by Zane Grey
“But, girl—I kissed y’u—hugged y’u—handled y’u—” he expostulated, and the making of the cigarette ceased.
“Yes, y’u did—y’u brute—when I was so downhearted and weak I couldn’t lift my hand,” she flashed.
“Ahuh! Y’u mean I couldn’t do that now?”
“I should smile I do, Jim Colter!” she replied.
“Wal, mebbe—I’ll see—presently,” he went on, straining with words. “But I’m shore curious…. Daggs, then—he was nothin’ to y’u?”
“No more than y’u,” she said, morbidly. “He used to run after me—long ago, it seems.… I was only a girl then—innocent—an’ I’d not known any but rough men. I couldn’t all the time—every day, every hour—keep him at arm’s length. Sometimes before I knew—I didn’t care. I was a child. A kiss meant nothing to me. But after I knew—”
Ellen dropped her head in brooding silence.
“Say, do y’u expect me to believe that?” he queried, with a derisive leer.
“Bah! What do I care what y’u believe?” she cried, with lifting head.
“How aboot Simm Brace?”
“That coyote! … He lied aboot me, Jim Colter. And any man half a man would have known he lied.”
“Wal, Simm always bragged aboot y’u bein’ his girl,” asserted Colter. “An’ he wasn’t over—particular aboot details of your love-makin’.”
Ellen gazed out of the door, over Colter’s head, as if the forest out there was a refuge. She evidently sensed more about the man than appeared in his slow talk, in his slouching position. Her lips shut in a firm line, as if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate tongue. Jean, in his absorption, magnified his perceptions. Not yet was Ellen Jorth afraid of this man, but she feared the situation. Jean’s heart was at bursting pitch. All within him seemed chaos—a wreck of beliefs and convictions. Nothing was true. He would wake presently out of a nightmare. Yet, as surely as he quivered there, he felt the imminence of a great moment—a lightning flash—a thunderbolt—a balance struck.
Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. He rolled it, lighted it, all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes as fiery as molten steel.
“Wal, Ellen—how aboot Jean Isbel—our half-breed Nez Perce friend—who was shore seen handlin’ y’u familiar?” he drawled.
Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.
“Damn y’u, Jim Colter!” she burst out, furiously. “I wish Jean Isbel would jump in that door—or down out of that loft! … He killed Greaves for defiling my name! … He’d kill y’u for your dirty insult…. And I’d like to watch him do it…. Y’u cold-blooded Texan! Y’u thieving rustler! Y’u liar! … Y’u lied aboot my father’s death. And I know why. Y’u stole my father’s gold…. An’ now y’u want me—y’u expect me to fall into your arms…. My Heaven! cain’t y’u tell a decent woman? Was your mother decent? Was your sister decent? … Bah! I’m appealing to deafness. But y’u’ll heah this, Jim Colter! … I’m not what yu think I am! I’m not the—the damned hussy y’u liars have made me out…. I’m a Jorth, alas! I’ve no home, no relatives, no friends! I’ve been forced to live my life with rustlers—vile men like y’u an’ Daggs an’ the rest of your like…. But I’ve been good! Do y’u heah that? … I am good—so help me God, y’u an’ all your rottenness cain’t make me bad!”
Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished.
Vanished also was Jean Isbel’s suspended icy dread, the cold clogging of his fevered mind—vanished in a white, living, leaping flame.
Silently he drew his knife and lay there watching with the eyes of a wildcat. The instant Colter stepped far enough over toward the edge of the loft Jean meant to bound erect and plunge down upon him. But Jean could wait now. Colter had a gun at his hip. He must never have a chance to draw it.
“Ahuh! So y’u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah, do y’u?” queried Colter. “Wal, if I had any pity on y’u, that’s done for it.”
A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to move, brought his hand in clutching contact with her. And the force of it flung her half across the cabin room, leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his grasp. Pantingly she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him off as he took long, slow strides toward her.
Jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovernable passion to risk all on one leap. But the distance was too great. Colter, blind as he was to all outward things, would hear, would see in time to make Jean’s effort futile. Shaking like a leaf, Jean sank back, eye again to the crack between the rafters.
Ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move. Every line of her body was instinct with fight, and the magnificent blaze of her eyes would have checked a less callous brute.
Colter’s big hand darted between Ellen’s arms and fastened in the front of her blouse. He did not try to hold her or draw her close. The unleashed passion of the man required violence. In one savage pull he tore off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders and heaving bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned upward.
Overcome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the rustler, Ellen sank to her knees, with blanched face and dilating eyes, trying with folded arms and trembling hand to hide her nudity.
At that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard trail outside halted Colter in his tracks.
“Hell!” he exclaimed. “An’ who’s that?” With a fierce action he flung the remnants of Ellen’s blouse in her face and turned to leap out the door.
Jean saw Ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while she sagged against the wall and stared at the door. The hoof beats pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside.
“Jim—thar’s hell to pay!” rasped out a panting voice.
“Wal, Springer, I reckon I wished y’u’d paid it without spoilin’ my deals,” retorted Colter, cool and sharp.
“Deals? Ha! Y’u’ll be forgettin’—your lady love in a minnit,” replied Springer. “When I catch—my breath.”
“Where’s Somers?” demanded Colter.
“I reckon he’s all shot up—if my eyes didn’t fool me.”
“Where is he?” yelled Colter.
“Jim—he’s layin’ up in the bushes round thet bluff. I didn’t wait to see how he was hurt. But he shore stopped some lead. An’ he flopped like a chicken with its—haid cut off.”
“Where’s Antonio?”
“He run like the greaser he is,” declared Springer, disgustedly.
“Ahuh! An’ where’s Queen?” queried Colter, after a significant pause.
“Dead!”
The silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that held Jean in cold bonds. He saw the girl below rise from her knees, one hand holding the blouse to her breast, the other extended, and with strange, repressed, almost frantic look she swayed toward the door.
“Wal, talk,” ordered Colter, harshly.
“Jim, there ain’t a hell of a lot,” replied Springer; drawing a deep breath, “but what there is is shore interestin’…. Me an’ Somers took Antonio with us. He left his woman with the sheep. An’ we rode up the canyon, clumb out on top, an’ made a circle back on the ridge. That’s the way we’ve been huntin’ fer tracks. Up thar in a bare spot we run plump into Queen sittin’ against a tree, right out in the open. Queerest sight y’u ever seen! The damn gunfighter had set down to wait for Isbel, who was trailin’ him, as we suspected—an’ he died thar. He wasn’t cold when we found him…. Somers was quick to see a trick. So he propped Queen up an’ tied the guns to his hands—an’, Jim, the queerest thing aboot that deal was this—Queen’s guns was empty! Not a shell left! It beat us holler…. We left him thar, an’ hid up high on the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off. The hosses we left back of a thicket. An’ we waited thar a long time. But, sure enough, the half-breed come. He was too smart.
Too much Injun! He would not cross the open, but went around. An’ then he seen Queen. It was great to watch him. After a little he shoved his rifle out an’ went right fer Queen. This is when I wanted to shoot. I could have plugged him. But Somers says wait an’ make it sure. When Isbel got up to Queen he was sort of half hid by the tree. An’ I couldn’t wait no longer, so I shot. I hit him, too. We all begun to shoot. Somers showed himself, an’ that’s when Isbel opened up. He used up a whole magazine on Somers an’ then, suddenlike, he quit. It didn’t take me long to figger mebbe he was out of shells. When I seen him run I was certain of it. Then we made for the hosses an’ rode after Isbel. Pretty soon I seen him runnin’ like a deer down the ridge. I yelled an’ spurred after him. There is where Antonio quit me. But I kept on. An’ I got a shot at Isbel. He ran out of sight. I follered him by spots of blood on the stones an’ grass until I couldn’t trail him no more. He must have gone down over the cliffs. He couldn’t have done nothin’ else without me seein’ him. I found his rifle, an’ here it is to prove what I say. I had to go back to climb down off the Rim, an’ I rode fast down the canyon. He’s somewhere along that west wall, hidin’ in the brush, hard hit if I know anythin’ aboot the color of blood.”
