To The Last Man

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Isbel never forgave her an' he hounded me to ruin. He made me out
a card-sharp, cheatin' my best friends. I was disgraced. Later he
tangled me in the courts--he beat me out of property--an' last by
convictin' me of rustlin' cattle he run me out of Texas."

Black and distorted now, Jorth's face was a spectacle to make Ellen
sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate. The truth of her
father's ruin and her own were enough. What mattered all else?
Jorth beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed
all the more significant for their lack of physical force.

"An' so help me God, it's got to be wiped out in blood!" he hissed.

That was his answer to the wavering and nobility of Ellen. And she
in her turn had no answer to make. She crept away into the corner
behind the curtain, and there on her couch in the semidarkness she
lay with strained heart, and a resurging, unconquerable tumult in her
mind. And she lay there from the middle of that afternoon until the
next morning.

When she awakened she expected to be unable to rise--she hoped she
could not--but life seemed multiplied in her, and inaction was
impossible. Something young and sweet and hopeful that had been
in her did not greet the sun this morning. In their place was a
woman's passion to learn for herself, to watch events, to meet what
must come, to survive.

After breakfast, at which she sat alone, she decided to put Isbel's
package out of the way, so that it would not be subjecting her to
continual annoyance. The moment she picked it up the old curiosity
assailed her.

"Shore I'll see what it is, anyway," she muttered, and with swift
hands she opened the package. The action disclosed two pairs of fine,
soft shoes, of a style she had never seen, and four pairs of stockings,
two of strong, serviceable wool, and the others of a finer texture.
Ellen looked at them in amaze. Of all things in the world, these would
have been the last she expected to see. And, strangely, they were what
she wanted and needed most. Naturally, then, Ellen made the mistake of
taking them in her hands to feel their softness and warmth.

"Shore! He saw my bare legs! And he brought me these presents he'd
intended for his sister. . . . He was ashamed for me--sorry for me.
. . And I thought he looked at me bold-like, as I'm used to be looked
at heah! Isbel or not, he's shore. . ."

But Ellen Jorth could not utter aloud the conviction her intelligence
tried to force upon her.

"It'd be a pity to burn them," she mused. "I cain't do it.
Sometime I might send them to Ann Isbel."

Whereupon she wrapped them up again and hid them in the bottom of the
old trunk, and slowly, as she lowered the lid, looking darkly, blankly
at the wall, she whispered: "Jean Isbel! . . . I hate him!"

Later when Ellen went outdoors she carried her rifle, which was unusual
for her, unless she intended to go into the woods.

The morning was sunny and warm. A group of shirt-sleeved men lounged
in the hall and before the porch of the double cabin. Her father was
pacing up and down, talking forcibly. Ellen heard his hoarse voice.
As she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their
attention. Ellen's glance ran over them swiftly--Daggs, with his
superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; Colter with
his lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorth,
her uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair,
and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorth, another brother
of her father's, younger, red of eye and nose, a weak-chinned drinker
of rum. Three other limber-legged Texans lounged there, partners of
Daggs, and they were sun-browned, light-haired, blue-eyed men singularly
alike in appearance, from their dusty high-heeled boots to their broad
black sombreros. They claimed to be sheepmen. All Ellen could be sure
of was that Rock Wells spent most of his time there, doing nothing but
look for a chance to waylay her; Springer was a gambler; and the third,
who answered to the strange name of Queen, was a silent, lazy,
watchful-eyed man who never wore a glove on his right hand and who
never was seen without a gun within easy reach of that hand.

"Howdy, Ellen. Shore you ain't goin' to say good mawnin' to this
heah bad lot?" drawled Daggs, with good-natured sarcasm.

"Why, shore! Good morning, y'u hard-working industrious MANANA sheep
raisers," replied Ellen, coolly.

Daggs stared. The others appeared taken back by a greeting so foreign
from any to which they were accustomed from her. Jackson Jorth let out
a gruff haw-haw. Some of them doffed their sombreros, and Rock Wells
managed a lazy, polite good morning. Ellen's father seemed most
significantly struck by her greeting, and the least amused.

"Ellen, I'm not likin' your talk, " he said, with a frown.

"Dad, when y'u play cards don't y'u call a spade a spade?"

"Why, shore I do."

"Well, I'm calling spades spades."

"Ahuh!" grunted Jorth, furtively dropping his eyes. "Where you goin'
with your gun? I'd rather you hung round heah now."

