Cabin Gulch by Zane Grey Read Free Book Online Page A

Joan.”
    â€œJoan!” He placed heavy compelling hands on her shoulders and turned her squarely toward him. Again she felt his gaze, strangely like the reflection of sunlight from ice. She had to look at him. This was her supreme test. For hours she had prepared for it, steeled herself, wrought upon all that was sensitive in her, and now she prayed, and swiftly looked up into his eyes. They were windows of a gray hell. She gazed into that naked abyss—at that dark uncovered soul with only the timid anxiety and fear, and the unconsciousness of an innocent ignorant girl.
    â€œJoan! You know why I brought you here?”
    â€œYes, of course, you told me,” she replied steadily. “You want to ransom me for gold. And I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home without getting any.”
    â€œYou know what I mean to do to you,” he went on thickly.
    â€œDo to me?” she echoed, and she never quivered a muscle. “You . . . you didn’t say. I haven’t thought. But you won’t hurt me . . . will you? It’s not my fault if there’s no gold to ransom me.”
    â€œHell!” he exclaimed, and he shook her. His face changed, grew darker. “You
know
what I mean.”
    â€œI don’t. And you needn’t swear at me.”
    With some show of spirit she essayed to slip out of his grasp. He held her the tighter.
    â€œHow old are you?”
    It was only in her height and development thatJoan looked anywhere near her age. Often she had been taken for a very young girl.
    â€œI’m seventeen,” she replied. This was not the truth. It was a lie that did not falter on lips that had scorned falsehood.
    â€œSeventeen!” he ejaculated in amaze. “Honestly, now?”
    She lifted her chin scornfully, and remained alert.
    â€œWell, I’ll be damned. I thought you were a woman. I took you to be twenty-five . . . at least twenty-two. Seventeen, with that shape! You’re only a girl . . . a kid. You don’t know anything.”
    Then he released her, almost with violence, as if angered at her or himself, and he turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained her poise. There might be, probably would be infinitely more trying ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however, that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror and knowledge and self.
    The scene of her isolation had a curious fascination for her. Something—and she shuddered—was to happen to her here in this lonely silent gorge. There were some flat stones made into a rude seat under the balsam tree, and a swift yard-wide stream of clear water ran by. Observing something white against the tree, Joan went closer. A card, the ace of hearts, had been pinned to the bark by a small cluster of bullet holes, every one of which touched the red heart, and one of them had obliterated it. Below the circle of bullet holes, scrawled in rude letters with a lead pencil was the name: Gulden. How little, a few nights back, when Jim Cleve had menaced Joan with names of Kells and Gulden, had she imagined they were actualmen she was to meet and fear! And here she was the prisoner of one of them. She would ask Kells who and what this Gulden was. The log cabin was merely a shed, without fireplace or window, and the floor was a covering of balsam boughs, long dried out and withered. A dim trail led away from it down the cañon. If Joan was any judge of trails, this one had not seen the imprint of a horse track for many months. Kells had indeed brought her to a hiding place, one of those, perhaps, that camp gossip said was inaccessible to any save a border hawk. Joan knew that only an Indian could follow the tortuous and rocky trail by which Kells had brought her in. She would never be tracked there by her own people.
    The