Luce, began to bend low, ready to duck. Gulden didn't look no different
from usual. You can't see any change in him. But I for one felt all hell
burnin' in him.
“'Oho! You have,' said Cleve, quick, like he was pleased. 'An' did you
get her?'
“'Not yet. Just looked over the ground. I'm pickin' you to go with me.
We'll split on the gold, an' I'll take the girl.'
“Cleve swung the whisky-bottle an' it smashed on Gulden's mug, knockin'
him flat. Cleve was up, like a cat, gun burnin' red. The other fellers
were dodgin' low. An' as I ducked I seen Gulden, flat on his back,
draggin' at his gun. He stopped short an' his hand flopped. The side of
his face went all bloody. I made sure he'd cashed, so I leaped up an'
grabbed Cleve.
“It'd been all right if Gulden had only cashed. But he hadn't. He came
to an' bellered fer his gun an' fer his pards. Why, you could have heard
him for a mile.... Then, as I told you, I had trouble in holdin' back a
general mix-up. An' while he was hollerin' about it I led them all over
to you. Gulden is layin' back there with his ear shot off. An' that's
all.”
Kells, with thoughtful mien, turned from Pearce to the group of
dark-faced men. “This fight settles one thing,” he said to them. “We've
got to have organization. If you're not all a lot of fools you'll see
that. You need a head. Most of you swear by me, but some of you are for
Gulden. Just because he's a bloody devil. These times are the wildest
the West ever knew, and they're growing wilder. Gulden is a great
machine for execution. He has no sense of fear. He's a giant. He loves
to fight--to kill. But Gulden's all but crazy. This last deal proves
that. I leave it to your common sense. He rides around hunting for some
lone camp to rob. Or some girl to make off with. He does not plan with
me or the men whose judgment I have confidence in. He's always without
gold. And so are most of his followers. I don't know who they are. And
I don't care. But here we split--unless they and Gulden take advice and
orders from me. I'm not so much siding with Cleve. Any of you ought to
admit that Gulden's kind of work will disorganize a gang. He's been with
us for long. And he approaches Cleve with a job. Cleve is a stranger.
He may belong here, but he's not yet one of us. Gulden oughtn't have
approached him. It was no straight deal. We can't figure what Gulden
meant exactly, but it isn't likely he wanted Cleve to go. It was a
bluff. He got called.... You men think this over--whether you'll stick
to Gulden or to me. Clear out now.”
His strong, direct talk evidently impressed them, and in silence they
crowded out of the cabin, leaving Pearce and Cleve behind.
“Jim, are you just hell-bent on fighting or do you mean to make yourself
the champion of every poor girl in these wilds?”
Cleve puffed a cloud of smoke that enveloped his head “I don't pick
quarrels,” he replied.
“Then you get red-headed at the very mention of a girl.”
A savage gesture of Cleve's suggested that Kells was right.
“Here, don't get red-headed at me,” called Kells, with piercing
sharpness. “I'll be your friend if you let me.... But declare yourself
like a man--if you want me for a friend!”
“Kells, I'm much obliged,” replied Cleve, with a semblance of
earnestness. “I'm no good or I wouldn't be out here... But I can't stand
for these--these deals with girls.”
“You'll change,” rejoined Kells, bitterly. “Wait till you live a few
lonely years out here! You don't understand the border. You're young.
I've seen the gold-fields of California and Nevada. Men go crazy with
the gold fever. It's gold that makes men wild. If you don't get killed
you'll change. If you live you'll see life on this border. War debases
the moral force of a man, but nothing like what you'll experience here
the next few years. Men with their wives and daughters are pouring
into this range. They're all over. They're finding gold. They've tasted
blood. Wait till the great gold strike comes! Then you'll see men and
women go back ten thousand years... And then what'll one girl more or
less matter?”
“Well, you see, Kells, I was loved so devotedly by one and made such a
hero of--that I just can't bear to see any girl mistreated.”
He almost drawled the words, and he was suave and cool, and his face was
inscrutable, but a bitterness in his tone gave the lie to all he said
and looked.
Pearce caught the broader inference and laughed as if at a great joke.
Kells shook his head doubtfully, as if Cleve's transparent speech only
added to the complexity. And Cleve turned away, as if in an instant he
had forgotten his comrades.
