Cabin Gulch (34 page)

Then he led her up the street and through that end of camp out upon the rough open slope. They began to climb. The stars were bright, but even so Joan stumbled often over the stones. She wondered how Jim could get along so well in the dark and she clung to his arm. They did not speak often, and then only in a whisper. Jim halted occasionally to listen or to look up at the bold black bluff for his bearings. Presently he led her among broken fragments of cliff, and half carried her over rougher ground, into a kind of shadowy pocket or niche.

“Here's where I slept,” he whispered.

He wrapped a blanket around her, and then they sat down against the rock, and she leaned upon his shoulder.

“I have your coat and the blankets,” she said. “Won't you be cold?”

He laughed. “Now don't talk anymore. You're white and fagged-out. You need to rest . . . to sleep.”

“Sleep? How impossible,” she murmured.

“Why, your eyes are half shut now. Anyway, I'll not talk to you. I want to think.”

“Jim . . . kiss me good night,” she whispered.

He bent over her rather violently, she imagined.
His head blotted out the light of the stars. He held her tightly a moment. She felt him shake. Then he kissed her on the cheek, and abruptly drew away. How strange he seemed.

For that matter everything was strange. She had never seen the stars so bright, so full of power, so close. All about her the shadows gathered protectively, to hide her and Jim. The silence spoke. She saw Jim's face in the starlight and it seemed so keen, so listening, so thoughtful and beautiful. He would sit there all night, wide-eyed and alert, guarding her, waiting for the gray of dawn. How he had changed. And she was his wife. But that seemed only a dream. It needed daylight and sight of her ring to make that real.

A warmth and languor stole over her; she relaxed comfortably; after all, she would sleep. But why did that intangible dread hang onto her soul? The night was so still and clear and perfect—a radiant white night of stars—and Jim was there, holding her—and tomorrow they would ride away. That might be, but dark dangling shapes haunted her—back in her mind, and there, too, loomed Kells. Where was he now? Gone—gone on his bloody trail with his broken fortunes and his desperate bitterness! He had lost her. The lunge of that wild mob had parted them. A throb of pain and shame went through her, for she was sorry. She could not understand why, unless it was because she had possessed some strange power to instill or to bring out good in him. No woman could have been proof against that. It was monstrous to know that she had power to turn him from an evil life, yet she could not do it. It was more than monstrous to realize that he had gone on spilling blood and would continue to go on when she could have prevented it—could have saved many poor miners who perhaps had wives or sweethearts somewhere.
Yet there was no help for it. She loved Jim Cleve. She might have sacrificed herself, but she would not sacrifice him for all the bandits and miners on the border.

Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer that pang for Kells. She would never lie down in the peace and quiet of her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark and forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a lonely trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely stars. Sooner or later he would meet his doom. It was inevitable. She pictured again that sinister scene of the dangling forms, but no—Kells would never end that way. Terrible as he was, he had never been born to be hanged. He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that band of traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil they had to be. But more likely some gambling hell, with gold and life at stake, would see his last fight. These bandits stole gold and gambled among themselves and fought. And the fight that finished Kells must necessarily be a terrible one. She seemed to see into a lonely cabin where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered and blue smoke floated in veils, and men lay prone on the floor—Kells, stark and bloody—and the giant Gulden, dead at last and more terrible in death—and on the rude table bags of gold, and scattered on the floor like streams of sand and useless as sand, dust of gold—the destroyer.

All Joan's fancies or dreams faded into obscurity, and, when she was aroused, it seemed she had scarcely closed her eyes. But there was the gray gloom of dawn.

Jim was shaking her gently.

“No, you weren't sleepy . . . it's just a mistake,” he said, helping her to arise. “Now we'll get out of here.”

They threaded a careful way out of the rocks, then hurried down the slope. In the grayness Joan saw the dark shape of a cabin and it resembled the one Kells had built. It disappeared. Presently when Jim led her into a road, she felt sure that this cabin had been the one where she had been a prisoner for so long. They hurried down the road and entered the camp. There were no lights. The tents and cabins looked strange and gloomy. The road was empty. Not a sound broke the stillness. At the bend Joan saw a stagecoach and horses looming up in what seemed gray distance. Jim hurried her on.

