Tonto Basin, page 21
A pinpoint of light penetrated the blackness. It made Jean’s heart leap. The Jorth contingent was burning the big lamp that hung in the center of Greaves’s store. Jean listened. Loud voices and coarse laughter sounded discord in the melancholy silence of the night. What Blue had called his instinct had surely guided him aright. Death of Gaston Isbel was being celebrated by revel.
In a few moments Jean had regained his breath. Then all his faculties set intensely to the action at hand. He seemed to magnify his hearing and his sight. His movements made no sound. He gained the wagon, where he crouched a moment.
The ground seemed a pale obscure medium, hardly more real than the gloom above it. Through this gloom of night, which looked thick like a cloud but was really clear, shone the thin bright point of light, accentuating the black square that was Greaves’s store. Above this stood a gray line of tree foliage, and then the intensely dark blue sky studded with white, cold stars. A hound bayed lonesomely somewhere in the distance. Voices of men sounded more distinctly, some deep and low, others loud, unguarded, with the vacant note of thoughtlessness.
Jean gathered all his forces, until sense of sight and hearing were in exquisite accord with the suppleness and lightness of his movements. He glided on about ten short swift steps before he halted. That was as far as his piercing eyes could penetrate. If there had been a guard stationed outside the store, Jean would have seen him before being seen. He saw the fence—reached it—entered the yard—glided in the dense shadow of the barn until the black square began to loom gray—the color of stone at night. Jean peered through the obscurity. No dark figure of a man showed against that gray wall—only a black patch, which must be the hole in the foundation mentioned by Blue. A ray of light now streaked out from the little back window. To the right showed the wide back door.
Farther in, Jean glided silently. Then he halted. There was no guard outside. Jean heard the clink of a cup, the lazy drawl of a Texan, and then a strong harsh voice—Jorth’s. It strung Jean’s whole being, tight and vibrating. Inside he was on fire while cold thrills rippled over his skin. It took tremendous effort of will to hold himself back another instant to listen, to look, to feel, to make sure. That instinct charged him with a mighty current of hot blood, straining, throbbing, damming.
When Jean leaped, this current burst. In a few swift bounds he gained his point halfway between door and window. He leaned his rifle against the stone wall. Then he swung the axe. Crash! The window shutter split and rattled to the floor inside. The silence then broke with a hoarse: “What’s that?”
With all his might Jean swung the heavy axe at the door. Smash! The lower half caved in and banged to the floor. Bright light flared out the hole.
“Look out!” yelled a man in loud alarm. “They’re batterin’ the back door!”
Jean swung again, high on the splintered door. Crash! Pieces flew inside.
“They’ve got axes,” hoarsely shouted another voice. “Shove the counter ag’in’ the door.”
“No!” thundered a voice of authority that denoted terror as well. “Let them come in. Pull your guns an’ take to cover!”
“They ain’t comin’ in,” was the hoarse reply. “They’ll shoot in on us from the dark.”
“Put out the lamp!” yelled another.
Jean’s third heavy swing caved in part of the upper half of the door. Shouts and curses intermingled with the sliding of benches across the floor and the hard shuffle of boots. This confusion seemed to be split and silenced by a piercing yell, of different caliber, of terrible meaning. It stayed Jean’s swing—caused him to drop the axe and snatch up his rifle.
“Don’t anybody move!”
Like a steel whip this voice cut the silence. It belonged to Blue. Jean swiftly bent to put his eye to a crack in the hole of the door. Most of those visible seemed to have been frozen into unnatural positions. Jorth stood rather in front of his men, hatless and coatless, one arm outstretched, and his dark profile was set toward the little man just inside the door. This man was Blue. Jean needed only one flashing look at Blue’s face, at his leveled, quivering guns, to understand why he had chosen this trick.
“Who’re … you?” demanded Jorth in husky pants.
“Reckon I’m Isbel’s right-hand man,” came the biting reply. “Once tolerable well-known in Texas … King Fisher!”
