Cabin Gulch Page 3

  When she awoke, the air was nipping cold. Her eyes snapped open, clear and bright. The lips of the cedars were ruddy in the sunrise. A campfire crackled. Blue smoke curled upward. Joan sat up with a rush of memory. Roberts and Kells were bustling around the fire. The man Bill was carrying water. The other fellow had brought in the horses and was taking off the hobbles. No one apparently paid any attention to Joan. She got up and combed out her tangled hair, which she always wore in a braid down her back when she rode. She had slept, then, and in her boots. That was the first time she had ever done that. When she went down to the brook to bathe her face and wash her hands, the men still apparently took no notice of her. She began to hope that Roberts had exaggerated their danger. Her horse was rather skittish and did not care for strange hands. He broke away from the bunch. Joan went after him, even lost sight of camp. Presently, after she caught him, she led him back to camp and tied him up. And then she was so far emboldened as to approach the fire and to greet the men.

  “Good morning,” she said brightly.

  Kells had his back turned at the moment. He did not move or speak or give any sign that he had heard. The man Bill stared boldly at her, but without a word. Roberts returned her greeting, and, as she glanced quickly at him, drawn by his voice, he turned away. But she had seen that his face was dark, haggard, worn.

  Joan’s cheer and hope sustained a sudden and violent check. There was something wrong in this group and she could not guess what it was. She seemed to have a queer dragging weight at her limbs. She was glad to move over to a stone and sink down upon it. Roberts brought her breakfast, but he did not speak or look at her. His hands shook. This frightened Joan. What was going to happen? Roberts went back to the campfire. Joan had to force herself to eat. There was one thing of which she was sure—that she would need all the strength and fortitude she could summon.

  Joan became aware presently that Kells was conversing with Roberts, but too low for her to hear what he said. She saw Roberts make a gesture of fierce protest. About the other man there was an air cool, persuading, dominant. He ceased speaking, as if the incident were closed. Roberts hurried and blundered through his task with his pack, and then went for his horse. The animal limped slightly but evidently was not in bad shape. Roberts saddled him, tied on the pack. Then he saddled Joan’s horse. That done, he squared around with the front of a man who had to face something he dreaded.

  “Come on, Joan, we’re ready!” he called. His voice was loud, but not natural.

  Joan started to cross to him when Kells strode between them. She might not have been there for all the sign this ominous man gave of her presence. He confronted Roberts in the middle of the camp circle, and halted, perhaps a rod distant.

  “Roberts, get on your horse and clear out,” he said.

  Roberts dropped his halter and straightened up. It was a bolder action than any he had heretofore given. Perhaps the mask was off now; he was wholly sure of what he had only feared; subterfuge and blindness were in vain; now he could be a man. Some change worked in his face—a blanching—a setting.

  “No, I won’t go without the girl,” he said.

  “But you can’t take her.”

  Joan vibrated to a sudden start. So this was what was going to happen. Her heart almost stood still. Breathless and quivering, she watched these two men, about whom now all was strangely magnified.

  “Reckon I’ll go along with you, then,” replied Roberts.

  “Your company’s not wanted.”

  “Wal, I’ll go anyway.”

  This was only play at words, Joan thought. She divined in Roberts a cold and grim acceptance of something he had expected. And the voice of Kells—what did that convey? Still the man seemed slow, easy, kind, amiable.

  “Haven’t you got any sense, Roberts?” he asked.

  Roberts made no reply to that.

  “Go on home. Say nothing or anything . . . whatever you like,” continued Kells. “You did me a favor once over in California. I like to remember favors. Use your head now. Hit the trail.”

  “Not without her. I’ll fight first,” declared Roberts, and his hands began to twitch and jerk.

  Joan did not miss the wonderful intentness of the pale gray eyes that watched Roberts—his face—his glance—his hands.

  “What good will it do to fight?” asked Kells. He laughed coolly. “That won’t help her. You ought to know what you’ll get.”

