Zane Grey (16 page)

"Anywhere you like up and down the gulch."

"Are you going to have me watched?"

"Not if you say you won't run off."

"You trust me?"

"Yes."

"All right. I promise. And if I change my mind I'll tell you."

"Lord! don't do it, Joan. I—I—Well, you've come to mean a good deal
to me. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you." As she mounted the horse
Kells added, "Don't stand any raw talk from any of the gang."

Joan rode away, pondering in mind the strange fact that though she hated
this bandit, yet she had softened toward him. His eyes lit when he saw
her; his voice mellowed; his manner changed. He had meant to tell her
again that he loved her, yet he controlled it. Was he ashamed? Had he
seen into the depths of himself and despised what he had imagined love?
There were antagonistic forces at war within him.

It was early morning and a rosy light tinged the fresh green. She let
the eager horse break into a canter and then a gallop; and she rode up
the gulch till the trail started into rough ground. Then turning, she
went back, down under the pines and by the cabins, to where the gulch
narrowed its outlet into the wide valley. Here she met several dusty
horsemen driving a pack-train. One, a jovial ruffian, threw up his hands
in mock surrender.

"Hands up, pards!" he exclaimed. "Reckon we've run agin' Dandy Dale come
to life."

His companions made haste to comply and then the three regarded her with
bold and roguish eyes. Joan had run square into them round a corner of
slope and, as there was no room to pass, she had halted.

"Shore it's the Dandy Dale we heerd of," vouchsafed another.

"Thet's Dandy's outfit with a girl inside," added the third.

Joan wheeled her horse and rode back up the trail. The glances of these
ruffians seemed to scorch her with the reality of her appearance. She
wore a disguise, but her womanhood was more manifest in it than in her
feminine garb. It attracted the bold glances of these men. If there were
any possible decency among them, this outrageous bandit costume rendered
it null. How could she ever continue to wear it? Would not something
good and sacred within her be sullied by a constant exposure to the
effect she had upon these vile border men? She did not think it could
while she loved Jim Cleve; and with thought of him came a mighty throb
of her heart to assure her that nothing mattered if only she could save
him.

Upon the return trip up the gulch Joan found men in sight leading
horses, chopping wood, stretching arms in cabin doors. Joan avoided
riding near them, yet even at a distance she was aware of their gaze.
One rowdy, half hidden by a window, curved hands round his mouth and
called, softly, "Hullo, sweetheart!"

Joan was ashamed that she could feel insulted. She was amazed at the
temper which seemed roused in her. This border had caused her feelings
she had never dreamed possible to her. Avoiding the trail, she headed
for the other side of the gulch. There were clumps of willows along
the brook through which she threaded a way, looking for a good place to
cross. The horse snorted for water. Apparently she was not going to find
any better crossing, so she turned the horse into a narrow lane through
the willows and, dismounting on a mossy bank, she slipped the bridle so
the horse could drink.

Suddenly she became aware that she was not alone. But she saw no one
in front of her or on the other side of her horse. Then she turned. Jim
Cleve was in the act of rising from his knees. He had a towel in his
hand. His face was wet. He stood no more than ten steps from her.

Joan could not have repressed a little cry to save her life. The
surprise was tremendous. She could not move a finger. She expected to
hear him call her name.

Cleve stared at her. His face, in the morning light, was as drawn and
white as that of a corpse. Only his eyes seemed alive and they were
flames. A lightning flash of scorn leaped to them. He only recognized
in her a woman, and his scorn was for the creature that bandit garb
proclaimed her to be. A sad and bitter smile crossed his face; and then
it was followed by an expression that was a lash upon Joan's bleeding
spirit. He looked at her shapely person with something of the brazen
and evil glance that had been so revolting to her in the eyes of those
ruffians. That was the unexpected—the impossible—in connection with
Jim Cleve. How could she stand there under it—and live?

She jerked at the bridle, and, wading blindly across the brook, she
mounted somehow, and rode with blurred sight back to the cabin. Kells
appeared busy with men outside and did not accost her. She fled to her
cabin and barricaded the door.

