For several nights these stolen interviews were apparently the safer because of Joan's tender blinding of her lover. But it seemed that in Jim's condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim's case she had added the spark to the powder. She realized her blunder when it was too late. And the fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her again that she, too, was answering to the wildness of the time and place. Joan's intelligence had broadened wonderfully in this period of her life, just as all her feelings had quickened. If gold had developed and intensified and liberated the worst passions of men, so the spirit of that atmosphere had its baneful effect upon her. Joan deplored this, yet she had the keenness to understand that it was nature fitting her to survive.
Back upon her fell that weight of suspense--what would happen next? Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same peril which had menaced her before, but she would suffer through fatality to Cleve or Kells. And these two slept at night under a shadow that held death, and by day they walked on a thin crust over a volcano. Joan grew more and more fearful of the disclosures made when Kells met his men nightly in the cabin. She feared to hear, but she must hear, and even if she had not felt it necessary to keep informed of events, the fascination of the game would have impelled her to listen. And gradually the suspense she suffered augmented into a magnified, though vague, assurance of catastrophe, of impending doom. She could not shake off the gloomy presentiment. Something terrible was going to happen. An experience begun as tragically as hers could only end in a final and annihilating stroke. Yet hope was unquenchable, and with her fear kept pace a driving and relentless spirit.
One night at the end of a week of these interviews, when Joan attempted to resist Jim, to plead with him, lest in his growing boldness he betray them, she found him a madman.
“I'll pull you right out of this window,” he said, roughly, and then with his hot face pressed against hers tried to accomplish the thing he threatened.
“Go on--pull me to pieces!” replied Joan, in despair and pain. “I'd be better off dead! And--you--hurt me--so!”
“Hurt you!” he whispered, hoarsely, as if he had never dreamed of such possibility. And then suddenly he was remorseful. He begged her to forgive him. His voice was broken, husky, pleading. His remorse, like every feeling of his these days, was exaggerated, wild, with that raw tinge of gold-blood in it. He made so much noise that Joan, more fearful than ever of discovery, quieted him with difficulty.
“Does Kells see you often--these days?” asked Jim, suddenly.
Joan had dreaded this question, which she had known would inevitably come. She wanted to lie; she knew she ought to lie; but it was impossible.
“Every day,” she whispered. “Please--Jim--never mind that. Kells is good--he's all right to me.... And you and I have so little time together.”
“Good!” exclaimed Cleve. Joan felt the leap of his body under her touch. “Why, if I'd tell you what he sends that gang to do--you'd--you'd kill him in his sleep.”
“Tell me,” replied Joan. She had a morbid, irresistible desire to learn.
“No.... And WHAT does Kells do--when he sees you every day?”
“He talks.”
“What about?”
“Oh, everything except about what holds him here. He talks to me to forget himself.”
“Does he make love to you?”
Joan maintained silence. What would she do with this changed and hopeless Jim Cleve?
“Tell me!” Jim's hands gripped her with a force that made her wince. And now she grew as afraid of him as she had been for him. But she had spirit enough to grow angry, also.
“Certainly he does.”
Jim Cleve echoed her first word, and then through grinding teeth he cursed. “I'm going to--stop it!” he panted, and his eyes looked big and dark and wild in the starlight.
“You can't. I belong to Kells. You at least ought to have sense enough to see that.”
“Belong to him!... For God's sake! By what right?”
“By the right of possession. Might is right here on the border. Haven't you told me that a hundred times? Don't you hold your claim--your gold--by the right of your strength? It's the law of this border. To be sure Kells stole me. But just now I belong to him. And lately I see his consideration--his kindness in the light of what he could do if he held to that border law.... And of all the men I've met out here Kells is the least wild with this gold fever. He sends his men out to do murder for gold; he'd sell his soul to gamble for gold; but just the same, he's more of a man than---”
“Joan!” he interrupted, piercingly. “You love this bandit!”
