"You--you wild thing! You desperado! I always told Bill you'd run
wild some day! ... March in the house and get out of that indecent
rig!"
That night under the spruces, with the starlight piercing the lacy
shadows, Joan waited for Jim Cleve. It was one of the white, silent,
mountain nights. The brook murmured over the stones and the wind
rustled the branches.
The wonder of Joan's home-coming was in learning that Uncle Bill
Hoadley was indeed Overland, the discoverer of Alder Creek. Years
and years of profitless toil had at last been rewarded in this rich
gold strike.
Joan hated to think of gold. She had wanted to leave the gold back
in Cabin Gulch, and she would have done so had Jim permitted it. And
to think that all that gold which was not Jim Cleve's belonged to
her uncle! She could not believe it.
Fatal and terrible forever to Joan would be the significance of
gold. Did any woman in the world or any man know the meaning of gold
as well as she knew it? How strange and enlightening and terrible
had been her experience! She had grown now not to blame any man,
honest miner or bloody bandit. She blamed only gold. She doubted its
value. She could not see it a blessing. She absolutely knew its
driving power to change the souls of men. Could she ever forget that
vast ant-hill of toiling diggers and washers, blind and deaf and
dumb to all save gold?
Always limned in figures of fire against the black memory would be
the forms of those wild and violent bandits! Gulden, the monster,
the gorilla, the cannibal! Horrible as was the memory of him, there
was no horror in thought of his terrible death. That seemed to be
the one memory that did not hurt.
But Kells was indestructible--he lived in her mind. Safe out of the
border now and at home, she could look back clearly. Still all was
not clear and never would be. She saw Kells the ruthless bandit, the
organizer, the planner, and the blood-spiller. He ought have no
place in a good woman's memory. Yet he had. She never condoned one
of his deeds or even his intentions. She knew her intelligence was
not broad enough to grasp the vastness of his guilt. She believed he
must have been the worst and most terrible character on that wild
border. That border had developed him. It had produced the time and
the place and the man. And therein lay the mystery. For over against
this bandit's weakness and evil she could contrast strength and
nobility. She alone had known the real man in all the strange phases
of his nature, and the darkness of his crime faded out of her mind.
She suffered remorse--almost regret. Yet what could she have done?
There had been no help for that impossible situation as, there was
now no help for her in a right and just placing of Kells among men.
He had stolen her--wantonly murdering for the sake of lonely,
fruitless hours with her; he had loved her--and he had changed; he
had gambled away her soul and life--a last and terrible proof of the
evil power of gold; and in the end he had saved her--he had gone
from her white, radiant, cool, with strange, pale eyes and his
amiable, mocking smile, and all the ruthless force of his life had
expended itself in one last magnificent stand. If only he had known
her at the end--when she lifted his head! But no--there had been
only the fading light--the strange, weird look of a retreating soul,
already alone forever.