During June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley.
Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel’s life. Another
cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket
bordering the trail that led to Blaisdell’s ranch. Blaisdell heard
this shot, so near his home was it fired. No trace of the hidden foe
could be found. The ‘ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of
pine needles which showed no trace of footprints. The supposition was
that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly
instigated, by the Jorths. But there was no proof. And Gaston Isbel
had other enemies in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan. The old
man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. And his
friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends.
“Let’s quit ranchin’ till this trouble’s settled,” he declared. “Let’s
arm an’ ride the trails an’ meet these men half-way.... It won’t help
our side any to wait till you’re shot in the back.” More than one of
Isbel’s supporters offered the same advice.
“No; we’ll wait till we know for shore,” was the stubborn cattleman’s
reply to all these promptings.
“Know! Wal, hell! Didn’t Jean find the black hoss up at Jorth’s
ranch?” demanded Blaisdell. “What more do we want?”
“Jean couldn’t swear Jorth stole the black.”
“Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!” growled Blaisdell. “An’ we’re
losin’ cattle all the time. Who’s stealin’ ’em?”
“We’ve always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin’ heah.”
“Gas, I reckon yu want Jorth to start this fight in the open.”
“It’ll start soon enough,” was Isbel’s gloomy reply.
Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen
cattle. Circumstances had been against him, and there was something
baffling about this rustling. The summer storms set in early, and it
had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he
might have followed. The range was large and cattle were everywhere.
Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. Gaston Isbel’s sons
were now the only men left to ride the range. Two of his riders had
quit because of the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go. So
that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their
tracks were old. Added to that was the fact that this Grass Valley
country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks. The rustlers,
whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was
reason for them to show their cunning they did it.
Early in July the hot weather came. Down on the red ridges of the
Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were cool, the early mornings were
pleasant, but the day was something to endure. When the white cumulus
clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and
darker, here and there coalescing into a black thundercloud, Jean
welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down
from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it
approached like a trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats,
the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub
oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the
hot summer sun. Jean longed for the cool heights of the Rim, the shady
pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and
murmur of the clear rills. He often had another longing, too, which he
bitterly stifled.
Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd dog, had disappeared one day, and
had never returned. Among men at the ranch there was a difference of
opinion as to what had happened to Shepp. The old rancher thought he
had been poisoned or shot; Bill and Guy Isbel believed he had been
stolen by sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and Jean
inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber
wolves. The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.
One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out
in the valley; and upon hurrying to a vantage point he was amazed to
see upward of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf. Jean’s father
had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean. The
wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and powerful, and until he
got the steers all behind him he was rather hard put to it to keep out
of their way. Probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and
pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. Jean kept
along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within
range of a rifle. But the wary wolf saw Jean and sheered off,
gradually drawing away from his pursuers.
Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across
the valley. His father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet
been driven up on the Rim, where all the sheep in the country were run
during the hot, dry summer down on the Tonto. Young Evarts and a
Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock. The regular
Mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job; and these
boys were not equal to the task of risking the sheep up in the enemies’
stronghold.
This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from Grass
Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and
there was good water and a little feed. Before Jean reached his
destination he heard a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact
caused Jean a little concern. Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but,
to his knowledge, no small arms. Jean rode up on one of the
black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Grass
Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country. At first
he made out only cattle, and bare meadowland, and the low encircling
ridges and hills. But presently up toward the head of the valley he
descried a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village. He could not
tell their number. That dark moving mass seemed to Jean to be instinct
with life, mystery, menace. Who were they? It was too far for him to
recognize horses, let alone riders. They were moving fast, too.
Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again,
and rode on his quest. A number of horsemen like that was a very
unusual sight around Grass Valley at any time. What then did it
portend now? Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was
a new sensation for him. Brooding over this he proceeded on his way,
at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders was
located. Upon coming in sight of it he heard a hoarse shout. Young
Evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush. Jean urged his
horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. Evarts
appeared beside himself with terror.
“Boy! what’s the matter?” queried Jean, as he dismounted, rifle in
hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white face to the camp, and all
around.
“Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing his hands and
pointing.
Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp. He saw the little
teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal—and then the Mexican
lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly
face. Near him lay an old six-shooter.
“Whose gun is that?” demanded Jean, as he picked it up.
“Ber-nardino’s,” replied Evarts, huskily. “He—he jest got it—the
other day.”
“Did he shoot himself accidentally?”
“Oh no! No! He didn’t do it—atall.”
“Who did, then?”
“The men—they rode up—a gang-they did it,” panted Evarts.
“Did you know who they were?”
