Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 540
She pitied him with all her heart. She was all he had, as he was all the world to her. And so, as she gave ear to his long, illogical rigmarole of argument and defense, she slowly found that her pity and her love were making vital decisions for her. As of old, in poignant moments, her father lapsed at last into a denunciation of the Isbels and what they had brought him to. His sufferings were real, at least, in Ellen’s presence. She was the only link that bound him to long-past happier times. She was her mother over again — the woman who had betrayed another man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death.
“Dad, don’t go on so,” said Ellen, breaking in upon her father’s rant. “I will be true to y’u — as my mother was.... I am a Jorth. Your place is my place — your fight is my fight.... Never speak of the past to me again. If God spares us through this feud we will go away and begin all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a Jorth.... If we’re not spared we’ll at least have had our whack at these damned Isbels.”
CHAPTER VII
DURING JUNE JEAN Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley.
Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel’s life. Another cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket bordering the trail that led to Blaisdell’s ranch. Blaisdell heard this shot, so near his home was it fired. No trace of the hidden foe could be found. The ‘ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of pine needles which showed no trace of footprints. The supposition was that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the Jorths. But there was no proof. And Gaston Isbel had other enemies in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan. The old man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. And his friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends. “Let’s quit ranchin’ till this trouble’s settled,” he declared. “Let’s arm an’ ride the trails an’ meet these men half-way.... It won’t help our side any to wait till you’re shot in the back.” More than one of Isbel’s supporters offered the same advice.
“No; we’ll wait till we know for shore,” was the stubborn cattleman’s reply to all these promptings.
“Know! Wal, hell! Didn’t Jean find the black hoss up at Jorth’s ranch?” demanded Blaisdell. “What more do we want?”
“Jean couldn’t swear Jorth stole the black.”
“Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!” growled Blaisdell. “An’ we’re losin’ cattle all the time. Who’s stealin’ ‘em?”
“We’ve always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin’ heah.”
“Gas, I reckon yu want Jorth to start this fight in the open.”
“It’ll start soon enough,” was Isbel’s gloomy reply.
Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen cattle. Circumstances had been against him, and there was something baffling about this rustling. The summer storms set in early, and it had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he might have followed. The range was large and cattle were everywhere. Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. Gaston Isbel’s sons were now the only men left to ride the range. Two of his riders had quit because of the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go. So that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their tracks were old. Added to that was the fact that this Grass Valley country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks. The rustlers, whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was reason for them to show their cunning they did it.
Early in July the hot weather came. Down on the red ridges of the Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was something to endure. When the white cumulus clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thundercloud, Jean welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats, the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the hot summer sun. Jean longed for the cool heights of the Rim, the shady pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and murmur of the clear rills. He often had another longing, too, which he bitterly stifled.
Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd clog, had disappeared one day, and had never returned. Among men at the ranch there was a difference of opinion as to what had happened to Shepp. The old rancher thought he had been poisoned or shot; Bill and Guy Isbel believed he had been stolen by sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and Jean inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.
One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out in the valley; and upon hurrying to a vantage point he was amazed to see upward of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf. Jean’s father had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean. The wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and powerful, and until he got the steers all behind him he was rather hard put to it to keep out of their way. Probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. Jean kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within range of a rifle. But the wary wolf saw Jean and sheered off, gradually drawing away from his pursuers.
Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across the valley. His father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet been driven up on the Rim, where all the sheep in the country were run during the hot, dry summer down on the Tonto. Young Evarts and a Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock. The regular Mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job; and these boys were not equal to the task of risking the sheep up in the enemies’ stronghold.
This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from Grass Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and there was good water and a little feed. Before Jean reached his destination he heard a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact caused Jean a little concern. Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but, to his knowledge, no small arms. Jean rode up on one of the black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Grass Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country. At first he made out only cattle, and bare meadowland, and the low encircling ridges and hills. But presently up toward the head of the valley he descried a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village. He could not tell their number. That dark moving mass seemed to Jean to be instinct with life, mystery, menace. Who were they? It was too far for him to recognize horses, let alone riders. They were moving fast, too.
Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again, and rode on his quest. A number of horsemen like that was a very unusual sight around Grass Valley at any time. What then did it portend now? Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was a new sensation for him. Brooding over this he proceeded on his way, at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders was located. Upon coming in sight of it he heard a hoarse shout. Young Evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush. Jean urged his horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. Evarts appeared beside himself with terror.
“Boy! what’s the matter?” queried Jean, as he dismounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white face to the camp, and all around.
“Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing his hands and pointing.
Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp. He saw the little teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal — and then the Mexican lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly face. Near him lay an old six-shooter.
“Whose gun is that?” demanded Jean, as he picked it up.
“Ber-nardino’s,” replied Evarts, huskily. “He — he jest got it — the other day.”
“Did he shoot himself accidentally?”
“Oh no! No! He didn’t do it — atall.”
“Who did, then?”
“The men — they rode up — a gang-they did it,” panted Evarts.
“Did you know who they were?”
“No. I couldn’t tell. I saw them comin’ an’ I was skeered. Bernardino had gone fer water. I run an’ hid in the brush. I wanted to yell, but they come too close.... Then I heerd them talkin’. Bernardino come back. They ‘peared friendly-like. Thet made me raise up, to look. An’ I couldn’t see good. I heerd one of them ask Bernardino to let him see his gun. An’ Bernardino handed it over. He looked at the gun an’ haw-hawed, an’ flipped it up in the air, an’ when it fell back in his hand it — it went off bang! ... An’ Bernardino dropped.... I hid down close. I was skeered stiff. I heerd them talk more, but not what they said. Then they rode away.... An’ I hid there till I seen y’u comin’.”
“Have you got a horse?” queried Jean, sharply.
“No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”
“Get one. Hurry over to Blaisdell. Tell him to send word to Blue and Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to my father’s ranch. Hurry now!”
Young Evarts ran off without reply. Jean stood looking down at the limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy. “By Heaven!” he exclaimed, grimly “the Jorth-Isbel war is on! ... Deliberate, cold-blooded murder! I’ll gamble Daggs did this job. He’s been given the leadership. He’s started it.... Bernardino, greaser or not, you were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.”
Jean had no time to spare. Tearing a tarpaulin out of the teepee he covered the lad with it and then ran for, his horse. Mounting, he galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the valley, where he put his horse to a run.
Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had engendered. Jean even felt a strange, grim relief. The long, dragging days of waiting were over. Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative. Blood had begun to flow. And it would continue to flow now till the last man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last man of the other. Would it be a Jorth or an Isbel? “My instinct was right,” he muttered, aloud. “That bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin’.” Jean gazed all around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the dark group of riders. They had gone on to Greaves’s store, there, no doubt, to drink and to add more enemies of the Isbels to their gang. Suddenly across Jean’s mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth. “What ‘ll become of her? ... What ‘ll become of all the women? My sister? ... The little ones?”
No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens, the solid, well-built cabins — all these seemed to repudiate Jean’s haste and his darkness of mind. This place was, his father’s farm. There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky.
As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then Bill and Guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. Jean saw how he’ waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the lane. Bill and Guy reached his side as Jean pulled his heaving horse to a halt. They all looked at Jean, swiftly and intently, with a little, hard, fiery gleam strangely identical in the eyes of each. Probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect.
“Wal, you shore was in a hurry,” remarked the father.
“What the hell’s up?” queried Bill, grimly.
Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean leaped off his horse.
“Bernardino has just been killed — murdered with his own gun.”
Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let his chest sag. A terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.
“A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.
Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. They were silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their own minds. Then they listened with absorption to Jean’s brief story.
“Wal, that lets us in,” said his father. “I wish we had more time. Reckon I’d done better to listen to you boys an’ have my men close at hand. Jacobs happened to ride over. That makes five of us besides the women.”
“Aw, dad, you don’t reckon they’ll round us up heah?” asked Guy Isbel.
“Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old man. “But I never really believed they’d have the nerve. Shore I ought to have figgered Daggs better. This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush looked aboot Jorth’s size to me. But I reckon now we’ll have to fight without our friends.”
