Zane Grey (9 page)

"I promise," said Jean.

"Wal, an' now to get it out," began his father, breathing hard. His
face twitched and his hands clenched. "The sheepman heah I have to
reckon with is Lee Jorth, a lifelong enemy of mine. We were born in
the same town, played together as children, an' fought with each other
as boys. We never got along together. An' we both fell in love with
the same girl. It was nip an' tuck for a while. Ellen Sutton belonged
to one of the old families of the South. She was a beauty, an' much
courted, an' I reckon it was hard for her to choose. But I won her an'
we became engaged. Then the war broke out. I enlisted with my brother
Jean. He advised me to marry Ellen before I left. But I would not.
That was the blunder of my life. Soon after our partin' her letters
ceased to come. But I didn't distrust her. That was a terrible time
an' all was confusion. Then I got crippled an' put in a hospital. An'
in aboot a year I was sent back home."

At this juncture Jean refrained from further gaze at his father's face.

"Lee Jorth had gotten out of goin' to war," went on the rancher, in
lower, thicker voice. "He'd married my sweetheart, Ellen.... I knew
the story long before I got well. He had run after her like a hound
after a hare.... An' Ellen married him. Wal, when I was able to get
aboot I went to see Jorth an' Ellen. I confronted them. I had to know
why she had gone back on me. Lee Jorth hadn't changed any with all his
good fortune. He'd made Ellen believe in my dishonor. But, I reckon,
lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was faithless. In my absence he had won
her away from me. An' I saw that she loved him as she never had me. I
reckon that killed all my generosity. If she'd been imposed upon an'
weaned away by his lies an' had regretted me a little I'd have
forgiven, perhaps. But she worshiped him. She was his slave. An' I,
wal, I learned what hate was.

"The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many Southerners. Lee Jorth
went in for raisin' cattle. He'd gotten the Sutton range an' after a
few years he began to accumulate stock. In those days every cattleman
was a little bit of a thief. Every cattleman drove in an' branded
calves he couldn't swear was his. Wal, the Isbels were the strongest
cattle raisers in that country. An' I laid a trap for Lee Jorth,
caught him in the act of brandin' calves of mine I'd marked, an' I
proved him a thief. I made him a rustler. I ruined him. We met once.
But Jorth was one Texan not strong on the draw, at least against an
Isbel. He left the country. He had friends an' relatives an' they
started him at stock raisin' again. But he began to gamble an' he got
in with a shady crowd. He went from bad to worse an' then he came back
home. When I saw the change in proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton, an' how
she still worshiped Jorth, it shore drove me near mad between pity an'
hate.... Wal, I reckon in a Texan hate outlives any other feelin'.
There came a strange turn of the wheel an' my fortunes changed. Like
most young bloods of the day, I drank an' gambled. An' one night I run
across Jorth an' a card-sharp friend. He fleeced me. We quarreled.
Guns were thrown. I killed my man.... Aboot that period the Texas
Rangers had come into existence.... An', son, when I said I never was
run out of Texas I wasn't holdin' to strict truth. I rode out on a
hoss.

"I went to Oregon. There I married soon, an' there Bill an' Guy were
born. Their mother did not live long. An' next I married your mother,
Jean. She had some Indian blood, which, for all I could see, made her
only the finer. She was a wonderful woman an' gave me the only
happiness I ever knew. You remember her, of course, an' those home
days in Oregon. I reckon I made another great blunder when I moved to
Arizona. But the cattle country had always called me. I had heard of
this wild Tonto Basin an' how Texans were settlin' there. An' Jim
Blaisdell sent me word to come—that this shore was a garden spot of
the West. Wal, it is. An' your mother was gone—

"Three years ago Lee Jorth drifted into the Tonto. An', strange to me,
along aboot a year or so after his comin' the Hash Knife Gang rode up
from Texas. Jorth went in for raisin' sheep. Along with some other
sheepmen he lives up in the Rim canyons. Somewhere back in the wild
brakes is the hidin' place of the Hash Knife Gang. Nobody but me, I
reckon, associates Colonel Jorth, as he's called, with Daggs an' his
gang. Maybe Blaisdell an' a few others have a hunch. But that's no
matter. As a sheepman Jorth has a legitimate grievance with the
cattlemen. But what could be settled by a square consideration for the
good of all an' the future Jorth will never settle. He'll never settle
because he is now no longer an honest man. He's in with Daggs. I
cain't prove this, son, but I know it. I saw it in Jorth's face when I
met him that day with Greaves. I saw more. I shore saw what he is up
to. He'd never meet me at an even break. He's dead set on usin' this
sheep an' cattle feud to ruin my family an' me, even as I ruined him.
But he means more, Jean. This will be a war between Texans, an' a
bloody war. There are bad men in this Tonto—some of the worst that
didn't get shot in Texas. Jorth will have some of these fellows....
Now, are we goin' to wait to be sheeped off our range an' to be
murdered from ambush?"

