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
"Wal, what if it is?"
"Ha! . . . Shore we needn't worry about hidin' out," replied Springer,
sententiously. "With thet dog Jean Isbel could trail a grasshopper."
"The hell y'u say!" muttered Colter. Manifestly such a possibility put
a different light upon the present situation. The men grew silent and
watchful, occupied by brooding thoughts and vigilant surveillance of
all points. Somers slipped off into the brush, soon to return,
with intent look of importance.
"I heerd somethin'," he whispered, jerking his thumb backward.
"Rollin' gravel--crackin' of twigs. No deer! . . . Reckon it'd
be a good idee for us to slip round acrost this bench."
"Wal, y'u fellars go, an' I'll watch heah," returned Colter.
"Not much," said Somers, while Springer leered knowingly.
Colter became incensed, but he did not give way to it. Pondering a
moment, he finally turned to Ellen. "Y'u wait heah till I come back.
An' if I don't come in reasonable time y'u slip across the canyon an'
through the willows to the cabins. Wait till aboot dark." With that
he possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts and silently
joined his comrades. Together they noiselessly stole into the brush.
Ellen had no other thought than to comply with Colter's wishes.
There was her wounded uncle who had been left unattended, and she
was anxious to get back to him. Besides, if she had wanted to run
off from Colter, where could she go? Alone in the woods, she would
get lost and die of starvation. Her lot must be cast with the Jorth
faction until the end. That did not seem far away.
Her strained attention and suspense made the moments fly. By and by
several shots pealed out far across the side canyon on her right,
and they were answered by reports sounding closer to her. The fight
was on again. But these shots were not repeated. The flies buzzed,
the hot sun beat down and sloped to the west, the soft, warm breeze
stirred the aspens, the ravens croaked, the red squirrels and blue
jays chattered.
Suddenly a quick, short, yelp electrified Ellen, brought her upright
with sharp, listening rigidity. Surely it was not a wolf and hardly
could it be a coyote. Again she heard it. The yelp of a sheep dog!
She had heard that' often enough to know. And she rose to change her
position so she could command a view of the rocky bluff above. Presently
she espied what really appeared to be a big timber wolf. But another
yelp satisfied her that it really was a dog. She watched him. Soon
it became evident that he wanted to get down over the bluff. He ran
to and fro, and then out of sight. In a few moments his yelp sounded
from lower down, at the base of the bluff, and it was now the cry of
an intelligent dog that was trying to call some one to his aid. Ellen
grew convinced that the dog was near where Colter had said Bill Isbel
had plunged over the declivity. Would the dog yelp that way if the
man was dead? Ellen thought not.
No one came, and the continuous yelping of the dog got on Ellen's nerves.
It was a call for help. And finally she surrendered to it. Since her
natural terror when Colter's horse was shot from under her and she had
been dragged away, she had not recovered from fear of the Isbels. But
calm consideration now convinced her that she could hardly be in a worse
plight in their hands than if she remained in Colter's. So she started
out to find the dog.
The wooded bench was level for a few hundred yards, and then it began
to heave in rugged, rocky bulges up toward the Rim. It did not appear
far to where the dog was barking, but the latter part of the distance
proved to be a hard climb over jumbled rocks and through thick brush.
Panting and hot, she at length reached the base of the bluff, to find
that it was not very high.
The dog espied her before she saw him, for he was coming toward her
when she discovered him. Big, shaggy, grayish white and black,
with wild, keen face and eyes he assuredly looked the reputation
Springer had accorded him. But sagacious, guarded as was his approach,
he appeared friendly.
"Hello--doggie!" panted Ellen. "What's--wrong--up heah? "
He yelped, his ears lost their stiffness, his body sank a little,
and his bushy tail wagged to and fro. What a gray, clear, intelligent
look he gave her! Then he trotted back.
Ellen followed him around a corner of bluff to see the body of a man
lying on his back. Fresh earth and gravel lay about him, attesting to
his fall from above. He had on neither coat nor hat, and the position
of his body and limbs suggested broken bones. As Ellen hurried to his
side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody blotch.
But he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was perfectly
conscious. Ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet
the mold of features, the look of the eyes, seemed strangely familiar.
"You're--Jorth's--girl," he said, in faint voice of surprise.
