The Border Legion Part 24

"That I'm innocent--that I'm as good--a girl--as ever.. ever.... Let me tell you.... Oh, you're mistaken--terribly mistaken."

"Now, I know I'm drunk.... You, Joan Randle! You in that rig! You the companion of Jack Kells! Not even his wife! The jest of these foul-mouthed bandits! And you say you're innocent--good?... When you refused to leave him!"

"I was afraid to go--afraid you'd be killed," she moaned, beating her breast.

It must have seemed madness to him, a monstrous nightmare, a delirium of drink, that Joan Randle was there on her knees in a brazen male attire, lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to believe in her innocence.

Joan burst into swift, broken utterance: "Only listen! I trailed you out--twenty miles from Hoadley. I met Roberts. He came with me. He lamed his horse--we had to camp. Kells rode down on us. He had two men. They camped there. Next morning he--killed Roberts--made off with me.... Then he killed his men--just to have me--alone to himself.... We crossed a range--camped in the canon. There he attacked me--and I--I shot him!...

But I couldn't leave him--to die!" Joan hurried on with her narrative, gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve. "First he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden--and the others," she went on. "He meant to save me from them. But they guessed or found out....

Kells forced me into these bandit clothes. He's depraved, somehow. And I had to wear something. Kells hasn't harmed me--no one has. I've influence over him. He can't resist it. He's tried to force me to marry him. And he's tried to give up to his evil intentions. But he can't.

There's good in him. I can make him feel it.... Oh, he loves me, and I'm not afraid of him any more.... It has been a terrible time for me, Jim, but I'm still--the same girl you knew--you used to--"

Cleve dropped the gun and he waved his hand before his eyes as if to dispel a blindness.

"But why--why?" he asked, incredulously. "Why did you leave Hoadley?

That's forbidden. You knew the risk."

Joan gazed steadily up at him, to see the whiteness slowly fade out of his face. She had imagined it would be an overcoming of pride to betray her love, but she had been wrong. The moment was so full, so overpowering, that she seemed dumb. He had ruined himself for her, and out of that ruin had come the glory of her love. Perhaps it was all too late, but at least he would know that for love of him she had in turn sacrificed herself.

"Jim," she whispered, and with the first word of that betrayal a thrill, a tremble, a rush went over her, and all her blood seemed hot at her neck and face, "that night when you kissed me I was furious. But the moment you had gone I repented. I must have--cared for you then, but I didn't know.... Remorse seized me. And I set out on your trail to save you from yourself. And with the pain and fear and terror there was sometimes--the--the sweetness of your kisses. Then I knew I cared....

And with the added days of suspense and agony--all that told me of your throwing your life away--there came love.... Such love as otherwise I'd never have been big enough for! I meant to find you--to save you--to send you home!... I have found you, maybe too late to save your life, but not your soul, thank G.o.d!... That's why I've been strong enough to hold back Kells. I love you, Jim!... I love you! I couldn't tell you enough. My heart is bursting.... Say you believe me! Say you know I'm good--true to you--your Joan!... And kiss me--like you did that night when we were such blind fools. A boy and a girl who didn't know--and couldn't tell!--Oh, the sadness of it!.... Kiss me, Jim, before I--drop--at your feet!... If only you--believe--"

Joan was blinded by tears and whispering she knew not what when Cleve broke from his trance and caught her to his breast. She was fainting--hovering at the border of unconsciousness when his violence held her back from oblivion. She seemed wrapped to him and held so tightly there was no breath in her body, no motion, no stir of pulse. That vague, dreamy moment pa.s.sed. She heard his husky, broken accents--she felt the pound of his heart against her breast. And he began to kiss her as she had begged him to. She quickened to thrilling, revivifying life. And she lifted her face, and clung round his neck, and kissed him, blindly, sweetly, pa.s.sionately, with all her heart and soul in her lips, wanting only one thing in the world--to give that which she had denied him.

"Joan!... Joan!... Joan!" he murmured when their lips parted. "Am I dreaming--drunk--or crazy?"

"Oh, Jim, I'm real--you have me in your arms," she whispered. "Dear Jim--kiss me again--and say you believe me."

"Believe you?... I'm out of my mind with joy.... You loved me! You followed me!... And--that idea of mine--only an absurd, vile suspicion!

I might have known--had I been sane!"

"There.... Oh, Jim!... Enough of madness. We've got to plan. Remember where we are. There's Kells, and this terrible situation to meet!"

He stared at her, slowly realizing, and then it was his turn to shake.

"My G.o.d! I'd forgotten. I'll HAVE to kill you now!"

