"That's not all," said Kells, bluntly.
"Jim, I reckon you ain't tellin' what you did to thet lyin' girl an'
the feller. How'd you leave them?" added Pearce.
But Cleve appeared to become gloomy and reticent.
"Wimmen can hand the double-cross to a man, hey, Kells?" queried
Smith, with a broad grin.
"By gosh! I thought you'd been treated powerful mean!" exclaimed
Bate Wood, and he was full of wrath.
"A treacherous woman!" exclaimed Kells, passionately. He had taken
Cleve's story hard. The man must have been betrayed by women, and
Cleve's story had irritated old wounds.
Directly Kells left the fire and repaired to his blankets, near
where Joan lay. Probably he believed her asleep, for he neither
looked nor spoke. Cleve sought his bed, and likewise Wood and Smith.
Pearce was the last to leave, and as he stood up the light fell upon
his red face, lean and bold like an Indian's. Then he passed Joan,
looking down upon her and then upon the recumbent figure of Kells;
and if his glance was not baleful and malignant, as it swept over
the bandit, Joan believed her imagination must be vividly weird, and
running away with her judgment.
The next morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the
mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan
spared her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a
trail Smith alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others.
They climbed out of the notched head of the canon, and up a long
slope of weathered shale that let the horses slide back a foot for
every yard gained, and through a labyrinth of broken cliffs, and
over bench and ridge to the height of the divide. From there Joan
had a magnificent view. Foot-hills rolled round heads below, and
miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened Bear Lake. The rest
here at this height was counteracted by the fact that the altitude
affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again, and now the
travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was difficult,
for horses were more easily lamed in a descent. It took two hours to
descend the distance that had consumed all the morning to ascend.
Smith led through valley after valley between foot-hills, and late
in the afternoon halted by a spring in a timbered spot.
Joan ached in every muscle and she was too tired to care what
happened round the camp-fire. Jim had been close to her all day and
that had kept up her spirit. It was not yet dark when she lay down
for the night.