The Zane Grey Megapack, page 631
“Listen!” he said, tersely, and bent his head a little to one side, ear to the slight breeze.
They all listened. Ellen heard the beating of her heart, the rustle of leaves, the tapping of a woodpecker, and faint, remote sounds that she could not name.
“Deer, I reckon,” spoke up Somers.
“Ahuh! Wal, I reckon they ain’t trailin’ us yet,” replied Colter. “We gave them a shade better ’n they sent us.”
“Short an’ sweet!” ejaculated Springer, and he removed his black sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger through a buffet hole in the crown. “Thet’s how close I come to cashin’. I was lyin’ behind a log, listenin’ an’ watchin’, an’ when I stuck my head up a little—zam! Somebody made my bonnet leak.”
“Where’s Queen?” asked Colter.
“He was with me fust off,” replied Somers. “An’ then when the shootin’ slacked—after I’d plugged thet big, red-faced, white-haired pal of Isbel’s—”
“Reckon thet was Blaisdell,” interrupted Springer.
“Queen—he got tired layin’ low,” went on Somers. “He wanted action. I heerd him chewin’ to himself, an’ when I asked him what was eatin’ him he up an’ growled he was goin’ to quit this Injun fightin’. An’ he slipped off in the woods.”
“Wal, that’s the gun fighter of it,” declared Colter, wagging his head, “Ever since that cowman, Blue, braced us an’ said he was King Fisher, why Queen has been sulkier an’ sulkier. He cain’t help it. He’ll do the same trick as Blue tried. An’ shore he’ll get his everlastin’. But he’s the Texas breed all right.”
“Say, do you reckon Blue really is King Fisher?” queried Somers.
“Naw!” ejaculated Colter, with downward sweep of his hand. “Many a would-be gun slinger has borrowed Fisher’s name. But Fisher is daid these many years.”
“Ahuh! Wal, mebbe, but don’t you fergit it—thet Blue was no would-be,” declared Somers. “He was the genuine article.”
“I should smile!” affirmed Springer.
The subject irritated Colter, and he dismissed it with another forcible gesture and a counter question.
“How many left in that Isbel outfit?”
“No tellin’. There shore was enough of them,” replied Somers. “Anyhow, the woods was full of flyin’ bullets…. Springer, did you account for any of them?”
“Nope—not thet I noticed,” responded Springer, dryly. “I had my chance at the half-breed…. Reckon I was nervous.”
“Was Slater near you when he yelled out?”
“No. He was lyin’ beside Somers.”
“Wasn’t thet a queer way fer a man to act?” broke in Somers. “A bullet hit Slater, cut him down the back as he was lyin’ flat. Reckon it wasn’t bad. But it hurt him so thet he jumped right up an’ staggered around. He made a target big as a tree. An’ mebbe them Isbels didn’t riddle him!”
“That was when I got my crack at Bill Isbel,” declared Colter, with grim satisfaction. “When they shot my horse out from under me I had Ellen to think of an’ couldn’t get my rifle. Shore had to run, as yu seen. Wal, as I only had my six-shooter, there was nothin’ for me to do but lay low an’ listen to the sping of lead. Wells was standin’ up behind a tree about thirty yards off. He got plugged, an’ fallin’ over he began to crawl my way, still holdin’ to his rifle. I crawled along the log to meet him. But he dropped aboot half-way. I went on an’ took his rifle an’ belt. When I peeped out from behind a spruce bush then I seen Bill Isbel. He was shootin’ fast, an’ all of them was shootin’ fast. That war, when they had the open shot at Slater…. Wal, I bored Bill Isbel right through his middle. He dropped his rifle an’, all bent double, he fooled around in a circle till he flopped over the Rim. I reckon he’s layin’ right up there somewhere below that daid spruce. I’d shore like to see him.”
“I Wal, you’d be as crazy as Queen if you tried thet,” declared Somers. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
“I reckon not,” replied Colter. “An’ I’ve lost my horse. Where’d y’u leave yours?”
“They’re down the canyon, below thet willow brake. An’ saddled an’ none of them tied. Reckon we’ll have to look them up before dark.”
“Colter, what’re we goin’ to do?” demanded Springer.
