Zane Grey (28 page)

The summer morning dawned that brought Ellen strange tidings. They
must have been created in her sleep, and now were realized in the
glorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across the
blue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screech
of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. These heralded the day
as no ordinary day. Something was going to happen to her. She divined
it. She felt it. And she trembled. Nothing beautiful, hopeful,
wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had been born to
disaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone. Yet all nature
about her seemed a magnificent rebuke to her morbidness. The same
spirit that came out there with the thick, amber light was in her. She
lived, and something in her was stronger than mind.

Ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms,
driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning. And a
well-known voice broke in upon her rapture.

"Wal, lass, I like to see you happy an' I hate myself fer comin'.
Because I've been to Grass Valley fer two days an' I've got news."

Old John Sprague stood there, with a smile that did not hide a troubled
look.

"Oh! Uncle John! You startled me," exclaimed Ellen, shocked back to
reality. And slowly she added: "Grass Valley! News?"

She put out an appealing hand, which Sprague quickly took in his own,
as if to reassure her.

"Yes, an' not bad so far as you Jorths are concerned," he replied. "The
first Jorth-Isbel fight has come off.... Reckon you remember makin' me
promise to tell you if I heerd anythin'. Wal, I didn't wait fer you to
come up."

"So Ellen heard her voice calmly saying. What was this lying calm when
there seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart? The first fight—not
so bad for the Jorths! Then it had been bad for the Isbels. A sudden,
cold stillness fell upon her senses.

"Let's sit down—outdoors," Sprague was saying. "Nice an' sunny
this—mornin'. I declare—I'm out of breath. Not used to walkin'.
An' besides, I left Grass Valley, in the night—an' I'm tired. But
excoose me from hangin' round thet village last night! There was
shore—"

"Who—who was killed?" interrupted Ellen, her voice breaking low and
deep.

"Guy Isbel an' Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, an' Daggs, Craig, an'
Greaves on your father's side," stated Sprague, with something of awed
haste.

"Ah!" breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabin
wall.

Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, and
he seemed burdened with grave and important matters.

"I heerd a good many conflictin' stories," he said, earnestly. "The
village folks is all skeered an' there's no believin' their gossip. But
I got what happened straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off day
before yestiddy. Your father's gang rode down to Isbel's ranch. Daggs
was seen to be wantin' some of the Isbel hosses, so Evarts says. An'
Guy Isbel an' Jacobs ran out in the pasture. Daggs an' some others
shot them down."

"Killed them—that way?" put in Ellen, sharply.

"So Evarts says. He was on the ridge an' swears he seen it all. They
killed Guy an' Jacobs in cold blood. No chance fer their lives—not
even to fight! ... Wall, hen they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The
fight last all thet day an' all night an' the next day. Evarts says
Guy an' Jacobs laid out thar all this time. An' a herd of hogs broke
in the pasture an' was eatin' the dead bodies ..."

"My God!" burst out Ellen. "Uncle John, y'u shore cain't mean my
father wouldn't stop fightin' long enough to drive the hogs off an'
bury those daid men?"

"Evarts says they stopped fightin', all right, but it was to watch the
hogs," declared Sprague. "An' then, what d' ye think? The wimminfolks
come out—the red-headed one, Guy's wife, an' Jacobs's wife—they
drove the hogs away an' buried their husbands right there in the
pasture. Evarts says he seen the graves."

"It is the women who can teach these bloody Texans a lesson," declared
Ellen, forcibly.

"Wal, Daggs was drunk, an' he got up from behind where the gang was
hidin', an' dared the Isbels to come out. They shot him to pieces. An'
thet night some one of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on
guard.... An' last—this here's what I come to tell you—Jean Isbel
slipped up in the dark on Greaves an' knifed him."

"Why did y'u want to tell me that particularly?" asked Ellen, slowly.

"Because I reckon the facts in the case are queer—an' because, Ellen,
your name was mentioned," announced Sprague, positively.

