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, Im 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 be 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." 		I

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 comer 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 ail 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 comer 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 comer, 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 be 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 bad 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 stopped 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 clog, 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 comer 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 bosses," 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 comer 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 bad 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 be 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 talkan' 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," repled 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 deapair, 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 Oueen 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 be 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 be 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 bad 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
be 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 lovein 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 be 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 loveliless 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, signifiying
his crippled arm.  "But I can kneel with you! . . ."