.

Derived from Zane Grey's classic, TO THE LAST MAN. It is one of those lovely Romeo and Juliet romances. Gene was one of the dreaded Isbels and Ellen was one of the dreadful Jorges. They met only by accident on the Tonto Rim, and found themselves swept up in a torrent of mad events and falling in love in spite of everything and everybody, including themselves. The Isbel family was counting on Gene to help them kill off every one of the Jorges. Ellen was expected to learn the art of cattle rustling and ambushing members of the Isbel family. In a war that could be won only by the last man standing.  Was there any way their love could survive?
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* A Hybrid Book *

* Sheep War *

* Lover's Wait *

**

The Sheep War

is a new hybrid book From BrowzerBooks
Based upon Zane Grey's classic,
TO THE LAST MAN

At the end of a dry, uphill journey over barren country Gene Isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon green with water-marking willow trees and the cottonwoods, had promised water and grass.

His animals were tired, especially the pack mule that had carried a heavily concentrated load; and with a slow heave of relief they sought out the wallows, knelt and rolled in the dust. Gene experienced some measure of relief himself as he threw off his chaps. He had not been used to the hot, dusty, glaring days found on the barren lands.

Stretching his full length beside a tiny rill of clear water that tinkled over smooth red river stones, he drank thirstily in a way that would not have been approved of by the Biblical warrior Gideon.

The water was cool, but it had an acrid taste -- an alkali bite to it that he did not appreciate.

Not since he had left Oregon behind had he tasted the pure, clear, sweet, cold water he had grown accustomed to; and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had loved. So far, this wild, endless Arizona land bade fairly soon to earn his hatred.

By the time he had leisurely completed his camp chores twilight had fallen and coyotes had begun their game-driving yips. Gene listened to their yelps and to the moan of the cool wind in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction that at least these lonely sounds were familiar. He noted too that this cedar wood burned into a pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant.

"Reckon maybe I could make myself learn to like Arizona," he mused, half aloud. "But I've a hankering for clean waterfalls and dark-green forests. Must be the forest Indian in me, I reckon.... Anyway, I'm here now and dad said he needs me bad, so I'm here for keeps."

Gene shook his head and threw a few more brushy cedar branches on the fire. As the flames tossed up more light Gene opened his father's letter, hoping that by some alchemy a repeated reading would help him to grasp more of its strange portent for his future. The letter had been two months in reaching him, coming first by traveler, next by stage and then a long ride on a train, and then it waited a while, and got lifted by boat, and finally arrived by riding the stage again.

Written with a faint lead pencil on a leaf torn from an old ledger, it would have been hard to read even if the writing had been more legible.

"Dad's writing was always bad, but I never even saw his saddle-back tally writing look this shaky," said Gene, thinking aloud.






PAULS VALLY, ARIZONA.

Son Gene, -- Come home. Here is your home now and here your needed. When we left Oregon we all reckoned you would not be long behind. But its ben what, seven years now? I am growing old, son, and you was always my steadiest boy. Not that you ever was that dam steady.

Your wildness seemed made more for the woods tho. You take after your mother, kwite and intent and your brothers Bill and Guy take after me. That is the red and white of it. Your part Indian, Gene, and it is that Indian part that I reckon I am going to need bad. I am rich in cattle and horses now. And my range here is the best I ever seen. Lately we have been losing stock though. I want you to come home and track these rustlers down for me.

Sheepmen have moved onto Green Mesa and keep grazing down on us in Pauls Vally. I think that's where the rustlers are coming from. Cattlemen and sheep herders can never bide together in this here country no way. We have bad times ahead unless you can track down these rustlers. Reckon I have some more reasons to worry and I need you, but you must wait to hear that from my mouth.

Whatever your doing, chuck it and rustle for Pauls Vally so to make here by spring. I am asking you to take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells. Hide them in your outfit because everybody wants more guns here on the road to nowhere.

If you meet anyone when your coming down into Green Mesa, listen more than you talk. And last, son, dont let anything keep you in Oregon.

If you have a sweetheart by now, fetch her along.

With love from your dad, JESSE ISBEL.

Gene pondered over this letter until the solid shadows of night dipped into place and a dying wind came sighing into his camp. Judged by his memory of his father, who had always been self-sufficient, the letter had been a surprise and somewhat of a shock. Weeks of travel and reflection had not helped him to grasp the meanings that must be hidden between the lines.

"Yes, dad's growing old," mused Gene, feeling a warmth and a sadness stir in him. "He must be 'way over sixty by now. But he never looked old....

So he's rich now and losing stock? He won't be rich for long."

The soft yearning to see his family that stirred in Gene with every perusal of his father's letter merged into a cold, thoughtful earnestness that frightened him.

A dark, full current seemed flowing in his veins, and at times he felt it swell and heat. It troubled him, making him conscious of a deeper, stronger self that dwelt deep in his breast, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy life for the past four years of tracking down horse thieves and finding lost cattle when they came up missing. The work had paid quite well and it had financed this trip with over $100 left to spare. “I'm pretty rich myself. Most men only earn about $300 a year.”

No human ties had bound him in Oregon, except love for the great, still forests and the thundering rivers; and this love came from his softer side. It had cost him a wrench to leave. And all the way by ship down the coast to San Diego and across the Sierra Madres by stage, and so on to this last overland travel by horseback, he had felt the loss and a retreating of the flowering self that was tranquil and happy and a dominating of this unknown somber self, with its menacing possibilities.

Yet no young man can endure great change without his dreams expanding in hope and anticipation of new opportunities. So, despite a nameless regret and a yearning for Oregon, when Gene pulled his blankets around him that night he had to confess a keen interest in his adventurous future, triggered by a keen enjoyment of this strange, stark, wild Arizona frontier with its future blasted wide open for him as he entered. It even appeared to be a different sky stretching in hovering great, dark, star-spangled dome over him -- closer, vaster, bluer.

The strong fragrance of sage and cedar floated over him like incense with the camp-fire smoke as he drifted off to sleep, and all seemed to subdue his drowsy thoughts.

At dawn Gene rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his boots, began the day with a zest for the work that must bring closer his destiny. The white, crackling frost and cold, nipping air were the same keen spurs to action that he had known in the uplands of Oregon, yet they were not wholly the same. He sensed an exhilaration similar to the effect of a strong, sweet wine.

His horse and mule had fared well during the night, having been much refreshed by the rest they had taken, and the grass and water they had found in the little canyon. Gene mounted his horse and rode into the cedars with gladness that at last he had put the endless leagues of barren land behind him.


The trail he followed appeared to be seldom traveled and often faded out entirely. It led, according to the meager information obtainable at the last settlement, directly to what was called the Palo Verde Rim, and from there Pauls Valley could be seen down in the Basin, they had told him. The ascent of the ground was so gradual that only in long, open stretches could the difference be noted. Scant, low, scraggy cedars gave place to more numerous, darker, greener, bushier ones, and these to high, full-foliaged, green-berried trees. The changing nature of the vegetation showed Gene how he was climbing. The rocks were turning to rough flagstone with prairie grass sticking through.

Sage and grass in the open flats grew more luxuriously. Then came the stubby pinyons his dad had told him about and he had dined on the nuts left on one tree. Presently, among them he noted the checker-barked junipers. Gene paused to hail the first pine tree he saw with a hearty slap on its brown, rugged bark. It was a small dwarf pine with a tap root shooting up out of solid rock. It needed all the encouragement it could get.

The next pine tree was larger, and after that came several more, and beyond them stands of even larger pines stood up everywhere above the lower trees. It was the odor of crushed pine needles mingled with the dry smells of the sage that made the wind so pleasant to Gene. In an hour from the first line of pines he had ridden beyond the cedars and pinyons into a slowly thickening and deepening forest.

Underbrush appeared scarce except in ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached grass. It appeared to be a dry, uninhabited forest.

Gene's eye refused to believe it and began to rove for sight of squirrels, birds, deer, or any moving creature. Nothing greeted his searching gaze.

About midday Gene halted at a pond of surface water, evidently melted snow, and gave his animals a drink. He saw a few old deer tracks in the mud and several huge bird tracks new to him which he concluded after some thought that they must have been made by wild turkeys.

The trail divided at this little pond. Gene had no idea which branch he ought to take. "Reckon it doesn't matter," he muttered, as he was about to remount. Then he noticed that his horse was standing with ears up, looking back along the trail. Gene heard a ringing clip-clop of trotting hoofs, and presently espied a horseman, following his trail.

Gene made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths while he peered over his horse at the approaching rider. Any men he met in this country were going to be of exceeding interest to Gene Isbel. This man at a distance rode and looked like all the Arizonians Gene had seen so far, he had a superb seat in the saddle, and he was long and lean. He wore a huge black sombrero and a soiled red scarf. His vest was open and he was riding without a coat.

The rider came trotting up and halted far enough away from Gene that none of his dust would settle on him, but close enough he would not have to raise his voice.

"Hullo, stranger!" he said, gruffly.

"Hullo yourself!" replied Gene with a friendly edge to his voice. He felt an instinctive whiff of the importance in this meeting with the man for never had a sharper set of eyes flashed over Gene and his outfit. The stranger had a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long, lean, and hard, a huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth. His eyes were of piercing light intensity.

Not very much hard Western experience had passed by this man unmet, yet he did not seem to be old when measured by years.

When he dismounted Gene saw he was tall, even for an Arizonian. "I seen your tracks, back a ways," he said, as he slipped the bit to let his horse drink. "Where bound?"

"Reckon I'm lost," Gene admitted. "Plumb new country for me."

"Sure. I seen that from your tracks and the lay of your last camp. well, where was you heading for before you got lost?"

The query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp snap of authority biting in it. Gene felt the lack of friendliness and kindliness in it.

"Pauls Valley," he replied, shortly. “My name's Isbel” He let it be a challenge if it was wanted to be that way.

The rider paid attention to his drinking horse and presently rebridled him; then with a long swing of leg he appeared to step into the saddle. "Why, sure I knew you was Gene Isbel," he said.

"Everybody in the Verde Mesa has heard that old Jesse Isbel sent for his boy."

"Well then, why did you ask?" inquired Gene.

"I wanted to see what kind of boy Jesse sent for, I knew that I could tell by hearing what you'd say."

"So? I stand revealed. All right. But I been hearing your meaning riding a dark horse, and I'm not really caring very much for what YOU say."

Their glances locked steadily then and each man measured the other by the intangible evidence of spirit no man can ever really hide.

"Sure that's natural," replied the rider after a long moment. His speech was now slower and better modulated. It matched the motions of his long, brown hands as he carefully took a cigarette from his vest, and kept time with his words. "But seeing you're one of the Isbels, I'll have my say, whether you want it or not. My name's Coulter and I'm one of the sheep herders Jesse Isbel's all riled up with."

"Coulter, you say? Glad to meet you," replied Gene with a nod. "But, you're starting to rile me a bit."

"Sure. If that wasn't so you wouldn't be an Isbel," returned Coulter, with a grim little laugh. "They rile easy. So, it's easy to see you ain't run into any Verde Mesa Basin fellers yet. They'd change your mind some.

“Well, I'm going to tell you that your old man gabbed like a woman down at Greaves's store. Bragged about you and how you could fight and how you could shoot and how you could track a horse or a man! Bragged how you'd chase every sheep herder back up on the Rim.... I'm telling you because we want you to git our stand right from the start. We're going to run sheep down in Pauls Valley because it's free range there and he don't own it nor any of those ranchers either."

"Uh Huh! It's kind of that way all over,” said Gene. But, just exactly who's this we?" queried Gene, curtly.

"Wha-at? ... We? -- Why, I mean the sheep herders ranging this Rim from Black Butte to the border of Apache country."

"Coulter, Let me give you a new hunch here. I'm a stranger in Arizona," Gene said slowly. "I know little enough about ranchers or sheep herders in this country. Any information you feel to give me will be appreciated.

“It's true my father sent for me. It's true, I dare say, that he probly bragged on me, for he was always given to bluster and blow when it felt like his tail was on fire, and he's old now so it's probly getting worse. I can't help it if he bragged about me. But all I'm here for is to track down the rustlers at work on his herds and the herds of his friends. That's the kind of work I do for a living, and just between you and me, I probly won't have no trouble atall living up to his brag."

"I get your hunch” said Coulter. “Sure, we understand each other a lot better now, I think, and that's a powerful help to getting along. But you need to carry my hunch to your old man," replied Coulter. He turned his horse away toward the left.

"That trail leading south is yours. When you come to the Rim you'll see a bare spot down in the Basin. that'll be Pauls Valley."

With a light touch of his spurs Coulter reined away and his back soon disappeared into the woods. Gene leaned against his horse and pondered.

It seemed difficult for him to be fair to this Coulter at first, not because of his claims, but because of a subtle dangerous hostility that had emanated from him. Coulter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of speech that Gene had come to associate with dishonest men. Even if Gene had not been prejudiced before, even if he had known nothing of his father's trouble with these particular sheep herders, and if Coulter had met him only to exchange glances and greetings, still Gene would never have had a favorable impression.

The half lies and deliberate taunts of Coulter grated upon him, roused an antagonism he seldom felt for others. "Heigh-ho!" sighed the young man, "Good-by to some happy hunting and fishing'!"

With that he mounted his horse and started the pack mule into the right-hand trail. Walking and trotting, he traveled all afternoon and found himself toward sunset getting into a heavy forest of pine. More than one snow bank gleamed white through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of shady ravines.

And it wasn't until he entered this zone of richer, deeper forestland that Gene finally sloughed off his gloomy forebodings.

These stately pines were not the giant firs of Oregon, but any lover of the woods could be happy with a camp under them. Higher still he climbed until the forest spread before and around him like a level park, with thicketed ravines here and there on each side. And presently that deceitful level led to a higher bench upon which the pines towered, and were matched by beautiful trees he took for spruce.

Heavily barked, with regular spreading branches, these conifers rose in symmetrical shape to spear the sky with silver plumes. A graceful gray-green moss, waved like veils from the branches. The air was not so dry and it was colder, with a scent and touch of snow.

Gene made camp at the first likely site, taking the precaution to unroll his bed some little distance from his fire.

Under the softly moaning pines he felt comfortable, having lost the sense of an immeasurable open space falling away from all around him.

The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Gene, "Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug." There didn't seem to be a great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Gene got up, and taking his rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try locating the turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and, what with finding it and cooking flapjacks for breakfast and packing, Gene did not make a very early start.

On this last lap of his long journey he had slowed down even more for his mule was now laboring hard. He was weary of hurrying anyway; the change from weeks in the glaring sun and dust-laden wind to this sweet coot darkly green and brown forest was very welcome; he wanted to linger along the shaded trail.

This day he made sure would see him reach the Rim. But by and by he lost the trail again. It had just worn out from lack of use. Every now and then Gene would cross an old trail, and as he penetrated deeper into the forest every damp or dusty spot showed tracks of turkey, deer, and bear. The amount of fresh bear sign surprised him and thrilled him. Presently his keen nostrils were assailed by the nasty smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep, trail and he wondered if that was what had attracted so many bear to this area.

From the tracks Gene calculated that the sheep had passed there the day before. An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had already been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was probly why he was prepared to be unreasonable.

But on the other hand this band of sheep had been moving slowly and left a broad bare swath that was weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. “I guess it's true; “where sheep graze they will destroy.”

An hour later he found himself riding out to the crest of a long parklike slope. New green grass was sprouting up and flowers peeped out everywhere. The pines appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against the green well of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like a moving stream away down in the woods.

Gene heard the musical tinkle of guide bells and soon heard the baa-baa of sheep and the faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he rode toward these sounds a dog ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Gene smelled a camp fire and soon he first caught sight of a curling blue tendril of smoke, and then a small peaked tent.

Beyond the clump of oaks Gene encountered a Mexican lad carrying a carbine. The boy had a wide, swarthy, pleasant face, and to Gene's greeting he replied loudly, "BUENAS DIAS." Gene understood little Spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple queries was that the lad was not alone -- and that it was "lambing time."

This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. The forest seemed shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. All about the camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. A few were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling white fleecy little lambs so new to the world that they still staggered on their feet. Everywhere Gene saw tiny lambs just born.

Their pin-pointed bleats pierced the heavier baa-baa of their mothers. Gene dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather expected to see another and older Mexican, from whom he might get information. The lad walked with him, but lagging just slightly behind.

Down this way the plaintive uproar made by the sheep was not so loud. "Hello there!" Gene cheerfully hailed the camp, as he approached the tent. He paused uncertainly when no answer was forthcoming. Dropping his bridle, he went on afoot, rather slowly, looking for some one to appear. Then a voice from one side startled him. That anyone could appear suddenly near him startled him enough, but this was young, and womanly.

"Morning, stranger." A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a rifle in the crook of her arm. The barrel just naturally floated out to point at his chest but in such a way that Gene did not resent it at all. Her face flashed richly brown, but she was obviously not Mexican or even Castilian.

This fact, and the sudden conviction that she had been watching him now disconcerted Gene two ways. "I Beg pardon -- miss," he floundered.

"I didn't expect, to see a – pretty girl out here.... I'm sort of lost -- looking for the Rim -- and thought maybe I'd find a sheep herder who'd show me. I can't quite savvy this boy's lingo."

While he spoke it seemed to him a strained intentness of expression relaxed from her face.

A faint suggestion of hostility likewise disappeared. Gene was not even sure that he had caught it, but there had been something that now was gone.

"Sure I'll be glad to show you," she said.

"Thanks, miss. Reckon I can breathe easy now," he replied, "It's been a long ride from San Diego. Hot and dusty! I'm pretty tired. and maybe this woods isn't good medicine to aching eyes!"

"San Diego! you're in here from the coast?"

"Yes, I am." Gene doffed his sombrero and held it rather deferentially perhaps. It seemed to attract her attention of a sudden.

"Put on your hat, stranger.... sure I can't recollect when any man bared his head for me no way." She uttered a little laugh in which surprise and frankness mingled with a tiny tint of bitterness.

Gene sat down with his back to a pine, and, laying the sombrero by his side, he looked full at her, conscious of a singular eagerness, as if he wanted to verify by close scrutiny a first, hasty impression. If there had been much in the nature of an instinct in his meeting with Coulter, there was more in this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the shiny little carbine across her knees, still hazily pointed in his direction. She had laid a level, curious gaze upon him, and Gene had never met one just like it.

Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought flickering in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Gene, and his gaze dropped first. It was only then that he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet.

She noted his gaze and drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Gene lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That small touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold, look that he had encountered in her eyes.

"Reckon you're from Texas," said Gene, presently.

"Sure am," she drawled. She had a lazy Southern voice, pleasant to hear. "How'd yawl guess that?"

"Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from there were a good many pioneers and ranchers from the old Lone Star state. I've worked for several. and, come to think of it, I'd rather hear a Texas girl talk than anybody, except maybe one certain lady from Alabama."

"Did you know many Texas girls?" she inquired, turning again to face him.

"Reckon I did -- quite a good many."

"Did you go with them?"

"Go with them? Oh. Reckon you mean keep company. Why, yes, I guess I did -- a little," laughed Gene. "Sometimes on a Sunday or a dance once in a blue moon, and occasionally a hay ride."

"Sure that accounts," said the girl, wistfully.

"For what?" asked Gene.

"Your being a gentleman," she replied, with force. "Oh, I've not forgotten. I had friends when we lived in Texas.... Three years ago. Sure it seems longer. Three miserable years I've been trapped in this damned country!"

Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further unwitting utterance to a total stranger.

It was that biting of her lip that drew Gene's attention to her mouth. It held beauty of curve and fullness and color that could not hide a certain sadness and bitterness. Then the whole flashing brown face changed for Gene. He saw that it was young, full of passion and restraint, possessing a power which grew on him. This, with her shame and pathos and the fact that she craved respect, gave a leap to Gene's interest.

"Well, I reckon you flatter me," he said, hoping to put her at her ease again. "I'm only a rough hunter and fisherman-woodchopper and sometime stolen horse tracker. Never had all the school I needed -- nor near enough company of nice girls like you."


"Am I nice?" she asked, rather hopefully with a quick rise of attention.

"Oh, You sure are," he replied, then smiled broadly.

"In these rags," she demanded, with a sudden flash of passion that thrilled him. "Look at me.”

A dammed-up resentment seemed to have broken through in a flood. She lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. "No stockings! No Shoes! ... How can a girl be nice when she has no clean, decent womanly clothes to wear?"

"How? -- See here, miss, I'm begging your pardon for -- sort of stirring you to the point that you forgot yourself a little.

“Reckon I understand. You don't meet many strangers and maybe I sort of hit you wrong – making you talk too much. Who and what you are is none of my business to start with.

“I'm just glad we met.... and I reckon something has already happened between us -- probly more to me than to you.... Reckon I do know most women love nice things to wear and think that because clothes can make them look some pretty that they're nicer or better because they got nice clothes.

“But they're wrong. They're wrong, and you're wrong, too. Maybe it'd be too much for a girl out here like you to be happy without some nice clothes. But for all you know, you're a good deal more appealing to some men."

She weighed his words out and rejected them, or maybe his sincerity. She shook her head. "Stranger, you sure must excuse my temper and the show I just made of myself," replied the girl, with composure. "That, to say the least, was not nice. and I don't want anyone thinking better of me than I deserve. My mother died in Texas, and I've lived out here in this wild country -- a girl alone among a bunch of rough men that don't see many women. Meeting you to-day makes me see what a hard lot they are -- and what these three years have done to me."

"Are you a sheep herder?" he asked.

"I'm a shepherd,” she corrected him. “My sheep foller me. Sure I am a sheep herder now and then. My father lives back here in a canyon. He's a sheepman; that's somebody that owns the sheep. Lately there's been some herders shot at. Just now we're short and I have to fill in. But I like being a shepherd and I even like shepherding and I love the woods, and for that matter, I love the Rim Rock and all the Verde Mesa. If they were all they was in my life, I'd sure be happy."

"Herders being shot at?" Gene, asked thoughtfully. "By whom? and what for?"

"Oh, sure. There's trouble brewing between the cattlemen down in the Basin and the sheep herders up on the Rim. Dad says there'll sure be hell to pay if any of his men get hurt. I'm just mad enough to tell him I hope the cattlemen chase him back to Texas."

"Then -- Are you on the ranchers' side?" queried Gene, trying to pretend only a casual interest as he plucked up a stem of grass.

"No. I'll always be on my father's side," she replied, with spirit. "But I'm bound to admit I think the cattlemen have the fair side of this here particular argument."

"How so?"

"Well, because there's grass everywhere. I see no sense in a sheepman going out of his way to surround a cattleman and sheep off his range. That's what started this row. Lord knows how it'll end. You see, most all of them here are from Texas and they were born to raise a ruckus."

"So I was told," replied Gene. "and I heard most all these Texas sheepmen got run out of Texas. Any truth in that?"

"Sure I reckon there is," she replied, seriously. "But, stranger, it might not be healthy for you to, say that anywhere. My dad, for one, was not run out of Texas. Sure I never can see why he came here. He's accumulated stock, but he's lost a lot by moving here. We're not rich nor so well off as we were back home in Texas."

"Well then. Are you going to stay here for always then?" queried Gene, suddenly.

"If I do so it'll be in my grave," she answered, darkly. "But what's the use of thinking I got a way out? People stay places until they drift away or get married and hauled off. You can never tell what color of horse you'll be riding tomorrow.... Well, stranger, this talk is keeping you from moving on."

She seemed moody now, and a note of detachment had crept into her voice. Gene rose at once and went for his horse. His mule had strayed off among the bleating sheep.

Gene drove it back and then led his horse up to where the girl stood. She appeared taller and, though not of robust build, she was vigorous and lithe, with something about her that fitted the place. Gene was loath to bid her good-by.

"Which way is the Rim?" he asked, turning to tightening his saddle girths.

"South," she replied, pointing. "It's only a mile or so. I'll walk down with you a ways .... Suppose you're on the way to Pauls Valley. You must have family there because it's just a little town on the road to nowhere."

"Yes; I've relatives there," he returned. He dreaded her next question, which he suspected would concern his name. But she did not ask. Taking up her rifle she turned away. Gene strode forward to her side. "Reckon if you walk then I won't ride."

So he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a born Mountaineer. Her bare, brown head came up nearly to his shoulder. It was a small, pretty head, graceful, well held, and the thick hair on top was a shiny, soft brown.

She wore it in a braid, rather untidily and tangled, he thought, and it was tied with a string of buckskin. Altogether her apparel proclaimed poverty, not wealth.

Gene let the conversation languish for a little. He wanted to think what to say presently, and then he felt a rather vague pleasure in stalking beside her. Her profile was straight cut and exquisite in line. From this side view the soft curve of lips could not be seen.

She made several attempts to start conversation, all of which Gene ignored as he struggled for the right words. Presently Gene, having decided what he wanted to say, began: "I like this adventure. Do you?"

"Adventure! Meeting me in the woods and me without a bath in the last month or two?" And she laughed the laugh of impervious youth. "Sure you must be hard up for adventure, stranger."

"Do you like it?" he persisted, and his eyes searched the half-averted face.

"I might like it," she answered, frankly, "if -- if my temper had not made a fool of me. I so seldom meet anyone I care to talk to. Why should it not be pleasant to run across some one new -- some one strange in this here wild country?"


"I didn't think you made a fool of yourself.” Gene replied. “If I thought so, would I want to see you again?"

"Do you?" The brown smile flashed on him with surprise, with a light he took for gladness sparkling in her eyes. And because he wanted to appear calm and friendly, not too eager, he had to deny himself the thrill of meeting that changing gaze.

"Sure I do. Reckon you think I'm overbold on such short acquaintance. But I might not have another chance to tell you, so please don't hold it against me."

This declaration over, Gene felt relief and something of exultation. He had been afraid he might not have the courage to make it. She walked on as before, only with her head bowed a little and her eyes downcast. No color showed in her cheeks but the gold-brown tan of her face and the pulse of one tiny blue vein on the side of her head made her stand out. He noticed then a slight swelling quiver of her throat; and he became alive to its graceful contour, and to how full and pulsating it was, how nobly her throat set into the curve of her shoulder.

Here in her quivering throat was the weakness of her, the evidence of her sex, the womanliness that belied the mountaineer stride and the grasp of strong brown hands on a rifle that no longer pointed at him. It had an effect on Gene totally inexplicable to him, both in the strange warmth that stole over him and in the utterance he could not hold back.

"Girl, we're strangers, but what of that? We've met, and I tell you it means something special to me. I've known girls for months and never felt this close. I don't know who you are and I don't care. I want to see you again for my own sake."

At this juncture Gene in his earnestness and quite without thought grasped her nearest hand. The contact checked the flow of his speech and suddenly made him aghast at his temerity. But the girl did not make any effort to withdraw it. So Gene, inhaling a deep breath and trying to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely.

He imagined he felt a faint, warm, returning pressure, but told himself he must be wrong. Then, just as he was about to speak again, she pulled her hand free.

"Here's the Rim," she said, in her quaint Southern drawl. "and right down there's your Verde Mesa Basin."

Gene had been intent only upon the girl. He had kept step beside her without taking note of what was ahead of him. At her words he looked up expectantly, to be struck mute.

He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an immense abyss beneath him. As he looked afar he saw a black basin of timbered country, the darkest and wildest he had ever gazed upon, a hundred miles of blue distance across to an unflung mountain range, hazy purple against the sky.

It seemed to be a stupendous gulf surrounded on three sides by bold, undulating lines of peaks, and on his side by a well so high that he felt lifted aloft on the run of the sky.

"Southeast you see the Sierra Anchas," said the girl pointing. "That notch in the range is the pass where sheep are driven to Phoenix and Maricopa. Those big rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals. Round to the west is the Four Peaks Range. and you're standing on the Rim."

Gene could not see at first just what the Rim was, but by shifting his gaze westward he grasped this remarkable phenomenon of nature. For leagues and leagues a colossal red and yellow well, a rampart, a mountain-faced cliff, seemed to zigzag westward. Grand and bold were the promontories reaching out over the void. They ran toward the westering sun. Sweeping and impressive were the long lines slanting away from them, sloping darkly spotted down to merge into the black timber. Gene had never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of nature's depths and upheavals. His admiration held him mute.

"Stranger, you ain't seen the best part of it yet. Look down," said the girl.

Gene's sight was educated to judge heights and depths and distances. This wall upon which he stood sheered precipitously down, so far that it made him dizzy to look, and then the craggy broken cliffs merged into red-slided, cedar-greened slopes running down and down into gorges choked with forests, and from which soared up a roar of rushing waters. Slope after slope, ridge beyond ridge, canyon merging into canyon -- so the tremendous bowl sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a wilderness across which travel seemed impossible.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Gene.

"Indeed it is!" murmured the girl. "Sure that is Arizona. I reckon I love THIS. The heights and depths -- the awfulness of its wilderness!"

"And yet you want to leave it?"

"Yes and no. I don't deny the peace that comes to me here. But not often do I see the Basin, and for that matter, one doesn't live for long on grand scenery anyway."

"Child, even once in a while -- this sight would cure any misery, if you only see. I'm glad I came. I'm glad you was the one that showed it to me first."

She too seemed under the spell of a vastness and loneliness and beauty and grandeur that could not but strike the heart.

Gene took her hand again. "Girl, say you will meet me here," he said, his voice ringing deep in his ears.

"Sure I will," she replied, softly, and turned to him. It seemed then that Gene saw her face for the first time. She was beautiful as he had never known beauty. Limned against that scene, she gave it life -- wild, sweet, young life -- the poignant meaning of which haunted yet eluded him. But she belonged there. Her eyes were again searching his, as if for some lost part of herself, unrealized, never known before. Wondering, wistful, hopeful, glad-they were eyes that seemed surprised, to reveal part of her soul.

Then her red lips parted. Their tremulous movement was a magnet to Gene. An invisible and mighty force pulled him down to kiss them.
Whatever the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it. He jerked away, as if he expected to be either shot or slapped. "Girl -- I -- I" -- he gasped in amazement and sudden-dawning contrition -- "I swear that wasn't intentional -- I never thought...."

The anger that Gene anticipated failed to materialize. He stood, breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal. By the same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was now invested again by the older character.

"Sure I reckon my calling you a gentleman was a little previous," she said, with a rather dry chuckle. "But, stranger, you're sudden. I'll say that for you, for sure."

"You're not insulted?" asked Gene, hurriedly.

"Oh, I've been kissed before. And, sure, I know all men are all alike."

"They're not all alike," he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion, a dulling of enchantment. "Don't you class me with other men who've kissed you. I wasn't myself when I did it and I'd have gone on my knees to ask your forgiveness.... But now I wouldn't -- and I wouldn't kiss you again, either -- even if you – why, even if you wanted it."

Gene read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt, as if she was questioning him. "Miss, I take that back," Gene added as if she had caught him in a lie, and she had.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that and be rude. It was a mean trick for me to kiss you. A girl alone in the woods who's gone out of her way to be kind to me! I don't know why I forgot my manners. and I humbly ask your pardon."

She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down into the Basin.

"There's Pauls Valley. That long gray spot in the black. It's about fifteen miles away. Ride along the Rim that way till you cross a trail. Sure you can't miss it. Then go on down."

"I'm much obliged to you," replied Gene, reluctantly accepting what he regarded as his dismissal. Turning his horse, he put his foot in the stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl. Her abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested loneliness and wistfulness. She was not thinking of that scene spread so wondrously before her. It struck Gene she might be pondering a subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious of too, yet could not define. "Reckon this is good-by," he said, with regret and hesitation.

"ADIOS, SENOR," she replied, facing him again. She lifted the little carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready to depart.

"Adios means good-by?" he queried.

"Yes, good-by -- till to-morrow or good-by forever. Take it as you like."

"Then you will still meet me here day after to-morrow?" How eagerly he spoke, on impulse, without a consideration of the intangible thing that had changed him!

"Did I say I wouldn't?"

"No. But I reckoned you'd not care to after --" he replied, breaking off in some confusion.

"Sure I'll be glad to meet you. Day after to-morrow about mid-afternoon. Right here. Fetch all the news from Pauls Valley."

"All right. Thanks. That'll be -- fine," replied Gene. His breath didn't seem to be working right and the air stuck in his throat, and as he spoke he experienced a buoyant thrill, a pleasant lightness of enthusiasm, such as always stirred boyishly in him at a prospect of adventure. Before it passed he wondered at it and felt unsure of himself. He needed to think.

"Stranger sure I'm not recollecting that you told me who you are," she said.

"No, reckon I didn't tell," he returned. "Let's meet without knowing any more about each other than we do now."

"Sure. I'd like that. In this big, wild Arizona a girl -- and I reckon a man -- feels so insignificant. What's a name, anyhow? Still, people and things have to be distinguished. I'll call you 'Stranger' and be satisfied -- if you say it's fair for you not to tell who you are."

"Fair! No, it's not," declared Gene, forced to confession. "My name's Gene -- Gene Isbel."

"ISBEL!" she exclaimed, with a violent start. "Sure you can't be no son of old Jesse Isbel.... I've seen both his boys and they ain't worth that much spit that I can tell."

"He has three sons," replied Gene, with relief because now the secret was out. "I'm the youngest. I'm twenty-four. Never been out of Oregon till now. On my way -- "

The brown color slowly faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale, with eyes that began to blaze. The very suppleness of her seemed to stiffen every muscle. "My name's Ellen Jorges," she burst out, passionately. "Does it mean anything to you?"

"Never heard it in my life," protested Gene. "Sure I reckoned you belonged to the sheep raisers who 're on the outs with my father. That's why I had to tell you I'm Gene Isbel.... Ellen Jorges. It's strange and pretty.... Reckon I can be just as good a -- a friend to you -- "

"No Isbel, can ever be a friend of mine," she said, with bitter coldness. Stripped of her ease and her soft wistfulness, she stood before him one instant, entirely another girl, a hostile enemy in the next instant. Then she wheeled and strode off into the woods.

Gene, in amazement, watched her swiftly draw away with her lithe, free step. He want to follow her, wanted to call to her, beg her to stay; but the resentment roused by her suddenly avowed hostility held him mute in his tracks.

He watched her disappear, and when the brown-and-green wall of forest swallowed the slender gray form he fought against the insistent desire to follow her, at all hazards, and fought it in vain.

A little futile searching to and fro for her tracks cooled his impulse to follow her. It wasn't that her tracks weren't there, but that too many of them were there. Pride came to his rescue. Returning to his horse, he mounted, rode out behind the pack mule to start it along, and soon felt the relief of decision derived from his action.  He forced his mind away from the girl Ellen Jorges, and the only place his mind would willingly go was chasing off down some of the windy canyons.

Some instinct in Gene had always called out for a lonely, wild land, into the fastnesses of which he could roam at will and be the other strange self that he had always yearned to be but had never had the place or time to be. Clumps of small pines grew thickly in spots on the Rim, making it necessary for him to skirt them; at which times he lost sight of the purple basin. Every time he came back to an opening through which he could see the wild ruggedness and colors and distances, his appreciation of their nature grew on him. Arizona from Yuma to the Little Colorado had been an endless waste of wind-scoured, sun-blasted barrenness to him. This black-forested rock-rimmed land of untrodden ways was a world that in itself would satisfy him.

But, every few moments there intruded into his flowing consciousness the flashing smile of Ellen Jorges, the way she had looked at him, the things she had said. "Reckon I was a fool," he soliloquized, with an acute sense of hot humiliation. "She never saw how much in earnest I was." And Gene began to remember the circumstances with a vividness that disturbed and perplexed him.

The accident of running across such a girl in that lonely place might be out of the ordinary -- but it had happened. Surprise had dulled his perception guards. The charm of her appearance, the appeal of her manner, must have drawn him at the very first, but he had not recognized that. Only at hearing her confession, "Oh, I've been kissed before," had his feelings been checked in their hot, and heedless plunge.
And the utterance of them had made an immediate difference in his thought patterns that he now sought to analyze. Some voice, some idea had begun to defend her even before he was conscious that he had arraigned her before the bar of his judgment. This defense seemed to be clamoring in him like a 2-horse fire truck now, and he forced himself to listen. He wanted, in his hurt pride, to justify his amazing surrender to a sweet and sentimental impulse.

He realized now that at first glance he should have recognized in her look, her poise, her voice, the quality he identified as a healthy thoroughbred. Her ragged and stained apparel did not prove her of a common sort as he had expected. Gene had known a number of fine and wholesome girls sprung of good family. This Ellen Jorges was that kind of a girl irrespective of her present environment. Gene championed her loyally, even after he had gratified his selfish pride.

It was then -- contending with an intangible and stealing glamour, unreal and fanciful, like the dream of a forbidden enchantment -- that Gene arrived at the part in the little woodland drama where he had kissed Ellen Jorges and had been unrebuked. Why had she not resented his action? Dispelled was the fairy-tale castle illusion he had been dreamily and nobly constructing. Then he had been stunned with her words, "Oh, I have been kissed before!" Why, obviously, it had happened many times and she had grown so used to it that this manly desire to kiss her was common place.

The shock to sensibilities now exceeded his first dismay. Half bitterly she had spoken, and wholly scornful of herself, or of him, or of all men. For hadn't she said all men were alike in trying for something more. Gene chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every decent man hated. And yet, hadn't that exact same goal been his secret desire? Wasn't he actually just like other men in his crass desires. Well then, wasn't it only natural that every happy and healthy young man would want to kiss such red, sweet lips. And then want to go just a little farther, if possible.

“Yeah,” he admitted angrily. “But if those lips have been pursed out there for others – I don't want them ever pursed out for me, doggone it!”

Nonetheless, Gene couldn't keep his mind from reeling the same, smarting scene of her lips inviting other men to kiss them before his eyes over and over again. First one man then another kissed her lips – and that Coulter. Heavy odds said he had been one of those worthless scum that had so freely leaned down and kissed those lips!

This thought drew him up in a cold sweat. Were his desires really on some higher plane than that of a burly-bearded sheepherder like Coulter that had kissed her before? It was too much to see Coulter dipping his uncombed head down to kiss, and kiss again those sweet lips as his hands roamed the exciting contours of her body, unchecked --

as unchecked as his own hands had been?

“Sweet hell and sheep-dip tarnation” -- Gene made his brain disengage, throw out Coulter's licentious lolly-gagging. But it came roaring right back in and he had to deal with it. Surely Coulter had not been permitted that license; “If he has, I'll kill him.”

The fierceness of his avowal frightened Gene for a moment, but the dam had been cut and his thoughts rushed through. Killing Coulter in various ways was more fun than watching Coulter ravage Ellen Jorges. He let the soul-satisfying day dream rattle on until some of his adrenalin dwindled. He paused in his thoughts and they dove right back to Ellen Jorges. “There is a difference, and it is a major difference. Like her I am still innocent, still in full touch with my noble birth right. Not since my innocent participation in childish games have I actually kissed a girl – In fact, not until this brown-faced Ellen Jorges came my way. Not me.”

His mind drifted away to wonder at this innocence of his. Was it truly of any value? Did it make him any better than the heathen that raged over distant lands and ravaged ten or more women every day? He paused and thought intensely. “For all I know, women prefer men like Coulter. In fact, haven't I seen men just like Coulter with a woman tucked beneath each arm and both of them laughing?”

He wondered anew at the significance of his accidental kiss. Did it, could it possibly mean that he was in love with her?

And that lack of retarding effort on her part – would she have stopped him before he went any farther? Somehow he couldn't imagine her stopping him, not until he had told his lineage. What kind of a woman would let a man do that?

After some more analyzing he decided for sure that she would not have stopped him; he had stopped himself.. his noble, innocent birthright had been all that had stopped anything from happening between them. “Why, that would mean she was a shameless hussy.”

Even then he could not slap the affair out of his mind. “Why not?” he asked. “Why do I keep thoughts of her so uppermost in my brain? After all, was that kiss not merely an accident?”
Why should he remember this episode so vividly, over and over again? Why should he ponder, and weep? What was the faint, deep, growing thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts when allowed to run their full length in his mind?

Riding along with busy mind, Gene almost crossed a well-beaten trail, leading through a pine thicket and down over the Rim. Gene's pack mule led the way without being driven. And when Gene reached the edge of the bluff one look down was enough to fetch him off his horse. That trail was steep, narrow, clogged with stones, and as full of sharp corners as a crosscut saw. Once on that descent with a packed mule and a spirited horse, Gene would have no time for wool-gathering, no wandering thoughts could be entertained, and very little of his thoughts could be spared for occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the vast blue hollow asleep under a westering sun.

The stones did rattle, the dust rose, the cedar twigs snapped, the little trickling avalanches of red earth slid down, the iron-shod hoofs rang on the rocks. This slope had been narrow at the apex in the Rim where the trail led down a crack, and it widened in fan shape as Gene descended. He zigzagged down a breath-taking, danger-ridden thousand feet before the slope benched into dividing ridges. Here the cedars and junipers failed and pines once more were so thick they hid the sun. Deep ravines were black with brush. Fresh deer and bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail. From somewhere rose a roar of running water, most pleasant to Gene's ears.

Those timbered ridges were but billows of that tremendous slope that now sheered above Gene, ending in a magnificent yellow well of rock, greened in niches, stained by weather rust, carved and cracked and caverned. As Gene descended farther the hum of bees made quaint melody, the roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze filled him with the content of the wild. Sheepmen like Coulter and wild girls like Ellen Jorges and all that seemed promising or menacing in his father's letter could never change the Indian in Gene.

So he had thought and always believed. The first crinkling of doubt pounded on his heart like a mad man pounding on the door to get out. He let his thoughts rush on and hard upon that conclusion rushed another that made his blood run cold in his veins. -- one which troubled him with its stinging revelation. Surely though, these influences he had defied were just the ones to bring out in him the Indian he had sensed but had never known. Now that Gene could let his thoughts roam more freely he noted that this eventful day had processed new and bitter food for him to reflect upon.

The trail had landed him in the bowlder-strewn bed of a wide canyon, where the huge trees stretched a canopy of foliage which denied the sunlight, and where a beautiful brook rushed and foamed as if it were a miniature river hurtling over a mountain. Here at last Gene tasted water that rivaled the purity of his Oregon springs.

"Ah," he cried, "that sure is good!" Dark and shaded and ferny and mossy was this streamway; and everywhere were tracks of game, from the giant spread of a grizzly bear to the tiny, SCRATCHING, birdlike imprints of a terrified squirrel.

Gene sighed with satisfaction as he heard the familiar sounds of deer crackling the dead twigs; and the chatter of squirrels was incessant. This fragrant, cool retreat under the Rim brought back to him the dim recesses of Oregon forests. After all, Gene felt that he would not miss anything that he had loved in the Cascades. But what was the vague sense of all not being well with him -- the essence of a faint regret -- the insistence of a hovering shadow?

And then flashed again, etched more vividly by the repetition in memory, a picture of eyes, of lips -- of something he had to deal with, and forget, by golly.

Wild and broken as this rolling Basin floor had appeared from the Rim, the reality of traveling over it made that first impression a deceit of distance. Down here all was on a big, rough, broken scale. Gene did not find even a few rods of level ground. Bowlders as huge as houses obstructed the stream bed and dashed the water so fine that rainbows danced in the mist. He saw spruce trees eight feet thick that tried to lord it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a veritable canyon from which occasional glimpses through the foliage showed the Rim as a lofty red-tipped mountain peak.

The trail had turned southeast. Gene's pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear or lion and ran off down the rough trail with his load shifting, imperiling Gene's entire outfit. It was not an easy task to head him off nor, when that was accomplished, to keep him to a trot. But his fright and succeeding skittishness at least made for fast traveling.

Gene calculated that he covered ten miles under the Rim before the character of ground and forest began to change. Instead of gorge after gorge, red-welled and choked with forest, there began to be rolling ridges, some high; others were knolls; and a thick cedar growth made up for a falling off of pine. The spruce had long disappeared. Juniper thickets gave way, more and more to the beautiful manzanita; and soon on the south slopes appeared cactus and a scrubby live oak.

But for the well-broken trail, Gene would have fared ill through this tough brush.

Gene espied several deer, and again a coyote, and what he took to be a small herd of wild horses. No more turkey tracks showed in the dusty patches. He crossed a number of tiny brooklets, and at length came to a place where the trail ended or merged in a rough road that showed evidence of considerable travel. Horses, sheep, and cattle had passed along there that day. This road turned more southward, and Gene began to have pleasurable expectations.

The road, like the trail, led down grade, but no longer at such steep angles, and it was bordered by cedar and pinyon, jack-pine and juniper, mescal and manzanita. Quite sharply, going around a ridge, the road led Gene's eye down to a small open flat of marshy, or at least grassy, ground. This green oasis in the wilderness of red and timbered ridges marked another change in the character of the Basin. Beyond that the country began to spread out and roll gracefully, its dark-green forest interspersed with grassy parks, until Gene headed into a long, wide gray-green valley surrounded by black-fringed hills. His pulses quickened here. He saw cattle dotting the expanse, and here and there along the edge were log cabins and corrals, springing up.

As a village, Pauls Valley could not boast of much, apparently, in the way of population. Cabins and houses were widely scattered, as if the inhabitants did not care to encroach upon one another. But the one store, built of stone, and stamped also with the characteristic isolation, seemed to Gene to be a rather remarkable edifice. Not exactly like a fort did it strike him, but if it had not been designed for defense it certainly gave that impression, especially from the long, low side with its dark eye-like windows about the height of a man's shoulder. Some rather fine horses were tied to a hitching rail. Otherwise dust and dirt and age and long use stamped this Pauls Valley store and its immediate environment.

Gene threw his bridle, and, getting down, mounted the low porch and stepped into the wide open door. A face, gray against the background of gloom inside, passed out of sight just as Gene entered. He knew he had been seen. In front of the long, rather low-ceiled store were four men, all absorbed, apparently, in a game of checkers. Two were playing and two were looking on. One of these, a gaunt-faced man past middle age, casually looked up as Gene entered. But the moment of that casual glance afforded Gene time enough to meet eyes he instinctively distrusted. They masked their penetration. They seemed neither curious nor friendly. They saw him as if he had been mere thin air.

"Good evening," said Gene.

After what appeared to Gene a lapse of time sufficient to impress him with a possible deafness of these men, the gaunt-faced one said, "Howdy, Isbel!"

The tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. Gene's sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans -- for so Gene at once classed them -- had ever seen Gene, but they knew him and knew that he was expected in Pauls Valley. All but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under their wide-brimmed black hats.

Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave Gene the same impression of latent force that he had encountered in Coulter. "Will somebody please tell me where to find my father, Jesse Isbel?" inquired Gene, with as civil a tongue as he could command.

Nobody paid the slightest attention. Waiting, half amused, half irritated, Gene shot a rapid glance around the store. The place had felt bare; and Gene, peering back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much. Dry goods and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a low shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes, and next to it stood a rack of rifles. On the counter lay open cases of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that of real rum.

Gene's swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now deigned to look at Gene. Not much flesh was there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy. He stroked a lean chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of bridle holding than familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle. It was a lazy hand. The man looked lazy. If he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet Gene had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation.
"Sure," drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, "old Jesse lives about a mile down here." With slow sweep of the big hand he indicated a general direction to the south; then, appearing to forget his questioner, he turned his attention back to the game.

Gene muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove the pack mule down the road. "Reckon I've ran into the wrong folds to-day," he said. "If I remember dad right he was a man to make and keep good friends."

Beyond the store were some rather pretty and comfortable homes. He saw little ranch houses back in the coves of the hills. His road turned west and Gene saw his first sunset in the Verde Mesa Basin. It was a pageant of purple clouds with silver edges, and background of deep rich gold. Presently Gene met a lad driving a cow. "Hello, Johnny!" he said, genially, and with a double purpose. "My name's Gene Isbel. By Golly! I'm lost in Pauls Valley. I'll bet you don't believe that could happen to anybody, but it's sure nuff true; Will you please tell me where my dad lives?"

The boy studied him for a long moment then pointed off behind him. "Yeah, I know Old Man Jesse. Keep right on, and you can't miss him," the boy added with a bright smile. "He's looking for you."

"How do you know that, boy?" queried Gene, his heart warmed by that smile.

"Aw, I know. It's all over the valley that you'd ride in ter-day. sure I wus the one that tole yer dad and he give me a dollar."
"Was he glad to hear it?" asked Gene, with a queer sensation in his throat.

"well yes sir, he plumb was."

"and who told you I was going to ride in to-day?"

"I heard it at the store," replied the lad, with an air of confidence. "Some sheep herders was talking to Greaves. He's the storekeeper. I was setting outside, but I heard. A Mexican come down off the Rim ter-day and he fetched the news." Here the lad looked furtively around, then whispered. "and that greaser was sent by somebody. I never heard no more, but them sheep herders looked pretty plumb sour. and one of them, coming out, give me a kick in the backside, some up high, darn him. It sure is the luckedest day for us cowmen."

"How's that, Johnny?"

"well, that's sure a big fight coming to Pauls Valley. My dad says so and he rides for yer dad. and if it comes now you'll be here."

