Free Zane Grey by The Border Legion Page A

time—but
that's none of your business.... Look here! See that blue spot!" Gulden
pressed a huge finger down upon the blue welt on Kells's back. The
bandit moaned. "That's lead—that's the bullet," declared Gulden.
    "Wall, if you ain't correct!" exclaimed Pearce.
    Kells turned his head. "When you punched that place—it made me numb all
over. Gul, if you've located the bullet, cut it out."
    Joan did not watch the operation. As she went away to the seat under the
balsam she heard a sharp cry and then cheers. Evidently the grim Gulden
had been both swift and successful.
    Presently the men came out of the cabin and began to attend to their
horses and the pack-train.
    Pearce looked for Joan, and upon seeing her called out, "Kells wants
you."
    Joan found the bandit half propped up against a saddle with a damp and
pallid face, but an altogether different look.
    "Joan, that bullet was pressing on my spine," he said. "Now it's out,
all that deadness is gone. I feel alive. I'll get well, soon.... Gulden
was curious over the bullet. It's a forty-four caliber, and neither Bill
Bailey nor Halloway used that caliber of gun. Gulden remembered. He's
cunning. Bill was as near being a friend to this Gulden as any man I
know of. I can't trust any of these men, particularly Gulden. You stay
pretty close by me."
    "Kells, you'll let me go soon—help me to get home?" implored Joan in a
low voice.
    "Girl, it'd never be safe now," he replied.
    "Then later—soon—when it is safe?"
    "We'll see.... But you're my wife now!"
    With the latter words the man subtly changed. Something of the power she
had felt in him before his illness began again to be manifested. Joan
divined that these comrades had caused the difference in him.
    "You won't dare—!" Joan was unable to conclude her meaning. A tight
band compressed her breast and throat, and she trembled.
    "Will you dare go out there and tell them you're NOT my wife?" he
queried. His voice had grown stronger and his eyes were blending shadows
of thought.
    Joan knew that she dared not. She must choose the lesser of two evils.
"No man—could be such a beast to a woman—after she'd saved his life,"
she whispered.
    "I could be anything. You had your chance. I told you to go. I said if I
ever got well I'd be as I was—before."
    "But you'd have died."
    "That would have been better for you..... Joan, I'll do this. Marry
you honestly and leave the country. I've gold. I'm young. I love you. I
intend to have you. And I'll begin life over again. What do you say?"
    "Say? I'd die before—I'd marry you!" she panted.
    "All right, Joan Randle," he replied, bitterly. "For a moment I saw a
ghost. My old dead better self!... It's gone.... And you stay with me."

7
*
    After dark Kells had his men build a fire before the open side of the
cabin. He lay propped up on blankets and his saddle, while the others
lounged or sat in a half-circle in the light, facing him.
    Joan drew her blankets into a corner where the shadows were thick and
she could see without being seen. She wondered how she would ever sleep
near all these wild men—if she could ever sleep again. Yet she seemed
more curious and wakeful than frightened. She had no way to explain
it, but she felt the fact that her presence in the camp had a subtle
influence, at once restraining and exciting. So she looked out upon the
scene with wide-open eyes.
    And she received more strongly than ever an impression of wildness. Even
the camp-fire seemed to burn wildly; it did not glow and sputter and
pale and brighten and sing like an honest camp-fire. It blazed in red,
fierce, hurried flames, wild to consume the logs. It cast a baleful
and sinister color upon the hard faces there. Then the blackness of the
enveloping night was pitchy, without any bold outline of canon wall
or companionship of stars. The coyotes were out in force and from all
around came their wild sharp barks. The wind rose and mourned weirdly
through the balsams.
    But it was in the men that Joan felt