"A rope!"
"Yes, I mean a halter, a hangman's noose. But I balked her!"
"Oh! ... A good girl?"
"Bad! Bad to the core of her black heart--bad as I am!" he
exclaimed, with fierce, low passion.
Joan trembled. The man, in an instant, seemed transformed, somber as
death. She could not look at him, but she must keep on talking.
"Bad? You don't seem bad to me--only violent, perhaps, or wild. ...
Tell me about yourself."
She had stirred him. His neglected pipe fell from his hand. In the
gloom of the camp-fire he must have seen faces or ghosts of his
past.
"Why not?" he queried, strangely. "Why not do what's been impossible
for years--open my lips? It'll not matter--to a girl who can never
tell! ... Have I forgotten? God!--I have not! Listen, so that you'll
KNOW I'm bad. My name's not Kells. I was born in the East, and went
to school there till I ran away. I was young, ambitious, wild. I
stole. I ran away--came West in 'fifty-one to the gold-fields in
California. There I became a prospector, miner, gambler, robber--and
road-agent. I had evil in me, as all men have, and those wild years
brought it out. I had no chance. Evil and gold and blood--they are
one and the same thing. I committed every crime till no place, bad
as it might be, was safe for me. Driven and hunted and shot and
starved--almost hanged! ... And now I'm--Kells! of that outcast crew
you named 'the Border Legion!' Every black crime but one--the
blackest--and that haunting me, itching my hands to-night."
"Oh, you speak so--so dreadfully!" cried Joan. "What can I say? I'm
sorry for you. I don't believe it all. What--what black crime haunts
you? Oh! what could be possible tonight--here in this lonely canon--
with only me?"
Dark and terrible the man arose.
"Girl," he said, hoarsely. "To-night--to-night--I'll. ... What have
you done to me? One more day--and I'll be mad to do right by you--
instead of WRONG. ... Do you understand that?"
Joan leaned forward in the camp-fire light with outstretched hands
and quivering lips, as overcome by his halting confession of one
last remnant of honor as she was by the dark hint of his passion.
"No--no--I don't understand--nor believe!" she cried. "But you
frighten me--so! I am all--all alone with you here. You said I'd be
safe. Don't--don't--"
Her voice broke then and she sank back exhausted in her seat.
Probably Kells had heard only the first words of her appeal, for he
took to striding back and forth in the circle of the camp-fire
light. The scabbard with the big gun swung against his leg. It grew
to be a dark and monstrous thing in Joan's sight. A marvelous
intuition born of that hour warned her of Kells's subjection to the
beast in him, even while, with all the manhood left to him, he still
battled against it. Her girlish sweetness and innocence had availed
nothing, except mock him with the ghost of dead memories. He could
not be won or foiled. She must get her hands on that gun--kill him--
or--! The alternative was death for herself. And she leaned there,
slowly gathering all the unconquerable and unquenchable forces of a
woman's nature, waiting, to make one desperate, supreme, and final
effort.