Tonto Basin, page 12
Then it was not the face of a liar that Jorth disclosed. The present was forgotten. He lived in the past. He even seemed younger in the revivifying flash of hate that made his face radiant. The lines burned out. Hate gave him back the spirit of his youth.
“Gaston Isbel an’ I were boys together in Weston, Texas,” began Jorth in swift passionate voice. “We went to school together. We loved the same girl … your mother. When the war broke out, she was engaged to Isbel. His family was rich. They influenced her people. But she loved me. He came back an’ faced us. God! I’ll never forget that. Your mother confessed her unfaithfulness … by heaven! She taunted him with it. Isbel accused me of winnin’ her by lies. But she took the sting out of that. Isbel never forgave her an’ he hounded me to ruin. He made me out a cardsharp, 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 the 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 remonstrance and nobility of Ellen. 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. 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 continued 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 it, the fear gone. 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 other two of a finer texture. Ellen looked at them in amazement. 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 being 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 can’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 look, 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 mornin’ to this heah bad lot?” drawled Daggs with good-natured sarcasm.
“Why, shore. Good morning, you hard-working, industrious, mañana sheep raisers,” replied Ellen coolly.
Daggs stared. The others appeared taken aback by a greeting so foreign from any they were accustomed to 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 you play cards, don’t you call a spade a spade?”
“Why, shore I do.”
“Well, I’m calling spades, spades.”
“A-huh,” 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 he turned to Jorth was alight, sinister and magnetic.
“Jorth, you remember my hunch. I called the trick,” he said with a ring in his voice. “It’s first blood for the Isbels!”
Jorth dropped back in his chair. None of them spoke or stirred. Bruce rode in ahead of Lorenzo, threw his bridle, swung a long leg, and dismounted.
“Hullo, boys. I’m back an’ not so damn’ glad to see you-all,” he said. His open vest showed a soiled, collarless shirt splotched with blood all around his breast and neck. His face was swollen and bruised with unhealed cuts. Where his right eye should have been, there was 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 Percé 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 axe, 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 with 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 heavily discolored swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face. Lorenzo looked only serious.
“Hah! Speak up!” shouted Jorth impatiently.
“Señor 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 Percé … 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 once, 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 swallowed 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 Brace’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 dog-goned,” 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 with a real gunfighter. 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.
“Thet’d be like Gass,” spoke up Rock Wells quietly. “I oncet 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’ partikler 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, hawk-like 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 gunfighters in my day an’ Jean Isbel don’t run 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 Percé 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 that 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 man who had obscured her.
“Bruce, you’re a liar!” she said bitingly.
The surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root Bruce to the spot. All but the discolored places in 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 you’re more than a liar, too,” cried Ellen, facing him with blazing eyes. The rifle, gripped in both hands, seemed to declare her intent of menace. “That row was not aboot sheep. Jean Isbel didn’t beat you for anythin’ aboot sheep. Old John Sprague was in Greaves’s store. He heard you. He saw Jean Isbel beat you as you 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 you sayin’?” hoarsely called Jorth in dark amazement.
“Dad, you 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, you cast a dirty slur on my name,” cried Ellen passionately.
It was then that Daggs grasped Jorth’s right arm and held it tightly. “Jest what I thought,” he said. “Stand still, Lee. Let’s see the kid make him slow down.”
“That’s what Jean Isbel beat you for,” went on Ellen. “For slandering a girl who wasn’t there … me! You 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 that.”
Ellen threw up her hand and a scarlet wave of shame and anger 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 he was. An’ through his kiss I learned the difference between men. You made Lorenzo lie. An’ if I had a shred of good name left in Grass Valley, you dishonored it. You made him think I was your girl! Damn you! I ought to kill you. Eat your words now … take them back … or I’ll cripple you 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 Percé son.”
Chapter Six
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 fights, 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 absence 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 days of May, 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 dumbfounded 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 chew 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 or a piece of salt for the horses and cattle, or a wagon, or 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 around 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 Cañon, never materialized at all for Ellen. This circumstance so interested her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and get him to direct her to Bear Cañon so that she would be sure not to miss it and she rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Tonto Rim down all its length. She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear Cañon. Sprague said there was only one cañon by that name. Daggs had assured her of the exact location of his place, and so had her father. Had they lied? Were they mistaken in the cañon? There were many cañons, 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 cañons within six or eight miles of her home, both to east and west. All she discovered were 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.
