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.