From this hour Ellen Jorth bent all of her lately awakened intelligence
and will to the only end that seemed to hold possible salvation for
her. In the crisis sure to come she did not want to be blind or weak.
Dreaming and indolence, habits born in her which were often a comfort
to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the hard test she
divined and dreaded. In the matter of her father’s fight she must
stand by him whatever the issue or the outcome; in what pertained to
her own principles, her womanhood, and her soul she stood absolutely
alone.
Therefore, Ellen put dreams aside, and indolence of mind and body
behind her. Many tasks she found, and when these were done for a day
she kept active in other ways, thus earning the poise and peace of
labor.
Jorth rode off every day, sometimes with one or two of the men, often
with a larger number. If he spoke of such trips to Ellen it was to
give an impression of visiting the ranches of his neighbors or the
various sheep camps. Often he did not return the day he left. When he
did get back he smelled of rum and appeared heavy from need of sleep.
His horses were always dust and sweat covered. During his absences
Ellen fell victim to anxious dread until he returned. Daily he grew
darker and more haggard of face, more obsessed by some impending fate.
Often he stayed up late, haranguing with the men in the dim-lit cabin,
where they drank and smoked, but seldom gambled any more. When the men
did not gamble something immediate and perturbing was on their minds.
Ellen had not yet lowered herself to the deceit and suspicion of
eavesdropping, but she realized that there was a climax approaching in
which she would deliberately do so.
In those closing May days Ellen learned the significance of many things
that previously she had taken as a matter of course. Her father did
not run a ranch. There was absolutely no ranching done, and little
work. Often Ellen had to chop wood herself. Jorth did not possess a
plow. Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack
dumfounded her. Even old John Sprague raised some hay, beets, turnips.
Jorth’s cattle and horses fared ill during the winter. Ellen
remembered how they used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens.
Many of them died in the snow. The flocks of sheep, however, were
driven down into the Basin in the fall, and across the Reno Pass to
Phoenix and Maricopa.
Ellen could not discover a fence post on the ranch, nor a piece of salt
for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a
sheep-shearing outfit. She had never seen any sheep sheared. Ellen
could never keep track of the many and different horses running loose
and hobbled round the ranch. There were droves of horses in the woods,
and some of them wild as deer. According to her long-established
understanding, her father and her uncles were keen on horse trading and
buying.
Then the many trails leading away from the Jorth ranch—these grew to
have a fascination for Ellen; and the time came when she rode out on
them to see for herself where they led. The sheep ranch of Daggs,
supposed to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in Bear Canyon,
never materialized at all for Ellen. This circumstance so interested
her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and got him to direct
her to Bear Canyon, so that she would be sure not to miss it. And she
rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Rim down all
its length. She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear
Canyon. Sprague said there was only one canyon by that name. Daggs
had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her
father. Had they lied? Were they mistaken in the canyon? There were
many canyons, all heading up near the Rim, all running and widening
down for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from
the deep, short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the
Basin side. Ellen investigated the canyons within six or eight miles of
her home, both to east and to west. All she discovered was a couple of
old log cabins, long deserted. Still, she did not follow out all the
trails to their ends. Several of them led far into the deepest,
roughest, wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen. No
cattle or sheep had ever been driven over these trails.
This riding around of Ellen’s at length got to her father’s ears. Ellen
expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly would
refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked her to
limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot all about
it. In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervousness the
next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with the men, grew to
be distressing for Ellen. They presaged his further deterioration and
the ever-present evil of the growing feud.
One day Jorth rode home in the early morning, after an absence of two
nights. Ellen heard the clip-clop of, horses long before she saw them.
“Hey, Ellen! Come out heah,” called her father.
Ellen left her work and went outside. A stranger had ridden in with
her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by
ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard. He was long, loose
jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet
Ellen had ever seen. Next Ellen espied a black horse they had
evidently brought with them. Her father was holding a rope halter. At
once the black horse struck Ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred.
“Ellen, heah’s a horse for you,” said Jorth, with something of pride.
“I made a trade. Reckon I wanted him myself, but he’s too gentle for
me an’ maybe a little small for my weight.”
