To The Last Man

Z >> Zane Grey >> To The Last Man

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

When Colter's husky voice ceased Ellen whispered through lips as cold
and still as ice, "Let me go . . . leave me--heah--alone!"

"Why, shore! I reckon I understand," replied Colter. "I hated to
tell y'u. But y'u had to heah the truth aboot that half-breed. . . .
I'll carry your pack in the cabin an' unroll your blankets."

Releasing her, Colter strode off in the gloom. Like a dead weight,
Ellen began to slide until she slipped down full length beside the log.
And then she lay in the cool, damp shadow, inert and lifeless so far
as outward physical movement was concerned. She saw nothing and felt
nothing of the night, the wind, the cold, the falling dew. For the
moment or hour she was crushed by despair, and seemed to see herself
sinking down and down into a black, bottomless pit, into an abyss where
murky tides of blood and furious gusts of passion contended between her
body and her soul. Into the stormy blast of hell! In her despair she
longed, she ached for death. Born of infidelity, cursed by a taint of
evil blood, further cursed by higher instinct for good and happy life,
dragged from one lonely and wild and sordid spot to another, never
knowing love or peace or joy or home, left to the companionship of
violent and vile men, driven by a strange fate to love with unquenchable
and insupportable love a' half-breed, a savage, an Isbel, the hereditary
enemy of her people, and at last the. ruthless murderer of her father--
what in the name of God had she left to live for? Revenge! An eye for
an eye! A life for a life! But she could not kill Jean Isbel.
Woman's love could turn to hate, but not the love of Ellen Jorth.
He could drag her by the hair in the dust, beat her, and make her a
thing to loathe, and cut her mortally in his savage and implacable
thirst for revenge--but with her last gasp she would whisper she loved
him and that she had lied to him to kill his faith. It was that--his
strange faith in her purity--which had won her love. Of all men, that
he should be the one to recognize the truth of her, the womanhood yet
unsullied--how strange, how terrible, how overpowering! False, indeed,
was she to the Jorths! False as her mother had been to an Isbel!
This agony and destruction of her soul was the bitter Dead Sea fruit
--the sins of her parents visited upon her.

"I'll end it all," she whispered to the night shadows that hovered
over her. No coward was she--no fear of pain or mangled flesh or death
or the mysterious hereafter could ever stay her. It would be easy, it
would be a last thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme
self-proof of her love for Jean Isbel to kiss the Rim rock where his
feet had trod and then fling herself down into the depths. She was the
last Jorth. So the wronged Isbels would be avenged.

"But he would never know--never know--I lied to him!" she wailed
to the night wind.

She was lost--lost on earth and to hope of heaven. She had right
neither to live nor to die. She was nothing but a little weed along
the trail of life, trampled upon, buried in the mud. She was nothing
but a single rotten thread in a tangled web of love and hate and revenge.
And she had broken.

Lower and lower she seemed to sink. Was there no end to this gulf of
despair? If Colter had returned he would have found her a rag and a
toy--a creature degraded, fit for his vile embrace. To be thrust deeper
into the mire--to be punished fittingly for her betrayal of a man's
noble love and her own womanhood--to be made an end of, body, mind,
and soul.

But Colter did not return.

The wind mourned, the owls hooted, the leaves rustled, the insects
whispered their melancholy night song, the camp-fire flickered and faded.
Then the wild forestland seemed to close imponderably over Ellen. All
that she wailed in her deapair, all that she confessed in her abasement,
was true, and hard as life could be--but she belonged to nature. If
nature had not failed her, had God failed her? It was there--the lonely
land of tree and fern and flower and brook, full of wild birds and beasts,
where the mossy rocks could speak and the solitude had ears, where she
had always felt herself unutterably a part of creation. Thus a wavering
spark of hope quivered through the blackness of her soul and gathered
light.

The gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade, split asunder
to show a glimpse of a radiant star, piercingly white, cold, pure,
a steadfast eye of the universe, beyond all understanding and
illimitable with its meaning of the past and the present and the
future. Ellen watched it until the drifting clouds once more hid
it from her strained sight.

What had that star to do with hell? She might be crushed and destroyed
by life, but was there not something beyond? Just to be born, just to
suffer, just to die--could that be all? Despair did not loose its hold
on Ellen, the strife and pang of her breast did not subside. But with
the long hours and the strange closing in of the forest around her and
the fleeting glimpse of that wonderful star, with a subtle divination
of the meaning of her beating heart and throbbing mind, and, lastly,
with a voice thundering at her conscience that a man's faith in a
woman must not be greater, nobler, than her faith in God and eternity
--with these she checked the dark flight of her soul toward destruction.

