Cabin Gulch by Zane Grey Page B

abnormally keen. She saw him there, bowed under his burden, gloomy and wroth and sick with himself because the man in him despised the coward. Men of his stamp were seldom or never cowards. Their life did not breed cowardice or baseness. Joan knew the burning in her breast—that thing which influenced, and swept through her like a wind of fire, was hate. Yet her heart held a grain of pity for him. She measured his forbearance, his struggle, against the monstrous cruelty and passion engendered by a wild life among wild men at a wild time. And, considering his opportunities of the long hours and lonely miles, she was grateful, and did not in the least underestimate what it cost him; how different from Bill or Halloway he had been. But all thiswas nothing, and her thinking of it useless, unless he conquered himself. She only waited, holding on to that steel-like control of her nerves, motionless and silent.
    She leaned back against her saddle, a blanket covering her, with wide-open eyes, and, despite the presence of that stalking figure and the fact of her mind being locked around one terrible and inevitable thought, she saw the changing beautiful glow of the fire logs and the cold pitiless stars and the mustering shadows under the walls. She heard, too, the low rising sigh of the wind in the balsam and the silvery tinkle of the brook, and sounds only imagined, or nameless. Yet a stern and insupportable silence weighed her down. This dark cañon seemed at the end of the earth. She felt encompassed by illimitable and stupendous upflung mountains, insulated in a vast dark silent tomb.
    Kells suddenly came to her, treading noiselessly, and he leaned over her. His visage was a dark blur, but the posture of him was that of a wolf about to spring. Lower he leaned—slowly—and yet lower. Joan saw the heavy gun swing away from his leg; she saw it black and clear against the blaze; a cold blue light glinted from its handle. Then Kells was near enough for her to see his face and his eyes that were but shadows of flames. She gazed up at him steadily—open-eyed, with no fear or shrinking. His breathing was quick and loud. He looked down at her for an endless moment, then, straightening his bent form, he resumed his walk to and fro.
    After that for Joan time might have consisted of moments or hours, each of which was marked by Kells, looming over her. He appeared to approach her from all sides; he found her wide-eyed, sleepless; his shadowy glance gloated over her lithe slender shape,and then he strode away into the gloom. Sometimes she could no longer hear his steps, and then she was quiveringly alert, listening, fearful that he might creep upon her like a panther. At times, he kept the campfire blazing brightly; at others, he let it die down. And these dark intervals were frightful for her. The night seemed treacherous, in league with her foe. It was endless. She prayed for dawn—yet with a blank hopelessness for what the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours? Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she wavered, and shook like a leaf in a wind, when the beating of her heart was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible, like things in a nightmare. But when Kells was near or approached to look at her, like a cat returned to watch a captive mouse, she was again strong, waiting, with ever a strange and cold sense of the nearness of that swinging gun. Late in the night she missed him; for how long she had no idea. She had less trust in his absence than his presence. The nearer he came to her, the stronger she grew and the clearer of purpose. At last the black void of cañon lost its blackness and turned to gray. Dawn was at hand. The horrible endless night, in which she had aged from girl to woman, had passed. Joan had never closed her eyes a single instant.
    When day broke, she got up. The long