Zane Grey (10 page)

Before those few days had come to an end he had developed two things—a
reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance of the
presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan felt the
eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances, except
Gulden's. The giant studied her with slow, cavernous stare, without
curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman was a new and
strange creature to him and he was experiencing unfamiliar sensations.
Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze—for she avoided it as much as
possible—she shuddered with sick memory of a story she had heard—how
a huge and ferocious gorilla had stolen into an African village and run
off with a white woman. She could not shake the memory. And it was this
that made her kinder to Kells than otherwise would have been possible.

All Joan's faculties sharpened in this period. She felt her own
development—the beginning of a bitter and hard education—an
instinctive assimilation of all that nature taught its wild people
and creatures, the first thing in elemental life—self-preservation.
Parallel in her heart and mind ran a hopeless despair and a driving,
unquenchable spirit. The former was fear, the latter love. She believed
beyond a doubt that she had doomed herself along with Jim Cleve; she
felt that she had the courage, the power, the love to save him, if
not herself. And the reason that she did not falter and fail in this
terrible situation was because her despair, great as it was, did not
equal her love.

That morning, before being lifted upon his horse, Kells buckled on his
gun-belt. The sheath and full round of shells and the gun made this belt
a burden for a weak man. And so Red Pearce insisted. But Kells laughed
in his face. The men, always excepting Gulden, were unfailing in
kindness and care. Apparently they would have fought for Kells to the
death. They were simple and direct in their rough feelings. But in
Kells, Joan thought, was a character who was a product of this border
wildness, yet one who could stand aloof from himself and see the
possibilities, the unexpected, the meaning of that life. Kells knew that
a man and yet another might show kindness and faithfulness one moment,
but the very next, out of a manhood retrograded to the savage, out
of the circumstance or chance, might respond to a primitive force far
sundered from thought or reason, and rise to unbridled action. Joan
divined that Kells buckled on his gun to be ready to protect her. But
his men never dreamed his motive. Kells was a strong, bad man set among
men like him, yet he was infinitely different because he had brains.

On the start of the journey Joan was instructed to ride before Kells
and Pearce, who supported the leader in his saddle. The pack-drivers
and Bate Wood and Frenchy rode ahead; Gulden held to the rear. And this
order was preserved till noon, when the cavalcade halted for a rest in
a shady, grassy, and well-watered nook. Kells was haggard, and his
brow wet with clammy dew, and lined with pain. Yet he was cheerful and
patient. Still he hurried the men through their tasks.

In an hour the afternoon travel was begun. The canon and its
surroundings grew more rugged and of larger dimensions. Yet the
trail appeared to get broader and better all the time. Joan noticed
intersecting trails, running down from side canons and gulches. The
descent was gradual, and scarcely evident in any way except in the
running water and warmer air.

Kells, tired before the middle of the afternoon, and he would have
fallen from his saddle but for the support of his fellows. One by one
they held him up. And it was not easy work to ride alongside, holding
him up. Joan observed that Gulden did not offer his services. He seemed
a part of this gang, yet not of it. Joan never lost a feeling of his
presence behind her, and from time to time, when he rode closer, the
feeling grew stronger. Toward the close of that afternoon she became
aware of Gulden's strange attention. And when a halt was made for camp
she dreaded something nameless.

This halt occurred early, before sunset, and had been necessitated by
the fact that Kells was fainting. They laid him out on blankets, with
his head in his saddle. Joan tended him, and he recovered somewhat,
though he lacked the usual keenness.

It was a busy hour with saddles, packs, horses, with wood to cut and
fire to build and meal to cook. Kells drank thirstily, but refused food.

"Joan," he whispered, at an opportune moment, "I'm only tired—dead for
sleep. You stay beside me. Wake me quick—if you want to!"