CHAPTER XII

A chill, gray, somber dawn was breaking when Ellen dragged herself
into the cabin and crept under her blankets, there to sleep the sleep
of exhaustion.

When she awoke the hour appeared to be late afternoon. Sun and sky
shone through the sunken and decayed roof of the old cabin. Her uncle,
Tad Jorth, lay upon a blanket bed upheld by a crude couch of boughs.
The light fell upon his face, pale, lined, cast in a still mold of
suffering. He was not dead, for she heard his respiration.

The floor underneath Ellen's blankets was bare clay. She and Jorth
were alone in this cabin. It contained nothing besides their beds
and a rank growth of weeds along the decayed lower logs. Half of the
cabin had a rude ceiling of rough-hewn boards which formed a kind of loft.
This attic extended through to the adjoining cabin, forming the ceiling
of the porch-like space between the two structures. There was no
partition. A ladder of two aspen saplings, pegged to the logs, and
with braces between for steps, led up to the attic.

Ellen smelled wood smoke and the odor of frying meat, and she heard the
voices of men. She looked out to see that Slater and Somers had joined
their party--an addition that might have strengthened it for defense,
but did not lend her own situation anything favorable. Somers had
always appeared the one best to avoid.

Colter espied her and called her to "Come an' feed your pale face."
His comrades laughed, not loudly, but guardedly, as if noise was
something to avoid. Nevertheless, they awoke Tad Jorth, who began
to toss and moan on the bed.

Ellen hurried to his side and at once ascertained that he had a high
fever and was in a critical condition. Every time he tossed he opened
a wound in his right breast, rather high up. For all she could see,
nothing had been done for him except the binding of a scarf round his
neck and under his arm. This scant bandage had worked loose. Going to
the door, she called out:

"Fetch me some water." When Colter brought it, Ellen was rummaging
in her pack for some clothing or towel that she could use for bandages.

"Weren't any of y'u decent enough to look after my uncle?" she queried.

"Huh! Wal, what the hell!" rejoined Colter. "We shore did all we could.
I reckon y'u think it wasn't a tough job to pack him up the Rim. He was
done for then an' I said so."

"I'll do all I can for him," said Ellen.

"Shore. Go ahaid. When I get plugged or knifed by that half-breed
I shore hope y'u'll be round to nurse me."

"Y'u seem to be pretty shore of your fate, Colter."

"Shore as hell!" he bit out, darkly. "Somers saw Isbel an' his gang
trailin' us to the Jorth ranch."

"Are y'u goin' to stay heah--an' wait for them?"

"Shore I've been quarrelin' with the fellars out there over that very
question. I'm for leavin' the country. But Queen, the damn gun fighter,
is daid set to kill that cowman, Blue, who swore he was King Fisher,
the old Texas outlaw. None but Queen are spoilin' for another fight.
All the same they won't leave Tad Jorth heah alone."

Then Colter leaned in at the door and whispered: "Ellen, I cain't boss
this outfit. So let's y'u an' me shake 'em. I've got your dad's gold.
Let's ride off to-night an' shake this country."

Colter, muttering under his breath, left the door and returned to his
comrades. Ellen had received her first intimation of his cowardice;
and his mention of her father's gold started a train of thought that
persisted in spite of her efforts to put all her mind to attending
her uncle. He grew conscious enough to recognize her working over him,
and thanked her with a look that touched Ellen deeply. It changed the
direction of her mind. His suffering and imminent death, which she was
able to alleviate and retard somewhat, worked upon her pity and compassion
so that she forgot her own plight. Half the night she was tending him,
cooling his fever, holding him quiet. Well she realized that but for
her ministrations he would have died. At length he went to sleep.

And Ellen, sitting beside him in the lonely, silent darkness of that
late hour, received again the intimation of nature, those vague and
nameless stirrings of her innermost being, those whisperings out of
the night and the forest and the sky. Something great would not let
go of her soul. She pondered.

Attention to the wounded man occupied Ellen; and soon she redoubled
her activities in this regard, finding in them something of protection
against Colter.

He had waylaid her as she went to a spring for water, and with a lunge
like that of a bear he had tried to embrace her. But Ellen had been
too quick.

"Wal, are y'u goin' away with me?" he demanded.

"No. I'll stick by my uncle," she replied.