“You're a fool!” burst out Joan.
“I guess--I--am,” he replied in terrible, slow earnestness. He raised himself and appeared to loom over her and released his hold.
But Joan fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged to get away she was hard put to it to hold him.
“Jim! Where are you going?”
He stood there a moment, a dark form against the night shadow, like an outline of a man cut from black stone.
“I'll just step around--there.”
“Oh, what for?” whispered Joan.
“I'm going to kill Kells.”
Joan got both arms round his neck and with her head against him she held him tightly, trying, praying to think how to meet this long-dreaded moment. After all, what was the use to try? This was the hour of Gold! Sacrifice, hope, courage, nobility, fidelity--these had no place here now. Men were the embodiment of passion--ferocity. They breathed only possession, and the thing in the balance was death. Women were creatures to hunger and fight for, but womanhood was nothing. Joan knew all this with a desperate hardening certainty, and almost she gave in. Strangely, thought of Gulden flashed up to make her again strong! Then she raised her face and began the old pleading with Jim, but different this time, when it seemed that absolutely all was at stake. She begged him, she importuned him, to listen to reason, to be guided by her, to fight the wildness that had obsessed him, to make sure that she would not be left alone. All in vain! He swore he would kill Kells and any other bandit who stood in the way of his leading her free out of that cabin. He was wild to fight. He might never have felt fear of these robbers. He would not listen to any possibility of defeat for himself, or the possibility that in the event of Kells's death she would be worse off. He laughed at her strange, morbid fears of Gulden. He was immovable.
“Jim!... Jim! You'll break my heart!” she whispered, wailingly. “Oh! WHAT can I do?”
Then Joan released her clasp and gave up to utter defeat. Cleve was silent. He did not seem to hear the shuddering little sobs that shook her. Suddenly he bent close to her.
“There's one thing you can do. If you'll do it I won't kill Kells. I'll obey your every word.”
“What is it? Tell me!”
“Marry me!” he whispered, and his voice trembled.
“MARRY YOU!” exclaimed Joan. She was confounded. She began to fear Jim was out of his head.
“I mean it. Marry me. Oh, Joan, will you--will you? It'll make the difference. That'll steady me. Don't you want to?”
“Jim, I'd be the happiest girl in the world if--if I only COULD marry you!” she breathed, passionately.
“But will you--will you? Say yes! Say yes!”
“YES!” replied Joan in her desperation. “I hope that pleases you. But what on earth is the use to talk about it now?”
Cleve seemed to expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness, a happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was spiritual, and somehow she received an uplift of hope.
“Listen,” he whispered. “There's a preacher down in camp. I've seen him--talked with him. He's trying to do good in that hell down there. I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him--enough. I'll fetch him up here tomorrow night--about this time. Oh, I'll be careful--very careful. And he can marry us right here by the window. Joan, will you do it?... Somehow, whatever threatens you or me--that'll be my salvation!... I've suffered so. It's been burned in my heart that YOU would never marry me. Yet you say you love me!... Prove it!... MY WIFE!... Now, girl, a word will make a man of me!”
“Yes!” And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart in them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from him.
“Look for me to-morrow about this time,” he whispered. “Keep your nerve.... Good night.”
That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The next day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was brought to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and she only vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the murmur of voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a quarrel between Kells and his men did not distract her.
At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with the gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the bluff, did she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud caught the glory of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden radiance like that. It faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained. At twilight and then at dusk this glow lingered.
Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of light and shadow, of sound and silence, of dread and hope, of sadness and joy.
That pale, ruddy glow lingered over the bold heave of the range in the west. It was like a fire that would not go out, that would live to-morrow, and burn golden. The sky shone with deep, rich blue color fired with a thousand stars, radiant, speaking, hopeful. And there was a white track across the heavens. The mountains flung down their shadows, impenetrable, like the gloomy minds of men; and everywhere under the bluffs and slopes, in the hollows and ravines, lay an enveloping blackness, hiding its depth and secret and mystery.
