Zane Grey (30 page)

Colter stalked away across the lane, and Ellen found herself dubiously
staring at his tall figure. Was it the situation that struck her with
a foreboding perplexity or was her intuition steeling her against this
man? Ellen could not decide. But she had to go with him. Her
prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment. And she could
not yet feel that she was solely responsible to herself.

When it came to making a small bundle of her belongings she was in a
quandary. She discarded this and put in that, and then reversed the
order. Next in preciousness to her mother's things were the
long-hidden gifts of Jean Isbel. She could part with neither.

While she was selecting and packing this bundle Colter again entered
and, without speaking, began to rummage in the corner where her father
kept his possessions. This irritated Ellen.

"What do y'u want there?" she demanded.

"Wal, I reckon your dad wants his papers—an' the gold he left
heah—an' a change of clothes. Now doesn't he?" returned Colter,
coolly.

"Of course. But I supposed y'u would have me pack them."

Colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately went on rummaging,
with little regard for how he scattered things. Ellen turned her back
on him. At length, when he left, she went to her father's corner and
found that, as far as she was able to see, Colter had taken neither
papers nor clothes, but only the gold. Perhaps, however, she had been
mistaken, for she had not observed Colter's departure closely enough to
know whether or not he carried a package. She missed only the gold.
Her father's papers, old and musty, were scattered about, and these she
gathered up to slip in her own bundle.

Colter, or one of the men, had saddled Spades, and he was now tied to
the corral fence, champing his bit and pounding the sand. Ellen
wrapped bread and meat inside her coat, and after tying this behind her
saddle she was ready to go. But evidently she would have to wait, and,
preferring to remain outdoors, she stayed by her horse. Presently,
while watching the men pack, she noticed that Springer wore a bandage
round his head under the brim of his sombrero. His motions were slow
and lacked energy. Shuddering at the sight, Ellen refused to
conjecture. All too soon she would learn what had happened, and all too
soon, perhaps, she herself would be in the midst of another fight. She
watched the men. They were making a hurried slipshod job of packing
food supplies from both cabins. More than once she caught Colter's
gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it.

"I'll ride up an' say good-by to Sprague," she called to Colter.

"Shore y'u won't do nothin' of the kind," he called back.

There was authority in his tone that angered Ellen, and something else
which inhibited her anger. What was there about Colter with which she
must reckon? The other two Texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly
silenced by Colter's harsh and lowered curses. Ellen walked out of
hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained until Colter hailed her.

"Get up an' ride," he called.

Ellen complied with this order and, riding up behind the three mounted
men, she soon found herself leaving what for years had been her home.
Not once did she look back. She hoped she would never see the squalid,
bare pretension of a ranch again.

Colter and the other riders drove the pack horses across the meadow,
off of the trails, and up the slope into the forest. Not very long did
it take Ellen to see that Colter's object was to hide their tracks. He
zigzagged through the forest, avoiding the bare spots of dust, the dry,
sun-baked flats of clay where water lay in spring, and he chose the
grassy, open glades, the long, pine-needle matted aisles. Ellen rode
at their heels and it pleased her to watch for their tracks. Colter
manifestly had been long practiced in this game of hiding his trail,
and he showed the skill of a rustler. But Ellen was not convinced that
he could ever elude a real woodsman. Not improbably, however, Colter
was only aiming to leave a trail difficult to follow and which would
allow him and his confederates ample time to forge ahead of pursuers.
Ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit. Yet Colter must have
expected it, and Springer and Wells also, for they had a dark,
sinister, furtive demeanor that strangely contrasted with the cool,
easy manner habitual to them.

They were not seeking the level routes of the forest land, that was
sure. They rode straight across the thick-timbered ridge down into
another canyon, up out of that, and across rough, rocky bluffs, and
down again. These riders headed a little to the northwest and every
mile brought them into wilder, more rugged country, until Ellen, losing
count of canyons and ridges, had no idea where she was. No stop was
made at noon to rest the laboring, sweating pack animals.

