"He made me think of a gorrilla," said Joan.
"There's only one man I know who's not afraid of Gulden. He's a new-
comer here on the border. Jim Cleve he calls himself. A youngster I
can't figure! But he'd slap the devil himself in the face. Cleve
won't last long out here. Yet you can never tell. Men like him, who
laugh at death, sometimes avert it for long. I was that way once. ...
Cleve heard me talking to Pearce about Gulden. And he said,
'Kells, I'll pick a fight with this Gulden and drive him out of the
camp or kill him.'"
"What did you say?" queried Joan, trying to steady her voice as she
averted her eyes.
"I said 'Jim, that wins me. But I don't want you killed.' ... It
certainly was nervy of the youngster. Said it just the same as--as
he'd offer to cinch my saddle. Gulden can whip a roomful of men.
He's done it. And as for a killer--I've heard of no man with his
record."
"And that's why you fear him?"
"It's not," replied Kells, passionately, as if his manhood had been
affronted. "It's because he's Gulden. There's something uncanny
about him. ... Gulden's a cannibal!"
Joan looked as if she had not heard aright.
"It's a cold fact. Known all over the border. Gulden's no braggart.
But he's been known to talk. He was a sailor--a pirate. Once he was
shipwrecked. Starvation forced him to be a cannibal. He told this in
California, and in Nevada camps. But no one believed him. A few
years ago he got snowed-up in the mountains back of Lewiston. He had
two companions with him. They all began to starve. It was absolutely
necessary to try to get out. They started out in the snow. Travel
was desperately hard. Gulden told that his companions dropped. But
he murdered them--and again saved his life by being a cannibal.
After this became known his sailor yarns were no longer doubted. ...
There's another story about him. Once he got hold of a girl and took
her into the mountains. After a winter he returned alone. He told
that he'd kept her tied in a cave, without any clothes, and she
froze to death."
"Oh, horrible!" moaned Joan.
"I don't know how true it is. But I believe it. Gulden is not a man.
The worst of us have a conscience. We can tell right from wrong. But
Gulden can't. He's beneath morals. He has no conception of manhood,
such as I've seen in the lowest of outcasts. That cave story with
the girl--that betrays him. He belongs back in the Stone Age. He's a
thing. ... And here on the border, if he wants, he can have all the
more power because of what he is."