“Wal! … that beats me holler, too,” ejaculated Colter.
“Jim, what’s to be done?” inquired Springer, eagerly. “If we’re sharp we can corral that half-breed. He’s the last of the Isbels.”
“More, pard. He’s the last of the Isbel outfit,” declared Colter. “If y’u can show me blood in his tracks I’ll trail him.”
“Y’u can bet I’ll show y’u,” rejoined the other rustler. “But listen! Wouldn’t it be better for us first to see if he crossed the canyon? I reckon he didn’t. But let’s make sure. An’ if he didn’t we’ll have him somewhar along that west canyon wall. He’s not got no gun. He’d never run thet way if he had…. Jim, he’s our meat!”
“Shore, he’ll have that knife,” pondered Colter.
“We needn’t worry about thet,” said the other, positively. “He’s hard hit, I tell y’u. All we got to do is find thet bloody trail again an’ stick to it—goin’ careful. He’s layin’ low like a crippled wolf.”
“Springer, I want the job of finishin’ that half-breed,” hissed Colter. “I’d give ten years of my life to stick a gun down his throat an’ shoot it off.”
“All right. Let’s rustle. Mebbe y’u’ll not have to give much more ’n ten minnits. Because I tell y’u I can find him. It’d been easy—but, Jim, I reckon I was afraid.”
“Leave your hoss for me an’ go ahaid,” the rustler then said, brusquely. “I’ve a job in the cabin heah.”
“Haw-haw! … Wal, Jim, I’ll rustle a bit down the trail an’ wait. No huntin’ Jean Isbel alone—not fer me. I’ve had a queer feelin’ about thet knife he used on Greaves. An’ I reckon y’u’d oughter let thet Jorth hussy alone long enough to—”
“Springer, I reckon I’ve got to hawg-tie her—” His voice became indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a slow moving away of the men.
Jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch every syllable while his gaze rested upon Ellen who stood beside the door. Every line of her body denoted a listening intensity. Her back was toward Jean, so that he could not see her face. And he did not want to see, but could not help seeing her naked shoulders. She put her head out of the door. Suddenly she drew it in quickly and half turned her face, slowly raising her white arm. This was the left one and bore the marks of Colter’s hard fingers.
She gave a little gasp. Her eyes became large and staring. They were bent on the hand that she had removed from a step on the ladder. On hand and wrist showed a bright-red smear of blood.
Jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that he had left his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had climbed. That moment seemed the supremely terrible one of his life.
Ellen Jorth’s face blanched and her eyes darkened and dilated with exceeding amaze and flashing thought to become fixed with horror. That instant was the one in which her reason connected the blood on the ladder with the escape of Jean Isbel.
One moment she leaned there, still as a stone except for her heaving breast, and then her fixed gaze changed to a swift, dark blaze, comprehending, yet inscrutable, as she flashed it up the ladder to the loft. She could see nothing, yet she knew and Jean knew that she knew he was there. A marvelous transformation passed over her features and even over her form. Jean choked with the ache in his throat. Slowly she put the bloody hand behind her while with the other she still held the torn blouse to her breast.
Colter’s slouching, musical step sounded outside. And it might have been a strange breath of infinitely vitalizing and passionate life blown into the well-springs of Ellen Jorth’s being. Isbel had no name for her then. The spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown.
She swayed back from the door against the wall in singular, softened poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body. And as Colter’s tall shadow fell across the threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring with eyeballs that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. He saw but could not comprehend.
“Jim—I heard—all Springer told y’u,” she said. The look of her dumfounded Colter and her voice seemed to shake him visibly.
“Suppose y’u did. What then?” he demanded, harshly, as he halted with one booted foot over the threshold. Malignant and forceful, he eyed her darkly, doubtfully.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“What of? Me?”
