Cabin Gulch (21 page)

“There's only one thing . . . to get away,” he said.

“Yes, but that's a terrible risk,” she replied.

“We've a good chance now. I'll get horses. We can slip away while they're all excited.”

“No . . . no. I daren't risk so much. Kells would find out at once. He'd be like a hound on our trail. But that's not all. I've a horror of Gulden. I can't explain. I
feel
it. He would know . . . he would take the trail. I'd never try to escape with Gulden in camp. Jim, do you know what he's done?”

“He's a cannibal. I hate the sight of him. I tried to kill him. I wish I had killed him.”

“I'm never safe while he's near.”

“Then I will kill him.”

“Hush! You'll not be desperate unless you have to be. Listen. I'm safe with Kells, for the present. And he's friendly to you. Let us wait. I'll keep trying to influence him. I have won the friendship of some of his men. We'll stay with him . . . travel with him. Surely we'd have a better chance to escape after we reach that gold camp. You must play your part. But do it without drinking and fighting. I couldn't bear that. We'll see each other somehow. We'll plan. Then we'll take the first sure chance to get away.”

“We might never have a better chance than we've got right now,” he remonstrated.

“It may seem so to you. But I
know
. I haven't watched these ruffians for nothing. I tell you Gulden has split with Kells because of me. I don't know how I know. And I think I'd die of terror out on the trail, with two hundred miles to go . . . and that gorilla after me.”

“But Joan, if we once got away, Gulden would never take you alive,” said Jim earnestly. “So you needn't fear that.”

“I've uncanny horror of him. It's as if he were a gorilla
. . . and would take me off even if I were dead! No, Jim, let me wait. Let me select the time. I can do it. Trust me. Oh, Jim, now that I've saved you from being a bandit, I can do anything. I can fool Kells or Pearce or Wood . . . any of them, except Gulden.”

“If Kells had to choose now between trailing you and rushing for the gold camp, which would he do?”

“He'd trail me,” she said.

“But Kells is crazy over gold. He has two passions. To steal gold, and to gamble with it.”

“That may be. But he'd go after me first. So would Gulden. We can't ride these hills as they do. We don't know the trails . . . the water. We'd get lost. We'd be caught. And somehow I know Gulden and his gang would find us first.”

“You're probably right, Joan,” replied Cleve. “But you condemn me to a living death. . . . To let you out of my sight with Kells or any of them! It'll be worse almost than my life was before.”

“But, Jim, I'll be safe,” she entreated. “It's the better choice of two evils. Our lives depend on reason, waiting, planning. And Jim, I want to live for you.”

“My brave darling, to hear you say that!” he exclaimed with deep emotion. “When I never expected to see you again. . . . But the past is past. I begin over from this hour. I'll be what you want . . . do what you want.”

Joan seemed irresistibly drawn to him again, and the supplication—as she lifted her blushing face—and the yielding were perilously sweet.

“Jim, kiss me and hold me . . . the way . . . you did that night.”

And it was not Joan who first broke that embrace.

“Find my mask,” she said.

Cleve picked up his gun and presently the piece of black felt. He held it as if it was a deadly thing.

“Put it on me.”

He slipped the cord over her head and adjusted the mask so the holes were right for her eyes.

“Joan, it hides the . . . the
goodness
of you,” he said. “No one can see your eyes now. No one will look at your face. That damned rig shows your . . . shows you off so! It's not decent. But, oh, Lord! I'm bound to confess how pretty, how devilish, how seductive you are. And I hate it.”

“Jim, I hate it, too. But we must stand it. Try not to shame me anymore. And now good bye. Keep watch for me . . . as I will for you . . . all the time.”

Joan broke from him and glided out of the grove, away under the straggling pines, along the slope. She came upon her horse, and she led him back to the corral. Many of the horses had strayed. There was no one at the cabin, but she saw men striding up the slope, Kells in the lead. She had been fortunate. Her absence could hardly have been noted. She had just enough strength left to get to her room, where she fell upon the bed, weak and trembling and dizzy, and unutterably grateful at her deliverance from the hateful unbearable falsity of her situation.