“No. I couldn’t tell. I saw them comin’ an’ I was skeered. Bernardino
had gone fer water. I run an’ hid in the brush. I wanted to yell, but
they come too close.... Then I heerd them talkin’. Bernardino come
back. They ’peared friendly-like. Thet made me raise up, to look. An’
I couldn’t see good. I heerd one of them ask Bernardino to let him see
his gun. An’ Bernardino handed it over. He looked at the gun an’
haw-hawed, an’ flipped it up in the air, an’ when it fell back in his
hand it—it went off bang!... An’ Bernardino dropped.... I hid down
close. I was skeered stiff. I heerd them talk more, but not what they
said. Then they rode away.... An’ I hid there till I seen y’u comin’.”
“Have you got a horse?” queried Jean, sharply.
“No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”
“Get one. Hurry over to Blaisdell. Tell him to send word to Blue and
Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to my father’s ranch.
Hurry now!”
Young Evarts ran off without reply. Jean stood looking down at the
limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy. “By Heaven!” he
exclaimed, grimly “the Jorth-Isbel war is on!... Deliberate,
cold-blooded murder! I’ll gamble Daggs did this job. He’s been given
the leadership. He’s started it.... Bernardino, greaser or not, you
were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.”
Jean had no time to spare. Tearing a tarpaulin out of the teepee he
covered the lad with it and then ran for, his horse. Mounting, he
galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the
valley, where he put his horse to a run.
Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had
engendered. Jean even felt a strange, grim relief. The long, dragging
days of waiting were over. Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative.
Blood had begun to flow. And it would continue to flow now till the
last man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last man of the
other. Would it be a Jorth or an Isbel? “My instinct was right,” he
muttered, aloud. “That bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin’.” Jean
gazed all around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so
swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the
dark group of riders. They had gone on to Greaves’s store, there, no
doubt, to drink and to add more enemies of the Isbels to their gang.
Suddenly across Jean’s mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth. “What
’ll become of her?... What ’ll become of all the women? My sister?...
The little ones?”
No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more
peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the
foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced
pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens,
the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate Jean’s
haste and his darkness of mind. This place was, his father’s farm.
There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky.
As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then
Bill and Guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. Jean
saw how he’ waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the
lane. Bill and Guy reached his side as Jean pulled his heaving horse
to a halt. They all looked at Jean, swiftly and intently, with a
little, hard, fiery gleam strangely identical in the eyes of each.
Probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect.
“Wal, you shore was in a hurry,” remarked the father.
“What the hell’s up?” queried Bill, grimly.
Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean
leaped off his horse.
“Bernardino has just been killed—murdered with his own gun.”
Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let
his chest sag. A terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on
ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.
“A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.
Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. They were
silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their
own minds. Then they listened with absorption to Jean’s brief story.
“Wal, that lets us in,” said his father. “I wish we had more time.
Reckon I’d done better to listen to you boys an’ have my men close at
hand. Jacobs happened to ride over. That makes five of us besides the
women.”
“Aw, dad, you don’t reckon they’ll round us up heah?” asked Guy Isbel.
“Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old man. “But I never
really believed they’d have the nerve. Shore I ought to have figgered
Daggs better. This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush
looked aboot Jorth’s size to me. But I reckon now we’ll have to fight
without our friends.”
“Let them come,” said Jean. “I sent for Blaisdell, Blue, Gordon, and
Fredericks. Maybe they’ll get here in time. But if they don’t it
needn’t worry us much. We can hold out here longer than Jorth’s gang
can hang around. We’ll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the
house.”
“Wal, I’ll see to that,” rejoined his father. “Jean, you go out close
by, where you can see all around, an’ keep watch.”
“Who’s goin’ to tell the women?” asked Guy Isbel.
The silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent testimony to the
hardest and saddest aspect of this strife between men. The
inevitableness of it in no wise detracted from its sheer uselessness.
Men from time immemorial had hated, and killed one another, always to
the misery and degradation of their women. Old Gaston Isbel showed
this tragic realization in his lined face.
“Wal, boys, I’ll tell the women,” he said. “Shore you needn’t worry
none aboot them. They’ll be game.”
Jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from the house, and
here he stationed himself to watch all points. The cedared ridge back
of the ranch was the one approach by which Jorth’s gang might come
close without being detected, but even so, Jean could see them and ride
to the house in time to prevent a surprise. The moments dragged by,
and at the end of an hour Jean was in hopes that Blaisdell would soon
come. These hopes were well founded. Presently he heard a clatter of
hoofs on hard ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw the
friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse.
Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight of him gave Jean a
glow of warmth. He was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels
to the last man. Jean watched him ride to the house—watched the
meeting between him and his lifelong friend. There floated out to Jean
old Blaisdell’s roar of rage.
Then out on the green of Grass Valley, where a long, swelling plain
swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. A
bunch of horses! Jean’s body gave a slight start—the shock of sudden
propulsion of blood through all his veins. Those horses bore riders.
They were coming straight down the open valley, on the wagon road to
Isbel’s ranch. No subterfuge nor secrecy nor sneaking in that advance!
