Joan Randle rode on and on, through the canon, out at its head and over a pass into another canon, and never did she let it be possible for Kells to see her eyes until she knew beyond peradventure of a doubt that they hid the strength and spirit and secret of her soul.
The time came when traveling was so steep and rough that she must think first of her horse and her own safety. Kells led up over a rock-jumbled spur of range, where she had sometimes to follow on foot. It seemed miles across that wilderness of stone. Foxes and wolves trotted over open places, watching stealthily. All around dark mountain peaks stood up. The afternoon was far advanced when Kells started to descend again, and he rode a zigzag course on weathered slopes and over brushy benches, down and down into the canons again.
A lonely peak was visible, sunset-flushed against the blue, from the point where Kells finally halted. That ended the longest ride Joan had ever made in one day. For miles and miles they had climbed and descended and wound into the mountains. Joan had scarcely any idea of direction. She was completely turned around and lost. This spot was the wildest and most beautiful she had ever seen. A canon headed here. It was narrow, low-walled, and luxuriant with grass and wild roses and willow and spruce and balsam. There were deer standing with long ears erect, motionless, curious, tame as cattle. There were moving streaks through the long grass, showing the course of smaller animals slipping away.
Then under a giant balsam, that reached aloft to the rim-wall, Joan saw a little log cabin, open in front. It had not been built very long; some of the log ends still showed yellow. It did not resemble the hunters' and prospectors' cabins she had seen on her trips with her uncle.
In a sweeping glance Joan had taken in these features. Kells had dismounted and approached her. She looked frankly, but not directly, at him.
“I'm tired--almost too tired to get off,” she said.
“Fifty miles of rock and brush, up and down! Without a kick!” he exclaimed, admiringly. “You've got sand, girl!”
“Where are we?”
“This is Lost Canon. Only a few men know of it. And they are--attached to me. I intend to keep you here.”
“How long?” She felt the intensity of his gaze.
“Why--as long as--” he replied, slowly, “till I get my ransom.”
“What amount will you ask?”
“You're worth a hundred thousand in gold right now... Maybe later I might let you go for less.”
Joan's keen-wrought perception registered his covert, scarcely veiled implication. He was studying her.
“Oh, poor uncle. He'll never, never get so much.”
“Sure he will,” replied Kells, bluntly.
Then he helped her out of the saddle. She was stiff and awkward, and she let herself slide. Kells handled her gently and like a gentleman, and for Joan the first agonizing moment of her ordeal was past. Her intuition had guided her correctly. Kells might have been and probably was the most depraved of outcast men; but the presence of a girl like her, however it affected him, must also have brought up associations of a time when by family and breeding and habit he had been infinitely different. His action here, just like the ruffian Bill's, was instinctive, beyond his control. Just this slight thing, this frail link that joined Kells to his past and better life, immeasurably inspirited Joan and outlined the difficult game she had to play.
“You're a very gallant robber,” she said.
He appeared not to hear that or to note it; he was eying her up and down; and he moved closer, perhaps to estimate her height compared to his own.
“I didn't know you were so tall. You're above my shoulder.”
“Yes, I'm very lanky.”
“Lanky! Why you're not that. You've a splendid figure--tall, supple, strong; you're like a Nez Perce girl I knew once.... You're a beautiful thing. Didn't you know that?”
“Not particularly. My friends don't dare flatter me. I suppose I'll have to stand it from you. But I didn't expect compliments from Jack Kells of the Border Legion.”
“Border Legion? Where'd you hear that name?”
“I didn't hear it. I made it up--thought of it myself.”
“Well, you've invented something I'll use.... And what's your name--your first name? I heard Roberts use it.”
Joan felt a cold contraction of all her internal being, but outwardly she never so much as nicked an eyelash. “My name's Joan.”
“Joan!” He placed heavy, compelling hands on her shoulders and turned her squarely toward him.