  “Kells . . . I’ll die before I leave that girl in your clutches,” flashed Roberts. “An’ I ain’t a-goin’ to stand here an’ argue with you. Let her come, or . . .”

  “You don’t strike me as a fool,” interrupted Kells. His voice was suave, smooth, persuasive, cool. What strength—what certainty appeared behind it. “It’s not my habit to argue with fools. Take the chance I offer you. Hit the trail. Life is precious, man! You’ve no chance here. And what’s one girl more or less to you?”

  “Kells, I may be a fool, but I’m a man,” passionately rejoined Roberts. “Why, you’re somethin’ inhuman. I knew that out in the gold fields. But to think you can stand there . . . an’ talk sweet an’ pleasant . . . with no idee of manhood. Let her come now . . . or I’m a-goin’ for my gun!”

  “Roberts, haven’t you a wife . . . children?”

  “Yes, I have!” shouted Roberts huskily. “An’ that wife would disown me if I left Joan Randle to you. An’ I’ve got a grown girl. Mebbe someday she might need a man to stand between her an’ such as you, Jack Kells!”

  All Roberts’s pathos and passion had no effect, unless to bring out by contrast the singular and ruthless nature of Jack Kells.

  “Will you hit the trail?”

  “By Gawd!” thundered Roberts.

  Until then Joan Randle had been fascinated, held by the swift interchange between her friend and enemy. But now she had a convulsion of fear. She had seen men fight, but never to the death. Roberts crouched like a wolf at bay. There was a madman upon him. He shook like a rippling leaf. Suddenly his shoulder lurched—his arm swung.

  Joan wheeled away in horror, shutting her eyes, covering her ears, running blindly. Then her muffled hearing burst to the boom of a gun.

  THREE

  Joan ran on, stumbling over rocks and brush, with a darkness before her eyes and terror in her soul. She was out in the cedars when someone grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake. Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away—stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and, leaning there, fought her weakness, that cold black horror that seemed a physical thing in her mind, her blood, her muscles.

  When she recovered enough for the thickness to leave her sight, she saw Kells coming, leading her horse and his own. At sight of him a strange swift heat shot through her. Then she was confounded with the thought of Roberts.

  “Ro-Roberts?” she faltered.

  Kells gave her a piercing glance.

  “Miss Randle, I had to take the fight out of your friend,” he said.

  “You . . . you . . . is he dead?”

  “I just crippled his gun arm. If I hadn’t, he would have hurt somebody. He’ll ride back to Hoadley and tell your folks about it. So they’ll know you’re safe.”

  “Safe,” she whispered.

  “That’s what I said, Miss Randle. If you’re going to ride out into that border . . . if it’s possible to be safe out there, you’ll be so with me.”

  “But I want to go home. Oh, please let me go!”

  “I couldn’t think of it.”

  “Then . . . what will you . . . do with me?”

  Again that gray glance pierced her. His eyes were clear, flawless, like crystal, without coldness, warmth, expression.

  “I’ll get a barrel of gold out of you.”

  “How?” she asked wonderingly.

  “I’ll hold you for ransom. Sooner or later those prospectors over there are going to strike g
old. Strike it rich! I know that. I’ve got to make a living some way.”

  Kells was tightening the cinch on her saddle while he spoke. His voice, his manner, the amiable smile on his intelligent face,—they all appeared to come from sincerity. But for those strange eyes Joan would have wholly believed him; as it was, a half doubt troubled her. She remembered the character Roberts had given this man. Still she was recovering her nerve. It had been the certainty of disaster to Roberts that had made her weaken. As he was only slightly wounded and free to ride home safely, she had not the horror of his death upon her. Indeed, she was now so immensely uplifted that she faced the situation unflinchingly.

  “Bill,” said Kells to the man standing there with a grin on his coarse red face, “you go back and help Halloway pack. Then take my trail.”

  Bill nodded, and was walking away when Kells called after him: “And say, Bill, don’t say anything to Roberts! He’s easily riled.”

