Let me
tell you.... Oh, you're mistaken--terribly mistaken."

"Now, I know I'm drunk.... You, Joan Randle! You in that rig! You
the companion of Jack Kells! Not even his wife! The jest of these
foul-mouthed bandits! And you say you're innocent--good?... When you
refused to leave him!"

"I was afraid to go--afraid you'd be killed," she moaned, beating her
breast.

It must have seemed madness to him, a monstrous nightmare, a delirium of
drink, that Joan Randle was there on her knees in a brazen male attire,
lifting her arms to him, beseeching him, not to spare her life, but to
believe in her innocence.

Joan burst into swift, broken utterance: "Only listen! I trailed you
out--twenty miles from Hoadley. I met Roberts. He came with me. He lamed
his horse--we had to camp. Kells rode down on us. He had two men. They
camped there. Next morning he--killed Roberts--made off with me.... Then
he killed his men--just to have me--alone to himself.... We crossed a
range--camped in the canon. There he attacked me--and I--I shot him!...
But I couldn't leave him--to die!" Joan hurried on with her narrative,
gaining strength and eloquence as she saw the weakening of Cleve. "First
he said I was his wife to fool that Gulden--and the others," she went
on. "He meant to save me from them. But they guessed or found out....
Kells forced me into these bandit clothes. He's depraved, somehow. And
I had to wear something. Kells hasn't harmed me--no one has. I've
influence over him. He can't resist it. He's tried to force me to marry
him. And he's tried to give up to his evil intentions. But he can't.
There's good in him. I can make him feel it.... Oh, he loves me, and I'm
not afraid of him any more.... It has been a terrible time for me, Jim,
but I'm still--the same girl you knew--you used to--"

Cleve dropped the gun and he waved his hand before his eyes as if to
dispel a blindness.

"But why--why?" he asked, incredulously. "Why did you leave Hoadley?
That's forbidden. You knew the risk."

Joan gazed steadily up at him, to see the whiteness slowly fade out of
his face. She had imagined it would be an overcoming of pride to
betray her love, but she had been wrong. The moment was so full, so
overpowering, that she seemed dumb. He had ruined himself for her, and
out of that ruin had come the glory of her love. Perhaps it was all too
late, but at least he would know that for love of him she had in turn
sacrificed herself.

"Jim," she whisp