Cabin Gulch (7 page)

Kells suddenly came to her, treading noiselessly, and he leaned over her. His visage was a dark blur, but the posture of him was that of a wolf about to spring. Lower he leaned—slowly—and yet lower. Joan saw the heavy gun swing away from his leg; she saw it black and clear against the blaze; a cold blue light glinted from its handle. Then Kells was near enough for her to see his face and his eyes that were but shadows of flames. She gazed up at him steadily—open-eyed, with no fear or shrinking. His breathing was quick and loud. He looked down at her for an endless moment, then, straightening his bent form, he resumed his walk to and fro.

After that for Joan time might have consisted of moments or hours, each of which was marked by Kells, looming over her. He appeared to approach her from all sides; he found her wide-eyed, sleepless; his shadowy glance gloated over her lithe slender shape,
and then he strode away into the gloom. Sometimes she could no longer hear his steps, and then she was quiveringly alert, listening, fearful that he might creep upon her like a panther. At times, he kept the campfire blazing brightly; at others, he let it die down. And these dark intervals were frightful for her. The night seemed treacherous, in league with her foe. It was endless. She prayed for dawn—yet with a blank hopelessness for what the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours? Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she wavered, and shook like a leaf in a wind, when the beating of her heart was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible, like things in a nightmare. But when Kells was near or approached to look at her, like a cat returned to watch a captive mouse, she was again strong, waiting, with ever a strange and cold sense of the nearness of that swinging gun. Late in the night she missed him; for how long she had no idea. She had less trust in his absence than his presence. The nearer he came to her, the stronger she grew and the clearer of purpose. At last the black void of cañon lost its blackness and turned to gray. Dawn was at hand. The horrible endless night, in which she had aged from girl to woman, had passed. Joan had never closed her eyes a single instant.

When day broke, she got up. The long hours in which she had rested motionlessly had left her muscles cramped and dead. She began to walk off the feeling. Kells had just stirred from his blanket under the balsam tree. His face was dark, haggard, lined. She saw him go down to the brook and plunge his hands into the water and bathe his face with a kind of fury. Then he went up to the smoldering fire. There
was a glow, a somberness, a hardness about him that had not been noticeable the day before.

Joan found the water cold as ice, soothing to the burn beneath her skin. She walked away then, aware that Kells did not appear to care, and went up to where the brook brawled from under the cliff. This was 100 paces from camp, although in plain sight. Joan looked around for her horse, but he was not to be seen. She decided to slip away the first opportunity that offered, and on foot or horseback, any way to get out of Kells's clutches, if she had to wander lost in the mountains till she starved. Possibly the day might be endurable, but another night would drive her crazy. She sat on a ledge, planning and brooding, till she was startled by a call from Kells. Then slowly she retraced her steps.

“Don't you want to eat?” he asked.

“I'm not hungry,” she replied.

“Well, eat anyhow . . . if it chokes you,” he ordered.

Joan seated herself while he placed food and drink before her. She did not look at him and did not feel his gaze upon her. Far asunder as they had been yesterday, the distance between them today was incalculably greater. She ate as much as she could swallow and pushed the rest away. Leaving the campfire, she began walking again, here and there aimlessly, scarcely seeing what she looked at. There was a shadow over her, an impending portent of catastrophe, a moment standing, dark and sharp, out of the age-long hour. She leaned against the balsam, and there she rested in the stone seat, and then she had to walk again. It might have been long, that time, she never knew how long or short. There came a strange flagging, sinking of her spirit, accompanied by vibrating, restless, uncontrollable muscular activity. Her nerves were on the verge of collapse.

It was then that a call from Kells, clear and ringing, thrilled all the weakness from her in a flash, and left her strung and cold. She saw him coming. His face looked amiable again, bright against what seemed a vague and veiled background. Like a mountaineer he strode. And she looked into his strange gray glance to see unmasked the ruthless power, the leaping devil, the ungovernable passion she had sensed in him.

He grasped her arm and with a single pull swung her to him.

“
You've
got to pay that ransom!”