He closed his eyes wearily, without explaining, and soon slumbered.
Joan did not choose to allow these men to see that she feared them or
distrusted them or disliked them. She ate with them beside the fire.
And this was their first opportunity to be close to her. The fact had
an immediate and singular influence. Joan had no vanity, though she knew
she was handsome. She forced herself to be pleasant, agreeable, even
sweet. Their response was instant and growing. At first they were bold,
then familiar and coarse. For years she had been used to rough men
of the camps. These however, were different, and their jokes and
suggestions had no effect because they were beyond her. And when this
became manifest to them that aspect of their relation to her changed.
She grasped the fact intuitively, and then she verified it by proof. Her
heart beat strong and high. If she could hide her hate, her fear, her
abhorrence, she could influence these wild men. But it all depended upon
her charm, her strangeness, her femininity. Insensibly they had been
influenced, and it proved that in the worst of men there yet survived
some good. Gulden alone presented a contrast and a problem. He appeared
aware of her presence while he sat there eating like a wolf, but it was
as if she were only an object. The man watched as might have an animal.

Her experience at the camp-fire meal inclined her to the belief that,
if there were such a possibility as her being safe at all, it would be
owing to an unconscious and friendly attitude toward the companions she
had been forced to accept. Those men were pleased, stirred at being in
her vicinity. Joan came to a melancholy and fearful cognizance of her
attraction. While at home she seldom had borne upon her a reality—that
she was a woman. Her place, her person were merely natural. Here it
was all different. To these wild men, developed by loneliness,
fierce-blooded, with pulses like whips, a woman was something that
thrilled, charmed, soothed, that incited a strange, insatiable,
inexplicable hunger for the very sight of her. They did not realize it,
but Joan did.

Presently Joan finished her supper and said: "I'll go hobble my horse.
He strays sometimes."

"Shore I'll go, miss," said Bate Wood. He had never called her Mrs.
Kells, but Joan believed he had not thought of the significance.
Hardened old ruffian that he was. Joan regarded him as the best of a bad
lot. He had lived long, and some of his life had not been bad.

"Let me go," added Pearce.

"No, thanks. I'll go myself," she replied.

She took the rope hobble off her saddle and boldly swung down the trail.
Suddenly she heard two or more of the men speak at once, and then, low
and clear: "Gulden, where'n hell are you goin'?" This was Red Pearce's
voice.

Joan glanced back. Gulden had started down the trail after her. Her
heart quaked, her knees shook, and she was ready to run back. Gulden
halted, then turned away, growling. He acted as if caught in something
surprising to himself.

"We're on to you, Gulden," continued Pearce, deliberately. "Be careful
or we'll put Kells on."

A booming, angry curse was the response. The men grouped closer and a
loud altercation followed. Joan almost ran down the trail and heard no
more. If any one of them had started her way now she would have plunged
into the thickets like a frightened deer. Evidently, however, they meant
to let her alone. Joan found her horse, and before hobbling him she was
assailed by a temptation to mount him and ride away. This she did not
want to do and would not do under any circumstances; still, she could
not prevent the natural instinctive impulse of a woman.

She crossed to the other side of the brook and returned toward camp
under the spruce and balsam trees, She did not hurry. It was good to
be alone, out of sight of those violent men, away from that constant
wearing physical proof of catastrophe. Nevertheless, she did not feel
free or safe for a moment; she peered fearfully into the shadows of the
rocks and trees; and presently it was a relief to get back to the side
of the sleeping Kells. He lay in a deep slumber of exhaustion. She
arranged her own saddle and blankets near him, and prepared to meet the
night as best she could. Instinctively she took a position where in one
swift snatch she could get possession of Kells's gun.

It was about time of sunset, warm and still in the canon, with rosy
lights fading upon the peaks. The men were all busy with one thing and
another. Strange it was to see that Gulden, who Joan thought might be
a shirker, did twice the work of any man, especially the heavy work. He
seemed to enjoy carrying a log that would have overweighted two ordinary
men. He was so huge, so active, so powerful that it was fascinating to
watch him. They built the camp-fire for the night uncomfortably near
Joan's position; however, remembering how cold the air would become
later, she made no objection. Twilight set in and the men, through for
the day, gathered near the fire.

