To The Last Man

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"I'm glad of that," Isbel was saying, thoughtfully.

"Did you come heah to see me?" interrupted Ellen. She felt that she
could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of consideration
in him. She would betray herself--betray what she did not even realize
herself. She must force other footing--and that should be the one of
strife between the Jorths and Isbels.

"No--honest, I didn't, Miss Ellen," he rejoined, humbly. "I'll tell
you, presently, why I came. But it wasn't to see you. . . . I don't
deny I wanted . . . but that's no matter. You didn't meet me that
day on the Rim."

"Meet y'u!" she echoed, coldly. "Shore y'u never expected me?"

"Somehow I did," he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her.
"I put somethin' in your tent that day. Did you find it?"

"Yes," she replied, with the same casual coldness.

"What did you do with it?"

"I kicked it out, of course," she replied.

She saw him flinch.

"And you never opened it?"

"Certainly not," she retorted, as if forced. "Doon't y'u know anythin'
about--about people? . . . Shore even if y'u are an Isbel y'u never
were born in Texas."

"Thank God I wasn't!" he replied. "I was born in a beautiful country
of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren
desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. Where I come from
men don't live on hate. They can forgive."

"Forgive! . . . Could y'u forgive a Jorth?"

"Yes, I could."

"Shore that's easy to say--with the wrongs all on your side,"
she declared, bitterly.

"Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your, side," retorted Jean,
his voice fall. "Your father stole my father's sweetheart--by lies,
by slander, by dishonor, by makin' terrible love to her in his absence."

"It's a lie," cried Ellen, passionately.

"It is not," he declared, solemnly.

"Jean Isbel, I say y'u lie!"

"No! I say you've been lied to," he thundered.

The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen.
It weakened her.

"But--mother loved dad--best."

"Yes, afterward. No wonder, poor woman! . . . But it was the action
of your father and your mother that ruined all these lives. You've
got to know the truth, Ellen Jorth. . . . All the years of hate have
borne their fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must
be spilled. The Jorths and the Isbels can't live on the same earth.
. . And you've got to know the truth because the worst of this hell
falls on you and me."

The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her.

"Never, Jean Isbel! " she cried. "I'll never know truth from y'u.
. . . I'll never share anythin' with y'u--not even hell."

Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins.
The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.

"Why do you hate me so?" he asked. "I just happen to be my father's son.
I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you . . . fell in love
with you in a flash--though I never knew it till after. . . . Why do
you hate me so terribly?"

Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. "Y'u're an
Isbel. . . . Doon't speak of love to me."

"I didn't intend to. But your--your hate seems unnatural. And we'll
probably never meet again. . . . I can't help it. I love you. Love at
first sight! Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn't it? . . .
It was all so strange. My meetin' you so lonely and unhappy, my seein'
you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin' you so good in spite of--"

"Shore it was strange," interrupted Ellen, with scornful laugh.
She had found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt.
"Thinking me so good in spite of-- Ha-ha! And I said I'd been
kissed before!"

"Yes, in spite of everything," he said.

Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild
tumult in her heart. All that crowded to her lips for utterance
was false.

"Yes--kissed before I met you--and since," she said, mockingly.
"And I laugh at what y'u call love, Jean Isbel."

"Laugh if you want--but believe it was sweet, honorable--the best in me,"
he replied, in deep earnestness.

"Bah!" cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.

"By Heaven, you must be different from what I thought!" exclaimed Isbel,
huskily.

"Shore if I wasn't, I'd make myself. . . . Now, Mister Jean Isbel,
get on your horse an' go!"

Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal,
and she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect
prepared her for some blow.

"That's a pretty black horse."

"Yes," replied Ellen, blankly.

"Do you like him?"

"I--I love him. "

"All right, I'll give him to you then. He'll have less work and kinder
treatment than if I used him. I've got some pretty hard rides ahead
of me."

"Y'u--y'u give--" whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening. "Yes. He's mine,"
replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up his head,
snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the closer he got,
and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved master she
saw it then. Isbel laid a hand on the animal's neck and caressed him,
then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: "I picked him from a
lot of fine horses of my father's. We got along well. My sister Ann
rode him a good deal. . . . He was stolen from our pasture day before
yesterday. I took his trail and tracked him up here. Never lost his
trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to circle till I picked it
up again."

"Stolen--pasture--tracked him up heah?" echoed Ellen, without any
evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, she seemed to have been
turned to stone.

"Trackin' him. was easy. I wish for your sake it 'd been impossible,"
he said, bluntly.

"For my sake?" she echoed, in precisely the same tone,

Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control. He misunderstood
it. With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he
could look into her face.

"Yes, for your sake!" he declared, harshly. "Haven't you sense
enough to see that? . . . What kind of a game do you think you
can play with me?"