"Uh Huh!" laughed Gene. "and what then, boy?"

The lad turned bright eyes upward. "Aw, now, yu'all can't come that on me. Ain't you an Injun, Gene Isbel? Ain't you a stolened horse tracker that rustlers can't fool? Ain't you a plumb dead shot? Ain't you wrung out wuss'ern a grizzly bear in a tight rough-and-tumble? ... Now ain't you, sure?"

Gene laughed at the hopeful description and bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day and rode on his way. Manifestly he had a reputation somewhat difficult to live up to and it had preceded his entry into Pauls Valley.

Gene's first sight of his future home thrilled him all the way through. It was a big, low, rambling log structure standing well out from a wooded knoll at the edge of the valley. Corrals and barns and sheds, cleanly arranged, lay off at the back. To the fore, stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and horses grazed. With some sign of good luck, it was sunset that wrapped the scene with rich color. Prosperity and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch; lusty voices of burros braying and cows bawling seemed to be welcoming Gene. A hound bayed at his scent, stirring anew Gene's hopes for some hunting and fishing. The first cool touch of wind fanned Gene's cheek and brought a fragrance of wood smoke and frying ham.

Horses in the Pasture romped to the fence and whistled at these newcomers. Gene espied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his sight. "Hello, Whiteface! I'll sure straddle you," called Gene. Then up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father -- the same as he had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, short sleeved, striding with long steps that could step him plumb over a fence without breaking much of his stride. Gene waved and called to him.

"Hi, You Prodigal!" came the answer.

Yes, his heart thrilled at the cordial voice of his father -- and Gene's boyhood memories flashed. He hurried his horse those last few rods. No -- dad was not the same. His hair shone a flickering gray of unmanaged care.

"Here I am, dad," called Gene, and then he was dismounting. A deep, quiet emotion settled over him, stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the pang in his breast. He opened his arms and embraced his father for the first time in his life. His tears spurted as his father, first shocked, then disturbed let loose with a hard pounding on Gene's back.

"Son, I sure am glad to see you," said his father, and wrung his hand. "well, well, look at the size of you! sure you've grown, any how you favor your mother."

Gene felt the iron clasp of his father's hand, noted with pride at the uplifting of the handsome head, in the strong, fine light of piercing eyes that there was no difference in the spirit of his father. But the old smile could not hide lines and shades strange to Gene.

"Dad, I'm just as glad as you," replied Gene, heartily. "It seems like a long time that we've been parted, now I see you. Are You well, dad, and are you all right?"

"Not complaining, son,” bragged his father. “I can ride all day same as ever, and break any horse in the corral. Come on. Never mind your horses. They'll be looked after. Come meet the folks.... well, well, you got here at last."

On the porch of the house a group awaited Gene's coming, rather silently, he thought. Wide-eyed children were there, very shy and watchful. The dark face of his sister corresponded with the image of her in his memory. She appeared taller, more womanly, as she embraced him. "Oh, Gene, Gene, I'm glad you've come!" she cried, and pressed him close. Gene felt in her a woman's anxiety for the present as well as affection for the past.

He remembered his aunt Mary, though he had not seen her for years. His half brothers, Bill and Guy, had changed but little except perhaps to grow lean and rangy. Bill resembled his father, though his aspect was jocular rather than serious. Guy was smaller, wiry, and hard as rock, with snapping eyes in a brown, still face, and he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. Both had married in Arizona. Bill's wife, Kate, was a stout, comely little woman, mother of three of the children. The other wife was young, a strapping girl, red headed and freckled, with wonderful lines of pain and strength in her face. Gene remembered, as he looked at her, that some one had written him about the tragedy in her life. When she was only a child the Apaches had murdered all her family before her eyes.

Then next to greet Gene were the little children, all shy, yet all manifestly impressed by the occasion. A warmth and intimacy of forgotten home emotions flooded over Gene. Sweet it was to get home to these relatives who loved him and welcomed him with quiet gladness and the smell of hot biscuits. But there seemed more. Gene was quick to see the shadow in the eyes of the women in that household and to sense a strange reliance which his presence brought.

"Son, this here Verde Mesa is a land of milk and honey," said his father, as Gene gazed spellbound at the bounteous supper.

Gene performed gastronomic feats on this occasion, to the delight of Aunt Mary and the wonder of the children. He dived into the bowl of hot biscuits and found one that just fit his hand. "Oh, he's starv-ved to death," whispered one of the little boys to his sister. Already, they had begun to warm to this stranger uncle. Gene had no chance to talk, even had he been able to, for the meal-time showed a relaxation of restraint and they all tried to tell him things at once.
In the bright lamplight his father looked easier and happier as he beamed upon Gene.

After supper the men went into an adjoining room that appeared most comfortable and attractive. It was long, and the width of the house, with a huge stone fireplace, low ceiling of hewn timbers and walls of the same, small windows with inside shutters of wood, and home-made table and chairs and rugs.

"well, Gene, do you recollect them shooting-irons?" inquired the rancher, pointing above the fireplace. Two guns hung on the spreading deer antlers there. One was a musket Gene's father had used in the war of the rebellion and the other was a long, heavy, muzzle-loading flintlock Kentucky, rifle with which Gene had learned to shoot.

"Reckon I do, dad," replied Gene, and with reverent hands and a rush of memory he took the old gun down.

"Gene, you sure handle that old arm some clumsy like it was loaded," said Guy Isbel, dryly.

Gene fetched him a glance of indignation. “Any gun is loaded and dangerous until you know otherwise.”

Bill charged in to add a remark to the effect that perhaps Gene had been leading a luxurious and tame life back there in them there Oregon pines, and then added with pride, "But I reckon he's packing that six-shooter like a Texan."

"So, I fetched a gun or two along with me," replied Gene, jocularly. "Reckon I near broke my poor mule's back with the load of shells and guns I brought in."

"Son, sure all shooting arms and such are at a premium in the Verde Mesa," replied his father.

"and I was giving you a hunch to come loaded. I hope you caught it."

His cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon the pleasantries. Right there Gene sensed the charged atmosphere boiling up from the floor. His brothers were bursting with utterance about to break forth, and his father suddenly wore a look that recalled to Gene critical times of days on end and long past. But the entrance of the children and the women folk put an end to confidences.

Evidently the youngsters were laboring under subdued excitement. They preceded their mother, the smallest boy in the lead. For him this must have been both a dreadful and a wonderful experience, for he seemed to have a need to be pushed forward by his sister and brother and mother, but driven by yearnings of his own that wouldn't let him go. "There now, Lee. So, yawl hush up. Uncle Gene, what did you fetch us?' The lad hesitated for a shy, frightened look at Gene, and then, gaining something of promise from his scrutiny of his uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the question of tremendous importance again.

"What did I fetch you, hey?" cried Gene, in delight, as he whisked the lad up on his knee. "well, wouldn't you just like to know? I didn't forget, Lee. I remembered you all. Oh! the job I had packing your bundle of presents in.... Now, Lee, make a guess."
"I dess you fetched a dun," replied Lee.

"A dun! -- I'll bet you mean a gun," laughed Gene. "Well, you four-year-old Texas gun slinger! Make another guess."

That appeared too momentous and entrancing for the other two youngsters, and, adding their shrill and joyous voices to Lee's, they besieged Gene.

"Dad, where's my pack?" cried Gene. "These young Apaches are after my scalp."

"Reckon the boys fetched it onto the porch," replied the rancher.

Guy Isbel opened the door and went out. "By golly! here's three packs," he called. "Which one do you want, Gene?"

"It's a long, heavy bundle, all tied up," replied Gene.

Guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a whoop from the youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes of the women. Gene lost nothing of this. How glad he was that he had tarried in San Francisco because of a mental picture of this very reception in far-off wild Arizona.

When Guy deposited the bundle on the floor it jarred the room. It gave forth metallic and rattling and crackling sounds.

"Everybody stand back and give me elbow room," ordered Gene, majestically. "My good folks, I want you all to know this is something that doesn't happen often. The bundle you see here weighed about a hundred pounds when I packed it on my shoulder down Market Street in Frisco. It was stolen from me on shipboard. I got it back in San Diego and licked the thief till he wasn't nothing but ribbons. It rode on a burro from San Diego to Yuma and once in a sand storm I thought the burro was lost for keeps with everything on it. It came up the Colorado River from Yuma to Ehrenberg and there went on top of a stage.

“Leaving there we got chased by bandits and once when the horses were galloping hard it near rolled off. Then it went on the back of a pack horse and helped wear him out. and I reckon it would be somewhere else now if I hadn't fallen in with a freighter going north from Phoenix to the Santa Fe Trail. The last lap when it sagged the back of a mule was the riskiest and full of the narrowest escapes. Twice my mule bucked off his pack and left my outfit scattered. Worst of all, my precious bundle made the mule top heavy coming down that place back here where the trail seems to drop off the earth. There I was hard put to keep sight of my pack. Sometimes it was on top and other times the mule was. But it got here at last.... and so now I'll open it."

After this long and impressive harangue, which at least augmented the suspense of the women and worked the children into a frenzy, Gene leisurely untied the many knots round the bundle and unrolled it. He had packed that bundle for just such travel as it had sustained. Three cloth-bound rifles he laid aside, and with them a long, very heavy package tied between two thin wide boards. From this came the metallic clink. "Oo, I know what dem is!" cried Lee, breaking the silence of suspense. Then Gene, tearing open a long flat parcel, spread before the mute, rapt-eyed youngsters such magnificent things, as they had never dreamed of -- picture books, mouth-harps, dolls, a toy gun and a toy pistol, a wonderful whistle and a fox horn, and last of all a box of candy.

Before these treasures on the floor, too magical to be touched at first, the two little boys and their sister simply knelt. That was a sweet, full moment for Gene; yet even that was clouded by the something which shadowed these innocent children, fatefully born in a wild place at a wild time. Next Gene gave to his sister the presents he had brought her -- beautiful cloth for a dress, ribbons and a bit of lace, handkerchiefs and buttons and yards of linen, a sewing case and a whole box of spools of thread, a comb and brush and mirror, and lastly a Spanish brooch inlaid with garnets.

"There, Ann," said Gene, "I confess I asked a girl friend in Oregon to tell me some things my sister might like." Manifestly there was not much difference in girls. Ann seemed stunned by this munificence, and then awakening, she hugged Gene in a way that took his breath. She was not a child any more, that was certain.

Aunt Mary turned knowing eyes upon Gene. "Reckon you couldn't have pleased Ann more. She's engaged, Gene, and where girls are in that state these things mean a heap.... Ann, you'll be married in that!" she prophesied. And she pointed to the beautiful folds of material that Ann had spread out.

"What's this?" demanded Gene. His sister's blushes were enough to convict her, and they were mightily becoming, too.
"Here, Aunt Mary," went on Gene, "here's yours, and here's something for each of my new sisters." This distribution left the women as happy and occupied, almost, as the children. It left also another package, the last one in the bundle. Gene laid hold of it and, lifting it, he was about to speak when he sustained a little shock of memory.

Quite distinctly he saw two little feet, with bare toes peeping out of worn-out moccasins, and then round, bare, symmetrical ankles that had been scratched by brush. Next he saw Ellen Jorges's passionate face as she looked when she had made the violent action so disconcerting to him. In this happy moment the memory seemed no farther off than a few hours. It had crystallized. It annoyed him while it drew him. As a result he slowly laid this package aside and did not speak as he had intended to.

"Dad, I reckon I didn't fetch a lot for you and the boys," continued Gene. "Some knives, some pipes and tobacco. and sure the guns."

"Sure, you're a regular Santa Claus, Gene," replied his father. "well, well, look at the kids. and look at Mary. and for the land's sake look at Ann! well, well, I'm getting old. I'd forgotten the pretty stuff and gimcracks that mean so much to women. We're out of the world here on the road to nowhere. It's just as well you've lived apart from us, Gene, for coming back this way, with all that stuff, does us a lot of good. I can't say, son, how obliged I am.

“My mind has been set on the hard side of life. and it's sure good to forget that for a few minutes -- to see the smiles of the women and the joy flashing lights on the kids."

At this juncture a tall young man entered the open door. He looked a rider. All about him, even his face, except his eyes, seemed old, but his eyes were young, fine, soft, and dark.

"Howdie do, yawl!" he said, evenly.

Ann rose from her knees. Then Gene did not need to be told who this newcomer was.

"Gene, this is my friend, Andrew Chamberlain."

Gene knew when he met Chamberlain's grip and the keen flash of his eyes that he was glad Ann had set her heart upon one of their kind. And his second impression was something akin to the one given him in the road by the admiring lad. Chamberlain's estimate of him must have been a monument built of Ann's eulogies. Gene's heart suffered misgivings. Could he live up to the character that somehow had forestalled his advent in Pauls Valley? Surely life was measured differently here in the Verde Mesa Basin.

The children, bundling their treasures to their bosoms, were dragged off to bed in some remote part of the house, from which their laughter and voices came back with happy significance. Gene forthwith had an interested audience. How eagerly these lonely pioneer people listened to news of the outside world! Gene talked until he was hoarse. In their turn his hearers told him much that had never found place in the few and short letters he had received since he had been left in Oregon.

Not a word about sheep herders or any hint of rustlers! Gene marked the omission and thought all the more seriously of probabilities because nothing was said. Altogether the evening was a happy reunion of a family of which all living members were there present. Gene grasped that this fact was one of significant satisfaction to his father.

"Sure we're all going to live together here," he declared. "I started this range. I call most of this valley mine. We'll run up a cabin for Ann soon as she says the word. and you, Gene, where's your girl? I sure told you to fetch her."

"Dad, I didn't have one," replied Gene. His eyes were so downcast that Ann chuckled.

"well, I wish you had," returned the rancher. "That means you'll go courting one of these Verde Mesa hussies that I might object to."

"Why, father, there's not a girl in the valley Gene would look twice at," interposed Ann Isbel, with spirit.

Gene laughed the matter aside, but he had an uneasy memory. Aunt Mary averred, after the manner of relatives, that Gene would play havoc among the women of the settlement. And Gene retorted that at least one member of the Isbels; should hold out against folly and fight and love and marriage, the agents which had reduced the family to these few present. "I'll be the last real Isbel to go under," he concluded.

"Son, you're talking wisdom," said his father. "and sure that reminds me of the uncle you're named after. Gene Isbel! ... well, he was my youngest brother and sure a fire-eater. Our mother was a French creole from Louisiana, and Gene must have inherited some of his fighting nature from her. When the war of the rebellion started my brother Gene and I enlisted. I was crippled up before we ever got to the front. But Gene went through three Years before he was killed. His company had orders to fight to the last man. and Gene fought long enough to be that last man."

At length Gene was left alone with his father.

"Reckon you're used to bunking outdoors?" queried the rancher, rather abruptly.

"Well, yeah, most of the time," replied Gene.

"well, there's room in the house, but I want you to sleep out. Come get your bedding and gun. I'll show you."

They went outside on the porch, where Gene shouldered his roll of tarpaulin and blankets. His rifle, in its saddle sheath, leaned against the door. His father took it up and, half pulling it out, looked at it by the starlight. "Forty-four, eh? well, well, there's sure no better iron, if a man can hold straight." At the moment a big gray dog trotted up to sniff at Gene. "and here's your bunkmate, Shepp. He's part loafer, Gene. His mother was a favorite shepherd dog of mine. His father was a big timber wolf that took us two years to kill. There's sure some bad wolf packs running this Basin."

The night was cold and still, darkly bright under moon and stars; the smell of hay seemed to mingle with that of cedar. Gene followed his father round the house and up a gentle slope of grass to the edge of the cedar line. Here several trees with low-sweeping thick branches formed a dense, impenetrable shade.

"Son, your uncle Gene was scout for Liggett, one of the greatest rebels the South had," said the rancher. "and you're going to be scout for the Isbels of Verde Mesa. Reckon you'll find it 'most as hot as your uncle did.... Spread your bed inside. You can see out, but no one can see you. Reckon there's been some queer happenings 'round here lately. If Shepp could talk he'd sure have lots to tell us. Bill and Guy have been sleeping out, trailing strange horse tracks, and all that. But sure whoever's been prowling around here was too sharp for them. Some bad, crafty, light-stepping woodsmen 'round here, Gene.... Three mornings ago, just after daylight, I stepped out the back door and some one of these sneaks I'm talking about took a shot at me. Missed my head a quarter of an inch! To-morrow I'll show you the bullet hole in the doorpost. and some of my gray hairs that 're sticking in it!"

"Dad!" ejaculated Gene, with a hand outstretched. "That's awful! You frighten me."

"No time to be scared," replied his father, calmly. "They're sure going to kill me. That's why I wanted you home.... In there with you, now! Go to sleep. You sure can trust Shepp to wake you if he gets scent or sound.... and good night, my son. My hunch is that I'll rest easy to-night."

Gene mumbled a good night and stood watching his father's shining white head move away under the starlight. Then the tall, dark form vanished, a door closed, and all was still. The dog Shepp licked Gene's hand. Gene felt grateful for that warm touch. For a moment he sat on his roll of bedding, his thought still locked on the shuddering revelation of his father's words, "They're sure going to kill me."

The shock of inaction passed. Gene pushed his pack in the dark opening and, crawling inside, he unrolled it and made his bed.

When at length he was comfortably settled for the night he breathed a long sigh of relief. What bliss to relax! A throbbing and burning of his muscles seemed to begin with his rest. The cool starlit night, the smell of cedar, the moan of wind, the silence -- an were real to his senses. After long weeks of long, arduous travel he was home. The warmth of the welcome still lingered, but it seemed to have been pierced by an icy thrust. What lay before him? The shadow in the eyes of his aunt, in the younger, fresher eyes of his sister -- Gene connected that with the meaning of his father's tragic words. Far past was the morning that had been so keen, the breaking of camp in the sunlit forest, the riding down the brown aisles under the pines, the music of bleating lambs that had called him not to pass by.

Thought of Ellen Jorges recurred. Had he met her only that morning? She was up there in the forest, asleep under the starlit pines. Who was she? What was her story? That savage fling of her skirt, her bitter speech and passionate flaming face -- they haunted Gene. They were crystallizing into simpler memories, growing away from his bewilderment, and therefore at once sweeter and more doubtful. "Maybe she meant differently from what I thought," Gene soliloquized. "Anyway, she was honest." Both shame and thrill possessed him at the recall of an insidious idea -- dare he go back and find her and give her the last package of gifts he had brought from the city? What might they mean to poor, ragged, untidy, beautiful Ellen Jorges? The idea grew on Gene. It could not be dispelled. He resisted stubbornly. It was bound to go to its fruition.

Deep into his mind had sunk an impression of her need -- a material need that brought spirit and pride to abasement. From one picture to another his memory wandered, from one speech and act of hers to another, choosing, selecting, casting aside, until clear and sharp as the stars shone the words, "Oh, I've been kissed before!" That stung him now. By whom? Not by one man, but by several, by many, she had meant. Pshaw! he had only been sympathetic and drawn by a strange girl in the woods. To-morrow he would forget. Work there was for him in Pauls Valley. And he reverted uneasily to the remarks of his father until at last sleep claimed him.

A cold nose against his cheek, a low whine, awakened Gene. The big dog Shepp was beside him, keen, wary, intense. The night appeared far advanced toward dawn. Far away a cock crowed; then near-at-hand one answered in clarion voice. "What is it, Shepp?" whispered Gene, and he sat up. The dog smelled or heard something suspicious to his nature, but whether man or animal Gene could not tell.

The morning star, large, intensely blue-white, magnificent in its dominance of the clear night sky, hung over the dim, dark valley ramparts. The man in the moon had gone down head first and all the other stars were wan, pale ghosts.

Presently the strained vacuum of Gene's ears vibrated to a low roar of many hoofs. It came from the open valley, along the slope to the south. Shepp acted as if he wanted the word to run. Gene laid a hand on the dog. "Hold on, Shepp," he whispered. Then hauling on his boots and slipping into his coat Gene took his rifle and stole out into the open. Shepp appeared to be well trained, for it was evident that he had a strong natural tendency to run off and hunt for whatever had aroused him. Gene thought it more than likely that the dog scented an animal of some kind. If there were men prowling around the ranch Shepp, might have been just as vigilant, but it seemed to Gene that the dog would have shown less eagerness to leave him, or none at all.

In the stillness of the morning it took Gene a moment to locate the direction of the wind, which was very light and coming from the south. In fact that little breeze had borne the low roar of trampling hoofs. Gene circled the ranch house to the right and kept going along the slope at the edge of the cedars. It struck him suddenly how well fitted he was for work of this sort. All the work he had ever done, except for his few years in school, had been in the open.

All the leisure he had ever been able to obtain had been given to his ruling passion for hunting and fishing. Love of the wild had been born in Gene. At this moment he experienced a grim assurance of what his instinct and his training might accomplish if directed to a stern and daring end. Perhaps his father understood this; perhaps the old Texan had some little reason for his confidence.

Every few paces Gene halted to listen. All objects, of course, were indistinguishable in the dark-gray obscurity, except when he came close upon them. Shepp showed an increasing eagerness to bolt out into the void. When Gene had traveled half a mile from the house he heard a scattered trampling of cattle on the run, and farther out a low strangled bawl of a calf. "Uh Huh!" muttered Gene. "Cougar or some varmint pulled down on that calf."

Then he discharged his rifle in the air and yelled with all his might. Then it was necessary to yell again to hold Shepp back.

Thereupon Gene set forth down the valley, and tramped out and across and around, as much to scare away whatever had been after the stock as to look for the wounded calf. More than once he heard cattle moving away ahead of him, but he could not see them. Gene let Shepp go, hoping the dog would strike a trail. But Shepp neither gave tongue nor came back. Dawn began to break, and in the growing light Gene searched around until at last he stumbled over a dead calf, lying in a little bare wash where water ran in wet seasons.

Big wolf tracks showed in the soft earth. "Lofers," said Gene, as he knelt and just covered one track with his spread hand. "We had wolves in Oregon, but not as big as these.... Wonder where that half-wolf dog, Shepp, went. Wonder if he can be trusted where wolves are concerned. I'll bet not, if there's a she-wolf running around."

Gene found the tracks of two wolves, and he trailed them out of the wash, then lost them in the grass. But, guided by their direction, he went on and climbed a slope to the cedar line, where in the dusty patches he found the tracks again. "Not scared much," he muttered, as he noted the slow trotting tracks. "Well, you old gray loafers, we're going to clash."

Gene knew from many a futile hunt that wolves were the wariest and most intelligent of wild animals in the west. From the top of a low foothill he watched the sun rise; and then no longer wondered why his father waxed eloquent over the beauty and location and luxuriance of this grassy valley. But it was large enough to make rich a good many ranchers. Gene tried to restrain any curiosity as to his father's dealings in Pauls Valley until the situation had been made clear.

Moreover, Gene wanted to love this wonderful country. He wanted to be free to ride and hunt and roam to his heart's content; and therefore he dreaded hearing his father's claims. But Gene threw off his forebodings. Nothing ever turned out so badly as it was presaged. He would think the best until certain of the worst.

The morning was gloriously bright, and already the frost was glistening wet on the stones. Pauls Valley shone like burnished silver dotted with innumerable black spots. Burros were braying their discordant messages to one another; the colts were romping in the fields; stallions were whistling; cows were bawling. A cloud of blue smoke hung low over the ranch house, slowly wafting away on the wind. Far out in the valley a dark group of horsemen were riding toward the village. Gene glanced thoughtfully at them and reflected that he seemed destined to harbor suspicion of all men new and strange to him.

Above the distant village stood the darkly green foothills leading up to the craggy slopes, and these ending in the Rim, a red, black-fringed mountain front, beautiful in the morning sunlight, lonely, serene, and mysterious against the level skyline. Mountains, ranges, distances unknown to Gene, always called to him -- to come, to seek, to explore, to find, but no wild horizon ever before beckoned to him as this one. And the subtle vague emotion that had gone to sleep with him last night awoke now hauntingly. It took effort to dispel the desire to think, to wonder.

Upon his return to the house, he went around on the valley side, so as to see the place by light of day. His father had built for permanence; and evidently there had been three constructive periods in the history of that long, substantial, picturesque log house. But few nails and little sawed lumber and no glass had been used.

Strong and skillful hands, axes and a crosscut saw, had been the prime factors in erecting this habitation of the Isbels.

"Good morning, son," called a cheery voice from the porch. "Sure we-all heard you shoot; and the crack of that forty-four was as welcome as May flowers."

Bill Isbel looked up from a task over a saddle girth and inquired pleasantly if Gene ever slept of nights. Guy Isbel laughed and there was warm regard in the gaze he bent on Gene.

"You old Indian!" he drawled, slowly. "Did you get a bead on anything?"

"No. I shot to scare away what I found to be some of your loafers," replied Gene. "I heard them pulling down a calf. and I found tracks of two whopping big wolves. I found the dead calf, too. Reckon the meat can be saved. Dad, you must lose a lot of stock here."

"well, son, you sure hit the nail on the head," replied the rancher. "What with lions and bears and loafers -- and two-footed loafers of another breed -- I've lost five thousand dollars in stock this last year."

"Dad! You don't mean it!" exclaimed Gene, in astonishment. To him that sum represented more than six years of wages.

"I sure do," answered his father.

Gene shook his head as if he could not understand such an enormous loss where there were keen able-bodied men about. "But that's awful, dad. How could it happen? Where were your herders and cowboys? and Bill and Guy?"

Bill Isbel shook a vehement fist at Gene and retorted in earnest, having manifestly been hit in a sore spot. "Where was me and Guy, huh? well, my Oregon brother, we was here, all year, sleeping more or less about three hours out of every twenty-four -- riding our boots off -- and we couldn't keep down that loss."

"Gene, you have a mighty tumble coming to you out here," said Guy, complacently.

"Listen, son," spoke up the rancher. "You want to have some hunches before you figure on our troubles. There's two or three packs of loafers, and in the winter time they are hell to deal with. Lions thick as bees, and sure bad when the snow's on. Bears will kill a cow now and then – break its neck and haul it off. and whenever an old silvertip comes mozying across from the Mazatzals he kills stock. I'm in with half a dozen cattlemen. We all work together, and the whole outfit can't keep these vermints down. Three years ago the no count Jorges moved in up above us. Then two years ago the Hash Knife Gang come into the Verde Mesa."

"Hash Knife Gang? What a pretty name!" replied Gene. "Who're they?"

"Rustlers, son. and sure enough the real and old Texas brand patchers. The old Lone Star State got too hot for them, and they followed the trail of a lot of other Texans who needed a healthier climate. We've got some two hundred Texans around here, Gene, and maybe a matter of three hundred inhabitants in the Verde Mesa all told, good and bad. Reckon it's about half and half."

A cheery call from the kitchen interrupted the conversation of the men. "You come to breakfast. We got biscuits from the frying pan and pure gravy in the pot."

During the meal the old rancher talked to Bill and Guy about the day's order of work; and from this Gene gathered an idea of what a big cattle business his father conducted. After breakfast Gene's brothers manifested keen interest in the new rifles. These were unwrapped and cleaned and taken out for testing. The three rifles were forty-four calibre Winchesters, the kind of gun Gene had found most effective. He tried them out first before he let anyone else have it, and the shots he made were slammed in satisfactory to him and amazing to the others. Bill had been using an old Henry rifle. Guy did not favor any particular rifle. The rancher pinned his faith to the famous old single-shot buffalo gun, mostly called needle gun. "well, reckon I'd better stick to mine. Sure you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But you boys may do well with the forty-fours. Pack them on your saddles and practice shooting when you see a coyote."

Gene found it difficult to convince himself that this interest in guns and marksmanship had any sinister propulsion back of it. His father and brothers had always been this way. Rifles were as important to pioneers as plows, and their skillful use was an achievement every frontiersman tried to attain. Friendly rivalry had always existed among the members of the Isbel family: even Ann Isbel was a good shot. But such proficiency in the use of firearms -- and life in the open that was correlative with it -- had not dominated them as it had Gene. Bill and Guy Isbel were born cattlemen -- chips of the old block. Gene began to hope that his father's letter was an exaggeration, and particularly that the fatalistic speech of last night, "they are going to kill me," was just a moody inclination to see the worst side. Still, even as Gene tried to persuade himself of this more hopeful view, he recalled many references to the peculiar reputation of Texans for gun-throwing, for feuds, for never-ending hatreds. In Oregon the Isbels had lived among industrious and peaceful pioneers from all over the States; to be sure, the life had been rough and primitive, and there had been fights on occasions, though no Isbel had ever killed a man. But now they had become fixed in a wilder and sparsely settled country among men of their own breed. Gene was afraid his hopes had only sentiment to foster them. Nevertheless, be forced back a strange, brooding, mental state and resolutely held up the brighter side. Whatever the evil conditions existing in Pauls Valley, they could be met with intelligence and courage, with an absolute certainty that it was inevitable they must pass away. Gene refused to consider the old, fatal law that at certain wild times and wild places in the West certain men had to pass away to change evil conditions.

"well, Gene, ride around the range with the boys," said the rancher. "Meet some of my neighbors, Jim Blanchard, in particular. Take a look at the cattle. and pick out some horses for yourself."
"I've seen one already," declared Gene, quickly. "A black with white face. I'll take him."

"Sure you know a horse. To my eye he's my pick. But the boys don't agree. Bill 'specially has degenerated into a fancier of pitching horses. Ann can ride that black. You try him this morning.... and, son, enjoy yourself."

True to his first impression, Gene named the black horse Whiteface and fell in love with him before ever he swung a leg over him.

Whiteface appeared spirited, yet gentle. He had been trained instead of being broken. Of hard hits and quirts and spurs he had no experience. He liked to put his muscles doing what his rider wanted him to do.

A hundred or more horses grazed in the grassy meadow, and as Gene rode on among them it was a pleasure to see stallions throw heads and ears up and whistle or snort. Whole troops of colts and two-year-olds raced with flying tails and manes.

Beyond these pastures stretched the range, and Gene saw the gray-green expanse speckled by thousands of cattle. The scene was inspiring. Gene's brothers led him all around, meeting some of the herders and riders employed on the ranch, one of whom was a burly, grizzled man with eyes reddened and narrowed by much riding in wind and sun and dust. His last name was Evans and he was father of the lad whom Gene had met near the village. Burt was busily skinning the calf that had been killed by the wolves.

"See here, you Gene," said Burt, "it sure was about time you come home. We-all hear you have an eye for tracks. well, maybe you can kill Old Gray, the loafer that did this job. He's pulled down nine calves as' yearlings this last two months that I know of. and we haven't even had the spring round-up yet."

Pauls Valley widened to the southeast. Gene would have been backward about estimating the square miles in it. Yet it was not vast acreage so much as rich pasture that made it such a wonderful range. Several ranches lay along the western slope of this section. Gene was informed that open parks and swales, and little valleys nestling among the foothills, wherever there was water and grass, had been settled by ranchers.

Every summer a few new families ventured in.

Jim Blanchard struck Gene as being a lionlike type of Texan, both in his broad, bold face, his huge head with its upstanding tawny hair like a mane, and in the speech and force that betokened the nature of his heart. He was not as old as Gene's father. He had a rolling voice, with the same drawling intonation characteristic of all Texans, and blue eyes that still held the fire of youth. Quite a marked contrast he presented to the lean, rangy, hard-jawed, intent-eyed men Gene had begun to accept as Texans.

Blanchard took time for a curious scrutiny and study of Gene, that, frank and kindly as it was, and evidently the adjustment of impressions gotten from hearsay, yet bespoke the attention of one used to judging men for himself, and in this particular case seemed to be having reasons of his own for so doing.

"well, you're like your sister Ann," Blanchard declared. "Which you may take as a compliment, young man. Both of you favor your mother. But you're an Isbel too. Back in Texas there are men who never wear a glove on their right hands, and sure I reckon if one of them met up with you right sudden like he'd think some graves had opened and he'd go for his gun."

Blanchard's laugh pealed out with a deep, pleasant roll. Thus he planted in Gene's sensitive mind a significant thought-provoking idea about the past-and-gone Isbels.

His further remarks, likewise, were exceedingly interesting to Gene. The settling of the Verde Mesa Basin by Texans was a subject often in dispute. His own father had been in the first party of adventurous pioneers who had traveled up from the south to cross over the Reno Pass of the Mazatzals into the Basin. "Newcomers from outside get impressions of the Verde Mesa according to the first settlers they meet," declared Blanchard. "and sure it's my belief these first impressions never change, just so strong they are! well, I've heard my father say there were men in his wagon train that got run out of Texas by the rangers, but he swore he wasn't one of them. So I reckon that sort of talk held good for twenty years, and for all the Texans who emigrated, except, of course, such notorious rustlers as Davidson and men of his ilk. Sure we've got some bad men here. There's no law. Possession used to mean even more than it does now. Davidson and his Hash Knife Gang have begun to hold forth with a high hand. No small rancher can keep enough stock to pay for his labor."

At the time of which Jim Blanchard spoke there were not many sheep herders and cattlemen in the Verde Mesa, considering its vast area. But these, on account of the extreme wildness of the broken country, were limited to the comparatively open Pauls Valley and its adjacent environs. Naturally, as the inhabitants increased and stock raising grew in proportion the grazing and water rights became matters of extreme importance.

“Sheepmen run their flocks up on the Rim in summer time and down into the Basin in winter time. A sheepman can throw a few thousand sheep round a cattleman's ranch and ruin him. The range is free for them as man's enough to keep it.” He glanced up at Bill.. “It is just as fair for sheep herders to graze their herds anywhere as it is for cattlemen. This of course does not apply to the few acres of cultivated ground that a rancher can call his own; but very few cattle can have been raised on such limited area.

Blanchard went on to say that blaming the sheep herders for losses was unfair because they though perhaps at more labor, were keeping to the ridges and leaving the open valley and little flats to the ranchers. “There used to be enough room for everybody; there used to be room enough for all. Now the grazing ranges were being encroached upon by sheep herders newly come to the Verde Mesa.”

To Blanchard's way of thinking the rustler menace was more serious than the sheeping-off of the range, for the simple reason that no cattleman knew exactly who the rustlers were and for the more complex and significant reason that the rustlers did not steal sheep.

"Texas was overstocked with bad men and fine steers," concluded Blanchard. "Most of the first and some of the last have struck the Verde Mesa. The sheep herders have now got distributing points for wool and sheep at Maricopa and Phoenix. They're sure waxing strong and bold."

“And you don't think sheeping off is that bad?” asked Gene.

“Well now, no I don't and let me tell you why without none of you butting in till I finish filling in my hunch.”

Bill rolled his head as if he'd heard it all, time and time again. But Gene nodded for the man to continue. With a gulp of air, Jim Blanchard commenced.

“Bar room brawlers have dramatized the confrontations between sheepherders and cowboys. They been quick to point out that sheep stripped a land and left nothing behind, ruining it. If that were true the whole southwest would have been denuded for decades at a time. Sheep have been the prevalent livestock for centuries on Navajo land and even with overgrazing, that land returns to great bounty, given just a short period of time.

“To this day you can get in a big argument in sticking up for sheep. The evidence of our eyes can frequently cause fierce prejudices, I'll tell you what.

“Cows go along munching clumps here and there, off the top of the grass, off the cactus, even running their long tongue out and wrapping it around clumps of leaves from a tree or bush. Your sheep will thrust his nose down through the grass right to the ground and bite a single stalk or so off right at ground level. Cows grab bunches of grass and then go lie down to work it through their four stomachs. You put a herd of cows on a hundred acres or so and eventually they will get all of it whacked off all the way to the ground if they can’t go wandering off to another hundred acres or so.

“Your sheep, unless the shepherd leads them to greener pastures, will strip a piece of land all the way to the ground.

“But let me tell you my hunch. Neither sheep, horse, nor kine will yank the roots of grass out of the ground and ruin that patch of ground forever unless forced into it by starvation.

“Cows have no upper teeth in front. Their lower teeth clip the grass right up to cleavages in the upper palate after the tongue rolls their food into their mouth. They cannot bite their food off the stalks, they must rip it off. That’s quite ineffective when you think of it.”

Gene's mind paused to consider this new brand of thinking. Then he nodded for Jim to continue. “Sheep can graze all day long without a break, but cows prefor to wander off to a comfortable lair and chew their cud. Their hoofs are cloven and they chew the cud therefore they are numbered among the clean animals. Sheep have a single hoof on each foot and chew not the cud, therefore they too are numbered among the clean animals. They was 7 of them each, on the Ark.

“Horses don’t chew the cud and in fact, their intestines aren’t attached to the wall of the belly but simply float inside, whereas most other animals do have their intestines attached. Wunst horses have swallowed something they have no way of bringing it back up through the stove pipe, and it must pass through the system as rapidly as possible. Horse manure has been digested so well that it is nigh unto useless for any significant purpose.

“Cows pass cow patties though, chock full of undigested food, most inefficiently. Whole kernels of corn appear in many patties when cows feed upon the grain. The patties of healthy kine is wet and steaming, it forms in little concentric waves if that critter is getting good food to eat and plenty to drink.

“But you take a horse now.. Horses produce egg-sized clumps of manure that is firm, and feathers in the sunlight, then blows away. Sheep and goats produce firm little pellets of manure that often must be crushed before it can be absorbed by the ground. Rabbits, hares, deer and antelope produce pellets that retain their shapes for up to several weeks, and their manure is rich enough in pre-digested nutrients that survivalists like myself can cross great stretches of terrain, eating little or nothing else. In my youth I could gain weight in the desert of southern Arizona with nothing but the clothes on my back and shoes on my feet to carry me through. Occasionally I went without shoes. No hat, knife, or way of building a fire, no way of carrying water.

“That's the kind of kids I have raised, too. Recently I was visiting my fifth daughter and I caught her teaching her three daughters how to tell the tracks of a buck from the tracks of a doe, and tell how old the buck was. When you know enough about nature, you can survive anywhere, and you’re never too young to learn.”

Gene thought and rethought the hunch he had heard. “That's sure enough food for thought, and what's likely to come of this mess?"

"Ask your dad," replied Jim Blanchard.

"I will. But I reckon I'd be obliged for your honest opinion."

"well, short and sweet it's this: Texas cattlemen will never allow the range they stocked to be overrun by sheep herders."

Guy snorted his contemptuous agreement.

"Who's this man Greaves?" Gene asked. "I've never run into anyone like him."

"Greaves is hard to figure. He's a snaky customer in deals. But he seems to be good to the poor people 'round here. Says he's from Missouri. Ha-ha! He's as much Texan as I am. He rode into the Verde Mesa without even a pack to his name. and presently he builds his stone house and freights supplies in from Phoenix. Appears to buy and sell a good deal of stock. For a while it looked like he was steering a middle course between cattlemen and sheep herders. Both sides made a rendezvous of his store, where he heard the grievances of each. Laterly he's leaning to the sheep herders. Nobody has accused him of that yet. But it's time some cattleman called his bluff."

"Of course there are honest and square sheep herders in the Basin?" queried Gene.

"Yes, and some of them are not unreasonable. But the new fellows that dropped in on us the last few year -- they're the ones we're going to clash with."

"This -- sheepman, Jorges?" went on Gene, in slow hesitation, as if compelled to ask for what he would rather not learn.

"All we can figure is that Jorges must be the leader of this sheep faction that's harrying us ranchers. He doesn't make threats or roar around like some of them. But he goes on raising and buying more and more sheep. During lambing season he goes round buying up half-twins and puts that daughter of his to keeping them alive. His herders have been grazing down all around us this winter. Yep. Jorges's got to be reckoned with."

"Who is he, do you know?"

"well, no. I don't know enough to talk about. Your dad never said so, but I think he and Jorges knew each other in Texas years ago. I never saw Jorges but once. That was in Greaves's barroom. Your dad and Jorges met that day for the first time in this country. well, I've not known men for nothing. They just stood stiff and looked at each other. Your dad was about to draw. But Jorges made no sign to throw a gun."

Gene saw the growing and weaving and thickening threads of a tangle that had already involved him. And the sudden pang of regret he sustained was not wholly because of his sympathies with his own people.

"The other day back up in the woods on the Rim I ran into a sheepman who said his name was Coulter. Who is he?

"Coulter? sure he's a new one. I hain't seen him yet, but they say he can handle a border shift with the best of them. What did he look like to you?"

Gene said one word.. “Dangerous!” Then he went on and described Coulter with a readiness that spoke volumes for the vividness of his impressions.

"I don't know him, like I said," replied Blanchard. "But that only goes to prove my contention -- any fellow running wild in the woods can say he's a sheepman."

"Coulter surprised me by calling me by my name," continued Gene. "Our little talk wasn't exactly friendly. He said a lot about my being sent for to run sheep herders out of the country."

"Sure that's all over," replied Blanchard, seriously. "You're a marked man already."

"What started such a rumor?"

"Sure you can't prove it by me, but I reckon your dad bragged on you quite some go. But it's not taken as rumor by the sheepherders. It's got to the sheep herders as hard a fact as any of them bullets in your belt."

"Uh Huh! That accounts for Coulter's seeming a little sore under the collar. Well, he said they were going to run sheep over Pauls Valley, and for me to take that hunch to my dad."

Blanchard had his chair tilted back and his heavy boots against a post of the porch. Down he thumped. His neck corded with a sudden rush of blood and his eyes changed to a deep, blue fire.

"The hell he did!" he ejaculated, in furious amazement. Blanchard exhaled sharply, then cursed under his breath. He swung his arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or hope aside, and then relapsed to his former state. “Well, he's said it now and he's said it to you, mite near like a promise, I'd bet. Well, you can count on it, there's going to be some shooting start now.”

Gene gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old cattleman by his sudden break from the cool, easy Texan manner. The man reached over and laid a brown hand on Gene's knee. "Two years ago I called the cards," he said, quietly.

“My hunch was a Pauls Valley war was a going to happen. It ain't changed none; I see it coming now, no matter what."

Not until late that afternoon did Gene's father broach the subject uppermost in his mind. Then at an opportune moment he drew Gene away into the cedars out of sight.

"Son, I sure hate to make your home-coming unhappy," he said, with evidence of agitation, "but, so help me God, I have to do it!"

"Dad, you called me Prodigal, and I reckon you were right. You think I've shirked my duty to you. I'm ready now to make up for it," replied Gene, feelingly.

"well, well, sure that's fine-spoken, my boy.... Let's set down here and have a long talk. First off, what did Jim Blanchard tell you?"

Briefly Gene outlined the neighbor rancher's conversation. Then Gene recounted his experience with Coulter and concluded with Blanchard's reception of the sheepman's threat. If Gene expected to see his father rise up like a lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake. This news of Coulter and his talk never struck even so much as a spark from Jesse Isbel.

"well," he began, thoughtfully, "reckon there are only two points in Jim's talk I need touch on then. There's sure going to be a Pauls Valley war. and Jim's idea of the cause of it seems to be pretty much the same as that of all the other cattlemen. It'll go down a black blot on the history page of the Verde Mesa Basin as a war between rival sheep herders and cattlemen. Same old fight over water and grass! ... Gene, my son, that is wrong. It'll not be a war between sheep herders and cattlemen. But a war of honest ranchers against rustlers masking as sheep-raisers! ... Mind you, I don't belittle the trouble between sheep herders and cattlemen in Arizona. It's real and it's vital and it's serious. It'll take law and order, time in the courts to straighten out the grazing question. Some day the government will keep sheep off of cattle ranges.... So get things right in your mind, my son. You can trust your dad to tell you the absolute truth. In this fight that'll wipe out some of the Isbels -- maybe all of them -- you're on the side of justice and right. Knowing that, a man can fight a hundred times harder than he who knows he is on the side of a liar and a thief."

The old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed slowly and deeply. Gene sensed in him the rise of a tremendous emotional strain. Wonderingly he watched the keen lined face. More than material worries were at the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father's eyes. "Now next take what Jim said about your coming to chase these sheep-herders out of the valley....

“Gene, I started that talk. I had my tricky reasons. I know these greaser sheep-herders and I know the respect Texans have for a gunman. Some say I bragged. Some say I'm an old fool in his dotage, raving about a favorite son. But they are people who hate me and are afraid. True, son, I talked with a purpose, but sure I was mighty cold and steady when I did it. My feeling was that you'd do what I'd do if I were thirty years younger. No, fact is, I reckoned you'd do more. For I figured on your blood.

“Gene, you're Indian, and Texas and French, and you've trained yourself in the Oregon woods. When you were only a boy, few marksmen I ever knew could beat you, and I never saw your equal for eye and ear, for tracking a horse, for all the gifts that make a woodsman.... well, remembering this and seeing the trouble ahead for the Isbels, I just broke out whenever I had a chance. I bragged before men I'd reason to believe would take my words deep. For instance, not long ago I missed some stock, and, happening into Greaves's place one Saturday night, I sure talked loud. His barroom was full of men and some of them were in my black book. Greaves took my talk a little testy. He said. 'well, Jesse, maybe you're right about some of these cattle thieves living among us, but ain't they jest as liable to be some of your friends or relatives as Ted Meeker's or mine or any one around here?' That was where Greaves and me fell out. I yelled at him: 'No, by God, they're not! My record here and that of my people is open. The least I can say for you, Greaves, and your crowd, is that your records fade away on dim trails.' Then he said, nasty-like, 'well, if you could work out all the dim trails in the Verde Mesa you'd sure be surprised.'

“and that's when I roared at him. Sure enough though, that was the chance I had been looking for. I swore the trails he hinted of would be tracked to the holes of the rustlers who made them. I told him I had sent for you and when you got here these slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they were, would sure have hell to pay. Greaves said he hoped so, but he was afraid I was partial to my Indian son. Then we had hot words.

“Jim Blanchard had to get between us. When I was leaving I took a parting fling at him. 'Greaves, you ought to know the Isbels, considering you're from Texas. Maybe you've got reasons for throwing taunts at my claims for my son Gene. Yes, he's got Indian blood in him and that'll be the worse for the men who will have to meet him. I'm telling you, Greaves, Gene Isbel is as tough as any of the Texas gunmen you ought to remember.... Greaves, there are men rubbing elbows with you right here that my Indian son is going to track down and shoot for rustlers; you mark my word!'"

Gene bent his head in stunned cognizance of the notoriety with which his father had chosen to affront any and all Verde Mesa Basin men who were under the ban of his suspicion. What a terrible reputation and trust to have saddled upon him! Thrills and strange, heated sensations seemed to rush together inside Gene, forming a hot ball of fire that threatened to explode. A retreating self made feeble protests. He saw his own pale face going away from this older, grimmer man.

"Son, if I could have looked forward to anything but blood spilling I'd never have given you such a name to uphold," continued the rancher. "What I'm going to tell you now is my secret. My other sons and Ann have never heard it. Jim Blanchard suspects there's something strange, but he doesn't know. I'll sure never tell anyone else but you. and you must promise to keep my secret now and after I am gone."

"I can promise you that," said Gene.

"well, and now to get it out," began his father, breathing hard. His face twitched and his hands clenched. "The sheepman here I have to reckon with is Lee Jorges. He ain't nothing new; he's a lifelong enemy of mine. We were born in the same town, played together as children, and fought with each other as boys. We never got along together. and we both fell in love with the same girl. It was nip and tuck for a while. Ellen Sutton belonged to one of the old families of the South. She was a beauty, and much courted, and I reckon it was hard for her to choose. But I won her and we became engaged. Then the war broke out. I enlisted with my brother Gene. He advised me to marry Ellen before I left. But I would not. That was the blunder of my life. Soon after our parting her letters ceased to come. But I didn't distrust her. That was a terrible time and all was confusion. Then I got crippled and put in a hospital. and in about a year I was sent back home."

At this juncture Gene refrained from further gaze at his father's face.

"Lee's father gave him 12 nigrahs," went on the rancher, in lower, thicker voice. "That kept him out of the war, and he married my sweetheart, Ellen, while I was off to war.... I knew the story long before I got well. He had run after her like a hound after a hare.... and Ellen married him. well, when I was able to get about I went to see Jorges and Ellen. I confronted them in the middle of town. I had to know why she had gone back on me. Lee Jorges hadn't changed any with all his good fortune. He'd made Ellen believe in my dishonor. But, I reckon, lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was just plain faithless. In my absence he had won her away from me but it was as much her doing as his. and I saw that she loved him as she never had me. I reckon that learning what she was really like killed all my generosity. If she'd been imposed upon and weaned away by his lies and had regretted me a little I'd have forgiven, perhaps. But she worshiped him. She was his slave. and I, well, I learned what hate was.

