a tremble, a rush went over her, and all her blood seemed hot at her
neck and face, “that night when you kissed me I was furious. But the
moment you had gone I repented. I must have--cared for you then, but I
didn't know.... Remorse seized me. And I set out on your trail to save
you from yourself. And with the pain and fear and terror there was
sometimes--the--the sweetness of your kisses. Then I knew I cared....
And with the added days of suspense and agony--all that told me of your
throwing your life away--there came love.... Such love as otherwise I'd
never have been big enough for! I meant to find you--to save you--to
send you home!... I have found you, maybe too late to save your life,
but not your soul, thank God!... That's why I've been strong enough to
hold back Kells. I love you, Jim!... I love you! I couldn't tell you
enough. My heart is bursting.... Say you believe me! Say you know I'm
good--true to you--your Joan!... And kiss me--like you did that night
when we were such blind fools. A boy and a girl who didn't know--and
couldn't tell!--Oh, the sadness of it!.... Kiss me, Jim, before
I--drop--at your feet!... If only you--believe--”
Joan was blinded by tears and whispering she knew not what when
Cleve broke from his trance and caught her to his breast. She was
fainting--hovering at the border of unconsciousness when his violence
held her back from oblivion. She seemed wrapped to him and held so
tightly there was no breath in her body, no motion, no stir of
pulse. That vague, dreamy moment passed. She heard his husky, broken
accents--she felt the pound of his heart against her breast. And he
began to kiss her as she had begged him to. She quickened to thrilling,
revivifying life. And she lifted her face, and clung round his neck, and
kissed him, blindly, sweetly, passionately, with all her heart and soul
in her lips, wanting only one thing in the world--to give that which she
had denied him.
“Joan!... Joan!... Joan!” he murmured when their lips parted. “Am I
dreaming--drunk--or crazy?”
“Oh, Jim, I'm real--you have me in your arms,” she whispered. “Dear
Jim--kiss me again--and say you believe me.”
“Believe you?... I'm out of my mind with joy.... You loved me! You
followed me!... And--that idea of mine--only an absurd, vile suspicion!
I might have known--had I been sane!”
“There.... Oh, Jim!... Enough of madness. We've got to plan. Remember
where we are. There's Kells, and this terrible situation to meet!”
He stared at her, slowly realizing, and then it was his turn to shake.
“My God! I'd forgotten. I'll HAVE to kill you now!”
A reaction set in. If he had any self-control left he lost it, and like
a boy whose fling into manhood had exhausted his courage he sank beside
her and buried his face against her. And he cried in a low, tense,
heartbroken way. For Joan it was terrible to hear him. She held his hand
to her breast and implored him not to weaken now. But he was stricken
with remorse--he had run off like a coward, he had brought her to this
calamity--and he could not rise under it. Joan realized that he had long
labored under stress of morbid emotion. Only a supreme effort could lift
him out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that must come
from her.
She pushed him away from her, and held him back where he must see her,
and white-hot with passionate purpose, she kissed him. “Jim Cleve, if
you've NERVE enough to be BAD you've nerve enough to save the girl who
LOVES you--who BELONGS to you!”
He raised his face and it flashed from red to white. He caught the
subtlety of her antithesis. With the very two words which had driven him
away under the sting of cowardice she uplifted him; and with all that
was tender and faithful and passionate in her meaning of surrender she
settled at once and forever the doubt of his manhood. He arose trembling
in every limb. Like a dog he shook himself. His breast heaved. The
shades of scorn and bitterness and abandon might never have haunted his
face. In that moment he had passed from the reckless and wild, sick rage
of a weakling to the stern, realizing courage of a man. His suffering
on this wild border had developed a different fiber of character; and at
the great moment, the climax, when his moral force hung balanced
between elevation and destruction, the woman had called to him, and her
unquenchable spirit passed into him.
“There's only one thing--to get away,” he said.
“Yes, but that's a terrible risk,” she replied.
“We've a good chance now. I'll get horses. We can slip away while
they're all excited.”
“No--no. I daren't risk so much. Kells would find out at once. He'd be
like a hound on our trail. But that's not all. I've a horror of Gulden.
I can't explain. I FEEL it. He would know--he would take the trail. I'd
never try to escape with Gulden in camp.... Jim, do you know what he's
done?”
“He's a cannibal. I hate the sight of him. I tried to kill him. I wish I
had killed him.”
“I'm never safe while he's near.”
“Then I will kill him.”