The name must have been a guarantee of death. Jorth recognized this outlaw and realized his own fate. In the lamplight his face turned a pale, greenish white. His outstretched hand began to quiver down.
Blue’s left gun seemed to leap up and flash red and explode. Several heavy reports merged almost as one. Jorth’s arm jerked limply, flinging his gun, and his body sagged in the middle. His hands fluttered like crippled wings and found their way to his abdomen. His death-pale face never changed its set look or position toward Blue, but his gasping utterance was one of horrible mortal fury and terror. Then he began to sway, still with that strange rigid set of his face toward his slayer until he fell.
His fall broke the spell. Even Blue, like the gunman he was, had paused to watch Jorth in his last mortal action. Jorth’s followers began to draw and shoot. Jean saw Blue’s return fire bring down a huge man who fell across Jorth’s body. Then Jean, quick as the thought that actuated him, raised his rifle and shot at the big lamp. It burst in a flare. It crashed to the floor. Darkness followed—a black thick, enveloping mantle. Then red flashing of guns emphasized the blackness. Inside the store, there broke loose a pandemonium of shots, yells, curses, and thudding boots. Jean shoved his rifle barrel inside the door, and, holding it low down, he moved it to and fro while he worked lever and trigger until the magazine was empty. Then, drawing his six-shooter, he emptied that. A roar of rifles from the front of the store told Jean that his comrades had entered the fray. Bullets zipped through the door he had broken. Jean ran swiftly around the corner, taking care to sheer off a little to the left, and, when he got clear of the building, he saw a line of flashes in the middle of the road. Blaisdell and the others were firing into the door of the store. With nimble fingers Jean reloaded his rifle. Then swiftly he ran across the road, and down to get behind his comrades. Their shouting had slackened. Jean saw dark forms coming his way.
“Hello, Blaisdell!” he called warningly.
“That you, Jean?” returned the rancher, looming up. “Wal, we wasn’t worried aboot you.”
“Blue?” queried Jean sharply.
A little dark figure shuffled up to Jean. “Howdy, Jean,” said Blue dryly. “You shore did your part. Reckon I’ll need to be tied up, but I ain’t hurt much.”
“Colmor’s hit!” called the voice of Gordon, a few yards distant. “Help me, somebody.”
Jean ràn to help Gordon hold up the swaying Colmor. “Are you hurt … bad?” asked Jean anxiously. The young man’s head rolled and hung. He was breathing hard and did not reply. They had almost to carry him.
“Come on, men!” called Blaisdell, turning back toward the others who were still firing. “We’ll let well enough alone. Fredericks, you an’ Bill help me find the body of the old man. It’s heah somewhere.”
Farther on down the road the searchers stumbled over Gaston Isbel. They picked him up and followed Jean and Gordon, who were supporting the wounded Colmor. Jean looked back to see Blue dragging himself along in the rear. It was too dark to see distincdy, nevertheless Jean got the impression that Blue was more severely wounded than he had claimed to be. The distance to Meeker’s cabin was not far, but it took what Jean felt to be a long and anxious time to get there. Colmor apparently rallied somewhat. When this procession entered Meeker’s yard, Blue was lagging behind.
“Blue, how air you?” called Blaisdell with concern.
“Wal, I got … my boots … on … anyhow,” replied Blue huskily.
He lurched into the yard and slid down on the grass and stretched out.
“Man! You’re hurt bad!” exclaimed Blaisdell. The others halted in their slow march, and, as if by tacit unspoken word, lowered the body of Isbel to the ground. Then Blaisdell knelt beside Blue. Jean left Colmor to Gordon and hurried to peer down into Blue’s thin face.
“No, I ain’t hurt,” said Blue in a much weaker voice. “I’m jest killed! It was Queen! You all heered me. Queen was … only badman in thet lot. I knowed it. I could … hev’ killed him … but I was … after Lee Jorth … an’ his brothers.…”
Blue’s voice failed there.