That motive of hers seemed to obstruct his will. Ellen was keen to see
that Colter and his comrades were at a last stand and disintegrating
under a severe strain. Nerve and courage of the open and the wild they
possessed, but only in a limited degree. Colter seemed obsessed by his
passion for her, and though Ellen in her stubborn pride did not yet fear
him, she realized she ought to. After that incident she watched closely,
never leaving her uncle's bedside except when Colter was absent. One or
more of the men kept constant lookout somewhere down the canyon.

Day after day passed on the wings of suspense, of watching, of ministering
to her uncle, of waiting for some hour that seemed fixed.

Colter was like a hound upon her trail. At every turn he was there to
importune her to run off with him, to frighten her with the menace of
the Isbels, to beg her to give herself to him. It came to pass that
the only relief she had was when she ate with the men or barred the
cabin door at night. Not much relief, however, was there in the shut
and barred door. With one thrust of his powerful arm Colter could have
caved it in. He knew this as well as Ellen. Still she did not have
the fear she should have had. There was her rifle beside her, and
though she did not allow her mind to run darkly on its possible use,
still the fact of its being there at hand somehow strengthened her.
Colter was a cat playing with a mouse, but not yet sure of his quarry.

Ellen came to know hours when she was weak--weak physically, mentally,
spiritually, morally--when under the sheer weight of this frightful
and growing burden of suspense she was not capable of fighting her
misery, her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same time
wholly withstanding Colter's advances.

He would come into the cabin and, utterly indifferent to Tad Jorth,
he would try to make bold and unrestrained love to Ellen. When he
caught her in one of her unresisting moments and was able to hold
her in his arms and kiss her he seemed to be beside himself with the
wonder of her. At such moments, if he had any softness or gentleness
in him, they expressed themselves in his sooner or later letting her go,
when apparently she was about to faint. So it must have become
fascinatingly fixed in Colter's mind that at times Ellen repulsed
him with scorn and at others could not resist him.

Ellen had escaped two crises in her relation with this man, and as a
morbid doubt, like a poisonous fungus, began to strangle her mind,
she instinctively divined that there was an approaching and final
crisis. No uplift of her spirit came this time--no intimations--no
whisperings. How horrible it all was! To long to be good and noble
--to realize that she was neither--to sink lower day by day! Must she
decay there like one of these rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was
the insinuating and ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use?
What did it matter? Who would ever think of Ellen Jorth? "O God!"
she whispered in her distraction, "is there nothing left--nothing at all?"

A period of several days of less torment to Ellen followed. Her uncle
apparently took a turn for the better and Colter let her alone. This
last circumstance nonplused Ellen. She was at a loss to understand it
unless the Isbel menace now encroached upon Colter so formidably that
he had forgotten her for the present.

Then one bright August morning, when she had just begun to relax her
eternal vigilance and breathe without oppression, Colter encountered
her and, darkly silent and fierce, he grasped her and drew her off her
feet. Ellen struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived
her of strength. And that paralyzing weakness assailed her as never
before. Without apparent effort Colter carried her, striding rapidly
away from the cabins into the border of spruce trees at the foot of
the canyon wall.

"Colter--where--oh, where are Y'u takin' me?" she found voice to cry out.

"By God! I don't know," he replied, with strong, vibrant passion.
"I was a fool not to carry y'u off long ago. But I waited. I was
hopin' y'u'd love me! . . . An' now that Isbel gang has corralled us.
Somers seen the half-breed up on the rocks. An' Springer seen the
rest of them sneakin' around. I run back after my horse an' y'u."

"But Uncle Tad! . . . We mustn't leave him alone," cried Ellen.

"We've got to," replied Colter, grimly. "Tad shore won't worry y'u
no more--soon as Jean Isbel gets to him."

"Oh, let me stay," implored Ellen. "I will save him."

Colter laughed at the utter absurdity of her appeal and claim.
Suddenly he set her down upon her feet. "Stand still," he ordered.
Ellen saw his big bay horse, saddled, with pack and blanket, tied
there in the shade of a spruce. With swift hands Colter untied him
and mounted him, scarcely moving his piercing gaze from Ellen. He
reached to grasp her. "Up with y'u! . . . Put your foot in the
stirrup!" His will, like his powerful arm, was irresistible for Ellen
at that moment. She found herself swung up behind him. Then the horse
plunged away. What with the hard motion and Colter's iron grasp on her
Ellen was in a painful position. Her knees and feet came into violent
contact with branches and snags. He galloped the horse, tearing through
the dense thicket of willows that served to hide the entrance to the
side canyon, and when out in the larger and more open canyon he urged
him to a run. Presently when Colter put the horse to a slow rise of
ground, thereby bringing him to a walk, it was just in time to save
Ellen a serious bruising. Again the sunlight appeared to shade over.
They were in the pines. Suddenly with backward lunge Colter halted
the horse. Ellen heard a yell. She recognized Queen's voice.

