The Border Legion

"That's not all," said Kells, bluntly.

"Jim, I reckon you ain't tellin' what you did to thet lyin' girl an'

the feller. How'd you leave them?" added Pearce.

But Cleve appeared to become gloomy and reticent.

"Wimmen can hand the double-cross to a man, hey, Kells?" queried

Smith, with a broad grin.

"By gosh! I thought you'd been treated powerful mean!" exclaimed

Bate Wood, and he was full of wrath.

"A treacherous woman!" exclaimed Kells, passionately. He had taken

Cleve's story hard. The man must have been betrayed by women, and

Cleve's story had irritated old wounds.

Directly Kells left the fire and repaired to his blankets, near

where Joan lay. Probably he believed her asleep, for he neither

looked nor spoke. Cleve sought his bed, and likewise Wood and Smith.

Pearce was the last to leave, and as he stood up the light fell upon

his red face, lean and bold like an Indian's. Then he passed Joan,

looking down upon her and then upon the recumbent figure of Kells;

and if his glance was not baleful and malignant, as it swept over

the bandit, Joan believed her imagination must be vividly weird, and

running away with her judgment.

The next morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the

mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan

spared her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a

trail Smith alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others.

They climbed out of the notched head of the canon, and up a long

slope of weathered shale that let the horses slide back a foot for

every yard gained, and through a labyrinth of broken cliffs, and

over bench and ridge to the height of the divide. From there Joan

had a magnificent view. Foot-hills rolled round heads below, and

miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened Bear Lake. The rest

here at this height was counteracted by the fact that the altitude

affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again, and now the

travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was difficult,

for horses were more easily lamed in a descent. It took two hours to

descend the distance that had consumed all the morning to ascend.

Smith led through valley after valley between foot-hills, and late

in the afternoon halted by a spring in a timbered spot.

Joan ached in every muscle and she was too tired to care what

happened round the camp-fire. Jim had been close to her all day and

that had kept up her spirit. It was not yet dark when she lay down

for the night.