The Border Legion

He laughed. "Now don't talk any more. You're white and fagged-out.

You need to rest--to sleep."

"Sleep? How impossible!" she murmured.

"Why, your eyes are half shut now. ... Anyway, I'll not talk to you.

I want to think."

"Jim! ... kiss me--good night," she whispered.

He bent over rather violently, she imagined. His head blotted out

the light of the stars. He held her tightly for a moment. She felt

him shake. Then he kissed her on the cheek and abruptly drew away.

How strange he seemed!

For that matter, everything was strange. She had never seen the

stars so bright, so full of power, so close. All about her the

shadows gathered protectingly, to hide her and Jim. The silence

spoke. She saw Jim's face in the starlight and it seemed so keen, so

listening, so thoughtful, so beautiful. He would sit there all

night, wide-eyed and alert, guarding her, waiting for the gray of

dawn. How he had changed! And she was his wife! But that seemed only

a dream. It needed daylight and sight of her ring to make that real.

A warmth and languor stole over her; she relaxed comfortably; after

all, she would sleep. But why did that intangible dread hang on to

her soul? The night was so still and clear and perfect--a radiant

white night of stars--and Jim was there, holding her--and to-morrow

they would ride away. That might be, but dark, dangling shapes

haunted her, back in her mind, and there, too, loomed Kells. Where

was he now? Gone--gone on his bloody trail with his broken fortunes

and his desperate bitterness! He had lost her. The lunge of that

wild mob had parted them. A throb of pain and shame went through

her, for she was sorry. She could not understand why, unless it was

because she had possessed some strange power to instil or bring up

good in him. No woman could have been proof against that. It was

monstrous to know that she had power to turn him from an evil life,

yet she could not do it. It was more than monstrous to realize that

he had gone on spilling blood and would continue to go on when she

could have prevented it--could have saved many poor miners who

perhaps had wives or sweethearts somewhere. Yet there was no help

for it. She loved Jim Cleve. She might have sacrificed herself, but

she would not sacrifice him for all the bandits and miners on the

border.

Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer

that pang for Kells. She would never lie down in the peace and quiet

of her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark

and forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a

lonely trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely

stars. Sooner or later he would meet his doom. It was inevitable.

She pictured over that sinister scene of the dangling forms; but no--

Kells would never end that way. Terrible as he was, he had not been

born to be hanged. He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that

band of traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil

they had to be. But more likely some gambling-hell, with gold and

life at stake, would see his last fight. These bandits stole gold

and gambled among themselves and fought. And that fight which

finished Kells must necessarily be a terrible one. She seemed to see

into a lonely cabin where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered

and blue smoke floated in veils and men lay prone on the floor--

Kells, stark and bloody, and the giant Gulden, dead at last and more

terrible in death, and on the rude table bags of gold and dull,

shining heaps of gold, and scattered on the floor, like streams of

sand and useless as sand, dust of gold--the Destroyer.