Joan turned away from the door in a cold clamp of relief. The shadow of death hovered over these men. She must fortify herself to live under that shadow, to be prepared for any sudden violence, to stand a succession of shocks that inevitably would come. She listened. The men were talking and laughing now; there came a click of chips, the spat of a thrown card, the thump of a little sack of gold. Ahead of her lay the long hours of night in which these men would hold revel. Only a faint ray of light penetrated her cabin, but it was sufficient for her to distinguish objects. She set about putting the poles in place to barricade the opening. When she had finished she knew she was safe at least from intrusion. Who had constructed that rude door and for what purpose? Then she yielded to the temptation to peep once more under the edge of the curtain.
The room was cloudy and blue with smoke. She saw Jim Cleve at a table gambling with several ruffians. His back was turned, yet Joan felt the contrast of his attitude toward the game, compared with that of the others. They were tense, fierce, and intent upon every throw of a card. Cleve's very poise of head and movement of arm betrayed his indifference. One of the gamblers howled his disgust, slammed down his cards, and got up.
“He's cleaned out,” said one, in devilish glee.
“Naw, he ain't,” voiced another. “He's got two fruit-cans full of dust. I saw 'em.... He's just lay down--like a poisoned coyote.”
“Shore I'm glad Cleve's got the luck, fer mebbe he'll give my gold back,” spoke up another gamester, with a laugh.
“Wal, he certainlee is the chilvalus card sharp,” rejoined the last player. “Jim, was you allus as lucky in love as in cards?”
“Lucky in love?... Sure!” answered Jim Cleve, with a mocking, reckless ring in his voice.
“Funny, ain't thet, boys? Now there's the boss. Kells can sure win the gurls, but he's a pore gambler.” Kells heard this speech, and he laughed with the others. “Hey, you greaser, you never won any of my money,” he said.
“Come an' set in, boss. Come an' see your gold fade away. You can't stop this Jim Cleve. Luck--bull luck straddles his neck. He'll win your gold--your hosses an' saddles an' spurs an' guns--an' your shirt, if you've nerve enough to bet it.”
The speaker slapped his cards upon the table while he gazed at Cleve in grieved admiration. Kells walked over to the group and he put his hand on Cleve's shoulder.
“Say youngster,” he said, genially, “you said you were just as lucky in love.... Now I had a hunch some BAD luck with a girl drove you out here to the border.”
Kells spoke jestingly, in a way that could give no offense, even to the wildest of boys, yet there was curiosity, keenness, penetration, in his speech. It had not the slightest effect upon Jim Cleve.
“Bad luck and a girl?... To hell with both!” he said.
“Shore you're talkin' religion. Thet's where both luck an' gurls come from,” replied the unlucky gamester. “Will one of you hawgs pass the whiskey?”
The increased interest with which Kells looked down upon Jim Cleve was not lost upon Joan. But she had seen enough, and, turning away, she stumbled to the bed and lay there with an ache in her heart.
“Oh,” she whispered to herself, “he is ruined--ruined--ruined!... God forgive me!” She saw bright, cold stars shining between the logs. The night wind swept in cold and pure, with the dew of the mountain in it. She heard the mourn of wolves, the hoot of an owl, the distant cry of a panther, weird and wild. Yet outside there was a thick and lonely silence. In that other cabin, from which she was mercifully shut out, there were different sounds, hideous by contrast. By and by she covered her ears, and at length, weary from thought and sorrow, she drifted into slumber.
Next morning, long after she had awakened, the cabin remained quiet, with no one stirring. Morning had half gone before Wood knocked and gave her a bucket of water, a basin and towels. Later he came with her breakfast. After that she had nothing to do but pace the floor of her two rooms. One appeared to be only an empty shed, long in disuse. Her view from both rooms was restricted to the green slope of the gulch up to yellow crags and the sky. But she would rather have had this to watch than an outlook upon the cabins and the doings of these bandits.
