Joan felt that she would always be haunted and would always suffer that pang for Kells.  She would never lie down in the peace and quiet of her home, wherever that might be, without picturing Kells, dark and forbidding and burdened, pacing some lonely cabin or riding a lonely trail or lying with his brooding face upturned to the lonely stars.  Sooner or later he would meet his doom.  It was inevitable.  She pictured over that sinister scene of the dangling forms; but no—­ Kells would never end that way.  Terrible as he was, he had not been born to be hanged.  He might be murdered in his sleep, by one of that band of traitors who were traitors because in the nature of evil they had to be.  But more likely some gambling-hell, with gold and life at stake, would see his last fight.  These bandits stole gold and gambled among themselves and fought.  And that fight which finished Kells must necessarily be a terrible one.  She seemed to see into a lonely cabin where a log fire burned low and lamps flickered and blue smoke floated in veils and men lay prone on the floor—­ Kells, stark and bloody, and the giant Gulden, dead at last and more terrible in death, and on the rude table bags of gold and dull, shining heaps of gold, and scattered on the floor, like streams of sand and useless as sand, dust of gold—­the Destroyer.

18

All Joan’s fancies and dreams faded into obscurity, and when she was aroused it seemed she had scarcely closed her eyes.  But there was the gray gloom of dawn.  Jim was shaking her gently.

“No, you weren’t sleepy—­it’s just a mistake,” he said, helping her to arise.  “Now we’ll get out of here.”

They threaded a careful way out of the rocks, then hurried down the slope.  In the grayness Joan saw the dark shape of a cabin and it resembled the one Kells had built.  It disappeared.  Presently when Jim led her into a road she felt sure that this cabin had been the one where she had been a prisoner for so long.  They hurried down the road and entered the camp.  There were no lights.  The tents and cabins looked strange and gloomy.  The road was empty.  Not a sound broke the stillness.  At the bend Joan saw a stage-coach and horses looming up in what seemed gray distance.  Jim hurried her on.

They reached the stage.  The horses were restive.  The driver was on the seat, whip and reins in hand.  Two men sat beside him with rifles across their knees.  The door of the coach hung open.  There were men inside, one of whom had his head out of the window.  The barrel of a rifle protruded near him.  He was talking in a low voice to a man apparently busy at the traces.

“Hello, Cleve!  You’re late,” said another man, evidently the agent.  “Climb aboard.  When’ll you be back?”

“I hardly know,” replied Cleve, with hesitation.

“All right.  Good luck to you.”  He closed the coach door after Joan and Jim.  “Let ’em go, Bill.”

The stage started with a jerk.  To Joan what an unearthly creak and rumble it made, disturbing the silent dawn!  Jim squeezed her hand with joy.  They were on the way!