The Border Legion

Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this

inexplicable change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each; and it was

not till she encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was

revealed. Frenchy was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his

being inculcated a sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the

darkness of a wicked life, and now that something came fleeting out

of the depths--and it was respect for a woman. To Joan it was a

flash of light. Yesterday these ruffians despised her; to-day they

respected her. So they had believed what she had so desperately

flung at Jim Cleve. They believed her good, they pitied her, they

respected her, they responded to her effort to turn a boy back from

a bad career. They were bandits, desperados, murderers, lost, but

each remembered in her a mother or a sister. What each might have

felt or done had he possessed her, as Kells possessed her, did not

alter the case as it stood. A strange inconsistency of character

made them hate Kells for what they might not have hated in

themselves. Her appeal to Cleve, her outburst of truth, her youth

and misfortune, had discovered to each a human quality. As in Kells

something of nobility still lingered, a ghost among his ruined

ideals, so in the others some goodness remained. Joan sustained an

uplifting divination--no man was utterly bad. Then came the hideous

image of the giant Gulden, the utter absence of soul in him, and she

shuddered. Then came the thought of Jim Cleve, who had not believed

her, who had bitterly made the fatal step, who might in the strange

reversion of his character be beyond influence.

And it was at the precise moment when this thought rose to

counteract the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men that

Joan looked out to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a

cigarette between his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon

him the stamp of abandonment. Joan suffered a contraction of heart

that benumbed her breast. She stood a moment battling with herself.

She was brave enough, desperate enough, to walk straight up to

Cleve, remove her mask and say, "I am Joan!" But that must be a last

resource. She had no plan, yet she might force an opportunity to see

Cleve alone.

A shout rose above the hubbub of voices. A tall man was pointing

across the gulch where dust-clouds showed above the willows. Men

crowded round him, all gazing in the direction of his hand, all

talking at once.