his lonesome place for--well,
say for ever?"

"I wouldn't like that," replied Joan. "I'd like this--camping out like
this now--if my folks only knew I am alive and well and safe. I love
lonely, dreamy places. I've dreamed of being in just such a one as this.
It seems so far away here--so shut in by the walls and the blackness.
So silent and sweet! I love the stars. They speak to me. And the wind
in the spruces. Hear it.... Very low, mournful! That whispers to
me--to-morrow I'd like it here if I had no worry. I've never grown
up yet. I explore and climb trees and hunt for little birds and
rabbits--young things just born, all fuzzy and sweet, frightened, piping
or squealing for their mothers. But I won't touch one for worlds. I
simply can't hurt anything. I can't spur my horse or beat him. Oh, I
HATE pain!"

"You're a strange girl to live out here on this border," he said.

"I'm no different from other girls. You don't know girls."

"I knew one pretty well. She put a rope round my neck," he replied,
grimly.

"A rope!"

"Yes, I mean a halter, a hangman's noose. But I balked her!"

"Oh!... A good girl?"

"Bad! Bad to the core of her black heart--bad as I am!" he exclaimed,
with fierce, low passion.

Joan trembled. The man, in an instant, seemed transformed, somber as
death. She could not look at him, but she must keep on talking.

"Bad? You don't seem bad to me--only violent, perhaps, or wild.... Tell
me about yourself."

She had stirred him. His neglected pipe fell from his hand. In the gloom
of the camp-fire he must have seen faces or ghosts of his past.

"Why not?" he queried, strangely. "Why not do what's been impossible for
years--open my lips? It'll not matter--to a girl who can never tell!...
Have I forgotten? God!--I have not! Listen, so that you'll KNOW I'm bad.
My name's not Kells. I was born in the East, and went to school there
till I ran away. I was young, ambitious, wild. I stole. I ran away--came
West in 'fifty-one to the gold-fields in California. There I became a
prospector, miner, gambler, robber--and road-agent. I had evil in me, as
all men have, and those wild years brought it out. I had no chance. Evil
and gold and blood--they are one and the same thing. I committed every
crime till no place, bad as it might be, was safe for me. Driven and
hunted and shot and starved--almost hanged!... And now I'm--Kells! of
that outcast crew you named 'the Border Legion!' Every black crime but
one--the