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.