[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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 on 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. And 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 to let her
be his wife! That was the apex 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 emotions 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.
Page 137
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"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 anything 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 which
seemed real at the moment. It seemed so dark and shadowy round 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 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.
"Oh, Joan, that you'd really have me! I can't believe it. ... Your
HUSBAND."
That word dispelled the dream and the pain which had held Joan,
leaving only the tenderness, magnified now a hundredfold.
And that instant when she was locked in Cleve's arms, when the
silence was so beautiful and full, she heard the heavy pound of a
gun-butt upon the table in Kells's room.
"Where is Cleve?" That was the voice of Kells, stern, demanding.
Joan felt a start, a tremor run over Jim. Then he stiffened.
"I can't locate him," replied Red Pearce. "It was the same last
night an' the one before. Cleve jest disappears these nights--about
this time. ... Some woman's got him!"
"He goes to bed. Can't you find where he sleeps?"
Page 138
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"No."
"This job's got to go through and he's got to do it."
"Bah!" taunted Pearce. "Gulden swears you can't make Cleve do a job.
And so do I!"
"Go out and yell for Cleve! ... Damn you all! I'll show you!"
Then Joan heard the tramp of heavy boots, then a softer tramp on the
ground outside the cabin. Joan waited, holding her breath. She felt
Jim's heart beating. He stood like a post. He, like Joan, was
listening, as if for a trumpet of doom.
"HALLO, JIM!" rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the
silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped in echo, and wound
away, mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild
borderland the breaking-point of the bandit's power.
So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and
she let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she
realized it, and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan
waited, listening with abated breathing. On this side of the cabin
there was absolute silence. She believed that Jim would slip around
under cover of night and return by the road from camp. Then what
would he do? The question seemed to puzzle her.
Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from
those vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that
had left her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the
voice of Kells had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was
returning now to reality. Presently she would peer through the
crevice between the boards into the other room, and she shrank from
the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with him, maintained silence.
Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot and a creak of the
loose floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear compelled her
to look.
The lamps were burning; the door was wide open. Apparently Kells's
rule of secrecy had been abandoned. One glance at Kells was enough
to show Joan that he was sick and desperate. Handy Oliver did not
wear his usual lazy good humor. Red Pearce sat silent and sullen, a
smoking, unheeded pipe in his hand. Jesse Smith was gloomy. The only
other present was Bate Wood, and whatever had happened had in no
wise affected him. These bandits were all waiting. Presently quick
footsteps on the path outside caused them all to look toward the
door. That tread was familiar to Joan, and suddenly her mouth was
dry, her tongue stiff. What was Jim Cleve coming to meet? How sharp
and decided his walk! Then his dark form crossed the bar of light
outside the door, and he entered, bold and cool, and with a
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]