Title: To the Last Man
Author: Grey, Zane
Language: English
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To The Last Man


by

Zane Grey



FOREWORD


It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the
great West I should at length come to the story of a feud.  For long I
have steered clear of this rock.  But at last I have reached it and
must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events
of pioneer days.

Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the
West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting
past.  How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if
the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out?  It cannot be done.
How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless
it be full of sensation?  My long labors have been devoted to making
stories resemble the times they depict.  I have loved the West for its
vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness
and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great
men and women who died unknown and unsung.

In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift, greedy age of
realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place
for romance itself.  For many years all the events leading up to the
great war were realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic,
and the aftermath is likewise.  Romance is only another name for
idealism; and I contend that life without ideals is not worth living.
Never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as
now.  Walter Scott wrote romance; so did Victor Hugo; and likewise
Kipling, Hawthorne, Stevenson.  It was Stevenson, particularly, who
wielded a bludgeon against the realists.  People live for the dream in
their hearts.  And I have yet to know anyone who has not some secret
dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the
dusk, some painted window leading to the soul. How strange indeed to
find that the realists have ideals and dreams! To read them one would
think their lives held nothing significant. But they love, they hope,
they dream, they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream in their
hearts just the same as others.  We all are dreamers, if not in the
heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the meaning of life that makes us
work on.

It was Wordsworth who wrote, “The world is too much with us”; and if I
could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it
would be contained in that quotation.  My inspiration to write has
always come from nature.  Character and action are subordinated to
setting.  In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how
the world is too much with them.  Getting and spending they lay waste
their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the
open!

So I come back to the main point of this foreword, in which I am trying
to tell why and how I came to write the story of a feud notorious in
Arizona as the Pleasant Valley War.

Some years ago Mr. Harry Adams, a cattleman of Vermajo Park, New
Mexico, told me he had been in the Tonto Basin of Arizona and thought I
might find interesting material there concerning this Pleasant Valley
War. His version of the war between cattlemen and sheepmen certainly
determined me to look over the ground.  My old guide, Al Doyle of
Flagstaff, had led me over half of Arizona, but never down into that
wonderful wild and rugged basin between the Mogollon Mesa and the
Mazatzal Mountains.  Doyle had long lived on the frontier and his
version of the Pleasant Valley War differed markedly from that of Mr.
Adams.  I asked other old timers about it, and their remarks further
excited my curiosity.

Once down there, Doyle and I found the wildest, most rugged, roughest,
and most remarkable country either of us had visited; and the few
inhabitants were like the country.  I went in ostensibly to hunt bear
and lion and turkey, but what I really was hunting for was the story of
that Pleasant Valley War.  I engaged the services of a bear hunter who
had three strapping sons as reserved and strange and aloof as he was.
No wheel tracks of any kind had ever come within miles of their cabin.
I spent two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the beauty
and grandeur of that Rim Rock country, but I came out knowing no more
about the Pleasant Valley War.  These Texans and their few neighbors,
likewise from Texas, did not talk.  But all I saw and felt only
inspired me the more.  This trip was in the fall of 1918.

The next year I went again with the best horses, outfit, and men the
Doyles could provide.  And this time I did not ask any questions. But I
rode horses—some of them too wild for me—and packed a rifle many a
hundred miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day, and I
climbed in and out of the deep canyons, desperately staying at the
heels of one of those long-legged Texans.  I learned the life of those
backwoodsmen, but I did not get the story of the Pleasant Valley War.
I had, however, won the friendship of that hardy people.

In 1920 I went back with a still larger outfit, equipped to stay as
long as I liked.  And this time, without my asking it, different
natives of the Tonto came to tell me about the Pleasant Valley War. No
two of them agreed on anything concerning it, except that only one of
the active participants survived the fighting.  Whence comes my title,
TO THE LAST MAN.  Thus I was swamped in a mass of material out of which
I could only flounder to my own conclusion.  Some of the stories told
me are singularly tempting to a novelist.  But, though I believe them
myself, I cannot risk their improbability to those who have no idea of
the wildness of wild men at a wild time.  There really was a terrible
and bloody feud, perhaps the most deadly and least known in all the
annals of the West.  I saw the ground, the cabins, the graves, all so
darkly suggestive of what must have happened.

I never learned the truth of the cause of the Pleasant Valley War, or
if I did hear it I had no means of recognizing it.  All the given
causes were plausible and convincing.  Strange to state, there is still
secrecy and reticence all over the Tonto Basin as to the facts of this
feud.  Many descendents of those killed are living there now. But no
one likes to talk about it.  Assuredly many of the incidents told me
really occurred, as, for example, the terrible one of the two women, in
the face of relentless enemies, saving the bodies of their dead
husbands from being devoured by wild hogs.  Suffice it to say that this
romance is true to my conception of the war, and I base it upon the
setting I learned to know and love so well, upon the strange passions
of primitive people, and upon my instinctive reaction to the facts and
rumors that I gathered.

ZANE GREY.
  AVALON, CALIFORNIA,
    April, 1921



CHAPTER I


At the end of a dry, uphill ride over barren country Jean Isbel
unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon
green with willow and cottonwood, promised water and grass.

His animals were tired, especially the pack mule that had carried a
heavy load; and with slow heave of relief they knelt and rolled in the
dust.  Jean experienced something of relief himself as he threw off his
chaps.  He had not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren
lands.  Stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of clear water
that tinkled over the red stones, he drank thirstily. The water was
cool, but it had an acrid taste—an alkali bite that he did not like.
Not since he had left Oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water;
and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had
loved.  This wild, endless Arizona land bade fair to earn his hatred.

By the time he had leisurely completed his tasks twilight had fallen
and coyotes had begun their barking.  Jean listened to the yelps and to
the moan of the cool wind in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction
that these lonely sounds were familiar.  This cedar wood burned into a
pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant.

“Reckon maybe I’ll learn to like Arizona,” he mused, half aloud. “But
I’ve a hankerin’ for waterfalls an’ dark-green forests. Must be the
Indian in me.... Anyway, dad needs me bad, an’ I reckon I’m here for
keeps.”

Jean threw some cedar branches on the fire, in the light of which he
opened his father’s letter, hoping by repeated reading to grasp more of
its strange portent.  It had been two months in reaching him, coming by
traveler, by stage and train, and then by boat, and finally by stage
again.  Written in lead pencil on a leaf torn from an old ledger, it
would have been hard to read even if the writing had been more legible.

“Dad’s writin’ was always bad, but I never saw it so shaky,” said Jean,
thinking aloud.


   GRASS VALLY, ARIZONA.

   Son Jean,—Come home.  Here is your home and here your needed.
   When we left Oregon we all reckoned you would not be long behind.
   But its years now.  I am growing old, son, and you was always my
   steadiest boy.  Not that you ever was so dam steady.  Only your
   wildness seemed more for the woods.  You take after mother, and
   your brothers Bill and Guy take after me.  That is the red and
   white of it.  Your part Indian, Jean, and that Indian I reckon
   I am going to need bad.  I am rich in cattle and horses.  And my
   range here is the best I ever seen.  Lately we have been losing
   stock.  But that is not all nor so bad.  Sheepmen have moved into
   the Tonto and are grazing down on Grass Vally.  Cattlemen and
   sheepmen can never bide in this country.  We have bad times ahead.
   Reckon I have more reasons to worry and need you, but you must wait
   to hear that by word of mouth.  Whatever your doing, chuck it and
   rustle for Grass Vally so to make here by spring.  I am asking you
   to take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells.  And hide
   them in your outfit.  If you meet anyone when your coming down into
   the Tonto, listen more than you talk.  And last, son, dont let
   anything keep you in Oregon.  Reckon you have a sweetheart, and
   if so fetch her along.  With love from your dad,

   GASTON ISBEL.


Jean pondered over this letter.  Judged by memory of his father, who
had always been self-sufficient, it had been a surprise and somewhat of
a shock.  Weeks of travel and reflection had not helped him to grasp
the meaning between the lines.

“Yes, dad’s growin’ old,” mused Jean, feeling a warmth and a sadness
stir in him.  “He must be ‘way over sixty.  But he never looked old....
So he’s rich now an’ losin’ stock, an’ goin’ to be sheeped off his
range.  Dad could stand a lot of rustlin’, but not much from sheepmen.”

The softness that stirred in Jean merged into a cold, thoughtful
earnestness which had followed every perusal of his father’s letter. A
dark, full current seemed flowing in his veins, and at times he felt it
swell and heat.  It troubled him, making him conscious of a deeper,
stronger self, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy nature.  No
ties had bound him in Oregon, except love for the great, still forests
and the thundering rivers; and this love came from his softer side.  It
had cost him a wrench to leave.  And all the way by ship down the coast
to San Diego and across the Sierra Madres by stage, and so on to this
last overland travel by horseback, he had felt a retreating of the self
that was tranquil and happy and a dominating of this unknown somber
self, with its menacing possibilities.  Yet despite a nameless regret
and a loyalty to Oregon, when he lay in his blankets he had to confess
a keen interest in his adventurous future, a keen enjoyment of this
stark, wild Arizona.  It appeared to be a different sky stretching in
dark, star-spangled dome over him—closer, vaster, bluer.  The strong
fragrance of sage and cedar floated over him with the camp-fire smoke,
and all seemed drowsily to subdue his thoughts.

At dawn he rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his boots, began
the day with a zest for the work that must bring closer his calling
future.  White, crackling frost and cold, nipping air were the same
keen spurs to action that he had known in the uplands of Oregon, yet
they were not wholly the same.  He sensed an exhilaration similar to
the effect of a strong, sweet wine.  His horse and mule had fared well
during the night, having been much refreshed by the grass and water of
the little canyon.  Jean mounted and rode into the cedars with gladness
that at last he had put the endless leagues of barren land behind him.

The trail he followed appeared to be seldom traveled.  It led,
according to the meager information obtainable at the last settlement,
directly to what was called the Rim, and from there Grass Valley could
be seen down in the Basin.  The ascent of the ground was so gradual
that only in long, open stretches could it be seen.  But the nature of
the vegetation showed Jean how he was climbing.  Scant, low, scraggy
cedars gave place to more numerous, darker, greener, bushier ones, and
these to high, full-foliaged, green-berried trees.  Sage and grass in
the open flats grew more luxuriously.  Then came the pinyons, and
presently among them the checker-barked junipers.  Jean hailed the
first pine tree with a hearty slap on the brown, rugged bark.  It was a
small dwarf pine struggling to live.  The next one was larger, and
after that came several, and beyond them pines stood up everywhere
above the lower trees.  Odor of pine needles mingled with the other dry
smells that made the wind pleasant to Jean.  In an hour from the first
line of pines he had ridden beyond the cedars and pinyons into a slowly
thickening and deepening forest.  Underbrush appeared scarce except in
ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached grass. Jean’s
eye roved for sight of squirrels, birds, deer, or any moving creature.
It appeared to be a dry, uninhabited forest.  About midday Jean halted
at a pond of surface water, evidently melted snow, and gave his animals
a drink.  He saw a few old deer tracks in the mud and several huge bird
tracks new to him which he concluded must have been made by wild
turkeys.

The trail divided at this pond.  Jean had no idea which branch he ought
to take.  “Reckon it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, as he was about to
remount.  His horse was standing with ears up, looking back along the
trail.  Then Jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs, and presently
espied a horseman.

Jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered
over his horse at the approaching rider.  All men in this country were
going to be of exceeding interest to Jean Isbel.  This man at a
distance rode and looked like all the Arizonians Jean had seen, he had
a superb seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean.  He wore a huge
black sombrero and a soiled red scarf.  His vest was open and he was
without a coat.

The rider came trotting up and halted several paces from Jean

“Hullo, stranger!” he said, gruffly.

“Howdy yourself!” replied Jean.  He felt an instinctive importance in
the meeting with the man.  Never had sharper eyes flashed over Jean and
his outfit.  He had a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long, lean, and
hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes of piercing
light intensity.  Not very much hard Western experience had passed by
this man, yet he was not old, measured by years. When he dismounted
Jean saw he was tall, even for an Arizonian.

“Seen your tracks back a ways,” he said, as he slipped the bit to let
his horse drink.  “Where bound?”

“Reckon I’m lost, all right,” replied Jean.  “New country for me.”

“Shore.  I seen thet from your tracks an’ your last camp.  Wal, where
was you headin’ for before you got lost?”

The query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp ring.  Jean felt the
lack of friendliness or kindliness in it.

“Grass Valley.  My name’s Isbel,” he replied, shortly.

The rider attended to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him;
then with long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle.

“Shore I knowed you was Jean Isbel,” he said.  “Everybody in the Tonto
has heerd old Gass Isbel sent fer his boy.”

“Well then, why did you ask?” inquired Jean, bluntly.

“Reckon I wanted to see what you’d say.”

“So?  All right.  But I’m not carin’ very much for what YOU say.”

Their glances locked steadily then and each measured the other by the
intangible conflict of spirit.

“Shore thet’s natural,” replied the rider.  His speech was slow, and
the motions of his long, brown hands, as he took a cigarette from his
vest, kept time with his words.  “But seein’ you’re one of the Isbels,
I’ll hev my say whether you want it or not.  My name’s Colter an’ I’m
one of the sheepmen Gass Isbel’s riled with.”

“Colter.  Glad to meet you,” replied Jean.  “An’ I reckon who riled my
father is goin’ to rile me.”

“Shore.  If thet wasn’t so you’d not be an Isbel,” returned Colter,
with a grim little laugh.  “It’s easy to see you ain’t run into any
Tonto Basin fellers yet.  Wal, I’m goin’ to tell you thet your old man
gabbed like a woman down at Greaves’s store.  Bragged aboot you an’ how
you could fight an’ how you could shoot an’ how you could track a hoss
or a man!  Bragged how you’d chase every sheep herder back up on the
Rim.... I’m tellin’ you because we want you to git our stand right.
We’re goin’ to run sheep down in Grass Valley.”

“Ahuh!  Well, who’s we?” queried Jean, curtly.

“What-at?... We—I mean the sheepmen rangin’ this Rim from Black Butte
to the Apache country.”

“Colter, I’m a stranger in Arizona,” said Jean, slowly.  “I know little
about ranchers or sheepmen.  It’s true my father sent for me.  It’s
true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an’
blow. An’ he’s old now.  I can’t help it if he bragged about me.  But
if he has, an’ if he’s justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I’m
goin’ to do my best to live up to his brag.”

“I get your hunch.  Shore we understand each other, an’ thet’s a
powerful help.  You take my hunch to your old man,” replied Colter, as
he turned his horse away toward the left.  “Thet trail leadin’ south is
yours.  When you come to the Rim you’ll see a bare spot down in the
Basin.  Thet ’ll be Grass Valley.”

He rode away out of sight into the woods.  Jean leaned against his
horse and pondered.  It seemed difficult to be just to this Colter, not
because of his claims, but because of a subtle hostility that emanated
from him.  Colter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of
speech that Jean had come to associate with dishonest men. Even if Jean
had not been prejudiced, if he had known nothing of his father’s
trouble with these sheepmen, and if Colter had met him only to exchange
glances and greetings, still Jean would never have had a favorable
impression.  Colter grated upon him, roused an antagonism seldom felt.

“Heigho!” sighed the young man, “Good-by to huntin’ an’ fishing’! Dad’s
given me a man’s job.”

With that he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the
right-hand trail.  Walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon,
toward sunset getting into heavy forest of pine.  More than one snow
bank showed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of
shady ravines.  And it was upon entering this zone of richer, deeper
forestland that Jean sloughed off his gloomy forebodings.  These
stately pines were not the giant firs of Oregon, but any lover of the
woods could be happy under them.  Higher still he climbed until the
forest spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed
ravines here and there on each side.  And presently that deceitful
level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were
matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce.  Heavily barked, with
regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to
spear the sky with silver plumes.  A graceful gray-green moss, waved
like veils from the branches.  The air was not so dry and it was
colder, with a scent and touch of snow.  Jean made camp at the first
likely site, taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little
distance from his fire.  Under the softly moaning pines he felt
comfortable, having lost the sense of an immeasurable open space
falling away from all around him.

The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Jean, “Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug,
chug-a-lug-chug.”  There was not a great difference between the gobble
of a wild turkey and that of a tame one.  Jean got up, and taking his
rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the
turkeys.  But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they
appeared to be gone.  The mule had strayed, and, what with finding it
and cooking breakfast and packing, Jean did not make a very early
start.  On this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down. He was
weary of hurrying; the change from weeks in the glaring sun and
dust-laden wind to this sweet coot darkly green and brown forest was
very welcome; he wanted to linger along the shaded trail.  This day he
made sure would see him reach the Rim.  By and by he lost the trail.
It had just worn out from lack of use.  Every now and then Jean would
cross an old trail, and as he penetrated deeper into the forest every
damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and bear.  The amount
of bear sign surprised him.  Presently his keen nostrils were assailed
by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep, trail.  From
the tracks Jean calculated that the sheep had passed there the day
before.

An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him.  To be sure he had been
prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable.  But
on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath,
weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake.  Where sheep grazed
they destroyed.  That was what Jean had against them.

An hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike slope, where new
green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere.  The pines
appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against
the green wall of woods.  A white strip of snow gleamed like a moving
stream away down in the woods.

Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the
faint, sweet bleating of lambs.  As he road toward these sounds a dog
ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him.  Next Jean smelled a
camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke,
and then a small peaked tent.  Beyond the clump of oaks Jean
encountered a Mexican lad carrying a carbine.  The boy had a swarthy,
pleasant face, and to Jean’s greeting he replied, “BUENAS DIAS.”  Jean
understood little Spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple
queries was that the lad was not alone—and that it was “lambing time.”

This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest.  The forest seemed
shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats.  All about the
camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep.  A few
were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling
white fleecy little lambs that staggered on their feet.  Everywhere
Jean saw tiny lambs just born.  Their pin-pointed bleats pierced the
heavier baa-baa of their mothers.

Jean dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather
expected to see another and older Mexican, from whom he might get
information.  The lad walked with him.  Down this way the plaintive
uproar made by the sheep was not so loud.

“Hello there!” called Jean, cheerfully, as he approached the tent. No
answer was forthcoming.  Dropping his bridle, he went on, rather
slowly, looking for some one to appear.  Then a voice from one side
startled him.

“Mawnin’, stranger.”

A girl stepped out from beside a pine.  She carried a rifle.  Her face
flashed richly brown, but she was not Mexican.  This fact, and the
sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat disconcerted
Jean.

“Beg pardon—miss,” he floundered.  “Didn’t expect, to see a—girl....
I’m sort of lost—lookin’ for the Rim—an’ thought I’d find a sheep
herder who’d show me.  I can’t savvy this boy’s lingo.”

While he spoke it seemed to him an intentness of expression, a strain
relaxed from her face.  A faint suggestion of hostility likewise
disappeared.  Jean was not even sure that he had caught it, but there
had been something that now was gone.

“Shore I’ll be glad to show y’u,” she said.

“Thanks, miss.  Reckon I can breathe easy now,” he replied,

“It’s a long ride from San Diego.  Hot an’ dusty!  I’m pretty tired.
An’ maybe this woods isn’t good medicine to achin’ eyes!”

“San Diego!  Y’u’re from the coast?”

“Yes.”

Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still held it,
rather deferentially, perhaps.  It seemed to attract her attention.

“Put on y’ur hat, stranger.... Shore I can’t recollect when any man
bared his haid to me.”  She uttered a little laugh in which surprise
and frankness mingled with a tint of bitterness.

Jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his
side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if
he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression. If
there had been an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was more
in this.  The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny
little carbine across her knees.  She had a level, curious gaze upon
him, and Jean had never met one just like it.  Her eyes were rather a
wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their
amber-brown depths.  They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze
dropped first.  Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few
inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out
moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly
she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When
Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain
of red in the gold tan of her cheek.  That touch of embarrassment
somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting.  It
changed her poise.  It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost
bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes.

“Reckon you’re from Texas,” said Jean, presently.

“Shore am,” she drawled.  She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant to
hear.  “How’d y’u-all guess that?”

“Anybody can tell a Texan.  Where I came from there were a good many
pioneers an’ ranchers from the old Lone Star state.  I’ve worked for
several.  An’, come to think of it, I’d rather hear a Texas girl talk
than anybody.”

“Did y’u know many Texas girls?” she inquired, turning again to face
him.

“Reckon I did—quite a good many.”

“Did y’u go with them?”

“Go with them?  Reckon you mean keep company.  Why, yes, I guess I
did—a little,” laughed Jean.  “Sometimes on a Sunday or a dance once
in a blue moon, an’ occasionally a ride.”

“Shore that accounts,” said the girl, wistfully.

“For what?” asked Jean.

“Y’ur bein’ a gentleman,” she replied, with force.  “Oh, I’ve not
forgotten.  I had friends when we lived in Texas.... Three years ago.
Shore it seems longer.  Three miserable years in this damned country!”

Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting
utterance to a total stranger.  And it was that biting of her lip that
drew Jean’s attention to her mouth.  It held beauty of curve and
fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and
bitterness.  Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Jean. He
saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a
power which grew on him.  This, with her shame and pathos and the fact
that she craved respect, gave a leap to Jean’s interest.

“Well, I reckon you flatter me,” he said, hoping to put her at her ease
again.  “I’m only a rough hunter an’ fisherman-woodchopper an’ horse
tracker.  Never had all the school I needed—nor near enough company of
nice girls like you.”

“Am I nice?” she asked, quickly.

“You sure are,” he replied, smiling.

“In these rags,” she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that
thrilled him.  “Look at the holes.”  She showed rips and worn-out
places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a
round, brown arm.  “I sew when I have anythin’ to sew with.... Look at
my skirt—a dirty rag.  An’ I have only one other to my name.... Look!”
Again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and giving the lie to
her action.  But shame could not check her violence now.  A dammed-up
resentment seemed to have broken out in flood.  She lifted the ragged
skirt almost to her knees.  “No stockings!  No Shoes!... How can a
girl be nice when she has no clean, decent woman’s clothes to wear?”

“How—how can a girl...” began Jean.  “See here, miss, I’m beggin’ your
pardon for—sort of stirrin’ you to forget yourself a little. Reckon I
understand.  You don’t meet many strangers an’ I sort of hit you
wrong—makin’ you feel too much—an’ talk too much.  Who an’ what you
are is none of my business.  But we met.... An’ I reckon somethin’ has
happened—perhaps more to me than to you.... Now let me put you
straight about clothes an’ women.  Reckon I know most women love nice
things to wear an’ think because clothes make them look pretty that
they’re nicer or better.  But they’re wrong.  You’re wrong. Maybe it ’d
be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes.  But you
can be—you axe just as nice, an’—an’ fine—an’, for all you know, a
good deal more appealin’ to some men.”

“Stranger, y’u shore must excuse my temper an’ the show I made of
myself,” replied the girl, with composure.  “That, to say the least,
was not nice.  An’ I don’t want anyone thinkin’ better of me than I
deserve.  My mother died in Texas, an’ I’ve lived out heah in this wild
country—a girl alone among rough men.  Meetin’ y’u to-day makes me see
what a hard lot they are—an’ what it’s done to me.”

Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing
sense that he pitied her, liked her.

“Are you a sheep herder?” he asked.

“Shore I am now an’ then.  My father lives back heah in a canyon. He’s
a sheepman.  Lately there’s been herders shot at.  Just now we’re short
an’ I have to fill in.  But I like shepherdin’ an’ I love the woods,
and the Rim Rock an’ all the Tonto.  If they were all, I’d shore be
happy.”

“Herders shot at!” exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully.  “By whom? An’ what
for?”

“Trouble brewin’ between the cattlemen down in the Basin an’ the
sheepmen up on the Rim.  Dad says there’ll shore be hell to pay. I tell
him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas.”

“Then—  Are you on the ranchers’ side?” queried Jean, trying to
pretend casual interest.

“No.  I’ll always be on my father’s side,” she replied, with spirit.
“But I’m bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of the
argument.”

“How so?”

“Because there’s grass everywhere.  I see no sense in a sheepman goin’
out of his way to surround a cattleman an’ sheep off his range.  That
started the row.  Lord knows how it’ll end.  For most all of them heah
are from Texas.”

“So I was told,” replied Jean.  “An’ I heard’ most all these Texans got
run out of Texas.  Any truth in that?”

“Shore I reckon there is,” she replied, seriously.  “But, stranger, it
might not be healthy for y’u to, say that anywhere.  My dad, for one,
was not run out of Texas.  Shore I never can see why he came heah. He’s
accumulated stock, but he’s not rich nor so well off as he was back
home.”

“Are you goin’ to stay here always?” queried Jean, suddenly.

“If I do so it ’ll be in my grave,” she answered, darkly.  “But what’s
the use of thinkin’?  People stay places until they drift away.  Y’u
can never tell.... Well, stranger, this talk is keepin’ y’u.”

She seemed moody now, and a note of detachment crept into her voice.
Jean rose at once and went for his horse.  If this girl did not desire
to talk further he certainly had no wish to annoy her.  His mule had
strayed off among the bleating sheep.  Jean drove it back and then led
his horse up to where the girl stood.  She appeared taller and, though
not of robust build, she was vigorous and lithe, with something about
her that fitted the place.  Jean was loath to bid her good-by.

“Which way is the Rim?” he asked, turning to his saddle girths.

“South,” she replied, pointing.  “It’s only a mile or so.  I’ll walk
down with y’u.... Suppose y’u’re on the way to Grass Valley?”

“Yes; I’ve relatives there,” he returned.  He dreaded her next
question, which he suspected would concern his name.  But she did not
ask.  Taking up her rifle she turned away.  Jean strode ahead to her
side.  “Reckon if you walk I won’t ride.”

So he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a Mountaineer.
Her bare, brown head came up nearly to his shoulder.  It was a small,
pretty head, graceful, well held, and the thick hair on it was a shiny,
soft brown.  She wore it in a braid, rather untidily and tangled, he
thought, and it was tied with a string of buckskin.  Altogether her
apparel proclaimed poverty.

Jean let the conversation languish for a little.  He wanted to think
what to say presently, and then he felt a rather vague pleasure in
stalking beside her.  Her profile was straight cut and exquisite in
line.  From this side view the soft curve of lips could not be seen.

She made several attempts to start conversation, all of which Jean
ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint.  Presently Jean, having
decided what he wanted to say, suddenly began: “I like this adventure.
Do you?”

“Adventure! Meetin’ me in the woods?”  And she laughed the laugh of
youth.  “Shore you must be hard up for adventure, stranger.”

“Do you like it?” he persisted, and his eyes searched the half-averted
face.

“I might like it,” she answered, frankly, “if—if my temper had not
made a fool of me.  I never meet anyone I care to talk to.  Why should
it not be pleasant to run across some one new—some one strange in this
heah wild country?”

“We are as we are,” said Jean, simply.  “I didn’t think you made a fool
of yourself.  If I thought so, would I want to see you again?”

“Do y’u?”  The brown face flashed on him with surprise, with a light he
took for gladness.  And because he wanted to appear calm and friendly,
not too eager, he had to deny himself the thrill of meeting those
changing eyes.

“Sure I do.  Reckon I’m overbold on such short acquaintance.  But I
might not have another chance to tell you, so please don’t hold it
against me.”

This declaration over, Jean felt relief and something of exultation. He
had been afraid he might not have the courage to make it.  She walked
on as before, only with her head bowed a little and her eyes downcast.
No color but the gold-brown tan and the blue tracery of veins showed in
her cheeks.  He noticed then a slight swelling quiver of her throat;
and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and
pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her shoulder.
Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of
her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the
grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle.  It had an effect on Jean
totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over
him and in the utterance he could not hold back.

“Girl, we’re strangers, but what of that?  We’ve met, an’ I tell you it
means somethin’ to me.  I’ve known girls for months an’ never felt this
way.  I don’t know who you are an’ I don’t care.  You betrayed a good
deal to me.  You’re not happy.  You’re lonely.  An’ if I didn’t want to
see you again for my own sake I would for yours.  Some things you said
I’ll not forget soon.  I’ve got a sister, an’ I know you have no
brother.  An’ I reckon ...”

At this juncture Jean in his earnestness and quite without thought
grasped her hand.  The contact checked the flow of his speech and
suddenly made him aghast at his temerity.  But the girl did not make
any effort to withdraw it.  So Jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying
to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely.  He imagined he felt
a faint, warm, returning pressure.  She was young, she was friendless,
she was human.  By this hand in his Jean felt more than ever the
loneliness of her.  Then, just as he was about to speak again, she
pulled her hand free.

“Heah’s the Rim,” she said, in her quaint Southern drawl. “An’ there’s
Y’ur Tonto Basin.”

Jean had been intent only upon the girl.  He had kept step beside her
without taking note of what was ahead of him.  At her words he looked
up expectantly, to be struck mute.

He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath
him. As he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the
darkest and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue
distance across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the
sky. It seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by
bold, undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a wall so high that
he felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky.

“Southeast y’u see the Sierra Anchas,” said the girl pointing. “That
notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to Phoenix an’
Maricopa.  Those big rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals.
Round to the west is the Four Peaks Range.  An’ y’u’re standin’ on the
Rim.”

Jean could not see at first just what the Rim was, but by shifting his
gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature. For
leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow wall, a rampart, a
mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward.  Grand and bold were
the promontories reaching out over the void.  They ran toward the
westering sun.  Sweeping and impressive were the long lines slanting
away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into the black
timber.  Jean had never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of
nature’s depths and upheavals.  He was held mute.

“Stranger, look down,” said the girl.

Jean’s sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances.
This wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that
it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged
into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into gorges
choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing waters.
Slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into canyon—so
the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a
wilderness across which travel seemed impossible.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Jean.

“Indeed it is!” murmured the girl.  “Shore that is Arizona.  I reckon I
love THIS.  The heights an’ depths—the awfulness of its wilderness!”

“An’ you want to leave it?”

“Yes an’ no.  I don’t deny the peace that comes to me heah.  But not
often do I see the Basin, an’ for that matter, one doesn’t live on
grand scenery.”

“Child, even once in a while—this sight would cure any misery, if you
only see.  I’m glad I came.  I’m glad you showed it to me first.”

She too seemed under the spell of a vastness and loneliness and beauty
and grandeur that could not but strike the heart.

Jean took her hand again.  “Girl, say you will meet me here,” he said,
his voice ringing deep in his ears.

“Shore I will,” she replied, softly, and turned to him.  It seemed then
that Jean saw her face for the first time.  She was beautiful as he had
never known beauty.  Limned against that scene, she gave it life—wild,
sweet, young life—the poignant meaning of which haunted yet eluded
him.  But she belonged there.  Her eyes were again searching his, as if
for some lost part of herself, unrealized, never known before.
Wondering, wistful, hopeful, glad—they were eyes that seemed surprised,
to reveal part of her soul.

Then her red lips parted.  Their tremulous movement was a magnet to
Jean. An invisible and mighty force pulled him down to kiss them.
Whatever the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it.

He jerked away, as if he expected to be struck. “Girl—I—I”—he gasped
in amaze and sudden-dawning contrition—“I kissed you—but I swear it
wasn’t intentional—I never thought....”

The anger that Jean anticipated failed to materialize.  He stood,
breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal.  By the
same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was
now invested again by the older character.

“Shore I reckon my callin’ y’u a gentleman was a little previous,” she
said, with a rather dry bitterness.  “But, stranger, yu’re sudden.”

“You’re not insulted?” asked Jean, hurriedly.

“Oh, I’ve been kissed before.  Shore men are all alike.”

“They’re not,” he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion, a
dulling of enchantment.  “Don’t you class me with other men who’ve
kissed you.  I wasn’t myself when I did it an’ I’d have gone on my
knees to ask your forgiveness.... But now I wouldn’t—an’ I wouldn’t
kiss you again, either—even if you—you wanted it.”

Jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt, as if
she was questioning him.

“Miss, I take that back,” added Jean, shortly.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t
mean to be rude.  It was a mean trick for me to kiss you.  A girl alone
in the woods who’s gone out of her way to be kind to me!  I don’t know
why I forgot my manners.  An’ I ask your pardon.”

She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down into the
Basin.

“There’s Grass Valley.  That long gray spot in the black.  It’s about
fifteen miles.  Ride along the Rim that way till y’u cross a trail.
Shore y’u can’t miss it.  Then go down.”

“I’m much obliged to you,” replied Jean, reluctantly accepting what he
regarded as his dismissal.  Turning his horse, he put his foot in the
stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl. Her
abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested
loneliness and wistfulness.  She was not thinking of that scene spread
so wondrously before her.  It struck Jean she might be pondering a
subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious
of, yet could not define.

“Reckon this is good-by,” he said, with hesitation.

“ADIOS, SENOR,” she replied, facing him again.  She lifted the little
carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready to
depart.

“Adios means good-by?” he queried.

“Yes, good-by till to-morrow or good-by forever.  Take it as y’u like.”

“Then you’ll meet me here day after to-morrow?”  How eagerly he spoke,
on impulse, without a consideration of the intangible thing that had
changed him!

“Did I say I wouldn’t?”

“No.  But I reckoned you’d not care to after—” he replied, breaking
off in some confusion.

“Shore I’ll be glad to meet y’u.  Day after to-morrow about
mid-afternoon.  Right heah.  Fetch all the news from Grass Valley.”

“All right.  Thanks.  That’ll be—fine,” replied Jean, and as he spoke
he experienced a buoyant thrill, a pleasant lightness of enthusiasm,
such as always stirred boyishly in him at a prospect of adventure.
Before it passed he wondered at it and felt unsure of himself. He
needed to think.

“Stranger shore I’m not recollectin’ that y’u told me who y’u are,” she
said.

“No, reckon I didn’t tell,” he returned.  “What difference does that
make?  I said I didn’t care who or what you are.  Can’t you feel the
same about me?”

“Shore—I felt that way,” she replied, somewhat non-plussed, with the
level brown gaze steadily on his face.  “But now y’u make me think.”

“Let’s meet without knowin’ any more about each other than we do now.”

“Shore.  I’d like that.  In this big wild Arizona a girl—an’ I reckon
a man—feels so insignificant.  What’s a name, anyhow?  Still, people
an’ things have to be distinguished.  I’ll call y’u ‘Stranger’ an’ be
satisfied—if y’u say it’s fair for y’u not to tell who y’u are.”

“Fair!  No, it’s not,” declared Jean, forced to confession.  “My name’s
Jean—Jean Isbel.”

“ISBEL!” she exclaimed, with a violent start.  “Shore y’u can’t be son
of old Gass Isbel.... I’ve seen both his sons.”

“He has three,” replied Jean, with relief, now the secret was out. “I’m
the youngest.  I’m twenty-four.  Never been out of Oregon till now.  On
my way—”

The brown color slowly faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale,
with eyes that began to blaze.  The suppleness of her seemed to stiffen.

“My name’s Ellen Jorth,” she burst out, passionately.  “Does it mean
anythin’ to y’u?”

“Never heard it in my life,” protested Jean.  “Sure I reckoned you
belonged to the sheep raisers who ’re on the outs with my father.
That’s why I had to tell you I’m Jean Isbel.... Ellen Jorth. It’s
strange an’ pretty.... Reckon I can be just as good a—a friend to
you—”

“No Isbel, can ever be a friend to me,” she said, with bitter coldness.
Stripped of her ease and her soft wistfulness, she stood before him one
instant, entirely another girl, a hostile enemy.  Then she wheeled and
strode off into the woods.

Jean, in amaze, in consternation, watched her swiftly draw away with
her lithe, free step, wanting to follow her, wanting to call to her;
but the resentment roused by her suddenly avowed hostility held him
mute in his tracks.  He watched her disappear, and when the
brown-and-green wall of forest swallowed the slender gray form he
fought against the insistent desire to follow her, and fought in vain.



CHAPTER II


But Ellen Jorth’s moccasined feet did not leave a distinguishable trail
on the springy pine needle covering of the ground, and Jean could not
find any trace of her.

A little futile searching to and fro cooled his impulse and called
pride to his rescue.  Returning to his horse, he mounted, rode out
behind the pack mule to start it along, and soon felt the relief of
decision and action.  Clumps of small pines grew thickly in spots on
the Rim, making it necessary for him to skirt them; at which times he
lost sight of the purple basin.  Every time he came back to an opening
through which he could see the wild ruggedness and colors and
distances, his appreciation of their nature grew on him. Arizona from
Yuma to the Little Colorado had been to him an endless waste of
wind-scoured, sun-blasted barrenness.  This black-forested rock-rimmed
land of untrodden ways was a world that in itself would satisfy him.
Some instinct in Jean called for a lonely, wild land, into the
fastnesses of which he could roam at will and be the other strange self
that he had always yearned to be but had never been.

Every few moments there intruded into his flowing consciousness the
flashing face of Ellen Jorth, the way she had looked at him, the things
she had said.  “Reckon I was a fool,” he soliloquized, with an acute
sense of humiliation.  “She never saw how much in earnest I was.”  And
Jean began to remember the circumstances with a vividness that
disturbed and perplexed him.

The accident of running across such a girl in that lonely place might
be out of the ordinary—but it had happened.  Surprise had made him
dull. The charm of her appearance, the appeal of her manner, must have
drawn him at the very first, but he had not recognized that.  Only at
her words, “Oh, I’ve been kissed before,” had his feelings been checked
in their heedless progress.  And the utterance of them had made a
difference he now sought to analyze.  Some personality in him, some
voice, some idea had begun to defend her even before he was conscious
that he had arraigned her before the bar of his judgment.  Such defense
seemed clamoring in him now and he forced himself to listen.  He
wanted, in his hurt pride, to justify his amazing surrender to a sweet
and sentimental impulse.

He realized now that at first glance he should have recognized in her
look, her poise, her voice the quality he called thoroughbred.  Ragged
and stained apparel did not prove her of a common sort.  Jean had known
a number of fine and wholesome girls of good family; and he remembered
his sister.  This Ellen Jorth was that kind of a girl irrespective of
her present environment.  Jean championed her loyally, even after he
had gratified his selfish pride.

It was then—contending with an intangible and stealing glamour, unreal
and fanciful, like the dream of a forbidden enchantment—that Jean
arrived at the part in the little woodland drama where he had kissed
Ellen Jorth and had been unrebuked.  Why had she not resented his
action?  Dispelled was the illusion he had been dreamily and nobly
constructing.  “Oh, I’ve been kissed before!”  The shock to him now
exceeded his first dismay.  Half bitterly she had spoken, and wholly
scornful of herself, or of him, or of all men.  For she had said all
men were alike.  Jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every
decent man hated.  Naturally every happy and healthy young man would
want to kiss such red, sweet lips.  But if those lips had been for
others—never for him!  Jean reflected that not since childish games
had he kissed a girl—until this brown-faced Ellen Jorth came his way.
He wondered at it.  Moreover, he wondered at the significance he placed
upon it.  After all, was it not merely an accident?  Why should he
remember?  Why should he ponder?  What was the faint, deep, growing
thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts?

Riding along with busy mind, Jean almost crossed a well-beaten trail,
leading through a pine thicket and down over the Rim.  Jean’s pack mule
led the way without being driven.  And when Jean reached the edge of
the bluff one look down was enough to fetch him off his horse. That
trail was steep, narrow, clogged with stones, and as full of sharp
corners as a crosscut saw.  Once on the descent with a packed mule and
a spirited horse, Jean had no time for mind wanderings and very little
for occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the vast blue hollow
asleep under a westering sun.

The stones rattled, the dust rose, the cedar twigs snapped, the little
avalanches of red earth slid down, the iron-shod hoofs rang on the
rocks. This slope had been narrow at the apex in the Rim where the
trail led down a crack, and it widened in fan shape as Jean descended.
He zigzagged down a thousand feet before the slope benched into
dividing ridges.  Here the cedars and junipers failed and pines once
more hid the sun.  Deep ravines were black with brush.  From somewhere
rose a roar of running water, most pleasant to Jean’s ears.  Fresh deer
and bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail.

Those timbered ridges were but billows of that tremendous slope that
now sheered above Jean, ending in a magnificent yellow wall of rock,
greened in niches, stained by weather rust, carved and cracked and
caverned.  As Jean descended farther the hum of bees made melody, the
roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze filled him with
the content of the wild.  Sheepmen like Colter and wild girls like
Ellen Jorth and all that seemed promising or menacing in his father’s
letter could never change the Indian in Jean.  So he thought.  Hard
upon that conclusion rushed another—one which troubled with its
stinging revelation.  Surely these influences he had defied were just
the ones to bring out in him the Indian he had sensed but had never
known.  The eventful day had brought new and bitter food for Jean to
reflect upon.

The trail landed him in the bowlder-strewn bed of a wide canyon, where
the huge trees stretched a canopy of foliage which denied the sunlight,
and where a beautiful brook rushed and foamed.  Here at last Jean
tasted water that rivaled his Oregon springs.  “Ah,” he cried, “that
sure is good!”  Dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this streamway;
and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly
bear to the tiny, birdlike imprints of a squirrel.  Jean heard familiar
sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels
was incessant.  This fragrant, cool retreat under the Rim brought back
to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests.  After all, Jean felt that
he would not miss anything that he had loved in the Cascades.  But what
was the vague sense of all not being well with him—the essence of a
faint regret—the insistence of a hovering shadow?  And then flashed
again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of
eyes, of lips—of something he had to forget.

Wild and broken as this rolling Basin floor had appeared from the Rim,
the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of
distance.  Down here all was on a big, rough, broken scale.  Jean did
not find even a few rods of level ground.  Bowlders as huge as houses
obstructed the stream bed; spruce trees eight feet thick tried to lord
it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a veritable canyon from which
occasional glimpses through the foliage showed the Rim as a lofty
red-tipped mountain peak.

Jean’s pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear or lion and ran
off down the rough trail, imperiling Jean’s outfit.  It was not an easy
task to head him off nor, when that was accomplished, to keep him to a
trot.  But his fright and succeeding skittishness at least made for
fast traveling.  Jean calculated that he covered ten miles under the
Rim before the character of ground and forest began to change.

The trail had turned southeast.  Instead of gorge after gorge,
red-walled and choked with forest, there began to be rolling ridges,
some high; others were knolls; and a thick cedar growth made up for a
falling off of pine.  The spruce had long disappeared.  Juniper
thickets gave way more and more to the beautiful manzanita; and soon on
the south slopes appeared cactus and a scrubby live oak.  But for the
well-broken trail, Jean would have fared ill through this tough brush.

Jean espied several deer, and again a coyote, and what he took to be a
small herd of wild horses.  No more turkey tracks showed in the dusty
patches.  He crossed a number of tiny brooklets, and at length came to
a place where the trail ended or merged in a rough road that showed
evidence of considerable travel.  Horses, sheep, and cattle had passed
along there that day.  This road turned southward, and Jean began to
have pleasurable expectations.

The road, like the trail, led down grade, but no longer at such steep
angles, and was bordered by cedar and pinyon, jack-pine and juniper,
mescal and manzanita.  Quite sharply, going around a ridge, the road
led Jean’s eye down to a small open flat of marshy, or at least grassy,
ground.  This green oasis in the wilderness of red and timbered ridges
marked another change in the character of the Basin.  Beyond that the
country began to spread out and roll gracefully, its dark-green forest
interspersed with grassy parks, until Jean headed into a long, wide
gray-green valley surrounded by black-fringed hills.  His pulses
quickened here.  He saw cattle dotting the expanse, and here and there
along the edge log cabins and corrals.

As a village, Grass Valley could not boast of much, apparently, in the
way of population.  Cabins and houses were widely scattered, as if the
inhabitants did not care to encroach upon one another.  But the one
store, built of stone, and stamped also with the characteristic
isolation, seemed to Jean to be a rather remarkable edifice.  Not
exactly like a fort did it strike him, but if it had not been designed
for defense it certainly gave that impression, especially from the
long, low side with its dark eye-like windows about the height of a
man’s shoulder.  Some rather fine horses were tied to a hitching rail.
Otherwise dust and dirt and age and long use stamped this Grass Valley
store and its immediate environment.

Jean threw his bridle, and, getting down, mounted the low porch and
stepped into the wide open door.  A face, gray against the background
of gloom inside, passed out of sight just as Jean entered.  He knew he
had been seen.  In front of the long, rather low-ceiled store were four
men, all absorbed, apparently, in a game of checkers.  Two were playing
and two were looking on.  One of these, a gaunt-faced man past middle
age, casually looked up as Jean entered.  But the moment of that casual
glance afforded Jean time enough to meet eyes he instinctively
distrusted. They masked their penetration.  They seemed neither curious
nor friendly. They saw him as if he had been merely thin air.

“Good evenin’,” said Jean.

After what appeared to Jean a lapse of time sufficient to impress him
with a possible deafness of these men, the gaunt-faced one said,
“Howdy, Isbel!”

The tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not
have been more pregnant with meaning.  Jean’s sharp sensibilities
absorbed much.  None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached
Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they
knew him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley.  All but the
one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the
wide-brimmed black hats.  Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they
gave Jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered
in Colter.

“Will somebody please tell me where to find my father, Gaston Isbel?”
inquired Jean, with as civil a tongue as he could command.

Nobody paid the slightest attention.  It was the same as if Jean had
not spoken.  Waiting, half amused, half irritated, Jean shot a rapid
glance around the store.  The place had felt bare; and Jean, peering
back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much.  Dry goods
and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided
their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a low
shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes,
and next to it stood a rack of rifles.  On the counter lay open cases
of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that
of rum.

Jean’s swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were
absorbed in the greasy checkerboard.  The fourth man was the one who
had spoken and he now deigned to look at Jean.  Not much flesh was
there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy.  He stroked a lean
chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of bridle holding than
familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle.  It was a lazy hand.  The
man looked lazy.  If he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet
Jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more
potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation.

“Shore,” drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, “old Gass lives aboot a mile
down heah.”  With slow sweep of the big hand he indicated a general
direction to the south; then, appearing to forget his questioner, he
turned his attention to the game.

Jean muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove
the pack mule down the road.  “Reckon I’ve ran into the wrong folds
to-day,” he said.  “If I remember dad right he was a man to make an’
keep friends.  Somehow I’ll bet there’s goin’ to be hell.”  Beyond the
store were some rather pretty and comfortable homes, little ranch
houses back in the coves of the hills.  The road turned west and Jean
saw his first sunset in the Tonto Basin.  It was a pageant of purple
clouds with silver edges, and background of deep rich gold.  Presently
Jean met a lad driving a cow.  “Hello, Johnny!” he said, genially, and
with a double purpose.  “My name’s Jean Isbel.  By Golly! I’m lost in
Grass Valley.  Will you tell me where my dad lives?”

“Yep.  Keep right on, an’ y’u cain’t miss him,” replied the lad, with a
bright smile.  “He’s lookin’ fer y’u.”

“How do you know, boy?” queried Jean, warmed by that smile.

“Aw, I know.  It’s all over the valley thet y’u’d ride in ter-day.
Shore I wus the one thet tole yer dad an’ he give me a dollar.”

“Was he glad to hear it?” asked Jean, with a queer sensation in his
throat.

“Wal, he plumb was.”

“An’ who told you I was goin’ to ride in to-day?”

“I heerd it at the store,” replied the lad, with an air of confidence.
“Some sheepmen was talkin’ to Greaves.  He’s the storekeeper.  I was
settin’ outside, but I heerd.  A Mexican come down off the Rim ter-day
an’ he fetched the news.”  Here the lad looked furtively around, then
whispered.  “An’ thet greaser was sent by somebody.  I never heerd no
more, but them sheepmen looked pretty plumb sour.  An’ one of them,
comin’ out, give me a kick, darn him.  It shore is the luckedest day
fer us cowmen.”

“How’s that, Johnny?”

“Wal, that’s shore a big fight comin’ to Grass Valley.  My dad says so
an’ he rides fer yer dad.  An’ if it comes now y’u’ll be heah.”

“Ahuh!” laughed Jean.  “An’ what then, boy?”

The lad turned bright eyes upward.  “Aw, now, yu’all cain’t come thet
on me.  Ain’t y’u an Injun, Jean Isbel?  Ain’t y’u a hoss tracker thet
rustlers cain’t fool?  Ain’t y’u a plumb dead shot?  Ain’t y’u wuss’ern
a grizzly bear in a rough-an’-tumble?... Now ain’t y’u, shore?”

Jean bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day and rode on his
way.  Manifestly a reputation somewhat difficult to live up to had
preceded his entry into Grass Valley.

Jean’s first sight of his future home thrilled him through.  It was a
big, low, rambling log structure standing well out from a wooded knoll
at the edge of the valley.  Corrals and barns and sheds lay off at the
back.  To the fore stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and
horses grazed.  At sunset the scene was one of rich color. Prosperity
and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch; lusty voices
of burros braying and cows bawling seemed welcoming Jean. A hound
bayed.  The first cool touch of wind fanned Jean’s cheek and brought a
fragrance of wood smoke and frying ham.

Horses in the Pasture romped to the fence and whistled at these
newcomers.  Jean espied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his
sight.  “Hello, Whiteface!  I’ll sure straddle you,” called Jean. Then
up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father—the same as
he had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, shirt sleeved, striding
with long step.  Jean waved and called to him.

“Hi, You Prodigal!” came the answer.  Yes, the voice of his father—and
Jean’s boyhood memories flashed.  He hurried his horse those last few
rods.  No—dad was not the same.  His hair shone gray.

“Here I am, dad,” called Jean, and then he was dismounting.  A deep,
quiet emotion settled over him, stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the
pang in his breast.

“Son, I shore am glad to see you,” said his father, and wrung his hand.
“Wal, wal, the size of you!  Shore you’ve grown, any how you favor your
mother.”

Jean felt in the iron clasp of hand, in the uplifting of the handsome
head, in the strong, fine light of piercing eyes that there was no
difference in the spirit of his father.  But the old smile could not
hide lines and shades strange to Jean.

“Dad, I’m as glad as you,” replied Jean, heartily.  “It seems long
we’ve been parted, now I see you.  Are You well, dad, an’ all right?”

“Not complainin’, son. I can ride all day same as ever,” he said.
“Come.  Never mind your hosses.  They’ll be looked after. Come meet the
folks.... Wal, wal, you got heah at last.”

On the porch of the house a group awaited Jean’s coming, rather
silently, he thought.  Wide-eyed children were there, very shy and
watchful.  The dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of
her in his memory.  She appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced
him.  “Oh, Jean, Jean, I’m glad you’ve come!” she cried, and pressed
him close.  Jean felt in her a woman’s anxiety for the present as well
as affection for the past.  He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had
not seen her for years.  His half brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed
but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy.  Bill resembled his
father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious.  Guy was
smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still
face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman.  Both had married in
Arizona.  Bill’s wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother
of three of the children.  The other wife was young, a strapping girl,
red headed and freckled, with wonderful lines of pain and strength in
her face.  Jean remembered, as he looked at her, that some one had
written him about the tragedy in her life.  When she was only a child
the Apaches had murdered all her family.  Then next to greet Jean were
the little children, all shy, yet all manifestly impressed by the
occasion.  A warmth and intimacy of forgotten home emotions flooded
over Jean.  Sweet it was to get home to these relatives who loved him
and welcomed him with quiet gladness.  But there seemed more.  Jean was
quick to see the shadow in the eyes of the women in that household and
to sense a strange reliance which his presence brought.

“Son, this heah Tonto is a land of milk an’ honey,” said his father, as
Jean gazed spellbound at the bounteous supper.

Jean certainly performed gastronomic feats on this occasion, to the
delight of Aunt Mary and the wonder of the children.  “Oh, he’s
starv-ved to death,” whispered one of the little boys to his sister.
They had begun to warm to this stranger uncle.  Jean had no chance to
talk, even had he been able to, for the meal-time showed a relaxation
of restraint and they all tried to tell him things at once.  In the
bright lamplight his father looked easier and happier as he beamed upon
Jean.

After supper the men went into an adjoining room that appeared most
comfortable and attractive.  It was long, and the width of the house,
with a huge stone fireplace, low ceiling of hewn timbers and walls of
the same, small windows with inside shutters of wood, and home-made
table and chairs and rugs.

“Wal, Jean, do you recollect them shootin’-irons?” inquired the
rancher, pointing above the fireplace.  Two guns hung on the spreading
deer antlers there.  One was a musket Jean’s father had used in the war
of the rebellion and the other was a long, heavy, muzzle-loading
flintlock Kentucky, rifle with which Jean had learned to shoot.

“Reckon I do, dad,” replied Jean, and with reverent hands and a rush of
memory he took the old gun down.

“Jean, you shore handle thet old arm some clumsy,” said Guy Isbel,
dryly.  And Bill added a remark to the effect that perhaps Jean had
been leading a luxurious and tame life back there in Oregon, and then
added,  “But I reckon he’s packin’ that six-shooter like a Texan.”

“Say, I fetched a gun or two along with me,” replied Jean, jocularly.
“Reckon I near broke my poor mule’s back with the load of shells an’
guns.  Dad, what was the idea askin’ me to pack out an arsenal?”

“Son, shore all shootin’ arms an’ such are at a premium in the Tonto,”
replied his father.  “An’ I was givin’ you a hunch to come loaded.”

His cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon the pleasantries.
Right there Jean sensed the charged atmosphere.  His brothers were
bursting with utterance about to break forth, and his father suddenly
wore a look that recalled to Jean critical times of days long past. But
the entrance of the children and the women folk put an end to
confidences.  Evidently the youngsters were laboring under subdued
excitement.  They preceded their mother, the smallest boy in the lead.
For him this must have been both a dreadful and a wonderful experience,
for he seemed to be pushed forward by his sister and brother and
mother, and driven by yearnings of his own.  “There now, Lee.  Say,
‘Uncle Jean, what did you fetch us?’  The lad hesitated for a shy,
frightened look at Jean, and then, gaining something from his scrutiny
of his uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the question of
tremendous importance.

“What did I fetch you, hey?” cried Jean, in delight, as he took the lad
up on his knee.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?  I didn’t forget, Lee. I
remembered you all.  Oh! the job I had packin’ your bundle of
presents.... Now, Lee, make a guess.”

“I dess you fetched a dun,” replied Lee.

“A dun!—I’ll bet you mean a gun,” laughed Jean.  “Well, you
four-year-old Texas gunman!  Make another guess.”

That appeared too momentous and entrancing for the other two
youngsters, and, adding their shrill and joyous voices to Lee’s, they
besieged Jean.

“Dad, where’s my pack?” cried Jean.  “These young Apaches are after my
scalp.”

“Reckon the boys fetched it onto the porch,” replied the rancher.

Guy Isbel opened the door and went out.  “By golly! heah’s three
packs,” he called.  “Which one do you want, Jean?”

“It’s a long, heavy bundle, all tied up,” replied Jean.

Guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a whoop from the
youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes of the women.  Jean lost
nothing of this.  How glad he was that he had tarried in San Francisco
because of a mental picture of this very reception in far-off wild
Arizona.

When Guy deposited the bundle on the floor it jarred the room. It gave
forth metallic and rattling and crackling sounds.

“Everybody stand back an’ give me elbow room,” ordered Jean,
majestically.  “My good folks, I want you all to know this is somethin’
that doesn’t happen often.  The bundle you see here weighed about a
hundred pounds when I packed it on my shoulder down Market Street in
Frisco.  It was stolen from me on shipboard. I got it back in San Diego
an’ licked the thief.  It rode on a burro from San Diego to Yuma an’
once I thought the burro was lost for keeps. It came up the Colorado
River from Yuma to Ehrenberg an’ there went on top of a stage.  We got
chased by bandits an’ once when the horses were gallopin’ hard it near
rolled off.  Then it went on the back of a pack horse an’ helped wear
him out.  An’ I reckon it would be somewhere else now if I hadn’t
fallen in with a freighter goin’ north from Phoenix to the Santa Fe
Trail.  The last lap when it sagged the back of a mule was the riskiest
an’ full of the narrowest escapes. Twice my mule bucked off his pack
an’ left my outfit scattered. Worst of all, my precious bundle made the
mule top heavy comin’ down that place back here where the trail seems
to drop off the earth. There I was hard put to keep sight of my pack.
Sometimes it was on top an’ other times the mule.  But it got here at
last.... An’ now I’ll open it.”

After this long and impressive harangue, which at least augmented the
suspense of the women and worked the children into a frenzy, Jean
leisurely untied the many knots round the bundle and unrolled it. He
had packed that bundle for just such travel as it had sustained. Three
cloth-bound rifles he laid aside, and with them a long, very heavy
package tied between two thin wide boards.  From this came the metallic
clink.  “Oo, I know what dem is!” cried Lee, breaking the silence of
suspense.  Then Jean, tearing open a long flat parcel, spread before
the mute, rapt-eyed youngsters such magnificent things, as they had
never dreamed of—picture books, mouth-harps, dolls, a toy gun and a
toy pistol, a wonderful whistle and a fox horn, and last of all a box
of candy.  Before these treasures on the floor, too magical to be
touched at first, the two little boys and their sister simply knelt.
That was a sweet, full moment for Jean; yet even that was clouded by
the something which shadowed these innocent children fatefully born in
a wild place at a wild time.  Next Jean gave to his sister the presents
he had brought her—beautiful cloth for a dress, ribbons and a bit of
lace, handkerchiefs and buttons and yards of linen, a sewing case and a
whole box of spools of thread, a comb and brush and mirror, and lastly
a Spanish brooch inlaid with garnets.  “There, Ann,” said Jean, “I
confess I asked a girl friend in Oregon to tell me some things my
sister might like.”  Manifestly there was not much difference in girls.
Ann seemed stunned by this munificence, and then awakening, she hugged
Jean in a way that took his breath.  She was not a child any more, that
was certain.  Aunt Mary turned knowing eyes upon Jean.  “Reckon you
couldn’t have pleased Ann more.  She’s engaged, Jean, an’ where girls
are in that state these things mean a heap.... Ann, you’ll be married
in that!”  And she pointed to the beautiful folds of material that Ann
had spread out.