“Let them come,” said Jean. “I sent for Blaisdell, Blue, Gordon, and Fredericks. Maybe they’ll get here in time. But if they don’t it needn’t worry us much. We can hold out here longer than Jorth’s gang can hang around. We’ll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house.”
“Wal, I’ll see to that,” rejoined his father. “Jean, you go out close by, where you can see all around, an’ keep watch.”
“Who’s goin’ to tell the women?” asked Guy Isbel.
The silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent testimony to the hardest and saddest aspect of this strife between men. The inevitableness of it in no wise detracted from its sheer uselessness. Men from time immemorial had hated, and killed one another, always to the misery and degradation of their women. Old Gaston Isbel showed this tragic realization in his lined face.
“Wal, boys, I’ll tell the women,” he said. “Shore you needn’t worry none aboot them. They’ll be game.”
Jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from the house, and here he stationed himself to watch all points. The cedared ridge back of the ranch was the one approach by which Jorth’s gang might come close without being detected, but even so, Jean could see them and ride to the house in time to prevent a surprise. The moments dragged by, and at the end of an hour Jean was in hopes that Blaisdell would soon come. These hopes were well founded. Presently he heard a clatter of hoofs on hard ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw the friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse. Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight of him gave Jean a glow of warmth. He was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels to the last man. Jean watched him ride to the house — watched the meeting between him and his lifelong friend. There floated out to Jean old Blaisdell’s roar of rage.
Then out on the green of Grass Valley, where a long, swelling plain swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. A bunch of horses! Jean’s body gave a slight start — the shock of sudden propulsion of blood through all his veins. Those horses bore riders. They were coming straight down the open valley, on the wagon road to Isbel’s ranch. No subterfuge nor secrecy nor sneaking in that advance! A hot thrill ran over Jean.
“By Heaven! They mean business!” he muttered. Up to the last moment he had unconsciously hoped Jorth’s gang would not come boldly like that. The verifications of all a Texan’s inherited instincts left no doubts, no hopes, no illusions — only a grim certainty that this was not conjecture nor probability, but fact. For a moment longer Jean watched the slowly moving dark patch of horsemen against the green background, then he hurried back to the ranch. His father saw him coming — strode out as before.
“Dad — Jorth is comin’,” said Jean, huskily. How he hated to be forced to tell his father that! The boyish love of old had flashed up.
“Whar?” demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweeping the horizon.
“Down the road from Grass Valley. You can’t see from here.”
“Wal, come in an’ let’s get ready.”
Isbel’s house had not been constructed with the idea of repelling an attack from a band of Apaches. The long living room of the main cabin was the one selected for defense and protection. This room had two windows and a door facing the lane, and a door at each end, one of which opened into the kitchen and the other into an adjoining and later-built cabin. The logs of this main cabin were of large size, and the doors and window coverings were heavy, affording safer protection from bullets than the other cabins.
When Jean went in he seemed to see a host of white faces lifted to him. His sister Ann, his two sisters-in-law, the children, all mutely watched him with eyes that would haunt him.
“Wal, Blaisdell, Jean says Jorth an’ his precious gang of rustlers are on the way heah,” announced the rancher.
“Damn me if it’s not a bad day fer Lee Jorth!” declared Blaisdell.
“Clear off that table,” ordered Isbel, “an’ fetch out all the guns an’ shells we got.”
Once laid upon the table these presented a formidable arsenal, which consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters that Jean had brought with him from the coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called “needle” gun, that Gaston Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle which Blaisdell had brought, and half a dozen six-shooters. Piles and packages of ammunition littered the table.
“Sort out these heah shells,” said Isbel. “Everybody wants to get hold of his own.”
Jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set, bearded man, rather jovial among those lean-jawed Texans. He carried a .44 rifle of an old pattern. “Wal, boys, if I’d knowed we was in fer some fun I’d hev fetched more shells. Only got one magazine full. Mebbe them new .44’s will fit my gun.”
It was discovered that the ammunition Jean had brought in quantity fitted Jacob’s rifle, a fact which afforded peculiar satisfaction to all the men present.
“Wal, shore we’re lucky,” declared Gaston Isbel.
