Cabin Gulch (18 page)

Kells lifted his head, as if listening, and then the whole manner of the man changed. The burden that weighed upon him was thrown aside. Like a general about to inspect a line of soldiers, Kells faced the door, keen, stern, commanding. The heavy tread of booted men, the
clink
of spurs, the low muffled sound of voices warned Joan that the gang had arrived. Would Jim Cleve be among them?

Joan wanted a better position in which to watch and listen. She thought a moment, and then carefully felt her way around to the other side of the steps, and here, sitting down with her feet hanging over the drop, she leaned against the wall and through a chink between the logs had a perfect view of the large cabin. The men were filing in, silent and intense. Joan counted twenty-seven in all. They appeared to fall into two groups, and it was significant that the larger group lined up on the side nearest Kells, and the smaller back of Gulden. He had removed the bandage, and with a raw red blotch where his right ear had been shot away he was hideous. There was some kind of power emanating from him, but it was not the same that was so keenly vital and impelling in Kells. It was brute ferocity, dominating by sheer physical force. In any but a muscular clash between Kells and Gulden the latter must lose. The men back of Gulden were a bearded, check-shirted, heavily armed group,
the worst of that bad lot. All the younger, cleaner-cut men, like Red Pearce and Frenchy and Beady Jones and Williams and the scout Blicky, were on the other side. There were two factions here, yet scarcely an antagonism, except possibly in the case of Kells. Joan felt that the atmosphere was supercharged with suspense and fatality and possibility—and anything might happen. To her great joy Jim Cleve was not present.

“Where's Beard and Wood?” queried Kells.

“Workin' over Beard's sick hoss,” replied Pearce. “They'll show up by an' by. Anythin' you say goes with them, you know.”

“Did you find young Cleve?”

“No. He camps up in the timber somewheres. Reckon he'll be along, too.”

Kells sat down at the head of the table, and, taking up the little book, he began to finger it while his pale eyes studied the men before him.

“We shuffled the deck pretty well over at Beard's,” he said. “Now for the deal. Who wants cards? I've organized my Border Legion. I'll have absolute control, whether there's ten men or a hundred. Now whose names go down in my book?”

Red Pearce stepped up and labored over the writing of his name. Blicky, Jones, Williams, and others followed suit. They did not speak, but each shook hands with the leader. Evidently Kells exacted no oath, but accepted each man's free action as his word of honor. There was that about the bandit which made such action as binding as ties of blood. He did not want men in his legion who had no loyalty to him. He seemed the kind of leader to whom men would be true.

“Kells, say them conditions over again,” requested one of the men, less eager to hurry with the matter.

At this juncture Joan was at once thrilled and frightened to see Jim Cleve enter the cabin. He appeared whiter of face, almost ghastly, and his piercing eyes swept the room, from Kells to Gulden, from man to man. Then he leaned against the wall, indistinct in the shadow. Kells gave no sign that he had noted the advent of Cleve.

“I'm the leader,” replied Kells deliberately. “I'll make the plans. I'll issue orders. No jobs without my knowledge. Equal shares in gold . . . man to man. Your word to stand by me!”

A muttering of approval ran through the listening group.

“Reckon I'll join,” said the man who had wished the conditions repeated. With that, he advanced to the table, and, apparently not being able to write, he made his mark in the book. Kells wrote the name below. The other men of this contingent, one by one, complied with Kells's requirements. This action left Gulden and his group to be dealt with.

“Gulden, are you still on the fence?” demanded Kells coolly.

The giant strode stolidly forward to the table. As always before to Joan he seemed to be a ponderous hulk, slow, heavy, plodding, with a mind to match.

“Kells, if we can agree, I'll join,” he said in his sonorous voice.

“You can bet you won't join unless we do agree,” snapped Kells. “But, see here, Gulden. Let's be friendly. The border is big enough for both of us. I want you. I need you. Still, if we can't agree, let's don't split and be enemies. How about it?”