“What’s this?” demanded Jean.  His sister’s blushes were enough to
convict her, and they were mightily becoming, too.

“Here, Aunt Mary,” went on Jean, “here’s yours, an’ here’s somethin’
for each of my new sisters.”  This distribution left the women as happy
and occupied, almost, as the children.  It left also another package,
the last one in the bundle.  Jean laid hold of it and, lifting it, he
was about to speak when he sustained a little shock of memory. Quite
distinctly he saw two little feet, with bare toes peeping out of
worn-out moccasins, and then round, bare, symmetrical ankles that had
been scratched by brush.  Next he saw Ellen Jorth’s passionate face as
she looked when she had made the violent action so disconcerting to
him.  In this happy moment the memory seemed farther off than a few
hours.  It had crystallized.  It annoyed while it drew him.  As a
result he slowly laid this package aside and did not speak as he had
intended to.

“Dad, I reckon I didn’t fetch a lot for you an’ the boys,” continued
Jean.  “Some knives, some pipes an’ tobacco.  An’ sure the guns.”

“Shore, you’re a regular Santa Claus, Jean,” replied his father. “Wal,
wal, look at the kids.  An’ look at Mary.  An’ for the land’s sake look
at Ann!  Wal, wal, I’m gettin’ old.  I’d forgotten the pretty stuff an’
gimcracks that mean so much to women.  We’re out of the world heah.
It’s just as well you’ve lived apart from us, Jean, for comin’ back
this way, with all that stuff, does us a lot of good.  I cain’t say,
son, how obliged I am.  My mind has been set on the hard side of life.
An’ it’s shore good to forget—to see the smiles of the women an’ the
joy of the kids.”

At this juncture a tall young man entered the open door.  He looked a
rider.  All about him, even his face, except his eyes, seemed old, but
his eyes were young, fine, soft, and dark.

“How do, y’u-all!” he said, evenly.

Ann rose from her knees.  Then Jean did not need to be told who this
newcomer was.

“Jean, this is my friend, Andrew Colmor.”

Jean knew when he met Colmor’s grip and the keen flash of his eyes that
he was glad Ann had set her heart upon one of their kind.  And his
second impression was something akin to the one given him in the road
by the admiring lad.  Colmor’s estimate of him must have been a
monument built of Ann’s eulogies.  Jean’s heart suffered misgivings.
Could he live up to the character that somehow had forestalled his
advent in Grass Valley?  Surely life was measured differently here in
the Tonto Basin.

The children, bundling their treasures to their bosoms, were dragged
off to bed in some remote part of the house, from which their laughter
and voices came back with happy significance.  Jean forthwith had an
interested audience.  How eagerly these lonely pioneer people listened
to news of the outside world!  Jean talked until he was hoarse. In
their turn his hearers told him much that had never found place in the
few and short letters he had received since he had been left in Oregon.
Not a word about sheepmen or any hint of rustlers! Jean marked the
omission and thought all the more seriously of probabilities because
nothing was said.  Altogether the evening was a happy reunion of a
family of which all living members were there present.  Jean grasped
that this fact was one of significant satisfaction to his father.

“Shore we’re all goin’ to live together heah,” he declared.  “I started
this range.  I call most of this valley mine.  We’ll run up a cabin for
Ann soon as she says the word.  An’ you, Jean, where’s your girl? I
shore told you to fetch her.”

“Dad, I didn’t have one,” replied Jean.

“Wal, I wish you had,” returned the rancher.  “You’ll go courtin’ one
of these Tonto hussies that I might object to.”

“Why, father, there’s not a girl in the valley Jean would look twice
at,” interposed Ann Isbel, with spirit.

Jean laughed the matter aside, but he had an uneasy memory.  Aunt Mary
averred, after the manner of relatives, that Jean would play havoc
among the women of the settlement.  And Jean retorted that at least one
member of the Isbels; should hold out against folly and fight and love
and marriage, the agents which had reduced the family to these few
present.  “I’ll be the last Isbel to go under,” he concluded.

“Son, you’re talkin’ wisdom,” said his father.  “An’ shore that reminds
me of the uncle you’re named after.  Jean Isbel!... Wal, he was my
youngest brother an’ shore a fire-eater.  Our mother was a French
creole from Louisiana, an’ Jean must have inherited some of his
fightin’ nature from her.  When the war of the rebellion started Jean
an’ I enlisted. I was crippled before we ever got to the front.  But
Jean went through three Years before he was killed.  His company had
orders to fight to the last man.  An’ Jean fought an’ lived long enough
just to be that last man.”

At length Jean was left alone with his father.

“Reckon you’re used to bunkin’ outdoors?” queried the rancher, rather
abruptly.

“Most of the time,” replied Jean.

“Wal, there’s room in the house, but I want you to sleep out. Come get
your beddin’ an’ gun. I’ll show you.”

They went outside on the porch, where Jean shouldered his roll of
tarpaulin and blankets.  His rifle, in its saddle sheath, leaned
against the door.  His father took it up and, half pulling it out,
looked at it by the starlight.  “Forty-four, eh?  Wal, wal, there’s
shore no better, if a man can hold straight.”  At the moment a big gray
dog trotted up to sniff at Jean.  “An’ heah’s your bunkmate, Shepp.
He’s part lofer, Jean.  His mother was a favorite shepherd dog of mine.
His father was a big timber wolf that took us two years to kill.  Some
bad wolf packs runnin’ this Basin.”

The night was cold and still, darkly bright under moon and stars; the
smell of hay seemed to mingle with that of cedar.  Jean followed his
father round the house and up a gentle slope of grass to the edge of
the cedar line.  Here several trees with low-sweeping thick branches
formed a dense, impenetrable shade.

“Son, your uncle Jean was scout for Liggett, one of the greatest rebels
the South had,” said the rancher.  “An’ you’re goin’ to be scout for
the Isbels of Tonto.  Reckon you’ll find it ’most as hot as your uncle
did.... Spread your bed inside.  You can see out, but no one can see
you.  Reckon there’s been some queer happenin’s ’round heah lately.  If
Shepp could talk he’d shore have lots to tell us.  Bill an’ Guy have
been sleepin’ out, trailin’ strange hoss tracks, an’ all that.  But
shore whoever’s been prowlin’ around heah was too sharp for them.  Some
bad, crafty, light-steppin’ woodsmen ’round heah, Jean.... Three
mawnin’s ago, just after daylight, I stepped out the back door an’ some
one of these sneaks I’m talkin’ aboot took a shot at me.  Missed my
head a quarter of an inch! To-morrow I’ll show you the bullet hole in
the doorpost.  An’ some of my gray hairs that ’re stickin’ in it!”

“Dad!” ejaculated Jean, with a hand outstretched.  “That’s awful! You
frighten me.”

“No time to be scared,” replied his father, calmly.  “They’re shore
goin’ to kill me.  That’s why I wanted you home.... In there with you,
now!  Go to sleep.  You shore can trust Shepp to wake you if he gets
scent or sound.... An’ good night, my son.  I’m sayin’ that I’ll rest
easy to-night.”

Jean mumbled a good night and stood watching his father’s shining white
head move away under the starlight.  Then the tall, dark form vanished,
a door closed, and all was still.  The dog Shepp licked Jean’s hand.
Jean felt grateful for that warm touch.  For a moment he sat on his
roll of bedding, his thought still locked on the shuddering revelation
of his father’s words, “They’re shore goin’ to kill me.”  The shock of
inaction passed.  Jean pushed his pack in the dark opening and,
crawling inside, he unrolled it and made his bed.

When at length he was comfortably settled for the night he breathed a
long sigh of relief.  What bliss to relax!  A throbbing and burning of
his muscles seemed to begin with his rest.  The cool starlit night, the
smell of cedar, the moan of wind, the silence—an were real to his
senses.  After long weeks of long, arduous travel he was home.  The
warmth of the welcome still lingered, but it seemed to have been
pierced by an icy thrust.  What lay before him?  The shadow in the eyes
of his aunt, in the younger, fresher eyes of his sister—Jean connected
that with the meaning of his father’s tragic words.  Far past was the
morning that had been so keen, the breaking of camp in the sunlit
forest, the riding down the brown aisles under the pines, the music of
bleating lambs that had called him not to pass by. Thought of Ellen
Jorth recurred.  Had he met her only that morning? She was up there in
the forest, asleep under the starlit pines. Who was she?  What was her
story?  That savage fling of her skirt, her bitter speech and
passionate flaming face—they haunted Jean. They were crystallizing
into simpler memories, growing away from his bewilderment, and
therefore at once sweeter and more doubtful. “Maybe she meant
differently from what I thought,” Jean soliloquized. “Anyway, she was
honest.”  Both shame and thrill possessed him at the recall of an
insidious idea—dare he go back and find her and give her the last
package of gifts he had brought from the city?  What might they mean to
poor, ragged, untidy, beautiful Ellen Jorth?  The idea grew on Jean.
It could not be dispelled.  He resisted stubbornly. It was bound to go
to its fruition.  Deep into his mind had sunk an impression of her
need—a material need that brought spirit and pride to abasement.  From
one picture to another his memory wandered, from one speech and act of
hers to another, choosing, selecting, casting aside, until clear and
sharp as the stars shone the words, “Oh, I’ve been kissed before!”
That stung him now.  By whom?  Not by one man, but by several, by many,
she had meant.  Pshaw! he had only been sympathetic and drawn by a
strange girl in the woods.  To-morrow he would forget.  Work there was
for him in Grass Valley.  And he reverted uneasily to the remarks of
his father until at last sleep claimed him.

A cold nose against his cheek, a low whine, awakened Jean.  The big dog
Shepp was beside him, keen, wary, intense.  The night appeared far
advanced toward dawn.  Far away a cock crowed; the near-at-hand one
answered in clarion voice.  “What is it, Shepp?” whispered Jean, and he
sat up.  The dog smelled or heard something suspicious to his nature,
but whether man or animal Jean could not tell.



CHAPTER III


The morning star, large, intensely blue-white, magnificent in its
dominance of the clear night sky, hung over the dim, dark valley
ramparts. The moon had gone down and all the other stars were wan, pale
ghosts.

Presently the strained vacuum of Jean’s ears vibrated to a low roar of
many hoofs.  It came from the open valley, along the slope to the
south.  Shepp acted as if he wanted the word to run.  Jean laid a hand
on the dog.  “Hold on, Shepp,” he whispered.  Then hauling on his boots
and slipping into his coat Jean took his rifle and stole out into the
open.  Shepp appeared to be well trained, for it was evident that he
had a strong natural tendency to run off and hunt for whatever had
roused him.  Jean thought it more than likely that the dog scented an
animal of some kind.  If there were men prowling around the ranch
Shepp, might have been just as vigilant, but it seemed to Jean that the
dog would have shown less eagerness to leave him, or none at all.

In the stillness of the morning it took Jean a moment to locate the
direction of the wind, which was very light and coming from the south.
In fact that little breeze had borne the low roar of trampling hoofs.
Jean circled the ranch house to the right and kept along the slope at
the edge of the cedars.  It struck him suddenly how well fitted he was
for work of this sort.  All the work he had ever done, except for his
few years in school, had been in the open.  All the leisure he had ever
been able to obtain had been given to his ruling passion for hunting
and fishing.  Love of the wild had been born in Jean.  At this moment
he experienced a grim assurance of what his instinct and his training
might accomplish if directed to a stern and daring end.  Perhaps his
father understood this; perhaps the old Texan had some little reason
for his confidence.

Every few paces Jean halted to listen.  All objects, of course, were
indistinguishable in the dark-gray obscurity, except when he came close
upon them.  Shepp showed an increasing eagerness to bolt out into the
void.  When Jean had traveled half a mile from the house he heard a
scattered trampling of cattle on the run, and farther out a low
strangled bawl of a calf.  “Ahuh!” muttered Jean.  “Cougar or some
varmint pulled down that calf.”  Then he discharged his rifle in the
air and yelled with all his might.  It was necessary then to yell again
to hold Shepp back.

Thereupon Jean set forth down the valley, and tramped out and across
and around, as much to scare away whatever had been after the stock as
to look for the wounded calf.  More than once he heard cattle moving
away ahead of him, but he could not see them.  Jean let Shepp go,
hoping the dog would strike a trail.  But Shepp neither gave tongue nor
came back.  Dawn began to break, and in the growing light Jean searched
around until at last he stumbled over a dead calf, lying in a little
bare wash where water ran in wet seasons.  Big wolf tracks showed in
the soft earth.  “Lofers,” said Jean, as he knelt and just covered one
track with his spread hand.  “We had wolves in Oregon, but not as big
as these.... Wonder where that half-wolf dog, Shepp, went.  Wonder if
he can be trusted where wolves are concerned. I’ll bet not, if there’s
a she-wolf runnin’ around.”

Jean found tracks of two wolves, and he trailed them out of the wash,
then lost them in the grass.  But, guided by their direction, he went
on and climbed a slope to the cedar line, where in the dusty patches he
found the tracks again.  “Not scared much,” he muttered, as he noted
the slow trotting tracks.  “Well, you old gray lofers, we’re goin’ to
clash.”  Jean knew from many a futile hunt that wolves were the wariest
and most intelligent of wild animals in the quest.  From the top of a
low foothill he watched the sun rise; and then no longer wondered why
his father waxed eloquent over the beauty and location and luxuriance
of this grassy valley.  But it was large enough to make rich a good
many ranchers.  Jean tried to restrain any curiosity as to his father’s
dealings in Grass Valley until the situation had been made clear.

Moreover, Jean wanted to love this wonderful country.  He wanted to be
free to ride and hunt and roam to his heart’s content; and therefore he
dreaded hearing his father’s claims.  But Jean threw off forebodings.
Nothing ever turned out so badly as it presaged.  He would think the
best until certain of the worst.  The morning was gloriously bright,
and already the frost was glistening wet on the stones.  Grass Valley
shone like burnished silver dotted with innumerable black spots. Burros
were braying their discordant messages to one another; the colts were
romping in the fields; stallions were whistling; cows were bawling.  A
cloud of blue smoke hung low over the ranch house, slowly wafting away
on the wind.  Far out in the valley a dark group of horsemen were
riding toward the village.  Jean glanced thoughtfully at them and
reflected that he seemed destined to harbor suspicion of all men new
and strange to him.  Above the distant village stood the darkly green
foothills leading up to the craggy slopes, and these ending in the Rim,
a red, black-fringed mountain front, beautiful in the morning sunlight,
lonely, serene, and mysterious against the level skyline.  Mountains,
ranges, distances unknown to Jean, always called to him—to come, to
seek, to explore, to find, but no wild horizon ever before beckoned to
him as this one.  And the subtle vague emotion that had gone to sleep
with him last night awoke now hauntingly. It took effort to dispel the
desire to think, to wonder.

Upon his return to the house, he went around on the valley side, so as
to see the place by light of day.  His father had built for permanence;
and evidently there had been three constructive periods in the history
of that long, substantial, picturesque log house. But few nails and
little sawed lumber and no glass had been used. Strong and skillful
hands, axes and a crosscut saw, had been the prime factors in erecting
this habitation of the Isbels.

“Good mawnin’, son,” called a cheery voice from the porch.  “Shore
we-all heard you shoot; an’ the crack of that forty-four was as welcome
as May flowers.”

Bill Isbel looked up from a task over a saddle girth and inquired
pleasantly if Jean ever slept of nights.  Guy Isbel laughed and there
was warm regard in the gaze he bent on Jean.

“You old Indian!” he drawled, slowly.  “Did you get a bead on anythin’?”

“No.  I shot to scare away what I found to be some of your lofers,”
replied Jean.  “I heard them pullin’ down a calf.  An’ I found tracks
of two whoppin’ big wolves.  I found the dead calf, too.  Reckon the
meat can be saved.  Dad, you must lose a lot of stock here.”

“Wal, son, you shore hit the nail on the haid,” replied the rancher.
“What with lions an’ bears an’ lofers—an’ two-footed lofers of another
breed—I’ve lost five thousand dollars in stock this last year.”

“Dad!  You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Jean, in astonishment. To him that
sum represented a small fortune.

“I shore do,” answered his father.

Jean shook his head as if he could not understand such an enormous loss
where there were keen able-bodied men about.  “But that’s awful, dad.
How could it happen?  Where were your herders an’ cowboys? An’ Bill an’
Guy?”

Bill Isbel shook a vehement fist at Jean and retorted in earnest,
having manifestly been hit in a sore spot.  “Where was me an’ Guy, huh?
Wal, my Oregon brother, we was heah, all year, sleepin’ more or less
aboot three hours out of every twenty-four—ridin’ our boots off—an’
we couldn’t keep down that loss.”

“Jean, you-all have a mighty tumble comin’ to you out heah,” said Guy,
complacently.

“Listen, son,” spoke up the rancher.  “You want to have some hunches
before you figure on our troubles.  There’s two or three packs of
lofers, an’ in winter time they are hell to deal with.  Lions thick as
bees, an’ shore bad when the snow’s on.  Bears will kill a cow now an’
then.  An’ whenever an’ old silvertip comes mozyin’ across from the
Mazatzals he kills stock.  I’m in with half a dozen cattlemen. We all
work together, an’ the whole outfit cain’t keep these vermints down.
Then two years ago the Hash Knife Gang come into the Tonto.”

“Hash Knife Gang?  What a pretty name!” replied Jean.  “Who’re they?”

“Rustlers, son.  An’ shore the real old Texas brand.  The old Lone Star
State got too hot for them, an’ they followed the trail of a lot of
other Texans who needed a healthier climate.  Some two hundred Texans
around heah, Jean, an’ maybe a matter of three hundred inhabitants in
the Tonto all told, good an’ bad.  Reckon it’s aboot half an’ half.”

A cheery call from the kitchen interrupted the conversation of the men.

“You come to breakfast.”

During the meal the old rancher talked to Bill and Guy about the day’s
order of work; and from this Jean gathered an idea of what a big cattle
business his father conducted.  After breakfast Jean’s brothers
manifested keen interest in the new rifles.  These were unwrapped and
cleaned and taken out for testing.  The three rifles were forty-four
calibre Winchesters, the kind of gun Jean had found most effective. He
tried them out first, and the shots he made were satisfactory to him
and amazing to the others.  Bill had used an old Henry rifle. Guy did
not favor any particular rifle.  The rancher pinned his faith to the
famous old single-shot buffalo gun, mostly called needle gun. “Wal,
reckon I’d better stick to mine.  Shore you cain’t teach an old dog new
tricks.  But you boys may do well with the forty-fours. Pack ’em on
your saddles an’ practice when you see a coyote.”

Jean found it difficult to convince himself that this interest in guns
and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it.  His father
and brothers had always been this way.  Rifles were as important to
pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every
frontiersman tried to attain.  Friendly rivalry had always existed
among the members of the Isbel family: even Ann Isbel was a good shot.
But such proficiency in the use of firearms—and life in the open that
was correlative with it—had not dominated them as it had Jean. Bill
and Guy Isbel were born cattlemen—chips of the old block. Jean began
to hope that his father’s letter was an exaggeration, and particularly
that the fatalistic speech of last night, “they are goin’ to kill me,”
was just a moody inclination to see the worst side. Still, even as Jean
tried to persuade himself of this more hopeful view, he recalled many
references to the peculiar reputation of Texans for gun-throwing, for
feuds, for never-ending hatreds.  In Oregon the Isbels had lived among
industrious and peaceful pioneers from all over the States; to be sure,
the life had been rough and primitive, and there had been fights on
occasions, though no Isbel had ever killed a man.  But now they had
become fixed in a wilder and sparsely settled country among men of
their own breed.  Jean was afraid his hopes had only sentiment to
foster them.  Nevertheless, be forced back a strange, brooding, mental
state and resolutely held up the brighter side.  Whatever the evil
conditions existing in Grass Valley, they could be met with
intelligence and courage, with an absolute certainty that it was
inevitable they must pass away.  Jean refused to consider the old,
fatal law that at certain wild times and wild places in the West
certain men had to pass away to change evil conditions.

“Wal, Jean, ride around the range with the boys,” said the rancher.
“Meet some of my neighbors, Jim Blaisdell, in particular.  Take a look
at the cattle.  An’ pick out some hosses for yourself.”

“I’ve seen one already,” declared Jean, quickly.  “A black with white
face.  I’ll take him.”

“Shore you know a hoss.  To my eye he’s my pick.  But the boys don’t
agree.  Bill ‘specially has degenerated into a fancier of pitchin’
hosses.  Ann can ride that black.  You try him this mawnin’.... An’,
son, enjoy yourself.”

True to his first impression, Jean named the black horse Whiteface and
fell in love with him before ever he swung a leg over him. Whiteface
appeared spirited, yet gentle.  He had been trained instead of being
broken.  Of hard hits and quirts and spurs he had no experience.  He
liked to do what his rider wanted him to do.

A hundred or more horses grazed in the grassy meadow, and as Jean rode
on among them it was a pleasure to see stallions throw heads and ears
up and whistle or snort.  Whole troops of colts and two-year-olds raced
with flying tails and manes.

Beyond these pastures stretched the range, and Jean saw the gray-green
expanse speckled by thousands of cattle.  The scene was inspiring.
Jean’s brothers led him all around, meeting some of the herders and
riders employed on the ranch, one of whom was a burly, grizzled man
with eyes reddened and narrowed by much riding in wind and sun and
dust. His name was Evans and he was father of the lad whom Jean had met
near the village.  Everts was busily skinning the calf that had been
killed by the wolves.  “See heah, y’u Jean Isbel,” said Everts, “it
shore was aboot time y’u come home.  We-all heahs y’u hev an eye fer
tracks. Wal, mebbe y’u can kill Old Gray, the lofer thet did this job.
He’s pulled down nine calves as’ yearlin’s this last two months thet I
know of.  An’ we’ve not hed the spring round-up.”

Grass Valley widened to the southeast.  Jean would have been backward
about estimating the square miles in it.  Yet it was not vast acreage
so much as rich pasture that made it such a wonderful range.  Several
ranches lay along the western slope of this section.  Jean was informed
that open parks and swales, and little valleys nestling among the
foothills, wherever there was water and grass, had been settled by
ranchers.  Every summer a few new families ventured in.

Blaisdell struck Jean as being a lionlike type of Texan, both in his
broad, bold face, his huge head with its upstanding tawny hair like a
mane, and in the speech and force that betokened the nature of his
heart.  He was not as old as Jean’s father.  He had a rolling voice,
with the same drawling intonation characteristic of all Texans, and
blue eyes that still held the fire of youth.  Quite a marked contrast
he presented to the lean, rangy, hard-jawed, intent-eyed men Jean had
begun to accept as Texans.

Blaisdell took time for a curious scrutiny and study of Jean, that,
frank and kindly as it was, and evidently the adjustment of impressions
gotten from hearsay, yet bespoke the attention of one used to judging
men for himself, and in this particular case having reasons of his own
for so doing.

“Wal, you’re like your sister Ann,” said Blaisdell.  “Which you may
take as a compliment, young man.  Both of you favor your mother. But
you’re an Isbel.  Back in Texas there are men who never wear a glove on
their right hands, an’ shore I reckon if one of them met up with you
sudden he’d think some graves had opened an’ he’d go for his gun.”

Blaisdell’s laugh pealed out with deep, pleasant roll.  Thus he planted
in Jean’s sensitive mind a significant thought-provoking idea about the
past-and-gone Isbels.

His further remarks, likewise, were exceedingly interesting to Jean.
The settling of the Tonto Basin by Texans was a subject often in
dispute.  His own father had been in the first party of adventurous
pioneers who had traveled up from the south to cross over the Reno Pass
of the Mazatzals into the Basin.  “Newcomers from outside get
impressions of the Tonto accordin’ to the first settlers they meet,”
declared Blaisdell.  “An’ shore it’s my belief these first impressions
never change, just so strong they are!  Wal, I’ve heard my father say
there were men in his wagon train that got run out of Texas, but he
swore he wasn’t one of them.  So I reckon that sort of talk held good
for twenty years, an’ for all the Texans who emigrated, except, of
course, such notorious rustlers as Daggs an’ men of his ilk.  Shore
we’ve got some bad men heah.  There’s no law.  Possession used to mean
more than it does now.  Daggs an’ his Hash Knife Gang have begun to
hold forth with a high hand.  No small rancher can keep enough stock to
pay for his labor.”

At the time of which Blaisdell spoke there were not many sheepmen and
cattlemen in the Tonto, considering its vast area.  But these, on
account of the extreme wildness of the broken country, were limited to
the comparatively open Grass Valley and its adjacent environs.
Naturally, as the inhabitants increased and stock raising grew in
proportion the grazing and water rights became matters of extreme
importance.  Sheepmen ran their flocks up on the Rim in summer time and
down into the Basin in winter time.  A sheepman could throw a few
thousand sheep round a cattleman’s ranch and ruin him.  The range was
free.  It was as fair for sheepmen to graze their herds anywhere as it
was for cattlemen.  This of course did not apply to the few acres of
cultivated ground that a rancher could call his own; but very few
cattle could have been raised on such limited area.  Blaisdell said
that the sheepmen were unfair because they could have done just as
well, though perhaps at more labor, by keeping to the ridges and
leaving the open valley and little flats to the ranchers.  Formerly
there had been room enough for all; now the grazing ranges were being
encroached upon by sheepmen newly come to the Tonto.  To Blaisdell’s
way of thinking the rustler menace was more serious than the
sheeping-off of the range, for the simple reason that no cattleman knew
exactly who the rustlers were and for the more complex and significant
reason that the rustlers did not steal sheep.

“Texas was overstocked with bad men an’ fine steers,” concluded
Blaisdell.  “Most of the first an’ some of the last have struck the
Tonto.  The sheepmen have now got distributin’ points for wool an’
sheep at Maricopa an’ Phoenix.  They’re shore waxin’ strong an’ bold.”

“Ahuh!... An’ what’s likely to come of this mess?” queried Jean.

“Ask your dad,” replied Blaisdell.

“I will.  But I reckon I’d be obliged for your opinion.”

“Wal, short an’ sweet it’s this: Texas cattlemen will never allow the
range they stocked to be overrun by sheepmen.”

“Who’s this man Greaves?” went on Jean.  “Never run into anyone like
him.”

“Greaves is hard to figure.  He’s a snaky customer in deals.  But he
seems to be good to the poor people ’round heah.  Says he’s from
Missouri.  Ha-ha!  He’s as much Texan as I am.  He rode into the Tonto
without even a pack to his name.  An’ presently he builds his stone
house an’ freights supplies in from Phoenix.  Appears to buy an’ sell a
good deal of stock.  For a while it looked like he was steerin’ a
middle course between cattlemen an’ sheepmen.  Both sides made a
rendezvous of his store, where he heard the grievances of each. Laterly
he’s leanin’ to the sheepmen.  Nobody has accused him of that yet.  But
it’s time some cattleman called his bluff.”

“Of course there are honest an’ square sheepmen in the Basin?” queried
Jean.

“Yes, an’ some of them are not unreasonable.  But the new fellows that
dropped in on us the last few year—they’re the ones we’re goin’ to
clash with.”

“This—sheepman, Jorth?” went on Jean, in slow hesitation, as if
compelled to ask what he would rather not learn.

“Jorth must be the leader of this sheep faction that’s harryin’ us
ranchers.  He doesn’t make threats or roar around like some of them.
But he goes on raisin’ an’ buyin’ more an’ more sheep.  An’ his herders
have been grazin’ down all around us this winter.  Jorth’s got to be
reckoned with.”

“Who is he?”

“Wal, I don’t know enough to talk aboot.  Your dad never said so, but I
think he an’ Jorth knew each other in Texas years ago.  I never saw
Jorth but once.  That was in Greaves’s barroom.  Your dad an’ Jorth met
that day for the first time in this country.  Wal, I’ve not known men
for nothin’.  They just stood stiff an’ looked at each other. Your dad
was aboot to draw.  But Jorth made no sign to throw a gun.”

Jean saw the growing and weaving and thickening threads of a tangle
that had already involved him.  And the sudden pang of regret he
sustained was not wholly because of sympathies with his own people.

“The other day back up in the woods on the Rim I ran into a sheepman
who said his name was Colter.  Who is he?

“Colter?  Shore he’s a new one.  What’d he look like?”

Jean described Colter with a readiness that spoke volumes for the
vividness of his impressions.

“I don’t know him,” replied Blaisdell.  “But that only goes to prove my
contention—any fellow runnin’ wild in the woods can say he’s a
sheepman.”

“Colter surprised me by callin’ me by my name,” continued Jean. “Our
little talk wasn’t exactly friendly.  He said a lot about my bein’ sent
for to run sheep herders out of the country.”

“Shore that’s all over,” replied Blaisdell, seriously.  “You’re a
marked man already.”

“What started such rumor?”

“Shore you cain’t prove it by me.  But it’s not taken as rumor. It’s
got to the sheepmen as hard as bullets.”

“Ahuh!  That accunts for Colter’s seemin’ a little sore under the
collar.  Well, he said they were goin’ to run sheep over Grass Valley,
an’ for me to take that hunch to my dad.”

Blaisdell had his chair tilted back and his heavy boots against a post
of the porch.  Down he thumped.  His neck corded with a sudden rush of
blood and his eyes changed to blue fire.

“The hell he did!” he ejaculated, in furious amaze.

Jean gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old cattleman by his
sudden break from the cool, easy Texan manner.  Blaisdell cursed under
his breath, swung his arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or
hope aside, and then relapsed to his former state.  He laid a brown
hand on Jean’s knee.

“Two years ago I called the cards,” he said, quietly.  “It means a
Grass Valley war.”

Not until late that afternoon did Jean’s father broach the subject
uppermost in his mind.  Then at an opportune moment he drew Jean away
into the cedars out of sight.

“Son, I shore hate to make your home-comin’ unhappy,” he said, with
evidence of agitation, “but so help me God I have to do it!”

“Dad, you called me Prodigal, an’ I reckon you were right.  I’ve
shirked my duty to you.  I’m ready now to make up for it,” replied
Jean, feelingly.

“Wal, wal, shore thats fine-spoken, my boy.... Let’s set down heah an’
have a long talk.  First off, what did Jim Blaisdell tell you?”

Briefly Jean outlined the neighbor rancher’s conversation.  Then Jean
recounted his experience with Colter and concluded with Blaisdell’s
reception of the sheepman’s threat.  If Jean expected to see his father
rise up like a lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake.  This news of
Colter and his talk never struck even a spark from Gaston Isbel.

“Wal,” he began, thoughtfully, “reckon there are only two points in
Jim’s talk I need touch on.  There’s shore goin’ to be a Grass Valley
war.  An’ Jim’s idea of the cause of it seems to be pretty much the
same as that of all the other cattlemen.  It ’ll go down a black blot
on the history page of the Tonto Basin as a war between rival sheepmen
an’ cattlemen.  Same old fight over water an’ grass!... Jean, my son,
that is wrong.  It ’ll not be a war between sheepmen an’ cattlemen. But
a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin’ as sheep-raisers!...
Mind you, I don’t belittle the trouble between sheepmen an’ cattlemen
in Arizona.  It’s real an’ it’s vital an’ it’s serious. It ’ll take law
an’ order to straighten out the grazin’ question. Some day the
government will keep sheep off of cattle ranges.... So get things right
in your mind, my son.  You can trust your dad to tell the absolute
truth.  In this fight that ’ll wipe out some of the Isbels—maybe all
of them—you’re on the side of justice an’ right. Knowin’ that, a man
can fight a hundred times harder than he who knows he is a liar an’ a
thief.”

The old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed slowly and
deeply.  Jean sensed in him the rise of a tremendous emotional strain.
Wonderingly he watched the keen lined face.  More than material worries
were at the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father’s eyes.

“Now next take what Jim said aboot your comin’ to chase these
sheep-herders out of the valley.... Jean, I started that talk. I had my
tricky reasons.  I know these greaser sheep-herders an’ I know the
respect Texans have for a gunman.  Some say I bragged. Some say I’m an
old fool in his dotage, ravin’ aboot a favorite son. But they are
people who hate me an’ are afraid.  True, son, I talked with a purpose,
but shore I was mighty cold an’ steady when I did it. My feelin’ was
that you’d do what I’d do if I were thirty years younger. No, I
reckoned you’d do more.  For I figured on your blood.  Jean, you’re
Indian, an’ Texas an’ French, an’ you’ve trained yourself in the Oregon
woods.  When you were only a boy, few marksmen I ever knew could beat
you, an’ I never saw your equal for eye an’ ear, for trackin’ a hoss,
for all the gifts that make a woodsman.... Wal, rememberin’ this an’
seein’ the trouble ahaid for the Isbels, I just broke out whenever I
had a chance.  I bragged before men I’d reason to believe would take my
words deep.  For instance, not long ago I missed some stock, an’,
happenin’ into Greaves’s place one Saturday night, I shore talked loud.
His barroom was full of men an’ some of them were in my black book.
Greaves took my talk a little testy.  He said. ‘Wal, Gass, mebbe you’re
right aboot some of these cattle thieves livin’ among us, but ain’t
they jest as liable to be some of your friends or relatives as Ted
Meeker’s or mine or any one around heah?’  That was where Greaves an’
me fell out.  I yelled at him: ‘No, by God, they’re not! My record heah
an’ that of my people is open.  The least I can say for you, Greaves,
an’ your crowd, is that your records fade away on dim trails.’  Then he
said, nasty-like, ‘Wal, if you could work out all the dim trails in the
Tonto you’d shore be surprised.’  An’ then I roared.  Shore that was
the chance I was lookin’ for.  I swore the trails he hinted of would be
tracked to the holes of the rustlers who made them.  I told him I had
sent for you an’ when you got heah these slippery, mysterious thieves,
whoever they were, would shore have hell to pay.  Greaves said he hoped
so, but he was afraid I was partial to my Indian son.  Then we had hot
words.  Blaisdell got between us. When I was leavin’ I took a partin’
fling at him.  ‘Greaves, you ought to know the Isbels, considerin’
you’re from Texas.  Maybe you’ve got reasons for throwin’ taunts at my
claims for my son Jean.  Yes, he’s got Indian in him an’ that ’ll be
the worse for the men who will have to meet him.  I’m tellin’ you,
Greaves, Jean Isbel is the black sheep of the family.  If you ride down
his record you’ll find he’s shore in line to be another Poggin, or
Reddy Kingfisher, or Hardin’, or any of the Texas gunmen you ought to
remember.... Greaves, there are men rubbin’ elbows with you right heah
that my Indian son is goin’ to track down!’”

Jean bent his head in stunned cognizance of the notoriety with which
his father had chosen to affront any and all Tonto Basin men who were
under the ban of his suspicion.  What a terrible reputation and trust
to have saddled upon him!  Thrills and strange, heated sensations
seemed to rush together inside Jean, forming a hot ball of fire that
threatened to explode.  A retreating self made feeble protests. He saw
his own pale face going away from this older, grimmer man.

“Son, if I could have looked forward to anythin’ but blood spillin’ I’d
never have given you such a name to uphold,” continued the rancher.
“What I’m goin’ to tell you now is my secret.  My other sons an’ Ann
have never heard it.  Jim Blaisdell suspects there’s somethin’ strange,
but he doesn’t know.  I’ll shore never tell anyone else but you. An’
you must promise to keep my secret now an’ after I am gone.”

“I promise,” said Jean.

“Wal, an’ now to get it out,” began his father, breathing hard. His
face twitched and his hands clenched.  “The sheepman heah I have to
reckon with is Lee Jorth, a lifelong enemy of mine.  We were born in
the same town, played together as children, an’ fought with each other
as boys.  We never got along together.  An’ we both fell in love with
the same girl.  It was nip an’ tuck for a while. Ellen Sutton belonged
to one of the old families of the South. She was a beauty, an’ much
courted, an’ I reckon it was hard for her to choose.  But I won her an’
we became engaged.  Then the war broke out.  I enlisted with my brother
Jean.  He advised me to marry Ellen before I left.  But I would not.
That was the blunder of my life. Soon after our partin’ her letters
ceased to come.  But I didn’t distrust her.  That was a terrible time
an’ all was confusion. Then I got crippled an’ put in a hospital.  An’
in aboot a year I was sent back home.”

At this juncture Jean refrained from further gaze at his father’s face.

“Lee Jorth had gotten out of goin’ to war,” went on the rancher, in
lower, thicker voice.  “He’d married my sweetheart, Ellen.... I knew
the story long before I got well.  He had run after her like a hound
after a hare.... An’ Ellen married him.  Wal, when I was able to get
aboot I went to see Jorth an’ Ellen.  I confronted them. I had to know
why she had gone back on me.  Lee Jorth hadn’t changed any with all his
good fortune.  He’d made Ellen believe in my dishonor. But, I reckon,
lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was faithless.  In my absence he had won
her away from me.  An’ I saw that she loved him as she never had me.  I
reckon that killed all my generosity.  If she’d been imposed upon an’
weaned away by his lies an’ had regretted me a little I’d have
forgiven, perhaps.  But she worshiped him.  She was his slave.  An’ I,
wal, I learned what hate was.

“The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many Southerners.  Lee Jorth
went in for raisin’ cattle.  He’d gotten the Sutton range an’ after a
few years he began to accumulate stock.  In those days every cattleman
was a little bit of a thief.  Every cattleman drove in an’ branded
calves he couldn’t swear was his.  Wal, the Isbels were the strongest
cattle raisers in that country.  An’ I laid a trap for Lee Jorth,
caught him in the act of brandin’ calves of mine I’d marked, an’ I
proved him a thief.  I made him a rustler.  I ruined him.  We met once.
But Jorth was one Texan not strong on the draw, at least against an
Isbel.  He left the country.  He had friends an’ relatives an’ they
started him at stock raisin’ again.  But he began to gamble an’ he got
in with a shady crowd.  He went from bad to worse an’ then he came back
home.  When I saw the change in proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton, an’ how
she still worshiped Jorth, it shore drove me near mad between pity an’
hate.... Wal, I reckon in a Texan hate outlives any other feelin’.
There came a strange turn of the wheel an’ my fortunes changed. Like
most young bloods of the day, I drank an’ gambled.  An’ one night I run
across Jorth an’ a card-sharp friend.  He fleeced me.  We quarreled.
Guns were thrown.  I killed my man.... Aboot that period the Texas
Rangers had come into existence.... An’, son, when I said I never was
run out of Texas I wasn’t holdin’ to strict truth.  I rode out on a
hoss.

“I went to Oregon.  There I married soon, an’ there Bill an’ Guy were
born.  Their mother did not live long.  An’ next I married your mother,
Jean.  She had some Indian blood, which, for all I could see, made her
only the finer.  She was a wonderful woman an’ gave me the only
happiness I ever knew.  You remember her, of course, an’ those home
days in Oregon.  I reckon I made another great blunder when I moved to
Arizona.  But the cattle country had always called me.  I had heard of
this wild Tonto Basin an’ how Texans were settlin’ there.  An’ Jim
Blaisdell sent me word to come—that this shore was a garden spot of
the West.  Wal, it is.  An’ your mother was gone—

“Three years ago Lee Jorth drifted into the Tonto.  An’, strange to me,
along aboot a year or so after his comin’ the Hash Knife Gang rode up
from Texas.  Jorth went in for raisin’ sheep.  Along with some other
sheepmen he lives up in the Rim canyons.  Somewhere back in the wild
brakes is the hidin’ place of the Hash Knife Gang.  Nobody but me, I
reckon, associates Colonel Jorth, as he’s called, with Daggs an’ his
gang.  Maybe Blaisdell an’ a few others have a hunch.  But that’s no
matter.  As a sheepman Jorth has a legitimate grievance with the
cattlemen.  But what could be settled by a square consideration for the
good of all an’ the future Jorth will never settle.  He’ll never settle
because he is now no longer an honest man.  He’s in with Daggs. I
cain’t prove this, son, but I know it.  I saw it in Jorth’s face when I
met him that day with Greaves.  I saw more.  I shore saw what he is up
to.  He’d never meet me at an even break.  He’s dead set on usin’ this
sheep an’ cattle feud to ruin my family an’ me, even as I ruined him.
But he means more, Jean.  This will be a war between Texans, an’ a
bloody war.  There are bad men in this Tonto—some of the worst that
didn’t get shot in Texas.  Jorth will have some of these fellows....
Now, are we goin’ to wait to be sheeped off our range an’ to be
murdered from ambush?”

“No, we are not,” replied Jean, quietly.

“Wal, come down to the house,” said the rancher, and led the way
without speaking until he halted by the door.  There he placed his
finger on a small hole in the wood at about the height of a man’s head.
Jean saw it was a bullet hole and that a few gray hairs stuck to its
edges.  The rancher stepped closer to the door-post, so that his head
was within an inch of the wood.  Then he looked at Jean with eyes in
which there glinted dancing specks of fire, like wild sparks.

“Son, this sneakin’ shot at me was made three mawnin’s ago.  I
recollect movin’ my haid just when I heard the crack of a rifle.  Shore
was surprised.  But I got inside quick.”

Jean scarcely heard the latter part of this speech.  He seemed doubled
up inwardly, in hot and cold convulsions of changing emotion.  A
terrible hold upon his consciousness was about to break and let go. The
first shot had been fired and he was an Isbel.  Indeed, his father had
made him ten times an Isbel.  Blood was thick.  His father did not
speak to dull ears.  This strife of rising tumult in him seemed the
effect of years of calm, of peace in the woods, of dreamy waiting for
he knew not what.  It was the passionate primitive life in him that had
awakened to the call of blood ties.

“That’s aboot all, son,” concluded the rancher.  “You understand now
why I feel they’re goin’ to kill me.  I feel it heah.”  With solemn
gesture he placed his broad hand over his heart.  “An’, Jean, strange
whispers come to me at night.  It seems like your mother was callin’ or
tryin’ to warn me.  I cain’t explain these queer whispers.  But I know
what I know.”

“Jorth has his followers.  You must have yours,” replied Jean, tensely.

“Shore, son, an’ I can take my choice of the best men heah,” replied
the rancher, with pride.  “But I’ll not do that.  I’ll lay the deal
before them an’ let them choose.  I reckon it ’ll not be a long-winded
fight.  It ’ll be short an bloody, after the way of Texans.  I’m
lookin’ to you, Jean, to see that an Isbel is the last man!”

“My God—dad! is there no other way?  Think of my sister Ann—of my
brothers’ wives—of—of other women!  Dad, these damned Texas feuds are
cruel, horrible!” burst out Jean, in passionate protest.

“Jean, would it be any easier for our women if we let these men shoot
us down in cold blood?”

“Oh no—no, I see, there’s no hope of—of.... But, dad, I wasn’t
thinkin’ about myself.  I don’t care.  Once started I’ll—I’ll be what
you bragged I was.  Only it’s so hard to-to give in.”

Jean leaned an arm against the side of the cabin and, bowing his face
over it, he surrendered to the irresistible contention within his
breast.  And as if with a wrench that strange inward hold broke. He let
down.  He went back.  Something that was boyish and hopeful—and in its
place slowly rose the dark tide of his inheritance, the savage instinct
of self-preservation bequeathed by his Indian mother, and the fierce,
feudal blood lust of his Texan father.

Then as he raised himself, gripped by a sickening coldness in his
breast, he remembered Ellen Jorth’s face as she had gazed dreamily down
off the Rim—so soft, so different, with tremulous lips, sad, musing,
with far-seeing stare of dark eyes, peering into the unknown, the
instinct of life still unlived.  With confused vision and nameless pain
Jean thought of her.

“Dad, it’s hard on—the—the young folks,” he said, bitterly.  “The
sins of the father, you know.  An’ the other side.  How about Jorth?
Has he any children?”

What a curious gleam of surprise and conjecture Jean encountered in his
father’s gaze!

“He has a daughter.  Ellen Jorth.  Named after her mother.  The first
time I saw Ellen Jorth I thought she was a ghost of the girl I had
loved an’ lost.  Sight of her was like a blade in my side.  But the
looks of her an’ what she is—they don’t gibe.  Old as I am, my
heart—Bah! Ellen Jorth is a damned hussy!”

Jean Isbel went off alone into the cedars.  Surrender and resignation
to his father’s creed should have ended his perplexity and worry. His
instant and burning resolve to be as his father had represented him
should have opened his mind to slow cunning, to the craft of the
Indian, to the development of hate.  But there seemed to be an
obstacle. A cloud in the way of vision.  A face limned on his memory.

Those damning words of his father’s had been a shock—how little or
great he could not tell.  Was it only a day since he had met Ellen
Jorth?  What had made all the difference?  Suddenly like a breath the
fragrance of her hair came back to him.  Then the sweet coolness of her
lips!  Jean trembled.  He looked around him as if he were pursued or
surrounded by eyes, by instincts, by fears, by incomprehensible things.

“Ahuh!  That must be what ails me,” he muttered.  “The look of her—an’
that kiss—they’ve gone hard me.  I should never have stopped to talk.
An’ I’m to kill her father an’ leave her to God knows what.”

Something was wrong somewhere.  Jean absolutely forgot that within the
hour he had pledged his manhood, his life to a feud which could be
blotted out only in blood.  If he had understood himself he would have
realized that the pledge was no more thrilling and unintelligible in
its possibilities than this instinct which drew him irresistibly.

“Ellen Jorth!  So—my dad calls her a damned hussy!  So—that explains
the—the way she acted—why she never hit me when I kissed her.  An’
her words, so easy an’ cool-like.  Hussy?  That means she’s bad—bad!
Scornful of me—maybe disappointed because my kiss was innocent! It
was, I swear.  An’ all she said: ‘Oh, I’ve been kissed before.’”

Jean grew furious with himself for the spreading of a new sensation in
his breast that seemed now to ache.  Had he become infatuated, all in a
day, with this Ellen Jorth?  Was he jealous of the men who had the
privilege of her kisses?  No!  But his reply was hot with shame, with
uncertainty.  The thing that seemed wrong was outside of himself. A
blunder was no crime.  To be attracted by a pretty girl in the
woods—to yield to an impulse was no disgrace, nor wrong.  He had been
foolish over a girl before, though not to such a rash extent.  Ellen
Jorth had stuck in his consciousness, and with her a sense of regret.

Then swiftly rang his father’s bitter words, the revealing: “But the
looks of her an’ what she is—they don’t gibe!”  In the import of these
words hid the meaning of the wrong that troubled him. Broodingly he
pondered over them.

“The looks of her.  Yes, she was pretty.  But it didn’t dawn on me at
first.  I—I was sort of excited.  I liked to look at her, but didn’t
think.”  And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet
and more impelling for the deliberate memory.  Flash of brown skin,
smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold,
unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face
rose before Jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy
musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of
longing, but the more mysterious and beautiful.

“She looks like that, but she’s bad,” concluded Jean, with bitter
finality.  “I might have fallen in love with Ellen Jorth if—if she’d
been different.”

But the conviction forced upon Jean did not dispel the haunting memory
of her face nor did it wholly silence the deep and stubborn voice of
his consciousness.  Later that afternoon he sought a moment with his
sister.

“Ann, did you ever meet Ellen Jorth?” he asked.

“Yes, but not lately,” replied Ann.

“Well, I met her as I was ridin’ along yesterday.  She was herdin’
sheep,” went on Jean, rapidly.  “I asked her to show me the way to the
Rim.  An’ she walked with me a mile or so.  I can’t say the meetin’ was
not interestin’, at least to me.... Will you tell me what you know
about her?”

“Sure, Jean,” replied his sister, with her dark eyes fixed wonderingly
and kindly on his troubled face.  “I’ve heard a great deal, but in this
Tonto Basin I don’t believe all I hear.  What I know I’ll tell you. I
first met Ellen Jorth two years ago.  We didn’t know each other’s names
then.  She was the prettiest girl I ever saw.  I liked her. She liked
me.  She seemed unhappy.  The next time we met was at a round-up.
There were other girls with me and they snubbed her. But I left them
and went around with her.  That snub cut her to the heart.  She was
lonely.  She had no friends.  She talked about herself—how she hated
the people, but loved Arizona.  She had nothin’ fit to wear.  I didn’t
need to be told that she’d been used to better things.  Just when it
looked as if we were goin’ to be friends she told me who she was and
asked me my name.  I told her.  Jean, I couldn’t have hurt her more if
I’d slapped her face.  She turned white.  She gasped.  And then she ran
off.  The last time I saw her was about a year ago.  I was ridin’ a
short-cut trail to the ranch where a friend lived.  And I met Ellen
Jorth ridin’ with a man I’d never seen.  The trail was overgrown and
shady.  They were ridin’ close and didn’t see me right off.  The man
had his arm round her. She pushed him away.  I saw her laugh.  Then he
got hold of her again and was kissin’ her when his horse shied at sight
of mine.  They rode by me then.  Ellen Jorth held her head high and
never looked at me.”

“Ann, do you think she’s a bad girl?” demanded Jean, bluntly.

“Bad?  Oh, Jean!” exclaimed Ann, in surprise and embarrassment.

“Dad said she was a damned hussy.”

“Jean, dad hates the Jorths.”

“Sister, I’m askin’ you what you think of Ellen Jorth.  Would you be
friends with her if you could?”

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t believe she’s bad.”

“No.  Ellen Jorth is lonely, unhappy.  She has no mother.  She lives
alone among rough men.  Such a girl can’t keep men from handlin’ her
and kissin’ her.  Maybe she’s too free.  Maybe she’s wild.  But she’s
honest, Jean.  You can trust a woman to tell.  When she rode past me
that day her face was white and proud.  She was a Jorth and I was an
Isbel.  She hated herself—she hated me.  But no bad girl could look
like that.  She knows what’s said of her all around the valley. But she
doesn’t care.  She’d encourage gossip.”

“Thank you, Ann,” replied Jean, huskily.  “Please keep this—this
meetin’ of mine with her all to yourself, won’t you?”

“Why, Jean, of course I will.”

Jean wandered away again, peculiarly grateful to Ann for reviving and
upholding something in him that seemed a wavering part of the best of
him—a chivalry that had demanded to be killed by judgment of a
righteous woman.  He was conscious of an uplift, a gladdening of his
spirit.  Yet the ache remained.  More than that, he found himself
plunged deeper into conjecture, doubt.  Had not the Ellen Jorth
incident ended?  He denied his father’s indictment of her and accepted
the faith of his sister.  “Reckon that’s aboot all, as dad says,” he
soliloquized.  Yet was that all?  He paced under the cedars. He watched
the sun set.  He listened to the coyotes.  He lingered there after the
call for supper; until out of the tumult of his conflicting emotions
and ponderings there evolved the staggering consciousness that he must
see Ellen Jorth again.



CHAPTER IV


Ellen Jorth hurried back into the forest, hotly resentful of the
accident that had thrown her in contact with an Isbel.

Disgust filled her—disgust that she had been amiable to a member of
the hated family that had ruined her father.  The surprise of this
meeting did not come to her while she was under the spell of stronger
feeling.  She walked under the trees, swiftly, with head erect, looking
straight before her, and every step seemed a relief.

Upon reaching camp, her attention was distracted from herself.  Pepe,
the Mexican boy, with the two shepherd dogs, was trying to drive sheep
into a closer bunch to save the lambs from coyotes.  Ellen loved the
fleecy, tottering little lambs, and at this season she hated all the
prowling beast of the forest.  From this time on for weeks the flock
would be besieged by wolves, lions, bears, the last of which were often
bold and dangerous.  The old grizzlies that killed the ewes to eat only
the milk-bags were particularly dreaded by Ellen.  She was a good shot
with a rifle, but had orders from her father to let the bears alone.
Fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few, and were left to be
hunted by men from the ranch.  Mexican sheep herders could not be
depended upon to protect their flocks from bears. Ellen helped Pepe
drive in the stragglers, and she took several shots at coyotes skulking
along the edge of the brush.  The open glade in the forest was
favorable for herding the sheep at night, and the dogs could be
depended upon to guard the flock, and in most cases to drive predatory
beasts away.

After this task, which brought the time to sunset, Ellen had supper to
cook and eat.  Darkness came, and a cool night wind set in. Here and
there a lamb bleated plaintively.  With her work done for the day,
Ellen sat before a ruddy camp fire, and found her thoughts again
centering around the singular adventure that had befallen her.
Disdainfully she strove to think of something else.  But there was
nothing that could dispel the interest of her meeting with Jean Isbel.
Thereupon she impatiently surrendered to it, and recalled every word
and action which she could remember.  And in the process of this
meditation she came to an action of hers, recollection of which brought
the blood tingling to her neck and cheeks, so unusually and burningly
that she covered them with her hands.  “What did he think of me?” she
mused, doubtfully.  It did not matter what he thought, but she could
not help wondering.  And when she came to the memory of his kiss she
suffered more than the sensation of throbbing scarlet cheeks.
Scornfully and bitterly she burst out, “Shore he couldn’t have thought
much good of me.”

The half hour following this reminiscence was far from being pleasant.
Proud, passionate, strong-willed Ellen Jorth found herself a victim of
conflicting emotions.  The event of the day was too close.  She could
not understand it.  Disgust and disdain and scorn could not make this
meeting with Jean Isbel as if it had never been.  Pride could not
efface it from her mind.  The more she reflected, the harder she tried
to forget, the stronger grew a significance of interest.  And when a
hint of this dawned upon her consciousness she resented it so forcibly
that she lost her temper, scattered the camp fire, and went into the
little teepee tent to roll in her blankets.

Thus settled snug and warm for the night, with a shepherd dog curled at
the opening of her tent, she shut her eyes and confidently bade sleep
end her perplexities.  But sleep did not come at her invitation. She
found herself wide awake, keenly sensitive to the sputtering of the
camp fire, the tinkling of bells on the rams, the bleating of lambs,
the sough of wind in the pines, and the hungry sharp bark of coyotes
off in the distance.  Darkness was no respecter of her pride.  The
lonesome night with its emphasis of solitude seemed to induce clamoring
and strange thoughts, a confusing ensemble of all those that had
annoyed her during the daytime.  Not for long hours did sheer weariness
bring her to slumber.

Ellen awakened late and failed of her usual alacrity.  Both Pepe and
the shepherd dog appeared to regard her with surprise and solicitude.
Ellen’s spirit was low this morning; her blood ran sluggishly; she had
to fight a mournful tendency to feel sorry for herself.  And at first
she was not very successful.  There seemed to be some kind of pleasure
in reveling in melancholy which her common sense told her had no reason
for existence.  But states of mind persisted in spite of common sense.

“Pepe, when is Antonio comin’ back?” she asked.

The boy could not give her a satisfactory answer.  Ellen had willingly
taken the sheep herder’s place for a few days, but now she was
impatient to go home.  She looked down the green-and-brown aisles of
the forest until she was tired.  Antonio did not return.  Ellen spent
the day with the sheep; and in the manifold task of caring for a
thousand new-born lambs she forgot herself.  This day saw the end of
lambing-time for that season.  The forest resounded to a babel of baas
and bleats.  When night came she was glad to go to bed, for what with
loss of sleep, and weariness she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

The following morning she awakened early, bright, eager, expectant,
full of bounding life, strangely aware of the beauty and sweetness of
the scented forest, strangely conscious of some nameless stimulus to
her feelings.

Not long was Ellen in associating this new and delightful variety of
sensations with the fact that Jean Isbel had set to-day for his ride up
to the Rim to see her.  Ellen’s joyousness fled; her smiles faded. The
spring morning lost its magic radiance.

“Shore there’s no sense in my lyin’ to myself,” she soliloquized,
thoughtfully.  “It’s queer of me—feelin’ glad aboot him—without
knowin’.  Lord!  I must be lonesome!  To be glad of seein’ an Isbel,
even if he is different!”

Soberly she accepted the astounding reality.  Her confidence died with
her gayety; her vanity began to suffer.  And she caught at her
admission that Jean Isbel was different; she resented it in amaze; she
ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession.  She could arrive at
no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, fluctuating,
inexplicable little fool.

But for all that she found her mind had been made up for her, without
consent or desire, before her will had been consulted; and that
inevitably and unalterably she meant to see Jean Isbel again. Long she
battled with this strange decree.  One moment she won a victory over,
this new curious self, only to lose it the next. And at last out of her
conflict there emerged a few convictions that left her with some shreds
of pride.  She hated all Isbels, she hated any Isbel, and particularly
she hated Jean Isbel.  She was only curious—intensely curious to see
if he would come back, and if he did come what he would do.  She wanted
only to watch him from some covert.  She would not go near him, not let
him see her or guess of her presence.

Thus she assuaged her hurt vanity—thus she stifled her miserable
doubts.

Long before the sun had begun to slant westward toward the
mid-afternoon Jean Isbel had set as a meeting time Ellen directed her
steps through the forest to the Rim.  She felt ashamed of her
eagerness.  She had a guilty conscience that no strange thrills could
silence.  It would be fun to see him, to watch him, to let him wait for
her, to fool him.

Like an Indian, she chose the soft pine-needle mats to tread upon, and
her light-moccasined feet left no trace.  Like an Indian also she made
a wide detour, and reached the Rim a quarter of a mile west of the spot
where she had talked with Jean Isbel; and here, turning east, she took
care to step on the bare stones.  This was an adventure, seemingly the
first she had ever had in her life.  Assuredly she had never before
come directly to the Rim without halting to look, to wonder, to
worship. This time she scarcely glanced into the blue abyss.  All
absorbed was she in hiding her tracks.  Not one chance in a thousand
would she risk. The Jorth pride burned even while the feminine side of
her dominated her actions.  She had some difficult rocky points to
cross, then windfalls to round, and at length reached the covert she
desired. A rugged yellow point of the Rim stood somewhat higher than
the spot Ellen wanted to watch.  A dense thicket of jack pines grew to
the very edge.  It afforded an ambush that even the Indian eyes Jean
Isbel was credited with could never penetrate.  Moreover, if by
accident she made a noise and excited suspicion, she could retreat
unobserved and hide in the huge rocks below the Rim, where a ferret
could not locate her.

With her plan decided upon, Ellen had nothing to do but wait, so she
repaired to the other side  of the pine thicket and to the edge of the
Rim where she could watch and listen.  She knew that long before she
saw Isbel she would hear his horse.  It was altogether unlikely that he
would come on foot.

