“Sleep well, Dandy Dale,” said Kells, cheerfully, yet not without pathos.  “Alder Creek to-morrow! ...  Then you’ll never sleep again!”

At times she seemed to feel that he regretted her presence, and always this fancy came to her with mocking or bantering suggestion that the costume and mask she wore made her a bandit’s consort, and she could not escape the wildness of this gold-seeking life.  The truth was that Kells saw the insuperable barrier between them, and in the bitterness of his love he lied to himself, and hated himself for the lie.

About the middle of the afternoon of the next day the tired cavalcade rode down out of the brush and rock into a new, broad, dusty road.  It was so new that the stems of the cut brush along the borders were still white.  But that road had been traveled by a multitude.

Out across the valley in the rear Joan saw a canvas-topped wagon, and she had not ridden far on the road when she saw a bobbing pack-burros to the fore.  Kells had called Wood and Smith and Pearce and Cleve together, and now they went on in a bunch, all driving the pack-train.  Excitement again claimed Kells; Pearce was alert and hawk-eyed; Smith looked like a hound on a scent; Cleve showed genuine feeling.  Only Bate Wood remained proof to the meaning of that broad road.

All along, on either side, Joan saw wrecks of wagons, wheels, harness, boxes, old rags of tents blown into the brush, dead mules and burros.  It seemed almost as if an army had passed that way.  Presently the road crossed a wide, shallow brook of water, half clear and half muddy; and on the other side the road followed the course of the brook.  Joan heard Smith call the stream Alder Creek, and he asked Kells if he knew what muddied water meant.  The bandit’s eyes flashed fire.  Joan thrilled, for she, too, knew that up-stream there were miners washing earth for gold.

A couple of miles farther on creek and road entered the mouth of a wide spruce-timbered gulch.  These trees hid any view of the slopes or floor of the gulch, and it was not till several more miles had been passed that the bandit rode out into what Joan first thought was a hideous slash in the forest made by fire.  But it was only the devastation wrought by men.  As far as she could see the timber was down, and everywhere began to be manifested signs that led her to expect habitations.  No cabins showed, however, in the next mile.  They passed out of the timbered part of the gulch into one of rugged, bare, and stony slopes, with bunches of sparse alder here and there.  The gulch turned at right angles and a great gray slope shut out sight of what lay beyond.  But, once round that obstruction, Kells halted his men with short, tense exclamation.

Joan saw that she stood high up on the slope, looking down upon the gold-camp.  It was an interesting scene, but not beautiful.  To Kells it must have been so, but to Joan it was even more hideous than the slash in the forest.  Here and there, everywhere, were rude dugouts, little huts of brush, an occasional tent, and an occasional log cabin; and as she looked farther and farther these crude habitations of miners magnified in number and in dimensions till the white and black broken, mass of the town choked the narrow gulch.