Delight visited Ellen for the first time in many days. Seldom had she
owned a good horse, and never one like this.
“Oh, dad!” she exclaimed, in her gratitude.
“Shore he’s yours on one condition,” said her father.
“What’s that?” asked Ellen, as she laid caressing hands on the restless
horse.
“You’re not to ride him out of the canyon.”
“Agreed.... All daid black, isn’t he, except that white face? What’s
his name, dad?
“I forgot to ask,” replied Jorth, as he began unsaddling his own horse.
“Slater, what’s this heah black’s name?”
The lanky giant grinned. “I reckon it was Spades.”
“Spades?” ejaculated Ellen, blankly. “What a name!... Well, I guess
it’s as good as any. He’s shore black.”
“Ellen, keep him hobbled when you’re not ridin’ him,” was her father’s
parting advice as he walked off with the stranger.
Spades was wet and dusty and his satiny skin quivered. He had fine,
dark, intelligent eyes that watched Ellen’s every move. She knew how
her father and his friends dragged and jammed horses through the woods
and over the rough trails. It did not take her long to discover that
this horse had been a pet. Ellen cleaned his coat and brushed him and
fed him. Then she fitted her bridle to suit his head and saddled him.
His evident response to her kindness assured her that he was gentle, so
she mounted and rode him, to discover he had the easiest gait she had
ever experienced. He walked and trotted to suit her will, but when
left to choose his own gait he fell into a graceful little pace that
was very easy for her. He appeared quite ready to break into a run at
her slightest bidding, but Ellen satisfied herself on this first ride
with his slower gaits.
“Spades, y’u’ve shore cut out my burro Jinny,” said Ellen, regretfully.
“Well, I reckon women are fickle.”
Next day she rode up the canyon to show Spades to her friend John
Sprague. The old burro breeder was not at home. As his door was open,
however, and a fire smoldering, Ellen concluded he would soon return.
So she waited. Dismounting, she left Spades free to graze on the new
green grass that carpeted the ground. The cabin and little level
clearing accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the forest. Ellen
always liked it here and had once been in the habit of visiting the old
man often. But of late she had stayed away, for the reason that
Sprague’s talk and his news and his poorly hidden pity depressed her.
Presently she heard hoof beats on the hard, packed trail leading down
the canyon in the direction from which she had come. Scarcely likely
was it that Sprague should return from this direction. Ellen thought
her father had sent one of the herders for her. But when she caught a
glimpse of the approaching horseman, down in the aspens, she failed to
recognize him. After he had passed one of the openings she heard his
horse stop. Probably the man had seen her; at least she could not
otherwise account for his stopping. The glimpse she had of him had
given her the impression that he was bending over, peering ahead in the
trail, looking for tracks. Then she heard the rider come on again,
more slowly this time. At length the horse trotted out into the
opening, to be hauled up short. Ellen recognized the buckskin-clad
figure, the broad shoulders, the dark face of Jean Isbel.
Ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation she had ever
suffered. It took violence of her new-born spirit to subdue that
feeling.
Isbel rode slowly across the clearing toward her. For Ellen his
approach seemed singularly swift—so swift that her surprise, dismay,
conjecture, and anger obstructed her will. The outwardly calm and cold
Ellen Jorth was a travesty that mocked her—that she felt he would
discern.
The moment Isbel drew close enough for Ellen to see his face she
experienced a strong, shuddering repetition of her first shock of
recognition. He was not the same. The light, the youth was gone.
This, however, did not cause her emotion. Was it not a sudden
transition of her nature to the dominance of hate? Ellen seemed to
feel the shadow of her unknown self standing with her.
Isbel halted his horse. Ellen had been standing near the trunk of a
fallen pine and she instinctively backed against it. How her legs
trembled! Isbel took off his cap and crushed it nervously in his bare,
brown hand.
“Good mornin’, Miss Ellen!” he said.
Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly,
“Did y’u come by our ranch?”
“No. I circled,” he replied.
“Jean Isbel! What do y’u want heah?” she demanded.
“Don’t you know?” he returned. His eyes were intensely black and
piercing. They seemed to search Ellen’s very soul. To meet their gaze
was an ordeal that only her rousing fury sustained.
Ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed Indian
traits and the reputation that had preceded him. But she could not
utter it.
“No,” she replied.
“It’s hard to call a woman a liar,” he returned, bitterly. But you
must be—seein’ you’re a Jorth.
“Liar! Not to y’u, Jean Isbel,” she retorted. “I’d not lie to y’u to
save my life.”
He studied her with keen, sober, moody intent. The dark fire of his
eyes thrilled her.
“If that’s true, I’m glad,” he said.
“Shore it’s true. I’ve no idea why y’u came heah.”
Ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion.
But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the
contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man’s
face.
“Does old Sprague live here?” asked Isbel.
“Yes. I expect him back soon.... Did y’u come to see him?”
“No.... Did Sprague tell you anythin’ about the row he saw me in?”
“He—did not,” replied Ellen, lying with stiff lips. She who had sworn
she could not lie! She felt the hot blood leaving her heart, mounting
in a wave. All her conscious will seemed impelled to deceive. What
had she to hide from Jean Isbel? And a still, small voice replied that
she had to hide the Ellen Jorth who had waited for him that day, who
had spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who
had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for her
name.
“I’m glad of that,” Isbel was saying, thoughtfully.
“Did you come heah to see me?” interrupted Ellen. She felt that she
could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of
consideration in him. She would betray herself—betray what she did
not even realize herself. She must force other footing—and that
should be the one of strife between the Jorths and Isbels.
“No—honest, I didn’t, Miss Ellen,” he rejoined, humbly. “I’ll tell
you, presently, why I came. But it wasn’t to see you.... I don’t deny
I wanted ... but that’s no matter. You didn’t meet me that day on the
Rim.”
“Meet y’u!” she echoed, coldly. “Shore y’u never expected me?”
“Somehow I did,” he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her. “I put
somethin’ in your tent that day. Did you find it?”
“Yes,” she replied, with the same casual coldness.
“What did you do with it?”
“I kicked it out, of course,” she replied.
She saw him flinch.
“And you never opened it?”
“Certainly not,” she retorted, as if forced. “Doon’t y’u know anythin’
about—about people?... Shore even if y’u are an Isbel y’u never were
born in Texas.”
“Thank God I wasn’t!” he replied. “I was born in a beautiful country
of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren
desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. Where I come from
men don’t live on hate. They can forgive.”
“Forgive!... Could y’u forgive a Jorth?”
“Yes, I could.”
“Shore that’s easy to say—with the wrongs all on your side,” she
declared, bitterly.
“Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side,” retorted Jean, his
voice fall. “Your father stole my father’s sweetheart—by lies, by
slander, by dishonor, by makin’ terrible love to her in his absence.”
“It’s a lie,” cried Ellen, passionately.
“It is not,” he declared, solemnly.
“Jean Isbel, I say y’u lie!”
“No! I say you’ve been lied to,” he thundered.
The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen. It
weakened her.
“But—mother loved dad—best.”
“Yes, afterward. No wonder, poor woman!... But it was the action of
your father and your mother that ruined all these lives. You’ve got to
know the truth, Ellen Jorth.... All the years of hate have borne their
fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must be spilled.
The Jorths and the Isbels can’t live on the same earth.... And you’ve
got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and
me.”
The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her.
“Never, Jean Isbel!” she cried. “I’ll never know truth from y’u....
I’ll never share anythin’ with y’u—not even hell.”
Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins.
The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.
“Why do you hate me so?” he asked. “I just happen to be my father’s
son. I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you ... fell in
love with you in a flash—though I never knew it till after.... Why do
you hate me so terribly?”
Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. “Y’u’re an
Isbel.... Doon’t speak of love to me.”
“I didn’t intend to. But your—your hate seems unnatural. And we’ll
probably never meet again.... I can’t help it. I love you. Love at
first sight! Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn’t it?... It
was all so strange. My meetin’ you so lonely and unhappy, my seein’
you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin’ you so good in spite of—”
“Shore it was strange,” interrupted Ellen, with scornful laugh. She had
found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt.
“Thinking me so good in spite of— Ha-ha! And I said I’d been kissed
before!”