“Shore, Ellen Jorth, y’u’re a queer girl,” she mused.  “I reckon I
wasn’t well acquainted with y’u.”

Beneath her yawned a wonderful deep canyon, rugged and rocky with but
few pines on the north slope, thick with dark green timber on the south
slope.  Yellow and gray crags, like turreted castles, stood up out of
the sloping forest on the side opposite her.  The trees were all sharp,
spear pointed.  Patches of light green aspens showed strikingly against
the dense black.  The great slope beneath Ellen was serrated with
narrow, deep gorges, almost canyons in themselves. Shadows alternated
with clear bright spaces.  The mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened
upon the Basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines,
valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the
Sierra Anchas.

But for once Ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of
wildness and grandeur.  Her ears were like those of a listening deer,
and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At
first, in her excitement, time flew by.  Gradually, however, as the sun
moved westward, she began to be restless.  The soft thud of dropping
pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked
spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen
ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling.  Finally she
heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone.
Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine
thicket to the spot she had chosen.  The little pines were so close
together that she had to crawl between their trunks. The ground was
covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant.  In her
hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the
blood.  She sucked the tiny wound.  “Shore I’m wonderin’ if that’s a
bad omen,” she muttered, darkly thoughtful. Then she resumed her
sinuous approach to the edge of the thicket, and presently reached it.

Ellen lay flat a moment to recover her breath, then raised herself on
her elbows.  Through an opening in the fringe of buck brush she could
plainly see the promontory where she had stood with Jean Isbel, and
also the approaches by which he might come.  Rather nervously she
realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the
promontory.  It was imperative that she be absolutely silent. Her eyes
searched the openings along the Rim.  The gray form of a deer crossed
one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard.
Then she lay down more comfortably and waited. Resolutely she held, as
much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions. The meaning of Ellen
Jorth lying in ambush just to see an Isbel was a conundrum she refused
to ponder in the present.  She was doing it, and the physical act had
its fascination.  Her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely
forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of
woodcraft.

A long hour passed by.  The sun had slanted to a point halfway between
the zenith and the horizon.  Suddenly a thought confronted Ellen Jorth:
“He’s not comin’,” she whispered.  The instant that idea presented
itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret—something that
must have been disappointment.  Unprepared for this, she was held by
surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned.  Her spirit, swift and
rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense.  She was a lonely,
guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to uphold, too fluctuating
to know her real self.  She stretched there, burying her face in the
pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as
that they might hide her.  The moment was incomprehensible to Ellen,
and utterly intolerable.  The sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists
and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite
relief.

The shrill snort of a horse sounded near at hand.  With a shock Ellen’s
body stiffened.  Then she  quivered a little and her feelings underwent
swift change.  Cautiously and noiselessly she raised herself upon her
elbows and peeped through the opening in the brush.  She saw a man
tying a horse to a bush somewhat back from the Rim.  Drawing a rifle
from its saddle sheath he threw it in the hollow of his arm and walked
to the edge of the precipice.  He gazed away across the Basin and
appeared lost in contemplation or thought.  Then he turned to look back
into the forest, as if he expected some one.

Ellen recognized the lithe figure, the dark face so like an Indian’s.
It was Isbel.  He had come.  Somehow his coming seemed wonderful and
terrible.  Ellen shook as she leaned on her elbows.  Jean Isbel, true
to his word, in spite of her scorn, had come back to see her.  The fact
seemed monstrous.  He was an enemy of her father.  Long had range rumor
been bandied from lip to lip—old Gass Isbel had sent for his Indian
son to fight the Jorths.  Jean Isbel—son of a Texan—unerring
shot—peerless tracker—a bad and dangerous man!  Then there flashed
over Ellen a burning thought—if it were true, if he was an enemy of
her father’s, if a fight between Jorth and Isbel was inevitable, she
ought to kill this Jean Isbel right there in his tracks as he boldly
and confidently waited for her.  Fool he was to think she would come.
Ellen sank down and dropped her head until the strange tremor of her
arms ceased.  That dark and grim flash of thought retreated.  She had
not come to murder a man from ambush, but only to watch him, to try to
see what he meant, what he thought, to allay a strange curiosity.

After a while she looked again.  Isbel was sitting on an upheaved
section of the Rim, in a comfortable position from which he could watch
the openings in the forest and gaze as well across the west curve of
the Basin to the Mazatzals.  He had composed himself to wait. He was
clad in a buckskin suit, rather new, and it certainly showed off to
advantage, compared with the ragged and soiled apparel Ellen
remembered.  He did not look so large.  Ellen was used to the long,
lean, rangy Arizonians and Texans.  This man was built differently. He
had the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made
him appear rather short.  But his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was
not short.  Whenever he moved the muscles rippled.  His hands were
clasped round a knee—brown, sinewy hands, very broad, and fitting the
thick muscular wrists.  His collar was open, and he did not wear a
scarf, as did the men Ellen knew.  Then her intense curiosity at last
brought her steady gaze to Jean Isbel’s head and face.  He wore a cap,
evidently of some thin fur.  His hair was straight and short, and in
color a dead raven black.  His complexion was dark, clear tan, with no
trace of red.  He did not have the prominent cheek bones nor the
high-bridged nose usual with white men who were part Indian.  Still he
had the Indian look.  Ellen caught that in the dark, intent, piercing
eyes, in the wide, level, thoughtful brows, in the stern impassiveness
of his smooth face.  He had a straight, sharp-cut profile.

Ellen whispered to herself: “I saw him right the other day.  Only, I’d
not admit it.... The finest-lookin’ man I ever saw in my life is a
damned Isbel!  Was that what I come out heah for?”

She lowered herself once more and, folding her arms under her breast,
she reclined comfortably on them, and searched out a smaller peephole
from which she could spy upon Isbel.  And as she watched him the new
and perplexing side of her mind waxed busier.  Why had he come back?
What did he want of her?  Acquaintance, friendship, was impossible for
them.  He had been respectful, deferential toward her, in a way that
had strangely pleased, until the surprising moment when he had kissed
her.  That had only disrupted her rather dreamy pleasure in a situation
she had not experienced before.  All the men she had met in this wild
country were rough and bold; most of them had wanted to marry her, and,
failing that, they had persisted in amorous attentions not particularly
flattering or honorable.  They were a bad lot.  And contact with them
had dulled some of her sensibilities.  But this Jean Isbel had seemed a
gentleman.  She struggled to be fair, trying to forget her antipathy,
as much to understand herself as to give him due credit.  True, he had
kissed her, crudely and forcibly.  But that kiss had not been an
insult.  Ellen’s finer feeling forced her to believe this.  She
remembered the honest amaze and shame and contrition with which he had
faced her, trying awkwardly to explain his bold act. Likewise she
recalled the subtle swift change in him at her words,  “Oh, I’ve been
kissed before!”  She was glad she had said that.   Still—was she glad,
after all?

She watched him.  Every little while he shifted his gaze from the blue
gulf beneath him to the forest.  When he turned thus the sun shone on
his face and she caught the piercing gleam of his dark eyes. She saw,
too, that he was listening.  Watching and listening for her! Ellen had
to still a tumult within her.  It made her feel very young, very shy,
very strange.  All the while she hated him because he manifestly
expected her to come.  Several times he rose and walked a little way
into the woods.  The last time he looked at the westering sun and shook
his head.  His confidence had gone.  Then he sat and gazed down into
the void.  But Ellen knew he did not see anything there.  He seemed an
image carved in the stone of the Rim, and he gave Ellen a singular
impression of loneliness and sadness.  Was he thinking of the miserable
battle his father had summoned him to lead—of what it would cost—of
its useless pain and hatred?  Ellen seemed to divine his thoughts.  In
that moment she softened toward him, and in her soul quivered and
stirred an intangible something that was like pain, that was too deep
for her understanding.  But she felt sorry for an Isbel until the old
pride resurged.  What if he admired her?  She remembered his interest,
the wonder and admiration, the growing light in his eyes.  And it had
not been repugnant to her until he disclosed his name.  “What’s in a
name?” she mused, recalling poetry learned in her girlhood.  “‘A rose
by any other name would smell as sweet’.... He’s an Isbel—yet he might
be splendid—noble.... Bah! he’s not—and I’d hate him anyhow.”

All at once Ellen felt cold shivers steal over her.  Isbel’s piercing
gaze was directed straight at her hiding place.  Her heart stopped
beating.  If he discovered her there she felt that she would die of
shame.  Then she became aware that a blue jay was screeching in a pine
above her, and a red squirrel somewhere near was chattering his shrill
annoyance.  These two denizens of the woods could be depended upon to
espy the wariest hunter and make known his presence to their kind.
Ellen had a moment of more than dread.  This keen-eyed, keen-eared
Indian might see right through her brushy covert, might hear the
throbbing of her heart.  It relieved her immeasurably to see him turn
away and take to pacing the promontory, with his head bowed and his
hands behind his back.  He had stopped looking off into the forest.
Presently he wheeled to the west, and by the light upon his face Ellen
saw that the time was near sunset.  Turkeys were beginning to gobble
back on the ridge.

Isbel walked to his horse and appeared to be untying something from the
back of his saddle.  When he came back Ellen saw that he carried a
small package apparently wrapped in paper.  With this under his arm he
strode off in the direction of Ellen’s camp and soon disappeared in the
forest.

For a little while Ellen lay there in bewilderment.  If she had made
conjectures before, they were now multiplied.  Where was Jean Isbel
going?  Ellen sat up suddenly.  “Well, shore this heah beats me,” she
said.  “What did he have in that package?  What was he goin’ to do with
it?”

It took no little will power to hold her there when she wanted to steal
after him through the woods and find out what he meant.  But his
reputation influenced even her and she refused to pit her cunning in
the forest against his.  It would be better to wait until he returned
to his horse.  Thus decided, she lay back again in her covert and gave
her mind over to pondering curiosity.  Sooner than she expected she
espied Isbel approaching through the forest, empty handed.  He had not
taken his rifle.  Ellen averted her glance a moment and thrilled to see
the rifle leaning against a rock.  Verily Jean Isbel had been far
removed from hostile intent that day.  She watched him stride swiftly
up to his horse, untie the halter, and mount.  Ellen had an impression
of his arrowlike straight figure, and sinuous grace and ease.  Then he
looked back at the promontory, as if to fix a picture of it in his
mind, and rode away along the Rim.  She watched him out of sight.  What
ailed her? Something was wrong with her, but she recognized only relief.

When Isbel had been gone long enough to assure Ellen that she might
safely venture forth she crawled through the pine thicket to the Rim on
the other side of the point.  The sun was setting behind the Black
Range, shedding a golden glory over the Basin.  Westward the zigzag Rim
reached like a streamer of fire into the sun.  The vast promontories
jutted out with blazing beacon lights upon their stone-walled faces.
Deep down, the Basin was turning shadowy dark blue, going to sleep for
the night.

Ellen bent swift steps toward her camp.  Long shafts of gold preceded
her through the forest.  Then they paled and vanished.  The tips of
pines and spruces turned gold.  A hoarse-voiced old turkey gobbler was
booming his chug-a-lug from the highest ground, and the softer chick of
hen turkeys answered him.  Ellen was almost breathless when she
arrived. Two packs and a couple of lop-eared burros attested to the
fact of Antonio’s return.  This was good news for Ellen.  She heard the
bleat of lambs and tinkle of bells coming nearer and nearer.  And she
was glad to feel that if Isbel had visited her camp, most probably it
was during the absence of the herders.

The instant she glanced into her tent she saw the package Isbel had
carried.  It lay on her bed.  Ellen stared blankly.  “The—the
impudence of him!” she ejaculated.  Then she kicked the package out of
the tent. Words and action seemed to liberate a dammed-up hot fury.
She kicked the package again, and thought she would kick it into the
smoldering camp-fire.  But somehow she stopped short of that.  She left
the thing there on the ground.

Pepe and Antonio hove in sight, driving in the tumbling woolly flock.
Ellen did not want them to see the package, so with contempt for
herself, and somewhat lessening anger, she kicked it back into the
tent.  What was in it?  She peeped inside the tent, devoured by
curiosity.  Neat, well wrapped and tied packages like that were not
often seen in the Tonto Basin.  Ellen decided she would wait until
after supper, and at a favorable moment lay it unopened on the fire.
What did she care what it contained?  Manifestly it was a gift.  She
argued that she was highly incensed with this insolent Isbel who had
the effrontery to approach her with some sort of present.

It developed that the usually cheerful Antonio had returned taciturn
and gloomy.  All Ellen could get out of him was that the job of sheep
herder had taken on hazards inimical to peace-loving Mexicans.  He had
heard something he would not tell.  Ellen helped prepare the supper and
she ate in silence.  She had her own brooding troubles.  Antonio
presently told her that her father had said she was not to start back
home after dark.  After supper the herders repaired to their own tents,
leaving Ellen the freedom of her camp-fire.  Wherewith she secured the
package and brought it forth to burn.  Feminine curiosity rankled
strong in her breast.  Yielding so far as to shake the parcel and press
it, and finally tear a corner off the paper, she saw some words written
in lead pencil.  Bending nearer the blaze, she read,  “For my sister
Ann.” Ellen gazed at the big, bold hand-writing, quite legible and
fairly well done.  Suddenly she tore the outside wrapper completely
off.  From printed words on the inside she gathered that the package
had come from a store in San Francisco.  “Reckon he fetched home a lot
of presents for his folks—the kids—and his sister,” muttered Ellen.
“That was nice of him.  Whatever this is he shore meant it for sister
Ann.... Ann Isbel.  Why, she must be that black-eyed girl I met and
liked so well before I knew she was an Isbel.... His sister!”

Whereupon for the second time Ellen deposited the fascinating package
in her tent.  She could not burn it up just then.  She had other
emotions besides scorn and hate.  And memory of that soft-voiced,
kind-hearted, beautiful Isbel girl checked her resentment.  “I wonder
if he is like his sister,” she said, thoughtfully.  It appeared to be
an unfortunate thought.  Jean Isbel certainly resembled his sister.
“Too bad they belong to the family that ruined dad.”

Ellen went to bed without opening the package or without burning it.
And to her annoyance, whatever way she lay she appeared to touch this
strange package.  There was not much room in the little tent.  First
she put it at her head beside her rifle, but when she turned over her
cheek came in contact with it.  Then she felt as if she had been stung.
She moved it again, only to touch it presently with her hand.  Next she
flung it to the bottom of her bed, where it fell upon her feet, and
whatever way she moved them she could not escape the pressure of this
undesirable and mysterious gift.

By and by she fell asleep, only to dream that the package was a
caressing hand stealing about her, feeling for hers, and holding it
with soft, strong clasp.  When she awoke she had the strangest
sensation in her right palm.  It was moist, throbbing, hot, and the
feel of it on her cheek was strangely thrilling and comforting. She lay
awake then.  The night was dark and still.  Only a low moan of wind in
the pines and the faint tinkle of a sheep bell broke the serenity.  She
felt very small and lonely lying there in the deep forest, and, try how
she would, it was impossible to think the same then as she did in the
clear light of day.  Resentment, pride, anger—these seemed abated now.
If the events of the day had not changed her, they had at least brought
up softer and kinder memories and emotions than she had known for long.
Nothing hurt and saddened her so much as to remember the gay, happy
days of her childhood, her sweet mother, her, old home.  Then her
thought returned to Isbel and his gift.  It had been years since anyone
had made her a gift. What could this one be?  It did not matter.  The
wonder was that Jean Isbel should bring it to her and that she could be
perturbed by its presence.  “He meant it for his sister and so he
thought well of me,” she said, in finality.

Morning brought Ellen further vacillation.  At length she rolled the
obnoxious package inside her blankets, saying that she would wait until
she got home and then consign it cheerfully to the flames. Antonio tied
her pack on a burro.  She did not have a horse, and therefore had to
walk the several miles, to her father’s ranch.

She set off at a brisk pace, leading the burro and carrying her rifle.
And soon she was deep in the fragrant forest.  The morning was clear
and cool, with just enough frost to make the sunlit grass sparkle as if
with diamonds.  Ellen felt fresh, buoyant, singularly full of, life.
Her youth would not be denied.  It was pulsing, yearning.  She hummed
an old Southern tune and every step seemed one of pleasure in action,
of advance toward some intangible future happiness.  All the unknown of
life before her called.  Her heart beat high in her breast and she
walked as one in a dream.  Her thoughts were swift-changing, intimate,
deep, and vague, not of yesterday or to-day, nor of reality.

The big, gray, white-tailed squirrels crossed ahead of her on the
trail, scampered over the piny ground to hop on tree trunks, and there
they paused to watch her pass.  The vociferous little red squirrels
barked and chattered at her.  From every thicket sounded the gobble of
turkeys. The blue jays squalled in the tree tops.  A deer lifted its
head from browsing and stood motionless, with long ears erect, watching
her go by.

Thus happily and dreamily absorbed, Ellen covered the forest miles and
soon reached the trail that led down into the wild brakes of Chevelon
Canyon.  It was rough going and less conducive to sweet wanderings of
mind.  Ellen slowly lost them.  And then a familiar feeling assailed
her, one she never failed to have upon returning to her father’s
ranch—a reluctance, a bitter dissatisfaction with her home, a loyal
struggle against the vague sense that all was not as it should be.

At the head of this canyon in a little, level, grassy meadow stood a
rude one-room log shack, with a leaning red-stone chimney on the
outside. This was the abode of a strange old man who had long lived
there.  His name was John Sprague and his occupation was raising
burros.  No sheep or cattle or horses did he own, not even a dog.
Rumor had said Sprague was a prospector, one of the many who had
searched that country for the Lost Dutchman gold mine.  Sprague knew
more about the Basin and Rim than any of the sheepmen or ranchers.
From Black Butte to the Cibique and from Chevelon Butte to Reno Pass he
knew every trail, canyon, ridge, and spring, and could find his way to
them on the darkest night.  His fame, however, depended mostly upon the
fact that he did nothing but raise burros, and would raise none but
black burros with white faces. These burros were the finest bred in all
the Basin and were in great demand.  Sprague sold a few every year.  He
had made a present of one to Ellen, although he hated to part with
them.  This old man was Ellen’s one and only friend.

Upon her trip out to the Rim with the sheep, Uncle John, as Ellen
called him, had been away on one of his infrequent visits to Grass
Valley.  It pleased her now to see a blue column of smoke lazily
lifting from the old chimney and to hear the discordant bray of burros.
As she entered the clearing Sprague saw her from the door of his shack.

“Hello, Uncle John!” she called.

“Wal, if it ain’t Ellen!” he replied, heartily.  “When I seen thet
white-faced jinny I knowed who was leadin’ her.  Where you been, girl?”

Sprague was a little, stoop-shouldered old man, with grizzled head and
face, and shrewd gray eyes that beamed kindly on her over his ruddy
cheeks.  Ellen did not like the tobacco stain on his grizzled beard nor
the dirty, motley, ragged, ill-smelling garb he wore, but she had
ceased her useless attempts to make him more cleanly.

“I’ve been herdin’ sheep,” replied Ellen.  “And where have y’u been,
uncle?  I missed y’u on the way over.”

“Been packin’ in some grub.  An’ I reckon I stayed longer in Grass
Valley than I recollect.  But thet was only natural, considerin’—”

“What?” asked Ellen, bluntly, as the old man paused.

Sprague took a black pipe out of his vest pocket and began rimming the
bowl with his fingers.  The glance he bent on Ellen was thoughtful and
earnest, and so kind that she feared it was pity.  Ellen suddenly
burned for news from the village.

“Wal, come in an’ set down, won’t you?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” replied Ellen, and she took a seat on the chopping block.
“Tell me, uncle, what’s goin’ on down in the Valley?”

“Nothin’ much yet—except talk.  An’ there’s a heap of thet.”

“Humph!  There always was talk,” declared Ellen, contemptuously. “A
nasty, gossipy, catty hole, that Grass Valley!”

“Ellen, thar’s goin’ to be war—a bloody war in the ole Tonto Basin,”
went on Sprague, seriously.

“War!... Between whom?”

“The Isbels an’ their enemies.  I reckon most people down thar, an’
sure all the cattlemen, air on old Gass’s side.  Blaisdell, Gordon,
Fredericks, Blue—they’ll all be in it.”

“Who are they goin’ to fight?” queried Ellen, sharply.

“Wal, the open talk is thet the sheepmen are forcin’ this war.  But
thar’s talk not so open, an’ I reckon not very healthy for any man to
whisper hyarbouts.”

“Uncle John, y’u needn’t be afraid to tell me anythin’,” said Ellen.
“I’d never give y’u away.  Y’u’ve been a good friend to me.”

“Reckon I want to be, Ellen,” he returned, nodding his shaggy head. “It
ain’t easy to be fond of you as I am an’ keep my mouth shet.... I’d
like to know somethin’.  Hev you any relatives away from hyar thet you
could go to till this fight’s over?”

“No.  All I have, so far as I know, are right heah.”

“How aboot friends?”

“Uncle John, I have none,” she said, sadly, with bowed head.

“Wal, wal, I’m sorry.  I was hopin’ you might git away.”

She lifted her face.  “Shore y’u don’t think I’d run off if my dad got
in a fight?” she flashed.

“I hope you will.”

“I’m a Jorth,” she said, darkly, and dropped her head again.

Sprague nodded gloomily.  Evidently he was perplexed and worried, and
strongly swayed by affection for her.

“Would you go away with me?” he asked.  “We could pack over to the
Mazatzals an’ live thar till this blows over.”

“Thank y’u, Uncle John.  Y’u’re kind and good.  But I’ll stay with my
father.  His troubles are mine.”

“Ahuh!... Wal, I might hev reckoned so.... Ellen, how do you stand on
this hyar sheep an’ cattle question?”

“I think what’s fair for one is fair for another.  I don’t like sheep
as much as I like cattle.  But that’s not the point.  The range is
free. Suppose y’u had cattle and I had sheep.  I’d feel as free to run
my sheep anywhere as y’u were to ran your cattle.”

“Right.  But what if you throwed your sheep round my range an’ sheeped
off the grass so my cattle would hev to move or starve?”

“Shore I wouldn’t throw my sheep round y’ur range,” she declared,
stoutly.

“Wal, you’ve answered half of the question.  An’ now supposin’ a lot of
my cattle was stolen by rustlers, but not a single one of your sheep.
What ’d you think then?”

“I’d shore think rustlers chose to steal cattle because there was no
profit in stealin’ sheep.”

“Egzactly.  But wouldn’t you hev a queer idee aboot it?”

“I don’t know.  Why queer?  What ’re y’u drivin’ at, Uncle John?”

“Wal, wouldn’t you git kind of a hunch thet the rustlers was—say a
leetle friendly toward the sheepmen?”

Ellen felt a sudden vibrating shock.  The blood rushed to her temples.
Trembling all over, she rose.

“Uncle John!” she cried.

“Now, girl, you needn’t fire up thet way.  Set down an’ don’t—”

“Dare y’u insinuate my father has—”

“Ellen, I ain’t insinuatin’ nothin’,” interrupted the old man.  “I’m
jest askin’ you to think.  Thet’s all.  You’re ’most grown into a young
woman now.  An’ you’ve got sense.  Thar’s bad times ahead, Ellen. An’ I
hate to see you mix in them.”

“Oh, y’u do make me think,” replied Ellen, with smarting tears in her
eyes.  “Y’u make me unhappy.  Oh, I know my dad is not liked in this
cattle country.  But it’s unjust.  He happened to go in for sheep
raising.  I wish he hadn’t.  It was a mistake.  Dad always was a
cattleman till we came heah.  He made enemies—who—who ruined him. And
everywhere misfortune crossed his trail.... But, oh, Uncle John, my dad
is an honest man.”

“Wal, child, I—I didn’t mean to—to make you cry,” said the old man,
feelingly, and he averted his troubled gaze.  “Never mind what I said.
I’m an old meddler.  I reckon nothin’ I could do or say would ever
change what’s goin’ to happen.  If only you wasn’t a girl!... Thar I
go ag’in.  Ellen, face your future an’ fight your way.  All youngsters
hev to do thet.  An’ it’s the right kind of fight thet makes the right
kind of man or woman.  Only you must be sure to find yourself.  An’ by
thet I mean to find the real, true, honest-to-God best in you an’ stick
to it an’ die fightin’ for it.  You’re a young woman, almost, an’ a
blamed handsome one.  Which means you’ll hev more trouble an’ a harder
fight.  This country ain’t easy on a woman when once slander has marked
her.

“What do I care for the talk down in that Basin?” returned Ellen. “I
know they think I’m a hussy.  I’ve let them think it. I’ve helped them
to.”

“You’re wrong, child,” said Sprague, earnestly.  “Pride an’ temper! You
must never let anyone think bad of you, much less help them to.”

“I hate everybody down there,” cried Ellen, passionately.  “I hate them
so I’d glory in their thinkin’ me bad.... My mother belonged to the
best blood in Texas.  I am her daughter.  I know WHO AND WHAT I AM.
That uplifts me whenever I meet the sneaky, sly suspicions of these
Basin people.  It shows me the difference between them and me. That’s
what I glory in.”

“Ellen, you’re a wild, headstrong child,” rejoined the old man, in
severe tones.  “Word has been passed ag’in’ your good name—your
honor.... An’ hevn’t you given cause fer thet?”

Ellen felt her face blanch and all her blood rush back to her heart in
sickening force.  The shock of his words was like a stab from a cold
blade.  If their meaning and the stem, just light of the old man’s
glance did not kill her pride and vanity they surely killed her
girlishness.  She stood mute, staring at him, with her brown, trembling
hands stealing up toward her bosom, as if to ward off another and a
mortal blow.

“Ellen!” burst out Sprague, hoarsely.  “You mistook me.  Aw, I didn’t
mean—what you think, I swear.... Ellen, I’m old an’ blunt.  I ain’t
used to wimmen.  But I’ve love for you, child, an’ respect, jest the
same as if you was my own.... An’ I KNOW you’re good.... Forgive me....
I meant only hevn’t you been, say, sort of—careless?”

“Care-less?” queried Ellen, bitterly and low.

“An’ powerful thoughtless an’—an’ blind—lettin’ men kiss you an’
fondle you—when you’re really a growed-up woman now?”

“Yes—I have,” whispered Ellen.

“Wal, then, why did you let them?

“I—I don’t know.... I didn’t think.  The men never let me
alone—never—never!  I got tired everlastingly pushin’ them away.  And
sometimes—when they were kind—and I was lonely for something I—I
didn’t mind if one or another fooled round me.  I never thought. It
never looked as y’u have made it look.... Then—those few times ridin’
the trail to Grass Valley—when people saw me—then I guess I
encouraged such attentions.... Oh, I must be—I am a shameless little
hussy!”

“Hush thet kind of talk,” said the old man, as he took her hand.
“Ellen, you’re only young an’ lonely an’ bitter.  No mother—no
friends—no one but a lot of rough men!  It’s a wonder you hev kept
yourself good.  But now your eyes are open, Ellen.  They’re brave an’
beautiful eyes, girl, an’ if you stand by the light in them you will
come through any trouble.  An’ you’ll be happy.  Don’t ever forgit
that.  Life is hard enough, God knows, but it’s unfailin’ true in the
end to the man or woman who finds the best in them an’ stands by it.”

“Uncle John, y’u talk so—so kindly.  Yu make me have hope.  There
seemed really so little for me to live for—hope for.... But I’ll never
be a coward again—nor a thoughtless fool.  I’ll find some good in
me—or make some—and never fail it, come what will.  I’ll remember
your words.  I’ll believe the future holds wonderful things for me....
I’m only eighteen.  Shore all my life won’t be lived heah.  Perhaps
this threatened fight over sheep and cattle will blow over....
Somewhere there must be some nice girl to be a friend—a sister to
me.... And maybe some man who’d believe, in spite of all they say—that
I’m not a hussy.”

“Wal, Ellen, you remind me of what I was wantin’ to tell you when you
just got here.... Yestiddy I heerd you called thet name in a barroom.
An’ thar was a fellar thar who raised hell.  He near killed one man an’
made another plumb eat his words.  An’ he scared thet crowd stiff.”

Old John Sprague shook his grizzled head and laughed, beaming upon
Ellen as if the memory of what he had seen had warmed his heart.

“Was it—y’u?” asked Ellen, tremulously.

“Me?  Aw, I wasn’t nowhere.  Ellen, this fellar was quick as a cat in
his actions an’ his words was like lightnin’.’

“Who? she whispered.

“Wal, no one else but a stranger jest come to these parts—an Isbel,
too.  Jean Isbel.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Ellen, faintly.

“In a barroom full of men—almost all of them in sympathy with the
sheep crowd—most of them on the Jorth side—this Jean Isbel resented
an insult to Ellen Jorth.”

“No!” cried Ellen.  Something terrible was happening to her mind or her
heart.

“Wal, he sure did,” replied the old man, “an’ it’s goin’ to be good fer
you to hear all about it.”



CHAPTER V


Old John Sprague launched into his narrative with evident zest.

“I hung round Greaves’ store most of two days.  An’ I heerd a heap.
Some of it was jest plain ole men’s gab, but I reckon I got the drift
of things concernin’ Grass Valley.  Yestiddy mornin’ I was packin’ my
burros in Greaves’ back yard, takin’ my time carryin’ out supplies from
the store.  An’ as last when I went in I seen a strange fellar was
thar. Strappin’ young man—not so young, either—an’ he had on
buckskin.  Hair black as my burros, dark face, sharp eyes—you’d took
him fer an Injun. He carried a rifle—one of them new forty-fours—an’
also somethin’ wrapped in paper thet he seemed partickler careful
about.  He wore a belt round his middle an’ thar was a bowie-knife in
it, carried like I’ve seen scouts an’ Injun fighters hev on the
frontier in the ‘seventies.  That looked queer to me, an’ I reckon to
the rest of the crowd thar.  No one overlooked the big six-shooter he
packed Texas fashion.  Wal, I didn’t hev no idee this fellar was an
Isbel until I heard Greaves call him thet.

“‘Isbel,’ said Greaves, ‘reckon your money’s counterfeit hyar. I cain’t
sell you anythin’.’

“‘Counterfeit?  Not much,’ spoke up the young fellar, an’ he flipped
some gold twenties on the bar, where they rung like bells.  ‘Why not?
Ain’t this a store?  I want a cinch strap.’

“Greaves looked particular sour thet mornin’.  I’d been watchin’ him
fer two days.  He hedn’t hed much sleep, fer I hed my bed back of the
store, an’ I heerd men come in the night an’ hev long confabs with him.
Whatever was in the wind hedn’t pleased him none.  An’ I calkilated
thet young Isbel wasn’t a sight good fer Greaves’ sore eyes, anyway.
But he paid no more attention to Isbel.  Acted jest as if he hedn’t
heerd Isbel say he wanted a cinch strap.

“I stayed inside the store then.  Thar was a lot of fellars I’d seen,
an’ some I knowed.  Couple of card games goin’, an’ drinkin’, of
course. I soon gathered thet the general atmosphere wasn’t friendly to
Jean Isbel.  He seen thet quick enough, but he didn’t leave.  Between
you an’ me I sort of took a likin’ to him.  An’ I sure watched him as
close as I could, not seemin’ to, you know.  Reckon they all did the
same, only you couldn’t see it.  It got jest about the same as if Isbel
hedn’t been in thar, only you knowed it wasn’t really the same.  Thet
was how I got the hunch the crowd was all sheepmen or their friends.
The day before I’d heerd a lot of talk about this young Isbel, an’ what
he’d come to Grass Valley fer, an’ what a bad hombre he was.  An’ when
I seen him I was bound to admit he looked his reputation.

“Wal, pretty soon in come two more fellars, an’ I knowed both of them.
You know them, too, I’m sorry to say.  Fer I’m comin’ to facts now thet
will shake you.  The first fellar was your father’s Mexican foreman,
Lorenzo, and the other was Simm Bruce.  I reckon Bruce wasn’t drunk,
but he’d sure been lookin’ on red licker.  When he seen Isbel darn me
if he didn’t swell an’ bustle all up like a mad ole turkey gobbler.

“‘Greaves,’ he said, ‘if thet fellar’s Jean Isbel I ain’t hankerin’ fer
the company y’u keep.’  An’ he made no bones of pointin’ right at
Isbel.  Greaves looked up dry an’ sour an’ he bit out spiteful-like:
‘Wal, Simm, we ain’t hed a hell of a lot of choice in this heah matter.
Thet’s Jean Isbel shore enough.  Mebbe you can persuade him thet his
company an’ his custom ain’t wanted round heah!’

“Jean Isbel set on the counter an took it all in, but he didn’t say
nothin’.  The way he looked at Bruce was sure enough fer me to see thet
thar might be a surprise any minnit.  I’ve looked at a lot of men in my
day, an’ can sure feel events comin’.  Bruce got himself a stiff drink
an’ then he straddles over the floor in front of Isbel.

“‘Air you Jean Isbel, son of ole Gass Isbel?’ asked Bruce, sort of
lolling back an’ givin’ a hitch to his belt.

“‘Yes sir, you’ve identified me,’ said Isbel, nice an’ polite.

“‘My name’s Bruce.  I’m rangin’ sheep heahaboots, an’ I hev interest in
Kurnel Lee Jorth’s bizness.’

“‘Hod do, Mister Bruce,’ replied Isbel, very civil ant cool as you
please.  Bruce hed an eye fer the crowd thet was now listenin’ an’
watchin’.  He swaggered closer to Isbel.

“‘We heerd y’u come into the Tonto Basin to run us sheepmen off the
range.  How aboot thet?’

“‘Wal, you heerd wrong,’ said Isbel, quietly.  ‘I came to work fer my
father.  Thet work depends on what happens.’

“Bruce began to git redder of face, an’ he shook a husky hand in front
of Isbel.  ‘I’ll tell y’u this heah, my Nez Perce Isbel—’ an’ when he
sort of choked fer more wind Greaves spoke up, ‘Simm, I shore reckon
thet Nez Perce handle will stick.’  An’ the crowd haw-hawed. Then Bruce
got goin’ ag’in.  ‘I’ll tell y’u this heah, Nez Perce. Thar’s been
enough happen already to run y’u out of Arizona.’

“‘Wal, you don’t say!  What, fer instance?, asked Isbel, quick an’
sarcastic.

“Thet made Bruce bust out puffin’ an’ spittin’: ‘Wha-tt, fer instance?
Huh!  Why, y’u darn half-breed, y’u’ll git run out fer makin’ up to
Ellen Jorth.  Thet won’t go in this heah country.  Not fer any Isbel.’

“‘You’re a liar,’ called Isbel, an’ like a big cat he dropped off the
counter.  I heerd his moccasins pat soft on the floor.  An’ I bet to
myself thet he was as dangerous as he was quick.  But his voice an’ his
looks didn’t change even a leetle.

“‘I’m not a liar,’ yelled Bruce.  ‘I’ll make y’u eat thet.  I can prove
what I say.... Y’u was seen with Ellen Jorth—up on the Rim—day before
yestiddy.  Y’u was watched.  Y’u was with her.  Y’u made up to her.
Y’u grabbed her an’ kissed her!... An’ I’m heah to say, Nez Perce,
thet y’u’re a marked man on this range.’

“‘Who saw me?’ asked Isbel, quiet an’ cold.  I seen then thet he’d
turned white in the face.

“‘Yu cain’t lie out of it,’ hollered Bruce, wavin’ his hands. ‘We got
y’u daid to rights.  Lorenzo saw y’u—follered y’u—watched y’u.’
Bruce pointed at the grinnin’ greaser.  ‘Lorenzo is Kurnel Jorth’s
foreman.  He seen y’u maulin’ of Ellen Jorth.  An’ when he tells the
Kurnel an’ Tad Jorth an’ Jackson Jorth!... Haw!  Haw! Haw!  Why, hell
’d be a cooler place fer yu then this heah Tonto.’

“Greaves an’ his gang hed come round, sure tickled clean to thar
gizzards at this mess.  I noticed, howsomever, thet they was Texans
enough to keep back to one side in case this Isbel started any
action.... Wal, Isbel took a look at Lorenzo.  Then with one swift grab
he jerked the little greaser off his feet an’ pulled him close.
Lorenzo stopped grinnin’.  He began to look a leetle sick.  But it was
plain he hed right on his side.

“‘You say you saw me?’ demanded Isbel.

“‘Si, senor,’ replied Lorenzo.

“What did you see?’

“‘I see senor an’ senorita.  I hide by manzanita.  I see senorita like
grande senor ver mooch.  She like senor keese.  She—’

“Then Isbel hit the little greaser a back-handed crack in the mouth.
Sure it was a crack!  Lorenzo went over the counter backward an’ landed
like a pack load of wood.  An’ he didn’t git up.

“‘Mister Bruce,’ said Isbel, ‘an’ you fellars who heerd thet lyin’
greaser, I did meet Ellen Jorth.  An’ I lost my head.  I—I kissed
her.... But it was an accident.  I meant no insult.  I apologized—I
tried to explain my crazy action.... Thet was all.  The greaser lied.
Ellen Jorth was kind enough to show me the trail.  We talked a little.
Then—I suppose—because she was young an’ pretty an’ sweet—I lost my
head.  She was absolutely innocent.  Thet damned greaser told a
bare-faced lie when he said she liked me.  The fact was she despised
me.  She said so.  An’ when she learned I was Jean Isbel she turned her
back on me an’ walked away.”’

At this point of his narrative the old man halted as if to impress
Ellen not only with what just had been told, but particularly with what
was to follow.  The reciting of this tale had evidently given Sprague
an unconscious pleasure.  He glowed.  He seemed to carry the burden of
a secret that he yearned to divulge.  As for Ellen, she was deadlocked
in breathless suspense.  All her emotions waited for the end. She
begged Sprague to hurry.

“Wal, I wish I could skip the next chapter an’ hev only the last to
tell,” rejoined the old man, and he put a heavy, but solicitous, hand
upon hers.... Simm Bruce haw-hawed loud an’ loud.... ‘Say, Nez Perce,’
he calls out, most insolent-like, ‘we air too good sheepmen heah to hev
the wool pulled over our eyes.  We shore know what y’u meant by Ellen
Jorth.  But y’u wasn’t smart when y’u told her y’u was Jean Isbel!...
Haw-haw!’

“Isbel flashed a strange, surprised look from the red-faced Bruce to
Greaves and to the other men.  I take it he was wonderin’ if he’d heerd
right or if they’d got the same hunch thet ’d come to him. An’ I reckon
he determined to make sure.

“‘Why wasn’t I smart?’ he asked.

“‘Shore y’u wasn’t smart if y’u was aimin’ to be one of Ellen Jorth’s
lovers,’ said Bruce, with a leer.  ‘Fer if y’u hedn’t give y’urself
away y’u could hev been easy enough.’

“Thar was no mistakin’ Bruce’s meanin’ an’ when he got it out some of
the men thar laughed.  Isbel kept lookin’ from one to another of them.
Then facin’ Greaves, he said, deliberately: ‘Greaves, this drunken
Bruce is excuse enough fer a show-down.  I take it that you are
sheepmen, an’ you’re goin’ on Jorth’s side of the fence in the matter
of this sheep rangin’.’

“‘Wal, Nez Perce, I reckon you hit plumb center,’ said Greaves, dryly.
He spread wide his big hands to the other men, as if to say they’d
might as well own the jig was up.

“‘All right.  You’re Jorth’s backers.  Have any of you a word to say in
Ellen Jorth’s defense?  I tell you the Mexican lied.  Believin’ me or
not doesn’t matter.  But this vile-mouthed Bruce hinted against thet
girl’s honor.’

“Ag’in some of the men laughed, but not so noisy, an’ there was a
nervous shufflin’ of feet.  Isbel looked sort of queer.  His neck had a
bulge round his collar.  An’ his eyes was like black coals of fire.
Greaves spread his big hands again, as if to wash them of this part of
the dirty argument.

“‘When it comes to any wimmen I pass—much less play a hand fer a
wildcat like Jorth’s gurl,’ said Greaves, sort of cold an’ thick.
‘Bruce shore ought to know her.  Accordin’ to talk heahaboots an’ what
HE says, Ellen Jorth has been his gurl fer two years.’

“Then Isbel turned his attention to Bruce an’ I fer one begun to shake
in my boots.

“‘Say thet to me!’ he called.

“‘Shore she’s my gurl, an’ thet’s why Im a-goin’ to hev y’u run off
this range.’

“Isbel jumped at Bruce.  ‘You damned drunken cur!  You vile-mouthed
liar!... I may be an Isbel, but by God you cain’t slander thet girl to
my face!... Then he moved so quick I couldn’t see what he did. But I
heerd his fist hit Bruce.  It sounded like an ax ag’in’ a beef. Bruce
fell clear across the room.  An’ by Jinny when he landed Isbel was
thar.  As Bruce staggered up, all bloody-faced, bellowin’ an’ spittin’
out teeth Isbel eyed Greaves’s crowd an’ said: ‘If any of y’u make a
move it ’ll mean gun-play.’  Nobody moved, thet’s sure. In fact, none
of Greaves’s outfit was packin’ guns, at least in sight. When Bruce got
all the way up—he’s a tall fellar—why Isbel took a full swing at him
an’ knocked him back across the room ag’in’ the counter.  Y’u know when
a fellar’s hurt by the way he yells.  Bruce got thet second smash right
on his big red nose.... I never seen any one so quick as Isbel.  He
vaulted over thet counter jest the second Bruce fell back on it, an’
then, with Greaves’s gang in front so he could catch any moves of
theirs, he jest slugged Bruce right an’ left, an’ banged his head on
the counter.  Then as Bruce sunk limp an’ slipped down, lookin’ like a
bloody sack, Isbel let him fall to the floor.  Then he vaulted back
over the counter.  Wipin’ the blood off his hands, he throwed his
kerchief down in Bruce’s face.  Bruce wasn’t dead or bad hurt.  He’d
jest been beaten bad. He was moanin’ an’ slobberin’.  Isbel kicked him,
not hard, but jest sort of disgustful.  Then he faced thet crowd.
‘Greaves, thet’s what I think of your Simm Bruce.  Tell him next time
he sees me to run or pull a gun.’  An’ then Isbel grabbed his rifle an’
package off the counter an’ went out.  He didn’t even look back.  I
seen him nount his horse an’ ride away.... Now, girl, what hev you to
say?”

Ellen could only say good-by and the word was so low as to be almost
inaudible.  She ran to her burro.  She could not see very clearly
through tear-blurred eyes, and her shaking fingers were all thumbs. It
seemed she had to rush away—somewhere, anywhere—not to get away from
old John Sprague, but from herself—this palpitating, bursting self
whose feet stumbled down the trail.  All—all seemed ended for her.
That interminable story!  It had taken so long.  And every minute of it
she had been helplessly torn asunder by feelings she had never known
she possessed.  This Ellen Jorth was an unknown creature.  She sobbed
now as she dragged the burro down the canyon trail.  She sat down only
to rise.  She hurried only to stop.  Driven, pursued, barred, she had
no way to escape the flaying thoughts, no time or will to repudiate
them.  The death of her girlhood, the rending aside of a veil of maiden
mystery only vaguely instinctively guessed, the barren, sordid truth of
her life as seen by her enlightened eyes, the bitter realization of the
vileness of men of her clan in contrast to the manliness and chivalry
of an enemy, the hard facts of unalterable repute as created by slander
and fostered by low minds, all these were forces in a cataclysm that
had suddenly caught her heart and whirled her through changes immense
and agonizing, to bring her face to face with reality, to force upon
her suspicion and doubt of all she had trusted, to warn her of the
dark, impending horror of a tragic bloody feud, and lastly to teach her
the supreme truth at once so glorious and so terrible—that she could
not escape the doom of womanhood.

About noon that day Ellen Jorth arrived at the Knoll, which was the
location of her father’s ranch.  Three canyons met there to form a
larger one.  The knoll was a symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of
the three canyons.  It was covered with brush and cedars, with here and
there lichened rocks showing above the bleached grass.  Below the Knoll
was a wide, grassy flat or meadow through which a willow-bordered
stream cut its rugged boulder-strewn bed.  Water flowed abundantly at
this season, and the deep washes leading down from the slopes attested
to the fact of cloudbursts and heavy storms.  This meadow valley was
dotted with horses and cattle, and meandered away between the timbered
slopes to lose itself in a green curve.  A singular feature of this
canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing
northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore
less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines.  The
ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough corner of the largest
of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its
rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black
mud-holes of corrals upon the beautiful and serene meadow valley.

Ellen Jorth approached her home slowly, with dragging, reluctant steps;
and never before in the three unhappy years of her existence there had
the ranch seemed so bare, so uncared for, so repugnant to her.  As she
had seen herself with clarified eyes, so now she saw her home.  The
cabin that Ellen lived in with her father was a single-room structure
with one door and no windows.  It was about twenty feet square.  The
huge, ragged, stone chimney had been built on the outside, with the
wide open fireplace set inside the logs.  Smoke was rising from the
chimney.  As Ellen halted at the door and began unpacking her burro she
heard the loud, lazy laughter of men.  An adjoining log cabin had been
built in two sections, with a wide roofed hall or space between them.
The door in each cabin faced the other, and there was a tall man
standing in one.  Ellen recognized Daggs, a neighbor sheepman, who
evidently spent more time with her father than at his own home,
wherever that was.  Ellen had never seen it.  She heard this man drawl,
“Jorth, heah’s your kid come home.”

Ellen carried her bed inside the cabin, and unrolled it upon a couch
built of boughs in the far corner.  She had forgotten Jean Isbel’s
package, and now it fell out under her sight.  Quickly she covered it.
A Mexican woman, relative of Antonio, and the only servant about the
place, was squatting Indian fashion before the fireplace, stirring a
pot of beans.  She and Ellen did not get along well together, and few
words ever passed between them.  Ellen had a canvas curtain stretched
upon a wire across a small triangular corner, and this afforded her a
little privacy.  Her possessions were limited in number.  The crude
square table she had constructed herself.  Upon it was a little
old-fashioned walnut-framed mirror, a brush and comb, and a dilapidated
ebony cabinet which contained odds and ends the sight of which always
brought a smile of derisive self-pity to her lips.  Under the table
stood an old leather trunk.  It had come with her from Texas, and
contained clothing and belongings of her mother’s.  Above the couch on
pegs hung her scant wardrobe.  A tiny shelf held several worn-out books.

When her father slept indoors, which was seldom except in winter, he
occupied a couch in the opposite corner.  A rude cupboard had been
built against the logs next to the fireplace.  It contained supplies
and utensils.  Toward the center, somewhat closer to the door, stood a
crude table and two benches.  The cabin was dark and smelled of smoke,
of the stale odors of past cooked meals, of the mustiness of dry,
rotting timber.  Streaks of light showed through the roof where the
rough-hewn shingles had split or weathered.  A strip of bacon hung upon
one side of the cupboard, and upon the other a haunch of venison.
Ellen detested the Mexican woman because she was dirty. The inside of
the cabin presented the same unkempt appearance usual to it after Ellen
had been away for a few days.  Whatever Ellen had lost during the
retrogression of the Jorths, she had kept her habits of cleanliness,
and straightway upon her return she set to work.

The Mexican woman sullenly slouched away to her own quarters outside
and Ellen was left to the satisfaction of labor.  Her mind was as busy
as her hands.  As she cleaned and swept and dusted she heard from time
to time the voices of men, the clip-clop of shod horses, the bellow of
cattle.  And a considerable time elapsed before she was disturbed.

A tall shadow darkened the doorway.

“Howdy, little one!” said a lazy, drawling voice.  “So y’u-all got
home?”

Ellen looked up.  A superbly built man leaned against the doorpost.
Like most Texans, he was light haired and light eyed.  His face was
lined and hard.  His long, sandy mustache hid his mouth and drooped
with a curl.  Spurred, booted, belted, packing a heavy gun low down on
his hip, he gave Ellen an entirely new impression.  Indeed, she was
seeing everything strangely.

“Hello, Daggs!” replied Ellen. “Where’s my dad?”

“He’s playin’ cairds with Jackson an’ Colter.  Shore’s playin’ bad,
too, an’ it’s gone to his haid.”

“Gamblin’?” queried Ellen.

“Mah child, when’d Kurnel Jorth ever play for fun?” said Daggs, with a
lazy laugh.  “There’s a stack of gold on the table.  Reckon yo’ uncle
Jackson will win it.  Colter’s shore out of luck.”

Daggs stepped inside.  He was graceful and slow.  His long’ spurs
clinked.  He laid a rather compelling hand on Ellen’s shoulder.

“Heah, mah gal, give us a kiss,” he said.

“Daggs, I’m not your girl,” replied Ellen as she slipped out from under
his hand.

Then Daggs put his arm round her, not with violence or rudeness, but
with an indolent, affectionate assurance, at once bold and
self-contained.  Ellen, however, had to exert herself to get free of
him, and when she had placed the table between them she looked him
square in the eyes.

“Daggs, y’u keep your paws off me,” she said.

“Aw, now, Ellen, I ain’t no bear,” he remonstrated.  “What’s the
matter, kid?”

“I’m not a kid.  And there’s nothin’ the matter.  Y’u’re to keep your
hands to yourself, that’s all.”

He tried to reach her across the table, and his movements were lazy and
slow, like his smile.  His tone was coaxing.

“Mah dear, shore you set on my knee just the other day, now, didn’t
you?”

Ellen felt the blood sting her cheeks.

“I was a child,” she returned.

“Wal, listen to this heah grown-up young woman.  All in a few days!...
Doon’t be in a temper, Ellen.... Come, give us a kiss.”

She deliberately gazed into his eyes.  Like the eyes of an eagle, they
were clear and hard, just now warmed by the dalliance of the moment,
but there was no light, no intelligence in them to prove he understood
her.  The instant separated Ellen immeasurably from him and from all of
his ilk.

“Daggs, I was a child,” she said.  “I was lonely—hungry for
affection—I was innocent.  Then I was careless, too, and thoughtless
when I should have known better.  But I hardly understood y’u men.  I
put such thoughts out of my mind.  I know now—know what y’u mean—what
y’u have made people believe I am.”

“Ahuh!  Shore I get your hunch,” he returned, with a change of tone.
“But I asked you to marry me?”

“Yes y’u did.  The first day y’u got heah to my dad’s house.  And y’u
asked me to marry y’u after y’u found y’u couldn’t have your way with
me. To y’u the one didn’t mean any more than the other.”

“Shore I did more than Simm Bruce an’ Colter,” he retorted. “They never
asked you to marry.”

“No, they didn’t.  And if I could respect them at all I’d do it because
they didn’t ask me.”

“Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated Daggs, thoughtfully, as he stroked
his long mustache.

“I’ll say to them what I’ve said to y’u,” went on Ellen.  “I’ll tell
dad to make y’u let me alone.  I wouldn’t marry one of y’u—y’u loafers
to save my life.  I’ve my suspicions about y’u.  Y’u’re a bad lot.”

Daggs changed subtly.  The whole indolent nonchalance of the man
vanished in an instant.

“Wal, Miss Jorth, I reckon you mean we’re a bad lot of sheepmen?” he
queried, in the cool, easy speech of a Texan.

“No,” flashed Ellen.  “Shore I don’t say sheepmen.  I say y’u’re a BAD
LOT.”

“Oh, the hell you say!”  Daggs spoke as he might have spoken to a man;
then turning swiftly on his heel he left her.  Outside he encountered
Ellen’s father.  She heard Daggs speak: “Lee, your little wildcat is
shore heah.  An’ take mah hunch.  Somebody has been talkin’ to her.”

“Who has?” asked her father, in his husky voice.  Ellen knew at once
that he had been drinking.

“Lord only knows,” replied Daggs.  “But shore it wasn’t any friends of
ours.”

“We cain’t stop people’s tongues,” said Jorth, resignedly

“Wal, I ain’t so shore,” continued Daggs, with his slow, cool laugh.
“Reckon I never yet heard any daid men’s tongues wag.”

Then the musical tinkle of his spurs sounded fainter.  A moment later
Ellen’s father entered the cabin.  His dark, moody face brightened at
sight of her.  Ellen knew she was the only person in the world left for
him to love.  And she was sure of his love.  Her very presence always
made him different.  And through the years, the darker their
misfortunes, the farther he slipped away from better days, the more she
loved him.

“Hello, my Ellen!” he said, and he embraced her.  When he had been
drinking he never kissed her.  “Shore I’m glad you’re home.  This heah
hole is bad enough any time, but when you’re gone it’s black.... I’m
hungry.”

Ellen laid food and drink on the table; and for a little while she did
not look directly at him.  She was concerned about this new searching
power of her eyes.  In relation to him she vaguely dreaded it.

Lee Jorth had once been a singularly handsome man.  He was tall, but
did not have the figure of a horseman.  His dark hair was streaked with
gray, and was white over his ears.  His face was sallow and thin, with
deep lines.  Under his round, prominent, brown eyes, like deadened
furnaces, were blue swollen welts.  He had a bitter mouth and weak
chin, not wholly concealed by gray mustache and pointed beard.  He wore
a long frock coat and a wide-brimmed sombrero, both black in color, and
so old and stained and frayed that along with the fashion of them they
betrayed that they had come from Texas with him.  Jorth always
persisted in wearing a white linen shirt, likewise a relic of his
Southern prosperity, and to-day it was ragged and soiled as usual.

Ellen watched her father eat and waited for him to speak.  It occured
to her strangely that he never asked about the sheep or the new-born
lambs.  She divined with a subtle new woman’s intuition that he cared
nothing for his sheep.

“Ellen, what riled Daggs?” inquired her father, presently.  “He shore
had fire in his eye.”

Long ago Ellen had betrayed an indignity she had suffered at the hands
of a man.  Her father had nearly killed him.  Since then she had taken
care to keep her troubles to herself.  If her father had not been blind
and absorbed in his own brooding he would have seen a thousand things
sufficient to inflame his Southern pride and temper.

“Daggs asked me to marry him again and I said he belonged to a bad
lot,” she replied.

Jorth laughed in scorn.  “Fool!  My God! Ellen, I must have dragged you
low—that every damned ru—er—sheepman—who comes along thinks he can
marry you.”

At the break in his words, the incompleted meaning, Ellen dropped her
eyes.  Little things once never noted by her were now come to have a
fascinating significance.

“Never mind, dad,” she replied.  “They cain’t marry me.”

“Daggs said somebody had been talkin’ to you.  How aboot that?”

“Old John Sprague has just gotten back from Grass Valley,” said Ellen.
“I stopped in to see him.  Shore he told me all the village gossip.”

“Anythin’ to interest me?” he queried, darkly.

“Yes, dad, I’m afraid a good deal,” she said, hesitatingly.  Then in
accordance with a decision Ellen had made she told him of the rumored
war between sheepmen and cattlemen; that old Isbel had Blaisdell,
Gordon, Fredericks, Blue and other well-known ranchers on his side;
that his son Jean Isbel had come from Oregon with a wonderful
reputation as fighter and scout and tracker; that it was no secret how
Colonel Lee Jorth was at the head of the sheepmen; that a bloody war
was sure to come.

“Hah!” exclaimed Jorth, with a stain of red in his sallow cheek.
“Reckon none of that is news to me.  I knew all that.”

Ellen wondered if he had heard of her meeting with Jean Isbel.  If not
he would hear as soon as Simm Bruce and Lorenzo came back.  She decided
to forestall them.

“Dad, I met Jean Isbel.  He came into my camp.  Asked the way to the
Rim. I showed him.  We—we talked a little.  And shore were gettin’
acquainted when—when he told me who he was.  Then I left him—hurried
back to camp.”

“Colter met Isbel down in the woods,” replied Jorth, ponderingly. “Said
he looked like an Indian—a hard an’ slippery customer to reckon with.”

“Shore I guess I can indorse what Colter said,” returned Ellen, dryly.
She could have laughed aloud at her deceit.  Still she had not lied.

“How’d this heah young Isbel strike you?” queried her father, suddenly
glancing up at her.

Ellen felt the slow, sickening, guilty rise of blood in her face. She
was helpless to stop it.  But her father evidently never saw it. He was
looking at her without seeing her.

“He—he struck me as different from men heah,” she stammered.

“Did Sprague tell you aboot this half-Indian Isbel—aboot his
reputation?”

“Yes.”

“Did he look to you like a real woodsman?”

“Indeed he did.  He wore buckskin.  He stepped quick and soft.  He
acted at home in the woods.  He had eyes black as night and sharp as
lightnin’. They shore saw about all there was to see.”

Jorth chewed at his mustache and lost himself in brooding thought.

“Dad, tell me, is there goin’ to be a war?” asked Ellen, presently.

What a red, strange, rolling flash blazed in his eyes!  His body jerked.

“Shore.  You might as well know.”

“Between sheepmen and cattlemen?”

“Yes.”

“With y’u, dad, at the haid of one faction and Gaston Isbel the other?”

“Daughter, you have it correct, so far as you go.”

“Oh!... Dad, can’t this fight be avoided?”

“You forget you’re from Texas,” he replied.

“Cain’t it be helped?” she repeated, stubbornly.

“No!” he declared, with deep, hoarse passion.

“Why not?”

“Wal, we sheepmen are goin’ to run sheep anywhere we like on the range.
An’ cattlemen won’t stand for that.”

“But, dad, it’s so foolish,” declared Ellen, earnestly.  “Y’u sheepmen
do not have to run sheep over the cattle range.”

“I reckon we do.”

“Dad, that argument doesn’t go with me.  I know the country.  For years
to come there will be room for both sheep and cattle without
overrunnin’. If some of the range is better in water and grass, then
whoever got there first should have it.  That shore is only fair.  It’s
common sense, too.”

“Ellen, I reckon some cattle people have been prejudicin’ you,” said
Jorth, bitterly.

“Dad!” she cried, hotly.

This had grown to be an ordeal for Jorth.  He seemed a victim of
contending tides of feeling.  Some will or struggle broke within him
and the change was manifest.  Haggard, shifty-eyed, with wabbling chin,
he burst into speech.