Then Joan was not long in discovering that the situation had begun
to impinge upon the feelings of each of these men. They looked at her
differently. Some of them invented pretexts to approach her, to ask
something, to offer service—anything to get near her. A personal and
individual note had been injected into the attitude of each. Intuitively
Joan guessed that Gulden's arising to follow her had turned their eyes
inward. Gulden remained silent and inactive at the edge of the camp-fire
circle of light, which flickered fitfully around him, making him seem a
huge, gloomy ape of a man. So far as Joan could tell, Gulden never cast
his eyes in her direction. That was a difference which left cause for
reflection. Had that hulk of brawn and bone begun to think? Bate Wood's
overtures to Joan were rough, but inexplicable to her because she dared
not wholly trust him.

"An' shore, miss," he had concluded, in a hoarse whisper, "we-all know
you ain't Kells's wife. Thet bandit wouldn't marry no woman. He's a
woman-hater. He was famous fer thet over in California. He's run off
with you—kidnapped you, thet's shore.... An' Gulden swears he shot his
own men an' was in turn shot by you. Thet bullet-hole in his back was
full of powder. There's liable to be a muss-up any time.... Shore, miss,
you'd better sneak off with me tonight when they're all asleep. I'll git
grub an' hosses, an' take you off to some prospector's camp. Then you
can git home."

Joan only shook her head. Even if she could have felt trust in Wood—and
she was of half a mind to believe him—it was too late. Whatever befell
her mattered little if in suffering it she could save Jim Cleve from the
ruin she had wrought.

Since this wild experience of Joan's had begun she had been sick so
many times with raw and naked emotions hitherto unknown to her, that
she believed she could not feel another new fear or torture. But these
strange sensations grew by what they had been fed upon.

The man called Frenchy, was audacious, persistent, smiling,
amorous-eyed, and rudely gallant. He cared no more for his companions
than if they had not been there. He vied with Pearce in his attention,
and the two of them discomfited the others. The situation might have
been amusing had it not been so terrible. Always the portent was a
shadow behind their interest and amiability and jealousy. Except for
that one abrupt and sinister move of Gulden's—that of a natural man
beyond deceit—there was no word, no look, no act at which Joan could
have been offended. They were joking, sarcastic, ironical, and sullen
in their relation to each other; but to Joan each one presented what was
naturally or what he considered his kindest and most friendly front. A
young and attractive woman had dropped into the camp of lonely wild men;
and in their wild hearts was a rebirth of egotism, vanity, hunger
for notice. They seemed as foolish as a lot of cock grouse preening
themselves and parading before a single female. Surely in some heart was
born real brotherhood for a helpless girl in peril. Inevitably in some
of them would burst a flame of passion as it had in Kells.

Between this amiable contest for Joan's glances and replies, with its
possibility of latent good to her, and the dark, lurking, unspoken
meaning, such as lay in Gulden's brooding, Joan found another new and
sickening torture.

"Say, Frenchy, you're no lady's man," declared Red Pearce, "an' you,
Bate, you're too old. Move—pass by—sashay!" Pearce, good-naturedly,
but deliberately, pushed the two men back.

"Shore she's Kells's lady, ain't she?" drawled Wood. "Ain't you all
forgettin' thet?"

"Kells is asleep or dead," replied Pearce, and he succeeded in getting
the field to himself.

"Where'd you meet Kells anyway?" he asked Joan, with his red face
bending near hers.

Joan had her part to play. It was difficult, because she divined
Pearce's curiosity held a trap to catch her in a falsehood. He
knew—they all knew she was not Kells's wife. But if she were a prisoner
she seemed a willing and contented one. The query that breathed in
Pearce's presence was how was he to reconcile the fact of her submission
with what he and his comrades had potently felt as her goodness?

"That doesn't concern anybody," replied Joan.

"Reckon not," said Pearce. Then he leaned nearer with intense face.
"What I want to know—is Gulden right? Did you shoot Kells?"