"Yes, I'm Ellen Jorth," she replied. "An' are y'u Bill Isbel?"
"All thet's left of me. But I'm thankin' God somebody come--even a Jorth."
Ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his abdomen.
A heavy bullet had indeed, as Colter had avowed, torn clear through
his middle. Even if he had not sustained other serious injury from
the fall over the cliff, that terrible bullet wound meant death very
shortly. Ellen shuddered. How inexplicable were men! How cruel,
bloody, mindless!
"Isbel, I'm sorry--there's no hope," she said, low voiced. "Y'u've not
long to live. I cain't help y'u. God knows I'd do so if I could."
"All over!" he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond her. "I reckon--I'm
glad. . . . But y'u can--do somethin' for or me. Will y'u?"
"Indeed, Yes. Tell me," she replied, lifting his dusty head on her knee.
Her hands trembled as she brushed his wet hair back from his clammy brow.
"I've somethin'--on my conscience," he whispered.
The woman, the sensitive in Ellen, understood and pitied him then.
"Yes," she encouraged him.
"I stole cattle--my dad's an ' Blaisdell's--an' made deals--with Daggs.
. . . All the crookedness--wasn't on--Jorth's side. . . . I want--my
brother Jean--to know."
"I'll try--to tell him," whispered Ellen, out of her great amaze.
"We were all--a bad lot--except Jean," went on Isbel. "Dad wasn't fair.
. . . God! how he hated Jorth! Jorth, yes, who was--your father. . . .
Wal, they're even now."
"How--so?" faltered Ellen.
"Your father killed dad. . . . At the last--dad wanted to--save us.
He sent word--he'd meet him--face to face--an' let thet end the feud.
They met out in the road. . . . But some one shot dad down--with a
rifle--an' then your father finished him."
"An' then, Isbel," added Ellen, with unconscious mocking bitterness,
"Your brother murdered my dad!"
"What!" whispered Bill Isbel. "Shore y'u've got--it wrong. I reckon
Jean--could have killed--your father. . . . But he didn't. Queer,
we all thought."
"Ah! . . . Who did kill my father?" burst out Ellen, and her voice
rang like great hammers at her ears.
"It was Blue. He went in the store--alone--faced the whole gang alone.
Bluffed them--taunted them--told them he was King Fisher. . . . Then he
killed--your dad--an' Jackson Jorth. . . . Jean was out--back of the
store. We were out--front. There was shootin'. Colmor was hit.
Then Blue ran out--bad hurt. . . . Both of them--died in Meeker's yard."
"An' so Jean Isbel has not killed a Jorth!" said Ellen, in strange,
deep voice.
"No," replied Isbel, earnestly. "I reckon this feud--was hardest on
Jean. He never lived heah. . . . An' my sister Ann said--he got sweet
on y'u. . . . Now did he?"
Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen's eyes, and her head sank low and lower.
"Yes--he did," she murmured, tremulously.
"Ahuh! Wal, thet accounts," replied Isbel, wonderingly. "Too bad! . . .
It might have been. . . . A man always sees--different when--he's dyin'.
. . . If I had--my life--to live over again! . . . My poor kids--deserted
in their babyhood--ruined for life! All for nothin'. . . .
May God forgive--"
Then he choked and whispered for water.
Ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his sombrero and started
hurriedly down the slope, making dust fly and rocks roll. Her mind was
a seething ferment. Leaping, bounding, sliding down the weathered slope,
she gained the bench, to run across that, and so on down into the open
canyon to the willow-bordered brook. Here she filled the sombrero with
water and started back, forced now to walk slowly and carefully. It was
then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular activity denied her,
that the tremendous import of Bill Isbel's revelation burst upon her
very flesh and blood and transfiguring the very world of golden light
and azure sky and speaking forestland that encompassed her.
Not a drop of the precious water did she spill. Not a misstep did she
make. Yet so great was the spell upon her that she was not aware she
had climbed the steep slope until the dog yelped his welcome. Then
with all the flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to
allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words had changed
frailty to strength, hate to love, and, the gloomy hell of despair to
something unutterable. But she had returned too late. Bill Isbel
was dead.
CHAPTER XIII
Jean Isbel, holding the wolf-dog Shepp in leash, was on the trail of
the most dangerous of Jorth's gang, the gunman Queen. Dark drops of
blood on the stones and plain tracks of a rider's sharp-heeled boots
behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-traveling
fugitive. Therefore, Jean Isbel held in the dog and proceeded with
the wary eye and watchful caution of an Indian.