"The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many other Southerners. Lee Jorges went in for raising cattle. He'd gotten the Sutton range and after a few years he began to accumulate stock. In those days every cattleman was a little bit of a thief. Every cattleman drove in and branded calves he couldn't swear was his. well, the Isbels were the strongest cattle raisers in that country. and I laid a trap for Lee Jorges, caught him in the act of branding calves of mine I'd marked, and I proved him a thief. I made neighbors see him as him a rustler. It ruined him. We met once. But Jorges was one Texan not strong on the draw, at least not against an Isbel. “He left the country. He had friends and relatives that believed in him and they started him at stock raising again. But he couldn't stand up to hard work and he began to gamble and he got in with a shady crowd. He went from bad to worse and then he came back home. When I saw the change in the proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton I had loved, and saw how she still worshiped Jorges after all that, it sure drove me near mad, whipped  between pity and hate.... well, I reckon in a Texan hate outlives any other feeling. There came a strange turn of the wheel and my fortunes changed. Like most young bloods of the day, I drank and gambled. and one night I run across Jorges and a card-sharp friend. That tin horn fleeced me. We quarreled. Guns were thrown. I killed my man.... about that period the Texas Rangers had come into existence.... and, son, when I said I was never run out of Texas I wasn't holding to strict truth. I rode out of Texas slowly, but on a fast horse that couldn't nobody hold back.

"I went to Oregon. There I married soon, and there Bill and Guy were born. Their mother did not live long. and next I married your mother, Gene. She had some Indian blood, which, for all I could see, made her only the finer. She was a wonderful woman and gave me the only happiness I ever knew. You remember her, of course, and those home days in Oregon. I reckon I made another great blunder when I moved to Arizona. But the cattle country had always called me. I had heard of this wild Verde Mesa Basin and Jim Blanchard sent me word to come – he said that this sure was a garden spot of the West.”

"Three years ago Lee Jorges drifted into the Verde Mesa. and, strange to me, along about a year or so after his coming, the Hash Knife Gang rode up from Texas and settled in the same area. Jorges went in for raising sheep. Along with some other sheep herders he lives up in the Rim canyons. Somewhere back in the wild brakes is the hiding place of the Hash Knife Gang. Nobody but me, I reckon, associates Colonel Jorges, as he's called, with Davidson and his gang. Maybe Blanchard and a few others have a hunch. But that's no matter.


“As a sheepman Jorges has a legitimate grievance with the cattlemen trying to protect range that actually belongs to all of us. But what could be settled by a square consideration for the good of all of us now, and give us a future of peace, Jorges will never consider or settle.

“He'll never settle because he is now no longer an honest man. He's in cahoots with Davidson. I can't prove this, son, but I know it. I saw it in Jorges's face when I met him that day with Greaves. I offered to settle what was personal between us right then and there. He would not let anything settle. He plans to put an army between us so that he can act in safety.

“I saw more. I saw sure what he is up to. He'd never meet me at an even break because just killing me isn't enough to satisfy his lust for revenge any more. He's dead set on using this sheep and cattle feud to ruin me, my family and my friends, even as he thinks I ruined him while all I really did was stop him in the execution of his abuses.

“But he means to do more, Gene. He is using clandestine methods in order to provoke me into openly starting the violence, so he will have an excuse in respectability to wipe us out. I have not let myself be provoked until at last I felt that I had to ask you to come home. Thousands of heads of cattle, horses, and even sheep have been rustled from me and from my friends. There is no legally constituted law here for us to appeal to. If we don't want to be wiped out completely we must act to protect ourselves and our property.

Many of the other ranchers are pushing for war. They are fools, Gene. I came here to raise a family. I have my sons and daughter here with me and I must think first of their safety and then of protecting their inheritances. My grandchildren are here with me and no man has ever loved his grandchildren more than I love, honor and cherish mine.” Jesse paused as if to remind himself just how precious his grandchildren were to him.

“Before Jorges came I had accrued great wealth; he has stolen a great part of that wealth from me and squandered it in debaucheries with his cronies. All that I have built up Jorges has come here to tear down and destroy. He is eager to share my wealth with all his friends. When my wealth is destroyed there will be nothing left here but ashes, for men like Jorges cannot build; nor can they maintain the wealth given to them. They cannot work in tandem yoke with God and nature. Nor can they live peacefully inside a society that is striving for righteousness.

“Once any man turns his hands to violence to get gain there is unleashed in his mind a worm that shall devour him just like locusts when wasps pierce their shells and lay their eggs inside, or like screw worms eat away the life of our steers.

This will be a bloody war Gene. There are bad men on the Verde Mesa -- some of the worst that didn't get shot or hanged in Texas are up there champing at the bit for easy pickings. Jorges will have at least some of these randies working for him.... others he just encourages to fleece us down below.

The old man turned his fierce gaze full upon Gene. “Others are hoping for war as if it was an outing, or a picnic; all I want is to protect what is mine for my children and for their children after them. Now, are we going to let ourselves be sheeped off our range -- or be murdered from ambush?"

"No, we are not," replied Gene, quietly and almost reluctantly.

"well, come down to the house," said the rancher, and led the way without speaking until he halted by the door. There he placed his finger on a small hole in the wood at about the height of a man's head. Gene saw it was a bullet hole and that a few gray hairs stuck to its edges. The rancher stepped closer to the door-post, so that his head was within an inch of the wood. Then he looked at Gene with eyes in which there glinted dancing specks of fire, like wild sparks.

"Son, this sneaking shot at me was made three mornings ago. I recollect moving my head just shortly before I heard the crack of a rifle. I sure was surprised. But I got inside quick. A man should be safe in his own home, Gene. I am no longer safe here, nor are my children. I have had enough provocation, Gene. From this day forward I will protect what is mine, and with your help I shall pursue anything of mine when it is stolen."

Gene scarcely heard the latter part of this speech. He seemed doubled up inwardly, in hot and cold convulsions of changing emotion. A terrible hold upon his consciousness was about to break and let go. The first shot had been fired and he was an Isbel. Indeed, his father had made him ten times an Isbel because Jesse Isbel was a fair man and an innocent one. Blood was thick and his father did not speak to dull ears this morning. This strife of rising tumult in him seemed to be the effect of years of calm, of peace in the woods, of dreamy waiting for he knew not what.

It was the passionate primitive life in him that had awakened to the primitive call of blood ties. When all else is gone, the family remains. It is the single most important building block of society. From Arabs to Eskimo, the family is what binds the nations together.

"That's about all, son," concluded the rancher. "You understand now why I feel they're going to kill me. I feel it here." With solemn gesture he placed his broad hand over his heart. "and, Gene, strange whispers come to me at night. It seems like your mother has been calling or trying to warn me.

“I can't explain these queer whispers in the night. But I know they are warnings from the other side."

"Jorges has his own set of hirelings and followers. You must have yours," replied Gene, tensely.

"Sure, son, and I can take my choice of the best men here if I choose to go to war," replied the rancher, with pride. "But my goal here is the same as it was in Texas; I intend to stop the cattle rustling and horse stealing. If Jorges is guilty here I want him hanged, legally and by the courts if that is possible, or shot down in the act if it isn't.

“I'll lay the deal before the other ranchers and let them choose their own course of action. For two years now they've been saying that we have been pushed enough and it is time to fight back. Now I believe they are right. Now we'll find out if they were just posing like most men will, or if the righteous indignation of a true Texan still runs in their veins.”

“I reckon it will not be a long-winded fight. When Jorges decides to move I know that it'll be short and bloody, after the way of Texans. I'm looking to you, Gene, to see that an Isbel is the last man standing! That's all I ask."

"My God -- dad! is there no other way? Think of my sister Ann -- of my brothers' wives -- of -- of the other women! Dad, these damned Texas feuds are cruel, horrible!" burst out Gene, in passionate protest.

"Gene, would it be any easier for our women if we let these men shoot us down in cold blood?"

"Oh no -- no, I see, there's no hope of -- of.... But, dad, I wasn't thinking about myself. I don't care. Once started I'll -- I'll be what you bragged I was. Only it's so hard to-to give in to a free rein on violent viciousness."

“You have that right, son. We must never let ourselves sink to their level, but there is also another side to this.. we must never let them steal what is ours by theft, coercion, or intimidation.”

Gene leaned an arm against the side of the cabin and, bowing his face over it, he surrendered to the irresistible contention within his breast. And as if with a wrench that strange inward hold broke. He let down. He went back. Something that was boyish and hopeful -- and in its place slowly rose the dark tide of his inheritance, the savage instinct of self-preservation bequeathed by his Indian mother, and the fierce, fierce pride of his Texan father that now felt justified to fight back.

Then as he raised himself, gripped by a sickening coldness in his breast, he remembered Ellen Jorges's face as she had gazed dreamily down off the Rim -- so soft, so different, with tremulous lips, sad, musing, with far-seeing stare of dark eyes, peering into the unknown, the instinct of life still unlived.

With confused vision and nameless pain, Gene found his first thoughts were of her. "Dad, it's hard on -- the -- the young folks," he said, bitterly. "The sins of the fathers, you know. and the other side. How about Jorges? Has he any children?"

What a curious gleam of surprise and conjecture Gene surprised in his father's gaze!

"He has a daughter. Ellen Jorges. Named after her mother. The first time I saw Ellen Jorges I was shocked into thinking she was the living ghost of the girl I had loved and lost. Sight of her was like a blade thrust into my side. But the looks of her and what she is -- they don't jibe. Old as I am, my heart went out to her, instantly -- Bah! Ellen Jorges is just another damned hussy, just like her mother was!"

Gene Isbel took himself off alone into the cedars so he could be alone and offer up his prayers. Surrender and resignation to his father's creed should have ended his perplexity and worry. His instant and burning resolve to be as his father had represented him should have opened his mind to slow cunning, to the craft of the Indian, to the development of hate. But there seemed to be an obstacle, a cloud in the way of his vision. It was a sweet face limned deep on his memory.

Those damning words of his father's had been a shock -- how little or great he could not tell. Was it only a day since he had met Ellen Jorges?
What had made all the difference? Suddenly like a breath the fragrance of her hair came back to him. Then the sweet coolness of her lips as they had touched his! Gene trembled. He looked around him as if he were pursued or surrounded by eyes, by instincts, by fears, by incomprehensible things from an unseen world. Was the devil dancing as murder and mayhem was being planned? “Damn the Jorges!” Gene exclaimed. Then Ellen Jorge's face floated clearly before his eyes as if she were right there in front of him and he realized that he did not desire to kill all of the Jorges. He did not want a hair on her head to be ruffled out of place by the violence around them.

"Uh Huh! That must be what ails me," he muttered. "The look of her -- and that kiss -- they've gone hard on me. I should never have stopped to talk. and now I'm enlisted to kill her father and leave her -- to God knows what."

Something was wrong somewhere. Gene absolutely forgot that within the hour he hadalready pledged his manhood and his life to a feud which could be blotted out only in blood.

If he had understood himself he would have realized that the pledge he had made was no more thrilling and unintelligible in its possibilities than this instinct which drew him irresistibly to the side of Ellen Jorges.

"Ellen Jorges! So -- my dad calls her a damned hussy? Sure -- that explains the -- the way she acted – it explains why she never hit me when I kissed her. She was scornful of me, maybe even disappointed because my kiss was so innocent! It was innocent, I swear. and all she said was: 'Oh, I've been kissed before.'"

Gene grew furious with himself for the spreading of a new sensation in his breast that seemed now to ache. Had he become infatuated, all in a day, lowing like a love-sick bull to be with this Ellen Jorges? Was he jealous of the men who had the privilege of her kisses?

“No!” his mind said. But his reply was hot with shame because the word quivered with uncertainty as it trembled on the evening air. The thing that seemed wrong was outside of himself. “A blunder was no crime. To be attracted by a pretty girl in the woods -- to yield to an impulse to flirt was no disgrace, nor was it wrong.”

He had been a little bit foolish over a girl before, but he had only mooned for a short time, then promptly forgot all about her. Even that time had not been to such a rash extent as this. Ellen Jorges had stuck in his mind, and with her image there was now a sense of regret.

Then swiftly rang his father's bitter words, the revealing: "But the looks of her and what she is -- they don't jibe!" In the import of these words hid the meaning of the wrong that troubled him. Broodingly he pondered over them.

"The looks of her. Yes, she was pretty, and even more than pretty. But it is the kind of beauty that isn't that obvious at first, like seeing a deer intended to be supper, that walks right up to you and brushes against your side and suddenly becomes your friend.


I -- I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but I didn't think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before Gene, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of longing, but the more mysterious and beautiful.

"She looks sweeter than an angel, but she's bad," concluded Gene, with bitter finality. "I might have fallen in love with Ellen Jorges if -- if she'd been different."

But the conviction forced upon Gene did not dispel the haunting memory of her face nor did it wholly silence the deep and stubborn voice of his consciousness. Later that afternoon he sought a moment with his sister.

"Ann, did you ever meet Ellen Jorges?" he asked.

"Yes, but not lately," replied Ann.

"Well, I met her as I was riding along yesterday. She was herding sheep," went on Gene, rapidly. "I asked her to show me the way to the Rim. and she walked with me a mile or so. I can't say the meeting was not interesting, at least to me.... Will you tell me what you know about her?"

"Well, Gene, I've heard a great deal, but in this Verde Mesa Basin I don't believe all I hear. I first met Ellen Jorges two years ago. We didn't know each other's names then. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw. I liked her. She liked me. The next time we met was at a round-up. There were other girls with me and they went out of their way to snub her. But I left them and went around with her. That snub had cut her to the heart. She said she hated the people here, but loved Arizona.

“I remember that she had nothing fit to wear. I didn't need to be told that she'd been used to better things. Just when it looked as if we were going to be friends she told me who she was ..

“It about froze my heart when I heard she was one of the Jorges. Then she asked me my name. I told her who I was. Gene, I couldn't have hurt her more if I'd slapped her face in a church meeting.

“She gasped. And then she ran off.

“The last time I saw her was about a year ago. I was riding a short-cut trail to the ranch where a friend lived. And I met Ellen Jorges riding with a man I'd never seen. The trail was overgrown and shady. They were riding close and didn't see me right off. The man had his arm round her. She pushed him away. I saw her laugh at him. Then he got hold of her again and was kissing her kind of rough when his horse shied at sight of mine. They rode by me then. Ellen Jorges held her head high and never looked at me."

"She pushed him away. Ann, do you think she's just a big flirt?" Gene demanded bluntly.

"Flirt? Oh, Gene!" exclaimed Ann, in surprise and embarrassment. "Dad said she was a damned hussy. But, you've got to remember Gene, dad hates anything with the name of Jorges."
"Sister, I need to know what you think of Ellen Jorges. Would you go out of your way to be friends with her -- if you could?"

Ann paused only long enough to get an honest answer from her own heart. "Yes," she finally admitted. “I know that I would. I would like to have a friend like her.”

"Then you don't believe she's a flirt?"

"No. She isn't -- wasn't. Not then, she wasn't anyway. From what I hear, Ellen Jorges lives alone among a gang of very rough men. A girl with that kind of natural beauty can't keep men from trying to handle her and start trying to kiss her. Maybe she's too wild and free up there. But she was honest, Gene. When she rode past me that day her face was proud. She was a Jorges and I was an Isbel. She hated herself -- she hated me. But no girl with a dark heart could look like that.

“She knows what's being said of her all around the valley. But she doesn't care. She'd encourage the gossip with her head up because the people that are talking about her aren't any better than they think she is."

Gene wandered away again, peculiarly grateful to Ann for reviving and upholding something in him that seemed a wavering part of the best of him -- a chivalry that had demanded to be killed by the judgment of a righteous woman.He was conscious of an uplift, a gladdening of his spirit. Yet the ache remained. More than that, he found himself plunged deeper into conjecture, even doubt. Had not the Ellen Jorges incident already ended?


Yet his heart still smoldered with longings to know her better and he stalwartly denied his father's indictment of her, and accepted the faith of his sister as confirmation that his heart had seen the truth of the matter.

"Reckon that's about all, as dad says," he soliloquized. Yet was that all? Could he even let it be all? An emptiness within him called out for Ellen Jorges to be the missing part of himself that had plagued him all his days.

He paced back and forth under the cedars, trying to resolve some way to see her again. He watched the sun set and dreamed that he was seeing it with her beside him. He listened to the lonely wail of the coyotes and wanted to join in with a lonely wail of his own.

He lingered in the cedars even after the call for supper, wishing Ellen Jorges would step out of the shadows and walk into his arms; “I could love her,” he cried out to the tumult of his conflicting emotions and ponderings. There evolved the staggering realization that he must see Ellen Jorges again, tomorrow, no matter what the cost to him might be.


When Ellen Jorges hurried back into the forest, she was hotly resentful of the accident that had thrown her into contact with an Isbel.

Disgust filled her -- disgust that she had been fooled into being amiable to a member of that hated Isbel family that had ruined her father. The surprise of this meeting did not come to her while she was under the spell of stronger feeling. She walked under the trees, swiftly, with head erect, looking straight before her, and every step seemed a relief as she hurried back to camp.

At this season the flock would be besieged by wolves, lions, bears, the last of which were often bold and dangerous. The old grizzlies that killed the ewes to eat only the milk-bags were particularly dreaded by Ellen. She was a good shot with a rifle, but had orders from her father to let the big bears alone as they could be much more dangerous after they were shot than when they were just upset. Fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few, and they were left to be hunted down for sport by men from the ranch.

Ellen helped Pedro drive some of the stragglers, and she took several shots at coyotes skulking along the edge of the brush in broad daylight. Coyotes seemed to love sheep meat better than anything else on earth. They were drooling at the thought of so much good tasting meat. If the shepherd let them get in amongst the sheep they would literally go crazy, ripping one to pieces, then hurrying after another one. Left unhindered they would go on killing until they were too tired to move from the effort.

The open glades in the forest was favorable for herding the sheep at night, and the dogs could be depended upon to guard the flock, and in many cases to drive predatory beasts away.

After getting the sheep bunched it was sunset. Ellen had supper to cook and eat, but she paused to study the sunset with a long, intense emotion she had never felt before.

Darkness came before they were through eating, and a cool night wind set in. Here and there a lamb bleated plaintively.

With her work done for the day, Ellen sat before a ruddy camp fire, and found her thoughts again centering around the singular adventure that had befallen her that day.
Disdainfully she strove to make her mind think of something else. But it seemed that there was nothing that could dispel the memory of her meeting with Gene Isbel. Thereupon she impatiently surrendered to it in an effort to get it out of her system. She found herself recalling every word and action which she could remember. And in the process of this meditation she came to a full stop on an action of hers, the recollection of which brought the blood tingling to her neck and cheeks, so unusually and burningly that she covered them with her hands.
"What did he think of me when I said that?" she mused, doubtfully. “It doesn't matter what he thought; He's an Isbel.”

That shattered the play in her mind, but she could not help wondering what he had thought. Thus, when she replayed the memory of his kiss she suffered more than the sensation of throbbing scarlet cheeks. Scornfully and bitterly she burst out, "sure he couldn't have thought much good of me then when I said that."

The half hour following this reminiscence was far from being pleasant. Proud, passionate, strong-willed, -- Ellen Jorges found herself a victim of conflicting emotions. The event of the day was too close. She could not understand it. Disgust and disdain and scorn could not make this meeting with Gene Isbel disappear as if it had never been. Not even pride could efface it from her mind. The more she reflected, the harder she tried to forget, the stronger grew a significance of interest. And when a hint of this dawned upon her consciousness she resented it so forcibly that she lost her temper, scattered the camp fire, and went into the little teepee tent to roll in her blankets.

Thus settled snug and warm for the night, with a shepherd dog curled at the opening of her tent, she shut her eyes and confidently bade sleep end her perplexities. But sleep did not come at her invitation. She found herself wide awake, keenly sensitive to the sputtering of the camp fire, the tinkling of bells on the rams, the bleating of lambs, the sigh of soft winds in the pines, and the hungry sharp bark of coyotes off in the distance. Darkness was no respecter of her pride.

Lover's Wait

The lonesome night with its emphasis of solitude seemed to induce clamoring and strange thoughts, a confusing ensemble of all those that had annoyed her during the daytime. Not for long hours did sheer weariness bring her to slumber.

She woke up late and failed of her usual alacrity. Both Pedro and the shepherd dog appeared to regard her with surprise and solicitude. The sweet smell of pine where so much oxygen was being poured into the air was a temptation to feel a burst of radiant joy, but Ellen's spirit was low this morning; her blood seemed to run sluggishly; she even had to fight a mournful tendency to feel sorry for herself -- although she told herself nothing had changed from the week before.

There seemed to be some kind of perverse pleasure in reveling in melancholy which her common sense told her had no reason for its existence. But her state of mind persisted in spite of that common sense. “Why do I feel so rotten and lonely today?”

She grabbed food out of the hot skillet, took one bite and then threw it back. "Pedro, when is Antonio coming back?" she demanded.

The boy turned his head away and would not give her a satisfactory answer. Ellen had willingly taken the sheep herder's place for a few days, but now she was impatient to go home. She looked down the green-and-brown aisles of the forest until she was tired. Antonio did not return.

Ellen spent the day running with the sheep; and in the manifold task of caring for a thousand new-born lambs she forgot herself. This day saw the end of lambing-time for that season. The forest resounded to a babel of baas and bleats. When night came she was so exhausted that she was glad to go to bed, for what with loss of sleep, and weariness she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

The following morning she awakened early, bright, eager, expectant, full of bounding life, strangely aware of the beauty and sweetness of the scented forest, strangely conscious of some nameless stimulus to her feelings. “What is so wonderful about today?” she asked herself.

Not long was Ellen in associating this new and delightful variety of sensations with the fact that Gene Isbel had set to-day for his ride up to the Rim to see her. Ellen's joyousness fled; her smiles faded. The spring morning lost its magic radiance.


"Sure there's no sense in my lying to myself," she soliloquized, thoughtfully. "It's queer of me -- feeling glad about him coming -- without knowing. Lord! I must be in a deep pit of lonesome to be glad of seeing an Isbel, even if he is different!"

Soberly she accepted the astounding reality and felt guilty about it. Her confidence died with her gayety; her vanity began to suffer. And she caught at her admission that Gene Isbel was different; she resented it in amazement; she ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession. She could arrive at no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, fluctuating, inexplicable little fool.

But for all that she found her mind had been made up for her, without consent or desire, before her will had been consulted; and that inevitably and unalterably she meant to see Gene Isbel again. Long she battled with this strange decree. One moment she won a victory over, this new curious self, only to lose it the next. And at last out of her conflict there emerged a few convictions that left her with some shreds of pride. She hated all Isbels, she hated any Isbel, and particularly she hated Gene Isbel. She was only curious -- intensely curious to see if he would come back, and if he did come what he would do?

She wanted only to watch him from some covert station. She would not go near him, not let him see her or guess of her presence. Thus she assuaged her hurt vanity -- thus she stifled her miserable doubts.

Long before the sun had begun to slant westward toward the mid-afternoon Gene Isbel had set as a meeting time Ellen directed her steps through the forest to the Rim.

She felt ashamed of her eagerness. She had a guilty conscience that no strange thrills could silence. It would be fun to see him, to watch him, to let him wait for her, to fool him.

Like an Indian, she chose the soft pine-needle mats to tread upon, and her light-moccasined feet left no trace. Like an Indian she also made a wide detour, and reached the Rim a quarter of a mile west of the spot where she had talked with Gene Isbel; and here, turning east, she took care to step on the bare stones. This was an adventure, seemingly the first she had ever had in her life. Assuredly she had never before come directly to the Rim without halting to look, to wonder, to worship. This time she scarcely glanced into the blue abyss. All absorbed was she in hiding her tracks. Not one chance in a thousand would she risk. The Jorges pride burned even while the feminine side of her dominated her actions.

She had some difficult rocky points to cross, then windfalls to round, and at length reached the covert she desired. A rugged yellow point of the Rim stood somewhat higher than the spot Ellen wanted to watch. A dense thicket of jack pines grew to the very edge. It afforded an ambush that even the Indian eyes Gene Isbel was credited with could never penetrate. Moreover, if by accident she made a noise and excited suspicion, she could retreat unobserved and hide in the huge rocks below the Rim, where a ferret could not locate her.
With her plan decided upon, Ellen had nothing to do but wait, so she repaired to the other side of the pine thicket and to the edge of the Rim where she could watch and listen. She knew that long before she saw Isbel she would hear his horse.

"Sure, Ellen Jorges, you're a queer girl," she mused ab out this new self she was discovering.
"I reckon I wasn't well acquainted with you."
Beneath her yawned a wonderful deep canyon, rugged and rocky with but few pines on the north slope, thick with dark green timber on the south slope. Yellow and gray crags, like turreted castles, stood up out of the sloping forest on the side opposite her.

The trees were all sharp, spear pointed. Patches of light green aspens showed strikingly against the dense black. The great slope beneath Ellen was serrated with narrow, deep gorges, almost canyons in themselves. shadows alternated with clear bright spaces. The mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened upon the Basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines, valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the Sierra Anchas.

But for once Ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of wildness and grandeur. Her ears were like those of a listening deer, and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At first, in her excitement, time flew by. Gradually, however, as the sun moved westward, she began to be restless. The soft thud of dropping pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling.

Finally she heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone. Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine thicket to the spot she had chosen. The little pines were so close together that she had to crawl between their trunks.

The ground was covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant. In her hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the blood. She sucked the tiny wound.

"Sure I'm wondering if that's a bad omen," she muttered, darkly thoughtful. Then she resumed her sinuous approach to the edge of the thicket, and presently reached it.

Ellen lay flat a moment to recover her breath, then raised herself on her elbows. Through an opening in the fringe of buck brush she could plainly see the promontory where she had stood with Gene Isbel, and also the approaches by which he might come. Rather nervously she realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the promontory.

It was imperative that she be absolutely silent. Her eyes searched the openings along the Rim. The gray form of a deer crossed one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard. Then she lay down more comfortably and waited. Resolutely she held, as much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions.

The meaning of Ellen Jorges lying in ambush just to see an Isbel was a conundrum she refused to ponder in the present. She was doing it, and the physical act had its fascination. Her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of woodcraft.

A long hour passed by. The sun had slanted to a point halfway between the zenith and the horizon. Suddenly a thought confronted Ellen Jorges: "He's not coming," she whispered. The instant that idea presented itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret -- something that must have been disappointment.

Unprepared for this, she was held by surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned. Her spirit, swift and rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense. She was a lonely, guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to uphold, too fluctuating to know her real self. She stretched there, burying her face in the pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as that they might hide her. The moment was incomprehensible to Ellen, and utterly intolerable. The sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite relief.

The shrill snort of a horse sounded near at hand. With a shock Ellen's body stiffened. Then she quivered a little and her feelings underwent swift change. Cautiously and noiselessly she raised herself upon her elbows and peeped through the opening in the brush. She saw a man tying a black horse to a bush somewhat back from the Rim. Drawing a rifle from its saddle sheath he threw it in the hollow of his arm and walked to the edge of the precipice. He gazed away across the Basin and appeared lost in contemplation or thought. Then he turned to look back into the forest, as if he expected some one.

Ellen recognized the lithe figure, the dark face so like an Indian. It was the Isbel. He had come. Somehow his coming seemed both wonderful and terrible. Ellen shook as she leaned on her elbows. Gene Isbel, true to his word, in spite of her scorn, had come back to see her.

The fact seemed monstrous, unbelievable. He was an enemy of her father. Long had range rumor been bandied from lip to lip -- old Jesse Isbel had sent for his Indian son to fight the Jorgess.
Gene Isbel -- son of a Texan -- unerring shot -- peerless tracker -- a bad and dangerous man! Then there flashed over Ellen a burning thought -- if it were true, if he was an enemy of her father's, if a fight between Jorges and Isbel was inevitable, she ought to kill this Gene Isbel right there in his tracks as he boldly and confidently waited for her. A fool he was to think a Jorges would come out to bandy soft words and sweet kisses with him. Sweet kisses? Where had that thought come from? Ellen sank down and dropped her head until the strange tremor of her arms ceased.

“Sure I didn't come here to murder a man from ambush, but only to watch him, to try and see what he meant, what he thought, only to allay my strange new breed of curiosity.”

After a while she looked again. Isbel was sitting on an upheaved section of the Rim, in a comfortable position from which he could watch the openings in the forest and gaze as well across the west curve of the Basin to the Mazatzals. He had composed himself to wait. He was clad in a buckskin suit, rather new, and it certainly showed off to his advantage, compared with the ragged and soiled apparel Ellen remembered.

“He doesn't look so large now.” Ellen was used to the long, lean, rangy Arizonians and Texans. This man was built differently. He had the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made him appear rather short. But his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was not short. Whenever he moved the muscles rippled beneath his shirt. His hands were clasped round a knee -- brown, sinewy hands, very broad, and fitting his thick, muscular wrists. His collar was open, and he did not wear a scarf, as did the men Ellen knew.
Then her intense curiosity at last brought her steady gaze to Gene Isbel's head and face. He wore a cap, evidently of some thin fur.
He had a straight, sharp-cut profile with dark, intent, piercing eyes. She studied the wide, level, thoughtful brows, and dwelled on the stern impassiveness of his smooth face.. His hair was straight and short, and in color a dead raven black. His complexion was a dark, clear tan, with no trace of glowing red. He did not have the prominent cheek bones nor the high-bridged nose usual with white men who were part Indian. Still he had the Indian look in his posture and probably in the way he thought too.

Ellen whispered to herself: "I saw him right the other day. Only, I'd not admit it.... He's the finest-looking man I ever saw in my life even if he is a damned Isbel! Was that what I come out here to see?" She lowered herself once more and, folding her arms under her breast, she reclined comfortably on them, and searched out a smaller peephole from which she could spy upon Isbel.

And as she watched him the new and perplexing side of her mind waxed busier. Why had he come back? What did he want of her? Acquaintance, friendship, was impossible for them. He had been respectful, deferential toward her, in a way that had strangely pleased, until the surprising moment when he had kissed her. That had only disrupted her rather dreamy pleasure in a situation she had not experienced before. All the men she had met in this wild country were rough and bold; most of them had wanted to marry her, and, failing that, they had persisted in amorous attentions not particularly flattering or honorable. They were a bad lot. And contact with them had dulled some of her sensibilities.

But this Gene Isbel had seemed a gentleman. She struggled to be fair, trying to forget her antipathy, as much to understand herself as to give him due credit. True, that kiss had not been an insult.

Ellen's finer feeling forced her to believe this. She remembered the honest amazement and shame and contrition with which he had faced her, trying awkwardly to explain his bold act.

Likewise she recalled the subtle swift change in him at her words, "Oh, I've been kissed before!" She was glad she had said that now. Still -- was she so glad, after all?

She rose up and watched him. Every little while he shifted his gaze from the blue gulf beneath him to the forest. When he turned thus the sun shone on his face and she caught the piercing gleam of his dark eyes. She saw, too, that he wasn't just watching for her – he was also listening. Watching and listening for her! Ellen had to still a tumult within her breast. It made her feel very young, very shy, very strange. All the while, she hated him because he had manifestly expected her to come. Several times he rose and walked a little way into the woods. The last time he looked at the westering sun and shook his head. His confidence had gone. Then he sat and gazed down into the void. But Ellen knew he did not see anything there. “How many times have I sat in that self-same spot and wished for a future far different than I have now.”

He seemed an image carved in the stone of the Rim, and he gave Ellen a singular impression of an intense loneliness and sadness she had not seen before. Was he thinking of the miserable battle his father had summoned him to lead -- of what it would cost -- of its useless pain and hatred?
Ellen felt as if she could divine his thoughts. In that moment she softened toward him, and in her soul quivered and stirred an intangible something that was like pain, that was too deep for her understanding. But she felt sorry for an Isbel for a few moments, until her old pride resurged.

In anger she wondered what difference it made if he admired her? Then her mind coasted over memories of his last visit and she thrilled as she remembered his interest, the wonder and admiration, the growing light in his eyes as he talked with her, not at her. And it had been wonderful, exciting -- not been repugnant to her until he disclosed his name. "What's in a name?" she mused, recalling poetry learned in her youth.

"'A rose by any other name would still taste as sweet'....Well, something like that. He's got the name of an Isbel -- yet he might be splendid – noble even.... Bah! He can't be -- and I'd hate him for being splendid anyhow."

All at once Ellen felt cold shivers steal over her. Isbel's piercing gaze was directed straight at her hiding place. Her heart stopped beating. If he discovered her there she felt that she would die of shame. Then she became aware that a blue jay was screeching in a pine above her, and a red squirrel somewhere near was chattering his shrill annoyance. These two denizens of the woods could be depended upon to espy the wariest hunter and make known his presence to their kind.
Ellen had a moment of more than dread. This keen-eyed, keen-eared Indian might see right through her brushy covert, why, he might even hear the throbbing of her heart.

Turkeys were beginning to gobble back on the ridge. It relieved her immeasurably to see him turn away and take to pacing the promontory, with his head bowed and his hands behind his back.
He had stopped looking off into the forest. Presently he wheeled to the west, and by the light foaming like gold upon his face Ellen saw that the time was near sunset.

Isbel walked to his horse and appeared to be untying something from the back of his saddle. When he came back Ellen saw that he carried a small package apparently wrapped in paper. With this under his arm he strode off in the direction of Ellen's camp and soon disappeared in the forest.

For a little while Ellen lay there in bewilderment. If she had made conjectures before, they were now multiplied. Where was Gene Isbel going? Ellen sat up suddenly. "Well, sure this here beats me," she said. "What did he have in that package? What was he going to do with it?"

It took no little will power to hold her there when she wanted to steal after him through the woods and find out what he meant. But his reputation influenced even her and she refused to pit her cunning in the forest against his. It would be better to wait until he returned to his black horse. Thus decided, she lay back again in her covert and gave her mind over to pondering curiosity. Sooner than she expected she espied Isbel approaching through the forest, empty handed. He had not taken his rifle.
Ellen averted her glance a moment and thrilled to see the rifle leaning against a rock. Verily Gene Isbel had been far removed from hostile intent that day. She watched him stride swiftly up to his horse, untie the halter, and mount. Ellen had an impression of his arrowlike straight figure, and sinuous grace and ease.

Then he looked back at the promontory, as if to fix a picture of it in his mind, and rode away along the Rim. She watched him out of sight. What ailed her? Something was wrong with her, but she recognized only relief.

When Gene Isbel had been gone long enough to assure Ellen that she might safely venture forth she crawled through the pine thicket to the Rim on the other side of the point. The sun was setting behind the Black Range, shedding a golden glory over the Basin. Westward the zigzag Rim reached like a streamer of fire into the sun. The vast promontories jutted out with blazing beacon lights upon their stone-welled faces. Deep down, the Basin was turning shadowy dark blue, going to sleep for the night.

Ellen bent swift steps toward her camp.

Long shafts of purest gold preceded her through the forest. Then they paled into shadows and vanished. The tips of pines and spruces had turned gold and still stole that glory. A hoarse-voiced old turkey gobbler was booming his chug-a-lug from the highest ground, and the softer chick of hen turkeys answered him.

Ellen was almost breathless when she arrived at the camp. Two packs and a couple of lop-eared burros attested to the fact of Antonio's return. This was good news for Ellen. She heard the bleat of lambs and tinkle of bells coming nearer and nearer. And she was glad to feel that if Isbel had visited her camp, most probably it was during the absence of the herders.

The instant she glanced into her tent she saw the package that dirty Isbel had carried. It lay on her bed. Ellen stared blankly. "The -- the impudence of him!" she ejaculated. Then she kicked the package out of the tent. Words and action seemed to liberate a dammed-up hot fury. She kicked the package again, and thought she would kick it into the smoldering camp-fire. But somehow she stopped short of that. She left the thing there on the ground.

Pedro and Antonio hove into sight, driving in the tumbling woolly flock. Ellen did not want them to see the package, so with contempt for herself, and somewhat lessening anger, she kicked it back into the tent.

What was in it? She peeped inside the tent, devoured by curiosity. Neat, well wrapped and tied packages like that were not often seen in the Verde Mesa Basin. Ellen decided she would wait until after supper, and at a favorable moment lay it unopened on the fire. What did she care what it contained? Manifestly it was a gift. She argued that she was highly incensed with this insolent Isbel who had the effrontery to approach her with some sort of present.

It developed that the usually cheerful Antonio had returned taciturn and gloomy. All Ellen could get out of him was that the job of sheep herder had taken on hazards inimical to peace-loving Mexicans. He had heard something he would not tell. Ellen helped prepare the supper and she ate in silence. She had her own brooding troubles to take care of. Antonio presently told her that her father had said she was not to start back home after dark.

After supper the herders repaired to their own tents, leaving Ellen the freedom of her camp-fire. Antonio strummed on his guitar and Pedro lifted his voice in Aiee Yii Yiis in what must have been the right places. Ellen listened for the longest time, then she secured the package and brought it forth to burn.

Feminine curiosity rankled strong in her breast. Yielding so far as to shake the parcel and press it, and finally tear a comer off the paper so she could peek inside. She recognized as some words written in lead pencil. Bending nearer the blaze, she read, "For my sister Ann." Ellen gazed at the big, bold hand-writing, quite legible and fairly well done. Suddenly she tore the outside wrapper completely off. From printed words on another package on the inside she gathered her packages had come from a store in San Francisco.

"Reckon he fetched home a lot of presents for his folks -- the kids -- and his sister," muttered Ellen. "That was nice of him. Whatever this is he sure meant it for sister Ann.... Ann Isbel. Why, she must be that black-eyed girl I met and liked so well before I knew she was an Isbel too.... His sister!"

Ellen deposited the fascinating package in her tent. She could not burn it up just then. She had other emotions besides scorn and hate. And memory of that soft-voiced, kind-hearted, beautiful Isbel girl checked her resentment.
"I wonder if he is really as nice as his sister," she said, thoughtfully. It appeared to be an unfortunate thought. Gene Isbel certainly resembled his sister. "Too bad they both belong to the family that ruined dad."

Ellen went to bed without opening the package or without burning it. And to her annoyance, whatever way she lay she appeared to touch this strange package. There was not much room in the little tent. First she put it at her head beside her rifle, but when she turned over her cheek came in contact with it. Then she felt as if she had been stung. She moved it again, only to touch it presently with her hand. Next she flung it to the bottom of her bed, where it fell upon her feet, and whatever way she moved them she could not escape the pressure of this undesirable and mysterious gift.

By and by she fell asleep, only to dream that the package was a caressing hand stealing about her, feeling for hers, and holding it with soft, strong clasp. When she awoke she had the strangest sensation in her right palm. It was moist, throbbing, hot, and the feel of it on her cheek was strangely thrilling and comforting. She lay awake then. The night was dark and still. Only a low moan of wind in the pines and the faint tinkle of a sheep bell broke the serenity. She felt very small and lonely lying there in the deep forest, and, try how she would, it was impossible to think the same then as she did in the clear light of day. Resentment, pride, anger -- these seemed abated now. If the events of the day had not changed her, they had at least brought up softer and kinder memories and emotions than she had known for long. Nothing hurt and saddened her so much as to remember the gay, happy days of her childhood, her sweet mother, her, old home. Then her thought returned to Isbel and his gift. It had been years since anyone had made her a gift. What could this one be? It did not matter.

The wonder was that Gene Isbel should bring it to her and that she could be perturbed by its presence. "He meant it for his sister and so he thought well of me," she said, in finality.

Morning brought Ellen further vacillation. At length she rolled the obnoxious package inside her blankets, saying that she would wait until she got home and then consign it cheerfully to the flames. Antonio tied her pack on a burro with supplies for the camp. She did not have a horse, and so had to walk the several miles, to her father's ranch.


She set off at a brisk pace, leading the burro and carrying her rifle. And soon she was deep in the fragrant forest. The morning was clear and cool, with just enough frost to make the sunlit grass sparkle as if with diamonds.

Ellen felt fresh, buoyant, singularly full of, life. Her youth would not be denied. It was pulsing, yearning. She hummed an old Southern tune and every step seemed one of pleasure in action, of advance toward some intangible future happiness. All the unknown of life before her called. Her heart beat high in her breast and she walked as one in a dream. Her thoughts were swift-changing, intimate, deep, and vague, not of yesterday or to-day, nor of reality.

The big, gray, white-tailed squirrels crossed ahead of her on the trail, scampered over the piney ground to hop on tree trunks, and there they paused to watch her pass. The vociferous little red squirrels barked and chattered at her. From every thicket sounded the gobble of turkeys.

The blue jays squalled in the tree tops. Two deer lifted their heads from browsing and stood motionless, with long ears erect, watching her go by.

Thus happily and dreamily absorbed, Ellen covered the forest miles and soon reached the trail that led down into the wild brakes of Chaveelon Canyon. It was rough going and less conducive to sweet wanderings of mind. Ellen slowly lost them. And then a familiar feeling assailed her, one she never failed to have upon returning to her father's ranch -- a reluctance, a bitter dissatisfaction with her home, a loyal struggle against the vague sense that all was not as it should be.

At the head of this canyon in a little, level, grassy meadow stood a rude one-room log shack, with a leaning red-stone chimney on the outside. This was the abode of a strange old man who had long lived there. His name was John Sprague and his occupation was raising burros. No sheep or cattle or horses did he own, not even a dog. Rumor had said Sprague was a prospector, one of the many who had searched that country for the Lost Dutchman gold mine.

Sprague knew more about the Basin and Rim than any of the sheep herders or ranchers. From Black Butte to the Cibique and from Chaveelon Butte to Reno Pass he knew every trail, canyon, ridge, and spring, and could find his way to them on the darkest night, it was sais. His fame, however, depended mostly upon the fact that he did nothing but raise burros, and would raise none but black burros with white faces. These burros were the finest bred in ail the Basin and were in great demand. Sprague sold a few every year. He had made a present of one to Ellen, although he hated to part with them. This old man was Ellen's one and only friend.

Upon her trip out to the Rim with the sheep, Uncle John, as Ellen called him, had been away on one of his infrequent visits to Pauls Valley. It pleased her now to see a blue column of smoke lazily lifting from the old chimney and to hear the discordant bray of burros. As she entered the clearing Sprague saw her from the door of his shack and waved excitedly for her to approach.

"Hello, Uncle John!" she called.

"well, if it ain't Ellen!" he replied, heartily. "When I seen that lop-eared jenny I knew who was leading her. Where have you been, girl?"

Sprague was a little, stoop-shouldered old man, with grizzled head and face, and shrewd gray eyes that beamed kindly on her over his ruddy cheeks. Ellen did not like the tobacco stain on his grizzled beard nor the dirty, motley, ragged, ill-smelling garb he wore, but she had ceased her useless attempts to make him more cleanly.

"I've been playing shepherd again," replied Ellen. "And where have you been, uncle? I missed you on the way over."

"Oh, I been packing in some grub. and I reckon I stayed longer in Pauls Valley than I recollect. But that was only natural, considering -- "

"What?" asked Ellen, bluntly, as the old man paused.

Sprague took a black pipe out of his vest pocket and began rimming the bowl with his fingers. The glance he bent on Ellen was thoughtful and earnest, and so kind that she feared it was pity. Ellen suddenly burned for news from the village.

"well, come in and set down, won't you?" he asked.

"No, thanks," replied Ellen, and she took a seat on the chopping block. "Tell me, uncle, what's going on down in the Valley?"

"nothing much yet -- except talk. and there's a heap of that."

"Humph! There always was talk," declared Ellen, contemptuously.
"Ellen, thar's going to be war -- a bloody war in the ole Verde Mesa Basin," went on Sprague, seriously.

"War! ... Between whom?"

"The Isbels and their enemies. I reckon most people down there, and sure all the cattlemen, are on old Jesse's side. Blanchard, Gordon, Fredericks, Blue -- they'll all be in it to save his neck."

"Well -- who are they going to fight?" Ellen queried sharply.

"well, the open talk is that the sheep herders are forcing this war. But thar's talk not so open, and I reckon not very healthy for any man to whisper hyarbouts."

"Uncle John, you needn't be afraid to tell me anything," said Ellen. "I'd never give you away, you've been too good a friend to me."

"Reckon I want to be, Ellen," he returned, nodding his shaggy head. "It ain't easy to be fond of you as I am and keep my mouth shut.... I'd like to know something. have you any relatives away from here that you could go to till this fight's over?"

"No. All I have, so far as I know, are right here."

"How about friends?"

"Uncle John, I have none," she said, sadly, with bowed head.

"well, well, I'm sorry. I was hoping you might git away."


She lifted her face. "Sure you don't think I'd run off if my dad got in a fight?" she flashed.

"I hope you will."

"I'm a Jorges," she said, darkly, and dropped her head again.

Sprague nodded gloomily. Evidently he was perplexed and worried, and strongly swayed by affection for her.

"Would you go away with me?" he asked. "We could pack over to the Mazatzals and live there till this blows over."

"Thank you, Uncle John. you're kind and good. But I'll stay with my father. His troubles are mine."

"Uh Huh! ... well, I might have reckoned so.... Ellen, how do you stand on this here sheep and cattle question?"

"I think what's fair for one is fair for another. I don't like sheep as much as I like cattle. But that's not the point. The range is free. Suppose you had cattle and I had sheep. I'd feel as free to run my sheep anywhere as you were to ran your cattle."

"Right. But what if you threw your sheep round my range and sheeped off the grass so my cattle would have to move or starve?"

"Sure I wouldn't throw my sheep round your range," she declared, stoutly.

"well, you've answered half of the question. and now supposing a lot of my cattle was stolen by rustlers, but not a single one of your sheep. What would you think then?"

"I'd sure think those rustlers knew it was easier and more profitable to steal cattle and horses than sheep and I'd remember there was no profit in stealing sheep because coyotes is what likes sheep meat best."

Uncle John had to pause and work his way through that message. "Egzactly. But wouldn't you have a queer idea about it?"

"I don't know. Why queer? What 're you driving at, Uncle John?"

"well, wouldn't you git kind of a hunch that these rustlers was -- say a little friendly toward the sheep herders?"

Ellen felt a sudden vibrating shock. The blood rushed to her temples. Trembling all over, she rose.

"Uncle John!" she cried.

"Now, girl, you needn't fire up that way. Set down and don't -- "

"Don't you dare insinuate my father has -- "

"Ellen, I ain't insinuating nothing," interrupted the old man. "I'm jest asking you to think. that's all. You're 'most grown into a young woman now. and you've got sense. There's bad times ahead, Ellen. and I hate to see you mix in them."

"Oh, you do make me think," replied Ellen, with smarting tears in her eyes. "you make me unhappy. Oh, I know my dad is not liked in this cattle country. But it's unjust. He just happened to go in for sheep raising.

“I wish he hadn't. It was a mistake. Dad always was a cattleman till we came here. Him and his sheep have made enemies -- who -- who ruined him. And everywhere misfortune crossed his trail.... But, oh, Uncle John, my dad is still an honest man."

"well, child, I -- I didn't mean to -- to make you cry," said the old man, feelingly, and he averted his troubled gaze. "Never mind what I said. I'm an old meddler. I reckon nothing I could do or say would ever change what's going to happen. If only you wasn't a girl! ...

“There I go again. Ellen, face your future and fight your way. All youngsters have to do that. and it's the right kind of fight that makes the right kind of man or woman. Only you must be sure to find yourself. and by that I mean to find the real, true, honest-to-God best in you and stick to it and die fighting for it. You're a young woman, almost anyway, and a blamed handsome one.

“Which means you'll have more trouble and a harder fight. This country ain't easy on a woman when once slander has marked her.

"What do I care for the talk down in that Basin?" returned Ellen. "I know they think I'm a hussy. I've let them think it. I've helped them to think it."

"You're wrong, child," said Sprague, earnestly. "Pride and temper! You must never let anyone think bad of you, much less help them to do it."

"I hate everybody down there," cried Ellen, passionately. "I hate them so I'd glory in their thinking me a hussy.... My mother belonged to the best blood in Texas. I am her daughter. I know WHO AND WHAT I AM. That uplifts me whenever I meet the sneaky, sly suspicions of these Basin people. It shows me the difference between them and me. That's what I glory in."

"Ellen, you're a wild, headstrong child," rejoined the old man, in severe tones. "Word has been passed against your good name -- your honor.... and haven't you given cause for people to go believing that?"

Ellen felt her face blanch and all her blood rush back to her heart in sickening force. The shock of his words was like a stab from a cold blade. If their meaning and the stem, just the light of the old man's glance did not kill her pride and vanity they surely killed her girlishness. She stood mute, staring at him, with her brown, trembling hands stealing up toward her bosom, as if to ward off another and a mortal blow.

"Ellen!" burst out Sprague, hoarsely. "You mistook me. Aw, I didn't mean -- what you think, I swear.... Ellen, I'm old and blunt. I ain't used to women. But I've love for you, child, and respect, jest the same as if you was my own.... and I KNOW you're good.... Forgive me.... I meant only haven't you been, say, sort of -- careless?"

"Care-less?" queried Ellen, bitterly and low.

"and powerful thoughtless and -- and blind -- letting men kiss you and fondle you -- when you're really a growed-up woman now?"

"Yes -- I guess have," whispered Ellen.

"well, then, why did you let them?

