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Updated: May 24, 2025
Apparently what they knew of Kells's movements and plans since the break-up at Alder Creek fitted well with Cleve's suggestions. "Come on!" boomed Gulden, from the fore. "Do you want to rot here?" Then without so much as a backward glance at the ruin they left behind the bandits fell into line. Jesse Smith led straight off the road into a shallow brook and evidently meant to keep in it.
All that was natural and true in her shrank from such unwomanly deception; all that had been born of her wild experience inflamed her to play the game, to match Kells's villainy with a woman's unfathomable duplicity. And while Joan was absorbed in thought the sun set, the light failed, twilight stole into the cabin, and then darkness.
At a turn, when the second pack-horse, that appeared unused to his task, came fully into Joan's sight, she was struck with his resemblance to some horse with which she was familiar. It was scarcely an impression which she might have received from seeing Kells's horse or Bill's or any one's a few times. Therefore she watched this animal, studying his gait and behavior.
Likewise Kells's assertion that he had parted company with Halloway and Bill because he would not share the ransom that, too, was false. The idea of a ransom, in this light, was now ridiculous.
His vanity began to bleed to death. This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells's unsteady hand reached for one of the whisky bottles. Once with a low curse he threw an empty bottle through the door. "Hey, boss, ain't it about time " began Jesse Smith.
Presently Joan sauntered away, and she went among the tired, shaggy horses and made friends with them. An occasional rider swung up the trail to dismount before Kells's cabin, and once two riders rode in, both staring all eyes at her. The meaning of her intent alertness dawned upon her then.
He lost first to Gulden, then to Kells, and presently he rose, a beaten, but game man. He reached for the whisky. "Fellers, I reckon I can enjoy Kells's yellow streak more when I ain't playin'," he said. The bandit leader eyed Smith with awakening rancor, as if a persistent hint of inevitable weakness had its effect. He frowned, and the radiance left his face for the forbidding cast.
But he figgered Kells wrong for once. He accused Kells's girl an' got killed for his pains. Mebbe it was part of his plan to git the girl himself. Anyway, he had agreed to betray the Border Legion to-day. An' if he hadn't been killed by this time we'd all be tied up, ready for the noose!... Mebbe thet wasn't a lucky shot of the boss's.
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.
What was the stealing of more or less gold? "Free to do as you like except fight my men," said Kells. "That's understood." "If they don't pick a fight with me," added the giant, and he grinned. One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that Kells's personality made a serious and binding compact. "Anybody else?" called Kells, glancing round.
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