Zane Grey (23 page)

Joan suddenly felt Kells start and she believed she heard a low, hissing
exclamation. And she looked for the cause. Then she saw familiar dark
faces; they belonged to men of Kells's Legion. And with his broad back
to her there sat the giant Gulden. Already he and his allies had gotten
together in defiance of or indifference to Kells's orders. Some of them
were already under the influence of drink, but, though they saw Kells,
they gave no sign of recognition. Gulden did not see Joan, and for that
she was thankful. And whether or not his presence caused it, the fact
was that she suddenly felt as much of a captive as she had in Cabin
Gulch, and feared that here escape would be harder because in a
community like this Kells would watch her closely.

Kells led Joan and Cleve from one part of the smoky hall to another, and
they looked on at the games and the strange raw life manifested there.
The place was getting packed with men. Kells's party encountered Blicky
and Beady Jones together. They passed by as strangers. Then Joan saw
Beard and Chick Williams arm in arm, strolling about, like roystering
miners. Williams telegraphed a keen, fleeting glance at Kells, then went
on, to be lost in the crowd. Handy Oliver brushed by Kells, jostled him,
apparently by accident, and he said, "Excuse me, mister!" There were
other familiar faces. Kells's gang were all in Alder Creek and the dark
machinations of the bandit leader had been put into operation.
What struck Joan forcibly was that, though there were hilarity and
comradeship, they were not manifested in any general way. These miners
were strangers to one another; the groups were strangers; the gamblers
were strangers; the newcomers were strangers; and over all hung an
atmosphere of distrust. Good fellowship abided only in the many small
companies of men who stuck together. The mining-camps that Joan had
visited had been composed of an assortment of prospectors and hunters
who made one big, jolly family. This was a gold strike, and the
difference was obvious. The hunting for gold was one thing, in its
relation to the searchers; after it had been found, in a rich field,
the conditions of life and character changed. Gold had always seemed
wonderful and beautiful to Joan; she absorbed here something that was
the nucleus of hate. Why could not these miners, young and old, stay in
their camps and keep their gold? That was the fatality. The pursuit
was a dream—a glittering allurement; the possession incited a lust for
more, and that was madness. Joan felt that in these reckless, honest
miners there was a liberation of the same wild element which was the
driving passion of Kells's Border Legion. Gold, then, was a terrible
thing.

"Take me in there," said Joan, conscious of her own excitement, and she
indicated the dance-hall.

Kells laughed as if at her audacity. But he appeared reluctant.

"Please take me—unless—" Joan did not know what to add, but she meant
unless it was not right for her to see any more. A strange curiosity
had stirred in her. After all, this place where she now stood was not
greatly different from the picture imagination had conjured up. That
dance-hall, however, was beyond any creation of Joan's mind.

"Let me have a look first," said Kells, and he left Joan with Cleve.

When he had gone Joan spoke without looking at Cleve, though she held
fast to his arm.

"Jim, it could be dreadful here—all in a minute!" she whispered.

"You've struck it exactly," he replied. "All Alder Creek needed to make
it hell was Kells and his gang."

"Thank Heaven I turned you back in time!... Jim, you'd have—have gone
the pace here."

He nodded grimly. Then Kells returned and led them back through the room
to another door where spectators were fewer. Joan saw perhaps a dozen
couples of rough, whirling, jigging dancers in a half-circle of watching
men. The hall was a wide platform of boards with posts holding a canvas
roof. The sides, were open; the lights were situated at each end-huge,
round, circus tent lamps. There were rude benches and tables where
reeling men surrounded a woman. Joan saw a young miner in dusty boots
and corduroys lying drunk or dead in the sawdust. Her eyes were drawn
back to the dancers, and to the dance that bore some semblance to a
waltz. In the din the music could scarcely be heard. As far as the
men were concerned this dance was a bold and violent expression of
excitement on the part of some, and for the rest a drunken, mad fling.
Sight of the women gave Joan's curiosity a blunt check. She felt queer.
She had not seen women like these, and their dancing, their actions,
their looks, were beyond her understanding. Nevertheless, they shocked
her, disgusted her, sickened her. And suddenly when it dawned upon her
in unbelievable vivid suggestion that they were the wildest and most
terrible element of this dark stream of humanity lured by gold, then she
was appalled.

