e paused while he lifted sand
and let it drift through his fingers, watching it curiously. All the men
were interested and Kells hung on every word.

"When I got back," went on Cleve, "my girl had married another fellow.
She'd given him all I left with her. Then I got drunk. While I was drunk
they put up a job on me. It was her word that disgraced me and run me
out of town.... So I struck west and drifted to the border."

"That's not all," said Kells, bluntly.

"Jim, I reckon you ain't tellin' what you did to thet lyin' girl an' the
feller. How'd you leave them?" added Pearce.

But Cleve appeared to become gloomy and reticent.

"Wimmen can hand the double-cross to a man, hey, Kells?" queried Smith,
with a broad grin.

"By gosh! I thought you'd been treated powerful mean!" exclaimed Bate
Wood, and he was full of wrath.

"A treacherous woman!" exclaimed Kells, passionately. He had taken
Cleve's story hard. The man must have been betrayed by women, and
Cleve's story had irritated old wounds.

Directly Kells left the fire and repaired to his blankets, near where
Joan lay. Probably he believed her asleep, for he neither looked nor
spoke. Cleve sought his bed, and likewise Wood and Smith. Pearce was the
last to leave, and as he stood up the light fell upon his red face, lean
and bold like an Indian's. Then he passed Joan, looking down upon her
and then upon the recumbent figure of Kells; and if his glance was not
baleful and malignant, as it swept over the bandit, Joan believed her
imagination must be vividly weird, and running away with her judgment.

The next morning began a day of toil. They had to climb over the
mountain divide, a long, flat-topped range of broken rocks. Joan spared
her horse to the limit of her own endurance. If there were a trail Smith
alone knew it, for none was in evidence to the others. They climbed out
of the notched head of the canon, and up a long slope of weathered shale
that let the horses slide back a foot for every yard gained, and through
a labyrinth of broken cliffs, and over bench and ridge to the height of
the divide. From there Joan had a magnificent view. Foot-hills rolled
round heads below, and miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened
Bear Lake. The rest here at this height was counteracted by the fact
that the altitude affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again,
and now the travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was
difficult, for horses were mor