Joan had an intuitive feeling that Pearce lied.
+
+"You want to be careful how you talk about me," said Cleve.
+
+Kells purled out a suspended breath and he flung the sweat from
+his brow. There was about him, perhaps more than the others, a dark
+realization of how close the call had been for Pearce.
+
+"Jim, you're not drunk?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you're sore?"
+
+"Sure I'm sore. Pearce put me in bad with you, didn't he?"
+
+"No. You misunderstood me. Red hasn't a thing against you. And neither
+he nor anybody else could put you in bad with me."
+
+"All right. Maybe I was hasty. But I'm not wasting time these days,"
+replied Cleve. "I've no hard feelings.... Pearce, do you want to shake
+hands--or hold that against me?"
+
+"He'll shake, of course," said Kells.
+
+Pearce extended his hand, but with a bad grace. He was dominated. This
+affront of Cleve's would rankle in him.
+
+"Kells, what do you want with me?" demanded Cleve.
+
+A change passed over Kells, and Joan could not tell just what it was,
+but somehow it seemed to suggest a weaker man.
+
+"Jim, you've been a great card for me," began Kells, impressively.
+"You've helped my game--and twice you saved my life. I think a lot
+of you.... If you stand by me now I swear I'll return the trick some
+day.... Will you stand by me?"
+
+"Yes," replied Cleve, steadily, but he grew pale. "What's the trouble?"
+
+"By--, it's bad enough!" exclaimed Kells, and as he spoke the shade
+deepened in his haggard face. "Gulden has split my Legion. He has drawn
+away more than half my men. They have been drunk and crazy ever since.
+They've taken things into their own hands. You see the result as well as
+I. That camp down there is fire and brimstone. Some one of that drunken
+gang has talked. We're none of us safe any more. I see suspicion
+everywhere. I've urged getting a big stake and then hitting the trail
+for the border. But not a man sticks to me in that. They all want the
+free, easy, wild life of this gold-camp. So we're anchored till--till...
+But maybe it's not too late. Pearce, Oliver, Smith--all the best of my
+Legion--profess loyalty to me. If we all pull together maybe we can
+win yet. But they've threatened to split, too. And it's all on your
+account!"
+
+"Mine?" ejaculated Cleve.
+
+"Yes. Now it's nothing to make you flash your gun. Remember you said
+you'd stand by me.... Jim, the fact is--all the gang to a man believe
+you're double-crossing me!"
+
+"In what way?" queried Cleve, blanching.
+
+"They think you're the one who has talked. They blame you for the
+suspicion that's growing."
+
+"Well, they're absolutely wrong," declared Cleve, in a ringing voice.
+
+"I know they are. Mind you I'm not hinting I distrust you. I don't. I
+swear by you. But Pearce--"
+
+"So it's Pearce," interrupted Cleve, darkly. "I thought you said he
+hadn't tried to put me in bad with you."
+
+"He hasn't. He simply spoke his convictions. He has a right to them.
+So have all the men. And, to come to the point, they all think you're
+crooked because you're honest!"
+
+"I don't understand," replied Cleve, slowly.
+
+"Jim, you rode into Cabin Gulch, and you raised some trouble. But you
+were no bandit. You joined my Legion, but you've never become a bandit.
+Here you've been an honest miner. That suited my plan and it helped.
+But it's got so it doesn't suit my men. You work every day hard. You've
+struck it rich. You're well thought of in Alder Creek. You've never done
+a dishonest thing. Why, you wouldn't turn a crooked trick in a card game
+for a sack full of gold. This has hurt you with my men. They can't see
+as I see, that you're as square as you are game. They see you're an
+honest miner. They believe you've got into a clique--that you've given
+us away. I don't blame Pearce or any of my men. This is a time when
+men's intelligence, if they have any, doesn't operate. Their brains
+are on fire. They see gold and whisky and blood, and they feel gold
+and whisky and blood. That's all. I'm glad that the gang gives you the
+benefit of a doubt and a chance to stand by me."
+
+"A chance!"
+
+"Yes. They've worked out a job for you alone. Will you undertake it?"
+
+"I'll have to," replied Cleve.
+
+"You certainly will if you want the gang to justify my faith in you.
+Once you pull off a crooked deal, they'll switch and swear by you. Then
+we'll get together, all of us, and plan what to do about Gulden and
+his outfit. They'll run our heads, along with their own, right into the
+noose."
+
+"What is this--this job?" labored Cleve. He was sweating now and his
+hair hung damp over his brow. He lost that look which had made him a
+bold man and seemed a boy again, weak, driven, bewildered.
+
+Kells averted his gaze before speaking again. He hated to force this
+task upon Cleve. Joan felt, in the throbbing pain of the moment, that if
+she never had another reason to like this bandit, she would like him for
+the pity he showed.
+
+"Do you know a miner named Creede?" asked Kells, rapidly.
+
+"A husky chap, short, broad, something like Gulden for shape, only not
+so big--fellow with a fierce red beard?" asked Cleve.
+
+"I never saw him," replied Kells. "But Pearce has. How does Cleve's
+description fit Creede?"
+
+"He's got his man spotted," answered Pearce.
+
+"All right, that's settled," went on Kells, warming to his subject.
+"This fellow Creede wears a heavy belt of gold. Blicky never makes a
+mistake. Creede's partner left on yesterday's stage for Bannack.
+He'll be gone a few days. Creede is a hard worker-one of the hardest.
+Sometimes he goes to sleep at his supper. He's not the drinking kind.
+He's slow, thick-headed. The best time for this job will be early in the
+evening--just as soon as his lights are out. Locate the tent. It stands
+at the head of a little wash and there's a bleached pine-tree right by
+the tent. To-morrow night as soon as it gets dark crawl up this wash--be
+careful--wait till the right time--then finish the job quick!"
+
+"How--finish--it?" asked Cleve, hoarsely.
+
+Kells was scintillating now, steely, cold, radiant. He had forgotten the
+man before him in the prospect of the gold.
+
+"Creede's cot is on the side of the tent opposite the tree. You won't
+have to go inside. Slit the canvas. It's a rotten old tent. Kill Creede
+with your knife.... Get his belt.... Be bold, cautious, swift! That's
+your job. Now what do you say?"
+
+"All right," responded Cleve, somberly, and with a heavy tread he left
+the room.
+
+After Jim had gone Joan still watched and listened. She was in distress
+over his unfortunate situation, but she had no fear that he meant to
+carry out Kells's plan. This was a critical time for Jim, and therefore
+for her. She had no idea what Jim could do; all she thought was what he
+would not do.
+
+Kells gazed triumphantly at Pearce. "I told you the youngster would
+stand by me. I never put him on a job before."
+
+"Reckon I figgered wrong, boss," replied Pearce.
+
+"He looked sick to me, but game," said Handy Oliver. "Kells is right,
+Red, an' you've been sore-headed over nothin'!"
+
+"Mebbe. But ain't it good figgerin' to make Cleve do some kind of a job,
+even if he is on the square?"
+
+They all acquiesced to this, even Kells slowly nodding his head.
+
+"Jack, I've thought of another an' better job for young Cleve," spoke up
+Jesse Smith, with his characteristic grin.
+
+"You'll all be setting him jobs now," replied Kells. "What's yours?"
+
+"You spoke of plannin' to get together once more--what's left of us. An'
+there's thet bull-head Gulden."
+
+"You're sure right," returned the leader, grimly, and he looked at Smith
+as if he would welcome any suggestion.
+
+"I never was afraid to speak my mind," went on Smith. Here he lost his
+grin and his coarse mouth grew hard. "Gulden will have to be killed if
+we're goin' to last!"
+
+"Wood, what do you say?" queried Kells, with narrowing eyes.
+
+Bate Wood nodded as approvingly as if he had been asked about his bread.
+
+"Oliver, what do you say?"
+
+"Wal, I'd love to wait an' see Gul hang, but if you press me, I'll agree
+to stand pat with the cards Jesse's dealt," replied Handy Oliver.
+
+Then Kells turned with a bright gleam upon his face. "And you--Pearce?"
+
+"I'd say yes in a minute if I'd not have to take a hand in thet job,"
+replied Pearce, with a hard laugh. "Gulden won't be so easy to kill.
+He'll pack a gunful of lead. I'll gamble if the gang of us cornered him
+in this cabin he'd do for most of us before we killed him."
+
+"Gul sleep alone, no one knows where," said Handy Oliver. "An' he can't
+be surprised. Red's correct. How're we goin' to kill him?"
+
+"If you gents will listen you'll find out," rejoined Jesse Smith.
+"Thet's the job for young Cleve. He can do it. Sure Gulden never was
+afraid of any man. But somethin' about Cleve bluffed him. I don't
+know what. Send Cleve out after Gulden. He'll call him face to face,
+anywhere, an' beat him to a gun!... Take my word for it."
+
+"Jesse, that's the grandest idea you ever had," said Kells, softly. His
+eyes shone. The old power came back to his face. "I split on Gulden.
+With him once out of the way--!"
+
+"Boss, are you goin' to make thet Jim Cleve's second job?" inquired
+Pearce, curiously.
+
+"I am," replied Kells, with his jaw corded and stiff. "If he pulls thet
+off you'll never hear a yap from me so long as I live. An' I'll eat out
+of Cleve's hand."
+
+Joan could bear to hear no more. She staggered to her bed and fell
+there, all cramped as if in a cold vise. However Jim might meet the
+situation planned for murdering Creede, she knew he would not shirk
+facing Gulden with deadly intent. He hated Gulden because she had a
+horror of him. Would these hours of suspense never end? Must she pass
+from one torture to another until--?
+
+Sleep did not come for a long time. And when it did she suffered with
+nightmares from which it seemed she could never awaken.
+
+The day, when at last it arrived, was no better than the night. It
+wore on endlessly, and she who listened so intently found it one of the
+silent days. Only Bate Wood remained at the cabin. He appeared kinder
+than usual, but Joan did not want to talk. She ate her meals, and passed
+the hours watching from the window and lying on the bed. Dusk brought
+Kells and Pearce and Smith, but not Jim Cleve. Handy Oliver and Blicky
+arrived at supper-time.
+
+"Reckon Jim's appetite is pore," remarked Bate Wood, reflectively. "He
+ain't been in to-day."
+
+Some of the bandits laughed, but Kells had a twinge, if Joan ever saw a
+man have one. The dark, formidable, stern look was on his face. He alone
+of the men ate sparingly, and after the meal he took to his bent posture
+and thoughtful pacing. Joan saw the added burden of another crime upon
+his shoulders. Conversation, which had been desultory, and such as any
+miners or campers might have indulged in, gradually diminished to a
+word here and there, and finally ceased. Kells always at this hour had
+a dampening effect upon his followers. More and more he drew aloof from
+them, yet he never realized that. He might have been alone. But often he
+glanced out of the door, and appeared to listen. Of course he expected
+Jim Cleve to return, but what did he expect of him? Joan had a blind
+faith that Jim would be cunning enough to fool Kells and Pearce. So much
+depended upon it!
+
+Some of the bandits uttered an exclamation. Then silently, like a
+shadow, Jim Cleve entered.
+
+Joan's heart leaped and seemed to stand still. Jim could not have locked
+more terrible if he were really a murderer. He opened his coat. Then
+he flung a black object upon the table and it fell with a soft, heavy,
+sodden thud. It was a leather belt packed with gold.
+
+When Kells saw that he looked no more at the pale Cleve. His clawlike
+hand swept out for the belt, lifted and weighed it. Likewise the other
+bandits, with gold in sight, surged round Kells, forgetting Cleve.
+
+"Twenty pounds!" exclaimed Kells, with a strange rapture in his voice.
+
+"Let me heft it?" asked Pearce, thrillingly.
+
+Joan saw and heard so much, then through a kind of dimness, that she
+could not wipe away, her eyes beheld Jim. What was the awful thing that
+she interpreted from his face, his mien? Was this a part he was playing
+to deceive Kells? The slow-gathering might of her horror came with the
+meaning of that gold-belt. Jim had brought back the gold-belt of the
+miner Creede. He had, in his passion to remain near her, to save her in
+the end, kept his word to Kells and done the ghastly deed.
+
+Joan reeled and sank back upon the bed, blindly, with darkening sight
+and mind.
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+Joan returned to consciousness with a sense of vague and unlocalized
+pain which she thought was that old, familiar pang of grief. But once
+fully awakened, as if by a sharp twinge, she became aware that the pain
+was some kind of muscular throb in her shoulder. The instant she was
+fully sure of this the strange feeling ceased. Then she lay wide-eyed in
+the darkness, waiting and wondering.
+
+Suddenly the slight sharp twing was repeated. It seemed to come from
+outside her flesh. She shivered a little, thinking it might be a
+centipede. When she reached for her shoulder her hand came in contact
+with a slender stick that had been thrust through a crack between the
+boards. Jim was trying to rouse her. This had been his method on several
+occasions when she had fallen asleep after waiting long for him.
+
+Joan got up to the window, dizzy and sick with the resurging memory of
+Jim's return to Kells with that gold-belt.
+
+Jim rose out of the shadow and felt for her, clasped her close. Joan
+had none of the old thrill; her hands slid loosely round his; and every
+second the weight inwardly grew heavier.
+
+"Joan! I had a time waking you," whispered Jim, and then he kissed her.
+"Why, you're as cold as ice."
+
+"Jim--I--I must have fainted," she replied.
+
+"What for?" "I was peeping into Kells's cabin, when you--you--"
+
+"Poor kid!" he interrupted, tenderly. "You've had so much to bear!...
+Joan, I fooled Kells. Oh, I was slick!... He ordered me out on a job--to
+kill a miner! Fancy that! And what do you think? I know Creede well.
+He's a good fellow. I traded my big nugget for his gold-belt!"
+
+"You TRADED--you--didn't--kill him!" faltered Joan.
+
+"Hear the child talk!" exclaimed Cleve, with a low laugh.
+
+Joan suddenly clung to him with all her might, quivering in a silent
+joy. It had not occurred to Jim what she might have thought.
+
+"Listen," he went on. "I traded my nugget. It was worth a great deal
+more than Creede's gold-belt. He knew this. He didn't want to trade. But
+I coaxed him. I persuaded him to leave camp--to walk out on the road to
+Bannack. To meet the stage somewhere and go on to Bannack, and stay a
+few days. He sure was curious. But I kept my secret.... Then I came
+back here, gave the belt to Kells, told him I had followed Creede in
+the dark, had killed him and slid him into a deep hole in the creek....
+Kells and Pearce--none of them paid any attention to my story. I had
+the gold-belt. That was enough. Gold talks--fills the ears of these
+bandits.... I have my share of Creede's gold-dust in my pocket. Isn't
+that funny? Alas for my--YOUR big nugget! But we've got to play the
+game. Besides, I've sacks and cans of gold hidden away. Joan, what'll
+we do with it all? You're my wife now. And, oh! If we can only get away
+with it you'll be rich!"
+
+Joan could not share his happiness any more than she could understand
+his spirit. She remembered.
+
+"Jim--dear--did Kells tell you what your--next job was to be?" she
+whispered, haltingly.
+
+Cleve swore under his breath, but loud enough to make Joan swiftly put
+her hand over his lips and caution him.
+
+"Joan, did you hear that about Gulden?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell you. Yes, I've got my second job. And
+this one I can't shirk or twist around."
+
+Joan held to him convulsively. She could scarcely speak.
+
+"Girl, don't lose your nerve!" he said, sternly. "When you married me
+you made me a man. I'll play my end of the game. Don't fear for me. You
+plan when we can risk escape. I'll obey you to the word."
+
+"But Jim--oh, Jim!" she moaned. "You're as wild as these bandits. You
+can't see your danger.... That terrible Gulden!... You don't mean to
+meet him--fight him?... Say you won't!"
+
+"Joan, I'll meet him--and I'll KILL him," whispered Jim, with a piercing
+intensity. "You never knew I was swift with a gun. Well, I didn't,
+either, till I struck the border. I know now. Kells is the only man
+I've seen who can throw a gun quicker than I. Gulden is a big bull. He's
+slow. I'll get into a card-game with him--I'll quarrel over gold--I'll
+smash him as I did once before--and this time I won't shoot off his ear.
+I've my nerve now. Kells swore he'd do anything for me if I stand by
+him now. I will. You never can tell. Kells is losing his grip. And my
+standing by him may save you."
+
+Joan drew a deep breath. Jim Cleve had indeed come into manhood. She
+crushed down her womanish fears and rose dauntless to the occasion. She
+would never weaken him by a lack of confidence.
+
+"Jim, Kells's plot draws on to a fatal close," she said, earnestly. "I
+feel it. He's doomed. He doesn't realize that yet. He hopes and plots
+on. When he falls, then he'll be great--terrible. We must get away
+before that comes. What you said about Creede has given me an idea.
+Suppose we plan to slip out some night soon, and stop the stage next day
+on its way to Bannack?"
+
+"I've thought of that. But we must have horses."
+
+"Let's go afoot. We'd be safer. There'd not be so much to plan."
