Cabin Gulch Page 8

  “Bate, you forgot to tell how he handled Luce,” said Red Pearce. “You were there. I wasn’t. Tell Kells that.”

  “Luce. I know the man. Go ahead, Bate,” responded Kells.

  “Mebbe it ain’t any recommendation fer said Jim Cleve,” replied Wood. “Though I’m damned if it didn’t sorta warm me to him. Boss, of course you recollect thet little Brander girl over at Bear Lake village. She’s old Brander’s girl . . . worked in his store there. I’ve seen you talk sweet to her myself. Wal, it seems the ole man an’ some of his boys took to prospectin’ an’ fetched the girl along. Thet’s how I understood it. Luce came bracin’ in over at Cabin Gulch one day. As usual we was drinkin’ an’ playin’. But young Cleve wasn’t doin’ neither. He had a strange moody spell that day, as I recollect. Luce sprung a job on us. We never worked with him or his outfit, but mebbe . . . you can’t tell what’d’ve come off if it hadn’t been for Cleve. Luce had a job put up to ride down where ole Brander was washin’ fer gold, take what he had . . . an’ the girl. Fact was, the gold was only incidental. When somebody cornered Luce, he couldn’t swear there was gold worth goin’ after. An’ about then Jim Cleve woke up. He cussed Luce somethin’ fearful. An’ when Luce went for his gun, natural-like, why this Jim Cleve took it away from him. An’ then he jumped Luce. He knocked an’ threw him around an’ he near beat him to death before we could interfere. Luce was shore near dead. All battered up . . . broken bones . . . an’ what-all I can’t say. We put him to bed an’ he’s there yet an’ he’ll never be the man he was.”

  A significant silence fell upon the group at the conclusion of Wood’s narrative. Wood had liked the telling, and it had made his listeners thoughtful. All at once the pale face of Kells turned slightly toward Gulden.

  “Gulden, did you hear that?” asked Kells.

  “Yes,” replied the man.

  “What do you think about this Jim Cleve . . . and the job he prevented?”

  “Never saw Cleve. I’ll look him up when we get back to camp. Then I’ll go after the Brander girl.”

  How strangely his brutal assurance marked a line between him and his companions. There was something wrong—something perverse in this Gulden. Had Kells meant to bring that point out or to get an impression of Cleve?

  Joan could not decide. She divined that there was antagonism between Gulden and all the others. And there was something else, vague and intangible, that might have been fear. Apparently Gulden was a criminal for the sake of crime. Joan regarded him with a growing terror—augmented the more because he alone kept eyes upon the corner where she was hidden—and she felt that compared to him the others, even Kells, of whose cold villainy she was assured, were but insignificant men of evil. She covered her head with a blanket to shut out sight of that shaggy massive head and the great dark caves of eyes.

  Thereupon, Joan did not see or hear any more of the bandits. Evidently the conversation died down, or she, in the absorption of new thoughts, no longer heard. She relaxed, and suddenly seemed to quiver all over with the name she whispered to herself. Jim! Jim! Oh, Jim! It was an inward sob. What he had done was terrible. It tortured her. She had not believed it in him. Yet, now she thought, how like him! All for her—in despair and spite—he had ruined himself. He would be killed out there in some drunken brawl—or, still worse, he would become a member of this bandit crew and drift into crime. That was the great blow to Joan—that curse she had put upon him. How silly, false, and vain had been her coquetry—her indifference. She loved Jim Cleve. She had not known that when she started out to trail him, to fetch him back, but she knew it now. She ought to have known before.

  The situation she had foreseen loomed, dark and monstrous and terrible in prospect. Just to think of it made her body creep and shudder with cold terror. Yet there was that strange inward thrilling burn around her heart. Somewhere and soon she was coming face to face with this changed Jim Cleve—this boy who had become a reckless devil. What would he do? What could she do? Might he not despise her—scorn her—curse her—taking her at Kells’s word, the wife of a bandit? But, no! He could divine the truth in the flash of an eye. And then? She could not think what might happen, but it must mean blood—death. If he escaped Kells, how could he ever escape Gulden—this huge vulture of prey?

