out what she saw in his face. Kells had used part of the very speech
with which she had driven Jim Cleve to his ruin. And those words
galvanized him. The fatality of all this! Joan hated herself. Those
very words of hers would drive this maddened and heartbroken boy to join
Kells's band. She knew what to expect from Jim even before she opened
her eyes; yet when she did open them it was to see him transformed and
blazing.
Then Kells either gave way to leaping passion or simulated it in the
interest of his cunning.
“Cleve, you're going down for a woman?” he queried, with that sharp,
mocking ring in his voice.
“If you don't shut up you'll get there first,” replied Cleve,
menacingly.
“Bah!... Why do you want to throw a gun on me? I'm your friend: You're
sick. You're like a poisoned pup. I say if you've got nerve you won't
quit. You'll take a run for your money. You'll see life. You'll fight.
You'll win some gold. There are other women. Once I thought I would quit
for a woman. But I didn't. I never found the right one till I had gone
to hell--out here on this border.... If you've got nerve, show me. Be a
man instead of a crazy youngster. Spit out the poison.... Tell it before
us all!... Some girl drove you to us?”
“Yes--a girl!” replied Cleve, hoarsely, as if goaded.
“It's too late to go back?”
“Too late!”
“There's nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?”
“Nothing.... Only I--can't forget!” he panted.
Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness. Joan saw how
Kells worked upon Jim's feelings. He was only a hopeless, passionate
boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man. He would be like wax to a
sculptor's touch. Jim would bend to this bandit's will, and through his
very tenacity of love and memory be driven farther on the road to drink,
to gaming, and to crime.
Joan got to her feet, and with all her woman's soul uplifting and
inflaming her she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.
Kells made a gesture of savage violence. “Show your nerve!... Join
with me!... You'll make a name on this border that the West will never
forget!”
That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit's best trump. And
it won. Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from
his damp brow. The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from
him. He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as
his own cowardice.
“Sure, Kells,” he said, recklessly. “Let me in the game.... And--by
God--I'll play--the hand out!” He reached for the pencil and bent over
the book.
“Wait!... Oh, WAIT!” cried Joan. The passion of that moment, the
consciousness of its fateful portent and her situation, as desperate
as Cleve's, gave her voice a singularly high and piercingly sweet
intensity. She glided from behind the blanket--out of the shadow--into
the glare of the lanterns--to face Kells and Cleve.
Kells gave one astounded glance at her, and then, divining her purpose,
he laughed thrillingly and mockingly, as if the sight of her was a spur,
as if her courage was a thing to admire, to permit, and to regret.
“Cleve, my wife, Dandy Dale,” he said, suave and cool. “Let her persuade
you--one way or another!”
The presence of a woman, however disguised, following her singular
appeal, transformed Cleve. He stiffened erect and the flush died out of
his face, leaving it whiter than ever, and the eyes that had grown dull
quickened and began to burn. Joan felt her cheeks blanch. She all but
fainted under that gaze. But he did not recognize her, though he was
strangely affected.
“Wait!” she cried again, and she held to that high voice, so different
from her natural tone. “I've been listening. I've heard all that's been
said. Don't join this Border Legion.... You're young--and still, honest.
For God's sake--don't go the way of these men! Kells will make you a
bandit.... Go home--boy--go home!”
“Who are you--to speak to me of honesty--of home?” Cleve demanded.
“I'm only a--a woman.... But I can feel how wrong you are.... Go back
to that girl--who--who drove you to the border.... She must repent. In
a day you'll be too late.... Oh, boy, go home! Girls never know their
minds--their hearts. Maybe your girl--loved you!... Oh, maybe her heart
is breaking now!”
A strong, muscular ripple went over Cleve, ending in a gesture of fierce
protest. Was it pain her words caused, or disgust that such as she dared
mention the girl he had loved? Joan could not tell. She only knew
that Cleve was drawn by her presence, fascinated and repelled, subtly
responding to the spirit of her, doubting what he heard and believing
with his eyes.
