To The Last Man

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"Ahuh! . . . An' what's likely to come of this mess?" queried Jean.

"Ask your dad," replied Blaisdell.

"I will. But I reckon I'd be obliged for your opinion."

"Wal, short an' sweet it's this: Texas cattlemen will never allow
the range they stocked to be overrun by sheepmen."

"Who's this man Greaves?" went on Jean. "Never run into anyone
like him."

"Greaves is hard to figure. He's a snaky customer in deals. But he
seems to be good to the poor people 'round heah. Says he's from
Missouri. Ha-ha! He's as much Texan as I am. He rode into the
Tonto without even a pack to his name. An' presently he builds his
stone house an' freights supplies in from Phoenix. Appears to buy
an' sell a good deal of stock. For a while it looked like he was
steerin' a middle course between cattlemen an' sheepmen. Both sides
made a rendezvous of his store, where he heard the grievances of each.
Laterly he's leanin' to the sheepmen. Nobody has accused him of that
yet. But it's time some cattleman called his bluff."

"Of course there are honest an' square sheepmen in the Basin?"
queried Jean.

"Yes, an' some of them are not unreasonable. But the new fellows that
dropped in on us the last few year--they're the ones we're goin' to
clash with."

"This--sheepman, Jorth?" went on Jean, in slow hesitation, as if
compelled to ask what he would rather not learn.

"Jorth must be the leader of this sheep faction that's harryin' us
ranchers. He doesn't make threats or roar around like some of them.
But he goes on raisin' an' buyin' more an' more sheep. An' his herders
have been grazin' down all around us this winter. Jorth's got to be
reckoned with."

"Who is he?"

"Wal, I don't know enough to talk aboot. Your dad never said so,
but I think he an' Jorth knew each other in Texas years ago. I never
saw Jorth but once. That was in Greaves's barroom. Your dad an' Jorth
met that day for the first time in this country. Wal, I've not known
men for nothin'. They just stood stiff an' looked at each other.
Your dad was aboot to draw. But Jorth made no sign to throw a gun.

Jean saw the growing and weaving and thickening threads of a tangle
that had already involved him. And the sudden pang of regret he
sustained was not wholly because of sympathies with his own people.

"The other day back up in the woods on the Rim I ran into a sheepman
who said his name was Colter. Who is he?

"Colter? Shore he's a new one. What'd he look like? "

Jean described Colter with a readiness that spoke volumes for the
vividness of his impressions.

"I don't know him," replied Blaisdell. "But that only goes to prove
my contention--any fellow runnin' wild in the woods can say he's a
sheepman."

"Colter surprised me by callin' me by my name," continued Jean.
"Our little talk wasn't exactly friendly. He said a lot about my
bein' sent for to run sheep herders out of the country."

"Shore that's all over," replied Blaisdell, seriously. "You're a
marked man already."

"What started such rumor?"

"Shore you cain't prove it by me. But it's not taken as rumor.
It's got to the sheepmen as hard as bullets."

"Ahuh! That accunts for Colter's seemin' a little sore under the
collar. Well, he said they were goin' to run sheep over Grass Valley,
an' for me to take that hunch to my dad."

Blaisdell had his chair tilted back and his heavy boots against a post
of the porch. Down he thumped. His neck corded with a sudden rush of
blood and his eyes changed to blue fire.

"The hell he did!" he ejaculated, in furious amaze.

Jean gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old cattleman by his
sudden break from the cool, easy Texan manner. Blaisdell cursed under
his breath, swung his arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or
hope aside, and then relapsed to his former state. He laid a brown
hand on Jean's knee.

"Two years ago I called the cards," he said, quietly. "It means
a Grass Valley war."

Not until late that afternoon did Jean's father broach the subject
uppermost in his mind. Then at an opportune moment he drew Jean away
into the cedars out of sight.

"Son, I shore hate to make your home-comin' unhappy," he said,
with evidence of agitation, "but so help me God I have to do it!"

"Dad, you called me Prodigal, an' I reckon you were right. I've
shirked my duty to you. I'm ready now to make up for it," replied
Jean, feelingly.

"Wal, wal, shore thats fine-spoken, my boy. . . . Let's set down heah
an' have a long talk. First off, what did Jim Blaisdell tell you?"

Briefly Jean outlined the neighbor rancher's conversation. Then Jean
recounted his experience with Colter and concluded with Blaisdell's
reception of the sheepman's threat. If Jean expected to see his father
rise up like a lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake. This news of
Colter and his talk never struck even a spark from Gaston Isbel.

