Tonto Basin, page 17
Jean made a careful study of the obscure gray-black open before him, and then the background to his rear. So long as he kept the dense shadows behind him he could not be seen. He slipped from behind his covert, and, gliding with absolutely noiseless footsteps, he gained the first clump of junipers. Here he waited patiently and motionlessly for another round of shots from the rustlers. After the second shot from the west side Jean sheered off to the right. Patches of brush, clumps of juniper, and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording Jean a perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a detour and come up behind the rustler who was firing from that side. Jean climbed to the top of the ridge, descended the opposite slope, made his turn to the left, and slowly worked up behind the point near where he expected to locate the rustler. Long habit in the open, by day and night, rendered his sense of direction almost as perfect as sight itself. The first flash of fire he saw from this side disclosed that he had come straight up toward his man. Jean’s intention was to crawl up on this one of the Jorth gang and silently kill him with a knife. If the plan worked successfully, Jean meant to work around to the next rustler. Laying aside his rifle, he crawled forward on hands and knees, making no more sound than a cat. His approach was slow. He had to pick his way, be careful not to break twigs or rattle stones. His buckskin garments made no sound against the brush. Jean located the rustler, sitting on the top of the ridge at the center of an open space. He was alone. Jean saw the dull, red end of the cigarette he was smoking. The ground on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for Jean’s purpose. He had to abandon the idea of crawling up to the rustler, whereupon he turned back, patiently and slowly, to get his rifle. Upon securing it, he began to retrace his course, this time more slowly than ever, hampered as he was by the rifle. But he did not make the slightest sound, and at length he reached the edge of the open ridge top, once more to espy the dark form of the rustler silhouetted against the sky. The distance was not more than fifty yards. As Jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle around to avoid the twigs of a juniper, he suddenly experienced another emotion besides the one of grim, hard wrath at the Jorths. It was an emotion that sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable sensation. Suppose this man was Ellen Jorth’s father! Jean lowered the rifle. He felt it shake over his knee. He was trembling all over. The astounding discovery that he did not want to kill Ellen’s father—that he could not do it—awakened Jean to the despairing nature of his love for her. In this grim moment of indecision, when he knew his Indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage on the Jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love for the girl. He made no attempt to deny it any longer. Like the night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitability of this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact. A reality. He breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul—he could not kill Ellen Jorth’s father. Feud or no feud, Isbel or not, he could not deliberately do it. And why not? There was no answer. Was he not faithless to his father? He had no hope of ever winning Ellen Jorth. He did not want the love of a girl of her character. But he loved her. And his struggle must be against the insidious and mysterious growth of that passion. It swayed him already. It made him a coward. Through his mind and heart swept the memory of Ellen Jorth, her beauty and charm, her boldness and pathos, her shame and her degradation, and the sweetness of her outweighed the boldness, the mystery of her arrayed itself in unquenchable protest against her acknowledged shame. Jean lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless white stars, to the infinite depths of the dark blue sky. He could sense the fact of his being an atom in the universe of nature. What was he—what was his revengeful father—what were hate and passion and strife in comparison to the nameless something, immense and everlasting, that he sensed in this dark moment?
But the rustlers—Daggs—the Jorths—they had killed his brother Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of Jean’s—a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish. Jean had not loved him as he had Guy. Guy lay dead down there on the meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course. Jean steeled his nerve. The hot blood crept back along his veins. The dark and masterful tide of revenge waved over him. The keen edge of his mind then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts. He must kill when and where he could. This man could hardly be Ellen Jorth’s father. Jorth would be with the main crowd, directing hostilities. Jean could shoot this rustler guard and his shot would be taken by the gang as the regular one from their comrade. Then swiftly Jean leveled his rifle, covered the dark form, grew cold and set, and pressed the trigger. After the report he rose and wheeled away. He did not look or listen for the result of his shot. A clammy sweat wet his face, the hollows of his hands, his breast. A horrible, leaden-thick sensation oppressed his heart. Nature had endowed him with Indian gifts, but the exercise of them to this end caused a revolt in his soul. Nevertheless, it was the Isbel blood that dominated him. The wind blew cool on his face. The burden upon his shoulders seemed to lift. The clamoring whispers grew fainter in his ears. By the time he had retraced his cautious steps back to the orchard, all his physical being was strung to the talk at hand. Something had come between his reflective self and this man of action.
Crossing the lane, he took to the west line of sheds and passed beyond them into the meadow. In the grass he crawled silently away to the right, using the same precaution that had actuated him on the slope, only here he did not pause so often, nor move so slowly. Jean aimed to go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embankment behind which the rustlers had found such efficient cover. This ditch had been made to keep water, during spring thaws and summer storms, from pouring off the slope to flood the corrals.
Jean miscalculated and found he had come upon the embankment somewhat to the left of the end, which fact however caused him no uneasiness. He lay there a while to listen. Again he heard voices. After a time a shot pealed out. He did not see the flash, but he calculated that it had come from the north side of the cabin.