"Reckon I might as well get used to packing my gun all the time,"
replied Ellen. "Reckon I'll be treated more like a man."

Then the event Ellen had been expecting all morning took place.
Simm Bruce and Lorenzo rode around the slope of the Knoll and
trotted toward the cabin. Interest in Ellen was relegated to
the background.

"Shore they're bustin' with news," declared Daggs.

"They been ridin' some, you bet," remarked another.

"Huh!" exclaimed Jorth. "Bruce shore looks queer to me."

"Red liquor," said Tad Jorth, sententiously. "You-all know the
brand Greaves hands out."

"Naw, Simm ain't drunk," said Jackson Jorth. "Look at his bloody shirt."

The cool, indolent interest of the crowd vanished at the red color
pointed out by Jackson Jorth. Daggs rose in a single springy motion
to his lofty height. The face Bruce turned to Jorth was swollen and
bruised, with unhealed cuts. Where his right eye should have been
showed a puffed dark purple bulge. His other eye, however, gleamed
with hard and sullen light. He stretched a big shaking hand toward Jorth.

Thet Nez Perce Isbel beat me half to death," he bellowed.

Jorth stared hard at the tragic, almost grotesque figure, at the
battered face. But speech failed him. It was Daggs who answered Bruce.

"Wal, Simm, I'll be damned if you don't look it."

"Beat you! What with?" burst out Jorth, explosively.

"I thought he was swingin' an ax, but Greaves swore it was his fists,"
bawled Bruce, in misery and fury.

"Where was your gun?" queried Jorth, sharply.

"Gun? Hell!" exclaimed Bruce, flinging wide his arms. "Ask Lorenzo.
He had a gun. An' he got a biff in the jaw before my turn come.
Ask him?"

Attention thus directed to the Mexican showed a heavy discolored
swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face. Lorenzo looked
only serious.

"Hah! Speak up," shouted Jorth, impatiently.

"Senor Isbel heet me ver quick," replied Lorenzo, with expressive
gesture. "I see thousand stars--then moocho black--all like night."

At that some of Daggs's men lolled back with dry crisp laughter.
Daggs's hard face rippled with a smile. But there was no humor
in anything for Colonel Jorth.

"Tell us what come off. Quick!" he ordered. "Where did it happen?
Why? Who saw it? What did you do? "

Bruce lapsed into a sullen impressiveness. "Wal, I happened in
Greaves's store an' run into Jean Isbel. Shore was lookin' fer him.
I had my mind made up what to do, but I got to shootin' off my gab
instead of my gun. I called him Nez Perce--an' I throwed all thet
talk in his face about old Gass Isbel sendin' fer him---an' I told
him he'd git run out of the Tonto. Reckon I was jest warmin' up.
. . . But then it all happened. He slugged Lorenzo jest one. An'
Lorenzo slid peaceful-like to bed behind the counter. I hadn't time
to think of throwin' a gun before he whaled into me. He knocked out
two of my teeth. An' I swallered one of them."

Ellen stood in the background behind three of the men and in the
shadow. She did not join in the laugh that followed Bruce's remarks.
She had known that he would lie. Uncertain yet of her reaction to this,
but more bitter and furious as he revealed his utter baseness, she
waited for more to be said.

"Wal, I'll be doggoned," drawled Daggs.

"What do you make of this kind of fightin'?" queried Jorth,

"Darn if I know," replied Daggs in perplexity. "Shore an' sartin
it's not the way of a Texan. Mebbe this young Isbel really is what
old Gass swears he is. Shore Bruce ain't nothin' to give an edge to
a real gun fighter. Looks to me like Isbel bluffed Greaves an' his
gang an' licked your men without throwin' a gun."

"Maybe Isbel doesn't want the name of drawin' first blood,"
suggested Jorth.

"That 'd be like Gass," spoke up Rock Wells, quietly. I onct rode
fer Gass in Texas."

"Say, Bruce," said Daggs, "was this heah palaverin' of yours an'
Jean Isbel's aboot the old stock dispute? Aboot his father's range
an' water? An' partickler aboot, sheep?"

"Wal--I--I yelled a heap," declared Bruce, haltingly, "but I don't
recollect all I said--I was riled. . . . Shore, though it was the same
old argyment thet's been fetchin' us closer an' closer to trouble."

Daggs removed his keen hawklike gaze from Bruce. Wal, Jorth, all I'll
say is this. If Bruce is tellin' the truth we ain't got a hell of a
lot to fear from this young Isbel. I've known a heap of gun fighters
in my day. An' Jean Isbel don't ran true to class. Shore there never
was a gunman who'd risk cripplin' his right hand by sluggin' anybody."