About noon she heard the voice of Kells in low and earnest conversation with someone; she could not, however, understand what was said. That ceased, and then she heard Kells moving around. There came a clatter of hoofs as a horse galloped away from the cabin, after which a knock sounded on the wall.
“Joan,” called Kells. Then the curtain was swept aside and Kells, appearing pale and troubled, stepped into her room.
“What's the matter?” asked Joan, hurriedly.
“Gulden shot two men this morning. One's dead. The other's in bad shape, so Red tells me. I haven't seen him.”
“Who--who are they?” faltered Joan. She could not think of any man except Jim Cleve.
“Dan Small's the one's dead. The other they call Dick. Never heard his last name.”
“Was it a fight?”
“Of course. And Gulden picked it. He's a quarrelsome man. Nobody can go against him. He's all the time like some men when they're drunk. I'm sorry I didn't bore him last night. I would have done it if it hadn't been for Red Pearce.”
Kells seemed gloomy and concentrated on his situation and he talked naturally to Joan, as if she were one to sympathize. A bandit, then, in the details of his life, the schemes, troubles, friendships, relations, was no different from any other kind of a man. He was human, and things that might constitute black evil for observers were dear to him, a part of him. Joan feigned the sympathy she could not feel.
“I thought Gulden was your enemy.”
Kells sat down on one of the box seats, and his heavy gun-sheath rested upon the floor. He looked at Joan now, forgetting she was a woman and his prisoner.
“I never thought of that till now,” he said. “We always got along because I understood him. I managed him. The man hasn't changed in the least. He's always what he is. But there's a difference. I noticed that first over in Lost Canon. And Joan, I believe it's because Gulden saw you.”
“Oh, no!” cried Joan, trembling.
“Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway something's wrong. Gulden never had a friend or a partner. I don't misunderstand his position regarding Bailey. What did he care for that soak? Gulden's cross-grained. He opposes anything or anybody. He's got a twist in his mind that makes him dangerous.... I wanted to get rid of him. I decided to--after last night. But now it seems that's no easy job.”
“Why?” asked Joan, curiously.
“Pearce and Wood and Beard, all men I rely on, said it won't do. They hint Gulden is strong with my gang here, and all through the border. I was wild. I don't believe it. But as I'm not sure--what can I do?... They're all afraid of Gulden. That's it.... And I believe I am, too.”
“You!” exclaimed Joan.
Kells actually looked ashamed. “I believe I am, Joan,” he replied. “That Gulden is not a man. I never was afraid of a real man. He's--he's an animal.”
“He made me think of a gorrilla,” said Joan.
“There's only one man I know who's not afraid of Gulden. He's a new-comer here on the border. Jim Cleve he calls himself. A youngster I can't figure! But he'd slap the devil himself in the face. Cleve won't last long out here. Yet you can never tell. Men like him, who laugh at death, sometimes avert it for long. I was that way once.... Cleve heard me talking to Pearce about Gulden. And he said, 'Kells, I'll pick a fight with this Gulden and drive him out of the camp or kill him.'”
“What did you say?” queried Joan, trying to steady her voice as she averted her eyes.
“I said 'Jim, that wins me. But I don't want you killed.'... It certainly was nervy of the youngster. Said it just the same as--as he'd offer to cinch my saddle. Gulden can whip a roomful of men. He's done it. And as for a killer--I've heard of no man with his record.”
“And that's why you fear him?”
“It's not,” replied Kells, passionately, as if his manhood had been affronted. “It's because he's Gulden. There's something uncanny about him.... Gulden's a cannibal!”
Joan looked as if she had not heard aright.
“It's a cold fact. Known all over the border. Gulden's no braggart. But he's been known to talk. He was a sailor--a pirate. Once he was shipwrecked. Starvation forced him to be a cannibal. He told this in California, and in Nevada camps. But no one believed him. A few years ago he got snowed-up in the mountains back of Lewiston. He had two companions with him. They all began to starve. It was absolutely necessary to try to get out. They started out in the snow. Travel was desperately hard. Gulden told that his companions dropped. But he murdered them--and again saved his life by being a cannibal. After this became known his sailor yarns were no longer doubted.... There's another story about him. Once he got hold of a girl and took her into the mountains. After a winter he returned alone. He told that he'd kept her tied in a cave, without any clothes, and she froze to death.”