  Still, with the horror thick upon her, Joan could not wholly give up. The moment Jim Cleve’s name and his ruin burst upon her ears, in the gossip of these bandits, she had become another girl—a girl wholly become a woman, and one with driving passion to save, if it cost her life. She lost her fear of Kells, of the others, of all except Gulden.

  The torment in her brain eased then, and gradually she quieted down, with only a pang and a weight in her breast. The past seemed far away. The present was nothing. Only the future—that contained Jim Cleve—mattered to her. She would not have left the clutches of Kells if at that moment she could have walked forth free and safe. She was going on to Cabin Gulch. That thought was the last one in her weary mind as she dropped to sleep.

  EIGHT

  In three days—during which Joan attended Kells as faithfully as if she were indeed his wife—he thought that he had gained sufficiently to undertake the journey to the main camp, Cabin Gulch. He was eager to get back there and imperious in his overruling of any opposition. The men could take turns at propping him in a saddle. So on the morning of the fourth day they packed for the ride.

  During these few days Joan had verified her suspicion that Kells had two sides to his character, or so it seemed, rather, that her presence developed a latent or a long dead side. When she was with him, thereby distracting his attention, he was entirely different from what he was when his men surrounded him. Apparently he had no knowledge of this. He showed surprise and gratitude at Joan’s kindness, although never pity or compassion for her. That he had become infatuated with her, Joan could no longer doubt. His strange eyes followed her; there was a strange dreamy light in them; he was mostly silent with her.

  Before those few days had come to an end he had developed two things, a reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance of the presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan felt the eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances, except Gulden’s. The giant studied her with slow cavernous stare, without curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman was a new and strange creature to him, and he was experiencing unfamiliar sensations. Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze—for she avoided it as much as possible—she shuddered with a sick memory of a story she had heard—how a huge and ferocious gorilla had stolen into an African village and run off with a white woman. She could not shake the memory. It was this that made her kinder to Kells than otherwise would have been possible.

  All Joan’s faculties sharpened in this period. She felt her own development—the beginning of a bitter and hard education—an instinctive assimilation of all that Nature taught its wild people and creatures, the first thing in elemental life—self-preservation. Parallel in her heart and mind ran a hopeless despair and a driving unquenchable spirit. The former was fear—the latter love. She believed, beyond a doubt, that she doomed herself along with Jim Cleve; she believed that she had the courage, the power, the love to save him, if not herself. And the reason that she did not falter and fail in this terrible situation was because her despair, great as it was, did not equal her love.

  That morning, before being lifted upon his horse, Kells buckled on his gun belt. The sheath and full round of shells and the gun made this belt a burden for a weak man. Or so Red Pearce insisted. But Kells laughed in his face. The men, always excepting Gulden, were unfailing in kindness and care. Apparently they would have fought for Kells to the death. They were simple and direct in their rough feelings. But in Kells, Joan thought, was a character who was a product of this border wildness yet one who could stand aloof from himself and see the possibilities, the unexpected, the meaning of that life. Kells knew that a man and yet another might show kindness and faithfulness one mo
ment, but the very next, out of a manhood retrograded to the savage, out of circumstance or chance, might respond to a primitive force far sundered from thought or reason, and rise to unbridled action. Joan divined that Kells buckled on his gun to be ready to protect her. But his men never dreamed his motive. Kells was a strong bad man set among men like him, yet he was infinitely different because he had brains.

  On the start of the journey Joan was instructed to ride before Kells and Pearce, who supported the leader in his saddle. The pack drivers and Bate Wood and Frenchy rode ahead, while Gulden held to the rear. This order was preserved till noon when the cavalcade halted for a rest in a shady, grassy, and well-watered nook. Kells was haggard, his brow wet with clammy dew, and livid with pain. Yet he was cheerful and patient. Still he hurried the men through their tasks.

