Cabin Gulch (19 page)

“You don't care whether you join any legion or whether you don't.”

“Not a damn,” was the indifferent answer.

“Then, do me a favor,” went on Kells. “Join to please me. We'll be good friends. You're in bad out here on the border. You might as well fall in with me.”

“I'd rather go alone.”

“But you won't last.”

“It's a lot I care.”

The bandit studied the reckless white face. “See here, Cleve . . . haven't you got the nerve to be bad . . . thoroughly bad?”

Cleve gave a start as if he had been stung. Joan shut
her eyes to blot out what she saw in his face. Kells had used part of the very speech with which she had driven Jim Cleve to his ruin. And those words galvanized him. The fatality of all this! Joan hated herself. Those very words of hers would drive this maddened and heart-broken boy to join Kells's band. She knew what to expect from Jim even before she opened her eyes, yet, when she did open them, it was to see him transformed and blazing.

Then Kells either gave way to leaping passion or simulated it in the interest of his cunning. “Cleve, you're going to hell for a woman?” he queried with that sharp, mocking ring in his voice.

“If you don't shut up, you'll get there first,” replied Cleve menacingly.

“Bah! Why do you want to throw a gun on me? I'm your friend. You're sick. You're like a poisoned pup. I say, if you've got nerve, you won't quit. You'll talk a run for your money. You'll see life. You'll fight. You'll win some gold. There are other women. Once I thought I would go to hell for a woman. But I didn't. I never found the right one till I
had
gone to hell . . . out here on this border. . . . If you've got nerve, show me. Be a man instead of a crazy youngster. Spit out the poison! Tell it before us all! Some girl drove you to us?”

“Yes . . . a girl?” replied Cleve hoarsely, as if goaded.

“It's too late to go back?”

“Too late!”

“There's nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?”

“Nothing . . . only I can't forget!” he panted.

Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness. Joan saw how Kells worked upon Jim's feelings. He was only a hopeless passionate boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man. He would be
like wax to a sculptor's touch. Jim would bend to this bandit's will, and through his very tenacity of love and memory be driven further on the road to drink, to gaming, and to crime.

Joan got to her feet, and, with all her woman's soul uplifting and inflaming her, she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.

Kells made a gesture of savage violence.

“Show your nerve! Join with me! You'll make a name on this border that the West will never forget.”

That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit's best trump. And it won. Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from his damp brow. The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from him. He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as his own cowardice.

“Sure Kells,” he said recklessly. “Let me in the game. And . . . by God . . . I'll . . . play . . . the hand out!”

He reached for the pencil and bent over the book.

“Wait! Oh, wait!” cried Joan. The power of that moment, the consciousness of its fateful portent and her situation, as desperate as Cleve's, gave her voice a singularly high and piercingly sweet intensity. She glided from behind the blanket . . . out of the shadow . . . into the glare of the lanterns . . . to face Kells and Cleve.

Kells gave one astounded glance at her, and then, divining her purpose, he laughed thrillingly and mockingly, as if the sight of her was a spur, as if her courage was a thing to admire, to permit, and to regret.

“Cleve, my wife, Dandy Dale,” he said, suave and cool. “Let her persuade you . . . one way or another!”

The presence of a woman, however disguised, following her singular appeal, transformed Cleve. He
stiffened erect and the flush died out of his face, leaving it whiter than ever, and the eyes that had grown dull quickened and began to burn. Joan felt her cheeks blanch. She all but fainted under that gaze. But he did not recognize her, although he was strangely affected.

“Wait!” she cried again, and she held to that high voice, so different from her natural tones. “I've been listening. I've heard all that's been said. Don't join this Border Legion. You're young . . . and still honest. For God's sake . . . don't go the way of these men! Kells will make you a bandit. Go home . . . boy . . . go home!”

“Who are you . . . to speak to me of honesty . . . of home?” Cleve demanded.

“I'm only a . . . a woman . . . but I can feel how wrong you are. Go back to that girl . . . who . . . who drove you to the border. She must repent. In a day you'll be too late. Oh, boy, go home! Girls never know their minds . . . their hearts. Maybe your girl . . . loved you. Oh, maybe her heart is breaking now.”

A stray muscular ripple went over Cleve ending in a gesture of fierce protest. Was it pain her words caused or disgust that such as she dared mention the girl he had loved? Joan could not tell. She only knew that Cleve was drawn by her presence—fascinated and repelled—subtly responding to the spirit of her—doubting what he heard and believing with his eyes.

“You beg me not to become a bandit?” he asked slowly, as if revolving a strange idea.

“Oh, I implore you.”

“Why?”

“I told you . . . because you're still good at heart. You've only been wild. . . . Because . . .”

“Are you the wife of Kells?” he flashed at her.

A reply seemed slowly wrenched from Joan's reluctant lips. “No.”

The denial left a silence behind it. The truth that all three knew, when spoken by her, was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon the face of Cleve shone an immeasurable scorn.

“Not his wife!” exclaimed Cleve softly. His tone was unendurable to Joan. She began to shrink. A flame curled within her. How he must hate any creature of her sex! “And you appeal to me?” he went on. Suddenly a weariness came over him. The complexity of women was beyond him. Almost he turned his back upon her. “I reckon such as you can't keep me from Kells . . . or blood . . . or hell?”