Queen, true to his class, and emulating Blue with the same magnificent
effrontery and with the same paralyzing suddenness of surprise, had
appeared as if by magic at the last night camp of the Isbel faction.
Jean had seen him first, in time to leap like a panther into the shadow.
But he carried in his shoulder Queen's first bullet of that terrible
encounter. Upon Gordon and Fredericks fell the brunt of Queen's
fusillade. And they, shot to pieces, staggering and falling, held
passionate grip on life long enough to draw and still Queen's guns
and send him reeling off into the darkness of the forest.
Unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, Jean had kept a vigil near
camp all that silent and menacing night. Morning disclosed Gordon and
Fredericks stark and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their guns
clutched immovably in stiffened hands. Jean buried them as best he could,
and when they were under ground with flat stones on their graves he knew
himself to be indeed the last of the Isbel clan. And all that was wild
and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit rose to make him
more than man and less than human. Then for the third time during
these tragic last days the wolf-dog Shepp came to him.
Jean washed the wound Queen had given him and bound it tightly.
The keen pang and burn of the lead was a constant and all-powerful
reminder of the grim work left for him to do. The whole world was no
longer large enough for him and whoever was left of the Jorths. The
heritage of blood his father had bequeathed him, the unshakable love
for a worthless girl who had so dwarfed and obstructed his will and
so bitterly defeated and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith,
the killing of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the
pursuits and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates--these
had finally engendered in Jean Isbel a wild, unslakable thirst, these
had been the cause of his retrogression, these had unalterably and
ruthlessly fixed in his darkened mind one fierce passion--to live
and die the last man of that Jorth-Isbel feud.
At sunrise Jean left this camp, taking with him only a small knapsack
of meat and bread, and with the eager, wild Shepp in leash he set out
on Queen's bloody trail.
Black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular trail of footprints
proved to Jean that the gunman was hard hit. Here he had fallen, or
knelt, or sat down, evidently to bind his wounds. Jean found strips
of scarf, red and discarded. And the blood drops failed to show on
more rocks. In a deep forest of spruce, under silver-tipped spreading
branches, Queen had rested, perhaps slept. Then laboring with dragging
steps, not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up out of the
dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-tipped ridge. Here he had
rested, perhaps waited to see if he were pursued. From that point his
trail spoke an easy language for Jean's keen eye. The gunman knew he
was pursued. He had seen his enemy. Therefore Jean proceeded with a
slow caution, never getting within revolver range of ambush, using all
his woodcraft to trail this man and yet save himself. Queen traveled
slowly, either because he was wounded or else because he tried to ambush
his pursuer, and Jean accommodated his pace to that of Queen. From noon
of that day they were never far apart, never out of hearing of a rifle shot.
The contrast of the beauty and peace and loneliness of the surroundings
to the nature of Queen's flight often obtruded its strange truth into
the somber turbulence of Jean's mind, into that fixed columnar idea
around which fleeting thoughts hovered and gathered like shadows.
Early frost had touched the heights with its magic wand. And the forest
seemed a temple in which man might worship nature and life rather than
steal through the dells and under the arched aisles like a beast of prey.
The green-and-gold leaves of aspens quivered in the glades; maples in the
ravines fluttered their red-and-purple leaves. The needle-matted carpet
under the pines vied with the long lanes of silvery grass, alike enticing
to the eye of man and beast. Sunny rays of light, flecked with dust and
flying insects, slanted down from the overhanging brown-limbed,
green-massed foliage. Roar of wind in the distant forest alternated
with soft breeze close at hand. Small dove-gray squirrels ran all over
the woodland, very curious about Jean and his dog, rustling the twigs,
scratching the bark of trees, chattering and barking, frisky, saucy,
and bright-eyed. A plaintive twitter of wild canaries came from the
region above the treetops--first voices of birds in their pilgrimage
toward the south. Pine cones dropped with soft thuds. The blue jays
followed these intruders in the forest, screeching their displeasure.
Like rain pattered the dropping seeds from the spruces. A woody,
earthy, leafy fragrance, damp with the current of life, mingled with
a cool, dry, sweet smell of withered grass and rotting pines.