"Game I . . . Game of what? " she asked.

"Why, a--a game of ignorance--innocence--any old game to fool a man
who's tryin' to be decent."

This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. And it
inflamed Isbel.

"You know your father's a horse thief!" he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an
unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body,
her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained
by hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her
mind and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire
of Isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one
flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered
died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a
second of whirling, revealing thought.

"Ellen Jorth, you know your father's in with this Hash Knife Gang
of rustlers," thundered Isbel.

"Shore," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.

"You know he's got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?"

"Shore."

You know this talk of sheepmen buckin' the cattlemen is all a blind?"

"Shore," reiterated Ellen.

Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment,
he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by
the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she emanated.
Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head and his
broad hand went to his breast.

"To think I fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed, and his
other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen--body, mind, and soul.
Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination
there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to
fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like
whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It
lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that
family to whom she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief
and rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her,
accepting her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the
Jorths. The sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.

"Shore y'u might have had me--that day on the Rim--if y'u hadn't
told your name," she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes
with all the mystery of a woman's nature.

Isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague. "Girl, what do you mean?"

"Shore, I'd have been plumb fond of havin' y'u make up to me," she
drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of
the love he could not help. Some fiendish woman's satisfaction dwelt
in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful,
the good in him.

"Ellen Jorth, you lie!" he burst out, hoarsely.

"Jean, shore I'd been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough.
I was tired of them. . . . I wanted a new lover. . . . And if y'u
hadn't give yourself away--"

Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until
his hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot, salty
blood from a cut lip.

"Shut up, you hussy!" he ordered, roughly. "Have you no shame? . . .
My sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses--she pitied you."

That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank.
But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible poise.

"Jean Isbel--go along with y'u," she said, impatiently. "I'm waiting
heah for Simm Bruce!"

At last it was as if she struck his heart. Because of doubt of himself
and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof
against this last stab. Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had
prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him rebounded
on her! She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her to move a
hand. One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the other, hard
across her breast and neck, forced her head back. Then she tried to
wrestle away. But she was utterly powerless. His dark face bent down
closer and closer. Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle. She was
like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic eyes of a
snake. Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her, she
welcomed it.

"Ellen Jorth, I'm thinkin' yet--you lie!" he said, low and tense
between his teeth.

"No! No!" she screamed, wildly. Her nerve broke there. She could no
longer meet those terrible black eyes. Her passionate denial was not
only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her, repudiating
herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable situation.

Isbel took her literally. She had convinced him. And the instant
held blank horror for Ellen.

"By God--then I'll have somethin'--of you anyway!" muttered Isbel, thickly.

Ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck. She saw his dark, hard
face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it
blurred and obstructed her gaze. She felt the swell and ripple and
stretch--then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope.
Then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers. All Ellen's
senses reeled, as if she were swooning. She was suffocating. The
spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and
terrible consciousness. For the endless period of one moment he held
her so that her breast seemed crushed. His kisses burned and braised
her lips. And then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so
hard that she choked under them. It was as if a huge bat had fastened
upon her throat.

Suddenly the remorseless binding embraces--the hot and savage kisses--
fell away from her. Isbel had let go. She saw him throw up his hands,
and stagger back a little, all the while with his piercing gaze on her.
His face had been dark purple: now it was white.

"No--Ellen Jorth," he panted, "I don't--want any of you--that way."
And suddenly he sank on the log and covered his face with his hands.
"What I loved in you--was what I thought--you were."

Like a wildcat Ellen sprang upon him, beating him with her fists,
tearing at his hair, scratching his face, in a blind fury. Isbel
made no move to stop her, and her violence spent itself with her
strength. She swayed back from him, shaking so that she could
scarcely stand.

"Y'u--damned--Isbel!" she gasped, with hoarse passion. "Y'u insulted me!"

"Insulted you?. . ."laughed Isbel, in bitter scorn. "It couldn't be done."

"Oh! . . . I'll KILL y'u!" she hissed.

Isbel stood up and wiped the red scratches on his face. "Go ahead.
There's my gun," he said, pointing to his saddle sheath." Somebody's
got to begin this Jorth-Isbel feud. It'll be a dirty business. I'm
sick of it already. . . . Kill me! . . . First blood for Ellen Jorth!"

Suddenly the dark grim tide that had seemed to engulf Ellen's very soul
cooled and receded, leaving her without its false strength. She began
to sag. She stared at Isbel's gun. "Kill him," whispered the retreating
voices of her hate. But she was as powerless as if she were still held
in Jean Isbel's giant embrace.

"I--I want to--kill y'u," she whispered, "but I cain't. . . .
Leave me."