“You beg me not to become a bandit?” he asked, slowly, as if revolving a
strange idea.
“Oh, I implore you!”
“Why?”
“I told you. Because you're still good at heart. You've only been
wild.... Because--”
“Are you the wife of Kells?” he flashed at her.
A reply seemed slowly wrenched from Joan's reluctant lips. “No!”
The denial left a silence behind it. The truth that all knew when spoken
by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention.
Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon
the face of Cleve shone an immeasurable scorn.
“Not his wife!” exclaimed Cleve, softly.
His tone was unendurable to Joan. She began to shrink. A flame curled
within her. How he must hate any creature of her sex!
“And you appeal to me!” he went on. Suddenly a weariness came over him.
The complexity of women was beyond him. Almost he turned his back upon
her. “I reckon such as you can't keep me from Kells--or blood--or hell!”
“Then you're a narrow-souled weakling--born to crime!” she burst out in
magnificent wrath. “For however appearances are against me--I am a good
woman!”
That stunned him, just as it drew Kells upright, white and watchful.
Cleve seemed long in grasping its significance. His face was half
averted. Then he turned slowly, all strung, and his hands clutched
quiveringly at the air. No man of coolness and judgment would have
addressed him or moved a step in that strained moment. All expected some
such action as had marked his encounter with Luce and Gulden.
Then Cleve's gaze in unmistakable meaning swept over Joan's person. How
could her appearance and her appeal be reconciled? One was a lie! And
his burning eyes robbed Joan of spirit.
“He forced me to--to wear these,” she faltered. “I'm his prisoner. I'm
helpless.”
With catlike agility Cleve leaped backward, so that he faced all the
men, and when his hands swept to a level they held gleaming guns. His
utter abandon of daring transfixed these bandits in surprise as much as
fear. Kells appeared to take most to himself the menace.
“_I_ CRAWL!” he said, huskily. “She speaks the God's truth.... But you
can't help matters by killing me. Maybe she'd be worse off!”
He expected this wild boy to break loose, yet his wit directed him to
speak the one thing calculated to check Cleve.
“Oh, don't shoot!” moaned Joan.
“You go outside,” ordered Cleve. “Get on a horse and lead another near
the door.... Go! I'll take you away from this.”
Both temptation and terror assailed Joan. Surely that venture would mean
only death to Jim and worse for her. She thrilled at the thought--at the
possibility of escape--at the strange front of this erstwhile nerveless
boy. But she had not the courage for what seemed only desperate folly.
“I'll stay,” she whispered. “You go!”
“Hurry, woman!”
“No! No!”
“Do you want to stay with this bandit?”
“Oh, I must!”
“Then you love him?”
All the fire of Joan's heart flared up to deny the insult and all her
woman's cunning fought to keep back words that inevitably must lead to
revelation. She drooped, unable to hold up under her shame, yet strong
to let him think vilely of her, for his sake. That way she had a barest
chance.
“Get out of my sight!” he ejaculated, thickly. “I'd have fought for
you.”
Again that white, weary scorn radiated from him. Joan bit her tongue to
keep from screaming. How could she live under this torment? It was she,
Joan Randle, that had earned that scorn, whether he knew her or not. She
shrank back, step by step, almost dazed, sick with a terrible inward,
coldness, blinded by scalding tears. She found her door and stumbled in.
“Kells, I'm what you called me.” She heard Cleve's voice, strangely far
off. “There's no excuse... unless I'm not just right in my head about
women.... Overlook my break or don't--as you like. But if you want me
I'm ready for your Border Legion!”
12
Those bitter words of Cleve's, as if he mocked himself, were the last
Joan heard, and they rang in her ears and seemed to reverberate through
her dazed mind like a knell of doom. She lay there, all blackness about
her, weighed upon by an insupportable burden; and she prayed that day
might never dawn for her; a nightmare of oblivion ended at last with her
eyes opening to the morning light.
