Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 548
It was a solemn, beautiful moment. But the last spoken words lingered hauntingly. “Too late?” she whispered.
And suddenly it seemed that death itself shuddered in her soul. Too late! It was too late. She had killed his love. That Jorth blood in her — that poisonous hate — had chosen the only way to strike this noble Isbel to the heart. Basely, with an abandonment of womanhood, she had mockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie. She writhed, she shook under the whip of this inconceivable fact. Lost! Lost! She wailed her misery. She might as well be what she had made Jean Isbel think she was. If she had been shamed before, she was now abased, degraded, lost in her own sight. And if she would have given her soul for his kisses, she now would have killed herself to earn back his respect. Jean Isbel had given her at sight the deference that she had unconsciously craved, and the love that would have been her salvation. What a horrible mistake she had made of her life! Not her mother’s blood, but her father’s — the Jorth blood — had been her ruin.
Again Ellen fell upon the soft pine-needle mat, face down, and she groveled and burrowed there, in an agony that could not bear the sense of light. All she had suffered was as nothing to this. To have awakened to a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she had imagined she hated, who had fought for her name and had killed in revenge for the dishonor she had avowed — to have lost his love and what was infinitely more precious to her now in her ignominy — his faith in her purity — this broke her heart.
CHAPTER XI
WHEN ELLEN, UTTERLY spent in body and mind, reached home that day a melancholy, sultry twilight was falling. Fitful flares of sheet lightning swept across the dark horizon to the east. The cabins were deserted. Antonio and the Mexican woman were gone. The circumstances made Ellen wonder, but she was too tired and too sunken in spirit to think long about it or to care. She fed and watered her horse and left him in the corral. Then, supperless and without removing her clothes, she threw herself upon the bed, and at once sank into heavy slumber.
Sometime during the night she awoke. Coyotes were yelping, and from that sound she concluded it was near dawn. Her body ached; her mind seemed dull. Drowsily she was sinking into slumber again when she heard the rapid clip-clop of trotting horses. Startled, she raised her head to listen. The men were coming back. Relief and dread seemed to clear her stupor.
The trotting horses stopped across the lane from her cabin, evidently at the corral where she had left Spades. She heard him whistle.
From the sound of hoofs she judged the number of horses to be six or eight. Low voices of men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps and flopping of saddles on the ground. After that the heavy tread of boots sounded on the porch of the cabin opposite. A door creaked on its hinges. Next a slow footstep, accompanied by clinking of spurs, approached Ellen’s door, and a heavy hand banged upon it. She knew this person could not be her father.
“Hullo, Ellen!”
She recognized the voice as belonging to Colter. Somehow its tone, or something about it, sent a little shiver clown her spine. It acted like a revivifying current. Ellen lost her dragging lethargy.
“Hey, Ellen, are y’u there?” added Colter, louder voice.
“Yes. Of course I’m heah,” she replied. “What do y’u want?”
“Wal — I’m shore glad y’u’re home,” he replied. “Antonio’s gone with his squaw. An’ I was some worried aboot y’u.”
“Who’s with y’u, Colter?” queried Ellen, sitting up.
“Rock Wells an’ Springer. Tad Jorth was with us, but we had to leave him over heah in a cabin.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Wal, he’s hurt tolerable bad,” was the slow reply.
Ellen heard Colter’s spurs jangle, as if he had uneasily shifted his feet.
“Where’s dad an’ Uncle Jackson?” asked Ellen.
A silence pregnant enough to augment Ellen’s dread finally broke to Colter’s voice, somehow different. “Shore they’re back on the trail. An’ we’re to meet them where we left Tad.”
“Are yu goin’ away again?”
“I reckon.... An’, Ellen, y’u’re goin’ with us.”
“I am not,” she retorted.
“Wal, y’u are, if I have to pack y’u,” he replied, forcibly. “It’s not safe heah any more. That damned half-breed Isbel with his gang are on our trail.”
That name seemed like a red-hot blade at Ellen’s leaden heart. She wanted to fling a hundred queries on Colter, but she could not utter one.
“Ellen, we’ve got to hit the trail an’ hide,” continued Colter, anxiously. “Y’u mustn’t stay heah alone. Suppose them Isbels would trap y’u! ... They’d tear your clothes off an’ rope y’u to a tree. Ellen, shore y’u’re goin’.... Y’u heah me!”
“Yes — I’ll go,” she replied, as if forced.
“Wal — that’s good,” he said, quickly. “An’ rustle tolerable lively. We’ve got to pack.”
The slow jangle of Colter’s spurs and his slow steps moved away out of Ellen’s hearing. Throwing off the blankets, she put her feet to the floor and sat there a moment staring at the blank nothingness of the cabin interior in the obscure gray of dawn. Cold, gray, dreary, obscure — like her life, her future! And she was compelled to do what was hateful to her. As a Jorth she must take to the unfrequented trails and hide like a rabbit in the thickets. But the interest of the moment, a premonition of events to be, quickened her into action.