“Oh, horrible!” moaned Joan.
“I don't know how true it is. But I believe it. Gulden is not a man. The worst of us have a conscience. We can tell right from wrong. But Gulden can't. He's beneath morals. He has no conception of manhood, such as I've seen in the lowest of outcasts. That cave story with the girl--that betrays him. He belongs back in the Stone Age. He's a thing.... And here on the border, if he wants, he can have all the more power because of what he is.”
“Kells, don't let him see me!” entreated Joan.
The bandit appeared not to catch the fear in Joan's tone and look. She had been only a listener. Presently with preoccupied and gloomy mien, he left her alone.
Joan did not see him again, except for glimpses under the curtain, for three days. She kept the door barred and saw no one except Bate Wood, who brought her meals. She paced her cabin like a caged creature. During this period few men visited Kells's cabin, and these few did not remain long. Joan was aware that Kells was not always at home. Evidently he was able to go out. Upon the fourth day he called to her and knocked for admittance. Joan let him in, and saw that he was now almost well again, once more cool, easy, cheerful, with his strange, forceful air.
“Good day, Joan. You don't seem to be pining for your--negligent husband.”
He laughed as if he mocked himself, but there was gladness in the very sight of her, and some indefinable tone in his voice that suggested respect.
“I didn't miss you,” replied Joan. Yet it was a relief to see him.
“No, I imagine not,” he said, dryly. “Well, I've been busy with men--with plans. Things are working out to my satisfaction. Red Pearce got around Gulden. There's been no split. Besides, Gulden rode off. Someone said he went after a little girl named Brander. I hope he gets shot.... Joan, we'll be leaving Cabin Gulch soon. I'm expecting news that'll change things. I won't leave you here. You'll have to ride the roughest trails. And your clothes are in tatters now. You've got to have something to wear.”
“I should think so,” replied Joan, fingering the thin, worn, ragged habit that had gone to pieces. “The first brush I ride through will tear this off.”
“That's annoying,” said Kells, with exasperation at himself. “Where on earth can I get you a dress? We're two hundred miles from everywhere. The wildest kind of country.... Say, did you ever wear a man's outfit?”
“Ye-es, when I went prospecting and hunting with my uncle,” she replied, reluctantly.
Suddenly he had a daring and brilliant smile that changed his face completely. He rubbed his palms together. He laughed as if at a huge joke. He cast a measuring glance up and down her slender form.
“Just wait till I come back,” he said.
He left her and she heard him rummaging around in the pile of trappings she had noted in a corner of the other cabin. Presently he returned carrying a bundle. This he unrolled on the bed and spread out the articles.
“Dandy Dale's outfit,” he said, with animation. “Dandy was a would-be knight of the road. He dressed the part. But he tried to hold up a stage over here and an unappreciative passenger shot him. He wasn't killed outright. He crawled away and died. Some of my men found him and they fetched his clothes. That outfit cost a fortune. But not a man among us could get into it.”
There was a black sombrero with heavy silver band; a dark-blue blouse and an embroidered buckskin vest; a belt full of cartridges and a pearl-handled gun; trousers of corduroy; high-top leather boots and gold mounted spurs, all of the finest material and workmanship.
“Joan, I'll make you a black mask out of the rim of a felt hat, and then you'll be grand.” He spoke with the impulse and enthusiasm of a boy.
“Kells, you don't mean me to wear these?” asked Joan, incredulously.
“Certainly. Why not? Just the thing. A little fancy, but then you're a girl. We can't hide that. I don't want to hide it.”
“I won't wear them,” declared Joan.
“Excuse me--but you will,” he replied, coolly and pleasantly.
“I won't!” cried Joan. She could not keep cool.
