a captive of this notorious Kells! She was being led
into that wild border country. Somewhere out there Kells and Jim Cleve
would meet. Jim would find her in Kells's hands. Then there would be
hell, Joan thought. The possibility, the certainty, seemed to strike
deep into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again; a
ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth
in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed
the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and
distrust at this new, strange side of her nature.

And while her mind was thus thronged the morning hours passed swiftly,
the miles of foot-hills were climbed and descended. A green gap of
canon, wild and yellow-walled, yawned before her, opening into the
mountain.

Kells halted on the grassy bank of a shallow brook. "Get down. We'll
noon here and rest the horses," he said to Joan. "I can't say that
you're anything but game. We've done perhaps twenty-five miles this
morning."

The mouth of this canon was a wild, green-flowered, beautiful place.
There were willows and alders and aspens along the brook. The green
bench was like a grassy meadow. Joan caught a glimpse of a brown object,
a deer or bear, stealing away through spruce-trees on the slope. She
dismounted, aware now that her legs ached and it was comfortable
to stretch them. Looking backward across the valley toward the last
foot-hill, she saw the other men, with horses and packs, coming. She had
a habit of close observation, and she thought that either the men with
the packs had now one more horse than she remembered, or else she had
not seen the extra one. Her attention shifted then. She watched Kells
unsaddle the horses. He was wiry, muscular, quick with his hands. The
big, blue-cylindered gun swung in front of him. That gun had a queer
kind of attraction for her. The curved black butt made her think of a
sharp grip of hand upon it. Kells did not hobble the horses. He slapped
his bay on the haunch and drove him down toward the brook. Joan's pony
followed. They drank, cracked the stones, climbed the other bank, and
began to roll in the grass. Then the other men with the packs trotted
up. Joan was glad. She had not thought of it before, but now she felt
she would rather not be alone with Kells. She remarked then that there
was no extra horse in the bunch. It seemed strange, her thinking that,
and she imagined she was not