Cabin Gulch Read Online Free PDF Page B

into that wild border country. Somewhere out there Kells and Jim Cleve would meet. Jim would find her in Kells’s hands. Then there would be hell, Joan thought. The possibility—the certainty seemed to strike deeply into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again—a ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and distrust at this new strange side of her nature.
    While her mind was thus occupied, the morning hours passed swiftly, the miles of foothills were climbed and descended. A green gap of cañon, wild and yellow-walled, yawned before her, opening into the mountain.
    Kells halted on the grassy bank of a shallow brook.
    â€œGet down. We’ll noon here and rest the horses,” he said to Joan. “I can’t say that you’re anything but game. We’ve done perhaps twenty-five miles this morning.”
    The mouth of this cañon was a wild green-flowered beautiful place. There were willows and alders and aspens along the brook. The green bench was like a grassy meadow. Joan caught a glimpse of a brown object, a deer or bear, stealing away through spruce trees on the slope. She dismounted, aware now that her legs ached, and it was comfortable to stretch them. Looking backward across the valley toward the last foothill, she saw the other men, with horses and packs, coming. She had a habit of close observation and she thought that either the men with the packshad now one more horse than she remembered or else she had not seen the extra one. Her attention shifted then. She watched Kells unsaddle the horses. He was wiry, muscular, quick with his hands. The big blue-cylindered gun swung in front of him. That gun had a queer kind of attraction for her. The curved black butt made her think of a sharp grip of hand upon it. Kells did not hobble the horses. He slapped his bay on the haunch and drove him down toward the brook. Joan’s pony followed. They drank, cracked the stones, climbed to the other bank, and began to roll in the grass. Then the other men with the packs trotted up. Joan was glad. She had not thought of it before, but now she felt she would rather not be alone with Kells. She remarked then that there was no extra horse in the bunch. It seemed strange, her thinking that and she imagined she was not clear-headed.
    â€œThrow the packs, Bill,” said Kells.
    Another fire was kindled and preparations made toward a noonday meal. Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook, and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared not to notice him, and thereafter she averted her gaze. The man chuckled. “She’s the proud hussy! But she ain’t foolin’ me. I’ve knowed a heap of wimmen.” Whereupon Halloway guffawed, and between them, in lower tones, they exchanged mysterious remarks. Kells returned with a bucket of water.
    â€œWhat’s got into you men?” he queried.
    Both of them looked around blusteringly innocent.
    â€œReckon it’s the same that’s ailin’ you,” replied Bill. He showed that among wild unhampered men how little could inflame and change.
    â€œBoss, it’s the unaccustomed company,” added Halloway with a conciliatory smile. “Bill sort of warms up. He jest can’t help it. An’ seein’ what a thunderin’ crab he always is, why I’m glad an’ welcome.”
    Kells vouchsafed no reply to this and, turning away, continued at his tasks. Joan had a close look at his eyes and again she was startled. They were not like eyes, but just gray spaces, opaque openings, with nothing visible behind, yet with something terrible