“Joan, you've got to take long rides with me. At night sometimes. Wild rides to elude pursuers sometimes. You'll go into camps with me. You'll have to wear strong, easy, free clothes. You'll have to be masked. Here the outfit is--as if made for you. Why, you're dead lucky. For this stuff is good and strong. It'll stand the wear, yet it's fit for a girl.... You put the outfit on, right now.”
“I said I wouldn't!” Joan snapped.
“But what do you care if it belonged to a fellow who's dead?... There! See that hole in the shirt. That's a bullet-hole. Don't be squeamish. It'll only make your part harder.”
“Mr. Kells, you seem to have forgotten entirely that I'm a--a girl.”
He looked blank astonishment. “Maybe I have.... I'll remember. But you said you'd worn a man's things.”
“I wore my brother's coat and overalls, and was lost in them,” replied Joan.
His face began to work. Then he laughed uproariously. “I--under--stand. This'll fit--you--like a glove.... Fine! I'm dying to see you.”
“You never will.”
At that he grew sober and his eyes glinted. “You can't take a little fun. I'll leave you now for a while. When I come back you'll have that suit on!”
There was that in his voice then which she had heard when he ordered men.
Joan looked her defiance.
“If you don't have it on when I come I'll--I'll tear your rags off!... I can do that. You're a strong little devil, and maybe I'm not well enough yet to put this outfit on you. But I can get help.... If you anger me I might wait for--Gulden!”
Joan's legs grew weak under her, so that she had to sink on the bed. Kells would do absolutely and literally what he threatened. She understood now the changing secret in his eyes. One moment he was a certain kind of a man and the very next he was incalculably different. She instinctively recognized this latter personality as her enemy. She must use all the strength and wit and cunning and charm to keep his other personality in the ascendancy, else all was futile.
“Since you force me so--then I must,” she said.
Kells left her without another word.
Joan removed her stained and torn dress and her worn-out boots; then hurriedly, for fear Kells might return, she put on the dead boy-bandit's outfit. Dandy Dale assuredly must have been her counterpart, for his things fitted her perfectly. Joan felt so strange that she scarcely had courage enough to look into the mirror. When she did look she gave a start that was of both amaze and shame. But for her face she never could have recognized herself. What had become of her height, her slenderness? She looked like an audacious girl in a dashing boy masquerade. Her shame was singular, inasmuch as it consisted of a burning hateful consciousness that she had not been able to repress a thrill of delight at her appearance, and that this costume strangely magnified every curve and swell of her body, betraying her feminity as nothing had ever done.
And just at that moment Kells knocked on the door and called, “Joan, are you dressed?”
“Yes,” she replied. But the word seemed involuntary.
Then Kells came in.
It was an instinctive and frantic impulse that made Joan snatch up a blanket and half envelop herself in it. She stood with scarlet face and dilating eyes, trembling in every limb. Kells had entered with an expectant smile and that mocking light in his gaze. Both faded. He stared at the blanket--then at her face. Then he seemed to comprehend this ordeal. And he looked sorry for her.
“Why you--you little--fool!” he exclaimed, with emotion. And that emotion seemed to exasperate him. Turning away from her, he gazed out between the logs. Again, as so many times before, he appeared to be remembering something that was hard to recall, and vague.
Joan, agitated as she was, could not help but see the effect of her unexpected and unconscious girlishness. She comprehended that with the mind of the woman which had matured in her. Like Kells, she too, had different personalities.
“I'm trying to be decent to you,” went on Kells, without turning. “I want to give you a chance to make the best of a bad situation. But you're a kid--a girl!... And I'm a bandit. A man lost to all good, who means to have you!”
“But you're NOT lost to all good,” replied Joan, earnestly. “I can't understand what I do feel. But I know--if it had been Gulden instead of you--that I wouldn't have tried to hide my--myself behind this blanket. I'm no longer--AFRAID of you. That's why I acted--so--just like a girl caught.... Oh! can't you see!”
“No, I can't see,” he replied. “I wish I hadn't fetched you here. I wish the thing hadn't happened. Now it's too late.”
“It's never too late.... You--you haven't harmed me yet.”
