“I'm never safe while he's near.”
“Then I will kill him.”
“Hush! you'll not be desperate unless you have to be.... Listen. I'm safe with Kells for the present. And he's friendly to you. Let us wait. I'll keep trying to influence him. I have won the friendship of some of his men. We'll stay with him—travel with him. Surely we'd have a better chance to excape after we reach that gold-camp. You must play your part. But do it without drinking and fighting. I couldn't bear that. We'll see each other somehow. We'll plan. Then we'll take the first chance to get away.”
“We might never have a better chance than we've got right now,” he remonstrated.
“It may seem so to you. But I KNOW. I haven't watched these ruffians for nothing. I tell you Gulden has split with Kells because of me. I don't know how I know. And I think I'd die of terror out on the trail with two hundred miles to go—and that gorilla after me.”
“But, Joan, if we once got away Gulden would never take you alive,” said Jim, earnestly. “So you needn't fear that.”
“I've uncanny horror of him. It's as if he were a gorilla—and would take me off even if I were dead!... No, Jim, let us wait. Let me select the time. I can do it. Trust me. Oh, Jim, now that I've saved you from being a bandit, I can do anything. I can fool Kells or Pearce or Wood—any of them, except Gulden.”
“If Kells had to choose now between trailing you and rushing for the gold-camp, which would he do?”
“He'd trail me,” she said.
“But Kells is crazy over gold. He has two passions. To steal gold, and to gamble with it.”