Jean Isbel, holding the wolf-dog Shepp in leash, was on the trail of
the most dangerous of Jorth’s gang, the gunman Queen. Dark drops of
blood on the stones and plain tracks of a rider’s sharp-heeled boots
behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-traveling
fugitive. Therefore, Jean Isbel held in the dog and proceeded with the
wary eye and watchful caution of an Indian.
Queen, true to his class, and emulating Blue with the same magnificent
effrontery and with the same paralyzing suddenness of surprise, had
appeared as if by magic at the last night camp of the Isbel faction.
Jean had seen him first, in time to leap like a panther into the
shadow. But he carried in his shoulder Queen’s first bullet of that
terrible encounter. Upon Gordon and Fredericks fell the brunt of
Queen’s fusillade. And they, shot to pieces, staggering and falling,
held passionate grip on life long enough to draw and still Queen’s guns
and send him reeling off into the darkness of the forest.
Unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, Jean had kept a vigil near
camp all that silent and menacing night. Morning disclosed Gordon and
Fredericks stark and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their
guns clutched immovably in stiffened hands. Jean buried them as best
he could, and when they were under ground with flat stones on their
graves he knew himself to be indeed the last of the Isbel clan. And
all that was wild and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit
rose to make him more than man and less than human. Then for the third
time during these tragic last days the wolf-dog Shepp came to him.
Jean washed the wound Queen had given him and bound it tightly. The
keen pang and burn of the lead was a constant and all-powerful reminder
of the grim work left for him to do. The whole world was no longer
large enough for him and whoever was left of the Jorths. The heritage
of blood his father had bequeathed him, the unshakable love for a
worthless girl who had so dwarfed and obstructed his will and so
bitterly defeated and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith, the
killing of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the pursuits
and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates—these had
finally engendered in Jean Isbel a wild, unslakable thirst, these had
been the cause of his retrogression, these had unalterably and
ruthlessly fixed in his darkened mind one fierce passion—to live and
die the last man of that Jorth-Isbel feud.
At sunrise Jean left this camp, taking with him only a small knapsack
of meat and bread, and with the eager, wild Shepp in leash he set out
on Queen’s bloody trail.
Black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular trail of footprints
proved to Jean that the gunman was hard hit. Here he had fallen, or
knelt, or sat down, evidently to bind his wounds. Jean found strips of
scarf, red and discarded. And the blood drops failed to show on more
rocks. In a deep forest of spruce, under silver-tipped spreading
branches, Queen had rested, perhaps slept. Then laboring with dragging
steps, not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up out of the
dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-tipped ridge. Here he had
rested, perhaps waited to see if he were pursued. From that point his
trail spoke an easy language for Jean’s keen eye. The gunman knew he
was pursued. He had seen his enemy. Therefore Jean proceeded with a
slow caution, never getting within revolver range of ambush, using all
his woodcraft to trail this man and yet save himself. Queen traveled
slowly, either because he was wounded or else because he tried to
ambush his pursuer, and Jean accommodated his pace to that of Queen.
From noon of that day they were never far apart, never out of hearing
of a rifle shot.
The contrast of the beauty and peace and loneliness of the surroundings
to the nature of Queen’s flight often obtruded its strange truth into
the somber turbulence of Jean’s mind, into that fixed columnar idea
around which fleeting thoughts hovered and gathered like shadows.
Early frost had touched the heights with its magic wand. And the
forest seemed a temple in which man might worship nature and life
rather than steal through the dells and under the arched aisles like a
beast of prey. The green-and-gold leaves of aspens quivered in the
glades; maples in the ravines fluttered their red-and-purple leaves.