“Wal,” ejaculated Blaisdell.
“Shore was funny … Jorth’s face … when I said … King Fisher,” whispered Blue. “Funnier … when I bored … him through.… But it … was … Queen.…”
His whisper died away.
“Blue!” called Blaisdell sharply. Receiving no answer, he bent down in the starlight and placed a hand upon the man’s breast.
“Wal, he’s gone … I wonder if he was the old Texas King Fisher. No one would ever believe it. But if he killed the Jorths, I’ll shore believe him.”
Chapter Ten
Two weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked incalculable change in Ellen Jorth.
Late in June her father and her two uncles had packed and ridden off with Daggs, Colter, and six other men, all heavily armed, some somber with drink, others hard and grim with a foretaste of fight. Ellen had not been given any orders. Her father had forgotten to bid her good bye or had avoided it. Their dark mission was stamped on their faces.
They had gone, and keen as had been Ellen’s pang, nevertheless their departure was a relief. She had heard their bluster and brag so often that she had her doubts of any great Jorth-Isbel war. Barking dogs did not bite. Somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly wounded, possibly killed, and then the feud would go on as before, mostly talk. Many of her former impressions had faded. Development had been so rapid and continuous in her that she could look back to a day-by-day transformation. At night she would hate the sight of herself, but, when the dawn came, she would rise singing.
Jorth had left Ellen at home with the Mexican woman and Antonio. Ellen saw them only at meal times, and often not then, for she frequently visited old John Sprague or came home late to do her own cooking. It was but a short distance up to Sprague’s cabin, and, since she had stopped riding the black horse Spades, she walked. Spades was accustomed to having grain and in the mornings he would come down to the ranch and whistle. Ellen had vowed she would never feed the horse and bade Antonio do it. But one morning Antonio was absent. She fed Spades herself. When she laid a hand on him and when he rubbed his nose against her shoulder, she was not quite so sure she hated him. “Why should I?” she queried. “A horse cain’t help it if he belongs to … to.…” Ellen was not sure of anything except that more and more it felt good to be alone.
A whole day in the lonely forest passed swiftly, yet it left a feeling of being a long time. She lived by her thoughts. Always the morning was bright, sunny, sweet and fragrant and colorful, and her mood was pensive, wistful, dreamy. Always, just as much as the hours passed, thought intruded upon her happiness, and thought brought memory, and memory brought shame, and shame brought fight. Sunset after sunset she had dragged herself back to the ranch, sullen and sick and beaten. Yet she never ceased to struggle.
The July storms came, and the forest floor that had been so sere and brown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic. The green grass shot up, the flowers bloomed, and, along the cañon, beds of lacy ferns swayed in the wind and bent their graceful tips near the amber-colored water. Ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravines where the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink. She wandered alone. But there grew to be company in the rugged, fallen trees and the wind in the aspens and the music of the little waterfalls. If she could have lived in that solitude always, never returning to the ranch home that reminded her of her name, she could have forgotten and have been happy.
She loved the storms. It was a dry country and she had learned through years to welcome the creamy clouds that rolled from the southwest. They came sailing and clustering and darkening, at last to form a great, purple, angry mass that appeared to lodge against the mountain’s rim and burst into dazzling sheets of lightning and gray falls of rain. Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Tonto Rim there was never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines. During the storm season sheepherders and woodsmen generally did not camp under the pines. Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but for Ellen the dazzling white streaks, or the tremendous splitting, crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along the battlements of the rim held no terrors. A storm eased her breast. Deep in her heart was a hidden, gathering, imponderable storm and somehow, to be out when the elements were warring, when the earth trembled and the heavens seemed to burst asunder, afforded her strange relief.