“Wait heah a while—then cross the canyon an’ work round up under the bluff, back to the cabin.”
“An’ then what?” queried Somers, doubtfully eying Colter.
“We’ve got to eat—we’ve got to have blankets,” rejoined Colter, testily. “An’ I reckon we can hide there an’ stand a better show in a fight than runnin’ for it in the woods.”
“Wal, I’m givin’ you a hunch thet it looked like you was runnin’ fer it,” retorted Somers.
“Yes, an’ packin’ the girl,” added Springer. “Looks funny to me.”
Both rustlers eyed Colter with dark and distrustful glances. What he might have replied never transpired, for the reason that his gaze, always shifting around, had suddenly fixed on something.
“Is that a wolf?” he asked, pointing to the Rim.
Both his comrades moved to get in line with his finger. Ellen could not see from her position.
“Shore thet’s a big lofer,” declared Somers. “Reckon he scented us.”
“There he goes along the Rim,” observed Colter. “He doesn’t act leary. Looks like a good sign to me. Mebbe the Isbels have gone the other way.”
“Looks bad to me,” rejoined Springer, gloomily.
“An’ why?” demanded Colter.
“I seen thet animal. Fust time I reckoned it was a lofer. Second time it was right near them Isbels. An’ I’m damned now if I don’t believe it’s thet half-lofer sheep dog of Gass Isbel’s.”
“Wal, what if it is?”
“Ha! … Shore we needn’t worry about hidin’ out,” replied Springer, sententiously. “With thet dog Jean Isbel could trail a grasshopper.”
“The hell y’u say!” muttered Colter. Manifestly such a possibility put a different light upon the present situation. The men grew silent and watchful, occupied by brooding thoughts and vigilant surveillance of all points. Somers slipped off into the brush, soon to return, with intent look of importance.
“I heerd somethin’,” he whispered, jerking his thumb backward. “Rollin’ gravel—crackin’ of twigs. No deer! … Reckon it’d be a good idee for us to slip round acrost this bench.”
“Wal, y’u fellars go, an’ I’ll watch heah,” returned Colter.
“Not much,” said Somers, while Springer leered knowingly.
Colter became incensed, but he did not give way to it. Pondering a moment, he finally turned to Ellen. “Y’u wait heah till I come back. An’ if I don’t come in reasonable time y’u slip across the canyon an’ through the willows to the cabins. Wait till aboot dark.” With that he possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts and silently joined his comrades. Together they noiselessly stole into the brush.
Ellen had no other thought than to comply with Colter’s wishes. There was her wounded uncle who had been left unattended, and she was anxious to get back to him. Besides, if she had wanted to run off from Colter, where could she go? Alone in the woods, she would get lost and die of starvation. Her lot must be cast with the Jorth faction until the end. That did not seem far away.
Her strained attention and suspense made the moments fly. By and by several shots pealed out far across the side canyon on her right, and they were answered by reports sounding closer to her. The fight was on again. But these shots were not repeated. The flies buzzed, the hot sun beat down and sloped to the west, the soft, warm breeze stirred the aspens, the ravens croaked, the red squirrels and blue jays chattered.
Suddenly a quick, short, yelp electrified Ellen, brought her upright with sharp, listening rigidity. Surely it was not a wolf and hardly could it be a coyote. Again she heard it. The yelp of a sheep dog! She had heard that’ often enough to know. And she rose to change her position so she could command a view of the rocky bluff above. Presently she espied what really appeared to be a big timber wolf. But another yelp satisfied her that it really was a dog. She watched him. Soon it became evident that he wanted to get down over the bluff. He ran to and fro, and then out of sight. In a few moments his yelp sounded from lower down, at the base of the bluff, and it was now the cry of an intelligent dog that was trying to call someone to his aid. Ellen grew convinced that the dog was near where Colter had said Bill Isbel had plunged over the declivity. Would the dog yelp that way if the man was dead? Ellen thought not.
No one came, and the continuous yelping of the dog got on Ellen’s nerves. It was a call for help. And finally she surrendered to it. Since her natural terror when Colter’s horse was shot from under her and she had been dragged away, she had not recovered from fear of the Isbels. But calm consideration now convinced her that she could hardly be in a worse plight in their hands than if she remained in Colter’s. So she started out to find the dog.