“Yes, in spite of everything,” he said.
Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild
tumult in her heart. All that crowded to her lips for utterance was
false.
“Yes—kissed before I met you—and since,” she said, mockingly. “And I
laugh at what y’u call love, Jean Isbel.”
“Laugh if you want—but believe it was sweet, honorable—the best in
me,” he replied, in deep earnestness.
“Bah!” cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.
“By Heaven, you must be different from what I thought!” exclaimed
Isbel, huskily.
“Shore if I wasn’t, I’d make myself.... Now, Mister Jean Isbel, get on
your horse an’ go!”
Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and
she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect
prepared her for some blow.
“That’s a pretty black horse.”
“Yes,” replied Ellen, blankly.
“Do you like him?”
“I—I love him.”
“All right, I’ll give him to you then. He’ll have less work and kinder
treatment than if I used him. I’ve got some pretty hard rides ahead of
me.”
“Y’u—y’u give—” whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening. “Yes. He’s
mine,” replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up
his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the
closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a
beloved master she saw it then. Isbel laid a hand on the animal’s neck
and caressed him, then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: “I
picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father’s. We got along
well. My sister Ann rode him a good deal.... He was stolen from our
pasture day before yesterday. I took his trail and tracked him up
here. Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to
circle till I picked it up again.”
“Stolen—pasture—tracked him up heah?” echoed Ellen, without any
evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, she seemed to have been turned
to stone.
“Trackin’ him was easy. I wish for your sake it ’d been impossible,”
he said, bluntly.
“For my sake?” she echoed, in precisely the same tone,
Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control. He misunderstood
it. With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he
could look into her face.
“Yes, for your sake!” he declared, harshly. “Haven’t you sense enough
to see that?... What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?”
“Game I ... Game of what?” she asked.
“Why, a—a game of ignorance—innocence—any old game to fool a man
who’s tryin’ to be decent.”
This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. And it
inflamed Isbel.
“You know your father’s a horse thief!” he thundered.
Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an
unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body,
her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by
hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind
and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of
Isbel’s eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one
flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered
died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a
second of whirling, revealing thought.
“Ellen Jorth, you know your father’s in with this Hash Knife Gang of
rustlers,” thundered Isbel.
“Shore,” she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.
“You know he’s got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?”
“Shore.”
“You know this talk of sheepmen buckin’ the cattlemen is all a blind?”
“Shore,” reiterated Ellen.
Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment,
he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by
the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she
emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head
and his broad hand went to his breast.
“To think I fell in love with such as you!” he exclaimed, and his other
hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.
The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen—body, mind, and soul.
Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination
there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to
fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like
whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It
lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that
family to whom she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and
rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting
her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths. The
sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.
“Shore y’u might have had me—that day on the Rim—if y’u hadn’t told
your name,” she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all
the mystery of a woman’s nature.
Isbel’s powerful frame shook as with an ague. “Girl, what do you mean?”
“Shore, I’d have been plumb fond of havin’ y’u make up to me,” she
drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of
the love he could not help. Some fiendish woman’s satisfaction dwelt
in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the
good in him.
“Ellen Jorth, you lie!” he burst out, hoarsely.
“Jean, shore I’d been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I
was tired of them.... I wanted a new lover.... And if y’u hadn’t give
yourself away—”
Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his
hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood
from a cut lip.
“Shut up, you hussy!” he ordered, roughly. “Have you no shame?... My
sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses—she pitied you.”
That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank.
But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible
poise.
“Jean Isbel—go along with y’u,” she said, impatiently. “I’m waiting
heah for Simm Bruce!”
At last it was as if she struck his heart. Because of doubt of himself
and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof
against this last stab. Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had
prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him
rebounded on her! She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her
to move a hand. One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the
other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back. Then she
tried to wrestle away. But she was utterly powerless. His dark face
bent down closer and closer. Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle.
She was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic
eyes of a snake. Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her,
she welcomed it.
“Ellen Jorth, I’m thinkin’ yet—you lie!” he said, low and tense
between his teeth.