“Then you're a narrow-souled weakling . . . born to crime!” she burst out in magnificent wrath. “For however appearances are against me . . . I am a good woman!”

That stunned him, just as it drew Kells upright, white and watchful. Cleve seemed long in grasping its significance. His face was half averted. Then he turned slowly, all strung, and his hands clutched quiveringly at the air. No man of coolness and judgment would have addressed him or moved a step in that strained moment. All expected some such action as had marked his encounter with Luce and Gulden.

Then Cleve's gaze in unmistakable meaning swept over Joan's person. How could her appearance and her appeal be reconciled? One was a lie! And his burning eyes robbed Joan of spirit.

“He forced me to . . . to wear this,” she faltered. “I'm his prisoner. I'm helpless.”

With cat-like agility Cleve leaped backward, so that he faced all the men, and, when his hands swept to a
level, they held gleaming guns. His utter abandon of daring transfixed these bandits in surprise as much as fear. Kells appeared to take most of the menace personally.

“I crawl,” he said huskily. “She speaks the God's truth . . . but you can't help matters by killing me. Maybe she'd be worse off.”

He expected this wild boy to break loose, yet his wit directed him to speak the one thing calculated to check Cleve.

“Oh, don't shoot,” moaned Joan.

“You go outside!” ordered Cleve. “Get on a horse and lead another near the door. Go! I'll take you away from this.”

Both temptation and terror assailed Joan. Surely that venture would mean only death to Jim and worse for her. She thrilled at the thought—at the possibility of escape—at the strange front of this erst-while nerveless boy. But she had not the courage for what seemed only desperate folly.

“I'll stay,” she whispered. “You go.”

“Hurry, woman!”

“No . . . no!”

“Do you want to stay with this bandit?”

“Oh, I must!”

“Then you love him?”

All the fire of Joan's heart flared up to deny the insult and all her woman's cunning fought to keep back words that inevitably must lead to revelation. She drooped, unable to hold up under her shame, yet strong to let him think vilely of her, for his sake. That way she had a barest chance.

“Get out of my sight!” he ejaculated thickly. “I'd have fought for you.”

Again that white, weary scorn radiated from him. Joan bit her tongue to keep from screaming. How
could she live under this torment? It was she, Joan Randle, that had earned that scorn, whether he knew her or not. She shrank back, step by step, almost dazed, sick with a terrible inward gripping coldness, blinded by scalding tears. She found her door and stumbled in.

“Kells, I'm what you called me.” She heard Cleve's voice, strangely far off. “There's no excuse . . . unless I'm not just right in my head about women . . . overlook my break or don't . . . as you like. But if you want me, I'm ready for your Border Legion.”

Those bitter words of Cleve's, as if he mocked himself, were the last Joan heard, and they rang in her ears and seemed to reverberate through her dazed mind like a knell of doom. She lay there, all blackness about her, weighed upon by an insupportable burden, and she prayed that day might never dawn for her.

A nightmare of oblivion ended at last with her eyes opening to the morning light. She was cold and stiff. She had lain uncovered all the long hours of night. She had not moved a finger since she had fallen upon the bed, crushed by those bitter words with which Cleve had consented to join Kells's legion. Since then Joan felt that she had lived years. She could not remember a single thought she might have had during those black hours; nevertheless a decision had been formed in her mind, and it was that today she would reveal herself to Jim Cleve if it cost both their lives. Death was infinitely better than the suspense and fear and agony she had endured, and as for Jim it would at least save him from crime.

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. She could not now be stopped.

Kells was gay and excited that morning. He paid her compliments. He said they would soon be out of this lonely gulch and she would see the sight of her life—a gold strike. She would see men wager a fortune on the turn of a card—lose—laugh—and go back to the digging. He said he would take her to Sacramento and Frisco and buy her everything any girl could desire. He was wild, voluble, unreasoning—obsessed by the anticipated fulfillment of his dream.

It was rather late in the morning and there were a dozen or more men in and around the cabin, all as excited as Kells. Preparations were already under way for the expected journey to the gold field. Packs were being laid out, overhauled, and repacked; saddles and bridles and weapons were being worked over; clothes were being awkwardly mended. Horses were being shod, and the job was as hard and disagreeable for men as for horses. Whenever a rider swung up the slope, and one came now and then, all the robbers would leave off their tasks and start eagerly for the newcomer. 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 gleams 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. Presently Joan discovered that, despite the excitement, her effect on them was more marked than ever, and by a difference she was quick to feel. But she could not tell what this difference was—how their attitude had changed. Then she set herself the task of being useful. First she helped Bate Wood. He was roughly kind. She had not realized that there was sadness about her until he whispered: “Don't be downcast, miss . . . mebbe it'll come out right yet.” That amazed Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances, the sympathy she felt in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She grew keen to learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in all the men. Then she went to Pearce, and with all a woman's craft she exaggerated the silent sadness that had brought quick response from Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her proximity as that of a feminine thing that roused the devil in him. Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud of her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then, as she finished, he glanced furtively around; he pressed her hand. “I had a sister once,” he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate: “Kells . . . he'll get his over in the gold camp.”

Joan turned away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange deep undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her situation—what was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the bandit leader? Was there
no honor among evil men banded together for evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate, and faithlessness fostered by this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant's notice to break out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragic nature of Kells's great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold—of riotous gambling—but by its very nature it was doomed. It embraced failure and death.