"Wal," he began, thoughtfully, "reckon there are only two points in
Jim's talk I need touch on. There's shore goin' to be a Grass Valley
war. An' Jim's idea of the cause of it seems to be pretty much the
same as that of all the other cattlemen. It 'll go down a black blot
on the history page of the Tonto Basin as a war between rival sheepmen
an' cattlemen. Same old fight over water an' grass! . . . Jean, my son,
that is wrong. It 'll not be a war between sheepmen an' cattlemen.
But a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin' as sheep-raisers!
. . Mind you, I don't belittle the trouble between sheepmen an'
cattlemen in Arizona. It's real an' it's vital an' it's serious.
It 'll take law an' order to straighten out the grazin' question.
Some day the government will keep sheep off of cattle ranges. . . .
So get things right in your mind, my son. You can trust your dad to
tell the absolute truth. In this fight that 'll wipe out some of the
Isbels--maybe all of them--you're on the side of justice an' right.
Knowin' that, a man can fight a hundred times harder than he who
knows he is a liar an' a thief."

The old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed slowly and
deeply. Jean sensed in him the rise of a tremendous emotional strain.
Wonderingly he watched the keen lined face. More than material worries
were at the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father's eyes.

"Now next take what Jim said aboot your comin' to chase these
sheep-herders out of the valley. . . . Jean, I started that talk.
I had my tricky reasons. I know these greaser sheep-herders an'
I know the respect Texans have for a gunman. Some say I bragged.
Some say I'm an old fool in his dotage, ravin' aboot a favorite son.
But they are people who hate me an' are afraid. True, son, I talked
with a purpose, but shore I was mighty cold an' steady when I did it.
My feelin' was that you'd do what I'd do if I were thirty years younger.
No, I reckoned you'd do more. For I figured on your blood. Jean,
you're Indian, an' Texas an' French, an' you've trained yourself in
the Oregon woods. When you were only a boy, few marksmen I ever knew
could beat you, an' I never saw your equal for eye an' ear, for trackin'
a hoss, for all the gifts that make a woodsman. . . . Wal, rememberin'
this an' seein' the trouble ahaid for the Isbels, I just broke out
whenever I had a chance. I bragged before men I'd reason to believe
would take my words deep. For instance, not long ago I missed some
stock, an', happenin' into Greaves's place one Saturday night, I shore
talked loud. His barroom was full of men an' some of them were in my
black book. Greaves took my talk a little testy. He said. 'Wal, Gass,
mebbe you're right aboot some of these cattle thieves livin' among us,
but ain't they jest as liable to be some of your friends or relatives
as Ted Meeker's or mine or any one around heah?' That was where
Greaves an' me fell out. I yelled at him: 'No, by God, they're not!
My record heah an' that of my people is open. The least I can say
for you, Greaves, an' your crowd, is that your records fade away on
dim trails.' Then he said, nasty-like, 'Wal, if you could work out
all the dim trails in the Tonto you'd shore be surprised.' An' then
I roared. Shore that was the chance I was lookin' for. I swore the
trails he hinted of would be tracked to the holes of the rustlers who
made them. I told him I had sent for you an' when you got heah these
slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they were, would shore have hell
to pay. Greaves said he hoped so, but he was afraid I was partial to
my Indian son. Then we had hot words. Blaisdell got between us.
When I was leavin' I took a partin' fling at him. 'Greaves, you
ought to know the Isbels, considerin' you're from Texas. Maybe you've
got reasons for throwin' taunts at my claims for my son Jean. Yes,
he's got Indian in him an' that 'll be the worse for the men who will
have to meet him. I'm tellin' you, Greaves, Jean Isbel is the black
sheep of the family. If you ride down his record you'll find he's
shore in line to be another Poggin, or Reddy Kingfisher, or Hardin',
or any of the Texas gunmen you ought to remember. . . . Greaves,
there are men rubbin' elbows with you right heah that my Indian
son is goin' to track down!' "

Jean bent his head in stunned cognizance of the notoriety with which
his father had chosen to affront any and all Tonto Basin men who were
under the ban of his suspicion. What a terrible reputation and trust
to have saddled upon him! Thrills and strange, heated sensations
seemed to rush together inside Jean, forming a hot ball of fire that
threatened to explode. A retreating self made feeble protests.
He saw his own pale face going away from this older, grimmer man.

"Son, if I could have looked forward to anythin' but blood spillin'
I'd never have given you such a name to uphold," continued the rancher.
"What I'm goin' to tell you now is my secret. My other sons an' Ann
have never heard it. Jim Blaisdell suspects there's somethin' strange,
but he doesn't know. I'll shore never tell anyone else but you.
An' you must promise to keep my secret now an' after I am gone."

"I promise," said Jean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, but not lately," replied Ann.

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

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

"Ann, do you think she's a bad girl?" demanded Jean, bluntly.

"Bad? Oh, Jean!" exclaimed Ann, in surprise and embarrassment.

"Dad said she was a damned hussy."

"Jean, dad hates the Jorths. "

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