Zane Grey (17 page)

"Good mornin', Miss Ellen!" he said.

Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly,
"Did y'u come by our ranch?"

"No. I circled," he replied.

"Jean Isbel! What do y'u want heah?" she demanded.

"Don't you know?" he returned. His eyes were intensely black and
piercing. They seemed to search Ellen's very soul. To meet their gaze
was an ordeal that only her rousing fury sustained.

Ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed Indian
traits and the reputation that had preceded him. But she could not
utter it.

"No," she replied.

"It's hard to call a woman a liar," he returned, bitterly. But you
must be—seein' you're a Jorth.

"Liar! Not to y'u, Jean Isbel," she retorted. "I'd not lie to y'u to
save my life."

He studied her with keen, sober, moody intent. The dark fire of his
eyes thrilled her.

"If that's true, I'm glad," he said.

"Shore it's true. I've no idea why y'u came heah."

Ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion.
But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the
contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man's
face.

"Does old Sprague live here?" asked Isbel.

"Yes. I expect him back soon.... Did y'u come to see him?"

"No.... Did Sprague tell you anythin' about the row he saw me in?"

"He—did not," replied Ellen, lying with stiff lips. She who had sworn
she could not lie! She felt the hot blood leaving her heart, mounting
in a wave. All her conscious will seemed impelled to deceive. What
had she to hide from Jean Isbel? And a still, small voice replied that
she had to hide the Ellen Jorth who had waited for him that day, who
had spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who
had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for her
name.

"I'm glad of that," Isbel was saying, thoughtfully.

"Did you come heah to see me?" interrupted Ellen. She felt that she
could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of
consideration in him. She would betray herself—betray what she did
not even realize herself. She must force other footing—and that
should be the one of strife between the Jorths and Isbels.

"No—honest, I didn't, Miss Ellen," he rejoined, humbly. "I'll tell
you, presently, why I came. But it wasn't to see you.... I don't deny
I wanted ... but that's no matter. You didn't meet me that day on the
Rim."

"Meet y'u!" she echoed, coldly. "Shore y'u never expected me?"

"Somehow I did," he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her. "I put
somethin' in your tent that day. Did you find it?"

"Yes," she replied, with the same casual coldness.

"What did you do with it?"

"I kicked it out, of course," she replied.

She saw him flinch.

"And you never opened it?"

"Certainly not," she retorted, as if forced. "Doon't y'u know anythin'
about—about people? ... Shore even if y'u are an Isbel y'u never were
born in Texas."

"Thank God I wasn't!" he replied. "I was born in a beautiful country
of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren
desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. Where I come from
men don't live on hate. They can forgive."

"Forgive! ... Could y'u forgive a Jorth?"

"Yes, I could."

"Shore that's easy to say—with the wrongs all on your side," she
declared, bitterly.

"Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side," retorted Jean, his
voice fall. "Your father stole my father's sweetheart—by lies, by
slander, by dishonor, by makin' terrible love to her in his absence."

"It's a lie," cried Ellen, passionately.

"It is not," he declared, solemnly.

"Jean Isbel, I say y'u lie!"

"No! I say you've been lied to," he thundered.

The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen. It
weakened her.

"But—mother loved dad—best."

"Yes, afterward. No wonder, poor woman! ... But it was the action of
your father and your mother that ruined all these lives. You've got to
know the truth, Ellen Jorth.... All the years of hate have borne their
fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must be spilled.
The Jorths and the Isbels can't live on the same earth.... And you've
got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and
me."

The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her.

"Never, Jean Isbel!" she cried. "I'll never know truth from y'u....
I'll never share anythin' with y'u—not even hell."

Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins.
The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.

"Why do you hate me so?" he asked. "I just happen to be my father's
son. I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you ... fell in
love with you in a flash—though I never knew it till after.... Why do
you hate me so terribly?"

Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. "Y'u're an
Isbel.... Doon't speak of love to me."

"I didn't intend to. But your—your hate seems unnatural. And we'll
probably never meet again.... I can't help it. I love you. Love at
first sight! Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn't it? ... It
was all so strange. My meetin' you so lonely and unhappy, my seein'
you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin' you so good in spite of—"

"Shore it was strange," interrupted Ellen, with scornful laugh. She had
found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt.
"Thinking me so good in spite of— Ha-ha! And I said I'd been kissed
before!"

"Yes, in spite of everything," he said.

Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild
tumult in her heart. All that crowded to her lips for utterance was
false.

