Border Legion (1990)
Page 29
Always limned in figures of fire against the black memory would be the forms of those wild and violent bandits! Gulden, the monster, the gorilla, the cannibal! Horrible as was the memory of him, there was no horror in thought of his terrible death. That seemed to be the one memory that did not hurt.
But Kells was indestructible--he lived in her mind. Safe out of the border now and at home, she could look back clearly. Still all was not clear and never would be. She saw Kells the ruthless bandit, the organizer, the planner, and the blood-spiller. He ought have no place in a good woman's memory. Yet he had. She never condoned one of his deeds or even his intentions. She knew her intelligence was not broad enough to grasp the vastness of his guilt. She believed he must have been the worst and most terrible character on that wild border. That border had developed him. It had produced the time and the place and the man. And therein lay the mystery. For over against this bandit's weakness and evil she could contrast strength and nobility. She alone had known the real man in all the strange phases of his nature, and the darkness of his crime faded out of her mind.
She suffered remorse--almost regret. Yet what could she have done?
There had been no help for that impossible situation as, there was now no help for her in a right and just placing of Kells among men.
He had stolen her--wantonly murdering for the sake of lonely, fruitless hours with her; he had loved her--and he had changed; he had gambled away her soul and life--a last and terrible proof of the evil power of gold; and in the end he had saved her--he had gone from her white, radiant, cool, with strange, pale eyes and his amiable, mocking smile, and all the ruthless force of his life had expended itself in one last magnificent stand. If only he had known her at the end--when she lifted his head! But no--there had been only the fading light--the strange, weird look of a retreating soul, already alone forever.
A rustling of leaves, a step thrilled Joan out of her meditation.
Suddenly she was seized from behind, and Jim Cleve showed that though he might be a joyous and grateful lover, he certainly would never be an actor. For if he desired to live over again that fatal meeting and quarrel which had sent them out to the border, he failed utterly in his part. There was possession in the gentle grasp of his arms and bliss in the trembling of his lips.
"Jim, you never did it that way!" laughed Joan. "If you had--do you think I could ever have been furious?"
Jim in turn laughed happily. "Joan, that's exactly the way I stole upon you and mauled you!".
"You think so! Well, I happen to remember. Now you sit here and make believe you are Joan. And let me be Jim Cleve! ... I'll show you!"
Joan stole away in the darkness, and noiselessly as a shadow she stole back--to enact that violent scene as it lived in her memory.
Jim was breathless, speechless, choked.
"That's how you treated me," she said.
"I--I don't believe I could have--been such a--a bear!" panted Jim.
"But you were. And consider--I've not half your strength."
"Then all I say is--you did right to drive me off. ... Only you should never have trailed me out to the border."
"Ah! ... But, Jim, in my fury I discovered my love!"
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Border Legion by Zane Grey