"HALLO, JIM!" rang out Pearce's stentorian call. It murdered the
silence. It boomed under the bluff, and clapped in echo, and wound
away, mockingly. It seemed to have shrieked to the whole wild
borderland the breaking-point of the bandit's power.

So momentous was the call that Jim Cleve seemed to forget Joan, and
she let him go without a word. Indeed, he was gone before she
realized it, and his dark form dissolved in the shadows. Joan
waited, listening with abated breathing. On this side of the cabin
there was absolute silence. She believed that Jim would slip around
under cover of night and return by the road from camp. Then what
would he do? The question seemed to puzzle her.

Joan leaned there at her window for moments greatly differing from
those vaguely happy ones just passed. She had sustained a shock that
had left her benumbed with a dull pain. What a rude, raw break the
voice of Kells had made in her brief forgetfulness! She was
returning now to reality. Presently she would peer through the
crevice between the boards into the other room, and she shrank from
the ordeal. Kells, and whoever was with him, maintained silence.
Occasionally she heard the shuffle of a boot and a creak of the
loose floor boards. She waited till anxiety and fear compelled her
to look.

The lamps were burning; the door was wide open. Apparently Kells's
rule of secrecy had been abandoned. One glance at Kells was enough
to show Joan that he was sick and desperate. Handy Oliver did not
wear his usual lazy good humor. Red Pearce sat silent and sullen, a
smoking, unheeded pipe in his hand. Jesse Smith was gloomy. The only