“No! No!” she screamed, wildly. Her nerve broke there. She could no
longer meet those terrible black eyes. Her passionate denial was not
only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her,
repudiating herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable
situation.
Isbel took her literally. She had convinced him. And the instant held
blank horror for Ellen.
“By God—then I’ll have somethin’—of you anyway!” muttered Isbel,
thickly.
Ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck. She saw his dark, hard
face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it
blurred and obstructed her gaze. She felt the swell and ripple and
stretch—then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope.
Then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers. All Ellen’s
senses reeled, as if she were swooning. She was suffocating. The
spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and
terrible consciousness. For the endless period of one moment he held
her so that her breast seemed crushed. His kisses burned and braised
her lips. And then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so
hard that she choked under them. It was as if a huge bat had fastened
upon her throat.
Suddenly the remorseless binding embraces—the hot and savage
kisses—fell away from her. Isbel had let go. She saw him throw up
his hands, and stagger back a little, all the while with his piercing
gaze on her. His face had been dark purple: now it was white.
“No—Ellen Jorth,” he panted, “I don’t—want any of you—that way.” And
suddenly he sank on the log and covered his face with his hands. “What
I loved in you—was what I thought—you were.”
Like a wildcat Ellen sprang upon him, beating him with her fists,
tearing at his hair, scratching his face, in a blind fury. Isbel made
no move to stop her, and her violence spent itself with her strength.
She swayed back from him, shaking so that she could scarcely stand.
“Y’u—damned—Isbel!” she gasped, with hoarse passion. “Y’u insulted
me!”
“Insulted you?...” laughed Isbel, in bitter scorn. “It couldn’t be
done.”
“Oh!... I’ll KILL y’u!” she hissed.
Isbel stood up and wiped the red scratches on his face. “Go ahead.
There’s my gun,” he said, pointing to his saddle sheath. “Somebody’s
got to begin this Jorth-Isbel feud. It’ll be a dirty business. I’m
sick of it already.... Kill me!... First blood for Ellen Jorth!”
Suddenly the dark grim tide that had seemed to engulf Ellen’s very soul
cooled and receded, leaving her without its false strength. She began
to sag. She stared at Isbel’s gun. “Kill him,” whispered the
retreating voices of her hate. But she was as powerless as if she were
still held in Jean Isbel’s giant embrace.
“I—I want to—kill y’u,” she whispered, “but I cain’t.... Leave me.”
“You’re no Jorth—the same as I’m no Isbel. We oughtn’t be mixed in
this deal,” he said, somberly. “I’m sorrier for you than I am for
myself.... You’re a girl.... You once had a good mother—a decent home.
And this life you’ve led here—mean as it’s been—is nothin’ to what
you’ll face now. Damn the men that brought you to this! I’m goin’ to
kill some of them.”
With that he mounted and turned away. Ellen called out for him to take
his horse. He did not stop nor look back. She called again, but her
voice was fainter, and Isbel was now leaving at a trot. Slowly she
sagged against the tree, lower and lower. He headed into the trail
leading up the canyon. How strange a relief Ellen felt! She watched
him ride into the aspens and start up the slope, at last to disappear
in the pines. It seemed at the moment that he took with him something
which had been hers. A pain in her head dulled the thoughts that
wavered to and fro. After he had gone she could not see so well. Her
eyes were tired. What had happened to her? There was blood on her
hands. Isbel’s blood! She shuddered. Was it an omen? Lower she sank
against the tree and closed her eyes.
Old John Sprague did not return. Hours dragged by—dark hours for
Ellen Jorth lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and
golden sunlight from her eyes. At length the lethargy of despair, the
black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a condition
of coherent thought.
What had she learned? Sight of the black horse grazing near seemed to
prompt the trenchant replies. Spades belonged to Jean Isbel. He had
been stolen by her father or by one of her father’s accomplices.
Isbel’s vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast. Her
father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman only as a blind, a
consort of Daggs, leader of the Hash Knife Gang. Ellen well remembered
the ill repute of that gang, way back in Texas, years ago. Her father
had gotten in with this famous band of rustlers to serve his own
ends—the extermination of the Isbels. It was all very plain now to
Ellen.