The needle-matted carpet under the pines vied with the long lanes of
silvery grass, alike enticing to the eye of man and beast. Sunny rays
of light, flecked with dust and flying insects, slanted down from the
overhanging brown-limbed, green-massed foliage. Roar of wind in the
distant forest alternated with soft breeze close at hand. Small
dove-gray squirrels ran all over the woodland, very curious about Jean
and his dog, rustling the twigs, scratching the bark of trees,
chattering and barking, frisky, saucy, and bright-eyed. A plaintive
twitter of wild canaries came from the region above the treetops—first
voices of birds in their pilgrimage toward the south. Pine cones
dropped with soft thuds. The blue jays followed these intruders in the
forest, screeching their displeasure. Like rain pattered the dropping
seeds from the spruces. A woody, earthy, leafy fragrance, damp with
the current of life, mingled with a cool, dry, sweet smell of withered
grass and rotting pines.
Solitude and lonesomeness, peace and rest, wild life and nature,
reigned there. It was a golden-green region, enchanting to the gaze of
man. An Indian would have walked there with his spirits.
And even as Jean felt all this elevating beauty and inscrutable spirit
his keen eye once more fastened upon the blood-red drops Queen had
again left on the gray moss and rock. His wound had reopened. Jean
felt the thrill of the scenting panther.
The sun set, twilight gathered, night fell. Jean crawled under a
dense, low-spreading spruce, ate some bread and meat, fed the dog, and
lay down to rest and sleep. His thoughts burdened him, heavy and black
as the mantle of night. A wolf mourned a hungry cry for a mate. Shepp
quivered under Jean’s hand. That was the call which had lured him from
the ranch. The wolf blood in him yearned for the wild. Jean tied the
cowhide leash to his wrist. When this dark business was at an end
Shepp could be free to join the lonely mate mourning out there in the
forest. Then Jean slept.
Dawn broke cold, clear, frosty, with silvered grass sparkling, with a
soft, faint rustling of falling aspen leaves. When the sun rose red
Jean was again on the trail of Queen. By a frosty-ferned brook, where
water tinkled and ran clear as air and cold as ice, Jean quenched his
thirst, leaning on a stone that showed drops of blood. Queen, too, had
to quench his thirst. What good, what help, Jean wondered, could the
cold, sweet, granite water, so dear to woodsmen and wild creatures, do
this wounded, hunted rustler? Why did he not wait in the open to fight
and face the death he had meted? Where was that splendid and terrible
daring of the gunman? Queen’s love of life dragged him on and on, hour
by hour, through the pine groves and spruce woods, through the oak
swales and aspen glades, up and down the rocky gorges, around the
windfalls and over the rotting logs.
The time came when Queen tried no more ambush. He gave up trying to
trap his pursuer by lying in wait. He gave up trying to conceal his
tracks. He grew stronger or, in desperation, increased his energy, so
that he redoubled his progress through the wilderness. That, at best,
would count only a few miles a day. And he began to circle to the
northwest, back toward the deep canyon where Blaisdell and Bill Isbel
had reached the end of their trails. Queen had evidently left his
comrades, had lone-handed it in his last fight, but was now trying to
get back to them. Somewhere in these wild, deep forest brakes the rest
of the Jorth faction had found a hiding place. Jean let Queen lead him
there.
Ellen Jorth would be with them. Jean had seen her. It had been his
shot that killed Colter’s horse. And he had withheld further fire
because Colter had dragged the girl behind him, protecting his body
with hers. Sooner or later Jean would come upon their camp. She would
be there. The thought of her dark beauty, wasted in wantonness upon
these rustlers, added a deadly rage to the blood lust and righteous
wrath of his vengeance. Let her again flaunt her degradation in his
face and, by the God she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end
the race of Jorths!
Another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight. The wind moaned
in the forest. Shepp was restless. He sniffed the air. There was a
step on his trail. Again a mournful, eager, wild, and hungry wolf cry
broke the silence. It was deep and low, like that of a baying hound,
but infinitely wilder. Shepp strained to get away. During the night,
while Jean slept, he managed to chew the cowhide leash apart and run
off.
Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen. Fog and low-drifting clouds
in the forest and a misty rain had put the rustler off his bearings. He
was lost, and showed that he realized it. Strange how a matured man,
fighter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last
stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost! So Jean Isbel read
the signs of the trail.
Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he
headed down into a canyon. It was one that notched the Rim and led
down and down, mile after mile into the Basin. Not soon had Queen
discovered his mistake. When he did do so, night overtook him.
The weather cleared before morning. Red and bright the sun burst out
of the east to flood that low basin land with light. Jean found that
Queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had
lost. But in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes
instead of back up the canyon. And here he had fought the hold of that
strange brush of Spanish name until he fell exhausted.
Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish
thicket for Jean to catch up with him. Many and many a place Jean
would have chosen had he been in Queen’s place. Many a rock and dense
thicket Jean circled or approached with extreme care. Manzanita grew
in patches that were impenetrable except for a small animal. The brush
was a few feet high, seldom so high that Jean could not look over it,
and of a beautiful appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden
berry, and branches of dark-red color. These branches were tough and
unbendable. Every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard
as steel, sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus. Progress was
possible only by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between
patches, or else by crashing through with main strength or walking
right over the tops. Jean preferred this last method, not because it
was the easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much
farther. So he literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush.
Often he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke
with him, letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork
to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the
patience of a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable.
On that south slope under the Rim the sun beat down hot. There was no
breeze to temper the dry air. And before midday Jean was laboring, wet
with sweat, parching with thirst, dusty and hot and tiring. It amazed
him, the doggedness and tenacity of life shown by this wounded rustler.
The time came when under the burning rays of the sun he was compelled
to abandon the walk across the tips of the manzanita bushes and take to
the winding, open threads that ran between. It would have been poor
sight indeed that could not have followed Queen’s labyrinthine and
broken passage through the brush. Then the time came when Jean espied
Queen, far ahead and above, crawling like a black bug along the
bright-green slope. Sight then acted upon Jean as upon a hound in the
chase. But he governed his actions if he could not govern his
instincts. Slowly but surely he followed the dusty, hot trail, and
never a patch of blood failed to send a thrill along his veins.
Queen, headed up toward the Rim, finally vanished from sight. Had he
fallen? Was he hiding? But the hour disclosed that he was crawling.
Jean’s keen eye caught the slow moving of the brush and enabled him to
keep just so close to the rustler, out of range of the six-shooters he
carried. And so all the interminable hours of the hot afternoon that
snail-pace flight and pursuit kept on.
Halfway up the Rim the growth of manzanita gave place to open, yellow,
rocky slope dotted with cedars. Queen took to a slow-ascending ridge
and left his bloody tracks all the way to the top, where in the
gathering darkness the weary pursuer lost them.
Another night passed. Daylight was relentless to the rustler. He
could not hide his trail. But somehow in a desperate last rally of
strength he reached a point on the heavily timbered ridge that Jean
recognized as being near the scene of the fight in the canyon. Queen
was nearing the rendezvous of the rustlers. Jean crossed tracks of
horses, and then more tracks that he was certain had been made days
past by his own party. To the left of this ridge must be the deep
canyon that had frustrated his efforts to catch up with the rustlers on
the day Blaisdell lost his life, and probably Bill Isbel, too.
Something warned Jean that he was nearing the end of the trail, and an
unaccountable sense of imminent catastrophe seemed foreshadowed by
vague dreads and doubts in his gloomy mind. Jean felt the need of
rest, of food, of ease from the strain of the last weeks. But his
spirit drove him implacably.
Queen’s rally of strength ended at the edge of an open, bald ridge that
was bare of brush or grass and was surrounded by a line of forest on
three sides, and on the fourth by a low bluff which raised its gray
head above the pines. Across this dusty open Queen had crawled,
leaving unmistakable signs of his condition. Jean took long survey of
the circle of trees and of the low, rocky eminence, neither of which he
liked. It might be wiser to keep to cover, Jean thought, and work
around to where Queen’s trail entered the forest again. But he was
tired, gloomy, and his eternal vigilance was failing. Nevertheless, he
stilled for the thousandth time that bold prompting of his vengeance
and, taking to the edge of the forest, he went to considerable pains to
circle the open ground. And suddenly sight of a man sitting back
against a tree halted Jean.