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” laughed Bill.

  His harsh laughter somehow rang jarringly in Joan’s ears. But she was used to violent men who expressed mirth over mirthless jokes.

  “Get up, Miss Randle,” said Kells as he mounted. “We’ve a long ride. You’ll need all your strength. So I advise you to come quietly with me and not try to get away. It won’t be any use trying.”

  Joan climbed into her saddle and rode after him. Once she looked back in the hope of seeing Roberts, of waving a hand to him. She saw his horse, standing saddled, and she saw Bill struggling under a pack, but there was no sign of Roberts. Then more cedars intervened and the campsite was lost to view. When she glanced ahead, her first thought was to take in the points of Kells’s horse. She had been used to horses all her life. Kells rode a big rangy bay—a horse that appeared to snort speed and endurance. Her pony could never run away from that big brute. Still Joan had the temper to make an attempt to escape, if a favorable one was presented.

  The morning was rosy, clear, cool; there was a sweet dry tang in the air; white-tailed deer bounded away out of the open spaces, and the gray-domed, glistening mountains, with their bold black-fringed slopes, overshadowed the close foothills. Joan was a victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions. She was riding away with a freebooter, a road agent, to be held for ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts’s words, yet they haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, he had said. Joan knew she possessed good looks, but they had never caused her any particular concern. That Kells had let that influence him—as Roberts had imagined—was more than absurd. Kells had scarcely looked at her. It was gold such men wanted. She wondered what her ransom would be—where her uncle would get it—and if there really was a likelihood of that rich strike. Then she remembered her mother, who had died when she was a little girl, and a strange sweet sadness abided with her. It passed. She saw her uncle—that great, robust, hearty, splendid old man, with his laugh and his kindness, and his love for her, and his everlasting unquenchable belief that soon he would make a rich gold strike. What a roar and a stampede he would raise at her loss! The village camp might be divided on that score, she thought, because the few young women in that little settlement hated her, and the young men would have more peace without her. Suddenly her thought shifted to Jim Cleve, the cause of her present misfortune. She had forgotten Jim. In the interval somehow he had grown. Sweet to remember how he had fought for her and kept it secret. After all, she had misjudged him. She had hated him because she liked him. Maybe she did more. That gave her a shock. She recalled his kisses, and then flamed all over. If she did not hate him, she ought to. He had been so useless; he ran after her so; he was the laughingstock of the village; his actions made her other admirers and friends believe she cared for him, was playing fast-and-loose with him. Still there was a difference now. He had terribly transgressed. He had frightened her with threats of dire ruin to himself, and because of that she had trailed him, to fall herself upon a hazardous experience. Where was Jim Cleve now? Like a flash then occurred to her the singular possibility. Jim had ridden for the border with the avowed and desperate intention of finding Kells, and Gulden, and the badmen of that trackless region. He would do what he had sworn he would. And here she was—the cause of it all—a captive of this notorious Kells. She was being led into that wild border country. Somewhere out there Kells and Jim Cleve would meet. Jim would find her in Kells’s hands. Then there would be hell, Joan thought. The possibility—the certainty seemed to strike deeply into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again—a ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and distrust at this new strange side of her nature.

  While her mind was thus occupied, the morning hours passed swiftly, the miles of foothills were climbed and descended. A green gap of cañon, wild and yellow-walled, yawned before her, opening into the mountain.

  Kells halted on the grassy bank of a shallow brook.

  “Get down. We’ll noon here and rest the horses,” he said to Joan. “I can’t say that you’re anything but game. We’ve done perhaps twenty-five miles this morning.”