Solitude and lonesomeness, peace and rest, wild life and nature,
reigned there. It was a golden-green region, enchanting to the gaze
of man. An Indian would have walked there with his spirits.
And even as Jean felt all this elevating beauty and inscrutable spirit
his keen eye once more fastened upon the blood-red drops Queen had
again left on the gray moss and rock. His wound had reopened.
Jean felt the thrill of the scenting panther.
The sun set, twilight gathered, night fell. Jean crawled under a dense,
low-spreading spruce, ate some bread and meat, fed the dog, and lay down
to rest and sleep. His thoughts burdened him, heavy and black as the
mantle of night. A wolf mourned a hungry cry for a mate. Shepp quivered
under Jean's hand. That was the call which had lured him from the ranch.
The wolf blood in him yearned for the wild. Jean tied the cowhide leash
to his wrist. When this dark business was at an end Shepp could be free
to join the lonely mate mourning out there in the forest. Then Jean slept.
Dawn broke cold, clear, frosty, with silvered grass sparkling, with a
soft, faint rustling of falling aspen leaves. When the sun rose red
Jean was again on the trail of Queen. By a frosty-ferned brook, where
water tinkled and ran clear as air and cold as ice, Jean quenched his
thirst, leaning on a stone that showed drops of blood. Queen, too,
had to quench his thirst. What good, what help, Jean wondered, could
the cold, sweet, granite water, so dear to woodsmen and wild creatures,
do this wounded, hunted rustler? Why did he not wait in the open to
fight and face the death he had meted? Where was that splendid and
terrible daring of the gunman? Queen's love of life dragged him on
and on, hour by hour, through the pine groves and spruce woods, through
the oak swales and aspen glades, up and down the rocky gorges, around
the windfalls and over the rotting logs.
The time came when Queen tried no more ambush. He gave up trying to
trap his pursuer by lying in wait. He gave up trying to conceal his
tracks. He grew stronger or, in desperation, increased his energy,
so that he redoubled his progress through the wilderness. That,
at best, would count only a few miles a day. And he began to circle
to the northwest, back toward the deep canyon where Blaisdell and Bill
Isbel had reached the end of their trails. Queen had evidently left
his comrades, had lone-handed it in his last fight, but was now trying
to get back to them. Somewhere in these wild, deep forest brakes the
rest of the Jorth faction had found a hiding place. Jean let Queen
lead him there.
Ellen Jorth would be with them. Jean had seen her. It had been his
shot that killed Colter's horse. And he had withheld further fire
because Colter had dragged the girl behind him, protecting his body
with hers. Sooner or later Jean would come upon their camp. She would
be there. The thought of her dark beauty, wasted in wantonness upon
these rustlers, added a deadly rage to the blood lust and righteous
wrath of his vengeance. Let her again flaunt her degradation in his
face and, by the God she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end
the race of Jorths!
Another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight. The wind moaned
in the forest. Shepp was restless. He sniffed the air. There was a
step on his trail. Again a mournful, eager, wild, and hungry wolf cry
broke the silence. It was deep and low, like that of a baying hound,
but infinitely wilder. Shepp strained to get away. During the night,
while Jean slept, he managed to chew the cowhide leash apart and run off.
Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen. Fog and low-drifting clouds
in the forest and a misty rain had put the rustler off his bearings.
He was lost, and showed that he realized it. Strange how a matured man,
fighter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last
stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost! So Jean Isbel read
the signs of the trail.
Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he
headed down into a canyon. It was one that notched the Rim and led down
and down, mile after mile into the Basin. Not soon had Queen discovered
his mistake. When he did do so, night overtook him.
The weather cleared before morning. Red and bright the sun burst out
of the east to flood that low basin land with light. Jean found that
Queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had
lost. But in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes instead
of back up the canyon. And here he had fought the hold of that strange
brush of Spanish name until he fell exhausted.
Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish
thicket for Jean to catch up with him. Many and many a place Jean would
have chosen had he been in Queen's place. Many a rock and dense thicket
Jean circled or approached with extreme care. Manzanita grew in patches
that were impenetrable except for a small animal. The brush was a few
feet high, seldom so high that Jean could not look over it, and of a
beautiful appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden berry, and
branches of dark-red color. These branches were tough and unbendable.