"I -- I don't know.... I guess that I just didn't think. The men never let me alone -- never -- never! I got tired everlastingly pushing them away. And sometimes -- when they were kind -- and I was lonely for something I -- I didn't mind if one or another fooled round me. I never thought. It never looked as you have made it look.... Then -- those few times riding the trail to Pauls Valley -- when people saw me -- then I guess I encouraged such attentions.... Oh, I must be -- I guess I am just another shameless little hussy!"

"Hush that kind of talk," said the old man, as he took her hand. "Ellen, you're only young and lonely and bitter. No mother -- no friends -- no one but a lot of rough men around you! It's a wonder you have kept yourself unspoiled. But now we have your eyes open, Ellen. They're brave and beautiful eyes, girl, and if you stand by the light in them you will come through any trouble. and you'll be happy. Don't ever forget that. Life is hard enough, God knows, but it's unfailing true in the end to the man or woman who finds the best in them and stands by it."

"Uncle John, you talk so -- so kindly. you give me real hope. There seemed really so little for me to live for -- hope for.... But I'll never be a coward again -- nor a thoughtless fool either. I'll find some good in me -- or I'll make some -- and never fail it, come what will. I'll remember your words. I'll believe the future holds wonderful things for me.... I'm only eighteen. sure all my life won't be lived here. Perhaps this threatened fight over sheep and cattle will blow over.... Somewhere there must be some nice girl to be a friend -- a sister to me.... And maybe some man who'd believe, in spite of all they say -- that I'm not a hussy."

"well, Ellen, you remind me of what I was wanting to tell you when you just got here.... Yesterday I heard you called that name in a barroom. and there was a feller there who raised hell. He near killed one man and made another plumb eat his words. and he scared that crowd stiff."

Old John Sprague shook his grizzled head and laughed, beaming upon Ellen as if the memory of what he had seen had warmed his heart.

"Was it -- you?" asked Ellen, tremulously.

"Me? Aw, I wasn't nowhere. Ellen, this feller was quick as a cat in his actions and his words was like lightning peeling the bark off a pine tree.'

"Who? she whispered.

"well, no one else but a stranger jest come to these parts -- an Isbel, too. Gene Isbel."

"Oh!" exclaimed Ellen, faintly.

"In a barroom full of men -- almost all of them in sympathy with the sheep crowd -- most of them on the Jorges side -- this Gene Isbel resented an insult to Ellen Jorges."

"No!" cried Ellen. Something terrible was happening to her mind or her heart.
"well, he sure did," replied the old man, "and it's going to be good for you to hear all about it."

Old John Sprague launched into his narrative with evident zest.

"I hung round Greaves' store most of two days. and I heard a heap. Some of it was jest plain ole men's gab, but I reckon I got the drift of things concerning Pauls Valley. Yesterday morning I was packing my burros in Greaves' back yard, taking my time carrying out supplies from the store. and as last when I went in I seen a strange feller was there. Strapping young man -- not so young, either -- and he had on buckskin. Hair black as my burros, dark face, sharp eyes -- you'd took him for an Injun. He carried a rifle -- one of them new forty-fours -- and also something wrapped in paper that he seemed partickler careful about. He wore a belt round his middle and there was a bowie-knife in it, carried like I've seen scouts and Injun fighters have on the frontier in the 'seventies.

That looked queer to me, and I reckon to the rest of the crowd there. No one overlooked the big six-shooter he packed Texas fashion. well, I didn't have no idea this feller was an Isbel until I heard Greaves call him that.

"'Isbel,' said Greaves, 'reckon your money's counterfeit here. I can't sell you anything.'

"'Counterfeit? Not much,' spoke up the young feller, and he flipped some gold twenties on the bar, where they rung like bells. 'Why not? Ain't this a store? I want a cinch strap.'

"Greaves looked particular sour that morning. I'd been watching him for two days. He hadn't had much sleep, for I had my bed back of the store, and I heard men come in the night and have long confabs with him. Whatever was in the wind hadn't pleased him none. and I calculated that young Isbel wasn't a sight good for Greaves' sore eyes, anyway. But he paid no more attention to Isbel. Acted jest as if he hadn't heard Isbel say he wanted a cinch strap.

"I stayed inside the store then. There was a lot of boys I'd seen, and some I knew. Couple of card games going, and drinking, of course. I soon gathered that the general atmosphere wasn't friendly to Gene Isbel. He seen that quick enough, but he didn't leave. Between you and me I sort of took a liking to him. and I sure watched him as close as I could, not seeming to, you know.

“Reckon they all did the same, only you couldn't see it. It got jest about the same as if Isbel hadn't been in there, only you knew it wasn't really the same. that was how I got the hunch the crowd was all sheep herders or their friends. The day before I'd heard a lot of talk about this young Isbel, and what he'd come to Pauls Valley fer, and what a bad hombre he was. and when I seen him I was bound to admit he looked his reputation.

"well, pretty soon in come two more boys, and I knew both of them. You know them, too, I'm sorry to say. for I'm coming to facts now that will shake you. The first feller was your father's Mexican foreman, Lorenzo, and the other was Slim Bruce. I reckon Bruce wasn't drunk, but he'd sure been looking on red licker. When he seen Isbel darn me if he didn't swell and bustle all up like a mad ole turkey gobbler.

"'Greaves,' he said, 'if that feller's Gene Isbel I ain't hankering for the company you keep.' and he made no bones of pointing right at Isbel. Greaves looked up dry and sour and he bit out spiteful-like: 'well, Slim, we ain't had a hell of a lot of choice in this here matter. that's Gene Isbel sure enough. Maybe you can persuade him that his company and his custom ain't wanted round here!'

"Gene Isbel set on the counter an took it all in, but he didn't say nothing. The way he looked at Bruce was sure enough for me to see that there might be a surprise any minute. I've looked at a lot of men in my day, and can sure feel events coming. Bruce got himself a stiff drink and then he straddles over the floor in front of Isbel.

"'Air you Gene Isbel, son of ole Jesse Isbel?' asked Bruce, sort of lolling back and giving a hitch to his belt.

"'Yes sir, you've identified me,' said Isbel, nice and polite.

"'My name's Bruce. I'm ranging sheep hereabouts, and I have interest in Kurnel Lee Jorges's business.'

"'Hod do, Mister Bruce,' replied Isbel, very civil ant cool as you please. Bruce had an eye for the crowd that was now listening and watching. He swaggered closer to Isbel.

"'We heard you come into the Verde Mesa Basin to run us sheep herders off the range. How about that?'

"'well, you heard wrong,' said Isbel, quietly. 'I came to work for my father. that work depends on what happens.'

"Bruce began to git redder of face, and he shook a husky hand in front of Isbel. 'I'll tell you this here, my Nez Perce Isbel -- ' and when he sort of choked for more wind Greaves spoke up, 'Slim, I sure reckon that Nez Perce handle will stick.' and the crowd haw-hawed. Then Bruce got going again. 'I'll tell you this here, Nez Perce. There's been enough happen already to run you out of Arizona.'

"'well, you don't say! What, for instance?, asked Isbel, quick and sarcastic.

"that made Bruce bust out puffing and spitting: 'Wha-tt, for instance? Huh! Why, you darn half-breed, you'll git run out for making up to Ellen Jorges. that won't go in this here country. Not for any Indian Isbel.'

"'You're a liar,' called Isbel, and like a big cat he dropped off the counter. I heard his moccasins pat soft on the floor. and I bet to myself that he was as dangerous as he was quick. But his voice and his looks didn't change even a little.
"'I'm not a liar,' yelled Bruce. 'I'll make you eat that. I can prove what I say.... you was seen with Ellen Jorges -- up on the Rim -- day before yesterday. you was watched. you was with her. you made up to her. you grabbed her and kissed her! ... and I'm here to say, Nez Perce, that you're a marked man on this range.'

"'Who saw me?' asked Isbel, quiet and cold. I seen then that he'd turned white in the face.

"'you can't lie out of it,' hollered Bruce, waving his hands. 'We got you dead to rights. Lorenzo saw you -- followed you -- watched you.' Bruce pointed at the grinning greaser. 'Lorenzo is Kurnel Jorges's foreman. He seen you mauling of Ellen Jorges. and when he tells the Kurnel and Tad Jorges and Jackson Jorges! ... Haw! Haw! Haw! Why, hell 'd be a cooler place for you then this here Verde Mesa.'

"Greaves and his gang had come round, sure tickled clean to there gizzards at this mess. I noticed, however, that they was Texans enough to keep back to one side in case this Isbel started any action.... well, Isbel took a look at Lorenzo. Then with one swift grab he jerked the little greaser off his feet and pulled him close. Lorenzo stopped grinning. He began to look a little sick. But it was plain he had right on his side.

"'You say you saw me?' demanded Isbel.

"'Si, senor,' replied Lorenzo with a smirk.

"Huh! Tell me. What did you see?'

"'I see senor and senorita. I hide by manzanita. I see senorita like grande senor ver mooch. She like senor keesees. She -- '

"Then Isbel hit the little greaser a back-handed crack in the mouth. Sure it was a crack! Lorenzo went over the counter backward and landed like a pack load of wood. and he didn't git up.

"'Mister Bruce,' said Isbel, 'and you boys who heard that lying greaser, I did meet Ellen Jorges. and I lost my head. I 'I kissed her.... But it was an accident. I meant no insult. I apologized -- I tried to explain my crazy action.... that was all. The greaser lied. Ellen Jorges was kind enough to show me the trail. We talked a little. Then -- I suppose -- because she was young and pretty and sweet -- I lost my head. She was absolutely innocent. that damned greaser told a bare-faced lie when he said she liked me. The fact was she despised me. She said so. and when she learned I was Gene Isbel she turned her back on me and walked away."'

At this point of his narrative the old man halted as if to impress Ellen not only with what just had been told, but particularly with what was to follow.

The reciting of this tale had evidently given Sprague an unconscious pleasure. He glowed. He seemed to carry the burden of a secret that he yearned to divulge. As for Ellen, she was deadlocked in breathless suspense. All her emotions waited for the end. She begged Sprague to hurry.

"well, I wish I could skip the next chapter and have only the last to tell," rejoined the old man, and he put a heavy, but solicitous, hand upon hers.... Slim Bruce haw-hawed loud and loud.... 'Gene, Nez Perce,' he calls out, most insolent-like, 'we air too good sheep herders here to have the wool pulled over our eyes. We sure know what you meant by Ellen Jorges.

“'But you wasn't very smart when you told her you was Gene Isbel! ... Haw-haw!'

"Isbel flashed a strange, surprised look from the red-faced Bruce to Greaves and then swept around to the other men, one b y one. I take it he was wondering if he'd heard right or if they'd got the same hunch that 'd come to him. and I reckon he determined to make sure.

"'Why wasn't I smart?' he asked.

"'Sure you wasn't smart if you was aiming to be one of Ellen Jorges's lovers,' said Bruce, with a leer. 'for if you hadn't give yourself away you could have been her lover easy enough.'

"There was no mistaking Bruce's meaning and when he got it out some of the men there laughed. Isbel kept looking from one to another of them. Then facing Greaves, he said, deliberately: 'Greaves, I take it that all you boys here are sheep herders, and you're going on Jorges's side of the fence in the matter of this sheep ranging.'

"'well, Nez Per Say, I reckon you hit the target plumb center,' said Greaves. He spread wide his big hands to the other men, as if to say they'd might as well own it, the jig was up.

"'All right. You're all Jorges's backers. Have any of you a word to say in Ellen Jorges's defense? I tell you the Mexican lied. Believing me or not doesn't matter. But this vile-mouthed Bruce hinted against that girl's honor. And ain't none of you spoken up one word in her defense.'

"again some of the men snickered and laughed, but not so noisy now, and there was a nervous shuffling of feet. Isbel looked sort of queer. His neck had a bulge round his collar. and his eyes was like black coals of fire. Greaves spread his big hands again, as if he wanted to wash them of this part of the dirty argument.

"'When it comes to defending a woman's honor I pass -- That Jorges's girl looks like one helluva wild cat,' said Greaves, sort of cold and thick. 'According to what Bruce says, Ellen Jorges has been his girl for two years; so he ought to know exactly what kind of woman she is.'


"Then Isbel turned his attention to Bruce and I for one begun to shake in my boots.

"'Ain't nobody here man enough to slop your boots. Let's hear you say that to me!' he called.

"Bruce knew then he was the center of attention. 'Sure,' he said. 'he's my girl, and that's why I'm a-going to have you run off this range.'

"Isbel jumped at Bruce. 'You damned drunken, lying cur! You vile-mouthed liar! ... I may be an Isbel, but by God you can't slander that girl to my face! ... Then his fist hit Bruce. It sounded like an ax against a side of dead beef. Bruce came clean off his feet and fell headfirst away from Isbel. He ended up clear across the room when he quit skidding.

“As Bruce staggered up, all bloody-faced, bellowing and spitting out teeth Isbel eyed Greaves's crowd and said: 'If any of you make a move to stop me it'll mean your life because I done got blood on my mind.'

“Nobody moved, that's sure. In fact, none of Greaves's outfit was packing guns, at least in sight. When Bruce got all the way up -- why Isbel took a full swing at him and knocked him all the way back across the room against the counter.

“you know when a feller's hurt by the way he yells, kind of faint like. Bruce got that second smash right on his big red nose.... I never seen any one so quick as Isbel. He vaulted over that counter jest the second Bruce fell back on it, and then, with Greaves's gang in front so he could catch any moves of theirs, he jest slugged Bruce right and left, and banged his head on the counter. Then as Bruce sunk limp and slipped down, looking like a bloody sack, Isbel stood back and let him fall to the floor.

“Then he vaulted back over the counter. Wiping the blood off his hands, he throwed his kerchief down in Bruce's face.

Bruce had been beaten bad. He was moaning and slobbering. Isbel kicked him, not hard, but jest sort of disgustful. Then he faced that crowd. 'Greaves, I guess Bruce had the buffalo on you boys so bad you don't even act like men. I'm going to remember what you let Bruce tell you without you standing up to his lies. You tell Slim Bruce he won't get by this lucky next time. He said he was going to run me out of the territory? You tell him to start walking when he wakes up because the minute I see him again I'm going to pull a knife and cut him so wide and deep the only job he can get is working second shift in a whore house.'

“There wasn't no sound from nowhere. It was clear to me that everybody there believed what he was going to do. 'Don't nobody here move while I walk out of here because I'm mad enough to kill every one of you.' And then Isbel grabbed his rifle and his package off the counter and went out. He didn't even look back for his change, he was that mad.

“I seen him mount his black horse and ride away.... Now, girl, what have you got to say?"

Ellen turned away from him and said say good-by, and the word was so low as to be almost inaudible. Once outside she ran to her burro. She could not see very clearly through tear-blurred eyes, and her shaking fingers were all thumbs. It seemed she had to rush away -- somewhere, anywhere -- not to get away from old John Sprague, but from herself -- this palpitating, bursting self whose feet stumbled down the trail. All -- all seemed ended for her. That interminable story! It had taken so long. And every minute of it she had been helplessly torn asunder by feelings she had never known she possessed.

This Ellen Jorges was an unknown creature. She sobbed now as she dragged the burro down the canyon trail. She sat down only to rise. She hurried only to stop.

Driven, pursued, barred, she had no way to escape the flaying thoughts, no time or will to repudiate them. The death of her girlhood, the rending aside of a veil of maiden mystery only vaguely instinctively guessed, the barren, sordid truth of her life as seen by her enlightened eyes, the bitter realization of the vileness of men of her clan in contrast to the manliness and chivalry of an enemy, the hard facts of unalterable repute as created by slander and fostered by low minds, all these were forces in a cataclysm that had suddenly caught her heart and whirled her through changes immense and agonizing, to bring her face to face with reality, to force upon her suspicion and doubt of all she had trusted, to warn her of the dark, impending horror of a tragic bloody feud, and lastly to teach her the supreme truth at once so glorious and so terrible -- that she could not escape the doom of womanhood.

About noon that day Ellen Jorges arrived at the Knoll, which was the location of her father's ranch. Three canyons met there to form a larger one. The knoll was a symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of the three canyons. It was covered with brush and cedars, with here and there lichened rocks showing above the bleached grass. Below the Knoll was a wide, grassy flat or meadow through which a willow-bordered stream cut its rugged boulder-strewn bed. Water flowed abundantly at this season, and the deep washes leading down from the slopes attested to the fact of cloudbursts and heavy storms.

This meadow valley was dotted with horses and cattle, and meandered away between the timbered slopes to lose itself in a green curve. A singular feature of this canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines. The ranch house of Colonel Jorges stood round the rough comer of the largest of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black mud-holes of corrals upon the beautiful and serene meadow valley.

Ellen Jorges approached her home slowly, with dragging, reluctant steps; and never before in the three unhappy years of her existence there had the ranch seemed so bare, so uncared for, so repugnant to her. As she had seen herself with clarified eyes, so now she saw her home. The cabin that Ellen lived in with her father was a single-room structure with one door and no windows. It was about twenty feet square. The huge, ragged, stone chimney had been built on the outside, with the wide open fireplace set inside the logs. Smoke was rising from the chimney.

As Ellen halted at the door and began unpacking her burro she heard the loud, lazy laughter of men. An adjoining log cabin had been built in two sections, with a wide roofed hall or space between them. The door in each cabin faced the other, and there was a tall man standing in one.

Ellen recognized Davidson, a neighbor sheepman, who evidently spent more time with her father than at his own home, wherever that was. Ellen had never seen it. She heard this man drawl, "Jorges, here's your kid come home."

Ellen carried her bed inside the cabin, and unrolled it upon a couch built of boughs in the far corner. She had forgotten Gene Isbel's package, and now it fell out under her sight. Quickly she covered it. A Mexican woman, relative of Antonio, and the only servant about the place, was squatting Indian fashion before the fireplace, stirring a pot of beans. She and Ellen did not get along well together, and few words ever passed between them.

Ellen had a canvas curtain stretched upon a wire across a small triangular comer, and this afforded her a little privacy. Her possessions were limited in number. The crude square table she had constructed herself. Upon it was a little old-fashioned walnut-framed mirror, a brush and comb, and a dilapidated ebony cabinet which contained odds and ends the sight of which always brought a smile of derisive self-pity to her lips. Under the table stood an old leather trunk. It had come with her from Texas, and contained clothing and belongings of her mother's. Above the couch on pegs hung her scant wardrobe. A tiny shelf held several worn-out books.

When her father slept indoors, which was seldom except in winter, he occupied a couch in the opposite corner. A rude cupboard had been built against the logs next to the fireplace. It contained supplies and utensils. Toward the center, somewhat closer to the door, stood a crude table and two benches. The cabin was dark and smelled of smoke, of the stale odors of past cooked meals, of the mustiness of dry, rotting timber. Streaks of light showed through the roof where the rough-hewn shingles had split or weathered. A strip of bacon hung upon one side of the cupboard, and upon the other a haunch of venison. Ellen detested the Mexican woman because she was dirty. The inside of the cabin presented the same unkempt appearance usual to it after Ellen had been away for a few days. Whatever Ellen had lost during the retrogression of the Jorgess, she had kept her habits of cleanliness, and straightway upon her return she set to work.

The Mexican woman sullenly slouched away to her own quarters outside and Ellen was left to the satisfaction of labor. Her mind was as busy as her hands. As she cleaned and swept and dusted she heard from time to time the voices of men, the clip-clop of shod horses, the bellow of cattle. And a considerable time elapsed before she was disturbed.

A tall shadow darkened the doorway. "Howdy, little one!" said a lazy, drawling voice. "So yawl finally got home?"

Ellen looked up. A superbly built man leaned against the doorpost. Like most Texans, he was light haired and light eyed. His face was lined and hard. His long, sandy mustache hid his mouth and drooped with a curl.

Spurred, booted, belted, packing a heavy gun low down on his hip, he gave Ellen an entirely new impression. Indeed, she was seeing everything strangely.

"Hello, Davidson!" replied Ellen. "Where's my dad?"

"He's playing cards with Jackson and Coulter. sure's playing bad, too, and it's gone to his head."

"Gambling?" queried Ellen.

"Mah child, when'd Kurnel Jorges ever play for fun?" said Davidson, with a lazy laugh. "There's a stack of gold on the table. Reckon yo' uncle Jackson will win it. Coulter's sure out of luck."

Davidson stepped inside. He was graceful and slow. His long' spurs clinked. He laid a rather compelling hand on Ellen's shoulder.

"here, mah gal, give us a kiss," he said.

"Davidson, I'm not your girl," replied Ellen as she slipped out from under his hand.

Then Davidson put his arm round her, not with violence or rudeness, but with an indolent, affectionate assurance, at once bold and self-contained. Ellen, however, had to exert herself to get free of him, and when she had placed the table between them, she looked him square in the eyes.

"Davidson, you keep your paws off me," she said.

"Aw, now, Ellen, I ain't no bear," he remonstrated. "What's the matter, kid?"

"I'm not a kid any more. And there's nothing the matter. you're to keep your hands to yourself from now on, that's all."

He tried to reach her across the table, and his movements were lazy and slow, like his smile. He seemed to think his tone was coaxing.

"Mah dear, sure you set on my knee just the other day, now, didn't you?"

Ellen felt the blood sting her cheeks.

"I was a child," she returned.

"well, listen to this here grown-up young woman. All in a few days! ... don't be in a temper, Ellen.... Come, give us a kiss."
She deliberately gazed into his eyes. Like the eyes of an eagle, they were clear and hard, just now warmed by the dalliance of the moment, but there was no light, no intelligence in them to prove he understood her. The instant separated Ellen immeasurably from him and from all of his ilk.

"Davidson, I was a child," she said. "I was lonely -- hungry for affection -- I was innocent. Then I was careless, too, and thoughtless when I should have known better. But I don't have much education and I hardly understood what you men were after.

I have put such thoughts out of my mind. I know now -- know what you mean -- what you have made people believe I am."

"Uh Huh! sure I get your hunch," he returned, with a change of tone. "But I did ask you to marry me, didn't I?"

"Yes you did. The first day you got here to my dad's house. But, you only asked me to marry you after you found out you couldn't have your way with me. To you the one didn't mean any more than the other."

"Sure I did more than Slim Bruce and Coulter," he retorted. "They never asked you to marry them."


"No, they didn't. And if there was any reason I could respect them at all it would bet because they didn't ask me."

"well, I'll be dog-goned!" ejaculated Davidson, thoughtfully, as he stroked his long mustache.

"I'll say to them what I've said to you," went on Ellen. "I wouldn't marry any one of you -- you loafers to save my life. you're all a bad lot."

Davidson changed subtly. The whole indolent nonchalance of the man vanished in an instant.

"well, Miss Pretty Pants Jorges, I reckon you mean we're a bad lot of sheep herders?" he queried, in the cool, easy speech of a Texan.

"No," flashed Ellen. "sure I don't say sheep herders. I say you're a BAD LOT."

"Oh, the hell you say!" Davidson spoke as he might have spoken to a man; then turning swiftly on his heel he left her. Outside he encountered Ellen's father. She heard Davidson speak: "Lee, your little wildcat is sure here. and take mah hunch. Somebody has been talking bad to her."

"Who has?" asked her father, in his husky voice. Ellen knew at once that he had been drinking.

"Lord only knows," replied Davidson. "But sure it wasn't any friends of ours."

"We can't stop people's tongues," said Jorges, resignedly.

"well, I ain't so sure," continued Davidson, with his slow, cool laugh. "Reckon I never yet heard any dead men's tongues wagging."

Then the musical tinkle of his spurs sounded fainter. A moment later Ellen's father entered the cabin. His dark, moody face brightened at sight of her. Ellen knew she was the only person in the world left for him to love. And she was sure of his love. Her very presence always made him different. And through the years, the darker their misfortunes, the farther he slipped away from better days, the more she loved him.

"Hello, my Ellen!" he said, and he embraced her. When he had been drinking he never kissed her. "sure I'm glad you're home. This here hole is bad enough any time, but when you're gone it's black.... I'm hungry."

Ellen laid food and drink on the table; and for a little while she did not look directly at him. She was concerned about this new searching power of her eyes. She vaguely dreaded its power so much she wouldn't look at her father.

Lee Jorges had once been a singularly handsome man. He was tall, but did not have the figure of a horseman. His dark hair was streaked with gray, and was white over his ears. His face was sallow and thin, with deep lines. Under his round, prominent, brown eyes, like deadened furnaces, were blue swollen welts. He had a bitter mouth and weak chin, not wholly concealed by his gray mustache and pointed beard. He wore a long frock coat and a wide-brimmed sombrero, both black in color, and so old and stained and frayed that along with the fashion of them they betrayed that they had come from Texas with him.
Jorges always persisted in wearing a white linen shirt, likewise a relic of his Southern prosperity, and to-day it was ragged and soiled as usual.

Ellen watched her father eat and waited for him to speak. It occurred to her strangely that he never asked about the sheep or the new-born lambs. She divined with a subtle new woman's intuition that he he didn't care nothing for his sheep.
"Ellen, what riled Davidson?" inquired her father, presently. "He sure had fire in his eye."

Long ago Ellen had betrayed an indignity she had suffered at the hands of a man. Her father had nearly killed him. Since then she had taken care to keep her troubles to herself. If her father had not been blind and absorbed in his own brooding he would have seen a thousand things sufficient to inflame his Southern pride and temper.
"Davidson asked me to marry him again and I said he belonged to a bad lot," she replied.

Jorges laughed in scorn. "Fool! My God! Ellen, I must have dragged you low -- that every damned ru -- er -- sheepman -- who comes along thinks he can marry you."

At the break in his words, the incompleted meaning, Ellen dropped her eyes. Little things once never noted by her were now come to have a fascinating significance.

"Never mind, dad," she replied. "They can't marry me."

"Davidson said somebody had been talking to you. How about that?"
"Old John Sprague has just gotten back from Pauls Valley," said Ellen. "I stopped in to see him. sure he told me all the village gossip."

"Anything to interest me?" he queried, darkly.

"Yes, dad, I'm afraid a good deal," she said, hesitatingly. Then in accordance with a decision Ellen had made she told him of the rumored war between sheep herders and cattlemen; that old Isbel had Blanchard, Gordon, Fredericks, Blue and other well-known ranchers on his side; that his son Gene Isbel had come from Oregon with a wonderful reputation as fighter and scout and tracker; that it was no secret how Colonel Lee Jorges was at the head of the sheep herders; that a bloody war was sure to come.

"Hah!" exclaimed Jorges, with a stain of red in his sallow cheek. "Reckon none of that is news to me. I knew all that."
Ellen wondered if he had heard of her meeting with Gene Isbel. If not he would hear as soon as Slim Bruce and Lorenzo came back. She decided to forestall them.

"Dad, I met Gene Isbel. He came into my camp. Asked the way to the Rim. I showed him. We -- we talked a little. And sure were getting acquainted when -- when he told me who he was. Then I left him -- hurried back to camp."

"Coulter met Isbel down in the woods," replied Jorges, ponderingly. "Said he looked like an Indian -- a hard and slippery customer to reckon with."

"sure I guess I can indorse what Coulter said," returned Ellen, dryly. She could have laughed aloud at her deceit. Still she had not lied.

"How'd this here young Isbel strike you?" queried her father, suddenly glancing up at her.

Ellen felt the slow, sickening, guilty rise of blood in her face. She was helpless to stop it. But her father evidently never saw it. He was looking at her without seeing her.

"He -- he struck me as different from any of the men here," she stammered.
"Did Sprague tell you about this half-Indian Isbel -- about his reputation?"

"Yes."

"Did he look to you like a real woodsman?"

"Indeed he did. He wore real buckskin for one thing. He stepped quick and soft. He acted at home in the woods. He had eyes black as night and sharp as lightning. They sure saw about all there was to see, and he heard anything that moved in the forest around him. But it wasn't just that he saw everything and heard everything; he knew what it meant."

Jorges chewed at his mustache and lost himself in brooding thought. “Like what?”

“Like gnats boiling, which a way bees are flying when they are loaded and heading for home, like what a blue jay is talking about and how old sheep crap is if it ain't crumbled. Dad, I think he could track a piss ant through a pine forest just fine. Dad, tell me true now, is there going to be a war?" asked Ellen.

What a red, strange, rolling flash blazed in her father's eyes! His body jerked. "sure. You might as well know it's coming."

"Between sheep herders and cattlemen?"

"Well, Yes. It's shaping up kind of that way."

"And is that the reason you came here? Are you running sheep just because Jesse Isbel is running cattle?"

"Daughter, you have it correct, so far as you go."

"Oh! ... Dad, can't this fight be avoided?"

"You forget you're from Texas," he replied with a chuckle, as if she were too young to understand the things men were doing.

"can't it be helped?" she asked, stubbornly.
"No!" he declared at last, with deep and almost hoarse passion.

"Why not?"

Her father bent an angry glare at her. "well, we sheep herders are going to run sheep anywhere we like on the range. and cattlemen won't stand for that."

"But, dad, it's so foolish," declared Ellen, earnestly. "you sheep herders do not have to run sheep over the cattle range."

"I'll be the judge of that, and I reckon we do."

"Dad, that argument doesn't go with me. I know the country. For years to come there will be room for both sheep and cattle without overrunning. If some of the range is better in water and grass, then whoever got there first should have it. That sure is only fair. It's common sense, too."

"Ellen, the land don't belong to the first squatters; it belongs to them that holds the title. This here land title belongs to the government, and that's all of us, cattleman, sheepman, and horse rancher too. I got a right to run my sheep anywhere I have a mind to.”

His words rumbled to a standstill. Then his piercing gaze rose to meet hers. “I reckon some cattle people have been prejudicing you," said Jorges, bitterly.

"Dad!" she cried, hotly. 'You used to be a cattleman your own self.”


This had grown to be an ordeal for Jorges. He seemed a victim of contending tides of feeling. Some will or struggle broke within him and the change was manifest. Haggard, shifty-eyed, with wabbling chin, he burst into speech.

"See here, girl. You listen good, too. There's a clique of ranchers down in the Basin, all those you named, with Isbel at their head. They have resented sheep herders coming down into the valley. They want it all to themselves. That's the reason. sure there's another. All the Isbels are crooked. They're cattle and horse thieves -- have been for years. Jesse Isbel always was a maverick rustler. He's getting old now and rich, so he wants to cover his tracks. He aims to blame this cattle rustling and horse stealing on to us sheep herders, and run us out of the country."

Gravely Ellen Jorges studied her father's face, and the newly found truth-seeing power of her eyes did not fail her. In part, perhaps in all, he was telling lies to her. She shuddered a little, loyally battling against the insidious convictions being brought to fruition. Perhaps in his brooding over his failures and troubles he leaned toward false judgments. Ellen could not attach dishonor to her father's motives or speeches. For a long time though, something about him had troubled her, perplexed her. Fearfully she believed she was coming to some revelation, and, despite her keen determination to know, she found herself shrinking.

"Dad, mother told me before she died that the Isbels had ruined you," said Ellen, very low. It hurt her so to see her father cover his face that she could hardly go on. "If they ruined you they ruined all of us. I know what we had once -- what we lost again and again -- and I see what we are come to now. Mother hated the Isbels. She taught me to hate the very name. But I never knew how they ruined you -- or why -- or when. And I want to know all about it and I want to know now."

Then it was not the face of a liar that Jorges disclosed. The present was forgotten. He lived in the past. He even seemed younger 'in the revivifying flash of hate that made his face radiant. The lines burned out. Hate gave him back the spirit of his youth.

"Jesse Isbel and I were boys together in Weston, Texas," began Jorges, in swift, passionate voice. "We went to school together. We loved the same girl -- your mother. When the war broke out she was engaged to Isbel. His family was rich. They influenced her people. But she loved me. When Isbel went to war she married me. He came back and faced us. God! I'll never forget that. Your mother confessed her unfaithfulness -- by Heaven! She taunted him with it. Isbel accused me of winning her by lies. But she took the sting out of that.

"Isbel never forgave her and he hounded me to ruin. He proved me out a card-sharp, cheating my best friends. I was disgraced. Later he tangled me in the courts -- he beat me out of property -- and last -- by convicting me of rustling cattle -- he run me out of Texas."

Black and distorted now, Jorges's face was a spectacle to make Ellen sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate. The truth of her father's ruin and her own were enough. What mattered all else? Jorges beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the more significant for their lack of physical force.

"and so help me God, what he's done to me has got to be wiped out in blood!" he hissed.

That was his answer to the wavering and nobility of Ellen. And she in her turn had no answer to make. She crept away into the corner behind the curtain, and there on her couch in the semidarkness she lay with strained heart, and a resurging, unconquerable tumult in her mind. And she lay there from the middle of that afternoon until the next morning.

When she awakened she expected to be unable to rise -- she hoped she could not -- but life seemed multiplied in her, and inaction was impossible. Something young and sweet and hopeful that had been in her did not greet the sun this morning. In their place was a woman's passion to learn for herself, to watch events, to meet what must come, to survive.

After breakfast, at which she sat alone, she decided to put Isbel's package out of the way, so that it would not be subjecting her to continual annoyance. The moment she picked it up the old curiosity assailed her.

"sure I'll see what it is, anyway," she muttered, and with swift hands she opened the package. The action disclosed two pairs of fine, soft shoes, of a style she had never seen, and four pairs of stockings, two of strong, serviceable wool, and the others of a finer texture.
Ellen looked at them in amazement. Of all things in the world, these would have been the last she expected to see. And, strangely, they were what she wanted and needed most. Naturally, then, Ellen made the mistake of taking them in her hands to feel their softness and warmth.

"sure! He saw my bare legs! And he brought me these presents he'd intended for his sister.... He was ashamed for me -- sorry for me.... And I thought he looked at me bold-like, as I'm used to be looked at here! Isbel or not, he's sure..."

But Ellen Jorges could not utter aloud the conviction her intelligence tried to force upon her. "It'd be a pity to burn them," she mused. "I can't do it. Sometime I might send them to Ann Isbel."

Whereupon she wrapped them up again and hid them in the bottom of the old trunk, and slowly, as she lowered the lid, looking darkly, blankly at the well, she whispered: "Gene Isbel! ... I hate him! He's got no right feeling sorry for me."

Later when Ellen went outdoors she carried her rifle, which was unusual for her, unless she intended to go into the woods.

The morning was sunny and warm. A group of shirt-sleeved men lounged in the hall and before the porch of the double cabin. Her father was pacing up and down, talking forcibly. Ellen heard his hoarse voice. As she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their attention. Ellen's glance ran over them swiftly -- Davidson, with his superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; Coulter with his lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorges, her uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair, and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorges, another brother of her father's, younger, red of eye and nose, a weak-chinned drinker of rum. Three other limber-legged Texans lounged there, partners of Davidson, and they were sun-browned, light-haired, blue-eyed men singularly alike in appearance, from their dusty high-heeled boots to their broad black sombreros. They claimed to be sheep herders. All Ellen could be sure of was that Rock Wells spent most of his time there, doing nothing but look for a chance to waylay her; Springer was a gambler; and the third, who answered to the strange name of Queen, was a silent, lazy, watchful-eyed man who never wore a glove on his right hand and who never was seen without a gun within easy reach of that hand.

"Howdy, Ellen. sure you ain't going to say good morning to this here bad lot?" drawled Davidson, with good-natured sarcasm.

"Why, sure! Good morning, you hard-working, industrious MAñANA sheep raisers," replied Ellen, coolly.

Davidson stared. The others appeared taken back by a greeting so foreign from any to which they were accustomed from her. Jackson Jorges let out a gruff haw-haw. Some of them doffed their sombreros, and Rock Wells managed a lazy, polite good morning. Ellen's father seemed most significantly struck by her greeting, and the least amused.

"Ellen, I'm not liking your talk," he said, with a frown.


"Why, Dad, when you play cards don't you call a spade a spade?"

"Why, sure I do."

"Well, I'm just calling these here spades a couple of spades."

"Uh Huh!" grunted Jorges, furtively dropping his eyes. "Where you going with your gun? I'd rather you hung round here now."

"Reckon I might as well get used to packing my gun all the time," replied Ellen. "Reckon I'll be treated more like a man."

Then the event Ellen had been expecting all morning took place. Slim Bruce and Lorenzo rode around the slope of the Knoll and trotted toward the cabin. Interest in Ellen was relegated to the background.

"sure they're busting with news," declared Davidson.

"They been riding some, you bet," remarked another.

"Huh!" exclaimed Jorges. "Bruce sure looks queer to me."
"Red liquor," said Tad Jorges, sententiously. "You-all know the brand Greaves hands out."

"Naw, Slim ain't drunk," said Jackson Jorges. "Look at his bloody shirt."

The cool, indolent interest of the crowd vanished at the red color pointed out by Jackson Jorges. Davidson rose in a single springy motion to his lofty height. The face Bruce turned to Jorges was swollen and bruised, with unhealed cuts. Where his right eye should have been showed a puffed dark purple bulge. His other eye, however, gleamed with hard and sullen light. He stretched a big shaking hand toward Jorges.

"that Nez Perce Isbel beat me half to death," he bellowed.

Jorges stared hard at the tragic, almost grotesque figure, at the battered face. But speech failed him. It was Davidson who answered Bruce.

"well, Slim, I'll be damned if you don't look like it really happened."

"Beat you! What with?" burst out Jorges, explosively.

"I thought he was swinging an ax, but Greaves swore it was his fists," bawled Bruce, in misery and fury.

"Where was your gun?" queried Jorges, sharply.

"Gun? Hell!" exclaimed Bruce, flinging wide his arms. "Ask Lorenzo. He had a gun. and he got a biff in the jaw before my turn come. Ask him?"

Attention thus directed to the Mexican showed a heavy discolored swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face. He glared at Ellen.

"Hah! Speak up," shouted Jorges, impatiently.

"Senor Isbel heet me ver quick," replied Lorenzo, with expressive gesture. "I see thousand stars -- then moocho black -- all like night."

At that some of Davidson's men lolled back with dry crisp laughter. Davidson's hard face rippled with a smile. But there was no humor in anything for Colonel Jorges.

"Tell us what come off. Quick!" he ordered. "Where did it happen? Why? Who saw it? What did you do?"

Bruce lapsed into a sullen impressiveness. "well, I happened in Greaves's store and run into Gene Isbel. sure was looking for him. I had my mind made up what to do, but I got to shooting off my gab instead of my gun. I called him Nez Perce -- and I throwed all that talk in his face about old Jesse Isbel sending for him -- -and I told him he'd git run out of the Verde Mesa. Reckon I was jest warming up.... But then it all happened. He slugged Lorenzo jest one time. and Lorenzo slid peaceful-like to bed behind the counter. I hadn't time to think of throwing a gun before he whaled into me. He hit me so hard I come plumb off my feet. That blow knocked out two of my teeth. and I swallered one of them."

Ellen stood in the background behind three of the men and in the shadow. She did not join in the laugh that followed Bruce's remarks. She had known that he would lie.

Uncertain yet of her reaction to this, but more bitter and furious as he revealed his utter baseness, she waited for more to be said.

"well, I'll be doggoned," drawled Davidson. “He just goes around hitting people and nobody does nothing about it?”

"What do you make of this kind of fighting?" queried Jorges,

"Doggone me if I know," replied Davidson in perplexity. "sure and sartin it's not the way of a Texan. maybe this young Isbel really is what old Jesse swears he is. sure Bruce ain't nothing to give an edge to a real gun fighter. Looks to me like Isbel bluffed Greaves and his gang and licked your men without his throwing a gun."

"Maybe Isbel still doesn't want the name of drawing first blood," suggested Jorges.

"That 'd be like Jesse," spoke up Rock Wells, quietly. "I onct rode for Jesse in Texas and he was always backing down from a fight, lessen he was sure everybody he knew thought he was in the right on that subject."

"So, Bruce," said Davidson, "was this here palavering of yours and Gene Isbel's about the price of lambs or the old stock dispute? about his father's range and water? and partickler about, sheep moving in?"

"well -- I -- I yelled a heap," declared Bruce, haltingly, "but I don't recollect all I said -- I was riled.... sure, though it was the same old argyment that's been fetching us closer and closer to trouble."

Davidson removed his keen hawklike gaze from Bruce. "well, Jorges, all I'll say is this. If Bruce is telling the truth we ain't got a hell of a lot to fear from this young Isbel. I've known a heap of gun fighters in my day. and Gene Isbel don't run true to that class. sure there never was a gunman who'd risk crippling his right hand by slugging anybody."

"well," broke in Bruce, sullenly. "You-all can take it dead straight or not. I don't give a damn. But you've sure got my hunch that Nez Perce Isbel is liable to handle any of you boys jest as he did me, and jest as easy. What's more, he's got Greaves figured. and yawl know that Greaves is as deep in -- "

"Shut up that kind of gab," Jorges hissed at him, stridently. "You just answer me straight now. Was the row in Greaves's barroom about sheep, or something else?"

"Aw, hell! I said so, didn't I?" shouted Bruce, with a fierce uplift of his distorted face.

Ellen strode out from the shadow of the tall men who had obscured her.

"Bruce, you're a liar," she said, bitingly. “You know damned well what the only thing that fight was about.”

The surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root Bruce to the spot. All but the discolored places on his face blanched white. He held his breath a moment, then expelled it sharply. His effort to recover from the shock was painfully obvious. He stammered incoherently.

"sure you're more than a liar, too," cried Ellen, facing him with blazing eyes. And the rifle, gripped in both hands, seemed to declare her intent of a bloody menace. "That row was not about sheep.... Gene Isbel didn't beat you for anything about sheep.... Old John Sprague was in Greaves's store. He heard you. He saw Gene Isbel beat you as badly as you deserved.... and he told ME why Gene Isbel done it, and everybody down there knows plain as day why Greaves nor nobody else backed your dirty play!"

Ellen saw Bruce shrink in fear of his life; and despite her fury she was filled with disgust that he could imagine she would have his blood on her hands. Then she divined that Bruce saw more in the gathering storm in her father's eyes than he had to fear from her.

"Girl, what the hell are you saying?" Jorges demanded in dark amazement.

"Dad, you leave this little chore to me," she retorted.

Davidson stepped beside Jorges, significantly on his right side. "Let her alone Lee," he advised, coolly. "She's sure got a hunch on Bruce and it's scaring him half to death."

"Slim Bruce, you cast a dirty slur on my name," Ellen cried out passionately.

It was then that Davidson grasped Jorges's right arm and held it tight, "Jest what I thought," he murmured. "Stand still, Lee. Let's see the kid make him put his cards down and crawl away."

"That's what Gene Isbel beat you for," went on Ellen. "For slandering a girl who wasn't there.... Me! you rotten, no good liar!"

"But, Ellen, it wasn't all lies," said Bruce, huskily. "I was half drunk -- and horribly jealous.... You know Lorenzo seen Isbel kissing you. I can prove that."

Ellen threw up her head and a scarlet wave of shame and wrath flooded her face.

"Yes," she cried, ringingly. "He saw Gene Isbel kiss me. Once! ... and it was the only decent kiss I've ever had in the last ten years. He meant no insult. I didn't know who he was, and what's more important, he didn't have no idea who I was. and through his kiss I learned there is a big difference between real men and them as just got some happy time thoughts rattling around in their head.... you made Lorenzo lie about the whole thing. If I had one shred of good name left in Pauls Valley you laid it in the mud and you stomped on it and you dishonored it.... you made everybody down there think I would stoop low enough to be your girl? Why, Damn you! I ought to kill you right this minute.... Well, I won't kill you, but you'd better eat your words right now – You take them back -- or I'll cripple you for life!"

She pointed her rifle at his kneecap. “Do it!”

"Sure, honey, I take back -- all I said," gulped Bruce. He gazed at the quivering rifle barrel and then his gaze fluttered hopefully into the face of Ellen's father. Suddenly he found it was too hard to breathe. Instinct told him where his real peril lay.

But, here the cool and tactful Davidson showed himself master of the situation.

"here, listen!" he called. "Ellen, I reckon Bruce was drunk and out of his head. He's sure ate his words. Now, we don't want any cripples in this camp. Let him alone. Your dad got me here to lead the Jorgess, and that's my say to you.... Slim, you're sure a low-down lying rascal. You keep away from Ellen after this or I'll bore you a new hole in your head myself.... Jorges, it won't be a bad idea for you to forget you're a Texan till you cool off. Put Bruce out of the camp somewhere that he can stop some Isbel lead. sure the Jorges-Isbel war is about on, and I reckon we'd be smart to start believing some of old Jesse's talk about his Nez Per Say son."

From this hour Ellen Jorges bent all of her lately awakened intelligence and will to the only end that seemed to hold possible salvation for her. In the crisis sure to come she did not want to be blind or weak. Dreaming and indolence, habits which were often a comfort to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the hard test she divined ahead and dreaded. In the matter of her father's fight she must stand by him whatever the issue or the outcome; but in what pertained to her own principles, her womanhood, and her soul she must stand absolutely alone.

Therefore, Ellen put her dreams aside, and she thrust any indolence of mind behind her. Many tasks she found to keep her hands busy and her mind from wandering. When these tasks were done for she kept active in other ways, thus earning the poise and peace of hard labor.

Jorges rode off every day, sometimes with one or two of the men, often with a larger number. If he spoke of such trips to Ellen it was to give an impression of visiting the various sheep camps. Often he did not return the day he left.

When he did get back he smelled of rum and appeared heavy from need of sleep. His horses were always dust and sweat covered. During his absences Ellen fell victim to anxious dread until he returned. Daily he grew darker and more haggard of face, more obsessed by some impending fate.

Often he stayed up late, haranguing with the men in the dim-lit cabin, where they drank and smoked, but seldom gambled any more.

Ellen knew that when this kind of men did not gamble something immediate and perturbing was on their minds. Ellen had never lowered herself to the deceit and suspicion of eavesdropping before, but she realized that there was a climax approaching in which she would deliberately do so to get the information she needed to help protect her father from ruin. In those closing May days Ellen learned the significance of many things that previously she had taken as a matter of course.

Her father did not run the ranch. There was absolutely no ranching done, and little work either. Often Ellen had to chop all the wood herself. Jorges did not possess a plow. Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack dumfounded her. Even old John Sprague raised some hay, beets, and turnips. Jorges's cattle and horses fared ill during the winter. Ellen remembered how last winter the poor beasts used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens. Many of them died in the snow. The only thing that had saved the flocks of sheep was being driven down into the Basin in the fall before winter came, and then on across the Reno Pass to Phoenix and Maricopa.

Ellen could not remember ever seeing a fence post on the ranch, nor a piece of salt set out for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a sheep-shearing outfit. Suddenly she realized that she had never even seen any of the sheep get sheared. Ellen could never keep track of the many and different horses running loose and hobbled round the ranch. There were droves of horses in the woods, and some of them wild as deer.

According to her understanding, her father and her uncles were keen on horse trading and buying. Buyers came, horses went, but she had never seen any arriving, nor any colts being born. There were many trails leading away from the Jorges ranch -- these grew to have a fascination for Ellen; and the time came when she rode out on them to see for herself where they led. The sheep ranch of Davidson, supposed to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in Bear Canyon, never materialized at all for Ellen. This circumstance so interested her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and asked him to direct her to Bear Canyon. Sprague said there was only one canyon by that name. And gave her directions so that she would be sure not to miss it.

Once she was in Bear Canyon she rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Rim down all its length. She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear Canyon. Davidson had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her father. Had they lied? Why had they lied? Why WOULD they lie? Were they calling some other canyon by that name? After all, here were many canyons, all heading up near the Rim, all running and widening down for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from the deep, short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the Basin side. Ellen rode out the canyons within six or eight miles of her home, both to the east and to the west. All she discovered was a couple of old log cabins, long deserted.

Still, she did not follow out all the trails to their ends. Several of them led far into the deepest, roughest, wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen. No cattle or sheep had ever been driven over these trails and she came to the conclusion these trails were ancient when she was born, trails left over by the ones that went before.

This riding around of Ellen's at length got to her father's ears. Ellen expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly would refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked her to limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot all about it. In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervousness the next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with the men, grew to be distressing for Ellen. They presaged his further deterioration and the ever-present evil of the growing feud.

One day Jorges rode home in the early morning when the last stars were still out, after an absence of two nights. Ellen heard the clip-clop of the horses long before she saw them.

"Hey, Ellen! Come out here," called her father.

Ellen left her work and went outside. A stranger had ridden in with her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard. He was long, loose jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet Ellen bad ever seen.
Next Ellen espied a black horse they had evidently brought with them. Her father was holding a rope halter. At once the black horse with the white face struck Ellen as being a real beauty and a real thoroughbred. He was as black as that horse Gene Isbel had been riding that day he'd returned to the Promontory to see her.

"Ellen, here's a horse for you," said Jorges, with something of pride. "I made a trade. Reckon I wanted him myself, but he's too gentle for me and maybe a little small for my weight anyway."

Delight visited Ellen for the first time in many days. Seldom had she owned a good horse, and never one like this one.

"Oh, dad!" she exclaimed, in her gratitude.

"sure he's yours on one condition," said her father.

"What's that?" asked Ellen, as she laid caressing hands on the restless horse.

"You're not to ride him out of the canyon."