  The mouth of this cañon was a wild green-flowered beautiful place. There were willows and alders and aspens along the brook. The green bench was like a grassy meadow. Joan caught a glimpse of a brown object, a deer or bear, stealing away through spruce trees on the slope. She dismounted, aware now that her legs ached, and it was comfortable to stretch them. Looking backward across the valley toward the last foothill, she saw the other men, with horses and packs, coming. She had a habit of close observation and she thought that either the men with the packs had now one more horse than she remembered or else she had not seen the extra one. Her attention shifted then. She watched Kells unsaddle the horses. He was wiry, muscular, quick with his hands. The big blue-cylindered gun swung in front of him. That gun had a queer kind of attraction for her. The curved black butt made her think of a sharp grip of hand upon it. Kells did not hobble the horses. He slapped his bay on the haunch and drove him down toward the brook. Joan’s pony followed. They drank, cracked the stones, climbed to the other bank, and began to roll in the grass. Then the other men with the packs trotted up. Joan was glad. She had not thought of it before, but now she felt she would rather not be alone with Kells. She remarked then that there was no extra horse in the bunch. It seemed strange, her thinking that and she imagined she was not clear-headed.

  “Throw the packs, Bill,” said Kells.

  Another fire was kindled and preparations made toward a noonday meal. Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook, and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared not to notice him, and thereafter she averted her gaze. The man chuckled. “She’s the proud hussy! But she ain’t foolin’ me. I’ve knowed a heap of wimmen.” Whereupon Halloway guffawed, and between them, in lower tones, they exchanged mysterious remarks. Kells returned with a bucket of water.

  “What’s got into you men?” he queried.

  Both of them looked around blusteringly innocent.

  “Reckon it’s the same that’s ailin’ you,” replied Bill. He showed that among wild unhampered men how little could inflame and change.

  “Boss, it’s the unaccustomed company,” added Halloway with a conciliatory smile. “Bill sort of warms up. He jest can’t help it. An’ seein’ what a thunderin’ crab he always is, why I’m glad an’ welcome.”

  Kells vouchsafed no reply to this and, turning away, continued at his tasks. Joan had a close look at his eyes and again she was startled. They were not like eyes, but just gray spaces, opaque openings, with nothing visible behind, yet with something terrible there.

  The preparations for the
meal went on, somewhat constrainedly on the part of Bill and Halloway, and presently were ended. Then the men attended to it with appetites born of the open and of action. Joan sat apart from them on the bank of the brook, and, after she had appeased her own hunger, she rested, leaning back in the shade of an alder bush. A sailing shadow crossed near her, and, looking up, she saw an eagle flying above the ramparts of the cañon. Then she had a drowsy spell, but she succumbed to it only to the extent of closing her eyes. Time dragged on. She would rather have been in the saddle. These men were leisurely, and Kells was provokingly slow. They had nothing to do with time but waste it. She tried to combat the desire for hurry, for action; she could not gain anything by worry. Nevertheless, resignation would not come to her and her hope began to flag. Something portended evil—something hung in the balance.

  The snort and tramp of horses roused her, and, upon sitting up, she saw the men about to pack and saddle again. Kells had spoken to her only twice so far that day. She was grateful for his silence, but could not understand it. He seemed to have a preoccupied air that somehow did not fit the amiableness of his face. He looked gentle, good-natured; he was soft-spoken; he gave an impression of kindness. But Joan began to realize that he was not what he seemed. He had something on his mind. It was not conscience, nor a burden: it might be a projection, a plan, an absorbing scheme, something that gained food with thought. Joan wondered doubtfully if it were the ransom of gold he expected to get.

  Presently, when all was about in readiness for a fresh start, she rose to her feet. Kells’s bay was not tractable at the moment. Bill held out Joan’s bridle to her and their hands touched. The contact was an accident, but it resulted in Bill’s grasping back at her hand. She jerked it away—scarcely comprehending. Then all under the brown of his face she saw creep a dark ruddy tide. He reached for her then—put his hand on her breast. It was an instinctive animal action. He meant nothing. She divined that he could not help it. She had lived with rough men long enough to know he had no motive—no thought at all. But, at the profanation of such a touch, she shrank back, uttering a cry.