"Turn back, Colter! Turn back!"

With an oath Colter wheeled his mount. "If I didn't run plump into
them," he ejaculated, harshly. And scarcely had the goaded horse gotten
a start when a shot rang out. Ellen felt a violent shock, as if her
momentum had suddenly met with a check, and then she felt herself
wrenched from Colter, from the saddle, and propelled into the air.
She alighted on soft ground and thick grass, and was unhurt save for
the violent wrench and shaking that had rendered her breathless. Before
she could rise Colter was pulling at her, lifting her to her feet. She
saw the horse lying with bloody head. Tall pines loomed all around.
Another rifle cracked. "Run!" hissed Colter, and he bounded off,
dragging her by the hand. Another yell pealed out. "Here we are,
Colter!". Again it was Queen's shrill voice. Ellen ran with all her
might, her heart in her throat, her sight failing to record more than
a blur of passing pines and a blank green wall of spruce. Then she
lost her balance, was falling, yet could not fall because of that steel
grip on her hand, and was dragged, and finally carried, into a dense
shade. She was blinded. The trees whirled and faded. Voices and shots
sounded far away. Then something black seemed to be wiped across her
feeling.

It turned to gray, to moving blankness, to dim, hazy objects, spectral
and tall, like blanketed trees, and when Ellen fully recovered
consciousness she was being carried through the forest.

"Wal, little one, that was a close shave for y'u," said Colter's hard
voice, growing clearer. "Reckon your keelin' over was natural enough."

He held her lightly in both arms, her head resting above his left elbow.
Ellen saw his face as a gray blur, then taking sharper outline, until
it stood out distinctly, pale and clammy, with eyes cold and wonderful
in their intense flare. As she gazed upward Colter turned his head to
look back through the woods, and his motion betrayed a keen, wild
vigilance. The veins of his lean, brown neck stood out like whipcords.
Two comrades were stalking beside him. Ellen heard their stealthy
steps, and she felt Colter sheer from one side or the other. They were
proceeding cautiously, fearful of the rear, but not wholly trusting to
the fore.

"Reckon we'd better go slow an' look before we leap," said one whose
voice Ellen recognized as Springer's.

"Shore. That open slope ain't to my likin', with our Nez Perce friend
prowlin' round," drawled Colter, as he set Ellen down on her feet.

Another of the rustlers laughed. "Say, can't he twinkle through the
forest? I had four shots at him. Harder to hit than a turkey runnin'
crossways."

This facetious speaker was the evil-visaged, sardonic Somers.
He carried two rifles and wore two belts of cartridges.

"Ellen, shore y'u ain't so daid white as y'u was," observed Colter,
and he chucked her under the chin with familiar hand. "Set down heah.
I don't want y'u stoppin' any bullets. An' there's no tellin'."

Ellen was glad to comply with his wish. She had begun to recover wits
and strength, yet she still felt shaky. She observed that their position
then was on the edge of a well-wooded slope from which she could see the
grassy canyon floor below. They were on a level bench, projecting out
from the main canyon wall that loomed gray and rugged and pine fringed.
Somers and Cotter and Springer gave careful attention to all points of
the compass, especially in the direction from which they had come.
They evidently anticipated being trailed or circled or headed off,
but did not manifest much concern. Somers lit a cigarette; Springer
wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt,
which appeared to be half empty. Colter stretched his long neck like
a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the forest
up toward the canyon rim.

"Listen!" he said, tersely, and bent his head a little to one side,
ear to the slight breeze.

They all listened. Ellen heard the beating of her heart, the rustle
of leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds that
she could not name.

"Deer, I reckon," spoke up Somers.

"Ahuh! Wal, I reckon they ain't trailin' us yet," replied Colter.
"We gave them a shade better 'n they sent us."

"Short an' sweet!" ejaculated Springer, and he removed his black
sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger through a buffet hole in the crown.
"Thet's how close I come to cashin'. I was lyin' behind a log,
listenin' an' watchin', an' when I stuck my head up a little--zam!
Somebody made my bonnet leak."

"Where's Queen?" asked Colter.

"He was with me fust off," replied Somers. "An' then when the shootin'
slacked--after I'd plugged thet big, red-faced, white-haired pal of
Isbel's--"

"Reckon thet was Blaisdell," interrupted Springer.