In the next quarter of an hour Jean discovered that the nearest rustler guard was firing from the top of the embankment, perhaps a hundred yards distant, and a second one was performing the same office from a point apparently only a few yards farther on. Two rustlers close together! Jean had not calculated upon that. For a little while he pondered on what was best to do, and at length decided to crawl around behind them and as close as the situation made advisable.
He found the ditch behind the embankment a favorable path by which to stalk those enemies. It was dry and sandy, with borders of high weeds. The only drawback was that it was almost impossible for him to keep from brushing against the dry, invisible branches of the weeds. To offset this he wormed his way like a snail, inch by inch, taking a long time before he caught sight of the sitting figure of a man, black against the dark-blue sky. This rustler had fired his rifle three times during Jean’s slow approach. Jean watched and listened a few moments, then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was within twenty steps of him. Jean smelled tobacco smoke, but could see no light of pipe or cigarette, because the fellow’s back was turned.
Chapter Eight
“Say, Ben,” said one of the men to his companion, sitting hunched up a few yards distant, “shore it strikes me queer that Somers ain’t shootin’ any over thar.”
Jean recognized the dry, drawling voice of Greaves and the shock of it seemed to contract the muscles of his whole thrilling body, like that of a panther about to spring.
“I was shore thinkin’ thet same,” said the other man. “An’, say, didn’t that last shot sound too sharp fer Somers’s Forty-Five?”
“Come to think of it, I reckon it did,” replied Greaves.
“Wal, I’ll go around over thar an’ see.”
The dark form of the rustler slipped out of sight over the embankment.
“Better go slow an’ careful,” warned Greaves. “An’ only go close enough to call Somers. Mebbe that damn’ half-breed Isbel is comin’ like some Injun on us.”
Jean heard the soft swish of footsteps though wet grass. Then all was still. He lay flat, with his cheek on the sand, and he had to look ahead and upwards to make out the dark figure of Greaves on the bank. One way or another he meant to kill Greaves, and he had the willpower to resist the strongest gust of passion that had ever stormed his breast. If he arose and shot the rusder, that act would defeat his plan of slipping around on the other outposts who were firing at the cabins. Jean wanted to call softly to Greaves:—You’re right about the half-breed!—and then, as he wheeled aghast, to kill him as he moved. But it suited Jean to risk leaping up on the man. Jean did not waste time in trying to understand the strange, deadly instinct that gripped him at the moment, but he realized he had chosen the most perilous plan to get rid of Greaves.
Jean drew a long, deep breath and held it. He let go of his rifle. He rose silently, as a lifting shadow. He drew the Bowie knife. Then, with light, swift bounds he glided up the bank. Greaves must have heard a rustling—a soft, quick pad of moccasin—for he turned with a start. At that instant Jean’s left arm darted like a striking snake around Greaves’s neck and closed, tight and hard. With his right hand free, holding the knife, Jean might have ended the deadly business in just one move, but when his bared arm felt the hot, bulging neck, something terrible burst out of the depths of him. To kill this enemy of his father’s was not enough! Physical contact had unleashed the savage soul of the Indian. Yet there was more, and, as Jean gave the straining body a tremendous jerk backwards, he felt the same strange thrill, the dark joy that he had known when his fist had smacked the face of Simm Bruce. Greaves had leered—he had corroborated Bruce’s vile insinuation about Ellen Jorth. So it was more than hate that actuated Jean Isbel.
Greaves was heavy and powerful. He wheeled himself feet first, over backwards, in a lunge like that of a lassoed steer. But Jean’s hold held. They rolled down the bank into the sandy ditch, and Jean landed uppermost, with his body at right angles with that of his adversary.
“Greaves, your hunch was right,” hissed Jean. “It’s the half-breed. An’ I’m goin’ to cut you … first for Ellen Jorth … an’ then for Gaston Isbel!”
Jean gazed down into the gleaming eyes. Then his right arm whipped the big blade. It flashed. It fell. Low down, as far as Jean could reach, it entered Greaves’s body.
All the heavy muscular frame of Greaves seemed to contract and burst. His spring was that of an animal in its terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke Jean’s hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling mildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift he got to his knees. He’d had his gun out when Jean reached him again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, or twist it far enough. Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the Bowie. Greaves’s strength went out in an awful, hoarse cry. His gun boomed again, then dropped from his hand. He swayed. Jean let go, and that enemy of the Isbels sank limply in the ditch. Jean’s eyes roved for his rifle, caught the starlit gleam of it. Snatching it up, he leaped over the embankment and ran straight for the cabins. From all around yells of the Jorth faction attested to their excitement and fury.
A fence loomed up gray in the obscurity. Jean vaulted it, darted across the lane into the shadow of the corrals, and soon gained the first cabin. Here he leaned to regain his breath. His heart pounded hard and seemed too large for his breast. The hot blood beat and surged all through his body. Sweat poured off him. His teeth were clenched as tight as a vise, but it took effort on his part to open his mouth so he could breathe more freely and deeply. But those physical sensations were as nothing compared to the tumult of his mind. Then the instinct, the spell, let go its grip, and he could think. He had avenged Guy, he had depleted the ranks of the Jorths, he had made good the brag of his father, all of which afforded him satisfaction. But these thoughts were not accountable for all that he felt, especially for the bittersweet sting of the fact that death to the defiler of Ellen Jorth could not efface the doubt, the regret that seemed to grow with the hours.