“Hush! you'll not be desperate unless you have to be.... Listen. I'm
safe with Kells for the present. And he's friendly to you. Let us wait.
I'll keep trying to influence him. I have won the friendship of some of
his men. We'll stay with him--travel with him. Surely we'd have a better
chance to excape after we reach that gold-camp. You must play your part.
But do it without drinking and fighting. I couldn't bear that. We'll see
each other somehow. We'll plan. Then we'll take the first chance to get
away.”
“We might never have a better chance than we've got right now,” he
remonstrated.
“It may seem so to you. But I KNOW. I haven't watched these ruffians for
nothing. I tell you Gulden has split with Kells because of me. I don't
know how I know. And I think I'd die of terror out on the trail with two
hundred miles to go--and that gorilla after me.”
“But, Joan, if we once got away Gulden would never take you alive,” said
Jim, earnestly. “So you needn't fear that.”
“I've uncanny horror of him. It's as if he were a gorilla--and would
take me off even if I were dead!... No, Jim, let us wait. Let me select
the time. I can do it. Trust me. Oh, Jim, now that I've saved you
from being a bandit, I can do anything. I can fool Kells or Pearce or
Wood--any of them, except Gulden.”
“If Kells had to choose now between trailing you and rushing for the
gold-camp, which would he do?”
“He'd trail me,” she said.
“But Kells is crazy over gold. He has two passions. To steal gold, and
to gamble with it.”
“That may be. But he'd go after me first. So would Gulden. We can't ride
these hills as they do. We don't know the trails--the water. We'd get
lost. We'd be caught. And somehow I know that Gulden and his gang would
find us first.”
“You're probably right, Joan,” replied Cleve. “But you condemn me to a
living death.... To let you out of my sight with Kells or any of them!
It'll be worse almost than my life was before.”
“But, Jim, I'll be safe,” she entreated. “It's the better choice of two
evils. Our lives depend on reason, waiting, planning. And, Jim, I want
to live for you.”
“My brave darling, to hear you say that!” he exclaimed, with deep
emotion. “When I never expected to see you again!... But the past is
past. I begin over from this hour. I'll be what you want--do what you
want.”
Joan seemed irresistibly drawn to him again, and the supplication, as
she lifted her blushing face, and the yielding, were perilously sweet.
“Jim, kiss me and hold me--the way--you did that night!”
And it was not Joan who first broke that embrace.
“Find my mask,” she said.
Cleve picked up his gun and presently the piece of black felt. He held
it as if it were a deadly thing.
“Put it on me.”
He slipped the cord over her head and adjusted the mask so the holes
came right for her eyes.
“Joan, it hides the--the GOODNESS of you,” he cried. “No one can see
your eyes now. No one will look at your face. That rig shows your--shows
you off so! It's not decent.... But, O Lord! I'm bound to confess how
pretty, how devilish, how seductive you are! And I hate it.”
“Jim, I hate it, too. But we must stand it. Try not to shame me any
more.... And now good-by. Keep watch for me--as I will for you--all the
time.”
Joan broke from him and glided out of the grove, away under the
straggling pines, along the slope. She came upon her horse and she led
him back to the corral. Many of the horses had strayed. There was no one
at the cabin, but she saw men striding up the slope, Kells in the lead.
She had been fortunate. Her absence could hardly have been noted. She
had just strength left to get to her room, where she fell upon the bed,
weak and trembling and dizzy and unutterably grateful at her deliverance
from the hateful, unbearable falsity of her situation.
13
It was afternoon before Joan could trust herself sufficiently to go out
again, and when she did she saw that she attracted very little attention
from the bandits.
Kells had a springy step, a bright eye, a lifted head, and he seemed to
be listening. Perhaps he was--to the music of his sordid dreams.
Joan watched him sometimes with wonder. Even a bandit--plotting gold
robberies, with violence and blood merely means to an end--built castles
in the air and lived with joy!
All that afternoon the bandits left camp in twos and threes, each party
with pack burros and horses, packed as Joan had not seen them before on
the border. Shovels and picks and old sieves and pans, these swinging or
tied in prominent places, were evidence that the bandits meant to assume
the characters of miners and prospectors. They whistled and sang. It was
a lark. The excitement had subsided and the action begun. Only in Kells,
under his radiance, could be felt the dark and sinister plot. He was the
heart of the machine.