“Daughter of a horse thief an’ rustler!” she muttered.
And her thoughts sped back to the days of her girlhood. Only the very
early stage of that time had been happy. In the light of Isbel’s
revelation the many changes of residence, the sudden moves to unsettled
parts of Texas, the periods of poverty and sudden prosperity, all
leading to the final journey to this God-forsaken Arizona—these were
now seen in their true significance. As far back as she could remember
her father had been a crooked man. And her mother had known it. He
had dragged her to her ruin. That degradation had killed her. Ellen
realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against her
father. Had Gaston Isbel truly and dishonestly started her father on
his downhill road? Ellen wondered. She hated the Isbels with
unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to
ponder, to weigh judgments in their behalf. She owed it to something
in herself to be fair. But what did it matter who was to blame for the
Jorth-Isbel feud? Somehow Ellen was forced to confess that deep in her
soul it mattered terribly. To be true to herself—the self that she
alone knew—she must have right on her side. If the Jorths were
guilty, and she clung to them and their creed, then she would be one of
them.
“But I’m not,” she mused, aloud. “My name’s Jorth, an’ I reckon I have
bad blood.... But it never came out in me till to-day. I’ve been
honest. I’ve been good—yes, GOOD, as my mother taught me to be—in
spite of all.... Shore my pride made me a fool.... An’ now have I any
choice to make? I’m a Jorth. I must stick to my father.”
All this summing up, however, did not wholly account for the pang in
her breast.
What had she done that day? And the answer beat in her ears like a
great throbbing hammer-stroke. In an agony of shame, in the throes of
hate, she had perjured herself. She had sworn away her honor. She had
basely made herself vile. She had struck ruthlessly at the great heart
of a man who loved her. Ah! That thrust had rebounded to leave this
dreadful pang in her breast. Loved her? Yes, the strange truth, the
insupportable truth! She had to contend now, not with her father and
her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Jean Isbel, but with
the mysteries of her own soul. Wonder of all wonders was it that such
love had been born for her. Shame worse than all other shame was it
that she should kill it by a poisoned lie. By what monstrous motive
had she done that? To sting Isbel as he had stung her! But that had
been base. Never could she have stooped so low except in a moment of
tremendous tumult. If she had done sore injury to Isbel what bad she
done to herself? How strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her
honor! Could she ever forget? She must forget it. But she could
never forget the way he had scorned those vile men in Greaves’s
store—the way he had beaten Bruce for defiling her name—the way he
had stubbornly denied her own insinuations. She was a woman now. She
had learned something of the complexity of a woman’s heart. She could
not change nature. And all her passionate being thrilled to the
manhood of her defender. But even while she thrilled she acknowledged
her hate. It was the contention between the two that caused the pang in
her breast. “An’ now what’s left for me?” murmured Ellen. She did not
analyze the significance of what had prompted that query. The most
incalculable of the day’s disclosures was the wrong she had done
herself. “Shore I’m done for, one way or another.... I must stick to
Dad.... or kill myself?”
Ellen rode Spades back to the ranch. She rode like the wind. When she
swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch
her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin.
She rode Spades at a full run.
“Who’s after you?” yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a
halt. Jorth held a rifle. Daggs, Colter, the other Jorths were there,
likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy.
“Shore nobody’s after me,” replied Ellen. “Cain’t I run a horse round
heah without being chased?”
Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.
“Hah!... What you mean, girl, runnin’ like a streak right down on us?
You’re actin’ queer these days, an’ you look queer. I’m not likin’ it.”
“Reckon these are queer times—for the Jorths,” replied Ellen,
sarcastically.
“Daggs found strange horse tracks crossin’ the meadow,” said her
father. “An’ that worried us. Some one’s been snoopin’ round the
ranch. An’ when we seen you runnin’ so wild we shore thought you was
bein’ chased.”
“No. I was only trying out Spades to see how fast he could run,”
returned Ellen. “Reckon when we do get chased it’ll take some running
to catch me.”
“Haw! Haw!” roared Daggs. “It shore will, Ellen.”
“Girl, it’s not only your runnin’ an’ your looks that’s queer,”
declared Jorth, in dark perplexity. “You talk queer.”
