Part 15 (1/2)

”Kells, you don't mean me to wear these?” asked Joan, incredulously.

”Certainly. Why not? Just the thing. A little fancy, but then you're a girl. We can't hide that. I don't want to hide it.”

”I won't wear them,” declared Joan.

”Excuse me--but you will,” he replied, coolly and pleasantly.

”I won't!” cried Joan. She could not keep cool.

”Joan, you've got to take long rides with me. At night sometimes. Wild rides to elude pursuers sometimes. You'll go into camps with me. You'll have to wear strong, easy, free clothes. You'll have to be masked. Here the outfit is--as if made for you. Why, you're dead lucky. For this stuff is good and strong. It'll stand the wear, yet it's fit for a girl.... You put the outfit on, right now.”

”I said I wouldn't!” Joan snapped.

”But what do you care if it belonged to a fellow who's dead?... There!

See that hole in the s.h.i.+rt. That's a bullet-hole. Don't be squeamish.

It'll only make your part harder.”

”Mr. Kells, you seem to have forgotten entirely that I'm a--a girl.”

He looked blank astonishment. ”Maybe I have.... I'll remember. But you said you'd worn a man's things.”

”I wore my brother's coat and overalls, and was lost in them,” replied Joan.

His face began to work. Then he laughed uproariously. ”I--under--stand.

This'll fit--you--like a glove.... Fine! I'm dying to see you.”

”You never will.”

At that he grew sober and his eyes glinted. ”You can't take a little fun. I'll leave you now for a while. When I come back you'll have that suit on!”

There was that in his voice then which she had heard when he ordered men.

Joan looked her defiance.

”If you don't have it on when I come I'll--I'll tear your rags off!... I can do that. You're a strong little devil, and maybe I'm not well enough yet to put this outfit on you. But I can get help.... If you anger me I might wait for--Gulden!”

Joan's legs grew weak under her, so that she had to sink on the bed. Kells would do absolutely and literally what he threatened. She understood now the changing secret in his eyes. One moment he was a certain kind of a man and the very next he was incalculably different.

She instinctively recognized this latter personality as her enemy. She must use all the strength and wit and cunning and charm to keep his other personality in the ascendancy, else all was futile.

”Since you force me so--then I must,” she said.

Kells left her without another word.

Joan removed her stained and torn dress and her worn-out boots; then hurriedly, for fear Kells might return, she put on the dead boy-bandit's outfit. Dandy Dale a.s.suredly must have been her counterpart, for his things fitted her perfectly. Joan felt so strange that she scarcely had courage enough to look into the mirror. When she did look she gave a start that was of both amaze and shame. But for her face she never could have recognized herself. What had become of her height, her slenderness?

She looked like an audacious girl in a das.h.i.+ng boy masquerade. Her shame was singular, inasmuch as it consisted of a burning hateful consciousness that she had not been able to repress a thrill of delight at her appearance, and that this costume strangely magnified every curve and swell of her body, betraying her feminity as nothing had ever done.

And just at that moment Kells knocked on the door and called, ”Joan, are you dressed?”

”Yes,” she replied. But the word seemed involuntary.