judgment I have confidence in. He's always without
gold. And so are most of his followers. I don't know who they are. And
I don't care. But here we split--unless they and Gulden take advice and
orders from me. I'm not so much siding with Cleve. Any of you ought to
admit that Gulden's kind of work will disorganize a gang. He's been with
us for long. And he approaches Cleve with a job. Cleve is a stranger.
He may belong here, but he's not yet one of us. Gulden oughtn't have
approached him. It was no straight deal. We can't figure what Gulden
meant exactly, but it isn't likely he wanted Cleve to go. It was a
bluff. He got called.... You men think this over--whether you'll stick
to Gulden or to me. Clear out now."

His strong, direct talk evidently impressed them, and in silence they
crowded out of the cabin, leaving Pearce and Cleve behind.

"Jim, are you just hell-bent on fighting or do you mean to make yourself
the champion of every poor girl in these wilds?"

Cleve puffed a cloud of smoke that enveloped his head "I don't pick
quarrels," he replied.

"Then you get red-headed at the very mention of a girl."

A savage gesture of Cleve's suggested that Kells was right.

"Here, don't get red-headed at me," called Kells, with piercing
sharpness. "I'll be your friend if you let me.... But declare yourself
like a man--if you want me for a friend!"

"Kells, I'm much obliged," replied Cleve, with a semblance of
earnestness. "I'm no good or I wouldn't be out here... But I can't stand
for these--these deals with girls."

"You'll change," rejoined Kells, bitterly. "Wait till you live a few
lonely years out here! You don't understand the border. You're young.
I've seen the gold-fields of California and Nevada. Men go crazy with
the gold fever. It's gold that makes men wild. If you don't get killed
you'll change. If you live you'll see life on this border. War debases
the moral force of a man, but nothing like what you'll experience here
the next few years. Men with their wives and daughters are pouring
into this range. They're all over. They're finding gold. They've tasted
blood. Wait till the great gold strike comes! Then you'll see men and
women go back ten thousand years... And then what'll one girl more or
less matter?"

"Well, you see, Kells, I was loved so devotedly by one and made such a
hero of--that I just can't bear to see any girl mistreated."

He almost drawled the words, and he was suave and cool, and his fac