"My name—mentioned?" echoed Ellen. Her horror and disgust gave way to
a quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment. "By whom?"

"Jean Isbel," replied Sprague, as if the name and the fact were
momentous.

Ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees. Slowly she
felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below her
neck. That name locked her thought.

"Ellen, it's a mighty queer story—too queer to be a lie," went on
Sprague. "Now you listen! Evarts got this from Ted Meeker. An' Ted
Meeker heerd it from Greaves, who didn't die till the next day after
Jean Isbel knifed him. An' your dad shot Ted fer tellin' what he
heerd.... No, Greaves wasn't killed outright. He was cut somethin'
turrible—in two places. They wrapped him all up an' next day packed
him in a wagon back to Grass Valley. Evarts says Ted Meeker was
friendly with Greaves an' went to see him as he was layin' in his room
next to the store. Wal, accordin' to Meeker's story, Greaves came to
an' talked. He said he was sittin' there in the dark, shootin'
occasionally at Isbel's cabin, when he heerd a rustle behind him in the
grass. He knowed some one was crawlin' on him. But before he could
get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear.
But it was a man. He shut off Greaves's wind an' dragged him back in
the ditch. An' he said: 'Greaves, it's the half-breed. An' he's goin'
to cut you—FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH! an' then for Gaston Isbel!' ...
Greaves said Jean ripped him with a bowie knife.... An' thet was all
Greaves remembered. He died soon after tellin' this story. He must
hev fought awful hard. Thet second cut Isbel gave him went clear
through him.... Some of the gang was thar when Greaves talked, an'
naturally they wondered why Jean Isbel had said 'first for Ellen
Jorth.' ... Somebody remembered thet Greaves had cast a slur on your
good name, Ellen. An' then they had Jean Isbel's reason fer sayin'
thet to Greaves. It caused a lot of talk. An' when Simm Bruce busted
in some of the gang haw-hawed him an' said as how he'd get the third
cut from Jean Isbel's bowie. Bruce was half drunk an' he began to cuss
an' rave about Jean Isbel bein' in love with his girl.... As bad luck
would have it, a couple of more fellars come in an' asked Meeker
questions. He jest got to thet part, 'Greaves, it's the half-breed,
an' he's goin' to cut you—FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH,' when in walked your
father! ... Then it all had to come out—what Jean Isbel had said an'
done—an' why. How Greaves had backed Simm Bruce in slurrin' you!"

Sprague paused to look hard at Ellen.

"Oh! Then—what did dad do?" whispered Ellen.

"He said, 'By God! half-breed or not, there's one Isbel who's a man!'
An' he killed Bruce on the spot an' gave Meeker a nasty wound. Somebody
grabbed him before he could shoot Meeker again. They threw Meeker out
an' he crawled to a neighbor's house, where he was when Evarts seen
him."

Ellen felt Sprague's rough but kindly hand shaking her. "An' now what
do you think of Jean Isbel?" he queried.

A great, unsurmountable wall seemed to obstruct Ellen's thought. It
seemed gray in color. It moved toward her. It was inside her brain.

"I tell you, Ellen Jorth," declared the old man, "thet Jean Isbel loves
you-loves you turribly—an' he believes you're good."

"Oh no—he doesn't!" faltered Ellen.

"Wal, he jest does."

"Oh, Uncle John, he cain't believe that!" she cried.

"Of course he can. He does. You are good—good as gold, Ellen, an' he
knows it.... What a queer deal it all is! Poor devil! To love you
thet turribly an' hev to fight your people! Ellen, your dad had it
correct. Isbel or not, he's a man.... An' I say what a shame you two
are divided by hate. Hate thet you hed nothin' to do with." Sprague
patted her head and rose to go. "Mebbe thet fight will end the
trouble. I reckon it will. Don't cross bridges till you come to them,
Ellen.... I must hurry back now. I didn't take time to unpack my
burros. Come up soon.... An', say, Ellen, don't think hard any more of
thet Jean Isbel."

