The Border Legion

"Yes," she replied.

Kells stooped for a red ember, with which he lighted his pipe, and

then he seated himself a little back from the fire. The blaze threw

a bright glare over him, and in it he looked neither formidable nor

vicious nor ruthless. He asked her where she was born, and upon

receiving an answer he followed that up with another question. And

he kept this up until Joan divined that he was not so much

interested in what he apparently wished to learn as he was in her

presence, her voice, her personality. She sensed in him loneliness,

hunger for the sound of a voice. She had heard her uncle speak of

the loneliness of lonely camp-fires and how all men working or

hiding or lost in the wilderness would see sweet faces in the embers

and be haunted by soft voices. After all, Kells was human. And she

talked as never before in her life, brightly, willingly, eloquently,

telling the facts of her eventful youth and girlhood--the sorrow and

the joy and some of the dreams--up to the time she had come to Camp

Hoadley.

"Did you leave any sweethearts over there at Hoadley?" he asked,

after a silence.

"Yes."

"How many?"

"A whole campful," she replied, with a laugh, "but admirers is a

better name for them."

"Then there's no one fellow?"

"Hardly--yet."

"How would you like being kept here in this lonesome place for--

well, say for ever?"

"I wouldn't like that," replied Joan. "I'd like this--camping out

like this now--if my folks only knew I am alive and well and safe. I

love lonely, dreamy places. I've dreamed of being in just such a one

as this. It seems so far away here--so shut in by the walls and the

blackness. So silent and sweet! I love the stars. They speak to me.

And the wind in the spruces. Hear it. ... Very low, mournful! That

whispers to me--to-morrow I'd like it here if I had no worry. I've

never grown up yet. I explore and climb trees and hunt for little

birds and rabbits--young things just born, all fuzzy and sweet,

frightened, piping or squealing for their mothers. But I won't touch

one for worlds. I simply can't hurt anything. I can't spur my horse

or beat him. Oh, I HATE pain!"

"You're a strange girl to live out here on this border," he said.

"I'm no different from other girls. You don't know girls."

"I knew one pretty well. She put a rope round my neck," he replied,

grimly.