Zane Grey (23 page)

"Jane, those hogs—" stammered Esther Isbel, to the wife of Jacobs.
"Come! Look! ... Do y'u know anythin' about hogs?"

The woman ran to the window and looked out. She stiffened as had
Esther.

"Dad, will those hogs—eat human flesh?" queried Jean, breathlessly.

The old man stared out of the window. Surprise seemed to hold him. A
completely unexpected situation had staggered him.

"Jean—can you—can you shoot that far?" he asked, huskily.

"To those hogs? No, it's out of range."

"Then, by God, we've got to stay trapped in heah an' watch an awful
sight," ejaculated the old man, completely unnerved. "See that break
in the fence! ... Jorth's done that.... To let in the hogs!"

"Aw, Isbel, it's not so bad as all that," remonstrated Blaisdell,
wagging his bloody head. "Jorth wouldn't do such a hell-bent trick."

"It's shore done."

"Wal, mebbe the hogs won't find Guy an' Jacobs," returned Blaisdell,
weakly. Plain it was that he only hoped for such a contingency and
certainly doubted it.

"Look!" cried Esther Isbel, piercingly. "They're workin' straight up
the pasture!"

Indeed, to Jean it appeared to be the fatal truth. He looked blankly,
feeling a little sick. Ann Isbel came to peer out of the window and
she uttered a cry. Jacobs's wife stood mute, as if dazed.

Blaisdell swore a mighty oath. "— — —! Isbel, we cain't stand heah
an' watch them hogs eat our people!"

"Wal, we'll have to. What else on earth can we do?"

Esther turned to the men. She was white and cold, except her eyes,
which resembled gray flames.

"Somebody can run out there an' bury our dead men," she said.

"Why, child, it'd be shore death. Y'u saw what happened to Guy an'
Jacobs.... We've jest got to bear it. Shore nobody needn't look
out—an' see."

Jean wondered if it would be possible to keep from watching. The thing
had a horrible fascination. The big hogs were rooting and tearing in
the grass, some of them lazy, others nimble, and all were gradually
working closer and closer to the bodies. The leader, a huge, gaunt
boar, that had fared ill all his life in this barren country, was
scarcely fifty feet away from where Guy Isbel lay.

"Ann, get me some of your clothes, an' a sunbonnet—quick," said Jean,
forced out of his lethargy. "I'll run out there disguised. Maybe I
can go through with it."

"No!" ordered his father, positively, and with dark face flaming. "Guy
an' Jacobs are dead. We cain't help them now."

"But, dad—" pleaded Jean. He had been wrought to a pitch by Esther's
blaze of passion, by the agony in the face of the other woman.

"I tell y'u no!" thundered Gaston Isbel, flinging his arms wide.

"I WILL GO!" cried Esther, her voice ringing.

"You won't go alone!" instantly answered the wife of Jacobs, repeating
unconsciously the words her husband had spoken.

"You stay right heah," shouted Gaston Isbel, hoarsely.

"I'm goin'," replied Esther. "You've no hold over me. My husband is
dead. No one can stop me. I'm goin' out there to drive those hogs
away an' bury him."

"Esther, for Heaven's sake, listen," replied Isbel. "If y'u show
yourself outside, Jorth an' his gang will kin y'u."

"They may be mean, but no white men could be so low as that."

Then they pleaded with her to give up her purpose. But in vain! She
pushed them back and ran out through the kitchen with Jacobs's wife
following her. Jean turned to the window in time to see both women run
out into the lane. Jean looked fearfully, and listened for shots. But
only a loud, "Haw! Haw!" came from the watchers outside. That coarse
laugh relieved the tension in Jean's breast. Possibly the Jorths were
not as black as his father painted them. The two women entered an open
shed and came forth with a shovel and spade.

"Shore they've got to hurry," burst out Gaston Isbel.

Shifting his gaze, Jean understood the import of his father's speech.
The leader of the hogs had no doubt scented the bodies. Suddenly he
espied them and broke into a trot.

"Run, Esther, run!" yelled Jean, with all his might.

That urged the women to flight. Jean began to shoot. The hog reached
the body of Guy. Jean's shots did not reach nor frighten the beast.
All the hogs now had caught a scent and went ambling toward their
leader. Esther and her companion passed swiftly out of sight behind a
corral. Loud and piercingly, with some awful note, rang out their
screams. The hogs appeared frightened. The leader lifted his long
snout, looked, and turned away. The others had halted. Then they,
too, wheeled and ran off.