"Agreed.... All dead black, isn't he, except that white face? What's his name, dad?

"I forgot to ask," replied Jorges, as he began unsaddling his own horse. "Slater, what's this here black's name?"

The lanky giant grinned. "I reckon it was Black Jack, like a Jack of Spades. He must have been won in a card game, maybe."



"Black Jack?" Ellen asked blankly. "Jack of Spades? What a name to give a horse! ... Well, I guess I'll just call him Black Jack. He's sure enough black."

"Ellen, keep him hobbled when you're not riding him," was her father's parting advice as he walked off with the stranger. “He might want to head out for his last home for a little while yet.”

Well, sure enough, Ellen knew that horses would do that for a little while if the previous owner had fed them well.

Black Jack was wet and dusty and his satiny skin quivered. He had fine, dark, intelligent eyes that watched Ellen's every move. She knew how her father and his friends dragged and jammed horses through the woods and over the rough trails.

It did not take her long to discover that this horse had been a pet. Ellen cleaned his coat and brushed him and fed him. Then she fitted her bridle to suit his head and saddled him. His evident response to her kindness assured her that he was gentle, so she mounted and rode him, to discover he had the easiest rocking-chair gait she had ever experienced. He walked and trotted to suit her will, but when left to choose his own gait he fell into a single foot, graceful little pace that was very easy for her. He appeared quite ready to break into a run at her slightest bidding, but Ellen satisfied herself on this first ride with his slower gaits.

"Black Jack, you've sure cut out my burro jenny," said Ellen, regretfully. "Well, I reckon all women are fickle when it comes to horses."



Next day she rode up the canyon to show Black Jack to her friend John Sprague. The old burro breeder was not at home. As his door was open, however, and a fire smoldering, Ellen concluded he would soon return. So she waited. Dismounting, she left Black Jack free to graze on the new green grass that carpeted the ground. The cabin and little level clearing accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the forest. Ellen always liked it here and had once been in the habit of visiting the old man often. But of late she had stayed away, for the reason that Sprague's talk and his news and his poorly hidden pity depressed her.

Presently she heard hoof beats on the hard, packed trail leading down the canyon in the direction from which she had come. Scarcely likely was it that Sprague should return from this direction. Ellen thought her father had sent one of the herders for her. But when she caught a glimpse of the approaching horseman, down in the aspens, she failed to recognize him. After he had passed one of the openings she heard his horse stop. Probably the man had seen her; at least she could not otherwise account for his stopping.

The glimpse she had of him had given her the impression that he was bending over, peering ahead in the trail, looking for tracks. Then she heard the rider come on again, more slowly this time.
At length the horse trotted out into the opening, to be hauled up short. Ellen recognized the buckskin-clad figure, the broad shoulders, the dark face of Gene Isbel.



Ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation ever suffered. It took all the violence of her new-born spirit to subdue that feeling.

Isbel rode slowly across the clearing toward her. For Ellen his approach seemed singularly swift -- so swift that her surprise, dismay, conjecture, and anger obstructed her will. The outwardly calm and cold Ellen Jorges was a travesty that mocked her -- that she felt he would discern.

The moment Isbel drew close enough for Ellen to see his face she experienced a strong, shuddering repetition of her first shock of recognition. He was not the same. The light, the youth was gone. This, however, did not cause her emotion. Was it not a sudden transition of her nature to the dominance of hate? Ellen seemed to feel the shadow of her unknown self standing with her.

Isbel halted his horse. Ellen had been standing near the trunk of a fallen pine and she instinctively backed against it. How her legs trembled! Isbel took off his cap and crushed it nervously in his bare, brown hand.

"Good morning, Miss Ellen!" he said.

Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost breathlessly, "Did you come by our ranch?"

"No. I circled," he replied.
"Gene Isbel! What do you want here?" she demanded.

"Don't you know?" he returned angrily. His eyes were intensely black and piercing. They seemed to search Ellen's very soul. To meet their gaze was an ordeal that only her rising fury sustained.

Ellen felt on her lips a scornful allusion to his half-breed Indian traits and the reputation that had preceded him. But she could not utter it.

"No," she replied, “I reckon that I don't.

"It's sort of hard to call a woman a liar even when the tracks are plain to see." he returned, bitterly. “But I guess you must be – seeing as you're so proud of being a Jorges.

"Liar? Not to you, Gene Isbel," she retorted. "I wouldn't lie to you to save my life from hell."

He studied her with a keen, sober, moody intent. The dark fire of his eyes thrilled her. "If that's true, I'm real glad," he said finally.

"sure it's true. I have no idea in the world why you came here."

When Gene's gaze flickered over towards her horse Ellen did suddenly have an idea dawning that she could not force back down into the rabbit hole of oblivion. But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this man's face.

"Does old Sprague live here?" asked Isbel.

"Yes. I expect him back soon because the door was open and the fire was smoldering. Did you come to see him?"
"No.... I follered your tracks in, I suppose.?"

Ellen shivered. What had she to hide from Gene Isbel? And a still, small voice replied that she had to hide the Ellen Jorges who had waited for him that day, who had spied upon him, who had treasured a gift she could not destroy, who had hugged to her miserable heart the fact that he had fought for her name.

"Did you come here to see me?" Ellen asked. She felt that she could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of consideration in him.

"No -- honest, I didn't, Miss Ellen," he rejoined, humbly. "I'll tell you, presently, why I came. But it wasn't to see you.... I don't deny I wanted to bad enough... but that's no matter since you didn't meet me that day on the Rim."

"Meet you!" she echoed, coldly. "surely you never expected me to show up after I found out who you really were?"

“Well, I guess I was just hoping," he admitted, with those penetrating eyes on her. "I put something in your tent that day. Did you find it?"

"Yes," she replied, with the same casual coldness.

"What did you do with it?"

"I kicked it out into the fire, of course," she replied. She saw him flinch.

"And you never opened it?"
"Certainly not," she retorted, as if forced. "Don't you know anything about propriety? -- about people? ... sure even if you are an Isbel you never were Texas born, trying to foist off a gift to your sister on me."

"Thank God I wasn't born in Texas!" he replied. "I was born in a beautiful country of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren desert where men curdle up as dry and hard as the cactus they eat. Where I come from men don't live on hate. They can forgive."

"Forgive! ... Could you forgive a Jorges?"

"Yes, I could."

"sure that's easy to say -- with the wrongs all on your side," she declared, bitterly.

"Ellen Jorges, the first wrong was on your side," retorted Gene, his voice fell. "Your father stole my father's sweetheart -- by lying to her, by slander, by dishonor, by making terrible love to her in his absence."

"It's a lie," cried Ellen, passionately.

"It is not," he declared, solemnly.

"Gene Isbel, do you say I lie!"

"No! I say you've been lied to," he thundered.

The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling the power of truth at Ellen. It weakened her.

"But -- mother loved dad -- best."

"Well, afterward maaybe. No wonder, poor woman! ... But it was the action of your father and your mother that has ruined all these lives. You've got to know the truth, Ellen Jorges.... All the years of hate have borne their fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must be spilled. Ig seems like the Jorgess and the Isbels can't live on the same earth because your father followed mine here deliberately.... And you've got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and me."

The hate that he spoke of was all that upheld her.

"Never, Gene Isbel!" she cried. "If that's what you call truth, then I'll never know any truth from you.... I'll never share anything with you -- not even hell."

Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins. The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head. "Why do you hate me so?" he asked. "I just happen to be my father's son. I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you ... fell in love with you in a flash -- Why do you hate me so terribly?"

Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast. "you're an Isbel.... don't you dare speak of love to me."

"I didn't intend to. But your -- your hate seems unnatural. And we'll probably never meet again.... I can't help it. I love you. Love at first sight they call it in the dime novels! Gene Isbel and Ellen Jorges! Strange, isn't it? ... It was all so strange. My meeting you, my seeing you so sweet and beautiful, my thinking you so good in spite of -- "

"sure it was strange," interrupted Ellen, with a scornful laugh. She had found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt. "Thinking me so good in spite of kissing me like that. -- Ha-ha! Well, I fixed your wagon good when I said I'd been kissed before, admit it, didn't I?"

"Yes," he said. “You fixed my wagon good.”

Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild tumult in her heart. All the words that crowded to her lips for utterance were false.

"Yes – I was kissed before I met you -- and I've been kissed since," she said, mockingly. "And I laugh at what you call love, Gene Isbel."

"Laugh if you want -- but believe it was sweet and honorable -- the best in me," he replied, in deep earnestness.

"Bah!" cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate. “The best that's in you smells worse than sheep poop on a hot day.”

"By Heaven, you surely must be different from what I thought!" exclaimed Isbel, huskily.

"sure if I wasn't, I'd make myself.... Now, Mister Gene Isbel, get on your horse and go!"

Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect prepared her for some blow.

"That's a pretty black horse."

"Yes," replied Ellen, blankly.
"Do you like him?"
"Why, yes. In fact, I -- I love him."
"All right, I'll give him to you then. He'll have less work and kinder treatment than if I used him. I've got a bunch of pretty hard rides ahead of me."

"you -- you give – you give, give HIM to ME? " whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening.

"Yes. He's mine," replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Black Jack threw up his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved master she saw it then.

Isbel laid a hand on the animal's neck and caressed him, then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: "I picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father's. We got along well. My sister Ann rode him a good deal.... He was stolen from our pasture. I took his trail and tracked him up here. Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to circle till I picked it up again."

"Stolen -- pasture -- tracked him up here?" echoed Ellen, without any evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, her lips seemed to have been turned to stone as she sat down.

"Tracking him was easy. I wish now that it 'd been impossible," he said, bluntly. "What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?"

"Game I ... Game of what?" she asked.




"Why, a -- a game of ignorance -- innocence -- any old game to fool a man who's trying to be decent. You know your father's nothing but a low down horse thief!" he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body, her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of Isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a second of whirling, revealing thought.

"Ellen Jorges, you know your father's in thick with this Hash Knife Gang of rustlers, too." Isbel thundered.

"sure," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.

"You know he's got this Davidson to lead his faction against the Isbels?"

"sure, I know that."

"You know this talk of sheep herders bucking the cattlemen is all a blind?"

"sure," reiterated Ellen in a whisper as she stared at the truth she'd been blind to for eighteen years.

Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment, he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head and his broad hand went to his breast.
"To think I fancied that I had fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed at last, and his other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at before now possessed Ellen -- body, mind, and soul. Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet she was still loved by him? In that divination there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back upon him her own stinging agony.

Her thought flew upon her like whips. Pride of the Jorgess! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of an Isbel, that family to whom she owed her degradation. Now she plainly saw she wasn't nothing but the daughter of a horse thief and rustler! Dark and evil and grim set, the forces within her boiled up until she had to accept her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorgess. The sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter. Her shoulders slumped.

"You know? sure you might have had me -- that day on the Rim -- if you hadn't told me your name, I would have loved you back, and forever" she said, but she made her words a mockery as she gazed into his eyes with all the mystery of a woman's nature.

Isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague. "Girl, what do you mean?"

"sure, I'd have been plumb fond of having you make up to me," she drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of the love he could not help.

Some fiendish desire to hurt and cripple rode her hard so that she surrendered to the consciousness of her power to kill the noble heart, the promise of faithful lips, the wall of good in him.

"Ellen Jorges, you lie!" he burst out, hoarsely.

"Gene Isbel, sure I'd been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I was tired of them.... I wanted a new lover.... And if you hadn't give yourself away -- "

Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood from a cut lip.

"Shut up, you hussy!" he ordered, roughly. "Have you no shame? ... My sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses – and now I've caught you red-handed with a stolen horse."

That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank. But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible poise. "Gene Isbel -- go along with you," she said, impatiently. "I'm waiting here for Slim Bruce!"

At last it was as if she had struck his heart.

Because of doubt of himself and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof against this last stab. Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him rebounded on her! She gasped as he lunged for her, too swift for her to move a hand. One arm crushed round her like a steel band; the other, hard across her breast and neck, forced her head back. Then she tried to wrestle away. But she was utterly powerless. His dark face bent down closer and closer. Suddenly Ellen ceased trying to struggle. She was like a stricken creature paralyzed by the piercing, hypnotic eyes of a snake. Yet in spite of her terror, if he meant death by her, she welcomed it.

"Ellen Jorges, I'm thinking yet -- your lying to me!" he said, low and tense between his teeth. “I can't have been that wrong about you. I don't know where she is, but I know that somewhere inside of you is the real woman, that I love.”

"No! No!" she screamed, wildly. Her nerve broke there. She could no longer meet those terrible black eyes. Her passionate denial was not only the last of her shameful deceit; it was the woman of her, repudiating herself and him, and all this sickening, miserable feuding situation.

Isbel took her literally. She had convinced him. And the instant held blank horror for Ellen.

"By God -- then I'll have something -- of you anyway!" muttered Isbel, thickly.

Ellen saw the blood bulge in his powerful neck. She saw his dark, hard face, strange now, fearful to behold, come lower and lower, till it blurred and obstructed her gaze. She felt the swell and ripple and stretch -- then the bind of his muscles, like huge coils of elastic rope. Then with savage rude force his mouth closed on hers. All Ellen's senses reeled, as if she were swooning.
She was suffocating. The spasm passed, and a bursting spurt of blood revived her to acute and terrible consciousness. For the endless period of one moment he held her so that her breast seemed crushed. His kisses burned and braised her lips. And then, shifting violently to her neck, they pressed so hard that she choked under them. It was as if a huge bat had fastened upon her throat.

Suddenly the remorseless binding embraces -- the hot and savage kisses -- fell away from her. Isbel had let go. She saw him throw up his hands, and stagger back a little as if he had to puke, all the while keeping his piercing gaze on her. “I guess that maybe I was wrong.”

His face had been dark purple: now it was white.
"Ellen Jorges," he snarled, "I don't -- want any of you." And suddenly he sank on the log and covered his face with his hands. "What I loved in you -- was just something that I dreamed up, not anything you were."

Like a wildcat Ellen sprang upon him, beating him with her fists, tearing at his hair, scratching his face, in a blind fury. Isbel made no move to stop her, and her violence spent itself with her strength. She swayed back from him, shaking so terribly that she could scarcely stand.

"you -- damned -- Isbel!" she gasped, with hoarse passion. "Now you have really insulted me!"

"Insulted you?..." laughed Isbel, in bitter scorn. "It couldn't be done, woman. You are lower than a snake's belly."

"Oh! ... I'll KILL you!" she hissed.
Isbel stood up and wiped the red scratches on his face. "Go ahead. There's my gun," he said, pointing to his saddle sheath. "Somebody's got to begin this Jorges-Isbel feud. It'll be a dirty business. I'm sick of it already....
“Kill me! ... Then it'll be scored, first blood goes down for the hussy Ellen Jorges!"

Suddenly the dark grim tide that had seemed to engulf Ellen's very soul cooled and receded, leaving her without its false strength. She began to sag. She stared at Isbel's gun. "Kill him," whispered the retreating voices of her hate. But she was as powerless as if she were still held in Gene Isbel's giant embrace.

"I -- I want to -- kill you," she whispered, "but I can't.... I cut you off too late; I love you. There, you made me say it.. Now, Leave me!"

He turned and looked at her. “Keep my horse, Ellen, and every time you look at him, you'll think of me and remember how your father stole him.” With that he mounted and turned away.

Ellen called out for him to come back and take his horse with him. He did not stop nor look back. She called again, but her voice was fainter, and Isbel was now leaving at a fast trot. Slowly she sagged against the tree, lower and lower. He headed into the trail leading up the canyon. How strange a relief Ellen felt! She watched him ride into the quaking aspens and start up the slope, at last to disappear in the pines. It seemed at the moment that he had taken with him something which had been hers.

A pain in her head dulled the thoughts that wavered to and fro. After he had gone she could not see so well. Her eyes were tired. What had happened to her? There was blood on her hands. Isbel's blood! She shuddered. Was it an omen? Would she be guilty of taking Isbel blood? Lower and lower she sank, and closed her eyes in pain.
Old John Sprague did not return. Hours dragged by -- dark hours for Ellen Jorges lying prostrate beside the tree, hiding the blue sky and golden sunlight from her eyes. At length the lethargy of despair, the black dull misery wore away; and she gradually returned to a condition of coherent thought. She scanned the forest around her as if they held the answers to her riddles. What was it that she had learned?

Sight of the black horse grazing near seemed to prompt the trenchant replies. Black Jack belonged to Gene Isbel. He had been stolen by her father or by one of her father's accomplices. Isbel's vaunted cunning as a tracker had been no idle boast. Her father was a horse thief, a rustler, a sheepman but only as a blind, because he was a consort of Davidson, leader of the Hash Knife Gang. Ellen well remembered the ill repute of that gang, way back in Texas, years ago.

Her father had gotten in with this famous band of rustlers to serve his own ends -- the extermination of the Isbels. It was all very plain now to Ellen. "I'm sure enough the daughter of a cheap, tin horn horse thief and rustler!" she muttered. “And what does that make me?” She laughed derisively.

Her thoughts raced back to the days of her youth. Only the very early stage of that time had been happy. In the light of Isbel's revelation the many changes of residence, the sudden moves to unsettled parts of Texas, the periods of poverty and sudden prosperity, all leading to the final journey to this God-forsaken place called Arizona -- these were now seen in their true significance.

As far back as she could remember her father had been a crooked man. And her mother must have known it. He had dragged her down to her ruin. That degradation was what had killed her. Ellen realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against her father.

Had Jesse Isbel truly and dishonestly started her father on his downhill road? Ellen wondered. She still hated the Isbels with unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to ponder, to weigh judgments in their behalf. She owed it to something in herself to be fair. But what did it matter who was to blame for the Jorges-Isbel feud? Somehow Ellen was forced to confess that deep in her soul it mattered terribly. To be true to herself -- the self that she alone knew -- she must have right on her side. If the Jorgess were guilty, and she clung to them and their creed, then she would still be one of them.

"But I'm not," she mused, aloud. "My name's Jorges, and I reckon I have bad blood in me because of it.... But it never came out in me till to-day. I've been honest. I've been good -- yes, GOOD, as my mother taught me to be -- in spite of all.... sure my pride has made me a fool.... and now have I any choice to make left to me? I'm a Jorges. Blood, even bad blood, calls to blood. I must stick to my father."

All this summing up, however, did not wholly account for the pangs beating in her breast.

What had she done that day? And the answer beat in her ears like a great throbbing hammer-stroke. In an agony of shame, in the throes of hate, she had perjured herself. Worse than that, she had sworn away her own honor. She had basely made herself look vile. She had struck ruthlessly at the great heart of a man who loved her.
Ah, yes! That was the thrust that had rebounded to leave this dreadful pang in her breast. He had fallen in love with her? Yes, the strange truth, the insupportable truth! She had to contend with it now, not with her father and her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Gene Isbel, but with the mysteries of her own soul. Wonder of all wonders was it that such love had been born for her. Shame worse than all other shame was it that she should struggle so hard to kill it with a poisoned lie.

By what monstrous motive had she done that? To sting Isbel as he had stung her! But that had been base. Never could she have stooped so low except in a moment of tremendous tumult. If she had done sore injury to Isbel what bad she done to herself? How strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her honor! Could she ever forget that? Miserably she sobbed to herself that she must forget it. But she could never forget the great joy she had felt upon learning the way he had beaten Bruce for defiling her name -- the way he had scorned those vile men in Greaves's store to silence -- the way he had stubbornly denied her own insinuations here.

Ellen was a woman now. She had learned something of the complexity of a woman's heart. She could not change her nature. And all her passionate being thrilled to the manhood of her defender. But even while she thrilled she acknowledged her hate. It was the contention between the two that caused the pang in her breast. "and now what's left for me?" murmured Ellen. She did not analyze the significance of what had prompted that query. The most incalculable of the day's disclosures was the wrong she had done herself. "sure I'm done for, one way or another.... I must stick to Dad.... or I must kill myself."
Ellen rode Black Jack back to the ranch. She rode him like the wind. When she swung out of the trail into the open meadow in plain sight of the ranch her appearance created a commotion among the loungers before the cabin. She rode Black Jack straight at them, at a full run.

"Who's after you?" yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a dirt-skidding halt. Jorges held a rifle. Davidson, Coulter, the other Jorgess were there, likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy.

"sure nobody's after me," replied Ellen as her gaze swept from man toman. "can't I run a horse round here without being chased?"

Jorges appeared both incensed and relieved.

"Hah! ... What do you mean, girl, running like a streak of lightning right down on us? You're sure acting queer these days, and you look strange to me. I'm not liking it."

"Reckon these are strange times -- for the Jorgess," replied Ellen, sarcastically.

"Davidson found strange horse tracks crossing the meadow," said her father. "and that worried us. Some one's been snooping round the ranch. and when we seen you running so wild we sure thought you was being chased."

"No. I was only trying out Black Jack to see how fast he could run," returned Ellen. "Reckon when we do get chased it'll take some running to catch me."

"Haw! Haw!" roared Davidson. "It sure will."
"Girl, it's not only your running and your looks that's queer," declared Jorges, in dark perplexity. "You keep talking mighty queer-like."

"sure, dad, you're not used to hearing spades called spades," said Ellen, as she dismounted.

"Humph!" ejaculated her father, as if convinced of the uselessness of trying to understand a woman. "So, did you see any strange horse tracks?"

"I reckon I did. And I know who made them."

Jorges stiffened. All the men behind him showed a sudden intensity of suspense.

"Who?" demanded Jorges.

"sure it was Gene Isbel," replied Ellen, coolly. "He came up here tracking his black horse."

"Gene -- Isbel -- tracking -- his -- black horse," repeated her father.

"Yes. He's not overrated as a tracker, at all. that's for sure."

Blank silence ensued. Ellen cast a slow glance over her father and the others, then she began to loosen the cinches of her saddle. Presently Jorges burst the silence with a curse, and Davidson followed with one of his sardonic laughs. "well, boss, what did I tell you about this daughter of yours?" he drawled.
Jorges strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he held her facing him. "Did you see this Isbel?"

"Yes, I sure did" replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked.

"Did you talk to him?"

"Yes, I sure did."

"What did he want up here?"

"I told you. He was tracking the black horse you stole from him."

Jorges's hand and arm dropped limply. His sallow face turned a livid hue. Amazement merged into discomfiture and that gave place to rage. He raised a hand as if to strike Ellen. And suddenly Davidson's long arm shot out to clutch Jorges's wrist. Wrestling to free himself, Jorges cursed under his breath. "Let go, Davidson," he shouted, stridently. "Am I drunk that you grab me?"

"well, you ain't drunk, I reckon," replied the rustler, with sarcasm. "But you're sure some things I'll reserve for your private ear."

Jorges gained a semblance of composure. But it was evident that he labored under a shock.

"Ellen, did Gene Isbel see this black horse?"

"Yes. He asked me how I got Black Jack and I told him it come from you."

"Did he say Black Jack belonged to him?"

"See him? sure I reckon he proved it it was his horse too. you can always tell a horse that loves its master."

"Hah! ... that horse is mine; Why, I've even got a bill of sale?"

“A bill of sale, from what?" she demanded. That horse belonged to Gene Isbel until he gave it to me. He said he'd rather I kept him because he was about to engage in a dirty, blood-spilling deal, and he reckoned he'd not be able to care for a fine horse. But he just rode on off.... And that's all there is to that."

"Maybe it's not," replied Jorges, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen with dark, intent gaze. "you've met this Isbel twice now."

"It wasn't any fault of mine," retorted Ellen.

"I hear he's sweet on you. How about that?"

Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and temple. But it was only memory which fired this shame. What her father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference. Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes as he went on.

"I hear talk from Bruce and Lorenzo," went on her father. "and Davidson here -- "

"Davidson nothing!" interrupted that worthy. "Don't fetch me into this. I said nothing and I think nothing. Them other two is hung out to dry."

Ellen burst in on it. "Yes, Gene Isbel was sweet on me, dad ... but he will never be sweet on me again. I called him a liar about his horse when the truth of it was right there for anybody to see."

With that she pulled her saddle off Black Jack. “Take a good look at this Spade, cause I'm calling it a spade, and every time you look at him I want you to remember that I know what you are and what you've done and I'm still here, still your daughter because bad blood calls out for bad blood, don't it?”

She hitched the saddle up over her shoulder and walked off to her cabin in angry strides.

Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered. "Ellen, I didn't know that horse belonged to Isbel," he began, in the swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen. "I swear I didn't. I bought him -- traded with Slater for him.... Honest to God, I never had any idea he was stolen! ... Why, when you said 'that horse you stoled, I felt as if you'd knifed me in the heart from the back...."

Ellen sat down at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into a frenzy. He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty.

It seemed that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. He had a terrible thirst for her respect. Not so much for her love, she divined, but just that faint hope that she would not see how far he had fallen!


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 like this," said Ellen, breaking in upon her father's rant. "I will be true to you -- as my mother was.... I am a Jorges. 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 Jorges.... If we're not spared we'll at least have had our whack at these damned Isbels."

During the month of June Gene Isbel did not ride far away from Pauls Valley. He was busy hunting loafers, killing bear, tracking down cougars.

Another attempt had been made upon Jesse Isbel's life. Another cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket. Gene had tracked the shooter onto a trail that led to Blanchard's ranch.

Blanchard had 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 that people said showed no trace of footprints.
“That's true enough,” said Gene, “but not because pine needles don't show tracks, no sir. I can read those tracks in the pine just fine. The trouble is, there's too many of our tracks out there, but I can tell you this man was about 5'10” and wore pointy-toed boots. He laid down to shoot and he had a forked stick to lay his rifle down on to get a steadier aim and probly weighed right at 200 pounds. He's got a short knife in his right boot.”

This news brought an explosion from the men around him. “You can read that much sign on a carpet of pine needles?”

“Yes,” said Gene. His eyes smoldered with anger and indignation. “If there'd been a dew this morning I could have tracked him down to hell and back. As it is, because of all our tracks mixed up there I'm not even sure I tracked the right horse down here to Blanchard's.”

Jesse Isbel let out a heavy sigh of crowning exultation. “I told you he could track; that's why I sent for him. But now we do know for sure that an attempt has been made on my life.”

Blanchard shook his head. “Yes, and it must have been perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the Jorges.”

Everyone muttered dark thoughts and bitter oaths. “But there is no proof,” Blanchard continued. “And Jesse Isbel does have some other enemies in the Verde Mesa Basin besides this sheep clan of Jorgess. We just don't know who they are.”

The old man stomped around and raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on his friend.

Blanchard urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends. "Let's quit ranching till this trouble's settled," he declared. "Let's arm ourselves and ride the trails and meet these men half-way.... It won't help our side any to wait till all of us get shot in the back."

More than one of Isbel's friendly supporters gave him the same advice. "No; I'm after rustlers and I'm after horse thieves; not a flaming Texas War. we'll wait till we know for sure, Now that Gene's here I'm we are going to track these rustlers back to their roost and burn them out with hot lead." was the stubborn cattleman's reply to all these promptings.

"We don't know who they are yet? well, hell! Didn't Gene track the black horse right straight up to Jorges's ranch?" demanded Blanchard. "What more evidence do we want?"

"Gene didn't find the loss soon enough that he could swear Jorges stole the black, just that it was stolen and ended up there. Remember too that he gave that horse to them so they could remember how they had come by him every day of their lives. Now that's steady hand to play."

"well, by thunder, I can swear to it!" growled Blanchard. "and we're losing cattle all the time. Who's stealing them?"

"I don't know, but I do know that it seems like we don't have near as many missing since Gene started hunting bear and cougar on our land. That boy's got enough trophy heads to fill up every wall in our house.


“But yawl think about this; We've always lost cattle ever since we started ranching here. That loss didn't wait for the Jorges to show up."

"Jesse, I reckon you just want to wait for Jorges to start this fight in the open."

"It'll start soon enough," was Jesse Isbel's gloomy reply. “Destroying me is the only reason Jorges came here in the first place, but I'm pretty sure somebody invited him. Then they turned around and started paying him for any damages done.

“So, here's how I want to play this. Anybody here finds stock missing, send here to fetch Gene and me. We'll do the tracking and dispense the justice.”




Gene had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen cattle. Even though circumstances had been hard against him, and there was something baffling about this rustling.


Sometimes the stolen stock trailed right through the Ibel's range and rested some before trailing up the shelf.

Then the summer storms had set in early, and it had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out some of the fresh tracks that he might have followed.

The free range in Pauls Valley was large and cattle were drifting everywhere. Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. Weeks after the rustling happened was too long for Gene to do a good job of tracking. Added to that was the fact that this Pauls Valley country was always being covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks.

The rustlers, whoever they were, had long been at this game, and now that there was good reason for them to show their cunning they did it.

Early in July the hot weather came. Down on the red ridges of the Verde Mesa it was a 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, Gene welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down from a canopy of black. The roar of rain pelting on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always a welcome sound.

Jesse shook his head. “Son, ain't you got sense enough to come in out of the rain?”
“Rain don't bother the bear, and it takes a pile of whole lot for rain to bother me any either.”

His words got around; in fair weather or foul, Gene was out there waiting for some rustler to show up. 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. Gene 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.

Gene'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 killing or stealing dogs; and Gene inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Gene missed him a pile of whole lot.

One morning at dawn Gene heard some 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.

Gene's father had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Gene. 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. Gene kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase the wolf within range of his rifle.
But the wary wolf saw Gene and sheered off, gradually drawing away from his pursuers.

Gene 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 Verde Mesa. Young Burt 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 Pauls Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun, and there was good water and a little feed. Before Gene reached his destination he heard a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact caused Gene a little concern. Burt and Bernardino both had rifles, but, to his knowledge, no small arms. Gene rode up on one of the black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Pauls 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 Gene 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. Gene 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 Pauls Valley at any time. What then did it portend now? Gene experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was a new sensation for him. Brooding over this shot 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 Burt appeared, running frantically out of the brush. Gene urged his horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. Burt appeared beside himself with terror.

"Boy! what's the matter?" queried Gene, as he dismounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from Burt's white face to the camp, and all around.
"Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!" gasped the boy, wringing his hands and pointing.

Gene 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 this?" demanded Gene, as he picked it up.

"Ber-nardino's," replied Burt, huskily. "He -- he jest got it -- the other day."

"Did he shoot himself accidentally?"

"Oh no! No! He didn't do it -- atall."

"Well, who did then, Burt?"
"The men -- they rode up -- a gang - they just rode right up – and -- did it," panted Burt.

"And, you didn't know who they were?"

"No. I couldn't tell. I saw them coming and I was scared. Bernardino had gone for water. I run and hid in the brush. I wanted to yell, but they come too close, too fast.... Then I heard them talking. Bernardino come back. That pistol in his belt made him feel big and brave, I think.

Those men appeared friendly-like. that made me raise up, to look. and I couldn't see good. I heard one of them ask Bernardino to let him see his gun. and Bernardino was scared too then; he handed it over. The man looked at the gun and haw-hawed. He flipped it up in the air, and when it fell back in his hand it – it was aimed right at Bernardino and it went off bang! ... and Bernardino dropped to the ground and they started laughing.... I hid down close. I was scared stiff. I heard them talk and some more laughing, but I couldn't hear what they said. Then they rode away.... and I hid right there where I was till I seen you coming."

"Have you got a horse?" Gene queried sharply.

"No. But I know how to make one of Bernardino's burros move out at a fast trot."

"Get him. Hurry over to Blanchard's. Tell him to send word to Blue and Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to our ranch. Hurry now!"

Young Burt dashed off without reply. Gene stood looking down at the limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy. "By Heaven!" he exclaimed, grimly "the Jorges sheep men have started a war on now! ... Deliberate, cold-blooded murder! I'll gamble Davidson did this job. He's been the leader all along ever since he got here. Bernardino, greaser or not, you were faithful and you won't go unavenged."

Gene had no time to spare; It wouldn't take those men long to liquor up some more courage. He ripped a tarpaulin out of the teepee and 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 into a dead run.

Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had engendered. Gene even felt a strange, grim relief. The long, dragging days of waiting were over. Blood had begun to flow. Jorges's gang had taken the initiative. Blood would continue to flow now till the last man stood over the dead body of the last man on the other side. "That bunch of horses gave me a queer feeling."

Gene 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 men to their gang. Suddenly across Gene's mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorges. "What'll become of her? ... For that matter, what'll become of all the women in this mixup? My sister?... Their little ones?"

No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Gene. 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 Gene's haste and his darkness of mind.
This place was his father's farm. There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky here.

As Gene 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. Gene saw how Jesse waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the lane. Bill and Guy reached his side as Gene pulled his heaving horse to a halt. They all looked at Gene, 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.

"well, you sure was in a hurry," remarked the father as he came walking up.

"What the hell's up?" queried Bill, grimly.
Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who had turned slightly pale. Gene leaped off his horse.

"Bernardino has just been killed -- murdered with his own gun."

Jesse 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, even motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their own minds. Then they listened with grim absorption to Gene's brief story.

"well, that cuts us in on the deal," said his father. "I wish we had more time. Reckon I'd done better to listen to you boys and have my friends close at hand. Jacobs just happened to ride over to visit this morning. That makes five of us besides the women."

"Aw, dad, you don't reckon they'll round us up here?" asked Guy Isbel.

"Boys, I always feared they might," replied the old man. "But I never really believed they'd have the nerve. sure I ought to have figured Davidson better. This here secret business and shooting at us from ambush looked about Jorges's size to me. But I reckon now we'll have to start this fight without any help from our friends."

"Let them come," said Gene. "I sent for Blanchard, 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 Jorges's gang can hang around. We'll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house though."

"well, I've seen to that," rejoined his father. "Gene, you go out close by, where you can see all around, and keep watch for us."

"Who's going to tell the women what's going on?" 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. For 6,000 years men had wanted more than they had. They had hated, dashed off to the nearest war, and killed one another.
Misery was the common lot of their women they left behind in order to be what they thought were heroes.

"well, boys, I'll tell the women," Jesse said. "sure I didn't ask for this war; Jorges knew I was here when he moved in. Our women will be game now that this war has come to us."

Gene 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 Jorges's gang might come close without being detected, Gene 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 Gene was in hopes that Blanchard would soon come.

These hopes proved 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. Blanchard carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight of him gave Gene a glow of warmth. He was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels to the last man. Gene watched him ride to the house -- watched the meeting between him and his lifelong friend. There floated out to Gene old Blanchard's roar of battle rage.

Then out on the green of Pauls Valley, where a long, swelling plain swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. A bunch of horses! Gene'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 even sneaking appeared in that advance! A hot thrill ran over Gene, a call to all out war.

"By Heaven! They mean bad business!" he muttered. Up to the last moment he had unconsciously hoped Jorges'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 Gene 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 -- Jorges is coming," said Gene. His voice sounded husky. The boyish love of old for his father had flashed up. How he hated to tell his father that! Right up until that moment he had hoped they would stick to surreptitious rustling so he could pick them off one by one.

"Whar at?" demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweeping the horizon.

"Down the road from Pauls Valley. You can't see them from here."

"well, come in for breakfast and let's get ready for this blamed boil," his father said.

For the first time Gene noticed that the 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 safor protection from bullets than the other cabins.

When Gene went inside 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 for years to come. He noted the faint smell of whiskey in the air.

"well, Blanchard, Gene says Jorges and his precious gang of rustlers are on the way here," announced the rancher. “Gene, get breakfast.”

"Clear off that table," Jesse ordered, "and Bill, fetch out all the guns and shells we got."

Once laid upon the table these presented a formidable arsenal which consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters that Gene had brought with him from the coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called "needle" gun, that Jesse Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle which Blanchard had brought with him, and half a dozen six-shooters. Piles and packages of ammunition littered the table.

"Sort out these here shells," said Isbel. "We want to make sure everybody can get what he needs when the smoke gets heavy in here."

Jacobs, the other neighbor who had come visiting that morning, was a thick-set, bearded man, rather jovial by nature when stood among those lean-jawed Texans.



He carried a .44 rifle of an old pattern. "well, boys, if I'd knew we was in for some fun I'd have fetched more shells. Only got one magazine full. Do you reckon maybe them new.44's will fit my gun."

It was discovered that the ammunition Gene had brought in quantity fitted Jacob's rifle right nicely, a fact which afforded peculiar satisfaction to all the men present as it gave them one more steady shooter.

"well, sure we're lucky," declared Jesse Isbel.

The women sat apart, in the comer toward the kitchen where stray bullets were less likely to fly, and there seemed to be a strange fascination for them in the talk and action of their men folk. The wife of Jacobs was a little woman, with homely face and very bright eyes. Gene thought she would be a help in that household during the next doubtful hours.

He wished his own woman was there both to root for him and to give meaning to his actions. Every few minutes Gene would go to the window and peer out down the road. His companions evidently relied upon his sharp eye, for no one else rose to look out.

Now that the suspense of weeks and months was over, these Texans faced the issue squarely with talk and acts not noticeably different from those of preparing for an ordinary day of mutual harvest. Fighting had been an ever necessary pattern of their lives back to home in order to protect what was theirs, both from Indians and from marauders of their own kind.


At last Gene espied the dark mass of horsemen spill out in the valley road. They were close together, walked their mounts, and were evidently in earnest conversation.

After several ineffectual attempts Gene was sure he counted eleven horses, every one of which he was sure bore a rider.

"Dad, they've brought it to us!" Gene called.

Jesse Isbel strode to the door and stood looking, without saying a word.

The other men crowded to the windows they had chosen for their own. Blanchard cursed under his breath. Jacobs said: "By Golly! Come to pay us a social call, did they?" The women sat motionless, with dark, strained eyes. The younger children ceased their play and looked fearfully to their mothers.

When just out of rifle shot of the cabins the band of horsemen halted and lined up in a half circle, all facing the ranch. They were close enough for Gene to see their gestures, but he could not recognize any of their faces. It struck him singularly that not one of them wore a mask for this unprovoked act of war.

"Gene, do you know any of them?" asked his father.

"No, not yet. They're too far off."

"Dad, I'll get your old navy telescope," said Guy Isbel, and he ran out toward the adjoining cabin.


Blanchard shook his big, hoary head and his voice rumbled out of his bull-thick neck, "well, now you're here, you sheep boys, what are you going to do, stand there and think?"

Guy Isbel returned with a yard-long telescope, which he passed to his father. The old man took it with trembling hands and leveled it. Suddenly it was as if he had been transfixed; then he lowered the glass, shaking violently, and his face grew gray with an exceeding bitter wrath. "Jorges!" he swore, harshly.

Gene had only to look at his father to know that recognition had been like a mortal shock. It passed. Again the rancher leveled the glass.

"well, Blanchard, there's our old Texas friend, Davidson," he drawled, dryly. "and Greaves, our honest storekeeper of Pauls Valley. And yep, there's Stonewall Jackson Jorges. and Tad Jorges, with the same old red nose! ... and, say, damn if one of that gang isn't Queen, as bad a gun fighter as Texas ever bred. sure I thought he'd been killed in the Big Bend country. So I heard.... and there's Craig, another respectable sheepman of Pauls Valley. Haw-haw! and, well, I don't recognize any more of them."

Gene forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across the faces of that group of horsemen. "Slim Bruce," he said, instantly. "I see Coulter. And, yes, Greaves is there. I've seen the man next to him -- face kind of looks like a ham...."

"sure that is Craig," interrupted his father.




Gene knew the dark face of Lee Jorges by the resemblance it bore to Ellen's, and the recognition brought a twinge. He thought, too, that he could tell the other Jorgess. He asked his father to describe Davidson and then Queen. It was not likely that Gene would fail to know these several men in the future. Then Blanchard asked for the telescope and, when he got through looking and cursing, he passed it on to others, who, one by one, took a long look, until finally it came back to the old rancher. "well, Davidson is waving his hand here and there, like a general about to send out scouts. Haw-haw! ... and 'pears to me he's not overlooking our horses. well, that's natural for a rustler. He'd have to steal a horse or a steer before going into a fight or to dinner or to a funeral."

"It'll be his funeral if he goes to fooling 'round them horses," declared Guy Isbel, peering anxiously out of the door way.

"well, son, sure it'll be somebody's funeral," replied his father. “Don't let it be yours.”

Gene paid but little heed to the conversation. With sharp eyes fixed upon the horsemen, he tried to grasp their intention. Davidson pointed to the horses in the pasture lot that lay between him and the house.

These animals were the best on the range and belonged mostly to Guy Isbel, who was the horse fancier and trader of the family. His brood of horses were his passion.

"Looks like they'd prefor to do some horse stealing," said Gene.

"Lend me that glass," demanded Guy, forcefully. He surveyed the band of men for a long moment, then he handed the glass back to Gene.
"I'm going out there after my bosses," he declared.

"No!" exclaimed his father. “I can get more horses but not no more sons. Stay here!”

"That gang has come to steal horses and not to fight. can't you see that? If they meant to fight they'd come on and do it. No sir, They're out there arguing about my horses."

Guy picked up his rifle. He looked sullenly determined and the gleam in his eye was one of fearlessness.

"Son, I know Davidson," said his father. "and I know Jorges. They've come here to kill us. It'll be sure death for you to go out there."

"I'm going, anyhow. They can't steal my horses out from under my eyes. and they ain't in range yet no way."

"well, Guy, you ain't going alone," Jacobs spoke up cheerily, as he stepped forward.

The red-haired young wife of Guy Isbel showed no change of her grave face. She had been reared in a stern school. She knew men in times like these. But Jacobs's wife appealed to him, "Bill, don't you go out there to risk your life for a horse or two."

Jacobs laughed and answered, "Not much risk," and went out with Guy. To Gene their action seemed foolhardy. He kept a keen eye on them and saw instantly when the band became aware of Guy's and Jacobs's entrance into the pasture. It took only another second then to realize that Davidson and Jorges had deadly intent. Gene saw Davidson slip out of his saddle, rifle in hand. Others of the gang did likewise, until half of them were dismounted.

"Dad, they're going to shoot," called out Gene, sharply. "Yell for Guy and Jacobs. Make them come back."

The old man shouted; Bill Isbel yelled; Blanchard lifted his stentorian voice.

Gene screamed piercingly: "Guy! Run! Run!"

But Guy Isbel and his companion strode on into the pasture, as if they had not heard, as if no menacing horse thieves were within miles. They had covered about a quarter of the distance across the pasture, and were nearing the horses when Gene saw red flashes and white puffs of smoke burst out from the front of that dark band of rustlers. Then followed the sharp, rattling crack of those rifles.

Guy Isbel stopped short, turning half way around, then, dropping his gun , he threw up his arms and fell headlong. Jacobs too acted as if he had suddenly been dealt an invisible blow. He too had been hit. Turning, he began to run and ran fast for a few paces. There were two more quick, sharp shots. Jacobs let go of his rifle. His running broke. He walked first, then staggering, reeling,, he kept on. A hoarse cry came from him. Then a single rifle shot pealed out. Gene heard the bullet strike. Jacobs fell to his knees, then forward on his face.


Gene Isbel felt himself turn to marble. The suddenness of this tragedy paralyzed him. His gaze remained riveted on those prostrate forms.

A hand clutched his arm -- a shaking woman's hand, slim and hard and tense.

"Bill's – been killed, ain't he!" whispered a broken voice. "I was watching.... They're both dead!"

The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up behind Gene and from behind him they had seen the tragedy. "I asked Bill -- not to -- go," faltered the Jacobs woman, and, covering her face with her hands, she groped back to the comer of the cabin, where the other women, shaking and white, received her in their arms.

Guy Isbel's wife stood at the window, peering over Gene's shoulder. She had the nerve of a man. She had looked out upon death before.

"Yes, they're dead," she said, bitterly. "and how are we going to get their bodies?"

At this Jesse Isbel seemed to rouse from the cold spell that had transfixed him. "My son -- my son! ... Murdered by the Jorgess!" he cried out, hoarsely. He glanced behind him at the women, then turned away..

“I didn't ask for this fight. Doggone it, I run from it. I didn't do one thing to invite it. If Jorges had met me man to man it would have been over years ago. But he followed me here, searched me out until he did find me. Then he started hiring gunmen and outlaws. All I wanted was to keep what was mine. But he wouldn't have it that way. He'll never rest until one of us is dead.
“God, this is hell for our women. Bless them, give them strength."

Gene saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off, start rounding up the herd of horses. They were professionals at it and the roundup took only a few minutes before the blooded horses were over the hill. Directly, the rustlers returned with all of them leading their horses, they began to move around to the left of the house.

"Dad, they're moving round us," Gene warned.

"Up to some trick," declared Bill Isbel.

"Bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say about the fifth log up," ordered the father. "sure we've got to look out behind us now."

The elder son grasped a tool and, scattering the children, who had been playing near the back corner, he began to work at the point designated. The little children backed away with fixed, wondering, grave eyes.

The women moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting and listening.

Gene gave his full attention to the rustlers until they passed out of his sight. They had moved toward the sloping, brushy ground to the north and west of the cabins.

"Let me know when you get a hole in the back wall," said Gene, and he went through the kitchen and cautiously out another door to slip into a low-roofed, shed-like end of the long, rambling cabin. This small space was used to store winter firewood.
The chinks between the walls had not been filled with adobe clay, and he could see out on three sides. The rustlers were going into the juniper brush. They moved out of sight, and presently reappeared without their horses. It looked to Gene as if they intended to attack the cabins. Then they halted at the edge of the brush and held a long consultation. Gene could see them distinctly, though they were too far distant for him to recognize any one particular man. His breathing came hard as he peered out. This was war; his brother and his friend had been murdered on their own land – the war had come to them.

One of the men stood and moved apart from the closely massed group. Evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was exhorting his listeners. Gene concluded this was either Davidson or Jorges. Whoever it was had a loud, coarse voice, and this and his actions impressed Gene with a suspicion that the man was under the influence of the bottle.

Presently Bill Isbel called Gene in a low voice. "Gene, I got the hole made, but we can't see anyone."

"That's all right, I see them," Gene replied. "They're having a powwow. Looks to me like either Jorges or Davidson is drunk. Whichever it is, he's arguing to charge us, and the rest of the gang are holding back. They must know they are in the wrong here and they're voting with their feet for getting out. Pass the word on to dad, and all of you keep watching. I'll let you know when they make a move, and where they plan to attack."

Jorges's gang appeared to be in no hurry to expose their plan of battle. Gradually the group disintegrated a little; some of them sat down; others walked to and fro. Presently two of them went into the brush, probably back to the horses, Gene thought. But no, in a few moments they reappeared, carrying a pack. And when this was deposited on the ground all the rustlers sat down around it.

It was crazy! They had brought food and drink just like they were going on a picnic. Gene had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was then reminded of many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife Gang. Gene was glad of a reprieve.

He let his breath all the way out and shook his limbs to loosen the muscles up. From the other room he heard Bill say, “The longer the rustlers put off an attack the more time our friends have to get here.”

Gene shook his head. Rather hazardous it would it be now for anyone to try getting to the Isbel cabins in the daytime. Night would be more favorable.

The strain in the large room, from which the rustlers could not be seen, must have been great. Twice Bill Isbel came through the kitchen to whisper to Gene. He told him all he had seen and what he thought about it. "Eating and drinking!" Bill snorted. "Well, I'll be -- ! That'll jar the old man. He wants to get somebody in his sights and get the fight over and done with.”

"Tell him I said it'll be over too quick -- for us -- unless we are mighty careful," replied Gene, sharply. “We're bad outnumbered and this outfit is used to fighting their way. Wish I was out there so I could pick them off one-by-one.”
Bill clapped his younger brother on the shoulder and went back, muttering to himself. Then followed a long wait, fraught with suspense, during which Gene watched the rustlers regale themselves. Every few minutes one of them would stand up and say something that brought a gale of laughter.

The day was hot and still inside. Outside, some smooth liquor was flowing to reinforce their brand of courage. The unnatural silence in the cabin was broken now and then by the gay laughter of the children. The sound shocked and haunted Gene. Playing children! Then another sound, so faint he had to strain to hear it, disturbed and saddened him -- his father's slow tread up and down the cabin floor, to and fro, to and fro. There was no cussing, no boasting. One son and a friend had been murdered right in front of him. What thoughts must be tearing into his father's heart this day!

At length the rustlers rose and, with rifles in hand, they moved as one man down the slope. They came several hundred yards closer, until Gene, grimly cocking his rifle, muttered to himself that a few more rods closer would mean the end of several of that gang.

But, they knew the range of a rifle well enough, too, and once more sheered off at right angles with the cabin. When they got even with the line of corrals they stooped down and were lost to Gene's sight. This fact caused him alarm because there was a lot of hooting.

He believed they were crawling up on the cabins. At the end of that line of corrals ran a ditch, the bank of which was high enough to afford cover. Moreover, it ran along in front of the cabins, scarcely a hundred yards out, and it was covered with grass and little clumps of yellow-headed brush.

Behind these the rustlers could fire straight into the windows and through the clay chinks without any considerable risk to themselves. As they did not come into sight again, Gene concluded he had discovered their plan. Still, he waited awhile longer, until he saw faint, little clouds of dust rising from behind the far end of the embankment.

