Cabin Gulch by Zane Grey

longer heard. She relaxed, and suddenly seemed to quiver all over with the name she whispered to herself.
Jim! Jim! Oh, Jim!
It was an inward sob. What he had done was terrible. It tortured her. She had not believed it in him. Yet, now she thought, how like him! All for her—in despair and spite—he had ruined himself. He would be killed out there in some drunken brawl—or, still worse, he would become a member of this bandit crew and drift into crime. That was the great blow to Joan—that curse she had put upon him. How silly, false, and vain had been her coquetry—her indifference. She loved Jim Cleve. She had not known that when she started out to trail him, to fetch himback, but she knew it now. She ought to have known before.
    The situation she had foreseen loomed, dark and monstrous and terrible in prospect. Just to think of it made her body creep and shudder with cold terror. Yet there was that strange inward thrilling burn around her heart. Somewhere and soon she was coming face to face with this changed Jim Cleve—this boy who had become a reckless devil. What would he do? What could she do? Might he not despise her—scorn her—curse her—taking her at Kells’s word, the wife of a bandit? But, no! He could divine the truth in the flash of an eye. And then? She could not think what might happen, but it must mean blood—death. If he escaped Kells, how could he ever escape Gulden—this huge vulture of prey?
    Still, with the horror thick upon her, Joan could not wholly give up. The moment Jim Cleve’s name and his ruin burst upon her ears, in the gossip of these bandits, she had become another girl—a girl wholly become a woman, and one with driving passion to save, if it cost her life. She lost her fear of Kells, of the others, of all except Gulden.
    The torment in her brain eased then, and gradually she quieted down, with only a pang and a weight in her breast. The past seemed far away. The present was nothing. Only the future—that contained Jim Cleve—mattered to her. She would not have left the clutches of Kells if at that moment she could have walked forth free and safe. She was going on to Cabin Gulch. That thought was the last one in her weary mind as she dropped to sleep.

E IGHT
    In three days—during which Joan attended Kells as faithfully as if she were indeed his wife—he thought that he had gained sufficiently to undertake the journey to the main camp, Cabin Gulch. He was eager to get back there and imperious in his overruling of any opposition. The men could take turns at propping him in a saddle. So on the morning of the fourth day they packed for the ride.
    During these few days Joan had verified her suspicion that Kells had two sides to his character, or so it seemed, rather, that her presence developed a latent or a long dead side. When she was with him, thereby distracting his attention, he was entirely different from what he was when his men surrounded him. Apparently he had no knowledge of this. He showed surprise and gratitude at Joan’s kindness, although never pity or compassion for her. That he had become infatuated with her, Joan could no longer doubt. His strange eyes followed her; there was a strange dreamy light in them; he was mostly silent with her.
    Before those few days had come to an end he had developed two things, a reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance of the presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan felt the eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances, except Gulden’s. The giant studied her with slow cavernous stare, without curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman was a new and strange creature to him, and he was experiencing unfamiliar sensations. Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze—for she avoided it as much as possible—she shuddered with a sick memory of a story she had heard—how a huge and ferocious gorilla had