"Wal," broke in Bruce, sullenly. "You-all can take it daid straight
or not. I don't give a damn. But you've shore got my hunch thet Nez
Perce Isbel is liable to handle any of you fellars jest as he did me,
an' jest as easy. What's more, he's got Greaves figgered. An' you-all
know thet Greaves is as deep in--"

"Shut up that kind of gab," demanded Jorth, stridently. "An' answer me.
Was the row in Greaves's barroom aboot sheep?"

"Aw, hell! I said so, didn't I?" shouted Bruce, with a fierce uplift
of his distorted face.

Ellen strode out from the shadow of the tall men who had obscured her.

"Bruce, y'u're a liar," she said, bitingly.

The surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root Bruce to the spot.
All but the discolored places on his face turned white. He held his
breath a moment, then expelled it hard. His effort to recover from
the shock was painfully obvious. He stammered incoherently.

"Shore y'u're more than a liar, too," cried Ellen, facing him with
blazing eyes. And the rifle, gripped in both hands, seemed to declare
her intent of menace. "That row was not about sheep. . . . Jean Isbel
didn't beat y'u for anythin' about sheep. . . . Old John Sprague was in
Greaves's store. He heard y'u. He saw Jean Isbel beat y'u as y'u
deserved. . . . An' he told ME!"

Ellen saw Bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she
was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood
on her hands. Then she divined that Bruce saw more in the gathering
storm in her father's eyes than he had to fear from her.

"Girl, what the hell are y'u sayin'?" hoarsely called Jorth, in dark amaze.

"Dad, y'u leave this to me," she retorted.

Daggs stepped beside Jorth, significantly on his right side. "Let her
alone Lee," he advised, coolly. "She's shore got a hunch on Bruce."

"Simm Bruce, y'u cast a dirty slur on my name," cried Ellen, passionately.

It was then that Daggs grasped Jorth's right arm and held it tight,
"Jest what I thought," he said. "Stand still, Lee. Let's see the
kid make him showdown."

"That's what jean Isbel beat y'u for," went on Ellen. "For slandering
a girl who wasn't there. . . . Me! Y'u rotten liar!"

"But, Ellen, it wasn't all lies," said Bruce, huskily. "I was half
drunk--an' horrible jealous. . . . You know Lorenzo seen Isbel kissin'
you. I can prove thet."

Ellen threw up her head and a scarlet wave of shame and wrath flooded
her face.

"Yes," she cried, ringingly. "He saw Jean Isbel kiss me. Once! . . .
An' it was the only decent kiss I've had in years. He meant no insult.
I didn't know who be was. An' through his kiss I learned a difference
between men. . . . Y'u made Lorenzo lie. An' if I had a shred of good
name left in Grass Valley you dishonored it. . . . Y'u made him think
I was your girl! Damn y'u! I ought to kill y'u. . . . Eat your words
now--take them back--or I'll cripple y'u for life!"

Ellen lowered the cocked rifle toward his feet.

"Shore, Ellen, I take back--all I said," gulped Bruce. He gazed at
the quivering rifle barrel and then into the face of Ellen's father.
Instinct told him where his real peril lay.

Here the cool and tactful Daggs showed himself master of the situation.

"Heah, listen!" he called. "Ellen, I reckon Bruce was drunk an' out
of his haid. He's shore ate his words. Now, we don't want any cripples
in this camp. Let him alone. Your dad got me heah to lead the Jorths,
an' that's my say to you. . . . Simm, you're shore a low-down lyin'
rascal. Keep away from Ellen after this or I'll bore you myself. . . .
Jorth, it won't be a bad idee for you to forget you're a Texan till
you cool off. Let Bruce stop some Isbel lead. Shore the Jorth-Isbel
war is aboot on, an' I reckon we'd be smart to believe old Gass's talk
aboot his Nez Perce son."

CHAPTER VI

>From this hour Ellen Jorth bent all of her lately awakened intelligence
and will to the only end that seemed to hold possible salvation for her.
In the crisis sure to come she did not want to be blind or weak.
Dreaming and indolence, habits born in her which were often a comfort
to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the hard test she divined
and dreaded. In the matter of her father's fight she must stand by him
whatever the issue or the outcome; in what pertained to her own principles,
her womanhood, and her soul she stood absolutely alone.

