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Updated: June 24, 2025
We're not welcome in the gambling-places any more. Last night I was not allowed to sit in the game at Belcher's." "You think Cleve has squealed?" queried Kells. "Yes." "I'll bet you every ounce of dust I've got that you're wrong," declared Kells. "A straight, square bet against anything you want to put up!" Kells's ringing voice was nothing if not convincing.
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.
His voice was cold and colorless, unfamiliar to Joan. Was this man really Jim Cleve? The meeting of Kells and Cleve was significant because of Kells's interest and the silent attention of the men of his clan. It did not seem to mean anything to the white-faced, tragic-eyed Cleve. Joan gazed at him with utter amazement.
"Speak, Joan!" he said, with his hands tightening and his brow clouding. "No, Kells," she replied. "Why? Because I'm a red-handed bandit?" "No. Because I I don't love you." "But wouldn't you rather be my wife and have me honest than become a slave here, eventually abandoned to to Gulden and his cave and his rope?" Kells's voice rose as that other side of him gained dominance.
"Yes, you do," replied Kells, persuasively. "Every man on this border needs that. And he's lucky when he gets it." "Well, I don't ask for it; I don't want it." "That's your own business, too. I'm not insisting or advising." Kells's force and ability to control men manifested itself in his speech and attitude.
But Gulden, tireless, sleepless, eternally vigilant, guarded the saddle of gold and brooded over it, and seemed a somber giant carved out of the night. And Blicky, nursing some deep and late-developed scheme, perhaps in Kells's interest or his own, kept watch over Gulden and all. Jim cautioned Joan to rest, and importuned her and promised to watch while she slept.
But all the others every man must take orders from me." Gulden reached out a huge hand. His instant acceptance evidently amazed Kells and the others. "LET HER RIP!" Gulden exclaimed. He shook Kells's hand and then laboriously wrote his name in the little book. In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild abandoned men. What were Kells and this Legion to him?
"Joan! I had a time waking you," whispered Jim, and then he kissed her. "Why, you're as cold as ice." "Jim I I must have fainted," she replied. "What for?" "I was peeping into Kells's cabin, when you you " "Poor kid!" he interrupted, tenderly. "You've had so much to bear!... Joan, I fooled Kells. Oh, I was slick!... He ordered me out on a job to kill a miner! Fancy that! And what do you think?
Joan imagined she recognized the brushy ravine out of which Jesse Smith had led that day when Kells's party came upon the new road. She believed Jim thought so, too, for he gripped her hand unusually hard. Beyond that point Joan began to breathe more easily. There seemed no valid reason now why every mile should not separate them farther from the bandits, and she experienced relief.
"There ain't much wrong.... Cleve, here, throwed a gun on Gulden, that's all." Kells gave a slight start, barely perceptible, but the intensity of it, and a fleeting tigerish gleam across his face, impressed Joan with the idea that he felt a fiendish joy. Her own heart clamped in a cold amaze. "Gulden!" Kells's exclamation was likewise a passionate query. "No, he ain't cashed," replied Pearce.
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