"Queen--he got tired layin' low," went on Somers. "He wanted action.
I heerd him chewin' to himself, an' when I asked him what was eatin'
him he up an' growled he was goin' to quit this Injun fightin'.
An' he slipped off in the woods."

"Wal, that's the gun fighter of it," declared Colter, wagging his head,
"Ever since that cowman, Blue, braced us an' said he was King Fisher,
why Queen has been sulkier an' sulkier. He cain't help it. He'll do
the same trick as Blue tried. An' shore he'll get his everlastin'.
But he's the Texas breed all right."

"Say, do you reckon Blue really is King Fisher?" queried Somers.

"Naw!" ejaculated Colter, with downward sweep of his hand. "Many a
would-be gun slinger has borrowed Fisher's name. But Fisher is daid
these many years."

"Ahuh! Wal, mebbe, but don't you fergit it--thet Blue was no would-be,"
declared Somers. "He was the genuine article."

"I should smile!" affirmed Springer.

The subject irritated Colter, and he dismissed it with another forcible
gesture and a counter question.

"How many left in that Isbel outfit?"

"No tellin'. There shore was enough of them," replied Somers. "Anyhow,
the woods was full of flyin' bullets. . . . Springer, did you account
for any of them?"

"Nope--not thet I noticed," responded Springer, dryly. "I had my
chance at the half-breed. . . . Reckon I was nervous."

"Was Slater near you when he yelled out?"

"No. He was lyin' beside Somers."

"Wasn't thet a queer way fer a man to act?" broke in Somers. "A bullet
hit Slater, cut him down the back as he was lyin' flat. Reckon it wasn't
bad. But it hurt him so thet he jumped right up an' staggered around.
He made a target big as a tree. An' mebbe them Isbels didn't riddle him!"

"That was when I got my crack at Bill Isbel," declared Colter, with grim
satisfaction. "When they shot my horse out from under me I had Ellen to
think of an' couldn't get my rifle. Shore had to run, as yu seen. Wal,
as I only had my six-shooter, there was nothin' for me to do but lay low
an' listen to the sping of lead. Wells was standin' up behind a tree
about thirty yards off. He got plugged, an' fallin' over he began to
crawl my way, still holdin' to his rifle. I crawled along the log to
meet him. But he dropped aboot half-way. I went on an' took his rifle
an' belt. When I peeped out from behind a spruce bush then I seen Bill
Isbel. He was shootin' fast, an' all of them was shootin' fast. That
war, when they had the open shot at Slater. . . . Wal, I bored Bill Isbel
right through his middle. He dropped his rifle an', all bent double,
he fooled around in a circle till he flopped over the Rim. I reckon
he's layin' right up there somewhere below that daid spruce. I'd shore
like to see him."

"I Wal, you'd be as crazy as Oueen if you tried thet, declared Somers.
"We're not out of the woods yet."

"I reckon not," replied Colter. "An' I've lost my horse. Where'd y'u
leave yours?"

"They're down the canyon, below thet willow brake. An' saddled an'
none of them tied. Reckon we'll have to look them up before dark."

"Colter, what 're we goin' to do?" demanded Springer.

"Wait heah a while--then cross the canyon an' work round up under
the bluff, back to the cabin."

"An' then what?" queried Somers, doubtfully eying Colter.

"We've got to eat--we've got to have blankets," rejoined Colter,
testily. "An' I reckon we can hide there an' stand a better show
in a fight than runnin' for it in the woods."

"Wal, I'm givin' you a hunch thet it looked like you was runnin'
fer it," retorted Somers.

"Yes, an' packin' the girl," added Springer. "Looks funny to me."

Both rustlers eyed Colter with dark and distrustful glances. What he
might have replied never transpired, for the reason that his gaze,
always shifting around, had suddenly fixed on something.

"Is that a wolf?" he asked, pointing to the Rim.

Both his comrades moved to get in line with his finger. Ellen could
not see from her position.

"Shore thet's a big lofer," declared Somers. "Reckon he scented us."

"There he goes along the Rim," observed Colter. "He doesn't act leary.
Looks like a good sign to me. Mebbe the Isbels have gone the other way."

"Looks bad to me," rejoined Springer, gloomily.

"An' why?" demanded Colter.

"I seen thet animal. Fust time I reckoned it was a lofer. Second time
it was right near them Isbels. An' I'm damned now if I don't believe
it's thet half-lofer sheep dog of Gass Isbel's."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22