To The Last Man

Z >> Zane Grey >> To The Last Man

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Jean sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by
his side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness,
as if he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first hasty impression.
If there had been an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was
more in this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the
shiny little carbine across her knees. She had a level, curious gaze
upon him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were
rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought
in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and
his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt
and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude
worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet.
Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet.
When Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a
stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment
somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It
changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost
bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes.

"Reckon you're from Texas," said Jean, presently.

"Shore am," she drawled. She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant
to hear. "How'd y'u-all guess that?"

"Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from there were a good many
pioneers an' ranchers from the old Lone Star state. I've worked for
several. An', come to think of it, I'd rather hear a Texas girl talk
than anybody."

"Did y'u know many Texas girls?" she inquired, turning again to face him.

"Reckon I did--quite a good many."

"Did y'u go with them?"

"Go with them? Reckon you mean keep company. Why, yes, I guess I
did--a little," laughed Jean. "Sometimes on a Sunday or a dance once
in a blue moon, an' occasionally a ride. "

"Shore that accounts," said the girl, wistfully.

"For what? " asked Jean.

"Y'ur bein' a gentleman," she replied, with force. Oh, I've not
forgotten. I had friends when we lived in Texas. . . . Three years
ago. Shore it seems longer. Three miserable years in this damned
country!"

Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting
utterance to a total stranger. And it was that biting of her lip
that drew Jean's attention to her mouth. It held beauty of curve
and fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and
bitterness. Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Jean.
He saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing
a power which grew on him. This, with her shame and pathos and the
fact that she craved respect, gave a leap to Jean's interest.

"Well, I reckon you flatter me," he said, hoping to put her at her
ease again. "I'm only a rough hunter an' fisherman-woodchopper an'
horse tracker. Never had all the school I needed--nor near enough
company of nice girls like you."

"Am I nice?" she asked, quickly.

"You sure are," he replied, smiling.

"In these rags," she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that
thrilled him. "Look at the holes." She showed rips and worn-out
places in the sleeves of her buckskin blouse, through which gleamed
a round, brown arm. "I sew when I have anythin' to sew with. . . .
Look at my skirt--a dirty rag. An' I have only one other to my name.
. . . Look!" Again a color tinged her cheeks, most becoming, and
giving the lie to her action. But shame could not check her violence
now. A dammed-up resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. She
lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. "No stockings! No Shoes!
. . . How can a girl be nice when she has no clean, decent woman's
clothes to wear?"

"How--how can a girl. . ." began Jean. "See here, miss, I'm beggin'
your pardon for--sort of stirrin' you to forget yourself a little.
Reckon I understand. You don't meet many strangers an' I sort of
hit you wrong--makin' you feel too much--an' talk too much. Who an'
what you are is none of my business. But we met. . . . An' I reckon
somethin' has happened--perhaps more to me than to you. . . . Now let
me put you straight about clothes an' women. Reckon I know most women
love nice things to wear an' think because clothes make them look pretty
that they're nicer or better. But they're wrong. You're wrong. Maybe
it 'd be too much for a girl like you to be happy without clothes. But
you can be--you axe just as nice, an'--an' fine--an', for all you know,
a good deal more appealin' to some men."

"Stranger, y'u shore must excuse my temper an' the show I made of
myself," replied the girl, with composure. "That, to say the least,
was not nice. An' I don't want anyone thinkin' better of me than I
deserve. My mother died in Texas, an' I've lived out heah in this
wild country--a girl alone among rough men. Meetin' y'u to-day makes
me see what a hard lot they are--an' what it's done to me."

Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his mind a growing
sense that he pitied her, liked her.

"Are you a sheep herder?" he asked.

" Shore I am now an' then. My father lives back heah in a canyon.
He's a sheepman. Lately there's been herders shot at. Just now we're
short an' I have to fill in. But I like shepherdin' an' I love the
woods, and the Rim Rock an' all the Tonto. If they were all, I'd
shore be happy."

"Herders shot at!" exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully. "By whom?
An' what for?"