Under circumstances where pleasure might have been possible Ellen would
have reveled in this hard ride into a wonderful forest ever thickening
and darkening. But the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and
the deep, bronze-walled canyons left her cold. She saw and felt, but
had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when Spades slid
to his haunches down some steep, damp, piny declivity.

All the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer greener as they
traveled farther west. Grass grew thick and heavy. Water ran in all
ravines. The rocks were bronze and copper and russet, and some had
green patches of lichen.

Ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that the day was
waning and that Colter was swinging farther to the northwest. She had
never before ridden through such heavy forest and down and up such wild
canyons. Toward sunset the deepest and ruggedest canyon halted their
advance. Colter rode to the right, searching for a place to get down
through a spruce thicket that stood on end. Presently he dismounted
and the others followed suit. Ellen found she could not lead Spades
because he slid down upon her heels, so she looped the end of her reins
over the pommel and left him free. She herself managed to descend by
holding to branches and sliding all the way down that slope. She heard
the horses cracking the brush, snorting and heaving. One pack slipped
and had to be removed from the horse, and rolled down. At the bottom
of this deep, green-walled notch roared a stream of water. Shadowed,
cool, mossy, damp, this narrow gulch seemed the wildest place Ellen had
ever seen. She could just see the sunset-flushed, gold-tipped spruces
far above her. The men repacked the horse that had slipped his burden,
and once more resumed their progress ahead, now turning up this canyon.
There was no horse trail, but deer and bear trails were numerous. The
sun sank and the sky darkened, but still the men rode on; and the
farther they traveled the wilder grew the aspect of the canyon.

At length Colter broke a way through a heavy thicket of willows and
entered a side canyon, the mouth of which Ellen had not even descried.
It turned and widened, and at length opened out into a round pocket,
apparently inclosed, and as lonely and isolated a place as even pursued
rustlers could desire. Hidden by jutting wall and thicket of spruce
were two old log cabins joined together by roof and attic floor, the
same as the double cabin at the Jorth ranch.

Ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going round the cabins, saw
a bright fire. One man stood beside it gazing at Colter's party, which
evidently he had heard approaching.

"Hullo, Queen!" said Colter. "How's Tad?"

"He's holdin' on fine," replied Queen, bending over the fire, where he
turned pieces of meat.

"Where's father?" suddenly asked Ellen, addressing Colter.

As if he had not heard her, he went on wearily loosening a pack.

Queen looked at her. The light of the fire only partially shone on his
face. Ellen could not see its expression. But from the fact that
Queen did not answer her question she got further intimation of an
impending catastrophe. The long, wild ride had helped prepare her for
the secrecy and taciturnity of men who had resorted to flight. Perhaps
her father had been delayed or was still off on the deadly mission that
had obsessed him; or there might, and probably was, darker reason for
his absence. Ellen shut her teeth and turned to the needs of her
horse. And presently, returning to the fire, she thought of her uncle.

"Queen, is my uncle Tad heah?" she asked.

"Shore. He's in there," replied Queen, pointing at the nearer cabin.

Ellen hurried toward the dark doorway. She could see how the logs of
the cabin had moved awry and what a big, dilapidated hovel it was. As
she looked in, Colter loomed over her—placed a familiar and somehow
masterful hand upon her. Ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment.
Must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom her lot was
cast? Did Colter mean what Daggs had always meant? Ellen felt herself
weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied. Yet,
whatever Colter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it. So
she slipped out from under his hand.

"Uncle Tad, are y'u heah?" she called into the blackness. She heard
the mice scamper and rustle and she smelled the musty, old, woody odor
of a long-unused cabin.

"Hello, Ellen!" came a voice she recognized as her uncle's, yet it was
strange. "Yes. I'm heah—bad luck to me! ... How 're y'u buckin' up,
girl?"

"I'm all right, Uncle Tad—only tired an' worried. I—"

"Tad, how's your hurt?" interrupted Colter.

"Reckon I'm easier," replied Jorth, wearily, "but shore I'm in bad
shape. I'm still spittin' blood. I keep tellin' Queen that bullet
lodged in my lungs-but he says it went through."

