“It’s a cold fact.  Known all over the border.  Gulden’s no braggart.  But he’s been known to talk.  He was a sailor—­a pirate.  Once he was shipwrecked.  Starvation forced him to be a cannibal.  He told this in California, and in Nevada camps.  But no one believed him.  A few years ago he got snowed-up in the mountains back of Lewiston.  He had two companions with him.  They all began to starve.  It was absolutely necessary to try to get out.  They started out in the snow.  Travel was desperately hard.  Gulden told that his companions dropped.  But he murdered them—­and again saved his life by being a cannibal.  After this became known his sailor yarns were no longer doubted. ...  There’s another story about him.  Once he got hold of a girl and took her into the mountains.  After a winter he returned alone.  He told that he’d kept her tied in a cave, without any clothes, and she froze to death.”

“Oh, horrible!” moaned Joan.

“I don’t know how true it is.  But I believe it.  Gulden is not a man.  The worst of us have a conscience.  We can tell right from wrong.  But Gulden can’t.  He’s beneath morals.  He has no conception of manhood, such as I’ve seen in the lowest of outcasts.  That cave story with the girl—­that betrays him.  He belongs back in the Stone Age.  He’s a thing. ...  And here on the border, if he wants, he can have all the more power because of what he is.”

“Kells, don’t let him see me!” entreated Joan.

The bandit appeared not to catch the fear in Joan’s tone and look.  She had been only a listener.  Presently with preoccupied and gloomy mien, he left her alone.

Joan did not see him again, except for glimpses under the curtain, for three days.  She kept the door barred and saw no one except Bate Wood, who brought her meals.  She paced her cabin like a caged creature.  During this period few men visited Kells’s cabin, and these few did not remain long.  Joan was aware that Kells was not always at home.  Evidently he was able to go out.  Upon the fourth day he called to her and knocked for admittance.  Joan let him in, and saw that he was now almost well again, once more cool, easy, cheerful, with his strange, forceful air.

“Good day, Joan.  You don’t seem to be pining for your—­negligent husband.”

He laughed as if he mocked himself, but there was gladness in the very sight of her, and some indefinable tone in his voice that suggested respect.

“I didn’t miss you,” replied Joan.  Yet it was a relief to see him.

“No, I imagine not,” he said, dryly.  “Well, I’ve been busy with men —­with plans.  Things are working out to my satisfaction.  Red Pearce got around Gulden.  There’s been no split.  Besides, Gulden rode off.  Someone said he went after a little girl named Brander.  I hope he gets shot. ...  Joan, we’ll be leaving Cabin Gulch soon.  I’m expecting news that’ll change things.  I won’t leave you here.  You’ll have to ride the roughest trails.  And your clothes are in tatters now.  You’ve got to have something to wear.”