by Zane Grey
“Gulden, are you still on the fence?” demanded Kells, coolly.
The giant strode stolidly forward to the table. As always before to Joan, he seemed to be a ponderous hulk, slow, heavy, plodding, with a mind to match.
“Kells, if we can agree I’ll join,” he said in his sonorous voice.
“You can bet you won’t join unless we do agree,” snapped Kells. “But—see here, Gulden. Let’s be friendly. The border is big enough for both of us. I want you. I need you. Still, if we can’t agree, let’s not split and be enemies. How about it?”
Another muttering among the men attested to the good sense and good will of Kells’s suggestion.
“Tell me what you’re going to do—how you’ll operate,” replied Gulden.
Keils had difficulty in restraining his impatience and annoyance.
“What’s that to you or any of you?” he queried. “You all know I’m the man to think of things. That’s been proved. First it takes brains. I’ll furnish them. Then it takes execution. You and Pearce and the gang will furnish that. What more do you need to know?”
“How’re you going to operate?” persisted Gulden.
Kells threw up both hands as if it was useless to argue or reason with this desperado.
“All right, I’ll tell you,” he replied. “Listen.… I can’t say what definite plans I’ll make till Jesse Smith reports, and then when I get on the diggings. But here’s a working basis. Now don’t miss a word of this, Gulden—nor any of you men. We’ll pack our outfits down to this gold strike. We’ll build cabins on the outskirts of the town, and we won’t hang together. The gang will be spread out. Most of you must make a bluff at digging gold. Be like other miners. Get in with cliques and clans. Dig, drink, gamble like the rest of them. Beard will start a gambling-place. Red Pearce will find some other kind of work. I’ll buy up claims—employ miners to work them. I’ll disguise myself and get in with the influential men and have a voice in matters. You’ll all be scouts. You’ll come to my cabin at night to report. We’ll not tackle any little jobs. Miners going out with fifty or a hundred pounds of gold—the wagons—the stage-coach—these we’ll have timed to rights, and whoever I detail on the job will hold them up. You must all keep sober, if that’s possible. You must all absolutely trust to my judgment. You must all go masked while on a job. You must never speak a word that might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous. It will appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The more secretive we are the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In gold-camps, when there’s a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each other. They can’t organize. We shall have them helpless.… And in short, if it’s as rich a strike as looks due here in these hills, before winter we can pack out all the gold our horses can carry.”
Kells had begun under restraint, but the sound of his voice, the liberation of his great idea, roused him to a passion. The man radiated with passion. This, then, was his dream—the empire he aspired to.
He had a powerful effect upon his listeners, except Gulden; and it was evident to Joan that the keen bandit was conscious of his influence. Gulden, however, showed nothing that he had not already showed. He was always a strange, dominating figure. He contested the relations of things. Kells watched him—the men watched him—and Jim Cleve’s piercing eyes glittered in the shadow, fixed upon that massive face. Manifestly Gulden meant to speak, but in his slowness there was no laboring, no pause from emotion. He had an idea and it moved like he moved.
“Dead men tell no tales!” The words boomed deep from his cavernous chest, a mutter that was a rumble, with something almost solemn in its note and certainly menacing, breathing murder. As Kells had propounded his ideas, revealing his power to devise a remarkable scheme and his passion for gold, so Gulden struck out with the driving inhuman blood-lust that must have been the twist, the knot, the clot in his brain. Kells craved notoriety and gold; Gulden craved to kill. In the silence that followed his speech these wild border ruffians judged him, measured him, understood him, and though some of them grew farther aloof from him, more of them sensed the safety that hid in his terrible implication.
But Kells rose against him.
“Gulden, you mean when we steal gold—to leave only dead men behind?” he queried, with a hiss in his voice.
The giant nodded grimly.
“But only fools kill—unless in self-defense,” declared Kells, passionately.
“We’d last longer,” replied Gulden, imperturbably.
“No—no. We’d never last so long. Killings rouse a mining-camp after a while—gold fever or no. That means a vigilante band.”
“We can belong to the vigilantes, just as well as to your Legion,” said Gulden.
The effect of this was to make Gulden appear less of a fool than Kells supposed him. The ruffians nodded to one another. They stirred restlessly. They were animated by a strange and provocative influence. Even Red Pearce and the others caught its subtlety. It was evil predominating in evil hearts. Blood and death loomed like a shadow here. The keen Kells saw the change working toward a transformation and he seemed craftily fighting something within him that opposed this cold ruthlessness of his men.
“Gulden, suppose I don’t see it your way?” he asked.
“Then I won’t join your Legion.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll take the men who stand by me and go clean up that gold-camp.”
From the fleeting expression on Kells’s face Joan read that he knew Gulden’s project would defeat his own and render both enterprises fatal.
“Gulden, I don’t want to lose you,” he said.
“You won’t lose me if you see this thing right,” replied Gulden. “You’ve got the brains to direct us. But, Kells, you’re losing your nerve.… It’s this girl you’ve got here!”
Gulden spoke without rancor or fear or feeling of any kind. He merely spoke the truth. And it shook Kells with an almost ungovernable fury.