Another muttering among the men attested to the good sense and good will of Kells's suggestion.

“Tell me what you're going to do . . . how you'll operate,” replied Gulden.

Kells had difficulty in restraining his impatience and annoyance.

“What's that to you or any of you?” he queried. “You all know I'm the man to think of things. That's been proved. First it takes brains. I'll furnish them. Then it takes execution. You and Pearce and the gang will furnish that. What more do you need to know?”

“How're you going to operate?” persisted Gulden.

Kells threw up both hands as if it was useless to argue or reason with this desperado.

“All right, I'll tell you,” he replied. “Listen . . . I can't say what definite plans I'll make till Jesse Smith reports and then when I get on the diggings. But here's a working basis. Now don't miss a word of this, Gulden . . . nor any of you men. We'll pack our outfits down to this gold strike. We'll build cabins on the outskirts of the town, and we won't hang together. The gang will be spread out. Most of you must make a bluff at digging gold. Be like other miners. Get in with cliques and clans. Dig, drink, gamble like the rest of them. Beard will start a gambling place. Red Pearce will find some other kind of work. I'll buy up claims . . . employ miners to work them. I'll disguise myself and I'll get in with the influential men and have a voice in matters. You'll all be scouts. You'll come to my cabin at night to report. We'll not tackle any little jobs. Miners going out with fifty or a hundred pounds of gold . . . the wagons . . . the stage-coach . . . these we'll have timed to rights, and whoever I detail on the job will hold them up. You must all keep sober, if that's possible. You must all absolutely trust to my judgment. You must all go masked while on a job. You must never speak a word that might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous. It will
appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The more secretive we are, the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In gold camps, when there's a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each other. They can't organize. We shall have them helpless. And, in short, if it's as rich a strike as looks due here in these hills, before winter we can pack out all the gold our horses can carry.”

Kells had begun under restraint, but the sound of his voice, the liberation of his great idea, roused him to a passion. The man radiated with passion. This then was his dream—the empire he aspired to.

He had a powerful effect upon his listeners, except Gulden, and it was evident to Joan that the keen bandit was conscious of his influence. Gulden, however, showed nothing that he had not already showed. He was always a strange, dominating figure. He contested the relations of things. Kells watched him—the men watched him—and Jim Cleve's piercing eyes glittered in the shadow, fixed upon that massive face. Manifestly Gulden meant to speak, but in his slowness there was no laboring, no pause from emotion. He had an idea and it moved like he moved.

“Dead men tell no tales!” The words boomed deeply from his cavernous chest, a mutter that was a rumble, with something almost solemn in its note and certainly menacing, breathing murder. As Kells had propounded his ideas, revealing his power to devise a remarkable scheme and his passion for gold, so Gulden struck out with the driving inhuman blood lust that must have been the twist, the knot, the clot in his brain. Kells craved notoriety and gold; Gulden craved to kill. In the silence that followed his speech those wild border ruffians judged him, measured him, understood him, and, although some of them
grew further aloof from him, more of them sensed the safety that hid in his terrible implication.

But Kells rose against him. “Gulden, you mean where we steal gold . . . to leave only dead men behind?” he queried with a hiss in his voice.

The giant nodded gloomily.

“But only fools kill . . . unless in self-defense,” declared Kells passionately.

“We'd last longer,” replied Gulden imperturbably.

“No . . . no. We'd never last so long. Killings rouse a mining camp after a while . . . gold fever or no. That means a vigilante band.”

“We can belong to the vigilantes, just as well as to your legion,” said Gulden.

The effect of this was to make Gulden appear less of a fool than Kells supposed him. The ruffians nodded to one another. They stirred restlessly. They were animated by a strange and provocative influence. Even Red Pearce and the others caught its subtlety. It was evil predominating in evil hearts. Blood and death loomed like a shadow there. The keen Kells saw the change working toward a transformation and he seemed craftily fighting something within him that opposed this cold ruthlessness of his men.