Every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard as steel,
sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus. Progress was possible only
by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between patches,
or else by crashing through with main strength or walking right over
the tops. Jean preferred this last method, not because it was the
easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much farther.
So he literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush. Often
he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke with him,
letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork to fork,
on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the patience of
a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable.
On that south slope under the Rim the sun beat down hot. There was no
breeze to temper the dry air. And before midday Jean was laboring,
wet with sweat, parching with thirst, dusty and hot and tiring.
It amazed him, the doggedness and tenacity of life shown by this
wounded rustler. The time came when under the burning rays of the sun
he was compelled to abandon the walk across the tips of the manzanita
bushes and take to the winding, open threads that ran between. It would
have been poor sight indeed that could not have followed Queen's
labyrinthine and broken passage through the brush. Then the time
came when Jean espied Queen, far ahead and above, crawling like a
black bug along the bright-green slope. Sight then acted upon Jean
as upon a hound in the chase. But he governed his actions if he
could not govern his instincts. Slowly but surely he followed the
dusty, hot trail, and never a patch of blood failed to send a thrill
along his veins.
Queen, headed up toward the Rim, finally vanished from sight. Had he
fallen? Was he hiding? But the hour disclosed that he was crawling.
Jean's keen eye caught the slow moving of the brush and enabled him
to keep just so close to the rustler, out of range of the six-shooters
he carried. And so all the interminable hours of the hot afternoon
that snail-pace flight and pursuit kept on.
Halfway up the Rim the growth of manzanita gave place to open, yellow,
rocky slope dotted with cedars. Queen took to a slow-ascending ridge
and left his bloody tracks all the way to the top, where in the
gathering darkness the weary pursuer lost them.
Another night passed. Daylight was relentless to the rustler. He could
not hide his trail. But somehow in a desperate last rally of strength
he reached a point on the heavily timbered ridge that Jean recognized
as being near the scene of the fight in the canyon. Queen was nearing
the rendezvous of the rustlers. Jean crossed tracks of horses, and then
more tracks that he was certain had been made days past by his own party.
To the left of this ridge must be the deep canyon that had frustrated
his efforts to catch up with the rustlers on the day Blaisdell lost his
life, and probably Bill Isbel, too. Something warned Jean that he was
nearing the end of the trail, and an unaccountable sense of imminent
catastrophe seemed foreshadowed by vague dreads and doubts in his
gloomy mind. Jean felt the need of rest, of food, of ease from the
strain of the last weeks. But his spirit drove him implacably.
Queen's rally of strength ended at the edge of an open, bald ridge that
was bare of brush or grass and was surrounded by a line of forest on
three sides, and on the fourth by a low bluff which raised its gray
head above the pines. Across this dusty open Queen had crawled,
leaving unmistakable signs of his condition. Jean took long survey
of the circle of trees and of the low, rocky eminence, neither of which
he liked. It might be wiser to keep to cover, Jean thought, and work
around to where Queen's trail entered the forest again. But he was
tired, gloomy, and his eternal vigilance was failing. Nevertheless,
he stilled for the thousandth time that bold prompting of his vengeance
and, taking to the edge of the forest, he went to considerable pains to
circle the open ground. And suddenly sight of a man sitting back
against a tree halted Jean.
He stared to make sure his eyes did not deceive him. Many times stumps
and snags and rocks had taken on strange resemblance to a standing or
crouching man. This was only another suggestive blunder of the mind
behind his eyes--what he wanted to see he imagined he saw. Jean glided
on from tree to tree until he made sure that this sitting image indeed
was that of a man. He sat bolt upright, facing back across the open,
hands resting on his knees--and closer scrutiny showed Jean that he
held a gun in each hand.
Queen! At the last his nerve had revived. He could not crawl any
farther, he could never escape, so with the courage of fatality he
chose the open, to face his foe and die. Jean had a thrill of
admiration for the rustler. Then he stalked out from under the
pines and strode forward with his rifle ready.
A watching man could not have failed to espy Jean. But Queen never
made the slightest move. Moreover, his stiff, unnatural position
struck Jean so singularly that he halted with a muttered exclamation.
He was now about fifty paces from Queen, within range of those small
guns. Jean called, sharply, "QUEEN!" Still the figure never relaxed
in the slightest.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 | 19 |
20 |
21 |
22