+
+"But if we go on foot we must pack guns and grub--and there's my
+gold-dust. Fifty pounds or more! It's yours, Joan.... You'll need it
+all. You love pretty clothes and things. And now I'll get them for you
+or--or die."
+
+"Hush! That's foolish talk, with our very lives at stake. Let me plan
+some more. Oh, I think so hard!... And, Jim, there's another thing. Red
+Pearce was more than suspicious about your absence from the cabin at
+certain hours. What he hinted to Kells about a woman in the case! I'm
+afraid he suspects or knows."
+
+"He had me cold, too," replied Cleve, thoughtfully. "But he swore he
+knew nothing."
+
+"Jim, trust a woman's instinct. Pearce lied. That gun at his side made
+him a liar. He knew you'd kill him if he betrayed himself by a word. Oh,
+look out for him!"
+
+Cleve did not reply. It struck Joan that he was not listening, at least
+to her. His head was turned, rigid and alert. He had his ear to the soft
+wind. Suddenly Joan heard a faint rustle-then another. They appeared
+to come from the corner of the cabin. Silently Cleve sank down into the
+shadow and vanished. Low, stealthy footsteps followed, but Joan was not
+sure whether or not Cleve made them. They did not seem to come from the
+direction he usually took. Besides, when he was careful he never made
+the slightest noise. Joan strained her ears, only to catch the faint
+sounds of the night. She lay back upon her bed, worried and anxious
+again, and soon the dread returned. There were to be no waking or
+sleeping hours free from this portent of calamity.
+
+Next morning Joan awaited Kells, as was her custom, but he did not
+appear. This was the third time in a week that he had forgotten or
+avoided her or had been prevented from seeing her. Joan was glad,
+yet the fact was not reassuring. The issue for Kells was growing from
+trouble to disaster.
+
+Early in the afternoon she heard Kells returning from camp. He had men
+with him. They conversed in low, earnest tones. Joan was about to spy up
+on them when Kells's step approached her door. He rapped and spoke:
+
+"Put on Dandy Dale's suit and mask, and come out here," he said.
+
+The tone of his voice as much as the content of his words startled Joan
+so that she did not at once reply.
+
+"Do you hear?" he called, sharply.
+
+"Yes," replied Joan.
+
+Then he went back to his men, and the low, earnest conversation was
+renewed.
+
+Reluctantly Joan took down Dandy Dale's things from the pegs, and with
+a recurring shame she divested herself of part of her clothes and donned
+the suit and boots and mask and gun. Her spirit rose, however, at the
+thought that this would be a disguise calculated to aid her in the
+escape with Cleve. But why had Kells ordered the change? Was he
+in danger and did he mean to flee from Alder Creek? Joan found the
+speculation a relief from that haunting, persistent thought of Jim Cleve
+and Gulden. She was eager to learn, still she hesitated at the door. It
+was just as hard as ever to face those men.
+
+But it must be, so with a wrench she stepped out boldly.
+
+Kells looked worn and gray. He had not slept. But his face did not wear
+the shade she had come to associate with his gambling and drinking. Six
+other men were present, and Joan noted coats and gloves and weapons and
+spurs. Kells turned to address her. His face lighted fleetingly.
+
+"I want you to be ready to ride any minute," he said.
+
+"Why?" asked Joan.
+
+"We may HAVE to, that's all," he replied.
+
+His men, usually so keen when they had a chance to ogle Joan, now
+scarcely gave her a glance. They were a dark, grim group, with hard eyes
+and tight lips. Handy Oliver was speaking.
+
+"I tell you, Gulden swore he seen Creede--on the road--in the
+lamplight--last night AFTER Jim Cleve got here."
+
+"Gulden must have been mistaken," declared Kells, impatiently.
+
+"He ain't the kind to make mistakes," replied Oliver.
+
+"Gul's seen Creede's ghost, thet's what," suggested Blicky, uneasily.
+"I've seen a few in my time."
+
+Some of the bandits nodded gloomily.
+
+"Aw!" burst out Red Pearce. "Gulden never seen a ghost in his life. If
+he seen Creede he's seen him ALIVE!"
+
+"Shore you're right, Red," agreed Jesse Smith.
+
+"But, men--Cleve brought in Creede's belt--and we've divided the gold,"
+said Kells. "You all know Creede would have to be dead before that belt
+could be unbuckled from him. There's a mistake."
+
+"Boss, it's my idee thet Gul is only makin' more trouble," put in Bate
+Wood. "I seen him less than an hour ago. I was the first one Gul talked
+to. An' he knew Jim Cleve did for Creede. How'd he know? Thet was
+supposed to be a secret. What's more, Gul told me Cleve was on the job
+to kill him. How'd he ever find thet out?... Sure as God made little
+apples Cleve never told him!"
+
+Kells's face grew livid and his whole body vibrated. "Maybe one of
+Gulden's gang was outside, listening when we planned Cleve's job," he
+suggested. But his look belied his hope.
+
+"Naw! There's a nigger in the wood-pile, you can gamble on thet,"
+blurted out the sixth bandit, a lean faced, bold-eye, blond-mustached
+fellow whose name Joan had never heard.
+
+"I won't believe it," replied Kells, doggedly. "And you, Budd, you're
+accusing somebody present of treachery--or else Cleve. He's the only one
+not here who knew."
+
+"Wal, I always said thet youngster was slick," replied Budd.
+
+"Will you accuse him to his face?"
+
+"I shore will. Glad of the chance."
+
+"Then you're drunk or just a fool."
+
+"Thet so?"
+
+"Yes, that's so," flashed Kells. "You don't know Cleve. He'll kill you.
+He's lightning with a gun. Do you suppose I'd set him on Gulden's trail
+if I wasn't sure? Why I wouldn't care to--"
+
+"Here comes Cleve," interrupted Pearce, sharply.
+
+Rapid footsteps sounded without. Then Joan saw Jim Cleve darken the
+doorway. He looked keen and bold. Upon sight of Joan in her changed
+attire he gave a slight start.
+
+"Budd, here's Cleve," called out Red Pearce, mockingly. "Now, say it to
+his face!"
+
+In the silence that ensued Pearce's spirit dominated the moment with its
+cunning, hate, and violence. But Kells savagely leaped in front of the
+men, still master of the situation.
+
+"Red, what's got into you?" he hissed. "You're cross-grained lately.
+You're sore. Any more of this and I'll swear you're a disorganizer....
+Now, Budd, you keep your mouth shut. And you, Cleve, you pay no heed to
+Budd if he does gab.... We're in bad and all the men have chips on their
+shoulders. We've got to stop fighting among ourselves."
+
+"Wal, boss, there's a power of sense in a good example," dryly remarked
+Bate Wood. His remark calmed Kells and eased the situation.
+
+"Jim, did you meet Gulden?" queried Kells, eagerly.
+
+"Can't find him anywhere," replied Cleve. "I've loafed in the saloons
+and gambling-hells where he hangs out. But he didn't show up. He's in
+camp. I know that for a fact. He's laying low for some reason."
+
+"Gulden's been tipped off, Jim," said Kells, earnestly. "He told Bate
+Wood you were out to kill him."
+
+"I'm glad. It wasn't a fair hand you were going to deal him," responded
+Cleve. "But who gave my job away? Someone in this gang wants me done
+for--more than Gulden."
+
+Cleve's flashing gaze swept over the motionless men and fixed hardest
+upon Red Pearce. Pearce gave back hard look for hard look.
+
+"Gulden told Oliver more," continued Kells, and he pulled Cleve around
+to face him. "Gulden swore he saw Creede alive last night.... LATE LAST
+NIGHT!"
+
+"That's funny," replied Cleve, without the flicker of an eyelash.
+
+"It's not funny. But it's queer. Gulden hasn't the moral sense to lie.
+Bate says he wants to make trouble between you and me. I doubt that.
+I don't believe Gulden could see a ghost, either. He's simply mistaken
+some miner for Creede."
+
+"He sure has, unless Creede came back to life. I'm not sitting on his
+chest now, holding him down."
+
+Kells drew back, manifestly convinced and relieved. This action seemed
+to be a magnet for Pearce. He detached himself from the group, and,
+approaching Kells, tapped him significantly on the shoulder; and whether
+by design or accident the fact was that he took a position where Kells
+was between him and Cleve.
+
+"Jack, you're being double-crossed here--an' by more 'n one," he said,
+deliberately. "But if you want me to talk you've got to guarantee no
+gun-play."
+
+"Speak up, Red," replied Kells, with a glinting eye. "I swear there
+won't be a gun pulled."
+
+The other men shifted from one foot to another and there were deep-drawn
+breaths. Jim Cleve alone seemed quiet and cool. But his eyes were
+ablaze.
+
+"Fust off an' for instance here's one who's double-crossin' you," said
+Pearce, in slow, tantalizing speech, as if he wore out this suspense to
+torture Kells. And without ever glancing at Joan he jerked a thumb, in
+significant gesture, at her.
+
+Joan leaned back against the wall, trembling and cold all over. She read
+Pearce's mind. He knew her secret and meant to betray her and Jim. He
+hated Kells and wanted to torture him. If only she could think quickly
+and speak! But she seemed dumb and powerless.
+
+"Pearce, what do you mean?" demanded Kells.
+
+"The girl's double-crossin' you," replied Pearce. With the uttered words
+he grew pale and agitated.
+
+Suddenly Kells appeared to become aware of Joan's presence and that the
+implication was directed toward her. Then, many and remarkable as had
+been the changes Joan had seen come over him, now occurred one wholly
+greater. It had all his old amiability, his cool, easy manner, veiling a
+deep and hidden ruthlessness, terrible in contrast.
+
+"Red, I thought our talk concerned men and gold and--things," he said,
+with a cool, slow softness that had a sting, "but since you've nerve
+enough or are crazy enough to speak of--her--why, explain your meaning."
+
+Pearce's jaw worked so that he could scarcely talk. He had gone too
+far--realized it too late.
+
+"She meets a man--back there--at her window," he panted. "They whisper
+in the dark for hours. I've watched an' heard them. An' I'd told you
+before, but I wanted to make sure who he was.... I know him now!... An'
+remember I seen him climb in an' out--"
+
+Kells's whole frame leaped. His gun was a flash of blue and red and
+white all together. Pearce swayed upright, like a tree chopped at the
+roots, and then fell, face up, eyes set--dead. The bandit leader stood
+over him with the smoking gun.
+
+"My Gawd, Jack!" gasped Handy Oliver. "You swore no one would pull
+a gun--an' here you've killed him yourself!... YOU'VE DOUBLE-CROSSED
+YOURSELF! An' if I die for it I've got to tell you Red wasn't lyin'
+then!"
+
+Kells's radiance fled, leaving him ghastly. He stared at Oliver.
+
+"You've double-crossed yourself an' your pards," went on Oliver,
+pathetically. "What's your word amount to? Do you expect the gang
+to stand for this?... There lays Red Pearce dead. An' for what? Jest
+once--relyin' on your oath--he speaks out what might have showed you.
+An' you kill him!... If I knowed what he knowed I'd tell you now with
+thet gun in your hand! But I don't know. Only I know he wasn't lyin'....
+Ask the girl!... An' as for me, I reckon I'm through with you an' your
+Legion. You're done, Kells--your head's gone--you've broke over thet
+slip of a woman!"
+
+Oliver spoke with a rude and impressive dignity. When he ended he strode
+out into the sunlight.
+
+Kells was shaken by this forceful speech, yet he was not in any sense
+a broken man. "Joan--you heard Pearce," said he, passionately. "He lied
+about you. I had to kill him. He hinted--Oh, the low-lived dog! He could
+not know a good woman. He lied--and there he is--dead! I wouldn't fetch
+him back for a hundred Legions!"
+
+"But it--it wasn't--all--a lie," said Joan, and her words came haltingly
+because a force stronger than her cunning made her speak. She had
+reached a point where she could not deceive Kells to save her life.
+
+"WHAT!" he thundered.
+
+"Pearce told the truth--except that no one ever climbed in my window.
+That's false. No one could climb in. It's too small.... But I did
+whisper--to someone."
+
+Kells had to moisten his lips to speak. "Who?"
+
+"I'll never tell you."
+
+"Who?... I'll kill him!"
+
+"No--no. I won't tell. I won't let you kill another man on my account."
+
+"I'll choke it out of you."
+
+"You can't. There's no use to threaten me, or hurt me, either."
+
+Kells seemed dazed. "Whisper! For hours! In the dark!... But, Joan, what
+for? Why such a risk?"
+
+Joan shook her head.
+
+"Were you just unhappy--lonesome? Did some young miner happen to see
+you there in daylight--then come at night? Wasn't it only accident? Tell
+me."
+
+"I won't--and I won't because I don't want you to spill more blood."
+
+"For my sake," he queried, with the old, mocking tone. Then he grew dark
+with blood in his face, fierce with action of hands and body as he
+bent nearer her. "Maybe you like him too well to see him shot?... Did
+you--whisper often to this stranger?"
+
+Joan felt herself weakening. Kells was so powerful in spirit and passion
+that she seemed unable to fight him. She strove to withhold her reply,
+but it burst forth, involuntarily.
+
+"Yes--often."
+
+That roused more than anger and passion. Jealousy flamed from him and it
+transformed him into a devil.
+
+"You held hands out of that window--and kissed--in the dark?" he cried,
+with working lips.
+
+Joan had thought of this so fearfully and intensely--she had battled so
+to fortify herself to keep it secret--that he had divined it, had read
+her mind. She could not control herself. The murder of Pearce had almost
+overwhelmed her. She had not the strength to bite her tongue. Suggestion
+alone would have drawn her then--and Kells's passionate force was
+hypnotic.
+
+"Yes," she whispered.
+
+He appeared to control a developing paroxysm of rage.
+
+"That settles you," he declared darkly. "But I'll do one more decent
+thing by you. I'll marry you." Then he wheeled to his men. "Blicky,
+there's a parson down in camp. Go on the run. Fetch him back if you have
+to push him with a gun."
+
+Blicky darted through the door and his footsteps thudded out of hearing.
+
+"You can't force me to marry you," said Joan. "I--I won't open my lips."
+
+"That's your affair. I've no mind to coax you," he replied, bitterly.
+"But if you don't I'll try Gulden's way with a woman.... You remember.
+Gulden's way! A cave and a rope!"
+
+Joan's legs gave out under her and she sank upon a pile of blankets.
+Then beyond Kells she saw Jim Cleve. With all that was left of her
+spirit she flashed him a warning--a meaning--a prayer not to do the
+deed she divined was his deadly intent. He caught it and obeyed. And he
+flashed back a glance which meant that, desperate as her case was, it
+could never be what Kells threatened.
+
+"Men, see me through this," said Kells to the silent group. "Then any
+deal you want--I'm on. Stay here or--sack the camp! Hold up the stage
+express with gold for Bannack! Anything for a big stake! Then the trail
+and the border."
+
+He began pacing the floor. Budd and Smith strolled outside. Bate Wood
+fumbled in his pockets for pipe and tobacco. Cleve sat down at the table
+and leaned on his hands. No one took notice of the dead Pearce. Here was
+somber and terrible sign of the wildness of the border clan--that Kells
+could send out for a parson to marry him to a woman he hopelessly loved,
+there in the presence of murder and death, with Pearce's distorted face
+upturned in stark and ghastly significance.
+
+It might have been a quarter of an hour, though to Joan it seemed an
+endless time, until footsteps and voices outside announced the return of
+Blicky.
+
+He held by the arm a slight man whom he was urging along with no gentle
+force. This stranger's face presented as great a contrast to Blicky's as
+could have been imagined. His apparel proclaimed his calling. There were
+consternation and bewilderment in his expression, but very little fear.
+
+"He was preachin' down there in a tent," said Blicky, "an I jest waltzed
+him up without explainin'."
+
+"Sir, I want to be married at once," declared Kells, peremptorily.
+
+"Certainly. I'm at your service," replied the preacher. "But I deplore
+the--the manner in which I've been approached."
+
+"You'll excuse haste," rejoined the bandit. "I'll pay you well." Kells
+threw a small buckskin sack of gold-dust upon the table, and then he
+turned to Joan. "Come, Joan," he said, in the tone that brooked neither
+resistance nor delay.
+
+It was at that moment that the preacher first noticed Joan. Was her
+costume accountable for his start? Joan had remembered his voice and she
+wondered if he would remember hers. Certainly Jim had called her Joan
+more than once on the night of the marriage. The preacher's eyes grew
+keener. He glanced from Joan to Kells, and then at the other men, who
+had come in. Jim Cleve stood behind Jesse Smith's broad person, and
+evidently the preacher did not see him. That curious gaze, however, next
+discovered the dead man on the floor. Then to the curiosity and anxiety
+upon the preacher's face was added horror.
+
+"A minister of God is needed here, but not in the capacity you name," he
+said. "I'll perform no marriage ceremony in the presence of--murder."
+
+"Mr. Preacher, you'll marry me quick or you'll go along with him,"
+replied Kells, deliberately.
+
+"I cannot be forced." The preacher still maintained some dignity, but he
+had grown pale.
