what you
want."

Joan seemed irresistibly drawn to him again, and the supplication, as
she lifted her blushing face, and the yielding, were perilously sweet.

"Jim, kiss me and hold me--the way--you did that night!"

And it was not Joan who first broke that embrace.

"Find my mask," she said.

Cleve picked up his gun and presently the piece of black felt. He held
it as if it were a deadly thing.

"Put it on me."

He slipped the cord over her head and adjusted the mask so the holes
came right for her eyes.

"Joan, it hides the--the GOODNESS of you," he cried. "No one can see
your eyes now. No one will look at your face. That rig shows your--shows
you off so! It's not decent.... But, O Lord! I'm bound to confess how
pretty, how devilish, how seductive you are! And I hate it."

"Jim, I hate it, too. But we must stand it. Try not to shame me any
more.... And now good-by. Keep watch for me--as I will for you--all the
time."

Joan broke from him and glided out of the grove, away under the
straggling pines, along the slope. She came upon her horse and she led
him back to the corral. Many of the horses had strayed. There was no one
at the cabin, but she saw men striding up the slope, Kells in the lead.
She had been fortunate. Her absence could hardly have been noted. She
had just strength left to get to her room, where she fell upon the bed,
weak and trembling and dizzy and unutterably grateful at her deliverance
from the hateful, unbearable falsity of her situation.

13

It was afternoon before Joan could trust herself sufficiently to go out
again, and when she did she saw that she attracted very little attention
from the bandits.

Kells had a springy step, a bright eye, a lifted head, and he seemed to
be listening. Perhaps he was--to the music of his sordid dreams.
Joan watched him sometimes with wonder. Even a bandit--plotting gold
robberies, with violence and blood merely means to an end--built castles
in the air and lived with joy!

All that afternoon the bandits left camp in twos and threes, each party
with pack burros and horses, packed as Joan had not seen them before on
the border. Shovels and picks and old sieves and pans, these swinging or
tied in prominent places, were evidence that the bandits meant to assume
the characters of miners and prospectors. They whistled and sang. It was
a lark. The excitement had subsided and the action begun. Only in Kells,
under his radiance, could be felt the