Then she drew still closer to Kells, and with all the wondrous subtlety of a woman in a supreme moment where a life and a soul hang in the balance, she made of herself an absolute contrast to the fierce, wild, unyielding creature who had fought him off.

“Let me show—­you the difference,” she whispered, leaning to him, glowing, soft, eager, terrible, with her woman’s charm.  “Something tells me—­gives me strength. ...  What might be! ...  Only barely possible—­if in my awful plight—­you turned out to be a man, good instead of bad! ...  And—­if it were possible—­see the differences—­ in the woman. ...  I show you—­to save my soul!”

She gave the fascinated Kells her hands, slipped into his arms, to press against his breast, and leaned against him an instant, all one quivering, surrendered body; and then lifting a white face, true in its radiance to her honest and supreme purpose to give him one fleeting glimpse of the beauty and tenderness and soul of love, she put warm and tremulous lips to his.

Then she fell away from him, shrinking and terrified.  But he stood there as if something beyond belief had happened to him, and the evil of his face, the hard lines, the brute softened and vanished in a light of transformation.

“My God!” he breathed softly.  Then he awakened as if from a trance, and, leaping down the steps, he violently swept aside the curtain and disappeared.

Joan threw herself upon the bed and spent the last of her strength in the relief of blinding tears.  She had won.  She believed she need never fear Kells again.  In that one moment of abandon she had exalted him.  But at what cost!

10

Next day, when Kells called Joan out into the other cabin, she verified her hope and belief, not so much in the almost indefinable aging and sadness of the man, as in the strong intuitive sense that her attraction had magnified for him and had uplifted him.

“You mustn’t stay shut up in there any longer,” he said.  “You’ve lost weight and you’re pale.  Go out in the air and sun.  You might as well get used to the gang.  Bate Wood came to me this morning and said he thought you were the ghost of Dandy Dale.  That name will stick to you.  I don’t care how you treat my men.  But if you’re friendly you’ll fare better.  Don’t go far from the cabin.  And if any man says or does a thing you don’t like—­flash your gun.  Don’t yell for me.  You can bluff this gang to a standstill.”

That was a trial for Joan, when she walked out into the light in Dandy Dale’s clothes.  She did not step very straight, and she could feel the cold prick of her face under the mask.  It was not shame, but fear that gripped her.  She would rather die than have Jim Cleve recognize her in that bold disguise.  A line of dusty saddled horses stood heads and bridles down before the cabin, and a number of lounging men ceased talking when she appeared.  It was a crowd that smelled of dust and horses and