Kells was gay and excited that morning. He paid her compliments. He
said they would soon be out of this lonely gulch and she would see
the sight of her life--a gold strike. She would see men wager a
fortune on the turn of a card, lose, laugh, and go back to the
digging. He said he would take her to Sacramento and 'Frisco and buy
her everything any girl could desire. He was wild, voluble,
unreasoning--obsessed by the anticipated fulfilment of his dream.

It was rather late in the morning and there were a dozen or more men
in and around the cabin, all as excited as Kells. Preparations were
already under way for the expected journey to the gold-field. Packs
were being laid out, overhauled, and repacked; saddles and bridles
and weapons were being worked over; clothes were being awkwardly
mended. Horses were being shod, and the job was as hard and
disagreeable for men as for horses. Whenever a rider swung up the
slope, and one came every now and then, all the robbers would leave
off their tasks and start eagerly for the newcomer. The name Jesse
Smith was on everybody's lips. Any hour he might be expected to
arrive and corroborate Blicky's alluring tale.

Joan saw or imagined she saw that the glances in the eyes of these
men were yellow, like gold fire. She had seen miners and prospectors
whose eyes shone with a strange glory of light that gold inspired,
but never as those of Kells's bandit Legion. Presently Joan
discovered that, despite the excitement, her effect upon them was
more marked then ever, and by a difference that she was quick to
feel. But she could not tell what this difference was--how their
attitude had changed. Then she set herself the task of being useful.
First she helped Bate Wood. He was roughly kind. She had not
realized that there was sadness about her until he whispered: "Don't
be downcast, miss. Mebbe it'll come out right yet!" That amazed
Joan. Then his mysterious winks and glances, the sympathy she felt
in him, all attested to some kind of a change. She grew keen to
learn, but she did not know how. She felt the change in all the men.
Then she went to Pearce and with all a woman's craft she exaggerated
the silent sadness that had brought quick response from Wood. Red
Pearce was even quicker. He did not seem to regard her proximity as
that of a feminine thing which roused the devil in him. Pearce could
not be other than coarse and vulgar, but there was pity in him. Joan
sensed pity and some other quality still beyond her. This lieutenant
of the bandit Kells was just as mysterious as Wood. Joan mended a
great jagged rent in his buckskin shirt. Pearce appeared proud of
her work; he tried to joke; he said amiable things. Then as she
finished he glanced furtively round; he pressed her hand: "I had a
sister once!" he whispered. And then with a dark and baleful hate:
"Kells!--he'll get his over in the gold-camp!"