"Trouble brewin' between the cattlemen down in the Basin an' the
sheepmen up on the Rim. Dad says there'll shore be hell to pay.
I tell him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas."

"Then-- Are you on the ranchers' side? " queried Jean, trying to
pretend casual interest.

"No. I'll always be on my father's side," she replied, with spirit.
"But I'm bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of
the argument."

"How so?"

"Because there's grass everywhere. I see no sense in a sheepman goin'
out of his way to surround a cattleman an' sheep off his range. That
started the row. Lord knows how it'll end. For most all of them heah
are from Texas."

"So I was told," replied Jean. "An' I heard' most all these Texans
got run out of Texas. Any truth in that?"

"Shore I reckon there is," she replied, seriously. "But, stranger,
it might not be healthy for y'u to, say that anywhere. My dad, for
one, was not run out of Texas. Shore I never can see why he came heah.
He's accumulated stock, but he's not rich nor so well off as he was
back home."

"Are you goin' to stay here always?" queried Jean, suddenly.

"If I do so it 'll be in my grave, " she answered, darkly. "But what's
the use of thinkin'? People stay places until they drift away. Y'u can
never tell. . . . Well, stranger, this talk is keepin' y'u."

She seemed moody now, and a note of detachment crept into her voice.
Jean rose at once and went for his horse. If this girl did not desire
to talk further he certainly had no wish to annoy her. His mule had
strayed off among the bleating sheep. Jean drove it back and then led
his horse up to where the girl stood. She appeared taller and, though
not of robust build, she was vigorous and lithe, with something about
her that fitted the place. Jean was loath to bid her good-by.

"Which way is the Rim? " he asked, turning to his saddle girths.

"South," she replied, pointing. "It's only a mile or so. I'll walk
down with y'u. . . . Suppose y'u're on the way to Grass Valley?"

"Yes; I've relatives there," he returned. He dreaded her next
question, which he suspected would concern his name. But she did
not ask. Taking up her rifle she turned away. Jean strode ahead
to her side. "Reckon if you walk I won't ride."

So he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a Mountaineer.
Her bare, brown head came up nearly to his shoulder. It was a small,
pretty head, graceful, well held, and the thick hair on it was a shiny,
soft brown. She wore it in a braid, rather untidily and tangled, he
thought, and it was tied with a string of buckskin. Altogether her
apparel proclaimed poverty.

Jean let the conversation languish for a little. He wanted to think
what to say presently, and then he felt a rather vague pleasure in
stalking beside her. Her profile was straight cut and exquisite in
line. From this side view the soft curve of lips could not be seen.

She made several attempts to start conversation, all of which Jean
ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint. Presently Jean,
having decided what he wanted to say, suddenly began: "I like this
adventure. Do you?"

"Adventure! Meetin' me in the woods?" And she laughed the laugh
of youth. "Shore you must be hard up for adventure, stranger."

"Do you like it?" he persisted, and his eyes searched the
half-averted face.

"I might like it," she answered, frankly, "if--if my temper had not
made a fool of me. I never meet anyone I care to talk to. Why should
it not be pleasant to run across some one new--some one strange in
this heah wild country? "

"We are as we are," said Jean, simply. "I didn't think you made a
fool of yourself. If I thought so, would I want to see you again?"

"Do y'u?" The brown face flashed on him with surprise, with a light
he took for gladness. And because he wanted to appear calm and friendly,
not too eager, he had to deny himself the thrill of meeting those
changing eyes.

"Sure I do. Reckon I'm overbold on such short acquaintance. But I
might not have another chance to tell you, so please don't hold it
against me."

This declaration over, Jean felt relief and something of exultation.
He had been afraid he might not have the courage to make it. She
walked on as before, only with her head bowed a little and her eyes
downcast. No color but the gold-brown tan and the blue tracery of
veins showed in her cheeks. He noticed then a slight swelling quiver
of her throat; and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how
full and pulsating it was, how nobly it set into the curve of her
shoulder. Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her,
the evidence of her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer
stride and the grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle. It had an
effect on Jean totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth
that stole over him and in the utterance he could not hold back.

