Thereupon Joan did not see or hear any more of the bandits.
Evidently the conversation died down, or she, in the absorption of
new thoughts, no longer heard. She relaxed, and suddenly seemed to
quiver all over with the name she whispered to herself. "Jim! Jim!
Oh, Jim!" And the last whisper was an inward sob. What he had done
was terrible. It tortured her. She had not believed it in him. Yet,
now she thought, how like him. All for her--in despair and spite--he
had ruined himself. He would be killed out there in some drunken
brawl, or, still worse, he would become a member of this bandit crew
and drift into crime. That was a great blow to Joan--that the curse
she had put upon him. How silly, false, and vain had been her
coquetry, her indifference! She loved Jim Cleve. She had not known
that when she started out to trail him, to fetch him back, but she
knew it now. She ought to have known before.

The situation she had foreseen loomed dark and monstrous and
terrible in prospect. Just to think of it made her body creep and
shudder with cold terror. Yet there was that strange, inward,
thrilling burn round her heart. Somewhere and soon she was coming
face to face with this changed Jim Cleve--this boy who had become a
reckless devil. What would he do? What could she do? Might he not
despise her, scorn her, curse her, taking her at Kells's word, the
wife of a bandit? But no! he would divine the truth in the flash of
an eye. And then! She could not think what might happen, but it must
mean blood-death. If he escaped Kells, how could he ever escape this
Gulden--this huge vulture of prey?

Still, with the horror thick upon her, Joan could not wholly give
up. The moment Jim Cleve's name and his ruin burst upon her ears, in
the gossip of these bandits, she had become another girl--a girl