by Zane Grey
Kells did not cow Gulden—for it was likely the giant lacked the feeling of fear—but he overruled him by sheer strength of spirit.
Gulden backed away stolidly, apparently dazed by his own movements, then he plunged out the door, and the ruffians who had given silent but sure expression of their loyalty tramped after him.
“Reckon that starts the split,” declared Red Pearce.
“Suppose you’d been in Jim’s place,” flashed Kells.
“Jack, I ain’t sayin’ a word. You was square. I’d want you to do the same by me. But fetchin’ that girl into this deal. . . .”
Kells’s passionate and menacing gesture shut Pearce’s lips. He lifted a hand, resignedly, and went out.
“Jim,” said Kells earnestly, “take my hunch. Hide your nugget. Don’t send it out with the stage to Bannack. It’d never get there. And change the place where you sleep.”
“Thanks,” replied Cleve brightly. “I’ll hide my nugget, all right. And I’ll take care of myself.”
Later that night Joan waited at her window for Jim. It was so quiet that she could hear the faint murmur of the shallow creek. The sky was dusky blue; the stars were white; the night breeze sweet and cool. Her first flush of elation for Jim having passed, she experienced a sinking of courage. Were not they in peril enough without finding a fortune? How dark and significant had been Kells’s hint. There was something splendid in this bandit. Never had Joan felt so grateful to him. He was a villain, yet he was a man. What hatred he showed of Gulden. These rivals would surely meet in a terrible conflict—for power—for gold. And for her, she thought involuntarily with a deep inward shudder. Once the thought had flashed through her mind, it seemed like a word of revelation. Then she started as a dark form rose out of the shadow under her and a hand clasped hers. Jim! She lifted her face.
“Joan! Joan! I’m rich . . . rich!” he babbled wildly.
“Ssssh,” whispered Joan softly at his ear. “Be careful. You’re wild tonight. I saw you come in with the nugget. I heard you. Oh, you’re lucky, Jim. I’ll tell you what to do with it.”
“Darling, it’s all yours. You’ll marry me now?”
“Sir? Do you take me for a fortune-hunter? I marry you for your gold? Never.”
“Joan!”
“I’ve promised,” she said.
“I won’t go away now. I’ll work my claim,” he began excitedly. He went on so rapidly that Joan could not keep track of his words. He was not so cautious as formerly. She remonstrated with him, all to no purpose. Not only was he carried away by possession of gold and assurance of more, but he had become masterful, obstinate, and illogical. He was indeed hopeless tonight. The gold had gotten into his blood. Joan grew afraid he would betray their secret and realized there had come still greater need for a woman’s wit. So she resorted to a never-failing means of silencing him, of controlling him—her lips on his.
FIFTEEN
For several nights those stolen interviews were apparently the safer because of Joan’s tender binding of her lover. But it seemed that in Jim’s condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim’s case she had added the spark to the powder. She realized her blunder when it was too late. The fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost herself in a defiant reckless spell, warned her again that she, too, was answering to the wildness of the time and place. Joan’s intelligence had broadened wonderfully in this period of her life just as all her feelings had quickened. If gold had developed and intensified and liberated the worst passions of men, so the spirit of that atmosphere had its baneful effect upon her; Joan deplored it, yet she had the keenness to understand that it was Nature fitting her to survive.
Back upon her fell that weight of suspense—what would happen next? Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same peril that had menaced her before, but she would suffer through fatality to Cleve or Kells. And these two slept at night under a shadow that held death, and by day they walked on a thin crust over a volcano. Joan grew more and more fearful of the disclosures made when Kells met his men nightly in the cabin. She feared to hear, but she must hear, and, even if she had not felt it necessary to keep informed of events, the fascination of the game would have impelled her to listen. Gradually the suspense she suffered augmented into a magnified, although vague assurance of catastrophe, of impending doom. She could not shake off the gloomy presentiment. Something terrible was going to happen. An experience begun as tragically as hers could only end in the final and annihilating stroke. Yet hope was unquenchable, and with her fear kept pace a driving and relentless spirit.
One night at the end of a week of these interviews, when Joan attempted to resist Jim, to plead with him, lest in his growing boldness he betray them, she found him a madman.
“I’ll pull you right out of this window,” he said roughly, and then with his hot face pressed against hers literally tried to accomplish the thing he threatened.
“Go on . . . pull me to pieces,” replied Joan, in despair and pain. “I’d be better off dead. And . . . you . . . hurt me . . . so.”
“Hurt you,” he whispered hoarsely, as if he had never dreamed of such possibility. Then he was remorseful. He begged her to forgive him. His voice was broken, husky, pleading. His remorse, like every feeling of his these days, was exaggerated, wild, with that raw tinge of gold-blood in it. He made so much noise that Joan, more fearful than ever of discovery, quieted him with difficulty.
“Does Kells see you often . . . these days?” asked Jim suddenly.
Joan had dreaded this question that she had known would inevitably come. She wanted to lie; she knew that she ought to lie, but it was impossible.
“Every day,” she whispered. “Please . . . Jim . . . never mind that. Kells is good . . . he’s all right to me. And you and I have so little time together.”