+
+"_I_ can force you. Get ready now!... Joan, come here!"
+
+Kells spoke sternly, yet something of the old, self-mocking spirit was
+in his tone. His intelligence was deriding the flesh and blood of him,
+the beast, the fool. It spoke that he would have his way and that the
+choice was fatal for him.
+
+Joan shook her head. In one stride Kells reached her and swung her
+spinning before him. The physical violence acted strangely upon
+Joan--roused her rage.
+
+"I wouldn't marry you to save my life--even if I could!" she burst out.
+
+At her declaration the preacher gave a start that must have been
+suspicion or confirmation, or both. He bent low to peer into the face of
+the dead Pearce. When he arose he was shaking his head. Evidently he had
+decided that Pearce was not the man to whom he had married Joan.
+
+"Please remove your mask," he said to Joan.
+
+She did so, swiftly, without a tremor. The preacher peered into her
+face again, as he had upon the night he had married her to Jim. He faced
+Kells again.
+
+"I am beyond your threats," he said, now with calmness. "I can't marry
+you to a woman who already has a husband.... But I don't see that
+husband here."
+
+"You don't see that husband here!" echoed the bewildered Kells. He
+stared with open mouth. "Say, have you got a screw loose?"
+
+The preacher, in his swift glance, had apparently not observed the
+half-hidden Cleve. Certainly it appeared now that he would have
+no attention for any other than Kells. The bandit was a study. His
+astonishment was terrific and held him like a chain. Suddenly he
+lurched.
+
+"What did you say?" he roared, his face flaming.
+
+"I can't marry you to a woman who already has a husband."
+
+Swift as light the red flashed out of Kells's face. "Did you ever see
+her before?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied the preacher.
+
+"Where and when?"
+
+"Here--at the back of this cabin--a few nights ago."
+
+It hurt Joan to look at Kells now, yet he seemed wonderful to behold.
+She felt as guilty as if she had really been false to him. Her
+heart labored high in her breast. This was the climax--the moment of
+catastrophe. Another word and Jim Cleve would be facing Kells. The blood
+pressure in Joan's throat almost strangled her.
+
+"At the back of this cabin!... At her window?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What were you there for?"
+
+"In my capacity as minister. I was summoned to marry her."
+
+"To marry her?" gasped Kells.
+
+"Yes. She is Joan Randle, from Hoadley, Idaho. She is over eighteen. I
+understood she was detained here against her will. She loved an honest
+young miner of the camp. He brought me up here one night. And I married
+them."
+
+"YOU--MARRIED--THEM!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Kells was slow in assimilating the truth and his action corresponded
+with his mind. Slowly his hand moved toward his gun. He drew it, threw
+it aloft. And then all the terrible evil in the man flamed forth. But
+as he deliberately drew down on the preacher Blicky leaped forward and
+knocked up the gun. Flash and report followed; the discharge went into
+the roof. Blicky grasped Kells's arm and threw his weight upon it to
+keep it down.
+
+"I fetched thet parson here," he yelled, "an you ain't a-goin' to kill
+him!... Help, Jesse!... He's crazy! He'll do it!"
+
+Jesse Smith ran to Blicky's aid and tore the gun out of Kells's hand.
+Jim Cleve grasped the preacher by the shoulders and, whirling him
+around, sent him flying out of the door.
+
+"Run for your life!" he shouted.
+
+Blicky and Jesse Smith were trying to hold the lunging Kells.
+
+"Jim, you block the door," called Jesse. "Bate, you grab any loose guns
+an' knives.... Now, boss, rant an' be damned!"
+
+They released Kells and backed away, leaving him the room. Joan's limbs
+seemed unable to execute her will.
+
+"Joan! It's true," he exclaimed, with whistling breath.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"WHO?" he bellowed.
+
+"I'll never tell."
+
+He reached for her with hands like claws, as if he meant to tear her,
+rend her. Joan was helpless, weak, terrified. Those shaking, clutching
+hands reached for her throat and yet never closed round it. Kells wanted
+to kill her, but he could not. He loomed over her, dark, speechless,
+locked in his paroxysm of rage. Perhaps then came a realization of ruin
+through her. He hated her because he loved her. He wanted to kill her
+because of that hate, yet he could not harm her, even hurt her. And his
+soul seemed in conflict with two giants--the evil in him that was hate,
+and the love that was good. Suddenly he flung her aside. She stumbled
+over Pearce's body, almost falling, and staggered back to the wall.
+Kells had the center of the room to himself. Like a mad steer in a
+corral he gazed about, stupidly seeking some way to escape. But the
+escape Kells longed for was from himself. Then either he let himself go
+or was unable longer to control his rage. He began to plunge around. His
+actions were violent, random, half insane. He seemed to want to destroy
+himself and everything. But the weapons were guarded by his men and the
+room contained little he could smash. There was something magnificent
+in his fury, yet childish and absurd. Even under its influence and his
+abandonment he showed a consciousness of its futility. In a few moments
+the inside of the cabin was in disorder and Kells seemed a disheveled,
+sweating, panting wretch. The rapidity and violence of his action,
+coupled with his fury, soon exhausted him. He fell from plunging here
+and there to pacing the floor. And even the dignity of passion passed
+from him. He looked a hopeless, beaten, stricken man, conscious of
+defeat.
+
+Jesse Smith approached the bandit leader. "Jack, here's your gun," he
+said. "I only took it because you was out of your head.... An' listen,
+boss. There's a few of us left."
+
+That was Smith's expression of fidelity, and Kells received it with a
+pallid, grateful smile.
+
+"Bate, you an' Jim clean up this mess," went on Smith. "An', Blicky,
+come here an' help me with Pearce. We'll have to plant him."
+
+The stir begun by the men was broken by a sharp exclamation from Cleve.
+
+"Kells, here comes Gulden--Beady Jones, Williams, Beard!"
+
+The bandit raised his head and paced back to where he could look out.
+
+Bate Wood made a violent and significant gesture. "Somethin' wrong," he
+said, hurriedly. "An' it's more'n to do with Gul!... Look down the road.
+See thet gang. All excited an' wavin' hands an' runnin'. But they're
+goin' down into camp."
+
+Jesse Smith turned a gray face toward Kells. "Boss, there's hell to pay!
+I've seen THET kind of excitement before."
+
+Kells thrust the men aside and looked out. He seemed to draw upon a
+reserve strength, for he grew composed even while he gazed. "Jim, get in
+the other room," he ordered, sharply. "Joan--you go, too. Keep still."
+
+Joan hurried to comply. Jim entered after her and closed the door.
+Instinctively they clasped hands, drew close together.
+
+"Jim, what does it mean?" she whispered, fearfully. "Gulden!"
+
+"He must be looking for me," replied Jim. "But there's more doing. Did
+you see that crowd down the road?"
+
+"No. I couldn't see out."
+
+"Listen."
+
+Heavy tramp boots sounded without. Silently Joan led Jim to the crack
+between the boards through which she had spied upon the bandits. Jim
+peeped through, and Joan saw his hand go to his gun. Then she looked.
+
+Gulden was being crowded into the cabin by fierce, bulging-jawed men
+who meant some kind of dark business. The strangest thing about that
+entrance was its silence. In a moment they were inside, confronting
+Kells with his little group. Beard, Jones, Williams, former faithful
+allies of Kells, showed a malignant opposition. And the huge Gulden
+resembled an enraged gorilla. For an instant his great, pale, cavernous
+eyes glared. He had one hand under his coat and his position had a
+sinister suggestion. But Kells stood cool and sure. When Gulden moved
+Kells's gun was leaping forth. But he withheld his fire, for Gulden had
+only a heavy round object wrapped in a handkerchief.
+
+"Look there!" he boomed, and he threw the object on the table.
+
+The dull, heavy, sodden thump had a familiar ring. Joan heard Jim gasp
+and his hand tightened spasmodically upon hers.
+
+Slowly the ends of the red scarf slid down to reveal an irregularly
+round, glinting lump. When Joan recognized it her heart seemed to burst.
+
+"Jim Cleve's nugget!" ejaculated Kells. "Where'd you get that?"
+
+Gulden leaned across the table, his massive jaw working. "I found it on
+the miner Creede," replied the giant, stridently.
+
+Then came a nervous shuffling of boots on the creaky boards. In the
+silence a low, dull murmur of distant voices could be heard, strangely
+menacing. Kells stood transfixed, white as a sheet.
+
+"On Creede!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where was his--his body?"
+
+"I left it out on the Bannack trail."
+
+The bandit leader appeared mute.
+
+"Kells, I followed Creede out of camp last night," fiercely declared
+Gulden.... "I killed him!... I found this nugget on him!"
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+Apparently to Kells that nugget did not accuse Jim Cleve of treachery.
+Not only did this possibility seem lost upon the bandit leader, but also
+the sinister intent of Gulden and his associates.
+
+"Then Jim didn't kill Creede!" cried Kells.
+
+A strange light flashed across his face. It fitted the note of gladness
+in his exclamation. How strange that in his amaze there should be relief
+instead of suspicion! Joan thought she understood Kells. He was glad
+that he had not yet made a murderer out of Cleve.
+
+Gulden appeared slow in rejoining. "I told you I got Creede," he said.
+"And we want to know if this says to you what it says to us."
+
+His huge, hairy hand tapped the nugget. Then Kells caught the
+implication.
+
+"What does it say to you?" he queried, coolly, and he eyed Gulden and
+then the grim men behind him.
+
+"Somebody in the gang is crooked. Somebody's giving you the
+double-cross. We've known that for long. Jim Cleve goes out to kill
+Creede. He comes in with Creede's gold-belt--and a lie!... We think
+Cleve is the crooked one."
+
+"No! You're way off, Gulden," replied Kells, earnestly. "That boy is
+absolutely square. He's lied to me about Creede. But I can excuse
+that. He lost his nerve. He's only a youngster. To knife a man in his
+sleep--that was too much for Jim!... And I'm glad! I see it all now.
+Jim's swapped his big nugget for Creede's belt. And in the bargain
+he exacted that Creede hit the trail out of camp. You happened to see
+Creede and went after him yourself.... Well, I don't see where you've
+any kick coming. For you've ten times the money in Cleve's nugget that
+there was in a share of Creede's gold."
+
+"That's not my kick," declared Gulden. "What you say about Cleve may be
+true. But I don't believe it. And the gang is sore. Things have leaked
+out. We're watched. We're not welcome in the gambling-places any more.
+Last night I was not allowed to sit in the game at Belcher's."
+
+"You think Cleve has squealed?" queried Kells.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll bet you every ounce of dust I've got that you're wrong," declared
+Kells. "A straight, square bet against anything you want to put up!"
+
+Kells's ringing voice was nothing if not convincing.
+
+"Appearances are against Cleve," growled Gulden, dubiously. Always he
+had been swayed by the stronger mind of the leader.
+
+"Sure they are," agreed Kells.
+
+"Then what do you base your confidence on?"
+
+"Just my knowledge of men. Jim Cleve wouldn't squeal.... Gulden, did
+anybody tell you that?"
+
+"Yes," replied Gulden, slowly. "Red Pearce."
+
+"Pearce was a liar," said Kells, bitterly. "I shot him for lying to me."
+
+Gulden stared. His men muttered and gazed at one another and around the
+cabin.
+
+"Pearce told me you set Cleve to kill me," suddenly spoke up the giant.
+
+If he expected to surprise Kells he utterly failed.
+
+"That's another and bigger lie," replied the bandit leader, disgustedly.
+"Gulden, do you think my mind's gone?"
+
+"Not quite," replied Gulden, and he seemed as near a laugh as was
+possible for him.
+
+"Well, I've enough mind left not to set a boy to kill such a man as
+you."
+
+Gulden might have been susceptible to flattery. He turned to his men.
+They, too, had felt Kells's subtle influence. They were ready to veer
+round like weather-vanes.
+
+"Red Pearce has cashed, an' he can't talk for himself," said Beady
+Jones, as if answering to the unspoken thought of all.
+
+"Men, between you and me, I had more queer notions about Pearce than
+Cleve," announced Gulden, gruffly. "But I never said so because I had no
+proof."
+
+"Red shore was sore an' strange lately," added Chick Williams. "Me an'
+him were pretty thick once--but not lately."
+
+The giant Gulden scratched his head and swore. Probably he had no sense
+of justice and was merely puzzled.
+
+"We're wastin' a lot of time," put in Beard, anxiously. "Don't fergit
+there's somethin' comin' off down in camp, an' we ain't sure what."
+
+"Bah! Haven't we heard whispers of vigilantes for a week?" queried
+Gulden.
+
+Then some one of the men looked out of the door and suddenly whistled.
+
+"Who's thet on a hoss?"
+
+Gulden's gang crowded to the door.
+
+"Thet's Handy Oliver."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Shore is. I know him. But it ain't his hoss.... Say, he's hurryin'."
+
+Low exclamations of surprise and curiosity followed. Kells and his men
+looked attentively, but no one spoke. The clatter of hoofs on the stony
+road told of a horse swiftly approaching--pounding to a halt before the
+cabin.
+
+"Handy!... Air you chased?... What's wrong?... You shore look pale round
+the gills." These and other remarks were flung out the door.
+
+"Where's Kells? Let me in," replied Oliver, hoarsely.
+
+The crowd jostled and split to admit the long, lean Oliver. He stalked
+straight toward Kells, till the table alone stood between them. He was
+gray of face, breathing hard, resolute and stern.
+
+"Kells, I throwed--you--down!" he said, with outstretched hand. It was a
+gesture of self-condemnation and remorse.
+
+"What of that?" demanded Kells, with his head leaping like the strike of
+an eagle.
+
+"I'm takin' it back!"
+
+Kells met the outstretched hand with his own and wrung it. "Handy, I
+never knew you to right--about--face. But I'm glad.... What's changed
+you so quickly?"
+
+"VIGILANTES!"
+
+Kells's animation and eagerness suddenly froze. "VIGILANTES!" he ground
+out.
+
+"No rumor, Kells, this time. I've sure some news.... Come close, all
+you fellows. You, Gulden, come an' listen. Here's where we git together
+closer'n ever."
+
+Gulden surged forward with his group. Handy Oliver was surrounded by
+pale, tight faces, dark-browed and hardeyed.
+
+He gazed at them, preparing them for a startling revelation. "Men, of
+all the white-livered traitors as ever was Red Pearce was the worst!" he
+declared, hoarsely.
+
+No one moved or spoke.
+
+"AN' HE WAS A VIGILANTE!"
+
+A low, strange sound, almost a roar, breathed through the group.
+
+"Listen now an' don't interrupt. We ain't got a lot of time.... So never
+mind how I happened to find out about Pearce. It was all accident, an'
+jest because I put two an' two together.... Pearce was approached by one
+of this secret vigilante band, an' he planned to sell the Border Legion
+outright. There was to be a big stake in it for him. He held off
+day after day, only tippin' off some of the gang. There's Dartt an'
+Singleton an' Frenchy an' Texas all caught red-handed at jobs. Pearce
+put the vigilantes to watchin' them jest to prove his claim.... Aw! I've
+got the proofs! Jest wait. Listen to me!... You all never in your lives
+seen a snake like Red Pearce. An' the job he had put up on us was grand.
+To-day he was to squeal on the whole gang. You know how he began on
+Kells--an' how with his oily tongue he asked a guarantee of no gun-play.
+But he figgered Kells wrong for once. He accused Kells's girl an' got
+killed for his pains. Mebbe it was part of his plan to git the girl
+himself. Anyway, he had agreed to betray the Border Legion to-day. An'
+if he hadn't been killed by this time we'd all be tied up, ready for the
+noose!... Mebbe thet wasn't a lucky shot of the boss's. Men, I was the
+first to declare myself against Kells, an' I'm here now to say thet I
+was a fool. So you've all been fools who've bucked against him. If this
+ain't provin' it, what can!
+
+"But I must hustle with my story.... They was havin' a trial down at
+the big hall, an' thet place was sure packed. No diggin' gold to-day!...
+Think of what thet means for Alder Creek. I got inside where I could
+stand on a barrel an' see. Dartt an' Singleton an' Frenchy an' Texas was
+bein' tried by a masked court. A man near me said two of them had been
+proved guilty. It didn't take long to make out a case against Texas
+an' Frenchy. Miners there recognized them an' identified them. They was
+convicted an' sentenced to be hung!.. Then the offer was made to let
+them go free out of the border if they'd turn state's evidence an' give
+away the leader an' men of the Border Legion. Thet was put up to each
+prisoner. Dartt he never answered at all. An' Singleton told them to go
+to hell. An' Texas he swore he was only a common an' honest road-agent,
+an' never heard of the Legion. But the Frenchman showed a yellow streak.
+He might have taken the offer. But Texas cussed him tumble, an' made him
+ashamed to talk. But if they git Frenchy away from Texas they'll make
+him blab. He's like a greaser. Then there was a delay. The big crowd
+of miners yelled for ropes. But the vigilantes are waitin', an' it's my
+hunch they're waitin' for Pearce."
+
+"So! And where do we stand?" cried Kells, clear and cold.
