tly had
pleased and touched him, even hurt him, for his whisper was husky.

"It's all right--you're perfectly safe."

First Joan made out a glare of smoky lamps, a huge place full of smoke
and men and sounds. Kells led the way slowly. He had his own reason for
observance. There was a stench that sickened Joan--a blended odor of
tobacco and rum and wet sawdust and smoking oil. There was a noise that
appeared almost deafening--the loud talk and vacant laughter of drinking
men, and a din of creaky fiddles and scraping boots and boisterous
mirth. This last and dominating sound came from an adjoining room, which
Joan could see through a wide opening. There was dancing, but Joan could
not see the dancers because of the intervening crowd. Then her gaze came
back to the features nearer at hand. Men and youths were lined up to a
long bar nearly as high as her head. Then there were excited shouting
groups round gambling games. There were men in clusters, sitting on
upturned kegs, round a box for a table, and dirty bags of gold-dust were
in evidence. The gamblers at the cards were silent, in strange contrast
with the others; and in each group was at least one dark-garbed,
hard-eyed gambler who was not a miner. Joan saw boys not yet of age,
flushed and haggard, wild with the frenzy of winning and cast down in
defeat. There were jovial, grizzled, old prospectors to whom this
scene and company were pleasant reminders of bygone days. There were
desperados whose glittering eyes showed they had no gold with which to
gamble.

Joan suddenly felt Kells start and she believed she heard a low, hissing
exclamation. And she looked for the cause. Then she saw familiar dark
faces; they belonged to men of Kells's Legion. And with his broad back
to her there sat the giant Gulden. Already he and his allies had gotten
together in defiance of or indifference to Kells's orders. Some of them
were already under the influence of drink, but, though they saw Kells,
they gave no sign of recognition. Gulden did not see Joan, and for that
she was thankful. And whether or not his presence caused it, the fact
was that she suddenly felt as much of a captive as she had in Cabin
Gulch, and feared that here escape would be harder because in a
community like this Kells would watch her closely.

Kells led Joan and Cleve from one part of the smoky hall to another, and
they looked on at the games and the strange raw life manifested there.
The place was getting pack