"You're no Jorth--the same as I'm no Isbel. We oughtn't be mixed in
this deal," he said, somberly. "I'm sorrier for you than I am for
myself. . . . You're a girl. . . . You once had a good mother--a decent
home. And this life you've led here--mean as it's been--is nothin' to
what you'll face now. Damn the men that brought you to this! I'm goin'
to kill some of them."

With that he mounted and turned away. Ellen called out for him to take
his horse. He did not stop nor look back. She called again, but her
voice was fainter, and Isbel was now leaving at a trot. Slowly she
sagged against the tree, lower and lower. He headed into the trail
leading up the canyon. How strange a relief Ellen felt! She watched
him ride into the aspens and start up the slope, at last to disappear
in the pines. It seemed at the moment that he took with him something
which had been hers. A pain in her head dulled the thoughts that
wavered to and fro. After he had gone she could not see so well.
Her eyes were tired. What had happened to her? There was blood on
her hands. Isbel's blood! She shuddered. Was it an omen? Lower
she sank against the tree and closed her eyes.

Old John Sprague did not return. Hours dragged by--dark hours for
Ellen Jorth lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and
golden sunlight from her eyes. At length the lethargy of despair,
the black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a
condition of coherent thought.

What had she learned? Sight of the black horse grazing near seemed
to prompt the trenchant replies. Spades belonged to Jean Isbel. He
had been stolen by her father or by one of her father's accomplices.
Isbel's vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast. Her
father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman only as a blind,
a consort of Daggs, leader of the Hash Knife Gang. Ellen well
remembered the ill repute of that gang, way back in Texas, years ago.
Her father had gotten in with this famous band of rustlers to serve
his own ends--the extermination of the Isbels. It was all very plain
now to Ellen.

"Daughter of a horse thief an' rustler!" she muttered.

And her thoughts sped back to the days of her girlhood. Only the very
early stage of that time had been happy. In the light of Isbel's
revelation the many changes of residence, the sudden moves to
unsettled parts of Texas, the periods of poverty and sudden prosperity,
all leading to the final journey to this God-forsaken Arizona--these
were now seen in their true significance. As far back as she could
remember her father had been a crooked man. And her mother had known
it. He had dragged her to her ruin. That degradation had killed her.
Ellen realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against
her father. Had Gaston Isbel truly and dishonestly started her father
on his downhill road? Ellen wondered. She hated the Isbels with
unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to ponder,
to weigh judgments in their behalf. She owed it to something in herself
to be fair. But what did it matter who was to blame for the Jorth-Isbel
feud? Somehow Ellen was forced to confess that deep in her soul it
mattered terribly. To be true to herself--the self that she alone
knew--she must have right on her side. If the Jorths were guilty,
and she clung to them and their creed, then she would be one of them.

"But I'm not," she mused, aloud. "My name's Jorth, an' I reckon I have
bad blood. . . . But it never came out in me till to-day. I've been
honest. I've been good--yes, GOOD, as my mother taught me to be--in
spite of all. . . . Shore my pride made me a fool. . . . An' now have
I any choice to make? I'm a Jorth. I must stick to my father.

All this summing up, however, did not wholly account for the pang in
her breast.

What had she done that day? And the answer beat in her ears like a
great throbbing hammer-stroke. In an agony of shame, in the throes
of hate, she had perjured herself. She had sworn away her honor. She
had basely made herself vile. She had struck ruthlessly at the great
heart of a man who loved her. Ah! That thrust had rebounded to leave
this dreadful pang in her breast. Loved her? Yes, the strange truth,
the insupportable truth! She had to contend now, not with her father
and her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Jean Isbel, but
with the mysteries of her own soul. Wonder of all wonders was it that
such love had been born for her. Shame worse than all other shame was
it that she should kill it by a poisoned lie. By what monstrous motive
had she done that? To sting Isbel as he had stung her! But that had
been base. Never could she have stopped so low except in a moment of
tremendous tumult. If she had done sore injury to Isbel what bad she
done to herself? How strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her
honor! Could she ever forget? She must forget it. But she could never
forget the way he had scorned those vile men in Greaves's store--the
way he had beaten Bruce for defiling her name--the way he had stubbornly
denied her own insinuations. She was a woman now. She had learned
something of the complexity of a woman's heart. She could not change
nature. And all her passionate being thrilled to the manhood of her
defender. But even while she thrilled she acknowledged her hate.
It was the contention between the two that caused the pang in her
breast. "An' now what's left for me?" murmured Ellen. She did not
analyze the significance of what had prompted that query. The most
incalculable of the day's disclosures was the wrong she had done
herself. "Shore I'm done for, one way or another. . . . I must
stick to Dad. . . . or kill myself?"

Ellen rode Spades back to the ranch. She rode like the wind. When she
swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch
her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin.
She rode Spades at a full run.