By sundown Kells, Pearce, Wood, Jim Cleve, and a robust, grizzled
bandit, Jesse Smith, were left in camp. Smith was lame from his ride,
and Joan gathered that Kells would have left camp but for the fact that
Smith needed rest. He and Kells were together all the time, talking
endlessly. Joan heard them argue a disputed point--would the men abide
by Kells's plan and go by twos and threes into the gold-camp, and hide
their relations as a larger band? Kells contended they would and Smith
had his doubts.
“Jack, wait till you see Alder Creek!” ejaculated Smith, wagging his
grizzled head. “Three thousand men, old an' young, of all kinds--gone
gold--crazy! Alder Creek has got California's '49 and' '51 cinched to
the last hole!” And the bandit leader rubbed his palms in great glee.
That evening they all had supper together in Kell's cabin. Bate Wood
grumbled because he had packed most of his outfit. It so chanced that
Joan sat directly opposite Jim Cleve, and while he ate he pressed her
foot with his under the table. The touch thrilled Joan. Jim did not
glance at her, but there was such a change in him that she feared it
might rouse Kells's curiosity. This night, however, the bandit could not
have seen anything except a gleam of yellow. He talked, he sat at table,
but did not eat. After supper he sent Joan to her cabin, saying they
would be on the trail at daylight. Joan watched them awhile from
her covert. They had evidently talked themselves out, and Kells grew
thoughtful. Smith and Pearce went outside, apparently to roll their beds
on the ground under the porch roof. Wood, who said he was never a good
sleeper, smoked his pipe. And Jim Cleve spread blankets along the wall
in the shadow and and lay down. Joan could see his eyes shining toward
the door. Of course he was thinking of her. But could he see her eyes?
Watching her chance, she slipped a hand from behind the curtain, and she
knew Cleve saw it. What a comfort that was! Joan's heart swelled. All
might yet be well. Jim Cleve would be near her while she slept. She
could sleep now without those dark dreams--without dreading to awaken to
the light. Again she saw Kells pacing the room, silent, bent, absorbed,
hands behind his back, weighted with his burden. It was impossible not
to feel sorry for him. With all his intelligence and cunning power,
his cause was hopeless. Joan knew that as she knew so many other things
without understanding why. She had not yet sounded Jesse Smith, but not
a man of all the others was true to Kells. They would be of his Border
Legion, do his bidding, revel in their ill-gotten gains, and then, when
he needed them most, be false to him.
When Joan was awakened her room was shrouded in gray gloom. A bustle
sound from the big cabin, and outside horses stamped and men talked.
She sat alone at breakfast and ate by lantern-light. It was necessary
to take a lantern back to her cabin, and she was so long in her
preparations there that Kells called again. Somehow she did not want to
leave this cabin. It seemed protective and private, and she feared she
might not find such quarters again. Besides, upon the moment of leaving
she discovered that she had grown attached to the place where she had
suffered and thought and grown so much.
Kells had put out the lights. Joan hurried through the cabin and
outside. The gray obscurity had given way to dawn. The air was cold,
sweet, bracing with the touch of mountain purity in it. The men, except
Kells, were all mounted, and the pack-train was in motion. Kells dragged
the rude door into position, and then, mounting, he called to Joan to
follow. She trotted her horse after him, down the slope, across the
brook and through the wet willows, and out upon the wide trail. She
glanced ahead, discerning that the third man from her was Jim Cleve; and
that fact, in the start for Alder Creek, made all the difference in the
world.
When they rode out of the narrow defile into the valley the sun was
rising red and bright in a notch of the mountains. Clouds hung over
distant peaks, and the patches of snow in the high canons shone blue and
pink. Smith in the lead turned westward up the valley. Horses trooped
after the cavalcade and had to be driven back. There were also cattle in
the valley, and all these Kells left behind like an honest rancher
who had no fear for his stock. Deer stood off with long ears pointed
forward, watching the horses go by. There were flocks of quail, and
whirring grouse, and bounding jack-rabbits, and occasionally a brace
of sneaking coyotes. These and the wild flowers, and the waving
meadow-grass, the yellow-stemmed willows, and the patches of alder, all
were pleasurable to Joan's eyes and restful to her mind.
Smith soon led away from this valley up out of the head of a ravine,
across a rough rock-strewn ridge, down again into a hollow that grew to
be a canon. The trail was bad. Part of the time it was the bottom of a
boulder-strewn brook where the horses slipped on the wet, round stones.
Progress was slow and time passed. For Joan, however, it was a relief;
and the slower they might travel the better she would like it. At the
end of that journey there were Gulden and the others, and the gold-camp
with its illimitable possibilities for such men.