A hot thrill ran over Jean.
“By Heaven! They mean business!” he muttered. Up to the last moment
he had unconsciously hoped Jorth’s gang would not come boldly like
that. The verifications of all a Texan’s inherited instincts left no
doubts, no hopes, no illusions—only a grim certainty that this was not
conjecture nor probability, but fact. For a moment longer Jean watched
the slowly moving dark patch of horsemen against the green background,
then he hurried back to the ranch. His father saw him coming—strode
out as before.
“Dad—Jorth is comin’,” said Jean, huskily. How he hated to be forced
to tell his father that! The boyish love of old had flashed up.
“Whar?” demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweeping the horizon.
“Down the road from Grass Valley. You can’t see from here.”
“Wal, come in an’ let’s get ready.”
Isbel’s house had not been constructed with the idea of repelling an
attack from a band of Apaches. The long living room of the main cabin
was the one selected for defense and protection. This room had two
windows and a door facing the lane, and a door at each end, one of
which opened into the kitchen and the other into an adjoining and
later-built cabin. The logs of this main cabin were of large size, and
the doors and window coverings were heavy, affording safer protection
from bullets than the other cabins.
When Jean went in he seemed to see a host of white faces lifted to him.
His sister Ann, his two sisters-in-law, the children, all mutely
watched him with eyes that would haunt him.
“Wal, Blaisdell, Jean says Jorth an’ his precious gang of rustlers are
on the way heah,” announced the rancher.
“Damn me if it’s not a bad day fer Lee Jorth!” declared Blaisdell.
“Clear off that table,” ordered Isbel, “an’ fetch out all the guns an’
shells we got.”
Once laid upon the table these presented a formidable arsenal, which
consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters that Jean had brought with
him from the coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called “needle” gun,
that Gaston Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle which Blaisdell had
brought, and half a dozen six-shooters. Piles and packages of
ammunition littered the table.
“Sort out these heah shells,” said Isbel. “Everybody wants to get hold
of his own.”
Jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set, bearded man,
rather jovial among those lean-jawed Texans. He carried a .44 rifle of
an old pattern. “Wal, boys, if I’d knowed we was in fer some fun I’d
hev fetched more shells. Only got one magazine full. Mebbe them new
.44’s will fit my gun.”
It was discovered that the ammunition Jean had brought in quantity
fitted Jacob’s rifle, a fact which afforded peculiar satisfaction to
all the men present.
“Wal, shore we’re lucky,” declared Gaston Isbel.
The women sat apart, in the corner toward the kitchen, and there seemed
to be a strange fascination for them in the talk and action of the men.
The wife of Jacobs was a little woman, with homely face and very bright
eyes. Jean thought she would be a help in that household during the
next doubtful hours.
Every moment Jean would go to the window and peer out down the road.
His companions evidently relied upon him, for no one else looked out.
Now that the suspense of days and weeks was over, these Texans faced
the issue with talk and act not noticeably different from those of
ordinary moments.
At last Jean espied the dark mass of horsemen out in the valley road.
They were close together, walking their mounts, and evidently in
earnest conversation. After several ineffectual attempts Jean counted
eleven horses, every one of which he was sure bore a rider.
“Dad, look out!” called Jean.
Gaston Isbel strode to the door and stood looking, without a word.
The other men crowded to the windows. Blaisdell cursed under his
breath. Jacobs said: “By Golly! Come to pay us a call!” The women
sat motionless, with dark, strained eyes. The children ceased their
play and looked fearfully to their mother.
When just out of rifle shot of the cabins the band of horsemen halted
and lined up in a half circle, all facing the ranch. They were close
enough for Jean to see their gestures, but he could not recognize any
of their faces. It struck him singularly that not one of them wore a
mask.
“Jean, do you know any of them?” asked his father
“No, not yet. They’re too far off.”
“Dad, I’ll get your old telescope,” said Guy Isbel, and he ran out
toward the adjoining cabin.
Blaisdell shook his big, hoary head and rumbled out of his bull-like
neck, “Wal, now you’re heah, you sheep fellars, what are you goin’ to
do aboot it?”
Guy Isbel returned with a yard-long telescope, which he passed to his
father. The old man took it with shaking hands and leveled it.
Suddenly it was as if he had been transfixed; then he lowered the
glass, shaking violently, and his face grew gray with an exceeding
bitter wrath.
“Jorth!” he swore, harshly.
Jean had only to look at his father to know that recognition had been
like a mortal shock. It passed. Again the rancher leveled the glass.
“Wal, Blaisdell, there’s our old Texas friend, Daggs,” he drawled,
dryly. “An’ Greaves, our honest storekeeper of Grass Valley. An’
there’s Stonewall Jackson Jorth. An’ Tad Jorth, with the same old red
nose!... An’, say, damn if one of that gang isn’t Queen, as bad a gun
fighter as Texas ever bred. Shore I thought he’d been killed in the
Big Bend country. So I heard.... An’ there’s Craig, another
respectable sheepman of Grass Valley. Haw-haw! An’, wal, I don’t
recognize any more of them.”