He stared to make sure his eyes did not deceive him. Many times stumps
and snags and rocks had taken on strange resemblance to a standing or
crouching man. This was only another suggestive blunder of the mind
behind his eyes—what he wanted to see he imagined he saw. Jean glided
on from tree to tree until he made sure that this sitting image indeed
was that of a man. He sat bolt upright, facing back across the open,
hands resting on his knees—and closer scrutiny showed Jean that he
held a gun in each hand.
Queen! At the last his nerve had revived. He could not crawl any
farther, he could never escape, so with the courage of fatality he
chose the open, to face his foe and die. Jean had a thrill of
admiration for the rustler. Then he stalked out from under the pines
and strode forward with his rifle ready.
A watching man could not have failed to espy Jean. But Queen never
made the slightest move. Moreover, his stiff, unnatural position
struck Jean so singularly that he halted with a muttered exclamation.
He was now about fifty paces from Queen, within range of those small
guns. Jean called, sharply, “QUEEN!” Still the figure never relaxed in
the slightest.
Jean advanced a few more paces, rifle up, ready to fire the instant
Queen lifted a gun. The man’s immobility brought the cold sweat to
Jean’s brow. He stopped to bend the full intense power of his gaze
upon this inert figure. Suddenly over Jean flashed its meaning. Queen
was dead. He had backed up against the pine, ready to face his foe,
and he had died there. Not a shadow of a doubt entered Jean’s mind as
he started forward again. He knew. After all, Queen’s blood would not
be on his hands. Gordon and Fredericks in their death throes had given
the rustler mortal wounds. Jean kept on, marveling the while. How
ghastly thin and hard! Those four days of flight had been hell for
Queen.
Jean reached him—looked down with staring eyes. The guns were tied to
his hands. Jean started violently as the whole direction of his mind
shifted. A lightning glance showed that Queen had been propped against
the tree—another showed boot tracks in the dust.
“By Heaven, they’ve fooled me!” hissed Jean, and quickly as he leaped
behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers
who had waylaid him thus. He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead
before he heard a rifle crack. A bullet had ripped through his left
forearm. From behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the
face of the bluff—the very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had
descried as one of menace. Then several puffs of white smoke and
ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters. Bullets barked
the pine and whistled by. Jean saw a man dart from behind a rock and,
leaning over, run for another. Jean’s swift shot stopped him midway.
He fell, got up, and floundered behind a bush scarcely large enough to
conceal him. Into that bush Jean shot again and again. He had no pain
in his wounded arm, but the sense of the shock clung in his
consciousness, and this, with the tremendous surprise of the deceit,
and sudden release of long-dammed overmastering passion, caused him to
empty the magazine of his Winchester in a terrible haste to kill the
man he had hit.
These were all the loads he had for his rifle. Blood passion had made
him blunder. Jean cursed himself, and his hand moved to his belt. His
six-shooter was gone. The sheath had been loose. He had tied the gun
fast. But the strings had been torn apart. The rustlers were shooting
again. Bullets thudded into the pine and whistled by. Bending
carefully, Jean reached one of Queen’s guns and jerked it from his
hand. The weapon was empty. Both of his guns were empty. Jean peeped
out again to get the line in which the bullets were coming and, marking
a course from his position to the cover of the forest, he ran with all
his might. He gained the shelter. Shrill yells behind warned him that
he had been seen, that his reason for flight had been guessed. Looking
back, he saw two or three men scrambling down the bluff. Then the loud
neigh of a frightened horse pealed out.
Jean discarded his useless rifle, and headed down the ridge slope,
keeping to the thickest line of pines and sheering around the clumps of
spruce. As he ran, his mind whirled with grim thoughts of escape, of
his necessity to find the camp where Gordon and Fredericks were buried,
there to procure another rifle and ammunition. He felt the wet blood
dripping down his arm, yet no pain. The forest was too open for good
cover. He dared not run uphill. His only course was ahead, and that
soon ended in an abrupt declivity too precipitous to descend. As he
halted, panting for breath, he heard the ring of hoofs on stone, then
the thudding beat of running horses on soft ground. The rustlers had
sighted the direction he had taken. Jean did not waste time to look.