+
+"We're not spotted yet, thet's certain," replied Oliver, "else them
+masked vigilantes would have been on the job before now. But it's not
+sense to figger we can risk another day.... I reckon it's hit the trail
+back to Cabin Gulch."
+
+"Gulden, what do you say?" queried Kells, sharply.
+
+"I'll go or stay--whatever you want," replied the giant. In this crisis
+he seemed to be glad to have Kells decide the issue. And his followers
+resembled sheep ready to plunge after the leader.
+
+But though Kells, by a strange stroke, had been made wholly master of
+the Legion, he did not show the old elation or radiance. Perhaps he saw
+more clearly than ever before. Still he was quick, decisive, strong,
+equal to the occasion.
+
+"Listen--all of you," he said. "Our horses and outfits are hidden in a
+gulch several miles below camp. We've got to go that way. We can't pack
+any grub or stuff from here. We'll risk going through camp. Now leave
+here two or three at a time, and wait down there on the edge of the
+crowd for me. When I come we'll stick together. Then all do as I do."
+
+Gulden put the nugget under his coat and strode out, accompanied by Budd
+and Jones. They hurried away. The others went in couples. Soon only Bate
+Wood and Handy Oliver were left with Kells.
+
+"Now you fellows go," said Kells. "Be sure to round up the gang down
+there and wait for me."
+
+When they had gone he called for Jim and Joan to come out.
+
+All this time Joan's hand had been gripped in Jim's, and Joan had been
+so absorbed that she had forgotten the fact. He released her and faced
+her, silent, pale. Then he went out. Joan swiftly followed.
+
+Kells was buckling on his spurs. "You heard?" he said, the moment he saw
+Jim's face.
+
+"Yes," replied Jim.
+
+"So much the better. We've got to rustle.... Joan, put on that long
+coat of Cleve's. Take off your mask.... Jim, get what gold you have, and
+hurry. If we're gone when you come back hurry down the road. I want you
+with me."
+
+Cleve stalked out, and Joan ran into her room and put on the long coat.
+She had little time to choose what possessions she could take; and that
+choice fell upon the little saddle-bag, into which she hurriedly stuffed
+comb and brush and soap--all it would hold. Then she returned to the
+larger room.
+
+Kells had lifted a plank of the floor, and was now in the act of putting
+small buckskin sacks of gold into his pockets. They made his coat bulge
+at the sides.
+
+"Joan, stick some meat and biscuits in your pockets," he said. "I'd
+never get hungry with my pockets full of gold. But you might."
+
+Joan rummaged around in Bate Wood's rude cupboard.
+
+"These biscuits are as heavy as gold--and harder," she said.
+
+Kells flashed a glance at her that held pride, admiration, and sadness.
+"You are the gamest girl I ever knew! I wish I'd--But that's too
+late!... Joan, if anything happens to me stick close to Cleve. I believe
+you can trust him. Come on now."
+
+Then he strode out of the cabin. Joan had almost to run to keep up
+with him. There were no other men now in sight. She knew that Jim would
+follow soon, because his gold-dust was hidden in the cavern back of
+her room, and he would not need much time to get it. Nevertheless,
+she anxiously looked back. She and Kells had gone perhaps a couple of
+hundred yards before Jim appeared, and then he came on the run. At a
+point about opposite the first tents he joined Kells.
+
+"Jim, how about guns?" asked the bandit.
+
+"I've got two," replied Cleve.
+
+"Good! There's no telling--Jim, I'm afraid of the gang. They're crazy.
+What do you think?"
+
+"I don't know. It's a hard proposition."
+
+"We'll get away, all right. Don't worry about that. But the gang will
+never come together again." This singular man spoke with melancholy.
+"Slow up a little now," he added. "We don't want to attract
+attention.... But where is there any one to see us?... Jim, did I have
+you figured right about the Creede job?"
+
+"You sure did. I just lost my nerve."
+
+"Well, no matter."
+
+Then Kells appeared to forget that. He stalked on with keen glances
+searching everywhere, until suddenly, when he saw round a bend of the
+road, he halted with grating teeth. That road was empty all the way to
+the other end of camp, but there surged a dark mob of men. Kells stalked
+forward again. The Last Nugget appeared like an empty barn. How vacant
+and significant the whole center of camp! Kells did not speak another
+word.
+
+Joan hurried on between Kells and Cleve. She was trying to fortify
+herself to meet what lay at the end of the road. A strange, hoarse roar
+of men and an upflinging of arms made her shudder. She kept her eyes
+lowered and clung to the arms of her companions.
+
+Finally they halted. She felt the crowd before she saw it. A motley
+assemblage with what seemed craned necks and intent backs! They were all
+looking forward and upward. But she forced her glance down.
+
+Kells stood still. Jim's grip was hard upon her arm. Presently men
+grouped round Kells. She heard whispers. They began to walk slowly, and
+she was pushed and led along. More men joined the group. Soon she and
+Kells and Jim were hemmed in a circle. Then she saw the huge form
+of Gulden, the towering Oliver, and Smith and Blicky, Beard, Jones,
+Williams, Budd, and others. The circle they formed appeared to be only
+one of many groups, all moving, whispering, facing from her. Suddenly a
+sound like the roar of a wave agitated that mass of men. It was harsh,
+piercing, unnatural, yet it had a note of wild exultation. Then came the
+stamp and surge, and then the upflinging of arms, and then the abrupt
+strange silence, broken only by a hiss or an escaping breath, like a
+sob. Beyond all Joan's power to resist was a deep, primitive desire to
+look.
+
+There over the heads of the mob--from the bench of the slope--rose
+grotesque structures of new-hewn lumber. On a platform stood black,
+motionless men in awful contrast with a dangling object that doubled up
+and curled upon itself in terrible convulsions. It lengthened while it
+swayed; it slowed its action while it stretched. It took on the form of
+a man. He swung by a rope round his neck. His head hung back. His hands
+beat. A long tremor shook the body; then it was still, and swayed to and
+fro, a dark, limp thing.
+
+Joan's gaze was riveted in horror. A dim, red haze made her vision
+imperfect. There was a sickening riot within her.
+
+There were masked men all around the platform--a solid phalanx of them
+on the slope above. They were heavily armed. Other masked men stood on
+the platform. They seemed rigid figures--stiff, jerky when they moved.
+How different from the two forms swaying below!
+
+The structure was a rude scaffold and the vigilantes had already hanged
+two bandits.
+
+Two others with hands bound behind their backs stood farther along the
+platform under guard. Before each dangled a noose.
+
+Joan recognized Texas and Frenchy. And on the instant the great crowd
+let out a hard breath that ended in silence.
+
+The masked leader of the vigilantes was addressing Texas: "We'll spare
+your life if you confess. Who's the head of this Border Legion?"
+
+"Shore it's Red Pearce!... Haw! Haw! Haw!"
+
+"We'll give you one more chance," came the curt reply.
+
+Texas appeared to become serious and somber. "I swear to God it's
+Pearce!" he declared.
+
+"A lie won't save you. Come, the truth! We think we know, but we want
+proof! Hurry!"
+
+"You can go where it's hot!" responded Texas.
+
+The leader moved his hand and two other masked men stepped forward.
+
+"Have you any message to send any one--anything to say?" he asked.
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Have you any request to make?"
+
+"Hang that Frenchman before me! I want to see him kick."
+
+Nothing more was said. The two men adjusted the noose round the doomed
+man's neck. Texas refused the black cap. And he did not wait for the
+drop to be sprung. He walked off the platform into space as Joan closed
+her eyes.
+
+Again that strange, full, angry, and unnatural roar waved through the
+throng of watchers. It was terrible to hear. Joan felt the violent
+action of that crowd, although the men close round her were immovable as
+stones. She imagined she could never open her eyes to see Texas hanging
+there. Yet she did--and something about his form told her that he had
+died instantly. He had been brave and loyal even in dishonor. He had
+more than once spoken a kind word to her. Who could tell what had made
+him an outcast? She breathed a prayer for his soul.
+
+The vigilantes were bolstering up the craven Frenchy. He could not
+stand alone. They put the rope round his neck and lifted him off the
+platform--then let him down. He screamed in his terror. They cut short
+his cries by lifting him again. This time they held him up several
+seconds. His face turned black. His eyes bulged. His breast heaved. His
+legs worked with the regularity of a jumping-jack. They let him down and
+loosened the noose. They were merely torturing him to wring a confession
+from him. He had been choked severely and needed a moment to recover.
+When he did it was to shrink back in abject terror from that loop of
+rope dangling before his eyes.
+
+The vigilante leader shook the noose in his face and pointed to the
+swaying forms of the dead bandits.
+
+Frenchy frothed at the mouth as he shrieked out words in his native
+tongue, but any miner there could have translated their meaning.
+
+The crowd heaved forward, as if with one step, then stood in a strained
+silence.
+
+"Talk English!" ordered the vigilante.
+
+"I'll tell! I'll tell!"
+
+Joan became aware of a singular tremor in Kells's arm, which she still
+clasped. Suddenly it jerked. She caught a gleam of blue. Then the bellow
+of a gun almost split her ears. Powder burned her cheek. She saw Frenchy
+double up and collapse on the platform.
+
+For an instant there was a silence in which every man seemed petrified.
+Then burst forth a hoarse uproar and the stamp of many boots. All in
+another instant pandemonium broke out. The huge crowd split in every
+direction. Joan felt Cleve's strong arm around her--felt herself borne
+on a resistless tide of yelling, stamping, wrestling men. She had a
+glimpse of Kells's dark face drawing away from her; another of Gulden's
+giant form in Herculean action, tossing men aside like ninepins; another
+of weapons aloft. Savage, wild-eyed men fought to get into the circle
+whence that shot had come. They broke into it, but did not know then
+whom to attack or what to do. And the rushing of the frenzied miners all
+around soon disintegrated Kells's band and bore its several groups in
+every direction. There was not another shot fired.
+
+Joan was dragged and crushed in the melee. Not for rods did her feet
+touch the ground. But in the clouds of dust and confusion of struggling
+forms she knew Jim still held her, and she clasped him with all her
+strength. Presently her feet touched the earth; she was not jostled
+and pressed; then she felt free to walk; and with Jim urging her they
+climbed a rock-strewn slope till a cabin impeded further progress. But
+they had escaped the stream.
+
+Below was a strange sight. A scaffold shrouded in dust-clouds; a band
+of bewildered vigilantes with weapons drawn, waiting for they knew not
+what; three swinging, ghastly forms and a dead man on the platform; and
+all below, a horde of men trying to escape from one another. That shot
+of Kells's had precipitated a rush. No miner knew who the vigilantes
+were nor the members of the Border Legion. Every man there expected
+a bloody battle--distrusted the man next to him--and had given way to
+panic. The vigilantes had tried to crowd together for defense and
+all the others had tried to escape. It was a wild scene, born of wild
+justice and blood at fever-heat, the climax of a disordered time where
+gold and violence reigned supreme. It could only happen once, but it
+was terrible while it lasted. It showed the craven in men; it proved the
+baneful influence of gold; it brought, in its fruition, the destiny of
+Alder Creek Camp. For it must have been that the really brave and
+honest men in vast majority retraced their steps while the vicious kept
+running. So it seemed to Joan.
+
+She huddled against Jim there in the shadow of the cabin wall, and not
+for long did either speak. They watched and listened. The streams
+of miners turned back toward the space around the scaffold where the
+vigilantes stood grouped, and there rose a subdued roar of excited
+voices. Many small groups of men conversed together, until the vigilante
+leader brought all to attention by addressing the populace in general.
+Joan could not hear what he said and had no wish to hear.
+
+"Joan, it all happened so quickly, didn't it?" whispered Jim, shaking
+his head as if he was not convinced of reality.
+
+"Wasn't he--terrible!" whispered Joan in reply.
+
+"He! Who?"
+
+"Kells." In her mind the bandit leader dominated all that wild scene.
+
+"Terrible, if you like. But I'd say great!... The nerve of him! In the
+face of a hundred vigilantes and thousands of miners! But he knew what
+that shot would do!"
+
+"Never! He never thought of that," declared Joan, earnestly. "I felt him
+tremble. I had a glimpse of his face.... Oh!... First in his mind was
+his downfall, and, second, the treachery of Frenchy. I think that shot
+showed Kells as utterly desperate, but weak. He couldn't have helped
+it--if that had been the last bullet in his gun."
+
+Jim Cleve looked strangely at Joan, as if her eloquence was both
+persuasive and incomprehensible.
+
+"Well, that was a lucky shot for us--and him, too."
+
+"Do you think he got away?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"Sure. They all got away. Wasn't that about the maddest crowd you ever
+saw?"
+
+"No wonder. In a second every man there feared the man next to him would
+shoot. That showed the power of Kells's Border Legion. If his men had
+been faithful and obedient he never would have fallen."
+
+"Joan! You speak as if you regret it!"
+
+"Oh, I am ashamed," replied Joan. "I don't mean that. I don't know what
+I do mean. But still I'm sorry for Kells. I suffered so much.... Those
+long, long hours of suspense.... And his fortunes seemed my fortunes--my
+very life--and yours, too, Jim."
+
+"I think I understand, dear," said Jim, soberly.
+
+"Jim, what'll we do now? Isn't it strange to feel free?"
+
+"I feel as queer as you. Let me think," replied Jim.
+
+They huddled there in comparative seclusion for a long time after that.
+Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She
+felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind
+of burden. Moreover, responsibility had been added to his.
+
+The afternoon waned till the sun tipped the high range in the west. The
+excitement of the mining populace gradually wore away, and toward
+sunset strings of men filed up the road and across the open. The masked
+vigilantes disappeared, and presently only a quiet and curious crowd
+was left round the grim scaffold and its dark swinging forms. Joan's one
+glance showed that the vigilantes had swung Frenchy's dead body in the
+noose he would have escaped by treachery. They had hanged him dead. What
+a horrible proof of the temper of these newborn vigilantes! They had
+left the bandits swinging. What sight was so appalling as these limp,
+dark, swaying forms? Dead men on the ground had a dignity--at least the
+dignity of death. And death sometimes had a majesty. But here both life
+and death had been robbed and there was only horror. Joan felt that all
+her life she would be haunted.
+
+"Joan, we've got to leave Alder Creek," declared Cleve, finally. He rose
+to his feet. The words seemed to have given him decision. "At first I
+thought every bandit in the gang would run as far as he could from here.
+But--you can't tell what these wild men will do. Gulden, for instance!
+Common sense ought to make them hide for a spell. Still, no matter
+what's what, we must leave.... Now, how to go?"
+
+"Let's walk. If we buy horses or wait for the stage we'll have to see
+men here--and I'm afraid--"
+
+"But, Joan, there'll be bandits along the road sure. And the trails,
+wherever they are, would be less safe."
+
+"Let's travel by night and rest by day."
+
+"That won't do, with so far to go and no pack."
+
+"Then part of the way."
+
+"No. We'd better take the stage for Bannack. If it starts at all it'll
+be under armed guard. The only thing is--will it leave soon?... Come,
+Joan, we'll go down into camp."
+
+Dusk had fallen and lights had begun to accentuate the shadows. Joan
+kept close beside Jim, down the slope, and into the road. She felt like
+a guilty thing and every passing man or low-conversing group frightened
+her. Still she could not help but see that no one noticed her or Jim,
+and she began to gather courage. Jim also acquired confidence. The
+growing darkness seemed a protection. The farther up the street they
+passed, the more men they met. Again the saloons were in full blast.
+Alder Creek had returned to the free, careless tenor of its way. A
+few doors this side of the Last Nugget was the office of the stage and
+express company. It was a wide tent with the front canvas cut out and
+a shelf-counter across the opening. There was a dim, yellow lamplight.
+Half a dozen men lounged in front, and inside were several more, two of
+whom appeared to be armed guards. Jim addressed no one in particular.
+
+"When does the next stage leave for Bannack?"
+
+A man looked up sharply from the papers that littered a table before
+him. "It leaves when we start it," he replied, curtly.
+
+"Well, when will that be?"
+
+"What's that to you?" he replied, with a question still more curt.
+
+"I want to buy seats for two."
+
+"That's different. Come in and let's look you over.... Hello! it's young
+Cleve. I didn't recognize you. Excuse me. We're a little particular
+these days."
+
+The man's face lighted. Evidently he knew Jim and thought well of him.
+This reassured Joan and stilled the furious beating of her heart. She
+saw Jim hand over a sack of gold, from which the agent took the amount
+due for the passage. Then he returned the sack and whispered something
+in Jim's ear. Jim rejoined her and led her away, pressing her arm close
+to his side.
+
+"It's all right," he whispered, excitedly. "Stage leaves just before
+daylight. It used to leave in the middle of the fore-noon. But they want
+a good start to-morrow."
+
+"They think it might be held up?"
+
+"He didn't say so. But there's every reason to suspect that.... Joan, I
+sure hope it won't. Me with all this gold. Why, I feel as if I weighed a
+thousand pounds."
+
+"What'll we do now?" she inquired.