The wooded bench was level for a few hundred yards, and then it began to heave in rugged, rocky bulges up toward the Rim. It did not appear far to where the dog was barking, but the latter part of the distance proved to be a hard climb over jumbled rocks and through thick brush. Panting and hot, she at length reached the base of the bluff, to find that it was not very high.
The dog espied her before she saw him, for he was coming toward her when she discovered him. Big, shaggy, grayish white and black, with wild, keen face and eyes he assuredly looked the reputation Springer had accorded him. But sagacious, guarded as was his approach, he appeared friendly.
“Hello—doggie!” panted Ellen. “What’s—wrong—up heah?”
He yelped, his ears lost their stiffness, his body sank a little, and his bushy tail wagged to and fro. What a gray, clear, intelligent look he gave her! Then he trotted back.
Ellen followed him around a corner of bluff to see the body of a man lying on his back. Fresh earth and gravel lay about him, attesting to his fall from above. He had on neither coat nor hat, and the position of his body and limbs suggested broken bones. As Ellen hurried to his side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody blotch. But he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was perfectly conscious. Ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet the mold of features, the look of the eyes, seemed strangely familiar.
“You’re—Jorth’s—girl,” he said, in faint voice of surprise.
“Yes, I’m Ellen Jorth,” she replied. “An’ are y’u Bill Isbel?”
“All thet’s left of me. But I’m thankin’ God somebody come—even a Jorth.”
Ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his abdomen. A heavy bullet had indeed, as Colter had avowed, torn clear through his middle. Even if he had not sustained other serious injury from the fall over the cliff, that terrible bullet wound meant death very shortly. Ellen shuddered. How inexplicable were men! How cruel, bloody, mindless!
“Isbel, I’m sorry—there’s no hope,” she said, low voiced. “Y’u’ve not long to live. I cain’t help y’u. God knows I’d do so if I could.”
“All over!” he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond her. “I reckon—I’m glad…. But y’u can—do somethin’ for or me. Will y’u?”
“Indeed, Yes. Tell me,” she replied, lifting his dusty head on her knee. Her hands trembled as she brushed his wet hair back from his clammy brow.
“I’ve somethin’—on my conscience,” he whispered.
The woman, the sensitive in Ellen, understood and pitied him then.
“Yes,” she encouraged him.
“I stole cattle—my dad’s an’ Blaisdell’s—an’ made deals—with Daggs…. All the crookedness—wasn’t on—Jorth’s side…. I want—my brother Jean—to know.”
“I’ll try—to tell him,” whispered Ellen, out of her great amaze.
“We were all—a bad lot—except Jean,” went on Isbel. “Dad wasn’t fair…. God! how he hated Jorth! Jorth, yes, who was—your father…. Wal, they’re even now.”
“How—so?” faltered Ellen.
“Your father killed dad…. At the last—dad wanted to—save us. He sent word—he’d meet him—face to face—an’ let thet end the feud. They met out in the road…. But someone shot dad down—with a rifle—an’ then your father finished him.”
“An’ then, Isbel,” added Ellen, with unconscious mocking bitterness, “Your brother murdered my dad!”
“What!” whispered Bill Isbel. “Shore y’u’ve got—it wrong. I reckon Jean—could have killed—your father…. But he didn’t. Queer, we all thought.”
“Ah! … Who did kill my father?” burst out Ellen, and her voice rang like great hammers at her ears.
“It was Blue. He went in the store—alone—faced the whole gang alone. Bluffed them—taunted them—told them he was King Fisher…. Then he killed—your dad—an’ Jackson Jorth…. Jean was out—back of the store. We were out—front. There was shootin’. Colmor was hit. Then Blue ran out—bad hurt…. Both of them—died in Meeker’s yard.”
“An’ so Jean Isbel has not killed a Jorth!” said Ellen, in strange, deep voice.
“No,” replied Isbel, earnestly. “I reckon this feud—was hardest on Jean. He never lived heah…. An’ my sister Ann said—he got sweet on y’u…. Now did he?”
Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen’s eyes, and her head sank low and lower.
