Zane Grey (27 page)

Joan maintained silence. What would she do with this changed and
hopeless Jim Cleve?

"Tell me!" Jim's hands gripped her with a force that made her wince.
And now she grew as afraid of him as she had been for him. But she had
spirit enough to grow angry, also.

"Certainly he does."

Jim Cleve echoed her first word, and then through grinding teeth he
cursed. "I'm going to—stop it!" he panted, and his eyes looked big and
dark and wild in the starlight.

"You can't. I belong to Kells. You at least ought to have sense enough
to see that."

"Belong to him!... For God's sake! By what right?"

"By the right of possession. Might is right here on the border. Haven't
you told me that a hundred times? Don't you hold your claim—your
gold—by the right of your strength? It's the law of this border. To be
sure Kells stole me. But just now I belong to him. And lately I see his
consideration—his kindness in the light of what he could do if he held
to that border law.... And of all the men I've met out here Kells is the
least wild with this gold fever. He sends his men out to do murder for
gold; he'd sell his soul to gamble for gold; but just the same, he's
more of a man than—"

"Joan!" he interrupted, piercingly. "You love this bandit!"

"You're a fool!" burst out Joan.

"I guess—I—am," he replied in terrible, slow earnestness. He raised
himself and appeared to loom over her and released his hold.

But Joan fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged to
get away she was hard put to it to hold him.

"Jim! Where are you going?"

He stood there a moment, a dark form against the night shadow, like an
outline of a man cut from black stone.

"I'll just step around—there."

"Oh, what for?" whispered Joan.

"I'm going to kill Kells."

Joan got both arms round his neck and with her head against him she
held him tightly, trying, praying to think how to meet this long-dreaded
moment. After all, what was the use to try? This was the hour of Gold!
Sacrifice, hope, courage, nobility, fidelity—these had no place here
now. Men were the embodiment of passion—ferocity. They breathed only
possession, and the thing in the balance was death. Women were creatures
to hunger and fight for, but womanhood was nothing. Joan knew all this
with a desperate hardening certainty, and almost she gave in. Strangely,
thought of Gulden flashed up to make her again strong! Then she raised
her face and began the old pleading with Jim, but different this time,
when it seemed that absolutely all was at stake. She begged him, she
importuned him, to listen to reason, to be guided by her, to fight the
wildness that had obsessed him, to make sure that she would not be left
alone. All in vain! He swore he would kill Kells and any other bandit
who stood in the way of his leading her free out of that cabin. He was
wild to fight. He might never have felt fear of these robbers. He would
not listen to any possibility of defeat for himself, or the possibility
that in the event of Kells's death she would be worse off. He laughed at
her strange, morbid fears of Gulden. He was immovable.

"Jim!... Jim! You'll break my heart!" she whispered, wailingly. "Oh!
WHAT can I do?"

Then Joan released her clasp and gave up to utter defeat. Cleve was
silent. He did not seem to hear the shuddering little sobs that shook
her. Suddenly he bent close to her.

"There's one thing you can do. If you'll do it I won't kill Kells. I'll
obey your every word."

"What is it? Tell me!"

"Marry me!" he whispered, and his voice trembled.

"MARRY YOU!" exclaimed Joan. She was confounded. She began to fear Jim
was out of his head.

"I mean it. Marry me. Oh, Joan, will you—will you? It'll make the
difference. That'll steady me. Don't you want to?"

"Jim, I'd be the happiest girl in the world if—if I only COULD marry
you!" she breathed, passionately.

"But will you—will you? Say yes! Say yes!"

"YES!" replied Joan in her desperation. "I hope that pleases you. But
what on earth is the use to talk about it now?"

Cleve seemed to expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous
hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness,
a happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was
spiritual, and somehow she received an uplift of hope.

"Listen," he whispered. "There's a preacher down in camp. I've seen
him—talked with him. He's trying to do good in that hell down there.
I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him—enough. I'll fetch him up
here tomorrow night—about this time. Oh, I'll be careful—very careful.
And he can marry us right here by the window. Joan, will you do it?...
Somehow, whatever threatens you or me—that'll be my salvation!... I've
suffered so. It's been burned in my heart that YOU would never marry me.
Yet you say you love me!... Prove it!... MY WIFE!... Now, girl, a word
will make a man of me!"

"Yes!" And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart in
them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from him.

"Look for me to-morrow about this time," he whispered. "Keep your
nerve.... Good night."

That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The next
day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was brought
to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and she only
vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the murmur of
voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a quarrel
between Kells and his men did not distract her.

At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with the
gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the bluff, did
she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud caught the glory
of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden radiance like that. It
faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained. At twilight and then at dusk
this glow lingered.

Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of
light and shadow, of sound and silence, of dread and hope, of sadness
and joy.

That pale, ruddy glow lingered over the bold heave of the range in
the west. It was like a fire that would not go out, that would live
to-morrow, and burn golden. The sky shone with deep, rich blue color
fired with a thousand stars, radiant, speaking, hopeful. And there was a
white track across the heavens. The mountains flung down their shadows,
impenetrable, like the gloomy minds of men; and everywhere under
the bluffs and slopes, in the hollows and ravines, lay an enveloping
blackness, hiding its depth and secret and mystery.

Joan listened. Was there sound or silence? A faint and indescribably
low roar, so low that it might have been real or false, came on the soft
night breeze. It was the roar of the camp down there—the strife, the
agony, the wild life in ceaseless action—the strange voice of gold,
roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above
that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow
of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men,
for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and
clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its
murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this
was only a fleeting day of men and gold.

Only by straining her ears could Joan hear these sounds, and when she
ceased that, then she seemed to be weighed upon and claimed by silence.
It was not a silence like that of Lost Canon, but a silence of solitude
where her soul stood alone. She was there on earth, yet no one could
hear her mortal cry. The thunder of avalanches or the boom of the sea
might have lessened her sense of utter loneliness.

And that silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of dread.
They spoke to her. She breathed dread on that silent air and it filled
her breast. There was nothing stable in the night shadows. The ravine
seemed to send forth stealthy, noiseless shapes, specter and human, man
and phantom, each on the other's trail.

If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the hour! A
hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than the shadows.
She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and dread might be lost.
Love was something beyond the grasp of mind. Love had confounded Jim
Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor from the black depths of a
bandit's heart; it had transformed her from a girl into a woman. Surely
with all its greatness it could not be lost; surely in the end it must
triumph over evil.

Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock of
intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. And 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 to let her be his
wife! That was the apex 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
emotions 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 anything 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 which
seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy round 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 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 which had held Joan, leaving
only the tenderness, magnified now a hundredfold.

And 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 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 in 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
puzzle 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 floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear
compelled her to look.