Joan saw the green glare of his eyes—his gray working face—the flutter of his hand. She had an almost superhuman insight into the workings of his mind. She knew that then—he was fighting whether or not to kill Gulden on the spot. And she recognized that this was the time when Kells must kill Gulden or from that moment see a gradual diminishing of his power on the border. But Kells did not recognize that crucial height of his career. His struggle with his fury and hate showed that the thing uppermost in his mind was the need of conciliating Gulden and thus regaining a hold over the men.
“Gulden, suppose we waive the question till we’re on the grounds?” he suggested.
“Waive nothing. It’s one or the other with me,” declared Gulden.
“Do you want to be leader of this Border Legion?” went on Kells, deliberately.
“No.”
“Then what do you want?”
Gulden appeared at a loss for an instant reply. “I want plenty to do,” he replied, presently. “I want to be in on everything. I want to be free to kill a man when I like.”
“When you like!” retorted Kells, and added a curse. Then as if by magic his dark face cleared and there was infinite depth and craftiness in him. His opposition, and that hint of hate and loathing which detached him from Gulden, faded from his bearing. “Gulden, I’ll split the difference between us. I’ll leave you free to do as you like. But all the others—every man—must take orders from me.”
Gulden reached out a huge hand. His instant acceptance evidently amazed Kells and the others.
“Let her rip!” Gulden exclaimed. He shook Kells’s hand and then laboriously wrote his name in the little book.
In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild abandoned men. What were Kells and this Legion to him? What was the stealing of more or less gold?
“Free to do as you like except fight my men,” said Kells. “That’s understood.”
“If they don’t pick a fi
ght with me,” added the giant, and he grinned.
One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that Kells’s personality made a serious and binding compact.
“Anybody else?” called Kells, glancing round. The somberness was leaving his face.
“Here’s Jim Cleve,” said Pearce, pointing toward the wall.
“Hello, youngster! Come here. I’m wanting you bad,” said Kells.
Cleve sauntered out of the shadow, and his glittering eyes were fixed on Gulden. There was an instant of waiting. Gulden looked at Cleve. Then Kells quickly strode between them.
“Say, I forgot you fellows had trouble,” he said. He attended solely to Gulden. “You can’t renew your quarrel now. Gulden, we’ve all fought together more or less, and then been good friends. I want Cleve to join us, but not against your ill will. How about it?”
“I’ve no ill will,” replied the giant, and the strangeness of his remark lay in its evident truth. “But I won’t stand to lose my other ear!”
Then the ruffians guffawed in hoarse mirth. Gulden, however, did not seem to see any humor in his remark. Kells laughed with the rest. Even Cleve’s white face relaxed into a semblance of a smile.
“That’s good. We’re getting together,” declared Kells. Then he faced Cleve, all about him expressive of elation, of assurance, of power. “Jim, will you draw cards in this deal?”
“What’s the deal?” asked Cleve.
Then in swift, eloquent speech Kells launched the idea of his Border Legion, its advantages to any loose-footed, young outcast, and he ended his brief talk with much the same argument he had given Joan. Back there in her covert Joan listened and watched, mindful of the great need of controlling her emotions. The instant Jim Cleve had stalked into the light she had been seized by a spasm of trembling.
“Kells, I don’t care two straws one way or another,” replied Cleve.
The bandit appeared nonplussed. “You don’t care whether you join my Legion or whether you don’t?”
“Not a damn,” was the indifferent answer.
“Then do me a favor,” went on Kells. “Join to please me. We’ll be good friends. You’re in bad out here on the border. You might as well fall in with us.”
“I’d rather go alone.”
“But you won’t last.”
“It’s a lot I care.”
The bandit studied the reckless, white face. “See here, Cleve—haven’t you got the nerve to be bad—thoroughly bad?”
Cleve gave a start as if he had been stung. Joan shut her eyes to blot out what she saw in his face. Kells had used part of the very speech with which she had driven Jim Cleve to his ruin. And those words galvanized him. The fatality of all this! Joan hated herself. Those very words of hers would drive this maddened and heartbroken boy to join Kells’s band. She knew what to expect from Jim even before she opened her eyes; yet when she did open them it was to see him transformed and blazing.
Then Kells either gave way to leaping passion or simulated it in the interest of his cunning.
“Cleve, you’re going down for a woman?” he queried, with that sharp, mocking ring in his voice.
“If you don’t shut up you’ll get there first,” replied Cleve, menacingly.
“Bah!… Why do you want to throw a gun on me? I’m your friend: You’re sick. You’re like a poisoned pup. I say if you’ve got nerve you won’t quit. You’ll take a run for your money. You’ll see life. You’ll fight. You’ll win some gold. There are other women. Once I thought I would quit for a woman. But I didn’t. I never found the right one till I had gone to hell—out here on this border.… If you’ve got nerve, show me. Be a man instead of a crazy youngster. Spit out the poison.… Tell it before us all!… Some girl drove you to us?”
“Yes—a girl!” replied Cleve, hoarsely, as if goaded.
“It’s too late to go back?”
“Too late!”
“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 farther 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 passion 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, though he was strangely affected.
“Wait!” she cried again, and she held to that high voice, so different from her natural tone. “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 strong, 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 knew when spoken by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with a 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 crea
ture 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 these,” she faltered. “I’m his prisoner. I’m helpless.”
With catlike 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 to himself the menace.
“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 erstwhile nerveless boy. But she had not the courage for what seemed only desperate folly.
“I’ll stay,” she whispered. “You go!”