Cabin Gulch Read online

  “There’s nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?”

  “Nothing . . . only I can’t forget!” he panted.

  Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness. Joan saw how Kells worked upon Jim’s feelings. He was only a hopeless passionate boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man. He would be like wax to a sculptor’s touch. Jim would bend to this bandit’s will, and through his very tenacity of love and memory be driven further on the road to drink, to gaming, and to crime.

  Joan got to her feet, and, with all her woman’s soul uplifting and inflaming her, she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.

  Kells made a gesture of savage violence.

  “Show your nerve! Join with me! You’ll make a name on this border that the West will never forget.”

  That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit’s best trump. And it won. Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from his damp brow. The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from him. He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as his own cowardice.

  “Sure Kells,” he said recklessly. “Let me in the game. And . . . by God . . . I’ll . . . play . . . the hand out!”

  He reached for the pencil and bent over the book.

  “Wait! Oh, wait!” cried Joan. The power of that moment, the consciousness of its fateful portent and her situation, as desperate as Cleve’s, gave her voice a singularly high and piercingly sweet intensity. She glided from behind the blanket . . . out of the shadow . . . into the glare of the lanterns . . . to face Kells and Cleve.

  Kells gave one astounded glance at her, and then, divining her purpose, he laughed thrillingly and mockingly, as if the sight of her was a spur, as if her courage was a thing to admire, to permit, and to regret.

  “Cleve, my wife, Dandy Dale,” he said, suave and cool. “Let her persuade you . . . one way or another!”

  The presence of a woman, however disguised, following her singular appeal, transformed Cleve. He stiffened erect and the flush died out of his face, leaving it whiter than ever, and the eyes that had grown dull quickened and began to burn. Joan felt her cheeks blanch. She all but fainted under that gaze. But he did not recognize her, although he was strangely affected.

  “Wait!” she cried again, and she held to that high voice, so different from her natural tones. “I’ve been listening. I’ve heard all that’s been said. Don’t join this Border Legion. You’re young . . . and still honest. For God’s sake . . . don’t go the way of these men! Kells will make you a bandit. Go home . . . boy . . . go home!”

  “Who are you . . . to speak to me of honesty . . . of home?” Cleve demanded.

  “I’m only a . . . a woman . . . but I can feel how wrong you are. Go back to that girl . . . who . . . who drove you to the border. She must repent. In a day you’ll be too late. Oh, boy, go home! Girls never know their minds . . . their hearts. Maybe your girl . . . loved you. Oh, maybe her heart is breaking now.”

  A stray muscular ripple went over Cleve ending in a gesture of fierce protest. Was it pain her words caused or disgust that such as she dared mention the girl he had loved? Joan could not tell. She only knew that Cleve was drawn by her presence—fascinated and repelled—subtly responding to the spirit of her—doubting what he heard and believing with his eyes.

  “You beg me not to become a bandit?” he asked slowly, as if revolving a strange idea.

  “Oh, I implore you.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you . . . because you’re still good at heart. You’ve only been wild. . . . Because . . .”

  “Are you the wife of Kells?” he flashed at her.

  A reply seemed slowly wrenched from Joan’s reluctant lips. “No.”

  The denial left a silence behind it. The truth that all three knew, when spoken by her, was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon the face of Cleve shone an immeasurable scorn.

  “Not his wife!” exclaimed Cleve softly. His tone was unendurable to Joan. She began to shrink. A flame curled within her. How he must hate any creature of her sex! “And you appeal to me?” he went on. Suddenly a weariness came over him. The complexity of women was beyond him. Almost he turned his back upon her. “I reckon such as you can’t keep me from Kells . . . or blood . . . or hell?”

  “Then you’re a narrow-souled weakling . . . born to crime!” she burst out in magnificent wrath. “For however appearances are against me . . . I am a good woman!”

  That stunned him, just as it drew Kells upright, white and watchful. Cleve seemed long in grasping its significance. His face was half averted. Then he turned slowly, all strung, and his hands clutched quiveringly at the air. No man of coolness and judgment would have addressed him or moved a step in that strained moment. All expected some such action as had marked his encounter with Luce and Gulden.

  Then Cleve’s gaze in unmistakable meaning swept over Joan’s person. How could her appearance and her appeal be reconciled? One was a lie! And his burning eyes robbed Joan of spirit.

  “He forced me to . . . to wear this,” she faltered. “I’m his prisoner. I’m helpless.”

  With cat-like agility Cleve leaped backward, so that he faced all the men, and, when his hands swept to a level, they held gleaming guns. His utter abandon of daring transfixed these bandits in surprise as much as fear. Kells appeared to take most of the menace personally.

  “I crawl,” he said huskily. “She speaks the God’s truth . . . but you can’t help matters by killing me. Maybe she’d be worse off.”

  He expected this wild boy to break loose, yet his wit directed him to speak the one thing calculated to check Cleve.

  “Oh, don’t shoot,” moaned Joan.

