Cabin Gulch (28 page)

Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock of intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. When she gave rein to it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness. To hope was to think. Poor Jim. It was his fool's paradise. Just let her be his wife. That was the shibboleth of his dream. Joan divined that he might yield to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony would be greater. Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so different that she could not but feel joy in his joy.

Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow, Joan's mingled emotion merged into a
poignant sense of the pain and suspense and tenderness of the actual moment.

“Joan . . . Joan,” came the soft whisper.

She answered, and there was a catch in her breath.

The moving shadow split into two shadows that stole closer, loomed before her. She could not tell which belonged to Jim till he touched her. His touch was potent. It seemed to electrify her.

“Dearest, we're here . . . this is the parson,” said Jim, like a happy boy. “I. . . .”

“Ssssh,”
whispered Joan. “Not so loud . . . listen.”

Kells was holding a rendezvous with members of his legion. Joan even recognized his hard and somber tone, and the sharp voice of Red Pearce, and the drawl of Handy Oliver.

“All right. I'll be quiet,” responded Cleve cautiously. “Joan, you're to answer a few questions.”

Then a soft hand touched Joan, and a voice differently keyed from any she had heard on the border, addressed her.

“What is your name?” asked the preacher.

Joan told him.

“Can you tell any thing about yourself? This young man is . . . is almost violent. I'm not sure. Still I want to . . .”

“I can't tell much,” replied Joan hurriedly. “I'm an honest girl. I'm free to . . . to marry him. I . . . I love him. Oh, I want to help him. We . . . we are in trouble here. I daren't say how.”

“Are you over eighteen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do your parents object to this young man?”

“I have no parents, and my uncle, with whom I lived before I was brought to this awful place . . . he loves Jim. He always wanted me to marry him.”

“Take his hand, then.”

Joan felt the strong clasp of Jim's fingers and that was all that seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy around these two black forms in front of her window. She heard a mournful wail of a lone wolf and it intensified the weird dream that bound her. She heard her shaking whispered voice repeating the preacher's words. She felt the cool thrilling touch of a ring on her finger. She caught a phrase of a low-murmured prayer. Then one dark form moved silently away. She was alone with Jim.

“Dearest Joan,” he whispered. “It's over. It's done. Kiss me.”

She lifted her lips and Jim seemed to kiss her more sweetly, with less violence.

“Oh, Joan, that you'd really have me. I can't believe it . . . your husband.”

That word dispelled the dream and the pain that had held Joan, having only the tenderness, magnified now a hundredfold.

In that instant when she was locked in Cleve's arms, when the silence was so beautiful and full, she heard the heavy pound of a gun butt upon the table in Kells's room.

“Where is Cleve?” That was the voice of Kells, stern, demanding.

Joan felt a start, a tremor run over Jim. Then he stiffened.

“I can't locate him,” replied Red Pearce. “It was the same last night an' the one before. Cleve jest disappears these nights . . . about this time. Some woman's got him.”

“He goes to bed. Can't you find where he sleeps?”

“No.”

“This job's got to go through and he's got to do it.”

“Bah!” taunted Pearce. “Gulden swears you can't make Cleve do a job. And so do I!”

“Go out and yell for Cleve, damn you! Damn you all! I'll show you!”

Then Joan heard the tramp of heavy boots—then a softer tramp on the ground outside the cabin. Joan waited, holding her breath. She felt Jim's heart beating. He stood like a post. He, like Joan, was listening, as if for a trumpet of doom.

“Hallo Jim!” rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped an echo, and wound away mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild borderland the breaking point of the bandit's power.

So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and she let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she realized it, and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan waited, listening with abated breathing. On this side of the cabin there was absolute silence. She believed that Jim would slip around under cover of night and return by the road from camp. Then what would he do? The question seemed to stultify her.

Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from those vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that had left her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude raw break the voice of Kells had made in her brief forgetfulness. She was returning now to reality. Presently she would peer through the crevice between the boards into the other room, and she shrank from the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with him, maintained silence. Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot and a creak of the loose floorboards. 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. The only other present was Bate Wood, and whatever had happened had in no wise affected him. These bandits were all waiting.

Presently quick footsteps on the path outside caused them all to look toward the door. That tread was familiar to Joan, and suddenly her mouth was dry, her tongue stiff. What was Jim Cleve coming to meet? How sharp and decided his walk. Then his dark form crossed the bar of light outside the door, and he entered, bold and cool, and with a weariness that must have been simulated.

“Howdy, boys,” he said.

Only Kells greeted him in response. The bandit eyed him curiously. The others added suspicion to their glances.

“Did you hear Jim's yell?” queried Kells.

“I'd have heard that roar if I'd been dead,” replied Cleve bluntly. “And I didn't like it . . . not for a damn! I was coming up the road and I heard Pearce yell. I'll bet every man in camp heard it.”

“How'd you know Pearce yelled for you?”

“I recognized his voice.”

Cleve's manner recalled to Joan her first sight of him over in Cabin Gulch. He was not white or haggard, but his eyes were piercing, and what had once been recklessness now seemed to be boldness. He deliberately studied Pearce. Joan trembled, for she divined what none of these robbers knew, and it was
that Pearce was perilously near death. It was there for Joan to read in Jim's dark glance.

“Where've you been all these nights?” queried the bandit leader.

“Is that any of your business . . . when you haven't had need of me?” returned Cleve.

“Yes. It's my business. And I've sent for you. You couldn't be found.”

“I've been here for supper every night.”

“I don't talk to my men in daylight. You know my hours for meeting. And you've not come.”

“You should have told me. How was I to know?”