Afterward, in the silence and darkness of night, Joan Randle lay
upon her bed sleepless, haunted by Jim's white face, amazed at the
magnificent madness of him, thrilled to her soul by the meaning of his
attack on Gulden, and tortured by a love that had grown immeasurably
full of the strength of these hours of suspense and the passion of this
wild border.
Even in her dreams Joan seemed to be bending all her will toward that
inevitable and fateful moment when she must stand before Jim Cleve. It
had to be. Therefore she would absolutely compel herself to meet it,
regardless of the tumult that must rise within her. When all had been
said, her experience so far among the bandits, in spite of the shocks
and suspense that had made her a different girl, had been infinitely
more fortunate than might have been expected. She prayed for this luck
to continue and forced herself into a belief that it would.
That night she had slept in Dandy Dale's clothes, except for the boots;
and sometimes while turning in restless slumber she had been awakened by
rolling on the heavy gun, which she had not removed from the belt. And
at such moments, she had to ponder in the darkness, to realize that
she, Joan Randle, lay a captive in a bandit's camp, dressed in a dead
bandit's garb, and packing his gun--even while she slept. It was such an
improbable, impossible thing. Yet the cold feel of the polished gun sent
a thrill of certainty through her.
In the morning she at least did not have to suffer the shame of getting
into Dandy Dale's clothes, for she was already in them. She found a
grain of comfort even in that. When she had put on the mask and sombrero
she studied the effect in her little mirror. And she again decided
that no one, not even Jim Cleve, could recognize her in that disguise.
Likewise she gathered courage from the fact that even her best girl
friend would have found her figure unfamiliar and striking where once
it had been merely tall and slender and strong, ordinarily dressed. Then
how would Jim Cleve ever recognize her? She remembered her voice that
had been called a contralto, low and deep; and how she used to sing the
simple songs she knew. She could not disguise that voice. But she need
not let Jim hear it. Then there was a return of the idea that he would
instinctively recognize her--that no disguise could be proof to a lover
who had ruined himself for her. Suddenly she realized how futile all
her worry and shame. Sooner or later she must reveal her identity to Jim
Cleve. Out of all this complexity of emotion Joan divined that what
she yearned most for was to spare Cleve the shame consequent upon
recognition of her and then the agony he must suffer at a false
conception of her presence there. It was a weakness in her. When death
menaced her lover and the most inconceivably horrible situation yawned
for her, still she could only think of her passionate yearning to have
him know, all in a flash, that she loved him, that she had followed him
in remorse, that she was true to him and would die before being anything
else.
And when she left her cabin she was in a mood to force an issue.
Kells was sitting at the table and being served by Bate Wood.
“Hello, Dandy!” he greeted her, in surprise and pleasure. “This's early
for you.”
Joan returned his greeting and said that she could not sleep all the
time.
“You're coming round. I'll bet you hold up a stage before a month is
out.”
“Hold up a stage?” echoed Joan.
“Sure. It'll be great fun,” replied Kells, with a laugh. “Here--sit down
and eat with me.... Bate, come along lively with breakfast.... It's
fine to see you there. That mask changes you, though. No one can see how
pretty you are.... Joan, your admirer, Gulden, has been incapacitated
for the present.”
Then in evident satisfaction Kells repeated the story that Joan had
heard Red Pearce tell the night before; and in the telling Kells
enlarged somewhat upon Jim Cleve.
“I've taken a liking to Cleve,” said Kells. “He's a strange youngster.
But he's more man than boy. I think he's broken-hearted over some rotten
girl who's been faithless or something. Most women are no good, Joan. A
while ago I'd have said ALL women were that, but since I've known you I
think--I know different. Still, one girl out of a million doesn't change
a world.”
“What will this J--jim C--cleve do--when he sees--me?” asked Joan, and
she choked over the name.
“Don't eat so fast, girl,” said Kells. “You're only seventeen years old
and you've plenty of time.... Well, I've thought some about Cleve.
He's not crazy like Gulden, but he's just as dangerous. He's dangerous
because he doesn't know what he's doing--has absolutely no fear of
death--and then he's swift with a gun. That's a bad combination. Cleve
will kill a man presently. He's shot three already, and in Gulden's
case he meant to kill. If once he kills a man--that'll make him a
gun-fighter. I've worried a little about his seeing you. But I can
manage him, I guess. He can't be scared or driven. But he may be led.