“See heah, girl.  You listen.  There’s a clique of ranchers down in the
Basin, all those you named, with Isbel at their haid.  They have
resented sheepmen comin’ down into the valley.  They want it all to
themselves.  That’s the reason.  Shore there’s another.  All the Isbels
are crooked.  They’re cattle an’ horse thieves—have been for years.
Gaston Isbel always was a maverick rustler.  He’s gettin’ old now an’
rich, so he wants to cover his tracks.  He aims to blame this cattle
rustlin’ an’ horse stealin’ on to us sheepmen, an’ run us out of the
country.”

Gravely Ellen Jorth studied her father’s face, and the newly found
truth-seeing power of her eyes did not fail her.  In part, perhaps in
all, he was telling lies.  She shuddered a little, loyally battling
against the insidious convictions being brought to fruition.  Perhaps
in his brooding over his failures and troubles he leaned toward false
judgments.  Ellen could not attach dishonor to her father’s motives or
speeches.  For long, however, something about him had troubled her,
perplexed her.  Fearfully she believed she was coming to some
revelation, and, despite her keen determination to know, she found
herself shrinking.

“Dad, mother told me before she died that the Isbels had ruined you,”
said Ellen, very low.  It hurt her so to see her father cover his face
that she could hardly go on.  “If they ruined you they ruined all of
us.  I know what we had once—what we lost again and again—and I see
what we are come to now.  Mother hated the Isbels.  She taught me to
hate the very name.  But I never knew how they ruined you—or why—or
when.  And I want to know now.”

Then it was not the face of a liar that Jorth disclosed.  The present
was forgotten.  He lived in the past.  He even seemed younger ‘in the
revivifying flash of hate that made his face radiant.  The lines burned
out.  Hate gave him back the spirit of his youth.

“Gaston Isbel an’ I were boys together in Weston, Texas,” began Jorth,
in swift, passionate voice.  “We went to school together.  We loved the
same girl—your mother.  When the war broke out she was engaged to
Isbel.  His family was rich.  They influenced her people.  But she
loved me.  When Isbel went to war she married me.  He came back an’
faced us.  God!  I’ll never forget that.  Your mother confessed her
unfaithfulness—by Heaven!  She taunted him with it.  Isbel accused me
of winnin’ her by lies.  But she took the sting out of that.

“Isbel never forgave her an’ he hounded me to ruin.  He made me out a
card-sharp, cheatin’ my best friends.  I was disgraced.  Later he
tangled me in the courts—he beat me out of property—an’ last by
convictin’ me of rustlin’ cattle he run me out of Texas.”

Black and distorted now, Jorth’s face was a spectacle to make Ellen
sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate.  The truth of her
father’s ruin and her own were enough.  What mattered all else? Jorth
beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the
more significant for their lack of physical force.

“An’ so help me God, it’s got to be wiped out in blood!” he hissed.

That was his answer to the wavering and nobility of Ellen.  And she in
her turn had no answer to make.  She crept away into the corner behind
the curtain, and there on her couch in the semidarkness she lay with
strained heart, and a resurging, unconquerable tumult in her mind.  And
she lay there from the middle of that afternoon until the next morning.

When she awakened she expected to be unable to rise—she hoped she
could not—but life seemed multiplied in her, and inaction was
impossible.  Something young and sweet and hopeful that had been in her
did not greet the sun this morning.  In their place was a woman’s
passion to learn for herself, to watch events, to meet what must come,
to survive.

After breakfast, at which she sat alone, she decided to put Isbel’s
package out of the way, so that it would not be subjecting her to
continual annoyance.  The moment she picked it up the old curiosity
assailed her.

“Shore I’ll see what it is, anyway,” she muttered, and with swift hands
she opened the package.  The action disclosed two pairs of fine, soft
shoes, of a style she had never seen, and four pairs of stockings, two
of strong, serviceable wool, and the others of a finer texture. Ellen
looked at them in amaze.  Of all things in the world, these would have
been the last she expected to see.  And, strangely, they were what she
wanted and needed most.  Naturally, then, Ellen made the mistake of
taking them in her hands to feel their softness and warmth.

“Shore!  He saw my bare legs!  And he brought me these presents he’d
intended for his sister.... He was ashamed for me—sorry for me.... And
I thought he looked at me bold-like, as I’m used to be looked at heah!
Isbel or not, he’s shore...”

But Ellen Jorth could not utter aloud the conviction her intelligence
tried to force upon her.

“It’d be a pity to burn them,” she mused.  “I cain’t do it. Sometime I
might send them to Ann Isbel.”

Whereupon she wrapped them up again and hid them in the bottom of the
old trunk, and slowly, as she lowered the lid, looking darkly, blankly
at the wall, she whispered: “Jean Isbel!... I hate him!”

Later when Ellen went outdoors she carried her rifle, which was unusual
for her, unless she intended to go into the woods.

The morning was sunny and warm.  A group of shirt-sleeved men lounged
in the hall and before the porch of the double cabin.  Her father was
pacing up and down, talking forcibly.  Ellen heard his hoarse voice. As
she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their
attention.  Ellen’s glance ran over them swiftly—Daggs, with his
superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; Colter with his
lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorth, her
uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair,
and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorth, another brother
of her father’s, younger, red of eye and nose, a weak-chinned drinker
of rum.  Three other limber-legged Texans lounged there, partners of
Daggs, and they were sun-browned, light-haired, blue-eyed men
singularly alike in appearance, from their dusty high-heeled boots to
their broad black sombreros.  They claimed to be sheepmen.  All Ellen
could be sure of was that Rock Wells spent most of his time there,
doing nothing but look for a chance to waylay her; Springer was a
gambler; and the third, who answered to the strange name of Queen, was
a silent, lazy, watchful-eyed man who never wore a glove on his right
hand and who never was seen without a gun within easy reach of that
hand.

“Howdy, Ellen.  Shore you ain’t goin’ to say good mawnin’ to this heah
bad lot?” drawled Daggs, with good-natured sarcasm.

“Why, shore!  Good morning, y’u hard-working industrious MANANA sheep
raisers,” replied Ellen, coolly.

Daggs stared.  The others appeared taken back by a greeting so foreign
from any to which they were accustomed from her.  Jackson Jorth let out
a gruff haw-haw.  Some of them doffed their sombreros, and Rock Wells
managed a lazy, polite good morning.  Ellen’s father seemed most
significantly struck by her greeting, and the least amused.

“Ellen, I’m not likin’ your talk,” he said, with a frown.

“Dad, when y’u play cards don’t y’u call a spade a spade?”

“Why, shore I do.”

“Well, I’m calling spades spades.”

“Ahuh!” grunted Jorth, furtively dropping his eyes.  “Where you goin’
with your gun?  I’d rather you hung round heah now.”

“Reckon I might as well get used to packing my gun all the time,”
replied Ellen.  “Reckon I’ll be treated more like a man.”

Then the event Ellen had been expecting all morning took place. Simm
Bruce and Lorenzo rode around the slope of the Knoll and trotted toward
the cabin.  Interest in Ellen was relegated to the background.

“Shore they’re bustin’ with news,” declared Daggs.

“They been ridin’ some, you bet,” remarked another.

“Huh!” exclaimed Jorth.  “Bruce shore looks queer to me.”

“Red liquor,” said Tad Jorth, sententiously.  “You-all know the brand
Greaves hands out.”

“Naw, Simm ain’t drunk,” said Jackson Jorth.  “Look at his bloody
shirt.”

The cool, indolent interest of the crowd vanished at the red color
pointed out by Jackson Jorth.  Daggs rose in a single springy motion to
his lofty height.  The face Bruce turned to Jorth was swollen and
bruised, with unhealed cuts.  Where his right eye should have been
showed a puffed dark purple bulge.  His other eye, however, gleamed
with hard and sullen light.  He stretched a big shaking hand toward
Jorth.

“Thet Nez Perce Isbel beat me half to death,” he bellowed.

Jorth stared hard at the tragic, almost grotesque figure, at the
battered face.  But speech failed him.  It was Daggs who answered Bruce.

“Wal, Simm, I’ll be damned if you don’t look it.”

“Beat you!  What with?” burst out Jorth, explosively.

“I thought he was swingin’ an ax, but Greaves swore it was his fists,”
bawled Bruce, in misery and fury.

“Where was your gun?” queried Jorth, sharply.

“Gun? Hell!” exclaimed Bruce, flinging wide his arms.  “Ask Lorenzo. He
had a gun.  An’ he got a biff in the jaw before my turn come. Ask him?”

Attention thus directed to the Mexican showed a heavy discolored
swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face.  Lorenzo looked only
serious.

“Hah!  Speak up,” shouted Jorth, impatiently.

“Senor Isbel heet me ver quick,” replied Lorenzo, with expressive
gesture.  “I see thousand stars—then moocho black—all like night.”

At that some of Daggs’s men lolled back with dry crisp laughter.
Daggs’s hard face rippled with a smile.  But there was no humor in
anything for Colonel Jorth.

“Tell us what come off.  Quick!” he ordered.  “Where did it happen?
Why?  Who saw it?  What did you do?”

Bruce lapsed into a sullen impressiveness.  “Wal, I happened in
Greaves’s store an’ run into Jean Isbel.  Shore was lookin’ fer him. I
had my mind made up what to do, but I got to shootin’ off my gab
instead of my gun.  I called him Nez Perce—an’ I throwed all thet talk
in his face about old Gass Isbel sendin’ fer him—an’ I told him he’d
git run out of the Tonto.  Reckon I was jest warmin’ up.... But then it
all happened.  He slugged Lorenzo jest one.  An’ Lorenzo slid
peaceful-like to bed behind the counter.  I hadn’t time to think of
throwin’ a gun before he whaled into me.  He knocked out two of my
teeth.  An’ I swallered one of them.”

Ellen stood in the background behind three of the men and in the
shadow.  She did not join in the laugh that followed Bruce’s remarks.
She had known that he would lie.  Uncertain yet of her reaction to
this, but more bitter and furious as he revealed his utter baseness,
she waited for more to be said.

“Wal, I’ll be doggoned,” drawled Daggs.

“What do you make of this kind of fightin’?” queried Jorth,

“Darn if I know,” replied Daggs in perplexity.  “Shore an’ sartin it’s
not the way of a Texan.  Mebbe this young Isbel really is what old Gass
swears he is.  Shore Bruce ain’t nothin’ to give an edge to a real gun
fighter.  Looks to me like Isbel bluffed Greaves an’ his gang an’
licked your men without throwin’ a gun.”

“Maybe Isbel doesn’t want the name of drawin’ first blood,” suggested
Jorth.

“That ’d be like Gass,” spoke up Rock Wells, quietly.  “I onct rode fer
Gass in Texas.”

“Say, Bruce,” said Daggs, “was this heah palaverin’ of yours an’ Jean
Isbel’s aboot the old stock dispute?  Aboot his father’s range an’
water?  An’ partickler aboot, sheep?”

“Wal—I—I yelled a heap,” declared Bruce, haltingly, “but I don’t
recollect all I said—I was riled.... Shore, though it was the same old
argyment thet’s been fetchin’ us closer an’ closer to trouble.”

Daggs removed his keen hawklike gaze from Bruce.  “Wal, Jorth, all I’ll
say is this.  If Bruce is tellin’ the truth we ain’t got a hell of a
lot to fear from this young Isbel.  I’ve known a heap of gun fighters
in my day.  An’ Jean Isbel don’t ran true to class.  Shore there never
was a gunman who’d risk cripplin’ his right hand by sluggin’ anybody.”

“Wal,” broke in Bruce, sullenly.  “You-all can take it daid straight or
not.  I don’t give a damn.  But you’ve shore got my hunch thet Nez
Perce Isbel is liable to handle any of you fellars jest as he did me,
an’ jest as easy.  What’s more, he’s got Greaves figgered.  An’ you-all
know thet Greaves is as deep in—”

“Shut up that kind of gab,” demanded Jorth, stridently.  “An’ answer
me. Was the row in Greaves’s barroom aboot sheep?”

“Aw, hell!  I said so, didn’t I?” shouted Bruce, with a fierce uplift
of his distorted face.

Ellen strode out from the shadow of the tall men who had obscured her.

“Bruce, y’u’re a liar,” she said, bitingly.

The surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root Bruce to the spot.
All but the discolored places on his face turned white.  He held his
breath a moment, then expelled it hard.  His effort to recover from the
shock was painfully obvious.  He stammered incoherently.

“Shore y’u’re more than a liar, too,” cried Ellen, facing him with
blazing eyes.  And the rifle, gripped in both hands, seemed to declare
her intent of menace.  “That row was not about sheep.... Jean Isbel
didn’t beat y’u for anythin’ about sheep.... Old John Sprague was in
Greaves’s store.  He heard y’u.  He saw Jean Isbel beat y’u as y’u
deserved.... An’ he told ME!”

Ellen saw Bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she
was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood
on her hands.  Then she divined that Bruce saw more in the gathering
storm in her father’s eyes than he had to fear from her.

“Girl, what the hell are y’u sayin’?” hoarsely called Jorth, in dark
amaze.

“Dad, y’u leave this to me,” she retorted.

Daggs stepped beside Jorth, significantly on his right side.  “Let her
alone Lee,” he advised, coolly.  “She’s shore got a hunch on Bruce.”

“Simm Bruce, y’u cast a dirty slur on my name,” cried Ellen,
passionately.

It was then that Daggs grasped Jorth’s right arm and held it tight,
“Jest what I thought,” he said.  “Stand still, Lee.  Let’s see the kid
make him showdown.”

“That’s what jean Isbel beat y’u for,” went on Ellen.  “For slandering
a girl who wasn’t there.... Me!  Y’u rotten liar!”

“But, Ellen, it wasn’t all lies,” said Bruce, huskily.  “I was half
drunk—an’ horrible jealous.... You know Lorenzo seen Isbel kissin’
you.  I can prove thet.”

Ellen threw up her head and a scarlet wave of shame and wrath flooded
her face.

“Yes,” she cried, ringingly.  “He saw Jean Isbel kiss me. Once!... An’
it was the only decent kiss I’ve had in years.  He meant no insult. I
didn’t know who he was.  An’ through his kiss I learned a difference
between men.... Y’u made Lorenzo lie.  An’ if I had a shred of good
name left in Grass Valley you dishonored it.... Y’u made him think I
was your girl!  Damn y’u!  I ought to kill y’u.... Eat your words
now—take them back—or I’ll cripple y’u for life!”

Ellen lowered the cocked rifle toward his feet.

“Shore, Ellen, I take back—all I said,” gulped Bruce.  He gazed at the
quivering rifle barrel and then into the face of Ellen’s father.
Instinct told him where his real peril lay.

Here the cool and tactful Daggs showed himself master of the situation.

“Heah, listen!” he called.  “Ellen, I reckon Bruce was drunk an’ out of
his haid.  He’s shore ate his words.  Now, we don’t want any cripples
in this camp.  Let him alone.  Your dad got me heah to lead the Jorths,
an’ that’s my say to you.... Simm, you’re shore a low-down lyin’
rascal.  Keep away from Ellen after this or I’ll bore you myself....
Jorth, it won’t be a bad idee for you to forget you’re a Texan till you
cool off.  Let Bruce stop some Isbel lead.  Shore the Jorth-Isbel war
is aboot on, an’ I reckon we’d be smart to believe old Gass’s talk
aboot his Nez Perce son.”



CHAPTER VI


From this hour Ellen Jorth bent all of her lately awakened intelligence
and will to the only end that seemed to hold possible salvation for
her. In the crisis sure to come she did not want to be blind or weak.
Dreaming and indolence, habits born in her which were often a comfort
to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the hard test she
divined and dreaded.  In the matter of her father’s fight she must
stand by him whatever the issue or the outcome; in what pertained to
her own principles, her womanhood, and her soul she stood absolutely
alone.

Therefore, Ellen put dreams aside, and indolence of mind and body
behind her.  Many tasks she found, and when these were done for a day
she kept active in other ways, thus earning the poise and peace of
labor.

Jorth rode off every day, sometimes with one or two of the men, often
with a larger number.  If he spoke of such trips to Ellen it was to
give an impression of visiting the ranches of his neighbors or the
various sheep camps.  Often he did not return the day he left.  When he
did get back he smelled of rum and appeared heavy from need of sleep.
His horses were always dust and sweat covered.  During his absences
Ellen fell victim to anxious dread until he returned.  Daily he grew
darker and more haggard of face, more obsessed by some impending fate.
Often he stayed up late, haranguing with the men in the dim-lit cabin,
where they drank and smoked, but seldom gambled any more.  When the men
did not gamble something immediate and perturbing was on their minds.
Ellen had not yet lowered herself to the deceit and suspicion of
eavesdropping, but she realized that there was a climax approaching in
which she would deliberately do so.

In those closing May days Ellen learned the significance of many things
that previously she had taken as a matter of course.  Her father did
not run a ranch.  There was absolutely no ranching done, and little
work. Often Ellen had to chop wood herself.  Jorth did not possess a
plow. Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack
dumfounded her. Even old John Sprague raised some hay, beets, turnips.
Jorth’s cattle and horses fared ill during the winter.  Ellen
remembered how they used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens.
Many of them died in the snow.  The flocks of sheep, however, were
driven down into the Basin in the fall, and across the Reno Pass to
Phoenix and Maricopa.

Ellen could not discover a fence post on the ranch, nor a piece of salt
for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a
sheep-shearing outfit.  She had never seen any sheep sheared. Ellen
could never keep track of the many and different horses running loose
and hobbled round the ranch.  There were droves of horses in the woods,
and some of them wild as deer.  According to her long-established
understanding, her father and her uncles were keen on horse trading and
buying.

Then the many trails leading away from the Jorth ranch—these grew to
have a fascination for Ellen; and the time came when she rode out on
them to see for herself where they led.  The sheep ranch of Daggs,
supposed to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in Bear Canyon,
never materialized at all for Ellen.  This circumstance so interested
her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and got him to direct
her to Bear Canyon, so that she would be sure not to miss it.  And she
rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Rim down all
its length.  She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear
Canyon.  Sprague said there was only one canyon by that name.  Daggs
had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her
father.  Had they lied?  Were they mistaken in the canyon?  There were
many canyons, all heading up near the Rim, all running and widening
down for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from
the deep, short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the
Basin side. Ellen investigated the canyons within six or eight miles of
her home, both to east and to west.  All she discovered was a couple of
old log cabins, long deserted.  Still, she did not follow out all the
trails to their ends.  Several of them led far into the deepest,
roughest, wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen.  No
cattle or sheep had ever been driven over these trails.

This riding around of Ellen’s at length got to her father’s ears. Ellen
expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly would
refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked her to
limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot all about
it.  In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervousness the
next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with the men, grew to
be distressing for Ellen.  They presaged his further deterioration and
the ever-present evil of the growing feud.

One day Jorth rode home in the early morning, after an absence of two
nights.  Ellen heard the clip-clop of, horses long before she saw them.

“Hey, Ellen!  Come out heah,” called her father.

Ellen left her work and went outside.  A stranger had ridden in with
her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by
ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard.  He was long, loose
jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet
Ellen had ever seen.  Next Ellen espied a black horse they had
evidently brought with them.  Her father was holding a rope halter.  At
once the black horse struck Ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred.

“Ellen, heah’s a horse for you,” said Jorth, with something of pride.
“I made a trade.  Reckon I wanted him myself, but he’s too gentle for
me an’ maybe a little small for my weight.”

Delight visited Ellen for the first time in many days.  Seldom had she
owned a good horse, and never one like this.

“Oh, dad!” she exclaimed, in her gratitude.

“Shore he’s yours on one condition,” said her father.

“What’s that?” asked Ellen, as she laid caressing hands on the restless
horse.

“You’re not to ride him out of the canyon.”

“Agreed.... All daid black, isn’t he, except that white face? What’s
his name, dad?

“I forgot to ask,” replied Jorth, as he began unsaddling his own horse.
“Slater, what’s this heah black’s name?”

The lanky giant grinned.  “I reckon it was Spades.”

“Spades?” ejaculated Ellen, blankly.  “What a name!... Well, I guess
it’s as good as any.  He’s shore black.”

“Ellen, keep him hobbled when you’re not ridin’ him,” was her father’s
parting advice as he walked off with the stranger.

Spades was wet and dusty and his satiny skin quivered.  He had fine,
dark, intelligent eyes that watched Ellen’s every move.  She knew how
her father and his friends dragged and jammed horses through the woods
and over the rough trails.  It did not take her long to discover that
this horse had been a pet.  Ellen cleaned his coat and brushed him and
fed him.  Then she fitted her bridle to suit his head and saddled him.
His evident response to her kindness assured her that he was gentle, so
she mounted and rode him, to discover he had the easiest gait she had
ever experienced.  He walked and trotted to suit her will, but when
left to choose his own gait he fell into a graceful little pace that
was very easy for her.  He appeared quite ready to break into a run at
her slightest bidding, but Ellen satisfied herself on this first ride
with his slower gaits.

“Spades, y’u’ve shore cut out my burro Jinny,” said Ellen, regretfully.
“Well, I reckon women are fickle.”

Next day she rode up the canyon to show Spades to her friend John
Sprague.  The old burro breeder was not at home.  As his door was open,
however, and a fire smoldering, Ellen concluded he would soon return.
So she waited.  Dismounting, she left Spades free to graze on the new
green grass that carpeted the ground.  The cabin and little level
clearing accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the forest. Ellen
always liked it here and had once been in the habit of visiting the old
man often.  But of late she had stayed away, for the reason that
Sprague’s talk and his news and his poorly hidden pity depressed her.

Presently she heard hoof beats on the hard, packed trail leading down
the canyon in the direction from which she had come.  Scarcely likely
was it that Sprague should return from this direction.  Ellen thought
her father had sent one of the herders for her.  But when she caught a
glimpse of the approaching horseman, down in the aspens, she failed to
recognize him.  After he had passed one of the openings she heard his
horse stop.  Probably the man had seen her; at least she could not
otherwise account for his stopping.  The glimpse she had of him had
given her the impression that he was bending over, peering ahead in the
trail, looking for tracks.  Then she heard the rider come on again,
more slowly this time.  At length the horse trotted out into the
opening, to be hauled up short.  Ellen recognized the buckskin-clad
figure, the broad shoulders, the dark face of Jean Isbel.

Ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation she had ever
suffered. It took violence of her new-born spirit to subdue that
feeling.

Isbel rode slowly across the clearing toward her.  For Ellen his
approach seemed singularly swift—so swift that her surprise, dismay,
conjecture, and anger obstructed her will.  The outwardly calm and cold
Ellen Jorth was a travesty that mocked her—that she felt he would
discern.

The moment Isbel drew close enough for Ellen to see his face she
experienced a strong, shuddering repetition of her first shock of
recognition.  He was not the same.  The light, the youth was gone.
This, however, did not cause her emotion.  Was it not a sudden
transition of her nature to the dominance of hate?  Ellen seemed to
feel the shadow of her unknown self standing with her.

Isbel halted his horse.  Ellen had been standing near the trunk of a
fallen pine and she instinctively backed against it.  How her legs
trembled!  Isbel took off his cap and crushed it nervously in his bare,
brown hand.

“Good mornin’, Miss Ellen!” he said.

Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly,
“Did y’u come by our ranch?”

“No. I circled,” he replied.

“Jean Isbel!  What do y’u want heah?” she demanded.

“Don’t you know?” he returned.  His eyes were intensely black and
piercing.  They seemed to search Ellen’s very soul.  To meet their gaze
was an ordeal that only her rousing fury sustained.

Ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed Indian
traits and the reputation that had preceded him.  But she could not
utter it.

“No,” she replied.

“It’s hard to call a woman a liar,” he returned, bitterly.  But you
must be—seein’ you’re a Jorth.

“Liar!  Not to y’u, Jean Isbel,” she retorted.  “I’d not lie to y’u to
save my life.”

He studied her with keen, sober, moody intent.  The dark fire of his
eyes thrilled her.

“If that’s true, I’m glad,” he said.

“Shore it’s true.  I’ve no idea why y’u came heah.”

Ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion.
But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the
contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man’s
face.

“Does old Sprague live here?” asked Isbel.

“Yes.  I expect him back soon.... Did y’u come to see him?”

“No.... Did Sprague tell you anythin’ about the row he saw me in?”

“He—did not,” replied Ellen, lying with stiff lips.  She who had sworn
she could not lie!  She felt the hot blood leaving her heart, mounting
in a wave.  All her conscious will seemed impelled to deceive.  What
had she to hide from Jean Isbel?  And a still, small voice replied that
she had to hide the Ellen Jorth who had waited for him that day, who
had spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who
had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for her
name.

“I’m glad of that,” Isbel was saying, thoughtfully.

“Did you come heah to see me?” interrupted Ellen.  She felt that she
could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of
consideration in him.  She would betray herself—betray what she did
not even realize herself.  She must force other footing—and that
should be the one of strife between the Jorths and Isbels.

“No—honest, I didn’t, Miss Ellen,” he rejoined, humbly.  “I’ll tell
you, presently, why I came.  But it wasn’t to see you.... I don’t deny
I wanted ... but that’s no matter.  You didn’t meet me that day on the
Rim.”

“Meet y’u!” she echoed, coldly.   “Shore y’u never expected me?”

“Somehow I did,” he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her. “I put
somethin’ in your tent that day.  Did you find it?”

“Yes,” she replied, with the same casual coldness.

“What did you do with it?”

“I kicked it out, of course,” she replied.

She saw him flinch.

“And you never opened it?”

“Certainly not,” she retorted, as if forced.  “Doon’t y’u know anythin’
about—about people?... Shore even if y’u are an Isbel y’u never were
born in Texas.”

“Thank God I wasn’t!” he replied.  “I was born in a beautiful country
of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren
desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus.  Where I come from
men don’t live on hate.  They can forgive.”

“Forgive!... Could y’u forgive a Jorth?”

“Yes, I could.”

“Shore that’s easy to say—with the wrongs all on your side,” she
declared, bitterly.

“Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side,” retorted Jean, his
voice fall.  “Your father stole my father’s sweetheart—by lies, by
slander, by dishonor, by makin’ terrible love to her in his absence.”

“It’s a lie,” cried Ellen, passionately.

“It is not,” he declared, solemnly.

“Jean Isbel, I say y’u lie!”

“No!  I say you’ve been lied to,” he thundered.

The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen. It
weakened her.

“But—mother loved dad—best.”

“Yes, afterward.  No wonder, poor woman!... But it was the action of
your father and your mother that ruined all these lives.  You’ve got to
know the truth, Ellen Jorth.... All the years of hate have borne their
fruit.  God Almighty can never save us now.  Blood must be spilled.
The Jorths and the Isbels can’t live on the same earth.... And you’ve
got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and
me.”

The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her.

“Never, Jean Isbel!” she cried.  “I’ll never know truth from y’u....
I’ll never share anythin’ with y’u—not even hell.”

Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins.
The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.

“Why do you hate me so?” he asked.  “I just happen to be my father’s
son. I never harmed you or any of your people.  I met you ... fell in
love with you in a flash—though I never knew it till after.... Why do
you hate me so terribly?”

Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast.  “Y’u’re an
Isbel.... Doon’t speak of love to me.”

“I didn’t intend to.  But your—your hate seems unnatural.  And we’ll
probably never meet again.... I can’t help it.  I love you.  Love at
first sight!  Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth!  Strange, isn’t it?... It
was all so strange.  My meetin’ you so lonely and unhappy, my seein’
you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin’ you so good in spite of—”

“Shore it was strange,” interrupted Ellen, with scornful laugh. She had
found her defense.  In hurting him she could hide her own hurt.
“Thinking me so good in spite of—  Ha-ha!  And I said I’d been kissed
before!”

“Yes, in spite of everything,” he said.

Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her.  She felt a wild
tumult in her heart.  All that crowded to her lips for utterance was
false.

“Yes—kissed before I met you—and since,” she said, mockingly. “And I
laugh at what y’u call love, Jean Isbel.”

“Laugh if you want—but believe it was sweet, honorable—the best in
me,” he replied, in deep earnestness.

“Bah!” cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.

“By Heaven, you must be different from what I thought!” exclaimed
Isbel, huskily.

“Shore if I wasn’t, I’d make myself.... Now, Mister Jean Isbel, get on
your horse an’ go!”

Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and
she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes.  His changed aspect
prepared her for some blow.

“That’s a pretty black horse.”

“Yes,” replied Ellen, blankly.

“Do you like him?”

“I—I love him.”

“All right, I’ll give him to you then.  He’ll have less work and kinder
treatment than if I used him.  I’ve got some pretty hard rides ahead of
me.”

“Y’u—y’u give—” whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening.  “Yes.  He’s
mine,” replied Isbel.  With that he turned to whistle.  Spades threw up
his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot.  He came faster the
closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a
beloved master she saw it then.  Isbel laid a hand on the animal’s neck
and caressed him, then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: “I
picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father’s.  We got along
well.  My sister Ann rode him a good deal.... He was stolen from our
pasture day before yesterday.  I took his trail and tracked him up
here.  Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to
circle till I picked it up again.”

“Stolen—pasture—tracked him up heah?” echoed Ellen, without any
evidence of emotion whatever.  Indeed, she seemed to have been turned
to stone.

“Trackin’ him was easy.  I wish for your sake it ’d been impossible,”
he said, bluntly.

“For my sake?” she echoed, in precisely the same tone,

Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control.  He misunderstood
it.  With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he
could look into her face.

“Yes, for your sake!” he declared, harshly.  “Haven’t you sense enough
to see that?... What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?”

“Game I ... Game of what?” she asked.

“Why, a—a game of ignorance—innocence—any old game to fool a man
who’s tryin’ to be decent.”

This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning.  And it
inflamed Isbel.

“You know your father’s a horse thief!” he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same.  She had been prepared for an
unknown and a terrible blow.  It had fallen.  And her face, her body,
her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by
hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind
and soul.  Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of
Isbel’s eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn.  In one
flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her.  The faith she had fostered
died a sudden death.  A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a
second of whirling, revealing thought.

“Ellen Jorth, you know your father’s in with this Hash Knife Gang of
rustlers,” thundered Isbel.

“Shore,” she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.

“You know he’s got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?”

“Shore.”

“You know this talk of sheepmen buckin’ the cattlemen is all a blind?”

“Shore,” reiterated Ellen.

Isbel gazed darkly down upon her.  With his anger spent for the moment,
he appeared ready to end the interview.  But he seemed fascinated by
the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she
emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face.  He shook his dark head
and his broad hand went to his breast.

“To think I fell in love with such as you!” he exclaimed, and his other
hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen—body, mind, and soul.
Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel!  Yet loved by him!  In that divination
there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to
fling back upon him a stinging agony.  Her thought flew upon her like
whips.  Pride of the Jorths!  Pride of the old Texan blue blood!  It
lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that
family to whom she owed her degradation.  Daughter of a horse thief and
rustler!  Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting
her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths.  The
sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.

“Shore y’u might have had me—that day on the Rim—if y’u hadn’t told
your name,” she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all
the mystery of a woman’s nature.

Isbel’s powerful frame shook as with an ague.  “Girl, what do you mean?”

“Shore, I’d have been plumb fond of havin’ y’u make up to me,” she
drawled.  It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of
the love he could not help.  Some fiendish woman’s satisfaction dwelt
in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the
good in him.

“Ellen Jorth, you lie!” he burst out, hoarsely.

“Jean, shore I’d been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I
was tired of them.... I wanted a new lover.... And if y’u hadn’t give
yourself away—”

Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his
hard hand smote her mouth.  Instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood
from a cut lip.

“Shut up, you hussy!” he ordered, roughly.  “Have you no shame?... My
sister Ann spoke well of you.  She made excuses—she pitied you.”

That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank.
But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible
poise.

“Jean Isbel—go along with y’u,” she said, impatiently.  “I’m waiting
heah for Simm Bruce!”

At last it was as if she struck his heart.  Because of doubt of himself
and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof
against this last stab.  Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had
prompted the speech that tortured Isbel.  How the shock to him
rebounded on her!  She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her
to move a hand.  One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the
other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back.  Then she
tried to wrestle away.  But she was utterly powerless.  His dark face
bent down closer and closer.  Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle.
She was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic
eyes of a snake.  Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her,
she welcomed it.

“Ellen Jorth, I’m thinkin’ yet—you lie!” he said, low and tense
between his teeth.

“No!  No!” she screamed, wildly.  Her nerve broke there.  She could no
longer meet those terrible black eyes.  Her passionate denial was not
only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her,
repudiating herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable
situation.

Isbel took her literally.  She had convinced him.  And the instant held
blank horror for Ellen.

“By God—then I’ll have somethin’—of you anyway!” muttered Isbel,
thickly.

Ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck.  She saw his dark, hard
face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it
blurred and obstructed her gaze.  She felt the swell and ripple and
stretch—then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope.
Then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers.  All Ellen’s
senses reeled, as if she were swooning.  She was suffocating.  The
spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and
terrible consciousness.  For the endless period of one moment he held
her so that her breast seemed crushed.  His kisses burned and braised
her lips.  And then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so
hard that she choked under them.  It was as if a huge bat had fastened
upon her throat.

Suddenly the remorseless binding embraces—the hot and savage
kisses—fell away from her.  Isbel had let go.  She saw him throw up
his hands, and stagger back a little, all the while with his piercing
gaze on her. His face had been dark purple: now it was white.

“No—Ellen Jorth,” he panted, “I don’t—want any of you—that way.” And
suddenly he sank on the log and covered his face with his hands. “What
I loved in you—was what I thought—you were.”

Like a wildcat Ellen sprang upon him, beating him with her fists,
tearing at his hair, scratching his face, in a blind fury.  Isbel made
no move to stop her, and her violence spent itself with her strength.
She swayed back from him, shaking so that she could scarcely stand.

“Y’u—damned—Isbel!” she gasped, with hoarse passion.  “Y’u insulted
me!”

“Insulted you?...” laughed Isbel, in bitter scorn.  “It couldn’t be
done.”

“Oh!... I’ll KILL y’u!” she hissed.

Isbel stood up and wiped the red scratches on his face.  “Go ahead.
There’s my gun,” he said, pointing to his saddle sheath.  “Somebody’s
got to begin this Jorth-Isbel feud.  It’ll be a dirty business.  I’m
sick of it already.... Kill me!... First blood for Ellen Jorth!”

Suddenly the dark grim tide that had seemed to engulf Ellen’s very soul
cooled and receded, leaving her without its false  strength.  She began
to sag.  She stared at Isbel’s gun.  “Kill him,” whispered the
retreating voices of her hate.  But she was as powerless as if she were
still held in Jean Isbel’s giant embrace.

“I—I want to—kill y’u,” she whispered, “but I cain’t.... Leave me.”

“You’re no Jorth—the same as I’m no Isbel.  We oughtn’t be mixed in
this deal,” he said, somberly.  “I’m sorrier for you than I am for
myself.... You’re a girl.... You once had a good mother—a decent home.
And this life you’ve led here—mean as it’s been—is nothin’ to what
you’ll face now.  Damn the men that brought you to this!  I’m goin’ to
kill some of them.”

With that he mounted and turned away.  Ellen called out for him to take
his horse.  He did not stop nor look back.  She called again, but her
voice was fainter, and Isbel was now leaving at a trot.  Slowly she
sagged against the tree, lower and lower.  He headed into the trail
leading up the canyon.  How strange a relief Ellen felt!  She watched
him ride into the aspens and start up the slope, at last to disappear
in the pines.  It seemed at the moment that he took with him something
which had been hers.  A pain in her head dulled the thoughts that
wavered to and fro.  After he had gone she could not see so well. Her
eyes were tired.  What had happened to her?  There was blood on her
hands.  Isbel’s blood!  She shuddered.  Was it an omen?  Lower she sank
against the tree and closed her eyes.

Old John Sprague did not return.  Hours dragged by—dark hours for
Ellen Jorth lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and
golden sunlight from her eyes.  At length the lethargy of despair, the
black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a condition
of coherent thought.

What had she learned?  Sight of the black horse grazing near seemed to
prompt the trenchant replies.  Spades belonged to Jean Isbel.  He had
been stolen by her father or by one of her father’s accomplices.
Isbel’s vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast.  Her
father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman only as a blind, a
consort of Daggs, leader of the Hash Knife Gang.  Ellen well remembered
the ill repute of that gang, way back in Texas, years ago. Her father
had gotten in with this famous band of rustlers to serve his own
ends—the extermination of the Isbels.  It was all very plain now to
Ellen.

“Daughter of a horse thief an’ rustler!” she muttered.

And her thoughts sped back to the days of her girlhood.  Only the very
early stage of that time had been happy.  In the light of Isbel’s
revelation the many changes of residence, the sudden moves to unsettled
parts of Texas, the periods of poverty and sudden prosperity, all
leading to the final journey to this God-forsaken Arizona—these were
now seen in their true significance.  As far back as she could remember
her father had been a crooked man.  And her mother had known it.  He
had dragged her to her ruin.  That degradation had killed her. Ellen
realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against her
father.  Had Gaston Isbel truly and dishonestly started her father on
his downhill road?  Ellen wondered.  She hated the Isbels with
unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to
ponder, to weigh judgments in their behalf.  She owed it to something
in herself to be fair.  But what did it matter who was to blame for the
Jorth-Isbel feud?  Somehow Ellen was forced to confess that deep in her
soul it mattered terribly.  To be true to herself—the self that she
alone knew—she must have right on her side.  If the Jorths were
guilty, and she clung to them and their creed, then she would be one of
them.

“But I’m not,” she mused, aloud.  “My name’s Jorth, an’ I reckon I have
bad blood.... But it never came out in me till to-day.  I’ve been
honest.  I’ve been good—yes, GOOD, as my mother taught me to be—in
spite of all.... Shore my pride made me a fool.... An’ now have I any
choice to make?  I’m a Jorth.  I must stick to my father.”

All this summing up, however, did not wholly account for the pang in
her breast.

What had she done that day?  And the answer beat in her ears like a
great throbbing hammer-stroke.  In an agony of shame, in the throes of
hate, she had perjured herself.  She had sworn away her honor.  She had
basely made herself vile.  She had struck ruthlessly at the great heart
of a man who loved her.  Ah!  That thrust had rebounded to leave this
dreadful pang in her breast.  Loved her?  Yes, the strange truth, the
insupportable truth!  She had to contend now, not with her father and
her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Jean Isbel, but with
the mysteries of her own soul.  Wonder of all wonders was it that such
love had been born for her. Shame worse than all other shame was it
that she should kill it by a poisoned lie.  By what monstrous motive
had she done that?  To sting Isbel as he had stung her!  But that had
been base.  Never could she have stooped so low except in a moment of
tremendous tumult.  If she had done sore injury to Isbel what bad she
done to herself?  How strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her
honor!  Could she ever forget?  She must forget it.  But she could
never forget the way he had scorned those vile men in Greaves’s
store—the way he had beaten Bruce for defiling her name—the way he
had stubbornly denied her own insinuations.  She was a woman now.  She
had learned something of the complexity of a woman’s heart.  She could
not change nature.  And all her passionate being thrilled to the
manhood of her defender.  But even while she thrilled she acknowledged
her hate. It was the contention between the two that caused the pang in
her breast.  “An’ now what’s left for me?” murmured Ellen.  She did not
analyze the significance of what had prompted that query.  The most
incalculable of the day’s disclosures was the wrong she had done
herself.  “Shore I’m done for, one way or another.... I must stick to
Dad.... or kill myself?”

Ellen rode Spades back to the ranch.  She rode like the wind.  When she
swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch
her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin.
She rode Spades at a full run.

“Who’s after you?” yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a
halt. Jorth held a rifle.  Daggs, Colter, the other Jorths were there,
likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy.

“Shore nobody’s after me,” replied Ellen.  “Cain’t I run a horse round
heah without being chased?”

Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.

“Hah!... What you mean, girl, runnin’ like a streak right down on us?
You’re actin’ queer these days, an’ you look queer. I’m not likin’ it.”

“Reckon these are queer times—for the Jorths,” replied Ellen,
sarcastically.

“Daggs found strange horse tracks crossin’ the meadow,” said her
father. “An’ that worried us.  Some one’s been snoopin’ round the
ranch.  An’ when we seen you runnin’ so wild we shore thought you was
bein’ chased.”

“No.  I was only trying out Spades to see how fast he could run,”
returned Ellen.  “Reckon when we do get chased it’ll take some running
to catch me.”

“Haw! Haw!” roared Daggs.  “It shore will, Ellen.”

“Girl, it’s not only your runnin’ an’ your looks that’s queer,”
declared Jorth, in dark perplexity.  “You talk queer.”

“Shore, dad, y’u’re not used to hearing spades called spades,” said
Ellen, as she dismounted.

“Humph!” ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness of
trying to understand a woman.  “Say, did you see any strange horse
tracks?”

“I reckon I did.  And I know who made them.”

Jorth stiffened.  All the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of
suspense.

“Who?” demanded Jorth.

“Shore it was Jean Isbel,” replied Ellen, coolly.  “He came up heah
tracking his black horse.”

“Jean—Isbel—trackin’—his—black horse,” repeated her father.

“Yes.  He’s not overrated as a tracker, that’s shore.”

Blank silence ensued.  Ellen cast a slow glance over her father and the
others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle. Presently
Jorth burst the silence with a curse, and Daggs followed with one of
his sardonic laughs.

“Wal, boss, what did I tell you?” he drawled.

Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he
held her facing him.

“Did y’u see Isbel?”

“Yes,” replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked.

“Did y’u talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want up heah?”

“I told y’u.  He was tracking the black horse y’u stole.”

Jorth’s hand and arm dropped limply.  His sallow face turned a livid
hue. Amaze merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage.  He
raised a hand as if to strike Ellen.  And suddenly Daggs’s long arm
shot out to clutch Jorth’s wrist.  Wrestling to free himself, Jorth
cursed under his breath.  “Let go, Daggs,” he shouted, stridently.  “Am
I drunk that you grab me?”

“Wal, y’u ain’t drunk, I reckon,” replied the rustler, with sarcasm.
“But y’u’re shore some things I’ll reserve for your private ear.”

Jorth gained a semblance of composure.  But it was evident that he
labored under a shock.

“Ellen, did Jean Isbel see this black horse?”

“Yes.  He asked me how I got Spades an’ I told him.”

“Did he say Spades belonged to him?”

“Shore I reckon he, proved it.  Y’u can always tell a horse that loves
its master.”

“Did y’u offer to give Spades back?”

“Yes.  But Isbel wouldn’t take him.”

“Hah!... An’ why not?”

“He said he’d rather I kept him.  He was about to engage in a dirty,
blood-spilling deal, an’ he reckoned he’d not be able to care for a
fine horse.... I didn’t want Spades.  I tried to make Isbel take him.
But he rode off.... And that’s all there is to that.”

“Maybe it’s not,” replied Jorth, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen
with dark, intent gaze.  “Y’u’ve met this Isbel twice.”

“It wasn’t any fault of mine,” retorted Ellen.

“I heah he’s sweet on y’u.  How aboot that?”

Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and
temple.  But it was only memory which fired this shame.  What her
father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference.
Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.

“I heah talk from Bruce an’ Lorenzo,” went on her father.  “An’ Daggs
heah—”

“Daggs nothin’!” interrupted that worthy.  “Don’t fetch me in.  I said
nothin’ an’ I think nothin’.”

“Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad ... but he will never be again,”
returned Ellen, in low tones.  With that she pulled her saddle off
Spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.

Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered.

“Ellen, I didn’t know that horse belonged to Isbel,” he began, in the
swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen.  “I swear I
didn’t. I bought him—traded with Slater for him.... Honest to God, I
never had any idea he was stolen!... Why, when y’u said ‘that horse
y’u stole,’  I felt as if y’u’d knifed me....”

Ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro
and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into
a frenzy.  He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory
and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty.  It seemed
that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. He had
a terrible thirst for her respect.  Not so much for her love, she
divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen!

She pitied him with all her heart.  She was all he had, as he was all
the world to her.  And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical
rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and
her love were making vital decisions for her.  As of old, in poignant
moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the Isbels
and what they had brought him to.  His sufferings were real, at least,
in Ellen’s presence.  She was the only link that bound him to long-past
happier times.  She was her mother over again—the woman who had
betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death.

“Dad, don’t go on so,” said Ellen, breaking in upon her father’s rant.
“I will be true to y’u—as my mother was.... I am a Jorth.  Your place
is my place—your fight is my fight.... Never speak of the past to me
again.  If God spares us through this feud we will go away and begin
all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a Jorth.... If we’re
not spared we’ll at least have had our whack at these damned Isbels.”



CHAPTER VII


During June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley.

Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel’s life.  Another
cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket
bordering the trail that led to Blaisdell’s ranch.  Blaisdell heard
this shot, so near his home was it fired.  No trace of the hidden foe
could be found.  The ‘ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of
pine needles which showed no trace of footprints.  The supposition was
that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly
instigated, by the Jorths.  But there was no proof.  And Gaston Isbel
had other enemies in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan.  The old
man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him.  And his
friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends.
“Let’s quit ranchin’ till this trouble’s settled,” he declared.  “Let’s
arm an’ ride the trails an’ meet these men half-way.... It won’t help
our side any to wait till you’re shot in the back.”  More than one of
Isbel’s supporters offered the same advice.

“No; we’ll wait till we know for shore,” was the stubborn cattleman’s
reply to all these promptings.

“Know!  Wal, hell!  Didn’t Jean find the black hoss up at Jorth’s
ranch?” demanded Blaisdell.  “What more do we want?”

“Jean couldn’t swear Jorth stole the black.”

“Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!” growled Blaisdell.  “An’ we’re
losin’ cattle all the time.  Who’s stealin’ ’em?”

“We’ve always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin’ heah.”

“Gas, I reckon yu want Jorth to start this fight in the open.”

“It’ll start soon enough,” was Isbel’s gloomy reply.

Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen
cattle. Circumstances had been against him, and there was something
baffling about this rustling.  The summer storms set in early, and it
had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he
might have followed.  The range was large and cattle were everywhere.
Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks.  Gaston Isbel’s sons
were now the only men left to ride the range.  Two of his riders had
quit because of the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go.  So
that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their
tracks were old. Added to that was the fact that this Grass Valley
country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks.  The rustlers,
whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was
reason for them to show their cunning they did it.

Early in July the hot weather came.  Down on the red ridges of the
Tonto it was hot desert.  The nights were cool, the early mornings were
pleasant, but the day was something to endure.  When the white cumulus
clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and
darker, here and there coalescing into a black thundercloud, Jean
welcomed them.  He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down
from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it
approached like a trampling army was always welcome.  The grassy flats,
the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub
oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the
hot summer sun.  Jean longed for the cool heights of the Rim, the shady
pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and
murmur of the clear rills.  He often had another longing, too, which he
bitterly stifled.

Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd dog, had disappeared one day, and
had never returned.  Among men at the ranch there was a difference of
opinion as to what had happened to Shepp.  The old rancher thought he
had been poisoned or shot; Bill and Guy Isbel believed he had been
stolen by sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and Jean
inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber
wolves.  The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.

One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out
in the valley; and upon hurrying to a vantage point he was amazed to
see upward of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf.  Jean’s father
had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean.  The
wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and powerful, and until he
got the steers all behind him he was rather hard put to it to keep out
of their way.  Probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and
pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. Jean kept
along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within
range of a rifle.  But the wary wolf saw Jean and sheered off,
gradually drawing away from his pursuers.

Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across
the valley.  His father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet
been driven up on the Rim, where all the sheep in the country were run
during the hot, dry summer down on the Tonto.  Young Evarts and a
Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock.  The regular
Mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job; and these
boys were not equal to the task of risking the sheep up in the enemies’
stronghold.

This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from Grass
Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and
there was good water and a little feed.  Before Jean reached his
destination he heard a shot.  It was not a rifle shot, which fact
caused Jean a little concern.  Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but,
to his knowledge, no small arms.  Jean rode up on one of the
black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Grass
Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country.  At first
he made out only cattle, and bare meadowland, and the low encircling
ridges and hills.  But presently up toward the head of the valley he
descried a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village.  He could not
tell their number.  That dark moving mass seemed to Jean to be instinct
with life, mystery, menace.  Who were they?  It was too far for him to
recognize horses, let alone riders.  They were moving fast, too.

Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again,
and rode on his quest.  A number of horsemen like that was a very
unusual sight around Grass Valley at any time.  What then did it
portend now?  Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was
a new sensation for him.  Brooding over this he proceeded on his way,
at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders was
located.  Upon coming in sight of it he heard a hoarse shout.  Young
Evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush.  Jean urged his
horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them.  Evarts
appeared beside himself with terror.

“Boy! what’s the matter?” queried Jean, as he dismounted, rifle in
hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white face to the camp, and all
around.

“Ber-nardino!  Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing his hands and
pointing.

Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp.  He saw the little
teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal—and then the Mexican
lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly
face.  Near him lay an old six-shooter.

“Whose gun is that?” demanded Jean, as he picked it up.

“Ber-nardino’s,” replied Evarts, huskily. “He—he jest got it—the
other day.”

“Did he shoot himself accidentally?”

“Oh no!  No!  He didn’t do it—atall.”

“Who did, then?”

“The men—they rode up—a gang-they did it,” panted Evarts.

“Did you know who they were?”

“No. I couldn’t tell.  I saw them comin’ an’ I was skeered. Bernardino
had gone fer water.  I run an’ hid in the brush.  I wanted to yell, but
they come too close.... Then I heerd them talkin’.  Bernardino come
back.  They ’peared friendly-like.  Thet made me raise up, to look. An’
I couldn’t see good.  I heerd one of them ask Bernardino to let him see
his gun.  An’ Bernardino handed it over.  He looked at the gun an’
haw-hawed, an’ flipped it up in the air, an’ when it fell back in his
hand it—it went off bang!... An’ Bernardino dropped.... I hid down
close.  I was skeered stiff.  I heerd them talk more, but not what they
said.  Then they rode away.... An’ I hid there till I seen y’u comin’.”

“Have you got a horse?” queried Jean, sharply.

“No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”

“Get one.  Hurry over to Blaisdell.  Tell him to send word to Blue and
Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to my father’s ranch.
Hurry now!”

Young Evarts ran off without reply.  Jean stood looking down at the
limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy.  “By Heaven!” he
exclaimed, grimly “the Jorth-Isbel war is on!... Deliberate,
cold-blooded murder! I’ll gamble Daggs did this job.  He’s been given
the leadership.  He’s started it.... Bernardino, greaser or not, you
were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.”

Jean had no time to spare.  Tearing a tarpaulin out of the teepee he
covered the lad with it and then ran for, his horse.  Mounting, he
galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the
valley, where he put his horse to a run.

Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had
engendered.  Jean even felt a strange, grim relief.  The long, dragging
days of waiting were over.  Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative.
Blood had begun to flow.  And it would continue to flow now till the
last man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last man of the
other.  Would it be a Jorth or an Isbel?  “My instinct was right,” he
muttered, aloud.  “That bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin’.” Jean
gazed all around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so
swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the
dark group of riders.  They had gone on to Greaves’s store, there, no
doubt, to drink and to add more enemies of the Isbels to their gang.
Suddenly across Jean’s mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth.  “What
’ll become of her?... What ’ll become of all the women?  My sister?...
The little ones?”

No one was in sight around the ranch.  Never had it appeared more
peaceful and pastoral to Jean.  The grazing cattle and horses in the
foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced
pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens,
the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate Jean’s
haste and his darkness of mind.  This place was, his father’s farm.
There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky.

As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then
Bill and Guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. Jean
saw how he’ waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the
lane.  Bill and Guy reached his side as Jean pulled his heaving horse
to a halt.  They all looked at Jean, swiftly and intently, with a
little, hard, fiery gleam strangely identical in the eyes of each.
Probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect.

“Wal, you shore was in a hurry,” remarked the father.

“What the hell’s up?” queried Bill, grimly.

Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean
leaped off his horse.

“Bernardino has just been killed—murdered with his own gun.”

Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let
his chest sag.  A terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on
ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.

“A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.

Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing.  They were
silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their
own minds.  Then they listened with absorption to Jean’s brief story.

“Wal, that lets us in,” said his father.  “I wish we had more time.
Reckon I’d done better to listen to you boys an’ have my men close at
hand.  Jacobs happened to ride over.  That makes five of us besides the
women.”

“Aw, dad, you don’t reckon they’ll round us up heah?” asked Guy Isbel.

“Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old man.  “But I never
really believed they’d have the nerve.  Shore I ought to have figgered
Daggs better.  This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush
looked aboot Jorth’s size to me.  But I reckon now we’ll have to fight
without our friends.”

“Let them come,” said Jean.  “I sent for Blaisdell, Blue, Gordon, and
Fredericks.  Maybe they’ll get here in time.  But if they don’t it
needn’t worry us much.  We can hold out here longer than Jorth’s gang
can hang around.  We’ll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the
house.”

“Wal, I’ll see to that,” rejoined his father.  “Jean, you go out close
by, where you can see all around, an’ keep watch.”

“Who’s goin’ to tell the women?” asked Guy Isbel.

The silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent testimony to the
hardest and saddest aspect of this strife between men.  The
inevitableness of it in no wise detracted from its sheer uselessness.
Men from time immemorial had hated, and killed one another, always to
the misery and degradation of their women.  Old Gaston Isbel showed
this tragic realization in his lined face.

“Wal, boys, I’ll tell the women,” he said.  “Shore you needn’t worry
none aboot them.  They’ll be game.”

Jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from the house, and
here he stationed himself to watch all points.  The cedared ridge back
of the ranch was the one approach by which Jorth’s gang might come
close without being detected, but even so, Jean could see them and ride
to the house in time to prevent a surprise.  The moments dragged by,
and at the end of an hour Jean was in hopes that Blaisdell would soon
come.  These hopes were well founded.  Presently he heard a clatter of
hoofs on hard ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw the
friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse.
Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight of him gave Jean a
glow of warmth.  He was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels
to the last man.  Jean watched him ride to the house—watched the
meeting between him and his lifelong friend. There floated out to Jean
old Blaisdell’s roar of rage.

Then out on the green of Grass Valley, where a long, swelling plain
swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. A
bunch of horses!  Jean’s body gave a slight start—the shock of sudden
propulsion of blood through all his veins.  Those horses bore riders.
They were coming straight down the open valley, on the wagon road to
Isbel’s ranch.  No subterfuge nor secrecy nor sneaking in that advance!
A hot thrill ran over Jean.

“By Heaven!  They mean business!” he muttered.  Up to the last moment
he had unconsciously hoped Jorth’s gang would not come boldly like
that. The verifications of all a Texan’s inherited instincts left no
doubts, no hopes, no illusions—only a grim certainty that this was not
conjecture nor probability, but fact.  For a moment longer Jean watched
the slowly moving dark patch of horsemen against the green background,
then he hurried back to the ranch.  His father saw him coming—strode
out as before.

“Dad—Jorth is comin’,” said Jean, huskily.  How he hated to be forced
to tell his father that!  The boyish love of old had flashed up.

“Whar?” demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweeping the horizon.

“Down the road from Grass Valley.  You can’t see from here.”

“Wal, come in an’ let’s get ready.”

Isbel’s house had not been constructed with the idea of repelling an
attack from a band of Apaches.  The long living room of the main cabin
was the one selected for defense and protection.  This room had two
windows and a door facing the lane, and a door at each end, one of
which opened into the kitchen and the other into an adjoining and
later-built cabin.  The logs of this main cabin were of large size, and
the doors and window coverings were heavy, affording safer protection
from bullets than the other cabins.

When Jean went in he seemed to see a host of white faces lifted to him.
His sister Ann, his two sisters-in-law, the children, all mutely
watched him with eyes that would haunt him.

“Wal, Blaisdell, Jean says Jorth an’ his precious gang of rustlers are
on the way heah,” announced the rancher.

“Damn me if it’s not a bad day fer Lee Jorth!” declared Blaisdell.

“Clear off that table,” ordered Isbel, “an’ fetch out all the guns an’
shells we got.”

Once laid upon the table these presented a formidable arsenal, which
consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters that Jean had brought with
him from the coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called “needle” gun,
that Gaston Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle which Blaisdell had
brought, and half a dozen six-shooters.  Piles and packages of
ammunition littered the table.

“Sort out these heah shells,” said Isbel.  “Everybody wants to get hold
of his own.”

Jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set, bearded man,
rather jovial among those lean-jawed Texans.  He carried a .44 rifle of
an old pattern.  “Wal, boys, if I’d knowed we was in fer some fun I’d
hev fetched more shells.  Only got one magazine full.  Mebbe them new
.44’s will fit my gun.”

It was discovered that the ammunition Jean had brought in quantity
fitted Jacob’s rifle, a fact which afforded peculiar satisfaction to
all the men present.

“Wal, shore we’re lucky,” declared Gaston Isbel.

The women sat apart, in the corner toward the kitchen, and there seemed
to be a strange fascination for them in the talk and action of the men.
The wife of Jacobs was a little woman, with homely face and very bright
eyes.  Jean thought she would be a help in that household during the
next doubtful hours.

Every moment Jean would go to the window and peer out down the road.
His companions evidently relied upon him, for no one else looked out.
Now that the suspense of days and weeks was over, these Texans faced
the issue with talk and act not noticeably different from those of
ordinary moments.

At last Jean espied the dark mass of horsemen out in the valley road.
They were close together, walking their mounts, and evidently in
earnest conversation.  After several ineffectual attempts Jean counted
eleven horses, every one of which he was sure bore a rider.

“Dad, look out!” called Jean.

Gaston Isbel strode to the door and stood looking, without a word.

The other men crowded to the windows.  Blaisdell cursed under his
breath.  Jacobs said: “By Golly!  Come to pay us a call!”  The women
sat motionless, with dark, strained eyes.  The children ceased their
play and looked fearfully to their mother.

When just out of rifle shot of the cabins the band of horsemen halted
and lined up in a half circle, all facing the ranch.  They were close
enough for Jean to see their gestures, but he could not recognize any
of their faces.  It struck him singularly that not one of them wore a
mask.

“Jean, do you know any of them?” asked his father

“No, not yet.  They’re too far off.”