"Yes—kissed before I met you—and since," she said, mockingly. "And I
laugh at what y'u call love, Jean Isbel."

"Laugh if you want—but believe it was sweet, honorable—the best in
me," he replied, in deep earnestness.

"Bah!" cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.

"By Heaven, you must be different from what I thought!" exclaimed
Isbel, huskily.

"Shore if I wasn't, I'd make myself.... Now, Mister Jean Isbel, get on
your horse an' go!"

Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and
she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect
prepared her for some blow.

"That's a pretty black horse."

"Yes," replied Ellen, blankly.

"Do you like him?"

"I—I love him."

"All right, I'll give him to you then. He'll have less work and kinder
treatment than if I used him. I've got some pretty hard rides ahead of
me."

"Y'u—y'u give—" whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening. "Yes. He's
mine," replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up
his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the
closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a
beloved master she saw it then. Isbel laid a hand on the animal's neck
and caressed him, then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: "I
picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father's. We got along
well. My sister Ann rode him a good deal.... He was stolen from our
pasture day before yesterday. I took his trail and tracked him up
here. Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to
circle till I picked it up again."

"Stolen—pasture—tracked him up heah?" echoed Ellen, without any
evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, she seemed to have been turned
to stone.

"Trackin' him was easy. I wish for your sake it 'd been impossible,"
he said, bluntly.

"For my sake?" she echoed, in precisely the same tone,

Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control. He misunderstood
it. With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he
could look into her face.

"Yes, for your sake!" he declared, harshly. "Haven't you sense enough
to see that? ... What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?"

"Game I ... Game of what?" she asked.

"Why, a—a game of ignorance—innocence—any old game to fool a man
who's tryin' to be decent."

This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. And it
inflamed Isbel.

"You know your father's a horse thief!" he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an
unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body,
her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by
hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind
and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of
Isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one
flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered
died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a
second of whirling, revealing thought.

"Ellen Jorth, you know your father's in with this Hash Knife Gang of
rustlers," thundered Isbel.

"Shore," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.

"You know he's got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?"

"Shore."

"You know this talk of sheepmen buckin' the cattlemen is all a blind?"

"Shore," reiterated Ellen.

Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment,
he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by
the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she
emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head
and his broad hand went to his breast.

"To think I fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed, and his other
hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen—body, mind, and soul.
Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination
there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to
fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like
whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It
lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that
family to whom she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and
rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting
her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths. The
sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.

"Shore y'u might have had me—that day on the Rim—if y'u hadn't told
your name," she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all
the mystery of a woman's nature.

Isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague. "Girl, what do you mean?"

"Shore, I'd have been plumb fond of havin' y'u make up to me," she
drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of
the love he could not help. Some fiendish woman's satisfaction dwelt
in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the
good in him.

"Ellen Jorth, you lie!" he burst out, hoarsely.

"Jean, shore I'd been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I
was tired of them.... I wanted a new lover.... And if y'u hadn't give
yourself away—"

Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his
hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood
from a cut lip.

"Shut up, you hussy!" he ordered, roughly. "Have you no shame? ... My
sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses—she pitied you."

That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank.
But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible
poise.

"Jean Isbel—go along with y'u," she said, impatiently. "I'm waiting
heah for Simm Bruce!"

At last it was as if she struck his heart. Because of doubt of himself
and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof
against this last stab. Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had
prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him
rebounded on her! She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her
to move a hand. One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the
other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back. Then she
tried to wrestle away. But she was utterly powerless. His dark face
bent down closer and closer. Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle.
She was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic
eyes of a snake. Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her,
she welcomed it.

"Ellen Jorth, I'm thinkin' yet—you lie!" he said, low and tense
between his teeth.

"No! No!" she screamed, wildly. Her nerve broke there. She could no
longer meet those terrible black eyes. Her passionate denial was not
only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her,
repudiating herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable
situation.

Isbel took her literally. She had convinced him. And the instant held
blank horror for Ellen.

"By God—then I'll have somethin'—of you anyway!" muttered Isbel,
thickly.

Ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck. She saw his dark, hard
face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it
blurred and obstructed her gaze. She felt the swell and ripple and
stretch—then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope.
Then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers. All Ellen's
senses reeled, as if she were swooning. She was suffocating. The
spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and
terrible consciousness. For the endless period of one moment he held
her so that her breast seemed crushed. His kisses burned and braised
her lips. And then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so
hard that she choked under them. It was as if a huge bat had fastened
upon her throat.