  In an hour the afternoon travel was begun. The cañon and its surroundings grew more rugged and of larger dimensions. Yet the trail appeared to get broader and better all the time. Joan noticed intersecting trails, running down from side cañons and gulches. The descent was gradual, and scarcely evident in any way except in the running water and warmer air.

  Kells tired before the middle of the afternoon and he would have fallen from his saddle but for the support of his fellows. One by one they helped him, and it was not easy work to ride alongside, holding him up. Joan observed that Gulden did not offer his services. He seemed a part of this gang, yet not of it. Joan never lost a feeling of his presence behind her, and from time to time, when he rode closer, the feeling grew stronger. Toward the close of that afternoon she became aware of Gulden’s strange attention. And when a halt was made for camp, she dreaded something nameless.

  This halt occurred early, before sunset, and had been necessitated by the fact that Kells was fainting. They laid him out on blankets, with his head on his saddle. Joan tended him and he recovered somewhat, although he lacked the usual keenness.

  It was a long hour with saddles, packs, horses—with wood to cut and fire to build and meal to cook. Kells drank thirstily, but refused food.

  “Joan,” he whispered at an opportune moment, “I’m only tired . . . dead for sleep. You stay beside me. Wake me quick . . . if you want to.”

  He closed his eyes wearily, without explaining, and soon slumbered. Joan did not choose to allow those men to see that she feared them or distrusted them or disliked them. She ate with them beside the fire. This was their first opportunity to be close to her. The fact had an immediate and singular influence. Joan had no vanity, although she knew she was handsome. She forced herself to be pleasant, agreeable, even sweet. Their response was instant and growing. At first they were bold, then familiar and coarse. For years she had been used to rough men of the camps. These, however, were different, and their jokes and suggestions had no effect because they went beyond her. And when this became manifest to them, that aspect of their relation to her changed. She grasped the fact intuitively and then she verified it by proof. Her heart beat strong and high. If she could hide her hate, her fear, her abhorrence, she could influence these wild men. But it all depended upon her charm, her strangeness, her femininity. Insensibly they had been influenced and it proved that in the worst of men there yet survived some good. Gulden alone presented a contrast and a problem. He appeared aware of her presence while he sat, eating like a wolf, but it was as if she were only an object. The man watched as might have an animal.

  Her experience at the campfire meal inclined her to the belief that, if there were such a possibility as her being safe at all, it would be owing to an unconscious and friendly attitude toward the companions she had been forced to accept. These men were pleasant—stirred at being in her vicinity. Joan came to a melancholy and fearful cognizance of her attraction. While at home she seldom had borne upon her a reality—that she was a woman. Her place—her person were merely natural. Here it was all different. To these wild men, developed by loneliness, fierce-blooded with pulses like whips, a woman was something that thrilled, charmed, soothed, that incited a strange insatiable, inexplicable hunger for very sight of her. They did not realize it, but Joan did.

  Presently Joan finished her supper and said: “I’ll go hobble my horse. He strays, sometimes.”

  “Shore I’ll go, miss,” said Bate Wood. He had never called her Mrs. Kells, but Joan believed he had not thought of the significance. Hardened old ruffian that he was, Joan regarded him as the best of a bad lot. He had lived long and some of his life had not been bad.

  “Let me go,” added Pearce.

  “No thanks. I’ll go myself,” she replied.

  She took the rope hobble off her saddle, and boldly swung down the trail. Suddenly she heard two or more of the men speak at once, and then low and clear: “Gulden, where’n hell are you goin’?” This was Red Pearce’s voice.

  Joan glanced back. Gulden had started down the trail after her. Her heart quaked, her knees shook, and she was ready to run back. Gulden halted, then turned away, growling. He acted as if caught in something surprising to himself.

  “We’re on to you, Gulden,” continued Pearce deliberately. “Be careful or we’ll put Kells on.”

  A booming angry curse was the response. The men grouped closer and a loud altercation followed. Joan almost ran down the trail, and heard no more. If any one of them had started her way now, she would have plunged into the thickets like a frightened deer. Evidently, however, they meant to let her alone. Joan found her horse, and, before hobbling him, she was assailed by a temptation to mount him and ride away. This she did not want to do and would not do under any circumstances; still she could not prevent the natural instinctive impulses of a woman.