Again she felt his gaze, strangely, like the reflection of sunlight from ice. She had to look at him. This was her supreme test. For hours she had prepared for it, steeled herself, wrought upon all that was sensitive in her; and now she prayed, and swiftly looked up into his eyes. They were windows of a gray hell. And she gazed into that naked abyss, at that dark, uncovered soul, with only the timid anxiety and fear and the unconsciousness of an innocent, ignorant girl.
“Joan! You know why I brought you here?”
“Yes, of course; you told me,” she replied, steadily. “You want to ransom me for gold.... And I'm afraid you'll have to take me home without getting any.”
“You know what I mean to do to you,” he went on, thickly.
“Do to me?” she echoed, and she never quivered a muscle. “You--you didn't say.... I haven't thought.... But you won't hurt me, will you? It's not my fault if there's no gold to ransom me.”
He shook her. His face changed, grew darker. “You KNOW what I mean.”
“I don't.” With some show of spirit she essayed to slip out of his grasp. He held her the tighter.
“How old are you?”
It was only in her height and development that Joan looked anywhere near her age. Often she had been taken for a very young girl.
“I'm seventeen,” she replied. This was not the truth. It was a lie that did not falter on lips which had scorned falsehood.
“Seventeen!” he ejaculated in amaze. “Honestly, now?”
She lifted her chin scornfully and remained silent.
“Well, I thought you were a woman. I took you to be twenty-five--at least twenty-two. Seventeen, with that shape! You're only a girl--a kid. You don't know anything.”
Then he released her, almost with violence, as if angered at her or himself, and he turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained her poise. There might be, probably would be, infinitely more trying ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however, that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror and knowledge and self.
The scene of her isolation had a curious fascination for her. Something--and she shuddered--was to happen to her here in this lonely, silent gorge. There were some flat stones made into a rude seat under the balsam-tree, and a swift, yard-wide stream of clear water ran by. Observing something white against the tree, Joan went closer. A card, the ace of hearts, had been pinned to the bark by a small cluster of bullet-holes, every one of which touched the red heart, and one of them had obliterated it. Below the circle of bulletholes, scrawled in rude letters with a lead-pencil, was the name “Gulden.” How little, a few nights back, when Jim Cleve had menaced Joan with the names of Kells and Gulden, had she imagined they were actual men she was to meet and fear! And here she was the prisoner of one of them. She would ask Kells who and what this Gulden was. The log cabin was merely a shed, without fireplace or window, and the floor was a covering of balsam boughs, long dried out and withered. A dim trail led away from it down the canon. If Joan was any judge of trails, this one had not seen the imprint of a horse track for many months. Kells had indeed brought her to a hiding place, one of those, perhaps, that camp gossip said was inaccessible to any save a border hawk. Joan knew that only an Indian could follow the tortuous and rocky trail by which Kells had brought her in. She would never be tracked there by her own people.
The long ride had left her hot, dusty, scratched, with tangled hair and torn habit. She went over to her saddle, which Kells had removed from her pony, and, opening the saddlebag, she took inventory of her possessions. They were few enough, but now, in view of an unexpected and enforced sojourn in the wilds, beyond all calculation of value. And they included towel, soap, toothbrush, mirror and comb and brush, a red scarf, and gloves. It occurred to her how seldom she carried that bag on her saddle, and, thinking back, referred the fact to accident, and then with honest amusement owned that the motive might have been also a little vanity. Taking the bag, she went to a flat stone by the brook and, rolling up her sleeves, proceeded to improve her appearance. With deft fingers she rebraided her hair and arranged it as she had worn it when only sixteen. Then, resolutely, she got up and crossed over to where Kells was unpacking.
“I'll help you get supper,” she said.
He was on his knees in the midst of a jumble of camp duffle that had been hastily thrown together. He looked up at her--from her shapely, strong, brown arms to the face she had rubbed rosy.
“Say, but you're a pretty girl!”
He said it enthusiastically, in unstinted admiration, without the slightest subtlety or suggestion; and if he had been the devil himself it would have been no less a compliment, given spontaneously to youth and beauty.
“I'm glad if it's so, but please don't tell me,” she rejoined, simply.