Groping his way into the woodshed, he entered the kitchen, and, calling here, he went on into the main cabin.
“Jean! Jean!” came his father’s shaking voice.
“Yes, I’m back,” replied Jean.
“Are … you … all right?”
“Yes. I think I’ve got a bullet crease on my leg. I didn’t know I had it till now. It’s bleedin’ a little. But it’s nothin’.”
Jean heard soft steps and someone reached shaking hands for him. They belonged to his sister Ann. She embraced him. Jean felt the heave and throb of her breast.
“Why, Ann, I’m not hurt,” he said, and held her closely. “Now you lie down and try to sleep.”
In the black starkness of the cabin Jean led her back to the corner, and his heart was full. Speech was difficult, because the very touch of Ann’s hands had made him divine that the success of his venture in no wise changed the plight of the women.
“Wal, what happened out there?” demanded Blaisdell.
“I got two of them,” replied Jean. “That fellow who was shootin’ from the ridge west. An’ the other was Greaves.”
“Hah!” exclaimed his father.
“Shore, then, it was Greaves yellin’,” declared Blaisdell. “By God, I never heard such yells! What’d you do, Jean?”
“I knifed him. You see, I’d planned to slip up on one after another. An’ I didn’t want to make noise. But I didn’t get any farther than Greaves.”
“Wal, I reckon that’ll end their shootin in the dark,” muttered Gaston Isbel. “We’ve got to be on the look-out for somethin’ else. Fire, most likely.”
The old rancher’s surmise proved to be partially correct. Jorth’s faction ceased the shooting. Nothing further was seen or heard from them. But this silence and apparent break in the siege were harder to bear than deliberate hostility. The long, dark hours dragged by. The men took turns watching and resting, but none of them slept. At last the blackness paled, and gray dawn stole out of the east. The sky turned rose over the distant range, and daylight came.
The children awoke hungry and noisy, having slept away their fears. The women took advantage of the quiet morning hour to get a hot breakfast.
“Maybe they’ve gone away,” suggested Guy Isbel’s wife, peering out of the window. She had done that several times since daybreak. Jean saw her somber gaze search the pasture until it rested upon the dark, prone shape of her dead husband, lying face down in the open. Her look worried Jean.
“No, Esther, they’ve not gone yet,” replied Jean. “I’ve seen some of them out there at the edge of the brush.”
Blaisdell was optimistic. He said Jean’s night work would have its effect and that the Jorth contingent would not renew the siege very determinedly. It turned out, however, that Blaisdell was wrong. Directly after sunrise they began to pour volleys from four sides and from closer range. During the night Jorth’s gang had thrown up earth banks and constructed log breastworks from behind which they were now firing. Jean and his comrades could see the flashes of fire and streaks of smoke to such good advantage that they began to return the volleys.
In half an hour the cabin was so full of smoke that Jean could not see the womenfolk in their corner. The fierce attack then abated somewhat, and the firing became more intermittent, and therefore more carefully aimed. A glancing bullet cut a furrow in Blaisdell’s hoary head, making a painful, although not serious, wound. It was Esther Isbel who stopped the flow of blood and bound Blaisdell’s head, a task that she performed skillfully and without a tremor. The old Texan could not sit still during this operation. Sight of the blood in his hand, which he tried to rub off, appeared to inflame him to a great degree.
“Wal, we’re goin’ to go out thar,” he kept repeating, “an’ kill them all.”
“No, we’re goin’ to stay heah,” replied Gaston Isbel. “Shore I’m lookin’ for Blue an’ Fredericks an’ Gordon to open up out there. They ought to be heah, an’, if they are, you shore can bet they’re got the fight sized up.”
Isbel’s hopes did not materialize. The shooting continued without any lull until about midday. Then the Jorth faction stopped.
“Wal, now what’s up?” queried Isbel. “Boys, hold your fire an’ let’s wait.”
Gradually the smoke wafted out of the windows and doors, until the room was once more clear. And at this juncture Esther Isbel came over to take another gaze out upon the meadow. Jean saw her suddenly start violently, then stiffen, with a trembling hand outstretched.
“Look!” she cried.
“Esther, get back,” ordered the old rancher. “Keep away from that window.”
“What the hell,” muttered Blaisdell. “She sees somethin’ or she’s gone dotty.”
Esther seemed turned to stone. “Look! The hogs have broken into the pasture! They’ll eat Guy’s body!”
Everyone was frozen with horror at Esther’s statement. Jean took a swift survey of the pasture. A bunch of black hogs had, indeed, appeared on the scene and were rooting around in the grass not far from where lay the bodies of Guy Isbel and Jacobs. This herd of hogs belonged to the rancher and was allowed to run wild.
