“Yes.  She is Joan Randle, from Hoadley, Idaho.  She is over eighteen.  I understood she was detained here against her will.  She loved an honest young miner of the camp.  He brought me up here one night.  And I married them.”

“You—­married—­them!”

“Yes.”

Kells was slow in assimilating the truth and his action corresponded with his mind.  Slowly his hand moved toward his gun.  He drew it, threw it aloft.  And then all the terrible evil in the man flamed forth.  But as he deliberately drew down on the preacher Blicky leaped forward and knocked up the gun.  Flash and report followed; the discharge went into the roof.  Blicky grasped Kells’s arm and threw his weight upon it to keep it down.

“I fetched thet parson here,” he yelled, “an you ain’t a-goin’ to kill him! ...  Help, Jesse! ...  He’s crazy!  He’ll do it!”

Jesse Smith ran to Blicky’s aid and tore the gun out of Kells’s hand.  Jim Cleve grasped the preacher by the shoulders and, whirling him around, sent him flying out of the door.

“Run for your life!” he shouted.

Blicky and Jesse Smith were trying to hold the lunging Kells.

“Jim, you block the door,” called Jesse.  “Bate, you grab any loose guns an’ knives. ...  Now, boss, rant an’ be damned!”

They released Kells and backed away, leaving him the room.  Joan’s limbs seemed unable to execute her will.

“Joan!  It’s true,” he exclaimed, with whistling breath.

“Yes.”

“Who?” he bellowed.

“I’ll never tell.”

He reached for her with hands like claws, as if he meant to tear her, rend her.  Joan was helpless, weak, terrified.  Those shaking, clutching hands reached for her throat and yet never closed round it.  Kells wanted to kill her, but he could not.  He loomed over her, dark, speechless, locked in his paroxysm of rage.  Perhaps then came a realization of ruin through her.  He hated her because he loved her.  He wanted to kill her because of that hate, yet he could not harm her, even hurt her.  And his soul seemed in conflict with two giants—­the evil in him that was hate, and the love that was good.  Suddenly he flung her aside.  She stumbled over Pearce’s body, almost falling, and staggered back to the wall.  Kells had the center of the room to himself.  Like a mad steer in a corral he gazed about, stupidly seeking some way to escape.  But the escape Kells longed for was from himself.  Then either he let himself go or was unable longer to control his rage.  He began to plunge around.  His actions were violent, random, half insane.  He seemed to want to destroy himself and everything.  But the weapons were guarded by his men and the room contained little he could smash.  There was something magnificent in his fury, yet childish and absurd.  Even under its influence and his abandonment he showed a consciousness of its futility.  In a few moments the inside of the cabin was in disorder and Kells seemed a disheveled, sweating, panting wretch.  The rapidity and violence of his action, coupled with his fury, soon exhausted him.  He fell from plunging here and there to pacing the floor.  And even the dignity of passion passed from him.  He looked a hopeless, beaten, stricken man, conscious of defeat.