Zane Grey (37 page)

Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. He rolled it, lighted it,
all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a
cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes
as fiery as molten steel.

"Wal, Ellen—how aboot Jean Isbel—our half-breed Nez Perce friend—who
was shore seen handlin' y'u familiar?" he drawled.

Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty
scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.

"Damn y'u, Jim Colter!" she burst out, furiously. "I wish Jean Isbel
would jump in that door—or down out of that loft! ... He killed
Greaves for defiling my name! ... He'd kill Y'U for your dirty
insult.... And I'd like to watch him do it.... Y'u cold-blooded Texan!
Y'u thieving rustler! Y'u liar! ... Y'u lied aboot my father's death.
And I know why. Y'u stole my father's gold.... An' now y'u want
me—y'u expect me to fall into your arms.... My Heaven! cain't y'u tell
a decent woman? Was your mother decent? Was your sister decent? ...
Bah! I'm appealing to deafness. But y'u'll HEAH this, Jim Colter! ...
I'm not what yu think I am! I'm not the—the damned hussy y'u liars
have made me out.... I'm a Jorth, alas! I've no home, no relatives, no
friends! I've been forced to live my life with rustlers—vile men like
y'u an' Daggs an' the rest of your like.... But I've been good! Do y'u
heah that? ... I AM good—so help me God, y'u an' all your rottenness
cain't make me bad!"

Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished.

Vanished also was Jean Isbel's suspended icy dread, the cold clogging
of his fevered mind—vanished in a white, living, leaping flame.

Silently he drew his knife and lay there watching with the eyes of a
wildcat. The instant Colter stepped far enough over toward the edge of
the loft Jean meant to bound erect and plunge down upon him. But Jean
could wait now. Colter had a gun at his hip. He must never have a
chance to draw it.

"Ahuh! So y'u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah, do y'u?" queried
Colter. "Wal, if I had any pity on y'u, that's done for it."

A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to move, brought
his hand in clutching contact with her. And the force of it flung her
half across the cabin room, leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his
grasp. Pantingly she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him
off as he took long, slow strides toward her.

Jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovernable passion to
risk all on one leap. But the distance was too great. Colter, blind
as he was to all outward things, would hear, would see in time to make
Jean's effort futile. Shaking like a leaf, Jean sank back, eye again
to the crack between the rafters.

Ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move. Every line of her body
was instinct with fight, and the magnificent blaze of her eyes would
have checked a less callous brute.

Colter's big hand darted between Ellen's arms and fastened in the front
of her blouse. He did not try to hold her or draw her close. The
unleashed passion of the man required violence. In one savage pull he
tore off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders and heaving
bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned upward.

Overcome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the rustler, Ellen
sank to her knees, with blanched face and dilating eyes, trying with
folded arms and trembling hand to hide her nudity.

At that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard trail outside halted
Colter in his tracks.

"Hell!" he exclaimed. "An' who's that?" With a fierce action he flung
the remnants of Ellen's blouse in her face and turned to leap out the
door.

Jean saw Ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while
she sagged against the wall and stared at the door. The hoof beats
pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside.

"Jim—thar's hell to pay!" rasped out a panting voice.

"Wal, Springer, I reckon I wished y'u'd paid it without spoilin' my
deals," retorted Colter, cool and sharp.

"Deals? Ha! Y'u'll be forgettin'—your lady love in a minnit,"
replied Springer. "When I catch—my breath."

"Where's Somers?" demanded Colter.

"I reckon he's all shot up—if my eyes didn't fool me."

"Where is he?" yelled Colter.

"Jim—he's layin' up in the bushes round thet bluff. I didn't wait to
see how he was hurt. But he shore stopped some lead. An' he flopped
like a chicken with its—haid cut off."

"Where's Antonio?"

"He run like the greaser he is," declared Springer, disgustedly.

"Ahuh! An' where's Queen?" queried Colter, after a significant pause.

"Dead!"

The silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that held Jean in cold
bonds. He saw the girl below rise from her knees, one hand holding the
blouse to her breast, the other extended, and with strange, repressed,
almost frantic look she swayed toward the door.