“Dad, I’ll get your old telescope,” said Guy Isbel, and he ran out
toward the adjoining cabin.

Blaisdell shook his big, hoary head and rumbled out of his bull-like
neck, “Wal, now you’re heah, you sheep fellars, what are you goin’ to
do aboot it?”

Guy Isbel returned with a yard-long telescope, which he passed to his
father.  The old man took it with shaking hands and leveled it.
Suddenly it was as if he had been transfixed; then he lowered the
glass, shaking violently, and his face grew gray with an exceeding
bitter wrath.

“Jorth!” he swore, harshly.

Jean had only to look at his father to know that recognition had been
like a mortal shock.  It passed.  Again the rancher leveled the glass.

“Wal, Blaisdell, there’s our old Texas friend, Daggs,” he drawled,
dryly. “An’ Greaves, our honest storekeeper of Grass Valley.  An’
there’s Stonewall Jackson Jorth.  An’ Tad Jorth, with the same old red
nose!... An’, say, damn if one of that gang isn’t Queen, as bad a gun
fighter as Texas ever bred.  Shore I thought he’d been killed in the
Big Bend country.  So I heard.... An’ there’s Craig, another
respectable sheepman of Grass Valley.  Haw-haw!  An’, wal, I don’t
recognize any more of them.”

Jean forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across the faces of
that group of horsemen.  “Simm Bruce,” he said, instantly.  “I see
Colter.  And, yes, Greaves is there.  I’ve seen the man next to
him—face like a ham....”

“Shore that is Craig,” interrupted his father.

Jean knew the dark face of Lee Jorth by the resemblance it bore to
Ellen’s, and the recognition brought a twinge.  He thought, too, that
he could tell the other Jorths.  He asked his father to describe Daggs
and then Queen.  It was not likely that Jean would fail to know these
several men in the future.  Then Blaisdell asked for the telescope and,
when he got through looking and cursing, he passed it on to others,
who, one by one, took a long look, until finally it came back to the
old rancher.

“Wal, Daggs is wavin’ his hand heah an’ there, like a general aboot to
send out scouts.  Haw-haw!... An’ ‘pears to me he’s not overlookin’
our hosses.  Wal, that’s natural for a rustler.  He’d have to steal a
hoss or a steer before goin’ into a fight or to dinner or to a funeral.”

“It ’ll be his funeral if he goes to foolin’ ’round them hosses,”
declared Guy Isbel, peering anxiously out of the door.

“Wal, son, shore it ’ll be somebody’s funeral,” replied his father.

Jean paid but little heed to the conversation.  With sharp eyes fixed
upon the horsemen, he tried to grasp at their intention.  Daggs pointed
to the horses in the pasture lot that lay between him and the house.
These animals were the best on the range and belonged mostly to Guy
Isbel, who was the horse fancier and trader of the family.  His horses
were his passion.

“Looks like they’d do some horse stealin’,” said Jean.

“Lend me that glass,” demanded Guy, forcefully.  He surveyed the band
of men for a long moment, then he handed the glass back to Jean.

“I’m goin’ out there after my hosses,” he declared.

“No!” exclaimed his father.

“That gang come to steal an’ not to fight.  Can’t you see that? If they
meant to fight they’d do it.  They’re out there arguin’ about my
hosses.”

Guy picked up his rifle.  He looked sullenly determined and the gleam
in his eye was one of fearlessness.

“Son, I know Daggs,” said his father.  “An’ I know Jorth.  They’ve come
to kill us.  It ’ll be shore death for y’u to go out there.”

“I’m goin’, anyhow.  They can’t steal my hosses out from under my eyes.
An’ they ain’t in range.”

“Wal, Guy, you ain’t goin’ alone,” spoke up Jacobs, cheerily, as he
came forward.

The red-haired young wife of Guy Isbel showed no change of her grave
face.  She had been reared in a stern school.  She knew men in times
like these.  But Jacobs’s wife appealed to him,  “Bill, don’t risk your
life for a horse or two.”

Jacobs laughed and answered,  “Not much risk,” and went out with Guy.
To Jean their action seemed foolhardy.  He kept a keen eye on them and
saw instantly when the band became aware of Guy’s and Jacobs’s entrance
into the pasture.  It took only another second then to realize that
Daggs and Jorth had deadly intent.  Jean saw Daggs slip out of his
saddle, rifle in hand.  Others of the gang did likewise, until half of
them were dismounted.

“Dad, they’re goin’ to shoot,” called out Jean, sharply.  “Yell for Guy
and Jacobs.  Make them come back.”

The old man shouted; Bill Isbel yelled; Blaisdell lifted his stentorian
voice.

Jean screamed piercingly: “Guy!  Run!  Run!”

But Guy Isbel and his companion strode on into the pasture, as if they
had not heard, as if no menacing horse thieves were within miles.  They
had covered about a quarter of the distance across the pasture, and
were nearing the horses, when Jean saw red flashes and white puffs of
smoke burst out from the front of that dark band of rustlers.  Then
followed the sharp, rattling crack of rifles.

Guy Isbel stopped short, and, dropping his gun, he threw up his arms
and fell headlong.  Jacobs acted as if he had suddenly encountered an
invisible blow.  He had been hit.  Turning, he began to run and ran
fast for a few paces.  There were more quick, sharp shots.  He let go
of his rifle.  His running broke.  Walking, reeling, staggering, he
kept on. A hoarse cry came from him.  Then a single rifle shot pealed
out.  Jean heard the bullet strike.  Jacobs fell to his knees, then
forward on his face.

Jean Isbel felt himself turned to marble.  The suddenness of this
tragedy paralyzed him.  His gaze remained riveted on those prostrate
forms.

A hand clutched his arm—a shaking woman’s hand, slim and hard and
tense.

“Bill’s—killed!” whispered a broken voice.  “I was watchin’....
They’re both dead!”

The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up behind Jean and from
behind him they had seen the tragedy.

“I asked Bill—not to—go,” faltered the Jacobs woman, and, covering
her face with her hands, she groped back to the corner of the cabin,
where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms.
Guy Isbel’s wife stood at the window, peering over Jean’s shoulder. She
had the nerve of a man.  She had looked out upon death before.

“Yes, they’re dead,” she said, bitterly.  “An’ how are we goin’ to get
their bodies?”

At this Gaston Isbel seemed to rouse from the cold spell that had
transfixed him.

“God, this is hell for our women,” he cried out, hoarsely.  “My son—my
son!... Murdered by the Jorths!”  Then he swore a terrible oath.

Jean saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off, and then, all
of them leading their horses, they began to move around to the left.

“Dad, they’re movin’ round,” said Jean.

“Up to some trick,” declared Bill Isbel.

“Bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say aboot the fifth log
up,” ordered the father.  “Shore we’ve got to look out.”

The elder son grasped a tool and, scattering the children, who had been
playing near the back corner, he began to work at the point designated.
The little children backed away with fixed, wondering, grave eyes.  The
women moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting and
listening.

Jean watched the rustlers until they passed out of his sight.  They had
moved toward the sloping, brushy ground to the north and west of the
cabins.

“Let me know when you get a hole in the back wall,” said Jean, and he
went through the kitchen and cautiously out another door to slip into a
low-roofed, shed-like end of the rambling cabin.  This small space was
used to store winter firewood.  The chinks between the walls had not
been filled with adobe clay, and he could see out on three sides. The
rustlers were going into the juniper brush.  They moved out of sight,
and presently reappeared without their horses.  It looked to Jean as if
they intended to attack the cabins.  Then they halted at the edge of
the brush and held a long consultation.  Jean could see them
distinctly, though they were too far distant for him to recognize any
particular man.  One of them, however, stood and moved apart from the
closely massed group.  Evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was
exhorting his listeners.  Jean concluded this was either Daggs or
Jorth.  Whoever it was had a loud, coarse voice, and this and his
actions impressed Jean with a suspicion that the man was under the
influence of the bottle.

Presently Bill Isbel called Jean in a low voice.  “Jean, I got the hole
made, but we can’t see anyone.”

“I see them,” Jean replied.  “They’re havin’ a powwow.   Looks to me
like either Jorth or Daggs is drunk.  He’s arguin’ to charge us, an’
the rest of the gang are holdin’ back.... Tell dad, an’ all of you keep
watchin’.  I’ll let you know when they make a move.”

Jorth’s gang appeared to be in no hurry to expose their plan of battle.
Gradually the group disintegrated a little; some of them sat down;
others walked to and fro.  Presently two of them went into the brush,
probably back to the horses.  In a few moments they reappeared,
carrying a pack.  And when this was deposited on the ground all the
rustlers sat down around it.  They had brought food and drink.  Jean
had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of
many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife
Gang.  Jean was glad of a reprieve.  The longer the rustlers put off an
attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would have to get here.
Rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt to get
to the Isbel cabins in the daytime.  Night would be more favorable.

Twice Bill Isbel came through the kitchen to whisper to Jean.  The
strain in the large room, from which the rustlers could not be seen,
must have been great.  Jean told him all he had seen and what he
thought about it. “Eatin’ an’ drinkin’!” ejaculated Bill.  “Well, I’ll
be—!  That ’ll jar the old man.  He wants to get the fight over.

“Tell him I said it’ll be over too quick—for us—unless are mighty
careful,” replied Jean, sharply.

Bill went back muttering to himself.  Then followed a long wait,
fraught with suspense, during which Jean watched the rustlers regale
themselves. The day was hot and still.  And the unnatural silence of
the cabin was broken now and then by the gay laughter of the children.
The sound shocked and haunted Jean.  Playing children!  Then another
sound, so faint he had to strain to hear it, disturbed and saddened
him—his father’s slow tread up and down the cabin floor, to and fro,
to and fro. What must be in his father’s heart this day!

At length the rustlers rose and, with rifles in hand, they moved as one
man down the slope.  They came several hundred yards closer, until
Jean, grimly cocking his rifle, muttered to himself that a few more
rods closer would mean the end of several of that gang.  They knew the
range of a rifle well enough, and once more sheered off at right angles
with the cabin.  When they got even with the line of corrals they
stooped down and were lost to Jean’s sight.  This fact caused him
alarm. They were, of course, crawling up on the cabins.  At the end of
that line of corrals ran a ditch, the bank of which was high enough to
afford cover.  Moreover, it ran along in front of the cabins, scarcely
a hundred yards, and it was covered with grass and little clumps of
brush, from behind which the rustlers could fire into the windows and
through the clay chinks without any considerable risk to themselves. As
they did not come into sight again, Jean concluded he had discovered
their plan.  Still, he waited awhile longer, until he saw faint, little
clouds of dust rising from behind the far end of the embankment.  That
discovery made him rush out, and through the kitchen to the large
cabin, where his sudden appearance startled the men.

“Get back out of sight!” he ordered, sharply, and with swift steps he
reached the door and closed it.  “They’re behind the bank out there by
the corrals.  An’ they’re goin’ to crawl down the ditch closer to
us.... It looks bad.  They’ll have grass an’ brush to shoot from. We’ve
got to be mighty careful how we peep out.”

“Ahuh!  All right,” replied his father.  “You women keep the kids with
you in that corner.  An’ you all better lay down flat.”

Blaisdell, Bill Isbel, and the old man crouched at the large window,
peeping through cracks in the rough edges of the logs.  Jean took his
post beside the small window, with his keen eyes vibrating like a
compass needle.  The movement of a blade of grass, the flight of a
grasshopper could not escape his trained sight.

“Look sharp now!” he called to the other men.  “I see dust.... They’re
workin’ along almost to that bare spot on the bank.... I saw the tip of
a rifle ... a black hat ... more dust.  They’re spreadin’ along behind
the bank.”

Loud voices, and then thick clouds of yellow dust, coming from behind
the highest and brushiest line of the embankment, attested to the truth
of Jean’s observation, and also to a reckless disregard of danger.

Suddenly Jean caught a glint of moving color through the fringe of
brush.  Instantly he was strung like a whipcord.

Then a tall, hatless and coatless man stepped up in plain sight. The
sun shone on his fair, ruffled hair.  Daggs!

“Hey, you — — Isbels!” he bawled, in magnificent derisive boldness.
“Come out an’ fight!”

Quick as lightning Jean threw up his rifle and fired.  He saw tufts of
fair hair fly from Daggs’s head.  He saw the squirt of red blood. Then
quick shots from his comrades rang out.  They all hit the swaying body
of the rustler.  But Jean knew with a terrible thrill that his bullet
had killed Daggs before the other three struck.  Daggs fell forward,
his arms and half his body resting over, the embankment. Then the
rustlers dragged him back out of sight.  Hoarse shouts rose. A cloud of
yellow dust drifted away from the spot.

“Daggs!” burst out Gaston Isbel.  “Jean, you knocked off the top of his
haid.  I seen that when I was pullin’ trigger.  Shore we over heah
wasted our shots.”

“God! he must have been crazy or drunk—to pop up there—an’ brace us
that way,” said Blaisdell, breathing hard.

“Arizona is bad for Texans,” replied Isbel, sardonically.  “Shore it’s
been too peaceful heah.  Rustlers have no practice at fightin’.  An’ I
reckon Daggs forgot.”

“Daggs made as crazy a move as that of Guy an’ Jacobs,” spoke up Jean.
“They were overbold, an’ he was drunk.  Let them be a lesson to us.”

Jean had smelled whisky upon his entrance to this cabin.  Bill was a
hard drinker, and his father was not immune.  Blaisdell, too, drank
heavily upon occasions.  Jean made a mental note that he would not
permit their chances to become impaired by liquor.

Rifles began to crack, and puffs of smoke rose all along the embankment
for the space of a hundred feet.  Bullets whistled through the rude
window casing and spattered on the heavy door, and one split the clay
between the logs before Jean, narrowly missing him.  Another volley
followed, then another.  The rustlers had repeating rifles and they
were emptying their magazines.  Jean changed his position.  The other
men profited by his wise move.  The volleys had merged into one
continuous rattling roar of rifle shots.  Then came a sudden cessation
of reports, with silence of relief.  The cabin was full of dust,
mingled with the smoke from the shots of Jean and his companions.  Jean
heard the stifled breaths of the children.  Evidently they were
terror-stricken, but they did not cry out.  The women uttered no sound.

A loud voice pealed from behind the embankment.

“Come out an’ fight!  Do you Isbels want to be killed like sheep?”

This sally gained no reply. Jean returned to his post by the window and
his comrades followed his example. And they exercised extreme caution
when they peeped out.

“Boys, don’t shoot till you see one,” said Gaston Isbel.  “Maybe after
a while they’ll get careless.  But Jorth will never show himself.”

The rustlers did not again resort to volleys.  One by one, from
different angles, they began to shoot, and they were not firing at
random.  A few bullets came straight in at the windows to pat into the
walls; a few others ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and
most of them broke through the clay chinks between the logs.  It dawned
upon Jean that these dangerous shots were not accident.  They were well
aimed, and most of them hit low down.  The cunning rustlers had some
unerring riflemen and they were picking out the vulnerable places all
along the front of the cabin.  If Jean had not been lying flat he would
have been hit twice.  Presently he conceived the idea of driving pegs
between the logs, high up, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep
out from the upper edge of the window.  But this position was awkward
and difficult to hold for long.

He heard a bullet hit one of his comrades.  Whoever had been struck
never uttered a sound.  Jean turned to look.  Bill Isbel was holding
his shoulder, where red splotches appeared on his shirt.  He shook his
head at Jean, evidently to make light of the wound.  The women and
children were lying face down and could not see what was happening.
Plain is was that Bill did not want them to know.  Blaisdell bound up
the bloody shoulder with a scarf.

Steady firing from the rustlers went on, at the rate of one shot every
few minutes.  The Isbels did not return these.  Jean did not fire again
that afternoon.  Toward sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow
restless or careless, Blaisdell fired at something moving behind the
brush; and Gaston Isbel’s huge buffalo gun boomed out.

“Wal, what ’re they goin’ to do after dark, an’ what ’re WE goin’ to
do?” grumbled Blaisdell.

“Reckon they’ll never charge us,” said Gaston.

“They might set fire to the cabins,” added Bill Isbel.  He appeared to
be the gloomiest of the Isbel faction.  There was something on his mind.

“Wal, the Jorths are bad, but I reckon they’d not burn us alive,”
replied Blaisdell.

“Hah!” ejaculated Gaston Isbel.  “Much you know aboot Lee Jorth. He
would skin me alive an’ throw red-hot coals on my raw flesh.”

So they talked during the hour from sunset to dark.  Jean Isbel had
little to say.  He was revolving possibilities in his mind.  Darkness
brought a change in the attack of the rustlers.  They stationed men at
four points around the cabins; and every few minutes one of these
outposts would fire.  These bullets embedded themselves in the logs,
causing but little anxiety to the Isbels.

“Jean, what you make of it?” asked the old rancher.

“Looks to me this way,” replied Jean.  “They’re set for a long fight.
They’re shootin’ just to let us know they’re on the watch.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, what ’re you goin’ to do aboot it?”

“I’m goin’ out there presently.”

Gaston Isbel grunted his satisfaction at this intention of Jean’s.

All was pitch dark inside the cabin.  The women had water and food at
hand.  Jean kept a sharp lookout from his window while he ate his
supper of meat, bread, and milk.  At last the children, worn out by the
long day, fell asleep.  The women whispered a little in their corner.

About nine o’clock Jean signified his intention of going out to
reconnoitre.

“Dad, they’ve got the best of us in the daytime,” he said, “but not
after dark.”

Jean buckled on a belt that carried shells, a bowie knife, and
revolver, and with rifle in hand he went out through the kitchen to the
yard. The night was darker than usual, as some of the stars were hidden
by clouds.  He leaned against the log cabin, waiting for his eyes to
become perfectly adjusted to the darkness.  Like an Indian, Jean could
see well at night.  He knew every point around cabins and sheds and
corrals, every post, log, tree, rock, adjacent to the ranch.  After
perhaps a quarter of an hour watching, during which time several shots
were fired from behind the embankment and one each from the rustlers at
the other locations, Jean slipped out on his quest.

He kept in the shadow of the cabin walls, then the line of orchard
trees, then a row of currant bushes.  Here, crouching low, he halted to
look and listen.  He was now at the edge of the open ground, with the
gently rising slope before him.  He could see the dark patches of cedar
and juniper trees.  On the north side of the cabin a streak of fire
flashed in the blackness, and a shot rang out.  Jean heard the bullet
bit the cabin.  Then silence enfolded the lonely ranch and the darkness
lay like a black blanket.  A low hum of insects pervaded the air.  Dull
sheets of lightning illumined the dark horizon to the south. Once Jean
heard voices, but could not tell from which direction they came.  To
the west of him then flared out another rifle shot.  The bullet
whistled down over Jean to thud into the cabin.

Jean made a careful study of the obscure, gray-black open before him
and then the background to his rear.  So long as he kept the dense
shadows behind him he could not be seen.  He slipped from behind his
covert and, gliding with absolutely noiseless footsteps, he gained the
first clump of junipers.  Here he waited patiently and motionlessly for
another round of shots from the rustlers.  After the second shot from
the west side Jean sheered off to the right.  Patches of brush, clumps
of juniper, and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording Jean a
perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a detour and come up
behind the rustler who was firing from that side.  Jean climbed to the
top of the ridge, descended the opposite slope, made his turn to the
left, and slowly worked up behind the point near where he expected to
locate the rustler.  Long habit in the open, by day and night, rendered
his sense of direction almost as perfect as sight itself.  The first
flash of fire he saw from this side proved that he had come straight up
toward his man.  Jean’s intention was to crawl up on this one of the
Jorth gang and silently kill him with a knife.  If the plan worked
successfully, Jean meant to work round to the next rustler.  Laying
aside his rifle, he crawled forward on hands and knees, making no more
sound than a cat.  His approach was slow.  He had to pick his way, be
careful not to break twigs nor rattle stones.  His buckskin garments
made no sound against the brush.  Jean located the rustler sitting on
the top of the ridge in the center of an open space. He was alone.
Jean saw the dull-red end of the cigarette he was smoking.  The ground
on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for Jean’s purpose.  He
had to abandon the idea of crawling up on the rustler.  Whereupon, Jean
turned back, patiently and slowly, to get his rifle.

Upon securing it he began to retrace his course, this time more slowly
than before, as he was hampered by the rifle.  But he did not make the
slightest sound, and at length he reached the edge of the open ridge
top, once more to espy the dark form of the rustler silhouetted against
the sky.  The distance was not more than fifty yards.

As Jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle round to avoid
the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experienced another emotion besides
the one of grim, hard wrath at the Jorths.  It was an emotion that
sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable
sensation.  Suppose this man was Ellen Jorth’s father!  Jean lowered
the rifle.  He felt it shake over his knee.  He was trembling all over.
The astounding discovery that he did not want to kill Ellen’s
father—that he could not do it—awakened Jean to the despairing nature
of his love for her.  In this grim moment of indecision, when he knew
his Indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage over the
Jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love
for the girl.  He made no attempt to deny it any longer.  Like the
night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitableness of
this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality.
He breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul—he could not kill Ellen
Jorth’s father.  Feud or no feud, Isbel or not, he could not
deliberately do it.  And why not?  There was no answer.  Was he not
faithless to his father?  He had no hope of ever winning Ellen Jorth.
He did not want the love of a girl of her character.  But he loved her.
And his struggle must be against the insidious and mysterious growth of
that passion.  It swayed him already.  It made him a coward. Through
his mind and heart swept the memory of Ellen Jorth, her beauty and
charm, her boldness and pathos, her shame and her degradation. And the
sweetness of her outweighed the boldness.  And the mystery of her
arrayed itself in unquenchable protest against her acknowledged shame.
Jean lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless white stars, to
the infinite depths of the dark-blue sky.  He could sense the fact of
his being an atom in the universe of nature.  What was he, what was his
revengeful father, what were hate and passion and strife in comparison
to the nameless something, immense and everlasting, that he sensed in
this dark moment?

But the rustlers—Daggs—the Jorths—they had killed his brother
Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly.  Guy had been a playmate of
Jean’s—a favorite brother.  Bill had been secretive and selfish.  Jean
had never loved him as he did Guy.  Guy lay dead down there on the
meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course.  Jean steeled his
nerve. The hot blood crept back along his veins.  The dark and
masterful tide of revenge waved over him.  The keen edge of his mind
then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts.  He must kill when and where
he could.  This man could hardly be Ellen Jorth’s father.  Jorth would
be with the main crowd, directing hostilities.  Jean could shoot this
rustler guard and his shot would be taken by the gang as the regular
one from their comrade.  Then swiftly Jean leveled his rifle, covered
the dark form, grew cold and set, and pressed the trigger.  After the
report he rose and wheeled away.  He did not look nor listen for the
result of his shot.  A clammy sweat wet his face, the hollow of his
hands, his breast. A horrible, leaden, thick sensation oppressed his
heart.  Nature had endowed him with Indian gifts, but the exercise of
them to this end caused a revolt in his soul.

Nevertheless, it was the Isbel blood that dominated him.  The wind blew
cool on his face.  The burden upon his shoulders seemed to lift.  The
clamoring whispers grew fainter in his ears.  And by the time he had
retraced his cautious steps back to the orchard all his physical being
was strung to the task at hand.  Something had come between his
reflective self and this man of action.

Crossing the lane, he took to the west line of sheds, and passed beyond
them into the meadow.  In the grass he crawled silently away to the
right, using the same precaution that had actuated him on the slope,
only here he did not pause so often, nor move so slowly.  Jean aimed to
go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embankment behind
which the rustlers had found such efficient cover.  This ditch had been
made to keep water, during spring thaws and summer storms, from pouring
off the slope to flood the corrals.

Jean miscalculated and found he had come upon the embankment somewhat
to the left of the end, which fact, however, caused him no uneasiness.
He lay there awhile to listen.  Again he heard voices.  After a time a
shot pealed out.  He did not see the flash, but he calculated that it
had come from the north side of the cabins.

The next quarter of an hour discovered to Jean that the nearest guard
was firing from the top of the embankment, perhaps a hundred yards
distant, and a second one was performing the same office from a point
apparently only a few yards farther on.  Two rustlers close together!
Jean had not calculated upon that.  For a little while he pondered on
what was best to do, and at length decided to crawl round behind them,
and as close as the situation made advisable.

He found the ditch behind the embankment a favorable path by which to
stalk these enemies.  It was dry and sandy, with borders of high weeds.
The only drawback was that it was almost impossible for him to keep
from brushing against the dry, invisible branches of the weeds.  To
offset this he wormed his way like a snail, inch by inch, taking a long
time before he caught sight of the sitting figure of a man, black
against the dark-blue sky.  This rustler had fired his rifle three
times during Jean’s slow approach.  Jean watched and listened a few
moments, then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was
within twenty steps of him.

Jean smelled tobacco smoke, but could see no light of pipe or
cigarette, because the fellow’s back was turned.

“Say, Ben,” said this man to his companion sitting hunched up a few
yards distant, “shore it strikes me queer thet Somers ain’t shootin’
any over thar.”

Jean recognized the dry, drawling voice of Greaves, and the shock of it
seemed to contract the muscles of his whole thrilling body, like that
of a panther about to spring.



CHAPTER VIII


“Was shore thinkin’ thet same,” said the other man.  “An’, say, didn’t
thet last shot sound too sharp fer Somers’s forty-five?”

“Come to think of it, I reckon it did,” replied Greaves.

“Wal, I’ll go around over thar an’ see.”

The dark form of the rustler slipped out of sight over the embankment.

“Better go slow an’ careful,” warned Greaves.  “An’ only go close
enough to call Somers.... Mebbe thet damn half-breed Isbel is comin’
some Injun on us.”

Jean heard the soft swish of footsteps through wet grass.  Then all was
still.  He lay flat, with his cheek on the sand, and he had to look
ahead and upward to make out the dark figure of Greaves on the bank.
One way or another he meant to kill Greaves, and he had the will power
to resist the strongest gust of passion that had ever stormed his
breast.  If he arose and shot the rustler, that act would defeat his
plan of slipping on around upon the other outposts who were firing at
the cabins.  Jean wanted to call softly to Greaves, “You’re right about
the half-breed!” and then, as he wheeled aghast, to kill him as he
moved.  But it suited Jean to risk leaping upon the man.  Jean did not
waste time in trying to understand the strange, deadly instinct that
gripped him at the moment.  But he realized then he had chosen the most
perilous plan to get rid of Greaves.

Jean drew a long, deep breath and held it.  He let go of his rifle. He
rose, silently as a lifting shadow.  He drew the bowie knife. Then with
light, swift bounds he glided up the bank.  Greaves must have heard a
rustling—a soft, quick pad of moccasin, for he turned with a start.
And that instant Jean’s left arm darted like a striking snake round
Greaves’s neck and closed tight and hard.  With his right hand free,
holding the knife, Jean might have ended the deadly business in just
one move.  But when his bared arm felt the hot, bulging neck something
terrible burst out of the depths of him.  To kill this enemy of his
father’s was not enough!  Physical contact had unleashed the savage
soul of the Indian.  Yet there was more, and as Jean gave the straining
body a tremendous jerk backward, he felt the same strange thrill, the
dark joy that he had known when his fist had smashed the face of Simm
Bruce.  Greaves had leered—he had corroborated Bruce’s vile
insinuation about Ellen Jorth.  So it was more than hate that actuated
Jean Isbel.

Greaves was heavy and powerful.  He whirled himself, feet first, over
backward, in a lunge like that of a lassoed steer.  But Jean’s hold
held.  They rolled down the bank into the sandy ditch, and Jean landed
uppermost, with his body at right angles with that of his adversary.

“Greaves, your hunch was right,” hissed Jean.  “It’s the half-breed....
An’ I’m goin’ to cut you—first for Ellen Jorth—an’ then for Gaston
Isbel!”

Jean gazed down into the gleaming eyes.  Then his right arm whipped the
big blade.  It flashed.  It fell.  Low down, as far as Jean could
reach, it entered Greaves’s body.

All the heavy, muscular frame of Greaves seemed to contract and burst.
His spring was that of an animal in terror and agony.  It was so
tremendous that it broke Jean’s hold.  Greaves let out a strangled yell
that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note.  He wrestled
free.  The big knife came out.  Supple and swift, he got to his, knees.
He had his gun out when Jean reached him again.  Like a bear Jean
enveloped him.  Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist
it far enough.  Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the
bowie.  Greaves’s strength went out in an awful, hoarse cry. His gun
boomed again, then dropped from his hand.  He swayed.  Jean let go.
And that enemy of the Isbels sank limply in the ditch. Jean’s eyes
roved for his rifle and caught the starlit gleam of it. Snatching it
up, he leaped over the embankment and ran straight for the cabins.
From all around yells of the Jorth faction attested to their excitement
and fury.

A fence loomed up gray in the obscurity.  Jean vaulted it, darted
across the lane into the shadow of the corral, and soon gained the
first cabin.  Here he leaned to regain his breath.  His heart pounded
high and seemed too large for his breast.  The hot blood beat and
surged all over his body.  Sweat poured off him.  His teeth were
clenched tight as a vise, and it took effort on his part to open his
mouth so he could breathe more freely and deeply.  But these physical
sensations were as nothing compared to the tumult of his mind. Then the
instinct, the spell, let go its grip and he could think. He had avenged
Guy, he had depleted the ranks of the Jorths, he had made good the brag
of his father, all of which afforded him satisfaction. But these
thoughts were not accountable for all that he felt, especially for the
bittersweet sting of the fact that death to the defiler of Ellen Jorth
could not efface the doubt, the regret which seemed to grow with the
hours.

Groping his way into the woodshed, he entered the kitchen and, calling
low, he went on into the main cabin.

“Jean!  Jean!” came his father’s shaking voice.

“Yes, I’m back,” replied Jean.

“Are—you—all right?”

“Yes.  I think I’ve got a bullet crease on my leg.  I didn’t know I had
it till now.... It’s bleedin’ a little.  But it’s nothin’.”

Jean heard soft steps and some one reached shaking hands for him. They
belonged to his sister Ann.  She embraced him.  Jean felt the heave and
throb of her breast.

“Why, Ann, I’m not hurt,” he said, and held her close.  “Now you lie
down an’ try to sleep.”

In the black darkness of the cabin Jean led her back to the corner and
his heart was full.  Speech was difficult, because the very touch of
Ann’s hands had made him divine that the success of his venture in no
wise changed the plight of the women.

“Wal, what happened out there?” demanded Blaisdell.

“I got two of them,” replied Jean.  “That fellow who was shootin’ from
the ridge west.  An’ the other was Greaves.”

“Hah!” exclaimed his father.

“Shore then it was Greaves yellin’,” declared Blaisdell.  “By God, I
never heard such yells!  Whad ’d you do, Jean?”

“I knifed him.  You see, I’d planned to slip up on one after another.
An’ I didn’t want to make noise.  But I didn’t get any farther than
Greaves.”

“Wal, I reckon that ’ll end their shootin’ in the dark,” muttered
Gaston Isbel.  “We’ve got to be on the lookout for somethin’
else—fire, most likely.”

The old rancher’s surmise proved to be partially correct.  Jorth’s
faction ceased the shooting.  Nothing further was seen or heard from
them.  But this silence and apparent break in the siege were harder to
bear than deliberate hostility.  The long, dark hours dragged by. The
men took turns watching and resting, but none of them slept. At last
the blackness paled and gray dawn stole out of the east. The sky turned
rose over the distant range and daylight came.

The children awoke hungry and noisy, having slept away their fears. The
women took advantage of the quiet morning hour to get a hot breakfast.

“Maybe they’ve gone away,” suggested Guy Isbel’s wife, peering out of
the window.  She had done that several times since daybreak.  Jean saw
her somber gaze search the pasture until it rested upon the dark, prone
shape of her dead husband, lying face down in the grass.  Her look
worried Jean.

“No, Esther, they’ve not gone yet,” replied Jean.  “I’ve seen some of
them out there at the edge of the brush.”

Blaisdell was optimistic.  He said Jean’s night work would have its
effect and that the Jorth contingent would not renew the siege very
determinedly.  It turned out, however, that Blaisdell was wrong.
Directly after sunrise they began to pour volleys from four sides and
from closer range.  During the night Jorth’s gang had thrown earth
banks and constructed log breastworks, from behind which they were now
firing.  Jean and his comrades could see the flashes of fire and
streaks of smoke to such good advantage that they began to return the
volleys.

In half an hour the cabin was so full of smoke that Jean could not see
the womenfolk in their corner.  The fierce attack then abated somewhat,
and the firing became more intermittent, and therefore more carefully
aimed.  A glancing bullet cut a furrow in Blaisdell’s hoary head,
making a painful, though not serious wound.  It was Esther Isbel who
stopped the flow of blood and bound Blaisdell’s head, a task which she
performed skillfully and without a tremor.  The old Texan could not sit
still during this operation.  Sight of the blood on his hands, which he
tried to rub off, appeared to inflame him to a great degree.

“Isbel, we got to go out thar,” he kept repeating, “an’ kill them all.”

“No, we’re goin’ to stay heah,” replied Gaston Isbel.  “Shore I’m
lookin’ for Blue an’ Fredericks an’ Gordon to open up out there. They
ought to be heah, an’ if they are y’u shore can bet they’ve got the
fight sized up.”

Isbel’s hopes did not materialize.  The shooting continued without any
lull until about midday.  Then the Jorth faction stopped.

“Wal, now what’s up?” queried Isbel.  “Boys, hold your fire an’ let’s
wait.”

Gradually the smoke wafted out of the windows and doors, until the room
was once more clear.  And at this juncture Esther Isbel came over to
take another gaze out upon the meadows.  Jean saw her suddenly start
violently, then stiffen, with a trembling hand outstretched.

“Look!” she cried.

“Esther, get back,” ordered the old rancher.  “Keep away from that
window.”

“What the hell!” muttered Blaisdell.  “She sees somethin’, or she’s
gone dotty.”

Esther seemed turned to stone.  “Look!  The hogs have broken into the
pasture!... They’ll eat Guy’s body!”

Everyone was frozen with horror at Esther’s statement.  Jean took a
swift survey of the pasture.  A bunch of big black hogs had indeed
appeared on the scene and were rooting around in the grass not far from
where lay the bodies of Guy Isbel and Jacobs.  This herd of hogs
belonged to the rancher and was allowed to run wild.

“Jane, those hogs—” stammered Esther Isbel, to the wife of Jacobs.
“Come!  Look!... Do y’u know anythin’ about hogs?”

The woman ran to the window and looked out.  She stiffened as had
Esther.

“Dad, will those hogs—eat human flesh?” queried Jean, breathlessly.

The old man stared out of the window.  Surprise seemed to hold him. A
completely unexpected situation had staggered him.

“Jean—can you—can you shoot that far?” he asked, huskily.

“To those hogs?  No, it’s out of range.”

“Then, by God, we’ve got to stay trapped in heah an’ watch an awful
sight,” ejaculated the old man, completely unnerved.  “See that break
in the fence!... Jorth’s done that.... To let in the hogs!”

“Aw, Isbel, it’s not so bad as all that,” remonstrated Blaisdell,
wagging his bloody head.  “Jorth wouldn’t do such a hell-bent trick.”

“It’s shore done.”

“Wal, mebbe the hogs won’t find Guy an’ Jacobs,” returned Blaisdell,
weakly.  Plain it was that he only hoped for such a contingency and
certainly doubted it.

“Look!” cried Esther Isbel, piercingly.  “They’re workin’ straight up
the pasture!”

Indeed, to Jean it appeared to be the fatal truth.  He looked blankly,
feeling a little sick.  Ann Isbel came to peer out of the window and
she uttered a cry.  Jacobs’s wife stood mute, as if dazed.

Blaisdell swore a mighty oath.  “— — —!  Isbel, we cain’t stand heah
an’ watch them hogs eat our people!”

“Wal, we’ll have to.  What else on earth can we do?”

Esther turned to the men.  She was white and cold, except her eyes,
which resembled gray flames.

“Somebody can run out there an’ bury our dead men,” she said.

“Why, child, it’d be shore death.  Y’u saw what happened to Guy an’
Jacobs.... We’ve jest got to bear it.  Shore nobody needn’t look
out—an’ see.”

Jean wondered if it would be possible to keep from watching.  The thing
had a horrible fascination.  The big hogs were rooting and tearing in
the grass, some of them lazy, others nimble, and all were gradually
working closer and closer to the bodies.  The leader, a huge, gaunt
boar, that had fared ill all his life in this barren country, was
scarcely fifty feet away from where Guy Isbel lay.

“Ann, get me some of your clothes, an’ a sunbonnet—quick,” said Jean,
forced out of his lethargy.  “I’ll run out there disguised.  Maybe I
can go through with it.”

“No!” ordered his father, positively, and with dark face flaming. “Guy
an’ Jacobs are dead.  We cain’t help them now.”

“But, dad—” pleaded Jean.  He had been wrought to a pitch by Esther’s
blaze of passion, by the agony in the face of the other woman.

“I tell y’u no!” thundered Gaston Isbel, flinging his arms wide.

“I WILL GO!” cried Esther, her voice ringing.

“You won’t go alone!” instantly answered the wife of Jacobs, repeating
unconsciously the words her husband had spoken.

“You stay right heah,” shouted Gaston Isbel, hoarsely.

“I’m goin’,” replied Esther.  “You’ve no hold over me.  My husband is
dead.  No one can stop me.  I’m goin’ out there to drive those hogs
away an’ bury him.”

“Esther, for Heaven’s sake, listen,” replied Isbel.  “If y’u show
yourself outside, Jorth an’ his gang will kin y’u.”

“They may be mean, but no white men could be so low as that.”

Then they pleaded with her to give up her purpose.  But in vain! She
pushed them back and ran out through the kitchen with Jacobs’s wife
following her.  Jean turned to the window in time to see both women run
out into the lane.  Jean looked fearfully, and listened for shots.  But
only a loud, “Haw!  Haw!” came from the watchers outside.  That coarse
laugh relieved the tension in Jean’s breast. Possibly the Jorths were
not as black as his father painted them. The two women entered an open
shed and came forth with a shovel and spade.

“Shore they’ve got to hurry,” burst out Gaston Isbel.

Shifting his gaze, Jean understood the import of his father’s speech.
The leader of the hogs had no doubt scented the bodies.  Suddenly he
espied them and broke into a trot.

“Run, Esther, run!” yelled Jean, with all his might.

That urged the women to flight.  Jean began to shoot.  The hog reached
the body of Guy.  Jean’s shots did not reach nor frighten the beast.
All the hogs now had caught a scent and went ambling toward their
leader.  Esther and her companion passed swiftly out of sight behind a
corral.  Loud and piercingly, with some awful note, rang out their
screams.  The hogs appeared frightened.  The leader lifted his long
snout, looked, and turned away.  The others had halted.  Then they,
too, wheeled and ran off.

All was silent then in the cabin and also outside wherever the Jorth
faction lay concealed.  All eyes manifestly were fixed upon the brave
wives.  They spaded up the sod and dug a grave for Guy Isbel.  For a
shroud Esther wrapped him in her shawl.  Then they buried him.  Next
they hurried to the side of Jacobs, who lay some yards away.  They dug
a grave for him.  Mrs. Jacobs took off her outer skirt to wrap round
him.  Then the two women labored hard to lift him and lower him. Jacobs
was a heavy man.  When he had been covered his widow knelt beside his
grave.  Esther went back to the other.  But she remained standing and
did not look as if she prayed.  Her aspect was tragic—that of a woman
who had lost father, mother, sisters, brother, and now her husband, in
this bloody Arizona land.

The deed and the demeanor of these wives of the murdered men surely
must have shamed Jorth and his followers.  They did not fire a shot
during the ordeal nor give any sign of their presence.

Inside the cabin all were silent, too. Jean’s eyes blurred so that he
continually had to wipe them.  Old Isbel made no effort to hide his
tears.  Blaisdell nodded his shaggy head and swallowed hard.  The women
sat staring into space.  The children, in round-eyed dismay, gazed from
one to the other of their elders.

“Wal, they’re comin’ back,” declared Isbel, in immense relief. “An’ so
help me—Jorth let them bury their daid!”

The fact seemed to have been monstrously strange to Gaston Isbel. When
the women entered the old man said, brokenly: “I’m shore glad.... An’ I
reckon I was wrong to oppose you ... an’ wrong to say what I did aboot
Jorth.”

No one had any chance to reply to Isbel, for the Jorth gang, as if to
make up for lost time and surcharged feelings of shame, renewed the
attack with such a persistent and furious volleying that the defenders
did not risk a return shot.  They all had to lie flat next to the
lowest log in order to keep from being hit.  Bullets rained in through
the window.  And all the clay between the logs low down was shot away.
This fusillade lasted for more than an hour, then gradually the fire
diminished on one side and then on the other until it became desultory
and finally ceased.

“Ahuh!  Shore they’ve shot their bolt,” declared Gaston Isbel.

“Wal, I doon’t know aboot that,” returned Blaisdell, “but they’ve shot
a hell of a lot of shells.”

“Listen,” suddenly called Jean. “Somebody’s yellin’.”

“Hey, Isbel!” came in loud, hoarse voice.  “Let your women fight for
you.”

Gaston Isbel sat up with a start and his face turned livid.  Jean
needed no more to prove that the derisive voice from outside had
belonged to Jorth.  The old rancher lunged up to his full height and
with reckless disregard of life he rushed to the window. “Jorth,” he
roared, “I dare you to meet me—man to man!”

This elicited no answer.  Jean dragged his father away from the window.
After that a waiting silence ensued, gradually less fraught with
suspense.  Blaisdell started conversation by saying he believed the
fight was over for that particular time.  No one disputed him.
Evidently Gaston Isbel was loath to believe it.  Jean, however,
watching at the back of the kitchen, eventually discovered that the
Jorth gang had lifted the siege.  Jean saw them congregate at the edge
of the brush, somewhat lower down than they had been the day before. A
team of mules, drawing a wagon, appeared on the road, and turned toward
the slope.  Saddled horses were led down out of the junipers. Jean saw
bodies, evidently of dead men, lifted into the wagon, to be hauled away
toward the village.  Seven mounted men, leading four riderless horses,
rode out into the valley and followed the wagon.

“Dad, they’ve gone,” declared Jean.  “We had the best of this fight....
If only Guy an’ Jacobs had listened!”

The old man nodded moodily.  He had aged considerably during these two
trying days.  His hair was grayer.  Now that the blaze and glow of the
fight had passed he showed a subtle change, a fixed and morbid sadness,
a resignation to a fate he had accepted.

The ordinary routine of ranch life did not return for the Isbels.
Blaisdell returned home to settle matters there, so that he could
devote all his time to this feud.  Gaston Isbel sat down to wait for
the members of his clan.

The male members of the family kept guard in turn over the ranch that
night.  And another day dawned.  It brought word from Blaisdell that
Blue, Fredericks, Gordon, and Colmor were all at his house, on the way
to join the Isbels.  This news appeared greatly to rejuvenate Gaston
Isbel.  But his enthusiasm did not last long.  Impatient and moody by
turns, he paced or moped around the cabin, always looking out,
sometimes toward Blaisdell’s ranch, but mostly toward Grass Valley.

It struck Jean as singular that neither Esther Isbel nor Mrs. Jacobs
suggested a reburial of their husbands.  The two bereaved women did not
ask for assistance, but repaired to the pasture, and there spent
several hours working over the graves.  They raised mounds, which they
sodded, and then placed stones at the heads and feet.  Lastly, they
fenced in the graves.

“I reckon I’ll hitch up an’ drive back home,” said Mrs. Jacobs, when
she returned to the cabin.  “I’ve much to do an’ plan.  Probably I’ll
go to my mother’s home.  She’s old an’ will be glad to have me.”

“If I had any place to go to I’d sure go,” declared Esther Isbel,
bitterly.

Gaston Isbel heard this remark.  He raised his face from his hands,
evidently both nettled and hurt.

“Esther, shore that’s not kind,” he said.

The red-haired woman—for she did not appear to be a girl any
more—halted before his chair and gazed down at him, with a terrible
flare of scorn in her gray eyes.

“Gaston Isbel, all I’ve got to say to you is this,” she retorted, with
the voice of a man.  “Seein’ that you an’ Lee Jorth hate each other,
why couldn’t you act like men?... You damned Texans, with your bloody
feuds, draggin’ in every relation, every friend to murder each other!
That’s not the way of Arizona men.... We’ve all got to suffer—an’ we
women be ruined for life—because YOU had differences with Jorth. If
you were half a man you’d go out an’ kill him yourself, an’ not leave a
lot of widows an’ orphaned children!”

Jean himself writhed under the lash of her scorn.  Gaston Isbel turned
a dead white.  He could not answer her.  He seemed stricken with
merciless truth.  Slowly dropping his head, he remained motionless, a
pathetic and tragic figure; and he did not stir until the rapid beat of
hoofs denoted the approach of horsemen.  Blaisdell appeared on his
white charger, leading a pack animal.  And behind rode a group of men,
all heavily armed, and likewise with packs.

“Get down an’ come in,” was Isbel’s greeting.  “Bill—you look after
their packs.  Better leave the hosses saddled.”

The booted and spurred riders trooped in, and their demeanor fitted
their errand.  Jean was acquainted with all of them.  Fredericks was a
lanky Texan, the color of dust, and he had yellow, clear eyes, like
those of a hawk.  His mother had been an Isbel.  Gordon, too, was
related to Jean’s family, though distantly.  He resembled an
industrious miner more than a prosperous cattleman.  Blue was the most
striking of the visitors, as he was the most noted.  A little, shrunken
gray-eyed man, with years of cowboy written all over him, he looked the
quiet, easy, cool, and deadly Texan he was reputed to be.  Blue’s Texas
record was shady, and was seldom alluded to, as unfavorable comment had
turned out to be hazardous.  He was the only one of the group who did
not carry a rifle.  But he packed two guns, a habit not often noted in
Texans, and almost never in Arizonians.

Colmor, Ann Isbel’s fiance, was the youngest member of the clan, and
the one closest to Jean.  His meeting with Ann affected Jean
powerfully, and brought to a climax an idea that had been developing in
Jean’s mind. His sister devotedly loved this lean-faced, keen-eyed
Arizonian; and it took no great insight to discover that Colmor
reciprocated her affection. They were young.  They had long life before
them.  It seemed to Jean a pity that Colmor should be drawn into this
war.  Jean watched them, as they conversed apart; and he saw Ann’s
hands creep up to Colmor’s breast, and he saw her dark eyes, eloquent,
hungry, fearful, lifted with queries her lips did not speak.  Jean
stepped beside them, and laid an arm over both their shoulders.

“Colmor, for Ann’s sake you’d better back out of this Jorth-Isbel
fight,” he whispered.

Colmor looked insulted.  “But, Jean, it’s Ann’s father,” he said. “I’m
almost one of the family.”

“You’re Ann’s sweetheart, an’, by Heaven, I say you oughtn’t to go with
us!” whispered Jean.

“Go—with—you,” faltered Ann.

“Yes.  Dad is goin’ straight after Jorth.  Can’t you tell that?  An’
there ’ll be one hell of a fight.”

Ann looked up into Colmor’s face with all her soul in her eyes, but she
did not speak.  Her look was noble.  She yearned to guide him right,
yet her lips were sealed.  And Colmor betrayed the trouble of his soul.
The code of men held him bound, and he could not break from it, though
he divined in that moment how truly it was wrong.

“Jean, your dad started me in the cattle business,” said Colmor,
earnestly.  “An’ I’m doin’ well now.  An’ when I asked him for Ann he
said he’d be glad to have me in the family.... Well, when this talk of
fight come up, I asked your dad to let me go in on his side. He
wouldn’t hear of it.  But after a while, as the time passed an’ he made
more enemies, he finally consented.  I reckon he needs me now. An’ I
can’t back out, not even for Ann.”

“I would if I were you,” replied jean, and knew that he lied.

“Jean, I’m gamblin’ to come out of the fight,” said Colmor, with a
smile. He had no morbid fears nor presentiments, such as troubled jean.

“Why, sure—you stand as good a chance as anyone,” rejoined Jean. “It
wasn’t that I was worryin’ about so much.”

“What was it, then?” asked Ann, steadily.

“If Andrew DOES come through alive he’ll have blood on his hands,”
returned Jean, with passion.  “He can’t come through without it....
I’ve begun to feel what it means to have killed my fellow men.... An’
I’d rather your husband an’ the father of your children never felt
that.”

Colmor did not take Jean as subtly as Ann did.  She shrunk a little.
Her dark eyes dilated.  But Colmor showed nothing of her spiritual
reaction.  He was young.  He had wild blood.  He was loyal to the
Isbels.

“Jean, never worry about my conscience,” he said, with a keen look.
“Nothin’ would tickle me any more than to get a shot at every damn one
of the Jorths.”

That established Colmor’s status in regard to the Jorth-Isbel feud.
Jean had no more to say.  He respected Ann’s friend and felt poignant
sorrow for Ann.

Gaston Isbel called for meat and drink to be set on the table for his
guests.  When his wishes had been complied with the women took the
children into the adjoining cabin and shut the door.

“Hah!  Wal, we can eat an’ talk now.”

First the newcomers wanted to hear particulars of what had happened.
Blaisdell had told all he knew and had seen, but that was not
sufficient.  They plied Gaston Isbel with questions.  Laboriously and
ponderously he rehearsed the experiences of the fight at the ranch,
according to his impressions.  Bill Isbel was exhorted to talk, but he
had of late manifested a sullen and taciturn disposition. In spite of
Jean’s vigilance Bill had continued to imbibe red liquor. Then Jean was
called upon to relate all he had seen and done.  It had been Jean’s
intention to keep his mouth shut, first for his own sake and, secondly,
because he did not like to talk of his deeds.  But when thus appealed
to by these somber-faced, intent-eyed men he divined that the more
carefully he described the cruelty and baseness of their enemies, and
the more vividly he presented his participation in the first fight of
the feud the more strongly he would bind these friends to the Isbel
cause.  So he talked for an hour, beginning with his meeting with
Colter up on the Rim and ending with an account of his killing Greaves.
His listeners sat through this long narrative with unabated interest
and at the close they were leaning forward, breathless and tense.

“Ah!  So Greaves got his desserts at last,” exclaimed Gordon.

All the men around the table made comments, and the last, from Blue,
was the one that struck Jean forcibly.

“Shore thet was a strange an’ a hell of a way to kill Greaves. Why’d
you do thet, Jean?”

“I told you.  I wanted to avoid noise an’ I hoped to get more of them.”

Blue nodded his lean, eagle-like head and sat thoughtfully, as if not
convinced of anything save Jean’s prowess.  After a moment Blue spoke
again.

“Then, goin’ back to Jean’s tellin’ aboot trackin’ rustled Cattle, I’ve
got this to say.  I’ve long suspected thet somebody livin’ right heah
in the valley has been drivin’ off cattle an’ dealin’ with rustlers.
An’ now I’m shore of it.”

This speech did not elicit the amaze from Gaston Isbel that Jean
expected it would.

“You mean Greaves or some of his friends?”

“No.  They wasn’t none of them in the cattle business, like we are.
Shore we all knowed Greaves was crooked.  But what I’m figgerin’ is
thet some so-called honest man in our settlement has been makin’
crooked deals.”

Blue was a man of deeds rather than words, and so much strong speech
from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made
a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction.  But, to Jean’s
surprise, his father did not rave.  It was Blaisdell who supplied the
rage and invective.  Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to
this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean
caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought
of another’s mind, and he wondered—could his brother Bill know
anything about this crooked work alluded to by Blue?  Dismissing the
conjecture, Jean listened earnestly.

“An’ if it’s true it shore makes this difference—we cain’t blame all
the rustlin’ on to Jorth,” concluded Blue.

“Wal, it’s not true,” declared Gaston Isbel, roughly.  “Jorth an’ his
Hash Knife Gang are at the bottom of all the rustlin’ in the valley for
years back.  An’ they’ve got to be wiped out!”

“Isbel, I reckon we’d all feel better if we talk straight,” replied
Blue, coolly.  “I’m heah to stand by the Isbels.  An’ y’u know what
thet means. But I’m not heah to fight Jorth because he may be a
rustler.  The others may have their own reasons, but mine is this—you
once stood by me in Texas when I was needin’ friends.  Wal, I’m
standin’ by y’u now. Jorth is your enemy, an’ so he is mine.”

Gaston Isbel bowed to this ultimatum, scarcely less agitated than when
Esther Isbel had denounced him.  His rabid and morbid hate of Jorth had
eaten into his heart to take possession there, like the parasite that
battened upon the life of its victim.  Blue’s steely voice, his cold,
gray eyes, showed the unbiased truth of the man, as well as his
fidelity to his creed.  Here again, but in a different manner,  Gaston
Isbel had the fact flung at him that other men must suffer, perhaps
die, for his hate.  And the very soul of the old rancher apparently
rose in Passionate revolt against the blind, headlong, elemental
strength of his nature.  So it seemed to Jean, who, in love and pity
that hourly grew, saw through his father.  Was it too late? Alas!
Gaston Isbel could never be turned back!  Yet something was altering
his brooding, fixed mind.

“Wal,” said Blaisdell, gruffly, “let’s get down to business.... I’m for
havin’ Blue be foreman of this heah outfit, an’ all of us to do as he
says.”

Gaston Isbel opposed this selection and indeed resented it. He intended
to lead the Isbel faction.

“All right, then.  Give us a hunch what we’re goin’ to do,” replied
Blaisdell.

“We’re goin’ to ride off on Jorth’s trail—an’ one way or another—kill
him—KILL HIM!... I reckon that’ll end the fight.”

What did old Isbel have in his mind?  His listeners shook their heads.

“No,” asserted Blaisdell.  “Killin’ Jorth might be the end of your
desires, Isbel, but it ’d never end our fight.  We’ll have gone too
far.... If we take Jorth’s trail from heah it means we’ve got to wipe
out that rustier gang, or stay to the last man.”

“Yes, by God!” exclaimed Fredericks.

“Let’s drink to thet!” said Blue.  Strangely they turned to this Texas
gunman, instinctively recognizing in him the brain and heart, and the
past deeds, that fitted him for the leadership of such a clan.  Blue
had all in life to lose, and nothing to gain.  Yet his spirit was such
that he could not lean to all the possible gain of the future, and
leave a debt unpaid.  Then his voice, his look, his influence were
those of a fighter.  They all drank with him, even Jean, who hated
liquor.  And this act of drinking seemed the climax of the council.
Preparations were at once begun for their departure on Jorth’s trail.

Jean took but little time for his own needs.  A horse, a blanket, a
knapsack of meat and bread, a canteen, and his weapons, with all the
ammunition he could pack, made up his outfit.  He wore his buckskin
suit, leggings, and moccasins.  Very soon the cavalcade was ready to
depart.  Jean tried not to watch Bill Isbel say good-by to his
children, but it was impossible not to.  Whatever Bill was, as a man,
he was father of those children, and he loved them.  How strange that
the little ones seemed to realize the meaning of this good-by?  They
were grave, somber-eyed, pale up to the last moment, then they broke
down and wept.  Did they sense that their father would never come back?
Jean caught that dark, fatalistic presentiment.  Bill Isbel’s convulsed
face showed that he also caught it.  Jean did not see Bill say good-by
to his wife.  But he heard her.  Old Gaston Isbel forgot to speak to
the children, or else could not.  He never looked at them.  And his
good-by to Ann was as if he were only riding to the village for a day.
Jean saw woman’s love, woman’s intuition, woman’s grief in her eyes. He
could not escape her.  “Oh, Jean! oh, brother!” she whispered as she
enfolded him.  “It’s awful!  It’s wrong!  Wrong!  Wrong!... Good-by!...
If killing MUST be—see that y’u kill the Jorths!... Good-by!”

Even in Ann, gentle and mild, the Isbel blood spoke at the last. Jean
gave Ann over to the pale-faced Colmor, who took her in his arms. Then
Jean fled out to his horse.  This cold-blooded devastation of a home
was almost more than he could bear.  There was love here. What would be
left?

Colmor was the last one to come out to the horses.  He did not walk
erect, nor as one whose sight was clear.  Then, as the silent, tense,
grim men mounted their horses,  Bill Isbel’s eldest child, the boy,
appeared in the door.  His little form seemed instinct with a force
vastly different from grief.  His face was the face of an Isbel.

“Daddy—kill ’em all!” he shouted, with a passion all the fiercer for
its incongruity to the treble voice.

So the poison had spread from father to son.



CHAPTER IX


Half a mile from the Isbel ranch the cavalcade passed the log cabin of
Evarts, father of the boy who had tended sheep with Bernardino.

It suited Gaston Isbel to halt here.  No need to call!  Evarts and his
son appeared so quickly as to convince observers that they had been
watching.

“Howdy, Jake!” said Isbel.  “I’m wantin’ a word with y’u alone.”

“Shore, boss, git down an’ come in,” replied Evarts.

Isbel led him aside, and said something forcible that Jean divined from
the very gesture which accompanied it.  His father was telling Evarts
that he was not to join in the Isbel-Jorth war.  Evarts had worked for
the Isbels a long time, and his faithfulness, along with something
stronger and darker, showed in his rugged face as he stubbornly opposed
Isbel.  The old man raised his voice: “No, I tell you.  An’ that
settles it.”

They returned to the horses, and, before mounting, Isbel, as if he
remembered something, directed his somber gaze on young Evarts.

“Son, did you bury Bernardino?”

“Dad an’ me went over yestiddy,” replied the lad.  “I shore was glad
the coyotes hadn’t been round.”

“How aboot the sheep?”

“I left them there.  I was goin’ to stay, but bein’ all alone—I got
skeered.... The sheep was doin’ fine.  Good water an’ some grass. An’
this ain’t time fer varmints to hang round.”

“Jake, keep your eye on that flock,” returned Isbel.  “An’ if I
shouldn’t happen to come back y’u can call them sheep yours.... I’d
like your boy to ride up to the village.  Not with us, so anybody would
see him.  But afterward.  We’ll be at Abel Meeker’s.”

