The Border Legion

"You--you wild thing! You desperado! I always told Bill you'd run

wild some day! ... March in the house and get out of that indecent

rig!"

That night under the spruces, with the starlight piercing the lacy

shadows, Joan waited for Jim Cleve. It was one of the white, silent,

mountain nights. The brook murmured over the stones and the wind

rustled the branches.

The wonder of Joan's home-coming was in learning that Uncle Bill

Hoadley was indeed Overland, the discoverer of Alder Creek. Years

and years of profitless toil had at last been rewarded in this rich

gold strike.

Joan hated to think of gold. She had wanted to leave the gold back

in Cabin Gulch, and she would have done so had Jim permitted it. And

to think that all that gold which was not Jim Cleve's belonged to

her uncle! She could not believe it.

Fatal and terrible forever to Joan would be the significance of

gold. Did any woman in the world or any man know the meaning of gold

as well as she knew it? How strange and enlightening and terrible

had been her experience! She had grown now not to blame any man,

honest miner or bloody bandit. She blamed only gold. She doubted its

value. She could not see it a blessing. She absolutely knew its

driving power to change the souls of men. Could she ever forget that

vast ant-hill of toiling diggers and washers, blind and deaf and

dumb to all save gold?

Always limned in figures of fire against the black memory would be

the forms of those wild and violent bandits! Gulden, the monster,

the gorilla, the cannibal! Horrible as was the memory of him, there

was no horror in thought of his terrible death. That seemed to be

the one memory that did not hurt.

But Kells was indestructible--he lived in her mind. Safe out of the

border now and at home, she could look back clearly. Still all was

not clear and never would be. She saw Kells the ruthless bandit, the

organizer, the planner, and the blood-spiller. He ought have no

place in a good woman's memory. Yet he had. She never condoned one

of his deeds or even his intentions. She knew her intelligence was

not broad enough to grasp the vastness of his guilt. She believed he

must have been the worst and most terrible character on that wild

border. That border had developed him. It had produced the time and

the place and the man. And therein lay the mystery. For over against

this bandit's weakness and evil she could contrast strength and

nobility. She alone had known the real man in all the strange phases

of his nature, and the darkness of his crime faded out of her mind.

She suffered remorse--almost regret. Yet what could she have done?

There had been no help for that impossible situation as, there was

now no help for her in a right and just placing of Kells among men.

He had stolen her--wantonly murdering for the sake of lonely,

fruitless hours with her; he had loved her--and he had changed; he

had gambled away her soul and life--a last and terrible proof of the

evil power of gold; and in the end he had saved her--he had gone

from her white, radiant, cool, with strange, pale eyes and his

amiable, mocking smile, and all the ruthless force of his life had

expended itself in one last magnificent stand. If only he had known

her at the end--when she lifted his head! But no--there had been

only the fading light--the strange, weird look of a retreating soul,

already alone forever.