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?"
"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
weariness that must have been simulated.