Joan listened. Was there sound or silence? A faint and indescribably low roar, so low that it might have been real or false, came on the soft night breeze. It was the roar of the camp down there--the strife, the agony, the wild life in ceaseless action--the strange voice of gold, roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men, for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this was only a fleeting day of men and gold.
Only by straining her ears could Joan hear these sounds, and when she ceased that, then she seemed to be weighed upon and claimed by silence. It was not a silence like that of Lost Canon, but a silence of solitude where her soul stood alone. She was there on earth, yet no one could hear her mortal cry. The thunder of avalanches or the boom of the sea might have lessened her sense of utter loneliness.
And that silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of dread. They spoke to her. She breathed dread on that silent air and it filled her breast. There was nothing stable in the night shadows. The ravine seemed to send forth stealthy, noiseless shapes, specter and human, man and phantom, each on the other's trail.
If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the hour! A hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than the shadows. She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and dread might be lost. Love was something beyond the grasp of mind. Love had confounded Jim Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor from the black depths of a bandit's heart; it had transformed her from a girl into a woman. Surely with all its greatness it could not be lost; surely in the end it must triumph over evil.
Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock of intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. And when she gave rein to it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness. To hope was to think! Poor Jim! It was his fool's paradise. Just to let her be his wife! That was the apex of his dream. Joan divined that he might yield to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony would be greater. Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so different that she could not but feel joy in his joy.
Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow Joan's mingled emotions merged into a poignant sense of the pain and suspense and tenderness of the actual moment.
“Joan--Joan,” came the soft whisper.
She answered, and there was a catch in her breath.
The moving shadow split into two shadows that stole closer, loomed before her. She could not tell which belonged to Jim till he touched her. His touch was potent. It seemed to electrify her.
“Dearest, we're here--this is the parson,” said Jim, like a happy boy. “I--”
“Ssssh!” whispered Joan. “Not so loud.... Listen!”
Kells was holding a rendezvous with members of his Legion. Joan even recognized his hard and somber tone, and the sharp voice of Red Pearce, and the drawl of Handy Oliver.
“All right. I'll be quiet,” responded Cleve, cautiously. “Joan, you're to answer a few questions.”
Then a soft hand touched Joan, and a voice differently keyed from any she had heard on the border addressed her.
“What is your name?” asked the preacher.
Joan told him.
“Can you tell anything about yourself? This young man is--is almost violent. I'm not sure. Still I want to--”
“I can't tell much,” replied Joan, hurriedly. “I'm an honest girl. I'm free to--to marry him. I--I love him!... Oh, I want to help him. We--we are in trouble here. I daren't say how.”
“Are you over eighteen?” “Yes, sir.”
“Do your parents object to this young man?”
“I have no parents. And my uncle, with whom I lived before I was brought to this awful place, he loves Jim. He always wanted me to marry him.”
“Take his hand, then.”
Joan felt the strong clasp of Jim's fingers, and that was all which seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy round these two black forms in front of her window. She heard a mournful wail of a lone wolf and it intensified the weird dream that bound her. She heard her shaking, whispered voice repeating the preacher's words. She caught a phrase of a low-murmured prayer. Then one dark form moved silently away. She was alone with Jim.
“Dearest Joan!” he whispered. “It's over! It's done!... Kiss me!”
She lifted her lips and Jim seemed to kiss her more sweetly, with less violence.
“Oh, Joan, that you'd really have me! I can't believe it.... Your HUSBAND.”
That word dispelled the dream and the pain which had held Joan, leaving only the tenderness, magnified now a hundredfold.
And that instant when she was locked in Cleve's arms, when the silence was so beautiful and full, she heard the heavy pound of a gun-butt upon the table in Kells's room.
“Where is Cleve?” That was the voice of Kells, stern, demanding.