Again Jean was confronted with an uneasy premonition as to some idea or
plan his father had not shared with his followers.  When the cavalcade
started on again Jean rode to his father’s side and asked him why he
had wanted the Evarts boy to come to Grass Valley.  And the old man
replied that, as the boy could run to and fro in the village without
danger, he might be useful in reporting what was going on at Greaves’s
store, where undoubtedly the Jorth gang would hold forth. This appeared
reasonable enough, therefore Jean smothered the objection he had meant
to make.

The valley road was deserted.  When, a mile farther on, the riders
passed a group of cabins, just on the outskirts of the village, Jean’s
quick eye caught sight of curious and evidently frightened people
trying to see while they avoided being seen.  No doubt the whole
settlement was in a state of suspense and terror.  Not unlikely this
dark, closely grouped band of horsemen appeared to them as Jorth’s gang
had looked to Jean.  It was an orderly, trotting march that manifested
neither hurry nor excitement.  But any Western eye could have caught
the singular aspect of such a group, as if the intent of the riders was
a visible thing.

Soon they reached the outskirts of the village.  Here their approach
bad been watched for or had been already reported.  Jean saw men,
women, children peeping from behind cabins and from half-opened doors.
Farther on Jean espied the dark figures of men, slipping out the back
way through orchards and gardens and running north, toward the center
of the village.  Could these be friends of the Jorth crowd, on the way
with warnings of the approach of the Isbels?  Jean felt convinced of
it. He was learning that his father had not been absolutely correct in
his estimation of the way Jorth and his followers were regarded by
their neighbors.  Not improbably there were really many villagers who,
being more interested in sheep raising than in cattle, had an honest
leaning toward the Jorths.  Some, too, no doubt, had leanings that were
dishonest in deed if not in sincerity.

Gaston Isbel led his clan straight down the middle of the wide road of
Grass Valley until he reached a point opposite Abel Meeker’s cabin.
Jean espied the same curiosity from behind Meeker’s door and windows as
had been shown all along the road.  But presently, at Isbel’s call, the
door opened and a short, swarthy man appeared.  He carried a rifle.

“Howdy, Gass!” he said.  “What’s the good word?”

“Wal, Abel, it’s not good, but bad.  An’ it’s shore started,” replied
Isbel.  “I’m askin’ y’u to let me have your cabin.”

“You’re welcome.  I’ll send the folks ’round to Jim’s,” returned
Meeker. “An’ if y’u want me, I’m with y’u, Isbel.”

“Thanks, Abel, but I’m not leadin’ any more kin an’ friends into this
heah deal.”

“Wal, jest as y’u say.  But I’d like damn bad to jine with y’u.... My
brother Ted was shot last night.”

“Ted!  Is he daid?” ejaculated Isbel, blankly.

“We can’t find out,” replied Meeker.  “Jim says thet Jeff Campbell said
thet Ted went into Greaves’s place last night.  Greaves allus was
friendly to Ted, but Greaves wasn’t thar—”

“No, he shore wasn’t,” interrupted Isbel, with a dark smile, “an’ he
never will be there again.”

Meeker nodded with slow comprehension and a shade crossed his face.

“Wal, Campbell claimed he’d heerd from some one who was thar.  Anyway,
the Jorths were drinkin’ hard, an’ they raised a row with Ted—same old
sheep talk an’ somebody shot him.  Campbell said Ted was thrown out
back, an’ he was shore he wasn’t killed.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, I’m sorry, Abel, your family had to lose in this.  Maybe
Ted’s not bad hurt.  I shore hope so.... An’ y’u an’ Jim keep out of
the fight, anyway.”

“All right, Isbel.  But I reckon I’ll give y’u a hunch.  If this heah
fight lasts long the whole damn Basin will be in it, on one side or
t’other.”

“Abe, you’re talkin’ sense,” broke in Blaisdell.  “An’ that’s why we’re
up heah for quick action.”

“I heerd y’u got Daggs,” whispered Meeker, as he peered all around.

“Wal, y’u heerd correct,” drawled Blaisdell.

Meeker muttered strong words into his beard.  “Say, was Daggs in thet
Jorth outfit?”

“He WAS.  But he walked right into Jean’s forty-four.... An’ I reckon
his carcass would show some more.”

“An’ whar’s Guy Isbel?” demanded Meeker.

“Daid an’ buried, Abel,” replied Gaston Isbel.  “An’ now I’d be obliged
if y’u ’ll hurry your folks away, an’ let us have your cabin an’
corral. Have yu got any hay for the hosses?”

“Shore.  The barn’s half full,” replied Meeker, as he turned away.
“Come on in.”

“No.  We’ll wait till you’ve gone.”

When Meeker had gone, Isbel and his men sat their horses and looked
about them and spoke low.  Their advent had been expected, and the
little town awoke to the imminence of the impending battle.  Inside
Meeker’s house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and
the bustle incident to a hurried vacating.

Across the wide road people were peering out on all sides, some hiding,
others walking to and fro, from fence to fence, whispering in little
groups.  Down the wide road, at the point where it turned, stood
Greaves’s fort-like stone house.  Low, flat, isolated, with its dark,
eye-like windows, it presented a forbidding and sinister aspect. Jean
distinctly saw the forms of men, some dark, others in shirt sleeves,
come to the wide door and look down the road.

“Wal, I reckon only aboot five hundred good hoss steps are separatin’
us from that outfit,” drawled Blaisdell.

No one replied to his jocularity.  Gaston Isbel’s eyes narrowed to a
slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves’s
store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps,
any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more
representative of intense preoccupation of mind.  The look of him
thrilled Jean, who could sense its deadliness, yet could not grasp any
more.  Altogether, the manner of the villagers and the watchful pacing
to and fro of the Jorth followers and the silent, boding front of Isbel
and his men summed up for Jean the menace of the moment that must very
soon change to a terrible reality.

At a call from Meeker, who stood at the back of the cabin, Gaston Isbel
rode into the yard, followed by the others of his party.  “Somebody
look after the hosses,” ordered Isbel, as he dismounted and took his
rifle and pack.  “Better leave the saddles on, leastways till we see
what’s comin’ off.”

Jean and Bill Isbel led the horses back to the corral.  While watering
and feeding them, Jean somehow received the impression that Bill was
trying to speak, to confide in him, to unburden himself of some load.
This peculiarity of Bill’s had become marked when he was perfectly
sober. Yet he had never spoken or even begun anything unusual.  Upon
the present occasion, however, Jean believed that his brother might
have gotten rid of his emotion, or whatever it was, had they not been
interrupted by Colmor.

“Boys, the old man’s orders are for us to sneak round on three sides of
Greaves’s store, keepin’ out of gunshot till we find good cover, an’
then crawl closer an’ to pick off any of Jorth’s gang who shows
himself.”

Bill Isbel strode off without a reply to Colmor.

“Well, I don’t think so much of that,” said Jean, ponderingly. “Jorth
has lots of friends here.  Somebody might pick us off.”

“I kicked, but the old man shut me up.  He’s not to be bucked ag’in’
now.  Struck me as powerful queer.  But no wonder.”

“Maybe he knows best.  Did he say anythin’ about what he an’ the rest
of them are goin’ to do?”

“Nope.  Blue taxed him with that an’ got the same as me.  I reckon we’d
better try it out, for a while, anyway.”

“Looks like he wants us to keep out of the fight,” replied Jean,
thoughtfully.  “Maybe, though ... Dad’s no fool.  Colmor, you wait here
till I get out of sight.  I’ll go round an’ come up as close as
advisable behind Greaves’s store.  You take the right side. An’ keep
hid.”

With that Jean strode off, going around the barn, straight out the
orchard lane to the open flat, and then climbing a fence to the north
of the village.  Presently he reached a line of sheds and corrals, to
which he held until he arrived at the road.  This point was about a
quarter of a mile from Greaves’s store, and around the bend.  Jean
sighted no one.  The road, the fields, the yards, the backs of the
cabins all looked deserted.  A blight had settled down upon the
peaceful activities of Grass Valley.  Crossing the road, Jean began to
circle until he came close to several cabins, around which he made a
wide detour.  This took him to the edge of the slope, where brush and
thickets afforded him a safe passage to a line directly back of
Greaves’s store.  Then he turned toward it.  Soon he was again
approaching a cabin of that side, and some of its inmates descried him,
Their actions attested to their alarm.  Jean half expected a shot from
this quarter, such were his growing doubts, but he was mistaken.  A
man, unknown to Jean, closely watched his guarded movements and then
waved a hand, as if to signify to Jean that he had nothing to fear.
After this act he disappeared.  Jean believed that he had been
recognized by some one not antagonistic to the Isbels.  Therefore he
passed the cabin and, coming to a thick scrub-oak tree that offered
shelter, he hid there to watch.  From this spot he could see the back
of Greaves’s store, at a distance probably too far for a rifle bullet
to reach.  Before him, as far as the store, and on each side, extended
the village common. In front of the store ran the road.  Jean’s
position was such that he could not command sight of this road down
toward Meeker’s house, a fact that disturbed him.  Not satisfied with
this stand, he studied his surroundings in the hope of espying a
better.  And he discovered what he thought would be a more favorable
position, although he could not see much farther down the road.  Jean
went back around the cabin and, coming out into the open to the right,
he got the corner of Greaves’s barn between him and the window of the
store.  Then he boldly hurried into the open, and soon reached an old
wagon, from behind which he proposed to watch.  He could not see either
window or door of the store, but if any of the Jorth contingent came
out the back way they would be within reach of his rifle.  Jean took
the risk of being shot at from either side.

So sharp and roving was his sight that he soon espied Colmor slipping
along behind the trees some hundred yards to the left.  All his efforts
to catch a glimpse of Bill, however, were fruitless.  And this appeared
strange to Jean, for there were several good places on the right from
which Bill could have commanded the front of Greaves’s store and the
whole west side.

Colmor disappeared among some shrubbery, and Jean seemed left alone to
watch a deserted, silent village.  Watching and listening, he felt that
the time dragged.  Yet the shadows cast by the sun showed him that, no
matter how tense he felt and how the moments seemed hours, they were
really flying.

Suddenly Jean’s ears rang with the vibrant shock of a rifle report. He
jerked up, strung and thrilling.  It came from in front of the store.
It was followed by revolver shots, heavy, booming.  Three he counted,
and the rest were too close together to enumerate.  A single hoarse
yell pealed out, somehow trenchant and triumphant.  Other yells, not so
wild and strange, muffled the first one.  Then silence clapped down on
the store and the open square.

Jean was deadly certain that some of the Jorth clan would show
themselves.  He strained to still the trembling those sudden shots and
that significant yell had caused him.  No man appeared.  No more sounds
caught Jean’s ears.  The suspense, then, grew unbearable. It was not
that he could not wait for an enemy to appear, but that he could not
wait to learn what had happened.  Every moment that he stayed there,
with hands like steel on his rifle, with eyes of a falcon, but added to
a dreadful, dark certainty of disaster.  A rifle shot swiftly followed
by revolver shots!  What could, they mean?  Revolver shots of different
caliber, surely fired by different men!  What could they mean? It was
not these shots that accounted for Jean’s dread, but the yell which had
followed.  All his intelligence and all his nerve were not sufficient
to fight down the feeling of calamity.  And at last, yielding to it, he
left his post, and ran like a deer across the open, through the cabin
yard, and around the edge of the slope to the road.  Here his caution
brought him to a halt.  Not a living thing crossed his vision. Breaking
into a run, he soon reached the back of Meeker’s place and entered, to
hurry forward to the cabin.

Colmor was there in the yard, breathing hard, his face working, and in
front of him crouched several of the men with rifles ready.  The road,
to Jean’s flashing glance, was apparently deserted.  Blue sat on the
doorstep, lighting a cigarette.  Then on the moment Blaisdell strode to
the door of the cabin.  Jean had never seen him look like that.

“Jean—look—down the road,” he said, brokenly, and with big hand
shaking he pointed down toward Greaves’s store.

Like lightning Jean’s glance shot down—down—down—until it stopped to
fix upon the prostrate form of a man, lying in the middle of the road.
A man of lengthy build, shirt-sleeved arms flung wide, white head in
the dust—dead!  Jean’s recognition was as swift as his sight.  His
father! They had killed him!  The Jorths!  It was done.  His father’s
premonition of death had not been false.  And then, after these
flashing thoughts, came a sense of blankness, momentarily almost
oblivion, that gave place to a rending of the heart.  That pain Jean
had known only at the death of his mother.  It passed, this agonizing
pang, and its icy pressure yielded to a rushing gust of blood, fiery as
hell.

“Who—did it?” whispered Jean.

“Jorth!” replied Blaisdell, huskily.  “Son, we couldn’t hold your dad
back.... We couldn’t.  He was like a lion.... An’ he throwed his life
away! Oh, if it hadn’t been for that it ’d not be so awful.  Shore, we
come heah to shoot an’ be shot.  But not like that.... By God, it was
murder—murder!”

Jean’s mute lips framed a query easily read.

“Tell him, Blue.  I cain’t,”  continued Blaisdell, and he tramped back
into the cabin.

“Set down, Jean, an’ take things easy,” said Blue, calmly.  “You know
we all reckoned we’d git plugged one way or another in this deal. An’
shore it doesn’t matter much how a fellar gits it.  All thet ought to
bother us is to make shore the other outfit bites the dust—same as
your dad had to.”

Under this man’s tranquil presence, all the more quieting because it
seemed to be so deadly sure and cool, Jean felt the uplift of his dark
spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties
that must wait.  The little gunman seemed to have about his inert
presence something that suggested a rattlesnake’s inherent knowledge of
its destructiveness.  Jean sat down and wiped his clammy face.

“Jean, your dad reckoned to square accounts with Jorth, an’ save us
all,” began Blue, puffing out a cloud of smoke.  “But he reckoned too
late. Mebbe years; ago—or even not long ago—if he’d called Jorth out
man to man there’d never been any Jorth-Isbel war.  Gaston Isbel’s
conscience woke too late.  That’s how I figger it.”

“Hurry!  Tell me—how it—happen,” panted Jean.

“Wal, a little while after y’u left I seen your dad writin’ on a leaf
he tore out of a book—Meeker’s Bible, as yu can see.  I thought thet
was funny.  An’ Blaisdell gave me a hunch.  Pretty soon along comes
young Evarts.  The old man calls him out of our hearin’ an’ talks to
him. Then I seen him give the boy somethin’, which I afterward figgered
was what he wrote on the leaf out of the Bible.  Me an’ Blaisdell both
tried to git out of him what thet meant.  But not a word.  I kept
watchin’ an’ after a while I seen young Evarts slip out the back way.
Mebbe half an hour I seen a bare-legged kid cross, the road an’ go into
Greaves’s store.... Then shore I tumbled to your dad.  He’d sent a note
to Jorth to come out an’ meet him face to face, man to man!... Shore
it was like readin’ what your dad had wrote.  But I didn’t say nothin’
to Blaisdell.  I jest watched.”

Blue drawled these last words, as if he enjoyed remembrance of his keen
reasoning.  A smile wreathed his thin lips.  He drew twice on the
cigarette and emitted another cloud of smoke.   Quite suddenly then he
changed.  He made a rapid gesture—the whip of a hand, significant and
passionate.  And swift words followed:

“Colonel Lee Jorth stalked out of the store—out into the road—mebbe a
hundred steps.  Then he halted.  He wore his long black coat an’ his
wide black hat, an’ he stood like a stone.

“‘What the hell!’ burst out Blaisdell, comin’ out of his trance.

“The rest of us jest looked.  I’d forgot your dad, for the minnit. So
had all of us.  But we remembered soon enough when we seen him stalk
out.  Everybody had a hunch then.  I called him.  Blaisdell begged him
to come back.  All the fellars; had a say.  No use! Then I shore cussed
him an’ told him it was plain as day thet Jorth didn’t hit me like an
honest man.  I can sense such things.  I knew Jorth had trick up his
sleeve.  I’ve not been a gun fighter fer nothin’.

“Your dad had no rifle.  He packed his gun at his hip.  He jest stalked
down thet road like a giant, goin’ faster an’ faster, holdin’ his head
high.  It shore was fine to see him.  But I was sick.  I heerd
Blaisdell groan, an’ Fredericks thar cussed somethin’ fierce.... When
your dad halted—I reckon aboot fifty steps from Jorth—then we all
went numb. I heerd your dad’s voice—then Jorth’s.  They cut like
knives. Y’u could shore heah the hate they hed fer each other.”

Blue had become a little husky.  His speech had grown gradually to
denote his feeling.  Underneath his serenity there was a different
order of man.

“I reckon both your dad an’ Jorth went fer their guns at the same
time—an even break.  But jest as they drew, some one shot a rifle from
the store.  Must hev been a forty-five seventy.  A big gun!  The bullet
must have hit your dad low down, aboot the middle.  He acted thet way,
sinkin’ to his knees.  An’ he was wild in shootin’—so wild thet he
must hev missed.  Then he wabbled—an’ Jorth run in a dozen steps,
shootin’ fast, till your dad fell over.... Jorth run closer, bent over
him, an’ then straightened up with an Apache yell, if I ever heerd
one.... An’ then Jorth backed slow—lookin’ all the time—backed to the
store, an’ went in.”

Blue’s voice ceased.  Jean seemed suddenly released from an impelling
magnet that now dropped him to some numb, dizzy depth.  Blue’s lean
face grew hazy.  Then Jean bowed his head in his hands, and sat there,
while a slight tremor shook all his muscles at once.  He grew deathly
cold and deathly sick.  This paroxysm slowly wore away, and Jean grew
conscious of a dull amaze at the apparent deadness of his spirit.
Blaisdell placed a huge, kindly hand on his shoulder.

“Brace up, son!” he said, with voice now clear and resonant.  “Shore
it’s what your dad expected—an’ what we all must look for.... If yu
was goin’ to kill Jorth before—think how — — shore y’u’re goin’ to
kill him now.”

“Blaisdell’s talkin’,” put in Blue, and his voice had a cold ring. “Lee
Jorth will never see the sun rise ag’in!”

These calls to the primitive in Jean, to the Indian, were not in vain.
But even so, when the dark tide rose in him, there was still a haunting
consciousness of the cruelty of this singular doom imposed upon him.
Strangely Ellen Jorth’s face floated back in the depths of his vision,
pale, fading, like the face of a spirit floating by.

“Blue,” said Blaisdell, “let’s get Isbel’s body soon as we dare, an’
bury it.  Reckon we can, right after dark.”

“Shore,” replied Blue.  “But y’u fellars figger thet out.  I’m thinkin’
hard.  I’ve got somethin’ on my mind.”

Jean grew fascinated by the looks and speech and action of the little
gunman.  Blue, indeed, had something on his mind.  And it boded ill to
the men in that dark square stone house down the road.  He paced to and
fro in the yard, back and forth on the path to the gate, and then he
entered the cabin to stalk up and down, faster and faster, until all at
once he halted as if struck, to upfling his right arm in a singular
fierce gesture.

“Jean, call the men in,” he said, tersely.

They all filed in, sinister and silent, with eager faces turned to the
little Texan.  His dominance showed markedly.

“Gordon, y’u stand in the door an’ keep your eye peeled,” went on Blue.
“... Now, boys, listen!  I’ve thought it all out.  This game of man
huntin’ is the same to me as cattle raisin’ is to y’u.  An’ my life in
Texas all comes back to me, I reckon, in good stead fer us now.  I’m
goin’ to kill Lee Jorth!  Him first, an’ mebbe his brothers.  I had to
think of a good many ways before I hit on one I reckon will be shore.
It’s got to be SHORE.  Jorth has got to die!  Wal, heah’s my plan....
Thet Jorth outfit is drinkin’ some, we can gamble on it.  They’re not
goin’ to leave thet store.  An’ of course they’ll be expectin’ us to
start a fight.  I reckon they’ll look fer some such siege as they held
round Isbel’s ranch.  But we shore ain’t goin’ to do thet.  I’m goin’
to surprise thet outfit.  There’s only one man among them who is
dangerous, an’ thet’s Queen.  I know Queen.  But he doesn’t know me.
An’ I’m goin’ to finish my job before he gets acquainted with me. After
thet, all right!”

Blue paused a moment, his eyes narrowing down, his whole face setting
in hard cast of intense preoccupation, as if he visualized a scene of
extraordinary nature.

“Wal, what’s your trick?” demanded Blaisdell.

“Y’u all know Greaves’s store,” continued Blue.  “How them winders have
wooden shutters thet keep a light from showin’ outside?  Wal, I’m
gamblin’ thet as soon as it’s dark Jorth’s gang will be celebratin’.
They’ll be drinkin’ an’ they’ll have a light, an’ the winders will be
shut.  They’re not goin’ to worry none aboot us.  Thet store is like a
fort.  It won’t burn.  An’ shore they’d never think of us chargin’ them
in there.  Wal, as soon as it’s dark, we’ll go round behind the lots
an’ come up jest acrost the road from Greaves’s.  I reckon we’d better
leave Isbel where he lays till this fight’s over.  Mebbe y’u ’ll have
more ’n him to bury. We’ll crawl behind them bushes in front of
Coleman’s yard.  An’ heah’s where Jean comes in.  He’ll take an ax, an’
his guns, of course, an’ do some of his Injun sneakin’ round to the
back of Greaves’s store.... An’, Jean, y’u must do a slick job of this.
But I reckon it ’ll be easy fer you.  Back there it ’ll be dark as
pitch, fer anyone lookin’ out of the store.  An’ I’m figgerin’ y’u can
take your time an’ crawl right up. Now if y’u don’t remember how
Greaves’s back yard looks I’ll tell y’u.”

Here Blue dropped on one knee to the floor and with a finger he traced
a map of Greaves’s barn and fence, the back door and window, and
especially a break in the stone foundation which led into a kind of
cellar where Greaves stored wood and other things that could be left
outdoors.

“Jean, I take particular pains to show y’u where this hole is,” said
Blue, “because if the gang runs out y’u could duck in there an’ hide.
An’ if they run out into the yard—wal, y’u’d make it a sorry run fer
them.... Wal, when y’u’ve crawled up close to Greaves’s back door, an’
waited long enough to see an’ listen—then you’re to run fast an’ swing
your ax smash ag’in’ the winder.  Take a quick peep in if y’u want to.
It might help.  Then jump quick an’ take a swing at the door. Y’u ’ll
be standin’ to one side, so if the gang shoots through the door they
won’t hit y’u.  Bang thet door good an’ hard.... Wal, now’s where I
come in.  When y’u swing thet ax I’ll shore run fer the front of the
store.  Jorth an’ his outfit will be some attentive to thet poundin’ of
yours on the back door.  So I reckon.  An’ they’ll be lookin’ thet way.
I’ll run in—yell—an’ throw my guns on Jorth.”

“Humph!  Is that all?” ejaculated Blaisdell.

“I reckon thet’s all an’ I’m figgerin’ it’s a hell of a lot,” responded
Blue, dryly.  “Thet’s what Jorth will think.”

“Where do we come in?”

“Wal, y’u all can back me up,” replied Blue, dubiously.  “Y’u see, my
plan goes as far as killin’ Jorth—an’ mebbe his brothers.  Mebbe I’ll
get a crack at Queen.  But I’ll be shore of Jorth.  After thet all
depends.  Mebbe it ’ll be easy fer me to get out.  An’ if I do y’u
fellars will know it an’ can fill thet storeroom full of bullets.”

“Wal, Blue, with all due respect to y’u, I shore don’t like your plan,”
declared Blaisdell.  “Success depends upon too many little things any
one of which might go wrong.”

“Blaisdell, I reckon I know this heah game better than y’u,” replied
Blue.  “A gun fighter goes by instinct.  This trick will work.”

“But suppose that front door of Greaves’s store is barred,” protested
Blaisdell.

“It hasn’t got any bar,” said Blue.

“Y’u’re shore?”

“Yes, I reckon,” replied Blue.

“Hell, man! Aren’t y’u takin’ a terrible chance?” queried Blaisdell.

Blue’s answer to that was a look that brought the blood to Blaisdell’s
face.  Only then did the rancher really comprehend how the little
gunman had taken such desperate chances before, and meant to take them
now, not with any hope or assurance of escaping with his life, but to
live up to his peculiar code of honor.

“Blaisdell, did y’u ever heah of me in Texas?” he queried, dryly.

“Wal, no, Blue, I cain’t swear I did,” replied the rancher,
apologetically.  “An’ Isbel was always sort of’ mysterious aboot his
acquaintance with you.”

“My name’s not Blue.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, what is it, then—if I’m safe to ask?” returned Blaisdell,
gruffly.

“It’s King Fisher,” replied Blue.

The shock that stiffened Blaisdell must have been communicated to the
others.  Jean certainly felt amaze, and some other emotion not fully
realized, when he found himself face to face with one of the most
notorious characters ever known in Texas—an outlaw long supposed to be
dead.

“Men, I reckon I’d kept my secret if I’d any idee of comin’ out of this
Isbel-Jorth war alive,” said Blue.  “But I’m goin’ to cash.  I feel it
heah.... Isbel was my friend.  He saved me from bein’ lynched in Texas.
An’ so I’m goin’ to kill Jorth.  Now I’ll take it kind of y’u—if any
of y’u come out of this alive—to tell who I was an’ why I was on the
Isbel side.  Because this sheep an’ cattle war—this talk of Jorth an’
the Hash Knife Gang—it makes me, sick.  I KNOW there’s been crooked
work on Isbel’s side, too.  An’ I never want it on record thet I killed
Jorth because he was a rustler.”

“By God, Blue! it’s late in the day for such talk,” burst out
Blaisdell, in rage and amaze.  “But I reckon y’u know what y’u’re
talkin’ aboot.... Wal, I shore don’t want to heah it.”

At this juncture Bill Isbel quietly entered the cabin, too late to hear
any of Blue’s statement.  Jean was positive of that, for as Blue was
speaking those last revealing words Bill’s heavy boots had resounded on
the gravel path outside.  Yet something in Bill’s look or in the way
Blue averted his lean face or in the entrance of Bill at that
particular moment, or all these together, seemed to Jean to add further
mystery to the long secret causes leading up to the Jorth-Isbel war.
Did Bill know what Blue knew?  Jean had an inkling that he did.  And on
the moment, so perplexing and bitter, Jean gazed out the door, down the
deserted road to where his dead father lay, white-haired and ghastly in
the sunlight.

“Blue, you could have kept that to yourself, as well as your real
name,” interposed Jean, with bitterness.  “It’s too late now for either
to do any good.... But I appreciate your friendship for dad, an’ I’m
ready to help carry out your plan.”

That decision of Jean’s appeared to put an end to protest or argument
from Blaisdell or any of the others.  Blue’s fleeting dark smile was
one of satisfaction.  Then upon most of this group of men seemed to
settle a grim restraint.  They went out and walked and watched; they
came in again, restless and somber.  Jean thought that he must have
bent his gaze a thousand times down the road to the tragic figure of
his father.  That sight roused all emotions in his breast, and the one
that stirred there most was pity.  The pity of it!  Gaston Isbel lying
face down in the dust of the village street!  Patches of blood showed
on the back of his vest and one white-sleeved shoulder.  He had been
shot through.  Every time Jean saw this blood he had to stifle a
gathering of wild, savage impulses.

Meanwhile the afternoon hours dragged by and the village remained as if
its inhabitants had abandoned it.  Not even a dog showed on the side
road.  Jorth and some of his men came out in front of the store and sat
on the steps, in close convening groups.  Every move they, made seemed
significant of their confidence and importance.  About sunset they went
back into the store, closing  door and window shutters.  Then Blaisdell
called the Isbel faction to have food and drink.  Jean felt no hunger.
And Blue, who had kept apart from the others, showed no desire to eat.
Neither did he smoke, though early in the day he had never been without
a cigarette between his lips.

Twilight fell and darkness came.  Not a light showed anywhere in the
blackness.

“Wal, I reckon it’s aboot time,” said Blue, and he led the way out of
the cabin to the back of the lot.  Jean strode behind him, carrying his
rifle and an ax.  Silently the other men followed.  Blue turned to the
left and led through the field until he came within sight of a dark
line of trees.

“Thet’s where the road turns off,” he said to Jean.  “An’ heah’s the
back of Coleman’s place.... Wal, Jean, good luck!”

Jean felt the grip of a steel-like hand, and in the darkness he caught
the gleam of Blue’s eyes.  Jean had no response in words for the
laconic Blue, but he wrung the hard, thin hand and hurried away in the
darkness.

Once alone, his part of the business at hand rushed him into eager
thrilling action.  This was the sort of work he was fitted to do. In
this instance it was important, but it seemed to him that Blue had
coolly taken the perilous part.  And this cowboy with gray in his thin
hair was in reality the great King Fisher!  Jean marveled at the fact.
And he shivered all over for Jorth.  In ten minutes—fifteen, more or
less, Jorth would lie gasping bloody froth and sinking down. Something
in the dark, lonely, silent, oppressive summer night told Jean this.
He strode on swiftly.  Crossing the road at a run, he kept on over the
ground he had traversed during the afternoon, and in a few moments he
stood breathing hard at the edge of the common behind Greaves’s store.

A pin point of light penetrated the blackness.  It made Jean’s heart
leap.  The Jorth contingent were burning the big lamp that hung in the
center of Greaves’s store.  Jean listened.  Loud voices and coarse
laughter sounded discord on the melancholy silence of the night.  What
Blue had called his instinct had surely guided him aright.  Death of
Gaston Isbel was being celebrated by revel.

In a few moments Jean had regained his breath.  Then all his faculties
set intensely to the action at hand.  He seemed to magnify his hearing
and his sight.  His movements made no sound.  He gained the wagon,
where he crouched a moment.

The ground seemed a pale, obscure medium, hardly more real than the
gloom above it.  Through this gloom of night, which looked thick like a
cloud, but was really clear, shone the thin, bright point of light,
accentuating the black square that was Greaves’s store.  Above this
stood a gray line of tree foliage, and then the intensely dark-blue sky
studded with white, cold stars.

A hound bayed lonesomely somewhere in the distance.  Voices of men
sounded more distinctly, some deep and low, others loud, unguarded,
with the vacant note of thoughtlessness.

Jean gathered all his forces, until sense of sight and hearing were in
exquisite accord with the suppleness and lightness of his movements. He
glided on about ten short, swift steps before he halted.  That was as
far as his piercing eyes could penetrate.  If there had been a guard
stationed outside the store Jean would have seen him before being seen.
He saw the fence, reached it, entered the yard, glided in the dense
shadow of the barn until the black square began to loom gray—the color
of stone at night.  Jean peered through the obscurity.  No dark figure
of a man showed against that gray wall—only a black patch, which must
be the hole in the foundation mentioned.  A ray of light now streaked
out from the little black window.  To the right showed the wide, black
door.

Farther on Jean glided silently.  Then he halted.  There was no guard
outside.  Jean heard the clink of a cap, the lazy drawl of a Texan, and
then a strong, harsh voice—Jorth’s.  It strung Jean’s whole being
tight and vibrating.  Inside he was on fire while cold thrills rippled
over his skin.  It took tremendous effort of will to hold himself back
another instant to listen, to look, to feel, to make sure.  And that
instant charged him with a mighty current of hot blood, straining,
throbbing, damming.

When Jean leaped this current burst.  In a few swift bounds he gained
his point halfway between door and window.  He leaned his rifle against
the stone wall.  Then he swung the ax.  Crash!  The window shutter
split and rattled to the floor inside.  The silence then broke with a
hoarse, “What’s thet?”

With all his might Jean swung the heavy ax on the door.  Smash!  The
lower half caved in and banged to the floor.  Bright light flared out
the hole.

“Look out!” yelled a man, in loud alarm.  “They’re batterin’ the back
door!”

Jean swung again, high on the splintered door.  Crash!  Pieces flew
inside.

“They’ve got axes,” hoarsely shouted another voice.  “Shove the counter
ag’in’ the door.”

“No!” thundered a voice of authority that denoted terror as well. “Let
them come in.  Pull your guns an’ take to cover!”

“They ain’t comin’ in,” was the hoarse reply.  “They’ll shoot in on us
from the dark.”

“Put out the lamp!” yelled another.

Jean’s third heavy swing caved in part of the upper half of the door.
Shouts and curses intermingled with the sliding of benches across the
floor and the hard shuffle of boots.  This confusion seemed to be split
and silenced by a piercing yell, of different caliber, of terrible
meaning.  It stayed Jean’s swing—caused him to drop the ax and snatch
up his rifle.

“DON’T ANYBODY MOVE!”

Like a steel whip this voice cut the silence.  It belonged to Blue.
Jean swiftly bent to put his eye to a crack in the door.  Most of those
visible seemed to have been frozen into unnatural positions.  Jorth
stood rather in front of his men, hatless and coatless, one arm
outstretched, and his dark profile set toward a little man just inside
the door.  This man was Blue.  Jean needed only one flashing look at
Blue’s face, at his leveled, quivering guns, to understand why he had
chosen this trick.

“Who’re—you?” demanded Jorth, in husky pants.

“Reckon I’m Isbel’s right-hand man,” came the biting reply. “Once
tolerable well known in Texas.... KING FISHER!”

The name must have been a guarantee of death.  Jorth recognized this
outlaw and realized his own fate.  In the lamplight his face turned a
pale greenish white.  His outstretched hand began to quiver down.

Blue’s left gun seemed to leap up and flash red and explode.  Several
heavy reports merged almost as one.  Jorth’s arm jerked limply,
flinging his gun.  And his body sagged in the middle.  His hands
fluttered like crippled wings and found their way to his abdomen.  His
death-pale face never changed its set look nor position toward Blue.
But his gasping utterance was one of horrible mortal fury and terror.
Then he began to sway, still with that strange, rigid set of his face
toward his slayer, until he fell.

His fall broke the spell.  Even Blue, like the gunman he was, had
paused to watch Jorth in his last mortal action.  Jorth’s followers
began to draw and shoot.  Jean saw Blue’s return fire bring down a huge
man, who fell across Jorth’s body.  Then Jean, quick as the thought
that actuated him, raised his rifle and shot at the big lamp.  It burst
in a flare.  It crashed to the floor.  Darkness followed—a blank,
thick, enveloping mantle.  Then red flashes of guns emphasized the
blackness. Inside the store there broke loose a pandemonium of shots,
yells, curses, and thudding boots.  Jean shoved his rifle barrel inside
the door and, holding it low down, he moved it to and fro while he
worked lever and trigger until the magazine was empty.  Then, drawing
his six-shooter, he emptied that.  A roar of rifles from the front of
the store told Jean that his comrades had entered the fray.  Bullets
zipped through the door he had broken.  Jean ran swiftly round the
corner, taking care to sheer off a little to the left, and when he got
clear of the building he saw a line of flashes in the middle of the
road.  Blaisdell and the others were firing into the door of the store.
With nimble fingers Jean reloaded his rifle.  Then swiftly he ran
across the road and down to get behind his comrades.  Their shooting
had slackened.  Jean saw dark forms coming his way.

“Hello, Blaisdell!” he called, warningly.

“That y’u, Jean?” returned the rancher, looming up.  “Wal, we wasn’t
worried aboot y’u.”

“Blue?” queried Jean, sharply.

A little, dark figure shuffled past Jean.  “Howdy, Jean!” said Blue,
dryly.  “Y’u shore did your part.  Reckon I’ll need to be tied up, but
I ain’t hurt much.”

“Colmor’s hit,” called the voice of Gordon, a few yards distant. “Help
me, somebody!”

Jean ran to help Gordon uphold the swaying Colmor.  “Are you hurt—bad?”
asked Jean, anxiously.  The young man’s head rolled and hung.  He was
breathing hard and did not reply.  They had almost to carry him.

“Come on, men!” called Blaisdell, turning back toward the others who
were still firing.  “We’ll let well enough alone.... Fredericks, y’u
an’ Bill help me find the body of the old man.  It’s heah somewhere.”

Farther on down the road the searchers stumbled over Gaston Isbel. They
picked him up and followed Jean and Gordon, who were supporting the
wounded Colmor.  Jean looked back to see Blue dragging himself along in
the rear.  It was too dark to see distinctly; nevertheless, Jean got
the impression that Blue was more severely wounded than he had claimed
to be.  The distance to Meeker’s cabin was not far, but it took what
Jean felt to be a long and anxious time to get there. Colmor apparently
rallied somewhat.  When this procession entered Meeker’s yard, Blue was
lagging behind.

“Blue, how air y’u?” called Blaisdell, with concern.

“Wal, I got—my boots—on—anyhow,” replied Blue, huskily.

He lurched into the yard and slid down on the grass and stretched out.

“Man!  Y’u’re hurt bad!” exclaimed Blaisdell.  The others halted in
their slow march and, as if by tacit, unspoken word, lowered the body
of Isbel to the ground.  Then Blaisdell knelt beside Blue.  Jean left
Colmor to Gordon and hurried to peer down into Blue’s dim face.

“No, I ain’t—hurt,” said Blue, in a much weaker voice.  “I’m—jest
killed!... It was Queen!... Y’u all heerd me—Queen was—only bad man
in that lot.  I knowed it.... I could—hev killed him.... But I
was—after Lee Jorth an’ his brothers....”

Blue’s voice failed there.

“Wal!” ejaculated Blaisdell.

“Shore was funny—Jorth’s face—when I said—King Fisher,” whispered
Blue.  “Funnier—when I bored—him through.... But it—was—Queen—”

His whisper died away.

“Blue!” called Blaisdell, sharply.  Receiving no answer, he bent lower
in the starlight and placed a hand upon the man’s breast.

“Wal, he’s gone.... I wonder if he really was the old Texas King
Fisher.  No one would ever believe it.... But if he killed the Jorths,
I’ll shore believe him.”



CHAPTER X


Two weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked incalculable
change in Ellen Jorth.

Late in June her father and her two uncles had packed and ridden off
with Daggs, Colter, and six other men, all heavily armed, some somber
with drink, others hard and grim with a foretaste of fight.  Ellen had
not been given any orders.  Her father had forgotten to bid her good-by
or had avoided it.  Their dark mission was stamped on their faces.

They had gone and, keen as had been Ellen’s pang, nevertheless, their
departure was a relief.  She had heard them bluster and brag so often
that she had her doubts of any great Jorth-Isbel war.  Barking dogs did
not bite.  Somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly wounded,
possibly killed, and then the feud would go on as before, mostly talk.
Many of her former impressions had faded.  Development had been so
rapid and continuous in her that she could look back to a day-by-day
transformation.  At night she had hated the sight of herself and when
the dawn came she would rise, singing.

Jorth had left Ellen at home with the Mexican woman and Antonio. Ellen
saw them only at meal times, and often not then, for she frequently
visited old John Sprague or came home late to do her own cooking.

It was but a short distance up to Sprague’s cabin, and since she had
stopped riding the black horse, Spades, she walked.  Spades was
accustomed to having grain, and in the mornings he would come down to
the ranch and whistle.  Ellen had vowed she would never feed the horse
and bade Antonio do it.  But one morning Antonio was absent. She fed
Spades herself.  When she laid a hand on him and when he rubbed his
nose against her shoulder she was not quite so sure she hated him. “Why
should I?” she queried.  “A horse cain’t help it if he belongs
to—to—”  Ellen was not sure of anything except that more and more it
grew good to be alone.

A whole day in the lonely forest passed swiftly, yet it left a feeling
of long time.  She lived by her thoughts.  Always the morning was
bright, sunny, sweet and fragrant and colorful, and her mood was
pensive, wistful, dreamy.  And always, just as surely as the hours
passed, thought intruded upon her happiness, and thought brought
memory, and memory brought shame, and shame brought fight.  Sunset
after sunset she had dragged herself back to the ranch, sullen and sick
and beaten.  Yet she never ceased to struggle.

The July storms came, and the forest floor that had been so sear and
brown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic.  The green grass shot
up, the flowers bloomed, and along the canyon beds of lacy ferns swayed
in the wind and bent their graceful tips over the amber-colored water.
Ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravines
where the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink.  She wandered
alone.  But there grew to be company in the aspens and the music of the
little waterfalls.  If she could have lived in that solitude always,
never returning to the ranch home that reminded her of her name, she
could have forgotten and have been happy.

She loved the storms.  It was a dry country and she had learned through
years to welcome the creamy clouds that rolled from the southwest.
They came sailing and clustering and darkening at last to form a great,
purple, angry mass that appeared to lodge against the mountain rim and
burst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray palls of rain.
Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Rim there was
never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines.
During the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did not
camp under the pines. Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but
for Ellen the dazzling white streaks or the tremendous splitting,
crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along the
battlements of the Rim had no terrors.  A storm eased her breast.  Deep
in her heart was a hidden gathering storm.  And somehow, to be out when
the elements were warring, when the earth trembled and the heavens
seemed to burst asunder, afforded her strange relief.

The summer days became weeks, and farther and farther they carried
Ellen on the wings of solitude and loneliness until she seemed to look
back years at the self she had hated.  And always, when the dark memory
impinged upon peace, she fought and fought until she seemed to be
fighting hatred itself.  Scorn of scorn and hate of hate!  Yet even her
battles grew to be dreams.  For when the inevitable retrospect brought
back Jean Isbel and his love and her cowardly falsehood she would
shudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterly
fail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. The
clean and healing forest, with its whispering wind and imperious
solitude, had come between Ellen and the meaning of the squalid sheep
ranch, with its travesty of home, its tragic owner.  And it was coming
between her two selves, the one that she had been forced to be and the
other that she did not know—the thinker, the dreamer, the romancer,
the one who lived in fancy the life she loved.

The summer morning dawned that brought Ellen strange tidings.  They
must have been created in her sleep, and now were realized in the
glorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across the
blue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screech
of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag.  These heralded the day
as no ordinary day.  Something was going to happen to her. She divined
it.  She felt it.  And she trembled.  Nothing beautiful, hopeful,
wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth.  She had been born to
disaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone.  Yet all nature
about her seemed a magnificent rebuke to her morbidness.  The same
spirit that came out there with the thick, amber light was in her.  She
lived, and something in her was stronger than mind.

Ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms,
driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning.  And a
well-known voice broke in upon her rapture.

“Wal, lass, I like to see you happy an’ I hate myself fer comin’.
Because I’ve been to Grass Valley fer two days an’ I’ve got news.”

Old John Sprague stood there, with a smile that did not hide a troubled
look.

“Oh!  Uncle John!  You startled me,” exclaimed Ellen, shocked back to
reality.  And slowly she added: “Grass Valley!  News?”

She put out an appealing hand, which Sprague quickly took in his own,
as if to reassure her.

“Yes, an’ not bad so far as you Jorths are concerned,” he replied. “The
first Jorth-Isbel fight has come off.... Reckon you remember makin’ me
promise to tell you if I heerd anythin’.  Wal, I didn’t wait fer you to
come up.”

“So Ellen heard her voice calmly saying.  What was this lying calm when
there seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart?  The first fight—not
so bad for the Jorths!  Then it had been bad for the Isbels. A sudden,
cold stillness fell upon her senses.

“Let’s sit down—outdoors,” Sprague was saying.  “Nice an’ sunny
this—mornin’.  I declare—I’m out of breath.  Not used to walkin’.
An’ besides, I left Grass Valley, in the night—an’ I’m tired.  But
excoose me from hangin’ round thet village last night!  There was
shore—”

“Who—who was killed?” interrupted Ellen, her voice breaking low and
deep.

“Guy Isbel an’ Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, an’ Daggs, Craig, an’
Greaves on your father’s side,” stated Sprague, with something of awed
haste.

“Ah!” breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabin
wall.

Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, and
he seemed burdened with grave and important matters.

“I heerd a good many conflictin’ stories,” he said, earnestly.  “The
village folks is all skeered an’ there’s no believin’ their gossip. But
I got what happened straight from Jake Evarts.  The fight come off day
before yestiddy.  Your father’s gang rode down to Isbel’s ranch. Daggs
was seen to be wantin’ some of the Isbel hosses, so Evarts says. An’
Guy Isbel an’ Jacobs ran out in the pasture.  Daggs an’ some others
shot them down.”

“Killed them—that way?” put in Ellen, sharply.

“So Evarts says.  He was on the ridge an’ swears he seen it all.  They
killed Guy an’ Jacobs in cold blood.  No chance fer their lives—not
even to fight!... Wall, hen they surrounded the Isbel cabin.  The
fight last all thet day an’ all night an’ the next day.  Evarts says
Guy an’ Jacobs laid out thar all this time.  An’ a herd of hogs broke
in the pasture an’ was eatin’ the dead bodies ...”

“My God!” burst out Ellen.  “Uncle John, y’u shore cain’t mean my
father wouldn’t stop fightin’ long enough to drive the hogs off an’
bury those daid men?”

“Evarts says they stopped fightin’, all right, but it was to watch the
hogs,” declared Sprague.  “An’ then, what d’ ye think?  The wimminfolks
come out—the  red-headed one, Guy’s wife, an’ Jacobs’s wife—they
drove the hogs away an’ buried their husbands right there in the
pasture.  Evarts says he seen the graves.”

“It is the women who can teach these bloody Texans a lesson,” declared
Ellen, forcibly.

“Wal, Daggs was drunk, an’ he got up from behind where the gang was
hidin’, an’ dared the Isbels to come out.  They shot him to pieces. An’
thet night some one of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on
guard.... An’ last—this here’s what I come to tell you—Jean Isbel
slipped up in the dark on Greaves an’ knifed him.”

“Why did y’u want to tell me that particularly?” asked Ellen, slowly.

“Because I reckon the facts in the case are queer—an’ because, Ellen,
your name was mentioned,” announced Sprague, positively.

“My name—mentioned?” echoed Ellen.  Her horror and disgust gave way to
a quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment.  “By whom?”

“Jean Isbel,” replied Sprague, as if the name and the fact were
momentous.

Ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees.  Slowly she
felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below her
neck.  That name locked her thought.

“Ellen, it’s a mighty queer story—too queer to be a lie,” went on
Sprague.  “Now you listen!  Evarts got this from Ted Meeker.  An’ Ted
Meeker heerd it from Greaves, who didn’t die till the next day after
Jean Isbel knifed him.  An’ your dad shot Ted fer tellin’ what he
heerd.... No, Greaves wasn’t killed outright.  He was cut somethin’
turrible—in two places.  They wrapped him all up an’ next day packed
him in a wagon back to Grass Valley.  Evarts says Ted Meeker was
friendly with Greaves an’ went to see him as he was layin’ in his room
next to the store.  Wal, accordin’ to Meeker’s story, Greaves came to
an’ talked. He said he was sittin’ there in the dark, shootin’
occasionally at Isbel’s cabin, when he heerd a rustle behind him in the
grass.  He knowed some one was crawlin’ on him.  But before he could
get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear.
But it was a man.  He shut off Greaves’s wind an’ dragged him back in
the ditch. An’ he said: ‘Greaves, it’s the half-breed.  An’ he’s goin’
to cut you—FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH! an’ then for Gaston Isbel!’...
Greaves said Jean ripped him with a bowie knife.... An’ thet was all
Greaves remembered.  He died soon after tellin’ this story.  He must
hev fought awful hard.  Thet second cut Isbel gave him went clear
through him.... Some of the gang was thar when Greaves talked, an’
naturally they wondered why Jean Isbel had said ‘first for Ellen
Jorth.’... Somebody remembered thet Greaves had cast a slur on your
good name, Ellen.  An’ then they had Jean Isbel’s reason fer sayin’
thet to Greaves.  It caused a lot of talk.  An’ when Simm Bruce busted
in some of the gang haw-hawed him an’ said as how he’d get the third
cut from Jean Isbel’s bowie. Bruce was half drunk an’ he began to cuss
an’ rave about Jean Isbel bein’ in love with his girl.... As bad luck
would have it, a couple of more fellars come in an’ asked Meeker
questions.  He jest got to thet part, ‘Greaves, it’s the half-breed,
an’ he’s goin’ to cut you—FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH,’ when in walked your
father!... Then it all had to come out—what Jean Isbel had said an’
done—an’ why. How Greaves had backed Simm Bruce in slurrin’ you!”

Sprague paused to look hard at Ellen.

“Oh!  Then—what did dad do?” whispered Ellen.

“He said, ‘By God! half-breed or not, there’s one Isbel who’s a man!’
An’ he killed Bruce on the spot an’ gave Meeker a nasty wound. Somebody
grabbed him before he could shoot Meeker again.  They threw Meeker out
an’ he crawled to a neighbor’s house, where he was when Evarts seen
him.”

Ellen felt Sprague’s rough but kindly hand shaking her.  “An’ now what
do you think of Jean Isbel?” he queried.

A great, unsurmountable wall seemed to obstruct Ellen’s thought. It
seemed gray in color.  It moved toward her.  It was inside her brain.

“I tell you, Ellen Jorth,” declared the old man, “thet Jean Isbel loves
you—loves you turribly—an’ he believes you’re good.”

“Oh no—he doesn’t!” faltered Ellen.

“Wal, he jest does.”

“Oh, Uncle John, he cain’t believe that!” she cried.

“Of course he can.  He does.  You are good—good as gold, Ellen, an’ he
knows it.... What a queer deal it all is!  Poor devil!  To love you
thet turribly an’ hev to fight your people!  Ellen, your dad had it
correct.  Isbel or not, he’s a man.... An’ I say what a shame you two
are divided by hate.  Hate thet you hed nothin’ to do with.” Sprague
patted her head and rose to go.  “Mebbe thet fight will end the
trouble.  I reckon it will.  Don’t cross bridges till you come to them,
Ellen.... I must hurry back now.  I didn’t take time to unpack my
burros.  Come up soon.... An’, say, Ellen, don’t think hard any more of
thet Jean Isbel.”

Sprague strode away, and Ellen neither heard nor saw him go.  She sat
perfectly motionless, yet had a strange sensation of being lifted by
invisible and mighty power.  It was like movement felt in a dream. She
was being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. When
her blood beat down this deadlock of an her physical being and rushed
on and on through her veins it gave her an irresistible impulse to fly,
to sail through space, to ran and run and ran.

And on the moment the black horse, Spades, coming from the meadow,
whinnied at sight of her.  Ellen leaped up and ran swiftly, but her
feet seemed to be stumbling.  She hugged the horse and buried her hot
face in his mane and clung to him.  Then just as violently she rushed
for her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as if
it had been an empty sack.  Throwing them upon him, she buckled and
strapped with strong, eager hands.  It never occurred to her that she
was not dressed to ride.  Up she flung herself.  And the horse, sensing
her spirit, plunged into strong, free gait down the canyon trail.

The ride, the action, the thrill, the sensations of violence were not
all she needed.  Solitude, the empty aisles of the forest, the far
miles of lonely wilderness—were these the added all?  Spades took a
swinging, rhythmic lope up the winding trail.  The wind fanned her hot
face.  The sting of whipping aspen branches was pleasant.  A deep
rumble of thunder shook the sultry air.  Up beyond the green slope of
the canyon massed the creamy clouds, shading darker and darker.  Spades
loped on the levels, leaped the washes, trotted over the rocky ground,
and took to a walk up the long slope.  Ellen dropped the reins over the
pommel. Her hands could not stay set on anything.  They pressed her
breast and flew out to caress the white aspens and to tear at the maple
leaves, and gather the lavender juniper berries, and came back again to
her heart. Her heart that was going to burst or break!  As it had
swelled, so now it labored. It could not keep pace with her needs.  All
that was physical, all that was living in her had to be unleashed.

Spades gained the level forest.  How the great, brown-green pines
seemed to bend their lofty branches over her, protectively,
understandingly. Patches of azure-blue sky flashed between the trees.
The great white clouds sailed along with her, and shafts of golden
sunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles, shone down
through the canopy overhead.  Away in front of her, up the slow heave
of forest land, boomed the heavy thunderbolts along the battlements of
the Rim.

Was she riding to escape from herself?  For no gait suited her until
Spades was running hard and fast through the glades.  Then the pressure
of dry wind, the thick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green and
gold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of the
powerful horse under her, the whip of spruce branches on her muscles
contracting and expanding in hard action—all these sensations seemed
to quell for the time the mounting cataclysm in her heart.

The oak swales, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shaded
aisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she had
ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of
the Basin, gloomed by purple and silver cloud, shadowed by gray storm,
and in the west brightened by golden sky.

Straight to the Rim she had ridden, and to the point where she had
watched Jean Isbel that unforgetable day.  She rode to the promontory
behind the pine thicket and beheld a scene which stayed her restless
hands upon her heaving breast.

The world of sky and cloud and earthly abyss seemed one of
storm-sundered grandeur.  The air was sultry and still, and smelled of
the peculiar burnt-wood odor caused by lightning striking trees.  A few
heavy drops of rain were pattering down from the thin, gray edge of
clouds overhead. To the east hung the storm—a black cloud lodged
against the Rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed down
into the gulf.  The roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of the
rapids of a river.  Then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streak
of lightning shot down out of the black cloud.  It struck with a
splitting report that shocked the very wall of rock under Ellen.  Then
the heavens seemed to burst open with thundering crash and close with
mighty thundering boom.  Long roar and longer rumble rolled away to the
eastward.  The rain poured down in roaring cataracts.

The south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range and canyon, canyon
and range, on across the rolling leagues to the dim, lofty peaks, all
canopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide,
smoky, and sulphurous.  And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to her
breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulf
that resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank of
purple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with golden
lightning.

“It is for me!” cried Ellen. “My mind—my heart—my very soul.... Oh, I
know!  I know now!... I love him—love him—love him!”

She cried it out to the elements.  “Oh, I love Jean Isbel—an’ my heart
will burst or break!”

The might of her passion was like the blaze of the sun.  Before it all
else retreated, diminished.  The suddenness of the truth dimmed her
sight. But she saw clearly enough to crawl into the pine thicket,
through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to
the covert where she had once spied upon Jean Isbel.  And here she lay
face down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hard
upon the ground, stricken and spent.  But vitality was exceeding strong
in her. It passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened to
the consciousness of love.

But in the beginning it was not consciousness of the man.  It was new,
sensorial life, elemental, primitive, a liberation of a million
inherited instincts, quivering and physical, over which Ellen had no
more control than she had over the glory of the sun.  If she thought at
all it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near the
earth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature.  She
went to nature, unconsciously seeking a mother.  And love was a birth
from the depths of her, like a rushing spring of pure water, long
underground, and at last propelled to the surface by a convulsion.

Ellen gradually lost her tense rigidity and relaxed.  Her body
softened. She rolled over until her face caught the lacy, golden
shadows cast by sun and bough.  Scattered drops of rain pattered around
her.  The air was hot, and its odor was that of dry pine and spruce
fragrance penetrated by brimstone from the lightning.  The nest where
she lay was warm and sweet.  No eye save that of nature saw her in her
abandonment.  An ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips,
dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness.  Over
her dark and eloquent eyes, as Ellen gazed upward, spread a luminous
film, a veil.  She was looking intensely, yet she did not see.  The
wilderness enveloped her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock,
of tree, of cloud, of sunlight. Through her thrilling skin poured the
multiple and nameless sensations of the living organism stirred to
supreme sensitiveness.  She could not lie still, but all her movements
were gentle, involuntary.  The slow reaching out of her hand, to grasp
at nothing visible, was similar to the lazy stretching of her limbs, to
the heave of her breast, to the ripple of muscle.

Ellen knew not what she felt.  To live that sublime hour was beyond
thought.  Such happiness was like the first dawn of the world to the
sight of man.  It had to do with bygone ages.  Her heart, her blood,
her flesh, her very bones were filled with instincts and emotions
common to the race before intellect developed, when the savage lived
only with his sensorial perceptions.  Of all happiness, joy, bliss,
rapture to which man was heir, that of intense and exquisite
preoccupation of the senses, unhindered and unburdened by thought, was
the greatest.  Ellen felt that which life meant with its inscrutable
design.  Love was only the realization of her mission on the earth.

The dark storm cloud with its white, ragged ropes of lightning and
down-streaming gray veils of rain, the purple gulf rolling like a
colored sea to the dim mountains, the glorious golden light of the
sun—these had enchanted her eyes with her beauty of the universe. They
had burst the windows of her blindness.  When she crawled into the
green-brown covert it was to escape too great perception.  She needed
to be encompassed by close, tangible things.  And there her body paid
the tribute to the realization of life.  Shock, convulsion, pain,
relaxation, and then unutterable and insupportable sensing of her
environment and the heart!  In one way she was a wild animal alone in
the woods, forced into the mating that meant reproduction of its kind.
In another she was an infinitely higher being shot through and through
with the most resistless and mysterious transport that life could give
to flesh.

And when that spell slackened its hold there wedged into her mind a
consciousness of the man she loved—Jean Isbel.  Then emotion and
thought strove for mastery over her.  It was not herself or love that
she loved, but a living man.  Suddenly he existed so clearly for her
that she could see him, hear him, almost feel him.  Her whole soul, her
very life cried out to him for protection, for salvation, for love, for
fulfillment.  No denial, no doubt marred the white blaze of her
realization.  From the instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel’s
dark face she had loved him.  Only she had not known.  She bowed now,
and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her
ken.  Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance—to the three
times she had seen him.  Every look, every word, every act of his
returned to her now in the light of the truth.  Love at first sight! He
had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts.  And now a
blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her.  How weak and frail seemed
her body—too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine
of fire and lightning and fury and glory—her heart!  It must burst or
break.  Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled and
emotion conquered her.  At last she quivered up to her knees as if
lashed to action.  It seemed that first kiss of Isbel’s, cool and
gentle and timid, was on her lips.  And her eyes closed and hot tears
welled from under her lids.  Her groping hands found only the dead
twigs and the pine boughs of the trees.  Had she reached out to clasp
him?  Then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burned
those other kisses of Isbel’s, and with the flashing, stinging memory
came the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them.
Utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love.  Her loss
of mother and friends, her wandering from one wild place to another,
her lonely life among bold and rough men, had developed her for violent
love.  It overthrew all pride, it engendered humility, it killed hate.
Ellen wiped the tears from her eyes, and as she knelt there she swept
to her breast a fragrant spreading bough of pine needles.  “I’ll go to
him,” she whispered.  “I’ll tell him of—of my—my love.  I’ll tell him
to take me away—away to the end of the world—away from heah—before
it’s too late!”