She was cold and stiff. She had lain uncovered all the long hours of
night. She had not moved a finger since she had fallen upon the bed,
crushed by those bitter words with which Cleve had consented to join
Kells's Legion. Since then Joan felt that she had lived years. She could
not remember a single thought she might have had during those black
hours; nevertheless, a decision had been formed in her mind, and it was
that to-day she would reveal herself to Jim Cleve if it cost both their
lives. Death was infinitely better than the suspense and fear and agony
she had endured; and as for Jim, it would at least save him from crime.
Joan got up, a little dizzy and unsteady upon her feet. Her hands
appeared clumsy and shaky. All the blood in her seemed to surge from
heart to brain and it hurt her to breathe. Removing her mask, she bathed
her face and combed her hair. At first she conceived an idea to go out
without her face covered, but she thought better of it. Cleve's reckless
defiance had communicated itself to her. She could not now be stopped.
Kells was gay and excited that morning. He paid her compliments. He said
they would soon be out of this lonely gulch and she would see the sight
of her life--a gold strike. She would see men wager a fortune on the
turn of a card, lose, laugh, and go back to the digging. He said he
would take her to Sacramento and 'Frisco and buy her everything any
girl could desire. He was wild, voluble, unreasoning--obsessed by the
anticipated fulfilment of his dream.
It was rather late in the morning and there were a dozen or more men in
and around the cabin, all as excited as Kells. Preparations were already
under way for the expected journey to the gold-field. Packs were being
laid out, overhauled, and repacked; saddles and bridles and weapons
were being worked over; clothes were being awkwardly mended. Horses
were being shod, and the job was as hard and disagreeable for men as for
horses. Whenever a rider swung up the slope, and one came every now and
then, all the robbers would leave off their tasks and start eagerly for
the newcomer. The name Jesse Smith was on everybody's lips. Any hour he
might be expected to arrive and corroborate Blicky's alluring tale.
Joan saw or imagined she saw that the glances in the eyes of these men
were yellow, like gold fire. She had seen miners and prospectors whose
eyes shone with a strange glory of light that gold inspired, but never
as those of Kells's bandit Legion. Presently Joan discovered that,
despite the excitement, her effect upon them was more marked then ever,
and by a difference that she was quick to feel. But she could not tell
what this difference was--how their attitude had changed. Then she set
herself the task of being useful. First she helped Bate Wood. He was
roughly kind. She had not realized that there was sadness about her
until he whispered: “Don't be downcast, miss. Mebbe it'll come out
right yet!” That amazed Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances,
the sympathy she felt in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She
grew keen to learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in
all the men. Then she went to Pearce and with all a woman's craft she
exaggerated the silent sadness that had brought quick response from
Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her
proximity as that of a feminine thing which roused the devil in him.
Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity
in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This
lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan
mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud
of her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then as she
finished he glanced furtively round; he pressed her hand: “I had a
sister once!” he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate:
“Kells!--he'll get his over in the gold-camp!”
Joan turned away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange, deep
undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for
Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of
fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her
situation? What was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the
bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for
evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate and faithlessness fostered by
this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant's notice to break
out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragical nature of Kell's
great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or
weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold, of riotous gambling, but by its
very nature it was doomed. It embraced failure and death.
Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this inexplicable
change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each; and it was not till she
encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was revealed. Frenchy
was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his being inculcated a
sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the darkness of a wicked life,
and now that something came fleeting out of the depths--and it was
respect for a woman. To Joan it was a flash of light. Yesterday these
ruffians despised her; to-day they respected her. So they had believed
what she had so desperately flung at Jim Cleve. They believed her good,
they pitied her, they respected her, they responded to her effort
to turn a boy back from a bad career. They were bandits, desperados,
murderers, lost, but each remembered in her a mother or a sister. What
each might have felt or done had he possessed her, as Kells possessed
her, did not alter the case as it stood. A strange inconsistency of
character made them hate Kells for what they might not have hated in
themselves. Her appeal to Cleve, her outburst of truth, her youth
and misfortune, had discovered to each a human quality. As in Kells
something of nobility still lingered, a ghost among his ruined ideals,
so in the others some goodness remained. Joan sustained an uplifting
divination--no man was utterly bad. Then came the hideous image of the
giant Gulden, the utter absence of soul in him, and she shuddered.