Jean forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across the faces of
that group of horsemen. “Simm Bruce,” he said, instantly. “I see
Colter. And, yes, Greaves is there. I’ve seen the man next to
him—face like a ham....”
“Shore that is Craig,” interrupted his father.
Jean knew the dark face of Lee Jorth by the resemblance it bore to
Ellen’s, and the recognition brought a twinge. He thought, too, that
he could tell the other Jorths. He asked his father to describe Daggs
and then Queen. It was not likely that Jean would fail to know these
several men in the future. Then Blaisdell asked for the telescope and,
when he got through looking and cursing, he passed it on to others,
who, one by one, took a long look, until finally it came back to the
old rancher.
“Wal, Daggs is wavin’ his hand heah an’ there, like a general aboot to
send out scouts. Haw-haw!... An’ ‘pears to me he’s not overlookin’
our hosses. Wal, that’s natural for a rustler. He’d have to steal a
hoss or a steer before goin’ into a fight or to dinner or to a funeral.”
“It ’ll be his funeral if he goes to foolin’ ’round them hosses,”
declared Guy Isbel, peering anxiously out of the door.
“Wal, son, shore it ’ll be somebody’s funeral,” replied his father.
Jean paid but little heed to the conversation. With sharp eyes fixed
upon the horsemen, he tried to grasp at their intention. Daggs pointed
to the horses in the pasture lot that lay between him and the house.
These animals were the best on the range and belonged mostly to Guy
Isbel, who was the horse fancier and trader of the family. His horses
were his passion.
“Looks like they’d do some horse stealin’,” said Jean.
“Lend me that glass,” demanded Guy, forcefully. He surveyed the band
of men for a long moment, then he handed the glass back to Jean.
“I’m goin’ out there after my hosses,” he declared.
“No!” exclaimed his father.
“That gang come to steal an’ not to fight. Can’t you see that? If they
meant to fight they’d do it. They’re out there arguin’ about my
hosses.”
Guy picked up his rifle. He looked sullenly determined and the gleam
in his eye was one of fearlessness.
“Son, I know Daggs,” said his father. “An’ I know Jorth. They’ve come
to kill us. It ’ll be shore death for y’u to go out there.”
“I’m goin’, anyhow. They can’t steal my hosses out from under my eyes.
An’ they ain’t in range.”
“Wal, Guy, you ain’t goin’ alone,” spoke up Jacobs, cheerily, as he
came forward.
The red-haired young wife of Guy Isbel showed no change of her grave
face. She had been reared in a stern school. She knew men in times
like these. But Jacobs’s wife appealed to him, “Bill, don’t risk your
life for a horse or two.”
Jacobs laughed and answered, “Not much risk,” and went out with Guy.
To Jean their action seemed foolhardy. He kept a keen eye on them and
saw instantly when the band became aware of Guy’s and Jacobs’s entrance
into the pasture. It took only another second then to realize that
Daggs and Jorth had deadly intent. Jean saw Daggs slip out of his
saddle, rifle in hand. Others of the gang did likewise, until half of
them were dismounted.
“Dad, they’re goin’ to shoot,” called out Jean, sharply. “Yell for Guy
and Jacobs. Make them come back.”
The old man shouted; Bill Isbel yelled; Blaisdell lifted his stentorian
voice.
Jean screamed piercingly: “Guy! Run! Run!”
But Guy Isbel and his companion strode on into the pasture, as if they
had not heard, as if no menacing horse thieves were within miles. They
had covered about a quarter of the distance across the pasture, and
were nearing the horses, when Jean saw red flashes and white puffs of
smoke burst out from the front of that dark band of rustlers. Then
followed the sharp, rattling crack of rifles.
Guy Isbel stopped short, and, dropping his gun, he threw up his arms
and fell headlong. Jacobs acted as if he had suddenly encountered an
invisible blow. He had been hit. Turning, he began to run and ran
fast for a few paces. There were more quick, sharp shots. He let go
of his rifle. His running broke. Walking, reeling, staggering, he
kept on. A hoarse cry came from him. Then a single rifle shot pealed
out. Jean heard the bullet strike. Jacobs fell to his knees, then
forward on his face.
Jean Isbel felt himself turned to marble. The suddenness of this
tragedy paralyzed him. His gaze remained riveted on those prostrate
forms.
A hand clutched his arm—a shaking woman’s hand, slim and hard and
tense.
“Bill’s—killed!” whispered a broken voice. “I was watchin’....
They’re both dead!”
The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up behind Jean and from
behind him they had seen the tragedy.
“I asked Bill—not to—go,” faltered the Jacobs woman, and, covering
her face with her hands, she groped back to the corner of the cabin,
where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms.