He handled her as if he thought she resisted, but she was unresisting. She hung her head to hide her eyes. Then he placed an arm around her shoulders and half led, half dragged her toward the cabin.

Joan saw with startling distinctness the bits of balsam pine at her feet and pale pink daisies in the grass, and then the dry withered boughs. She was in the cabin.

“Girl, I'm hungry . . . for you,” he breathed hoarsely. Turning her toward him, he embraced her, as if his nature was savage and he had to use a savage force. If Joan struggled at all, it was only slightly, when she writhed and slipped, like a snake, to get her arm under his as it clasped her neck. Then she let herself go. He crushed her to him. He bent her backward—tilted her face with hard and eager hand. Like a madman, with hot working lips, he kissed her. She felt blinded—scorched. But her purpose was as swift and sure and wonderful as his passion was wild. The first reach of her groping hand found his gun belt. Swift as light her hand slipped down. Her fingers touched the cold gun—grasped with thrill on thrill—slipped farther down, strong and sure to raise the hammer. Then with a leaping strung intensity that matched his own, she drew the gun. She raised it while her eyes
were shut. She lay passively under his kisses—the devouring kisses of one whose manhood had been denied the sweetness, the glory, the fire, the life of a woman's lips. It was a moment in which she met his primitive fury of possession with a woman's primitive fury of profanation. She pressed the gun against his side and pulled the trigger.

A thundering muffled hollow
boom!
The odor of burned powder stung her nostrils. Kells's hold on her tightened convulsively, loosened with strange lessening power. She swayed back free of him, still with tight-shut eyes. A horrible cry escaped him—a cry of mortal agony. It wrenched her. She looked to see him staggering, amazed—stricken—at bay, like a wolf caught in cruel steel jaws. His hands came away from both sides, dripping with blood. They shook till the crimson drops spattered on the wall, on the boughs. Then he seemed to realize, and he clutched at her with those bloody hands.

“God Almighty!” he panted. “You shot me! You . . . you, girl! You fooled me! You knew . . . all the time! You damned she-cat! Give me that gun! Man or beast . . . I believe . . . I loved you!”

“Kells, get back! I'll kill you!” she cried. The big gun, outstretched between them, began to waver.

Kells did not see the gun. In his madness he tried to move, to reach her, but he could not; he was sinking. His legs sagged under him, let him down to his knees, and but for the wall he would have fallen. Then a change transformed him. The black turgid convulsed face grew white and ghastly, with beads of clammy sweat and lines of torture. His strange eyes showed swiftly passing thought—wonder—fear—scorn—even admiration.

“Joan, you've done . . . for me,” he gasped. “You've broken my back. It'll kill me. God, the pain . . . the
pain! And I can't stand pain! You . . . you girl! You innocent seventeen-year-old girl! You that couldn't hurt any creature! You so tender and gentle! Bah, you fooled me. The cunning of a woman! I ought . . . to know. A good woman's . . . more trouble than a . . . bad woman. But I deserved this. Once I used to be . . . only, my God, the torture! Why didn't you . . . kill me straight? Joan Randle . . . watch me . . . die! Since I had . . . to die . . . by rope or bullet . . . I'm glad you . . . you . . . did for me.”

Joan dropped the gun and sank beside him, helpless, horror-stricken, wringing her hands. She wanted to tell him she was sorry—that he drove her to it—that he must let her pray for him. But she could not speak. Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth and she seemed strangling.

Another change, slower and more subtle, passed over Kells. He did not see Joan. He forgot her. The white shaded out of his face, leaving a gray, like that of his somber eyes. Spirit, sense, life were fading from him. The quivering of a racked body ceased. All that seemed left was a lonely soul groping on the verge of the dim borderland between life and death. Presently his shoulders slipped along the wall and he fell, to lie, limp and motionless, before Joan. Then she fainted.

When Joan returned to consciousness, she was lying half outside the opening of the cabin and above her was a drift of blue gunsmoke, slowly floating upward. Almost as swiftly as perception of that smoke came a shuddering memory. She lay still, listening. She did not hear a sound, except the tinkle and babble and gentle rush of the brook. Kells was dead, then. Over-mastering the horror of her act was a relief, a freedom, a lifting of her soul out of dark dread, a something that whispered justification of the fatal deed.