  “You go outside!” ordered Cleve. “Get on a horse and lead another near the door. Go! I’ll take you away from this.”

  Both temptation and terror assailed Joan. Surely that venture would mean only death to Jim and worse for her. She thrilled at the thought—at the possibility of escape—at the strange front of this erst-while nerveless boy. But she had not the courage for what seemed only desperate folly.

  “I’ll stay,” she whispered. “You go.”

  “Hurry, woman!”

  “No . . . no!”

  “Do you want to stay with this bandit?”

  “Oh, I must!”

  “Then you love him?”

  All the fire of Joan’s heart flared up to deny the insult and all her woman’s cunning fought to keep back words that inevitably must lead to revelation. She drooped, unable to hold up under her shame, yet strong to let him think vilely of her, for his sake. That way she had a barest chance.

  “Get out of my sight!” he ejaculated thickly. “I’d have fought for you.”

  Again that white, weary scorn radiated from him. Joan bit her tongue to keep from screaming. How could she live under this torment? It was she, Joan Randle, that had earned that scorn, whether he knew her or not. She shrank back, step by step, almost dazed, sick with a terrible inward gripping coldness, blinded by scalding tears. She found her door and stumbled in.

  “Kells, I’m what you called me.” She heard Cleve’s voice, strangely far off. “There’s no excuse . . . unless I’m not just right in my head about women . . . overlook my break or don’t . . . as you like. But if you want me, I’m ready for your Border Legion.”

  TWELVE

  Those bitter words of Cleve’s, as if he mocked himself, were the last Joan heard, and they rang in her ears and seemed to reverberate through her dazed mind like a knell of doom. She lay there, all blackness about her, weighed upon by an insupportable burden, and she prayed that day might never dawn for her.

  A nightmare of oblivion ended at last with her eyes opening to the morning light. She was cold and stiff. She had lain uncovered all the long hours of night. She had not moved a finger since she had fallen upon the bed, crushed by those bitter words with whi
ch Cleve had consented to join Kells’s legion. Since then Joan felt that she had lived years. She could not remember a single thought she might have had during those black hours; nevertheless a decision had been formed in her mind, and it was that today she would reveal herself to Jim Cleve if it cost both their lives. Death was infinitely better than the suspense and fear and agony she had endured, and as for Jim it would at least save him from crime.

  Joan got up, a little dizzy and unsteady upon her feet. Her hands appeared clumsy and shaky. All the blood in her seemed to surge from heart to brain, and it hurt her to breathe. Removing her mask, she bathed her face and combed her hair. At first she conceived an idea to go out without her face covered, but she thought better of it. Cleve’s reckless defiance had communicated itself to her. She could not now be stopped.

  Kells was gay and excited that morning. He paid her compliments. He said they would soon be out of this lonely gulch and she would see the sight of her life—a gold strike. She would see men wager a fortune on the turn of a card—lose—laugh—and go back to the digging. He said he would take her to Sacramento and Frisco and buy her everything any girl could desire. He was wild, voluble, unreasoning—obsessed by the anticipated fulfillment of his dream.

  It was rather late in the morning and there were a dozen or more men in and around the cabin, all as excited as Kells. Preparations were already under way for the expected journey to the gold field. Packs were being laid out, overhauled, and repacked; saddles and bridles and weapons were being worked over; clothes were being awkwardly mended. Horses were being shod, and the job was as hard and disagreeable for men as for horses. Whenever a rider swung up the slope, and one came now and then, all the robbers would leave off their tasks and start eagerly for the newcomer. The name Jesse Smith was on everybody’s lips. Any hour he might be expected to arrive and corroborate Blicky’s alluring tale.

  Joan saw or imagined she saw that the gleams in the eyes of these men were yellow, like gold fire. She had seen miners and prospectors whose eyes shone with a strange glory of light that gold inspired, but never as those of Kells’s bandit legion. Presently Joan discovered that, despite the excitement, her effect on them was more marked than ever, and by a difference she was quick to feel. But she could not tell what this difference was—how their attitude had changed. Then she set herself the task of being useful. First she helped Bate Wood. He was roughly kind. She had not realized that there was sadness about her until he whispered: “Don’t be downcast, miss . . . mebbe it’ll come out right yet.” That amazed Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances, the sympathy she felt in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She grew keen to learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in all the men. Then she went to Pearce, and with all a woman’s craft she exaggerated the silent sadness that had brought quick response from Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her proximity as that of a feminine thing that roused the devil in him. Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud of her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then, as she finished, he glanced furtively around; he pressed her hand. “I had a sister once,” he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate: “Kells . . . he’ll get his over in the gold camp.”

  Joan turned away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange deep undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her situation—what was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate, and faithlessness fostered by this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant’s notice to break out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragic nature of Kells’s great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold—of riotous gambling—but by its very nature it was doomed. It embraced failure and death.

  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 whispe
red 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.