"Who's after you?" yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a halt.
Jorth held a rifle. Daggs, Colter, the other Jorths were there,
likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy.

"Shore nobody's after me," replied Ellen. "Cain't I run a horse round
heah without being chased?"

Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.

"Hah! . . . What you mean, girl, runnin' like a streak right down
on us? You're actin' queer these days, an' you look queer.
I'm not likin' it."

"Reckon these are queer times--for the Jorths," replied Ellen,
sarcastically.

"Daggs found strange horse tracks crossin' the meadow," said her father.
"An' that worried us. Some one's been snoopin' round the ranch. An'
when we seen you runnin' so wild we shore thought you was bein' chased."

"No. I was only trying out Spades to see how fast he could run,"
returned Ellen. "Reckon when we do get chased it'll take some
running to catch me."

"Haw! Haw!" roared Daggs. "It shore will, Ellen."

"Girl, it's not only your runnin' an' your looks that's queer,"
declared Jorth, in dark perplexity. "You talk queer."

"Shore, dad, y'u're not used to hearing spades called spades,"
said Ellen, as she dismounted.

"Humph!" ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness
of trying to understand a woman. "Say, did you see any strange
horse tracks?" "

"I reckon I did. And I know who made them."

Jorth stiffened. All the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of
suspense.

"Who?" demanded Jorth.

"Shore it was Jean Isbel," replied Ellen, coolly. "He came up heah
tracking his black horse."

"Jean--Isbel--trackin'--his--black horse, " repeated her father.

"Yes. He's not overrated as a tracker, that's shore."

Blank silence ensued. Ellen cast a slow glance over her father and
the others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle.
Presently Jorth burst the silence with a curse, and Daggs followed
with one of his sardonic laughs.

"Wal, boss, what did I tell you?" he drawled.

Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand,
he held her facing him.

"Did y'u see Isbel?"

"Yes," replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked.

"Did y'u talk to him?"

"Yes."

"What did he want up heah?"

"I told y'u. He was tracking the black horse y'u stole."

Jorth's hand and arm dropped limply. His sallow face turned a livid hue.
Amaze merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage. He raised
a hand as if to strike Ellen. And suddenly Daggs's long arm shot out
to clutch Jorth's wrist. Wrestling to free himself, Jorth cursed under
his breath. "Let go, Daggs," he shouted, stridently. "Am I drunk that
you grab me? "

"Wal, y'u ain't drunk, I reckon," replied the rustler, with sarcasm.
"But y'u're shore some things I'll reserve for your private ear."

Jorth gained a semblance of composure. But it was evident that he
labored under a shock.

"Ellen, did Jean Isbel see this black horse?"

"Yes. He asked me how I got Spades an' I told him."

"Did he say Spades belonged to him?"

"Shore I reckon he, proved it. Y'u can always tell a horse that loves
its master."

"Did y'u offer to give Spades back?"

"Yes. But Isbel wouldn't take him."

"Hah! . . . An' why not?"

"He said he'd rather I kept him. He was about to engage in a dirty,
blood-spilling deal, an' he reckoned he'd not be able to care for a
fine horse. . . . I didn't want Spades. I tried to make Isbel take him.
But he rode off. . . . And that's all there is to that."

"Maybe it's not," replied Jorth, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen
with dark, intent gaze. "Y'u've met this Isbel twice."

"It wasn't any fault of mine," retorted Ellen.

"I heah he's sweet on y'u. How aboot that?"

Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek
and temple. But it was only memory which fired this shame. What her
father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference.
Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.

"I heah talk from Bruce an' Lorenzo," went on her father. "An' Daggs heah--"

"Daggs nothin'!" interrupted that worthy. "Don't fetch me in. I said
nothin' an' I think nothin'."

"Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad . . . but he will never be again,"
returned Ellen, in low tones. With that she pulled her saddle off
Spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.

Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered.

"Ellen, I didn't know that horse belonged to Isbel," he began, in the
swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen. "I swear I didn't.
I bought him--traded with Slater for him. . . . Honest to God, I never
had any idea he was stolen! . . . Why, when y'u said 'that horse y'u
stole,' I felt as if y'u'd knifed me. . . ."

Ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro
and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into
a frenzy. He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory
and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty. It
seemed that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before.
He had a terrible thirst for her respect. Not so much for her love,
she divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen!

She pitied him with all her heart. She was all he had, as he was all
the world to her. And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical
rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity
and her love were making vital decisions for her. As of old, in
poignant moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of
the Isbels and what they had brought him to. His sufferings were real,
at least, in Ellen's presence. She was the only link that bound him
to long-past happier times. She was her mother over again--the woman
who had betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin
and death.

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