It was a solemn, beautiful moment.  But the last spoken words lingered
hauntingly.  “Too late?” she whispered.

And suddenly it seemed that death itself shuddered in her soul. Too
late!  It was too late.  She had killed his love.  That Jorth blood in
her—that poisonous hate—had chosen the only way to strike this noble
Isbel to the heart.  Basely, with an abandonment of womanhood, she had
mockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie.  She writhed, she shook
under the whip of this inconceivable fact.  Lost!  Lost!  She wailed
her misery.  She might as well be what she had made Jean Isbel think
she was.  If she had been shamed before, she was now abased, degraded,
lost in her own sight.  And if she would have given her soul for his
kisses, she now would have killed herself to earn back his respect.
Jean Isbel had given her at sight the deference that she had
unconsciously craved, and the love that would have been her salvation.
What a horrible mistake she had made of her life!  Not her mother’s
blood, but her father’s—the Jorth blood—had been her ruin.

Again Ellen fell upon the soft pine-needle mat, face down, and she
groveled and burrowed there, in an agony that could not bear the sense
of light.  All she had suffered was as nothing to this.  To have
awakened to a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she had
imagined she hated, who had fought for her name and had killed in
revenge for the dishonor she had avowed—to have lost his love and what
was infinitely more precious to her now in her ignominy—his faith in
her purity—this broke her heart.



CHAPTER XI


When Ellen, utterly spent in body and mind, reached home that day a
melancholy, sultry twilight was falling.  Fitful flares of sheet
lightning swept across the dark horizon to the east.  The cabins were
deserted.  Antonio and the Mexican woman were gone.  The circumstances
made Ellen wonder, but she was too tired and too sunken in spirit to
think long about it or to care.  She fed and watered her horse and left
him in the corral.  Then, supperless and without removing her clothes,
she threw herself upon the bed, and at once sank into heavy slumber.

Sometime during the night she awoke.  Coyotes were yelping, and from
that sound she concluded it was near dawn.  Her body ached; her mind
seemed dull.  Drowsily she was sinking into slumber again when she
heard the rapid clip-clop of trotting horses.  Startled, she raised her
head to listen.  The men were coming back.  Relief and dread seemed to
clear her stupor.

The trotting horses stopped across the lane from her cabin, evidently
at the corral where she had left Spades.  She heard him whistle.

From the sound of hoofs she judged the number of horses to be six or
eight.  Low voices of men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps and
flopping of saddles on the ground.  After that the heavy tread of boots
sounded on the porch of the cabin opposite.  A door creaked on its
hinges.  Next a slow footstep, accompanied by clinking of spurs,
approached Ellen’s door, and a heavy hand banged upon it.  She knew
this person could not be her father.

“Hullo, Ellen!”

She recognized the voice as belonging to Colter.  Somehow its tone, or
something about it, sent a little shiver clown her spine.  It acted
like a revivifying current.  Ellen lost her dragging lethargy.

“Hey, Ellen, are y’u there?” added Colter, louder voice.

“Yes.  Of course I’m heah,” she replied.  “What do y’u want?”

“Wal—I’m shore glad y’u’re home,” he replied.  “Antonio’s gone with
his squaw.  An’ I was some worried aboot y’u.”

“Who’s with y’u, Colter?” queried Ellen, sitting up.

“Rock Wells an’ Springer.  Tad Jorth was with us, but we had to leave
him over heah in a cabin.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Wal, he’s hurt tolerable bad,” was the slow reply.

Ellen heard Colter’s spurs jangle, as if he had uneasily shifted his
feet.

“Where’s dad an’ Uncle Jackson?” asked Ellen.

A silence pregnant enough to augment Ellen’s dread finally broke to
Colter’s voice, somehow different.  “Shore they’re back on the trail.
An’ we’re to meet them where we left Tad.”

“Are yu goin’ away again?”

“I reckon.... An’, Ellen, y’u’re goin’ with us.”

“I am not,” she retorted.

“Wal, y’u are, if I have to pack y’u,” he replied, forcibly.  “It’s not
safe heah any more.  That damned half-breed Isbel with his gang are on
our trail.”

That name seemed like a red-hot blade at Ellen’s leaden heart. She
wanted to fling a hundred queries on Colter, but she could not utter
one.

“Ellen, we’ve got to hit the trail an’ hide,” continued Colter,
anxiously.  “Y’u mustn’t stay heah alone.  Suppose them Isbels would
trap y’u!... They’d tear your clothes off an’ rope y’u to a tree.
Ellen, shore y’u’re goin’.... Y’u heah me!”

“Yes—I’ll go,” she replied, as if forced.

“Wal—that’s good,” he said, quickly.  “An’ rustle tolerable lively.
We’ve got to pack.”

The slow jangle of Colter’s spurs and his slow steps moved away out of
Ellen’s hearing.  Throwing off the blankets, she put her feet to the
floor and sat there a moment staring at the blank nothingness of the
cabin interior in the obscure gray of dawn.  Cold, gray, dreary,
obscure—like her life, her future!  And she was compelled to do what
was hateful to her.  As a Jorth she must take to the unfrequented
trails and hide like a rabbit in the thickets.  But the interest of the
moment, a premonition of events to be, quickened her into action.

Ellen unbarred the door to let in the light.  Day was breaking with an
intense, clear, steely light in the east through which the morning star
still shone white.  A ruddy flare betokened the advent of the sun.
Ellen unbraided her tangled hair and brushed and combed it.  A queer,
still pang came to her at sight of pine needles tangled in her brown
locks.  Then she washed her hands and face.  Breakfast was a matter of
considerable work and she was hungry.

The sun rose and changed the gray world of forest.  For the first time
in her life Ellen hated the golden brightness, the wonderful blue of
sky, the scream of the eagle and the screech of the jay; and the
squirrels she had always loved to feed were neglected that morning.

Colter came in.  Either Ellen had never before looked attentively at
him or else he had changed.  Her scrutiny of his lean, hard features
accorded him more Texan attributes than formerly.  His gray eyes were
as light, as clear, as fierce as those of an eagle.  And the sand gray
of his face, the long, drooping, fair mustache hid the secrets of his
mind, but not its strength.  The instant Ellen met his gaze she sensed
a power in him that she instinctively opposed.  Colter had not been so
bold nor so rude as Daggs, but he was the same kind of man, perhaps the
more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool, waiting inscrutableness.

“‘Mawnin’, Ellen!” he drawled.  “Y’u shore look good for sore eyes.”

“Don’t pay me compliments, Colter,” replied Ellen.  “An’ your eyes are
not sore.”

“Wal, I’m shore sore from fightin’ an’ ridin’ an’ layin’ out,” he said,
bluntly.

“Tell me—what’s happened,” returned Ellen.

“Girl, it’s a tolerable long story,” replied Colter.  “An’ we’ve no
time now.  Wait till we get to camp.”

“Am I to pack my belongin’s or leave them heah?” asked Ellen.

“Reckon y’u’d better leave—them heah.”

“But if we did not come back—”

“Wal, I reckon it’s not likely we’ll come—soon,” he said, rather
evasively.

“Colter, I’ll not go off into the woods with just the clothes I have on
my back.”

“Ellen, we shore got to pack all the grab we can.  This shore ain’t
goin’ to be a visit to neighbors.  We’re shy pack hosses.  But y’u make
up a bundle of belongin’s y’u care for, an’ the things y’u’ll need bad.
We’ll throw it on somewhere.”

Colter stalked away across the lane, and Ellen found herself dubiously
staring at his tall figure.  Was it the situation that struck her with
a foreboding perplexity or was her intuition steeling her against this
man?  Ellen could not decide.  But she had to go with him.  Her
prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment.  And she could
not yet feel that she was solely responsible to herself.

When it came to making a small bundle of her belongings she was in a
quandary.  She discarded this and put in that, and then reversed the
order.  Next in preciousness to her mother’s things were the
long-hidden gifts of Jean Isbel.  She could part with neither.

While she was selecting and packing this bundle Colter again entered
and, without speaking, began to rummage in the corner where her father
kept his possessions.  This irritated Ellen.

“What do y’u want there?” she demanded.

“Wal, I reckon your dad wants his papers—an’ the gold he left
heah—an’ a change of clothes.  Now doesn’t he?” returned Colter,
coolly.

“Of course.  But I supposed y’u would have me pack them.”

Colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately went on rummaging,
with little regard for how he scattered things.  Ellen turned her back
on him.  At length, when he left, she went to her father’s corner and
found that, as far as she was able to see, Colter had taken neither
papers nor clothes, but only the gold.  Perhaps, however, she had been
mistaken, for she had not observed Colter’s departure closely enough to
know whether or not he carried a package.  She missed only the gold.
Her father’s papers, old and musty, were scattered about, and these she
gathered up to slip in her own bundle.

Colter, or one of the men, had saddled Spades, and he was now tied to
the corral fence, champing his bit and pounding the sand.  Ellen
wrapped bread and meat inside her coat, and after tying this behind her
saddle she was ready to go.  But evidently she would have to wait, and,
preferring to remain outdoors, she stayed by her horse.  Presently,
while watching the men pack, she noticed that Springer wore a bandage
round his head under the brim of his sombrero.  His motions were slow
and lacked energy.  Shuddering at the sight, Ellen refused to
conjecture. All too soon she would learn what had happened, and all too
soon, perhaps, she herself would be in the midst of another fight.  She
watched the men.  They were making a hurried slipshod job of packing
food supplies from both cabins.  More than once she caught Colter’s
gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it.

“I’ll ride up an’ say good-by to Sprague,” she called to Colter.

“Shore y’u won’t do nothin’ of the kind,” he called back.

There was authority in his tone that angered Ellen, and something else
which inhibited her anger.  What was there about Colter with which she
must reckon?  The other two Texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly
silenced by Colter’s harsh and lowered curses.  Ellen walked out of
hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained until Colter hailed her.

“Get up an’ ride,” he called.

Ellen complied with this order and, riding up behind the three mounted
men, she soon found herself leaving what for years had been her home.
Not once did she look back.  She hoped she would never see the squalid,
bare pretension of a ranch again.

Colter and the other riders drove the pack horses across the meadow,
off of the trails, and up the slope into the forest.  Not very long did
it take Ellen to see that Colter’s object was to hide their tracks. He
zigzagged through the forest, avoiding the bare spots of dust, the dry,
sun-baked flats of clay where water lay in spring, and he chose the
grassy, open glades, the long, pine-needle matted aisles.  Ellen rode
at their heels and it pleased her to watch for their tracks.  Colter
manifestly had been long practiced in this game of hiding his trail,
and he showed the skill of a rustler.  But Ellen was not convinced that
he could ever elude a real woodsman.  Not improbably, however, Colter
was only aiming to leave a trail difficult to follow and which would
allow him and his confederates ample time to forge ahead of pursuers.
Ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit.  Yet Colter must have
expected it, and Springer and Wells also, for they had a dark,
sinister, furtive demeanor that strangely contrasted with the cool,
easy manner habitual to them.

They were not seeking the level routes of the forest land, that was
sure. They rode straight across the thick-timbered ridge down into
another canyon, up out of that, and across rough, rocky bluffs, and
down again. These riders headed a little to the northwest and every
mile brought them into wilder, more rugged country, until Ellen, losing
count of canyons and ridges, had no idea where she was.  No stop was
made at noon to rest the laboring, sweating pack animals.

Under circumstances where pleasure might have been possible Ellen would
have reveled in this hard ride into a wonderful forest ever thickening
and darkening.  But the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and
the deep, bronze-walled canyons left her cold.  She saw and felt, but
had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when Spades slid
to his haunches down some steep, damp, piny declivity.

All the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer greener as they
traveled farther west.  Grass grew thick and heavy.  Water ran in all
ravines.  The rocks were bronze and copper and russet, and some had
green patches of lichen.

Ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that the day was
waning and that Colter was swinging farther to the northwest.  She had
never before ridden through such heavy forest and down and up such wild
canyons.  Toward sunset the deepest and ruggedest canyon halted their
advance.  Colter rode to the right, searching for a place to get down
through a spruce thicket that stood on end.  Presently he dismounted
and the others followed suit.  Ellen found she could not lead Spades
because he slid down upon her heels, so she looped the end of her reins
over the pommel and left him free.  She herself managed to descend by
holding to branches and sliding all the way down that slope. She heard
the horses cracking the brush, snorting and heaving.  One pack slipped
and had to be removed from the horse, and rolled down.  At the bottom
of this deep, green-walled notch roared a stream of water. Shadowed,
cool, mossy, damp, this narrow gulch seemed the wildest place Ellen had
ever seen.  She could just see the sunset-flushed, gold-tipped spruces
far above her.  The men repacked the horse that had slipped his burden,
and once more resumed their progress ahead, now turning up this canyon.
There was no horse trail, but deer and bear trails were numerous.  The
sun sank and the sky darkened, but still the men rode on; and the
farther they traveled the wilder grew the aspect of the canyon.

At length Colter broke a way through a heavy thicket of willows and
entered a side canyon, the mouth of which Ellen had not even descried.
It turned and widened, and at length opened out into a round pocket,
apparently inclosed, and as lonely and isolated a place as even pursued
rustlers could desire.  Hidden by jutting wall and thicket of spruce
were two old log cabins joined together by roof and attic floor, the
same as the double cabin at the Jorth ranch.

Ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going round the cabins, saw
a bright fire.  One man stood beside it gazing at Colter’s party, which
evidently he had heard approaching.

“Hullo, Queen!” said Colter.  “How’s Tad?”

“He’s holdin’ on fine,” replied Queen, bending over the fire, where he
turned pieces of meat.

“Where’s father?” suddenly asked Ellen, addressing Colter.

As if he had not heard her, he went on wearily loosening a pack.

Queen looked at her.  The light of the fire only partially shone on his
face.  Ellen could not see its expression.  But from the fact that
Queen did not answer her question she got further intimation of an
impending catastrophe.  The long, wild ride had helped prepare her for
the secrecy and taciturnity of men who had resorted to flight.  Perhaps
her father had been delayed or was still off on the deadly mission that
had obsessed him; or there might, and probably was, darker reason for
his absence.  Ellen shut her teeth and turned to the needs of her
horse. And presently, returning to the fire, she thought of her uncle.

“Queen, is my uncle Tad heah?” she asked.

“Shore.  He’s in there,” replied Queen, pointing at the nearer cabin.

Ellen hurried toward the dark doorway.  She could see how the logs of
the cabin had moved awry and what a big, dilapidated hovel it was. As
she looked in, Colter loomed over her—placed a familiar and somehow
masterful hand upon her.  Ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment.
Must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom her lot was
cast? Did Colter mean what Daggs had always meant?  Ellen felt herself
weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied.  Yet,
whatever Colter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it.  So
she slipped out from under his hand.

“Uncle Tad, are y’u heah?” she called into the blackness.  She heard
the mice scamper and rustle and she smelled the musty, old, woody odor
of a long-unused cabin.

“Hello, Ellen!” came a voice she recognized as her uncle’s, yet it was
strange.  “Yes.  I’m heah—bad luck to me!... How ’re y’u buckin’ up,
girl?”

“I’m all right, Uncle Tad—only tired an’ worried.  I—”

“Tad, how’s your hurt?” interrupted Colter.

“Reckon I’m easier,” replied Jorth, wearily, “but shore I’m in bad
shape. I’m still spittin’ blood.  I keep tellin’ Queen that bullet
lodged in my lungs—but he says it went through.”

“Wal, hang on, Tad!” replied Colter, with a cheerfulness Ellen sensed
was really indifferent.

“Oh, what the hell’s the use!” exclaimed Jorth. “It’s all—up with
us—Colter!”

“Wal, shut up, then,” tersely returned Colter.  “It ain’t doin’ y’u or
us any good to holler.”

Tad Jorth did not reply to this.  Ellen heard his breathing and it did
not seem natural.  It rasped a little—came hurriedly—then caught in
his throat.  Then he spat.  Ellen shrunk back against the door. He was
breathing through blood.

“Uncle, are y’u in pain?” she asked.

“Yes, Ellen—it burns like hell,” he said.

“Oh! I’m sorry.... Isn’t there something I can do?”

“I reckon not.  Queen did all anybody could do for me—now—unless it’s
pray.”

Colter laughed at this—the slow, easy, drawling laugh of a Texan. But
Ellen felt pity for this wounded uncle.  She had always hated him. He
had been a drunkard, a gambler, a waster of her father’s property; and
now he was a rustler and a fugitive, lying in pain, perhaps mortally
hurt.

“Yes, uncle—I will pray for y’u,” she said, softly.

The change in his voice held a note of sadness that she had been quick
to catch.

“Ellen, y’u’re the only good Jorth—in the whole damned lot,” he said.
“God!  I see it all now.... We’ve dragged y’u to hell!”

“Yes, Uncle Tad, I’ve shore been dragged some—but not yet—to hell,”
she responded, with a break in her voice.

“Y’u will be—Ellen—unless—”

“Aw, shut up that kind of gab, will y’u?” broke in Colter, harshly.

It amazed Ellen that Colter should dominate her uncle, even though he
was wounded.  Tad Jorth had been the last man to take orders from
anyone, much less a rustler of the Hash Knife Gang.  This Colter began
to loom up in Ellen’s estimate as he loomed physically over her, a
lofty figure, dark motionless, somehow menacing.

“Ellen, has Colter told y’u yet—aboot—aboot Lee an’ Jackson?”
inquired the wounded man.

The pitch-black darkness of the cabin seemed to help fortify Ellen to
bear further trouble.

“Colter told me dad an’ Uncle Jackson would meet us heah,” she
rejoined, hurriedly.

Jorth could be heard breathing in difficulty, and he coughed and spat
again, and seemed to hiss.

“Ellen, he lied to y’u.  They’ll never meet us—heah!”

“Why not?” whispered Ellen.

“Because—Ellen—” he replied, in husky pants, “your dad an’—uncle
Jackson—are daid—an’ buried!”

If Ellen suffered a terrible shock it was a blankness, a deadness, and
a slow, creeping failure of sense in her knees.  They gave way under
her and she sank on the grass against the cabin wall.  She did not
faint nor grow dizzy nor lose her sight, but for a while there was no
process of thought in her mind.  Suddenly then it was there—the quick,
spiritual rending of her heart—followed by a profound emotion of
intimate and irretrievable loss—and after that grief and bitter
realization.

An hour later Ellen found strength to go to the fire and partake of the
food and drink her body sorely needed.

Colter and the men waited on her solicitously, and in silence, now and
then stealing furtive glances at her from under the shadow of their
black sombreros.  The dark night settled down like a blanket.  There
were no stars.  The wind moaned fitfully among the pines, and all about
that lonely, hidden recess was in harmony with Ellen’s thoughts.

“Girl, y’u’re shore game,” said Colter, admiringly.  “An’ I reckon y’u
never got it from the Jorths.”

“Tad in there—he’s game,” said Queen, in mild protest.

“Not to my notion,” replied Colter.  “Any man can be game when he’s
croakin’, with somebody around.... But Lee Jorth an’ Jackson—they
always was yellow clear to their gizzards.  They was born in
Louisiana—not Texas.... Shore they’re no more Texans than I am.  Ellen
heah, she must have got another strain in her blood.”

To Ellen their words had no meaning.  She rose and asked, “Where can I
sleep?”

“I’ll fetch a light presently an’ y’u can make your bed in there by
Tad,” replied Colter.

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Wal, if y’u reckon y’u can coax him to talk you’re shore wrong,”
declared Colter, with that cold timbre of voice that struck like steel
on Ellen’s nerves.  “I cussed him good an’ told him he’d keep his mouth
shut.  Talkin’ makes him cough an’ that fetches up the blood....
Besides, I reckon I’m the one to tell y’u how your dad an’ uncle got
killed.  Tad didn’t see it done, an’ he was bad hurt when it happened.
Shore all the fellars left have their idee aboot it. But I’ve got it
straight.”

“Colter—tell me now,” cried Ellen.

“Wal, all right.  Come over heah,” he replied, and drew her away from
the camp fire, out in the shadow of gloom.  “Poor kid!  I shore feel
bad aboot it.”  He put a long arm around her waist and drew her against
him.  Ellen felt it, yet did not offer any resistance.  All her
faculties seemed absorbed in a morbid and sad anticipation.

“Ellen, y’u shore know I always loved y’u—now don’t y ’u?” he asked,
with suppressed breath.

“No, Colter.  It’s news to me—an’ not what I want to heah.”

“Wal, y’u may as well heah it right now,” he said.  “It’s true. An’
what’s more—your dad gave y’u to me before he died.”

“What! Colter, y’u must be a liar.”

“Ellen, I swear I’m not lyin’,” he returned, in eager passion.  “I was
with your dad last an’ heard him last.  He shore knew I’d loved y’u for
years.  An’ he said he’d rather y’u be left in my care than anybody’s.”

“My father gave me to y’u in marriage!” ejaculated Ellen, in
bewilderment.

Colter’s ready assurance did not carry him over this point.  It was
evident that her words somewhat surprised and disconcerted him for the
moment.

“To let me marry a rustler—one of the Hash Knife Gang!” exclaimed
Ellen, with weary incredulity.

“Wal, your dad belonged to Daggs’s gang, same as I do,” replied Colter,
recovering his cool ardor.

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Yes, he shore did, for years,” declared Colter, positively. “Back in
Texas.  An’ it was your dad that got Daggs to come to Arizona.”

Ellen tried to fling herself away.  But her strength and her spirit
were ebbing, and Colter increased the pressure of his arm.  All at once
she sank limp.  Could she escape her fate?  Nothing seemed left to
fight with or for.

“All right—don’t hold me—so tight,” she panted.  “Now tell me how dad
was killed ... an’ who—who—”

Colter bent over so he could peer into her face.  In the darkness Ellen
just caught the gleam of his eyes.  She felt the virile force of the
man in the strain of his body as he pressed her close.  It all seemed
unreal—a hideous dream—the gloom, the moan of the wind, the weird
solitude, and this rustler with hand and will like cold steel.

“We’d come back to Greaves’s store,” Colter began.  “An’ as Greaves was
daid we all got free with his liquor.  Shore some of us got drunk.
Bruce was drunk, an’ Tad in there—he was drunk.  Your dad put away
more ’n I ever seen him.  But shore he wasn’t exactly drunk.  He got
one of them weak an’ shaky spells.  He cried an’ he wanted some of us
to get the Isbels to call off the fightin’.... He shore was ready to
call it quits.  I reckon the killin’ of Daggs—an’ then the awful way
Greaves was cut up by Jean Isbel—took all the fight out of your dad.
He said to me, ‘Colter, we’ll take Ellen an’ leave this heah
country—an’ begin life all over again—where no one knows us.’”

“Oh, did he really say that?... Did he—really mean it?” murmured
Ellen, with a sob.

“I’ll swear it by the memory of my daid mother,” protested Colter.
“Wal, when night come the Isbels rode down on us in the dark an’ began
to shoot.  They smashed in the door—tried to burn us out—an’ hollered
around for a while.  Then they left an’ we reckoned there’d be no more
trouble that night.  All the same we kept watch.  I was the soberest
one an’ I bossed the gang.  We had some quarrels aboot the drinkin’.
Your dad said if we kept it up it ’d be the end of the Jorths.  An’ he
planned to send word to the Isbels next mawnin’ that he was ready for a
truce. An’ I was to go fix it up with Gaston Isbel.  Wal, your dad went
to bed in Greaves’s room, an’ a little while later your uncle Jackson
went in there, too.  Some of the men laid down in the store an’ went to
sleep. I kept guard till aboot three in the mawnin’.  An’ I got so
sleepy I couldn’t hold my eyes open.  So I waked up Wells an’ Slater
an’ set them on guard, one at each end of the store.  Then I laid down
on the counter to take a nap.”

Colter’s low voice, the strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation
with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple,
matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to
Ellen Jorth.  Her vague doubt of him had been created by his attitude
toward her.  Emotion dominated her intelligence.  The images, the
scenes called up by Colter’s words, were as true as the gloom of the
wild gulch and the loneliness of the night solitude—as true as the
strange fact that she lay passive in the arm of a rustler.

“Wall, after a while I woke up,” went on Colter, clearing his throat.
“It was gray dawn.  All was as still as death.... An’ somethin’ shore
was wrong.  Wells an’ Slater had got to drinkin’ again an’ now laid
daid drunk or asleep.  Anyways, when I kicked them they never moved.
Then I heard a moan.  It came from the room where your dad an’ uncle
was.  I went in.  It was just light enough to see.  Your uncle Jackson
was layin’ on the floor—cut half in two—daid as a door nail.... Your
dad lay on the bed.  He was alive, breathin’ his last.... He says,
‘That half-breed Isbel—knifed us—while we slept!’... The winder
shutter was open.  I seen where Jean Isbel had come in an’ gone out.  I
seen his moccasin tracks in the dirt outside an’ I seen where he’d
stepped in Jackson’s blood an’ tracked it to the winder.  Y’u shore can
see them bloody tracks yourself, if y’u go back to Greaves’s store....
Your dad was goin’ fast.... He said, ‘Colter—take care of Ellen,’ an’
I reckon he meant a lot by that.  He kept sayin’, ‘My God! if I’d only
seen Gaston Isbel before it was too late!’ an’ then he raved a little,
whisperin’ out of his haid.... An’ after that he died.... I woke up the
men, an’ aboot sunup we carried your dad an’ uncle out of town an’
buried them.... An’ them Isbels shot at us while we were buryin’ our
daid!  That’s where Tad got his hurt.... Then we hit the trail for
Jorth’s ranch.... An now, Ellen, that’s all my story. Your dad was
ready to bury the hatchet with his old enemy.  An’ that Nez Perce Jean
Isbel, like the sneakin’ savage he is, murdered your uncle an’ your
dad.... Cut him horrible—made him suffer tortures of hell—all for
Isbel revenge!”

When Colter’s husky voice ceased Ellen whispered through lips as cold
and still as ice, “Let me go ... leave me—heah—alone!”

“Why, shore!  I reckon I understand,” replied Colter.  “I hated to tell
y’u.  But y’u had to heah the truth aboot that half-breed.... I’ll
carry your pack in the cabin an’ unroll your blankets.”

Releasing her, Colter strode off in the gloom.  Like a dead weight,
Ellen began to slide until she slipped down full length beside the log.
And then she lay in the cool, damp shadow, inert and lifeless so far as
outward physical movement was concerned.  She saw nothing and felt
nothing of the night, the wind, the cold, the falling dew.  For the
moment or hour she was crushed by despair, and seemed to see herself
sinking down and down into a black, bottomless pit, into an abyss where
murky tides of blood and furious gusts of passion contended between her
body and her soul.  Into the stormy blast of hell!  In her despair she
longed, she ached for death.  Born of infidelity, cursed by a taint of
evil blood, further cursed by higher instinct for good and happy life,
dragged from one lonely and wild and sordid spot to another, never
knowing love or peace or joy or home, left to the companionship of
violent and vile men, driven by a strange fate to love with
unquenchable and insupportable love a’ half-breed, a savage, an Isbel,
the hereditary enemy of her people, and at last the ruthless murderer
of her father—what in the name of God had she left to live for?
Revenge!  An eye for an eye!  A life for a life!  But she could not
kill Jean Isbel. Woman’s love could turn to hate, but not the love of
Ellen Jorth. He could drag her by the hair in the dust, beat her, and
make her a thing to loathe, and cut her mortally in his savage and
implacable thirst for revenge—but with her last gasp she would whisper
she loved him and that she had lied to him to kill his faith.  It was
that—his strange faith in her purity—which had won her love.  Of all
men, that he should be the one to recognize the truth of her, the
womanhood yet unsullied—how strange, how terrible, how overpowering!
False, indeed, was she to the Jorths!  False as her mother had been to
an Isbel! This agony and destruction of her soul was the bitter Dead
Sea fruit—the sins of her parents visited upon her.

“I’ll end it all,” she whispered to the night shadows that hovered over
her.  No coward was she—no fear of pain or mangled flesh or death or
the mysterious hereafter could ever stay her.  It would be easy, it
would be a last thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme
self-proof of her love for Jean Isbel to kiss the Rim rock where his
feet had trod and then fling herself down into the depths.  She was the
last Jorth.  So the wronged Isbels would be avenged.

“But he would never know—never know—I lied to him!” she wailed to the
night wind.

She was lost—lost on earth and to hope of heaven.  She had right
neither to live nor to die.  She was nothing but a little weed along
the trail of life, trampled upon, buried in the mud.  She was nothing
but a single rotten thread in a tangled web of love and hate and
revenge. And she had broken.

Lower and lower she seemed to sink.  Was there no end to this gulf of
despair?  If Colter had returned he would have found her a rag and a
toy—a creature degraded, fit for his vile embrace.  To be thrust
deeper into the mire—to be punished fittingly for her betrayal of a
man’s noble love and her own womanhood—to be made an end of, body,
mind, and soul.

But Colter did not return.

The wind mourned, the owls hooted, the leaves rustled, the insects
whispered their melancholy night song, the camp-fire flickered and
faded. Then the wild forestland seemed to close imponderably over
Ellen.  All that she wailed in her despair, all that she confessed in
her abasement, was true, and hard as life could be—but she belonged to
nature.  If nature had not failed her, had God failed her?  It was
there—the lonely land of tree and fern and flower and brook, full of
wild birds and beasts, where the mossy rocks could speak and the
solitude had ears, where she had always felt herself unutterably a part
of creation.  Thus a wavering spark of hope quivered through the
blackness of her soul and gathered light.

The gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade, split asunder
to show a glimpse of a radiant star, piercingly white, cold, pure, a
steadfast eye of the universe, beyond all understanding and illimitable
with its meaning of the past and the present and the future.  Ellen
watched it until the drifting clouds once more hid it from her strained
sight.

What had that star to do with hell?  She might be crushed and destroyed
by life, but was there not something beyond?  Just to be born, just to
suffer, just to die—could that be all?  Despair did not loose its hold
on Ellen, the strife and pang of her breast did not subside.  But with
the long hours and the strange closing in of the forest around her and
the fleeting glimpse of that wonderful star, with a subtle divination
of the meaning of her beating heart and throbbing mind, and, lastly,
with a voice thundering at her conscience that a man’s faith in a woman
must not be greater, nobler, than her faith in God and eternity—with
these she checked the dark flight of her soul toward destruction.



CHAPTER XII


A chill, gray, somber dawn was breaking when Ellen dragged herself into
the cabin and crept under her blankets, there to sleep the sleep of
exhaustion.

When she awoke the hour appeared to be late afternoon.  Sun and sky
shone through the sunken and decayed roof of the old cabin.  Her uncle,
Tad Jorth, lay upon a blanket bed upheld by a crude couch of boughs.
The light fell upon his face, pale, lined, cast in a still mold of
suffering.  He was not dead, for she heard his respiration.

The floor underneath Ellen’s blankets was bare clay.  She and Jorth
were alone in this cabin.  It contained nothing besides their beds and
a rank growth of weeds along the decayed lower logs.  Half of the cabin
had a rude ceiling of rough-hewn boards which formed a kind of loft.
This attic extended through to the adjoining cabin, forming the ceiling
of the porch-like space between the two structures.  There was no
partition.  A ladder of two aspen saplings, pegged to the logs, and
with braces between for steps, led up to the attic.

Ellen smelled wood smoke and the odor of frying meat, and she heard the
voices of men.  She looked out to see that Slater and Somers had joined
their party—an addition that might have strengthened it for defense,
but did not lend her own situation anything favorable.  Somers had
always appeared the one best to avoid.

Colter espied her and called her to “Come an’ feed your pale face.” His
comrades laughed, not loudly, but guardedly, as if noise was something
to avoid.  Nevertheless, they awoke Tad Jorth, who began to toss and
moan on the bed.

Ellen hurried to his side and at once ascertained that he had a high
fever and was in a critical condition.  Every time he tossed he opened
a wound in his right breast, rather high up.  For all she could see,
nothing had been done for him except the binding of a scarf round his
neck and under his arm.  This scant bandage had worked loose.  Going to
the door, she called out:

“Fetch me some water.”  When Colter brought it, Ellen was rummaging in
her pack for some clothing or towel that she could use for bandages.

“Weren’t any of y’u decent enough to look after my uncle?” she queried.

“Huh!  Wal, what the hell!” rejoined Colter.  “We shore did all we
could. I reckon y’u think it wasn’t a tough job to pack him up the Rim.
He was done for then an’ I said so.”

“I’ll do all I can for him,” said Ellen.

“Shore.  Go ahaid.  When I get plugged or knifed by that half-breed I
shore hope y’u’ll be round to nurse me.”

“Y’u seem to be pretty shore of your fate, Colter.”

“Shore as hell!” he bit out, darkly.  “Somers saw Isbel an’ his gang
trailin’ us to the Jorth ranch.”

“Are y’u goin’ to stay heah—an’ wait for them?”

“Shore I’ve been quarrelin’ with the fellars out there over that very
question.  I’m for leavin’ the country.  But Queen, the damn gun
fighter, is daid set to kill that cowman, Blue, who swore he was King
Fisher, the old Texas outlaw.  None but Queen are spoilin’ for another
fight. All the same they won’t leave Tad Jorth heah alone.”

Then Colter leaned in at the door and whispered: “Ellen, I cain’t boss
this outfit.  So let’s y’u an’ me shake ’em.  I’ve got your dad’s gold.
Let’s ride off to-night an’ shake this country.”

Colter, muttering under his breath, left the door and returned to his
comrades.  Ellen had received her first intimation of his cowardice;
and his mention of her father’s gold started a train of thought that
persisted in spite of her efforts to put all her mind to attending her
uncle.  He grew conscious enough to recognize her working over him, and
thanked her with a look that touched Ellen deeply.  It changed the
direction of her mind.  His suffering and imminent death, which she was
able to alleviate and retard somewhat, worked upon her pity and
compassion so that she forgot her own plight.  Half the night she was
tending him, cooling his fever, holding him quiet.  Well she realized
that but for her ministrations he would have died.  At length he went
to sleep.

And Ellen, sitting beside him in the lonely, silent darkness of that
late hour, received again the intimation of nature, those vague and
nameless stirrings of her innermost being, those whisperings out of the
night and the forest and the sky.  Something great would not let go of
her soul.  She pondered.

Attention to the wounded man occupied Ellen; and soon she redoubled her
activities in this regard, finding in them something of protection
against Colter.

He had waylaid her as she went to a spring for water, and with a lunge
like that of a bear he had tried to embrace her.  But Ellen had been
too quick.

“Wal, are y’u goin’ away with me?” he demanded.

“No.  I’ll stick by my uncle,” she replied.

That motive of hers seemed to obstruct his will.  Ellen was keen to see
that Colter and his comrades were at a last stand and disintegrating
under a severe strain.  Nerve and courage of the open and the wild they
possessed, but only in a limited degree.  Colter seemed obsessed by his
passion for her, and though Ellen in her stubborn pride did not yet
fear him, she realized she ought to.  After that incident she watched
closely, never leaving her uncle’s bedside except when Colter was
absent.  One or more of the men kept constant lookout somewhere down
the canyon.

Day after day passed on the wings of suspense, of watching, of
ministering to her uncle, of waiting for some hour that seemed fixed.

Colter was like a hound upon her trail.  At every turn he was there to
importune her to run off with him, to frighten her with the menace of
the Isbels, to beg her to give herself to him.  It came to pass that
the only relief she had was when she ate with the men or barred the
cabin door at night.  Not much relief, however, was there in the shut
and barred door.  With one thrust of his powerful arm Colter could have
caved it in.  He knew this as well as Ellen.  Still she did not have
the fear she should have had.  There was her rifle beside her, and
though she did not allow her mind to run darkly on its possible use,
still the fact of its being there at hand somehow strengthened her.
Colter was a cat playing with a mouse, but not yet sure of his quarry.

Ellen came to know hours when she was weak—weak physically, mentally,
spiritually, morally—when under the sheer weight of this frightful and
growing burden of suspense she was not capable of fighting her misery,
her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same time wholly
withstanding Colter’s advances.

He would come into the cabin and, utterly indifferent to Tad Jorth, he
would try to make bold and unrestrained love to Ellen.  When he caught
her in one of her unresisting moments and was able to hold her in his
arms and kiss her he seemed to be beside himself with the wonder of
her.  At such moments, if he had any softness or gentleness in him,
they expressed themselves in his sooner or later letting her go, when
apparently she was about to faint.  So it must have become
fascinatingly fixed in Colter’s mind that at times Ellen repulsed him
with scorn and at others could not resist him.

Ellen had escaped two crises in her relation with this man, and as a
morbid doubt, like a poisonous fungus, began to strangle her mind, she
instinctively divined that there was an approaching and final crisis.
No uplift of her spirit came this time—no intimations—no whisperings.
How horrible it all was!  To long to be good and noble—to realize that
she was neither—to sink lower day by day!  Must she decay there like
one of these rotting logs?  Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and
ever-growing hopelessness.  What was the use? What did it matter?  Who
would ever think of Ellen Jorth?  “O God!” she whispered in her
distraction, “is there nothing left—nothing at all?”

A period of several days of less torment to Ellen followed.  Her uncle
apparently took a turn for the better and Colter let her alone.  This
last circumstance nonplused Ellen.  She was at a loss to understand it
unless the Isbel menace now encroached upon Colter so formidably that
he had forgotten her for the present.

Then one bright August morning, when she had just begun to relax her
eternal vigilance and breathe without oppression, Colter encountered
her and, darkly silent and fierce, he grasped her and drew her off her
feet.  Ellen struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived
her of strength.  And that paralyzing weakness assailed her as never
before.  Without apparent effort Colter carried her, striding rapidly
away from the cabins into the border of spruce trees at the foot of the
canyon wall.

“Colter—where—oh, where are Y’u takin’ me?” she found voice to cry
out.

“By God!  I don’t know,” he replied, with strong, vibrant passion. “I
was a fool not to carry y’u off long ago.  But I waited.  I was hopin’
y’u’d love me!... An’ now that Isbel gang has corralled us. Somers
seen the half-breed up on the rocks.  An’ Springer seen the rest of
them sneakin’ around.  I run back after my horse an’ y’u.”

“But Uncle Tad!... We mustn’t leave him alone,” cried Ellen.

“We’ve got to,” replied Colter, grimly.  “Tad shore won’t worry y’u no
more—soon as Jean Isbel gets to him.”

“Oh, let me stay,” implored Ellen.  “I will save him.”

Colter laughed at the utter absurdity of her appeal and claim. Suddenly
he set her down upon her feet.  “Stand still,” he ordered. Ellen saw
his big bay horse, saddled, with pack and blanket, tied there in the
shade of a spruce.  With swift hands Colter untied him and mounted him,
scarcely moving his piercing gaze from Ellen.  He reached to grasp her.
“Up with y’u!... Put your foot in the stirrup!” His will, like his
powerful arm, was irresistible for Ellen at that moment.  She found
herself swung up behind him.  Then the horse plunged away.  What with
the hard motion and Colter’s iron grasp on her Ellen was in a painful
position.  Her knees and feet came into violent contact with branches
and snags.  He galloped the horse, tearing through the dense thicket of
willows that served to hide the entrance to the side canyon, and when
out in the larger and more open canyon he urged him to a run.
Presently when Colter put the horse to a slow rise of ground, thereby
bringing him to a walk, it was just in time to save Ellen a serious
bruising.  Again the sunlight appeared to shade over. They were in the
pines.  Suddenly with backward lunge Colter halted the horse.  Ellen
heard a yell.  She recognized Queen’s voice.

“Turn back, Colter!  Turn back!”

With an oath Colter wheeled his mount.  “If I didn’t run plump into
them,” he ejaculated, harshly.  And scarcely had the goaded horse
gotten a start when a shot rang out.  Ellen felt a violent shock, as if
her momentum had suddenly met with a check, and then she felt herself
wrenched from Colter, from the saddle, and propelled into the air. She
alighted on soft ground and thick grass, and was unhurt save for the
violent wrench and shaking that had rendered her breathless.  Before
she could rise Colter was pulling at her, lifting her to her feet.  She
saw the horse lying with bloody head.  Tall pines loomed all around.
Another rifle cracked.  “Run!” hissed Colter, and he bounded off,
dragging her by the hand.  Another yell pealed out.  “Here we are,
Colter!”.  Again it was Queen’s shrill voice.  Ellen ran with all her
might, her heart in her throat, her sight failing to record more than a
blur of passing pines and a blank green wall of spruce.  Then she lost
her balance, was falling, yet could not fall because of that steel grip
on her hand, and was dragged, and finally carried, into a dense shade.
She was blinded.  The trees whirled and faded.  Voices and shots
sounded far away.  Then something black seemed to be wiped across her
feeling.

It turned to gray, to moving blankness, to dim, hazy objects, spectral
and tall, like blanketed trees, and when Ellen fully recovered
consciousness she was being carried through the forest.

“Wal, little one, that was a close shave for y’u,” said Colter’s hard
voice, growing clearer.  “Reckon your keelin’ over was natural enough.”

He held her lightly in both arms, her head resting above his left
elbow. Ellen saw his face as a gray blur, then taking sharper outline,
until it stood out distinctly, pale and clammy, with eyes cold and
wonderful in their intense flare.  As she gazed upward Colter turned
his head to look back through the woods, and his motion betrayed a
keen, wild vigilance.  The veins of his lean, brown neck stood out like
whipcords. Two comrades were stalking beside him.  Ellen heard their
stealthy steps, and she felt Colter sheer from one side or the other.
They were proceeding cautiously, fearful of the rear, but not wholly
trusting to the fore.

“Reckon we’d better go slow an’ look before we leap,” said one whose
voice Ellen recognized as Springer’s.

“Shore.  That open slope ain’t to my likin’, with our Nez Perce friend
prowlin’ round,” drawled Colter, as he set Ellen down on her feet.

Another of the rustlers laughed.  “Say, can’t he twinkle through the
forest?  I had four shots at him.  Harder to hit than a turkey runnin’
crossways.”

This facetious speaker was the evil-visaged, sardonic Somers. He
carried two rifles and wore two belts of cartridges.

“Ellen, shore y’u ain’t so daid white as y’u was,” observed Colter, and
he chucked her under the chin with familiar hand.  “Set down heah. I
don’t want y’u stoppin’ any bullets.  An’ there’s no tellin’.”

Ellen was glad to comply with his wish.  She had begun to recover wits
and strength, yet she still felt shaky.  She observed that their
position then was on the edge of a well-wooded slope from which she
could see the grassy canyon floor below.  They were on a level bench,
projecting out from the main canyon wall that loomed gray and rugged
and pine fringed. Somers and Cotter and Springer gave careful attention
to all points of the compass, especially in the direction from which
they had come. They evidently anticipated being trailed or circled or
headed off, but did not manifest much concern.  Somers lit a cigarette;
Springer wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his
belt, which appeared to be half empty.  Colter stretched his long neck
like a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the
forest up toward the canyon rim.

“Listen!” he said, tersely, and bent his head a little to one side, ear
to the slight breeze.

They all listened.  Ellen heard the beating of her heart, the rustle of
leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds that she
could not name.

“Deer, I reckon,” spoke up Somers.

“Ahuh!  Wal, I reckon they ain’t trailin’ us yet,” replied Colter. “We
gave them a shade better ’n they sent us.”

“Short an’ sweet!” ejaculated Springer, and he removed his black
sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger through a buffet hole in the crown.
“Thet’s how close I come to cashin’.  I was lyin’ behind a log,
listenin’ an’ watchin’, an’ when I stuck my head up a little—zam!
Somebody made my bonnet leak.”

“Where’s Queen?” asked Colter.

“He was with me fust off,” replied Somers.  “An’ then when the shootin’
slacked—after I’d plugged thet big, red-faced, white-haired pal of
Isbel’s—”

“Reckon thet was Blaisdell,” interrupted Springer.

“Queen—he got tired layin’ low,” went on Somers.  “He wanted action. I
heerd him chewin’ to himself, an’ when I asked him what was eatin’ him
he up an’ growled he was goin’ to quit this Injun fightin’. An’ he
slipped off in the woods.”

“Wal, that’s the gun fighter of it,” declared Colter, wagging his head,
“Ever since that cowman, Blue, braced us an’ said he was King Fisher,
why Queen has been sulkier an’ sulkier.  He cain’t help it.  He’ll do
the same trick as Blue tried.  An’ shore he’ll get his everlastin’. But
he’s the Texas breed all right.”

“Say, do you reckon Blue really is King Fisher?” queried Somers.

“Naw!” ejaculated Colter, with downward sweep of his hand.  “Many a
would-be gun slinger has borrowed Fisher’s name.  But Fisher is daid
these many years.”

“Ahuh!  Wal, mebbe, but don’t you fergit it—thet Blue was no
would-be,” declared Somers.  “He was the genuine article.”

“I should smile!” affirmed Springer.

The subject irritated Colter, and he dismissed it with another forcible
gesture and a counter question.

“How many left in that Isbel outfit?”

“No tellin’.  There shore was enough of them,” replied Somers.
“Anyhow, the woods was full of flyin’ bullets.... Springer, did you
account for any of them?”

“Nope—not thet I noticed,” responded Springer, dryly.  “I had my
chance at the half-breed.... Reckon I was nervous.”

“Was Slater near you when he yelled out?”

“No.  He was lyin’ beside Somers.”

“Wasn’t thet a queer way fer a man to act?” broke in Somers.  “A bullet
hit Slater, cut him down the back as he was lyin’ flat.  Reckon it
wasn’t bad.  But it hurt him so thet he jumped right up an’ staggered
around. He made a target big as a tree.  An’ mebbe them Isbels didn’t
riddle him!”

“That was when I got my crack at Bill Isbel,” declared Colter, with
grim satisfaction.  “When they shot my horse out from under me I had
Ellen to think of an’ couldn’t get my rifle.  Shore had to run, as yu
seen.  Wal, as I only had my six-shooter, there was nothin’ for me to
do but lay low an’ listen to the sping of lead.  Wells was standin’ up
behind a tree about thirty yards off.  He got plugged, an’ fallin’ over
he began to crawl my way, still holdin’ to his rifle.  I crawled along
the log to meet him.  But he dropped aboot half-way.  I went on an’
took his rifle an’ belt.  When I peeped out from behind a spruce bush
then I seen Bill Isbel.  He was shootin’ fast, an’ all of them was
shootin’ fast.  That war, when they had the open shot at Slater....
Wal, I bored Bill Isbel right through his middle.  He dropped his rifle
an’, all bent double, he fooled around in a circle till he flopped over
the Rim.  I reckon he’s layin’ right up there somewhere below that daid
spruce.  I’d shore like to see him.”

“I Wal, you’d be as crazy as Queen if you tried thet,” declared Somers.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“I reckon not,” replied Colter.  “An’ I’ve lost my horse.  Where’d y’u
leave yours?”

“They’re down the canyon, below thet willow brake.  An’ saddled an’
none of them tied.  Reckon we’ll have to look them up before dark.”

“Colter, what ’re we goin’ to do?” demanded Springer.

“Wait heah a while—then cross the canyon an’ work round up under the
bluff, back to the cabin.”

“An’ then what?” queried Somers, doubtfully eying Colter.

“We’ve got to eat—we’ve got to have blankets,” rejoined Colter,
testily.  “An’ I reckon we can hide there an’ stand a better show in a
fight than runnin’ for it in the woods.”

“Wal, I’m givin’ you a hunch thet it looked like you was runnin’ fer
it,” retorted Somers.

“Yes, an’ packin’ the girl,” added Springer. “Looks funny to me.”

Both rustlers eyed Colter with dark and distrustful glances.  What he
might have replied never transpired, for the reason that his gaze,
always shifting around, had suddenly fixed on something.

“Is that a wolf?” he asked, pointing to the Rim.

Both his comrades moved to get in line with his finger.  Ellen could
not see from her position.

“Shore thet’s a big lofer,” declared Somers.  “Reckon he scented us.”

“There he goes along the Rim,” observed Colter.  “He doesn’t act leary.
Looks like a good sign to me.  Mebbe the Isbels have gone the other
way.”

“Looks bad to me,” rejoined Springer, gloomily.

“An’ why?” demanded Colter.

“I seen thet animal.  Fust time I reckoned it was a lofer.  Second time
it was right near them Isbels.  An’ I’m damned now if I don’t believe
it’s thet half-lofer sheep dog of Gass Isbel’s.”

“Wal, what if it is?”

“Ha!... Shore we needn’t worry about hidin’ out,” replied Springer,
sententiously.  “With thet dog Jean Isbel could trail a grasshopper.”

“The hell y’u say!” muttered Colter.  Manifestly such a possibility put
a different light upon the present situation.  The men grew silent and
watchful, occupied by brooding thoughts and vigilant surveillance of
all points.  Somers slipped off into the brush, soon to return, with
intent look of importance.

“I heerd somethin’,” he whispered, jerking his thumb backward. “Rollin’
gravel—crackin’ of twigs.  No deer!... Reckon it’d be a good idee for
us to slip round acrost this bench.”

“Wal, y’u fellars go, an’ I’ll watch heah,” returned Colter.

“Not much,” said Somers, while Springer leered knowingly.

Colter became incensed, but he did not give way to it.  Pondering a
moment, he finally turned to Ellen.  “Y’u wait heah till I come back.
An’ if I don’t come in reasonable time y’u slip across the canyon an’
through the willows to the cabins.  Wait till aboot dark.”  With that
he possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts and silently
joined his comrades.  Together they noiselessly stole into the brush.

Ellen had no other thought than to comply with Colter’s wishes. There
was her wounded uncle who had been left unattended, and she was anxious
to get back to him.  Besides, if she had wanted to run off from Colter,
where could she go?  Alone in the woods, she would get lost and die of
starvation.  Her lot must be cast with the Jorth faction until the end.
That did not seem far away.

Her strained attention and suspense made the moments fly.  By and by
several shots pealed out far across the side canyon on her right, and
they were answered by reports sounding closer to her.  The fight was on
again.  But these shots were not repeated.  The flies buzzed, the hot
sun beat down and sloped to the west, the soft, warm breeze stirred the
aspens, the ravens croaked, the red squirrels and blue jays chattered.

Suddenly a quick, short, yelp electrified Ellen, brought her upright
with sharp, listening rigidity.  Surely it was not a wolf and hardly
could it be a coyote.  Again she heard it.  The yelp of a sheep dog!
She had heard that’ often enough to know.  And she rose to change her
position so she could command a view of the rocky bluff above.
Presently she espied what really appeared to be a big timber wolf.  But
another yelp satisfied her that it really was a dog.  She watched him.
Soon it became evident that he wanted to get down over the bluff.  He
ran to and fro, and then out of sight.  In a few moments his yelp
sounded from lower down, at the base of the bluff, and it was now the
cry of an intelligent dog that was trying to call some one to his aid.
Ellen grew convinced that the dog was near where Colter had said Bill
Isbel had plunged over the declivity.  Would the dog yelp that way if
the man was dead?  Ellen thought not.

No one came, and the continuous yelping of the dog got on Ellen’s
nerves. It was a call for help.  And finally she surrendered to it.
Since her natural terror when Colter’s horse was shot from under her
and she had been dragged away, she had not recovered from fear of the
Isbels.  But calm consideration now convinced her that she could hardly
be in a worse plight in their hands than if she remained in Colter’s.
So she started out to find the dog.

The wooded bench was level for a few hundred yards, and then it began
to heave in rugged, rocky bulges up toward the Rim.  It did not appear
far to where the dog was barking, but the latter part of the distance
proved to be a hard climb over jumbled rocks and through thick brush.
Panting and hot, she at length reached the base of the bluff, to find
that it was not very high.

The dog espied her before she saw him, for he was coming toward her
when she discovered him.  Big, shaggy, grayish white and black, with
wild, keen face and eyes he assuredly looked the reputation Springer
had accorded him.  But sagacious, guarded as was his approach, he
appeared friendly.

“Hello—doggie!” panted Ellen. “What’s—wrong—up heah?”

He yelped, his ears lost their stiffness, his body sank a little, and
his bushy tail wagged to and fro.  What a gray, clear, intelligent look
he gave her!  Then he trotted back.

Ellen followed him around a corner of bluff to see the body of a man
lying on his back.  Fresh earth and gravel lay about him, attesting to
his fall from above.  He had on neither coat nor hat, and the position
of his body and limbs suggested broken bones.  As Ellen hurried to his
side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody
blotch. But he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was
perfectly conscious.  Ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face,
yet the mold of features, the look of the eyes, seemed strangely
familiar.

“You’re—Jorth’s—girl,” he said, in faint voice of surprise.

“Yes, I’m Ellen Jorth,” she replied.  “An’ are y’u Bill Isbel?”

“All thet’s left of me.  But I’m thankin’ God somebody come—even a
Jorth.”

Ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his abdomen. A heavy
bullet had indeed, as Colter had avowed, torn clear through his middle.
Even if he had not sustained other serious injury from the fall over
the cliff, that terrible bullet wound meant death very shortly.  Ellen
shuddered.  How inexplicable were men!  How cruel, bloody, mindless!

“Isbel, I’m sorry—there’s no hope,” she said, low voiced.  “Y’u’ve not
long to live.  I cain’t help y’u.  God knows I’d do so if I could.”

“All over!” he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond her. “I reckon—I’m
glad.... But y’u can—do somethin’ for or me.  Will y’u?”

“Indeed, Yes.  Tell me,” she replied, lifting his dusty head on her
knee. Her hands trembled as she brushed his wet hair back from his
clammy brow.

“I’ve somethin’—on my conscience,” he whispered.

The woman, the sensitive in Ellen, understood and pitied him then.

“Yes,” she encouraged him.

“I stole cattle—my dad’s an’ Blaisdell’s—an’ made deals—with
Daggs.... All the crookedness—wasn’t on—Jorth’s side.... I want—my
brother Jean—to know.”

“I’ll try—to tell him,” whispered Ellen, out of her great amaze.

“We were all—a bad lot—except Jean,” went on Isbel.  “Dad wasn’t
fair.... God! how he hated Jorth!  Jorth, yes, who was—your father....
Wal, they’re even now.”

“How—so?” faltered Ellen.

“Your father killed dad.... At the last—dad wanted to—save us. He
sent word—he’d meet him—face to face—an’ let thet end the feud. They
met out in the road.... But some one shot dad down—with a rifle—an’
then your father finished him.”

“An’ then, Isbel,” added Ellen, with unconscious mocking bitterness,
“Your brother murdered my dad!”

“What!” whispered Bill Isbel.  “Shore y’u’ve got—it wrong.  I reckon
Jean—could have killed—your father.... But he didn’t.  Queer, we all
thought.”

“Ah!... Who did kill my father?” burst out Ellen, and her voice rang
like great hammers at her ears.

“It was Blue.  He went in the store—alone—faced the whole gang alone.
Bluffed them—taunted them—told them he was King Fisher.... Then he
killed—your dad—an’ Jackson Jorth.... Jean was out—back of the
store.  We were out—front.  There was shootin’.  Colmor was hit. Then
Blue ran out—bad hurt.... Both of them—died in Meeker’s yard.”

“An’ so Jean Isbel has not killed a Jorth!” said Ellen, in strange,
deep voice.

“No,” replied Isbel, earnestly.  “I reckon this feud—was hardest on
Jean.  He never lived heah.... An’ my sister Ann said—he got sweet on
y’u.... Now did he?”

Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen’s eyes, and her head sank low and
lower.

“Yes—he did,” she murmured, tremulously.

“Ahuh!  Wal, thet accounts,” replied Isbel, wonderingly.  “Too bad!...
It might have been.... A man always sees—different when—he’s
dyin’.... If I had—my life—to live over again!... My poor
kids—deserted in their babyhood—ruined for life!  All for nothin’....
May God forgive—”

Then he choked and whispered for water.

Ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his sombrero and started
hurriedly down the slope, making dust fly and rocks roll.  Her mind was
a seething ferment.  Leaping, bounding, sliding down the weathered
slope, she gained the bench, to run across that, and so on down into
the open canyon to the willow-bordered brook.  Here she filled the
sombrero with water and started back, forced now to walk slowly and
carefully.  It was then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular
activity denied her, that the tremendous import of Bill Isbel’s
revelation burst upon her very flesh and blood and transfiguring the
very world of golden light and azure sky and speaking forestland that
encompassed her.

Not a drop of the precious water did she spill.  Not a misstep did she
make.  Yet so great was the spell upon her that she was not aware she
had climbed the steep slope until the dog yelped his welcome.  Then
with all the flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to
allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words had changed
frailty to strength, hate to love, and, the gloomy hell of despair to
something unutterable.  But she had returned too late.  Bill Isbel was
dead.



CHAPTER XIII


Jean Isbel, holding the wolf-dog Shepp in leash, was on the trail of
the most dangerous of Jorth’s gang, the gunman Queen.  Dark drops of
blood on the stones and plain tracks of a rider’s sharp-heeled boots
behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-traveling
fugitive.  Therefore, Jean Isbel held in the dog and proceeded with the
wary eye and watchful caution of an Indian.

Queen, true to his class, and emulating Blue with the same magnificent
effrontery and with the same paralyzing suddenness of surprise, had
appeared as if by magic at the last night camp of the Isbel faction.
Jean had seen him first, in time to leap like a panther into the
shadow. But he carried in his shoulder Queen’s first bullet of that
terrible encounter.  Upon Gordon and Fredericks fell the brunt of
Queen’s fusillade.  And they, shot to pieces, staggering and falling,
held passionate grip on life long enough to draw and still Queen’s guns
and send him reeling off into the darkness of the forest.

Unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, Jean had kept a vigil near
camp all that silent and menacing night.  Morning disclosed Gordon and
Fredericks stark and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their
guns clutched immovably in stiffened hands.  Jean buried them as best
he could, and when they were under ground with flat stones on their
graves he knew himself to be indeed the last of the Isbel clan.  And
all that was wild and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit
rose to make him more than man and less than human.  Then for the third
time during these tragic last days the wolf-dog Shepp came to him.

