“Joan!” he gasped, and the sound of his voice seemed to be the passing from horrible doubt to certainty.

Like a panther he leaped at her, fastened a powerful hand at the neck of her blouse, jerked her to her knees, and began to drag her.  Joan fought his iron grasp.  The twisting and tightening of her blouse choked her utterance.  He did not look down upon her, but she could see him, the rigidity of his body set in violence, the awful shade upon his face, the upstanding hair on his head.  He dragged her as if she had been an empty sack.  Like a beast he was seeking a dark place—­a hole to hide her.  She was strangling; a distorted sight made objects dim; and now she struggled instinctively.  Suddenly the clutch at her neck loosened; gaspingly came the intake of air to her lungs; the dark-red veil left her eyes.  She was still upon her knees.  Cleve stood before her, like a gray-faced demon, holding his gun level, ready to fire.

“Pray for your soul—­and mine!”

“Jim!  Oh Jim! ...  Will you kill yourself, too?”

“Yes!  But pray, girl—­quick!”

“Then I pray to God—­not for my soul—­but just for one more moment of life...  To tell you, jim!”

Cleve’s face worked and the gun began to waver.  Her reply had been a stroke of lightning into the dark abyss of his jealous agony.

Joan saw it, and she raised her quivering face, and she held up her arms to him.  “To tell—­you—­Jim!” she entreated.

“What?” he rasped out.

“That I’m innocent—­that I’m as good—­a girl—­as ever.. ever. ...  Let me tell you. ...  Oh, you’re mistaken—­terribly mistaken.”

“Now, I know I’m drunk. ...  You, Joan Randle!  You in that rig!  You the companion of Jack Kells!  Not even his wife!  The jest of these foul-mouthed bandits!  And you say you’re innocent—­good? ...  When you refused to leave him!”

“I was afraid to go—­afraid you’d be killed,” she moaned, beating her breast.

It must have seemed madness to him, a monstrous nightmare, a delirium of drink, that Joan Randle was there on her knees in a brazen male attire, lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to believe in her innocence.

Joan burst into swift, broken utterance:  “Only listen!  I trailed you out—­twenty miles from Hoadley.  I met Roberts.  He came with me.  He lamed his horse—­we had to camp.  Kells rode down on us.  He had two men.  They camped there.  Next morning he—­killed Roberts—­made off with me. ...  Then he killed his men—­just to have me—­alone to himself. ...  We crossed a range—­camped in the canon.  There he attacked me—­and I—­I shot him! ...  But I couldn’t leave him—­to die!” Joan hurried on with her narrative, gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve.  “First he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden—­and the others,” she went on.  “He meant to save me from them.  But they guessed or found