flash of light.  Yesterday these ruffians despised her; to-day they respected her.  So they had believed what she had so desperately flung at Jim Cleve.  They believed her good, they pitied her, they respected her, they responded to her effort to turn a boy back from a bad career.  They were bandits, desperados, murderers, lost, but each remembered in her a mother or a sister.  What each might have felt or done had he possessed her, as Kells possessed her, did not alter the case as it stood.  A strange inconsistency of character made them hate Kells for what they might not have hated in themselves.  Her appeal to Cleve, her outburst of truth, her youth and misfortune, had discovered to each a human quality.  As in Kells something of nobility still lingered, a ghost among his ruined ideals, so in the others some goodness remained.  Joan sustained an uplifting divination—­no man was utterly bad.  Then came the hideous image of the giant Gulden, the utter absence of soul in him, and she shuddered.  Then came the thought of Jim Cleve, who had not believed her, who had bitterly made the fatal step, who might in the strange reversion of his character be beyond influence.

And it was at the precise moment when this thought rose to counteract the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men that Joan looked out to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon him the stamp of abandonment.  Joan suffered a contraction of heart that benumbed her breast.  She stood a moment battling with herself.  She was brave enough, desperate enough, to walk straight up to Cleve, remove her mask and say, “I am Joan!” But that must be a last resource.  She had no plan, yet she might force an opportunity to see Cleve alone.

A shout rose above the hubbub of voices.  A tall man was pointing across the gulch where dust-clouds showed above the willows.  Men crowded round him, all gazing in the direction of his hand, all talking at once.

“Jesse Smith’s hoss, I swear!” shouted the tall man.  “Kells, come out here!”

Kells appeared, dark and eager, at the door, and nimbly he leaped to the excited group.  Pearce and Wood and others followed.

“What’s up?” called the bandit.  “Hello!  Who’s that riding bareback?”

“He’s shore cuttin’ the wind,” said Wood.

“Blicky!” exclaimed the tall man.  “Kells, there’s news.  I seen Jesse’s hoss.”

Kells let out a strange, exultant cry.  The excited talk among the men gave place, to a subdued murmur, then subsided.  Blicky was running a horse up the road, hanging low over him, like an Indian.  He clattered to the bench, scattered the men in all directions.  The fiery horse plunged and pounded.  Blicky was gray of face and wild of aspect.

“Jesse’s come!” he yelled, hoarsely, at Kells.  “He jest fell off his hoss—­all in!  He wants you—­an’ all the gang!  He’s seen a million dollars in gold-dust!”