“Kells, you’ll let me go soon—­help me to get home?” implored Joan in a low voice.

“Girl, it’d never be safe now,” he replied.

“Then later—­soon—­when it is safe?”

“We’ll see. ...  But you’re my wife now!”

With the latter words the man subtly changed.  Something of the power she had felt in him before his illness began again to be manifested.  Joan divined that these comrades had caused the difference in him.

“You won’t dare—!” Joan was unable to conclude her meaning.  A tight band compressed her breast and throat, and she trembled.

“Will you dare go out there and tell them you’re not my wife?” he queried.  His voice had grown stronger and his eyes were blending shadows of thought.

Joan knew that she dared not.  She must choose the lesser of two evils.  “No man—­could be such a beast to a woman—­after she’d saved his life,” she whispered.

“I could be anything.  You had your chance.  I told you to go.  I said if I ever got well I’d be as I was—­before.”

“But you’d have died.”

“That would have been better for you .. ...  Joan, I’ll do this.  Marry you honestly and leave the country.  I’ve gold.  I’m young.  I love you.  I intend to have you.  And I’ll begin life over again.  What do you say?”

“Say?  I’d die before—­I’d marry you!” she panted,

“All right, Joan Randle,” he replied, bitterly.  “For a moment I saw a ghost.  My old dead better self! ...  It’s gone. ...  And you stay with me.”

7

After dark Kells had his men build a fire before the open side of the cabin.  He lay propped up on blankets and his saddle, while the others lounged or sat in a half-circle in the light, facing him.

Joan drew her blankets into a corner where the shadows were thick and she could see without being seen.  She wondered how she would ever sleep near all these wild men—­if she could ever sleep again.  Yet she seemed more curious and wakeful than frightened.  She had no way to explain it, but she felt the fact that her presence in the camp had a subtle influence, at once restraining and exciting.  So she looked out upon the scene with wide-open eyes.

And she received more strongly than ever an impression of wildness.  Even the camp-fire seemed to burn wildly; it did not glow and sputter and pale and brighten and sing like an honest camp-fire.  It blazed in red, fierce, hurried flames, wild to consume the logs.  It cast a baleful and sinister color upon the hard faces there.  Then the blackness of the enveloping night was pitchy, without any bold outline of canon wall or companionship of stars.  The coyotes were out in force and from all around came their wild sharp barks.  The wind rose and mourned weirdly through the balsams.