Cleve gave a start as if he had been stung.  Joan shut her eyes to blot out what she saw in his face.  Kells had used part of the very speech with which she had driven Jim Cleve to his ruin.  And those words galvanized him.  The fatality of all this!  Joan hated herself.  Those very words of hers would drive this maddened and heartbroken boy to join Kells’s band.  She knew what to expect from Jim even before she opened her eyes; yet when she did open them it was to see him transformed and blazing.

Then Kells either gave way to leaping passion or simulated it in the interest of his cunning.

“Cleve, you’re going down for a woman?” he queried, with that sharp, mocking ring in his voice.

“If you don’t shut up you’ll get there first,” replied Cleve, menacingly.

“Bah! ...  Why do you want to throw a gun on me?  I’m your friend:  You’re sick.  You’re like a poisoned pup.  I say if you’ve got nerve you won’t quit.  You’ll take a run for your money.  You’ll see life.  You’ll fight.  You’ll win some gold.  There are other women.  Once I thought I would quit for a woman.  But I didn’t.  I never found the right one till I had gone to hell—­out here on this border. ...  If you’ve got nerve, show me.  Be a man instead of a crazy youngster.  Spit out the poison. ...  Tell it before us all! ...  Some girl drove you to us?”

“Yes—­a girl!” replied Cleve, hoarsely, as if goaded.

“It’s too late to go back?”

“Too late!”

“There’s nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?”

“Nothing. ...  Only I—­can’t forget!” he panted.

Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness.  Joan saw how Kells worked upon Jim’s feelings.  He was only a hopeless, passionate boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man.  He would be like wax to a sculptor’s touch.  Jim would bend to this bandit’s will, and through his very tenacity of love and memory be driven farther on the road to drink, to gaming, and to crime.

Joan got to her feet, and with all her woman’s soul uplifting and inflaming her she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.

Kells made a gesture of savage violence.  “Show your nerve! ...  Join with me! ...  You’ll make a name on this border that the West will never forget!”

That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit’s best trump.  And it won.  Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from his damp brow.  The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from him.  He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as his own cowardice.

“Sure, Kells,” he said, recklessly.  “Let me in the game. ...  And—­by God—­I’ll play—­the hand out!” He reached for the pencil and bent over the book.

“Wait! ...  Oh, wait!” cried Joan.  The passion of that moment, the consciousness of its fateful portent and her situation, as desperate as Cleve’s, gave her voice a singularly high and piercingly sweet intensity.  She glided from behind the blanket—­out of the shadow—­ into the glare of the lanterns—­to face Kells and Cleve.