It was afternoon before Joan could trust herself sufficiently to go
out again, and when she did she saw that she attracted very little
attention from the bandits.

Kells had a springy step, a bright eye, a lifted head, and he seemed
to be listening. Perhaps he was--to the music of his sordid dreams.
Joan watched him sometimes with wonder. Even a bandit--plotting gold
robberies, with violence and blood merely means to an end--built
castles in the air and lived with joy!

All that afternoon the bandits left camp in twos and threes, each
party with pack burros and horses, packed as Joan had not seen them
before on the border. Shovels and picks and old sieves and pans,
these swinging or tied in prominent places, were evidence that the
bandits meant to assume the characters of miners and prospectors.
They whistled and sang. It was a lark. The excitement had subsided
and the action begun. Only in Kells, under his radiance, could be
felt the dark and sinister plot. He was the heart of the machine.

By sundown Kells, Pearce, Wood, Jim Cleve, and a robust, grizzled
bandit, Jesse Smith, were left in camp. Smith was lame from his
ride, and Joan gathered that Kells would have left camp but for the
fact that Smith needed rest. He and Kells were together all the
time, talking endlessly. Joan heard them argue a disputed point--
would the men abide by Kells's plan and go by twos and threes into
the gold-camp, and hide their relations as a larger band? Kells
contended they would and Smith had his doubts.