Guy Isbel’s wife stood at the window, peering over Jean’s shoulder. She
had the nerve of a man. She had looked out upon death before.
“Yes, they’re dead,” she said, bitterly. “An’ how are we goin’ to get
their bodies?”
At this Gaston Isbel seemed to rouse from the cold spell that had
transfixed him.
“God, this is hell for our women,” he cried out, hoarsely. “My son—my
son!... Murdered by the Jorths!” Then he swore a terrible oath.
Jean saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off, and then, all
of them leading their horses, they began to move around to the left.
“Dad, they’re movin’ round,” said Jean.
“Up to some trick,” declared Bill Isbel.
“Bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say aboot the fifth log
up,” ordered the father. “Shore we’ve got to look out.”
The elder son grasped a tool and, scattering the children, who had been
playing near the back corner, he began to work at the point designated.
The little children backed away with fixed, wondering, grave eyes. The
women moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting and
listening.
Jean watched the rustlers until they passed out of his sight. They had
moved toward the sloping, brushy ground to the north and west of the
cabins.
“Let me know when you get a hole in the back wall,” said Jean, and he
went through the kitchen and cautiously out another door to slip into a
low-roofed, shed-like end of the rambling cabin. This small space was
used to store winter firewood. The chinks between the walls had not
been filled with adobe clay, and he could see out on three sides. The
rustlers were going into the juniper brush. They moved out of sight,
and presently reappeared without their horses. It looked to Jean as if
they intended to attack the cabins. Then they halted at the edge of
the brush and held a long consultation. Jean could see them
distinctly, though they were too far distant for him to recognize any
particular man. One of them, however, stood and moved apart from the
closely massed group. Evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was
exhorting his listeners. Jean concluded this was either Daggs or
Jorth. Whoever it was had a loud, coarse voice, and this and his
actions impressed Jean with a suspicion that the man was under the
influence of the bottle.
Presently Bill Isbel called Jean in a low voice. “Jean, I got the hole
made, but we can’t see anyone.”
“I see them,” Jean replied. “They’re havin’ a powwow. Looks to me
like either Jorth or Daggs is drunk. He’s arguin’ to charge us, an’
the rest of the gang are holdin’ back.... Tell dad, an’ all of you keep
watchin’. I’ll let you know when they make a move.”
Jorth’s gang appeared to be in no hurry to expose their plan of battle.
Gradually the group disintegrated a little; some of them sat down;
others walked to and fro. Presently two of them went into the brush,
probably back to the horses. In a few moments they reappeared,
carrying a pack. And when this was deposited on the ground all the
rustlers sat down around it. They had brought food and drink. Jean
had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of
many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife
Gang. Jean was glad of a reprieve. The longer the rustlers put off an
attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would have to get here.
Rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt to get
to the Isbel cabins in the daytime. Night would be more favorable.
Twice Bill Isbel came through the kitchen to whisper to Jean. The
strain in the large room, from which the rustlers could not be seen,
must have been great. Jean told him all he had seen and what he
thought about it. “Eatin’ an’ drinkin’!” ejaculated Bill. “Well, I’ll
be—! That ’ll jar the old man. He wants to get the fight over.
“Tell him I said it’ll be over too quick—for us—unless are mighty
careful,” replied Jean, sharply.
Bill went back muttering to himself. Then followed a long wait,
fraught with suspense, during which Jean watched the rustlers regale
themselves. The day was hot and still. And the unnatural silence of
the cabin was broken now and then by the gay laughter of the children.
The sound shocked and haunted Jean. Playing children! Then another
sound, so faint he had to strain to hear it, disturbed and saddened
him—his father’s slow tread up and down the cabin floor, to and fro,
to and fro. What must be in his father’s heart this day!
At length the rustlers rose and, with rifles in hand, they moved as one
man down the slope. They came several hundred yards closer, until
Jean, grimly cocking his rifle, muttered to himself that a few more
rods closer would mean the end of several of that gang. They knew the
range of a rifle well enough, and once more sheered off at right angles
with the cabin. When they got even with the line of corrals they
stooped down and were lost to Jean’s sight. This fact caused him
alarm. They were, of course, crawling up on the cabins. At the end of
that line of corrals ran a ditch, the bank of which was high enough to
afford cover. Moreover, it ran along in front of the cabins, scarcely
a hundred yards, and it was covered with grass and little clumps of
brush, from behind which the rustlers could fire into the windows and
through the clay chinks without any considerable risk to themselves. As
they did not come into sight again, Jean concluded he had discovered
their plan. Still, he waited awhile longer, until he saw faint, little
clouds of dust rising from behind the far end of the embankment. That
discovery made him rush out, and through the kitchen to the large
cabin, where his sudden appearance startled the men.