  She crossed to the other side of the brook and returned toward camp under the spruce and balsam trees. She did not hurry. It was good to be alone—out of sight of those violent men—away from that constant wearing physical proof of catastrophe. Nevertheless, she did not feel free or safe for a moment; she peered fearfully into the shadows of the rocks and trees, and presently it was a relief to get back to the side of the sleeping Kells. He lay in a deep slumber of exhaustion. She arranged her own saddle and blankets near him and prepared to meet the night as best she could. Instinctively she took a position where in one swift snatch she could get possession of Kells’s gun.

  It was about time of sunset, warm and still in the cañon, with rosy lights fading upon the peaks. The men were all busy with one thing and another. Strange it was to see that Gulden, who Joan thought might be a shirker, did twice the work of any man, especially the heavy work. He seemed to enjoy carrying a log that could have overweighted two ordinary men. He was so huge, so active, so powerful that it was fascinating to watch him. They built the campfire for the night uncomfortably near Joan’s position. Remembering how cold the air would become later, she made no objection. Twilight set in and the men, through for the day, gathered near the fire.

  There Joan was not long in discovering that the situation had begun to impinge upon the feeling of each of these men. They looked at her differently. Some of them invented pretexts to approach her, to ask something, to offer service—anything to get near her. A personal and individual note had been injected into the attitude of each. Intuitively Joan guessed that Gulden’s rising to follow her had turned the eyes inwardly. Gulden remained silent and inactive at the edge of the campfire circle of light that flickered fitfully around him, making him seem a huge gloomy ape of a man. So far as Joan could tell, Gulden never cast his eyes in her direction. That was a difference that left cause for reflection. Had that bulk of brawl and bone begun to think? Bate Wood’s overtures to Joan were rough, but inexplicable to her because she dared not wholly trust him.

  “An’ shore, miss,” he had concluded in a hoarse whisper, “we-all know you ain’t Kells’s wife. That bandit wouldn’t marry no woman. He’s a woman-hater. He was famous fer that over in California. He run off with you . . . kidnapped you, thet’s shore. An’ Gulden swears he shot his own men an’ was in turn shot by you. Thet bullet
hole in his back was full of powder. There’s liable to be a muss up any time. Shore, miss, you’d better sneak off with me tonight when they’re all asleep. I’ll git grub an’ horses, an’ take you off to some prospector’s camp. Then you can git home.”

  Joan only shook her head. Even if she could have felt trust in Wood—and she was of half a mind to believe him—it was too late. Whatever befell her mattered little if, in suffering it, she could save Jim Cleve from the ruin she had wrought.

  Since this wild experience of Joan’s had begun, she had been sick so many times with raw and naked emotions hitherto unknown to her that she believed she could not feel another new fear or torture. But these strange sensations grew by what they had been fed upon.

  The man called Frenchy was audacious, persistent, smiling, amorous-eyed, and rudely gallant. He cared no more for his companions than if they had not been there. He vied with Pearce in his attention, and the two of them discomfited the others. The situation might have been amusing had it not been so terrible. Always the portent was a shadow behind their interest and amiability and jealousy. Except for that one abrupt and sinister move of Gulden’s—that of a natural man beyond deceit—there was no word, no look, no act at which Joan could be offended. They were joking, sarcastic, ironical, and sullen in their relation to each other, but to Joan each one presented what was naturally or what he considered his kindest and most friendly front. A young and attractive woman had dropped into the camp of lonely wild men, and in their wild hearts was a rebirth of egotism, vanity, hunger for notice. They seemed as foolish as a lot of cock grouse preening themselves and parading before a single female. Surely in some heart was born real brotherhood for a helpless girl in peril. Inevitably in some of them would burst a flame of passion as it had in Kells.

  Between this amiable contest for Joan’s glances and replies, with its possibility of latent good to her and the dark, lurking, unspoken meaning, such as lay in Gulden’s brooding, Joan found another new and sickening torture.