THE BORDER LEGION. Zane Grey
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thought she was riding homeward over the back trail, sure of her way, remembering every rod of that rough travel, until she got out of the mountains, only to be turned back by dead men. Then fancy and dream, and all the haunted gloom of canon and cabin, seemed slowly to merge into one immense blackness.
The sun, rimming the east wall, shining into Joan's face, awakened her. She had slept hours. She felt rested, stronger. Like the night, something dark had passed away from her. It did not seem strange to her that she should feel that Kells still lived. She knew it. And examination proved her right. In him there had been no change except that he had ceased to bleed. There was just a flickering of life in him, manifest only in his slow, faint heart-beats.
Joan spent most of that day in sitting beside Kells. The whole day seemed only an hour. Sometimes she would look down the canon trail, half expecting to see horsemen riding up. If any of Kells's comrades happened to come, what could she tell them? They would be as bad as he, without that one trait which had kept him human for a day. Joan pondered upon this. It would never do to let them suspect she had shot Kells. So, carefully cleaning the gun, she reloaded it. If any men came, she would tell them that Bill had done the shooting.
Kells lingered. Joan began to feel that he would live, though everything indicated the contrary. Her intelligence told her he would die, and her feeling said he would not. At times she lifted his head and got water into his mouth with a spoon. When she did this he would moan. That night, during the hours she lay awake, she gathered courage out of the very solitude and loneliness. She had nothing to fear, unless someone came to the canon. The next day in no wise differed from the preceding. And then there came the third day, with no change in Kells till near evening, when she thought he was returning to consciousness. But she must have been mistaken. For hours she watched patiently. He might return to consciousness just before the end, and want to speak, to send a message, to ask a prayer, to feel a human hand at the last.
That night the crescent moon hung over the canon. In the faint light Joan could see the blanched face of Kells, strange and sad, no longer seeming evil. The time came when his lips stirred. He tried to talk. She moistened his lips and gave him a drink. He murmured incoherently, sank again into a stupor, to rouse once more and babble tike a madman. Then he lay quietly for long—so long that sleep was claiming Joan. Suddenly he startled her by calling very faintly but distinctly: "Water! Water!"
Joan bent over him, lifting his head, helping him to drink. She could see his eyes, like dark holes in something white.
"Is—that—you—mother?" he whispered.
"Yes," replied Joan.
He sank immediately into another stupor or sleep, from which he did not rouse. That whisper of his—mother—touched Joan. Bad men had mothers just the same as any other kind of men. Even this Kells had a mother. He was still a young man. He had been youth, boy, child, baby. Some mother had loved him, cradled him, kissed his rosy baby hands, watched him grow with pride and glory, built castles in her dreams of his manhood, and perhaps prayed for him still, trusting he was strong and honored among men. And here he lay, a shattered wreck, dying for a wicked act, the last of many crimes. It was a tragedy. It made Joan think of the hard lot of mothers, and then of this unsettled Western wild, where men flocked in packs like wolves, and spilled blood like water, and held life nothing.
Joan sought her rest and soon slept. In the morning she did not at once go to Kells. Somehow she dreaded finding him conscious, almost as much as she dreaded the thought of finding him dead. When she did bend over him he was awake, and at sight of her he showed a faint amaze.
"Joan!" he whispered.
"Yes," she replied.
"Are you—with me still?"
"Of course, I couldn't leave you."
The pale eyes shadowed strangely, darkly. "I'm alive yet. And you stayed!... Was it yesterday—you threw my gun—on me?"
"No. Four days ago."
"Four! Is my back broken?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. It's a terrible wound. I—I did all I could."
"You tried to kill me—then tried to save me?"
She was silent to that.
"You're good—and you've been noble," he said. "But I wish—you'd only been bad. Then I'd curse you—and strangle you—presently."
"Perhaps you had best be quiet," replied Joan.
"No. I've been shot before. I'll get over this—if my back's not broken. How can we tell?"
"I've no idea."
"Lift me up."
"But you might open your wound," protested Joan.
"Lift me up!" The force of the man spoke even in his low whisper.
"But why—why?" asked Joan.
"I want to see—if I can sit up. If I can't—give me my gun."
"I won't let you have it," replied Joan. Then she slipped her arms under his and, carefully raising him to a sitting posture, released her hold.
"I'm—a—rank coward—about pain," he gasped, with thick drops standing out on his white face. "I can't—stand it."
But tortured or not, he sat up alone, and even had the will to bend his back. Then with a groan he fainted and fell into Joan's arms. She laid him down and worked over him for some time before she could bring him to. Then he was wan, suffering, speechless. But she believed he would live and told him so. He received that with a strange smile. Later, when she came to him with broth, he drank it gratefully.
"I'll beat this out," he said, weakly. "I'll recover. My back's not broken. I'll get well. Now you bring water and food in here—then go."
"Go?" she echoed.
"Yes. Don't go down the canon. You'd be worse off.... Take the back trail. You've got a chance to get out.... Go!"
"Leave you here? So weak you can't lift a cup! I won't."
"I'd rather you did."
"Why?"
"Because in a few days I'll begin to mend. Then I'll grow like—myself.... I think—I'm afraid I loved you.... It could only be hell for you. Go now, before it's too late!... If you stay—till I'm well—I'll never let you go!"
"Kells, I believe it would be cowardly for me to leave you here alone," she replied, earnestly. "You can't help yourself. You'd die."
"All the better. But I won't die. I'm hard to kill. Go, I tell you."
She shook her head. "This is bad for you—arguing. You're excited. Please be quiet."
"Joan Randle, if you stay—I'll halter you—keep you naked in a cave—curse you—beat you—murder you! Oh, it's in me!... Go, I tell you!"
"You're out of your head. Once for all—no!" she replied, firmly.
"You—you—" His voice failed in a terrible whisper....
In the succeeding days Kells did not often speak. His recovery was slow—a matter of doubt. Nothing was any plainer than the fact that if Joan had left him he would not have lived long. She knew it. And he knew it. When he was awake, and she came to him, a mournful and beautiful smile lit his eyes. The sight of her apparently hurt him and uplifted him. But he slept twenty hours out of every day, and while he slept he did not need Joan.
She came to know the meaning of solitude. There were days when she did not hear the sound of her own voice. A habit of silence, one of the significant forces of solitude, had grown upon her. Daily she thought less and felt more. For hours she did nothing. When she roused herself, compelled herself to think of these encompassing peaks of the lonely canon walls, the stately trees, all those eternally silent and changless features of her solitude, she hated them with a blind and unreasoning passion. She hated them because she was losing her love for them, because they were becoming a part of her, because they were fixed and content and passionless. She liked to sit in