Joan dropped the gun and sank beside him, helpless, horror-stricken, wringing her hands.  She wanted to tell him she was sorry, that he drove her to it, that he must let her pray for him.  But she could not speak.  Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth and she seemed strangling.

Another change, slower and more subtle, passed over Kells.  He did not see Joan.  He forgot her.  The white shaded out of his face, leaving a gray like that of his somber eyes.  Spirit, sense, life, were fading from him.  The quivering of a racked body ceased.  And all that seemed left was a lonely soul groping on the verge of the dim borderland between life and death.  Presently his shoulders slipped along the wall and he fell, to lie limp and motionless before Joan.  Then she fainted.

6

When Joan returned to consciousness she was lying half outside the opening of the cabin and above her was a drift of blue gun-smoke, slowly floating upward.  Almost as swiftly as perception of that smoke came a shuddering memory.  She lay still, listening.  She did not hear a sound except the tinkle and babble and gentle rush of the brook.  Kells was dead, then.  And overmastering the horror of her act was a relief, a freedom, a lifting of her soul out of the dark dread, a something that whispered justification of the fatal deed.

She got up and, avoiding to look within the cabin, walked away.  The sun was almost at the zenith.  Where had the morning hours gone?

“I must get away,” she said, suddenly.  The thought quickened her.  Down the canon the horses were grazing.  She hurried along the trail, trying to decide whether to follow this dim old trail or endeavor to get out the way she had been brought in.  She decided upon the latter.  If she traveled slowly, and watched for familiar landmarks, things she had seen once, and hunted carefully for the tracks, she believed she might be successful.  She had the courage to try.  Then she caught her pony and led him back to camp.

“What shall I take?” she pondered.  She decided upon very little—­a blanket, a sack of bread and meat, and a canteen of water.  She might need a weapon, also.  There was only one, the gun with which she had killed Kells.  It seemed utterly impossible to touch that hateful thing.  But now that she had liberated herself, and at such cost, she must not yield to sentiment.  Resolutely she started for the cabin, but when she reached it her steps were dragging.  The long, dull-blue gun lay where she had dropped it.  And out of the tail of averted eyes she saw a huddled shape along the wall.  It was a sickening moment when she reached a shaking hand for the gun.  And at that instant a low moan transfixed her.

She seemed frozen rigid.  Was the place already haunted?  Her heart swelled in her throat and a dimness came before her eyes.  But another moan brought a swift realization—­Kells was alive.  And the cold, clamping sickness, the strangle in her throat, all the feelings of terror, changed and were lost in a flood of instinctive joy.  He was not dead.  She had not killed him.  She did not have blood on her hands.  She was not a murderer.