Ellen unbarred the door to let in the light. Day was breaking with an intense, clear, steely light in the east through which the morning star still shone white. A ruddy flare betokened the advent of the sun. Ellen unbraided her tangled hair and brushed and combed it. A queer, still pang came to her at sight of pine needles tangled in her brown locks. Then she washed her hands and face. Breakfast was a matter of considerable work and she was hungry.
The sun rose and changed the gray world of forest. For the first time in her life Ellen hated the golden brightness, the wonderful blue of sky, the scream of the eagle and the screech of the jay; and the squirrels she had always loved to feed were neglected that morning.
Colter came in. Either Ellen had never before looked attentively at him or else he had changed. Her scrutiny of his lean, hard features accorded him more Texan attributes than formerly. His gray eyes were as light, as clear, as fierce as those of an eagle. And the sand gray of his face, the long, drooping, fair mustache hid the secrets of his mind, but not its strength. The instant Ellen met his gaze she sensed a power in him that she instinctively opposed. Colter had not been so bold nor so rude as Daggs, but he was the same kind of man, perhaps the more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool, waiting inscrutableness.
“‘Mawnin’, Ellen!” he drawled. “Y’u shore look good for sore eyes.”
“Don’t pay me compliments, Colter,” replied Ellen. “An’ your eyes are not sore.”
“Wal, I’m shore sore from fightin’ an’ ridin’ an’ layin’ out,” he said, bluntly.
“Tell me — what’s happened,” returned Ellen.
“Girl, it’s a tolerable long story,” replied Colter. “An’ we’ve no time now. Wait till we get to camp.”
“Am I to pack my belongin’s or leave them heah?” asked Ellen.
“Reckon y’u’d better leave — them heah.”
“But if we did not come back—”
“Wal, I reckon it’s not likely we’ll come — soon,” he said, rather evasively.
“Colter, I’ll not go off into the woods with just the clothes I have on my back.”
“Ellen, we shore got to pack all the grab we can. This shore ain’t goin’ to be a visit to neighbors. We’re shy pack hosses. But y’u make up a bundle of belongin’s y’u care for, an’ the things y’u’ll need bad. We’ll throw it on somewhere.”
Colter stalked away across the lane, and Ellen found herself dubiously staring at his tall figure. Was it the situation that struck her with a foreboding perplexity or was her intuition steeling her against this man? Ellen could not decide. But she had to go with him. Her prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment. And she could not yet feel that she was solely responsible to herself.
When it came to making a small bundle of her belongings she was in a quandary. She discarded this and put in that, and then reversed the order. Next in preciousness to her mother’s things were the long-hidden gifts of Jean Isbel. She could part with neither.
While she was selecting and packing this bundle Colter again entered and, without speaking, began to rummage in the corner where her father kept his possessions. This irritated Ellen.
“What do y’u want there?” she demanded.
“Wal, I reckon your dad wants his papers — an’ the gold he left heah — an’ a change of clothes. Now doesn’t he?” returned Colter, coolly.
“Of course. But I supposed y’u would have me pack them.”
Colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately went on rummaging, with little regard for how he scattered things. Ellen turned her back on him. At length, when he left, she went to her father’s corner and found that, as far as she was able to see, Colter had taken neither papers nor clothes, but only the gold. Perhaps, however, she had been mistaken, for she had not observed Colter’s departure closely enough to know whether or not he carried a package. She missed only the gold. Her father’s papers, old and musty, were scattered about, and these she gathered up to slip in her own bundle.
Colter, or one of the men, had saddled Spades, and he was now tied to the corral fence, champing his bit and pounding the sand. Ellen wrapped bread and meat inside her coat, and after tying this behind her saddle she was ready to go. But evidently she would have to wait, and, preferring to remain outdoors, she stayed by her horse. Presently, while watching the men pack, she noticed that Springer wore a bandage round his head under the brim of his sombrero. His motions were slow and lacked energy. Shuddering at the sight, Ellen refused to conjecture. All too soon she would learn what had happened, and all too soon, perhaps, she herself would be in the midst of another fight. She watched the men. They were making a hurried slipshod job of packing food supplies from both cabins. More than once she caught Colter’s gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it.
“I’ll ride up an’ say good-by to Sprague,” she called to Colter.
“Shore y’u won’t do nothin’ of the kind,” he called back.
There was authority in his tone that angered Ellen, and something else which inhibited her anger. What was there about Colter with which she must reckon? The other two Texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly silenced by Colter’s harsh and lowered curses. Ellen walked out of hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained until Colter hailed her.
“Get up an’ ride,” he called.
Ellen complied with this order and, riding up behind the three mounted men, she soon found herself leaving what for years had been her home. Not once did she look back. She hoped she would never see the squalid, bare pretension of a ranch again.
