Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this
inexplicable change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each; and it was
not till she encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was
revealed. Frenchy was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his
being inculcated a sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the
darkness of a wicked life, and now that something came fleeting out
of the depths--and it was respect for a woman. To Joan it was a
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.