“Gulden, suppose I don't see it your way?” he asked.

“Then I won't join your legion.”

“What
will
you do?”

“I'll take the men who stand by me and go clean up that gold camp.”

From the fleeting expression on Kells's face, Joan read that he knew Gulden's project would defeat his own, and render both enterprises fatal.

“Gulden, I don't want to lose you,” he said.

“You won't lose me if you see this thing right,”
replied Gulden. “You've got the brains to direct us. But, Kells, you're losing your nerve. It's this girl you've got here!”

Gulden spoke without rancor or fear or feeling of any kind. He merely spoke the truth. And it shook Kells with an almost ungovernable fury.

Joan saw the green glare of his eyes—his gray, working face—the flutter of his hand. She had an almost superhuman insight into the workings of his mind. She knew that then he was fighting whether or not to kill Gulden on the spot. And she recognized that this was the time when Kells must kill Gulden or from that moment see a gradual diminishing of his power on the border. But Kells did not recognize that crucial height of his career. His struggle with his fury and hate showed that the thing uppermost in his mind was the need of conciliating Gulden and then regaining a hold over the men.

“Gulden, suppose we waive the question till we're on the ground?” he suggested.

“Waive nothing. It's one or the other with me,” declared Gulden.

“Do you want to be the leader of this Border Legion?” went on Kells deliberately.

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

Gulden appeared at a loss for an instant reply.

“I want plenty to do,” he replied presently. “I want to be in everything . . . I want to be free to kill a man when I like.”

“When you like!” retorted Kells, but added a curse. Then, as if by magic, his dark face cleared and there was infinite depth and craftiness in him. His opposition, and that hint of hate and loathing that detached him from Gulden, faded from his bearing. “Gulden,
I'll split the difference between us. I'll leave you free to do as you like. But all the others . . . every damned man . . . must take orders from me.”

Gulden reached out a huge hand. His instant acceptance evidently amazed Kells and the others.

“Let her rip!” Gulden exclaimed. He shook Kells's hand, and then laboriously wrote his name in the little book.

In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild and abandoned men. What were Kells and his legion to him? What was the stealing of more or less gold?

“Free to do as you like except fight my men,” said Kells. “That's understood.”

“If they don't pick a fight with me,” added the giant, and he grinned.

One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that Kells's personality made a serious and binding compact.

“Anybody else?” called Kells, glancing around. The somberness was leaving his face.

“Here's Jim Cleve,” said Pearce, pointing toward the wall.

“Hello, youngster. Come here. I'm wanting you bad,” said Kells.

Cleve sauntered out of the shadow, and his glittering eyes were fixed on Gulden. There was an instant of waiting. Gulden looked at Cleve. Then Kells quickly strode between them.

“Say, I forgot you fellows had trouble,” he said. He attended solely to Gulden. “You can't renew your quarrel now. Gulden, we've all fought together more or less. And then been good friends. I want Cleve to join us, but not against your ill-will. How about it?”

“I've no ill-will,” replied the giant, and the strangeness
of his remark lay in its evident truth. “But I won't stand to lose my other ear!”

The ruffians guffawed in hoarse mirth. Gulden, however, did not seem to see any humor in his remark. Kells laughed with the rest. Even Cleve's white face relaxed into a semblance of a smile.

“That's good. We're getting together,” declared Kells. Then he faced Cleve, all about him expressive of elation, of assurance, of power. “Jim, will you draw cards in this deal?”

“What's the deal?” asked Cleve.

Then in swift eloquent speed Kells launched the idea of his Border Legion, its advantages to any loose-footed young outcast, and he ended his brief talk with much the same argument he had given Joan. Back in her covert, Joan listened and watched, mindful of the great need of controlling her emotions. The instant Jim Cleve had stalked into the light she had been seized by a spasm of trembling.

“Kells, I don't care two straws one way or another,” replied Cleve.

The bandit appeared nonplussed.