That discovery made him rush out, and through the kitchen to the large cabin, where his sudden appearance startled the men.

"Get back out of sight!" he ordered, sharply, and with swift steps he reached the door and closed it. "They're behind the bank out there by the corrals. and they're going to crawl down the ditch closer to us.... It looks bad. They'll have grass and brush to shoot from. At that range we've got to be mighty careful how we peep out."

"Uh Huh!” replied his father. “All right, "You women keep the kids with you in that corner. and you all better lay down flat."

Blanchard, Bill Isbel, and Jesse crouched just back from the large window, peeping through cracks in the rough edges of the logs. Gene took his post beside the small window. From there the movement of a blade of grass, the flight of a grasshopper could not escape his trained sight."Look sharp now!" he called to the other men. "I see dust.... They're spreading out along behind the bank. They're working along almost to that bare spot on the bank....
“I saw the tip of a rifle poking up.”

Loud voices, and then thick clouds of yellow dust, coming from behind the highest and brushiest line of the embankment, attested to the truth of Gene's observation, and also to a reckless disregard of danger in the outlaws. “Well, you just show your nose and I'll knock more sense into your head!”

Suddenly Gene caught a glint of moving color through the fringe of brush. Instantly he was strung like a whipcord. Then he just jerked back, stunned as a Texas cowboy stood up and began to play a barn-stomping tune on his fiddle. Then a tall, hatless and coatless man stepped up in plain sight. And began to dance on the bank. The sun shone on his fair, ruffled hair. “It must be Davidson!” Gene whispered.

"Hey, you ** Isbels!" Davidson bawled, in magnificent derisive boldness. "Come out and show your women how well you can fight." He slapped his knee, and went to laughing. Then, throwing his head back he began to dance.

Quick as lightning Gene threw up his rifle and fired. He saw tufts of fair hair fly from Davidson's head. He saw the squirt of red blood. Then three quick shots from the front window rang out. They all hit the swaying body of the rustler. But Gene knew with a terrible thrill that his bullet had killed Davidson before the other three struck. Davidson fell forward, his arms and half his body resting over, the embankment. Then the rustlers dragged him back out of sight. The fiddler was gone off the bank but only a few seconds passed before Gene heard a mournful funeral tune float up.

Hoarse shouts rose high enough to drown out the fiddle. A cloud of yellow dust drifted away from the spot.

"That was Davidson!" Jesse Isbel burst out. "Gene, your bullet knocked off the top of his head. I seen that when I was pulling trigger."

"Davidson must have been crazy or drunk -- to pop up there that close -- and brace us that way," said Blanchard, breathing hard.

"Arizona is bad for Texans," replied Jesse Isbel, sardonically. "sure it's been too peaceful here. Rustlers have no practice at fighting. And too I reckon Davidson forgot he was fighting Texans."

Gene remembered the smell of whiskey upon his entrance to this cabin. "Davidson made a move just as crazy as that of Guy and Jacobs," Gene spoke up. "They were just overbold, and he was drunk. Let them be a lesson to us. We don't want to be overbold or drunk in this fight."

Bill was a hard drinker, and his father was not immune. Blanchard, too, drank heavily upon occasions. Gene made a mental note that he would not permit their chances to become impaired by passing a bottle of liquor.

Rifles began to crack, and puffs of smoke rose all along the embankment for the space of a hundred feet. Bullets whistled through the rude window casing and spattered on the heavy door, and one split the clay between the logs before Gene, narrowly missing him. Another volley followed, then another.

The rustlers had repeating rifles and they seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ammunition because they were emptying their magazines. It was clear these men were professionals with their weapons because little chinks were popping out of the walls..

Gene changed his position. The other men profited by his wise move. The volleys had merged into one continuous rattling roar of rifle shots. Then came a sudden cessation of reports, Sighs of relief echoed through the room. The whole cabin was full of dust, mingled with the smoke from the shots of Gene and his companions. Gene heard the stifled breathing of the children. Evidently they were terror-stricken, but they did not cry out. The women too, uttered no sound.

A loud voice pealed out from behind the embankment. "Come out and fight! Do you Isbel men want to go down, slaughtered like a bunch of stupid sheep?

“Come out now and we'll let your women folk go, after a while -- maybe."

This taunt was accompanied by hearty laughter, and it gained no reply. Gene returned to his post by the window and the others followed his example as before. They exercised extreme caution when they peeped out.

"Boys, don't shoot till you see one clear," said Jesse Isbel. "They're like turtles out there. Let them get their heads out; Maybe after a while they'll get careless. Not that old Jorges will ever show himself."

The rustlers did not again resort to volleys. One by one, from different angles, they began to shoot. Gene noted almost immediately that they were not firing at random. Only a few bullets came straight in at the windows to pat into the back wall; a few others ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and most of them broke through the clay chinks between the logs.

These shots were the most dangerous; they were not an accident. They were well aimed, and most of them hit low down. The cunning rustlers had some unerring riflemen and they were picking out the vulnerable places all along the front of the cabin. If Gene had not been lying flat he would have been hit at least twice. Presently he conceived the idea of driving pegs between the logs, high up, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep out from the upper edge of the window. But this position was too awkward and difficult to hold for long.

He heard a bullet strike one of his comrades. There's just a whole different sound to a bullet sinking into flesh. Whoever had been struck never uttered a sound. Gene turned to look. Bill Isbel was holding his shoulder, where red splotches appeared on his shirt. He shook his head at Gene, evidently to make light of the wound. The women and children were lying face down and could not see what was happening. Plain it was that Bill did not want them to know. Blanchard went over and bound up the bloody shoulder with a scarf.

Steady firing from the rustlers went on, at the rate of one shot every few minutes. The Isbels did not return these. Gene did not fire again that afternoon. Toward sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow restless or careless, Blanchard fired at something moving behind the brush; and Jesse Isbel's huge buffalo gun boomed out.

"well, what 're they going to do after dark, and just what 're WE going to do?" grumbled Blanchard.

"Reckon they'll never charge us," said Jesse.

"They might set fire to the cabins though," added Bill Isbel. He appeared to be the gloomiest of the Isbel faction. There was something, some plan on his mind though.

"well, the Jorgess are bad, but I reckon they'd not burn us alive," replied Blanchard.

"Hah!" ejaculated Jesse Isbel. "Much you know about Lee Jorges. He would skin me alive and throw red-hot coals on my raw flesh."

So they talked during the hour from sunset to dark. Gene Isbel had little to say. He was revolving possibilities in his mind. Darkness brought a change in the attack of the rustlers. They stationed men at four points around the cabins; and every few minutes one of these outposts would fire. These bullets embedded themselves in the logs, causing but little anxiety to the Isbels.

"Gene, what you make of it?" asked the old rancher.

"My hunch is like this," replied Gene. "They're set up for a long fight. They're shooting just to let us know they're on the watch. The other ones will be taking our horses home with them, but they'll be back."

"Uh Huh! well, I know you and Bill is thinking heavy. What're you going to do about it?"

"I'm going out there presently to even the odds up some little bit."

Jesse Isbel grunted his satisfaction at this intention of Gene's. Bill said nothing.

All was pitch dark inside the cabin. The women had water and food at hand. Gene kept a sharp lookout from his window while he ate his supper of meat, bread, and milk. At last the children, worn out by the long day, fell asleep. The women whispered back and forth a little in their corner.

About nine o'clock Gene signified his hunch of going out to reconnoitre. "Dad, they've got the best of us in the daytime," he said, "but not after dark."

Gene buckled on a belt that carried shells, a bowie knife, and revolver, and with rifle in hand he went out through the kitchen to the yard. The night was darker than usual, as some of the stars were hidden by clouds.

He stepped to one side where he could lean against the log cabin, waiting for his eyes to become perfectly adjusted to the darkness. Seconds later the door behind him and Bill came out.

“I had a hunch you would do that,” said Gene. Now, you come with me you'll need to mud up your face, keep your head forward and your eyes looking at the ground. Rub some mud on your rifle too, but not on the sight.”

“How did you grow up so bossy?” Bill muttered. But he stooped right down and began splattering himself with red dust.

“Now you hook a finger in my gun belt so you can keep up with me without making a racket. I've spotted all four men. They are on the points of the corner they own. That way they have all four sides covered twice. The moon's behind us, so even if it comes out all they'll see is a shadow.”

“What's the lariat for?” asked Bill.

Gene swished it together and put it inside his shirt. “Just in case,” he said. He glanced both ways and sniffed both times. The perfume off the male mulberry tree made him smile. “That dude is a gone geezer when we come back.”

He took off at a brisk walk, stooping over only slightly. It was like taking a walk in the park for him; not only could he see well at night, but he had long ago paced out every vantage point around the cabins and sheds and corrals. He knew every post, log, tree, and rock, adjacent to the ranch house. 30 paces out he stopped suddenly and Bill paused instantly as well. Gene sat down slowly, Bill following suit.

One shot came from their left, another from their right. Bill chuckled at the joke. “You timed them, didn't you?”

Gene touched his hand for quiet. “Wait for the rain to talk.” Then, on hands and knees they crawled farther out until Gene stood up. “All right, you hold on now because we're fixing to move some fast.”

At the edge of the wood Gene threw caution to the wind and began tearing through. “Keep your head down, Bro. Your head hits a tree limb and we'll have every one of them boxing us in.”

“Do you know where we are, where we're headed?” asked Bill.

“Brother, I know right where we are, and right where they are, but I don't know how well they can hear, now be quiet from here on or I'll detach you right here.”

“Goodness Sakes, you're bossy,” Bill whispered. But from that point on he was so quiet that Gene almost forgot he was back there. Finally he reached his turning point and paused to pass on some more instructions.

“Now we've got one man over yonder and we've got one man over here.

“If you can mark those two spots, watch for their muzzle flash. If they start shooting fast, nail both of them. Now we're going annie-goggling this way from them so we can move faster now than we did before. If the moon comes out good, freeze, don't try to let yourself sink down out of sight unless you see the moon before it does come out. However, the lower we can get the less they can see us or identify what they are seeing.”

Gene took off at a dog trot, moving close to the edge of the wood where it wandered his way. At last they were in the horse pasture. “I sure feel bad they got all our horses, Guy set a lot of store in them.”

From there Gene and Bill moved back towards the house until Gene pulled to a stop. “Drop down slowly,” Gene commanded.

When they were down on their knees Gene peered ahead into the shadows. A cottonwood behind them was sighing for rain, then sure enough, Gene smelled the rain coming. “It's going to be a gully-washer Bill. You can stay here if you want, cover me if they start shooting fast. If you're game to go in, wait here for maybe ten minutes. Then zig zag over to that pasture fence gate, that's where your man is. With any luck at all I'll have already taken care of him by the time you get there.”

“Daddy wasn't bragging on you none a tawl, was he?” Bill asked with a silent chuckle. “Just how good are you?”

Gene grinned back at him and laid his rifle down at the stump of a tree. “Up in Oregon I snuck up on a black bear once and counted coup on his left shoulder. Now, if you have to start shooting to save my bacon, keep moving from one side to another just as soon as you shoot. Try not to hit me though.. I'll be bearing right until I get up behind them.”

Gene took three long breaths and let them out, then loosened all his joints and muscles. Being dark complected helped at times like this.

“Gene?”

“Yeah?”

“What did that bear do?”

“He took off running as fast as he could go. I guess he thought I was a ghost.”

There was no reply so Gene set out in a straight line to where the bodies of Jacobs and Guy lay. As he approached he noticed a man coming openly towards him. Gene stopped where he was, tense and waiting, but with his eyes averted.

“Jim? Oh, Jim. Speak up so I can tell where you are.”

Gene went down to his knees when another voice spoke from his left. Not only were the bodies being guarded, but two men were guarding them.

“I brought our slickers, like you said, but it ain't going to rain.”

The voice named Jim snickered. “You don't hear it coming? There's going to be a downpour here in just a few minutes.” Gene nodded for he could clearly hear the rain advancing as a solid wall.

“Well, if you say so I'll put mine on too, just in case. Maybe it will keep me some dry. Hey, I just now felt a drop, a big drop. Yeah, I hear it coming now too.”

Gene nodded to himself in the darkness. “My timing couldn't have been no more perfect.” Knowing where they were from their hurry in donning their slickers he rushed forward, taking one man in each arm and thrusting them off balance. It was like an explosion when the two men crashed together.

His knife came out and his fingers turned it sideways in his hands as Gene leaned over first one man, then the other and gently pressed the knife to the hilt each time. There was no more movement seen from them.

Gene hurried back to the wood, pausing beside a tree. “Bill, I'm coming back in.” he whispered. He waited for a response that he knew was Bill's then advanced.

Bill stepped forward, “What's wrong? You weren't gone hardly no time.”

“No, everything's fine,” Gene assured him.

But it wasn't; Gene was sick nigh unto dying from taking lives of fellow human beings. But there was no time for weakness. He knelt down and wiped his knife's blade off on the grass.

A great splatter of rain struck the forest canopy. “All right, we have to hurry now because I don't know when new guards will show up. Grab my belt and let's go.”

The two men took off in a lope and soon reached the bodies of the two guards. “How in the world did you do this?”

The rain pelted down around them, little rivers of rain ran at their feet. “The weather's perfect, Bill. “Help me get their slickers off of them because I'm not as strong as you are.”

They wrestled the slickers off and moved forward a few feet to where lay the bodies of Jacobs and Guy. “They were waiting on us,” Gene explained. “Well, that's their come-uppance and none of our own. Now, here's what I'm planning. We'll lay both our slickers down and then roll the bodies over on top of them, then we'll each grab a corner and cut our of here for home. Do you see any fault in my hunch?”

“I think you got it right, little brother. This rain will let the slickers slide slick and easy. But Gene, I can't see where I'm stepping in this rain down pour.”

Gene thought for a moment. “All right, we'll do it the way I planned it out first then.

He took Bill's hand down to the slickers. “Tie a knot in both top corners. And I'll drag Jacobs over. You get Guy when you finish the knots.”

With the rain making everything nice and sloppy it was much easier to move Jacobs than he would have thought. The night was cool enough that the body was stiff like a board. Gene brought it back to the slicker bed and rolled Jacobs over onto it. He had just finished lining everything up when Bill returned with Guy's body. It was laid down beside that of Jacobs then each man tied one end of the lariat they had cut to the right size to form a tight harness. Gene stepped inside the loop as if he were an ox so that the loop was down low on his hips. Bill grabbed the loop with his right hand so as to take some of the pressure off Gene. Off the went to pick up their rifles. These were slapped on the slicker bed between the two bodies.

Now they moved off in a hurry. With Gene leading the way, almost entirely by dint of memory alone. When he swung to the right and set off at a run Bill gasped for breath, but managed to keep up until they reached the rear of the house. “Just as I thought,” said Gene. “Both the guards on this side are wrapped up tight in their slickers. But new guards will be coming out in just a few minutes. Now, I'll open the door to let the folks know it is us but you be turned out in the other direction because if our guards were smart they'll have this door sighted in if they hear the least noise.”

Bill tapped Gene's hand in a signal that he understood. Gene slipped forward, eyes downward cast. When he reached the door he squatted down and tapped on it at the bottom.

Just as he had anticipated, Jesse's startled voice whispered at him. “Who is it?”

“Gene,” Gene told him. “Open the door real slow just in case someone's watching us.”

The door opened slowly. Gene saw his father's heel at the bottom so that meant the old man was safely behind the wall and not standing in the open doorway. “What a rain,” said Jesse. “Do you know where Bill is?”

“Right here, Dad,” Bill whispered. He passed the lariat loop to Gene and the three of them dragged the two bodies up to the door. Jesse was crying so hard he was wheezing after learning what the boys were bringing in.

“My boy, my friend,” he gulped.

As if the guards had heard him a hail of bullets struck the back of the house. Gene turned his head quickly enough to note the position of the guards from their rifle flashes. Then he slipped inside and the door was closed behind him. One bullet struck the door a solid blow.

“I'll get some blankets,” said Jesse. He hurried off while Gene and Bill laid the two bodies head to head and squarely up against the main wall. Jesse came back with two blankets and two towels. He handed a towel to each son.

Gene had just enough time to mop his back when Mrs. Jacobs and Guy's wife came out. “They're here? They're really here?” They didn't seem able to believe it.

“Yes,” said Gene. “We was lucky.”

“Yawl need them moved any, just give us a call,” Jesse whispered. He touched Gene and Bill on the arm, “Let's let these women-folks do their grieving alone for a little while.”

Gene paused at the door and whispered to the two women. “There's going to be a whole fusillade of shooting here in a little while. When it happens it would best of yawl come on inside with us.” He hurried to catch up with his father, just in time for Ann to rush him and fling her arms around his neck. “You're safe, you're safe. Bill told me what you did.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Gene whispered loud enough for anyone awake to hear him. “The only way I could get in that close was because Bill was out there backing my play – and the two of us couldn't a been out there together without Dad and Blanchard protecting yawl while we were out playing in the rain.”

“Oh you,” Ann slapped his arm tenderly. “You can't tell me you like being out in that rain.”

“It's a real gully-washer,” Gene admitted. “But yes, I can tell you I don't mind rain a bit and there ain't a cowboy in Arizona wouldn't give his eye teeth to see it raining this hard on them. No, sir.”

Bill's wife was embracing him in the darkness so Gene sought out Blanchard at the front window. “There's going to be a whole bunch of bullets flying here any minute. We'd best all be on the floor when it happens. Now, I'm going on to sleep. Wake me and Dad up in about 2-3 hours because I'm a wanting to take another pasear out there.”

“You got it,” said Blanchard. “But how do you know they're going to start shooting in just a few minutes?”

“Well, I'm just supposing that most of them out there are cowboys and that means they'll be changing the guard at midnight. They ain't going to be happy when they do.”



Gene was just getting to sleep good when the bullets began to fly. He managed a grin and whispered out loud. “Why do the heathen rage?” As he drifted off to sleep again he wondered why he hadn't seen Jesse reading the Bible any since he had returned. I'll ask him in the morning, he thought.

He came wide awake when Blanchard touched his foot and stepped back. “Time.” He felt a hand touch his shoulder and there was a chunk of biscuit to chew on, with a slice of ham in it. Gene was so hungry he wolfed it down. Blanchard handed him a wet dipper, full of water. Gene drank most of it, then flicked water onto his face to finish waking up. “Can you hold down the fort for another hour, hour and a half?”

“Oh yes,” Blanchard replied eagerly. “Are you going out the back again?”

“No, I'm going out the front. Are they about ready to shoot at us again?”

Blanchard chuckled softly then touched Gene's shoulder. “They've been keeping up right steady lately. I reckon they're right mad about something or another.”

Gene chuckled too. “If you would, open the door for me, and wave your hat once, near the top. After I crawl through you can close the door and get back to your window. If they start shooting serious it will be okay to fire back at them because I won't be there. And, Mr. Blanchard, just so you know, I'll be coming in through the back door.”

“All right, son.”

Gene kept in the shadow of the cabin walls, then the line of orchard trees, then a row of currant bushes. Here, crouching low, he halted to look and listen. He was now at the edge of the open ground, with the gently rising slope before him. He scanned the dark patches of cedar and juniper trees. On the north side of the cabin a streak of fire flashed in the blackness, and a shot rang out. Gene heard the bullet bite the cabin and whirr away. The sound of rain wiped out all other sounds and the darkness lay like a black blanket over the lonely ranch. Dull sheets of lightning illumined the dark horizon to the south.

Once Gene heard plaintive voices, but could not tell from which direction they came. To the west of him a rifle flared out another rifle shot.

The bullet whistled down over Gene to thud into the cabin wall.

The moon would be behind the cabin now, if it should come out, so he wanted to be on the other side of them, just in case it did. 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 Gene sheered off to the right. Patches of brush, clumps of juniper, and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording Gene a perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a detour and come up behind the rustler who was firing from that side.

Gene 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 proved that he had come straight up toward his man.

Gene's intention was to crawl up on this member of the Jorges gang and silently kill him with a knife. If the plan worked successfully, Gene meant to work right on round to the next rustler until they realized he was out and about.

Laying aside his rifle, he crawled forward on hands and knees with his gaze downward so no flash would strike them and reveal his position to the enemy.

He hoped he was making no more sound than a cat; it was hard to tell in the rain. His approach was slowed. He had to pick his way because the undergrowth, not to break twigs nor rattle stones. His buckskin garments were slicked clean from months of hard use and made no sound against the brush.

Gene located the rustler on the top of the ridge in the center of an open space because he was fussing and feuding with himself for having to be out in such heavy rain. Gene grinned to himself; that was the one character trait shared with most criminals and tin horns... they were lazy and impatient. “As Da Vinci said THE MAN THAT WANTS TO BE RICH IN A DAY WILL BE HANGED IN A YEAR. And such was the end of most of our criminals in a healthy society.

This rustler seemed to be alone in spite of all the conversational noise he was making. The ground on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for Gene's purpose. He had to abandon the idea of crawling up and execute a surprise on the rustler. The rocks were too slippery beneath his wet. leathered feet. Consequently, Gene abandoned his attack, turned back in order to, patiently and slowly, go get his rifle. The pouring rain lashed into his eyes and he dared not to use his muddied hands to clear them.

Upon securing his rifle Gene began to retrace his course, this time more slowly than before, as he was hampered by the rifle. 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 just a few feet off.

As Gene rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle to avoid the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experienced another emotion besides the one of grim, hard wrath at the Jorgess. It was an emotion that sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable sensation. Suppose this man was Ellen Jorges's father – or brother!

Gene 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 or brothers -- that he could not shoot -- awakened Gene 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 over the Jorgess, 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 inevitableness of this Jorges-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality that must be considered.

He breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul -- he could not kill Ellen Jorges'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 Jorges. As far as that went, He did not want the love of a girl with 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 cringe from his duty like a coward.

Through his mind and heart swept the memory of Ellen Jorges, her beauty and charm, her boldness and pathos, her shame and her degradation. And the sweetness of her outweighed the boldness. And the mystery of her arrayed itself in unquenchable protest against her acknowledged shame.

Gene lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless, driving rain. 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 -- Davidson -- the Jorgess -- they had killed his brother Guy -- murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of Gene's -- a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish. Gene had never loved him as he had Guy. And now Guy lay dead back there at the house, stolen from the enemy, hired paladins shooting live bullets through the house, likely to harm, burn or kill all of his kin. This feud had already begun to run its bloody, muddy course.

Gene 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.

And, after all, this man could hardly be Ellen Jorges's father. Jorges would be snug in bed at the main camp, dreaming of his revenge and how he would soon be directing hostilities once more.

If he waited out the pattern right Gene could shoot this rustler guard and his shot would be taken by the gang as the regular one from their comrade. When the pattern started Gene swiftly leveled his rifle, covered the dark form only a few feet away, grew cold and set, and pressed the trigger. After the report he rose and wheeled away. He did not look nor listen for the result of his shot. A clammy sweat wet his face, the hollow of his hands, his breast. A horrible, leaden, thick sensation oppressed his heart.

It was the Isbel blood that dominated him. He hoped he could get one more paladin before the rain let up. The burden upon his shoulders seemed to lift. The clamoring whispers grew fainter in his ears. And by the time he had retraced his cautious steps back to the orchard all his physical being was strung to the task 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. Gene aimed to go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embankment behind which the rustlers had found such effective cover.

This ditch had been made to empty the water pouring off the slope to flood the pasture beyond the corrals, during spring thaws and summer storms like this one. It was only then that Gene realized why the dead trooper had been standing up.. the flooding ditch had driven him out of the beautiful cover. Therefore, the rest of the band must have been driven out as well. In the first morning light they would be exposed, and too wet to hurry off. They would be prime targets.

Gene found the embankment he had come upon was somewhat to the right of the end, which fact, however, caused him no great uneasiness as it would place him between them and the house. He lay there awhile 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 cabins.

Gene noted that the nearest guard was firing from the top of the embankment, and a second one was only inches away. Two rustlers close together? Gene had not calculated upon that. For a little while he pondered on what was best to do, and decided to crawl closer yet.

The only drawback to his plan was that it was almost impossible for him to keep from shaking some off the wet, 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 two sitting figures of men, black against the dark-blue sky. This position had fired a rifle three times during Gene's slow approach. Gene watched and listened a few moments, then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was almost close enough to touch.

"So, Ben," said this man to his companion sitting hunched up a few yards distant, "sure it strikes me queer that Summers ain't shooting any more over there." Gene 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 sure thinking that same thing," said the other man after a long pause. "and, say, you know, didn't that last shot sound too sharp for Summers's forty-five, almost like the echo of a crack of thunder?"

"Come to think of it, I reckon it did," replied Greaves.

"well, I'll go around over there and see."

The dark form of the rustler slipped out of sight over the embankment.

"Better go slow and careful," warned Greaves. "He might be getting spooked over there. Only go close enough to call Summers so as he'll know your voice and won't start shooting."

Gene heard the soft swish of footsteps slogging through the wet grass. Then all was too still. He lay flat, with his cheek resting on the sand. He had to look ahead and upward to make out the dark figure of Greaves sitting on the bank.

One way or another he meant to kill Greaves, and discovered that he must first quell the strongest gust of passion that had ever stormed through his breast to do it. had the will power to resist. If he arose out of sync and shot the rustler, that very act would defeat his plan of slipping on around upon the other outposts who were firing at the cabins.

Gene did not waste time in trying to understand the strange, deadly instinct that gripped him at the moment. But he realized then he had chosen the most perilous plan to get rid of Greaves.

Gene 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 two light, swift bounds he glided up the bank. Greaves must have heard a rustling -- a soft, quick pad of moccasin, for he leaped to his feet and turned with a start. And in that instant Gene's left arm darted like a striking snake round Greaves's neck and closed tight and hard. With his right hand free, holding the knife, Gene 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 in him.

Yet there was more, and as Gene gave the straining body a tremendous jerk backward, he felt the same strange thrill, the dark joy that he had known when his fist had smashed in the face of Slim Bruce. Greaves had taunted him and leered -- he had corroborated Bruce's vile insinuation about Ellen Jorges. “Ah,” Gene thought. “So it is more than hate that actuates Gene Isbel this night?”

Greaves was heavy and powerful. Bar room brawls were his fondest form of entertainment. He jammed his head forward against Gene's breast then whirled himself over backward to get loose. But Gene's hold held. They rolled down the bank into the sandy ditch, and Gene landed uppermost, with his body at right angles with that of his adversary. Greaves's face was under the water. Just by sitting still Gene could have drowned him. Instead, he jerked the man up, out of the water where his enemy began to cough and spit.

"Greaves, your hunch was right," Gene hissed when the coughing stopped for a second. "It's me, the half-breed.... and I saved your life from drowning because I'm going to cut you -- first for Ellen Jorges -- and then I'm going to cut you for befriending Jorges when you knew he was in the wrong!" Gene gazed down into the gleaming eyes, and then heard that great, booming yell Greaves was capable of. Then his right arm whipped out the big blade. It flashed in a streak of lightning. Then it fell, low down almost to the man's knees and between them. Even as his left hand clawed that mouth shut, his right hand drew slowly, irresistibly upward until it entered Greaves's body and then jerked right and then left.

All the heavy, muscular frame of Greaves seemed to contract and burst. His spring was that of an animal in terror and agony. The jolt was so tremendous that it broke Gene's hold. Greaves let out another yell, strangled by his own terror of losing himself in the darkness. Greaves wrestled free. Gene's big knife twisted again before it came out.

Gene chuckled and wiped the blade off on Greaves's cheek. He reached out and plucked the revolver from Greaves's holster, then reached down and grabbed up the man's rifle before he backed away. The screaming rose again, this time in horror as Greaves realized the damage done to him.

Gene let one more scream escape those foul lips, then he stepped close again and his blade sliced the man's throat open so that Greaves would never again yell at anyone or for anyone; all he could ever do again was bubble. Gene let go of the man's hair and that enemy of the Isbels sank limply into the watery ditch.

Gene felt around for his rifle and snatching it up, he leaped over the embankment and ran straight for the cabins. From all around yells of the Jorges faction attested to their excitement and fury. Then bullets began to smash, some of them even came close to him.

A fence loomed up gray in the obscurity. Gene vaulted it, darted across the lane into the shadow of the corral, and from there he soon gained the back door of the cabin. “Gene's coming in,” he yelled when only a few feet away. He paused to hear a reply, then leaned over low and hurtled in. Bullets and impotent rage slammed against the cabin wall. A few of them found their way through.

Gene's heart pounded high and seemed too large for his breast. The hot blood beat and surged all over his body, thicker than the rain. His legs kept jerking in convulsions. Sweat poured off him until he couldn't see a thing.

Bill waited until Gene's breath came calm and serene then asked, “What was that horrible scream out there?”

“It was Greaves. I gave him one last shout to summon his boys out of my way for a clear run at the house. If they had just stayed at their posts they could cut me off, sure.” Those last few words were jerked out of him for they took far too much oxygen to say and his lungs locked up between give and take. He rolled over to pound the floor for more breath. His teeth were clenched tight as a vise, and it took effort on his part to open his mouth.

When he could breathe more freely and deeply, he forced the air to stay in his lungs, then squeezed it out, sucked in a little more, and held it. Gradually he got his breathing pattern back under control only to find out he was crying and could not stop.

“What is it?” Guy demanded. “Are you hurt? What's wrong?”

“Ah, no. Nothing's wrong, with me anyway.”

It was a lie and it clung dark and dirty in his thoughts, but how can anyone confess to pure weakness as he was experiencing? Then the instinct, the spell, let go its grip and he could think clearly once more.

Bill chuckled. “Boy, have you ever made good Dad's brag on you. Here in just one night you've avenged Guy, brought the bodies back, depleted the ranks of the Jorgess, and now you have killed Greaves, too.”

Gene heard soft steps and some one reached shaking hands for him. They belonged to his sister Ann. She kneeled down to embrace him. Gene felt the heave and throb of her breast.

"Why, Ann, I'm not hurt," he said, and held her close. "Now you go lie down and try to sleep."

"Gene! Gene!" came his father's shaking voice.

"Yes, I'm back," replied Gene.

"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 bleeding a little. But it's nothing."

"well, what happened out there?" demanded Blanchard.

“Gene got Greaves, and the way I count it the odds out there are only 2 to 1 now.”

"sure then it was Greaves yelling worse than a stuck hog," declared Blanchard. "By cracky, I never heard such yells as he let out! But I was afraid it might be you that was getting it, so I didn't get to enjoy it like I should have. What did you do to him, Gene?"

“Oh, nothing much. But if we can stay awake for a little bit we may can even the odds up some more,” said Gene. “Come the first little bit of daylight and them fellows will be standing out like crows on a clothes line.

“Here, yawl help me up and let's do some more planning while it's still dark.”

Gene walked over to his sister and toed her awake. “Best you women get your toilets done and then the kids too. Don't go no farther than you can see the cabin's shadow back of you. Stay in that shadow and you can't be seen. I'll be way farther out, keeping watch nothing happens to any of you. Work it so one woman will be the last, and tell her to give me a soft yell before she starts back for the cabin.”

“Can we come out two at a time?” asked Ann. “We'd feel safer.”

“Good idea,” Gene agreed. “But stay far enough apart that you won't look like one target. He stepped out into the darkness, waited for his eyes to adjust, then moved out to take his station.

He squatted down and brought his knees up close enough he could rest his head on them and there he watched for moving shadows both left and right, high and low.

The last child was back in the cabin when the sky first turned a faint rose over the distant range as the sun came creeping up. “Daylight's trying to break,” Bill called.

The men took up their posts, three in the front and Gene in the back. The rain was just a female drizzle now and gradually the attackers became blurs taking shape in the same places they had attacked from the previous night. “Shoot when you're ready, Gene.” Jesse called.

Their bullets poured out in a fusillade. Gene's first shot missed, close enough to take the man's hat off, but not to put him down. He was chagrined to hear distant screams out front; indicating all three of them probably had done some serious damage to their targets. His other target was scooting low, heading for the safety in the wood. Gene leaned over his rifle and took in the sights, fired. His target went head over heels for one moment of jubilation, then the man leaped up and ran.

The children were now hungry and noisy. The women started up breakfast in the quiet morning hour while the men took their turns too, going to the outside while Gene watched.

Later, lying down once more, Gene realized that the bittersweet sting of killing that defiler of Ellen Jorges could not efface the doubt, his regret, which seemed to grow with the hours.

Blanchard was almost jubilant. “We have routed them, boys. They be gone, forever.”

"No,” Jesse protested. “Now with our numbers evened up We've got to be on the lookout for something else -- fire, most likely."



The old rancher's surmise proved to be partially correct. Jorges's crew had ceased their shooting because fire from the defenders was twice as accurate as it had been. Gene had ticked off the distances to each target for the two men out front. Then they had cut little grooves in the wood to rest the barrels of their rifles in. “Now you can stand well back in the shadows to shoot. If we punch another hole in the front wall we can stick another rifle out. They'll think we have another shooter.”

After one withering burst of return fire the rustlers had withdrawn completely out of sight. Nothing further was seen or heard from them after those first telling shots in broad daylight.

But this silence and apparent break in the siege was soon harder for the Isbels to bear than the deliberate hostility of shooting in the dark. Long hours dragged by. The men took turns watching and resting, one man in the front, and one in the rear. but none of them slept.

The noon hour came and passed without a sound. "Maybe they've gone away," suggested Guy Isbel's wife, peering out of the window. She had done that several times in the last hour because she was anxious to get Guy buried, “-- before all of us need burying.

"No, Esther, they've not gone yet," replied Gene. "I've seen some of them change shadows out there at the edge of the brush."

Blanchard was optimistic too though. He said Gene's night work would have its effect and that the Jorges contingent would not renew the siege very determinedly. It turned out, the rustlers had only been taking care of their toilets too, and scaring up some breakfast. Then they began to pour heavy volleys in from four sides and from closer range.

Wary as always of shot patterns, Gene drifted back into the front room. “Blanchard, when you hear 8 – 9 shots at a time that place to the left of you will be waiting for you to pop up and he'll have this window sighted in.”

“Ah ho,” said Blanchard. “That's what they have got planned, huh?”

Gene went on to point out where the lone gunman would appear on his father's side. “Our ditch out there is draining now so they may be trying to distract us while they work to reclaim that vantage point. Remember those shot patterns. If they start changing, let me know because it will mean a hard rush on us.”

It wasn't long before Jesse called Gene in to look out front. “They're in the ditch again, and they're cleaning it out for us, piling mud up on this side. They started in the middle so they could work both ways, cut the work time in half for them.”

Even as they watched, Jorges's gang began throwing up log breastworks, from behind which they were now firing. All Gene and his comrades could see now were the flashes of fire and streaks of smoke but they agreed it was a turn to their good advantage for one of them to shoot, and the other one to spot, then that one would fire and the other one would spot. They began to return the volleys.

In half an hour the cabin was so full of blue smoke that Gene could not see the womenfolk in their corner. The fierce attacks then abated somewhat, and the firing became more intermittent, and that meant they were aiming more carefully.

A glancing bullet cut a furrow in Blanchard's hoary head, making a painful, though not serious wound. It was Esther Isbel who stopped the flow of blood and bound Blanchard's head, a task which she performed skillfully and without a tremor.

The old Texan could not sit still during this operation. Sight of the blood on his hands, which he tried to rub off, appeared to inflame him to a great degree. "Isbel, we got to go out there and kill them all." he kept repeating"

"No, we're going to stay here," replied Jesse Isbel. "sure I'm looking for Blue and Fredericks and Gordon to open up out there. They ought to been here all morning, and if they are, you sure can bet they've got the fight sized up right."

Isbel's hopes did not materialize. The shooting continued without any real lull until about two hours after lunch. Then the Jorges faction stopped.

"well, now what's up?" queried Jesse Isbel. "Boys, hold your fire and 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 meadows. Gene saw her suddenly start violently, then stiffen, with a trembling hand outstretched.

"Gene? Look!" she cried. “They've turned the hogs loose out in the garden behind the corrals.”

"Esther, get back," ordered the old rancher. "Keep away from that window."

"What the hell!" Blanchard muttered from his side of the room. "She sees something, or she's gone dotty."

Esther's face seemed to be turned to stone. "Them hogs have broken into the pasture! If Guy's body was still out there them hogs would soon be eating it!"

“Yes,” Jesse agreed, “But he's not out there so what are they doing that for?”

Gene watched for a moment, then said. “Them hogs will be smelling blood and go right for it. The rustlers think we have hidden those bodies out there in the wood and they're hoping the hogs will lead them to them.”

“I think you are right,” said Jesse. “If they get the smell of blood they won't ask nobody what kind of meat it is. those hogs will eat human flesh just as quick as they would a buzzard's.

"See that break in the fence! ... Jorges's done that.... They let the hogs out!"

"Aw, Isbel, it's not so bad as all that," remonstrated Blanchard, wagging his bloody head. "Not even the Jorges would do such a hell-bent trick."

"It's sure done."

Esther turned to face the men. “All I want is to bury my husband," she said. She glanced from man to man in the room. Each of them glanced at Jesse, then shook their heads.

“Not until the Jorges leave.”

“Okay, I'll go.”

"Why, child, it'd be sure death out there. This crew has no sense of decency whatsoever. you saw what happened to Guy and Jacobs.... they shot them down like dogs. We've jest got to bear it for a little while longer. Then we can bury those bodies in complete safety."

The old man paced back and forth, considering. The answer came up the same. "No! Guy and Jacobs are dead. We can't help them now."

"I WILL GO!" cried Esther, her voice ringing.

"You won't go alone!" instantly answered the wife of Jacobs, repeating unconsciously the very same words her husband had spoken.

"You stay right here," Jesse Isbel shouted, hoarsely.

"I'm going," replied Esther. "You've no hold over me. My husband is dead. No one can stop me. I'm going out there to dig a grave for my husband, and bury him."

"Esther, for Heaven's sake, listen," replied Isbel. "If you show yourself outside, Jorges and his gang will kill you."

"They may be mean, but no white men could be so low as that," Blanchard cried.

“A white man, bad as these, will be lower than any Indian you ever knew of.”

The other men pleaded with her to give up her purpose. But in vain! She pushed them back and ran out through the kitchen with Jacobs's wife following her. Gene turned to the window in time to see both women run out towards the ridge behind the house. Gene looked fearfully from side to side, and listened for shots. But only a loud, cackling "Haw! Haw!" derision came from the watchers outside. That coarse laugh relieved the tension in Gene's breast. Possibly the Jorgess were not as black as his father painted them. The two women entered carried a garden shovel and a spade.

"sure they've got to hurry," Jesse Isbel said. “Them men can turn into animals again, just that quick. Like as not, they'll wait for the graves to be dug, then shoot the women down beside them, or in them.”

All was silent then in the cabin and also outside wherever the Jorges faction lay concealed. All eyes manifestly were fixed upon the brave wives. They spaded up the sod and dug a grave for Guy Isbel, then for Jacobs. The graves were long and deep. Mud came up fast and furious as if the women were working off their anger.

At last they were satisfied and came back for the bodies. They were crying now and no one knew how to offor them solace. The tumbled Guy's body onto Gene's slicker bed first, and began to drag him out.

“We'll be ready to give answering fire if the Jorges's start shooting.” Gene told them.

Esther snorted. “The only brave Isbel I've yet to see isn't as brave as my husband lying here, waiting for his grave. “Don't bother covering us if they start shooting.” They went out and began to pull the slicker bed over the muddy ground.

Gene turned to Bill and silently asked what they should do. Bill nodded his head to the front of the house, then shook his head. They turned their attention back outside and with hot nerves sizzling, watched as the women did for Guy Isbel. For a shroud Esther wrapped him in her shawl. Then they buried him and set up a twig for his foot marker.

The women came back, but nobody said a word as Jacobs took his turn on the slicker bed. They dragged him out. Mrs. Jacobs took off her outer skirt to wrap round him. Then the two women labored hard to lift him and lower him. Jacobs was a heavy man. When he had been covered his widow knelt beside his grave. Esther went back to the other grave. But she remained standing and did not look as if she were praying. Her aspect was tragic -- that of a woman who had lost father, mother, sisters, brother, and now her husband, in this bloody Arizona land. Gene glanced back at Jacobs and wondered if prayer offered any solace, of if it was just a pagan rite.

Then Gene scanned the tree line, but there was no flutter there.

This deed and the demeanor of these wives of the murdered men surely must have shamed Jorges and his followers. They did not fire a shot during the ordeal nor give any other sign of their presence.

Inside the cabin all were silent, too. Gene's eyes blurred so that he continually had to wipe them. Old Isbel made no effort to hide his tears. Blanchard nodded his shaggy head and swallowed hard. The women sat staring into space. The children, in round-eyed dismay, gazed from one to the other of their elders.

"well, they're coming back," declared Isbel, in immense relief. "and so help me -- Jorges let them bury their dead! It's hard to believe."

The fact seemed to have been monstrously strange to Jesse Isbel. When the women entered the old man said, brokenly: "I'm sure glad.... and I reckon I was wrong to oppose you ... and wrong to say what I did about the Jorges too by golly."

No one had any chance to reply to Isbel, for the Jorges gang, as if to make up for lost time and surcharged feelings of shame, renewed the attack with such a persistent and furious volleying that the defenders did not risk a single shot in return. They all had to lie flat next to the lowest log in order to keep from being hit. Bullets rained in through the window. And all the clay between the logs low down was shot away.



This intense fusillade lasted for more than an hour, then gradually the fire diminished on one side and then on the other until it became desultory -- and finally it ceased.

"Uh Huh! sure they've shot their bolt," declared Jesse Isbel.

"well, I don't know about that," returned Blanchard, "but they've shot a hell of a lot of shells our way."

"Listen," Gene called suddenly. "Somebody's yelling at us."

"Hey, Isbel!" came in loud, hoarse voice. "Are you going to let your women do all the fighting for you?"

Jesse Isbel sat up with a start and his face turned livid. Gene needed no more to prove that the derisive voice from outside had belonged to Jorges. The old rancher lunged up to his full height and with reckless disregard of life he rushed to the window. "Jorges," he roared, "I dare you to meet me -- man to man!"

This elicited no answer. Gene dragged his father away from the window. After that a waiting silence ensued, gradually less fraught with suspense. Blanchard started conversation by saying he believed the fight was over for that particular time. No one disputed him. Evidently Jesse Isbel was loath to believe it. Gene, however, was watching at the back of the kitchen.

He eventually discovered that the Jorges gang had indeed lifted the siege. Gene saw them congregate at the edge of the brush, somewhat lower down than they had been the day before. A team of mules, drawing a wagon, appeared on the road, and turned toward the slope. Saddled horses were led down out of the junipers.

Gene saw bodies, evidently of dead men from the lack of respect they were handled with as they were lifted into the wagon like so much dead meat, to be hauled away toward the village. There were only four mounted men, leading seven riderless horses that rode out into the valley, following the wagon.

Jesse nodded moodily after Gene told him of the gang's departure. He had aged considerably during these two trying days. His hair was grayer, his face was longer and leaner. Now that the blaze and glow of the fight had passed he showed more than a subtle change. His was a fixed and morbid sadness, a resignation to a fate he had finally accepted, dished out by the feud.

The ordinary routine of ranch life did not return for the Isbels. Blanchard returned home to settle matters there, so that he could devote all his time to settling this feud when it started up again. Jesse Isbel sat down to wait for the members of his clan.

The male members of the family kept guard over the ranch in turn that night. And another day dawned. It brought word from Blanchard that Blue, Fredericks, Gordon, and Andrew Chamberlain were all at his house. They were on the way to join the Isbels. This news appeared greatly to rejuvenate Jesse Isbel.

But his enthusiasm did not last long. Moody and impatient by turns, he paced or moped around the cabin, always looking out, sometimes toward Blanchard's ranch, but mostly toward Pauls Valley.

It struck Gene as singular that neither Esther Isbel nor Mrs. Jacobs suggested a reburial of their husbands. The two bereaved women had not asked for assistance, or food, they had looked bad insulted when Ann offered them some ham and a cruse of salt. “We'll eat no salt from you Isbels.” It was like a slap in the face to Ann.

With Mrs. Jacobs and Esther gone, taking Guy's children with them, the house was empty. After an hour or so, the two women returned. "I reckon I'll hitch up and drive back home," said Mrs. Jacobs, as she entered the cabin. "I've much to do and plan. Probably I'll go to my mother's home. She's getting old and might be glad to have me."

"If I had any place to go to I'd sure go," Esther Isbel declared bitterly.

Jesse Isbel heard this remark. He raised his face from his hands, evidently both nettled and hurt. "Esther, sure that's not kind," he said.

The red-haired woman -- for she did not appear to be a girl any more -- halted before his chair and gazed down at him, with a terrible flare of scorn in her gray eyes.

"Jesse Isbel, all I've got to say to you is this," she retorted, with the voice of a man. "Seeing that you and Lee Jorges hate each other, why couldn't you act like real men? ... You damned Texans, with your bloody feuds, dragging in every relation, every friend to murder each other! That's not the way of Arizona men....

“But here we are, stuck with you. We've all got to suffor some, I reckon -- and we women will be ruined for life -- because YOU had a few differences with Lee Jorges. If you were half a man you'd go out and kill him yourself, and not leave a lot of widows and orphaned children!"

Gene himself writhed under that lash of her scorn because it was so unfair; Jesse had offered to settle this man to man, repeatedly.

Jesse Isbel turned a dead white under that lash. He could not answer her. He seemed stricken by her words. Slowly dropping his head, he remained motionless, a pathetic and tragic figure; and he did not stir until the rapid beat of hoofs denoted the approach of horses.

Blanchard appeared on his white charger, leading a pack animal. And right behind rode a group of men, all heavily armed, and likewise fitted with packs.

"Get down and come in," was Isbel's greeting. "Bill – would you look after their packs? Better leave the horses saddled though."

The booted and spurred riders trooped in, and their demeanor fitted their errand. Gene was acquainted with all of them. Fredericks was a lanky Texan, the color of dust, and he had yellow, clear eyes, like those of a hawk. However, his mother had been an Isbel and it looked like a lot of her blood had passed through to him.

Gordon, too, was related to Gene's family, though distantly. He resembled an industrious miner more than a prosperous cattleman.

Blue was the most striking of the visitors, as he was the most noted. A little, shrunken gray-eyed man, with years of cowboy written all over him, he looked the quiet, easy, cool, and deadly Texan he was reputed to be. Blue's Texas record was shady, and was seldom alluded to, as unfavorable comment had turned out to be hazardous. He was the only one of the group who did not carry a rifle. But he packed two guns on his hips from crossed belts, a habit not often noted in Texans, and almost never in Arizonians either.

Andrew Chamberlain, Ann Isbel's fiance, was the youngest member of the clan, and the one closest to Gene's age. His meeting with Ann affected Gene powerfully, and brought to a climax an idea that had been developing in Gene's mind. His sister devotedly loved this lean-faced, keen-eyed Arizonian; and it took no great insight to discover that Andrew Chamberlain reciprocated her affection.

They were young. They had a long life before them. It seemed to Gene a pity that Chamberlain should be drawn into this war. Gene watched them, as they conversed apart; and he saw Ann's hands creep up to Chamberlain's breast, and he saw her dark eyes, eloquent, hungry, fearful, lifted with queries her lips did not speak. Gene stepped beside them, and laid an arm over both their shoulders. "Chamberlain, for Ann's sake you'd better back out of this Jorges-Isbel fight," he whispered.

Chamberlain looked insulted. "But, Gene, this here is Ann's father we're talking about," he said. "And, I'm almost one of the family."

"You're only Ann's sweetheart, and, by Heaven, I say you oughtn't to go with us!" whispered Gene.

"Go -- with -- you," faltered Ann.

"Yes. Dad is going straight after Jorges. can't you tell that? and there'll be one hell of a fight when he gets there because, no matter what Esther said, the Jorges won't ever give him a fair fight."

Ann looked up into Chamberlain's face with all her soul in her eyes, but she did not speak. Her look was noble. She yearned to guide him right, yet her lips were sealed. And Chamberlain betrayed the trouble of his soul. The code of men held him bound, and he could not break from it, though he divined in that moment how truly it was wrong.

"Gene, your dad started me in the cattle business," said Chamberlain, earnestly. "and I'm doing well now. and when I asked him for Ann he said he'd be glad to have me in the family.... Well, when this talk of fight come up, I asked your dad to let me go in on his side. He wouldn't hear of it.

But after a while, as time passed and Jorges tacked on more and more more troops, he finally consented. I reckon he needs me now. and I can't back out, not even for Ann."

"I would if I were you," replied Gene, and knew that he lied.

"Gene, I'm gambling to come out of the fight alive," said Chamberlain, with a smile. He had no morbid fears nor presentiments, such as troubled Gene.

"Why, sure -- you stand as good a chance as anyone," rejoined Gene. "It wasn't that I was worrying about so much."

"What was it, then?" asked Ann, steadily.

