Page 70 (1/2)

He held out a wide piece of black felt that evidently he had cut

from a sombrero This hehis knife he cut it to a desired shape Next he cut

eyeholes in it and fastened to it a loop made of a short strip of

buckskin

"Try thatPull it down--even with your eyes There!--take a

look at yourself"

Joan faced the er She was no

longer Joan Randle Her identity had been absolutely lost

"No one--who ever knewthought centered round Jiured on that," replied Kells "But you're right

Joan, if I don'ttill you'll be the

talk of ht to Joan proof of his singular pride

in the nae stories about bandits

and omen of the border She had never believed any of these

stories They had seemed merely a part of the life of this unsettled

wild country A prospector would spend a night at a camp-fire and

tell a weird story and pass on, never to be seen there again Could

there have been a stranger story than her life see thought--Kells and his

gang, the wild trails, the cahts, murder, mad rides in the dark, and back to Jim

Cleve and his ruin