ad been
walking to and fro. After a few moments Kells entered alone. The cabin
was now so dark that Joan could barely distinguish the bandit. Then he
lighted the lanterns. He hung up several on the wall and placed two upon
the table. From somewhere among his effects he produced a small book and
a pencil; these, with a heavy, gold-mounted gun, he laid on the table
before the seat he manifestly meant to occupy. That done, he began a
slow pacing up and down the room, his hands behind his back, his head
bent in deep and absorbing thought. What a dark, sinister, plotting
figure! Joan had seen many men in different attitudes of thought, but
here was a man whose mind seemed to give forth intangible yet terrible
manifestations of evil. The inside of that gloomy cabin took on another
aspect; there was a meaning in the saddles and bridles and weapons on
the wall; that book and pencil and gun seemed to contain the dark deeds
of wild men; and all about the bandit hovered a power sinister in its
menace to the unknown and distant toilers for gold.

Kells lifted his head, as if listening, and then the whole manner of the
man changed. The burden that weighed upon him was thrown aside. Like a
general about to inspect a line of soldiers Kells faced the door, keen,
stern, commanding. The heavy tread of booted men, the clink of spurs,
the low, muffled sound of voices, warned Joan that the gang had arrived.
Would Jim Cleve be among them?

Joan wanted a better position in which to watch and listen. She thought
a moment, and then carefully felt her way around to the other side of
the steps, and here, sitting down with her feet hanging over the drop,
she leaned against the wall and through a chink between the logs had
a perfect view of the large cabin. The men were filing in silent and
intense. Joan counted twenty-seven in all. They appeared to fall into
two groups, and it was significant that the larger group lined up on the
side nearest Kells, and the smaller back of Gulden. He had removed the
bandage, and with a raw, red blotch where his right ear had been shot
away, he was hideous. There was some kind of power emanating from him,
but it was not that which, was so keenly vital and impelling in Kells.
It was brute ferocity, dominating by sheer physical force. In any but
muscular clash between Kells and Gulden the latter must lose. The men
back of Gulden were a bearded, check-shirted, heavily armed group, the
worst of that bad lot. All the y