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The name Jesse Smith was on everybody's lips. Any hour he might be expected to arrive and corroborate Blicky's alluring tale. Joan saw or imagined she saw that the glances in the eyes of these men were yellow, like gold fire. She had seen miners and prospectors whose eyes shone with a strange glory of light that gold inspired, but never as those of Kells's bandit Legion.
Blicky grasped Kells's arm and threw his weight upon it to keep it down. "I fetched thet parson here," he yelled, "an you ain't a-goin' to kill him!... Help, Jesse!... He's crazy! He'll do it!" Jesse Smith ran to Blicky's aid and tore the gun out of Kells's hand. Jim Cleve grasped the preacher by the shoulders and, whirling him around, sent him flying out of the door.
Then she seemed to feel, to hear through an icy, sickening terror. A scattering volley silenced the guns above. Then came the pound of hoofs, the snort of frightened horses. "Jesse Smith! Stop!" called Jim, piercingly. "Hold on thar, Beady!" replied a hoarse voice. "Damn if it ain't Jim Cleve!" "Ho, Gul!" yelled another voice, and Joan recognized it as Blicky's.
Kells might persuade him to join that bandit legion. These men made Joan think of wolves, with Kells the keen and savage leader. No one had given a thought to Blicky's horse and that neglect in border men was a sign of unusual preoccupation. The horse was in bad shape. Joan took off his saddle and bridle, and rubbed the dust-caked lather from his flanks, and led him into the corral.
It might have been a quarter of an hour, though to Joan it seemed an endless time, until footsteps and voices outside announced the return of Blicky. He held by the arm a slight man whom he was urging along with no gentle force. This stranger's face presented as great a contrast to Blicky's as could have been imagined. His apparel proclaimed his calling.
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