+
+Jim halted in the middle of the road. It was quite dark now. The lights
+of the camp were flaring; men were passing to and fro; the loose boards
+on the walks rattled to their tread; the saloons had begun to hum; and
+there was a discordant blast from the Last Nugget.
+
+"That's it--what'll we do?" he asked in perplexity.
+
+Joan had no idea to advance, but with the lessening of her fear and the
+gradual clearing of her mind she felt that she would not much longer be
+witless.
+
+"We've got to eat and get some rest," said Jim, sensibly.
+
+"I'll try to eat--but I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight,"
+replied Joan.
+
+Jim took her to a place kept by a Mexican. It appeared to consist of
+two tents, with opening in front and door between. The table was a plank
+resting upon two barrels, and another plank, resting upon kegs, served
+as a seat. There was a smoking lamp that flickered. The Mexican's
+tableware was of a crudeness befitting his house, but it was clean and
+he could cook--two facts that Joan appreciated after her long experience
+of Bate Wood. She and Jim were the only customers of the Mexican, who
+spoke English rather well and was friendly. Evidently it pleased him to
+see the meal enjoyed. Both the food and the friendliness had good effect
+upon Jim Cleve. He ceased to listen all the time and to glance furtively
+out at every footstep.
+
+"Joan, I guess it'll turn out all right," he said, clasping her hand
+as it rested upon the table. Suddenly he looked bright-eyed and shy. He
+leaned toward her. "Do you remember--we are married?" he whispered.
+
+Joan was startled. "Of course," she replied hastily. But had she
+forgotten?
+
+"You're my wife."
+
+Joan looked at him and felt her nerves begin to tingle. A soft, warm
+wave stole over her.
+
+Like a boy he laughed. "This was our first meal together--on our
+honeymoon!"
+
+"Jim!" The blood burned in Joan's face.
+
+"There you sit--you beautiful... But you're not a girl now. You're Dandy
+Dale."
+
+"Don't call me that!" exclaimed Joan.
+
+"But I shall--always. We'll keep that bandit suit always. You can dress
+up sometimes to show off--to make me remember--to scare the--the kids--"
+
+"Jim Cleve!"
+
+"Oh, Joan, I'm afraid to be happy. But I can't help it. We're going to
+get away. You belong to me. And I've sacks and sacks of gold-dust. Lord!
+I've no idea how much! But you can never spend all the money. Isn't it
+just like a dream?"
+
+Joan smiled through tears, and failed trying to look severe.
+
+"Get me and the gold away--safe--before you crow," she said.
+
+That sobered him. He led her out again into the dark street with its
+dark forms crossing to and fro before the lights.
+
+"It's a long time before morning. Where can I take you--so you can sleep
+a little?" he muttered.
+
+"Find a place where we can sit down and wait," she suggested.
+
+"No." He pondered a moment. "I guess there's no risk."
+
+Then he led her up the street and through that end of camp out upon the
+rough, open slope. They began to climb. The stars were bright, but even
+so Joan stumbled often over the stones. She wondered how Jim could get
+along so well in the dark and she clung to his arm. They did not speak
+often, and then only in whispers. Jim halted occasionally to listen or
+to look up at the bold, black bluff for his bearings. Presently he led
+her among broken fragments of cliff, and half carried her over rougher
+ground, into a kind of shadowy pocket or niche.
+
+"Here's where I slept," he whispered.
+
+He wrapped a blanket round her, and then they sat down against the rock,
+and she leaned upon his shoulder.
+
+"I have your coat and the blanket, too," she said. "Won't you be cold?"
+
+He laughed. "Now don't talk any more. You're white and fagged-out. You
+need to rest--to sleep."
+
+"Sleep? How impossible!" she murmured.
+
+"Why, your eyes are half shut now.... Anyway, I'll not talk to you. I
+want to think."
+
+"Jim!... kiss me--good night," she whispered.
+
+He bent over rather violently, she imagined. His head blotted out the
+light of the stars. He held her tightly for a moment. She felt him
+shake. Then he kissed her on the cheek and abruptly drew away. How
+strange he seemed!
+
+For that matter, everything was strange. She had never seen the stars so
+bright, so full of power, so close. All about her the shadows gathered
+protectingly, to hide her and Jim. The silence spoke. She saw Jim's face
+in the starlight and it seemed so keen, so listening, so thoughtful, so
+beautiful. He would sit there all night, wide-eyed and alert, guarding
+her, waiting for the gray of dawn. How he had changed! And she was his
+wife! But that seemed only a dream. It needed daylight and sight of her
+ring to make that real.
+
+A warmth and languor stole over her; she relaxed comfortably; after all,
+she would sleep. But why did that intangible dread hang on to her soul?
+The night was so still and clear and perfect--a radiant white night of
+stars--and Jim was there, holding her--and to-morrow they would ride
+away. That might be, but dark, dangling shapes haunted her, back in her
+mind, and there, too, loomed Kells. Where was he now? Gone--gone on his
+bloody trail with his broken fortunes and his desperate bitterness! He
+had lost her. The lunge of that wild mob had parted them. A throb
+of pain and shame went through her, for she was sorry. She could not
+understand why, unless it was because she had possessed some strange
+power to instil or bring up good in him. No woman could have been proof
+against that. It was monstrous to know that she had power to turn him
+from an evil life, yet she could not do it. It was more than monstrous
+to realize that he had gone on spilling blood and would continue to go
+on when she could have prevented it--could have saved many poor miners
+who perhaps had wives or sweethearts somewhere. Yet there was no help
+for it. She loved Jim Cleve. She might have sacrificed herself, but she
+would not sacrifice him for all the bandits and miners on the border.
+
+Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer that
+pang for Kells. She would never lie down in the peace and quiet of
+her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark and
+forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a lonely
+trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely stars.
+Sooner or later he would meet his doom. It was inevitable. She pictured
+over that sinister scene of the dangling forms; but no--Kells would
+never end that way. Terrible as he was, he had not been born to be
+hanged. He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that band of
+traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil they had to be.
+But more likely some gambling-hell, with gold and life at stake,
+would see his last fight. These bandits stole gold and gambled among
+themselves and fought. And that fight which finished Kells must
+necessarily be a terrible one. She seemed to see into a lonely cabin
+where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered and blue smoke floated
+in veils and men lay prone on the floor--Kells, stark and bloody, and
+the giant Gulden, dead at last and more terrible in death, and on the
+rude table bags of gold and dull, shining heaps of gold, and scattered
+on the floor, like streams of sand and useless as sand, dust of
+gold--the Destroyer.
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+All Joan's fancies and dreams faded into obscurity, and when she was
+aroused it seemed she had scarcely closed her eyes. But there was the
+gray gloom of dawn. Jim was shaking her gently.
+
+"No, you weren't sleepy--it's just a mistake," he said, helping her to
+arise. "Now we'll get out of here."
+
+They threaded a careful way out of the rocks, then hurried down the
+slope. In the grayness Joan saw the dark shape of a cabin and it
+resembled the one Kells had built. It disappeared. Presently when Jim
+led her into a road she felt sure that this cabin had been the one where
+she had been a prisoner for so long. They hurried down the road and
+entered the camp. There were no lights. The tents and cabins looked
+strange and gloomy. The road was empty. Not a sound broke the stillness.
+At the bend Joan saw a stage-coach and horses looming up in what seemed
+gray distance. Jim hurried her on.
+
+They reached the stage. The horses were restive. The driver was on the
+seat, whip and reins in hand. Two men sat beside him with rifles across
+their knees. The door of the coach hung open. There were men inside, one
+of whom had his head out of the window. The barrel of a rifle protruded
+near him. He was talking in a low voice to a man apparently busy at the
+traces.
+
+"Hello, Cleve! You're late," said another man, evidently the agent.
+"Climb aboard. When'll you be back?"
+
+"I hardly know," replied Cleve, with hesitation.
+
+"All right. Good luck to you." He closed the coach door after Joan and
+Jim. "Let 'em go, Bill."
+
+The stage started with a jerk. To Joan what an unearthly creak and
+rumble it made, disturbing the silent dawn! Jim squeezed her hand with
+joy. They were on the way!
+
+Joan and Jim had a seat to themselves. Opposite sat three men--the
+guard with his head half out of the window, a bearded miner who appeared
+stolid or drowsy, and a young man who did not look rough and robust
+enough for a prospector. None of the three paid any particular attention
+to Joan and Jim.
+
+The road had a decided slope down-hill, and Bill, the driver, had the
+four horses on a trot. The rickety old stage appeared to be rattling
+to pieces. It lurched and swayed, and sometimes jolted over rocks and
+roots. Joan was hard put to it to keep from being bumped off the seat.
+She held to a brace on one side and to Jim on the other. And when the
+stage rolled down into the creek and thumped over boulders Joan made
+sure that every bone in her body would be broken. This crossing marked
+the mouth of the gulch, and on the other side the road was smooth.
+
+"We're going the way we came," whispered Jim in her ear.
+
+This was surprising, for Joan had been sure that Bannack lay in the
+opposite direction. Certainly this fact was not reassuring to her.
+Perhaps the road turned soon.
+
+Meanwhile the light brightened, the day broke, and the sun reddened the
+valley. Then it was as light inside the coach as outside. Joan might
+have spared herself concern as to her fellow-passengers. The only
+one who noticed her was the young man, and he, after a stare and a
+half-smile, lapsed into abstraction. He looked troubled, and there was
+about him no evidence of prosperity. Jim held her hand under a fold of
+the long coat, and occasionally he spoke of something or other outside
+that caught his eye. And the stage rolled on rapidly, seemingly in
+pursuit of the steady roar of hoofs.
+
+Joan imagined she recognized the brushy ravine out of which Jesse Smith
+had led that day when Kells's party came upon the new road. She believed
+Jim thought so, too, for he gripped her hand unusually hard. Beyond that
+point Joan began to breathe more easily. There seemed no valid reason
+now why every mile should not separate them farther from the bandits,
+and she experienced relief.
+
+Then the time did not drag so. She wanted to talk to Jim, yet did not,
+because of the other passengers. Jim himself appeared influenced by
+their absorption in themselves. Besides, the keen, ceaseless vigilance
+of the guard was not without its quieting effect. Danger lurked ahead
+in the bends of that road. Joan remembered hearing Kells say that the
+Bannack stage had never been properly held up by road-agents, but that
+when he got ready for the job it would be done right. Riding grew to be
+monotonous and tiresome. With the warmth of the sun came the dust and
+flies, and all these bothered Joan. She did not have her usual calmness,
+and as the miles steadily passed her nervousness increased.
+
+The road left the valley and climbed between foot-hills and wound
+into rockier country. Every dark gulch brought to Joan a trembling,
+breathless spell. What places for ambush! But the stage bowled on.
+
+At last her apprehensions wore out and she permitted herself the luxury
+of relaxing, of leaning back and closing her eyes. She was tired,
+drowsy, hot. There did not seem to be a breath of air.
+
+Suddenly Joan's ears burst to an infernal crash of guns. She felt
+the whip and sting of splinters sent flying by bullets. Harsh yells
+followed, then the scream of a horse in agony, the stage lurching and
+slipping to a halt, and thunder of heavy guns overhead.
+
+Jim yelled at her--threw her down on the seat. She felt the body of the
+guard sink against her knees. Then she seemed to feel, to hear through
+an icy, sickening terror.
+
+A scattering volley silenced the guns above. Then came the pound of
+hoofs, the snort of frightened horses.
+
+"Jesse Smith! Stop!" called Jim, piercingly.
+
+"Hold on thar, Beady!" replied a hoarse voice. "Damn if it ain't Jim
+Cleve!"
+
+"Ho, Gul!" yelled another voice, and Joan recognized it as Blicky's.
+
+Then Jim lifted her head, drew her up. He was white with fear.
+
+"Dear--are--you--hurt?"
+
+"No. I'm only--scared," she replied.
+
+Joan looked out to see bandits on foot, guns in hand, and others
+mounted, all gathering near the coach. Jim opened the door, and,
+stepping out, bade her follow. Joan had to climb over the dead guard.
+The miner and the young man huddled down on their seat.
+
+"If it ain't Jim an' Kells's girl--Dandy Dale!" ejaculated Smith.
+"Fellers, this means somethin'.... Say, youngster, hope you ain't
+hurt--or the girl?"
+
+"No. But that's not your fault," replied Cleve. "Why did you want to
+plug the coach full of lead?"
+
+"This beats me," said Smith. "Kells sent you out in the stage! But
+when he gave us the job of holdin' it up he didn't tell us you'd be in
+there.... When an' where'd you leave him?"
+
+"Sometime last night--in camp--near our cabin," replied Jim, quick as
+a flash. Manifestly he saw his opportunity "He left Dandy Dale with me.
+Told us to take the stage this morning. I expected him to be in it or to
+meet us."
+
+"Didn't you have no orders?"
+
+"None, except to take care of the girl till he came. But he did tell me
+he'd have more to say."
+
+Smith gazed blankly from Cleve to Blicky, and then at Gulden, who came
+slowly forward, his hair ruffed, his gun held low. Joan followed the
+glance of his great gray eyes, and she saw the stage-driver hanging dead
+over his seat, and the guards lying back of him. The off-side horse of
+the leaders lay dead in his traces, with his mate nosing at him.
+
+"Who's in there?" boomed Gulden, and he thrust hand and gun in at the
+stage door. "Come out!"
+
+The young man stumbled out, hands above his head, pallid and shaking, so
+weak he could scarcely stand.
+
+Gulden prodded the bearded miner. "Come out here, you!"
+
+The man appeared to be hunched forward in a heap.
+
+"Guess he's plugged," said Smith. "But he ain't cashed. Hear him
+breathe?... Heaves like a sick hoss."
+
+Gulden reached with brawny arm and with one pull he dragged the miner
+off the seat and out into the road, where he flopped with a groan.
+There was blood on his neck and hands. Gulden bent over him, tore at his
+clothes, tore harder at something, and then, with a swing, he held aloft
+a broad, black belt, sagging heavy with gold.
+
+"Hah!" he boomed. It was just an exclamation, horrible to hear, but it
+did not express satisfaction or exultation. He handed the gold-belt to
+the grinning Budd, and turned to the young man.
+
+"Got any gold?"
+
+"No. I--I wasn't a miner," replied the youth huskily.
+
+Gulden felt for a gold-belt, then slapped at his pockets. "Turn round!"
+ordered the giant.
+
+"Aw, Gul let him go!" remonstrated Jesse Smith.
+
+Blicky laid a restraining hand upon Gulden's broad shoulder.
+
+"Turn round!" repeated Gulden, without the slightest sign of noticing
+his colleagues.
+
+But the youth understood and he turned a ghastly livid hue.
+
+"For God's sake--don't murder me!" he gasped. "I had--nothing--no
+gold--no gun!"
+
+Gulden spun him round like a top and pushed him forward. They went half
+a dozen paces, then the youth staggered, and turning, he fell on his
+knees.
+
+"Don't--kill--me!" he entreated.
+
+Joan, seeing Jim Cleve stiffen and crouch, thought of him even in that
+horrible moment; and she gripped his arm with all her might. They must
+endure.
+
+The other bandits muttered, but none moved a hand.
+
+Gulden thrust out the big gun. His hair bristled on his head, and his
+huge frame seemed instinct with strange vibration, like some object of
+tremendous weight about to plunge into resistless momentum.
+
+Even the stricken youth saw his doom. "Let--me--pray!" he begged.
+
+Joan did not fault, but a merciful unclamping of muscle-bound rigidity
+closed her eyes.
+
+"Gul!" yelled Blicky, with passion. "I ain't a-goin' to let you kill
+this kid! There's no sense in it. We're spotted back in Alder Creek....
+Run, kid! Run!"
+
+Then Joan opened her eyes to see the surly Gulden's arm held by Blicky,
+and the youth running blindly down the road. Joan's relief and joy were
+tremendous. But still she answered to the realizing shock of what Gulden
+had meant to do. She leaned against Cleve, all within and without a
+whirling darkness of fire. The border wildness claimed her then. She had
+the spirit, though not the strength, to fight. She needed the sight
+and sound of other things to restore her equilibrium. She would have
+welcomed another shock, an injury. And then she was looking down upon
+the gasping miner. He was dying. Hurriedly Joan knelt beside him to lift
+his head. At her call Cleve brought a canteen. But the miner could not
+drink and he died with some word unspoken.
+
+Dizzily Joan arose, and with Cleve half supporting her she backed off
+the road to a seat on the bank. She saw the bandits now at business-like
+action. Blicky and Smith were cutting the horses out of their harness:
+Beady Jones, like a ghoul, searched the dead men; the three bandits whom
+Joan knew only by sight were making up a pack; Budd was standing beside
+the stage with his, expectant grin; and Gulden, with the agility of the
+gorilla he resembled, was clambering over the top of the stage. Suddenly
+from under the driver's seat he hauled a buckskin sack. It was small,
+but heavy. He threw it down to Budd, almost knocking over that bandit.