“Get back out of sight!” he ordered, sharply, and with swift steps he
reached the door and closed it. “They’re behind the bank out there by
the corrals. An’ they’re goin’ to crawl down the ditch closer to
us.... It looks bad. They’ll have grass an’ brush to shoot from. We’ve
got to be mighty careful how we peep out.”
“Ahuh! All right,” replied his father. “You women keep the kids with
you in that corner. An’ you all better lay down flat.”
Blaisdell, Bill Isbel, and the old man crouched at the large window,
peeping through cracks in the rough edges of the logs. Jean took his
post beside the small window, with his keen eyes vibrating like a
compass needle. The movement of a blade of grass, the flight of a
grasshopper could not escape his trained sight.
“Look sharp now!” he called to the other men. “I see dust.... They’re
workin’ along almost to that bare spot on the bank.... I saw the tip of
a rifle ... a black hat ... more dust. They’re spreadin’ along behind
the bank.”
Loud voices, and then thick clouds of yellow dust, coming from behind
the highest and brushiest line of the embankment, attested to the truth
of Jean’s observation, and also to a reckless disregard of danger.
Suddenly Jean caught a glint of moving color through the fringe of
brush. Instantly he was strung like a whipcord.
Then a tall, hatless and coatless man stepped up in plain sight. The
sun shone on his fair, ruffled hair. Daggs!
“Hey, you — — Isbels!” he bawled, in magnificent derisive boldness.
“Come out an’ fight!”
Quick as lightning Jean threw up his rifle and fired. He saw tufts of
fair hair fly from Daggs’s head. He saw the squirt of red blood. Then
quick shots from his comrades rang out. They all hit the swaying body
of the rustler. But Jean knew with a terrible thrill that his bullet
had killed Daggs before the other three struck. Daggs fell forward,
his arms and half his body resting over, the embankment. Then the
rustlers dragged him back out of sight. Hoarse shouts rose. A cloud of
yellow dust drifted away from the spot.
“Daggs!” burst out Gaston Isbel. “Jean, you knocked off the top of his
haid. I seen that when I was pullin’ trigger. Shore we over heah
wasted our shots.”
“God! he must have been crazy or drunk—to pop up there—an’ brace us
that way,” said Blaisdell, breathing hard.
“Arizona is bad for Texans,” replied Isbel, sardonically. “Shore it’s
been too peaceful heah. Rustlers have no practice at fightin’. An’ I
reckon Daggs forgot.”
“Daggs made as crazy a move as that of Guy an’ Jacobs,” spoke up Jean.
“They were overbold, an’ he was drunk. Let them be a lesson to us.”
Jean had smelled whisky upon his entrance to this cabin. Bill was a
hard drinker, and his father was not immune. Blaisdell, too, drank
heavily upon occasions. Jean made a mental note that he would not
permit their chances to become impaired by liquor.
Rifles began to crack, and puffs of smoke rose all along the embankment
for the space of a hundred feet. Bullets whistled through the rude
window casing and spattered on the heavy door, and one split the clay
between the logs before Jean, narrowly missing him. Another volley
followed, then another. The rustlers had repeating rifles and they
were emptying their magazines. Jean changed his position. The other
men profited by his wise move. The volleys had merged into one
continuous rattling roar of rifle shots. Then came a sudden cessation
of reports, with silence of relief. The cabin was full of dust,
mingled with the smoke from the shots of Jean and his companions. Jean
heard the stifled breaths of the children. Evidently they were
terror-stricken, but they did not cry out. The women uttered no sound.
A loud voice pealed from behind the embankment.
“Come out an’ fight! Do you Isbels want to be killed like sheep?”
This sally gained no reply. Jean returned to his post by the window and
his comrades followed his example. And they exercised extreme caution
when they peeped out.
“Boys, don’t shoot till you see one,” said Gaston Isbel. “Maybe after
a while they’ll get careless. But Jorth will never show himself.”
The rustlers did not again resort to volleys. One by one, from
different angles, they began to shoot, and they were not firing at
random. A few bullets came straight in at the windows to pat into the
walls; a few others ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and
most of them broke through the clay chinks between the logs. It dawned
upon Jean that these dangerous shots were not accident. They were well
aimed, and most of them hit low down. The cunning rustlers had some
unerring riflemen and they were picking out the vulnerable places all
along the front of the cabin. If Jean had not been lying flat he would
have been hit twice. Presently he conceived the idea of driving pegs
between the logs, high up, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep
out from the upper edge of the window. But this position was awkward
and difficult to hold for long.
He heard a bullet hit one of his comrades. Whoever had been struck
never uttered a sound. Jean turned to look. Bill Isbel was holding
his shoulder, where red splotches appeared on his shirt. He shook his
head at Jean, evidently to make light of the wound. The women and
children were lying face down and could not see what was happening.
Plain is was that Bill did not want them to know. Blaisdell bound up
the bloody shoulder with a scarf.