"If Andrew DOES come through alive he'll have blood on his hands," returned Gene, with passion. "He can't come through without it.... I've begun to feel what it means to have killed some of my fellow men.... and I'd rather your husband and the father of your children never felt that revolting stain that won't wash away."

Chamberlain did not take Gene as subtly as Ann did. She shrunk a little. Her dark eyes dilated. But Chamberlain showed nothing of her spiritual reaction. He was young. He had wild blood. He was loyal to the Isbels.

"Gene, never worry about my conscience," he said, with a keen look. "nothing would tickle me any more than to get a shot at every damn one of the Jorgess."

That established Chamberlain's status in regard to the Jorges-Isbel feud. Gene had no more to say. He respected Ann's boyfriend and felt poignant sorrow for Ann.

Jesse Isbel called for meat and drink to be set on the table for his guests. When his wishes had been complied with Ann took the children into the adjoining cabin and shut the door.

"Hah! well, we can eat and talk now."

First the newcomers wanted to hear particulars of what had happened. Blanchard had told all he knew and had seen, but that was not sufficient. They plied Jesse Isbel with questions. Laboriously and ponderously he rehearsed the experiences of the fight at the ranch, according to his impressions. Bill Isbel was exhorted to talk, but he had of late manifested a sullen and taciturn disposition. In spite of Gene's vigilance, Bill had continued to imbibe red liquor. Then Gene was called upon to relate all he had seen and done. It had been Gene's intention to keep his mouth shut, first for his own sake and, secondly, because he did not like to boast of his deeds. But when thus appealed to by these somber-faced, intent-eyed men he divined that the more carefully he described the cruelty and baseness of their enemies, and the more vividly he presented his participation in the first fight of the feud the more strongly he would bind these friends to the Isbel cause. So he talked for an hour, beginning with his meeting with Coulter up on the Rim and ending with an account of his killing Greaves. His listeners sat through this long narrative with unabated interest and at the close they were leaning forward, breathless and tense.

"Ah! So Greaves got his desserts at last," exclaimed Gordon.

All the men around the table made comments, and the last, from Blue, was the one that struck Gene forcibly. "sure that was a strange and a hell of a way to kill Greaves. Why'd you do that, Gene?"

"I told you. I wanted to avoid noise and I hoped to get more of them."

“You didn't do that though, did you?”

After waiting for a moment Blue spoke again. "Then, going back to Gene's telling about tracking rustled Cattle, I've got this to say. I've long suspected that somebody living right here in the valley has been driving off cattle and dealing with the rustlers. and now I'm sure of it."

This speech did not elicit the amazement from Jesse Isbel that Gene expected it would. "You mean Greaves or some of his friends?"

"No. They wasn't none of them in the cattle business, like we are. sure we all knew Greaves was crooked. But what I'm figuring is that some so-called honest man in our settlement has been making crooked deals and slipping off some of the cows or getting word to the rustlers where they could be picked up."

Blue was a man of deeds rather than words, and so much strong speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Gene's surprise, his father did not rave. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. It was Blanchard who supplied the rage and invective.

Suddenly Gene caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered -- could his brother Bill know anything about this crooked work alluded to by Blue? Dismissing the conjecture, Gene listened earnestly as the war talk continued.

"well, if it's true it sure makes this difference -- we can't blame all the rustling on to Jorges," concluded Blue.

"well, it's not true," declared Jesse Isbel. "Jorges and his Hash Knife Gang have been at the bottom of all the rustling in this valley for years back. But I want you to look at a few things here. First, they killed a young boy and rode off to get liquored up, then they came back here and before we fired a shot they wiped out Guy and Jacobs, then they rode off with our horses. This one bunch, right here, are guaranteed rustlers, cattle rustlers and horse thieves. They waltzed in here to start a war. They've got to be wiped out!"

"Isbel, I reckon we'd all feel better if we talk straight," replied Blue, coolly. "I'm here to stand by the Isbels. and you know what that means. But I'm not here to fight Jorges because he might be a rustler. The others may have their own reasons, but mine is this -- you once stood by me in Texas when I was needing friends. well, I'm standing by you now. Jorges is your enemy, and so he is mine."

Jesse Isbel bowed to this ultimatum, scarcely less agitated than when Esther Isbel had denounced him. His rabid and morbid hate of Jorges had eaten into his heart to take possession there, like the parasite that battened upon the life of its victim. Blue's steely voice, his cold, gray eyes, showed the unbiased truth of the man, as well as his fidelity to his creed. Here again, but in a different manner, Jesse Isbel had the fact flung at him that other men must suffer, perhaps bleed and die, for his hate. And the very soul of the old rancher apparently rose in Passionate revolt against the blind, headlong, elemental strength of his nature. So it seemed to Gene, who, in a blend of love and pity that hourly grew, saw through his father. Was it too late? Alas! Jesse Isbel could never be turned back from any purpose! Yet something inside was altering his brooding, fixed mind.

"well," said Blanchard, gruffly, "let's get down to business.... I'm for having Blue be foreman of this here outfit, and all of us to follow what he says."

Jesse Isbel opposed this selection and indeed resented it. He intended to lead the Isbel faction.

"All right, then. Give us a hunch what we're going to do," replied Blanchard.

"We're going to ride off on Jorges's trail -- and one way or another -- kill him -- KILL HIM! ... I reckon that'll end the fight."

What did old Isbel have in his mind? His listeners shook their heads.

"No," asserted Blanchard. "Killing Jorges might be the end of your desires, Isbel, but it 'd never end our fight. We'll have gone too far.... If we take Jorges's trail from here it means we've got to wipe out that gang of rustlers, or stay to the last man."

"Yes, by God!" exclaimed Fredericks. “We don't know who's getting all our cows, but we do know this gang has been getting some of them. The casual way they came in here, shot Guy and Jacobs then stole those horses tells me that they had no intentions of leaving man, woman or child behind when they left. We don't have any law up here, so we have to form our own posse and take these killers down.

"Well, Let's drink to that!" said Blue. Strangely they turned to this Texas gunman, instinctively recognizing in him the brain and heart, and the past deeds, that fitted him for the leadership of such a clan. Blue had all in life to lose, and nothing to gain. Yet his spirit was such that he could not lean to all the possible gain of the future, and leave a debt unpaid behind him. Then too, his voice, his look, his influence were those of a fighter. They all drank with him, even Gene, who hated liquor. And this act of drinking together seemed the climax of the council. Preparations were at once begun for their departure on Jorges's trail.

Gene took but little time for his own needs. A horse, a blanket, a knapsack of meat and bread, a canteen, and his weapons, with all the ammunition he could pack, made up his outfit. He wore his buckskin suit, leggings, and moccasins. Very soon the cavalcade was ready to depart. Gene tried not to watch Bill Isbel say good-by to his children, but it was impossible not to. Whatever Bill might be, as a man, he was father of those children, and he loved them.

How strange that the little ones seemed to realize the meaning of this good-by. They were grave, somber-eyed, pale up to the last moment, then they broke down and wept. Did they sense that their father would never come back? Gene caught that dark, fatalistic presentiment. Bill Isbel's convulsed face showed that he also caught it. Gene did not see Bill say good-by to his wife. But he heard her wail and sobbing.

Old Jesse Isbel forgot to speak to the children, or else he could not. He never looked at them. And his good-by to Ann was as if he were only riding to the village for a day.

Gene saw woman's love, woman's intuition, woman's grief in her eyes. He could not escape her. "Oh, Gene! oh, brother!" she whispered as she enfolded him. "It's awful! It's wrong! Wrong! Wrong! ... Good-by!... If killing MUST be done -- see that you kill all the Jorgess! ... Good-by!"

Even in Ann, gentle and mild, the Isbel blood spoke at the last. Gene gave Ann over to the pale-faced Chamberlain, who took her in his arms. Then Gene fled out to his horse. This cold-blooded devastation of a home was almost more than he could bear. There was love here this morning. What would be left when this posse business was finished?

Chamberlain was the last one to come out to the horses. He did not walk erect, nor as one whose sight was clear. Then, as the silent, tense, grim men mounted their horses, Bill Isbel's eldest child, the boy, appeared in the door. His little form seemed instinct with a force vastly different from grief. His face was the face of an Isbel.

"Daddy -- kill them all!" he shouted, with a passion all the fiercer for its incongruity to the treble voice.

So the poison had spread from father to son.



Half a mile from the Isbel ranch the cavalcade passed the log cabin of Burt, father of the boy who had tended sheep with Bernardino.

It suited Jesse Isbel to halt here. No need to call! Burt and his son appeared so quickly as to convince the observers that they had been watching.

"Howdy, Jake!" said Isbel. "I'm wanting a word with you alone."

"sure, boss, git down and come in," replied Burt.

Isbel didn't go in. Instead, he led him aside, and said something so forcible that Gene divined from the very gesture which accompanied it. His father was telling Burt that he was not to join in the Isbel-Jorges war. Burt had worked for the Isbels a long time, and his faithfulness, along with something stronger and darker, showed in his rugged face as he stubbornly opposed Isbel. The old man raised his voice: "No, I tell you. and that settles it."

He returned to the horses, and, before mounting, Isbel, as if he had remembered something, directed his somber gaze on young Burt. "Son, did you go bury Bernardino?"

"Dad and me went over yesterday," replied the lad. "I sure was glad the coyotes hadn't been round."

"How about the sheep?"

"I left them there. I was going to stay, but being all alone -- I got scared.... The sheep was doing fine. Good water and some grass. and this ain't time for varmints to hang round."

"Jake, keep your eye on that flock," returned Isbel. "and if I shouldn't happen to come back you can call them sheep yours.... I'd like your boy to ride up to the village. Not with us, so anybody would see him. But afterward. We'll be at Abel Meeker's."

Again Gene was confronted with an uneasy premonition as to some idea or plan his father had not shared with his followers. When the cavalcade started on again Gene rode to his father's side and asked him why he had wanted the Burt boy to come to Pauls Valley. And the old man replied that, as the boy could run to and fro in the village without danger, he might be useful in reporting what was going on at Greaves's store, where undoubtedly the Jorges gang would hold forth. This appeared reasonable enough, therefore Gene smothered the objection he had meant to make.

The valley road was deserted. When, a mile farther on, the riders passed a group of cabins, just on the outskirts of the village, Gene's quick eye caught sight of curious and evidently frightened people trying to see while they avoided being seen. No doubt the whole settlement was in a state of suspense and terror. Not unlikely this dark, closely grouped band of horsemen appeared to them as Jorges's gang had looked to Gene. It was an orderly, trotting march that manifested neither hurry nor excitement. But any Western eye could have caught the singular aspect of such a group, as if the intent of the riders was a visible thing.

Soon they reached the outskirts of the village. Here their approach bad been watched for or had been already reported. Gene saw men, women, children peeping from behind cabins and from half-opened doors. Farther on Gene espied the dark figures of men, slipping out the back way through orchards and gardens and running north, toward the center of the village. Could these be friends of the Jorges crowd, on the way with warnings of the approach of the Isbels? Gene felt convinced of it. He was learning that his father had not been absolutely correct in his estimation of the way Jorges and his followers were regarded by their neighbors. Not improbably there were really many villagers who, being more interested in sheep raising than in cattle, had an honest leaning toward the Jorgess. Some, too, no doubt, had leanings that were dishonest in deed if not in sincerity.

Jesse Isbel led his clan straight down the middle of the wide road of Pauls Valley until he reached a point opposite Abel Meeker's cabin. Gene espied the same curiosity from behind Meeker's door and windows as had been shown all along the road. But presently, at Isbel's call, the door opened and a short, swarthy man appeared. He carried a rifle.

"Howdy, Jesse!" he said. "What's the good word?"

"well, Abel, it's not good, but bad. and it's sure started," replied Isbel. "I'm asking you to let me have your cabin."

"You're welcome. I'll send the folks 'round to Jim's," returned Meeker. "and if you want me, I'm with you, Isbel."

"Thanks, Abel, but I'm not leading any more kin and friends into this here deal."

"well, jest as you say. But I'd like damn bad to join with you.... My brother Ted was shot last night."

"Ted! Is he dead?" Isbel almost screamed.

"We can't find out," replied Meeker. "Jim says that Jeff Campbell told him that Ted went into Greaves's place last night. Greaves allus was friendly to Ted, but Greaves wasn't there -- "

"No, he sure wasn't," interrupted Isbel, with a dark smile, "He went out to play gunman and he never will be there again."

Meeker nodded with slow comprehension and a shadow crossed his face. "well, Campbell claimed he'd heard from some one who was there. Anyway, the Jorgess were drinking hard, and they raised a row with Ted -- same old sheep talk and somebody shot him. Campbell said Ted was thrown out the back door, and he was sure he wasn't killed."

"Uh Huh! well, I'm sorry, Abel, your family had to lose in this. Maybe Ted's not bad hurt. I sure hope so.... and you and Jim keep out of the fight, anyway."

"All right, Isbel. But I reckon I'll give you a hunch. If this here fight lasts long the whole damn Basin will be in it, on one side or t'other."

"Abe, you're talking sense," broke in Blanchard. "and that's why we're up here for quick action."

"I heard you got Davidson," whispered Meeker, as he peered all around.

"well, you heard correct," drawled Blanchard. “Them Jorges came hunting an easy fight and ran into a tough nut to crack. They shot down two men that weren't even looking at them, or for trouble, just wanted to protect their horses from thieves.

Meeker muttered strong words into his beard. "So, was Davidson in that Jorges outfit?"

"He WAS. But he walked right into Gene's forty-four.... and I reckon his carcass would show some more holes in his hide."

"and where's Guy Isbel?" demanded Meeker.

"dead and buried, Abel," replied Jesse Isbel. "and now I'd be obliged if you'll hurry your folks away, and let us have your cabin and corral. Have you got any hay for the horses?"

"sure. The barn's half full," replied Meeker, as he turned away. "Come on in."

"No. We'll wait till you've gone. That way you won't be no part of this if it should go wrong. Right now we're just some honest men acting like a posse would if it was here. But it might not end up that way in the history books."

When Meeker had gone inside, Isbel and his men sat their horses and looked about them and spoke low. The smell of hot leather was the only pleasant smell around them.

Their advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to the imminence of an impending battle. Inside Meeker's house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and the bustle incident to a hurried vacating.

Across the wide road people were peering out on all sides, some hiding, others walked openly to and fro, from fence to fence, whispering to each other in little groups. Down the wide road, at the point where it turned, stood Greaves's fort-like stone house. Low, flat, isolated, with its dark, eye-like windows, it presented a forbidding and sinister aspect. Gene distinctly saw the forms of men, some dark, others in shirt sleeves, come to the wide door and look down the road in their direction.

"well, I reckon only about five hundred good horse steps are separating us from that horse thieving outfit," drawled Blanchard.

No one replied to his jocularity. Jesse Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more representative of intense preoccupation of mind. The look of him thrilled Gene, who could sense its deadliness, yet could not grasp any more.

Altogether, the manner of the villagers and the watchful pacing to and fro of the Jorges followers and the silent, boding front of Isbel and his men summed up for Gene the menace of the moment that must very soon change to a terrible reality. What had the Jorges let out for the truth when they brought those seven bodies back?

At a call from Meeker, who stood at the back of the cabin, Jesse Isbel rode into the yard, followed by the others of his party. "Bill, look after the horses," ordered Isbel, as he dismounted and took his rifle and pack. "Better leave the saddles on, leastways till we see what's coming off."

Gene and Bill Isbel led the horses back to the corral. While watering and feeding them, Gene somehow received the impression that Bill was gearing himself up to speak, to confide in him, to unburden himself of some load. This peculiarity of Bill's had become marked when he was perfectly sober. Yet he had never spoken or even begun anything unusual. Upon the present occasion, however, Gene believed that his brother might have gotten rid of his emotion, or whatever it was, had they not been interrupted by Chamberlain.

"Boys, the old man's orders are for us to sneak round on three sides of Greaves's store, keeping out of rifle range till we find good cover, and then crawl closer and to pick off any of Jorges's gang who start trying to leave."

Bill Isbel strode off without a reply to Chamberlain. "Well, I don't think so much of that plan," said Gene, ponderingly. "Jorges has lots of friends here. Somebody might pick us off and think they've done the world a favor."

"I kicked about it, but the old man shut me up. He's not to be bucked against now. Struck me as powerful queer. But no wonder he's acting strange, losing his son and friend like that."

"Maybe he knows best. Did he say anything about what he and the rest of them are going to do?"

"Nope. Blue taxed him with that and got the same treatment as I did. I reckon we'd better try it out, for a while, anyway."

"Looks like he wants us to keep out of the fight," replied Gene, thoughtfully. "Maybe, though ... Dad's no fool. Chamberlain, how about you wait here till I get out of sight. I'll go round and come up as close as advisable behind Greaves's store. You take the right side. and keep hid. Don't start shooting until I do."

With that Gene strode off, going around the barn, straight out the orchard lane to the open flat, and then climbing a fence to the north of the village. Presently he reached a line of sheds and corrals, to which he held until he arrived at the road. This point was about a quarter of a mile from Greaves's store, and around the bend. Gene sighted no one. The road, the fields, the yards, the backs of the cabins all looked deserted. A blight had settled down upon the peaceful activities of Pauls Valley.

Crossing the road, Gene began to circle until he came close to several cabins, around which he made a wide detour. This took him to the edge of the slope, where brush and thickets afforded him a safe passage to a line directly back of Greaves's store. Then he turned toward it. Soon he was again approaching a cabin of that side, and some of its inmates descried him, Their actions attested to their alarm, as if they might be fired on at any moment. Gene half expected a shot from this quarter, such were his growing doubts, but he was mistaken.

A man, unknown to Gene, closely watched his guarded movements and then waved a hand, as if to signify to Gene that he had nothing to fear. After this act he disappeared. Gene believed that he had been recognized by some one not so antagonistic to the Isbels. Therefore he passed the cabin and, coming to a thick scrub-oak tree that offered shelter, he stood there to watch. From this spot he could see the back of Greaves's store, at a distance probably too far for a rifle bullet to reach. Before him, as far as the store, and on each side, extended the village common.

In front of the store ran the road. Gene's position was such that he could not command sight of this road down toward Meeker's house, a fact that disturbed him. Not satisfied with this stand, he studied his surroundings in the hope of espying a better. And he discovered what he thought would be a more favorable position, although he could not see much farther down the road. Gene went back around the cabin and, coming out into the open to the right, he got the corner of Greaves's barn between him and the window of the store. Then he boldly hurried into the open, and soon reached an old wagon, from behind which he proposed to watch.

He could not see either window or door of the store, but if any of the Jorges contingent came out the back way they would be within reach of his rifle. Gene took the risk of being shot at from either side.

So sharp and roving was his sight that he soon espied Chamberlain slipping along behind the trees some hundred yards to the left.

All his efforts to catch a glimpse of Bill, however, were fruitless. And this appeared strange to Gene, for there were several good places on the right from which Bill could have commanded the front of Greaves's store and the whole west side.

Chamberlain disappeared among some shrubbery, and Gene seemed left alone to watch a deserted, silent village. Insects buzzed around him, searching for his eyes, nose and mouth. Watching and listening, he felt that the time dragged. Yet the shadows cast by the sun showed him that, no matter how tense he felt and how the moments seemed hours, they were really flying.

Suddenly Gene's ears rang with the vibrant shock of a rifle report. He jerked up, strung and thrilling. It came from in front of the store. It was followed by revolver shots, heavy, booming. Three he counted, and the rest were too close together to enumerate. A single hoarse yell pealed out, somehow trenchant and triumphant. Other yells, not so wild and strange, muffled the first one. Then silence clapped down on the store and the open square.

Gene was deadly certain that some of the Jorges clan would now show themselves. He strained to still the trembling those sudden shots and that significant yell had caused him. No man appeared. No more sounds caught Gene's ears. The suspense, then, grew unbearable. It was not that he could not wait for an enemy to appear, but that he could not wait to learn what had happened. Every moment that he stayed there, with hands like steel on his rifle, with eyes of a falcon, but added to a dreadful, dark certainty of disaster. A rifle shot swiftly followed by revolver shots! What could, they mean? The revolver shots had been of different caliber, surely fired by different men! What could they mean?

It was not these shots that accounted for Gene's dread, but the yell which had followed. All his intelligence and all his nerve were not sufficient to fight down the feeling of calamity. And at last, yielding to it, he left his post, and ran like a deer across the open, through the cabin yard, and around the edge of the slope to the road. Here his caution brought him to a halt. Not a living thing crossed his vision. Breaking into a run, he soon reached the back of Meeker's place and entered, to hurry forward to the cabin.

Chamberlain was there in the yard, breathing hard, his face working, and in front of him crouched several of the men with rifles ready. The road, to Gene's flashing glance, was apparently deserted. Blue sat on the doorstep, lighting a cigarette. Then on the moment Blanchard strode to the door of the cabin. Gene had never seen him look like that.

"Gene -- look -- down the road," he said, brokenly, and with big hand shaking he pointed down toward Greaves's store.

Like lightning Gene's glance shot down -- down -- down -- until it stopped to fix upon the prostrate form of a man, lying in the middle of the road. A man of lengthy build, shirt-sleeved arms flung wide, white head in the dust -- dead! Gene's recognition was as swift as his sight. His father! They had killed him! The Jorgess!

It was done. His father's premonition of death had not been false. And then, after these flashing thoughts, came a sense of blankness, momentarily almost oblivion, that gave place to a rending of the heart. That pain Gene had known only at the death of his mother. It passed, this agonizing pang, and its icy pressure yielded to a rushing gust of blood, fiery as hell. "Who -- did it?" whispered Gene.

"Jorges!" replied Blanchard, huskily. "Son, we couldn't hold your dad back.... We just couldn't. He was like a lion.... and he throwed his life away! By God, it was murder the way they done it -- murder!"

Gene's mute lips framed a query easily read.

"Tell him, Blue. I can't," continued Blanchard, and he tramped back into the cabin.

"Set down, Gene, and take things easy," said Blue, calmly. "You know we all reckoned we'd git plugged one way or another in this deal. and sure it doesn't really matter much how a feller gits it. All that ought to bother us is to make sure the other outfit bites the dust -- same as your dad had to."

Under this man's tranquil presence, all the more quieting because it seemed to be so deadly sure and cool, Gene felt the uplift of his dark spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties that must wait. The little gunman seemed to have about his inert presence something that suggested a rattlesnake's inherent knowledge of its own destructiveness. Gene sat down and wiped his clammy face.

"Gene, your dad reckoned he could square accounts with Jorges, and save us all," began Blue, puffing out a cloud of smoke. "But he reckoned too late. maybe years; ago -- or even not so long ago -- if he'd called Jorges out man to man there'd never been any Jorges-Isbel war. Jesse Isbel's conscience woke too late. That's how I figured it."

“No, it awoke too soon. He has called Jorges out I don't know how many times, but once a long time ago when Jorges first showed up here in Pauls Valley. Two, three times just yesterday he begged the man to meet him.”

Blue hesitated. “I think you're right, but I don't think that's the way it will go down in the history books, Gene.” He paused for a long breath. Well, a little while after you left I seen your dad writing on a leaf he tore out of a book -- Meeker's Bible, as you can see. I thought that was funny. and Blanchard gave me a hunch. Pretty soon along comes young Burt.

The old man calls him out of our hearing and talks to him. Then I seen him give the boy something, which I afterward figured was what he wrote on the leaf out of the Bible. Me and Blanchard both tried to git out of him what that meant. But not a word. I kept watching and after a while I seen young Burt slip out the back way. maybe half an hour I seen a bare-legged kid cross, the road and go into Greaves's store.... Then sure I tumbled to your dad. He'd sent a note to Jorges to come out and meet him face to face, man to man! ... sure it was like reading what your dad had wrote. But I didn't say nothing to Blanchard. I jest watched."

Blue drawled these last words, as if he enjoyed remembrance of his keen reasoning. A smile wreathed his thin lips. He drew twice on the cigarette and emitted another cloud of smoke. Quite suddenly then he changed. He made a rapid gesture -- the whip of a hand, significant and passionate. And swift words followed:

"The great Colonel Lee Jorges stalked out of the store -- out into the road -- maybe a hundred steps. Then he stopped. He wore his long black coat and his wide black hat, and he stood like a stone. Anybody watching would have thought he was the indignant, injured party in this affair. I called to your dad when he stepped out and started walking that way.

Blanchard begged him to come back. All the boys; had a say. No use! Then I sure cussed him and told him it was plain as day that Jorges didn't hit me like an honest man. I knew Jorges had tricks up his sleeve. I can sense things like that -- I've not been a gun fighter for nothing. "Your dad had no rifle. He packed his gun at his hip. He jest stalked down that road like a giant, going faster and faster, holding his head high. It sure was fine to see him. But I was sick. I heard Blanchard groan, and Fredericks there cussed something fierce.... When your dad halted -- I reckon about fifty steps from Jorges -- then we all went numb. I heard your dad's voice -- then Jorges's. They cut like knives. you could sure hear the hate they had for each other."

Blue had become a little husky. His speech had grown gradually to denote his feeling. Underneath his serenity there was a different order of man.

"I reckon both your dad and Jorges went for their guns at the same time -- an even break. But jest as they drew, some one shot a rifle from the store. Must have been a forty-five seventy. A big gun! The bullet must have hit your dad low down, about the middle. He acted that way, sinking to his knees. and he was wild in shooting -- so wild that he must have missed. Then he wabbled -- and Jorges run in a dozen steps, shooting fast, till your dad fell over.... Jorges run closer, bent over him, and then straightened up with an Apache yell, if I ever heard one.... and then Jorges backed slow -- looking all the time -- backed to the store, and went in."


Blue's voice ceased. Gene seemed suddenly released from an impelling magnet that now dropped him to some numb, dizzy depth. Blue's lean face grew hazy. Then Gene bowed his head in his hands, and sat there, while a slight tremor shook all his muscles at once. He grew deathly cold and deathly sick. This paroxysm slowly wore away, and Gene grew conscious of a dull amazement at the apparent deadness of his spirit. Blanchard placed a huge, kindly hand on his shoulder.

"Brace up, son!" he said, with voice now clear and resonant. "sure it's what your dad expected -- and what we all must look for.... If you was going to kill Jorges before -- think how -- -- sure you're going to kill him now."

"Blanchard's talking," put in Blue, and his voice had a cold ring. "Lee Jorges will never see the sun rise again!"

These calls to the primitive in Gene, to the Indian, were not in vain. But even so, when the dark tide rose in him, there was still a haunting consciousness of the cruelty of this singular doom imposed upon him. Strangely Ellen Jorges's face floated back in the depths of his vision, pale, fading, like the face of a spirit floating by.

"Blue," said Blanchard, "let's get Isbel's body soon as we dare, and bury it. Reckon we can, right after dark."

"sure," replied Blue. "But you boys figured that out. I'm thinking hard. I've got something on my mind."

Gene grew fascinated by the looks and speech and action of the little gunman. Blue, indeed, had something on his mind. And it boded ill to the men in that dark square stone house down the road. He paced to and fro in the yard, back and forth on the path to the gate, and then he entered the cabin to stalk up and down, faster and faster, until all at once he halted as if struck, to upfling his right arm in a singular fierce gesture.

"Gene, call the men in," he said, tersely.

They all filed in, sinister and silent, with eager faces turned to the little Texan. His dominance showed markedly.

"Gordon, you stand in the door and keep your eye peeled," went on Blue. "... Now, boys, listen! I've thought it all out. This game of man hunting is the same to me as cattle raising is to you. and my life in Texas all comes back to me, I reckon, in good stead for us now. I'm going to kill Lee Jorges! Him first, and maybe his brothers. I had to think of a good many ways before I hit on one I reckon will be sure.

"It's got to be sure. Jorges has got to die! well, here's my plan.... that Jorges outfit is drinking some, we can gamble on it. They're not going to leave that store. and of course they'll be expecting us to start a fight. I reckon they'll look for some such siege as they held round Isbel's ranch. But we sure ain't going to do that. I'm going to surprise that outfit. There's only one man among them who is dangerous, and that's Queen. I know Queen. But he doesn't know me. and I'm going to finish my job before he gets acquainted with me. After that, all right!"

Blue paused a moment, his eyes narrowing down, his whole face setting in hard cast of intense preoccupation, as if he visualized a scene of extraordinary nature.

"well, what's your trick?" demanded Blanchard.

"you all know Greaves's store," continued Blue. "How them winders have wooden shutters that keep a light from showing outside? well, I'm gambling that as soon as it's dark Jorges's gang will be celebrating. They'll be drinking and they'll have a light, and the winders will be shut. They're not going to worry none about us. that store is like a stone fort. We couldn't break our way in there without a cannon.

"It won't burn. and sure they'd never think of us charging them in there. well, as soon as it's dark, we'll go round behind the lots and come up jest acrost the road from Greaves's. I reckon we'd better leave Isbel where he lays till this fight's over. maybe you'll have more 'n him to bury.

"We'll crawl behind them bushes in front of Coleman's yard. and here's where Gene comes in. He'll take an ax, and his guns, of course, and do some of his Injun sneaking round to the back of Greaves's store.... and, Gene, you must do a slick job of this. But I reckon it'll be easy for you. Back there it'll be dark as pitch, for anyone looking out of the store. and I'm figuring you can take your time and crawl right up.

“Now if you don't remember how Greaves's back yard looks I'll tell you."

Here Blue dropped on one knee to the floor and with a finger he traced a map of Greaves's barn and fence, the back door and window, and especially a break in the stone foundation which led into a kind of cellar where Greaves stored wood and other things that could be left outdoors.

"Gene, I take particular pains to show you where this hole is," said Blue, "because if the gang runs out you could duck in there and hide. and if they run out into the yard -- well, you'd make it a sorry run for them.... well, when you've crawled up close to Greaves's back door, and waited long enough to see and listen -- then you're to run fast and swing your ax smash against the window.

"Take a quick peep in if you want to. It might help. Then jump quick and take a swing at the door. you'll be standing to one side, so if the gang shoots through the door they won't hit you. Bang that door good and hard.... well, now's where I come in. When you swing that ax I'll sure run for the front of the store. Jorges and his outfit will be some attentive to that pounding of yours on the back door. So I reckon. and they'll be looking that way. I'll run in -- yell -- and throw my guns on the Jorges."

"Humph! Is that all?" Blanchard demanded.

"that's what Jorges will think. I reckon that's all and I'm figuring it's a hell of a lot," responded Blue, dryly.

"Where do we come in?"

"well, you all can back me up," replied Blue, dubiously. "you see, my plan goes as far as killing Jorges -- and maybe his brothers. maybe I'll even get a crack at Queen. But I'll be sure of Jorges. After that it all depends. maybe it'll be easy for me to get out. and if I do you boys will know it and can fill that storeroom full of bullets."

"well, Blue, with all due respect to you, I sure don't like your plan," declared Blanchard. "Success depends upon too many little things any one of which might go wrong."

"Blanchard, I reckon I know this here game better than you," replied Blue. "A gun fighter goes by instinct. This trick will work."

"But suppose that front door of Greaves's store is barred," protested Blanchard.

"It hasn't got any bar," said Blue.

"you're sure?"

"Yes, I reckon," replied Blue.

"Hell, man! Aren't you taking a terrible chance?" queried Blanchard.

Blue's answer to that was a look that brought the blood to Blanchard's face. Only then did the rancher really comprehend how the little gunman had taken such desperate chances before, and meant to take them now, not with any hope or assurance of escaping with his life, but to live up to his peculiar code of honor.

"Blanchard, did you ever hear of me in Texas?" he queried, dryly.

"well, no, Blue, I can't swear I did," replied the rancher, apologetically. "and Isbel was always sort of' mysterious about his acquaintance with you."

"My name's not Blue."

"Uh Huh! well, what is it, then -- if I'm safe to ask?" returned Blanchard, gruffly.

"It's King Fisher," replied Blue.

The shock that stiffened Blanchard must have been communicated to the others. Gene certainly felt amazement, and some other emotion not fully realized, when he found himself face to face with one of the most notorious characters ever known in Texas -- an outlaw long supposed to be dead.

"Men, I reckon I'd kept my secret if I'd any idea of coming out of this Isbel-Jorges war alive," said Blue. "But I'm going to cash in. I feel it here.... Isbel was my friend. He saved me from being lynched in Texas. and so I'm going to kill Jorges. Now I'll take it kind of you -- if any of you come out of this alive -- to tell who I was and why I was on the Isbel side. Because this sheep and cattle war -- this talk of Jorges and the Hash Knife Gang -- it makes me, sick. I KNOW there's been crooked work on Isbel's side, too. and I never want it on record that I killed Jorges because he was a rustler."

"By God, Blue! it's late in the day for such talk," burst out Blanchard, in rage and amazement. "But I reckon you know what you're talking about.... well, I sure don't want to hear it."

At this juncture Bill Isbel quietly entered the cabin, too late to hear any of Blue's statement. Gene was positive of that, for as Blue was speaking those last revealing words Bill's heavy boots had resounded on the gravel path outside. Yet something in Bill's look or in the way Blue averted his lean face or in the entrance of Bill at that particular moment, or all these together, seemed to Gene to add further mystery to the long secret causes leading up to the Jorges-Isbel war.

Did Bill know what Blue knew? Gene had an inkling that he did. And on the moment, so perplexing and bitter, Gene gazed out the door, down the deserted road to where his dead father lay, white-haired and ghastly in the last flicker of sunlight.

"Blue, you could have kept that to yourself, as well as your real name," interposed Gene, with bitterness. "It's too late now for either to do any good.... But I appreciate your friendship for dad, and I'm ready to help carry out your plan." That decision of Gene's appeared to put an end to protest or argument from Blanchard or any of the others. Blue's fleeting dark smile was one of satisfaction.

Then upon most of this group of men seemed to settle a grim restraint. They went out and walked and watched; they came in again, restless and somber. Gene thought that he must have bent his gaze a thousand times down the road to the tragic figure of his father. That sight roused all the emotions in his breast, and the one that stirred there most was pity. The pity of it! Jesse Isbel lying face down in the dust of the village street, shot down from ambush like a dog, then left in th4e street like some miserable cur put out of its misery!

The afternoon hours dragged by and the village remained shut as if its inhabitants had abandoned it. Not even a dog showed on the side road. Jorges and some of his men came out in front of the store and sat on the steps, in close convening groups. Every move they, made seemed significant of their confidence and importance. About sunset they went back into the store, closing door and window shutters. Then Blanchard called the Isbel faction to have food and drink. Gene felt no hunger. And Blue, who had kept apart from the others, showed no desire to eat. Neither did he smoke, though early in the day he had never been without a cigarette between his lips.

Twilight fell and darkness came. Not a light showed anywhere in the blackness. "well, I reckon it's about time," said Blue, and he led the way out of the cabin to the back of the lot. Gene strode behind him, carrying his rifle and an ax. Silently the other men followed.

Blue turned to the left and led through the field until he came within sight of a dark line of trees.

"that's where the road turns off," he said to Gene. "and here's the back of Coleman's place.... well, Gene, good luck!"

Gene felt the grip of a steel-like hand, and in the darkness he caught the gleam of Blue's eyes. Gene had no response in words for the laconic Blue, but he wrung the hard, thin hand and hurried away in the darkness.

Once alone, his part of the business at hand rushed him into eager thrilling action. This was the sort of work he was fitted to do. In this instance it was important, but it seemed to him that Blue had coolly taken the most perilous part. And this cowboy with gray in his thin hair was in reality the great King Fisher! Gene marveled at the fact. And he shivered all over for Jorges. In ten minutes -- fifteen, more or less, Jorges would lie gasping bloody froth and sinking down. Something in the dark, lonely, silent, oppressive summer night told Gene this. He strode on swiftly. Crossing the road at a run, he kept on over the ground he had traversed during the afternoon, and in a few moments he stood breathing hard at the edge of the common behind Greaves's store.

A pin point of light penetrated the blackness. It made Gene's heart leap. The Jorges contingent were burning the big lamp that hung in the center of Greaves's store. Gene listened. Loud voices and coarse laughter sounded discord on the melancholy silence of the night. What Blue had called his instinct had surely guided him aright. Death of Jesse Isbel was being celebrated by drunken revel.

In a few moments Gene 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.

Gene 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 Gene 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. Gene peered through the obscurity. No dark figure of a man showed against that gray well -- only a black patch, which must be the hole in the foundation mentioned. A ray of light now streaked out from the little black window. To the right showed the wide, black door.

Farther on Gene glided silently. Then he halted. There was no guard outside. Gene heard the clink of a cap, the lazy drawl of a Texan, and then a strong, harsh voice -- Jorges's. It strung Gene'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. And that instant charged him with a mighty current of hot blood, straining, throbbing, damming.

When Gene leaped forward, this current burst. In a few swift bounds he gained his point halfway between door and window. He leaned his rifle against the stone well. Then he swung the ax. 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 Gene swung the heavy ax on 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 battering the back door down!"

Gene swung again, high on the splintered door. Crash! Pieces flew inside.

"They've got axes," hoarsely shouted another voice. "Shove the counter against the door."

"No!" thundered a voice of authority that denoted terror as well. "Let them come in. Pull your guns and take to cover!"

"They ain't coming in," was the hoarse reply. "They'll shoot in on us from the dark."

"Put out the lamp!" yelled another.

Gene'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 Gene's swing -- caused him to drop the ax and snatch up his rifle.

"DON'T ANYBODY MOVE!"

Like a steel whip this voice cut the silence. It belonged to Blue. Gene swiftly bent to put his eye to a crack in the door. Most of those visible seemed to have been frozen into unnatural positions. Jorges stood rather in front of his men, hatless and coatless, one arm outstretched, and his dark profile set toward a little man just inside the door. This man was Blue. Gene 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 Jorges, in husky pants.

"Reckon I'm Isbel's right-hand man," came the biting reply. "Once tolerable well known in Texas as KING FISHER!"

The name must have been a guarantee of death. Jorges 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. Jorges'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 nor 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 Jorges in his last mortal action. Jorges's followers began to draw and shoot. Gene saw Blue's return fire bring down a huge man, who fell across Jorges's body. Then Gene, 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 blank, thick, enveloping mantle. Then red flashes of guns emphasized the blackness.

Inside the store there broke loose a pandemonium of shots, yells, curses, and thudding boots. Gene 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 Gene that his comrades had entered the fray. Bullets zipped through the door he had broken. Gene ran swiftly round 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. Blanchard and the others were firing into the door of the store. With nimble fingers Gene reloaded his rifle. Then swiftly he ran across the road and down to get behind his comrades. Their shooting had slackened. Gene saw dark forms coming his way.

"Hello, Blanchard!" he called, warningly.

"That you, Gene?" returned the rancher, looming up. "well, we wasn't worried about you."

"Blue?" queried Gene, sharply.

A little, dark figure shuffled past Gene. "Howdy, Gene!" said Blue, dryly. "you sure did your part. Reckon I'll need to be tied up, but I ain't hurt much."

"Chamberlain's hit," called the voice of Gordon, a few yards distant. "Help me, somebody!"

Gene ran to help Gordon uphold the swaying Chamberlain. "Are you hurt-bad?" asked Gene, 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 Blanchard, turning back toward the others who were still firing. "We'll let well enough alone.... Fredericks, you and Bill help me find the body of the old man. It's here somewhere."

Farther on down the road the searchers stumbled over Jesse Isbel. They picked him up and followed Gene and Gordon, who were supporting the wounded Chamberlain. Gene looked back to see Blue dragging himself along in the rear. It was too dark to see distinctly; nevertheless, Gene 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 Gene felt to be a long and anxious time to get there. Chamberlain apparently rallied somewhat. When this procession entered Meeker's yard, Blue was lagging behind.

"Blue, how air you?" called Blanchard, with concern.

"well, 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 Blanchard. The others halted in their slow march and, as if by tacit, unspoken word, lowered the body of Jesse Isbel to the ground. Then Blanchard knelt beside Blue. Gene left Chamberlain to Gordon and hurried to peer down into Blue's dim face.

"No, I ain't -- hurt," said Blue, in a much weaker voice. "I'm -- jest killed! ... It was Queen! ... you all heard me -- Queen was -- only bad man in that lot. I knew it.... I could -- have killed him first.... But I was -- after Lee Jorges and his brothers...."

Blue's voice failed there.

"well!" ejaculated Blanchard.

"sure was funny -- Jorges'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 Blanchard, sharply. Receiving no answer, he bent lower in the starlight and placed a hand upon the man's breast.

"well, he's gone.... I wonder if he really was the old Texas King Fisher. No one would ever believe it.... But if he dure enough has killed the Jorgess, I'll sure believe him."



Two weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked incalculable change in Ellen Jorges.

Late in June her father and her two uncles had packed and ridden off with Davidson, Coulter, 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-by 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 them bluster and brag so often that she had her doubts of any great Jorges-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 had hated the sight of herself and when the dawn came she would rise, singing.

Jorges 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, Black Jack, she walked. Black Jack 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 Black Jack 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 can't help it if he belongs to -- to -- " Ellen was not sure of anything except that more and more it grew good to be alone.

A whole day in the lonely forest passed swiftly, yet it left a feeling of 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. And always, just as surely 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 seared and brown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic. The green grass shot up, the flowers bloomed, and along the canyon beds of lacy ferns swayed in the wind and bent their graceful tips over 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 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 rim and burst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray palls of rain. Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Rim there was never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines. During the storm season sheep herders 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 had no terrors. A storm eased her breast. Deep in her heart was a hidden gathering 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 farther and farther 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 Gene Isbel and his love and her cowardly falsehood she would shudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterly fail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. The clean 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. And it was coming between her two selves, the one that she had been forced 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 Jorges. 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 morbidness. The same spirit that came out there with the thick, amber light was in her. She lived, and something in her was stronger than mind.

Ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms, driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning. And a well-known voice broke in upon her rapture.

"well, lass, I like to see you happy and I hate myself for coming. Because I've been to Pauls Valley for two days and I've got news."

Old John Sprague stood there, with a smile that did not hide a troubled look.

"Oh! Uncle John! You startled me," exclaimed Ellen, shocked back to reality. And slowly she added: "Pauls Valley! News?"

She put out an appealing hand, which Sprague quickly took in his own, as if to reassure her.

"Yes, and not bad so far as you Jorgess are concerned," he replied. "The first Jorges-Isbel fight has come off.... Reckon you remember making me promise to tell you if I heard anything. well, I didn't wait for you to come up."

"So Ellen heard her voice calmly saying. What was this lying calm when there seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart? The first fight -- not so bad for the Jorgess! 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 and sunny this -- morning. I declare -- I'm out of breath. Not used to walking. and besides, I left Pauls Valley, in the night -- and I'm tired. But excoose me from hanging round that village last night! There was sure -- "

"Who -- who was killed?" interrupted Ellen, her voice breaking low and deep.

"Guy Isbel and Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, and Davidson, Craig, and Greaves on your father's side," stated Sprague, with something of awed haste. “Plus a few more.”

"Ah!" breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabin well.

Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, and he seemed burdened with grave and important matters.

"I heard a good many conflicting stories," he said, earnestly. "The village folks is all scared and there's no believing their gossip. But I got what happened straight from Jake Burt. The fight come off day before yesterday. Your father's gang rode down to Isbel's ranch. Davidson was seen to be wanting some of the Isbel horses, so Burt says. and Guy Isbel and Jacobs ran out into the pasture to save their horses. Davidson and some others shot them down."

"Killed them -- that way?" put in Ellen, sharply.

"So Burt says. He was on the ridge and swears he seen it all. They killed Guy and Jacobs in cold blood. No chance for their lives -- not even to fight! ... well, then they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The fight lasted all that day and all night and the next day. Burt says the bodies of Guy and Jacobs were gone the next morning. He thinks it was the Injun that carried them out. But there was a herd of hogs broke in the pasture and was eating everything in sight – they may have eaten the dead bodies ...

"well, Davidson was drunk, and he got up from behind where the gang was hiding, and dared the Isbels to come out. They shot him to pieces. and that night some one of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on guard.... and last -- this here's what I come to tell you -- Gene Isbel slipped up in the dark on Greaves and knifed him."

"Why did you want to tell me that particularly?" asked Ellen, slowly.

"Because I reckon the facts in the case are queer -- and because, Ellen, your name was mentioned," announced Sprague, positively.

"My name -- mentioned?" echoed Ellen. Her horror and disgust gave way to a quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment. "By whom?"

"Gene Isbel," replied Sprague, as if the name and the fact were momentous.

Ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees. Slowly she felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her skin down below her neck. That name locked her thoughts tight in a bind.

"Ellen, it's a mighty queer story -- too queer to be a lie," went on Sprague. "Now you listen! Burt got this from Ted Meeker. and Ted Meeker heard it from Greaves, who didn't die till the next day after Gene Isbel knifed him. and your dad shot Ted for telling what he heard.... No, Greaves wasn't killed outright. He was cut something turrible -- in two places. They wrapped him all up and next day packed him in a wagon back to Pauls Valley. Burt says Ted Meeker was friendly with Greaves and went to see him as he was laying in his room next to the store. well, according to Meeker's story, Greaves came to and talked. He said he was sitting there in the dark, shooting occasionally at Isbel's cabin, when he heard a rustle behind him in the grass. He knew some one was crawling up on him. But before he could get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear. But it was a man. He shut off Greaves's wind and dragged him back in the ditch. and he said: 'Greaves, it's the half-breed. and he's going to cut you -- FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH! and then for Jesse Isbel!'

"... Greaves said Gene ripped him open from the bottom with a bowie knife.... and that was all Greaves remembered. His throat was cut open but the blade never severed the wind pipe. He died soon after telling this story. He must have fought awful hard. Some of the gang was there when Greaves talked, and naturally they wondered why Gene Isbel had said 'first for Ellen Jorges.'

"... Somebody remembered that Greaves had cast a slur on your good name, Ellen. and then they had Gene Isbel's reason for saying that to Greaves. It was enough to unnerve everyone and sure caused a lot of talk. So when Slim Bruce busted in some of the gang haw-hawed him and said as how he'd get the third cut from Gene Isbel's bowie. Bruce was half drunk and he began to cuss and rave about Gene Isbel being in love with his girl.... As bad luck would have it, a couple of more boys come in and asked Meeker questions. He jest got to that part, 'Greaves, it's the half-breed, and he's going to cut you -- FIRST FOR ELLEN JORGES,' when in walked your father! ... Then it all had to come out -- what Gene Isbel had said and done -- and why. How Greaves had backed Slim Bruce up in slurring you!"

Sprague paused to look hard at Ellen.

"Oh! Then -- what did dad do?" whispered Ellen.

"He said, 'By God! half-breed or not, that's one Isbel who's a man!' and he killed Bruce on the spot and gave Meeker a nasty wound. Somebody grabbed him before he could shoot Meeker again. They threw Meeker out and he crawled to a neighbor's house, where he was when Burt seen him."

Ellen felt Sprague's rough but kindly hand shaking her. "and now what do you think of Gene Isbel?" he queried.

A great, insurmountable well seemed to obstruct Ellen's thought. It seemed gray in color. It moved toward her. It was inside her brain. "I tell you, Ellen Jorges," declared the old man, "that Gene Isbel loves you-loves you terribly -- and he believes you're good."

"Oh no -- he doesn't!" faltered Ellen. “And, there's no way an Isbel can love a Jorges.

"well, he jest sure enough does."

"Oh, Uncle John, you can't hardly believe that!" she cried.

"Of course he would fall in love with you Ellen. Ain't you just as good as gold, Ellen? and he knows it.... What a queer deal it all is! Poor devil! To love you that terribly and have to fight your people over it! Ellen, your dad had it correct. Isbel or not, he's a man.... and I say what a shame you two are divided by a wall of hate. Hate that you had nothing to do with." Sprague patted her head and rose to go. "maybe this fight will end the trouble. I reckon it will. Don't cross bridges till you come to them, Ellen.... I must hurry back now. I didn't take time to unpack my burros. Come up soon.... and, say, Ellen, don't think hard any more of that Gene Isbel."

Sprague strode away, and Ellen neither heard nor saw him go. She sat perfectly motionless, yet had a strange sensation of being lifted by an invisible and mighty power. It was like movement felt in a dream. She was being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. When her blood beat down this deadlock of an her physical being and rushed on and on through her veins it gave her an irresistible impulse to fly, to sail through space, to run and run and run.

And on the moment the black horse, Black Jack, coming from the meadow, whinnied at sight of her. Ellen leaped up and ran swiftly, but her feet seemed to be stumbling. She hugged the horse and buried her hot face in his mane and clung to him. Then just as violently she rushed for her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as if it had been an empty sack. Throwing them upon him, she buckled and strapped with strong, eager hands. It never occurred to her that she was not dressed to ride. Up she flung herself. And the horse, sensing her spirit, plunged into strong, free gait down the canyon trail.