I've had Red Pearce tell him you are my wife. I hope he believes it,
for none of the other fellows believe it. Anyway, you'll meet this
Cleve soon, maybe to-day, and I want you to be friendly. If I can steady
him--stop his drinking--he'll be the best man for me on this border.”
“I'm to help persuade him to join your band?” asked Joan, and she could
not yet control her voice.
“Is that so black a thing?” queried Kells, evidently nettled, and he
glared at her.
“I--I don't know,” faltered Joan. “Is this--this boy a criminal yet?”
“No. He's only a fine, decent young chap gone wild--gone bad for some
girl. I told you that. You don't seem to grasp the point. If I can
control him he'll be of value to me--he'll be a bold and clever and
dangerous man--he'll last out here. If I can't win him, why, he won't
last a week longer. He'll be shot or knifed in a brawl. Without my
control Cleve'll go straight to the hell he's headed for.”
Joan pushed back her plate and, looking up, steadily eyed the bandit.
“Kells, I'd rather he ended his--his career quick--and went to--to--than
live to be a bandit and murderer at your command.”
Kells laughed mockingly, yet the savage action with which he threw his
cup against the wall attested to the fact that Joan had strange power to
hurt him.
“That's your sympathy, because I told you some girl drove him out here,”
said the bandit. “He's done for. You'll know that the moment you see
him. I really think he or any man out here would be the better for my
interest. Now, I want to know if you'll stand by me--put in a word to
help influence this wild boy.”
“I'll--I'll have to see him first,” replied Joan.
“Well, you take it sort of hard,” growled Kells. Then presently he
brightened. “I seem always to forget that you're only a kid. Listen! Now
you do as you like. But I want to warn you that you've got to get back
the same kind of nerve”--here he lowered his voice and glanced at
Bate Wood--“that you showed when you shot me. You're going to see some
sights.... A great gold strike! Men grown gold-mad! Woman of no more
account than a puff of cottonseed!... Hunger, toil, pain, disease,
starvation, robbery, blood, murder, hanging, death--all nothing,
nothing! There will be only gold. Sleepless nights--days of hell--rush
and rush--all strangers with greedy eyes! The things that made life
will be forgotten and life itself will be cheap. There will be only that
yellow stuff--gold--over which men go mad and women sell their souls!”
After breakfast Kells had Joan's horse brought out of the corral and
saddled.
“You must ride some every day. You must keep in condition,” he said.
“Pretty soon we may have a chase, and I don't want it to tear you to
pieces.”
“Where shall I ride?” asked Joan.
“Anywhere you like up and down the gulch.”
“Are you going to have me watched?”
“Not if you say you won't run off.”
“You trust me?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I promise. And if I change my mind I'll tell you.”
“Lord! don't do it, Joan. I--I--Well, you've come to mean a good deal
to me. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you.” As she mounted the horse
Kells added, “Don't stand any raw talk from any of the gang.”
Joan rode away, pondering in mind the strange fact that though she hated
this bandit, yet she had softened toward him. His eyes lit when he saw
her; his voice mellowed; his manner changed. He had meant to tell her
again that he loved her, yet he controlled it. Was he ashamed? Had he
seen into the depths of himself and despised what he had imagined love?
There were antagonistic forces at war within him.
It was early morning and a rosy light tinged the fresh green. She let
the eager horse break into a canter and then a gallop; and she rode up
the gulch till the trail started into rough ground. Then turning, she
went back, down under the pines and by the cabins, to where the gulch
narrowed its outlet into the wide valley. Here she met several dusty
horsemen driving a pack-train. One, a jovial ruffian, threw up his hands
in mock surrender.
“Hands up, pards!” he exclaimed. “Reckon we've run agin' Dandy Dale come
to life.”
His companions made haste to comply and then the three regarded her with
bold and roguish eyes. Joan had run square into them round a corner of
slope and, as there was no room to pass, she had halted.
“Shore it's the Dandy Dale we heerd of,” vouchsafed another.
“Thet's Dandy's outfit with a girl inside,” added the third.