"Wal, hang on, Tad!" replied Colter, with a cheerfulness Ellen sensed
was really indifferent.

"Oh, what the hell's the use!" exclaimed Jorth. "It's all—up with
us—Colter!"

"Wal, shut up, then," tersely returned Colter. "It ain't doin' y'u or
us any good to holler."

Tad Jorth did not reply to this. Ellen heard his breathing and it did
not seem natural. It rasped a little—came hurriedly—then caught in
his throat. Then he spat. Ellen shrunk back against the door. He was
breathing through blood.

"Uncle, are y'u in pain?" she asked.

"Yes, Ellen—it burns like hell," he said.

"Oh! I'm sorry.... Isn't there something I can do?"

"I reckon not. Queen did all anybody could do for me—now—unless it's
pray."

Colter laughed at this—the slow, easy, drawling laugh of a Texan. But
Ellen felt pity for this wounded uncle. She had always hated him. He
had been a drunkard, a gambler, a waster of her father's property; and
now he was a rustler and a fugitive, lying in pain, perhaps mortally
hurt.

"Yes, uncle—I will pray for y'u," she said, softly.

The change in his voice held a note of sadness that she had been quick
to catch.

"Ellen, y'u're the only good Jorth—in the whole damned lot," he said.
"God! I see it all now.... We've dragged y'u to hell!"

"Yes, Uncle Tad, I've shore been dragged some—but not yet—to hell,"
she responded, with a break in her voice.

"Y'u will be—Ellen—unless—"

"Aw, shut up that kind of gab, will y'u?" broke in Colter, harshly.

It amazed Ellen that Colter should dominate her uncle, even though he
was wounded. Tad Jorth had been the last man to take orders from
anyone, much less a rustler of the Hash Knife Gang. This Colter began
to loom up in Ellen's estimate as he loomed physically over her, a
lofty figure, dark motionless, somehow menacing.

"Ellen, has Colter told y'u yet—aboot—aboot Lee an' Jackson?"
inquired the wounded man.

The pitch-black darkness of the cabin seemed to help fortify Ellen to
bear further trouble.

"Colter told me dad an' Uncle Jackson would meet us heah," she
rejoined, hurriedly.

Jorth could be heard breathing in difficulty, and he coughed and spat
again, and seemed to hiss.

"Ellen, he lied to y'u. They'll never meet us—heah!"

"Why not?" whispered Ellen.

"Because—Ellen—" he replied, in husky pants, "your dad an'—uncle
Jackson—are daid—an' buried!"

If Ellen suffered a terrible shock it was a blankness, a deadness, and
a slow, creeping failure of sense in her knees. They gave way under
her and she sank on the grass against the cabin wall. She did not
faint nor grow dizzy nor lose her sight, but for a while there was no
process of thought in her mind. Suddenly then it was there—the quick,
spiritual rending of her heart—followed by a profound emotion of
intimate and irretrievable loss—and after that grief and bitter
realization.

An hour later Ellen found strength to go to the fire and partake of the
food and drink her body sorely needed.

Colter and the men waited on her solicitously, and in silence, now and
then stealing furtive glances at her from under the shadow of their
black sombreros. The dark night settled down like a blanket. There
were no stars. The wind moaned fitfully among the pines, and all about
that lonely, hidden recess was in harmony with Ellen's thoughts.

"Girl, y'u're shore game," said Colter, admiringly. "An' I reckon y'u
never got it from the Jorths."

"Tad in there—he's game," said Queen, in mild protest.

"Not to my notion," replied Colter. "Any man can be game when he's
croakin', with somebody around.... But Lee Jorth an' Jackson—they
always was yellow clear to their gizzards. They was born in
Louisiana—not Texas.... Shore they're no more Texans than I am. Ellen
heah, she must have got another strain in her blood."

To Ellen their words had no meaning. She rose and asked, "Where can I
sleep?"

"I'll fetch a light presently an' y'u can make your bed in there by
Tad," replied Colter.

"Yes, I'd like that."