"No, we are not," replied Jean, quietly.

"Wal, come down to the house," said the rancher, and led the way
without speaking until he halted by the door. There he placed his
finger on a small hole in the wood at about the height of a man's head.
Jean saw it was a bullet hole and that a few gray hairs stuck to its
edges. The rancher stepped closer to the door-post, so that his head
was within an inch of the wood. Then he looked at Jean with eyes in
which there glinted dancing specks of fire, like wild sparks.

"Son, this sneakin' shot at me was made three mawnin's ago. I
recollect movin' my haid just when I heard the crack of a rifle. Shore
was surprised. But I got inside quick."

Jean scarcely heard the latter part of this speech. He seemed doubled
up inwardly, in hot and cold convulsions of changing emotion. A
terrible hold upon his consciousness was about to break and let go. The
first shot had been fired and he was an Isbel. Indeed, his father had
made him ten times an Isbel. Blood was thick. His father did not
speak to dull ears. This strife of rising tumult in him seemed the
effect of years of calm, of peace in the woods, of dreamy waiting for
he knew not what. It was the passionate primitive life in him that had
awakened to the call of blood ties.

"That's aboot all, son," concluded the rancher. "You understand now
why I feel they're goin' to kill me. I feel it heah." With solemn
gesture he placed his broad hand over his heart. "An', Jean, strange
whispers come to me at night. It seems like your mother was callin' or
tryin' to warn me. I cain't explain these queer whispers. But I know
what I know."

"Jorth has his followers. You must have yours," replied Jean, tensely.

"Shore, son, an' I can take my choice of the best men heah," replied
the rancher, with pride. "But I'll not do that. I'll lay the deal
before them an' let them choose. I reckon it 'll not be a long-winded
fight. It 'll be short an bloody, after the way of Texans. I'm
lookin' to you, Jean, to see that an Isbel is the last man!"

"My God—dad! is there no other way? Think of my sister Ann—of my
brothers' wives—of—of other women! Dad, these damned Texas feuds are
cruel, horrible!" burst out Jean, in passionate protest.

"Jean, would it be any easier for our women if we let these men shoot
us down in cold blood?"

"Oh no—no, I see, there's no hope of—of.... But, dad, I wasn't
thinkin' about myself. I don't care. Once started I'll—I'll be what
you bragged I was. Only it's so hard to-to give in."

Jean leaned an arm against the side of the cabin and, bowing his face
over it, he surrendered to the irresistible contention within his
breast. And as if with a wrench that strange inward hold broke. He let
down. He went back. Something that was boyish and hopeful—and in its
place slowly rose the dark tide of his inheritance, the savage instinct
of self-preservation bequeathed by his Indian mother, and the fierce,
feudal blood lust of his Texan father.

Then as he raised himself, gripped by a sickening coldness in his
breast, he remembered Ellen Jorth's face as she had gazed dreamily down
off the Rim—so soft, so different, with tremulous lips, sad, musing,
with far-seeing stare of dark eyes, peering into the unknown, the
instinct of life still unlived. With confused vision and nameless pain
Jean thought of her.

"Dad, it's hard on—the—the young folks," he said, bitterly. "The
sins of the father, you know. An' the other side. How about Jorth?
Has he any children?"

What a curious gleam of surprise and conjecture Jean encountered in his
father's gaze!

"He has a daughter. Ellen Jorth. Named after her mother. The first
time I saw Ellen Jorth I thought she was a ghost of the girl I had
loved an' lost. Sight of her was like a blade in my side. But the
looks of her an' what she is—they don't gibe. Old as I am, my
heart—Bah! Ellen Jorth is a damned hussy!"

