is difference was--how their attitude had changed. Then she set
herself the task of being useful. First she helped Bate Wood. He was
roughly kind. She had not realized that there was sadness about her
until he whispered: "Don't be downcast, miss. Mebbe it'll come out
right yet!" That amazed Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances,
the sympathy she felt in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She
grew keen to learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in
all the men. Then she went to Pearce and with all a woman's craft she
exaggerated the silent sadness that had brought quick response from
Wood. Red Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her
proximity as that of a feminine thing which roused the devil in him.
Pearce could not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity
in him. Joan sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This
lieutenant of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan
mended a great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud
of her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then as she
finished he glanced furtively round; he pressed her hand: "I had a
sister once!" he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate:
"Kells!--he'll get his over in the gold-camp!"

Joan turned away from Pearce still more amazed. Some strange, deep
undercurrent was working here. There had been unmistakable hate for
Kells in his dark look and a fierce implication in his portent of
fatality. What had caused this sudden impersonal interest in her
situation? What was the meaning of the subtle animosity toward the
bandit leader? Was there no honor among evil men banded together for
evil deeds? Were jealousy, ferocity, hate and faithlessness fostered by
this wild and evil border life, ready at an instant's notice to break
out? Joan divined the vain and futile and tragical nature of Kell's
great enterprise. It could not succeed. It might bring a few days or
weeks of fame, of blood-stained gold, of riotous gambling, but by its
very nature it was doomed. It embraced failure and death.

Joan went from man to man, keener now on the track of this inexplicable
change, sweetly and sadly friendly to each; and it was not till she
encountered the little Frenchman that the secret was revealed. Frenchy
was of a different race. Deep in the fiber of his being inculcated a
sentiment, a feeling, long submerged in the darkness of a wicked life,
and now that somethin