Joan had dreaded this question, which she had known would inevitably come.  She wanted to lie; she knew she ought to lie; but it was impossible.

“Every day,” she whispered.  “Please—­Jim—­never mind that.  Kells is good—­he’s all right to me. ...  And you and I have so little time together.”

“Good!” exclaimed Cleve.  Joan felt the leap of his body under her touch.  “Why, if I’d tell you what he sends that gang to do—­you’d—­ you’d kill him in his sleep.”

“Tell me,” replied Joan.  She had a morbid, irresistible desire to learn.

“No. ...  And what does Kells do—­when he sees you every day?”

“He talks.”

“What about?”

“Oh, everything except about what holds him here.  He talks to me to forget himself.”

“Does he make love to you?”

Joan maintained silence.  What would she do with this changed and hopeless Jim Cleve?

“Tell me!” Jim’s hands gripped her with a force that made her wince.  And now she grew as afraid of him as she had been for him.  But she had spirit enough to grow angry, also.

“Certainly he does.”

Jim Cleve echoed her first word, and then through grinding teeth he cursed.  “I’m going to—­stop it!” he panted, and his eyes looked big and dark and wild in the starlight.

“You can’t.  I belong to Kells.  You at least ought to have sense enough to see that.”

“Belong to him! ...  For God’s sake!  By what right?”

“By the right of possession.  Might is right here on the border.  Haven’t you told me that a hundred times?  Don’t you hold your claim--your gold—­by the right of your strength?  It’s the law of this border.  To be sure Kells stole me.  But just now I belong to him.  And lately I see his consideration—­his kindness in the light of what he could do if he held to that border law. ...  And of all the men I’ve met out here Kells is the least wild with this gold fever.  He sends his men out to do murder for gold; he’d sell his soul to gamble for gold; but just the same, he’s more of a man than—–­”

“Joan!” he interrupted, piercingly.  “You love this bandit!”

“You’re a fool!” burst out Joan.

“I guess—­I—­am,” he replied in terrible, slow earnestness.  He raised himself and appeared to loom over her and released his hold.

But Joan fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged to get away she was hard put to it to hold him.

“Jim!  Where are you going?”

He stood there a moment, a dark form against the night shadow, like an outline of a man cut from black stone.

“I’ll just step around—­there.”

“Oh, what for?” whispered Joan.

“I’m going to kill Kells.”