Then came the thought of Jim Cleve, who had not believed her, who had
bitterly made the fatal step, who might in the strange reversion of his
character be beyond influence.
And it was at the precise moment when this thought rose to counteract
the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men that Joan looked out
to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between
his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon him the stamp of
abandonment. Joan suffered a contraction of heart that benumbed her
breast. She stood a moment battling with herself. She was brave enough,
desperate enough, to walk straight up to Cleve, remove her mask and say,
“I am Joan!” But that must be a last resource. She had no plan, yet she
might force an opportunity to see Cleve alone.
A shout rose above the hubbub of voices. A tall man was pointing across
the gulch where dust-clouds showed above the willows. Men crowded round
him, all gazing in the direction of his hand, all talking at once.
“Jesse Smith's hoss, I swear!” shouted the tall man. “Kells, come out
here!”
Kells appeared, dark and eager, at the door, and nimbly he leaped to the
excited group. Pearce and Wood and others followed.
“What's up?” called the bandit. “Hello! Who's that riding bareback?”
“He's shore cuttin' the wind,” said Wood.
“Blicky!” exclaimed the tall man. “Kells, there's news. I seen Jesse's
hoss.”
Kells let out a strange, exultant cry. The excited talk among the men
gave place, to a subdued murmur, then subsided. Blicky was running a
horse up the road, hanging low over him, like an Indian. He clattered to
the bench, scattered the men in all directions. The fiery horse plunged
and pounded. Blicky was gray of face and wild of aspect.
“Jesse's come!” he yelled, hoarsely, at Kells. “He jest fell off his
hoss--all in! He wants you--an' all the gang! He's seen a million
dollars in gold-dust!”
Absolute silence ensued after that last swift and startling speech. It
broke to a commingling of yells and shouts. Blicky wheeled his horse and
Kells started on a run. And there was a stampede and rush after him.
Joan grasped her opportunity. She had seen all this excitement, but she
had not lost sight of Cleve. He got up from a log and started after the
others. Joan flew to him, grasped him, startled him with the suddenness
of her onslaught. But her tongue seemed cloven to the roof of her mouth,
her lips weak and mute. Twice she strove to speak.
“Meet me--there!--among the pines--right away!” she whispered, with
breathless earnestness. “It's life--or death--for me!”
As she released his arm he snatched at her mask. But she eluded him.
“Who ARE you?” he flashed.
Kells and his men were piling into the willows, leaping the brook,
hurrying on. They had no thought but to get to Jesse Smith to hear of
the gold strike. That news to them was as finding gold in the earth was
to honest miners.
“Come!” cried Joan. She hurried away toward the corner of the cabin,
then halted to see if he was following. He was, indeed. She ran round
behind the cabin, out on the slope, halting at the first trees. Cleve
came striding after her. She ran on, beginning to pant and stumble. The
way he strode, the white grimness of him, frightened her. What would he,
do? Again she went on, but not running now. There were straggling pines
and spruces that soon hid the cabins. Beyond, a few rods, was a dense
clump of pines, and she made for that. As she reached it she turned
fearfully. Only Cleve was in sight. She uttered a sob of mingled relief,
joy, and thankfulness. She and Cleve had not been observed. They would
be out of sight in this little pine grove. At last! She could reveal
herself, tell him why she was there, that she loved him, that she was as
good as ever she had been. Why was she shaking like a leaf in the wind?
She saw Cleve through a blur. He was almost running now. Involuntarily
she fled into the grove. It was dark and cool; it smelled sweetly of
pine; there were narrow aisles and little sunlit glades. She hurried
on till a fallen tree blocked her passage. Here she turned--she would
wait--the tree was good to lean against. There came Cleve, a dark,
stalking shadow. She did not remember him like that. He entered the
glade.
“Speak again!” he said, thickly. “Either I'm drunk or crazy!”
