That evening they all had supper together in Kell’s cabin.  Bate Wood grumbled because he had packed most of his outfit.  It so chanced that Joan sat directly opposite Jim Cleve, and while he ate he pressed her foot with his under the table.  The touch thrilled Joan.  Jim did not glance at her, but there was such a change in him that she feared it might rouse Kells’s curiosity.  This night, however, the bandit could not have seen anything except a gleam of yellow.  He talked, he sat at table, but did not eat.  After supper he sent Joan to her cabin, saying they would be on the trail at daylight.  Joan watched them awhile from her covert.  They had evidently talked themselves out, and Kells grew thoughtful.  Smith and Pearce went outside, apparently to roll their beds on the ground under the porch roof.  Wood, who said he was never a good sleeper, smoked his pipe.  And Jim Cleve spread blankets along the wall in the shadow and and lay down.  Joan could see his eyes shining toward the door.  Of course he was thinking of her.  But could he see her eyes?  Watching her chance, she slipped a hand from behind the curtain, and she knew Cleve saw it.  What a comfort that was!  Joan’s heart swelled.  All might yet be well.  Jim Cleve would be near her while she slept.  She could sleep now without those dark dreams—­without dreading to awaken to the light.  Again she saw Kells pacing the room, silent, bent, absorbed, hands behind his back, weighted with his burden.  It was impossible not to feel sorry for him.  With all his intelligence and cunning power, his cause was hopeless.  Joan knew that as she knew so many other things without understanding why.  She had not yet sounded Jesse Smith, but not a man of all the others was true to Kells.  They would be of his Border Legion, do his bidding, revel in their ill-gotten gains, and then, when he needed them most, be false to him.

When Joan was awakened her room was shrouded in gray gloom.  A bustle sound from the big cabin, and outside horses stamped and men talked.

She sat alone at breakfast and ate by lantern-light.  It was necessary to take a lantern back to her cabin, and she was so long in her preparations there that Kells called again.  Somehow she did not want to leave this cabin.  It seemed protective and private, and she feared she might not find such quarters again.  Besides, upon the moment of leaving she discovered that she had grown attached to the place where she had suffered and thought and grown so much.

Kells had put out the lights.  Joan hurried through the cabin and outside.  The gray obscurity had given way to dawn.  The air was cold, sweet, bracing with the touch of mountain purity in it.  The men, except Kells, were all mounted, and the pack-train was in motion.  Kells dragged the rude door into position, and then, mounting, he called to Joan to follow.  She trotted her horse after him, down the slope, across the brook and through the wet willows, and out upon the wide trail.  She glanced ahead, discerning that the third man from her was Jim Cleve; and that fact, in the start for Alder Creek, made all the difference in the world.