“But I love you,” he burst out. “Not like I have. Oh! I see this--that I never really loved any woman before. Something's gripped me. It feels like that rope at my throat--when they were going to hang me.”
Then Joan trembled in the realization that a tremendous passion had seized upon this strange, strong man. In the face of it she did not know how to answer him. Yet somehow she gathered courage in the knowledge.
Kells stood silent a long moment, looking out at the green slope. And then, as if speaking to himself, he said: “I stacked the deck and dealt myself a hand--a losing hand--and now I've got to play it!”
With that he turned to Joan. It was the piercing gaze he bent upon her that hastened her decision to resume the part she had to play. And she dropped the blanket. Kells's gloom and that iron hardness vanished. He smiled as she had never seen him smile. In that and his speechless delight she read his estimate of her appearance; and, notwithstanding the unwomanliness of her costume, and the fact of his notorious character, she knew she had never received so great a compliment. Finally he found his voice.
“Joan, if you're not the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!”
“I can't get used to this outfit,” said Joan. “I can't--I won't go away from this room in it.”
“Sure you will. See here, this'll make a difference, maybe. You're so shy.”
He held out a wide piece of black felt that evidently he had cut from a sombrero. This he measured over her forehead and eyes, and then taking his knife he cut it to a desired shape. Next he cut eyeholes in it and fastened to it a loop made of a short strip of buckskin.
“Try that.... Pull it down--even with your eyes. There!--take a look at yourself.”
Joan faced the mirror and saw merely a masked stranger. She was no longer Joan Randle. Her identity had been absolutely lost.
“No one--who ever knew me--could recognize me now,” she murmured, and the relieving thought centered round Jim Cleve.
“I hadn't figured on that,” replied Kells. “But you're right.... Joan, if I don't miss my guess, it won't be long till you'll be the talk of mining-towns and camp-fires.”
This remark of Kells's brought to Joan proof of his singular pride in the name he bore, and proof of many strange stories about bandits and wild women of the border. She had never believed any of these stories. They had seemed merely a part of the life of this unsettled wild country. A prospector would spend a night at a camp-fire and tell a weird story and pass on, never to be seen there again. Could there have been a stranger story than her life seemed destined to be? Her mind whirled with vague, circling thought--Kells and his gang, the wild trails, the camps, and towns, gold and stage-coaches, robbery, fights, murder, mad rides in the dark, and back to Jim Cleve and his ruin.
Suddenly Kells stepped to her from behind and put his arms around her. Joan grew stiff. She had been taken off her guard. She was in his arms and could not face him.
“Joan, kiss me,” he whispered, with a softness, a richer, deeper note in his voice.
“No!” cried Joan, violently.
There was a moment of silence in which she felt his grasp slowly tighten--the heave of his breast.
“Then I'll make you,” he said. So different was the voice now that another man might have spoken. Then he bent her backward, and, freeing one hand, brought it under her chin and tried to lift her face.
But Joan broke into fierce, violent resistance. She believed she was doomed, but that only made her the fiercer, the stronger. And with her head down, her arms straining, her body hard and rigidly unyielding she fought him all over the room, knocking over the table and seats, wrestling from wall to wall, till at last they fell across the bed and she broke his hold. Then she sprang up, panting, disheveled, and backed away from him. It had been a sharp, desperate struggle on her part and she was stronger than he. He was not a well man. He raised himself and put one hand to his breast. His face was haggard, wet, working with passion, gray with pain. In the struggle she had hurt him, perhaps reopened his wound.
“Did you--knife me--that it hurts so?” he panted, raising a hand that shook.
“I had--nothing.... I just--fought,” cried Joan, breathlessly.
“You hurt me--again--damn you! I'm never free--from pain. But this's worse.... And I'm a coward.... And I'm a dog, too! Not half a man!--You slip of a girl--and I couldn't--hold you!”
His pain and shame were dreadful for Joan to see, because she felt sorry for him, and divined that behind them would rise the darker, grimmer force of the man. And she was right, for suddenly he changed. That which had seemed almost to make him abject gave way to a pale and bitter dignity. He took up Dandy Dale's belt, which Joan had left on the bed, and, drawing the gun from its sheath, he opened the cylinder to see if it was loaded, and then threw the gun at Joan's feet.