“Yes—he did,” she murmured, tremulously.
“Ahuh! Wal, thet accounts,” replied Isbel, wonderingly. “Too bad! … It might have been…. A man always sees—different when—he’s dyin’…. If I had—my life—to live over again! … My poor kids—deserted in their babyhood—ruined for life! All for nothin’…. May God forgive—”
Then he choked and whispered for water.
Ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his sombrero and started hurriedly down the slope, making dust fly and rocks roll. Her mind was a seething ferment. Leaping, bounding, sliding down the weathered slope, she gained the bench, to run across that, and so on down into the open canyon to the willow-bordered brook. Here she filled the sombrero with water and started back, forced now to walk slowly and carefully. It was then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular activity denied her, that the tremendous import of Bill Isbel’s revelation burst upon her very flesh and blood and transfiguring the very world of golden light and azure sky and speaking forestland that encompassed her.
Not a drop of the precious water did she spill. Not a misstep did she make. Yet so great was the spell upon her that she was not aware she had climbed the steep slope until the dog yelped his welcome. Then with all the flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words had changed frailty to strength, hate to love, and, the gloomy hell of despair to something unutterable. But she had returned too late. Bill Isbel was dead.
CHAPTER XIII
Jean Isbel, holding the wolf-dog Shepp in leash, was on the trail of the most dangerous of Jorth’s gang, the gunman Queen. Dark drops of blood on the stones and plain tracks of a rider’s sharp-heeled boots behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-traveling fugitive. Therefore, Jean Isbel held in the dog and proceeded with the wary eye and watchful caution of an Indian.
Queen, true to his class, and emulating Blue with the same magnificent effrontery and with the same paralyzing suddenness of surprise, had appeared as if by magic at the last night camp of the Isbel faction. Jean had seen him first, in time to leap like a panther into the shadow. But he carried in his shoulder Queen’s first bullet of that terrible encounter. Upon Gordon and Fredericks fell the brunt of Queen’s fusillade. And they, shot to pieces, staggering and falling, held passionate grip on life long enough to draw and still Queen’s guns and send him reeling off into the darkness of the forest.
Unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, Jean had kept a vigil near camp all that silent and menacing night. Morning disclosed Gordon and Fredericks stark and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their guns clutched immovably in stiffened hands. Jean buried them as best he could, and when they were under ground with flat stones on their graves he knew himself to be indeed the last of the Isbel clan. And all that was wild and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit rose to make him more than man and less than human. Then for the third time during these tragic last days the wolf-dog Shepp came to him.
Jean washed the wound Queen had given him and bound it tightly. The keen pang and burn of the lead was a constant and all-powerful reminder of the grim work left for him to do. The whole world was no longer large enough for him and whoever was left of the Jorths. The heritage of blood his father had bequeathed him, the unshakable love for a worthless girl who had so dwarfed and obstructed his will and so bitterly defeated and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith, the killing of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the pursuits and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates—these had finally engendered in Jean Isbel a wild, unslakable thirst, these had been the cause of his retrogression, these had unalterably and ruthlessly fixed in his darkened mind one fierce passion—to live and die the last man of that Jorth-Isbel feud.
At sunrise Jean left this camp, taking with him only a small knapsack of meat and bread, and with the eager, wild Shepp in leash he set out on Queen’s bloody trail.
Black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular trail of footprints proved to Jean that the gunman was hard hit. Here he had fallen, or knelt, or sat down, evidently to bind his wounds. Jean found strips of scarf, red and discarded. And the blood drops failed to show on more rocks. In a deep forest of spruce, under silver-tipped spreading branches, Queen had rested, perhaps slept. Then laboring with dragging steps, not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up out of the dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-tipped ridge. Here he had rested, perhaps waited to see if he were pursued. From that point his trail spoke an easy language for Jean’s keen eye. The gunman knew he was pursued. He had seen his enemy. Therefore Jean proceeded with a slow caution, never getting within revolver range of ambush, using all his woodcraft to trail this man and yet save himself. Queen traveled slowly, either because he was wounded or else because he tried to ambush his pursuer, and Jean accommodated his pace to that of Queen. From noon of that day they were never far apart, never out of hearing of a rifle shot.