Jean Isbel went off alone into the cedars. Surrender and resignation
to his father's creed should have ended his perplexity and worry. His
instant and burning resolve to be as his father had represented him
should have opened his mind to slow cunning, to the craft of the
Indian, to the development of hate. But there seemed to be an
obstacle. A cloud in the way of vision. A face limned on his memory.

Those damning words of his father's had been a shock—how little or
great he could not tell. Was it only a day since he had met Ellen
Jorth? What had made all the difference? Suddenly like a breath the
fragrance of her hair came back to him. Then the sweet coolness of her
lips! Jean trembled. He looked around him as if he were pursued or
surrounded by eyes, by instincts, by fears, by incomprehensible things.

"Ahuh! That must be what ails me," he muttered. "The look of her—an'
that kiss—they've gone hard me. I should never have stopped to talk.
An' I'm to kill her father an' leave her to God knows what."

Something was wrong somewhere. Jean absolutely forgot that within the
hour he had pledged his manhood, his life to a feud which could be
blotted out only in blood. If he had understood himself he would have
realized that the pledge was no more thrilling and unintelligible in
its possibilities than this instinct which drew him irresistibly.

"Ellen Jorth! So—my dad calls her a damned hussy! So—that explains
the—the way she acted—why she never hit me when I kissed her. An'
her words, so easy an' cool-like. Hussy? That means she's bad—bad!
Scornful of me—maybe disappointed because my kiss was innocent! It
was, I swear. An' all she said: 'Oh, I've been kissed before.'"

Jean grew furious with himself for the spreading of a new sensation in
his breast that seemed now to ache. Had he become infatuated, all in a
day, with this Ellen Jorth? Was he jealous of the men who had the
privilege of her kisses? No! But his reply was hot with shame, with
uncertainty. The thing that seemed wrong was outside of himself. A
blunder was no crime. To be attracted by a pretty girl in the
woods—to yield to an impulse was no disgrace, nor wrong. He had been
foolish over a girl before, though not to such a rash extent. Ellen
Jorth had stuck in his consciousness, and with her a sense of regret.

Then swiftly rang his father's bitter words, the revealing: "But the
looks of her an' what she is—they don't gibe!" In the import of these
words hid the meaning of the wrong that troubled him. Broodingly he
pondered over them.

"The looks of her. Yes, she was pretty. But it didn't dawn on me at
first. I—I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but didn't
think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet
and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin,
smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold,
unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face
rose before Jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy
musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of
longing, but the more mysterious and beautiful.

"She looks like that, but she's bad," concluded Jean, with bitter
finality. "I might have fallen in love with Ellen Jorth if—if she'd
been different."

But the conviction forced upon Jean did not dispel the haunting memory
of her face nor did it wholly silence the deep and stubborn voice of
his consciousness. Later that afternoon he sought a moment with his
sister.

"Ann, did you ever meet Ellen Jorth?" he asked.

"Yes, but not lately," replied Ann.

"Well, I met her as I was ridin' along yesterday. She was herdin'
sheep," went on Jean, rapidly. "I asked her to show me the way to the
Rim. An' she walked with me a mile or so. I can't say the meetin' was
not interestin', at least to me.... Will you tell me what you know
about her?"

"Sure, Jean," replied his sister, with her dark eyes fixed wonderingly
and kindly on his troubled face. "I've heard a great deal, but in this
Tonto Basin I don't believe all I hear. What I know I'll tell you. I
first met Ellen Jorth two years ago. We didn't know each other's names
then. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw. I liked her. She liked
me. She seemed unhappy. The next time we met was at a round-up.
There were other girls with me and they snubbed her. But I left them
and went around with her. That snub cut her to the heart. She was
lonely. She had no friends. She talked about herself—how she hated
the people, but loved Arizona. She had nothin' fit to wear. I didn't
need to be told that she'd been used to better things. Just when it
looked as if we were goin' to be friends she told me who she was and
asked me my name. I told her. Jean, I couldn't have hurt her more if
I'd slapped her face. She turned white. She gasped. And then she ran
off. The last time I saw her was about a year ago. I was ridin' a
short-cut trail to the ranch where a friend lived. And I met Ellen
Jorth ridin' with a man I'd never seen. The trail was overgrown and
shady. They were ridin' close and didn't see me right off. The man
had his arm round her. She pushed him away. I saw her laugh. Then he
got hold of her again and was kissin' her when his horse shied at sight
of mine. They rode by me then. Ellen Jorth held her head high and
never looked at me."