All was silent then in the cabin and also outside wherever the Jorth
faction lay concealed. All eyes manifestly were fixed upon the brave
wives. They spaded up the sod and dug a grave for Guy Isbel. For a
shroud Esther wrapped him in her shawl. Then they buried him. Next
they hurried to the side of Jacobs, who lay some yards away. They dug
a grave for him. Mrs. Jacobs took off her outer skirt to wrap round
him. Then the two women labored hard to lift him and lower him. Jacobs
was a heavy man. When he had been covered his widow knelt beside his
grave. Esther went back to the other. But she remained standing and
did not look as if she prayed. Her aspect was tragic—that of a woman
who had lost father, mother, sisters, brother, and now her husband, in
this bloody Arizona land.

The deed and the demeanor of these wives of the murdered men surely
must have shamed Jorth and his followers. They did not fire a shot
during the ordeal nor give any sign of their presence.

Inside the cabin all were silent, too. Jean's eyes blurred so that he
continually had to wipe them. Old Isbel made no effort to hide his
tears. Blaisdell nodded his shaggy head and swallowed hard. The women
sat staring into space. The children, in round-eyed dismay, gazed from
one to the other of their elders.

"Wal, they're comin' back," declared Isbel, in immense relief. "An' so
help me—Jorth let them bury their daid!"

The fact seemed to have been monstrously strange to Gaston Isbel. When
the women entered the old man said, brokenly: "I'm shore glad.... An' I
reckon I was wrong to oppose you ... an' wrong to say what I did aboot
Jorth."

No one had any chance to reply to Isbel, for the Jorth gang, as if to
make up for lost time and surcharged feelings of shame, renewed the
attack with such a persistent and furious volleying that the defenders
did not risk a return shot. They all had to lie flat next to the
lowest log in order to keep from being hit. Bullets rained in through
the window. And all the clay between the logs low down was shot away.
This fusillade lasted for more than an hour, then gradually the fire
diminished on one side and then on the other until it became desultory
and finally ceased.

"Ahuh! Shore they've shot their bolt," declared Gaston Isbel.

"Wal, I doon't know aboot that," returned Blaisdell, "but they've shot
a hell of a lot of shells."

"Listen," suddenly called Jean. "Somebody's yellin'."

"Hey, Isbel!" came in loud, hoarse voice. "Let your women fight for
you."

Gaston Isbel sat up with a start and his face turned livid. Jean
needed no more to prove that the derisive voice from outside had
belonged to Jorth. The old rancher lunged up to his full height and
with reckless disregard of life he rushed to the window. "Jorth," he
roared, "I dare you to meet me—man to man!"

This elicited no answer. Jean dragged his father away from the window.
After that a waiting silence ensued, gradually less fraught with
suspense. Blaisdell started conversation by saying he believed the
fight was over for that particular time. No one disputed him.
Evidently Gaston Isbel was loath to believe it. Jean, however,
watching at the back of the kitchen, eventually discovered that the
Jorth gang had lifted the siege. Jean saw them congregate at the edge
of the brush, somewhat lower down than they had been the day before. A
team of mules, drawing a wagon, appeared on the road, and turned toward
the slope. Saddled horses were led down out of the junipers. Jean saw
bodies, evidently of dead men, lifted into the wagon, to be hauled away
toward the village. Seven mounted men, leading four riderless horses,
rode out into the valley and followed the wagon.

"Dad, they've gone," declared Jean. "We had the best of this fight....
If only Guy an' Jacobs had listened!"

The old man nodded moodily. He had aged considerably during these two
trying days. His hair was grayer. Now that the blaze and glow of the
fight had passed he showed a subtle change, a fixed and morbid sadness,
a resignation to a fate he had accepted.

The ordinary routine of ranch life did not return for the Isbels.
Blaisdell returned home to settle matters there, so that he could
devote all his time to this feud. Gaston Isbel sat down to wait for
the members of his clan.

The male members of the family kept guard in turn over the ranch that
night. And another day dawned. It brought word from Blaisdell that
Blue, Fredericks, Gordon, and Colmor were all at his house, on the way
to join the Isbels. This news appeared greatly to rejuvenate Gaston
Isbel. But his enthusiasm did not last long. Impatient and moody by
turns, he paced or moped around the cabin, always looking out,
sometimes toward Blaisdell's ranch, but mostly toward Grass Valley.

