She thought she saw and heard everything, yet insulated her true self in a callous and unreceptive aloofness from all that affronted her. The days were uneventful because, while always looking for Jim Cleve, she never once saw him. Several times she heard his name mentioned. He was here and there—at Beard’s, off in the mountains. But he did not come to Kells’s cabin, which fact, Joan gathered, had made Kells anxious. He did not want to lose Cleve. Joan peered from her covert in the evenings and watched for Jim, and grew weary of the loud talk and laughter, the gambling and smoking and drinking. When there seemed no more chance of Cleve’s coming, then Joan went to bed. On these occasions Joan learned that Kells was passionately keen to gamble, that he was a weak hand at cards, an honest gambler and, strangely enough, a poor loser. Moreover, when he lost, he drank heavily, and under the influence of drink he was dangerous. There were quarrels when curses rang throughout the cabin, when guns were drawn, but, whatever Kells’s weaknesses might be, he was strong and implacable in the governing of these men.