+Budd hugged the sack and yelled like an Indian. The other men whooped
+and ran toward him. Gulden hauled out another sack. Hands to the number
+of a dozen stretched clutchingly. When he threw the sack there was a mad
+scramble. They fought, but it was only play. They were gleeful. Blicky
+secured the prize and he held it aloft in triumph. Assuredly he would
+have waved it had it not been so heavy. Gulden drew out several small
+sacks, which he provokingly placed on the seat in front of him. The
+bandits below howled in protest. Then the giant, with his arm under the
+seat, his huge frame bowed, heaved powerfully upon something, and
+his face turned red. He halted in his tugging to glare at his bandit
+comrades below. If his great cavernous eyes expressed any feeling it was
+analogous to the reluctance manifest in his posture--he regretted
+the presence of his gang. He would rather have been alone. Then with
+deep-muttered curse and mighty heave he lifted out a huge buckskin sack,
+tied and placarded and marked.
+
+"ONE HUNDRED POUNDS!" he boomed.
+
+It seemed to Joan then that a band of devils surrounded the stage, all
+roaring at the huge, bristling demon above, who glared and bellowed down
+at them.
+
+Finally Gulden stilled the tumult, which, after all, was one of frenzied
+joy.
+
+"Share and share alike!" he thundered, now black in the face. "Do you
+fools want to waste time here on the road, dividing up this gold?"
+
+"What you say goes," shouted Budd.
+
+There was no dissenting voice.
+
+"What a stake!" ejaculated Blicky. "Gul, the boss had it figgered.
+Strange, though, he hasn't showed up!"
+
+"Where'll we go?" queried Gulden. "Speak up, you men."
+
+The unanimous selection was Cabin Gulch. Plainly Gulden did not like
+this, but he was just.
+
+"All right. Cabin Gulch it is. But nobody outside of Kells and us gets a
+share in this stake."
+
+Many willing hands made short work of preparation. Gulden insisted
+on packing all the gold upon his saddle, and had his will. He seemed
+obsessed; he never glanced at Joan. It was Jesse Smith who gave the
+directions and orders. One of the stage-horses was packed. Another, with
+a blanket for a saddle, was given Cleve to ride. Blicky gallantly gave
+his horse to Joan, shortened his stirrups to fit her, and then whistled
+at the ridgy back of the stage-horse he elected to ride. Gulden was in a
+hurry, and twice he edged off, to be halted by impatient calls. Finally
+the cavalcade was ready; Jesse Smith gazed around upon the scene with
+the air of a general overlooking a vanquished enemy.
+
+"Whoever fust runs acrost this job will have blind staggers, don't you
+forgit thet!"
+
+"What's Kells goin' to figger?" asked Blicky, sharply.
+
+"Nothin' fer Kells! He wasn't in at the finish!" declared Budd.
+
+Blicky gazed darkly at him, but made no comment.
+
+"I tell you Blick, I can't git this all right in my head," said Smith.
+
+"Say, ask Jim again. Mebbe, now the job's done, he can talk," suggested
+Blicky.
+
+Jim Cleve heard and appeared ready for that question.
+
+"I don't know much more than I told you. But I can guess. Kells had this
+big shipment of gold spotted. He must have sent us in the stage for some
+reason. He said he'd tell me what to expect and do. But he didn't come
+back. Sure he knew you'd do the job. And just as sure he expected to be
+on hand. He'll turn up soon."
+
+This ruse of Jim's did not sound in the least logical or plausible to
+Joan, but it was readily accepted by the bandits. Apparently what they
+knew of Kells's movements and plans since the break-up at Alder Creek
+fitted well with Cleve's suggestions.
+
+"Come on!" boomed Gulden, from the fore. "Do you want to rot here?"
+
+Then without so much as a backward glance at the ruin they left behind
+the bandits fell into line. Jesse Smith led straight off the road into
+a shallow brook and evidently meant to keep in it. Gulden followed; next
+came Beady Jones; then the three bandits with the pack-horse and the
+other horses; Cleve and Joan, close together, filed in here; and last
+came Budd and Blicky. It was rough, slippery traveling and the riders
+spread out. Cleve, however, rode beside Joan. Once, at an opportune
+moment, he leaned toward her.
+
+"We'd better run for it at the first chance," he said, somberly.
+
+"No!... GULDEN!" Joan had to moisten her lips to speak the monster's
+name.
+
+"He'll never think of you while he has all that gold."
+
+Joan's intelligence grasped this, but her morbid dread, terribly
+augmented now, amounted almost to a spell. Still, despite the darkness
+of her mind, she had a flash of inspiration and of spirit.
+
+"Kells is my only hope!... If he doesn't join us soon--then we'll
+run!... And if we can't escape that"--Joan made a sickening gesture
+toward the fore--"you must kill me before--before--"
+
+Her voice trailed off, failing.
+
+"I will!" he promised through locked teeth.
+
+And then they rode on, with dark, faces bent over the muddy water and
+treacherous stones.
+
+When Jesse Smith led out of that brook it was to ride upon bare rock. He
+was not leaving any trail. Horses and riders were of no consideration.
+And he was a genius for picking hard ground and covering it. He never
+slackened his gait, and it seemed next to impossible to keep him in
+sight.
+
+For Joan the ride became toil and the toil became pain. But there was no
+rest. Smith kept mercilessly onward. Sunset and twilight and night found
+the cavalcade still moving. Then it halted just as Joan was about to
+succumb. Jim lifted her off her horse and laid her upon the grass. She
+begged for water, and she drank and drank. But she wanted no food. There
+was a heavy, dull beating in her ears, a band tight round her forehead.
+She was aware of the gloom, of the crackling of fires, of leaping
+shadows, of the passing of men to and fro near her, and, most of all,
+rendering her capable of a saving shred of self-control, she was aware
+of Jim's constant companionship and watchfulness. Then sounds grew far
+off and night became a blur.
+
+Morning when it came seemed an age removed from that hideous night. Her
+head had cleared, and but for the soreness of body and limb she would
+have begun the day strong. There appeared little to eat and no time to
+prepare it. Gulden was rampant for action. Like a miser he guarded the
+saddle packed with gold. This tune his comrades were as eager as he to
+be on the move. All were obsessed by the presence of gold. Only one hour
+loomed in their consciousness--that of the hour of division. How fatal
+and pitiful and terrible! Of what possible use or good was gold to them?
+
+The ride began before sunrise. It started and kept on at a steady
+trot. Smith led down out of the rocky slopes and fastnesses into
+green valleys. Jim Cleve, riding bareback on a lame horse, had his
+difficulties. Still he kept close beside or behind Joan all the way.
+They seldom spoke, and then only a word relative to this stern business
+of traveling in the trail of a hard-riding bandit. Joan bore up better
+this day, as far as her mind was concerned. Physically she had all
+she could do to stay in the saddle. She learned of what steel she was
+actually made--what her slender frame could endure. That day's ride
+seemed a thousand miles long, and never to end. Yet the implacable Smith
+did finally halt, and that before dark.
+
+Camp was made near water. The bandits were a jovial lot, despite a lack
+of food. They talked of the morrow. All--the world--lay beyond the next
+sunrise. Some renounced their pipes and sought their rest just to hurry
+on the day. But Gulden, tireless, sleepless, eternally vigilant, guarded
+the saddle of gold and brooded over it, and seemed a somber giant carved
+out of the night. And Blicky, nursing some deep and late-developed
+scheme, perhaps in Kells's interest or his own, kept watch over Gulden
+and all.
+
+Jim cautioned Joan to rest, and importuned her and promised to watch
+while she slept.
+
+Joan saw the stars through her shut eyelids. All the night seemed to
+press down and softly darken.
+
+The sun was shining red when the cavalcade rode up Cabin Gulch. The
+grazing cattle stopped to watch and the horses pranced and whistled.
+There were flowers and flitting birds, and glistening dew on leaves,
+and a shining swift flow of water--the brightness of morning and nature
+smiled in Cabin Gulch.
+
+Well indeed Joan remembered the trail she had ridden so often. How that
+clump of willow where first she had confronted Jim thrilled her now! The
+pines seemed welcoming her. The gulch had a sense of home in it for her,
+yet it was fearful. How much had happened there! What might yet happen!
+
+Then a clear, ringing call stirred her pulse. She glanced up the slope.
+Tall and straight and dark, there on the bench, with hand aloft, stood
+the bandit Kells.
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+The weary, dusty cavalcade halted on the level bench before the bandit's
+cabin. Gulden boomed a salute to Kells. The other men shouted greeting.
+In the wild exultation of triumph they still held him as chief.
+But Kells was not deceived. He even passed by that heavily laden,
+gold-weighted saddle. He had eyes only for Joan.
+
+"Girl, I never was so glad to see any one!" he exclaimed in husky amaze.
+"How did it happen? I never--"
+
+Jim Cleve leaned over to interrupt Kells. "It was great, Kells--that
+idea of yours putting us in the stagecoach you meant to hold up," said
+Cleve, with a swift, meaning glance. "But it nearly was the end of us.
+You didn't catch up. The gang didn't know we were inside, and they shot
+the old stage full of holes."
+
+"Aha! So that's it," replied Kells, slowly. "But the main point is--you
+brought her through. Jim, I can't ever square that."
+
+"Oh, maybe you can," laughed Cleve, as he dismounted.
+
+Suddenly Kells became aware of Joan's exhaustion and distress. "Joan,
+you're not hurt?" he asked in swift anxiety.
+
+"No, only played out."
+
+"You look it. Come." He lifted her out of the saddle and, half carrying,
+half leading her, took her into the cabin, and through the big room to
+her old apartment. How familiar it seemed to Joan! A ground-squirrel
+frisked along a chink between the logs, chattering welcome. The place
+was exactly as Joan had left it.
+
+Kells held Joan a second, as if he meant to embrace her, but he did not.
+"Lord, it's good to see you! I never expected to again.... But you
+can tell me all about yourself after you rest.... I was just having
+breakfast. I'll fetch you some."
+
+"Were you alone here?" asked Joan.
+
+"Yes. I was with Bate and Handy--"
+
+"Hey, Kells!" roared the gang, from the outer room.
+
+Kells held aside the blanket curtain so that Joan was able to see
+through the door. The men were drawn up in a half-circle round the
+table, upon which were the bags of gold.
+
+Kells whistled low. "Joan, there'll be trouble now," he said, "but don't
+you fear. I'll not forget you."
+
+Despite his undoubted sincerity Joan felt a subtle change in him, and
+that, coupled with the significance of his words, brought a return of
+the strange dread. Kells went out and dropped the curtain behind him.
+Joan listened.
+
+"Share and share alike!" boomed the giant Gulden.
+
+"Say!" called Kells, gaily, "aren't you fellows going to eat first?"
+
+Shouts of derision greeted his sally.
+
+"I'll eat gold-dust," added Budd.
+
+"Have it your own way, men," responded Kells. "Blicky, get the scales
+down off of that shelf.... Say, I'll bet anybody I'll have the most dust
+by sundown."
+
+More shouts of derision were flung at him.
+
+"Who wants to gamble now?"
+
+"Boss, I'll take thet bet."
+
+"Haw! Haw! You won't look so bright by sundown."
+
+Then followed a moment's silence, presently broken by a clink of metal
+on the table.
+
+"Boss, how'd you ever git wind of this big shipment of gold?" asked
+Jesse Smith.
+
+"I've had it spotted. But Handy Oliver was the scout."
+
+"We'll shore drink to Handy!" exclaimed one of the bandits.
+
+"An' who was sendin' out this shipment?" queried the curious Smith.
+"Them bags are marked all the same."
+
+"It was a one-man shipment," replied Kells. "Sent out by the boss miner
+of Alder Creek. They call him Overland something."
+
+That name brought Joan to her feet with a thrilling fire. Her uncle, old
+Bill Hoadley, was called "Overland." Was it possible that the bandits
+meant him? It could hardly be; that name was a common one in the
+mountains.
+
+"Shore, I seen Overland lots of times," said Budd. "An' he got wise to
+my watchin' him."
+
+"Somebody tipped it off that the Legion was after his gold," went on
+Kells. "I suppose we have Pearce to thank for that. But it worked out
+well for us. The hell we raised there at the lynching must have thrown
+a scare into Overland. He had nerve enough to try to send his dust to
+Bannack on the very next stage. He nearly got away with it, too. For it
+was only lucky accident that Handy heard the news."
+
+The name Overland drew Joan like a magnet and she arose to take her old
+position, where she could peep in upon the bandits. One glance at Jim
+Cleve told her that he, too, had been excited by the name. Then it
+occurred to Joan that her uncle could hardly have been at Alder Creek
+without Jim knowing it. Still, among thousands of men, all wild and
+toiling and self-sufficient, hiding their identities, anything might be
+possible. After a few moments, however, Joan leaned to the improbability
+of the man being her uncle.
+
+Kells sat down before the table and Blicky stood beside him with the
+gold-scales. The other bandits lined up opposite. Jim Cleve stood to one
+side, watching, brooding.
+
+"You can't weigh it all on these scales," said Blicky.
+
+"That's sure," replied Kells. "We'll divide the small bags first.... Ten
+shares--ten equal parts!... Spill out the bags. Blick. And hurry. Look
+how hungry Gulden looks!... Somebody cook your breakfast while we divide
+the gold."
+
+"Haw! Haw!"
+
+"Ho! Ho!"
+
+"Who wants to eat?"
+
+The bandits were gay, derisive, scornful, eager, like a group of boys,
+half surly, half playful, at a game.
+
+"Wal, I shore want to see my share weighted," drawled Budd.
+
+Kells moved--his gun flashed--he slammed it hard upon the table.
+
+"Budd, do you question my honesty?" he asked, quick and hard.
+
+"No offense, boss. I was just talkin'."
+
+That quick change of Kells's marked a subtle difference in the spirit of
+the bandits and the occasion. Gaiety and good humor and badinage ended.
+There were no more broad grins or friendly leers or coarse laughs.
+Gulden and his groups clustered closer to the table, quiet, intense,
+watchful, suspicious.
+
+It did not take Kells and his assistant long to divide the smaller
+quantity of the gold.
+
+"Here, Gulden," he said, and handed the giant a bag. Jesse....
+Bossert.... Pike.... Beady.... Braverman... "Blicky."
+
+"Here, Jim Cleve, get in the game," he added, throwing a bag at Jim. It
+was heavy. It hit Jim with a thud and dropped to the ground. He stooped
+to reach it.
+
+"That leaves one for Handy and one for me," went on Kells. "Blicky,
+spill out the big bag."
+
+Presently Joan saw a huge mound of dull, gleaming yellow. The color of
+it leaped to the glinting eyes of the bandits. And it seemed to her
+that a shadow hovered over them. The movements of Kells grew tense and
+hurried. Beads of sweat stood out upon his brow. His hands were not
+steady.
+
+Soon larger bags were distributed to the bandits. That broke the
+waiting, the watchfulness, but not the tense eagerness. The bandits were
+now like leashed hounds. Blicky leaned before Kells and hit the table
+with his fist.
+
+"Boss, I've a kick comin'," he said.
+
+"Come on with it," replied the leader.
+
+"Ain't Gulden a-goin' to divide up thet big nugget?"
+
+"He is if he's square."
+
+A chorus of affirmatives from the bandits strengthened Kells's
+statement. Gulden moved heavily and ponderously, and he pushed some of
+his comrades aside to get nearer to Kells.
+
+"Wasn't it my right to do a job by myself--when I wanted?" he demanded.
+
+"No. I agreed to let you fight when you wanted. To kill a man when you
+liked!... That was the agreement."
+
+"What'd I kill a man for?"
+
+No one answered that in words, but the answer was there, in dark faces.
+
+"I know what I meant," continued Gulden. "And I'm going to keep this
+nugget."
+
+There was a moment's silence. It boded ill to the giant.
+
+"So--he declares himself," said Blicky, hotly. "Boss, what you say
+goes."
+
+"Let him keep it," declared Kells, scornfully. "I'll win it from him and
+divide it with the gang."
+
+That was received with hoarse acclaims by all except Gulden. He glared
+sullenly. Kells stood up and shook a long finger in the giant's face.
+
+"I'll win your nugget," he shouted. "I'll beat you at any game.... I
+call your hand.... Now if you've got any nerve!"
+
+"Come on!" boomed the giant, and he threw his gold down upon the table
+with a crash.
+
+The bandits closed in around the table with sudden, hard violence, all
+crowding for seats.
+
+"I'm a-goin' to set in the game!" yelled Blicky.
+
+"We'll all set in," declared Jesse Smith.
+
+"Come on!" was Gulden's acquiescence.
+
+"But we all can't play at once," protested Kells. "Let's make up two
+games."
+
+"Naw!"
+
+"Some of you eat, then, while the others get cleaned out."
+
+"Thet's it--cleaned out!" ejaculated Budd, meanly. "You seem to be sure,
+Kells. An' I guess I'll keep shady of thet game."
+
+"That's twice for you, Budd," flashed the bandit leader. "Beware of the
+third time!"
+
+"Hyar, fellers, cut the cards fer who sets in an' who sets out," called
+Blicky, and he slapped a deck of cards upon the table.
