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"Joan!" he interrupted, piercingly. "You love this bandit!"
"You're a fool!" burst out Joan.
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"I guess--I--am," he replied in terrible, slow earnestness. He
raised himself and appeared to loom over her and released his hold.
But Joan fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged
to get away she was hard put to it to hold him.
"Jim! Where are you going?"
He stood there a moment, a dark form against the night shadow, like
an outline of a man cut from black stone.
"I'll just step around--there."
"Oh, what for?" whispered Joan.
"I'm going to kill Kells."
Joan got both arms round his neck and with her head against him she
held him tightly, trying, praying to think how to meet this long-
dreaded moment. After all, what was the use to try? This was the
hour of Gold! Sacrifice, hope, courage, nobility, fidelity--these
had no place here now. Men were the embodiment of passion--ferocity.
They breathed only possession, and the thing in the balance was
death. Women were creatures to hunger and fight for, but womanhood
was nothing. Joan knew all this with a desperate hardening
certainty, and almost she gave in. Strangely, thought of Gulden
flashed up to make her again strong! Then she raised her face and
began the old pleading with Jim, but different this time, when it
seemed that absolutely all was at stake. She begged him, she
importuned him, to listen to reason, to be guided by her, to fight
the wildness that had obsessed him, to make sure that she would not
be left alone. All in vain! He swore he would kill Kells and any
other bandit who stood in the way of his leading her free out of
that cabin. He was wild to fight. He might never have felt fear of
these robbers. He would not listen to any possibility of defeat for
himself, or the possibility that in the event of Kells's death she
would be worse off. He laughed at her strange, morbid fears of
Gulden. He was immovable.
"Jim! ... Jim! You'll break my heart!" she whispered, wailingly.
"Oh! WHAT can I do?"
Then Joan released her clasp and gave up to utter defeat. Cleve was
silent. He did not seem to hear the shuddering little sobs that
shook her. Suddenly he bent close to her.
"There's one thing you can do. If you'll do it I won't kill Kells.
I'll obey your every word."
"What is it? Tell me!"
"Marry me!" he whispered, and his voice trembled.
"MARRY YOU!" exclaimed Joan. She was confounded. She began to fear
Jim was out of his head.
"I mean it. Marry me. Oh, Joan, will you--will you? It'll make the
difference. That'll steady me. Don't you want to?"
"Jim, I'd be the happiest girl in the world if--if I only COULD
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marry you!" she breathed, passionately.
"But will you--will you? Say yes! Say yes!"
"YES!" replied Joan in her desperation. "I hope that pleases you.
But what on earth is the use to talk about it now?"
Cleve seemed to expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous
hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness, a
happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was
spiritual, and somehow she received an uplift of hope.
"Listen," he whispered. "There's a preacher down in camp. I've seen
him--talked with him. He's trying to do good in that hell down
there. I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him--enough. I'll
fetch him up here tomorrow night--about this time. Oh, I'll be
careful--very careful. And he can marry us right here by the window.
Joan, will you do it? ... Somehow, whatever threatens you or me--
that'll be my salvation! ... I've suffered so. It's been burned in
my heart that YOU would never marry me. Yet you say you love me! ...
Prove it! ... MY WIFE! ... Now, girl, a word will make a man of me!"
"Yes!" And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart
in them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from
him.
"Look for me to-morrow about this time," he whispered. "Keep your
nerve. ... Good night."
That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The
next day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was
brought to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and
she only vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the
murmur of voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a
quarrel between Kells and his men did not distract her.
At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with
the gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the
bluff, did she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud
caught the glory of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden
radiance like that. It faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained.
At twilight and then at dusk this glow lingered.
Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of
light and shadow, of sound and silence, of dread and hope, of
sadness and joy.
That pale, ruddy glow lingered over the bold heave of the range in
the west. It was like a fire that would not go out, that would live
to-morrow, and burn golden. The sky shone with deep, rich blue color
fired with a thousand stars, radiant, speaking, hopeful. And there
was a white track across the heavens. The mountains flung down their
shadows, impenetrable, like the gloomy minds of men; and everywhere
under the bluffs and slopes, in the hollows and ravines, lay an
enveloping blackness, hiding its depth and secret and mystery.
Joan listened. Was there sound or silence? A faint and indescribably
low roar, so low that it might have been real or false, came on the
soft night breeze. It was the roar of the camp down there--the
strife, the agony, the wild life in ceaseless action--the strange
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voice of gold, roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of
men. But above that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a
hushed and dreamy flow of water over stones. It was hurrying to get
by this horde of wild men, for it must bear the taint of gold and
blood. Would it purge itself and clarify in the valleys below, on
its way to the sea? There was in its murmur an imperishable and
deathless note of nature, of time; and this was only a fleeting day
of men and gold.
Only by straining her ears could Joan hear these sounds, and when
she ceased that, then she seemed to be weighed upon and claimed by
silence. It was not a silence like that of Lost Canon, but a silence
of solitude where her soul stood alone. She was there on earth, yet
no one could hear her mortal cry. The thunder of avalanches or the
boom of the sea might have lessened her sense of utter loneliness.
And that silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of
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