Kells lifted his head, as if listening, and then the whole manner of the man changed.  The burden that weighed upon him was thrown aside.  Like a general about to inspect a line of soldiers Kells faced the door, keen, stern, commanding.  The heavy tread of booted men, the clink of spurs, the low, muffled sound of voices, warned Joan that the gang had arrived.  Would Jim Cleve be among them?

Joan wanted a better position in which to watch and listen.  She thought a moment, and then carefully felt her way around to the other side of the steps, and here, sitting down with her feet hanging over the drop, she leaned against the wall and through a chink between the logs had a perfect view of the large cabin.  The men were filing in silent and intense.  Joan counted twenty-seven in all.  They appeared to fall into two groups, and it was significant that the larger group lined up on the side nearest Kells, and the smaller back of Gulden.  He had removed the bandage, and with a raw, red blotch where his right ear had been shot away, he was hideous.  There was some kind of power emanating from him, but it was not that which, was so keenly vital and impelling in Kells.  It was brute ferocity, dominating by sheer physical force.  In any but muscular clash between Kells and Gulden the latter must lose.  The men back of Gulden were a bearded, check-shirted, heavily armed group, the worst of that bad lot.  All the younger, cleaner-cut men like Red Pearce and Frenchy and Beady Jones and Williams and the scout Blicky, were on the other side.  There were two factions here, yet scarcely an antagonism, except possibly in the case of Kells.  Joan felt that the atmosphere was supercharged with suspense and fatality and possibility—­and anything might happen.  To her great joy, Jim Cleve was not present.

“Where’re Beard and Wood?” queried Kells.

“Workin’ over Beard’s sick hoss,” replied Pearce.  “They’ll show up by an’ by.  Anythin’ you say goes with them, you know.”

“Did you find young Cleve?”

“No.  He camps up in the timber somewheres.  Reckon he’ll be along, too.”

Kells sat down at the head of the table, and, taking up the little book, he began to finger it while his pale eyes studied the men before him.

“We shuffled the deck pretty well over at Beard’s,” he said.  “Now for the deal. ...  Who wants cards? ...  I’ve organized my Border Legion.  I’ll have absolute control, whether there’re ten men or a hundred.  Now, whose names go down in my book?”

Red Pearce stepped up and labored over the writing of his name.  Blicky, Jones, Williams, and others followed suit.  They did not speak, but each shook hands with the leader.  Evidently Kells exacted no oath, but accepted each man’s free action and his word of honor.  There was that about the bandit which made such action as binding as ties of blood.  He did not want men in his Legion who had not loyalty to him.  He seemed the kind of leader to whom men would be true.