"Take me out of here!" she besought Kells, and he led her out instantly.
They went through the gambling-hall and into the crowded street, back
toward camp.

"You saw enough," said Kells, "but nothing to what will break out by and
by. This camp is new. It's rich. Gold is the cheapest thing. It passes
from hand to hand. Ten dollars an ounce. Buyers don't look at the
scales. Only the gamblers are crooked. But all this will change."

Kells did not say what that change might be, but the click of his teeth
was expressive. Joan did not, however, gather from it, and the dark
meaning of his tone, that the Border Legion would cause this change.
That was in the nature of events. A great strike of gold might enrich
the world, but it was a catastrophe.

Long into the night Joan lay awake, and at times, stirring the silence,
there was wafted to her on a breeze the low, strange murmur of the
gold-camp's strife.

Joan slept late next morning, and was awakened by the unloading of
lumber. Teams were drawing planks from the sawmill. Already a skeleton
framework for Kells's cabin had been erected. Jim Cleve was working with
the others, and they were sacrificing thoroughness to haste. Joan had
to cook her own breakfast, which task was welcome, and after it had been
finished she wished for something more to occupy her mind. But nothing
offered. Finding a comfortable seat among some rocks where she would be
inconspicuous, she looked on at the building of Kells's cabin. It seemed
strange, and somehow comforting, to watch Jim Cleve work. He had never
been a great worker. Would this experience on the border make a man of
him? She felt assured of that.

If ever a cabin sprang up like a mushroom, that bandit rendezvous was
the one. Kells worked himself, and appeared no mean hand. By noon the
roof of clapboards was on, and the siding of the same material had been
started. Evidently there was not to a be a fireplace inside.

Then a teamster drove up with a wagon-load of purchases Kells had
ordered. Kells helped unload this and evidently was in search of
articles. Presently he found them, and then approached Joan, to deposit
before her an assortment of bundles little and big.

"There Miss Modestly," he said. "Make yourself some clothes. You can
shake Dandy Dale's outfit, except when we're on the trail.... And, say,
if you knew what I had to pay for this stuff you'd think there was a
bigger robber in Alder Creek than Jack Kells.... And, come to think of
it, my name's now Blight. You're my daughter, if any one asks." Joan was
so grateful to him for the goods and the permission to get out of Dandy
Dale's suit as soon as possible, that she could only smile her thanks.
Kells stared at her, then turned abruptly away. Those little unconscious
acts of hers seemed to affect him strangely. Joan remembered that he
had intended to parade her in Dandy Dale's costume to gratify some vain
abnormal side of his bandit's proclivities. He had weakened. Here was
another subtle indication of the deterioration of the evil of him. How
far would it go? Joan thought dreamily, and with a swelling heart, of
her influence upon this hardened bandit, upon that wild boy, Jim Cleve.

All that afternoon, and part of the evening in the campfire light, and
all of the next day Joan sewed, so busy that she scarcely lifted her
eyes from her work. The following day she finished her dress, and with
no little pride, for she had both taste and skill. Of the men, Bate Wood
had been most interested in her task; and he would let things burn on
the fire to watch her.

That day the rude cabin was completed. It contained one long room; and
at the back a small compartment partitioned off from the rest, and built
against and around a shallow cavern in the huge rock. This compartment
was for Joan. There were a rude board door with padlock and key, a bench
upon which blankets had been flung, a small square hole cut in the wall
to serve as a window. What with her own few belongings and the articles
of furniture that Kells bought for her, Joan soon had a comfortable
room, even a luxury compared to what she had been used to for weeks.
Certain it was that Kells meant to keep her a prisoner, or virtually
so. Joan had no sooner spied the little window than she thought that it
would be possible for Jim Cleve to talk to her there from the outside.