"Girl, we're strangers, but what of that? We've met, an' I tell you
it means somethin' to me. I've known girls for months an' never felt
this way. I don't know who you are an' I don't care. You betrayed a
good deal to me. You're not happy. You're lonely. An' if I didn't
want to see you again for my own sake I would for yours. Some things
you said I'll not forget soon. I've got a sister, an' I know you have
no brother. An' I reckon . . ."

At this juncture Jean in his earnestness and quite without thought
grasped her hand. The contact checked the flow of his speech and
suddenly made him aghast at his temerity. But the girl did not make
any effort to withdraw it. So Jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying
to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely. He imagined he felt
a faint, warm, returning pressure. She was young, she was friendless,
she was human. By this hand in his Jean felt more than ever the
loneliness of her. Then, just as he was about to speak again,
she pulled her hand free.

"Heah's the Rim," she said, in her quaint Southern drawl.
"An' there's Y'ur Tonto Basin."

Jean had been intent only upon the girl. He had kept step beside her
without taking note of what was ahead of him. At her words he looked
up expectantly, to be struck mute.

He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath him.
As he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the darkest
and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue distance
across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the sky.
It seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by bold,
undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a wall so high that he
felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky.

Southeast y'u see the Sierra Anchas," said the girl pointing. "That
notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to Phoenix an'
Maricopa. Those big rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals.
Round to the west is the Four Peaks Range. An' y'u're standin' on
the Rim."

Jean could not see at first just what the Rim was, but by shifting
his gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature.
For leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow wall, a rampart,
a mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward. Grand and bold
were the promontories reaching out over the void. They ran toward
the westering sun. Sweeping and impressive were the long lines
slanting away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into
the black timber. Jean had never seen such a wild and rugged
manifestation of nature's depths and upheavals. He was held mute.

"Stranger, look down," said the girl.

Jean's sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances.
This wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that
it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged
into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into
gorges choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing
waters. Slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into
canyon--so the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths,
a wilderness across which travel seemed impossible.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Jean.

"Indeed it is!" murmured the girl. "Shore that is Arizona. I reckon
I love THIS. The heights an' depths--the awfulness of its wilderness!"

"An' you want to leave it?"

"Yes an' no. I don't deny the peace that comes to me heah. But not
often do I see the Basin, an' for that matter, one doesn't live on
grand scenery."

"Child, even once in a while--this sight would cure any misery, if you
only see. I'm glad I came. I'm glad you showed it to me first."

She too seemed under the spell of a vastness and loneliness and beauty
and grandeur that could not but strike the heart.

Jean took her hand again. "Girl, say you will meet me here," he said,
his voice ringing deep in his ears.

"Shore I will," she replied, softly, and turned to him. It seemed
then that Jean saw her face for the first time. She was beautiful
as he had never known beauty. Limned against that scene, she gave
it life--wild, sweet, young life--the poignant meaning of which
haunted yet eluded him. But she belonged there. Her eyes were
again searching his, as if. for some lost part of herself, unrealized,
never known before. Wondering, wistful, hopeful, glad-they were eyes
that seemed surprised, to reveal part of her soul.

Then her red lips parted. Their tremulous movement was a magnet to Jean.
An invisible and mighty force pulled him down to kiss them. Whatever
the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it.

He jerked away, as if he expected to be struck. "Girl--I--I"--he gasped
in amaze and sudden-dawning contrition--" I kissed you--but I swear it
wasn't intentional--I never thought. . . ."

The anger that Jean anticipated failed to materialize. He stood,
breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal. By the
same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was
now invested again by the older character.

"Shore I reckon my callin' y'u a gentleman was a little previous,"
she said, with a rather dry bitterness. "But, stranger, yu're sudden."

"You're not insulted?" asked Jean, hurriedly.

"Oh, I've been kissed before. Shore men are all alike."

"They're not," he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion,
a dulling of enchantment. "Don't you class me with other men who've
kissed you. I wasn't myself when I did it an' I'd have gone on my
knees to ask your forgiveness. . . . But now I wouldn't--an' I wouldn't
kiss you again, either--even if you--you wanted it."

Jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt,
as if she was questioning him.

"Miss, I take that back," added Jean, shortly. "I'm sorry. I didn't
mean to be rude. It was a mean trick for me to kiss you. A girl alone
in the woods who's gone out of her way to be kind to me! I don't know
why I forgot my manners. An' I ask your pardon."

She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down
into the Basin.

"There's Grass Valley. That long gray spot in the black. It's about
fifteen miles. Ride along the Rim that way till y'u cross a trail.
Shore y'u can't miss it. Then go down."

"I'm much obliged to you," replied Jean, reluctantly accepting what
he regarded as his dismissal. Turning his horse, he put his foot in
the stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl.
Her abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested
loneliness and wistfulness. She was not thinking of that scene spread
so wondrously before her. It struck Jean she might be pondering a
subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious
of, yet could not define.

"Reckon this is good-by," he said, with hesitation.

"ADIOS, SENOR," she replied, facing him again. She lifted the little
carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready
to depart.

"Adios means good-by? " he queried.

"Yes, good-by till to-morrow or good-by forever. Take it as y'u like."

"Then you'll meet me here day after to-morrow?" How eagerly he spoke,
on impulse, without a consideration of the intangible thing that had
changed him!

"Did I say I wouldn't? "

"No. But I reckoned you'd not care to after--" he replied,
breaking off in some confusion.

"Shore I'll be glad to meet y'u. Day after to-morrow about
mid-afternoon. Right heah. Fetch all the news from Grass Valley."

"All right. Thanks. That'll be--fine," replied Jean, and as he spoke
he experienced a buoyant thrill, a pleasant lightness of enthusiasm,
such as always stirred boyishly in him at a prospect of adventure.
Before it passed he wondered at it and felt unsure of himself.
He needed to think.

"Stranger shore I'm not recollectin' that y'u told me who y'u are,"
she said.

"No, reckon I didn't tell," he returned. "What difference does that
make? I said I didn't care who or what you are. Can't you feel the
same about me? "

"Shore--I felt that way," she replied, somewhat non-plussed, with the
level brown gaze steadily on his face. But now y'u make me think."

"Let's meet without knowin' any more about each other than we do now."

"Shore. I'd like that. In this big wild Arizona a girl--an' I reckon
a man--feels so insignificant. What's a name, anyhow? Still, people
an' things have to be distinguished. I'll call y'u 'Stranger' an' be
satisfied--if y'u say it's fair for y'u not to tell who y'u are."

"Fair! No, it's not," declared Jean, forced to confession. "My name's
Jean--Jean Isbel."

"ISBEL!" she exclaimed, with a violent start. "Shore y'u can't be
son of old Gass Isbel. . . . I've seen both his sons."

"He has three," replied Jean, with relief, now the secret was out.
"I'm the youngest. I'm twenty-four. Never been out of Oregon till
now. On my way--"

The brown color slowly faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale,
with eyes that began to blaze. The suppleness of her seemed to stiffen.

"My name's Ellen Jorth," she burst out, passionately. Does it mean
anythin' to y'u?"

"Never heard it in my life," protested Jean. "Sure I reckoned you
belonged to the sheep raisers who 're on the outs with my father.
That's why I had to tell you I'm Jean Isbel. . . . Ellen Jorth.
It's strange an' pretty. . . . Reckon I can be just as good a--a
friend to you--"

"No Isbel, can ever be a friend to me," she said, with bitter coldness.
Stripped of her ease and her soft wistfulness, she stood before him one
instant, entirely another girl, a hostile enemy. Then she wheeled and
strode off into the woods.

Jean, in amaze, in consternation, watched her swiftly draw away with
her lithe, free step, wanting to follow her, wanting to call to her;
but the resentment roused by her suddenly avowed hostility held him
mute in his tracks. He watched her disappear, and when the brown-and
-green wall of forest swallowed the slender gray form he fought against
the insistent desire to follow her, and fought in vain.

CHAPTER II

But Ellen Jorth's moccasined feet did not leave a distinguishable
trail on the springy pine needle covering of the ground, and Jean
could not find any trace of her.

