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 fight 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.