Indeed, there was no need, for as he bounded along the cliff to the
right a rifle cracked and a bullet whizzed over his head. It lent
wings to his feet. Like a deer he sped along, leaping cracks and logs
and rocks, his ears filled by the rush of wind, until his quick eye
caught sight of thick-growing spruce foliage close to the precipice. He
sprang down into the green mass. His weight precipitated him through
the upper branches. But lower down his spread arms broke his fall,
then retarded it until he caught. A long, swaying limb let him down
and down, where he grasped another and a stiffer one that held his
weight. Hand over hand he worked toward the trunk of this spruce and,
gaining it, he found other branches close together down which he
hastened, hold by hold and step by step, until all above him was black,
dense foliage, and beneath him the brown, shady slope. Sure of being
unseen from above, he glided noiselessly down under the trees, slowly
regaining freedom from that constriction of his breast.
Passing on to a gray-lichened cliff, overhanging and gloomy, he paused
there to rest and to listen. A faint crack of hoof on stone came to
him from above, apparently farther on to the right. Eventually his
pursuers would discover that he had taken to the canyon. But for the
moment he felt safe. The wound in his forearm drew his attention. The
bullet had gone clear through without breaking either bone. His shirt
sleeve was soaked with blood. Jean rolled it back and tightly wrapped
his scarf around the wound, yet still the dark-red blood oozed out and
dripped down into his hand. He became aware of a dull, throbbing pain.
Not much time did Jean waste in arriving at what was best to do. For
the time being he had escaped, and whatever had been his peril, it was
past. In dense, rugged country like this he could not be caught by
rustlers. But he had only a knife left for a weapon, and there was
very little meat in the pocket of his coat. Salt and matches he
possessed. Therefore the imperative need was for him to find the last
camp, where he could get rifle and ammunition, bake bread, and rest up
before taking again the trail of the rustlers. He had reason to
believe that this canyon was the one where the fight on the Rim, and
later, on a bench of woodland below, had taken place.
Thereupon he arose and glided down under the spruces toward the level,
grassy open he could see between the trees. And as he proceeded, with
the slow step and wary eye of an Indian, his mind was busy.
Queen had in his flight unerringly worked in the direction of this
canyon until he became lost in the fog; and upon regaining his bearings
he had made a wonderful and heroic effort to surmount the manzanita
slope and the Rim and find the rendezvous of his comrades. But he had
failed up there on the ridge. In thinking it over Jean arrived at a
conclusion that Queen, finding he could go no farther, had waited, guns
in hands, for his pursuer. And he had died in this position. Then by
strange coincidence his comrades had happened to come across him and,
recognizing the situation, they had taken the shells from his guns and
propped him up with the idea of luring Jean on. They had arranged a
cunning trick and ambush, which had all but snuffed out the last of the
Isbels. Colter probably had been at the bottom of this crafty plan.
Since the fight at the Isbel ranch, now seemingly far back in the past,
this man Colter had loomed up more and more as a stronger and more
dangerous antagonist then either Jorth or Daggs. Before that he had
been little known to any of the Isbel faction. And it was Colter now
who controlled the remnant of the gang and who had Ellen Jorth in his
possession.
The canyon wall above Jean, on the right, grew more rugged and loftier,
and the one on the left began to show wooded slopes and brakes, and at
last a wide expanse with a winding, willow border on the west and a
long, low, pine-dotted bench on the east. It took several moments of
study for Jean to recognize the rugged bluff above this bench. On up
that canyon several miles was the site where Queen had surprised Jean
and his comrades at their campfire. Somewhere in this vicinity was the
hiding place of the rustlers.
