“Joan! ...  Joan! ...  Joan!” he murmured when their lips parted.  “Am I dreaming—­drunk—­or crazy?”

“Oh, Jim, I’m real—­you have me in your arms,” she whispered.  “Dear Jim—­kiss me again—­and say you believe me.”

“Believe you? ...  I’m out of my mind with joy. ...  You loved me!  You followed me! ...  And—­that idea of mine—­only an absurd, vile suspicion!  I might have known—­had I been sane!”

“There. ...  Oh, Jim! ...  Enough of madness.  We’ve got to plan.  Remember where we are.  There’s Kells, and this terrible situation to meet!”

He stared at her, slowly realizing, and then it was his turn to shake.  “My God!  I’d forgotten.  I’ll have to kill you now!”

A reaction set in.  If he had any self-control left he lost it, and like a boy whose fling into manhood had exhausted his courage he sank beside her and buried his face against her.  And he cried in a low, tense, heartbroken way.  For Joan it was terrible to hear him.  She held his hand to her breast and implored him not to weaken now.  But he was stricken with remorse—­he had run off like a coward, he had brought her to this calamity—­and he could not rise under it.  Joan realized that he had long labored under stress of morbid emotion.  Only a supreme effort could lift him out of it to strong and reasoning equilibrium, and that must come from her.

She pushed him away from her, and held him back where he must see her, and white-hot with passionate purpose, she kissed him.  “Jim Cleve, if you’ve nerve enough to be bad you’ve nerve enough to save the girl who loves you—­who belongs to you!”

He raised his face and it flashed from red to white.  He caught the subtlety of her antithesis.  With the very two words which had driven him away under the sting of cowardice she uplifted him; and with all that was tender and faithful and passionate in her meaning of surrender she settled at once and forever the doubt of his manhood.  He arose trembling in every limb.  Like a dog he shook himself.  His breast heaved.  The shades of scorn and bitterness and abandon might never have haunted his face.  In that moment he had passed from the reckless and wild, sick rage of a weakling to the stern, realizing courage of a man.  His suffering on this wild border had developed a different fiber of character; and at the great moment, the climax, when his moral force hung balanced between elevation and destruction, the woman had called to him, and her unquenchable spirit passed into him.

“There’s only one thing—­to get away,” he said.

“Yes, but that’s a terrible risk,” she replied.

“We’ve a good chance now.  I’ll get horses.  We can slip away while they’re all excited.”

“No—­no.  I daren’t risk so much.  Kells would find out at once.  He’d be like a hound on our trail.  But that’s not all.  I’ve a horror of Gulden.  I can’t explain.  I feel it.  He would know—­he would take the trail.  I’d never try to escape with Gulden in camp. ...  Jim, do you know what he’s done?”