Cabin Gulch (20 page)

Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this inexplicable change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each, and it was not till she encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was revealed. Frenchy was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his being had been inculcated a sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the darkness of a wicked life, and now that something came fleetingly out of the depths—and it was respect for a woman. To Joan it was a flash of light. Yesterday these ruffians had despised her; today they respected her. So they had believed what she had so desperately flung at Jim Cleve. They believed her good—they pitied her—they respected her—they responded to her effort to turn a boy back from a bad career. They were bandits, desperadoes, murderers—lost—but each remembered in her a mother or a sister. What each might have felt or done had he possessed her, as Kells possessed her, did not alter the case as it stood. A strange inconsistency of character made them hate Kells for what they might not have hated in themselves. Her appeal to Cleve, her outburst of truth, her youth and misfortune, had discovered to each a human quality. As in Kells something of nobility still lingered, a ghost among his ruined ideals, so in the others some goodness remained. Joan sustained an uplifting divination—no man was utterly bad. Then
came the hidden image of the giant Gulden—the utter absence of soul in him—and she shuddered. Then came the thought of Jim Cleve, who had not believed her, who had bitterly made the fatal step, who might in the strange reversion of his character be beyond influence.

It was at the precise moment, when this thought rose to counteract the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men, that Joan looked out to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon him the stamp of abandonment. Joan suffered a contraction of heart that benumbed her breast. She stood a moment battling with herself. She was brave enough, desperate enough, to walk straight up to Cleve, remove her mask, and say:
I am Joan!
But that must be the last resource. She had no plan, yet she might force an opportunity to see Cleve alone.

A shout rose above the hubbub of voices. A tall man was pointing across the gulch where dust clouds showed above the willows. Men crawled around him, all gazing in the direction of his hand, all talking at once.

“Jesse Smith's hoss, I swear!” shouted the tall man. “Kells, come out here!”

Kells appeared, dark and eager, at the door, and nimbly he leaped to the excited group. Pearce and Wood and others followed.

“What's up?” called the bandit. “Hello, who's that riding bareback?”

“He's shore cuttin' the wind,” said Wood.

“Blicky!” exclaimed the tall man. “Kells, there's news. I seen Jesse's hoss.”

Kells let out a strangely exultant cry. The excited talk among the men gave place to a subdued murmur, then subsided. Blicky was running a horse up the
road, hanging low over him, like an Indian. He clattered to the bench, scattered the men in all directions. The fiery horse plunged and pounded. Blicky was gray of face and wild of aspect.

“Jesse's come!” he yelled hoarsely at Kells. “He just fell off his hoss. All in! He wants you . . . an' all the gang! He's seen a million dollars in gold dust!”

Absolute silence ensued after that last swift and startling speech. It broke to a commingling of yells and shouts. Blicky wheeled his horse and Kells started on a run. And there was a stampede and rush after him.

Joan grasped her opportunity. She had seen all this excitement, but she had not lost sight of Cleve. He got up from a log and started after the others. Joan flew to him—grasped him—startled him with the suddenness of her onslaught. But her tongue seemed cloven to the roof of her mouth, her lips weak and mute. Twice she strove to speak.

“Meet me . . . there . . . among the pines . . . right away,” she whispered with breathless earnestness. “It's life . . . or death . . . for me.”

As she released his arm, he snatched at her mask. But she eluded him.

“Who
are
you?” he flashed.

Kells and his men were piling into the willows, leaping the brook, hurrying on. They had no thought but to get to Jesse Smith, to hear of the gold strike. That news to them was as finding gold in the earth was to honest miners.

“Come!” cried Joan. She hurried away toward the corner of the cabin, then halted to see if he was following. He was, indeed. She ran around behind the cabin—out on the slope—halting at the first trees. Cleve came striding after her. She ran on, beginning to pant and stumble. The way he stood—the white
grimness of him—frightened her. What would he do? Again she went on, but not running now. There were straggling pines and spruces that soon hid the cabins. Beyond, a few rods, was a dense clump of pines, and she made for that. As she reached it, she turned fearfully. Only Cleve was in sight. She uttered a sob of mingled relief, joy, and thankfulness. She and Cleve had not been observed. They would be out of sight in this little pine grove. At last! She could reveal herself—tell him why she was there—that she loved him—that she was as good as ever she had been. Why was she shaking like a leaf in the wind? She saw Cleve through a blur. He was almost running now. Involuntarily she fled into the grove. It was dark and cool; it smelled sweetly of pine; there were narrow aisles and little sunlit glades. She hurried on till a fallen tree blocked her passage. Here she turned—she would wait—the tree was good to lean against. There came Cleve, a dark stalking shadow. She did not remember him like that. He entered the glade.