“No. Of—of Jean Isbel. He might kill y’u and—then where would I be?”
“Wal, I’m damned!” ejaculated the rustler. “What’s got into y’u?” He moved to enter, but a sort of fascination bound him.
“Jim, I hated y’u a moment ago,” she burst out. “But now—with that Jean Isbel somewhere near—hidin’—watchin’ to kill y’u—an’ maybe me, too—I—I don’t hate y’u any more…. Take me away.”
“Girl, have y’u lost your nerve?” he demanded.
“My God! Colter—cain’t y’u see?” she implored. “Won’t y’u take me away?”
“I shore will—presently,” he replied, grimly. “But y’u’ll wait till I’ve shot the lights out of this Isbel.”
“No!” she cried. “Take me away now…. An’ I’ll give in—I’ll be what y’u—want…. Y’u can do with me—as y’u like.”
Colter’s lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting blood. With a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom over her.
“Am I out of my haid, or are y’u?” he asked, in low, hoarse voice. His darkly corded face expressed extremest amaze.
“Jim, I mean it,” she whispered, edging an inch nearer him, her white face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in their eloquence and mystery. “I’ve no friend but y’u. I’ll be—yours…. I’m lost…. What does it matter? If y’u want me—take me now—before I kill myself.”
“Ellen Jorth, there’s somethin’ wrong aboot y’u,” he responded. “Did y’u tell the truth—when y’u denied ever bein’ a sweetheart of Simm Bruce?”
“Yes, I told y’u the truth.”
“Ahuh! An’ how do y’u account for layin’ me out with every dirty name y’u could give tongue to?”
“Oh, it was temper. I wanted to be let alone.”
“Temper! Wal, I reckon y’u’ve got one,” he retorted, grimly. “An’ I’m not shore y’u’re not crazy or lyin’. An hour ago I couldn’t touch y’u.”
“Y’u may now—if y’u promise to take me away—at once. This place has got on my nerves. I couldn’t sleep heah with that Isbel hidin’ around. Could y’u?”
“Wal, I reckon I’d not sleep very deep.”
“Then let us go.”
He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. Yet all the while there was manifest in his strung frame an al
most irrepressible violence, held in abeyance to his will.
“That aboot your bein’ so good?” he inquired, with a return of the mocking drawl.
“Never mind what’s past,” she flashed, with passion dark as his. “I’ve made my offer.”
“Shore there’s a lie aboot y’u somewhere,” he muttered, thickly.
“Man, could I do more?” she demanded, in scorn.
“No. But it’s a lie,” he returned. “Y’u’ll get me to take y’u away an’ then fool me—run off—God knows what. Women are all liars.”
Manifestly he could not believe in her strange transformation. Memory of her wild and passionate denunciation of him and his kind must have seared even his calloused soul. But the ruthless nature of him had not weakened nor softened in the least as to his intentions. This weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him, obsessed him with its possibilities. He had the look of a man who was divided between love of her and hate, whose love demanded a return, but whose hate required a proof of her abasement. Not proof of surrender, but proof of her shame! The ignominy of him thirsted for its like. He could grind her beauty under his heel, but he could not soften to this feminine inscrutableness.
And whatever was the truth of Ellen Jorth in this moment, beyond Colter’s gloomy and stunted intelligence, beyond even the love of Jean Isbel, it was something that held the balance of mastery. She read Colter’s mind. She dropped the torn blouse from her hand and stood there, unashamed, with the wave of her white breast pulsing, eyes black as night and full of hell, her face white, tragic, terrible, yet strangely lovely.
“Take me away,” she whispered, stretching one white arm toward him, then the other.
Colter, even as she moved, had leaped with inarticulate cry and radiant face to meet her embrace. But it seemed, just as her left arm flashed up toward his neck, that he saw her bloody hand and wrist. Strange how that checked his ardor—threw up his lean head like that striking bird of prey.
“Blood! What the hell!” he ejaculated, and in one sweep he grasped her. “How’d yu do that? Are y’u cut? … Hold still.”