Thereupon Jean proceeded with the utmost stealth, absolutely certain
that he would miss no sound, movement, sign, or anything unnatural to
the wild peace of the canyon. And his first sense to register
something was his keen smell. Sheep! He was amazed to smell sheep.
There must be a flock not far away. Then from where he glided along
under the trees he saw down to open places in the willow brake and
noticed sheep tracks in the dark, muddy bank of the brook. Next he
heard faint tinkle of bells, and at length, when he could see farther
into the open enlargement of the canyon, his surprised gaze fell upon
an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out acres and acres of
grass. Thousands of sheep were grazing there. Jean knew there were
several flocks of Jorth’s sheep on the mountain in the care of herders,
but he had never thought of them being so far west, more than twenty
miles from Chevelon Canyon. His roving eyes could not descry any
herders or dogs. But he knew there must be dogs close to that immense
flock. And, whatever his cunning, he could not hope to elude the scent
and sight of shepherd dogs. It would be best to go back the way he had
come, wait for darkness, then cross the canyon and climb out, and work
around to his objective point. Turning at once, he started to glide
back. But almost immediately he was brought stock-still and thrilling
by the sound of hoofs.
Horses were coming in the direction he wished to take. They were
close. His swift conclusion was that the men who had pursued him up on
the Rim had worked down into the canyon. One circling glance showed
him that he had no sure covert near at hand. It would not do to risk
their passing him there. The border of woodland was narrow and not
dense enough for close inspection. He was forced to turn back up the
canyon, in the hope of soon finding a hiding place or a break in the
wall where he could climb up.
Hugging the base of the wall, he slipped on, passing the point where he
had espied the sheep, and gliding on until he was stopped by a bend in
the dense line of willows. It sheered to the west there and ran close
to the high wall. Jean kept on until he was stooping under a curling
border of willow thicket, with branches slim and yellow and masses of
green foliage that brushed against the wall. Suddenly he encountered
an abrupt corner of rock. He rounded it, to discover that it ran at
right angles with the one he had just passed. Peering up through the
willows, he ascertained that there was a narrow crack in the main wall
of the canyon. It had been concealed by willows low down and leaning
spruces above. A wild, hidden retreat! Along the base of the wall
there were tracks of small animals. The place was odorous, like all
dense thickets, but it was not dry. Water ran through there somewhere.
Jean drew easier breath. All sounds except the rustling of birds or
mice in the willows had ceased. The brake was pervaded by a dreamy
emptiness. Jean decided to steal on a little farther, then wait till
he felt he might safely dare go back.
The golden-green gloom suddenly brightened. Light showed ahead, and
parting the willows, he looked out into a narrow, winding canyon, with
an open, grassy, willow-streaked lane in the center and on each side a
thin strip of woodland.
His surprise was short lived. A crashing of horses back of him in the
willows gave him a shock. He ran out along the base of the wall, back
of the trees. Like the strip of woodland in the main canyon, this one
was scant and had but little underbrush. There were young spruces
growing with thick branches clear to the grass, and under these he
could have concealed himself. But, with a certainty of sheep dogs in
the vicinity, he would not think of hiding except as a last resource.
These horsemen, whoever they were, were as likely to be sheep herders
as not. Jean slackened his pace to look back. He could not see any
moving objects, but he still heard horses, though not so close now.
Ahead of him this narrow gorge opened out like the neck of a bottle. He
would run on to the head of it and find a place to climb to the top.
Hurried and anxious as Jean was, he yet received an impression of
singular, wild nature of this side gorge. It was a hidden,
pine-fringed crack in the rock-ribbed and canyon-cut tableland. Above
him the sky seemed a winding stream of blue. The walls were red and
bulged out in spruce-greened shelves. From wall to wall was scarcely a
distance of a hundred feet. Jumbles of rock obstructed his close
holding to the wall. He had to walk at the edge of the timber. As he
progressed, the gorge widened into wilder, ruggeder aspect. Through
the trees ahead he saw where the wall circled to meet the cliff on the
left, forming an oval depression, the nature of which he could not
ascertain. But it appeared to be a small opening surrounded by dense
thickets and the overhanging walls. Anxiety augmented to alarm. He
might not be able to find a place to scale those rough cliffs.