Colter and the other riders drove the pack horses across the meadow, off of the trails, and up the slope into the forest. Not very long did it take Ellen to see that Colter’s object was to hide their tracks. He zigzagged through the forest, avoiding the bare spots of dust, the dry, sun-baked flats of clay where water lay in spring, and he chose the grassy, open glades, the long, pine-needle matted aisles. Ellen rode at their heels and it pleased her to watch for their tracks. Colter manifestly had been long practiced in this game of hiding his trail, and he showed the skill of a rustler. But Ellen was not convinced that he could ever elude a real woodsman. Not improbably, however, Colter was only aiming to leave a trail difficult to follow and which would allow him and his confederates ample time to forge ahead of pursuers. Ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit. Yet Colter must have expected it, and Springer and Wells also, for they had a dark, sinister, furtive demeanor that strangely contrasted with the cool, easy manner habitual to them.
They were not seeking the level routes of the forest land, that was sure. They rode straight across the thick-timbered ridge down into another canyon, up out of that, and across rough, rocky bluffs, and down again. These riders headed a little to the northwest and every mile brought them into wilder, more rugged country, until Ellen, losing count of canyons and ridges, had no idea where she was. No stop was made at noon to rest the laboring, sweating pack animals.
Under circumstances where pleasure might have been possible Ellen would have reveled in this hard ride into a wonderful forest ever thickening and darkening. But the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and the deep, bronze-walled canyons left her cold. She saw and felt, but had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when Spades slid to his haunches down some steep, damp, piny declivity.
All the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer greener as they traveled farther west. Grass grew thick and heavy. Water ran in all ravines. The rocks were bronze and copper and russet, and some had green patches of lichen.
Ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that the day was waning and that Colter was swinging farther to the northwest. She had never before ridden through such heavy forest and down and up such wild canyons. Toward sunset the deepest and ruggedest canyon halted their advance. Colter rode to the right, searching for a place to get down through a spruce thicket that stood on end. Presently he dismounted and the others followed suit. Ellen found she could not lead Spades because he slid down upon her heels, so she looped the end of her reins over the pommel and left him free. She herself managed to descend by holding to branches and sliding all the way down that slope. She heard the horses cracking the brush, snorting and heaving. One pack slipped and had to be removed from the horse, and rolled down. At the bottom of this deep, green-walled notch roared a stream of water. Shadowed, cool, mossy, damp, this narrow gulch seemed the wildest place Ellen had ever seen. She could just see the sunset-flushed, gold-tipped spruces far above her. The men repacked the horse that had slipped his burden, and once more resumed their progress ahead, now turning up this canyon. There was no horse trail, but deer and bear trails were numerous. The sun sank and the sky darkened, but still the men rode on; and the farther they traveled the wilder grew the aspect of the canyon.
At length Colter broke a way through a heavy thicket of willows and entered a side canyon, the mouth of which Ellen had not even descried. It turned and widened, and at length opened out into a round pocket, apparently inclosed, and as lonely and isolated a place as even pursued rustlers could desire. Hidden by jutting wall and thicket of spruce were two old log cabins joined together by roof and attic floor, the same as the double cabin at the Jorth ranch.
Ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going round the cabins, saw a bright fire. One man stood beside it gazing at Colter’s party, which evidently he had heard approaching.
“Hullo, Queen!” said Colter. “How’s Tad?”
“He’s holdin’ on fine,” replied Queen, bending over the fire, where he turned pieces of meat.
“Where’s father?” suddenly asked Ellen, addressing Colter.
As if he had not heard her, he went on wearily loosening a pack.
Queen looked at her. The light of the fire only partially shone on his face. Ellen could not see its expression. But from the fact that Queen did not answer her question she got further intimation of an impending catastrophe. The long, wild ride had helped prepare her for the secrecy and taciturnity of men who had resorted to flight. Perhaps her father had been delayed or was still off on the deadly mission that had obsessed him; or there might, and probably was, darker reason for his absence. Ellen shut her teeth and turned to the needs of her horse. And presently, returning to the fire, she thought of her uncle.
“Queen, is my uncle Tad heah?” she asked.
“Shore. He’s in there,” replied Queen, pointing at the nearer cabin.
Ellen hurried toward the dark doorway. She could see how the logs of the cabin had moved awry and what a big, dilapidated hovel it was. As she looked in, Colter loomed over her — placed a familiar and somehow masterful hand upon her. Ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment. Must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom her lot was cast? Did Colter mean what Daggs had always meant? Ellen felt herself weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied. Yet, whatever Colter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it. So she slipped out from under his hand.
“Uncle Tad, are y’u heah?” she called into the blackness. She heard the mice scamper and rustle and she smelled the musty, old, woody odor of a long-unused cabin.
“Hello, Ellen!” came a voice she recognized as her uncle’s, yet it was strange. “Yes. I’m heah — bad luck to me! ... How ‘re y’u buckin’ up, girl?”