Then with swift and business-like movements she set to helping him with the mess the inexperienced pack-horse had made of that particular pack. And when that was straightened out she began with the biscuit dough while he lighted a fire. It appeared to be her skill, rather than her willingness, that he yielded to. He said very little, but he looked at her often. And he had little periods of abstraction. The situation was novel, strange to him. Sometimes Joan read his mind and sometimes he was an enigma. But she divined when he was thinking what a picture she looked there, on her knees before the bread-pan, with flour on her arms; of the difference a girl brought into any place; of how strange it seemed that this girl, instead of lying a limp and disheveled rag under a tree, weeping and praying for home, made the best of a bad situation and unproved it wonderfully by being a thoroughbred.
Presently they sat down, cross-legged, one on each side of the tarpaulin, and began the meal. That was the strangest supper Joan ever sat down to; it was like a dream where there was danger that tortured her; but she knew she was dreaming and would soon wake up. Kells was almost imperceptibly changing. The amiability of his face seemed to have stiffened. The only time he addressed her was when he offered to help her to more meat or bread or coffee. After the meal was finished he would not let her wash the pans and pots, and attended to that himself.
Joan went to the seat by the tree, near the camp-fire. A purple twilight was shadowing the canon. Far above, on the bold peak the last warmth of the afterglow was fading. There was no wind, no sound, no movement. Joan wondered where Jim Cleve was then. They had often sat in the twilight. She felt an unreasonable resentment toward him, knowing she was to blame, but blaming him for her plight. Then suddenly she thought of her uncle, of home, of her kindly old aunt who always worried so about her. Indeed, there was cause to worry. She felt sorrier for them than for herself. And that broke her spirit momentarily. Forlorn, and with a wave of sudden sorrow and dread and hopelessness, she dropped her head upon her knees and covered her face. Tears were a relief. She forgot Kells and the part she must play. But she remembered swiftly--at the rude touch of his hand.
“Here! Are you crying?” he asked, roughly.
“Do you think I'm laughing?” Joan retorted. Her wet eyes, as she raised them, were proof enough.
“Stop it.”
“I can't help--but cry--a little. I was th--thinking of home--of those who've been father and mother to me--since I was a baby. I wasn't crying--for myself. But they--they'll be so miserable. They loved me so.”
“It won't help matters to cry.”
Joan stood up then, no longer sincere and forgetful, but the girl with her deep and cunning game. She leaned close to him in the twilight.
“Did you ever love any one? Did you ever have a sister--a girl like me?”
Kells stalked away into the gloom.
Joan was left alone. She did not know whether to interpret his abstraction, his temper, and his action as favorable or not. Still she hoped and prayed they meant that he had some good in him. If she could only hide her terror, her abhorrence, her knowledge of him and his motive! She built up a bright camp-fire. There was an abundance of wood. She dreaded the darkness and the night. Besides, the air was growing chilly. So, arranging her saddle and blankets near the fire, she composed herself in a comfortable seat to await Kells's return and developments. It struck her forcibly that she had lost some of her fear of Kells and she did not know why. She ought to fear him more every hour--every minute. Presently she heard his step brushing the grass and then he emerged out of the gloom. He had a load of fire-wood on his shoulder.
“Did you get over your grief?” he asked, glancing down upon her.
“Yes,” she replied.
Kells stooped for a red ember, with which he lighted his pipe, and then he seated himself a little back from the fire. The blaze threw a bright glare over him, and in it he looked neither formidable nor vicious nor ruthless. He asked her where she was born, and upon receiving an answer he followed that up with another question. And he kept this up until Joan divined that he was not so much interested in what he apparently wished to learn as he was in her presence, her voice, her personality. She sensed in him loneliness, hunger for the sound of a voice. She had heard her uncle speak of the loneliness of lonely camp-fires and how all men working or hiding or lost in the wilderness would see sweet faces in the embers and be haunted by soft voices. After all, Kells was human. And she talked as never before in her life, brightly, willingly, eloquently, telling the facts of her eventful youth and girlhood--the sorrow and the joy and some of the dreams--up to the time she had come to Camp Hoadley.
