“I think you will.  You’ll remember every yard of the trail on which you were brought in here.  You won’t realize that till you see.”

Joan started and did not look back.  Cabin Gulch was like a place in a dream.  It was a relief when she rode out into the broad valley.  The grazing horses lifted their heads to whistle.  Joan saw the clumps of bushes and the flowers, the waving grass, but never as she had seen them before.  How strange that she knew exactly which way to turn, to head, to cross!  She trotted her horse so fast that Jim called to say he could not drive a pack-animal and keep to her gait.  Every rod of the trail lessened a burden.  Behind was something hideous and incomprehensible and terrible; before beckoned something beginning to seem bright.  And it was not the ruddy, calm sunset, flooding the hills with color.  That something called from beyond the hills.

She led straight to a camp-site she remembered long before she came to it; and the charred logs of the fire, the rocks, the tree under which she had lain—­all brought back the emotions she had felt there.  She grew afraid of the twilight, and when night settled down there were phantoms stalking in the shadows.  When Cleve, in his hurried camp duties, went out of her sight, she wanted to cry out to him, but had not the voice; and when he was close still she trembled and was cold.  He wrapped blankets round her and held her in his arms, yet the numb chill and the dark clamp of mind remained with her.  Long she lay awake.  The stars were pitiless.  When she shut her eyes the blackness seemed unendurable.  She slept, to wake out of nightmare, and she dared sleep no more.  At last the day came.

For Joan that faint trail seemed a broad road, blazoned through the wild canons and up the rocky fastness and through the thick brakes.  She led on and on and up and down, never at fault, with familiar landmarks near and far.  Cleve hung close to her, and now his call to her or to the pack-horse took on a keener note.  Every rough and wild mile behind them meant so much.  They did not halt at the noon hour.  They did not halt at the next camp-site, still more darkly memorable to Joan.  And sunset found them miles farther on, down on the divide, at the head of Lost Canon.

Here Joan ate and drank, and slept the deep sleep of exhaustion.  Sunrise found them moving, and through the winding, wild canon they made fast travel.  Both time and miles passed swiftly.  At noon they reached the little open cabin, and they dismounted for a rest and a drink at the spring.  Joan did not speak a word here.  That she could look into the cabin where she had almost killed a bandit, and then, through silent, lonely weeks, had nursed him back to life, was a proof that the long ride and distance were helping her, sloughing away the dark deadlock to hope and brightness.  They left the place exactly as they had found it, except that Cleve plucked the card from the bark of the balsam-tree—­Gulden’s ace—­of—­hearts target with its bullet—­holes.