At noon the party halted for a rest. The camp site was pleasant and the
men were all agreeable. During the meal Kells found occasion to remark
to Cleve:
“Say youngster, you've brightened up. Must be because of our prospects
over here.”
“Not that so much,” replied Cleve. “I quit the whisky. To be honest,
Kells, I was almost seeing snakes.”
“I'm glad you quit. When you're drinking you're wild. I never yet saw
the man who could drink hard and keep his head. I can't. But I don't
drink much.”
His last remark brought a response in laughter. Evidently his companions
thought he was joking. He laughed himself and actually winked at Joan.
It happened to be Cleve whom Kells told to saddle Joan's horse, and as
Joan tried the cinches, to see if they were too tight to suit her, Jim's
hand came in contact with hers. That touch was like a message. Joan was
thrilling all over as she looked at Jim, but he kept his face averted.
Perhaps he did not trust his eyes.
Travel was resumed up the canon and continued steadily, though
leisurely. But the trail was so rough, and so winding, that Joan
believed the progress did not exceed three miles an hour. It was the
kind of travel in which a horse could be helped and that entailed
attention to the lay of the ground. Before Joan realized the hours were
flying, the afternoon had waned. Smith kept on, however, until nearly
dark before halting for camp.
The evening camp was a scene of activity, and all except Joan had work
to do. She tried to lend a hand, but Wood told her to rest. This she was
glad to do. When called to supper she had almost fallen asleep. After
a long day's ride the business of eating precluded conversation. Later,
however, the men began to talk between puffs on their pipes, and from
the talk no one could have guessed that here was a band of robbers
on their way to a gold camp. Jesse Smith had a sore foot and he was
compared to a tenderfoot on his first ride. Smith retaliated in kind.
Every consideration was shown Joan, and Wood particularly appeared
assiduous in his desire for her comfort. All the men except Cleve paid
her some kind attention; and he, of course, neglected her because he was
afraid to go near her. Again she felt in Red Pearce a condemnation of
the bandit leader who was dragging a girl over hard trails, making her
sleep in the open, exposing her to danger and to men like himself and
Gulden. In his own estimate Pearce, like every one of his kind, was not
so slow as the others.
Joan watched and listened from her blankets, under a leafy tree, some
few yards from the camp-fire. Once Kells turned to see how far distant
she was, and then, lowering his voice, he told a story. The others
laughed. Pearce followed with another, and he, too, took care that Joan
could not hear. They grew closer for the mirth, and Smith, who evidently
was a jolly fellow, set them to roaring. Jim Cleve laughed with them.
“Say, Jim, you're getting over it,” remarked Kells.
“Over what?”
Kells paused, rather embarrassed for a reply, as evidently in the humor
of the hour he had spoken a thought better left unsaid. But there was no
more forbidding atmosphere about Cleve. He appeared to have rounded to
good-fellowship after a moody and quarrelsome drinking spell.
“Why, over what drove you out here--and gave me a lucky chance at you,”
replied Kells, with a constrained laugh.
“Oh, you mean the girl?... Sure, I'm getting over that, except when I
drink.”
“Tell us, Jim,” said Kells, curiously.
“Aw, you'll give me the laugh!” retorted Cleve.
“No, we won't unless your story's funny.”
“You can gamble it wasn't funny,” put in Red Pearce.
They all coaxed him, yet none of them, except Kells, was particularly
curious; it was just that hour when men of their ilk were lazy and
comfortable and full fed and good-humored round the warm, blazing
camp-fire.
“All right,” replied Cleve, and apparently, for all his complaisance, a
call upon memory had its pain. “I'm from Montana. Range-rider in winter
and in summer I prospected. Saved quite a little money, in spite of a
fling now and then at faro and whisky.... Yes, there was a girl, I guess
yes. She was pretty. I had a bad case over her. Not long ago I left all
I had--money and gold and things--in her keeping, and I went prospecting
again. We were to get married on my return. I stayed out six months, did
well, and got robbed of all my dust.”
Cleve was telling this fabrication in a matter-of-fact way, growing a
little less frank as he proceeded, and he paused while he lifted sand
and let it drift through his fingers, watching it curiously. All the men
were interested and Kells hung on every word.
“When I got back,” went on Cleve, “my girl had married another fellow.
She'd given him all I left with her. Then I got drunk. While I was drunk
they put up a job on me. It was her word that disgraced me and run me
out of town.... So I struck west and drifted to the border.”
