understand what I do feel. But I know--if it had been Gulden instead of
you--that I wouldn't have tried to hide my--myself behind this blanket.
I'm no longer--AFRAID of you. That's why I acted--so--just like a girl
caught.... Oh! can't you see!"

"No, I can't see," he replied. "I wish I hadn't fetched you here. I wish
the thing hadn't happened. Now it's too late."

"It's never too late.... You--you haven't harmed me yet."

"But I love you," he burst out. "Not like I have. Oh! I see this--that
I never really loved any woman before. Something's gripped me. It feels
like that rope at my throat--when they were going to hang me."

Then Joan trembled in the realization that a tremendous passion had
seized upon this strange, strong man. In the face of it she did not know
how to answer him. Yet somehow she gathered courage in the knowledge.

Kells stood silent a long moment, looking out at the green slope. And
then, as if speaking to himself, he said: "I stacked the deck and dealt
myself a hand--a losing hand--and now I've got to play it!"

With that he turned to Joan. It was the piercing gaze he bent upon her
that hastened her decision to resume the part she had to play. And she
dropped the blanket. Kells's gloom and that iron hardness vanished.
He smiled as she had never seen him smile. In that and his speechless
delight she read his estimate of her appearance; and, notwithstanding
the unwomanliness of her costume, and the fact of his notorious
character, she knew she had never received so great a compliment.
Finally he found his voice.

"Joan, if you're not the prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!"

"I can't get used to this outfit," said Joan. "I can't--I won't go away
from this room in it."

"Sure you will. See here, this'll make a difference, maybe. You're so
shy."

He held out a wide piece of black felt that evidently he had cut from a
sombrero. This he measured over her forehead and eyes, and then taking
his knife he cut it to a desired shape. Next he cut eyeholes in it and
fastened to it a loop made of a short strip of buckskin.

"Try that.... Pull it down--even with your eyes. There!--take a look at
yourself."

Joan faced the mirror and saw merely a masked stranger. She was no
longer Joan Randle. Her identity had been absolutely lost.

"No one--who ever knew me--could recognize me now," she murmured, and
the relieving thought centered round Jim Cleve.

"I hadn't figured on that," replied Kells. "Bu