Joan felt a start, a tremor run over Jim. Then he stiffened.
“I can't locate him,” replied Red Pearce. “It was the same last night an' the one before. Cleve jest disappears these nights--about this time.... Some woman's got him!”
“He goes to bed. Can't you find where he sleeps?”
“No.”
“This job's got to go through and he's got to do it.”
“Bah!” taunted Pearce. “Gulden swears you can't make Cleve do a job. And so do I!”
“Go out and yell for Cleve!... Damn you all! I'll show you!”
Then Joan heard the tramp of heavy boots, then a softer tramp on the ground outside the cabin. Joan waited, holding her breath. She felt Jim's heart beating. He stood like a post. He, like Joan, was listening, as if for a trumpet of doom.
“HALLO, JIM!” rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped in echo, and wound away, mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild borderland the breaking-point of the bandit's power.
So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and she let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she realized it, and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan waited, listening with abated breathing. On this side of the cabin there was absolute silence. She believed that Jim would slip around under cover of night and return by the road from camp. Then what would he do? The question seemed to puzzle her.
Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from those vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that had left her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the voice of Kells had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was returning now to reality. Presently she would peer through the crevice between the boards into the other room, and she shrank from the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with him, maintained silence. Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot and a creak of the loose floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear compelled her to look.
The lamps were burning; the door was wide open. Apparently Kells's rule of secrecy had been abandoned. One glance at Kells was enough to show Joan that he was sick and desperate. Handy Oliver did not wear his usual lazy good humor. Red Pearce sat silent and sullen, a smoking, unheeded pipe in his hand. Jesse Smith was gloomy. The only other present was Bate Wood, and whatever had happened had in no wise affected him. These bandits were all waiting. Presently quick footsteps on the path outside caused them all to look toward the door. That tread was familiar to Joan, and suddenly her mouth was dry, her tongue stiff. What was Jim Cleve coming to meet? How sharp and decided his walk! Then his dark form crossed the bar of light outside the door, and he entered, bold and cool, and with a weariness that must have been simulated.
“Howdy boys!” he said.
Only Kells greeted him in response. The bandit eyed him curiously. The others added suspicion to their glances.
“Did you hear Red's yell?” queried Kells, presently.
“I'd have heard that roar if I'd been dead,” replied Cleve, bluntly. “And I didn't like it!... I was coming up the road and I heard Pearce yell. I'll bet every man in camp heard it.”
“How'd you know Pearce yelled for you?”
“I recognized his voice.”
Cleve's manner recalled to Joan her first sight of him over in Cabin Gulch. He was not so white or haggard, but his eyes were piercing, and what had once been recklessness now seemed to be boldness. He deliberately studied Pearce. Joan trembled, for she divined what none of these robbers knew, and it was that Pearce was perilously near death. It was there for Joan to read in Jim's dark glance.
“Where've you been all these nights?” queried the bandit leader.
“Is that any of your business--when you haven't had need of me?” returned Cleve.
“Yes, it's my business. And I've sent for you. You couldn't be found.”
“I've been here for supper every night.”
“I don't talk to any men in daylight. You know my hours for meeting. And you've not come.”
“You should have told me. How was I to know?”
“I guess you're right. But where've you been?”
“Down in camp. Faro, most of the time. Bad luck, too.”
Red Pearce's coarse face twisted into a scornful sneer. It must have been a lash to Kells.
“Pearce says you're chasing a woman,” retorted the bandit leader.
“Pearce lies!” flashed Cleve. His action was as swift. And there he stood with a gun thrust hard against Pearce's side.
“JIM! Don't kill him!” yelled Kells, rising.
Pearce's red face turned white. He stood still as a stone, with his gaze fixed in fascinated fear upon Cleve's gun.
A paralyzing surprise appeared to hold the group.
“Can you prove what you said?” asked Cleve, low and hard.