“Did you leave any sweethearts over there at Hoadley?” he asked, after a silence.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“A whole campful,” she replied, with a laugh, “but admirers is a better name for them.”
“Then there's no one fellow?”
“Hardly--yet.”
“How would you like being kept here in this lonesome place for--well, say for ever?”
“I wouldn't like that,” replied Joan. “I'd like this--camping out like this now--if my folks only knew I am alive and well and safe. I love lonely, dreamy places. I've dreamed of being in just such a one as this. It seems so far away here--so shut in by the walls and the blackness. So silent and sweet! I love the stars. They speak to me. And the wind in the spruces. Hear it.... Very low, mournful! That whispers to me--to-morrow I'd like it here if I had no worry. I've never grown up yet. I explore and climb trees and hunt for little birds and rabbits--young things just born, all fuzzy and sweet, frightened, piping or squealing for their mothers. But I won't touch one for worlds. I simply can't hurt anything. I can't spur my horse or beat him. Oh, I HATE pain!”
“You're a strange girl to live out here on this border,” he said.
“I'm no different from other girls. You don't know girls.”
“I knew one pretty well. She put a rope round my neck,” he replied, grimly.
“A rope!”
“Yes, I mean a halter, a hangman's noose. But I balked her!”
“Oh!... A good girl?”
“Bad! Bad to the core of her black heart--bad as I am!” he exclaimed, with fierce, low passion.
Joan trembled. The man, in an instant, seemed transformed, somber as death. She could not look at him, but she must keep on talking.
“Bad? You don't seem bad to me--only violent, perhaps, or wild.... Tell me about yourself.”
She had stirred him. His neglected pipe fell from his hand. In the gloom of the camp-fire he must have seen faces or ghosts of his past.
“Why not?” he queried, strangely. “Why not do what's been impossible for years--open my lips? It'll not matter--to a girl who can never tell!... Have I forgotten? God!--I have not! Listen, so that you'll KNOW I'm bad. My name's not Kells. I was born in the East, and went to school there till I ran away. I was young, ambitious, wild. I stole. I ran away--came West in 'fifty-one to the gold-fields in California. There I became a prospector, miner, gambler, robber--and road-agent. I had evil in me, as all men have, and those wild years brought it out. I had no chance. Evil and gold and blood--they are one and the same thing. I committed every crime till no place, bad as it might be, was safe for me. Driven and hunted and shot and starved--almost hanged!... And now I'm--Kells! of that outcast crew you named 'the Border Legion!' Every black crime but one--the blackest--and that haunting me, itching my hands to-night.”
“Oh, you speak so--so dreadfully!” cried Joan. “What can I say? I'm sorry for you. I don't believe it all. What--what black crime haunts you? Oh! what could be possible tonight--here in this lonely canon--with only me?”
Dark and terrible the man arose.
“Girl,” he said, hoarsely. “To-night--to-night--I'll.... What have you done to me? One more day--and I'll be mad to do right by you--instead of WRONG.... Do you understand that?”
Joan leaned forward in the camp-fire light with outstretched hands and quivering lips, as overcome by his halting confession of one last remnant of honor as she was by the dark hint of his passion.
“No--no--I don't understand--nor believe!” she cried. “But you frighten me--so! I am all--all alone with you here. You said I'd be safe. Don't--don't--”
Her voice broke then and she sank back exhausted in her seat. Probably Kells had heard only the first words of her appeal, for he took to striding back and forth in the circle of the camp-fire light. The scabbard with the big gun swung against his leg. It grew to be a dark and monstrous thing in Joan's sight. A marvelous intuition born of that hour warned her of Kells's subjection to the beast in him, even while, with all the manhood left to him, he still battled against it. Her girlish sweetness and innocence had availed nothing, except mock him with the ghost of dead memories. He could not be won or foiled. She must get her hands on that gun--kill him--or--! The alternative was death for herself. And she leaned there, slowly gathering all the unconquerable and unquenchable forces of a woman's nature, waiting, to make one desperate, supreme, and final effort.