Joan wheeled her horse and rode back up the trail. The glances of these
ruffians seemed to scorch her with the reality of her appearance. She
wore a disguise, but her womanhood was more manifest in it than in her
feminine garb. It attracted the bold glances of these men. If there were
any possible decency among them, this outrageous bandit costume rendered
it null. How could she ever continue to wear it? Would not something
good and sacred within her be sullied by a constant exposure to the
effect she had upon these vile border men? She did not think it could
while she loved Jim Cleve; and with thought of him came a mighty throb
of her heart to assure her that nothing mattered if only she could save
him.
Upon the return trip up the gulch Joan found men in sight leading
horses, chopping wood, stretching arms in cabin doors. Joan avoided
riding near them, yet even at a distance she was aware of their gaze.
One rowdy, half hidden by a window, curved hands round his mouth and
called, softly, “Hullo, sweetheart!”
Joan was ashamed that she could feel insulted. She was amazed at the
temper which seemed roused in her. This border had caused her feelings
she had never dreamed possible to her. Avoiding the trail, she headed
for the other side of the gulch. There were clumps of willows along
the brook through which she threaded a way, looking for a good place to
cross. The horse snorted for water. Apparently she was not going to find
any better crossing, so she turned the horse into a narrow lane through
the willows and, dismounting on a mossy bank, she slipped the bridle so
the horse could drink.
Suddenly she became aware that she was not alone. But she saw no one
in front of her or on the other side of her horse. Then she turned. Jim
Cleve was in the act of rising from his knees. He had a towel in his
hand. His face was wet. He stood no more than ten steps from her.
Joan could not have repressed a little cry to save her life. The
surprise was tremendous. She could not move a finger. She expected to
hear him call her name.
Cleve stared at her. His face, in the morning light, was as drawn and
white as that of a corpse. Only his eyes seemed alive and they were
flames. A lightning flash of scorn leaped to them. He only recognized
in her a woman, and his scorn was for the creature that bandit garb
proclaimed her to be. A sad and bitter smile crossed his face; and then
it was followed by an expression that was a lash upon Joan's bleeding
spirit. He looked at her shapely person with something of the brazen
and evil glance that had been so revolting to her in the eyes of those
ruffians. That was the unexpected--the impossible--in connection with
Jim Cleve. How could she stand there under it--and live?
She jerked at the bridle, and, wading blindly across the brook, she
mounted somehow, and rode with blurred sight back to the cabin. Kells
appeared busy with men outside and did not accost her. She fled to her
cabin and barricaded the door.
Then she hid her face on her bed, covered herself to shut out the light,
and lay there, broken-hearted. What had been that other thing she had
imagined was shame--that shrinking and burning she had suffered through
Kells and his men? What was that compared to this awful thing? A brand
of red-hot pitch, blacker and bitterer than death, had been struck
brutally across her soul. By the man she loved--whom she would have died
to save! Jim Cleve had seen in her only an abandoned creature of the
camps. His sad and bitter smile had been for the thought that he could
have loved anything of her sex. His scorn had been for the betrayed
youth and womanhood suggested by her appearance. And then the thing
that struck into Joan's heart was the fact that her grace and charm
of person, revealed by this costume forced upon her, had aroused Jim
Cleve's first response to the evil surrounding him, the first call to
that baseness he must be assimilating from these border ruffians. That
he could look at her so! The girl he had loved! Joan's agony lay not
in the circumstance of his being as mistaken in her character as he had
been in her identity, but that she, of all women, had to be the one who
made him answer, like Kells and Gulden and all those ruffians, to the
instincts of a beast.
“Oh, he'd been drunk--he was drunk!” whispered Joan. “He isn't to be
blamed. He's not my old Jim. He's suffering--he's changed--he doesn't
care. What could I expect--standing there like a hussy before him--in
this--this indecent rig?... I must see him. I must tell him. If he
recognized me now--and I had no chance to tell him why I'm here--why I
look like this--that I love him--am still good--and true to him--if I
couldn't tell him I'd--I'd shoot myself!”