She got up and, avoiding to look within the cabin, walked away. The sun was almost at the zenith. Where had the morning hours gone?

“I must get away,” she said suddenly. The thought quickened her. Down the cañon the horses were grazing. She hurried along the trail, trying to decide whether to follow this dim old trail or endeavor to get out the way she had been brought in. She decided upon the latter. If she traveled slowly and watched for familiar landmarks, things she had seen once, and
hunted carefully for their tracks, she believed she might be successful. She had the courage to try. Then she caught her pony, and led him back to camp.

What shall I take?
she pondered. She decided upon very little,—a blanket, a sack of bread and meat, and a canteen of water. She might need a weapon, also. There was only one, the gun with which she had killed Kells. It seemed utterly impossible to touch that hateful thing. But now that she had liberated herself, and at such cost, she must not yield to sentiment. Resolutely she started for the cabin, but, when she reached it, her steps were dragging. The long dull-blue gun lay where she had dropped it. Out of the tail of averted eyes she saw a huddled shape along the wall. It was a sickening moment when she reached a shaking hand for the gun. At that instant a low moan transfixed her.

She seemed frozen rigid. Was the place already haunted? Her heart swelled in her throat and a dimness came before her eyes. But another moan brought swift realization—Kells was alive. The cold clamping sickness, the strangle in her throat, all the feelings of terror changed and were lost in a flood of instinctive joy. He was not dead. She had not killed him. She did not have blood on her hands. She was not a murderer.

She whirled to look at him. There he lay, ghastly as a corpse. All her woman's gladness fled. But there was compassion left to her, and, forgetting all else, she knelt beside him. He was as cold as stone. She felt no stir, no beat of pulse in temple or wrist. Then she placed her ear against his breast. His heart beat weakly.

“He's alive,” she whispered. “But . . . he's dying. . . . What shall I do?”

Many thoughts flashed across her mind. She could not help him now; he would be dead soon; she did
not need to wait there beside him; there was a risk of some of his comrades riding into that rendezvous. Suppose his back was not broken, after all? Suppose she stopped the flow of blood—tended him—nursed him—saved his life? For if there were one chance of his living, which she doubted, it must be through her. Would he not be the same savage the hour he was well and strong again? What difference could she make in such a nature? The man was evil. He could not conquer evil. She had been witness to that. He had driven Roberts to draw and had killed him. No doubt he had deliberately and coldly murdered the two ruffians, Bill and Halloway, just so he could be free of their glances at her and be alone with her. He deserved to die there like a dog.

What Joan Randle did was surely a woman's choice. Carefully she rolled Kells over. The back of his vest and shirt was wet with blood. She got up to find a knife, towel, and water. As she returned to the cabin, he moaned again.

Joan had dressed many a wound. She was not afraid of blood. The difference here was that she had shed it. She felt white and sick, but her hands were firm as she cut open the vest and shirt, rolled them aside, and bathed his back. The big bullet had made a gaping wound, having gone through the small of the back. The blood still flowed. She could not tell whether or not Kells's spine was broken, but she believed that the bullet had gone between bone and muscle, or had glanced. There was a blue welt just over his spine, in line with the course of the wound. She tore her underskirt into strips and used it for compresses and bandages. Then she laid him back upon a saddle blanket. She had done all that was possible for the present, and it gave her a strange sense of comfort. She even prayed for his life and, if that must
go, for his soul. Then she got up. He was unconscious, white, death-like. It seemed that his torture, his near approach to death had robbed his face of ferocity, of ruthlessness, and of that strange amiable expression. But then his eyes, those furnace windows, were closed.

Joan waited for the end to come. The afternoon passed and she did not leave the cabin. It was possible that he might come to and want water. She had once ministered to a miner who had been fatally crushed in an avalanche, and never could she forget his husky call for water and the gratitude in his eyes.