+
+With grim eagerness, as if drawing lots against fate, the bandits bent
+over and drew cards. Budd, Braverman, and Beady Jones were the ones
+excluded from the game.
+
+"Beady, you fellows unpack those horses and turn them loose. And bring
+the stuff inside," said Kells.
+
+Budd showed a surly disregard, but the other two bandits got up
+willingly and went out.
+
+Then the game began, with only Cleve standing, looking on. The bandits
+were mostly silent; they moved their hands, and occasionally bent
+forward. It was every man against his neighbor. Gulden seemed implacably
+indifferent and played like a machine. Blicky sat eager and excited,
+under a spell. Jesse Smith was a slow, cool, shrewed gambler. Bossert
+and Pike, two ruffians almost unknown to Joan, appeared carried away
+by their opportunity. And Kells began to wear that strange, rapt, weak
+expression that gambling gave him.
+
+Presently Beady Jones and Braverman bustled in, carrying the packs. Then
+Budd jumped up and ran to them. He returned to the table, carrying a
+demijohn, which he banged upon the table.
+
+"Whisky!" exclaimed Kells. "Take that away. We can't drink and gamble."
+
+"Watch me!" replied Blicky.
+
+"Let them drink, Kells," declared Gulden. "We'll get their dust quicker.
+Then we can have our game."
+
+Kells made no more comment. The game went on and the aspect of it
+changed. When Kells himself began to drink, seemingly unconscious of the
+fact, Joan's dread increased greatly, and, leaving the peep-hole, she
+lay back upon the bed. Always a sword had hung over her head. Time after
+time by some fortunate circumstance or by courage or wit or by an act of
+Providence she had escaped what strangely menaced. Would she escape it
+again? For she felt the catastrophe coming. Did Jim recognize that fact?
+Remembering the look on his face, she was assured that he did. Then he
+would be quick to seize upon any possible chance to get her away; and
+always he would be between her and those bandits. At most, then, she had
+only death to fear--death that he would mercifully deal to her if the
+worst came. And as she lay there listening to the slow-rising murmur of
+the gamblers, with her thought growing clearer, she realized it was love
+of Jim and fear for him--fear that he would lose her--that caused her
+cold dread and the laboring breath and the weighted heart. She had cost
+Jim this terrible experience and she wanted to make up to him for it, to
+give him herself and all her life.
+
+Joan lay there a long time, thinking and suffering, while the strange,
+morbid desire to watch Kells and Gulden grew stronger and stronger,
+until it was irresistible. Her fate, her life, lay in the balance
+between these two men. She divined that.
+
+She returned to her vantage-point, and as she glanced through she
+vibrated to a shock. The change that had begun subtly, intangibly, was
+now a terrible and glaring difference. That great quantity of gold, the
+equal chance of every gambler, the marvelous possibilities presented to
+evil minds, and the hell that hid in that black bottle--these had made
+playthings of every bandit except Gulden. He was exactly the same as
+ever. But to see the others sent a chill of ice along Joan's veins.
+Kells was white and rapt. Plain to see--he had won! Blicky was wild with
+rage. Jesse Smith sat darker, grimmer, but no longer cool. There was
+hate in the glance he fastened upon Kells as he bet. Beady Jones and
+Braverman showed an inflamed and impotent eagerness to take their turn.
+Budd sat in the game now, and his face wore a terrible look. Joan could
+not tell what passion drove him, but she knew he was a loser. Pike and
+Bossert likewise were losers, and stood apart, sullen, watching with
+sick, jealous rage. Jim Cleve had reacted to the strain, and he was
+white, with nervous, clutching hands and piercing glances. And the game
+went on with violent slap of card or pound of fist upon the table, with
+the slide of a bag of gold or the little, sodden thump of its weight,
+with savage curses at loss and strange, raw exultation at gain, with
+hurry and violence--more than all, with the wildness of the hour and
+the wildness of these men, drawing closer and closer to the dread climax
+that from the beginning had been foreshadowed.
+
+Suddenly Budd rose and bent over the table, his cards clutched in a
+shaking hand, his face distorted and malignant, his eyes burning at
+Kells. Passionately he threw the cards down.
+
+"There!" he yelled, hoarsely, and he stilled the noise.
+
+"No good!" replied Kells, tauntingly. "Is there any other game you
+play?"
+
+Budd bent low to see the cards in Kells's hand, and then, straightening
+his form, he gazed with haggard fury at the winner. "You've done me!...
+I'm cleaned--I'm busted!" he raved.
+
+"You were easy. Get out of the game," replied Kells, with an exultant
+contempt. It was not the passion of play that now obsessed him, but the
+passion of success.
+
+"I said you done me," burst out Budd, insanely. "You're slick with the
+cards!"
+
+The accusation acted like magic to silence the bandits, to check
+movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed
+careless and nonchalant.
+
+"All right, Budd," he replied, but his tone did not suit his strange
+look. "That's three times for you!"
+
+Swift as a flash he shot. Budd fell over Gulden, and the giant with one
+sweep of his arm threw the stricken bandit off. Budd fell heavily, and
+neither moved nor spoke.
+
+"Pass me the bottle," went on Kells, a little hoarse shakiness in his
+voice. "And go on with the game!"
+
+"Can I set in now?" asked Beady Jones, eagerly.
+
+"You and Jack wait. This's getting to be all between Kells an' me," said
+Gulden.
+
+"We've sure got Blicky done!" exclaimed Kells. There was something
+taunting about the leader's words. He did not care for the gold. It was
+the fight to win. It was his egotism.
+
+"Make this game faster an' bigger, will you?" retorted Blicky, who
+seemed inflamed.
+
+"Boss, a little luck makes you lofty," interposed Jesse Smith in dark
+disdain. "Pretty soon you'll show yellow clear to your gizzard!"
+
+The gold lay there on the table. It was only a means to an end. It
+signified nothing. The evil, the terrible greed, the brutal lust, were
+in the hearts of the men. And hate, liberated, rampant, stalked out
+unconcealed, ready for blood.
+
+"Gulden, change the game to suit these gents," taunted Kells.
+
+"Double stakes. Cut the cards!" boomed the giant, instantly.
+
+Blicky lasted only a few more deals of the cards, then he rose, loser of
+all his share, a passionate and venomous bandit, ready for murder. But
+he kept his mouth shut and looked wary.
+
+"Boss, can't we set in now?" demanded Beady Jones.
+
+"Say, Beady, you're in a hurry to lose your gold," replied Kells. "Wait
+till I beat Gulden and Smith."
+
+Luck turned against Jesse Smith. He lost first to Gulden, then to
+Kells, and presently he rose, a beaten, but game man. He reached for the
+whisky.
+
+"Fellers, I reckon I can enjoy Kells's yellow streak more when I ain't
+playin'," he said.
+
+The bandit leader eyed Smith with awakening rancor, as if a persistent
+hint of inevitable weakness had its effect. He frowned, and the radiance
+left his face for the forbidding cast.
+
+"Stand around, you men, and see some real gambling," he said.
+
+At this moment in the contest Kells had twice as much gold as Gulden,
+there being a huge mound of little buckskin sacks in front of him.
+
+They began staking a bag at a time and cutting the cards, the higher
+card winning. Kells won the first four cuts. How strangely that radiance
+returned to his face! Then he lost and won, and won and lost. The other
+bandits grouped around, only Jones and Braverman now manifesting any
+eagerness. All were silent. There were suspense, strain, mystery in the
+air. Gulden began to win consistently and Kells began to change. It
+was a sad and strange sight to see this strong man's nerve and force
+gradually deteriorate under a fickle fortune. The time came when half
+the amount he had collected was in front of Gulden. The giant was
+imperturbable. He might have been a huge animal, or destiny, or
+something inhuman that knew the run of luck would be his. As he had
+taken losses so he greeted gains--with absolute indifference. While
+Kells's hands shook the giant's were steady and slow and sure. It must
+have been hateful to Kells--this faculty of Gulden's to meet victory
+identically as he met defeat. The test of a great gambler's nerve was
+not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact
+grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler and Kells was not. The
+giant had no emotion, no imagination. And Kells seemed all fire and
+whirling hope and despair and rage. His vanity began to bleed to death.
+This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of
+his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells's unsteady
+hand reached for one of the whisky bottles. Once with a low curse he
+threw an empty bottle through the door.
+
+"Hey, boss, ain't it about time--" began Jesse Smith. But whatever
+he had intended to say, he thought better of, withholding it. Kells's
+sudden look and movement were unmistakable.
+
+The goddess of chance, as false as the bandit's vanity, played with him.
+He brightened under a streak of winning. But just as his face began to
+lose its haggard shade, to glow, the tide again turned against him.
+He lost and lost, and with each bag of gold-dust went something of his
+spirit. And when he was reduced to his original share he indeed showed
+that yellow streak which Jesse Smith had attributed to him. The bandit's
+effort to pull himself together, to be a man before that scornful gang,
+was pitiful and futile. He might have been magnificent, confronted by
+other issues, of peril or circumstance, but there he was craven. He was
+a man who should never have gambled.
+
+One after the other, in quick succession, he lost the two bags of gold,
+his original share. He had lost utterly. Gulden had the great heap of
+dirty little buckskin sacks, so significant of the hidden power within.
+
+Joan was amazed and sick at sight of Kells then, and if it had been
+possible she would have withdrawn her gaze. But she was chained there.
+The catastrophe was imminent.
+
+Kells stared down at the gold. His jaw worked convulsively. He had the
+eyes of a trapped wolf. Yet he seemed not wholly to comprehend what had
+happened to him.
+
+Gulden rose, slow, heavy, ponderous, to tower over his heap of gold.
+Then this giant, who had never shown an emotion, suddenly, terribly
+blazed.
+
+"One more bet--a cut of the cards--my whole stake of gold!" he boomed.
+
+The bandits took a stride forward as one man, then stood breathless.
+
+"One bet!" echoed Kells, aghast. "Against what?"
+
+"AGAINST THE GIRL!"
+
+Joan sank against the wall, a piercing torture in her breast. She
+clutched the logs to keep from falling. So that was the impending
+horror. She could not unrivet her eyes from the paralyzed Kells, yet
+she seemed to see Jim Cleve leap straight up, and then stand, equally
+motionless, with Kells.
+
+"One cut of the cards--my gold against the girl!" boomed the giant.
+
+Kells made a movement as if to go for his gun. But it failed. His hand
+was a shaking leaf.
+
+"You always bragged on your nerve!" went on Gulden, mercilessly. "You're
+the gambler of the border!... Come on."
+
+Kells stood there, his doom upon him. Plain to all was his torture,
+his weakness, his defeat. It seemed that with all his soul he combated
+something, only to fail.
+
+"ONE CUT--MY GOLD AGAINST YOUR GIRL!"
+
+The gang burst into one concerted taunt. Like snarling, bristling wolves
+they craned their necks at Kells.
+
+"No, damn--you! No!" cried Kells, in hoarse, broken fury. With both
+hands before him he seemed to push back the sight of that gold, of
+Gulden, of the malignant men, of a horrible temptation.
+
+"Reckon, boss, thet yellow streak is operatin'!" sang out Jesse Smith.
+
+But neither gold, nor Gulden, nor men, nor taunts ruined Kells at this
+perhaps most critical crisis of his life. It was the mad, clutching,
+terrible opportunity presented. It was the strange and terrible nature
+of the wager. What vision might have flitted through the gambler's mind!
+But neither vision of loss nor gain moved him. There, licking like a
+flame at his soul, consuming the good in him at a blast, overpowering
+his love, was the strange and magnificent gamble. He could not resist
+it.
+
+Speechless, with a motion of his hand, he signified his willingness.
+
+"Blicky, shuffle the cards," boomed Gulden.
+
+Blicky did so and dropped the deck with a slap in the middle of the
+table.
+
+"Cut!" called Gulden.
+
+Kells's shaking hand crept toward the deck.
+
+Jim Cleve suddenly appeared to regain power of speech and motion.
+"Don't, Kells, don't!" he cried, piercingly, as he leaped forward.
+
+But neither Kells nor the others heard him, or even saw his movement.
+
+Kells cut the deck. He held up his card. It was the king of hearts. What
+a transformation! His face might have been that of a corpse suddenly
+revivified with glorious, leaping life.
+
+"Only an ace can beat thet!" muttered Jesse Smith into the silence.
+
+Gulden reached for the deck as if he knew every card left was an ace.
+His cavernous eyes gloated over Kells. He cut, and before he looked
+himself he let Kells see the card.
+
+"You can't beat my streak!" he boomed.
+
+Then he threw the card upon the table. It was the ace of spades.
+
+Kells seemed to shrivel, to totter, to sink. Jim Cleve went quickly to
+him, held to him.
+
+"Kells, go say good--by to your girl!" boomed Gulden. "I'll want her
+pretty soon.... Come on, you Beady and Braverman. Here's your chance to
+get even."
+
+Gulden resumed his seat, and the two bandits invited to play were eager
+to comply, while the others pressed close once more.
+
+Jim Cleve led the dazed Kells toward the door into Joan's cabin. For
+Joan just then all seemed to be dark.
+
+When she recovered she was lying on the bed and Jim was bending over
+her. He looked frantic with grief and desperation and fear.
+
+"Jim! Jim!" she moaned, grasping his hands. He helped her to sit up.
+Then she saw Kells standing there. He looked abject, stupid, drunk. Yet
+evidently he had begun to comprehend the meaning of his deed.
+
+"Kells," began Cleve, in low, hoarse tones, as he stepped forward with a
+gun. "I'm going to kill you--and Joan--and myself!"
+
+Kells stared at Cleve. "Go ahead. Kill me. And kill the girl, too.
+That'll be better for her now. But why kill yourself?"
+
+"I love her. She's my wife!"
+
+The deadness about Kells suddenly changed. Joan flung herself before
+him.
+
+"Kells--listen," she whispered in swift, broken passion. "Jim Cleve
+was--my sweetheart--back in Hoadley. We quarreled. I taunted him. I said
+he hadn't nerve enough--even to be bad. He left me--bitterly enraged.
+Next day I trailed him. I wanted to fetch him back.... You remember--how
+you met me with Robert--how you killed Roberts? And all the rest?...
+When Jim and I met out here--I was afraid to tell you. I tried to
+influence him. I succeeded--till we got to Alder Creek. There he went
+wild. I married him--hoping to steady him.... Then the day of the
+lynching--we were separated from you in the crowd. That night we
+hid--and next morning took the stage. Gulden and his gang held up the
+stage. They thought you had put us there. We fooled them, but we had to
+come on--here to Cabin Gulch--hoping to tell--that you'd let us go....
+And now--now--"
+
+Joan had not strength to go on. The thought of Gulden made her faint.
+
+"It's true, Kells," added Cleve, passionately, as he faced the
+incredulous bandit. "I swear it. Why, you ought to see now!"
+
+"My God, boy, I DO see!" gasped Kells. That dark, sodden thickness of
+comprehension and feeling, indicative of the hold of drink, passed away
+swiftly. The shock had sobered him.
+
+Instantly Joan saw it--saw in him the return of the other and better
+Kells, how stricken with remorse. She slipped to her knees and clasped
+her arms around him. He tried to break her hold, but she held on.
+
+"Get up!" he ordered, violently. "Jim, pull her away!... Girl, don't do
+that in front of me... I've just gambled away--"
+
+"Her life, Kells, only that, I swear," cried Cleve.
+
+"Kells, listen," began Joan, pleadingly. "You will not let that--that
+CANNIBAL have me?"
+
+"No, by God!" replied Kells, thickly. "I was drunk--crazy.... Forgive
+me, girl! You see--how did I know--what was coming?... Oh, the whole
+thing is hellish!"
+
+"You loved me once," whispered Joan, softly. "Do you love me still?...
+Kells, can't you see? It's not too late to save my life--and YOUR
+soul!... Can't you see? You have been bad. But if you save me now--from
+Gulden--save me for this boy I've almost ruined--you--you.... God will
+forgive you!... Take us away--go with us--and never come back to the
+border."
+
+"Maybe I can save you," he muttered, as if to himself. He appeared to
+want to think, but to be bothered by the clinging arms around him. Joan
+felt a ripple go over his body and he seemed to heighten, and the touch
+of his hands thrilled.
+
+Then, white and appealing, Cleve added his importunity.
+
+"Kells, I saved your life once. You said you'd remember it some day.
+Now--now!... For God's sake don't make me shoot her!"
+
+Joan rose from her knees, but she still clasped Kells. She seemed to
+feel the mounting of his spirit, to understand how in this moment he was
+rising out of the depths. How strangely glad she was for him!
+
+"Joan, once you showed me what the love of a good woman really was. I've
+never seen the same since then. I've grown better in one way--worse
+in all others.... I let down. I was no man for the border. Always that
+haunted me. Believe me, won't you--despite all?"
+
+Joan felt the yearning in him for what he dared not ask. She read his
+mind. She knew he meant, somehow, to atone for his wrong.
