by Zane Grey
Ellen rode Spades back to the ranch. She rode like the wind. When she swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin. She rode Spades at a full run.
“Who’s after you?” yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a halt. Jorth held a rifle. Daggs, Colter, the other Jorths were there, likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy.
“Shore nobody’s after me,” replied Ellen. “Cain’t I run a horse round heah without being chased?”
Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.
“Hah! … What you mean, girl, runnin’ like a streak right down on us? You’re actin’ queer these days, an’ you look queer. I’m not likin’ it.”
“Reckon these are queer times—for the Jorths,” replied Ellen, sarcastically.
“Daggs found strange horse tracks crossin’ the meadow,” said her father. “An’ that worried us. Some one’s been snoopin’ round the ranch. An’ when we seen you runnin’ so wild we shore thought you was bein’ chased.”
“No. I was only trying out Spades to see how fast he could run,” returned Ellen. “Reckon when we do get chased it’ll take some running to catch me.”
“Haw! Haw!” roared Daggs. “It shore will, Ellen.”
“Girl, it’s not only your runnin’ an’ your looks that’s queer,” declared Jorth, in dark perplexity. “You talk queer.”
“Shore, dad, y’u’re not used to hearing spades called spades,” said Ellen, as she dismounted.
“Humph!” ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness of trying to understand a woman. “Say, did you see any strange horse tracks?”
“I reckon I did. And I know who made them.”
Jorth stiffened. All the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of suspense.
“Who?” demanded Jorth.
“Shore it was Jean Isbel,” replied Ellen, coolly. “He came up heah tracking his black horse.”
“Jean—Isbel—trackin’—his—black horse,” repeated her father.
“Yes. He’s not overrated as a tracker, that’s shore.”
Blank silence ensued. Ellen cast a slow glance over her father and the others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle. Presently Jorth burst the silence with a curse, and Daggs followed with one of his sardonic laughs.
“Wal, boss, what did I tell you?” he drawled.
Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he held her facing him.
“Did y’u see Isbel?”
“Yes,” replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked.
“Did y’u talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want up heah?”
“I told y’u. He was tracking the black horse y’u stole.”
Jorth’s hand and arm dropped limply. His sallow face turned a livid hue. Amaze merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage. He raised a hand as if to strike Ellen. And suddenly Daggs’s long arm shot out to clutch Jorth’s wrist. Wrestling to free himself, Jorth cursed under his breath. “Let go, Daggs,” he shouted, stridently. “Am I drunk that you grab me?”
“Wal, y’u ain’t drunk, I reckon,” replied the rustler, with sarcasm. “But y’u’re shore some things I’ll reserve for your private ear.”
Jorth gained a semblance of composure. But it was evident that he labored under a shock.
“Ellen, did Jean Isbel see this black horse?”
“Yes. He asked me how I got Spades an’ I told him.”
“Did he say Spades belonged to him?”
“Shore I reckon he, proved it. Y’u can always tell a horse that loves its master.”
“Did y’u offer to give Spades back?”
“Yes. But Isbel wouldn’t take him.”
“Hah! … An’ why not?”
“He said he’d rather I kept him. He was about to engage in a dirty, blood-spilling deal, an’ he reckoned he’d not be able to care for a fine horse…. I didn’t want Spades. I tried to make Isbel take him. But he rode off…. And that’s all there is to that.”
“Maybe it’s not,” replied Jorth, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen with dark, intent gaze. “Y’u’ve met this Isbel twice.”
“It wasn’t any fault of mine,” retorted Ellen.
“I heah he’s sweet on y’u. How aboot that?”
Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and temple. But it was only memory which fired this shame. What her father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference. Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.
“I heah talk from Bruce an’ Lorenzo,” went on her father. “An’ Daggs heah—”
“Daggs nothin’!” interrupted that worthy. “Don’t fetch me in. I said nothin’ an’ I think nothin’.”
“Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad … but he will never be again,” returned Ellen, in low tones. With that she pulled her saddle off Spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.
Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered.
“Ellen, I didn’t know that horse belonged to Isbel,” he began, in the swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen. “I swear I didn’t. I bought him—traded with Slater for him…. Honest to God, I never had any idea he was stolen! … Why, when y’u said ‘that horse y’u stole,’ I felt as if y’u’d knifed me….”
Ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into a frenzy. He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty. It seemed that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. He had a terrible thirst for her respect. Not so much for her love, she divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen!
She pitied him with all her heart. She was all he had, as he was all the world to her. And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and her love were making vital decisions for her. As of old, in poignant moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the Isbels and what they had brought him to. His sufferings were real, at least, in Ellen’s presence. She was the only link that bound him to long-past happier times. She was her mother over again—the woman who had betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death.
“Dad, don’t go on so,” said Ellen, breaking in upon her father’s rant. “I will be true to y’u—as my mother was…. I am a Jorth. Your place is my place—your fight is my fight…. Never speak of the past to me again. If God spares us through this feud we will go away and begin all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a Jorth…. If we’re not spared we’ll at least have had our whack at these damned Isbels.”
CHAPTER VII
During June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley.
Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel’s life. Another cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket bordering the trail that led to Blaisdell’s ranch. Blaisdell heard this shot, so near his home was it fired. No trace of the hidden foe could be found. The ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of pine needles which showed no trace of footprints. The supposition was that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the Jorths. But there was no proof. And Gaston Isbel had other enemies in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan. The old man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. And his friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends. “Let’s quit ranchin’ till this trouble’s settled,” he declared. “Let’s arm an’ ride the trails an’ meet these men half-way…. It won’t help our side any to wait till you’re shot in the back.” More than one of Isbel’s supporters offered the same advice.
“No; we’ll wait till we know for shore,” was the stubborn cattleman�
��s reply to all these promptings.
“Know! Wal, hell! Didn’t Jean find the black hoss up at Jorth’s ranch?” demanded Blaisdell. “What more do we want?”
“Jean couldn’t swear Jorth stole the black.”
“Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!” growled Blaisdell. “An’ we’re losin’ cattle all the time. Who’s stealin’ ’em?”
“We’ve always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin’ heah.”
“Gas, I reckon yu want Jorth to start this fight in the open.”
“It’ll start soon enough,” was Isbel’s gloomy reply.
Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen cattle. Circumstances had been against him, and there was something baffling about this rustling. The summer storms set in early, and it had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he might have followed. The range was large and cattle were everywhere. Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. Gaston Isbel’s sons were now the only men left to ride the range. Two of his riders had quit because of the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go. So that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their tracks were old. Added to that was the fact that this Grass Valley country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks. The rustlers, whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was reason for them to show their cunning they did it.
Early in July the hot weather came. Down on the red ridges of the Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was something to endure. When the white cumulus clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thundercloud, Jean welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats, the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the hot summer sun. Jean longed for the cool heights of the Rim, the shady pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and murmur of the clear rills. He often had another longing, too, which he bitterly stifled.
Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd clog, had disappeared one day, and had never returned. Among men at the ranch there was a difference of opinion as to what had happened to Shepp. The old rancher thought he had been poisoned or shot; Bill and Guy Isbel believed he had been stolen by sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and Jean inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.
One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out in the valley; and upon hurrying to a vantage point he was amazed to see upward of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf. Jean’s father had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean. The wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and powerful, and until he got the steers all behind him he was rather hard put to it to keep out of their way. Probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. Jean kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within range of a rifle. But the wary wolf saw Jean and sheered off, gradually drawing away from his pursuers.
Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across the valley. His father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet been driven up on the Rim, where all the sheep in the country were run during the hot, dry summer down on the Tonto. Young Evarts and a Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock. The regular Mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job; and these boys were not equal to the task of risking the sheep up in the enemies’ stronghold.
This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from Grass Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and there was good water and a little feed. Before Jean reached his destination he heard a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact caused Jean a little concern. Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but, to his knowledge, no small arms. Jean rode up on one of the black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Grass Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country. At first he made out only cattle, and bare meadowland, and the low encircling ridges and hills. But presently up toward the head of the valley he descried a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village. He could not tell their number. That dark moving mass seemed to Jean to be instinct with life, mystery, menace. Who were they? It was too far for him to recognize horses, let alone riders. They were moving fast, too.
Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again, and rode on his quest. A number of horsemen like that was a very unusual sight around Grass Valley at any time. What then did it portend now? Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was a new sensation for him. Brooding over this he proceeded on his way, at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders was located. Upon coming in sight of it he heard a hoarse shout. Young Evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush. Jean urged his horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. Evarts appeared beside himself with terror.
“Boy! what’s the matter?” queried Jean, as he dismounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white face to the camp, and all around.
“Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing his hands and pointing.
Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp. He saw the little teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal—and then the Mexican lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly face. Near him lay an old six-shooter.
“Whose gun is that?” demanded Jean, as he picked it up.
“Ber-nardino’s,” replied Evarts, huskily. “He—he jest got it—the other day.”
“Did he shoot himself accidentally?”
“Oh no! No! He didn’t do it—atall.”
“Who did, then?”
“The men—they rode up—a gang-they did it,” panted Evarts.
“Did you know who they were?”
“No. I couldn’t tell. I saw them comin’ an’ I was skeered. Bernardino had gone fer water. I run an’ hid in the brush. I wanted to yell, but they come too close…. Then I heerd them talkin’. Bernardino come back. They ’peared friendly-like. Thet made me raise up, to look. An’ I couldn’t see good. I heerd one of them ask Bernardino to let him see his gun. An’ Bernardino handed it over. He looked at the gun an’ haw-hawed, an’ flipped it up in the air, an’ when it fell back in his hand it—it went off bang! … An’ Bernardino dropped…. I hid down close. I was skeered stiff. I heerd them talk more, but not what they said. Then they rode away…. An’ I hid there till I seen y’u comin’.”
“Have you got a horse?” queried Jean, sharply.
“No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”
“Get one. Hurry over to Blaisdell. Tell him to send word to Blue and Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to my father’s ranch. Hurry now!”
Young Evarts ran off without reply. Jean stood looking down at the limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy. “By Heaven!” he exclaimed, grimly “the Jorth-Isbel war is on! … Deliberate, cold-blooded murder! I’ll gamble Daggs did this job. He’s been given the leadership. He’s started it…. Bernardino, greaser or not, you were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.”
Jean had no time to spare. Tearing a tarpaulin out of the teepee he covered the lad with it and then ran for, his horse. Mounting, he galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the valley, where he put his horse to a run.
Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had engendered. Jean even felt a strange, grim relief. The long, dragging days of waiting were over. Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative. Blood had begun to flow. And it would continue to flow now till the last man of one faction stood over the de
ad 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.