Joan knew that if Pearce did have the proof which would implicate her he would never live to tell it.
“Cleve--I don't--know nothin',” choked out Pearce. “I jest figgered--it was a woman!”
Cleve slowly lowered the gun and stepped back. Evidently that satisfied him. But Joan had an intuitive feeling that Pearce lied.
“You want to be careful how you talk about me,” said Cleve.
Kells purled out a suspended breath and he flung the sweat from his brow. There was about him, perhaps more than the others, a dark realization of how close the call had been for Pearce.
“Jim, you're not drunk?”
“No.”
“But you're sore?”
“Sure I'm sore. Pearce put me in bad with you, didn't he?”
“No. You misunderstood me. Red hasn't a thing against you. And neither he nor anybody else could put you in bad with me.”
“All right. Maybe I was hasty. But I'm not wasting time these days,” replied Cleve. “I've no hard feelings.... Pearce, do you want to shake hands--or hold that against me?”
“He'll shake, of course,” said Kells.
Pearce extended his hand, but with a bad grace. He was dominated. This affront of Cleve's would rankle in him.
“Kells, what do you want with me?” demanded Cleve.
A change passed over Kells, and Joan could not tell just what it was, but somehow it seemed to suggest a weaker man.
“Jim, you've been a great card for me,” began Kells, impressively. “You've helped my game--and twice you saved my life. I think a lot of you.... If you stand by me now I swear I'll return the trick some day.... Will you stand by me?”
“Yes,” replied Cleve, steadily, but he grew pale. “What's the trouble?”
“By--, it's bad enough!” exclaimed Kells, and as he spoke the shade deepened in his haggard face. “Gulden has split my Legion. He has drawn away more than half my men. They have been drunk and crazy ever since. They've taken things into their own hands. You see the result as well as I. That camp down there is fire and brimstone. Some one of that drunken gang has talked. We're none of us safe any more. I see suspicion everywhere. I've urged getting a big stake and then hitting the trail for the border. But not a man sticks to me in that. They all want the free, easy, wild life of this gold-camp. So we're anchored till--till... But maybe it's not too late. Pearce, Oliver, Smith--all the best of my Legion--profess loyalty to me. If we all pull together maybe we can win yet. But they've threatened to split, too. And it's all on your account!”
“Mine?” ejaculated Cleve.
“Yes. Now it's nothing to make you flash your gun. Remember you said you'd stand by me.... Jim, the fact is--all the gang to a man believe you're double-crossing me!”
“In what way?” queried Cleve, blanching.
“They think you're the one who has talked. They blame you for the suspicion that's growing.”
“Well, they're absolutely wrong,” declared Cleve, in a ringing voice.
“I know they are. Mind you I'm not hinting I distrust you. I don't. I swear by you. But Pearce--”
“So it's Pearce,” interrupted Cleve, darkly. “I thought you said he hadn't tried to put me in bad with you.”
“He hasn't. He simply spoke his convictions. He has a right to them. So have all the men. And, to come to the point, they all think you're crooked because you're honest!”
“I don't understand,” replied Cleve, slowly.
“Jim, you rode into Cabin Gulch, and you raised some trouble. But you were no bandit. You joined my Legion, but you've never become a bandit. Here you've been an honest miner. That suited my plan and it helped. But it's got so it doesn't suit my men. You work every day hard. You've struck it rich. You're well thought of in Alder Creek. You've never done a dishonest thing. Why, you wouldn't turn a crooked trick in a card game for a sack full of gold. This has hurt you with my men. They can't see as I see, that you're as square as you are game. They see you're an honest miner. They believe you've got into a clique--that you've given us away. I don't blame Pearce or any of my men. This is a time when men's intelligence, if they have any, doesn't operate. Their brains are on fire. They see gold and whisky and blood, and they feel gold and whisky and blood. That's all. I'm glad that the gang gives you the benefit of a doubt and a chance to stand by me.”
“A chance!”
