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"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.
But he did not come to Kells's cabin, which fact, Joan gathered, had made Kells anxious. He did not want to lose Cleve. Joan peered from her covert in the evenings, and watched for Jim, and grew weary of the loud talk and laughter, the gambling and smoking and drinking. When there seemed no more chance of Cleve's coming, then Joan went to bed.
All this time Joan's hand had been gripped in Jim's, and Joan had been so absorbed that she had forgotten the fact. He released her and faced her, silent, pale. Then he went out. Joan swiftly followed. Kells was buckling on his spurs. "You heard?" he said, the moment he saw Jim's face. "Yes," replied Jim. "So much the better. We've got to rustle.... Joan, put on that long coat of Cleve's.
"Look there!" he boomed, and he threw the object on the table. The dull, heavy, sodden thump had a familiar ring. Joan heard Jim gasp and his hand tightened spasmodically upon hers. Slowly the ends of the red scarf slid down to reveal an irregularly round, glinting lump. When Joan recognized it her heart seemed to burst. "Jim Cleve's nugget!" ejaculated Kells. "Where'd you get that?"
Kells's face grew livid and his whole body vibrated. "Maybe one of Gulden's gang was outside, listening when we planned Cleve's job," he suggested. But his look belied his hope. "Naw! There's a nigger in the wood-pile, you can gamble on thet," blurted out the sixth bandit, a lean faced, bold-eye, blond-mustached fellow whose name Joan had never heard.
It wasn't a fair hand you were going to deal him," responded Cleve. "But who gave my job away? Someone in this gang wants me done for more than Gulden." Cleve's flashing gaze swept over the motionless men and fixed hardest upon Red Pearce. Pearce gave back hard look for hard look. "Gulden told Oliver more," continued Kells, and he pulled Cleve around to face him.
"Jim, are you just hell-bent on fighting or do you mean to make yourself the champion of every poor girl in these wilds?" Cleve puffed a cloud of smoke that enveloped his head "I don't pick quarrels," he replied. "Then you get red-headed at the very mention of a girl." A savage gesture of Cleve's suggested that Kells was right.
Joan got up, a little dizzy and unsteady upon her feet. Her hands appeared clumsy and shaky. All the blood in her seemed to surge from heart to brain and it hurt her to breathe. Removing her mask, she bathed her face and combed her hair. At first she conceived an idea to go out without her face covered, but she thought better of it. Cleve's reckless defiance had communicated itself to her.
Suddenly there was an ominous sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next on the right of Palmer. Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed. "They're coming for him!" Quickly getting the men under arms, Hazen moved his brigade behind Van Cleve to act as a support, and awaited the coming attack.
There were still two horses in the rear, one carrying three men, and one two; and behind the latter Van Cleve, summoning his strength, threw the boy, who escaped. Nor did Van Cleve's pity for his fellows cease with this; for he stopped to tie his handkerchief around the knee of a wounded man.
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