The evening camp was a scene of activity, and all except Joan had work to do.  She tried to lend a hand, but Wood told her to rest.  This she was glad to do.  When called to supper she had almost fallen asleep.  After a long day’s ride the business of eating precluded conversation.  Later, however, the men began to talk between puffs on their pipes, and from the talk no one could have guessed that here was a band of robbers on their way to a gold camp.  Jesse Smith had a sore foot and he was compared to a tenderfoot on his first ride.  Smith retaliated in kind.  Every consideration was shown Joan, and Wood particularly appeared assiduous in his desire for her comfort.  All the men except Cleve paid her some kind attention; and he, of course, neglected her because he was afraid to go near her.  Again she felt in Red Pearce a condemnation of the bandit leader who was dragging a girl over hard trails, making her sleep in the open, exposing her to danger and to men like himself and Gulden.  In his own estimate Pearce, like every one of his kind, was not so slow as the others.

Joan watched and listened from her blankets, under a leafy tree, some few yards from the camp-fire.  Once Kells turned to see how far distant she was, and then, lowering his voice, he told a story.  The others laughed.  Pearce followed with another, and he, too, took care that Joan could not hear.  They grew closer for the mirth, and Smith, who evidently was a jolly fellow, set them to roaring.  Jim Cleve laughed with them.

“Say, Jim, you’re getting over it,” remarked Kells.

“Over what?”

Kells paused, rather embarrassed for a reply, as evidently in the humor of the hour he had spoken a thought better left unsaid.  But there was no more forbidding atmosphere about Cleve.  He appeared to have rounded to good-fellowship after a moody and quarrelsome drinking spell.

“Why, over what drove you out here—­and gave me a lucky chance at you,” replied Kells, with a constrained laugh.

“Oh, you mean the girl? ...  Sure, I’m getting over that, except when I drink.”

“Tell us, Jim,” said Kells, curiously.

“Aw, you’ll give me the laugh!” retorted Cleve.

“No, we won’t unless your story’s funny.”

“You can gamble it wasn’t funny,” put in Red Pearce.

They all coaxed him, yet none of them, except Kells, was particularly curious; it was just that hour when men of their ilk were lazy and comfortable and full fed and good-humored round the warm, blazing camp-fire.

“All right,” replied Cleve, and apparently, for all his complaisance, a call upon memory had its pain.  “I’m from Montana.  Range-rider in winter and in summer I prospected.  Saved quite a little money, in spite of a fling now and then at faro and whisky. ...  Yes, there was a girl, I guess yes.  She was pretty.  I had a bad case over her.  Not long ago I left all I had—­money and gold and things—­in her keeping, and I went prospecting again.  We were to get married on my return.  I stayed out six months, did well, and got robbed of all my dust.”