Breathing hard, Jean halted again. The situation was growing critical
again. His physical condition was worse. Loss of sleep and rest, lack
of food, the long pursuit of Queen, the wound in his arm, and the
desperate run for his life—these had weakened him to the extent that
if he undertook any strenuous effort he would fail. His cunning
weighed all chances.
The shade of wall and foliage above, and another jumble of ruined
cliff, hindered his survey of the ground ahead, and he almost stumbled
upon a cabin, hidden on three sides, with a small, bare clearing in
front. It was an old, ramshackle structure like others he had run
across in the canons. Cautiously he approached and peeped around the
corner. At first swift glance it had all the appearance of long disuse.
But Jean had no time for another look. A clip-clop of trotting horses
on hard ground brought the same pell-mell rush of sensations that had
driven him to wild flight scarcely an hour past. His body jerked with
its instinctive impulse, then quivered with his restraint. To turn
back would be risky, to run ahead would be fatal, to hide was his one
hope. No covert behind! And the clip-clop of hoofs sounded closer.
One moment longer Jean held mastery over his instincts of
self-preservation. To keep from running was almost impossible. It was
the sheer primitive animal sense to escape. He drove it back and
glided along the front of the cabin.
Here he saw that the cabin adjoined another. Reaching the door, he was
about to peep in when the thud of hoofs and voices close at hand
transfixed him with a grim certainty that he had not an instant to
lose. Through the thin, black-streaked line of trees he saw moving red
objects. Horses! He must run. Passing the door, his keen nose caught
a musty, woody odor and the tail of his eye saw bare dirt floor. This
cabin was unused. He halted—gave a quick look back. And the first
thing his eye fell upon was a ladder, right inside the door, against
the wall. He looked up. It led to a loft that, dark and gloomy,
stretched halfway across the cabin. An irresistible impulse drove
Jean. Slipping inside, he climbed up the ladder to the loft. It was
like night up there. But he crawled on the rough-hewn rafters and,
turning with his head toward the opening, he stretched out and lay
still.
What seemed an interminable moment ended with a trample of hoofs
outside the cabin. It ceased. Jean’s vibrating ears caught the jingle
of spurs and a thud of boots striking the ground.
“Wal, sweetheart, heah we are home again,” drawled a slow, cool,
mocking Texas voice.
“Home! I wonder, Colter—did y’u ever have a home—a mother—a
sister—much less a sweetheart?” was the reply, bitter and caustic.
Jean’s palpitating, hot body suddenly stretched still and cold with
intensity of shock. His very bones seemed to quiver and stiffen into
ice. During the instant of realization his heart stopped. And a slow,
contracting pressure enveloped his breast and moved up to constrict his
throat. That woman’s voice belonged to Ellen Jorth. The sound of it
had lingered in his dreams. He had stumbled upon the rendezvous of the
Jorth faction. Hard indeed had been the fates meted out to those of
the Isbels and Jorths who had passed to their deaths. But, no ordeal,
not even Queen’s, could compare with this desperate one Jean must
endure. He had loved Ellen Jorth, strangely, wonderfully, and he had
scorned repute to believe her good. He had spared her father and her
uncle. He had weakened or lost the cause of the Isbels. He loved her
now, desperately, deathlessly, knowing from her own lips that she was
worthless—loved her the more because he had felt her terrible shame.
And to him—the last of the Isbels—had come the cruelest of dooms—to
be caught like a crippled rat in a trap; to be compelled to lie
helpless, wounded, without a gun; to listen, and perhaps to see Ellen
Jorth enact the very truth of her mocking insinuation. His will, his
promise, his creed, his blood must hold him to the stem decree that he
should be the last man of the Jorth-Isbel war. But could he lie there
to hear—to see—when he had a knife and an arm?