“Good!” exclaimed Cleve. Joan felt the leap of his body under her touch. “Why, if I’d tell you what he sends that gang to do . . . you’d . . . you’d kill him in his sleep.”
“Tell me,” replied Joan. She had a morbid and irresistible desire to know.
“No. . . . And what does Kells do . . . when he sees you every day?”
“He talks.”
“What about?”
“Oh, everything, except about what holds him here. He talks to me to forget himself.”
“Does he make love to you?”
Joan maintained silence. What could she do with this changed and hopeless Jim Cleve?
“Tell me!” Jim’s hands gripped her with a force that made her wince. And now she grew as afraid of him as she had been for him. But she had spirit enough to grow angry, also.
“Certainly he does.”
Jim Cleve echoed her first word, and then through grinding teeth he cursed. “I’m going to . . . stop it,” he panted, and his eyes looked big and dark and wild in the starlight.
“You can’t. I belong to Kells. You at least ought to have sense enough to see that.”
“Belong to him . . . for God’s sake! By what right?”
“By the right of possession. Might is right here on the border. Haven’t you told me that a hundred times? Don’t you hold your claim . . . your gold by the right of your strength? It’s the law of this border. To be sure, Kells stole me. But just now I belong to him. And lately I see his consideration . . . his kindness in the light of what he could do if he held to that border law. Of all the men I’ve met out here, Kells is the least wild with this gold fever. He sends men out to murder for gold. He’d sell his soul to gamble for gold. But just the same he’s more of a man than. . . .”
“Joan!” he interrupted piercingly. “You love this bandit!”
“You’re a fool!” burst out Joan.
“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 around 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. 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 the thought of Gulden flashed up to make her again strong. Then she raised her face and began the old pleading with Jim, but differently 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, of the possibility that in the event of Kells’s death she would be the 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?”
“Marry me,” he whispered, and his voice trembled.
“Marry you!” exclaimed Joan. She was confounded. She began to fear Jim was out of his mind.
“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 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. Then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness, a happiness, 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 tomorrow 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 in 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 sensation 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 tomorrow, 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, and wild life in ceaseless action—the strange 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 Cañon, but a silence of solitude when 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 loosened her sense of utter loneliness. That silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of dread. They spoke to her. She breathed dread on that silent air and it filled her breast. There was nothing stable in the night shadows. The ravine seemed to send forth stealthy noiseless shapes, specter and human, man and phantom, each in the other’s trail.
If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the hour. A hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than the shadows. She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and dread might be lost. Love was something beyond the grasp of mind. Love had confounded Jim Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor from the black depths of a bandit’s heart; it had transformed her from a girl into a woman. Surely with all its greatness it could not be lost; surely in the end it must triumph over evil.
Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock of intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. When she gave rein to it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness. To hope was to think. Poor Jim. It was his fool’s paradise. Just let her be his wife. That was the shibboleth of his dream. Joan divined that he might yield to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony would be greater. Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so different that she could not but feel joy in his joy.
Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow, Joan’s mingled emotion merged into a poignant sense of the pain and suspense and tenderness of the actual moment.
“Joan . . . Joan,” came the soft whisper.
She answered, and there was a catch in her breath.
The moving shadow split into two shadows that stole closer, loomed before her. She could not tell which belonged to Jim till he touched her. His touch was potent. It seemed to electrify her.
“Dearest, we’re here . . . this is the parson,” said Jim, like a happy boy. “I. . . .”
“Ssssh,” whispered Joan. “Not so loud . . .
listen.”
Kells was holding a rendezvous with members of his legion. Joan even recognized his hard and somber tone, and the sharp voice of Red Pearce, and the drawl of Handy Oliver.
“All right. I’ll be quiet,” responded Cleve cautiously. “Joan, you’re to answer a few questions.”
Then a soft hand touched Joan, and a voice differently keyed from any she had heard on the border, addressed her.
“What is your name?” asked the preacher.
Joan told him.
“Can you tell any thing about yourself? This young man is . . . is almost violent. I’m not sure. Still I want to . . .”
“I can’t tell much,” replied Joan hurriedly. “I’m an honest girl. I’m free to . . . to marry him. I . . . I love him. Oh, I want to help him. We . . . we are in trouble here. I daren’t say how.”
“Are you over eighteen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do your parents object to this young man?”
“I have no parents, and my uncle, with whom I lived before I was brought to this awful place . . . he loves Jim. He always wanted me to marry him.”
“Take his hand, then.”
Joan felt the strong clasp of Jim’s fingers and that was all that seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy around these two black forms in front of her window. She heard a mournful wail of a lone wolf and it intensified the weird dream that bound her. She heard her shaking whispered voice repeating the preacher’s words. She felt the cool thrilling touch of a ring on her finger. She caught a phrase of a low-murmured prayer. Then one dark form moved silently away. She was alone with Jim.
“Dearest Joan,” he whispered. “It’s over. It’s done. Kiss me.”
She lifted her lips and Jim seemed to kiss her more sweetly, with less violence.
