Zane Grey (3 page)

She would lie awake. It would be impossible to sleep. And suddenly into
her full mind flashed an idea to slip away in the darkness, find her
horse, and so escape from any possible menace. This plan occupied her
thoughts for a long while. If she had not been used to Western ways she
would have tried just that thing. But she rejected it. She was not
sure that she could slip away, or find her horse, or elude pursuit,
and certainly not sure of her way home. It would be best to stay with
Roberts.

When that was settled her mind ceased to race. She grew languid and
sleepy. The warmth of the blankets stole over her. She had no idea of
sleeping, yet she found sleep more and more difficult to resist.
Time that must have been hours passed. The fire died down and then
brightened; the shadows darkened and then lightened. Someone now and
then got up to throw on wood. The thump of hobbled hoofs sounded out in
the darkness. The wind was still and the coyotes were gone. She could
no longer open her eyes. They seemed glued shut. And then gradually all
sense of the night and the wild, of the drowsy warmth, faded.

When she awoke the air was nipping cold. Her eyes snapped open clear and
bright. The tips of the cedars were ruddy in the sunrise. A camp-fire
crackled. Blue smoke curled upward. Joan sat up with a rush of memory.
Roberts and Kells were bustling round the fire. The man Bill was
carrying water. The other fellow had brought in the horses and was
taking off the hobbles. No one, apparently, paid any attention to Joan.
She got up and smoothed out her tangled hair, which she always wore in
a braid down her back when she rode. She had slept, then, and in her
boots! That was the first time she had ever done that. When she went
down to the brook to bathe her face and wash her hands, the men still,
apparently, took no notice of her. She began to hope that Roberts had
exaggerated their danger. Her horse was rather skittish and did not care
for strange hands. He broke away from the bunch. Joan went after him,
even lost sight of camp. Presently, after she caught him, she led him
back to camp and tied him up. And then she was so far emboldened as to
approach the fire and to greet the men.

"Good morning," she said, brightly.

Kells had his back turned at the moment. He did not move or speak or
give any sign he had heard. The man Bill stared boldly at her, but
without a word. Roberts returned her greeting, and as she glanced
quickly at him, drawn by his voice, he turned away. But she had seen
that his face was dark, haggard, worn.

Joan's cheer and hope sustained a sudden and violent check. There was
something wrong in this group, and she could not guess what it was. She
seemed to have a queer, dragging weight at her limbs. She was glad
to move over to a stone and sink down upon it. Roberts brought her
breakfast, but he did not speak or look at her. His hands shook. And
this frightened Joan. What was going to happen? Roberts went back to
the camp-fire. Joan had to force herself to eat. There was one thing of
which she was sure—that she would need all the strength and fortitude
she could summon.

Joan became aware, presently, that Kells was conversing with Roberts,
but too low for her to hear what was said. She saw Roberts make a
gesture of fierce protest. About the other man there was an air cool,
persuading, dominant. He ceased speaking, as if the incident were
closed. Roberts hurried and blundered through his task with his pack and
went for his horse. The animal limped slightly, but evidently was not in
bad shape. Roberts saddled him, tied on the pack. Then he saddled Joan's
horse. That done, he squared around with the front of a man who had to
face something he dreaded.

"Come on, Joan. We're ready," he called. His voice was loud, but not
natural.

Joan started to cross to him when Kells strode between them. She might
not have been there, for all the sign this ominous man gave of her
presence. He confronted Roberts in the middle of the camp-circle, and
halted, perhaps a rod distant.

"Roberts, get on your horse and clear out," he said.

Roberts dropped his halter and straightened up. It was a bolder action
than any he had heretofore given. Perhaps the mask was off now; he was
wholly sure of what he had only feared; subterfuge and blindness were
in vain; and now he could be a man. Some change worked in his face—a
blanching, a setting.

"No, I won't go without the girl," he said.

"But you can't take her!"

Joan vibrated to a sudden start. So this was what was going to happen.
Her heart almost stood still. Breathless and quivering, she watched
these two men, about whom now all was strangely magnified.

