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The Border Legion

by Zane Grey · English · Gutenberg #4552 · 542,316 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Border Legion

Author: Zane Grey


        
Release date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4552]
                Most recently updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4552

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, David Widger
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE 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 

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