Then she hid her face on her bed, covered herself to shut out the light,
and lay there, broken-hearted. What had been that other thing she had
imagined was shame—that shrinking and burning she had suffered through
Kells and his men? What was that compared to this awful thing? A brand
of red-hot pitch, blacker and bitterer than death, had been struck
brutally across her soul. By the man she loved—whom she would have died
to save! Jim Cleve had seen in her only an abandoned creature of the
camps. His sad and bitter smile had been for the thought that he could
have loved anything of her sex. His scorn had been for the betrayed
youth and womanhood suggested by her appearance. And then the thing
that struck into Joan's heart was the fact that her grace and charm
of person, revealed by this costume forced upon her, had aroused Jim
Cleve's first response to the evil surrounding him, the first call to
that baseness he must be assimilating from these border ruffians. That
he could look at her so! The girl he had loved! Joan's agony lay not
in the circumstance of his being as mistaken in her character as he had
been in her identity, but that she, of all women, had to be the one who
made him answer, like Kells and Gulden and all those ruffians, to the
instincts of a beast.

"Oh, he'd been drunk—he was drunk!" whispered Joan. "He isn't to be
blamed. He's not my old Jim. He's suffering—he's changed—he doesn't
care. What could I expect—standing there like a hussy before him—in
this—this indecent rig?... I must see him. I must tell him. If he
recognized me now—and I had no chance to tell him why I'm here—why I
look like this—that I love him—am still good—and true to him—if I
couldn't tell him I'd—I'd shoot myself!"

Joan sobbed out the final words and then broke down. And when the spell
had exercised its sway, leaving her limp and shaken and weak, she was
the better for it. Slowly calmness returned so that she could look at
her wild and furious rush from the spot where she had faced Jim Cleve,
at the storm of shame ending in her collapse. She realized that if she
had met Jim Cleve here in the dress in which she had left home there
would have been the same shock of surprise and fear and love. She owed
part of that breakdown to the suspense she had been under and then the
suddenness of the meeting. Looking back at her agitation, she felt that
it had been natural—that if she could only tell the truth to Jim Cleve
the situation was not impossible. But the meeting, and all following it,
bore tremendous revelation of how through all this wild experience she
had learned to love Jim Cleve. But for his reckless flight and her blind
pursuit, and then the anxiety, fear, pain, toil, and despair, she would
never have known her woman's heart and its capacity for love.

Following that meeting, with all its power to change and strengthen
Joan, there were uneventful days in which she rode the gulch trails
and grew able to stand the jests and glances of the bandit's gang. She
thought she saw and heard everything, yet insulated her true self in a
callous and unreceptive aloofness from all that affronted her.

The days were uneventful because, while always looking for Jim Cleve,
she never once saw him. Several times she heard his name mentioned. He
was here and there—at Beard's off in the mountains. But he did not come
to Kells's cabin, which fact, Joan gathered, had made Kells anxious. He
did not want to lose Cleve. Joan peered from her covert in the evenings,
and watched for Jim, and grew weary of the loud talk and laughter, the
gambling and smoking and drinking. When there seemed no more chance of
Cleve's coming, then Joan went to bed.

On these occasions Joan learned that Kells was passionately keen to
gamble, that he was a weak hand at cards, an honest gambler, and,
strangely enough, a poor loser. Moreover, when he lost he drank heavily,
and under the influence of drink he was dangerous. There were quarrels
when curses rang throughout the cabin, when guns were drawn, but
whatever Kells's weaknesses might be, he was strong and implacable in
the governing of these men.

That night when Gulden strode into the cabin was certainly not
uneventful for Joan. Sight of him sent a chill to her marrow while a
strange thrill of fire inflamed her. Was that great hulk of a gorilla
prowling about to meet Jim Cleve? Joan thought that it might be the
worse for him if he were. Then she shuddered a little to think that she
had already been influenced by the wildness around her.

Gulden appeared well and strong, and but for the bandage on his head
would have been as she remembered him. He manifested interest in the
gambling of the players by surly grunts. Presently he said something to
Kells.