It struck Jean as singular that neither Esther Isbel nor Mrs. Jacobs
suggested a reburial of their husbands. The two bereaved women did not
ask for assistance, but repaired to the pasture, and there spent
several hours working over the graves. They raised mounds, which they
sodded, and then placed stones at the heads and feet. Lastly, they
fenced in the graves.

"I reckon I'll hitch up an' drive back home," said Mrs. Jacobs, when
she returned to the cabin. "I've much to do an' plan. Probably I'll
go to my mother's home. She's old an' will be glad to have me."

"If I had any place to go to I'd sure go," declared Esther Isbel,
bitterly.

Gaston Isbel heard this remark. He raised his face from his hands,
evidently both nettled and hurt.

"Esther, shore that's not kind," he said.

The red-haired woman—for she did not appear to be a girl any
more—halted before his chair and gazed down at him, with a terrible
flare of scorn in her gray eyes.

"Gaston Isbel, all I've got to say to you is this," she retorted, with
the voice of a man. "Seein' that you an' Lee Jorth hate each other,
why couldn't you act like men? ... You damned Texans, with your bloody
feuds, draggin' in every relation, every friend to murder each other!
That's not the way of Arizona men.... We've all got to suffer—an' we
women be ruined for life—because YOU had differences with Jorth. If
you were half a man you'd go out an' kill him yourself, an' not leave a
lot of widows an' orphaned children!"

Jean himself writhed under the lash of her scorn. Gaston Isbel turned
a dead white. He could not answer her. He seemed stricken with
merciless truth. Slowly dropping his head, he remained motionless, a
pathetic and tragic figure; and he did not stir until the rapid beat of
hoofs denoted the approach of horsemen. Blaisdell appeared on his
white charger, leading a pack animal. And behind rode a group of men,
all heavily armed, and likewise with packs.

"Get down an' come in," was Isbel's greeting. "Bill—you look after
their packs. Better leave the hosses saddled."

The booted and spurred riders trooped in, and their demeanor fitted
their errand. Jean was acquainted with all of them. Fredericks was a
lanky Texan, the color of dust, and he had yellow, clear eyes, like
those of a hawk. His mother had been an Isbel. Gordon, too, was
related to Jean's family, though distantly. He resembled an
industrious miner more than a prosperous cattleman. Blue was the most
striking of the visitors, as he was the most noted. A little, shrunken
gray-eyed man, with years of cowboy written all over him, he looked the
quiet, easy, cool, and deadly Texan he was reputed to be. Blue's Texas
record was shady, and was seldom alluded to, as unfavorable comment had
turned out to be hazardous. He was the only one of the group who did
not carry a rifle. But he packed two guns, a habit not often noted in
Texans, and almost never in Arizonians.

Colmor, Ann Isbel's fiance, was the youngest member of the clan, and
the one closest to Jean. His meeting with Ann affected Jean
powerfully, and brought to a climax an idea that had been developing in
Jean's mind. His sister devotedly loved this lean-faced, keen-eyed
Arizonian; and it took no great insight to discover that Colmor
reciprocated her affection. They were young. They had long life before
them. It seemed to Jean a pity that Colmor should be drawn into this
war. Jean watched them, as they conversed apart; and he saw Ann's
hands creep up to Colmor's breast, and he saw her dark eyes, eloquent,
hungry, fearful, lifted with queries her lips did not speak. Jean
stepped beside them, and laid an arm over both their shoulders.

"Colmor, for Ann's sake you'd better back out of this Jorth-Isbel
fight," he whispered.

Colmor looked insulted. "But, Jean, it's Ann's father," he said. "I'm
almost one of the family."

"You're Ann's sweetheart, an', by Heaven, I say you oughtn't to go with
us!" whispered Jean.

"Go—with—you," faltered Ann.

"Yes. Dad is goin' straight after Jorth. Can't you tell that? An'
there 'll be one hell of a fight."

Ann looked up into Colmor's face with all her soul in her eyes, but she
did not speak. Her look was noble. She yearned to guide him right,
yet her lips were sealed. And Colmor betrayed the trouble of his soul.
The code of men held him bound, and he could not break from it, though
he divined in that moment how truly it was wrong.