It was afternoon before Joan could trust herself sufficiently to go out again, and, when she did go, she saw that she attracted very little attention from the bandits. Kells had a springy step, a bright eye, a lifted head, and he seemed to be listening. Perhaps he was—to the music of his sordid dreams. Joan watched him sometimes with wonder. Even a bandit—plotting gold robbing with violence and blood merely means to an end—built castles in the air and lived with joy.

All that afternoon the bandits left camp in twos and threes, each party with pack burros and horses, packed as Joan had not seen them before on the border. Shovels and picks and old sieves and pans,—these swinging or tied in prominent places were evidence that the bandits meant to assume the characters of miners and prospectors. They whistled and sang. It was a lark. The excitement had subsided and the action begun. Only in Kells, under his radiance, could be felt the dark and sinister plot. He was the heart of the machine.

By sundown, Kells, Pearce, Wood, Jim Cleve, and a robust grizzled bandit, Jesse Smith, were left in camp. Smith was lame from his ride, and Joan gathered that Kells would have left camp but for the fact that Smith needed rest. He and Kells were together all the time, talking endlessly. Joan heard them argue a disputed point—would the men abide by Kells's plan and go by twos and threes into the gold camp, and hide their relation as a larger band? Kells contended they would and Smith had his doubts.

“Jack, wait till you see Alder Creek!” ejaculated Smith, wagging his grizzled head. “Three thousand men, old an' young, of all kinds . . . gone gold crazy! Alder Creek of 'sixty-three has got California's 'forty-nine an 'fifty-one cinched to the last hole!”

And the bandit leader rubbed his palms in great glee.

That evening they all had supper together in Kells's cabin. Bate Wood grumbled because he had packed most of his outfit. It so chanced that Joan sat directly opposite Jim Cleve, and, while he ate, he pressed her foot with his under the table. The touch thrilled Joan. Jim did not glance at her. But there was such a change in him that she feared it might rouse Kells's curiosity. This night, however, the bandit could not have seen anything except a gleam of yellow. He talked, he sat at table, but he did not eat. After supper, he sent Joan to her cabin, saying they would be on the trail at daylight. Joan watched them a while from her covert. They had evidently talked themselves out, and Kells grew thoughtful. Smith and Pearce went outside, apparently to roll their beds on the ground under the porch roof. Wood, who said he was never a good sleeper, smoked his pipe. And Jim Cleve spread blankets along the wall in the shadow
and lay down. Joan could just see his eyes shining toward her door. Of course, he was thinking of her. But could he see her eyes? Watching her chance, she slipped a hand from behind the curtain, and she knew Cleve saw it. What a comfort that was! Joan's heart swelled. All might yet be well. Jim Cleve would be near her while she slept. She could sleep now without the dark dreams—without dreading to awaken to the light. Again she saw Kells pacing the room, silent, bent, absorbed, hands behind his back, weighted with his burden. It was impossible not to feel sorry for him. With all his intelligence and cunning and power his cause was hopeless. Joan knew that as she knew so many other things without understanding why. She had not yet sounded Jesse Smith, but not a man of all the others was true to Kells. They would be of his Border Legion, do his bidding, revel with their ill-gotten gains, and then, when he needed them most, be false to him.

When Joan was awakened, her room was shrouded in gray gloom. A bustle sounded from the big cabin, and outside horses stamped and men talked.

She sat alone at breakfast and ate by lantern light. It was necessary to take a lantern back to the cabin, and she was so long in her preparations there that Kells called again. Somehow she did not want to leave this cabin. It seemed protective and private, and she feared she might not find such quarters again. Besides upon the moment of leaving she discovered that she had grown attached to the place where she had suffered and thought and grown so much.

Kells had put out the lights. Joan hurried through the cabin and outside. The gray obscurity had given way to dawn. The air was cold, sweet, bracing with
the touch of mountain purity in it. The men, except Kells, were all mounted, and the pack train was in motion. Kells dragged the rude door into position, and then, mounting, he called to Joan to follow. She trotted her horse after him, down the slope, across the brook and through the wet willows, and out upon the wide trail. She glanced ahead, discerning that the third man from her was Jim Cleve, and that fact, in the start for Alder Creek, made all the difference in the world.