Joan sobbed out the final words and then broke down. And when the spell
had exercised its sway, leaving her limp and shaken and weak, she was
the better for it. Slowly calmness returned so that she could look at
her wild and furious rush from the spot where she had faced Jim Cleve,
at the storm of shame ending in her collapse. She realized that if she
had met Jim Cleve here in the dress in which she had left home there
would have been the same shock of surprise and fear and love. She owed
part of that breakdown to the suspense she had been under and then the
suddenness of the meeting. Looking back at her agitation, she felt that
it had been natural--that if she could only tell the truth to Jim Cleve
the situation was not impossible. But the meeting, and all following it,
bore tremendous revelation of how through all this wild experience she
had learned to love Jim Cleve. But for his reckless flight and her blind
pursuit, and then the anxiety, fear, pain, toil, and despair, she would
never have known her woman's heart and its capacity for love.
11
Following that meeting, with all its power to change and strengthen
Joan, there were uneventful days in which she rode the gulch trails
and grew able to stand the jests and glances of the bandit's gang. She
thought she saw and heard everything, yet insulated her true self in a
callous and unreceptive aloofness from all that affronted her.
The days were uneventful because, while always looking for Jim Cleve,
she never once saw him. Several times she heard his name mentioned. He
was here and there--at Beard's off in the mountains. But he did not come
to Kells's cabin, which fact, Joan gathered, had made Kells anxious. He
did not want to lose Cleve. Joan peered from her covert in the evenings,
and watched for Jim, and grew weary of the loud talk and laughter, the
gambling and smoking and drinking. When there seemed no more chance of
Cleve's coming, then Joan went to bed.
On these occasions Joan learned that Kells was passionately keen to
gamble, that he was a weak hand at cards, an honest gambler, and,
strangely enough, a poor loser. Moreover, when he lost he drank heavily,
and under the influence of drink he was dangerous. There were quarrels
when curses rang throughout the cabin, when guns were drawn, but
whatever Kells's weaknesses might be, he was strong and implacable in
the governing of these men.
That night when Gulden strode into the cabin was certainly not
uneventful for Joan. Sight of him sent a chill to her marrow while a
strange thrill of fire inflamed her. Was that great hulk of a gorilla
prowling about to meet Jim Cleve? Joan thought that it might be the
worse for him if he were. Then she shuddered a little to think that she
had already been influenced by the wildness around her.
Gulden appeared well and strong, and but for the bandage on his head
would have been as she remembered him. He manifested interest in the
gambling of the players by surly grunts. Presently he said something to
Kells.
“What?” queried the bandit, sharply, wheeling, the better to see Gulden.
The noise subsided. One gamester laughed knowingly.
“Lend me a sack of dust?” asked Gulden.
Kells's face showed amaze and then a sudden brightness.
“What! You want gold from me?”
“Yes. I'll pay it back.”
“Gulden, I wasn't doubting that. But does your asking mean you've taken
kindly to my proposition?”
“You can take it that way,” growled Gulden. “I want gold.” “I'm mighty
glad, Gulden,” replied Kells, and he looked as if he meant it. “I need
you. We ought to get along.... Here.”
He handed a small buckskin sack to Gulden. Someone made room for him
on the other side of the table, and the game was resumed. It was
interesting to watch them gamble. Red Pearce had a scale at his end of
the table, and he was always measuring and weighing out gold-dust. The
value of the gold appeared to be fifteen dollars to the ounce, but the
real value of money did not actuate the gamblers. They spilled the dust
on the table and ground as if it were as common as sand. Still there did
not seem to be any great quantity of gold in sight. Evidently these were
not profitable times for the bandits. More than once Joan heard them
speak of a gold strike as honest people spoke of good fortune. And these
robbers could only have meant that in case of a rich strike there would
be gold to steal. Gulden gambled as he did everything else. At first
he won and then he lost, and then he borrowed more from Kells, to
win again. He paid back as he had borrowed and lost and won--without
feeling. He had no excitement. Joan's intuition convinced her that if
Gulden had any motive at all in gambling it was only an antagonism to
men of his breed. Gambling was a contest, a kind of fight.
Most of the men except Gulden drank heavily that night. There had been
fresh liquor come with the last pack-train. Many of them were drunk when
the game broke up. Red Pearce and Wood remained behind with Kells after
the others had gone, and Pearce was clever enough to cheat Kells before
he left.
“Boss--thet there Red double--crossed you,” said Bate Wood.