ood like a post. He, like Joan, was listening,
as if for a trumpet of doom.

"HALLO, JIM!" rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the
silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped in echo, and wound away,
mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild borderland the
breaking-point of the bandit's power.

So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and she
let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she realized it,
and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan waited, listening with
abated breathing. On this side of the cabin there was absolute silence.
She believed that Jim would slip around under cover of night and return
by the road from camp. Then what would he do? The question seemed to
puzzle her.

Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from those
vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that had left
her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the voice of Kells
had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was returning now to reality.
Presently she would peer through the crevice between the boards into the
other room, and she shrank from the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with
him, maintained silence. Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot
and a creak of the loose floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear
compelled her to look.

The lamps were burning; the door was wide open. Apparently Kells's rule
of secrecy had been abandoned. One glance at Kells was enough to show
Joan that he was sick and desperate. Handy Oliver did not wear his usual
lazy good humor. Red Pearce sat silent and sullen, a smoking, unheeded
pipe in his hand. Jesse Smith was gloomy. The only other present was
Bate Wood, and whatever had happened had in no wise affected him. These
bandits were all waiting. Presently quick footsteps on the path outside
caused them all to look toward the door. That tread was familiar to
Joan, and suddenly her mouth was dry, her tongue stiff. What was Jim
Cleve coming to meet? How sharp and decided his walk! Then his dark
form crossed the bar of light outside the door, and he entered, bold and
cool, and with a weariness that must have been simulated.

"Howdy boys!" he said.

Only Kells greeted him in response. The bandit eyed him curiously. The
others added suspicion to their glances.

"Did you hear Red's yell?" queried Kells, presently.

"I'd have heard that roar if I'd been dead," replied Cleve, b