Gulden reached out a huge hand.  His instant acceptance evidently amazed Kells and the others.

“Let her rip!” Gulden exclaimed.  He shook Kells’s hand and then laboriously wrote his name in the little book.

In that moment Gulden stood out alone in the midst of wild abandoned men.  What were Kells and this Legion to him?  What was the stealing of more or less gold?

“Free to do as you like except fight my men,” said Kells.  “That’s understood.”

“If they don’t pick a fight with me,” added the giant, and he grinned.

One by one his followers went through with the simple observances that Kells’s personality made a serious and binding compact.

“Anybody else?” called Kells, glancing round.  The somberness was leaving his face.

“Here’s Jim Cleve,” said Pearce, pointing toward the wall.

“Hello, youngster!  Come here.  I’m wanting you bad,” said Kells.

Cleve sauntered out of the shadow, and his glittering eyes were fixed on Gulden.  There was an instant of waiting.  Gulden looked at Cleve.  Then Kells quickly strode between them.

“Say, I forgot you fellows had trouble,” he said.  He attended solely to Gulden.  “You can’t renew your quarrel now.  Gulden, we’ve all fought together more or less, and then been good friends.  I want Cleve to join us, but not against your ill will.  How about it?”

“I’ve no ill will,” replied the giant, and the strangeness of his remark lay in its evident truth.  “But I won’t stand to lose my other ear!”

Then the ruffians guffawed in hoarse mirth.  Gulden, however, did not seem to see any humor in his remark.  Kells laughed with the rest.  Even Cleve’s white face relaxed into a semblance of a smile.

“That’s good.  We’re getting together,” declared Kells.  Then he faced Cleve, all about him expressive of elation, of assurance, of power.  “Jim, will you draw cards in this deal?”

“What’s the deal?” asked Cleve.

Then in swift, eloquent speech Kells launched the idea of his Border Legion, its advantages to any loose-footed, young outcast, and he ended his brief talk with much the same argument he had given Joan.  Back there in her covert Joan listened and watched, mindful of the great need of controlling her emotions.  The instant Jim Cleve had stalked into the light she had been seized by a spasm of trembling.

“Kells, I don’t care two straws one way or another,” replied Cleve.

The bandit appeared nonplussed.  “You don’t care whether you join my Legion or whether you don’t?”

“Not a damn,” was the indifferent answer.

“Then do me a favor,” went on Kells.  “Join to please me.  We’ll be good friends.  You’re in bad out here on the border.  You might as well fall in with us.”

“I’d rather go alone.”

“But you won’t last.”

“It’s a lot I care.”

The bandit studied the reckless, white face.  “See here, Cleve—­ haven’t you got the nerve to be bad—­thoroughly bad?”