Steady firing from the rustlers went on, at the rate of one shot every
few minutes. The Isbels did not return these. Jean did not fire again
that afternoon. Toward sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow
restless or careless, Blaisdell fired at something moving behind the
brush; and Gaston Isbel’s huge buffalo gun boomed out.
“Wal, what ’re they goin’ to do after dark, an’ what ’re WE goin’ to
do?” grumbled Blaisdell.
“Reckon they’ll never charge us,” said Gaston.
“They might set fire to the cabins,” added Bill Isbel. He appeared to
be the gloomiest of the Isbel faction. There was something on his mind.
“Wal, the Jorths are bad, but I reckon they’d not burn us alive,”
replied Blaisdell.
“Hah!” ejaculated Gaston Isbel. “Much you know aboot Lee Jorth. He
would skin me alive an’ throw red-hot coals on my raw flesh.”
So they talked during the hour from sunset to dark. Jean Isbel had
little to say. He was revolving possibilities in his mind. Darkness
brought a change in the attack of the rustlers. They stationed men at
four points around the cabins; and every few minutes one of these
outposts would fire. These bullets embedded themselves in the logs,
causing but little anxiety to the Isbels.
“Jean, what you make of it?” asked the old rancher.
“Looks to me this way,” replied Jean. “They’re set for a long fight.
They’re shootin’ just to let us know they’re on the watch.”
“Ahuh! Wal, what ’re you goin’ to do aboot it?”
“I’m goin’ out there presently.”
Gaston Isbel grunted his satisfaction at this intention of Jean’s.
All was pitch dark inside the cabin. The women had water and food at
hand. Jean kept a sharp lookout from his window while he ate his
supper of meat, bread, and milk. At last the children, worn out by the
long day, fell asleep. The women whispered a little in their corner.
About nine o’clock Jean signified his intention of going out to
reconnoitre.
“Dad, they’ve got the best of us in the daytime,” he said, “but not
after dark.”
Jean buckled on a belt that carried shells, a bowie knife, and
revolver, and with rifle in hand he went out through the kitchen to the
yard. The night was darker than usual, as some of the stars were hidden
by clouds. He leaned against the log cabin, waiting for his eyes to
become perfectly adjusted to the darkness. Like an Indian, Jean could
see well at night. He knew every point around cabins and sheds and
corrals, every post, log, tree, rock, adjacent to the ranch. After
perhaps a quarter of an hour watching, during which time several shots
were fired from behind the embankment and one each from the rustlers at
the other locations, Jean slipped out on his quest.
He kept in the shadow of the cabin walls, then the line of orchard
trees, then a row of currant bushes. Here, crouching low, he halted to
look and listen. He was now at the edge of the open ground, with the
gently rising slope before him. He could see the dark patches of cedar
and juniper trees. On the north side of the cabin a streak of fire
flashed in the blackness, and a shot rang out. Jean heard the bullet
bit the cabin. Then silence enfolded the lonely ranch and the darkness
lay like a black blanket. A low hum of insects pervaded the air. Dull
sheets of lightning illumined the dark horizon to the south. Once Jean
heard voices, but could not tell from which direction they came. To
the west of him then flared out another rifle shot. The bullet
whistled down over Jean to thud into the cabin.
Jean made a careful study of the obscure, gray-black open before him
and then the background to his rear. So long as he kept the dense
shadows behind him he could not be seen. He slipped from behind his
covert and, gliding with absolutely noiseless footsteps, he gained the
first clump of junipers. Here he waited patiently and motionlessly for
another round of shots from the rustlers. After the second shot from
the west side Jean sheered off to the right. Patches of brush, clumps
of juniper, and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording Jean a
perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a detour and come up
behind the rustler who was firing from that side. Jean climbed to the
top of the ridge, descended the opposite slope, made his turn to the
left, and slowly worked up behind the point near where he expected to
locate the rustler. Long habit in the open, by day and night, rendered
his sense of direction almost as perfect as sight itself. The first
flash of fire he saw from this side proved that he had come straight up
toward his man. Jean’s intention was to crawl up on this one of the
Jorth gang and silently kill him with a knife. If the plan worked
successfully, Jean meant to work round to the next rustler. Laying
aside his rifle, he crawled forward on hands and knees, making no more
sound than a cat. His approach was slow. He had to pick his way, be
careful not to break twigs nor rattle stones. His buckskin garments
made no sound against the brush. Jean located the rustler sitting on
the top of the ridge in the center of an open space. He was alone.
Jean saw the dull-red end of the cigarette he was smoking. The ground
on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for Jean’s purpose. He
had to abandon the idea of crawling up on the rustler. Whereupon, Jean
turned back, patiently and slowly, to get his rifle.