They reached the stage. The horses were restive.
The driver was on the seat, whip and reins in hand. Two men sat beside him with rifles across their knees. The door of the coach hung open. There were men inside, one of whom had his head out of the window. The barrel of a rifle protruded near him. He was talking in a low voice to a man apparently busy at the traces.

“Hello, Cleve, you're late,” said another man, evidently the agent. “Climb aboard. When'll you be back?”

“I hardly know,” replied Cleve with hesitation.

“All right. Good luck to you.” He closed the coach door after Joan and Jim. “Let 'em go, Bill.”

The stage started with a jerk. To Joan what an unearthly creak and rumble it made, disturbing that dead silent dawn. Jim squeezed her hand with joy. They were on the way!

Joan and Jim had a seat to themselves. Opposite sat three men,—the guard with his head half out of the window, a bearded miner who appeared stolid or drowsy, and a young man who did not look rough and robust enough to be a prospector. None of the three paid any particular attention to Joan and Jim.

The road had a decided slope downhill, and Bill, the driver, had the four horses in a trot. The rickety old stage appeared to be rattling to pieces. It lurched and swayed, and sometimes jolted over rocks and roots. Joan was hard put to it to keep from being bumped off the seat. She held to a brace on one side and to Jim on the other, and, when the stage rolled down into the creek and thumped over boulders, Joan was sure that every bone in her body would be broken. This crossing marked the mouth of the gulch, and on the other side the road was smooth.

“We're going the way we came,” whispered Jim in her ear.

This was surprising, for Joan had been sure that Bannack lay in the opposite direction. Certainly this fact was not reassuring to her. Perhaps the road turned soon.

Meanwhile, the light brightened, the day broke, and the sun reddened the valley. Then it was as light inside the coach as outside. Joan might have spared herself concern as to her fellow passengers. The only one who noticed her was the young man, and he, after a stare and a half smile, lapsed into abstraction. He looked troubled, and there was about him no evidence of prosperity. Jim held her hand under a fold of the long coat, and occasionally he spoke of something or other outside that caught his eye. The stage rolled on rapidly, seemingly in pursuit of the steady roar of hoofs.

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.

Then the time did not drag so. She wanted to talk to Jim, yet did not because of the other passengers. Jim himself appeared influenced by their absorption in themselves. Besides the keen, ceaseless vigilance of the guard was not without its quieting effect. Danger lurked ahead in the bends of that road. Joan remembered hearing Kells say that the Bannack stage had never been properly held up by road agents, but that, when he got ready for the job, it would be done right. Riding grew to be monotonous and tiresome. With the warmth of the sun came the dust and flies, and all three bothered Joan. She did not have her
usual calmness, and, as the miles steadily passed, her nervousness increased.

The road left the valley and climbed between foothills and wound into rockier country. Every dark gulch brought to Joan a trembling breathless spell. What places for ambush! But the stage bowled on.

At last her apprehension wore out and she permitted herself the luxury of relaxing, of leaning back and closing her eyes. She was tired, drowsy, hot. There did not seem to be a breath of air.

Suddenly Joan's ears burst to an infernal crash of guns. She felt the whip and sting of splinters sent flying by bullets. Harsh yells followed, then the scream of a horse in agony, the stage lurching and slipping to a halt, and thunder of heavy guns overhead.

Jim yelled at her—threw her down on the seat. She felt the body of the guard sink against her knees. Then she seemed to feel, to hear through an icy sickening terror.

A scattering volley silenced the guns overhead. Then came the pound of hoofs, the snort of frightened horses.

“Jesse Smith! Stop!” called Jim piercingly.

“Hold on thar, Beady!” replied a hoarse voice. “Damn if it ain't Jim Cleve!”

