“Yes—a girl!” replied Cleve, hoarsely, as if goaded.
“It's too late to go back?”
“Too late!”
“There's nothing left but wild life that makes you forget?”
“Nothing.... Only I—can't forget!” he panted.
Cleve was in a torture of memory, of despair, of weakness. Joan saw how Kells worked upon Jim's feelings. He was only a hopeless, passionate boy in the hands of a strong, implacable man. He would be like wax to a sculptor's touch. Jim would bend to this bandit's will, and through his very tenacity of love and memory be driven farther on the road to drink, to gaming, and to crime.
Joan got to her feet, and with all her woman's soul uplifting and inflaming her she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.
Kells made a gesture of savage violence. “Show your nerve!... Join with me!... You'll make a name on this border that the West will never forget!”
That last hint of desperate fame was the crafty bandit's best trump. And it won. Cleve swept up a weak and nervous hand to brush the hair from his damp brow. The keenness, the fire, the aloofness had departed from him. He looked shaken as if by something that had been pointed out as his own cowardice.
“Sure, Kells,” he said, recklessly. “Let me in the game.... And—by God—I'll play—the hand out!” He reached for the pencil and bent over the book.