“Speak again,” he said thickly. “Either I'm drunk or crazy.”

But Joan could not speak. She held out hands that shook—swept them to her face—tore at the mask. Then she stood revealed.

If she had stabbed him straight through the heart, he could not have been more ghastly. Joan saw him—in all the terrible transfiguration that came over him—but she had no conception, no thought of what constituted that change. After that check to her mind came a surge of joy.

“Jim . . . Jim . . . it's Joan,” she breathed, with lips almost mute.

“Joan,” he gasped, and the sound of his voice
seemed to be the passing from horrible doubt to certainty.

Then like a panther he leaped at her—fastened a powerful hand at the neck of her blouse—jerked her to her knees—and began to drag her. Joan fought his iron grasp. The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her utterance. He did not look down upon her, but she could see him—the regularity of his body set in violence—the awful shade upon his face—the upstanding hair on his head. He dragged her as if she had been an empty sack. Like a beast he was seeking a dark place—a hole to hide her. She was strangling, a distorted sight made objects dim, and now she struggled instinctively. Suddenly the clutch at her neck loosened; gaspingly came the intake of air to her lungs; the dark red veil left her eyes.

She was still upon her knees. Cleve stood before her, like a gray-faced demon, holding his gun level ready to fire.

“Pray for you soul . . . and mine!”

“Jim . . . oh, Jim . . . will you kill yourself, too?”

“Yes. But pray, girl . . . quick!”

“Then I pray to God . . . not for my soul . . . but just for one more moment of life. . . . To tell you, Jim.”

Cleve's face worked and the gun began to waver. Her reply had been a stroke of lightning into the dark abyss of his jealous agony.

Joan saw it, and she raised her quivering face, and she held up her arms to him.

“To tell . . . you . . . Jim,” she entreated.

“What?” he rasped out.

“That I'm innocent . . . that I'm as good . . . a girl . . . as ever. Let me tell you. Oh, you're mistaken . . . terribly mistaken.”

“Now I know I'm drunk! You, Joan Randle! You in
that rag! You the companion of Jack Kells! Not even his wife! The jest of these foul-mouthed bandits! And you say you're innocent . . . good? When you refused to leave him!”

“I was afraid to go . . . afraid you'd be killed,” she moaned, beating her breast.

It must have seemed madness to him—a monstrous nightmare—a delirium of drink that Joan Randle was there on her knees in brazen male attire, lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to believe in her innocence.

Joan burst into swift broken utterance: “Only listen! I trailed you out . . . thirty miles . . . from Hoadley. I met Roberts. He came with me. He lamed his horse . . . we had to camp. Kells rode down on us. He had two men. They camped there. Next morning he . . . killed Roberts . . . made off with me. Then he killed his men . . . just to have me . . . alone to himself. We crossed a range . . . camped in a cañon. There he attacked me . . . and I . . . I shot him. But I couldn't leave him . . . to die.”

Joan hurried on with her narrative, gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve.

“First he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden . . . and the others,” she went on. “He meant it to save me from them. But they guessed or found out. Kells forced me into these bandit clothes. He's depraved, somehow. And I had to wear something. Kells hasn't harmed me . . . no one has. I've influence over him. He can't resist it. And he's tried to give up his evil intentions. But he can't. There's good in him. I can make him feel it. Oh, he loves me, and I'm not afraid of him anymore. It has been a terrible time for me, Jim, but I'm still . . . the same girl you knew . . . you used to. . . .”

Cleve dropped the gun and he waved his hand before his eyes as if to dispel a blindness.

“But why . . .
why?
” he asked incredulously. “Why did you leave Hoadley? That's forbidden. You knew the risk.”