Jean washed the wound Queen had given him and bound it tightly. The
keen pang and burn of the lead was a constant and all-powerful reminder
of the grim work left for him to do.  The whole world was no longer
large enough for him and whoever was left of the Jorths.  The heritage
of blood his father had bequeathed him, the unshakable love for a
worthless girl who had so dwarfed and obstructed his will and so
bitterly defeated and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith, the
killing of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the pursuits
and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates—these had
finally engendered in Jean Isbel a wild, unslakable thirst, these had
been the cause of his retrogression, these had unalterably and
ruthlessly fixed in his darkened mind one fierce passion—to live and
die the last man of that Jorth-Isbel feud.

At sunrise Jean left this camp, taking with him only a small knapsack
of meat and bread, and with the eager, wild Shepp in leash he set out
on Queen’s bloody trail.

Black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular trail of footprints
proved to Jean that the gunman was hard hit.  Here he had fallen, or
knelt, or sat down, evidently to bind his wounds.  Jean found strips of
scarf, red and discarded.  And the blood drops failed to show on more
rocks.  In a deep forest of spruce, under silver-tipped spreading
branches, Queen had rested, perhaps slept.  Then laboring with dragging
steps, not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up out of the
dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-tipped ridge.  Here he had
rested, perhaps waited to see if he were pursued.  From that point his
trail spoke an easy language for Jean’s keen eye.  The gunman knew he
was pursued.  He had seen his enemy.  Therefore Jean proceeded with a
slow caution, never getting within revolver range of ambush, using all
his woodcraft to trail this man and yet save himself.  Queen traveled
slowly, either because he was wounded or else because he tried to
ambush his pursuer, and Jean accommodated his pace to that of Queen.
From noon of that day they were never far apart, never out of hearing
of a rifle shot.

The contrast of the beauty and peace and loneliness of the surroundings
to the nature of Queen’s flight often obtruded its strange truth into
the somber turbulence of Jean’s mind, into that fixed columnar idea
around which fleeting thoughts hovered and gathered like shadows.

Early frost had touched the heights with its magic wand.  And the
forest seemed a temple in which man might worship nature and life
rather than steal through the dells and under the arched aisles like a
beast of prey. The green-and-gold leaves of aspens quivered in the
glades; maples in the ravines fluttered their red-and-purple leaves.
The needle-matted carpet under the pines vied with the long lanes of
silvery grass, alike enticing to the eye of man and beast.  Sunny rays
of light, flecked with dust and flying insects, slanted down from the
overhanging brown-limbed, green-massed foliage.  Roar of wind in the
distant forest alternated with soft breeze close at hand.  Small
dove-gray squirrels ran all over the woodland, very curious about Jean
and his dog, rustling the twigs, scratching the bark of trees,
chattering and barking, frisky, saucy, and bright-eyed.  A plaintive
twitter of wild canaries came from the region above the treetops—first
voices of birds in their pilgrimage toward the south.  Pine cones
dropped with soft thuds.  The blue jays followed these intruders in the
forest, screeching their displeasure. Like rain pattered the dropping
seeds from the spruces.  A woody, earthy, leafy fragrance, damp with
the current of life, mingled with a cool, dry, sweet smell of withered
grass and rotting pines.

Solitude and lonesomeness, peace and rest, wild life and nature,
reigned there.  It was a golden-green region, enchanting to the gaze of
man.  An Indian would have walked there with his spirits.

And even as Jean felt all this elevating beauty and inscrutable spirit
his keen eye once more fastened upon the blood-red drops Queen had
again left on the gray moss and rock.  His wound had reopened. Jean
felt the thrill of the scenting panther.

The sun set, twilight gathered, night fell.  Jean crawled under a
dense, low-spreading spruce, ate some bread and meat, fed the dog, and
lay down to rest and sleep.  His thoughts burdened him, heavy and black
as the mantle of night.  A wolf mourned a hungry cry for a mate.  Shepp
quivered under Jean’s hand.  That was the call which had lured him from
the ranch. The wolf blood in him yearned for the wild.  Jean tied the
cowhide leash to his wrist.  When this dark business was at an end
Shepp could be free to join the lonely mate mourning out there in the
forest.  Then Jean slept.

Dawn broke cold, clear, frosty, with silvered grass sparkling, with a
soft, faint rustling of falling aspen leaves.  When the sun rose red
Jean was again on the trail of Queen.  By a frosty-ferned brook, where
water tinkled and ran clear as air and cold as ice, Jean quenched his
thirst, leaning on a stone that showed drops of blood.  Queen, too, had
to quench his thirst.  What good, what help, Jean wondered, could the
cold, sweet, granite water, so dear to woodsmen and wild creatures, do
this wounded, hunted rustler?  Why did he not wait in the open to fight
and face the death he had meted?  Where was that splendid and terrible
daring of the gunman?  Queen’s love of life dragged him on and on, hour
by hour, through the pine groves and spruce woods, through the oak
swales and aspen glades, up and down the rocky gorges, around the
windfalls and over the rotting logs.

The time came when Queen tried no more ambush.  He gave up trying to
trap his pursuer by lying in wait.  He gave up trying to conceal his
tracks.  He grew stronger or, in desperation, increased his energy, so
that he redoubled his progress through the wilderness.  That, at best,
would count only a few miles a day.  And he began to circle to the
northwest, back toward the deep canyon where Blaisdell and Bill Isbel
had reached the end of their trails.  Queen had evidently left his
comrades, had lone-handed it in his last fight, but was now trying to
get back to them.  Somewhere in these wild, deep forest brakes the rest
of the Jorth faction had found a hiding place.  Jean let Queen lead him
there.

Ellen Jorth would be with them.  Jean had seen her.  It had been his
shot that killed Colter’s horse.  And he had withheld further fire
because Colter had dragged the girl behind him, protecting his body
with hers.  Sooner or later Jean would come upon their camp.  She would
be there.  The thought of her dark beauty, wasted in wantonness upon
these rustlers, added a deadly rage to the blood lust and righteous
wrath of his vengeance.  Let her again flaunt her degradation in his
face and, by the God she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end
the race of Jorths!

Another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight.  The wind moaned
in the forest.  Shepp was restless.  He sniffed the air.  There was a
step on his trail.  Again a mournful, eager, wild, and hungry wolf cry
broke the silence.  It was deep and low, like that of a baying hound,
but infinitely wilder.  Shepp strained to get away.  During the night,
while Jean slept, he managed to chew the cowhide leash apart and run
off.

Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen.  Fog and low-drifting clouds
in the forest and a misty rain had put the rustler off his bearings. He
was lost, and showed that he realized it.  Strange how a matured man,
fighter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last
stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost!  So Jean Isbel read
the signs of the trail.

Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he
headed down into a canyon.  It was one that notched the Rim and led
down and down, mile after mile into the Basin.  Not soon had Queen
discovered his mistake.  When he did do so, night overtook him.

The weather cleared before morning.  Red and bright the sun burst out
of the east to flood that low basin land with light.  Jean found that
Queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had
lost.  But in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes
instead of back up the canyon.  And here he had fought the hold of that
strange brush of Spanish name until he fell exhausted.

Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish
thicket for Jean to catch up with him.  Many and many a place Jean
would have chosen had he been in Queen’s place.  Many a rock and dense
thicket Jean circled or approached with extreme care.  Manzanita grew
in patches that were impenetrable except for a small animal.  The brush
was a few feet high, seldom so high that Jean could not look over it,
and of a beautiful appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden
berry, and branches of dark-red color.  These branches were tough and
unbendable. Every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard
as steel, sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus.  Progress was
possible only by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between
patches, or else by crashing through with main strength or walking
right over the tops.  Jean preferred this last method, not because it
was the easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much
farther. So he literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush.
Often he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke
with him, letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork
to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the
patience of a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable.

On that south slope under the Rim the sun beat down hot.  There was no
breeze to temper the dry air.  And before midday Jean was laboring, wet
with sweat, parching with thirst, dusty and hot and tiring. It amazed
him, the doggedness and tenacity of life shown by this wounded rustler.
The time came when under the burning rays of the sun he was compelled
to abandon the walk across the tips of the manzanita bushes and take to
the winding, open threads that ran between.  It would have been poor
sight indeed that could not have followed Queen’s labyrinthine and
broken passage through the brush.  Then the time came when Jean espied
Queen, far ahead and above, crawling like a black bug along the
bright-green slope.  Sight then acted upon Jean as upon a hound in the
chase.  But he governed his actions if he could not govern his
instincts.  Slowly but surely he followed the dusty, hot trail, and
never a patch of blood failed to send a thrill along his veins.

Queen, headed up toward the Rim, finally vanished from sight.  Had he
fallen?  Was he hiding?  But the hour disclosed that he was crawling.
Jean’s keen eye caught the slow moving of the brush and enabled him to
keep just so close to the rustler, out of range of the six-shooters he
carried.  And so all the interminable hours of the hot afternoon that
snail-pace flight and pursuit kept on.

Halfway up the Rim the growth of manzanita gave place to open, yellow,
rocky slope dotted with cedars.  Queen took to a slow-ascending ridge
and left his bloody tracks all the way to the top, where in the
gathering darkness the weary pursuer lost them.

Another night passed.  Daylight was relentless to the rustler.  He
could not hide his trail.  But somehow in a desperate last rally of
strength he reached a point on the heavily timbered ridge that Jean
recognized as being near the scene of the fight in the canyon.  Queen
was nearing the rendezvous of the rustlers.  Jean crossed tracks of
horses, and then more tracks that he was certain had been made days
past by his own party. To the left of this ridge must be the deep
canyon that had frustrated his efforts to catch up with the rustlers on
the day Blaisdell lost his life, and probably Bill Isbel, too.
Something warned Jean that he was nearing the end of the trail, and an
unaccountable sense of imminent catastrophe seemed foreshadowed by
vague dreads and doubts in his gloomy mind.  Jean felt the need of
rest, of food, of ease from the strain of the last weeks.  But his
spirit drove him implacably.

Queen’s rally of strength ended at the edge of an open, bald ridge that
was bare of brush or grass and was surrounded by a line of forest on
three sides, and on the fourth by a low bluff which raised its gray
head above the pines.  Across this dusty open Queen had crawled,
leaving unmistakable signs of his condition.  Jean took long survey of
the circle of trees and of the low, rocky eminence, neither of which he
liked.  It might be wiser to keep to cover, Jean thought, and work
around to where Queen’s trail entered the forest again.  But he was
tired, gloomy, and his eternal vigilance was failing.  Nevertheless, he
stilled for the thousandth time that bold prompting of his vengeance
and, taking to the edge of the forest, he went to considerable pains to
circle the open ground.  And suddenly sight of a man sitting back
against a tree halted Jean.

He stared to make sure his eyes did not deceive him.  Many times stumps
and snags and rocks had taken on strange resemblance to a standing or
crouching man.  This was only another suggestive blunder of the mind
behind his eyes—what he wanted to see he imagined he saw.  Jean glided
on from tree to tree until he made sure that this sitting image indeed
was that of a man.  He sat bolt upright, facing back across the open,
hands resting on his knees—and closer scrutiny showed Jean that he
held a gun in each hand.

Queen!  At the last his nerve had revived.  He could not crawl any
farther, he could never escape, so with the courage of fatality he
chose the open, to face his foe and die.  Jean had a thrill of
admiration for the rustler.  Then he stalked out from under the pines
and strode forward with his rifle ready.

A watching man could not have failed to espy Jean.  But Queen never
made the slightest move.  Moreover, his stiff, unnatural position
struck Jean so singularly that he halted with a muttered exclamation.
He was now about fifty paces from Queen, within range of those small
guns.  Jean called, sharply, “QUEEN!” Still the figure never relaxed in
the slightest.

Jean advanced a few more paces, rifle up, ready to fire the instant
Queen lifted a gun.  The man’s immobility brought the cold sweat to
Jean’s brow.  He stopped to bend the full intense power of his gaze
upon this inert figure.  Suddenly over Jean flashed its meaning. Queen
was dead.  He had backed up against the pine, ready to face his foe,
and he had died there.  Not a shadow of a doubt entered Jean’s mind as
he started forward again.  He knew.  After all, Queen’s blood would not
be on his hands.  Gordon and Fredericks in their death throes had given
the rustler mortal wounds.  Jean kept on, marveling the while. How
ghastly thin and hard!  Those four days of flight had been hell for
Queen.

Jean reached him—looked down with staring eyes.  The guns were tied to
his hands.  Jean started violently as the whole direction of his mind
shifted.  A lightning glance showed that Queen had been propped against
the tree—another showed boot tracks in the dust.

“By Heaven, they’ve fooled me!” hissed Jean, and quickly as he leaped
behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers
who had waylaid him thus.  He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead
before he heard a rifle crack.  A bullet had ripped through his left
forearm.  From behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the
face of the bluff—the very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had
descried as one of menace.  Then several puffs of white smoke and
ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters.  Bullets barked
the pine and whistled by.  Jean saw a man dart from behind a rock and,
leaning over, run for another.  Jean’s swift shot stopped him midway.
He fell, got up, and floundered behind a bush scarcely large enough to
conceal him.  Into that bush Jean shot again and again.  He had no pain
in his wounded arm, but the sense of the shock clung in his
consciousness, and this, with the tremendous surprise of the deceit,
and sudden release of long-dammed overmastering passion, caused him to
empty the magazine of his Winchester in a terrible haste to kill the
man he had hit.

These were all the loads he had for his rifle.  Blood passion had made
him blunder.  Jean cursed himself, and his hand moved to his belt.  His
six-shooter was gone.  The sheath had been loose.  He had tied the gun
fast.  But the strings had been torn apart.  The rustlers were shooting
again.  Bullets thudded into the pine and whistled by.  Bending
carefully, Jean reached one of Queen’s guns and jerked it from his
hand. The weapon was empty.  Both of his guns were empty.  Jean peeped
out again to get the line in which the bullets were coming and, marking
a course from his position to the cover of the forest, he ran with all
his might.  He gained the shelter.  Shrill yells behind warned him that
he had been seen, that his reason for flight had been guessed.  Looking
back, he saw two or three men scrambling down the bluff.  Then the loud
neigh of a frightened horse pealed out.

Jean discarded his useless rifle, and headed down the ridge slope,
keeping to the thickest line of pines and sheering around the clumps of
spruce.  As he ran, his mind whirled with grim thoughts of escape, of
his necessity to find the camp where Gordon and Fredericks were buried,
there to procure another rifle and ammunition.  He felt the wet blood
dripping down his arm, yet no pain.  The forest was too open for good
cover.  He dared not run uphill.  His only course was ahead, and that
soon ended in an abrupt declivity too precipitous to descend. As he
halted, panting for breath, he heard the ring of hoofs on stone, then
the thudding beat of running horses on soft ground.  The rustlers had
sighted the direction he had taken.  Jean did not waste time to look.
Indeed, there was no need, for as he bounded along the cliff to the
right a rifle cracked and a bullet whizzed over his head.  It lent
wings to his feet.  Like a deer he sped along, leaping cracks and logs
and rocks, his ears filled by the rush of wind, until his quick eye
caught sight of thick-growing spruce foliage close to the precipice. He
sprang down into the green mass.  His weight precipitated him through
the upper branches.  But lower down his spread arms broke his fall,
then retarded it until he caught.  A long, swaying limb let him down
and down, where he grasped another and a stiffer one that held his
weight. Hand over hand he worked toward the trunk of this spruce and,
gaining it, he found other branches close together down which he
hastened, hold by hold and step by step, until all above him was black,
dense foliage, and beneath him the brown, shady slope.  Sure of being
unseen from above, he glided noiselessly down under the trees, slowly
regaining freedom from that constriction of his breast.

Passing on to a gray-lichened cliff, overhanging and gloomy, he paused
there to rest and to listen.  A faint crack of hoof on stone came to
him from above, apparently farther on to the right.  Eventually his
pursuers would discover that he had taken to the canyon.  But for the
moment he felt safe.  The wound in his forearm drew his attention. The
bullet had gone clear through without breaking either bone. His shirt
sleeve was soaked  with blood.  Jean rolled it back and tightly wrapped
his scarf around the wound, yet still the dark-red blood oozed out and
dripped down into his hand.  He became aware of a dull, throbbing pain.

Not much time did Jean waste in arriving at what was best to do. For
the time being he had escaped, and whatever had been his peril, it was
past.  In dense, rugged country like this he could not be caught by
rustlers.  But he had only a knife left for a weapon, and there was
very little meat in the pocket of his coat.  Salt and matches he
possessed.  Therefore the imperative need was for him to find the last
camp, where he could get rifle and ammunition, bake bread, and rest up
before taking again the trail of the rustlers.  He had reason to
believe that this canyon was the one where the fight on the Rim, and
later, on a bench of woodland below, had taken place.

Thereupon he arose and glided down under the spruces toward the level,
grassy open he could see between the trees.  And as he proceeded, with
the slow step and wary eye of an Indian, his mind was busy.

Queen had in his flight unerringly worked in the direction of this
canyon until he became lost in the fog; and upon regaining his bearings
he had made a wonderful and heroic effort to surmount the manzanita
slope and the Rim and find the rendezvous of his comrades.  But he had
failed up there on the ridge.  In thinking it over Jean arrived at a
conclusion that Queen, finding he could go no farther, had waited, guns
in hands, for his pursuer.  And he had died in this position. Then by
strange coincidence his comrades had happened to come across him and,
recognizing the situation, they had taken the shells from his guns and
propped him up with the idea of luring Jean on.  They had arranged a
cunning trick and ambush, which had all but snuffed out the last of the
Isbels.  Colter probably had been at the bottom of this crafty plan.
Since the fight at the Isbel ranch, now seemingly far back in the past,
this man Colter had loomed up more and more as a stronger and more
dangerous antagonist then either Jorth or Daggs. Before that he had
been little known to any of the Isbel faction. And it was Colter now
who controlled the remnant of the gang and who had Ellen Jorth in his
possession.

The canyon wall above Jean, on the right, grew more rugged and loftier,
and the one on the left began to show wooded slopes and brakes, and at
last a wide expanse with a winding, willow border on the west and a
long, low, pine-dotted bench on the east.  It took several moments of
study for Jean to recognize the rugged bluff above this bench.  On up
that canyon several miles was the site where Queen had surprised Jean
and his comrades at their campfire.  Somewhere in this vicinity was the
hiding place of the rustlers.

Thereupon Jean proceeded with the utmost stealth, absolutely certain
that he would miss no sound, movement, sign, or anything unnatural to
the wild peace of the canyon.  And his first sense to register
something was his keen smell.  Sheep!  He was amazed to smell sheep.
There must be a flock not far away.  Then from where he glided along
under the trees he saw down to open places in the willow brake and
noticed sheep tracks in the dark, muddy bank of the brook.  Next he
heard faint tinkle of bells, and at length, when he could see farther
into the open enlargement of the canyon, his surprised gaze fell upon
an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out acres and acres of
grass.  Thousands of sheep were grazing there.  Jean knew there were
several flocks of Jorth’s sheep on the mountain in the care of herders,
but he had never thought of them being so far west, more than twenty
miles from Chevelon Canyon.  His roving eyes could not descry any
herders or dogs. But he knew there must be dogs close to that immense
flock.  And, whatever his cunning, he could not hope to elude the scent
and sight of shepherd dogs.  It would be best to go back the way he had
come, wait for darkness, then cross the canyon and climb out, and work
around to his objective point.  Turning at once, he started to glide
back. But almost immediately he was brought stock-still and thrilling
by the sound of hoofs.

Horses were coming in the direction he wished to take.  They were
close. His swift conclusion was that the men who had pursued him up on
the Rim had worked down into the canyon.  One circling glance showed
him that he had no sure covert near at hand.  It would not do to risk
their passing him there.  The border of woodland was narrow and not
dense enough for close inspection.  He was forced to turn back up the
canyon, in the hope of soon finding a hiding place or a break in the
wall where he could climb up.

Hugging the base of the wall, he slipped on, passing the point where he
had espied the sheep, and gliding on until he was stopped by a bend in
the dense line of willows.  It sheered to the west there and ran close
to the high wall.  Jean kept on until he was stooping under a curling
border of willow thicket, with branches slim and yellow and masses of
green foliage that brushed against the wall.  Suddenly he encountered
an abrupt corner of rock.  He rounded it, to discover that it ran at
right angles with the one he had just passed.  Peering up through the
willows, he ascertained that there was a narrow crack in the main wall
of the canyon.  It had been concealed by willows low down and leaning
spruces above.  A wild, hidden retreat!  Along the base of the wall
there were tracks of small animals.  The place was odorous, like all
dense thickets, but it was not dry.  Water ran through there somewhere.
Jean drew easier breath.  All sounds except the rustling of birds or
mice in the willows had ceased.  The brake was pervaded by a dreamy
emptiness.  Jean decided to steal on a little farther, then wait till
he felt he might safely dare go back.

The golden-green gloom suddenly brightened.  Light showed ahead, and
parting the willows, he looked out into a narrow, winding canyon, with
an open, grassy, willow-streaked lane in the center and on each side a
thin strip of woodland.

His surprise was short lived.  A crashing of horses back of him in the
willows gave him a shock.  He ran out along the base of the wall, back
of the trees.  Like the strip of woodland in the main canyon, this one
was scant and had but little underbrush.  There were young spruces
growing with thick branches clear to the grass, and under these he
could have concealed himself.  But, with a certainty of sheep dogs in
the vicinity, he would not think of hiding except as a last resource.
These horsemen, whoever they were, were as likely to be sheep herders
as not.  Jean slackened his pace to look back.  He could not see any
moving objects, but he still heard horses, though not so close now.
Ahead of him this narrow gorge opened out like the neck of a bottle. He
would run on to the head of it and find a place to climb to the top.

Hurried and anxious as Jean was, he yet received an impression of
singular, wild nature of this side gorge.  It was a hidden,
pine-fringed crack in the rock-ribbed and canyon-cut tableland.  Above
him the sky seemed a winding stream of blue.  The walls were red and
bulged out in spruce-greened shelves.  From wall to wall was scarcely a
distance of a hundred feet.  Jumbles of rock obstructed his close
holding to the wall. He had to walk at the edge of the timber.  As he
progressed, the gorge widened into wilder, ruggeder aspect.  Through
the trees ahead he saw where the wall circled to meet the cliff on the
left, forming an oval depression, the nature of which he could not
ascertain.  But it appeared to be a small opening surrounded by dense
thickets and the overhanging walls.  Anxiety augmented to alarm.  He
might not be able to find a place to scale those rough cliffs.
Breathing hard, Jean halted again. The situation was growing critical
again.  His physical condition was worse.  Loss of sleep and rest, lack
of food, the long pursuit of Queen, the wound in his arm, and the
desperate run for his life—these had weakened him to the extent that
if he undertook any strenuous effort he would fail.  His cunning
weighed all chances.

The shade of wall and foliage above, and another jumble of ruined
cliff, hindered his survey of the ground ahead, and he almost stumbled
upon a cabin, hidden on three sides, with a small, bare clearing in
front. It was an old, ramshackle structure like others he had run
across in the canons.  Cautiously he approached and peeped around the
corner. At first swift glance it had all the appearance of long disuse.
But Jean had no time for another look.  A clip-clop of trotting horses
on hard ground brought the same pell-mell rush of sensations that had
driven him to wild flight scarcely an hour past.  His body jerked with
its instinctive impulse, then quivered with his restraint.  To turn
back would be risky, to run ahead would be fatal, to hide was his one
hope.  No covert behind!  And the clip-clop of hoofs sounded closer.
One moment longer Jean held mastery over his instincts of
self-preservation.  To keep from running was almost impossible. It was
the sheer primitive animal sense to escape.  He drove it back and
glided along the front of the cabin.

Here he saw that the cabin adjoined another.  Reaching the door, he was
about to peep in when the thud of hoofs and voices close at hand
transfixed him with a grim certainty that he had not an instant to
lose. Through the thin, black-streaked line of trees he saw moving red
objects. Horses!  He must run.  Passing the door, his keen nose caught
a musty, woody odor and the tail of his eye saw bare dirt floor.  This
cabin was unused.  He halted—gave a quick look back.  And the first
thing his eye fell upon was a ladder, right inside the door, against
the wall. He looked up.  It led to a loft that, dark and gloomy,
stretched halfway across the cabin.  An irresistible impulse drove
Jean.  Slipping inside, he climbed up the ladder to the loft.  It was
like night up there.  But he crawled on the rough-hewn rafters and,
turning with his head toward the opening, he stretched out and lay
still.

What seemed an interminable moment ended with a trample of hoofs
outside the cabin.  It ceased.  Jean’s vibrating ears caught the jingle
of spurs and a thud of boots striking the ground.

“Wal, sweetheart, heah we are home again,” drawled a slow, cool,
mocking Texas voice.

“Home!  I wonder, Colter—did y’u ever have a home—a mother—a
sister—much less a sweetheart?” was the reply, bitter and caustic.

Jean’s palpitating, hot body suddenly stretched still and cold with
intensity of shock.  His very bones seemed to quiver and stiffen into
ice. During the instant of realization his heart stopped.  And a slow,
contracting pressure enveloped his breast and moved up to constrict his
throat.   That woman’s voice belonged to Ellen Jorth.  The sound of it
had lingered in his dreams.  He had stumbled upon the rendezvous of the
Jorth faction.  Hard indeed had been the fates meted out to those of
the Isbels and Jorths who had passed to their deaths.  But, no ordeal,
not even Queen’s, could compare with this desperate one Jean must
endure. He had loved Ellen Jorth, strangely, wonderfully, and he had
scorned repute to believe her good.  He had spared her father and her
uncle. He had weakened or lost the cause of the Isbels.  He loved her
now, desperately, deathlessly, knowing from her own lips that she was
worthless—loved her the more because he had felt her terrible shame.
And to him—the last of the Isbels—had come the cruelest of dooms—to
be caught like a crippled rat in a trap; to be compelled to lie
helpless, wounded, without a gun; to listen, and perhaps to see Ellen
Jorth enact the very truth of her mocking insinuation.  His will, his
promise, his creed, his blood must hold him to the stem decree that he
should be the last man of the Jorth-Isbel war.  But could he lie there
to hear—to see—when he had a knife and an arm?



CHAPTER XIV


Then followed the leathery flop of saddles to the soft turf and the
stamp, of loosened horses.

Jean heard a noise at the cabin door, a rustle, and then a knock of
something hard against wood.  Silently he moved his head to look down
through a crack between the rafters.  He saw the glint of a rifle
leaning against the sill.  Then the doorstep was darkened.  Ellen Jorth
sat down with a long, tired sigh.  She took off her sombrero and the
light shone on the rippling, dark-brown hair, hanging in a tangled
braid. The curved nape of her neck showed a warm tint of golden tan.
She wore a gray blouse, soiled and torn, that clung to her lissome
shoulders.

“Colter, what are y’u goin’ to do?” she asked, suddenly.  Her voice
carried something Jean did not remember.  It thrilled into the icy
fixity of his senses.

“We’ll stay heah,” was the response, and it was followed by a clinking
step of spurred boot.

“Shore I won’t stay heah,” declared Ellen.  “It makes me sick when I
think of how Uncle Tad died in there alone—helpless—sufferin’. The
place seems haunted.”

“Wal, I’ll agree that it’s tough on y’u.  But what the hell CAN we do?”

A long silence ensued which Ellen did not break.

“Somethin’ has come off round heah since early mawnin’,” declared
Colter. “Somers an’ Springer haven’t got back.  An’ Antonio’s gone....
Now, honest, Ellen, didn’t y’u heah rifle shots off somewhere?”

“I reckon I did,” she responded, gloomily.

“An’ which way?”

“Sounded to me up on the bluff, back pretty far.”

“Wal, shore that’s my idee.  An’ it makes me think hard.  Y’u know
Somers come across the last camp of the Isbels.  An’ he dug into a
grave to find the bodies of Jim Gordon an’ another man he didn’t know.
Queen kept good his brag.  He braced that Isbel gang an’ killed those
fellars.  But either him or Jean Isbel went off leavin’ bloody tracks.
If it was Queen’s y’u can bet Isbel was after him.  An’ if it was
Isbel’s tracks, why shore Queen would stick to them.  Somers an’
Springer couldn’t follow the trail.  They’re shore not much good at
trackin’.  But for days they’ve been ridin’ the woods, hopin’ to run
across Queen.... Wal now, mebbe they run across Isbel instead.  An’ if
they did an’ got away from him they’ll be heah sooner or later.  If
Isbel was too many for them he’d hunt for my trail.  I’m gamblin’ that
either Queen or Jean Isbel is daid.  I’m hopin’ it’s Isbel.  Because if
he ain’t daid he’s the last of the Isbels, an’ mebbe I’m the last of
Jorth’s gang.... Shore I’m not hankerin’ to meet the half-breed. That’s
why I say we’ll stay heah.  This is as good a hidin’ place as there is
in the country.  We’ve grub.  There’s water an’ grass.”

“Me—stay heah with y’u—alone!”

The tone seemed a contradiction to the apparently accepted sense of her
words.  Jean held his breath.  But he could not still the slowly
mounting and accelerating faculties within that were involuntarily
rising to meet some strange, nameless import.  He felt it.  He imagined
it would be the catastrophe of Ellen Jorth’s calm acceptance of
Colter’s proposition.  But down in Jean’s miserable heart lived
something that would not die.  No mere words could kill it.  How
poignant that moment of her silence!  How terribly he realized that if
his intelligence and his emotion had believed her betraying words, his
soul had not!

But Ellen Jorth did not speak.  Her brown head hung thoughtfully. Her
supple shoulders sagged a little.

“Ellen, what’s happened to y’u?” went on Colter.

“All the misery possible to a woman,” she replied, dejectedly.

“Shore I don’t mean that way,” he continued, persuasively.  “I ain’t
gainsayin’ the hard facts of your life.  It’s been bad.  Your dad was
no good.... But I mean I can’t figger the change in y’u.”

“No, I reckon y’u cain’t,” she said.  “Whoever was responsible for your
make-up left out a mind—not to say feeling.”

Colter drawled a low laugh.

“Wal, have that your own way.  But how much longer are yu goin’ to be
like this heah?”

“Like what?” she rejoined, sharply.

“Wal, this stand-offishness of yours?”

“Colter, I told y’u to let me alone,” she said, sullenly.

“Shore.  An’ y’u did that before.  But this time y’u’re different....
An’ wal, I’m gettin’ tired of it.”

Here the cool, slow voice of the Texan sounded an inflexibility before
absent, a timber that hinted of illimitable power.

Ellen Jorth shrugged her lithe shoulders and, slowly rising, she picked
up the little rifle and turned to step into the cabin.

“Colter,” she said, “fetch my pack an’ my blankets in heah.”

“Shore,” he returned, with good nature.

Jean saw Ellen Jorth lay the rifle lengthwise in a chink between two
logs and then slowly turn, back to the wall.  Jean knew her then, yet
did not know her.  The brown flash of her face seemed that of an older,
graver woman.  His strained gaze, like his waiting mind, had expected
something, he knew not what—a hardened face, a ghost of beauty, a
recklessness, a distorted, bitter, lost expression in keeping with her
fortunes.  But he had reckoned falsely.  She did not look like that.
There was incalculable change, but the beauty remained, somehow
different.  Her red lips were parted.  Her brooding eyes, looking out
straight from under the level, dark brows, seemed sloe black and
wonderful with their steady, passionate light.

Jean, in his eager, hungry devouring of the beloved face, did not on
the first instant grasp the significance of its expression.  He was
seeing the features that had haunted him.  But quickly he interpreted
her expression as the somber, hunted look of a woman who would bear no
more.  Under the torn blouse her full breast heaved.  She held her
hands clenched at her sides.  She was’ listening, waiting for that
jangling, slow step.  It came, and with the sound she subtly changed.
She was a woman hiding her true feelings.  She relaxed, and that
strong, dark look of fury seemed to fade back into her eyes.

Colter appeared at the door, carrying a roll of blankets and a pack.

“Throw them heah,” she said.  “I reckon y’u needn’t bother coming in.”

That angered the man.  With one long stride he stepped over the
doorsill, down into the cabin, and flung the blankets at her feet and
then the pack after it.  Whereupon he deliberately sat down in the
door, facing her. With one hand he slid off his sombrero, which fell
outside, and with the other he reached in his upper vest pocket for the
little bag of tobacco that showed there.  All the time he looked at
her.  By the light now unobstructed Jean descried Colter’s face; and
sight of it then sounded the roll and drum of his passions.

“Wal, Ellen, I reckon we’ll have it out right now an’ heah,” he said,
and with tobacco in one hand, paper in the other he began the
operations of making a cigarette.  However, he scarcely removed his
glance from her.

“Yes?” queried Ellen Jorth.

“I’m goin’ to have things the way they were before—an’ more,” he
declared.  The cigarette paper shook in his fingers.

“What do y’u mean?” she demanded.

“Y’u know what I mean,” he retorted.  Voice and action were subtly
unhinging this man’s control over himself.

“Maybe I don’t.  I reckon y’u’d better talk plain.”

The rustler had clear gray-yellow eyes, flawless, like, crystal, and
suddenly they danced with little fiery flecks.

“The last time I laid my hand on y’u I got hit for my pains. An’ shore
that’s been ranklin’.”

“Colter, y’u’ll get hit again if y’u put your hands on me,” she said,
dark, straight glance on him.  A frown wrinkled the level brows.

“Y’u mean that?” he asked, thickly.

“I shore, do.”

Manifestly he accepted her assertion.  Something of incredulity and
bewilderment, that had vied with his resentment, utterly disappeared
from his face.

“Heah I’ve been waitin’ for y’u to love me,” he declared, with a
gesture not without dignified emotion.  “Your givin’ in without that
wasn’t so much to me.”

And at these words of the rustler’s Jean Isbel felt an icy, sickening
shudder creep into his soul.  He shut his eyes.  The end of his dream
had been long in coming, but at last it had arrived.  A mocking voice,
like a hollow wind, echoed through that region—that lonely and
ghost-like hall of his heart which had harbored faith.

She burst into speech, louder and sharper, the first words of which
Jean’s strangely throbbing ears did not distinguish.

“— — you!... I never gave in to y’u an’ I never will.”

“But, girl—I kissed y’u—hugged y’u—handled y’u—” he expostulated,
and the making of the cigarette ceased.

“Yes, y’u did—y’u brute—when I was so downhearted and weak I couldn’t
lift my hand,” she flashed.

“Ahuh!  Y’u mean I couldn’t do that now?”

“I should smile I do, Jim Colter!” she replied.

“Wal, mebbe—I’ll see—presently,” he went on, straining with words.
“But I’m shore curious.... Daggs, then—he was nothin’ to y’u?”

“No more than y’u,” she said, morbidly.  “He used to run after me—long
ago, it seems.... I was only a girl then—innocent—an’ I’d not known
any but rough men.  I couldn’t all the time—every day, every
hour—keep him at arm’s length.  Sometimes before I knew—I didn’t
care. I was a child.  A kiss meant nothing to me.  But after I knew—”

Ellen dropped her head in brooding silence.

“Say, do y’u expect me to believe that?” he queried, with a derisive
leer.

“Bah!  What do I care what y’u believe?” she cried, with lifting head.

“How aboot Simm Brace?”

“That coyote!... He lied aboot me, Jim Colter.  And any man half a man
would have known he lied.”

“Wal, Simm always bragged aboot y’u bein’ his girl,” asserted Colter.
“An’ he wasn’t over—particular aboot details of your love-makin’.”

Ellen gazed out of the door, over Colter’s head, as if the forest out
there was a refuge.  She evidently sensed more about the man than
appeared in his slow talk, in his slouching position.  Her lips shut in
a firm line, as if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate
tongue.  Jean, in his absorption, magnified his perceptions. Not yet
was Ellen Jorth afraid of this man, but she feared the situation.
Jean’s heart was at bursting pitch.  All within him seemed chaos—a
wreck of beliefs and convictions.  Nothing was true.  He would wake
presently out of a nightmare.  Yet, as surely as he quivered there, he
felt the imminence of a great moment—a lightning flash—a
thunderbolt—a balance struck.

Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette.  He rolled it, lighted it,
all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a
cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes
as fiery as molten steel.

“Wal, Ellen—how aboot Jean Isbel—our half-breed Nez Perce friend—who
was shore seen handlin’ y’u familiar?” he drawled.

Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty
scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.

“Damn y’u, Jim Colter!” she burst out, furiously.  “I wish Jean Isbel
would jump in that door—or down out of that loft!... He killed
Greaves for defiling my name!... He’d kill Y’U for your dirty
insult.... And I’d like to watch him do it.... Y’u cold-blooded Texan!
Y’u thieving rustler!  Y’u liar!... Y’u lied aboot my father’s death.
And I know why.  Y’u stole my father’s gold.... An’ now y’u want
me—y’u expect me to fall into your arms.... My Heaven! cain’t y’u tell
a decent woman?  Was your mother decent?  Was your sister decent?...
Bah! I’m appealing to deafness.  But y’u’ll HEAH this, Jim Colter!...
I’m not what yu think I am!  I’m not the—the damned hussy y’u liars
have made me out.... I’m a Jorth, alas!  I’ve no home, no relatives, no
friends!  I’ve been forced to live my life with rustlers—vile men like
y’u an’ Daggs an’ the rest of your like.... But I’ve been good!  Do y’u
heah that?... I AM good—so help me God, y’u an’ all your rottenness
cain’t make me bad!”

Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished.

Vanished also was Jean Isbel’s suspended icy dread, the cold clogging
of his fevered mind—vanished in a white, living, leaping flame.

Silently he drew his knife and lay there watching with the eyes of a
wildcat.  The instant Colter stepped far enough over toward the edge of
the loft Jean meant to bound erect and plunge down upon him.  But Jean
could wait now.  Colter had a gun at his hip.  He must never have a
chance to draw it.

“Ahuh!  So y’u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah, do y’u?” queried
Colter. “Wal, if I had any pity on y’u, that’s done for it.”

A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to move, brought
his hand in clutching contact with her.  And the force of it flung her
half across the cabin room, leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his
grasp. Pantingly she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him
off as he took long, slow strides toward her.

Jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovernable passion to
risk all on one leap.  But the distance was too great.  Colter, blind
as he was to all outward things, would hear, would see in time to make
Jean’s effort futile.  Shaking like a leaf, Jean sank back, eye again
to the crack between the rafters.

Ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move.  Every line of her body
was instinct with fight, and the magnificent blaze of her eyes would
have checked a less callous brute.

Colter’s big hand darted between Ellen’s arms and fastened in the front
of her blouse.  He did not try to hold her or draw her close.  The
unleashed passion of the man required violence.  In one savage pull he
tore off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders and heaving
bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned upward.

Overcome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the rustler, Ellen
sank to her knees, with blanched face and dilating eyes, trying with
folded arms and trembling hand to hide her nudity.

At that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard trail outside halted
Colter in his tracks.

“Hell!” he exclaimed.  “An’ who’s that?”  With a fierce action he flung
the remnants of Ellen’s blouse in her face and turned to leap out the
door.

Jean saw Ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while
she sagged against the wall and stared at the door.  The hoof beats
pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside.

“Jim—thar’s hell to pay!” rasped out a panting voice.

“Wal, Springer, I reckon I wished y’u’d paid it without spoilin’ my
deals,” retorted Colter, cool and sharp.

“Deals?  Ha!  Y’u’ll be forgettin’—your lady love in a minnit,”
replied Springer.  “When I catch—my breath.”

“Where’s Somers?” demanded Colter.

“I reckon he’s all shot up—if my eyes didn’t fool me.”

“Where is he?” yelled Colter.

“Jim—he’s layin’ up in the bushes round thet bluff.  I didn’t wait to
see how he was hurt.  But he shore stopped some lead.  An’ he flopped
like a chicken with its—haid cut off.”

“Where’s Antonio?”

“He run like the greaser he is,” declared Springer, disgustedly.

“Ahuh!  An’ where’s Queen?” queried Colter, after a significant pause.

“Dead!”

The silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that held Jean in cold
bonds.  He saw the girl below rise from her knees, one hand holding the
blouse to her breast, the other extended, and with strange, repressed,
almost frantic look she swayed toward the door.

“Wal, talk,” ordered Colter, harshly.

“Jim, there ain’t a hell of a lot,” replied Springer; drawing a deep
breath, “but what there is is shore interestin’.... Me an’ Somers took
Antonio with us.  He left his woman with the sheep.  An’ we rode up the
canyon, clumb out on top, an’ made a circle back on the ridge. That’s
the way we’ve been huntin’ fer tracks.  Up thar in a bare spot we run
plump into Queen sittin’ against a tree, right out in the open.
Queerest sight y’u ever seen!  The damn gunfighter had set down to wait
for Isbel, who was trailin’ him, as we suspected—an’ he died thar. He
wasn’t cold when we found him.... Somers was quick to see a trick. So
he propped Queen up an’ tied the guns to his hands—an’, Jim, the
queerest thing aboot that deal was this—Queen’s guns was empty!  Not a
shell left!  It beat us holler.... We left him thar, an’ hid up high on
the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off.  The hosses we left back of a
thicket.  An’ we waited thar a long time.  But, sure enough, the
half-breed come.  He was too smart.  Too much Injun!  He would not
cross the open, but went around.  An’ then he seen Queen.  It was great
to watch him.  After a little he shoved his rifle out an’ went right
fer Queen.  This is when I wanted to shoot.  I could have plugged him.
But Somers says wait an’ make it sure.  When Isbel got up to Queen he
was sort of half hid by the tree.  An’ I couldn’t wait no longer, so I
shot.  I hit him, too.  We all begun to shoot.  Somers showed himself,
an’ that’s when Isbel opened up.  He used up a whole magazine on Somers
an’ then, suddenlike, he quit.  It didn’t take me long to figger mebbe
he was out of shells.  When I seen him run I was certain of it.  Then
we made for the hosses an’ rode after Isbel.  Pretty soon I seen him
runnin’ like a deer down the ridge.  I yelled an’ spurred after him.
There is where Antonio quit me.  But I kept on.  An’ I got a shot at
Isbel.  He ran out of sight.  I follered him by spots of blood on the
stones an’ grass until I couldn’t trail him no more.  He must have gone
down over the cliffs.  He couldn’t have done nothin’ else without me
seein’ him.  I found his rifle, an’ here it is to prove what I say.  I
had to go back to climb down off the Rim, an’ I rode fast down the
canyon.  He’s somewhere along that west wall, hidin’ in the brush, hard
hit if I know anythin’ aboot the color of blood.”

“Wal!... that beats me holler, too,” ejaculated Colter.

“Jim, what’s to be done?” inquired Springer, eagerly.  “If we’re sharp
we can corral that half-breed.  He’s the last of the Isbels.”

“More, pard.  He’s the last of the Isbel outfit,” declared Colter. “If
y’u can show me blood in his tracks I’ll trail him.”

“Y’u can bet I’ll show y’u,” rejoined the other rustler.  “But listen!
Wouldn’t it be better for us first to see if he crossed the canyon? I
reckon he didn’t.  But let’s make sure.  An’ if he didn’t we’ll have
him somewhar along that west canyon wall.  He’s not got no gun.  He’d
never run thet way if he had.... Jim, he’s our meat!”

“Shore, he’ll have that knife,” pondered Colter.

“We needn’t worry about thet,” said the other, positively.  “He’s hard
hit, I tell y’u.  All we got to do is find thet bloody trail again an’
stick to it—goin’ careful.  He’s layin’ low like a crippled wolf.”

“Springer, I want the job of finishin’ that half-breed,” hissed Colter.
“I’d give ten years of my life to stick a gun down his throat an’ shoot
it off.”

“All right.  Let’s rustle.  Mebbe y’u’ll not have to give much more ’n
ten minnits.  Because I tell y’u I can find him.  It’d been easy—but,
Jim, I reckon I was afraid.”

“Leave your hoss for me an’ go ahaid,” the rustler then said,
brusquely. “I’ve a job in the cabin heah.”

“Haw-haw!... Wal, Jim, I’ll rustle a bit down the trail an’ wait. No
huntin’ Jean Isbel alone—not fer me.  I’ve had a queer feelin’ about
thet knife he used on Greaves.  An’ I reckon y’u’d oughter let thet
Jorth hussy alone long enough to—”

“Springer, I reckon I’ve got to hawg-tie her—”  His voice became
indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a slow moving away of the
men.

Jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch every syllable
while his gaze rested upon Ellen who stood beside the door.  Every line
of her body denoted a listening intensity.  Her back was toward Jean,
so that he could not see her face.  And he did not want to see, but
could not help seeing her naked shoulders.  She put her head out of the
door.  Suddenly she drew it in quickly and half turned her face, slowly
raising her white arm.  This was the left one and bore the marks of
Colter’s hard fingers.

She gave a little gasp.  Her eyes became large and staring.  They were
bent on the hand that she had removed from a step on the ladder.  On
hand and wrist showed a bright-red smear of blood.

Jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that he had left
his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had climbed.  That moment seemed
the supremely terrible one of his life.

Ellen Jorth’s face blanched and her eyes darkened and dilated with
exceeding amaze and flashing thought to become fixed with horror. That
instant was the one in which her reason connected the blood on the
ladder with the escape of Jean Isbel.

One moment she leaned there, still as a stone except for her heaving
breast, and then her fixed gaze changed to a swift, dark blaze,
comprehending, yet inscrutable, as she flashed it up the ladder to the
loft.  She could see nothing, yet she knew and Jean knew that she knew
he was there.  A marvelous transformation passed over her features and
even over her form.  Jean choked with the ache in his throat. Slowly
she put the bloody hand behind her while with the other she still held
the torn blouse to her breast.

Colter’s slouching, musical step sounded outside.  And it might have
been a strange breath of infinitely vitalizing and passionate life
blown into the well-springs of Ellen Jorth’s being.  Isbel had no name
for her then.  The spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown.

She swayed back from the door against the wall in singular, softened
poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body.  And as Colter’s
tall shadow fell across the threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring
with eyeballs that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who
in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. He
saw but could not comprehend.

“Jim—I heard—all Springer told y’u,” she said.  The look of her
dumfounded Colter and her voice seemed to shake him visibly.

“Suppose y’u did.  What then?” he demanded, harshly, as he halted with
one booted foot over the threshold.  Malignant and forceful, he eyed
her darkly, doubtfully.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

“What of? Me?”

“No. Of—of Jean Isbel.  He might kill y’u and—then where would I be?”

“Wal, I’m damned!” ejaculated the rustler.  “What’s got into y’u?” He
moved to enter, but a sort of fascination bound him.

“Jim, I hated y’u a moment ago,” she burst out.  “But now—with that
Jean Isbel somewhere near—hidin’—watchin’ to kill y’u—an’ maybe me,
too—I—I don’t hate y’u any more.... Take me away.”

“Girl, have y’u lost your nerve?” he demanded.

“My God! Colter—cain’t y’u see?” she implored.  “Won’t y’u take me
away?”

“I shore will—presently,” he replied, grimly.  “But y’u’ll wait till
I’ve shot the lights out of this Isbel.”

“No!” she cried.  “Take me away now.... An’ I’ll give in—I’ll be what
y’u—want.... Y’u can do with me—as y’u like.”

Colter’s lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting blood.
With a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom over her.

“Am I out of my haid, or are y’u?” he asked, in low, hoarse voice. His
darkly corded face expressed extremest amaze.

“Jim, I mean it,” she whispered, edging an inch nearer him, her white
face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in their eloquence and mystery.
“I’ve no friend but y’u.  I’ll be—yours.... I’m lost.... What does it
matter?  If y’u want me—take me NOW—before I kill myself.”

“Ellen Jorth, there’s somethin’ wrong aboot y’u,” he responded. “Did
y’u tell the truth—when y’u denied ever bein’ a sweetheart of Simm
Bruce?”

“Yes, I told y’u the truth.”

“Ahuh!  An’ how do y’u account for layin’ me out with every dirty name
y’u could give tongue to?”

“Oh, it was temper. I wanted to be let alone.”

“Temper!  Wal, I reckon y’u’ve got one,” he retorted, grimly.  “An’ I’m
not shore y’u’re not crazy or lyin’.  An hour ago I couldn’t touch y’u.”

“Y’u may now—if y’u promise to take me away—at once.  This place has
got on my nerves.  I couldn’t sleep heah with that Isbel hidin’ around.
Could y’u?”

“Wal, I reckon I’d not sleep very deep.”

“Then let us go.”

He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his
piercing gaze studied her distrustfully.  Yet all the while there was
manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in
abeyance to his will.

“That aboot your bein’ so good?” he inquired, with a return of the
mocking drawl.

“Never mind what’s past,” she flashed, with passion dark as his. “I’ve
made my offer.”

“Shore there’s a lie aboot y’u somewhere,” he muttered, thickly.

“Man, could I do more?” she demanded, in scorn.

“No.  But it’s a lie,” he returned.  “Y’u’ll get me to take y’u away
an’ then fool me—run off—God knows what.  Women are all liars.”

Manifestly he could not believe in her strange transformation.  Memory
of her wild and passionate denunciation of him and his kind must have
seared even his calloused soul.  But the ruthless nature of him had not
weakened nor softened in the least as to his intentions.  This
weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him, obsessed him with its
possibilities.  He had the look of a man who was divided between love
of her and hate, whose love demanded a return, but whose hate required
a proof of her abasement.  Not proof of surrender, but proof of her
shame! The ignominy of him thirsted for its like.  He could grind her
beauty under his heel, but he could not soften to this feminine
inscrutableness.

And whatever was the truth of Ellen Jorth in this moment, beyond
Colter’s gloomy and stunted intelligence, beyond even the love of Jean
Isbel, it was something that held the balance of mastery.  She read
Colter’s mind.  She dropped the torn blouse from her hand and stood
there, unashamed, with the wave of her white breast pulsing, eyes black
as night and full of hell, her face white, tragic, terrible, yet
strangely lovely.

“Take me away,” she whispered, stretching one white arm toward him,
then the other.

Colter, even as she moved, had leaped with inarticulate cry and radiant
face to meet her embrace.  But it seemed, just as her left arm flashed
up toward his neck, that he saw her bloody hand and wrist.  Strange how
that checked his ardor—threw up his lean head like that striking bird
of prey.

“Blood!  What the hell!” he ejaculated, and in one sweep he grasped
her. “How’d yu do that?  Are y’u cut?... Hold still.”

Ellen could not release her hand.

“I scratched myself,” she said.

“Where?... All that blood!”  And suddenly he flung her hand back with
fierce gesture, and the gleams of his yellow eyes were like the points
of leaping flames.  They pierced her—read the secret falsity of her.
Slowly he stepped backward, guardedly his hand moved to his gun, and
his glance circled and swept the interior of the cabin.  As if he had
the nose of a hound and sight to follow scent, his eyes bent to the
dust of the ground before the door.  He quivered, grew rigid as stone,
and then moved his head with exceeding slowness as if searching through
a microscope in the dust—farther to the left—to the foot of the
ladder—and up one step—another—a third—all the way up to the loft.
Then he whipped out his gun and wheeled to face the girl.

“Ellen, y’u’ve got your half-breed heah!” he said, with a terrible
smile.

She neither moved nor spoke.  There was a suggestion of collapse, but
it was only a change where the alluring softness of her hardened into a
strange, rapt glow.  And in it seemed the same mastery that had
characterized her former aspect.  Herein the treachery of her was
revealed.  She had known what she meant to do in any case.

Colter, standing at the door, reached a long arm toward the ladder,
where he laid his hand on a rung.  Taking it away he held it palm
outward for her to see the dark splotch of blood.

“See?”

“Yes, I see,” she said, ringingly.

Passion wrenched him, transformed him.  “All that—aboot leavin’
heah—with me—aboot givin’ in—was a lie!”

“No, Colter. It was the truth. I’ll go—yet—now—if y’u’ll
spare—HIM!” She whispered the last word and made a slight movement of
her hand toward the loft.  “Girl!” he exploded, incredulously.  “Y’u
love this half-breed—this ISBEL!... Y’u LOVE him!”

“With all my heart!... Thank God!  It has been my glory.... It might
have been my salvation.... But now I’ll go to hell with y’u—if y’u’ll
spare him.”

“Damn my soul!” rasped out the rustler, as if something of respect was
wrung from that sordid deep of him.  “Y’u—y’u woman!... Jorth will
turn over in his grave.  He’d rise out of his grave if this Isbel got
y’u.”

“Hurry!  Hurry!” implored Ellen.  “Springer may come back. I think I
heard a call.”

“Wal, Ellen Jorth, I’ll not spare Isbel—nor y’u,” he returned, with
dark and meaning leer, as he turned to ascend the ladder.

Jean Isbel, too, had reached the climax of his suspense.  Gathering all
his muscles in a knot he prepared to leap upon Colter as he mounted the
ladder.  But, Ellen Jorth screamed piercingly and snatched her rifle
from its resting place and, cocking it, she held it forward and low.

“COLTER!”

Her scream and his uttered name stiffened him.

“Y’u will spare Jean Isbel!” she rang out.  “Drop that gun-drop it!”

“Shore, Ellen.... Easy now.  Remember your temper.... I’ll let Isbel
off,” he panted, huskily, and all his body sank quiveringly to a crouch.

“Drop your gun!  Don’t turn round.... Colter!—I’LL KILL Y’U!”

But even then he failed to divine the meaning and the spirit of her.

“Aw, now, Ellen,” he entreated, in louder, huskier tones, and as if
dragged by fatal doubt of her still, he began to turn.

Crash!  The rifle emptied its contents in Colter’s breast.  All his
body sprang up.  He dropped the gun.  Both hands fluttered toward her.
And an awful surprise flashed over his face.

“So—help—me—God!” he whispered, with blood thick in his voice. Then
darkly, as one groping, he reached for her with shaking hands.
“Y’u—y’u white-throated hussy!... I’ll ...”

He grasped the quivering rifle barrel.  Crash!  She shot him again. As
he swayed over her and fell she had to leap aside, and his clutching
hand tore the rifle from her grasp.  Then in convulsion he writhed, to
heave on his back, and stretch out—a ghastly spectacle.  Ellen backed
away from it, her white arms wide, a slow horror blotting out the
passion of her face.

Then from without came a shrill call and the sound of rapid footsteps.
Ellen leaned against the wall, staring still at Colter.  “Hey,
Jim—what’s the shootin’?” called Springer, breathlessly.

As his form darkened the doorway Jean once again gathered all his
muscular force for a tremendous spring.

Springer saw the girl first and he appeared thunderstruck.  His jaw
dropped.  He needed not the white gleam of her person to transfix him.
Her eyes did that and they were riveted in unutterable horror upon
something on the ground.  Thus instinctively directed, Springer espied
Colter.

“Y’u—y’u shot him!” he shrieked.  “What for—y’u hussy?... Ellen
Jorth, if y’u’ve killed him, I’ll...”

He strode toward where Colter lay.

Then Jean, rising silently, took a step and like a tiger he launched
himself into the air, down upon the rustler.  Even as he leaped
Springer gave a quick, upward look.  And he cried out.  Jean’s
moccasined feet struck him squarely and sent him staggering into the
wall, where his head hit hard.  Jean fell, but bounded up as the
half-stunned Springer drew his gun.  Then Jean lunged forward with a
single sweep of his arm—and looked no more.

Ellen ran swaying out of the door, and, once clear of the threshold,
she tottered out on the grass, to sink to her knees.  The bright,
golden sunlight gleamed upon her white shoulders and arms.  Jean had
one foot out of the door when he saw her and he whirled back to get her
blouse.  But Springer had fallen upon it.  Snatching up a blanket, Jean
ran out.

“Ellen!  Ellen!  Ellen!” he cried.  “It’s over!”  And reaching her, he
tried to wrap her in the blanket.

She wildly clutched his knees.  Jean was conscious only of her white,
agonized face and the dark eyes with their look of terrible strain.

“Did y’u—did y’u...” she whispered.

“Yes—it’s over,” he said, gravely.  “Ellen, the Isbel-Jorth feud is
ended.”

“Oh, thank—God!” she cried, in breaking voice.  “Jean—y’u are
wounded ... the blood on the step!”

“My arm.  See.  It’s not bad.... Ellen, let me wrap this round you.”
Folding the blanket around her shoulders, he held it there and
entreated her to get up.  But she only clung the closer.  She hid her
face on his knees.  Long shudders rippled over her, shaking the
blanket, shaking Jean’s hands.  Distraught, he did not know what to do.
And his own heart was bursting.

“Ellen, you must not kneel—there—that way,” he implored.

“Jean!  Jean!” she moaned, and clung the tighter.

He tried to lift her up, but she was a dead weight, and with that hold
on him seemed anchored at his feet.

“I killed Colter,” she gasped.  “I HAD to—kill him!... I offered—to
fling myself away....”

“For me!” he cried, poignantly.  “Oh, Ellen!  Ellen! the world has come
to an end!... Hush! don’t keep sayin’ that.  Of course you killed him.
You saved my life.  For I’d never have let you go off with him ....
Yes, you killed him.... You’re a Jorth an’ I’m an Isbel ... We’ve blood
on our hands—both of us—I for you an’ you for me!”

His voice of entreaty and sadness strengthened her and she raised her
white face, loosening her clasp to lean back and look up.  Tragic,
sweet, despairing, the loveliness of her—the significance of her there
on her knees—thrilled him to his soul.

“Blood on my hands!” she whispered.  “Yes.  It was awful—killing
him.... But—all I care for in this world is for your forgiveness—and
your faith that saved my soul!”

“Child, there’s nothin’ to forgive,” he responded.  “Nothin’... Please,
Ellen...”

“I lied to y’u!” she cried.  “I lied to y’u!”

“Ellen, listen—darlin’.”  And the tender epithet brought her head and
arms back close-pressed to him.  “I know—now,” he faltered on.  “I
found out to-day what I believed.  An’ I swear to God—by the memory of
my dead mother—down in my heart I never, never, never believed what
they—what y’u tried to make me believe.  NEVER!”

“Jean—I love y’u—love y’u—love y’u!” she breathed with exquisite,
passionate sweetness.  Her dark eyes burned up into his.

“Ellen, I can’t lift you up,” he said, in trembling eagerness,
signifying his crippled arm.  “But I can kneel with you!...”


*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "To the Last Man" ***

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