"Reckon I'll go along with you, then," replied Roberts.

"Your company's not wanted."

"Wal, I'll go anyway."

This was only play at words, Joan thought. She divined in Roberts a
cold and grim acceptance of something he had expected. And the voice
of Kells—what did that convey? Still the man seemed slow, easy, kind,
amiable.

"Haven't you got any sense, Roberts?" he asked.

Roberts made no reply to that.

"Go on home. Say nothing or anything—whatever you like," continued
Kells. "You did me a favor once over in California. I like to remember
favors. Use your head now. Hit the trail."

"Not without her. I'll fight first," declared Roberts, and his hands
began to twitch and jerk.

Joan did not miss the wonderful intentness of the pale-gray eyes that
watched Roberts—his face, his glance, his hands.

"What good will it do to fight?" asked Kells. He laughed coolly. "That
won't help her... You ought to know what you'll get."

"Kells—I'll die before I leave that girl in your clutches," flashed
Roberts. "An' I ain't a-goin' to stand here an' argue with you. Let her
come—or—"

"You don't strike me as a fool," interrupted Kells. His voice was suave,
smooth, persuasive, cool. What strength—what certainty appeared behind
it! "It's not my habit to argue with fools. Take the chance I offer
you. Hit the trail. Life is precious, man!... You've no chance here. And
what's one girl more or less to you?"

"Kells, I may be a fool, but I'm a man," passionately rejoined Roberts.
"Why, you're somethin' inhuman! I knew that out in the gold-fields. But
to think you can stand there—an' talk sweet an' pleasant—with no idee
of manhood!... Let her come now—or—or I'm a-goin' for my gun!"

"Roberts, haven't you a wife—children?"

"Yes, I have," shouted Roberts, huskily. "An' that wife would disown me
if I left Joan Randle to you. An' I've got a grown girl. Mebbe some day
she might need a man to stand between her an' such as you, Jack Kells!"

All Roberts' pathos and passion had no effect, unless to bring out by
contrast the singular and ruthless nature of Jack Kells.

"Will you hit the trail?"

"No!" thundered Roberts.

Until then Joan Randle had been fascinated, held by the swift
interchange between her friend and enemy. But now she had a convulsion
of fear. She had seen men fight, but never to the death. Roberts
crouched like a wolf at bay. There was a madness upon him. He shook like
a rippling leaf. Suddenly his shoulder lurched—his arm swung.

Joan wheeled away in horror, shutting her eyes, covering her ears,
running blindly. Then upon her muffled hearing burst the boom of a gun.

Joan ran on, stumbling over rocks and brush, with a darkness before her
eyes, the terror in her soul. She was out in the cedars when someone
grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake.
Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away,
stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something
that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and,
leaning there, fought her weakness, that cold black horror which seemed
a physical thing in her mind, her blood, her muscles.

When she recovered enough for the thickness to leave her sight she saw
Kells coming, leading her horse and his own. At sight of him a strange,
swift heat shot through her. Then she was confounded with the thought of
Roberts.

"Ro—Roberts?" she faltered.

Kells gave her a piercing glance. "Miss Randle, I had to take the fight
out of your friend," he said.

"You—you—Is he—dead?"

"I just crippled his gun arm. If I hadn't he would have hurt somebody.
He'll ride back to Hoadley and tell your folks about it. So they'll know
you're safe."

"Safe!" she whispered.

"That's what I said, Miss Randle. If you're going to ride out into the
border—if it's possible to be safe out there you'll be so with me."

"But I want to go home. Oh, please let me go!"

"I couldn't think of it."

"Then—what will you—do with me?"

Again that gray glance pierced her. His eyes were clear, flawless, like
crystal, without coldness, warmth, expression. "I'll get a barrel of
gold out of you."

"How?" she asked, wonderingly.

"I'll hold you for ransom. Sooner or later those prospectors over there
are going to strike gold. Strike it rich! I know that. I've got to make
a living some way."

