“Yes. Don't go down the cañon. You'd be worse off.... Take the back trail. You've got a chance to get out.... Go!”
“Leave you here? So weak you can't lift a cup! I won't.”
“I'd rather you did.”
“Why?”
“Because in a few days I'll begin to mend. Then I'll grow like—myself.... I think—I'm afraid I loved you.... It could only be hell for you. Go now, before it's too late!... If you stay—till I'm well—I'll never let you go!”
“Kells, I believe it would be cowardly for me to leave you here alone,” she replied, earnestly. “You can't help yourself. You'd die.”
“All the better. But I won't die. I'm hard to kill. Go, I tell you.”
She shook her head. “This is bad for you—arguing. You're excited. Please be quiet.”
“Joan Randle, if you stay—I'll halter you—keep you naked in a cave—curse you—beat you—murder you! Oh, it's in me!... Go, I tell you!”
“You're out of your head. Once for all—no!” she replied, firmly.
“You—you—” His voice failed in a terrible whisper....
In the succeeding days Kells did not often speak. His recovery was slow—a matter of doubt. Nothing was any plainer than the fact that if Joan had left him he would not have lived long. She knew it. And he knew it. When he was awake, and she came to him, a mournful and beautiful smile lit his eyes. The sight of her apparently hurt him and uplifted him. But he slept twenty hours out of every day, and while he slept he did not need Joan.
She came to know the meaning of solitude. There were days when she did not hear the sound of her own voice. A habit of silence, one of the significant forces of solitude, had grown upon her. Daily she thought less and felt more. For hours she did nothing. When she roused herself, compelled herself to think of these encompassing peaks of the lonely cañon walls, the stately trees, all those eternally silent and changless features of her solitude, she hated them with a blind and unreasoning passion. She hated them because she was losing her love for them, because they were becoming a part of her, because they were fixed and content and passionless. She liked to sit in the sun, feel its warmth, see its brightness; and sometimes she almost forgot to go back to her patient. She fought at times against an insidious change—a growing older—a going backward; at other times she drifted through hours that seemed quiet and golden, in which nothing happened. And by and by when she realized that the drifting hours were gradually swallowing up the restless and active hours, then strangely, she remembered Jim Cleve. Memory of him came to save her. She dreamed of him during the long, lonely, solemn days, and in the dark, silent climax of unbearable solitude—the night. She remembered his kisses, forgot her anger and shame, accepted the sweetness of their meaning, and so in the interminable hours of her solitude she dreamed herself into love for him.
Joan kept some record of days, until three weeks or thereabout passed, and then she lost track of time. It dragged along, yet looked at as the past, it seemed to have sped swiftly. The change in her, the growing old, the revelation and responsibility of serf, as a woman, made this experience appear to have extended over months.
Kells slowly became convalescent and then he had a relapse. Something happened, the nature of which Joan could not tell, and he almost died. There were days when his life hung in the balance, when he could not talk; and then came a perceptible turn for the better.
The store of provisions grew low, and Joan began to face another serious situation. Deer and rabbit were plentiful in the cañon, but she could not kill one with a revolver. She thought she would be forced to sacrifice one of the horses. The fact that Kells suddenly showed a craving for meat brought this aspect of the situation to a climax. And that very morning while Joan was pondering the matter she saw a number of horsemen riding up the cañon toward the cabin. At the moment she was relieved, and experienced nothing of the dread she had formerly felt while anticipating this very event.
“Kells,” she said, quickly, “there are men riding up the trail.”
“Good,” he exclaimed, weakly, with a light on his drawn face. “They've been long in—getting here. How many?”
Joan counted them—five riders, and several pack-animals.
“Yes. It's Gulden.”
“Gulden!” cried Joan, with a start.
Her exclamation and tone made Kells regard her attentively.
“You've heard of him? He's the toughest nut—on this border.... I never saw his like. You won't be safe. I'm so helpless.... What to say—to tell him!... Joan, if I should happen to croak—you want to get away quick... or shoot yourself.”
How strange to hear this bandit warn her of peril the like of which she had encountered through him! Joan secured the gun and hid it in a niche between the logs. Then she looked out again.
The riders were close at hand now. The foremost one, a man of Herculean build, jumped his mount across the brook, and leaped off while he hauled the horse to a stop. The second rider came close behind him; the others approached leisurely, with the gait of the pack-animals.
“Ho, Kells!” called the big man. His voice had a loud, bold, sonorous kind of ring.
“Reckon he's here somewheres,” said the other man, presently.
“Sure. I seen his hoss. Jack ain't goin' to be far from thet hoss.”
Then both of them approached the cabin. Joan had never before seen two such striking, vicious-looking, awesome men. The one was huge—so wide and heavy and deep-set that he looked short—and he resembled a gorilla. The other was tall, slim, with a face as red as flame, and an expression of fierce keenness. He was stoop shouldered, yet he held his head erect in a manner that suggested a wolf scenting blood.
“Someone here, Pearce,” boomed the big man.
“Why, Gul, if it ain't a girl!”
Joan moved out of the shadow of the wall of the cabin, and she pointed to the prostrate figure on the blankets.
“Howdy boys!” said Kells, wanly.
Gulden cursed in amaze while Pearce dropped to his knee with an exclamation of concern. Then both began to talk at once. Kells interrupted them by lifting a weak hand.
“No, I'm not going—to cash,” he said. “I'm only starved—and in need of stimulants. Had my back half shot off.”
“Who plugged you, Jack?”
“Gulden, it was your side-partner, Bill.”
“Bill?” Gulden's voice held a queer, coarse constraint. Then he added, gruffly. “Thought you and him pulled together.”
“Well, we didn't.”
“And—where's Bill now?” This time Joan heard a slow, curious, cold note in the heavy voice, and she interpreted it as either doubt or deceit.