Upon securing it he began to retrace his course, this time more slowly
than before, as he was hampered by the rifle. But he did not make the
slightest sound, and at length he reached the edge of the open ridge
top, once more to espy the dark form of the rustler silhouetted against
the sky. The distance was not more than fifty yards.
As Jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle round to avoid
the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experienced another emotion besides
the one of grim, hard wrath at the Jorths. It was an emotion that
sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable
sensation. Suppose this man was Ellen Jorth’s father! Jean lowered
the rifle. He felt it shake over his knee. He was trembling all over.
The astounding discovery that he did not want to kill Ellen’s
father—that he could not do it—awakened Jean to the despairing nature
of his love for her. In this grim moment of indecision, when he knew
his Indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage over the
Jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love
for the girl. He made no attempt to deny it any longer. Like the
night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitableness of
this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality.
He breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul—he could not kill Ellen
Jorth’s father. Feud or no feud, Isbel or not, he could not
deliberately do it. And why not? There was no answer. Was he not
faithless to his father? He had no hope of ever winning Ellen Jorth.
He did not want the love of a girl of her character. But he loved her.
And his struggle must be against the insidious and mysterious growth of
that passion. It swayed him already. It made him a coward. Through
his mind and heart swept the memory of Ellen Jorth, her beauty and
charm, her boldness and pathos, her shame and her degradation. And the
sweetness of her outweighed the boldness. And the mystery of her
arrayed itself in unquenchable protest against her acknowledged shame.
Jean lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless white stars, to
the infinite depths of the dark-blue sky. He could sense the fact of
his being an atom in the universe of nature. What was he, what was his
revengeful father, what were hate and passion and strife in comparison
to the nameless something, immense and everlasting, that he sensed in
this dark moment?
But the rustlers—Daggs—the Jorths—they had killed his brother
Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of
Jean’s—a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish. Jean
had never loved him as he did Guy. Guy lay dead down there on the
meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course. Jean steeled his
nerve. The hot blood crept back along his veins. The dark and
masterful tide of revenge waved over him. The keen edge of his mind
then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts. He must kill when and where
he could. This man could hardly be Ellen Jorth’s father. Jorth would
be with the main crowd, directing hostilities. Jean could shoot this
rustler guard and his shot would be taken by the gang as the regular
one from their comrade. Then swiftly Jean leveled his rifle, covered
the dark form, grew cold and set, and pressed the trigger. After the
report he rose and wheeled away. He did not look nor listen for the
result of his shot. A clammy sweat wet his face, the hollow of his
hands, his breast. A horrible, leaden, thick sensation oppressed his
heart. Nature had endowed him with Indian gifts, but the exercise of
them to this end caused a revolt in his soul.
Nevertheless, it was the Isbel blood that dominated him. The wind blew
cool on his face. The burden upon his shoulders seemed to lift. The
clamoring whispers grew fainter in his ears. And by the time he had
retraced his cautious steps back to the orchard all his physical being
was strung to the task at hand. Something had come between his
reflective self and this man of action.
Crossing the lane, he took to the west line of sheds, and passed beyond
them into the meadow. In the grass he crawled silently away to the
right, using the same precaution that had actuated him on the slope,
only here he did not pause so often, nor move so slowly. Jean aimed to
go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embankment behind
which the rustlers had found such efficient cover. This ditch had been
made to keep water, during spring thaws and summer storms, from pouring
off the slope to flood the corrals.
Jean miscalculated and found he had come upon the embankment somewhat
to the left of the end, which fact, however, caused him no uneasiness.
He lay there awhile to listen. Again he heard voices. After a time a
shot pealed out. He did not see the flash, but he calculated that it
had come from the north side of the cabins.
The next quarter of an hour discovered to Jean that the nearest guard
was firing from the top of the embankment, perhaps a hundred yards
distant, and a second one was performing the same office from a point
apparently only a few yards farther on. Two rustlers close together!
Jean had not calculated upon that. For a little while he pondered on
what was best to do, and at length decided to crawl round behind them,
and as close as the situation made advisable.
He found the ditch behind the embankment a favorable path by which to
stalk these enemies. It was dry and sandy, with borders of high weeds.
The only drawback was that it was almost impossible for him to keep
from brushing against the dry, invisible branches of the weeds. To
offset this he wormed his way like a snail, inch by inch, taking a long
time before he caught sight of the sitting figure of a man, black
against the dark-blue sky. This rustler had fired his rifle three
times during Jean’s slow approach. Jean watched and listened a few
moments, then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was
within twenty steps of him.
Jean smelled tobacco smoke, but could see no light of pipe or
cigarette, because the fellow’s back was turned.
“Say, Ben,” said this man to his companion sitting hunched up a few
yards distant, “shore it strikes me queer thet Somers ain’t shootin’
any over thar.”
Jean recognized the dry, drawling voice of Greaves, and the shock of it
seemed to contract the muscles of his whole thrilling body, like that
of a panther about to spring.