“Only an ace can beat thet!” muttered Jesse Smith into the silence.

Gulden reached for the deck as if he knew every card left was an ace.  His cavernous eyes gloated over Kells.  He cut, and before he looked himself he let Kells see the card.

“You can’t beat my streak!” he boomed.

Then he threw the card upon the table.  It was the ace of spades.

Kells seemed to shrivel, to totter, to sink.  Jim Cleve went quickly to him, held to him.

“Kells, go say good—­by to your girl!” boomed Gulden.  “I’ll want her pretty soon. ...  Come on, you Beady and Braverman.  Here’s your chance to get even.”

Gulden resumed his seat, and the two bandits invited to play were eager to comply, while the others pressed close once more.

Jim Cleve led the dazed Kells toward the door into Joan’s cabin.  For Joan just then all seemed to be dark.

When she recovered she was lying on the bed and Jim was bending over her.  He looked frantic with grief and desperation and fear.

“Jim!  Jim!” she moaned, grasping his hands.  He helped her to sit up.  Then she saw Kells standing there.  He looked abject, stupid, drunk.  Yet evidently he had begun to comprehend the meaning of his deed.

“Kells,” began Cleve, in low, hoarse tones, as he stepped forward with a gun.  “I’m going to kill you—­and Joan—­and myself!”

Kells stared at Cleve.  “Go ahead.  Kill me.  And kill the girl, too.  That’ll be better for her now.  But why kill yourself?”

“I love her.  She’s my wife!”

The deadness about Kells suddenly changed.  Joan flung herself before him.

“Kells—­listen,” she whispered in swift, broken passion.  “Jim Cleve was—­my sweetheart—­back in Hoadley.  We quarreled.  I taunted him.  I said he hadn’t nerve enough—­even to be bad.  He left me—­bitterly enraged.  Next day I trailed him.  I wanted to fetch him back. ...  You remember—­how you met me with Robert—­how you killed Roberts?  And all the rest? ...  When Jim and I met out here—­I was afraid to tell you.  I tried to influence him.  I succeeded—­till we got to Alder Creek.  There he went wild.  I married him—­hoping to steady him. ...  Then the day of the lynching—­we were separated from you in the crowd.  That night we hid—­and next morning took the stage.  Gulden and his gang held up the stage.  They thought you had put us there.  We fooled them, but we had to come on—­here to Cabin Gulch—­hoping to tell—­that you’d let us go. ...  And now—­now—­”

Joan had not strength to go on.  The thought of Gulden made her faint.

“It’s true, Kells,” added Cleve, passionately, as he faced the incredulous bandit.  “I swear it.  Why, you ought to see now!”

“My God, boy, I do see!” gasped Kells.  That dark, sodden thickness of comprehension and feeling, indicative of the hold of drink, passed away swiftly.  The shock had sobered him.

Instantly Joan saw it—­saw in him the return of the other and better Kells, how stricken with remorse.  She slipped to her knees and clasped her arms around him.  He tried to break her hold, but she held on.