Sprague strode away, and Ellen neither heard nor saw him go. She sat
perfectly motionless, yet had a strange sensation of being lifted by
invisible and mighty power. It was like movement felt in a dream. She
was being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. When
her blood beat down this deadlock of an her physical being and rushed
on and on through her veins it gave her an irresistible impulse to fly,
to sail through space, to ran and run and ran.

And on the moment the black horse, Spades, coming from the meadow,
whinnied at sight of her. Ellen leaped up and ran swiftly, but her
feet seemed to be stumbling. She hugged the horse and buried her hot
face in his mane and clung to him. Then just as violently she rushed
for her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as if
it had been an empty sack. Throwing them upon him, she buckled and
strapped with strong, eager hands. It never occurred to her that she
was not dressed to ride. Up she flung herself. And the horse, sensing
her spirit, plunged into strong, free gait down the canyon trail.

The ride, the action, the thrill, the sensations of violence were not
all she needed. Solitude, the empty aisles of the forest, the far
miles of lonely wilderness—were these the added all? Spades took a
swinging, rhythmic lope up the winding trail. The wind fanned her hot
face. The sting of whipping aspen branches was pleasant. A deep
rumble of thunder shook the sultry air. Up beyond the green slope of
the canyon massed the creamy clouds, shading darker and darker. Spades
loped on the levels, leaped the washes, trotted over the rocky ground,
and took to a walk up the long slope. Ellen dropped the reins over the
pommel. Her hands could not stay set on anything. They pressed her
breast and flew out to caress the white aspens and to tear at the maple
leaves, and gather the lavender juniper berries, and came back again to
her heart. Her heart that was going to burst or break! As it had
swelled, so now it labored. It could not keep pace with her needs. All
that was physical, all that was living in her had to be unleashed.

Spades gained the level forest. How the great, brown-green pines
seemed to bend their lofty branches over her, protectively,
understandingly. Patches of azure-blue sky flashed between the trees.
The great white clouds sailed along with her, and shafts of golden
sunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles, shone down
through the canopy overhead. Away in front of her, up the slow heave
of forest land, boomed the heavy thunderbolts along the battlements of
the Rim.

Was she riding to escape from herself? For no gait suited her until
Spades was running hard and fast through the glades. Then the pressure
of dry wind, the thick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green and
gold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of the
powerful horse under her, the whip of spruce branches on her muscles
contracting and expanding in hard action—all these sensations seemed
to quell for the time the mounting cataclysm in her heart.

The oak swales, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shaded
aisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she had
ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of
the Basin, gloomed by purple and silver cloud, shadowed by gray storm,
and in the west brightened by golden sky.

Straight to the Rim she had ridden, and to the point where she had
watched Jean Isbel that unforgetable day. She rode to the promontory
behind the pine thicket and beheld a scene which stayed her restless
hands upon her heaving breast.

The world of sky and cloud and earthly abyss seemed one of
storm-sundered grandeur. The air was sultry and still, and smelled of
the peculiar burnt-wood odor caused by lightning striking trees. A few
heavy drops of rain were pattering down from the thin, gray edge of
clouds overhead. To the east hung the storm—a black cloud lodged
against the Rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed down
into the gulf. The roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of the
rapids of a river. Then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streak
of lightning shot down out of the black cloud. It struck with a
splitting report that shocked the very wall of rock under Ellen. Then
the heavens seemed to burst open with thundering crash and close with
mighty thundering boom. Long roar and longer rumble rolled away to the
eastward. The rain poured down in roaring cataracts.

The south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range and canyon, canyon
and range, on across the rolling leagues to the dim, lofty peaks, all
canopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide,
smoky, and sulphurous. And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to her
breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulf
that resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank of
purple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with golden
lightning.

"It is for me!" cried Ellen. "My mind—my heart—my very soul.... Oh, I
know! I know now! ... I love him—love him—love him!"

She cried it out to the elements. "Oh, I love Jean Isbel—an' my heart
will burst or break!"