Tonto Basin, page 13
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, frizzy beard. He was long, loose-jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet Ellen had even 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 going to ride him out of the cañon?”
“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 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 the first ride with his slower gaits.
“Spades, you’ve shore cut out my burro Jinny,” said Ellen regretfully. “Well, I reckon women are fickle.”
Next day she rode up the cañon 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 cañon 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 got 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 fell prey to the strangest quaking sensation she had ever suffered. It took violence of her newborn 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 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 you come by our ranch?”
“No, I circled,” he replied.
“Jean Isbel! What do you 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 you, Jean Isbel,” she retorted. “I’d not lie to you 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 you 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 you 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!—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 quiet, 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 unstable heart the fact that he had fought for her name.
“I’m glad of that,” Isbel was saying thoughtfully.
“Did you come heah to see me?” interrupted Ellen. She felt that she could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of consideration in him. She would betray herself—betray what she did not even realize herself. She must force other footing—and that should be the one of strife between the Jorths and Isbels.
“No … honest I didn’t, Miss Ellen,” he rejoined humbly. “I’ll tell you presently why I came. But it wasn’t to see you. I don’t deny I waited … but that’s no matter. You didn’t meet me that day on the Tonto Rim.”
“Meet you?” she echoed coldly. “Shore you never expected me?”
“Somehow I did,” he replied with those penetrating eyes on her. “I put somethin’ in your tent that day. Did you find it?”
“Yes,” she replied with the same casual coldness.
“What did you do with it?”
“I kicked it out, of course,” she replied.
She saw him flinch.
“And you never opened it?”
“Certainly not,” she retorted, as if proud. “Don’t you know anythin’ about … about people? Shore, even if you are an Isbel, you never were born in Texas.”
“Thank God I wasn’t,” he replied. “I was born in a beautiful country of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. Where I came from, men don’t live on hate. They can forgive.”
“Forgive! Could you forgive a Jorth?”
“Yes, I could.”
“Shore that’s easy to say … with the wrongs all on your side,” she declared bitterly.
“Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side,” returned Jean, his voice full. “Your father stole my father’s sweetheart … by lies, by slander, by dishonor, by makin’ terrible love to her in his absence.”
“It is a lie!” cried Ellen passionately.
“It’s not!” he declared solemnly.
“Jean Isbel, I say you lie!”
“No! I say you’ve been lied to,” he thundered.
The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen. It weakened her.
“But … Mother loved Dad … best.”
“Yes, afterwards. No wonder, poor woman … but it was the action of your father and your mother that ruined all their lives. You’ve got to know the truth, Ellen Jorth. All the years of hate have borne their fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must be spilled. The Jorths and the Isbels can’t live on the same earth, and you’ve got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and me.”
The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her. “Never, Jean Isbel,” she cried. “I’ll never know truth from you. I’ll never share anythin’ with you … not even hell.”
Isbel dismounted, and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins. The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.
“Why do you hate me so?” he asked. “I just happen to be my father’s son. I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you … fell in love with you in a flash … though I never knew it till after. Why do you hate me so terribly?”
Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. “You’re an Isbel. Don’t speak of love to me.”
“I didn’t intend to. But your … your hate seems unnatural. And we’ll probably never meet again. I can’t help it. I love you. Love at first sight! Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn’t it? It was all so strange. My meetin’ you so lonely and unhappy … my seein’ you so sweet and beautiful … my thinking you so good in spite of.…”
“Shore it was strange,” interrupted Ellen with a scornful laugh. She had found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt. “Thinkin’ me so good in spite of … ha! ha! … and I said I’d been kissed before!”
“Yes, in spite of everything,” he said.
Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild tumult in her heart. All that crowded to her lips for utterance was false. “Yes … I kissed before I met you … and since,” she said mockingly. “And I laugh at what you call love, Jean Isbel.”
“Laugh if you want … but believe it was sweet, honorable … the best in me,” he replied in deep earnestness.
“Bah!” cried Ellen with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.
“By heaven, you must be different from what I thought!” exclaimed Isbel huskily.
“Shore if I wasn’t, I’d make myself.… Now, Mister Jean Isbel, get on your horse an’ go.”
Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect prepared her for some stunning blow.
“That’s a pretty black horse.”
“Yes,” replied Ellen blankly.
“Do you like him?”
“I … I love him.”
“All right, I’ll give him to you, then. He’ll have less work and kinder treatment than if I used him. I’ve got some pretty hard rides ahead of me.”
“You … you give … ?” whispered Ellen slowly stiffening.
“Yes. He’s mine,” replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the closer he got, and, if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved master, she saw it then. Isbel laid a hand on the animal’s neck and caressed him. Then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: “I picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father’s. We got along well. My sister Ann rode him a good deal. He was stolen from our pasture day before yesterday. I took his trail and tracked him up here. Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch where I had to circle till I picked it up again.”
“Stolen … pasture … tracked him up heah?” echoed Ellen without any evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, she seemed to have been turned to stone.
“Trackin’ him was easy. I wish for your sake it’d been impossible,” he said bluntly.
“For my sake?” she echoed in precisely the same tone.
Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control. He misunderstood it. With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he could look into her face.
“Yes, for your sake,” he declared harshly. “Haven’t you sense enough to see that? What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?”
“Game? Game of what?” she asked.
“Why a … a game of ignorance … innocence … any old game to fool a man who’s tryin’ to be decent.”
This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning, and it inflamed Isbel.
“You know your father’s a horse thief!” he thundered.
Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. Her face, her body, her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of Isbel’s eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one flash the naked truth seemed to blaze at her. The faith she had fostered died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a second of swirling, revealing thought.
“Ellen Jorth, you know your father’s in with this Hash Knife Gang of rustlers!” thundered Isbel.
“Shore,” she replied with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.
“You know he’s got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels.”
“Shore.”
“You know this talk of sheepmen buckin’ the cattlemen is all a blind?”
“Shore,” reiterated Ellen.
Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment, he appeared ready to end the interview, but he seemed fascinated by the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she emanated. Havoc gleamed in her pale set face. He shook his dark head and his broad hand went to his breast.
“To think I fell in love with such as you!” he exclaimed, and his other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.
The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen, body, mind, and soul. Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel, yet loved by him? In that divination there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thoughts flew upon her like whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that family to which she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths. The sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.
“Shore you might have had me … that day on the rim … if you hadn’t told your name,” she said mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all the mystery of a woman’s nature.
Isbel’s powerful frame shook as with an ague. “Girl, what do you mean?”
“Shore, I’d have been plumb fond of havin’ you make up to me,” she drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of the love he could not help. Some fiendish woman’s satisfaction dwelt in her consciousness, of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the good in him.
“Ellen Jorth, you lie!” he burst out hoarsely.
“Jean, shore I’d been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I was tired of them … I wanted a new lover … and, if you hadn’t give yourself away.…”
Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot salty blood from a cut lip.
“Shut up, you hussy,” he ordered roughly. “Have you no shame? My sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses … she pitied you.”