"What?" queried the bandit, sharply, wheeling, the better to see Gulden.

The noise subsided. One gamester laughed knowingly.

"Lend me a sack of dust?" asked Gulden.

Kells's face showed amaze and then a sudden brightness.

"What! You want gold from me?"

"Yes. I'll pay it back."

"Gulden, I wasn't doubting that. But does your asking mean you've taken
kindly to my proposition?"

"You can take it that way," growled Gulden. "I want gold." "I'm mighty
glad, Gulden," replied Kells, and he looked as if he meant it. "I need
you. We ought to get along.... Here."

He handed a small buckskin sack to Gulden. Someone made room for him
on the other side of the table, and the game was resumed. It was
interesting to watch them gamble. Red Pearce had a scale at his end of
the table, and he was always measuring and weighing out gold-dust. The
value of the gold appeared to be fifteen dollars to the ounce, but the
real value of money did not actuate the gamblers. They spilled the dust
on the table and ground as if it were as common as sand. Still there did
not seem to be any great quantity of gold in sight. Evidently these were
not profitable times for the bandits. More than once Joan heard them
speak of a gold strike as honest people spoke of good fortune. And these
robbers could only have meant that in case of a rich strike there would
be gold to steal. Gulden gambled as he did everything else. At first
he won and then he lost, and then he borrowed more from Kells, to
win again. He paid back as he had borrowed and lost and won—without
feeling. He had no excitement. Joan's intuition convinced her that if
Gulden had any motive at all in gambling it was only an antagonism to
men of his breed. Gambling was a contest, a kind of fight.

Most of the men except Gulden drank heavily that night. There had been
fresh liquor come with the last pack-train. Many of them were drunk when
the game broke up. Red Pearce and Wood remained behind with Kells after
the others had gone, and Pearce was clever enough to cheat Kells before
he left.

"Boss—thet there Red double—crossed you," said Bate Wood.

Kells had lost heavily, and he was under the influence of drink. He
drove Wood out of the cabin, cursing him sullenly. Then he put in place
the several bars that served as a door of his cabin. After that he
walked unsteadily around, and all about his action and manner that was
not aimless seemed to be dark and intermittent staring toward Joan's
cabin. She felt sickened again with this new aspect of her situation,
but she was not in the least afraid of Kells. She watched him till he
approached her door and then she drew back a little. He paused before
the blanket as if he had been impelled to halt from fear. He seemed to
be groping in thought. Then he cautiously and gradually, by degrees,
drew aside the blanket. He could not see Joan in the darkness, but she
saw him plainly. He fumbled at the poles, and, finding that he could not
budge them, he ceased trying. There was nothing forceful or strong about
him, such as was manifest when he was sober. He stood there a moment,
breathing heavily, in a kind of forlorn, undecided way, and then he
turned back. Joan heard him snap the lanterns. The lights went out and
all grew dark and silent.

Next morning at breakfast he was himself again, and if he had any
knowledge whatever of his actions while he was drunk, he effectually
concealed it from Joan.

Later, when Joan went outside to take her usual morning exercise, she
was interested to see a rider tearing up the slope on a foam-flecked
horse. Men shouted at him from the cabins and then followed without
hats or coats. Bate Wood dropped Joan's saddle and called to Kells. The
bandit came hurriedly out.

"Blicky!" he exclaimed, and then he swore under his breath in elation.

"Shore is Blicky!" said Wood, and his unusually mild eyes snapped with a
glint unpleasant for Joan to see.

The arrival of this Blicky appeared to be occasion for excitement and
Joan recalled the name as belonging to one of Kells's trusted men. He
swung his leg and leaped from his saddle as the horse plunged to a halt.
Blicky was a lean, bronzed young man, scarcely out of his teens, but
there were years of hard life in his face. He slapped the dust in little
puffs from his gloves. At sight of Kells he threw the gloves aloft and
took no note of them when they fell. "STRIKE!" he called, piercingly.

"No!" ejaculated Kells, intensely.

Bate Wood let out a whoop which was answered by the men hurrying up the
slope.