Kells was tightening the cinch on her saddle while he spoke. His voice,
his manner, the amiable smile on his intelligent face, they all appeared
to come from sincerity. But for those strange eyes Joan would have
wholly believed him. As it was, a half doubt troubled her. She
remembered the character Roberts had given this man. Still, she was
recovering her nerve. It had been the certainty of disaster to Roberts
that had made her weaken. As he was only slightly wounded and free to
ride home safely, she had not the horror of his death upon her.
Indeed, she was now so immensely uplifted that she faced the situation
unflinchingly.

"Bill," called Kells to the man standing there with a grin on his coarse
red face, "you go back and help Halloway pack. Then take my trail."

Bill nodded, and was walking away when Kells called after him: "And say,
Bill, don't say anything to Roberts. He's easily riled."

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" laughed Bill.

His harsh laughter somehow rang jarringly in Joan's ears. But she was
used to violent men who expressed mirth over mirthless jokes.

"Get up, Miss Randle," said Kells as he mounted. "We've a long ride.
You'll need all your strength. So I advise you to come quietly with me
and not try to get away. It won't be any use trying."

Joan climbed into her saddle and rode after him. Once she looked back
in hope of seeing Roberts, of waving a hand to him. She saw his horse
standing saddled, and she saw Bill struggling under a pack, but there
was no sign of Roberts. Then more cedars intervened and the camp site
was lost to view. When she glanced ahead her first thought was to take
in the points of Kells's horse. She had been used to horses all her
life. Kells rode a big rangy bay—a horse that appeared to snort speed
and endurance. Her pony could never run away from that big brute. Still
Joan had the temper to make an attempt to escape, if a favorable way
presented.

The morning was rosy, clear, cool; there was a sweet, dry tang in
the air; white-tailed deer bounded out of the open spaces; and the
gray-domed, glistening mountains, with their bold, black-fringed slopes,
overshadowed the close foot-hills.

Joan was a victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions.
She was riding away with a freebooter, a road-agent, to be held for
ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread
of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts's words, yet they
haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, he had said! Joan knew
she possessed good looks, but they had never caused her any particular
concern. That Kells had let that influence him—as Roberts had
imagined—was more than absurd. Kells had scarcely looked at her. It was
gold such men wanted. She wondered what her ransom would be, where her
uncle would get it, and if there really was a likelihood of that rich
strike. Then she remembered her mother, who had died when she was a
little girl, and a strange, sweet sadness abided with her. It passed.
She saw her uncle—that great, robust, hearty, splendid old man, with
his laugh and his kindness, and his love for her, and his everlasting
unquenchable belief that soon he would make a rich gold-strike. What a
roar and a stampede he would raise at her loss! The village camp might
be divided on that score, she thought, because the few young women in
that little settlement hated her, and the young men would have more
peace without her. Suddenly her thought shifted to Jim Cleve, the
cause of her present misfortune. She had forgotten Jim. In the interval
somehow he had grown. Sweet to remember how he had fought for her and
kept it secret! After all, she had misjudged him. She had hated him
because she liked him. Maybe she did more! That gave her a shock. She
recalled his kisses and then flamed all over. If she did not hate him
she ought to. He had been so useless; he ran after her so; he was the
laughing-stock of the village; his actions made her other admirers and
friends believe she cared for him, was playing fast-and-loose with him.
Still, there was a difference now. He had terribly transgressed. He had
frightened her with threats of dire ruin to himself. And because of that
she had trailed him, to fall herself upon a hazardous experience.
Where was Jim Cleve now? Like a flash then occurred to her the singular
possibility. Jim had ridden for the border with the avowed and desperate
intention of finding Kells and Gulden and the bad men of that trackless
region. He would do what he had sworn he would. And here she was, the
cause of it all, a captive of this notorious Kells! She was being led
into that wild border country. Somewhere out there Kells and Jim Cleve
would meet. Jim would find her in Kells's hands. Then there would be
hell, Joan thought. The possibility, the certainty, seemed to strike
deep into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again; a
ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth
in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed
the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and
distrust at this new, strange side of her nature.