When they rode out of the narrow defile into the valley, the sun was rising, red and bright, in a notch of the mountains. Clouds hung over distant peaks and the patches of snow in the high cañons shone blue and pink. Smith in the lead turned westward up the valley. Horses trooped after the cavalcade and had to be driven back. There were also cattle in the valley, and all these Kells left behind like an honest rancher who had no fear for his stock. Deer stood with long ears pointed forward, watching the horses go by. There were flocks of quail, and whirring grouse, and bounding jack rabbits, and occasionally a brace of sneaking coyotes. These, and the wild flowers, and the waving meadow grass, the yellow-stemmed willows and the patches of alder, all were pleasurable to Joan's eyes and restful to her mind.

Smith soon led away from this valley, up out of the head of a ravine, across a rough rock-strewn ridge, down again into a hollow that grew to be a cañon. The trail was bad. Part of the time it was the bottom of a boulder-strewn brook where the horses slipped on the wet round stones. Progress was slow and time passed. For Joan, however, it was a relief, and the slower they might travel, the better she would like it. At the end of that journey there were Gulden and the
others, and the gold camp with its illimitable possibilities for such men.

At noon the party halted for a rest. The campsite was pleasant and the men all agreeable. During the meal Kells found reason to remark to Cleve: “Say, youngster, you've brightened up. Must be because of our prospects over here?”

“Not that so much,” replied Cleve. “I quit the whiskey. To be honest, Kells, I was almost seeing snakes.”

“I'm glad you quit. When you're drinking, you're wild. I never yet saw the man who could drink hard and keep his head. I can't. But I don't drink much.”

His last remark brought a response in laughter. Evidently his companion thought he was joking. He laughed himself and actually winked at Joan.

It happened to be Cleve who Kells told to saddle Joan's horse, and, as Joan tried the cinches, to see if they were too tight to suit her, Jim's hand came in contact with hers. That touch was like a message. Joan was thrilling all over as she looked at Jim, but he kept his face averted. Perhaps he did not trust his eyes.

Travel was resumed up the cañon and continued steadily, although leisurely. But the trail was so rough, and so winding, that Joan believed the progress did not exceed three miles an hour. It was the kind of travel in which a horse could be helped and that entailed attention to the lay of the ground. Before Joan realized the hours were flying, the afternoon had waned. Smith kept on, however, until nearly dark before halting for camp.

The evening camp was a scene of activity, and all, except Joan, had work to do. She tried to lend a hand, but Wood told her to rest. This she was glad to do. When called to supper, she had almost fallen asleep.
After a long day's ride the business of eating precluded conversation. Later, however, the men began to talk between puffs on their pipes, and from that talk no one could have guessed that here was a band of robbers on their way to a gold camp. Jesse Smith had a sore foot and he was compared to a tenderfoot on his first ride. Smith retaliated in kind. Every consideration was shown Joan, and Wood particularly appeared assiduous in his desire for her comfort. All the men, except Cleve, paid her some kind attention, and Cleve, of course, neglected her because he was afraid to go near her. Again she felt in Red Pearce a condemnation of the bandit leader who was dragging a girl over hard trails, making her sleep in the open, exposing her to danger and to men like himself and Gulden. In his own estimate Pearce, like every one of his kind, was not so low as the others.

Joan watched and listened from her blankets, under a leafy tree some few yards from the campfire. Once Kells turned to see how far distant she was, and then, lowering his voice, he told a story. The others laughed. Pearce followed with another, and he, too, took care that Joan could not hear. They grew closer, for the mirth, and Smith, who evidently was a jolly fellow, set them to roaring. Jim Cleve laughed with them.

“Say, Jim, you're getting over it,” remarked Kells.

“Over what?”

Kells paused, rather embarrassed for a reply, as evidently in the humor of the hour he had spoken a thought better left unsaid. But there was no more forbidding atmosphere about Cleve. He appeared to have rounded to good fellowship after a moody and quarrelsome drinking spell.

“Why, over what drove you out here . . . and gave
me a lucky chance at you,” replied Kells with a constrained laugh.