Therefore, Ellen put dreams aside, and indolence of mind and body
behind her. Many tasks she found, and when these were done for a
day she kept active in other ways, thus earning the poise and peace
of labor.

Jorth rode off every day, sometimes with one or two of the men, often
with a larger number. If he spoke of such trips to Ellen it was to
give an impression of visiting the ranches of his neighbors or the
various sheep camps. Often he did not return the day he left. When
he did get back he smelled of rum and appeared heavy from need of sleep.
His horses were always dust and sweat covered. During his absences
Ellen fell victim to anxious dread until he returned. Daily he grew
darker and more haggard of face, more obsessed by some impending fate.
Often he stayed up late, haranguing with the men in the dim-lit cabin,
where they drank and smoked, but seldom gambled any more. When the men
did not gamble something immediate and perturbing was on their minds.
Ellen had not yet lowered herself to the deceit and suspicion of
eavesdropping, but she realized that there was a climax approaching
in which she would deliberately do so.

In those closing May days Ellen learned the significance of many things
that previously she had taken as a matter of course. Her father did
not run a ranch. There was absolutely no ranching done, and little work.
Often Ellen had to chop wood herself. Jorth did not possess a plow.
Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack dumfounded her.
Even old John Sprague raised some hay, beets, turnips. Jorth's cattle
and horses fared ill during the winter. Ellen remembered how they used
to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens. Many of them died in
the snow. The flocks of sheep, however, were driven down into the Basin
in the fall, and across the Reno Pass to Phoenix and Maricopa.

Ellen could not discover a fence post on the ranch. nor a piece of
salt for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a
sheep-shearing outfit. She had never seen any sheep sheared.
Ellen could never keep track of the many and different horses
running loose and hobbled round the ranch. There were droves of
horses in the woods, and some of them wild as deer. According to her
long-established understanding, her father and her uncles were keen
on horse trading and buying.

Then the many trails leading away from the Jorth ranch--these grew
to have a fascination for Ellen; and the time came when she rode out
on them to see for herself where they led. The sheep ranch of Daggs,
supposed to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in Bear Canyon,
never materialized at all for Ellen. This circumstance so interested
her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and got him to direct
her to Bear Canyon, so that she would be sure not to miss it. And she
rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Rim down all
its length. She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear
Canyon. Sprague said there was only one canyon by that name. Daggs
had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her
father. Had they lied? Were they mistaken in the canyon? There were
many canyons, all heading up near the Rim, all running and widening down
for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from the deep,
short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the Basin side.
Ellen investigated the canyons within six or eight miles of her home,
both to east and to west. All she discovered was a couple of old log
cabins, long deserted. Still, she did not follow out all the trails
to their ends. Several of them led far into the deepest, roughest,
wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen. No cattle or
sheep had ever been driven over these trails.

This riding around of Ellen's at length got to her father's ears.
Ellen expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly
would refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked
her to limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot
all about it. In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense
nervousness the next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with
the men, grew to be distressing for Ellen. They presaged his further
deterioration and the ever-present evil of the growing feud.

One day Jorth rode home in the early morning, after an absence of
two nights. Ellen heard the clip-clop of, horses long before she
saw them.

"Hey, Ellen! Come out heah," called her father.

Ellen left her work and went outside. A stranger had ridden in with
her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by
ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard. He was long, loose
jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet
Ellen bad ever seen. Next Ellen espied a black horse they had evidently
brought with them. Her father was holding a rope halter. At once the
black horse struck Ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred.

"Ellen, heah's a horse for you," said Jorth, with something of pride.
"I made a trade. Reckon I wanted him myself, but he's too gentle for
me an' maybe a little small for my weight."

Delight visited Ellen for the first time in many days. Seldom had she
owned a good horse, and never one like this.

"Oh, dad! " she exclaimed, in her gratitude.

"Shore he's yours on one condition," said her father.

"What's that?" asked Ellen, as she laid caressing hands on the
restless horse.

"You're not to ride him out of the canyon."

"Agreed. . . . All daid black, isn't he, except that white face?
What's his name, dad?

"I forgot to ask," replied Jorth. as he began unsaddling his own horse.
"Slater, what's this heah black's name?"

The lanky giant grinned. "I reckon it was Spades."

"Spades?" ejaculated Ellen, blankly. "What a name! . . . Well, I guess
it's as good as any. He's shore black."

"Ellen, keep him hobbled when you're not ridin' him," was her father's
parting advice as he walked off with the stranger.