The summer days became weeks, and further and further they carried Ellen on the wings of solitude and loneliness until she seemed to look back years at the self she had hated. And always, when the dark memory impinged upon peace, she fought and fought until she seemed to be fighting hatred itself. Scorn of scorn and hate of hate! Yet even her battles grew to be dreams. For when the inevitable retrospect brought back Jean Isbel and his love, and her cowardly falsehood, she would shudder a little, put an unconscious hand to her breast, and utterly fail in her fight, and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. The clear and healing forest with its whispering wind and imperious solitude had come between Ellen and the meaning of the squalid sheep ranch, with its travesty of home, its tragic owner. It was coming between her two selves, the one that she had been proud to be, and the other that she did not know—the thinker, the dreamer, the romancer, the one who lived in fancy the life she loved.
The summer morning dawned that brought Ellen strange tidings. They must have been created in her sleep and now were realized in the glorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across the blue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screech of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. These heralded the day as no ordinary day. Something was going to happen to her. She divined it. She felt it. And she trembled. Nothing beautiful, hopeful, wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had been born to disaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone. Yet all nature about her seemed a magnificent rebuke to her morbidity. The same spirit that came out there with the thick amber light was in her. She lived, and something in her was stronger than wind.
Ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms, driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning. A well-known voice broke in upon her rapture.
“Wal, lass, I like to see you happy an’ I hate myself fer comin’. Because I’ve been to Grass Valley fer two days an’ I’ve got news.”
Old John Sprague stood there, with a smile that did not hide a troubled look.
“Oh! John! You startled me!” exclaimed Ellen, shocked back to reality. Slowly she added: “Grass Valley. News?”
She put out an appealing hand, which Sprague quickly took in his own, as if to reassure her.
“Yes, an’ not bad so far as you Jorths are concerned,” he replied. “The first Jorth-Isbel fight has come off. Reckon you remember makin’ me promise to tell you if I heered anythin’? Wal, I didn’t wait fer you to come up.”
“So,” Ellen heard her voice calmly saying. What was this lying calmly when there seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart? The first fight—not so bad for the Jorths! Then it had been bad for the Isbels. A sudden cold stillness fell upon her senses.
“Let’s sit down outdoors,” Sprague was saying. “Nice an’ sunny this mornin’. I declare … I’m out of breath. Not used to walkin’. An’ besides I left Grass Valley in the night … an’ I’m tired. But excuse me from hangin’ ’round thet village last night. There was shore.…”
“Who … who was killed?” interrupted Ellen, her voice breaking, low and deep.
“Guy Isbel an’ Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, an’ Daggs, Craig, an’ Greaves, on your father’s side,” stated Sprague with something of awed haste.
“Ah,” breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabin wall.
Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, and he seemed burdened with grave and important matters.
“I heered a good many conflictin’ stories,” he said earnestly. “The village folk is all skeered an’ there’s no believin’ their gossip. But I got what happened straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off day before yestiddy. Your father’s gang rode down to Isbel’s ranch. Daggs was seen to be wantin’ some of the Isbel hosses … so Evarts says. An’ Guy Isbel an’ Jacobs run out in the pasture. Daggs an’ some others shot them down.…”
“Killed them … that way?” put in Ellen sharply.
“So Evarts says. He was on the ridge an’ swears he seen it all. They killed Guy an’ Jacobs in cold blood. No chance fer their lives … not even to fight! Wal, then they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The fight lasted all that day an’ all night an’ the next day. Evarts says Guy an’ Jacobs laid out thar all this time. An’ a herd of hogs broke in the pasture an’ was eatin’ the dead bodies.…”
“My God!” burst out Ellen. “Uncle John, you shore cain’t mean my father wouldn’t stop fightin’ long enough to drive the hogs off an’ bury those daid men?”
“Evarts says they stopped fightin’, all right, but it was to watch the hogs,” declared Sprague. “An’ then, what d’ya think? The wimminfolks come out … the red-headed one, Guy’s wife … an’ Jacobs’s wife … they drove the hogs away an’ buried their husbands right there in the pasture. Evarts says he seen the graves.”