“Yes. They've worked out a job for you alone. Will you undertake it?”
“I'll have to,” replied Cleve.
“You certainly will if you want the gang to justify my faith in you. Once you pull off a crooked deal, they'll switch and swear by you. Then we'll get together, all of us, and plan what to do about Gulden and his outfit. They'll run our heads, along with their own, right into the noose.”
“What is this--this job?” labored Cleve. He was sweating now and his hair hung damp over his brow. He lost that look which had made him a bold man and seemed a boy again, weak, driven, bewildered.
Kells averted his gaze before speaking again. He hated to force this task upon Cleve. Joan felt, in the throbbing pain of the moment, that if she never had another reason to like this bandit, she would like him for the pity he showed.
“Do you know a miner named Creede?” asked Kells, rapidly.
“A husky chap, short, broad, something like Gulden for shape, only not so big--fellow with a fierce red beard?” asked Cleve.
“I never saw him,” replied Kells. “But Pearce has. How does Cleve's description fit Creede?”
“He's got his man spotted,” answered Pearce.
“All right, that's settled,” went on Kells, warming to his subject. “This fellow Creede wears a heavy belt of gold. Blicky never makes a mistake. Creede's partner left on yesterday's stage for Bannack. He'll be gone a few days. Creede is a hard worker-one of the hardest. Sometimes he goes to sleep at his supper. He's not the drinking kind. He's slow, thick-headed. The best time for this job will be early in the evening--just as soon as his lights are out. Locate the tent. It stands at the head of a little wash and there's a bleached pine-tree right by the tent. To-morrow night as soon as it gets dark crawl up this wash--be careful--wait till the right time--then finish the job quick!”
“How--finish--it?” asked Cleve, hoarsely.
Kells was scintillating now, steely, cold, radiant. He had forgotten the man before him in the prospect of the gold.
“Creede's cot is on the side of the tent opposite the tree. You won't have to go inside. Slit the canvas. It's a rotten old tent. Kill Creede with your knife.... Get his belt.... Be bold, cautious, swift! That's your job. Now what do you say?”
“All right,” responded Cleve, somberly, and with a heavy tread he left the room.
After Jim had gone Joan still watched and listened. She was in distress over his unfortunate situation, but she had no fear that he meant to carry out Kells's plan. This was a critical time for Jim, and therefore for her. She had no idea what Jim could do; all she thought was what he would not do.
Kells gazed triumphantly at Pearce. “I told you the youngster would stand by me. I never put him on a job before.”
“Reckon I figgered wrong, boss,” replied Pearce.
“He looked sick to me, but game,” said Handy Oliver. “Kells is right, Red, an' you've been sore-headed over nothin'!”
“Mebbe. But ain't it good figgerin' to make Cleve do some kind of a job, even if he is on the square?”
They all acquiesced to this, even Kells slowly nodding his head.
“Jack, I've thought of another an' better job for young Cleve,” spoke up Jesse Smith, with his characteristic grin.
“You'll all be setting him jobs now,” replied Kells. “What's yours?”
“You spoke of plannin' to get together once more--what's left of us. An' there's thet bull-head Gulden.”
“You're sure right,” returned the leader, grimly, and he looked at Smith as if he would welcome any suggestion.
“I never was afraid to speak my mind,” went on Smith. Here he lost his grin and his coarse mouth grew hard. “Gulden will have to be killed if we're goin' to last!”
“Wood, what do you say?” queried Kells, with narrowing eyes.
Bate Wood nodded as approvingly as if he had been asked about his bread.
“Oliver, what do you say?”
“Wal, I'd love to wait an' see Gul hang, but if you press me, I'll agree to stand pat with the cards Jesse's dealt,” replied Handy Oliver.
Then Kells turned with a bright gleam upon his face. “And you--Pearce?”