A reaction set in. If he had any self-control left he lost it, and like a boy whose fling into manhood had exhausted his courage he sank beside her and buried his face against her. And he cried in a low, tense, heartbroken way. For Joan it was terrible to hear him. She held his hand to her breast and implored him not to weaken now. But he was stricken with remorse--he had run off like a coward, he had brought her to this calamity--and he could not rise under it. Joan realized that he had long labored under stress of morbid emotion. Only a supreme effort could lift him out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that must come from her.

She pushed him away from her, and held him back where he must see her, and white-hot with pa.s.sionate purpose, she kissed him. "Jim Cleve, if you've NERVE enough to be BAD you've nerve enough to save the girl who LOVES you--who BELONGS to you!"

He raised his face and it flashed from red to white. He caught the subtlety of her ant.i.thesis. With the very two words which had driven him away under the sting of cowardice she uplifted him; and with all that was tender and faithful and pa.s.sionate in her meaning of surrender she settled at once and forever the doubt of his manhood. He arose trembling in every limb. Like a dog he shook himself. His breast heaved. The shades of scorn and bitterness and abandon might never have haunted his face. In that moment he had pa.s.sed from the reckless and wild, sick rage of a weakling to the stern, realizing courage of a man. His suffering on this wild border had developed a different fiber of character; and at the great moment, the climax, when his moral force hung balanced between elevation and destruction, the woman had called to him, and her unquenchable spirit pa.s.sed into him.

"There's only one thing--to get away," he said.

"Yes, but that's a terrible risk," she replied.

"We've a good chance now. I'll get horses. We can slip away while they're all excited."

"No--no. I daren't risk so much. Kells would find out at once. He'd be like a hound on our trail. But that's not all. I've a horror of Gulden.

I can't explain. I FEEL it. He would know--he would take the trail. I'd never try to escape with Gulden in camp.... Jim, do you know what he's done?"

"He's a cannibal. I hate the sight of him. I tried to kill him. I wish I had killed him."

"I'm never safe while he's near."

"Then I will kill him."

"Hush! you'll not be desperate unless you have to be.... Listen. I'm safe with Kells for the present. And he's friendly to you. Let us wait.

I'll keep trying to influence him. I have won the friendship of some of his men. We'll stay with him--travel with him. Surely we'd have a better chance to excape after we reach that gold-camp. You must play your part.

But do it without drinking and fighting. I couldn't bear that. We'll see each other somehow. We'll plan. Then we'll take the first chance to get away."

"We might never have a better chance than we've got right now," he remonstrated.

"It may seem so to you. But I KNOW. I haven't watched these ruffians for nothing. I tell you Gulden has split with Kells because of me. I don't know how I know. And I think I'd die of terror out on the trail with two hundred miles to go--and that gorilla after me."

"But, Joan, if we once got away Gulden would never take you alive," said Jim, earnestly. "So you needn't fear that."

"I've uncanny horror of him. It's as if he were a gorilla--and would take me off even if I were dead!... No, Jim, let us wait. Let me select the time. I can do it. Trust me. Oh, Jim, now that I've saved you from being a bandit, I can do anything. I can fool Kells or Pearce or Wood--any of them, except Gulden."

"If Kells had to choose now between trailing you and rushing for the gold-camp, which would he do?"

"He'd trail me," she said.

"But Kells is crazy over gold. He has two pa.s.sions. To steal gold, and to gamble with it."

"That may be. But he'd go after me first. So would Gulden. We can't ride these hills as they do. We don't know the trails--the water. We'd get lost. We'd be caught. And somehow I know that Gulden and his gang would find us first."

"You're probably right, Joan," replied Cleve. "But you condemn me to a living death.... To let you out of my sight with Kells or any of them!

It'll be worse almost than my life was before."

"But, Jim, I'll be safe," she entreated. "It's the better choice of two evils. Our lives depend on reason, waiting, planning. And, Jim, I want to live for you."

"My brave darling, to hear you say that!" he exclaimed, with deep emotion. "When I never expected to see you again!... But the past is past. I begin over from this hour. I'll be what you want--do what you want."

Joan seemed irresistibly drawn to him again, and the supplication, as she lifted her blushing face, and the yielding, were perilously sweet.

"Jim, kiss me and hold me--the way--you did that night!"

And it was not Joan who first broke that embrace.

"Find my mask," she said.

Cleve picked up his gun and presently the piece of black felt. He held it as if it were a deadly thing.

"Put it on me."

He slipped the cord over her head and adjusted the mask so the holes came right for her eyes.

"Joan, it hides the--the GOODNESS of you," he cried. "No one can see your eyes now. No one will look at your face. That rig shows your--shows you off so! It's not decent.... But, O Lord! I'm bound to confess how pretty, how devilish, how seductive you are! And I hate it."