“There! Take it--and make a better job this time,” he said.
The power in his voice seemed to force Joan to pick up the gun.
“What do--you mean?” she queried, haltingly.
“Shoot me again! Put me out of my pain--my misery.... I'm sick of it all. I'd be glad to have you kill me!”
“Kells!” exclaimed Joan, weakly.
“Take your chance--now--when I've no strength--to force you.... Throw the gun on me.... Kill me!”
He spoke with a terrible impelling earnestness, and the strength of his will almost hypnotized Joan into execution of his demand.
“You are mad,” she said. “I don't want to kill you. I couldn't.... I just want you to--to be--decent to me.”
“I have been--for me. I was only in fun this time--when I grabbed you. But the FEEL of you!... I can't be decent any more. I see things clear now.... Joan Randle, it's my life or your soul!”
He rose now, dark, shaken, stripped of all save the truth.
Joan dropped the gun from nerveless grasp.
“Is that your choice?” he asked hoarsely.
“I can't murder you!”
“Are you afraid of the other men--of Gulden? Is that why you can't kill me? You're afraid to be left--to try to get away?”
“I never thought of them.”
“Then--my life or your soul!”
He stalked toward her, loomed over her, so that she put out trembling hands. After the struggle a reaction was coming to her. She was weakening. She had forgotten her plan.
“If you're merciless--then it must be--my soul,” she whispered. “For I CAN'T murder you.... Could you take that gun now--and press it here--and murder ME?”
“No. For I love you.”
“You don't love me. It's a blacker crime to murder the soul than the body.”
Something in his strange eyes inspired Joan with a flashing, reviving divination. Back upon her flooded all that tide of woman's subtle incalculable power to allure, to charge, to hold. Swiftly she went close to Kells. She stretched out her hands. One was bleeding from rough contract with the log wall during the struggle. Her wrists were red, swollen, bruised from his fierce grasp.
“Look! See what you've done. You were a beast. You made me fight like a beast. My hands were claws--my whole body one hard knot of muscle. You couldn't hold me--you couldn't kiss me.... Suppose you ARE able to hold me--later. I'll only be the husk of a woman. I'll just be a cold shell, doubled-up, unrelaxed, a callous thing never to yield.... All that's ME, the girl, the woman you say you love--will be inside, shrinking, loathing, hating, sickened to death. You will only kiss--embrace--a thing you've degraded. The warmth, the sweetness, the quiver, the thrill, the response, the life--all that is the soul of a woman and makes her lovable will be murdered.”
Then she drew still closer to Kells, and with all the wondrous subtlety of a woman in a supreme moment where a life and a soul hang in the balance, she made of herself an absolute contrast to the fierce, wild, unyielding creature who had fought him off.
“Let me show--you the difference,” she whispered, leaning to him, glowing, soft, eager, terrible, with her woman's charm. “Something tells me--gives me strength.... What MIGHT be!... Only barely possible--if in my awful plight--you turned out to be a man, good instead of bad!... And--if it were possible--see the differences--in the woman.... I show you--to save my soul!”
She gave the fascinated Kells her hands, slipped into his arms, to press against his breast, and leaned against him an instant, all one quivering, surrendered body; and then lifting a white face, true in its radiance to her honest and supreme purpose to give him one fleeting glimpse of the beauty and tenderness and soul of love, she put warm and tremulous lips to his.
Then she fell away from him, shrinking and terrified. But he stood there as if something beyond belief had happened to him, and the evil of his face, the hard lines, the brute softened and vanished in a light of transformation.
“My God!” he breathed softly. Then he awakened as if from a trance, and, leaping down the steps, he violently swept aside the curtain and disappeared.
Joan threw herself upon the bed and spent the last of her strength in the relief of blinding tears. She had won. She believed she need never fear Kells again. In that one moment of abandon she had exalted him. But at what cost!