"Wal, talk," ordered Colter, harshly.

"Jim, there ain't a hell of a lot," replied Springer; drawing a deep
breath, "but what there is is shore interestin'.... Me an' Somers took
Antonio with us. He left his woman with the sheep. An' we rode up the
canyon, clumb out on top, an' made a circle back on the ridge. That's
the way we've been huntin' fer tracks. Up thar in a bare spot we run
plump into Queen sittin' against a tree, right out in the open.
Queerest sight y'u ever seen! The damn gunfighter had set down to wait
for Isbel, who was trailin' him, as we suspected—an' he died thar. He
wasn't cold when we found him.... Somers was quick to see a trick. So
he propped Queen up an' tied the guns to his hands—an', Jim, the
queerest thing aboot that deal was this—Queen's guns was empty! Not a
shell left! It beat us holler.... We left him thar, an' hid up high on
the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off. The hosses we left back of a
thicket. An' we waited thar a long time. But, sure enough, the
half-breed come. He was too smart. Too much Injun! He would not
cross the open, but went around. An' then he seen Queen. It was great
to watch him. After a little he shoved his rifle out an' went right
fer Queen. This is when I wanted to shoot. I could have plugged him.
But Somers says wait an' make it sure. When Isbel got up to Queen he
was sort of half hid by the tree. An' I couldn't wait no longer, so I
shot. I hit him, too. We all begun to shoot. Somers showed himself,
an' that's when Isbel opened up. He used up a whole magazine on Somers
an' then, suddenlike, he quit. It didn't take me long to figger mebbe
he was out of shells. When I seen him run I was certain of it. Then
we made for the hosses an' rode after Isbel. Pretty soon I seen him
runnin' like a deer down the ridge. I yelled an' spurred after him.
There is where Antonio quit me. But I kept on. An' I got a shot at
Isbel. He ran out of sight. I follered him by spots of blood on the
stones an' grass until I couldn't trail him no more. He must have gone
down over the cliffs. He couldn't have done nothin' else without me
seein' him. I found his rifle, an' here it is to prove what I say. I
had to go back to climb down off the Rim, an' I rode fast down the
canyon. He's somewhere along that west wall, hidin' in the brush, hard
hit if I know anythin' aboot the color of blood."

"Wal! ... that beats me holler, too," ejaculated Colter.

"Jim, what's to be done?" inquired Springer, eagerly. "If we're sharp
we can corral that half-breed. He's the last of the Isbels."

"More, pard. He's the last of the Isbel outfit," declared Colter. "If
y'u can show me blood in his tracks I'll trail him."

"Y'u can bet I'll show y'u," rejoined the other rustler. "But listen!
Wouldn't it be better for us first to see if he crossed the canyon? I
reckon he didn't. But let's make sure. An' if he didn't we'll have
him somewhar along that west canyon wall. He's not got no gun. He'd
never run thet way if he had.... Jim, he's our meat!"

"Shore, he'll have that knife," pondered Colter.

"We needn't worry about thet," said the other, positively. "He's hard
hit, I tell y'u. All we got to do is find thet bloody trail again an'
stick to it—goin' careful. He's layin' low like a crippled wolf."

"Springer, I want the job of finishin' that half-breed," hissed Colter.
"I'd give ten years of my life to stick a gun down his throat an' shoot
it off."

"All right. Let's rustle. Mebbe y'u'll not have to give much more 'n
ten minnits. Because I tell y'u I can find him. It'd been easy—but,
Jim, I reckon I was afraid."

"Leave your hoss for me an' go ahaid," the rustler then said,
brusquely. "I've a job in the cabin heah."

"Haw-haw! ... Wal, Jim, I'll rustle a bit down the trail an' wait. No
huntin' Jean Isbel alone—not fer me. I've had a queer feelin' about
thet knife he used on Greaves. An' I reckon y'u'd oughter let thet
Jorth hussy alone long enough to—"

"Springer, I reckon I've got to hawg-tie her—" His voice became
indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a slow moving away of the
men.

Jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch every syllable
while his gaze rested upon Ellen who stood beside the door. Every line
of her body denoted a listening intensity. Her back was toward Jean,
so that he could not see her face. And he did not want to see, but
could not help seeing her naked shoulders. She put her head out of the
door. Suddenly she drew it in quickly and half turned her face, slowly
raising her white arm. This was the left one and bore the marks of
Colter's hard fingers.

She gave a little gasp. Her eyes became large and staring. They were
bent on the hand that she had removed from a step on the ladder. On
hand and wrist showed a bright-red smear of blood.

Jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that he had left
his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had climbed. That moment seemed
the supremely terrible one of his life.

Ellen Jorth's face blanched and her eyes darkened and dilated with
exceeding amaze and flashing thought to become fixed with horror. That
instant was the one in which her reason connected the blood on the
ladder with the escape of Jean Isbel.

One moment she leaned there, still as a stone except for her heaving
breast, and then her fixed gaze changed to a swift, dark blaze,
comprehending, yet inscrutable, as she flashed it up the ladder to the
loft. She could see nothing, yet she knew and Jean knew that she knew
he was there. A marvelous transformation passed over her features and
even over her form. Jean choked with the ache in his throat. Slowly
she put the bloody hand behind her while with the other she still held
the torn blouse to her breast.

Colter's slouching, musical step sounded outside. And it might have
been a strange breath of infinitely vitalizing and passionate life
blown into the well-springs of Ellen Jorth's being. Isbel had no name
for her then. The spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown.

She swayed back from the door against the wall in singular, softened
poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body. And as Colter's
tall shadow fell across the threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring
with eyeballs that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who
in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. He
saw but could not comprehend.

"Jim—I heard—all Springer told y'u," she said. The look of her
dumfounded Colter and her voice seemed to shake him visibly.

"Suppose y'u did. What then?" he demanded, harshly, as he halted with
one booted foot over the threshold. Malignant and forceful, he eyed
her darkly, doubtfully.

"I'm afraid," she whispered.

"What of? Me?"

"No. Of—of Jean Isbel. He might kill y'u and—then where would I be?"

"Wal, I'm damned!" ejaculated the rustler. "What's got into y'u?" He
moved to enter, but a sort of fascination bound him.

"Jim, I hated y'u a moment ago," she burst out. "But now—with that
Jean Isbel somewhere near—hidin'—watchin' to kill y'u—an' maybe me,
too—I—I don't hate y'u any more.... Take me away."

"Girl, have y'u lost your nerve?" he demanded.

"My God! Colter—cain't y'u see?" she implored. "Won't y'u take me
away?"

"I shore will—presently," he replied, grimly. "But y'u'll wait till
I've shot the lights out of this Isbel."

"No!" she cried. "Take me away now.... An' I'll give in—I'll be what
y'u—want.... Y'u can do with me—as y'u like."

Colter's lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting blood.
With a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom over her.

"Am I out of my haid, or are y'u?" he asked, in low, hoarse voice. His
darkly corded face expressed extremest amaze.

"Jim, I mean it," she whispered, edging an inch nearer him, her white
face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in their eloquence and mystery.
"I've no friend but y'u. I'll be—yours.... I'm lost.... What does it
matter? If y'u want me—take me NOW—before I kill myself."

"Ellen Jorth, there's somethin' wrong aboot y'u," he responded. "Did
y'u tell the truth—when y'u denied ever bein' a sweetheart of Simm
Bruce?"

"Yes, I told y'u the truth."

"Ahuh! An' how do y'u account for layin' me out with every dirty name
y'u could give tongue to?"

"Oh, it was temper. I wanted to be let alone."

"Temper! Wal, I reckon y'u've got one," he retorted, grimly. "An' I'm
not shore y'u're not crazy or lyin'. An hour ago I couldn't touch y'u."

"Y'u may now—if y'u promise to take me away—at once. This place has
got on my nerves. I couldn't sleep heah with that Isbel hidin' around.
Could y'u?"

"Wal, I reckon I'd not sleep very deep."

"Then let us go."

He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his
piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. Yet all the while there was
manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in
abeyance to his will.