Spades was wet and dusty and his satiny skin quivered. He had fine,
dark, intelligent eyes that watched Ellen's every move. She knew how
her father and his friends dragged and jammed horses through the woods
and over the rough trails. It did not take her long to discover that
this horse had been a pet. Ellen cleaned his coat and brushed him and
fed him. Then she fitted her bridle to suit his head and saddled him.
His evident response to her kindness assured her that he was gentle,
so she mounted and rode him, to discover he had the easiest gait she
had ever experienced. He walked and trotted to suit her will, but
when left to choose his own gait he fell into a graceful little pace
that was very easy for her. He appeared quite ready to break into a
run at her slightest bidding, but Ellen satisfied herself on this first
ride with his slower gaits.

"Spades, y'u've shore cut out my burro Jinny," said Ellen, regretfully.
"Well, I reckon women are fickle."

Next day she rode up the canyon to show Spades to her friend John
Sprague. The old burro breeder was not at home. As his door was open,
however, and a fire smoldering, Ellen concluded he would soon return.
So she waited. Dismounting, she left Spades free to graze on the new
green grass that carpeted the ground. The cabin and little level
clearing accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the forest.
Ellen always liked it here and had once been in the habit of visiting
the old man often. But of late she had stayed away, for the reason that
Sprague's talk and his news and his poorly hidden pity depressed her.

Presently she heard hoof beats on the hard, packed trail leading down
the canyon in the direction from which she had come. Scarcely likely
was it that Sprague should return from this direction. Ellen thought
her father had sent one of the herders for her. But when she caught
a glimpse of the approaching horseman, down in the aspens, she failed
to recognize him. After he had passed one of the openings she heard
his horse stop. Probably the man had seen her; at least she could not
otherwise account for his stopping. The glimpse she had of him had
given her the impression that he was bending over, peering ahead in
the trail, looking for tracks. Then she heard the rider come on again,
more slowly this time. At length the horse trotted out into the opening,
to be hauled up short. Ellen recognized the buckskin-clad figure,
the broad shoulders, the dark face of Jean Isbel.

Ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation she had ever suffered.
It took violence of her new-born spirit to subdue that feeling.

Isbel rode slowly across the clearing toward her. For Ellen his
approach seemed singularly swift--so swift that her surprise, dismay,
conjecture, and anger obstructed her will. The outwardly calm and cold
Ellen Jorth was a travesty that mocked her--that she felt he would discern.

The moment Isbel drew close enough for Ellen to see his face she
experienced a strong, shuddering repetition of her first shock of
recognition. He was not the same. The light, the youth was gone.
This, however, did not cause her emotion. Was it not a sudden
transition of her nature to the dominance of hate? Ellen seemed
to feel the shadow of her unknown self standing with her.

Isbel halted his horse. Ellen had been standing near the trunk of a
fallen pine and she instinctively backed against it. How her legs
trembled! Isbel took off his cap and crushed it nervously in his
bare, brown hand.

"Good mornin', Miss Ellen! " he said.

Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly,
"Did y'u come by our ranch?"

"No. I circled," he replied.

"Jean Isbel! What do y'u want heah?" she demanded.

"Don't you know?" he returned. His eyes were intensely black and
piercing. They seemed to search Ellen's very soul. To meet their
gaze was an ordeal that only her rousing fury sustained.

Ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed Indian
traits and the reputation that had preceded him. But she could not
utter it.

"No" she replied.

"It's hard to call a woman a liar," he returned, bitterly. But you
must be--seein' you're a Jorth.

"Liar! Not to y'u, Jean Isbel," she retorted. "I'd not lie to y'u
to save my life."

He studied her with keen, sober, moody intent. The dark fire of his
eyes thrilled her.

"If that's true, I'm glad," he said.

"Shore it's true. I've no idea why y'u came heah."

Ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion.
But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the
contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man's face.

"Does old Sprague live here?" asked Isbel.

"Yes. I expect him back soon. . . . Did y'u come to see him? "

"No. . . . Did Sprague tell you anythin' about the row he saw me in?"

"He--did not," replied Ellen, lying with stiff lips. She who had sworn
she could not lie! She felt the hot blood leaving her heart, mounting
in a wave. All her conscious will seemed impelled to deceive. What had
she to hide from Jean Isbel? And a still, small voice replied that she
had to hide the Ellen Jorth who had waited for him that day, who had
spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who
had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for
her name.

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