+
+"I'll show you again," she whispered. "I'll tell you more. If I'd never
+loved Jim Cleve--if I'd met you, I'd have loved you.... And, bandit or
+not, I'd have gone with you to the end of the world!"
+
+"Joan!" The name was almost a sob of joy and pain. Sight of his face
+then blinded Joan with her tears. But when he caught her to him, in a
+violence that was a terrible renunciation, she gave her embrace, her
+arms, her lips without the vestige of a lie, with all of womanliness and
+sweetness and love and passion. He let her go and turned away, and in
+that instant Joan had a final divination that this strange man could
+rise once to heights as supreme as the depths of his soul were dark.
+She dashed away her tears and wiped the dimness from her eyes. Hope
+resurged. Something strong and sweet gave her strength.
+
+When Kells wheeled he was the Kells of her earlier experience--cool,
+easy, deadly, with the smile almost amiable, and the strange, pale eyes.
+Only the white radiance of him was different. He did not look at her.
+
+"Jim, will you do exactly what I tell you?"
+
+"Yes, I promise," replied Jim.
+
+"How many guns have you?"
+
+"Two."
+
+"Give me one of them."
+
+Cleve held out the gun that all the while he had kept in his hand. Kells
+took it and put it in his pocket.
+
+"Pull your other gun--be ready," said he, swiftly. "But don't you shoot
+once till I go down!... Then do your best.... Save the last bullet for
+Joan--in case--"
+
+"I promise," replied Cleve, steadily.
+
+Then Kells drew a knife from a sheath at his belt. It had a long, bright
+blade. Joan had seen him use it many a time round the camp-fire. He
+slipped the blade up his sleeve, retaining the haft of the knife in his
+hand. He did not speak another word. Nor did he glance at Joan again.
+She had felt his gaze while she had embraced him, as she raised her
+lips. That look had been his last. Then he went out. Jim knelt beside
+the door, peering between post and curtain.
+
+Joan staggered to the chink between the logs. She would see that fight
+if it froze her blood--the very marrow of her bones.
+
+The gamblers were intent upon their game. Not a dark face looked up as
+Kells sauntered toward the table. Gulden sat with his back to the
+door. There was a shaft of sunlight streaming in, and Kells blocked it,
+sending a shadow over the bent heads of the gamesters. How significant
+that shadow--a blackness barring gold! Still no one paid any attention
+to Kells.
+
+He stepped closer. Suddenly he leaped into swift and terrible violence.
+Then with a lunge he drove the knife into Gulden's burly neck.
+
+Up heaved the giant, his mighty force overturning table and benches and
+men. An awful boom, strangely distorted and split, burst from him.
+
+Then Kells blocked the door with a gun in each hand, but only the one
+in his right hand spurted white and red. Instantly there followed a
+mad scramble--hoarse yells, over which that awful roar of Gulden's
+predominated--and the bang of guns. Clouds of white smoke veiled the
+scene, and with every shot the veil grew denser. Red flashes burst from
+the ground where men were down, and from each side of Kells. His form
+seemed less instinct with force; it had shortened; he was sagging. But
+at intervals the red spurt and report of his gun showed he was fighting.
+Then a volley from one side made him stagger against the door. The clear
+spang of a Winchester spoke above the heavy boom of the guns.
+
+Joan's eyesight recovered from its blur or else the haze of smoke
+drifted, for she saw better. Gulden's actions fascinated her, horrified
+her. He had evidently gone crazy. He groped about the room, through the
+smoke, to and fro before the fighting, yelling bandits, grasping with
+huge hands for something. His sense of direction, his equilibrium, had
+become affected. His awful roar still sounded above the din, but it was
+weakening. His giant's strength was weakening. His legs bent and buckled
+under him. All at once he whipped out his two big guns and began to fire
+as he staggered--at random. He killed the wounded Blicky. In the melee
+he ran against Jesse Smith and thrust both guns at him. Jesse saw the
+peril and with a shriek he fired point-blank at Gulden. Then as Gulden
+pulled triggers both men fell. But Gulden rose, bloody-browed, bawling,
+still a terrible engine of destruction. He seemed to glare in one
+direction and shoot in another. He pointed the guns and apparently
+pulled the triggers long after the shots had all been fired.
+
+Kells was on his knees now with only one gun. This wavered and fell,
+wavered and fell. His left arm hung broken. But his face flashed white
+through the thin, drifting clouds of smoke.
+
+Besides Gulden the bandit Pike was the only one not down, and he was
+hard hit. When he shot his last he threw the gun away, and, drawing a
+knife, he made at Kells. Kells shot once more, and hit Pike, but did
+not stop him. Silence, after the shots and yells, seemed weird, and the
+groping giant, trying to follow Pike, resembled a huge phantom. With one
+wrench he tore off a leg of the overturned table and brandished that. He
+swayed now, and there was a whistle where before there had been a roar.
+
+Pike fell over the body of Blicky and got up again. The bandit leader
+staggered to his feet, flung the useless gun in Pike's face, and closed
+with him in weak but final combat. They lurched and careened to and fro,
+with the giant Gulden swaying after them. Thus they struggled until
+Pike moved under Gulden's swinging club. The impetus of the blow
+carried Gulden off his balance. Kells seized the haft of the knife still
+protruding from the giant's neck, and he pulled upon it with all his
+might. Gulden heaved up again, and the movement enabled Kells to pull
+out the knife. A bursting gush of blood, thick and heavy, went flooding
+before the giant as he fell.
+
+Kells dropped the knife, and, tottering, surveyed the scene before
+him--the gasping Gulden, and all the quiet forms. Then he made a few
+halting steps, and dropped near the door.
+
+Joan tried to rush out, but what with the unsteadiness of her limbs
+and Jim holding her as he went out, too, she seemed long in getting to
+Kells.
+
+She knelt beside him, lifted his head. His face was white--his eyes were
+open. But they were only the windows of a retreating soul. He did not
+know her. Consciousness was gone. Then swiftly life fled.
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+Cleve steadied Joan in her saddle, and stood a moment beside her,
+holding her hands. The darkness seemed clearing before her eyes and the
+sick pain within her seemed numbing out.
+
+"Brace up! Hang--to your saddle!" Jim was saying, earnestly. "Any moment
+some of the other bandits might come.... You lead the way. I'll follow
+and drive the pack-horse."
+
+"But, Jim, I'll never be able to find the back-trail," said Joan.
+
+"I think you will. You'll remember every yard of the trail on which you
+were brought in here. You won't realize that till you see."
+
+Joan started and did not look back. Cabin Gulch was like a place in
+a dream. It was a relief when she rode out into the broad valley. The
+grazing horses lifted their heads to whistle. Joan saw the clumps of
+bushes and the flowers, the waving grass, but never as she had seen them
+before. How strange that she knew exactly which way to turn, to head, to
+cross! She trotted her horse so fast that Jim called to say he could
+not drive a pack-animal and keep to her gait. Every rod of the trail
+lessened a burden. Behind was something hideous and incomprehensible and
+terrible; before beckoned something beginning to seem bright. And it
+was not the ruddy, calm sunset, flooding the hills with color. That
+something called from beyond the hills.
+
+She led straight to a camp-site she remembered long before she came to
+it; and the charred logs of the fire, the rocks, the tree under which
+she had lain--all brought back the emotions she had felt there. She grew
+afraid of the twilight, and when night settled down there were phantoms
+stalking in the shadows. When Cleve, in his hurried camp duties, went
+out of her sight, she wanted to cry out to him, but had not the voice;
+and when he was close still she trembled and was cold. He wrapped
+blankets round her and held her in his arms, yet the numb chill and the
+dark clamp of mind remained with her. Long she lay awake. The stars were
+pitiless. When she shut her eyes the blackness seemed unendurable. She
+slept, to wake out of nightmare, and she dared sleep no more. At last
+the day came.
+
+For Joan that faint trail seemed a broad road, blazoned through the wild
+canons and up the rocky fastness and through the thick brakes. She led
+on and on and up and down, never at fault, with familiar landmarks near
+and far. Cleve hung close to her, and now his call to her or to the
+pack-horse took on a keener note. Every rough and wild mile behind them
+meant so much. They did not halt at the noon hour. They did not halt
+at the next camp-site, still more darkly memorable to Joan. And sunset
+found them miles farther on, down on the divide, at the head of Lost
+Canon.
+
+Here Joan ate and drank, and slept the deep sleep of exhaustion. Sunrise
+found them moving, and through the winding, wild canon they made fast
+travel. Both time and miles passed swiftly. At noon they reached the
+little open cabin, and they dismounted for a rest and a drink at the
+spring. Joan did not speak a word here. That she could look into the
+cabin where she had almost killed a bandit, and then, through silent,
+lonely weeks, had nursed him back to life, was a proof that the long
+ride and distance were helping her, sloughing away the dark deadlock to
+hope and brightness. They left the place exactly as they had found
+it, except that Cleve plucked the card from the bark of the
+balsam-tree--Gulden's ace--of--hearts target with its bullet--holes.
+
+Then they rode on, out of that canon, over the rocky ridge, down into
+another canon, on and on, past an old camp-site, along a babbling brook
+for miles, and so at last out into the foot--hills.
+
+Toward noon of the next day, when approaching a clump of low trees in a
+flat valley, Joan pointed ahead.
+
+"Jim--it was in there--where Roberts and I camped--and--"
+
+"You ride around. I'll catch up with you," replied Cleve.
+
+She made a wide detour, to come back again to her own trail, so
+different here. Presently Cleve joined her. His face was pale and
+sweaty, and he looked sick. They rode on silently, and that night they
+camped without water on her own trail, made months before. The single
+tracks were there, sharp and clear in the earth, as if imprinted but a
+day.
+
+Next morning Joan found that as the wild border lay behind her so did
+the dark and hateful shadow of gloom. Only the pain remained, and it had
+softened. She could think now.
+
+Jim Cleve cheered up. Perhaps it was her brightening to which he
+responded. They began to talk and speech liberated feeling. Miles of
+that back-trail they rode side by side, holding hands, driving the
+pack-horse ahead, and beginning to talk of old associations. Again it
+was sunset when they rode down the hill toward the little village of
+Hoadley. Joan's heart was full, but Jim was gay.
+
+"Won't I have it on your old fellows!" he teased. But he was grim, too.
+
+"Jim! You--won't tell--just yet!" she faltered.
+
+"I'll introduce you as my wife! They'll all think we eloped."
+
+"No. They'll say I ran after you!... Please, Jim! Keep it secret a
+little. It'll be hard for me. Aunt Jane will never understand."
+
+"Well, I'll keep it secret till you want to tell--for two things," he
+said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Meet me to--night, under the spruces where we had that quarrel. Meet
+just like we did then, but differently. Will you?"
+
+"I'll be--so glad."
+
+"And put on your mask now!... You know, Joan, sooner or later your story
+will be on everybody's tongue. You'll be Dandy Dale as long as you
+live near this border. Wear the mask, just for fun. Imagine your Aunt
+Jane--and everybody!"
+
+"Jim! I'd forgotten how I look!" exclaimed Joan in dismay. "I didn't
+bring your long coat. Oh, I can't face them in this suit!"
+
+"You'll have to. Besides, you look great. It's going to tickle me--the
+sensation you make. Don't you see, they'll never recognize you till you
+take the mask off.... Please, Joan."
+
+She yielded, and donned the black mask, not without a twinge. And thus
+they rode across the log bridge over the creek into the village. The few
+men and women they met stared in wonder, and, recognizing Cleve, they
+grew excited. They followed, and others joined them.
+
+"Joan, won't it be strange if Uncle Bill really is the Overland of Alder
+Creek? We've packed out every pound of Overland's gold. Oh! I hope--I
+believe he's your uncle.... Wouldn't it be great, Joan?"
+
+But Joan could not answer. The word gold was a stab. Besides, she saw
+Aunt Jane and two neighbors standing before a log cabin, beginning to
+show signs of interest in the approaching procession.
+
+Joan fell back a little, trying to screen herself behind Jim. Then Jim
+halted with a cheery salute.
+
+"For the land's sake!" ejaculated a sweet-faced, gray-haired woman.
+
+"If it isn't Jim Cleve!" cried another.
+
+Jim jumped off and hugged the first speaker. She seemed overjoyed to see
+him and then overcome. Her face began to work.
+
+"Jim! We always hoped you'd--you'd fetch Joan back!"
+
+"Sure!" shouted Jim, who had no heart now for even an instant's
+deception. "There she is!"
+
+"Who?... What?"
+
+Joan slipped out of her saddle and, tearing off the mask, she leaped
+forward with a little sob.
+
+"Auntie! Auntie!... It's Joan--alive--well!... Oh, so glad to be
+home!... Don't look at my clothes--look at me!"
+
+Aunt Jane evidently sustained a shock of recognition, joy, amaze,
+consternation, and shame, of which all were subservient to the joy.
+She cried over Joan and murmured over her. Then, suddenly alive to the
+curious crowd, she put Joan from her.
+
+"You--you wild thing! You desperado! I always told Bill you'd run wild
+some day!... March in the house and get out of that indecent rig!"
+
+That night under the spruces, with the starlight piercing the lacy
+shadows, Joan waited for Jim Cleve. It was one of the white, silent,
+mountain nights. The brook murmured over the stones and the wind rustled
+the branches.
+
+The wonder of Joan's home-coming was in learning that Uncle Bill Hoadley
+was indeed Overland, the discoverer of Alder Creek. Years and years of
+profitless toil had at last been rewarded in this rich gold strike.
+
+Joan hated to think of gold. She had wanted to leave the gold back in
+Cabin Gulch, and she would have done so had Jim permitted it. And to
+think that all that gold which was not Jim Cleve's belonged to her
+uncle! She could not believe it.
+
+Fatal and terrible forever to Joan would be the significance of gold.
+Did any woman in the world or any man know the meaning of gold as well
+as she knew it? How strange and enlightening and terrible had been her
+experience! She had grown now not to blame any man, honest miner or
+bloody bandit. She blamed only gold. She doubted its value. She could
+not see it a blessing. She absolutely knew its driving power to change
+the souls of men. Could she ever forget that vast ant-hill of toiling
+diggers and washers, blind and deaf and dumb to all save gold?
+
+Always limned in figures of fire against the black memory would be
+the forms of those wild and violent bandits! Gulden, the monster, the
+gorilla, the cannibal! Horrible as was the memory of him, there was
+no horror in thought of his terrible death. That seemed to be the one
+memory that did not hurt.
+
+But Kells was indestructible--he lived in her mind. Safe out of the
+border now and at home, she could look back clearly. Still all was
+not clear and never would be. She saw Kells the ruthless bandit, the
+organizer, the planner, and the blood-spiller. He ought have no place in
+a good woman's memory. Yet he had. She never condoned one of his deeds
+or even his intentions. She knew her intelligence was not broad enough
+to grasp the vastness of his guilt. She believed he must have been the
+worst and most terrible character on that wild border. That border had
+developed him. It had produced the time and the place and the man. And
+therein lay the mystery. For over against this bandit's weakness and
+evil she could contrast strength and nobility. She alone had known the
+real man in all the strange phases of his nature, and the darkness of
+his crime faded out of her mind. She suffered remorse--almost regret.
+Yet what could she have done? There had been no help for that impossible
+situation as, there was now no help for her in a right and just placing
+of Kells among men. He had stolen her--wantonly murdering for the
+sake of lonely, fruitless hours with her; he had loved her--and he had
+changed; he had gambled away her soul and life--a last and terrible
+proof of the evil power of gold; and in the end he had saved her--he
+had gone from her white, radiant, cool, with strange, pale eyes and
+his amiable, mocking smile, and all the ruthless force of his life had
+expended itself in one last magnificent stand. If only he had known her
+at the end--when she lifted his head! But no--there had been only the
+fading light--the strange, weird look of a retreating soul, already
+alone forever.
+
+A rustling of leaves, a step thrilled Joan out of her meditation.
+
+Suddenly she was seized from behind, and Jim Cleve showed that though
+he might be a joyous and grateful lover, he certainly would never be
+an actor. For if he desired to live over again that fatal meeting and
+quarrel which had sent them out to the border, he failed utterly in his
+part. There was possession in the gentle grasp of his arms and bliss in
+the trembling of his lips.
+
+"Jim, you never did it that way!" laughed Joan. "If you had--do you
+think I could ever have been furious?"
+
+Jim in turn laughed happily. "Joan, that's exactly the way I stole upon
+you and mauled you!".
+
+"You think so! Well, I happen to remember. Now you sit here and make
+believe you are Joan. And let me be Jim Cleve!... I'll show you!"
+
+Joan stole away in the darkness, and noiselessly as a shadow she stole
+back--to enact that violent scene as it lived in her memory.
+
+Jim was breathless, speechless, choked.
+
+"That's how you treated me," she said.
+
+"I--I don't believe I could have--been such a--a bear!" panted Jim.
+
+"But you were. And consider--I've not half your strength."
+
+"Then all I say is--you did right to drive me off.... Only you should
+never have trailed me out to the border."
+
+"Ah!... But, Jim, in my fury I discovered my love!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Border Legion, by Zane Grey
+
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