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Updated: May 3, 2025
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.
From the fleeting expression on Kells's face Joan read that he knew Gulden's project would defeat his own and render both enterprises fatal. "Gulden, I don't want to lose you," he said. "You won't lose me if you see this thing right," replied Gulden. "You've got the brains to direct us. But, Kells, you're losing your nerve.... It's this girl you've got here!"
It must have been hateful to Kells this faculty of Gulden's to meet victory identically as he met defeat. The test of a great gambler's nerve was not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler and Kells was not. The giant had no emotion, no imagination. And Kells seemed all fire and whirling hope and despair and rage.
Inevitably in some of them would burst a flame of passion as it had in Kells. Between this amiable contest for Joan's glances and replies, with its possibility of latent good to her, and the dark, lurking, unspoken meaning, such as lay in Gulden's brooding, Joan found another new and sickening torture. "Say, Frenchy, you're no lady's man," declared Red Pearce, "an' you, Bate, you're too old.
"Who's thet on a hoss?" Gulden's gang crowded to the door. "Thet's Handy Oliver." "No!" "Shore is. I know him. But it ain't his hoss.... Say, he's hurryin'." Low exclamations of surprise and curiosity followed. Kells and his men looked attentively, but no one spoke. The clatter of hoofs on the stony road told of a horse swiftly approaching pounding to a halt before the cabin.
A personal and individual note had been injected into the attitude of each. Intuitively Joan guessed that Gulden's arising to follow her had turned their eyes inward. Gulden remained silent and inactive at the edge of the camp-fire circle of light, which flickered fitfully around him, making him seem a huge, gloomy ape of a man.
Gulden's voice held a queer, coarse constraint. Then he added, gruffly. "Thought you and him pulled together." "Well, we didn't." "And where's Bill now?" This time Joan heard a slow, curious, cold note in the heavy voice, and she interpreted it as either doubt or deceit. "Bill's dead and Halloway, too," replied Kells. Gulden turned his massive, shaggy head in the direction of Joan.
"I'm a-goin' to set in the game!" yelled Blicky. "We'll all set in," declared Jesse Smith. "Come on!" was Gulden's acquiescence. "But we all can't play at once," protested Kells. "Let's make up two games." "Naw!" "Some of you eat, then, while the others get cleaned out." "Thet's it cleaned out!" ejaculated Budd, meanly. "You seem to be sure, Kells. An' I guess I'll keep shady of thet game."
He'll kill you. He's lightning with a gun. Do you suppose I'd set him on Gulden's trail if I wasn't sure? Why I wouldn't care to " "Here comes Cleve," interrupted Pearce, sharply. Rapid footsteps sounded without. Then Joan saw Jim Cleve darken the doorway. He looked keen and bold. Upon sight of Joan in her changed attire he gave a slight start.
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!"
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