Free Cabin Gulch by Zane Grey Page B

now, before it’s too late. If you stay . . . till I’m well . . . I’ll never let you go.”
    â€œKells, I believe it would be cowardly for me to leave you here alone,” she replied earnestly. “You can’t help yourself. You’d die.”
    â€œAll the better. But I won’t die. I’m hard to kill. Go, I tell you.”
    She shook her head. “This is bad for you . . . arguing. You’re excited. Please be quiet.”
    â€œJoan Randle, if you stay . . . I’ll halter you . . . keep you naked in a cave . . . curse you . . . beat you . . . murder you! Oh, it’s in me! Go, I tell you!”
    â€œYou’re out of your head. Once for all . . . no,” she replied firmly.
    â€œDamn you!” His voice failed in a terrible whisper.
    In the succeeding days Kells did not often speak. His recovery was slow—a matter of doubt. Nothing was any plainer than the fact that, if Joan had left him, he would not have lived long. She knew it. And he knewit. When he was awake, and she came to him, a mournful and beautiful smile lit his eyes. The sight of her apparently hurt him and uplifted him. But he slept twenty hours out of every day, and, while he slept, he did not need Joan.
    She came to know the meaning of solitude. There were days when she did not hear the sound of her own voice. A habit of silence, one of the significant forces of solitude, had grown upon her. Daily she thought less and felt more. For hours she did nothing. When she sensed herself, compelled herself to think of these encompassing peaks of the lonely cañon walls, the stately trees, all those eternally silent and changeless features of her solitude, she hated them with a blind and increasing passion. She hated them because she was losing her love for them, because they were becoming a part of her, because they were fixed and content and passionless. She liked to sit in the sun, feel its warmth, see its brightness, and sometimes she almost forgot to go back to her patient. She fought at times against an insidious change—a growing older—a going backward; at other times she drifted through hours that seemed quiet and golden, in which nothing happened. And by and by, when she realized that the drifting hours were gradually swallowing up the restless and active hours, then, strangely she remembered Jim Cleve. Memory of him came to save her. She dreamed of him during the long lonely solemn days, and in the dark silent climax of unbearable solitude—the night. She remembered his kisses—forgot her anger and shame—accepted the sweetness of their meaning—and so in the interminable hours of her solitude, she dreamed herself into love for him.
    Joan kept some record of days, until three weeks or thereabout passed, and then she lost track of time. Itdragged along, yet, looked at as the past, it seemed to have sped swiftly. The change in her, the growing older, the revelation and responsibility of self, as a woman, made this experience appear to have extended over months.
    Kells slowly became convalescent, and then he had a relapse. Something happened, the nature of which Joan could not tell, and he almost died. There were days when his life hung in the balance, when he could not talk, and then came a perceptible turn for the better.
    The store of provisions grew low, and Joan began to face another serious situation. Deer and rabbit were plentiful in the cañon, but she could not kill one with a revolver. She thought she would be forced to sacrifice one of the horses. The fact that Kells suddenly showed a craving for meat brought this aspect of the situation to a climax. And that very morning, while Joan was pondering the matter, she saw a number of horsemen riding up the cañon toward the cabin. At the moment she was relieved and experienced nothing of the dread she had formerly felt while anticipating this very event.
    â€œKells,” she said quickly, “there are men riding