“I guess you're right. But where've you been?”

“Down in camp. Faro, most of the time. Bad luck, too.”

Red Pearce's coarse face twisted into a scornful sneer. It must have been a lash to Kells.

“Pearce says you're chasing a woman,” retorted the bandit leader.

“Pearce lies!” flashed Cleve. His action was as swift, and there he stood with a cocked gun thrust hard against Pearce's side.

“Jim! Don't kill him!” yelled Kells, rising.

Pearce's red face turned white. He stood as still as a stone, with his gaze fixed in fascinated fear upon the hammer of Cleve's gun.

A paralyzing surprise appeared to hold the group.

“Can you prove what you said?” asked Cleve, low and hard.

Joan knew that if Pearce did have the proof that would implicate her he would never live to tell it.

“Cleve . . . I don't . . . know nothin',” choked out Pearce. “I jest figgered . . . it was a woman.”

Cleve slowly lowered the gun and stepped back. Evidently that satisfied him. But Joan had an intuitive feeling that Pearce lied.

“You want to be damn' careful how you talk about me,” said Cleve.

Kells puffed out a suspended breath and he flung the sweat from his brow. There was about him, perhaps more than the others, a dark realization of how close the call had been for Pearce.

“Jim, you're not drunk?”

“No.”

“But you're sore?”

“Sure I'm sore. Pearce put me in bad with you, didn't he?”

“No. You misunderstood me. Red hasn't a thing against you. And neither he nor anybody else could put you in bad with me.”

“All right. Maybe I was hasty. But I'm not wasting time these days,” replied Cleve. “I've no hard feelings. Pearce, do you want to shake hands . . . or hold that against me?”

“He'll shake, of course,” said Kells.

Pearce extended his hand, but with a bad grace. He was dominated. This affront of Cleve's would rankle in him.

“Kells, what do you want with me?” demanded Cleve.

A change passed over Kells, and Joan could not tell what it was, but somehow it seemed to suggest a weaker man.

“Jim, you've been a great card for me,” began Kells impressively. “You've helped my game . . . and twice you saved my life. I think a lot of you. If you stand by me now, I swear I'll return the trick someday. Will you stand by me?”

“Yes,” replied Cleve steadily, but he grew pale. “What's the trouble?”

“By God, it's bad enough!” exclaimed Kells, and, as he spoke, the shade deepened in his haggard face.
“Gulden has split my legion. He has drawn away more than half my men. They have been drunk and crazy ever since. They've taken things into their own hands. You see the results as well as I. That camp down there is fire and brimstone. Some one of that drunken gang has talked. We're none of us safe any more. I see suspicion everywhere. I've urged getting a big stake, and then hitting the trail for the border. But not a man sticks to me in that. They all want the free wild life of this gold camp. So we're anchored till . . . till . . . but maybe it's not too late. Pearce, Oliver, Smith, all the best of my legion profess loyalty to me. If we all pull together, maybe we can win yet. But they've threatened to split, too . . . and it's all on your account.”

“Mine?” ejaculated Cleve.

“Yes. Now it's nothing to make you flash your gun. Remember you said you'd stand by me. Jim, the fact is . . . all the gang to a man believe you're double-crossing me.”

“In what way?” queried Cleve, blushing.

“They think you're the one who has talked. They blame you for the suspicion that's growing.”

“Well, they're absolutely wrong,” declared Cleve in a ringing voice.

“I know they are. Mind you, I'm not hinting I distrust you. I don't. I swear by you. But Pearce. . . .”

“So it's Pearce,” interrupted Cleve darkly. “I thought you said he hadn't tried to put me in bad with you.”

“He hasn't. He simply spoke his convictions. He has a right to them. So have all the men. And to come to the point they all think you're crooked because you're honest.”

“I don't understand,” replied Cleve slowly.

“Jim, you rode into Cabin Gulch, and you raised some hell. But you were no bandit. You joined my legion, but you've never become a bandit. Here you've been an honest miner. That suited my plan and it helped. But it's got so it doesn't suit my men. You work hard every day. You've struck it rich. You're well thought of in Alder Creek. You've never done a dishonest thing. Why, you wouldn't turn a crooked trick in a card game for a sack full of gold. This has hurt you with my men. They can't see as I see that you're as square as you are game. They see you're an honest miner. They believe you've got into a clique . . . that you've given us away. I don't blame Pearce or any of my men. This is a time when men's intelligence, if they have any, doesn't operate. Their brains are on fire. They see gold and whiskey and blood, and they feel gold and whiskey and blood. That's all. I'm glad that the gang gives you the benefit of a doubt and a chance to stand by me.”

“A chance?”

“Yes. They've worked out a job for you alone. Will you undertake it?”

“I'll have to,” replied Cleve.

“You certainly will, if you want the gang to justify my faith in you. Once you pull off a crooked deal, they'll switch and swear by you. Then we'll get together, all of us, and plan what to do about Gulden and his outfit. They'll run our heads along with their own right into the noose.”

“What is this . . . this job?” labored Cleve. He was sweating now, and, his hair being damp over his brow, he lost that look that had made him a bold man and he seemed a boy again, weak, driven, bewildered.

Kells averted his gaze before speaking again. He hated to force this task upon Cleve. Joan felt, in the
throbbing pain of the moment, that if she never had another reason to like this bandit, she would like him for the pity he showed.

“Do you know a miner named Creede?” asked Kells rapidly.

“A husky chap, short, broad, something like Gulden for shape, only not so big . . . fellow with a fierce red beard?” asked Cleve.

“I never saw him,” replied Kells. “But Pearce has. How does Cleve's description fit Creede?”