twinge, if Joan ever saw a
man have one. The dark, formidable, stern look was on his face. He alone
of the men ate sparingly, and after the meal he took to his bent posture
and thoughtful pacing. Joan saw the added burden of another crime upon
his shoulders. Conversation, which had been desultory, and such as any
miners or campers might have indulged in, gradually diminished to a
word here and there, and finally ceased. Kells always at this hour had
a dampening effect upon his followers. More and more he drew aloof from
them, yet he never realized that. He might have been alone. But often he
glanced out of the door, and appeared to listen. Of course he expected
Jim Cleve to return, but what did he expect of him? Joan had a blind
faith that Jim would be cunning enough to fool Kells and Pearce. So much
depended upon it!

Some of the bandits uttered an exclamation. Then silently, like a
shadow, Jim Cleve entered.

Joan's heart leaped and seemed to stand still. Jim could not have locked
more terrible if he were really a murderer. He opened his coat. Then
he flung a black object upon the table and it fell with a soft, heavy,
sodden thud. It was a leather belt packed with gold.

When Kells saw that he looked no more at the pale Cleve. His clawlike
hand swept out for the belt, lifted and weighed it. Likewise the other
bandits, with gold in sight, surged round Kells, forgetting Cleve.

"Twenty pounds!" exclaimed Kells, with a strange rapture in his voice.

"Let me heft it?" asked Pearce, thrillingly.

Joan saw and heard so much, then through a kind of dimness, that she
could not wipe away, her eyes beheld Jim. What was the awful thing that
she interpreted from his face, his mien? Was this a part he was playing
to deceive Kells? The slow-gathering might of her horror came with the
meaning of that gold-belt. Jim had brought back the gold-belt of the
miner Creede. He had, in his passion to remain near her, to save her in
the end, kept his word to Kells and done the ghastly deed.

Joan reeled and sank back upon the bed, blindly, with darkening sight
and mind.

16

Joan returned to consciousness with a sense of vague and unlocalized
pain which she thought was that old, familiar pang of grief. But once
fully awakened, as if by a sharp twinge, she became aware that the pain
was some kind of muscular throb in her shoulder. The instant she was
fully sure of this the strange feeling ceased. Then she lay wide-eyed in
the