“Ho, Gul, we've played hell!” yelled another voice, and Joan recognized it as Blicky's.

Then Jim lifted her head, drew her up. He was white with fear. “Dear . . . are . . . you . . . hurt?”

“No. I'm only . . . scared,” she replied.

Joan looked out to see bandits on foot, guns in hand, and others mounted, all gathering near the coach. Jim opened the door and, stepping out, bade her follow. Joan had to climb over the dead guard. The miner and the young man huddled down on their seat.

“If it ain't Jim an' Kells's girl . . . Dandy Dale!” ejaculated Smith. “Fellers, this means somethin'. Say, youngster, hope you ain't hurt . . . or the girl?”

“No. But that's not your fault,” replied Cleve. “Why did you want to plug the coach full of lead?”

“This beats me,” said Smith. “Kells sent you out on the stage! But, hell, when he gave us the job of holdin' it up, he didn't tell us you'd be in there. When an' where'd you leave him?”

“Sometime last night . . . a camp . . . near our cabin,” replied Jim, quick as a flash. Manifestly he saw his opportunity. “He left Dandy Dale with me. Told us to take the stage this morning. I expected him to be in it or to meet us.”

“Didn't you have no orders?”

“None, except to take care of the girl, till he came. But he did tell me he'd have more to say.”

Smith gazed blankly from Cleve to Blicky, and then at Gulden, who came slowly forward, his hair ruffed, his gun held low. Joan followed the glance of his great gray eyes, and she saw the stage driver hanging dead over his seat, and the guards lying back of him. The off-side horse of the leaders lay dead in his traces with his mate nosing at him.

“Who's in there?” boomed Gulden, and he thrust hand and gun in at the stage door. “Come out!”

The young man stumbled out, hands above his head, pallid and shaking, so weak he could scarcely stand.

Gulden prodded the bearded miner.

“Come out here, you!”

The man appeared to be hunched forward in a heap.

“Guess he's plugged,” said Smith. “But he ain't cashed. Hear him breathe? Heaves like a sick hoss.”

Gulden reached in with brawny arm and with one pull he dragged the miner off the seat and out into
the road, where he flopped with a groan. There was blood on his neck and hands. Gulden bent over him, tore at his clothes, tore harder at something, and then, with a swing, he held aloft a broad black belt, sagging heavily with gold.

“Hah!” he boomed. It was just an exclamation, horrible to hear, but it did not express satisfaction or exultation. He handed the gold belt to the grinning Budd, and turned to the young man.

“Got any gold?”

“No. I . . . I wasn't a miner,” replied the youth huskily.

Gulden felt for a gold belt, then stopped at his pockets.

“Turn around!” ordered the giant.

“Aw, hell, let him go!” remonstrated Jesse Smith.

Blicky laid a restraining hand upon Gulden's broad shoulder.

“Turn around!” repeated Gulden, without the slightest sign of noticing his colleagues.

But the youth understood and he turned a ghastly livid hue.

“For God's sake . . . don't murder me!” he gasped. “I have . . . nothing . . . no gold . . . no gun!”

Gulden spun him around like a top and pushed him forward. They went half a dozen paces, then the youth staggered, and, turning, he fell on his knees.

“Don't . . . kill . . . me!” he entreated.

Joan, seeing Jim Cleve stiffen and crouch, thought of him even in that horrible moment, and she gripped his arm with all her might. They must endure.

The other bandits muttered, but none moved a hand.

Gulden thrust out the big gun. His hair bristled on his head and his huge frame seemed instinct with strange vibration, like some object of tremendous weight about to plunge into resistless momentum.
Even the stricken youth, with precious life the indestructible sound of hope, saw his doom.

“Let . . . me . . . pray!” he begged.

Joan did not faint, but a merciful unclamping of muscle-bound rigidity closed her eyes.

“Gul!” yelled Blicky with passion. “I ain't a-goin' to let you kill this kid! There's no sense in it. We're spotted back in Alder Creek. Run, kid! Run!”