But Joan could not speak. She held out hands that shook--swept them to
her face--tore at the mask. Then with a gasp she stood revealed.
If she had stabbed him straight through the heart he could not have been
more ghastly. Joan saw him, in all the terrible transfiguration
that came over him, but she had no conceptions, no thought of what
constituted that change. After that check to her mind came a surge of
joy.
“Jim!... Jim! It's Joan!” she breathed, with lips almost mute.
“JOAN!” he gasped, and the sound of his voice seemed to be the passing
from horrible doubt to certainty.
Like a panther he leaped at her, fastened a powerful hand at the neck of
her blouse, jerked her to her knees, and began to drag her. Joan fought
his iron grasp. The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her
utterance. He did not look down upon her, but she could see him, the
rigidity of his body set in violence, the awful shade upon his face, the
upstanding hair on his head. He dragged her as if she had been an empty
sack. Like a beast he was seeking a dark place--a hole to hide her.
She was strangling; a distorted sight made objects dim; and now she
struggled instinctively. Suddenly the clutch at her neck loosened;
gaspingly came the intake of air to her lungs; the dark-red veil left
her eyes. She was still upon her knees. Cleve stood before her, like a
gray-faced demon, holding his gun level, ready to fire.
“Pray for your soul--and mine!”
“Jim! Oh Jim!... Will you kill yourself, too?”
“Yes! But pray, girl--quick!”
“Then I pray to God--not for my soul--but just for one more moment of
life... TO TELL YOU, JIM!”
Cleve's face worked and the gun began to waver. Her reply had been a
stroke of lightning into the dark abyss of his jealous agony.
Joan saw it, and she raised her quivering face, and she held up her arms
to him. “To tell--you--Jim!” she entreated.
“What?” he rasped out.
“That I'm innocent--that I'm as good--a girl--as ever.. ever.... Let me
tell you.... Oh, you're mistaken--terribly mistaken.”
“Now, I know I'm drunk.... You, Joan Randle! You in that rig! You
the companion of Jack Kells! Not even his wife! The jest of these
foul-mouthed bandits! And you say you're innocent--good?... When you
refused to leave him!”
“I was afraid to go--afraid you'd be killed,” she moaned, beating her
breast.
It must have seemed madness to him, a monstrous nightmare, a delirium of
drink, that Joan Randle was there on her knees in a brazen male attire,
lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to
believe in her innocence.
Joan burst into swift, broken utterance: “Only listen! I trailed you
out--twenty miles from Hoadley. I met Roberts. He came with me. He lamed
his horse--we had to camp. Kells rode down on us. He had two men. They
camped there. Next morning he--killed Roberts--made off with me.... Then
he killed his men--just to have me--alone to himself.... We crossed a
range--camped in the canon. There he attacked me--and I--I shot him!...
But I couldn't leave him--to die!” Joan hurried on with her narrative,
gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve. “First
he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden--and the others,” she went
on. “He meant to save me from them. But they guessed or found out....
Kells forced me into these bandit clothes. He's depraved, somehow. And
I had to wear something. Kells hasn't harmed me--no one has. I've
influence over him. He can't resist it. He's tried to force me to marry
him. And he's tried to give up to his evil intentions. But he can't.
There's good in him. I can make him feel it.... Oh, he loves me, and I'm
not afraid of him any more.... It has been a terrible time for me, Jim,
but I'm still--the same girl you knew--you used to--”
Cleve dropped the gun and he waved his hand before his eyes as if to
dispel a blindness.
“But why--why?” he asked, incredulously. “Why did you leave Hoadley?
That's forbidden. You knew the risk.”
Joan gazed steadily up at him, to see the whiteness slowly fade out of
his face. She had imagined it would be an overcoming of pride to
betray her love, but she had been wrong. The moment was so full, so
overpowering, that she seemed dumb. He had ruined himself for her, and
out of that ruin had come the glory of her love. Perhaps it was all too
late, but at least he would know that for love of him she had in turn
sacrificed herself.