“That's not all,” said Kells, bluntly.
“Jim, I reckon you ain't tellin' what you did to thet lyin' girl an' the
feller. How'd you leave them?” added Pearce.
But Cleve appeared to become gloomy and reticent.
“Wimmen can hand the double-cross to a man, hey, Kells?” queried Smith,
with a broad grin.
“By gosh! I thought you'd been treated powerful mean!” exclaimed Bate
Wood, and he was full of wrath.
“A treacherous woman!” exclaimed Kells, passionately. He had taken
Cleve's story hard. The man must have been betrayed by women, and
Cleve's story had irritated old wounds.
Directly Kells left the fire and repaired to his blankets, near where
Joan lay. Probably he believed her asleep, for he neither looked nor
spoke. Cleve sought his bed, and likewise Wood and Smith. Pearce was the
last to leave, and as he stood up the light fell upon his red face, lean
and bold like an Indian's. Then he passed Joan, looking down upon her
and then upon the recumbent figure of Kells; and if his glance was not
baleful and malignant, as it swept over the bandit, Joan believed her
imagination must be vividly weird, and running away with her judgment.
The next morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the
mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan spared
her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a trail Smith
alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others. They climbed out
of the notched head of the canon, and up a long slope of weathered shale
that let the horses slide back a foot for every yard gained, and through
a labyrinth of broken cliffs, and over bench and ridge to the height of
the divide. From there Joan had a magnificent view. Foot-hills rolled
round heads below, and miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened
Bear Lake. The rest here at this height was counteracted by the fact
that the altitude affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again,
and now the travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was
difficult, for horses were more easily lamed in a descent. It took
two hours to descend the distance that had consumed all the morning to
ascend. Smith led through valley after valley between foot-hills, and
late in the afternoon halted by a spring in a timbered spot.
Joan ached in every muscle and she was too tired to care what happened
round the camp-fire. Jim had been close to her all day and that had kept
up her spirit. It was not yet dark when she lay down for the night.
“Sleep well, Dandy Dale,” said Kells, cheerfully, yet not without
pathos. “Alder Creek to-morrow!... Then you'll never sleep again!”
At times she seemed to feel that he regretted her presence, and always
this fancy came to her with mocking or bantering suggestion that the
costume and mask she wore made her a bandit's consort, and she could not
escape the wildness of this gold-seeking life. The truth was that Kells
saw the insuperable barrier between them, and in the bitterness of his
love he lied to himself, and hated himself for the lie.
About the middle of the afternoon of the next day the tired cavalcade
rode down out of the brush and rock into a new, broad, dusty road. It
was so new that the stems of the cut brush along the borders were still
white. But that road had been traveled by a multitude.
Out across the valley in the rear Joan saw a canvas-topped wagon, and
she had not ridden far on the road when she saw a bobbing pack-burros to
the fore. Kells had called Wood and Smith and Pearce and Cleve together,
and now they went on in a bunch, all driving the pack-train. Excitement
again claimed Kells; Pearce was alert and hawk-eyed; Smith looked like a
hound on a scent; Cleve showed genuine feeling. Only Bate Wood remained
proof to the meaning of that broad road.
All along, on either side, Joan saw wrecks of wagons, wheels, harness,
boxes, old rags of tents blown into the brush, dead mules and burros.
It seemed almost as if an army had passed that way. Presently the road
crossed a wide, shallow brook of water, half clear and half muddy; and
on the other side the road followed the course of the brook. Joan heard
Smith call the stream Alder Creek, and he asked Kells if he knew what
muddied water meant. The bandit's eyes flashed fire. Joan thrilled, for
she, too, knew that up-stream there were miners washing earth for gold.
A couple of miles farther on creek and road entered the mouth of a wide
spruce-timbered gulch. These trees hid any view of the slopes or floor
of the gulch, and it was not till several more miles had been passed
that the bandit rode out into what Joan first thought was a hideous
slash in the forest made by fire. But it was only the devastation
wrought by men. As far as she could see the timber was down, and
everywhere began to be manifested signs that led her to expect
habitations. No cabins showed, however, in the next mile. They passed
out of the timbered part of the gulch into one of rugged, bare, and
stony slopes, with bunches of sparse alder here and there. The gulch
turned at right angles and a great gray slope shut out sight of what
lay beyond. But, once round that obstruction, Kells halted his men with
short, tense exclamation.