“I'd say yes in a minute if I'd not have to take a hand in thet job,” replied Pearce, with a hard laugh. “Gulden won't be so easy to kill. He'll pack a gunful of lead. I'll gamble if the gang of us cornered him in this cabin he'd do for most of us before we killed him.”
“Gul sleep alone, no one knows where,” said Handy Oliver. “An' he can't be surprised. Red's correct. How're we goin' to kill him?”
“If you gents will listen you'll find out,” rejoined Jesse Smith. “Thet's the job for young Cleve. He can do it. Sure Gulden never was afraid of any man. But somethin' about Cleve bluffed him. I don't know what. Send Cleve out after Gulden. He'll call him face to face, anywhere, an' beat him to a gun!... Take my word for it.”
“Jesse, that's the grandest idea you ever had,” said Kells, softly. His eyes shone. The old power came back to his face. “I split on Gulden. With him once out of the way--!”
“Boss, are you goin' to make thet Jim Cleve's second job?” inquired Pearce, curiously.
“I am,” replied Kells, with his jaw corded and stiff. “If he pulls thet off you'll never hear a yap from me so long as I live. An' I'll eat out of Cleve's hand.”
Joan could bear to hear no more. She staggered to her bed and fell there, all cramped as if in a cold vise. However Jim might meet the situation planned for murdering Creede, she knew he would not shirk facing Gulden with deadly intent. He hated Gulden because she had a horror of him. Would these hours of suspense never end? Must she pass from one torture to another until--?
Sleep did not come for a long time. And when it did she suffered with nightmares from which it seemed she could never awaken.
The day, when at last it arrived, was no better than the night. It wore on endlessly, and she who listened so intently found it one of the silent days. Only Bate Wood remained at the cabin. He appeared kinder than usual, but Joan did not want to talk. She ate her meals, and passed the hours watching from the window and lying on the bed. Dusk brought Kells and Pearce and Smith, but not Jim Cleve. Handy Oliver and Blicky arrived at supper-time.
“Reckon Jim's appetite is pore,” remarked Bate Wood, reflectively. “He ain't been in to-day.”
Some of the bandits laughed, but Kells had a twinge, if Joan ever saw a man have one. The dark, formidable, stern look was on his face. He alone of the men ate sparingly, and after the meal he took to his bent posture and thoughtful pacing. Joan saw the added burden of another crime upon his shoulders. Conversation, which had been desultory, and such as any miners or campers might have indulged in, gradually diminished to a word here and there, and finally ceased. Kells always at this hour had a dampening effect upon his followers. More and more he drew aloof from them, yet he never realized that. He might have been alone. But often he glanced out of the door, and appeared to listen. Of course he expected Jim Cleve to return, but what did he expect of him? Joan had a blind faith that Jim would be cunning enough to fool Kells and Pearce. So much depended upon it!
Some of the bandits uttered an exclamation. Then silently, like a shadow, Jim Cleve entered.
Joan's heart leaped and seemed to stand still. Jim could not have locked more terrible if he were really a murderer. He opened his coat. Then he flung a black object upon the table and it fell with a soft, heavy, sodden thud. It was a leather belt packed with gold.
When Kells saw that he looked no more at the pale Cleve. His clawlike hand swept out for the belt, lifted and weighed it. Likewise the other bandits, with gold in sight, surged round Kells, forgetting Cleve.
“Twenty pounds!” exclaimed Kells, with a strange rapture in his voice.
“Let me heft it?” asked Pearce, thrillingly.
Joan saw and heard so much, then through a kind of dimness, that she could not wipe away, her eyes beheld Jim. What was the awful thing that she interpreted from his face, his mien? Was this a part he was playing to deceive Kells? The slow-gathering might of her horror came with the meaning of that gold-belt. Jim had brought back the gold-belt of the miner Creede. He had, in his passion to remain near her, to save her in the end, kept his word to Kells and done the ghastly deed.
Joan reeled and sank back upon the bed, blindly, with darkening sight and mind.
