ion that needed no rest, but was forced to rest
because of weaker attachments. On the other hand, he was not sullen or
brooding. It was that he did not seem to think.

Kells had been rapidly gaining strength since the extraction of
the bullet, and it was evident that his interest was growing
proportionately. He asked questions and received most of his replies
from Red Pearce. Joan did not listen attentively at first, but presently
she regretted that she had not. She gathered that Kells's fame as
the master bandit of the whole gold region of Idaho, Nevada, and
northeastern California was a fame that he loved as much as the gold he
stole. Joan sensed, through the replies of these men and their attitude
toward Kells, that his power was supreme. He ruled the robbers and
ruffians in his bands, and evidently they were scattered from Bannack
to Lewiston and all along the border. He had power, likewise, over the
border hawks not directly under his leadership. During the weeks of his
enforced stay in the canon there had been a cessation of operations--the
nature of which Joan merely guessed--and a gradual accumulation of
idle wailing men in the main camp. Also she gathered, but vaguely, that
though Kells had supreme power, the organization he desired was yet
far from being consummated. He showed thoughtfulness and irritation by
turns, and it was the subject of gold that drew his intensest interest.

"Reckon you figgered right, Jack," said Red Pearce, and paused as
if before a long talk, while he refilled his pipe. "Sooner or later
there'll be the biggest gold strike ever made in the West. Wagon-trains
are met every day comin' across from Salt Lake. Prospectors are workin'
in hordes down from Bannack. All the gulches an' valleys in the Bear
Mountains have their camps. Surface gold everywhere an' easy to get
where there's water. But there's diggin's all over. No big strike yet.
It's bound to come sooner or later. An' then when the news hits the
main-traveled roads an' reaches back into the mountains there's goin' to
be a rush that'll make '49 an' '51 look sick. What do you say, Bate?"

"Shore will," replied a grizzled individual whom Kells had called Bate
Wood. He was not so young as his companions, more sober, less wild,
and slower of speech. "I saw both '49 and '51. Them was days! But I'm
agreein' with Red. There shore will be hell on this Idaho border sooner
or later. I've been a prospector, though I never hankered after the h