Kells verified Joan's suspicion by telling her that she was not to leave
the cabin of her own accord, as she had been permitted to do back in
Cabin Gulch; and Joan retorted that there she had made him a promise not
to run away, which promise she now took back. That promise had worried
her. She was glad to be honest with Kells. He gazed at her somberly.

"You'll be worse off it you do—and I'll be better off," he said. And
then as an afterthought he added: "Gulden might not think you—a white
elephant on his hands!... Remember his way, the cave and the rope!"

So, instinctively or cruelly he chose the right name to bring shuddering
terror into Joan's soul.

Joan's opportunity for watching Kells and his men and overhearing
their colloquies was as good as it had been back in Cabin Gulch. But it
developed that where Kells had been open and frank he now became secret
and cautious. She was aware that men, singly and in couples, visited him
during the early hours of the night, and they had conferences in low,
earnest tones. She could peer out of her little window and see dark,
silent forms come up from the ravine at the back of the cabin, and leave
the same way. None of them went round to the front door, where Bate
Wood smoked and kept guard. Joan was able to hear only scraps of these
earnest talks; and from part of one she gathered that for some reason
or other Kells desired to bring himself into notice. Alder Creek must
be made to know that a man of importance had arrived. It seemed to
Joan that this was the very last thing which Kells ought to do.
What magnificent daring the bandit had! Famous years before in
California—with a price set upon his life in Nevada—and now the noted,
if unknown, leader of border robbers in Idaho, he sought to make himself
prominent, respected, and powerful. Joan found that in spite of her
horror at the sinister and deadly nature of the bandit's enterprise she
could not avoid an absorbing interest in his fortunes.

Next day Joan watched for an opportunity to tell Jim Cleve that he might
come to her little window any time after dark to talk and plan with her.
No chance presented itself. Joan wore the dress she had made, to the
evident pleasure of Bate Wood and Pearce. They had conceived as strong
an interest in her fortunes as she had in Kells's. Wood nodded his
approval and Pearce said she was a lady once more. Strange it was to
Joan that this villain Pearce, whom she could not have dared trust, grew
open in his insinuating hints of Kells's blackguardism. Strange because
Pearce was absolutely sincere!

When Jim Cleve did see Joan in her dress the first time he appeared so
glad and relieved and grateful that she feared he might betray himself,
so she got out of his sight.

Not long after that Kells called her from her room. He wore his somber
and thoughtful cast of countenance. Red Pearce and Jesse Smith were
standing at attention. Cleve was sitting on the threshold of the door
and Wood leaned against the wall.

"Is there anything in the pack of stuff I bought you that you could use
for a veil?" asked Kells of Joan.

"Yes," she replied.

"Get it," he ordered. "And your hat, too."

Joan went to her room and returned with the designated articles, the hat
being that which she had worn when she left Hoadley.

"That'll do. Put it on—over your face—and let's see how you look."

Joan complied with this request, all the time wondering what Kells
meant.

"I want it to disguise you, but not to hide your youth—your good
looks," he said, and he arranged it differently about her face.
"There!... You'd sure make any man curious to see you now.... Put on the
hat."

Joan did so. Then Kells appeared to become more forcible.

"You're to go down into the town. Walk slow as far as the Last Nugget.
Cross the road and come back. Look at every man you meet or see standing
by. Don't be in the least frightened. Pearce and Smith will be right
behind you. They'd get to you before anything could happen.... Do you
understand?"

"Yes," replied Joan.

Red Pearce stirred uneasily. "Jack, I'm thinkin' some rough talk'll come
her way," he said, darkly.

"Will you shut up!" replied Kells in quick passion. He resented some
implication. "I've thought of that. She won't hear what's said to
her.... Here," and he turned again to Joan, "take some cotton—or
anything—and stuff up your ears. Make a good job of it."

Joan went back to her room and, looking about for something with which
to execute Kells's last order, she stripped some soft, woolly bits from
a fleece-lined piece of cloth. With these she essayed to deaden her
hearing. Then she returned. Kells spoke to her, but, though she seemed
dully to hear his voice, she could not distinguish what he said. She
shook her head. With that Kells waved her out upon her strange errand.