“Shore, dad, y’u’re not used to hearing spades called spades,” said
Ellen, as she dismounted.
“Humph!” ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness of
trying to understand a woman. “Say, did you see any strange horse
tracks?”
“I reckon I did. And I know who made them.”
Jorth stiffened. All the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of
suspense.
“Who?” demanded Jorth.
“Shore it was Jean Isbel,” replied Ellen, coolly. “He came up heah
tracking his black horse.”
“Jean—Isbel—trackin’—his—black horse,” repeated her father.
“Yes. He’s not overrated as a tracker, that’s shore.”
Blank silence ensued. Ellen cast a slow glance over her father and the
others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle. Presently
Jorth burst the silence with a curse, and Daggs followed with one of
his sardonic laughs.
“Wal, boss, what did I tell you?” he drawled.
Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he
held her facing him.
“Did y’u see Isbel?”
“Yes,” replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked.
“Did y’u talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want up heah?”
“I told y’u. He was tracking the black horse y’u stole.”
Jorth’s hand and arm dropped limply. His sallow face turned a livid
hue. Amaze merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage. He
raised a hand as if to strike Ellen. And suddenly Daggs’s long arm
shot out to clutch Jorth’s wrist. Wrestling to free himself, Jorth
cursed under his breath. “Let go, Daggs,” he shouted, stridently. “Am
I drunk that you grab me?”
“Wal, y’u ain’t drunk, I reckon,” replied the rustler, with sarcasm.
“But y’u’re shore some things I’ll reserve for your private ear.”
Jorth gained a semblance of composure. But it was evident that he
labored under a shock.
“Ellen, did Jean Isbel see this black horse?”
“Yes. He asked me how I got Spades an’ I told him.”
“Did he say Spades belonged to him?”
“Shore I reckon he, proved it. Y’u can always tell a horse that loves
its master.”
“Did y’u offer to give Spades back?”
“Yes. But Isbel wouldn’t take him.”
“Hah!... An’ why not?”
“He said he’d rather I kept him. He was about to engage in a dirty,
blood-spilling deal, an’ he reckoned he’d not be able to care for a
fine horse.... I didn’t want Spades. I tried to make Isbel take him.
But he rode off.... And that’s all there is to that.”
“Maybe it’s not,” replied Jorth, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen
with dark, intent gaze. “Y’u’ve met this Isbel twice.”
“It wasn’t any fault of mine,” retorted Ellen.
“I heah he’s sweet on y’u. How aboot that?”
Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and
temple. But it was only memory which fired this shame. What her
father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference.
Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.
“I heah talk from Bruce an’ Lorenzo,” went on her father. “An’ Daggs
heah—”
“Daggs nothin’!” interrupted that worthy. “Don’t fetch me in. I said
nothin’ an’ I think nothin’.”
“Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad ... but he will never be again,”
returned Ellen, in low tones. With that she pulled her saddle off
Spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.
Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered.
“Ellen, I didn’t know that horse belonged to Isbel,” he began, in the
swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen. “I swear I
didn’t. I bought him—traded with Slater for him.... Honest to God, I
never had any idea he was stolen!... Why, when y’u said ‘that horse
y’u stole,’ I felt as if y’u’d knifed me....”
Ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro
and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into
a frenzy. He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory
and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty. It seemed
that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. He had
a terrible thirst for her respect. Not so much for her love, she
divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen!
She pitied him with all her heart. She was all he had, as he was all
the world to her. And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical
rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and
her love were making vital decisions for her. As of old, in poignant
moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the Isbels
and what they had brought him to. His sufferings were real, at least,
in Ellen’s presence. She was the only link that bound him to long-past
happier times. She was her mother over again—the woman who had
betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death.
“Dad, don’t go on so,” said Ellen, breaking in upon her father’s rant.
“I will be true to y’u—as my mother was.... I am a Jorth. Your place
is my place—your fight is my fight.... Never speak of the past to me
again. If God spares us through this feud we will go away and begin
all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a Jorth.... If we’re
not spared we’ll at least have had our whack at these damned Isbels.”