Joan gazed steadily up at him, to see the whiteness slowly fade out of his face. She had imagined it would be an overcoming of pride to betray her love, but she had been wrong. The moment was so full, so overpowering that she seemed dumb. He had ruined himself for her and out of that ruin had come the glory of her love. Perhaps it was all too late, but at least he would know that for love of him she had in turn sacrificed herself.

“Jim,” she whispered, and with the first word of that betrayal a thrill, a tremble, a rush went over her, and all the blood seemed hot at her neck and face. “That night, when you kissed me, I was furious. But the moment you had gone, I repented. I must have . . . cared for you then, but I didn't know. . . . Remorse seized me. And I set out on your trail to save you from yourself. And with the pain and fear and terror there was sometimes . . . the . . . the sweetness of your kisses. Then I knew I cared. And with the added days of suspense and agony . . . all that told me of your throwing your life away . . . there came love . . . such love as otherwise I'd never have been big enough for. I meant to find you . . . to save you . . . to send you home. . . . I have found you, maybe too late to save your life, but not your soul, thank God. That's why I've been strong enough to hold back Kells. I love you, Jim! I love you! I couldn't tell you enough. My heart is bursting. Say you believe me! Say you
know
I'm good . . . true to you . . . your Joan! And kiss me . . . like you did that night . . . when we
were such blind fools. A boy and a girl who didn't know . . . and couldn't tell . . . oh, the sadness of it. . . . Kiss me, Jim, before I . . . drop . . . at your feet. If only you . . . believe. . . .”

Joan was blinded by tears and whispering she knew not what when Cleve broke from his trance and caught her to his breast. She was fainting—hovering at the border of unconsciousness when his violence held her back from oblivion. She seemed wrapped to him and held so tightly there was no breath in her body, no motion, no stir of pulse. That vague dreamy moment faded. She heard his husky broken accents—she felt the pound of his heart against her breast. And he began to kiss her as she had begged him to. She quickened to thrilling revivifying life. And she lifted her face, and clung around his neck, and kissed him blindly, sweetly, passionately, with all her heart and soul in her lips, wanting only one thing in the world—to give that which she had denied him.

“Joan . . . Joan . . . Joan,” he murmured when their lips parted. “Am I dreaming . . . drunk . . . or crazy?”

“Oh, Jim, I'm real . . . you have me in your arms,” she whispered. “Dear Jim . . . kiss me again . . . and say you believe me.”

“Believe you! I'm out of my mind with joy. You loved me! You followed me! And that idea of mine . . . only an absurd vile suspicion! I might have known . . . had I been sane!”

“There! Oh, Jim, enough of madness. . . . We've got to plan. Remember where we are. There's Kells, and this terrible situation to meet.”

He stared at her, slowly realizing, and then it was his turn to shake.

“My God, I'd forgotten. I'll
have
to kill you now.”

A reaction set in. If he had any self-control left, he
lost it, and like a boy whose fling at manhood had exhausted his courage he sank beside her and buried his face against her. He cried in a low tense heart-broken way. For Joan it was terrible to hear him. She held his head to her breast and implored him not to weaken now. But he was stricken with remorse—he had run off like a coward—he had brought her to this calamity—and he could not rise under it. Joan realized that he had long labored under stress of morbid emotion. Only a supreme effort could lift them out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that must come from her.

She pushed him away from her, and held him back where he must see her, and white-hot with passionate purpose she kissed him.

“Jim Cleve, if you've
nerve
enough to be
bad
, you've nerve enough to save the girl who
loves
you, who
belongs
to you.”

He raised his face and it flashed from red to white. He caught the subtlety of her antithesis. With the very two words that had driven him away under the sting of cowardice she uplifted him, and, with all that was tender and faithful and passionate in her meaning of surrender, she settled at once and forever the doubt of his manhood. He arose, trembling in every limb. Like a dog he shook himself. His breast heaved. The shades of scorn and bitterness and abandon might never have haunted his face. In that moment he had passed from the reckless and wild, sick rage of a weakling to the stern, realizing courage of a man. His suffering on this wild border had developed a different fiber of character, and at the great moment, the climax, when his moral force hung balanced between elevation and destruction, the woman had called to him, and her unquenchable spirit passed into him.