A little futile searching to and fro cooled his impulse and called
pride to his rescue. Returning to his horse, he mounted, rode out
behind the pack mule to start it along, and soon felt the relief of
decision and action. Clumps of small pines grew thickly in spots
on the Rim, making it necessary for him to skirt them; at which
times he lost sight of the purple basin. Every time he came back
to an opening through which he could see the wild ruggedness and
colors and distances, his appreciation of their nature grew on him.
Arizona from Yuma to the Little Colorado had been to him an endless
waste of wind-scoured, sun-blasted barrenness. This black-forested
rock-rimmed land of untrodden ways was a world that in itself would
satisfy him. Some instinct in Jean called for a lonely, wild land,
into the fastnesses of which he could roam at will and be the other
strange self that he had always yearned to be but had never been.

Every few moments there intruded into his flowing consciousness
the flashing face of Ellen Jorth, the way she had looked at him,
the things she had said. "Reckon I was a fool," he soliloquized,
with an acute sense of humiliation. "She never saw how much in
earnest I was." And Jean began to remember the circumstances with
a vividness that disturbed and perplexed him.

The accident of running across such a girl in that lonely place might
be out of the ordinary--but it had happened. Surprise had made him dull.
The charm of her appearance, the appeal of her manner, must have drawn
him at the very first, but he had not recognized that. Only at her
words, "Oh, I've been kissed before," had his feelings been checked
in their heedless progress. And the utterance of them had made a
difference he now sought to analyze. Some personality in him, some
voice, some idea had begun to defend her even before he was conscious
that he had arraigned her before the bar of his judgment. Such defense
seemed clamoring in him now and he forced himself to listen. He wanted,
in his hurt pride, to justify his amazing surrender to a sweet and
sentimental impulse.

He realized now that at first glance he should have recognized in her
look, her poise, her voice the quality he called thoroughbred. Ragged
and stained apparel did not prove her of a common sort. Jean had known
a number of fine and wholesome girls of good family; and he remembered
his sister. This Ellen Jorth was that kind of a girl irrespective of
her present environment. Jean championed her loyally, even after he
had gratified his selfish pride.

It was then--contending with an intangible and stealing glamour,
unreal and fanciful, like the dream of a forbidden enchantment--that
Jean arrived at the part in the little woodland drama where he had
kissed Ellen Jorth and had been unrebuked. Why had she not resented
his action? Dispelled was the illusion he had been dreamily and nobly
constructing. "Oh, I've been kissed before!" The shock to him now
exceeded his first dismay. Half bitterly she had spoken, and wholly
scornful of herself, or of him, or of all men. For she had said all
men were alike. Jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every
decent man hated. Naturally every happy and healthy young man would
want to kiss such red, sweet lips. But if those lips had been for
others--never for him! Jean reflected that not since childish games
had he kissed a girl--until this brown-faced Ellen Jorth came his way.
He wondered at it. Moreover, he wondered at the significance he placed
upon it. After all, was it not merely an accident? Why should he
remember? Why should he ponder? What was the faint, deep, growing
thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts?

Riding along with busy mind, Jean almost crossed a well-beaten trail,
leading through a pine thicket and down over the Rim. Jean's pack
mule led the way without being driven. And when Jean reached the
edge of the bluff one look down was enough to fetch him off his horse.
That trail was steep, narrow, clogged with stones, and as full of
sharp corners as a crosscut saw. Once on the descent with a packed
mule and a spirited horse, Jean had no time for mind wanderings and
very little for occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the
vast blue hollow asleep under a westering sun.

The stones rattled, the dust rose, the cedar twigs snapped, the little
avalanches of red earth slid down, the iron-shod hoofs rang on the rocks.
This slope had been narrow at the apex in the Rim where the trail led
down a crack, and it widened in fan shape as Jean descended. He
zigzagged down a thousand feet before the slope benched into dividing
ridges. Here the cedars and junipers failed and pines once more hid
the sun. Deep ravines were black with brush. From somewhere rose a
roar of running water, most pleasant to Jean's ears. Fresh deer and
bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail.

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