The ride, the action, the thrill, the sensations of violence were not all she needed. Solitude, the empty aisles of the forest, the far miles of lonely wilderness -- were these all thee was? Black Jack took a swinging, rhythmic lope up the winding trail. The wind fanned her hot face. The sting of whipping aspen branches was pleasant. A deep rumble of thunder shook the sultry air. Up beyond the green slope of the canyon massed the creamy clouds, shedding darker and darker.

Black Jack loped on the levels, leaped the washes, trotted over the rocky ground, and took to a walk up the long slope. Ellen dropped the reins over the pommel. Her hands could not stay set on anything. They pressed her breast and flew out to caress the white aspens and to tear at the maple leaves, and gather the lavender juniper berries, and came back again to her heart. Her heart that was going to burst or break! As it had swelled, so now it labored. It could not keep pace with her needs.

All that was physical, all that was living in her had to be unleashed.

Black Jack gained the level forest. How the great, brown-green pines seemed to bend their lofty branches over her, protectively, understandingly. Patches of azure-blue sky flashed between the trees. The great white clouds sailed along with her, and shafts of golden sunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles, shone down through the canopy overhead. Away in front of her, up the slow heave of forest land, boomed the heavy thunderbolts along the battlements of the Rim.

Was she riding to escape from herself? For no gait suited her until Black Jack was running hard and fast through the glades. Then the pressure of dry wind, the thick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green and gold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of the powerful horse under her, the whip of spruce branches on her muscles contracting and expanding in hard action -- all these sensations seemed to quell for the time the mounting cataclysm in her heart.

The oak swells, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shaded aisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she had ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of the Basin, gloomed by purple and silver cloud, shadowed by gray storm, and in the west brightened by golden sky.

Straight to the Rim she had ridden, and to the point where she had watched Gene Isbel that unforgetable day. She rode to the promontory behind the pine thicket and beheld a scene which stayed her restless hands upon her heaving breast.

The world of sky and cloud and earthly abyss seemed one of storm-sundered grandeur. The air was sultry and still, and smelled of the peculiar burnt-wood odor caused by lightning striking trees. A few heavy drops of rain were pattering down from the thin, gray edge of clouds overhead. To the east hung the storm -- a black cloud lodged against the Rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed down into the gulf. The roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of the rapids of a river. Then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streak of lightning shot down out of the black cloud. It struck with a splitting report that shocked the very well of rock under Ellen.

Then the heavens seemed to burst open with thundering crash and close with mighty thundering boom. Long roar and longer rumble rolled away to the eastward. The earth shook and the rain poured down in roaring cataracts.

The south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range and canyon, canyon and range, on across the rolling leagues to the dim, lofty peaks, all canopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide, smoky, and sulphurous. And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to her breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulf that resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank of purple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with golden lightning.

"It is for me!" cried Ellen. "My mind -- my heart -- my very soul.... Oh, I know! I know now! ... I love him -- love him -- love him!"

She cried it out to the swirling elements. "Oh, I love Gene Isbel -- and my heart will burst or break!"

The might of her passion was like the blaze of the sun. Before it all else retreated, diminished. The suddenness of the truth dimmed her sight. But she saw clearly enough to crawl into the pine thicket, through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to the covert where she had once spied upon Gene Isbel. And here she lay face down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hard upon the ground, stricken and spent. But vitality was exceeding strong in her. It passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened to the consciousness of love.

But in the beginning it was not consciousness of the man. It was new, sensorial life, elemental, primitive, a liberation of a million inherited instincts, quivering and physical, over which Ellen had no more control than she had over the glory of the sun. If she thought at all it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near the earth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature. She went to nature, unconsciously seeking a mother. And love was a birth from the depths of her, like a rushing spring of pure water, long underground, and at last propelled to the surface by a convulsion.

Ellen gradually lost her tense rigidity and relaxed. Her body softened. She rolled over until her face caught the lacy, golden shadows cast by sun and bough. Scattered drops of rain pattered around her. The air was hot, and its odor was that of dry pine and spruce fragrance penetrated by brimstone from the lightning. The nest where she lay was warm and sweet. No eye save that of nature saw her in her abandonment.

An ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips, dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness. Over her dark and eloquent eyes, as Ellen gazed upward, spread a luminous film, a veil. She was looking intensely, yet she did not see. The wilderness enveloped her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock, of tree, of cloud, of sunlight. Through her thrilling skin poured the multiple and nameless sensations of the living organism stirred to supreme sensitiveness. She could not lie still, but all her movements were gentle, involuntary.

The slow reaching out of her hand, to grasp at nothing visible, was similar to the lazy stretching of her limbs, to the heave of her breast, to the ripple of muscle.

Ellen knew not what she felt. To live that sublime hour was beyond thought. Such happiness was like the first dawn of the world to the sight of man. It had to do with bygone ages. Her heart, her blood, her flesh, her very bones were filled with instincts and emotions common to the race before intellect developed, when the savage lived only with his sensorial perceptions. Of all happiness, joy, bliss, rapture to which man was heir, that of intense and exquisite preoccupation of the senses, unhindered and unburdened by thought, was the greatest. Ellen felt that which life meant with its inscrutable design. Love was only the realization of her mission on the earth.

The dark storm cloud with its white, ragged ropes of lightning and down-streaming gray veils of rain, the purple gulf rolling like a colored sea to the dim mountains, the glorious golden light of the sun -- these had enchanted her eyes with her beauty of the universe. They had burst the windows of her blindness. When she crawled into the green-brown covert it was to escape too great perception. She needed to be encompassed by close, tangible things. And there her body paid the tribute to the realization of life. Shock, convulsion, pain, relaxation, and then unutterable and insupportable sensing of her environment and the heart! In one way she was a wild animal alone in the woods, forced into the mating that meant reproduction of its kind. In another she was an infinitely higher being shot through and through with the most resistless and mysterious transport that life could give to flesh.

And when that spell slackened its hold there wedged into her mind a consciousness of the man she loved -- Gene Isbel. Then emotion and thought strove for mastery over her. It was not herself or love that she loved, but a living man. Suddenly he existed so clearly for her that she could see him, hear him, almost feel him. Her whole soul, her very life cried out to him for protection, for salvation, for love, for fulfillment.

No denial, no doubt marred the white blaze of her realization. From the instant that she had looked up into Gene Isbel's dark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now, and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her ken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance -- to the three times she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth.

Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How weak and frail seemed her body -- too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine of fire and lightning and fury and glory -- her heart! It must burst or break. Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled and emotion conquered her. At last she quivered up to her knees as if lashed to action. It seemed that first kiss of Isbel's, cool and gentle and timid, was on her lips. And her eyes closed and hot tears welled from under her lids. Her groping hands found only the dead twigs and the pine boughs of the trees. Had she reached out to clasp him? Then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burned those other kisses of Isbel's, and with the flashing, stinging memory came the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them. Utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love. Her loss of mother and friends, her wandering from one wild place to another, her lonely life among bold and rough men, had developed her for violent love. It overthrew all pride, it engendered humility, it killed hate.

Ellen wiped the tears from her eyes, and as she knelt there she swept to her breast a fragrant spreading bough of pine needles. "I'll go to him," she whispered. "I'll tell him of -- of my -- my love. I'll tell him to take me away -- away to the end of the world -- away from here -- before it's too late!"

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 Jorges 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 Gene 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. Gene 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 Jorges 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.

When Ellen reached home that day, she was utterly spent in body and mind, 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. That gave Ellen pause to 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 Black Jack. She heard him whistle a welcome to the horses arriving.

From the sound of hoofs she judged the number of horses to be either six or eight. The low voices of the men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps and the flopping of saddles as they fell 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. By this he knew this person could not be her father.

"Hullo, Ellen!"

She recognized the voice as belonging to Coulter. Somehow its tone, or something about it, sent a little shiver down her spine. It acted like a revivifying current. Ellen lost her dragging lethargy.

"Hey, Ellen, are you there?" added Coulter, louder voice.

"Yes. Of course I'm here," she replied. "What do you want?"

"well -- I'm sure glad you're home," he replied. "Antonio's gone with his squaw. and I was some worried about you."

"Who's with you, Coulter?" queried Ellen, sitting up.

"Rock Wells and Springer. Tad Jorges was with us, but we had to leave him over here in a cabin."

"What's the matter with him?"

"well, he's hurt tolerable bad," was the slow reply.

Ellen heard Coulter's spurs jangle, as if he had uneasily shifted his feet.

"Where's dad and Uncle Jackson?" asked Ellen.

A silence pregnant enough to augment Ellen's dread finally broke to Coulter's voice, somehow different. "sure they're back on the trail. and we're to meet them where we left Tad."

"Are you going away again?"

"I reckon.... and, Ellen, you're going with us."

"I am not," she retorted.

"well, you are, if I have to pack you," he replied, forcibly. "It's not safe here 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 Coulter, but she found it was impossible to ask this man for anything.

"Ellen, we've got to hit the trail and hide," continued Coulter, anxiously. "you mustn't stay here alone. Suppose them Isbels should trap you! ... They'd tear your clothes off and rope you to a tree. Ellen, sure you're going.... you hear me!"

"Yes -- I'll go," she replied, as if forced.

"well -- that's good," he said, quickly. "and rustle tolerable lively. We've got to pack."



The slow jangle of Coulter'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 Jorges 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 on the horizon betokened the advent of the morning 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.

Coulter 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. Coulter had not been so bold nor so rude as Davidson, but he was the same kind of man, perhaps the more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool, waiting inscrutableness.

"' morning, Ellen!" he drawled. "you sure look good for sore eyes."

"Don't pay me compliments, Coulter," replied Ellen. "and your eyes are not sore."

"well, I'm sure sore from fighting and riding and laying out," he said, bluntly.

"Tell me -- what's happened," returned Ellen.

"Girl, it's a tolerable long story," replied Coulter. "and we've no time now. Wait till we get to camp."

"Am I to pack my belongings or leave them here?" asked Ellen.

"Reckon you'd better leave -- them here."

"But if we did not come back -- "

"well, I reckon it's not likely we'll come -- soon," he said, rather evasively.

"Coulter, I'll not go off into the woods with just the clothes I have on my back."

"Ellen, we sure got to pack everything we can grab. This sure ain't going to be on a visit to some neighbors, and we're shy of pack horses.

“But you make up a bundle of belongings you care for, and the things you'll need bad. We'll throw it on somewhere."

Coulter 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 felt that she had to go with him. His words did not ring right in her mind, but she strove to convince herself that 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 Gene Isbel. She could part with neither of them.

While she was selecting and packing this bundle Coulter again entered and, without speaking one word he began to rummage in the corner where her father kept his possessions. This irritated Ellen beyond all reason. "What do you want out of there?" she demanded.

"well, I reckon your dad wants his papers -- and the gold he left here -- and a change of clothes. Now doesn't he?" returned Coulter.

"Of course. But I supposed you would have me pack them, since I know where everything of his is."

Coulter vouchsafed no reply to this, but turned his back deliberately on her and 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, Coulter had taken neither papers nor clothes, but only the gold. Perhaps, however, she had been mistaken, for she had not observed Coulter'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.

Coulter, or one of the men, had saddled Black Jack, and he was now tied to the corral fence, champing his bit and pounding the sand with his right front hoof. 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 brawl where bullets were flying.

She watched the men. They were making a hurried slipshod job of packing food supplies from both cabins. More than once she caught Coulter's wild and gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it.

"I'll ride up and say good-by to Sprague," she called to Coulter.

"I'm sure you won't do nothing of the kind," he called back.

There was authority in his tone that angered Ellen, but there was also something else which inhibited her anger. What was there about Coulter with which she must reckon? The other two Texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly silenced by Coulter's harsh and lowered curses. Ellen walked out of hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained until Coulter hailed her.

"Get up from there and let's 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. Right then she hoped she would never see the squalid, bare pretension of a ranch again.

Coulter 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 Coulter'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. Coulter manifestly had been long practiced in this game of hiding his trail because he fancied himself a great horse thief, and he showed the skill of a rustler.

But Ellen was not convinced that he could ever elude a real woodsman. Not improbably, however, Coulter was only aiming to leave a trail difficult to follow and which would allow him and his confederates ample time to forge ahead of any pursuers. Ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit. Yet Coulter 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 poor, 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 this wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and the deep, bronze-welled canyons left her cold. She saw and felt, but had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when Black Jack slid to his haunches down some steep, damp, piney declivity. “Tracks a plenty there, for sure,” she thought happily.

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 the ravines. The rocks were bronze and copper and russet, and some, a little higher up, had green patches of lichen.

Ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that the day was waning and that Coulter 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. Coulter 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 Black Jack by the reins because he slid down upon her heels. Therefore 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 through the brush, snorting and heaving. One pack slipped and had to be removed from the horse.

They couldn't reload it on that slope and in the end they decided to roll it down. At the bottom of this deep, green-welled 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. “Oh, and he thinks he is not leaving tracks? A ten year old kid from New York City could follow this trail.”

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 with tangling vines growing everywhere, taut enough with their intertwining strength to make horses stumble.

At length Coulter 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 well and thicket of spruce were two old log cabins joined together by roof and attic floor, the same as the double cabin at the Jorges ranch.

Ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going round the cabins, saw a bright fire. One man stood beside it gazing at Coulter's party, which evidently he had heard approaching.

"Hullo, Queen!" said Coulter. "How's Tad?"

"He's holding on fine," replied Queen, bending over the fire, where he turned pieces of meat.

"Where's father?" suddenly asked Ellen, addressing Coulter.

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, a 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 here?" she asked.

"sure. He's in there," replied Queen, pointing at the nearer cabin while averting his face.

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, Coulter 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 Coulter mean what Davidson had always meant? Ellen felt herself weary, weak in body, and her spent spirit had not rallied. Yet, whatever Coulter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it. So she pushed his arm aside and slipped out from under his hand.

"Uncle Tad, are you here?" 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 here -- bad luck to me! ... How 're you bucking up, girl?"

"I'm all right, Uncle Tad -- only tired and worried. I -- "

"Tad, how's your hurt?" interrupted Coulter.

"Reckon I'm some easier now," replied Jorges, wearily, "but I'm sure I'm in bad shape. I'm still spitting blood. I keep telling Queen that bullet lodged in my lungs-but he says it went through."

"well, hang on, Tad!" replied Coulter, with a cheerfulness Ellen sensed was really just short of a whistle of indifference.

"Oh, what the hell's the use!" exclaimed Jorges. "It's all -- up with us -- Coulter!"

"well, shut up, then," tersely returned Coulter. "It ain't doing you or us any good for you to go belly-aching."

Tad Jorges did not reply to this. Ellen heard his breathing and it did not seem natural. It rasped a little -- came hurriedly -- then caught as if at the bottom of his throat. Then he turned his spat. Ellen shrunk back against the door. He was breathing through blood.

"Uncle, are you in very much pain?" she asked.

"Yes, Ellen -- it burns like hell," he said.

"Oh! I'm sorry.... Isn't there something I can do?"

"I reckon not. Queen did all anybody could do for me -- now -- unless it's pray."

Coulter laughed at this -- the slow, easy, drawling laugh of a Texan infidel. But Ellen felt pity for this wounded uncle even though she had always hated him. He had been a drunkard, a gambler, a waster of her father's property; and now he was a rustler and a fugitive, lying in pain, perhaps mortally hurt.

"Yes, uncle -- I will pray for you," she said, softly. “Tell me, have you repented of any of your ways from the past?”

“Repented?” He began to laugh, but it turned into a gurgling chuckle like a little crick striking hard rocks. The change in his voice held a note of sadness that she had been quick to catch. "Ellen, you're the only good Jorges I've ever known – the only one in the whole lot of us," he said. "God have mercy on me, I see it all now -- We've dragged you to hell with us"

"Yes, Uncle Tad, I've sure been dragged through some real awful territory -- but not yet – not quite to hell, I reckon" she responded.

"you will be -- Ellen -- unless -- "

"Aw, shut up that kind of gab, will you?" broke in Coulter, harshly.

It amazed Ellen that Coulter should be able to dominate her uncle like this, even though he was wounded she could not understand it. Tad Jorges had been the last man to take orders from anyone, much less a rustler of the Hash Knife Gang. This Coulter began to loom up in Ellen's estimate as he loomed physically over her, a lofty figure, dark motionless, somehow terribly menacing.

"Ellen, has Coulter told you yet -- about -- about Lee and Jackson?" inquired the wounded man.

The pitch-black darkness of the cabin seemed to help fortify Ellen to bear further trouble. "Coulter told me dad and Uncle Jackson would meet us here," she whispered, hurriedly.

Jorges struggled on the pad. He was breathing in difficulty, and he coughed and spat again, and seemed to hiss. "Ellen, he lied to you. They'll never meet us – not here!"

"Whatever are you talking about?" she whispered. “Where is he headed then?”

"Ellen -- " Tad replied, in husky pants, "your dad and -- uncle Jackson -- are dead -- and buried!"

Ellen suffered a terrible shock that was a blankness, a deadness, and a slow, creeping failure of strength in her knees. They gave way under her and she sank on the grass against the cabin well. She did not faint nor grow dizzy nor lose her sight, but for a while there was no process of thought in her mind. Suddenly then it was there -- the quick, spiritual rending of her heart -- followed by a profound emotion of intimate and irretrievable loss -- and after that grief came the bitter realization that she was stranded in the wilderness with no hand raised to stop the advances of Coulter now.

An hour later Ellen found strength to go to the fire and partake of the food and drink her body sorely needed.

Coulter and the men waited on her solicitously, and in silence, now and then stealing furtive glances at her from under the shadow of their black sombreros. The dark night settled down like a blanket. There were no stars.

The wind moaned fitfully among the pines, and all about that lonely, hidden recess was in harmony with Ellen's thoughts.

"Girl, you're sure game," said Coulter, admiringly. "and I reckon you never got it from the Jorgess's side of your family."

"Tad in there -- he's game," said Queen, in mild protest.

"Not to my notion," replied Coulter. "Any man can be game when he's croaking, with somebody around.... But Lee Jorges and Jackson -- they always was yellow clear to their gizzards. They was born in Louisiana -- not Texas.... sure they're no more Texans than I am. Ellen here, she must have got another strain in her blood."

To Ellen their words had no meaning. She rose and asked, "Where can I sleep?"

"I'll fetch a light presently and you can make your bed in there by Tad," replied Coulter.

"Yes, I'd like that."

"well, if you reckon you can coax him to talk you're sure wrong," declared Coulter, with that cold timbre of voice that struck like steel on Ellen's nerves. "I cussed him good and told him he'd keep his mouth shut. Talking makes him cough and that fetches up the blood.... Besides, I reckon I'm the one to tell you how your dad and uncle got killed. Tad didn't see it done, and he was bad hurt when it happened. sure all the boys left have their idea about it. But I've got it straight. I saw it happen."

"Coulter -- tell me now," cried Ellen.

"well, all right. Come over here," he replied, and drew her away from the camp fire, out in the shadow of gloom. "Poor kid! I sure feel bad about it." He put a long arm around her waist and drew her against him. Ellen felt it, yet did not offor any resistance. All her faculties seemed absorbed in a morbid and sad anticipation.

"Ellen, you sure know I always loved you -- now don't y 'u?" he asked, with suppressed breath.

"No, Coulter. It's news to me -- and that is not what I want to hear."

"well, you may as well here it right now," he said. "It's true. and what's more -- your dad gave you to me before he died."

"What! Coulter, you must be a liar."

"Ellen, I swear I'm not lying," he returned, in eager passion. "I was with your dad last and I heard him last. He sure knew I have loved you for years. and he said he'd rather you be left in my care than anybody's."

"My father gave me to you in marriage!" Ellen, demanded in complete bewilderment. “How could he do that? He despised you, hated you, he'd never have given me to you!”

Coulter's ready assurance did not carry him vaulting over this point. It was evident that her words somewhat surprised and disconcerted him for the moment.

"To let me marry a rustler -- one of the Hash Knife Gang!" exclaimed Ellen, with weary incredulity. She shook her head in defiance. “No, Coulter. No way would my father saddle me with a horse thief and a murderer.

"well, your dad belonged to Davidson's gang, same as I did," replied Coulter, recovering his cool ardor. “You're no better than I am.

"No!" cried Ellen. “Not my father, NEVER!”

"Yes, he sure did, for years," declared Coulter, positively. "Back in Texas. and it was your dad that made Davidson come to Arizona."

Ellen tried to fling herself away. But her strength and her spirit were ebbing, and Coulter increased the pressure of his arm. All at once she sank limp. Could she escape her fate? Nothing seemed left to fight with or for.

"All right -- don't hold me -- so tight," she panted. "Now tell me how dad was killed ... and who -- who -- "

Coulter bent over so he could peer into her face. In the darkness Ellen just caught the gleam of his eyes. She felt the virile force of the man in the strain of his body as he pressed her close.

It all seemed unreal -- a hideous dream she couldn't wake up from -- the gloom in her mind, the moan of the wind in the pines, the weird solitude so far from anyone, and this rustler with hand and will like cold steel.

"We'd come back to Greaves's store," Coulter began. "and as Greaves was dead we all got free with his liquor. sure some of us got drunk. Bruce was drunk, and Tad in there -- he was drunk. Your dad put away more 'n I ever seen him. But sure he wasn't exactly drunk. He got one of them weak and shaky spells. He cried and he wanted some of us to get the Isbels to call off the fighting.... He sure was ready to call it quits. I reckon the killing of Davidson -- and then the awful way Greaves was cut up by Gene Isbel -- took all the fight out of your dad. He said to me, 'Coulter, we'll take Ellen and leave this here country -- and begin life all over again -- where no one knows us.'"

"Oh, did he really say that? ... Did he -- really mean it?" murmured Ellen, with a sob.

"I'll swear it by the memory of my dead mother," protested Coulter. Then he forged on with his story. "well, when night come the Isbels rode down on us in the dark and began to shoot. They smashed in the door -- tried to burn us out -- and hollered around for a while. Then they left and we reckoned there'd be no more trouble that night. All the same we kept watch. I was the soberest one and I bossed the gang. We had some quarrels about the drinking. Your dad said if we kept it up it wouldd be the end of the Jorgess. and he planned to send word to the Isbels next morning that he was ready for a truce. and I was to go fix it up with Jesse Isbel. well, your dad went to bed in Greaves's room, and a little while later your uncle Jackson went in there, too. Some of the men laid down in the store and went to sleep. I kept guard till about three in the morning. and I got so sleepy I couldn't hold my eyes open. So I waked up Wells and Slater and set them on guard, one at each end of the store. Then I laid down on the counter to take a nap."

Coulter's low voice, the strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple, matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to Ellen Jorges. Her vague doubt of him had been created by his attitude toward her. Emotion dominated her intelligence. The images, the scenes called up by Coulter's words, were as true as the gloom of the wild gulch and the loneliness soft and warm in the night solitude -- as true as the strange fact that she lay passive in the arm of a rustler.

"well, after a while I woke up," went on Coulter, clearing his throat. "It was gray dawn. All was as still as death.... and something sure was wrong. Wells and Slater had got to drinking again and now laid dead drunk or asleep. Anyways, when I kicked them they never moved. Then I heard a moan. It came from the room where your dad and uncle was. I went in. It was just light enough to see. Your uncle Jackson was laying on the floor -- cut half in two -- dead as a door nail.... Your dad lay on the bed. He was alive, breathing his last.... He says, 'That half-breed Isbel -- knifed us -- while we slept!' ... The winder shutter was open. I seen where Gene Isbel had come in and gone out. I seen his moccasin tracks in the dirt outside and I seen where he'd stepped in Jackson's blood and tracked it to the winder. you sure can see them bloody tracks yourself, if you go back to Greaves's store.... Your dad was going fast.... He said, 'Coulter -- take care of Ellen,' and I reckon he meant a lot by that. He kept saying, 'My God! if I'd only seen Jesse Isbel before it was too late!' and then he raved a little, whispering out of his head.... and after that he died.... I woke up the men, and about sunup we carried your dad and uncle out of town and buried them.... and them Isbels shot at us while we were burying our dead! That's where Tad got his hurt.... Then we hit the trail for Jorges's ranch.... And now, Ellen, that's all my story. Your dad was ready to bury the hatchet with his old enemy. and that Nez Perce Gene Isbel, like the sneaking savage he is, murdered your uncle and your dad.... Cut him up horrible -- made him suffer tortures of hell -- all for Isbel revenge!"

When Coulter's husky voice ceased Ellen whispered through lips as cold and still as ice, "Let me go ... leave me -- here -- alone!"

"Why, sure! I reckon I understand," replied Coulter. "I hated to tell you. But you had to hear the truth about that half-breed.... I'll carry your pack in the cabin and unroll your blankets."

Releasing her, Coulter strode off in the gloom, bouncing high on his feet as if he had just won a gun fight. Behind him and like a dead weight, Ellen began to slide until she slipped down full length beside the log. And then she lay in the cool, damp shadow, inert and lifeless so far as outward physical movement was concerned.

She saw nothing and felt nothing of the night, the wind, the cold, the falling dew. For the moment or hour she was crushed by despair, and seemed to see herself sinking down and down into a black, bottomless pit, into an abyss where murky tides of blood and furious gusts of passion contended between her body and her soul. She knew she was falling into the stormy blast of hell! In her despair she longed, she ached for death. Born of infidelity, cursed by a taint of evil blood, further cursed by higher instinct for good and happy life, dragged from one lonely and wild and sordid spot to another, never knowing love or peace or joy or home, left to the companionship of violent and vile men, driven by a strange fate to love with unquenchable and insupportable love a' half-breed, a savage, an Isbel, the hereditary enemy of her people, and at last the ruthless murderer of her father -- what in the name of God did she have left to live for?

Revenge! An eye for an eye! A life for a life! That was supposed to be so sweet, but she could not kill Gene Isbel, no matter what he had done. A woman's love could turn to hate, but not the love of Ellen Jorges. Gene Isbel could drag her by the hair in the dust, beat her, and make her a thing to loathe, and cut her mortally in his savage and implacable thirst for revenge -- but with her last gasp Ellen Jorges would whisper she loved him.

And oh! To think that she had lied to him, trying to kill his faith. It was that -- his strange faith in her purity -- which had won her love at last. Of all men, that he should be the one to recognize the truth of her, the womanhood yet unsullied -- how strange, how terrible, how overpowering! Yes, and how false, indeed, was she to the Jorgess! False as her mother had been to an Isbel! This agony and destruction of her soul was the bitter Dead Sea fruit -- the sins of her parents visited upon her head for 7 generations.

"I'll end it all before I'll marry that brute of a horse thief," she whispered to the night shadows that hovered over her. No coward was she -- no fear of pain or mangled flesh or death or the mysterious hereafter could ever stay her hand. It would be easy, it would be a last thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme self-proof of her love for Gene Isbel to kiss the Rim rock where his feet had trod and then fling herself down into the depths. She was the last Jorges. So the wronged Isbels would be avenged.

"But, if I did that, he would never know how much I love him-- never know – that I lied to him in order to kill his love for me!" she wailed to the night wind.

She was lost -- lost on earth and she would be lost to any hope of heaven if she married that horse thief. She had no right, neither to live nor to die. She was nothing but a little weed along the trail of life, trampled upon, squashed in the mud.

Ellen felt she was nothing but a single rotten thread in a tangled web of love and hate and revenge. And like a rotten thread she had snapped apart, broken for life. O God, O God!

Lower and lower she seemed to sink into the maelstrom. Was there no end to this gulf of despair? God was so far away. If Coulter had returned he would have found her spirit complacent, and her just a toy for his amusement. She knew herself to be a creature degraded, fit only for Coulter's vile embrace.

As the stars wheeled above her Ellen was certain that she should be thrust deeper into the mire – that she needed to be punished fittingly for her betrayal of a man's noble love and for denying her own womanhood – All she wanted was to be made an end of, to dissolve body, mind, and soul into nothing.

But Coulter did not return.



The wind went walking and mourned all night. The owls hooted the first morning star in, the leaves rustled with waking life, the insects whispered their melancholy, alien night song, the camp-fire flickered and faded. The wild forestland seemed to have closed imponderably over Ellen. For all that she had wailed in her despair, all that she confessed in her abasement was true, and hard as life could be -- but her mind and spirit belonged to nature. If nature had not failed her, did that mean that God had failed her? The question was there -- the lonely land of tree and fern and flower and brook, full of wild birds and beasts, where the mossy rocks could speak and the solitude had listening ears, where she had always felt herself unutterably a part of creation. Thus a wavering spark of hope quivered through the blackness of her soul and gathered light with the coming of day.

The gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade, split asunder as the sun rose, to show a glimpse of the last radiant star, piercingly white, cold, pure, a steadfast eye of the universe, beyond all understanding and illimitable with its meaning of the past knit together the present and the future. Ellen watched the star until it disappeared in the black sky that was sighing into blue.

“What does that star have to do with hell?” She might be crushed and destroyed by life, but was there not something beyond? Just to be born, just to suffer, just to die -- could that be all there is in the God of Love's universe?

Despair would not loose its hold on Ellen, the strife and pang of her breast did not subside. But with the long hours and the strange closing in of the forest around her and the fleeting glimpse of that wonderful star, with a subtle divination of the meaning of her beating heart and throbbing mind, and, lastly, with a voice thundering at her conscience that a man's faith in a woman must not be greater, nobler, than her faith in God and eternity -- with these thoughts she finally checked the dark flight of her soul toward destruction. She rolled over on her side where the morning sun glistened gold on her cheeks. “I will live,” she said.

Ellen dragged herself into the cabin and crept under her blankets, there to sleep the sleep of exhaustion. When she awoke the slanting shadows on the cabin wall told her the hour appeared to be late afternoon. Sun and sky shone through the sunken and decayed roof of the old cabin. Her uncle, Tad Jorges, lay upon a blanket bed upheld by a crude couch of boughs. The light fell upon his face, pale, lined, cast in a still mold of suffering. He was not dead, for she heard his respiration.

“I will live,” she said. “I will use my life to be a force for good. And I will start by praying for my Uncle Tad.”

The floor underneath Ellen's blankets was bare clay. She and Jorges were alone in this cabin. She rolled over and came to a kneeling position beside him. “Oh Lord, God of the bright and evening star, I pray thee for help with my Uncle Tad, even Tad Jorges. He has lived this long without whining, murmuring or cursing his fate. O Lord, My God, give him strength to recover, or take his hand and bring him back home to thee. Amen.”

Tad's breathing had halted and held as she prayed, as if he were listening in wonder, even awe that someone would pray for his recovery.

Ellen rose to her feet and examined the cabin's interior. It contained nothing besides their two beds and a rank growth of weeds along the decayed lower logs. Half of the cabin had a rude ceiling of rough-hewn boards which formed a kind of loft.

This attic extended through to the adjoining cabin, forming the ceiling of the porch-like space between the two structures. There was no partition. A ladder of two aspen saplings, pegged to the logs, and with braces between for steps, led up to the attic.

Ellen smelled wood smoke and the odor of frying meat, and she heard the voices of men. She started to go out, then she paused and looked back at Tad Jorges. His face looked to be burning up. “It's all very well to pray for someone and ask for divine help in their behalf, but far better it is to be of help mine own self to the one I have prayed for.”

That thought gave her strength. The only thing she thought might help Tad was a cool, soothing bath. No thoughts came to suggest anything better so Ellen began searching for a container for water. When she looked out Slater and Summers had joined their party -- That was an addition that might have strengthened the camp for defense, but did not lend anything favorable to her own situation. If anything it made her situation much worse.

Water, water, where was their source of water? There was an old house pump beyond the camp fire. Ellen picked up a badly dented pitcher and angled her path to avoid the fire and those gathered around it. Summers had always appeared the one best to avoid.

Coulter espied her and called her to "Come and feed your pale face." His comrades laughed, not loudly, but guardedly, as if noise was something to avoid when Coulter was talking to his woman. Nevertheless, their noise awoke Tad Jorges behind her. He began to toss and moan on the bed. Ellen hurried to get the water pumped. Without glancing at anyone she hurried back to the cabin.

Ellen hurried to Tad's side and realized at once that he was in a critical condition. Every time he tossed he opened a wound in his right breast, rather high up. For all she could see, nothing had been done for him except the binding of a scarf round his neck and under his arm. This scant bandage had worked loose. Going to the door, she called out:

When Coulter entered the tent, Ellen was rummaging in her pack for some clothing or towel that she could use for bandages. "Weren't any of you decent enough to look after my uncle?" she queried.

"Huh! well, what the hell!" rejoined Coulter. "We sure did all we could. I reckon you think it wasn't a tough job to pack him up the Rim. He was done for then and I said so."

"I'll do all I can for him," said Ellen.

"sure. Go ahead. When I get plugged or knifed by that half-breed I sure hope you'll be round to nurse me."

"you seem to be pretty sure of your fate, Coulter."

"sure as hell!" he bit out, darkly. "Summers saw Isbel and his gang trailing us to the Jorges ranch."

"Are you going to stay here -- and wait for them?"

"sure I've been quarreling with the boys out there over that very question. I'm for leaving the country. But Queen, the damn gun fighter, is dead set to kill that cowman, Blue, who swore he was King Fisher, the old Texas outlaw. None but Queen are spoiling for another fight. All the same they won't leave Tad Jorges here alone."

Then Coulter leaned in at the door and whispered: "Ellen, I can't boss this outfit. So let's you and me shake them. I've got your dad's gold. Let's ride off to-night and shake this country. You think about it and I'll be back.”

Coulter, muttering under his breath, left the door and returned to his comrades. Ellen had received yet another intimation of his base cowardice; and his mention of her father's gold started a train of thought that persisted in spite of her efforts to put all her mind to attending her uncle. He grew conscious enough to recognize her working over him, and thanked her with a look that touched Ellen deeply. That spot of gratitude changed the direction of her mind. His suffering and imminent death, which she was able to alleviate and retard somewhat, worked upon her pity and compassion so that she forgot her own plight. Half the night she was tending him, cooling his fever, holding him quiet. Well she realized that but for her ministrations he would have been all too miserable to go on living. She felt blessed to have cooled his fever down. At length he went to sleep. Ellen pulled his boots off and washed his feet.

Then she rose up and studied the wound in his chest. It was sucking a little bit of air with each breath that Tad took. “Oh Lord, what can I do about this hole?”

She had spoken aloud, and then she glanced around as if expecting an answer to appear. Nothing seemed to be at hand inside the cabin so she looked beyond its borders and glimpsed a spider that was starting to weave a web. The strands of a spider's web are tougher than steel. She would use that!

That seemed to be the answer for her, but not this spider; she needed a larger web. Therefore, she went looking for a larger web.

She began wandering from tree to tree and soon felt the eyes of everyone in camp trailing her form. Coulter came to his feet and came near her. “What is the matter with you?”

“I'm looking for a spider,” she told him.

Coulter became worried immediately. “A spider? What the hell are you going to do with a spider?”

“Don't you cuss around me Coulter.” Her voice was soft and matter-of-fact but it made Coulter bite his tongue and trail after her, saying nothing more.

They hadn't gone far when Ellen spotted a spider's web wrapped around a sickly pine limb and about 20 feet high. She was irritated that she hadn't brought her rifle. She pointed the web out to Coulter. “Shoot that limb down for me,” she told him.

He looked dubiously at the limb, then back at Ellen. “Sure, shoot it down,” he said. “Who can shoot a tiny limb down of that size?”

“Gene Isbel could do it,” she said. “Since you have stolen his woman I figured you thought you were as good as he is.”

“Oh yeah?” Coulter demanded angrily. He pulled leather and fired three rounds up at the limb holding the spider web. Ellen was still peering up at the spider web when the rest of the rustlers crowded around them. “What's up?”

“Coulter was going to show me how easy it is to shoot down that limb with a spider web on it. He missed three times and now he's going to get angry about it.”

“I am not getting angry about it,” Coulter roared, and everybody laughed.

Even Ellen smiled a tiny smile. “How about you, Queen? Can you do it?”

Queen glanced at the limb, and pulled his revolver out slowly. “Slow and easy does the trick,” he said. He chuckled a little bit, then fired one shot. The limb twitched violently then bent straight down to earth.”

“That's some great shooting, Queen. You're just a little bit off though. Gene Isbel could do better than that.”

“What does he have to do with it?” Queen asked, his voice was soft as two silks rubbing together and Ellen wondered if that was how he got his name.

“Gene Isbel is my man. Since Coulter has stolen me away from him I supposed all of you were trying to say you were as good as he is. He'll be coming after me pretty quick, as soon as he finds out yawl stole me.“

All the men turned and looked at Coulter. They didn't say anything but a coward can't read minds very well, and Coulter began to fret. “Stole you? I didn't steal you. You begged me to protect you, Ain't that right, boys?”

His witnesses failed to speak up. He had to do something or he knew he would go to pieces right in front of these men. He cleared leather and shot at the limb once more. It was probably an accident, but the limb that held the boil of spider web came tumbling down. Coulter glanced at Queen and nodded. “There.” Then he glanced at Ellen, and Coulter shivered in his boots and glanced away.

“Now I need some loose clay, there should be lots of it around here with the cabin floor being made of it.” She glanced from one of them to another. When she started her gaze moving back again the rustlers turned away from her and scattered out to hunt for loose clay.”

In just a few minutes Summers called out. “Miss Ellen, I think I've found some.”

Ellen laid down her spider limb and studied what he had found. “Summers, this is really high quality clay. Thank you.” Summers glowed as if he'd found the golden fleece. Ellen turned about and headed back for the cabin. There she pulled her treasures in with her and shut the door. Tad Jorges was burning up with fever again. She washed his face and then washed his feet, but she decided not to turn him over on his side just yet.

With a reprieve coming Ellen pulled out tufts of web and washed them in soapy water then laid them out to dry. Then she went for clean water to moisten the clay.

“How is Tad doing, Miss Ellen?” asked Queen.

Ellen stopped dead still and turned towards the gun man. “Tad is doing just fine, sir, thanks to your sharp shooting. Just fine.” She smiled briefly, then went on about the business of getting the water.

When she came back to the cabin she noted that the prepared tufts of spider web were dry. She began kneading the clay with water until it was creamy smooth. Once more she studied the wound and heard that rasping, sucking sound that should have spelled death long ago.

She kneeled beside the injured man. “O Lord, I don't know what else to do, so I ask thee to bless what I am doing. Amen.

Ellen began intertwining the tufts of web across the open wound. When it looked strong enough she began to form a clay patch over it and sealed it slick on Tad Jorges's chest.

Sitting beside the patient in the lonely, silent darkness of that late hour, she received again the intimation of nature's eternal round. Those vague and nameless stirrings of her innermost being, those whisperings out of the night and the forest and the sky. Something great would not let go of her soul. She began to sing softly and stopped suddenly to ponder the words she sand for they came from a song that had never been written before. Never mind though, she pulled together the words and began to sing once more. The song was beautiful. “I walk in the moonlight, down dark beauty's path. Her eyes are gleaming and her arms are seeming to draw me on, down beauty's path.”

“Ellen? Ellen?” called the voice of Tad Jorges. “I say, what's the name of that song?”

“I don't rightly know that it has a name, Uncle Tad,” she raised up and told him. “It sure sounds like something I've heard before, but I can't place it anywhere back to where I was a youngun.”

Tad Jorges gulped in some more air and grinned because it didn't hurt. Then he said.. “It's so beautiful, it should have a name.”

Ellen hummed the tune again and said, “ I say the name of it must be Down Dark Beauty's Path. What do you think?”

“Maybe just Dark Beauty's Path,” he replied.

“That's what we'll name it then,” said Ellen. She rolled to her feet and came over to him. She felt of his forehead. “Looks as if your fever has broke, sure. Are you up to eating a little dab?”

“I could eat a pot full of little dabs,” he replied. When Ellen laughed he grinned weakly and ducked his head. “Reckon I owe my life to you, little woman.”

Ellen hurried out after some of the deer meat stew. In an old tin cup she ladled up some of the broth. Coulter raised up from a shadow and said, “Is he getting some better.”

“Oh, much better,” she told him happily. “He can talk quite a bit now.”

"well, are you going away with me?" he demanded in a fierce whisper.

"No. I'll stick by my uncle," she replied. “He'll be walking soon and able to shoot down his own spider webs.”

That report of hers seemed to throw a dangerous kink in Coulter's will. Ellen was keen to see that Coulter and the others were at a last stand and the gang was disintegrating under the severe strain. Nerve and courage of the open and the wild they possessed, but only in a limited degree. Coulter seemed obsessed by his desire to possess her, and though Ellen did not yet fear him, she realized she would have to be real careful of falling into his path.

The next morning he waylaid her as she went to a nearby spring in searching for better tasting water, and with a lunge like that of a great burly bear he had plunged out in front of her and tried to embrace her. But Ellen had been too quick. She turned her body sideways to him, then swung the heavy iron pot at a place that guaranteed his thoughts would turn to other paths for a few days. “You really do have to keep your hands off of me, Mr. Coulter. If you don't, Gene Isbel will be doing some serious whittling on you when he gets here.”

“He'll never find this place, sure,” Coulter glared up at her. “Can't nobody follow a trail the way we doubled back and forth.”

“Nobody? Why, you stupid thing, I was looking at the tracks yawl left in front of me and I could have followed them to here by myself. I'm sure you saw all the places where my horse slewed down on his haunches? No better trail blaze was ever made. Gene Isbel will be here soon, and you can count on it. Move aside, Sir.”

Coulter didn't seem to know what to make of her, so he backed out of her way and peered after her.

When Ellen reached the edge of the creek she set her pot down and glanced back along her trail. Coulter had gone. Ellen followed the creek down a ways and found a shallow pool. Here she cleaned herself from head to toe before returning back to her pot. She filled it with pure, clean water and hurried back up the trail to be with her Uncle as he recuperated.

When Ellen walked into the cabin, Coulter jerked back from the bed. Tad Jorges's pillow was still in his hands and her Uncle was dead! She began screaming. Coulter leaped to her side and tried to stifle her screams.

Queen, Summers and another man came running. Coulter was still wrestling with Ellen when they drew up. He grinned at them.. “I'm just giving my woman a little what for,” he said.

Ellen was still in his grasp but she lunged closer to him and butted her head into his lips. They smashed flat and split wide open with blood going all over him. She broke away and swung the pot at him, striking his ribs. When Coulter went down Ellen pointed inside the cabin. “He just now killed Tad Jorges because Tad was starting to talk. And, and he stole all of my father's gold from me. He won't give it back to me, neither.”

“Gold?” Queen asked.

“I was going to share it with you,” Coulter explained hurriedly.

“Well, I think you'd better let Miss Ellen have her gold back, said Queen. Summers nodded eagerly.

With the gold in her hands Ellen turned to Queen and the others. “Why did he have to kill Uncle Tad? He was just starting to talk again, real good.”

“I reckon that's your answer,” said Summers. “He was just starting to talk again. I remember, back on the trail, he gave Tad a good cussing and told him he'd better not do no talking. I don't know what about.”

Everyone glanced at each other, then studied Coulter. The man denied nothing, just rushed away. Ellen began thinking, wondering more like, and she came up with nothing. Why would Coulter kill a man to keep him from talking? What could Tad Jorges have talked about that was worth his life?

It made no sense to her. The next day word went through the bandit camp that there were strange hoof prints at the mouth of the canyon. “I seen where he laid, and he was looking right down at us yesterday, must have seen everything we were doing because he stayed there for several hours.”

Ellen thought this was good news for her. But then the next day she was on her way to the creek and Coulter leaped out from a tree and bowled her over. He grabbed her up and and drew her off her feet. Ellen struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived her of her breath and robbed her of her strength. Without apparent effort Coulter carried her off into the wood, striding rapidly away from the cabins into the border of spruce trees at the foot of the canyon well.

"Coulter – Put me down, NOW!" she ordered him. “What kind of a fool are you?”

"By God! I don't know," he replied, with strong, vibrant passion. "I was a fool not to carry you off to start with. But I waited. I was hoping you'd love me! ... and now that Isbel gang has corralled us and I don't have no more time. Summers seen the half-breed up on the rocks last night, just sitting there, staring down at us. He's wanting his horses back, seems like. And Springer, he seen the rest of them sneaking around. I run back after your horse and you."

Coulter suddenly set her down upon her feet. "Stand still," he ordered. Ellen saw Black Jack saddled, with pack and blanket, tied there in the shade of a spruce. With swift hands Coulter untied him and mounted him, scarcely moving his piercing gaze from Ellen. He reached out to grasp her. "Up with you! ...”

Ellen dashed away from him, down the steep wall of the creek and then down the creek. She paused only once, so she could scream. “Gene, Gene.” But her voice couldn't have carried far. Then she saw an overhang in a curve of the creek and dived under it, leaving nothing but her nose sticking out of the water. She heard the sound of a heavy horse walk past her hiding place and quit breathing. “O Lord, God of the evening's beauty trail, savest thou me!”

The horse walked on. Then she heard it stop. Why would it stop? Cautiously she drew her head out of the water and listened. She heard nothing. Not one squirrel in the whole forest was chittering. Then she heard a voice calling.

"Here we are, Coulter!". It was Queen's shrill voice.

Ellen heard their stealthy steps, and she felt Coulter sheer from one side or the other. They were proceeding cautiously, fearful of the men at their rear, but not wholly trusting to the fore either.

"Reckon we'd better go slow and look before we leap," said one whose voice Ellen recognized as Springer's.

"sure. That open slope ain't to my liking, with our Nez PerSay friend prowling round," drawled Coulter.

Another of the rustlers laughed. "Well doggone it, can't he twinkle through the forest? I had four shots at him. He's harder to hit than a turkey running crossways."

This facetious speaker was the evil-visaged, sardonic Summers. He carried two rifles and wore two belts of cartridges.

Ellen had begun to recover wits and strength, yet she still felt shaky from her run. She observed that the gang's position then was on the edge of a well-wooded slope from which she could see the grassy canyon floor below. They were on a level bench, projecting out from the main canyon well that loomed gray and rugged and pine fringed. Summers and Cotter and Springer gave careful attention to all points of the compass, especially in the direction from which they had come. They evidently anticipated being trailed or circled or headed off, but did not manifest much concern. Summers lit a cigarette; Springer wiped his face with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt, which appeared to be half empty.

Coulter stretched his long neck like a vulture and peered down the slope and through the aisles of the forest up toward the canyon rim. "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 Summers.

"Uh Huh! well, I reckon they ain't trailing us yet," replied Coulter. "We gave them a shade better 'n they sent us."

"Short and sweet!" ejaculated Springer, and he removed his black sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger through a bullet hole in the crown. "that's how close I come to cashing in my chips. I was lying behind a log, listening and watching, and when I stuck my head up a little -- zam! Somebody made my bonnet leak."

"Where's Queen?" asked Coulter.

"He was with me fust off," replied Summers. "and then when the shooting slacked -- after I'd plugged that big, red-faced, white-haired pal of Isbel's -- "

"Reckon that was Blanchard," interrupted Springer.

"Queen -- he got tired laying low," went on Summers. "He wanted action. I heard him chewing to himself, and when I asked him what was eating him, he up and growled he was going to quit this Injun fighting. and he slipped off in the woods."

"well, that's the gun fighter of it," declared Coulter, wagging his head, "Ever since that cowman, Blue, braced us and said he was King Fisher, why Queen has been sulkier and sulkier. He can't help it. He'll do the same trick as Blue tried. and sure he'll get his everlasting. But he's from the Texas breed all right."

"So, do you reckon Blue really is King Fisher?" queried Summers.

"Naw!" ejaculated Coulter, with downward sweep of his hand. "Many a would-be gun slinger has borrowed Fisher's name. But Fisher is dead these many years."

"Uh Huh! well, maybe, but don't you fergit it -- that Blue was no would-be," declared Summers. "He was the genuine article."

"I should smile!" affirmed Springer.

The subject nettled Coulter, and he dismissed it with another forcible gesture and a counter question.

"How many left in that Isbel outfit?"

"No telling. There sure was enough of them," replied Summers. "Anyhow, the woods was full of flying bullets.... Springer, did you account for any of them?"

"Nope -- not that 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 lying beside Summers."

"Wasn't that a queer way for a man to act?" broke in Summers. "A bullet hit Slater, cut him down the back as he was lying flat. Reckon it wasn't bad. But it hurt him so that he jumped right up and staggered around. He made a target big as a tree. and maybe them Isbels didn't riddle him!"

"That was when I got my crack at Bill Isbel," declared Coulter, with grim satisfaction. "When they shot my horse out from under me I had Ellen to think of and couldn't get my rifle. sure had to run, as you seen. well, as I only had my six-shooter, there was nothing for me to do but lay low and listen to the sping of lead. Wells was standing up behind a tree about thirty yards off. He got plugged, and falling over he began to crawl my way, still holding to his rifle. I crawled along the log to meet him. But he dropped about half-way. I went on and took his rifle and belt. When I peeped out from behind a spruce bush then I seen Bill Isbel. He was shooting fast, and all of them was shooting fast. That war, when they had the open shot at Slater.... well, I bored Bill Isbel right through his middle. He dropped his rifle and, all bent double, he fooled around in a circle till he flopped over the Rim. I reckon he's laying right up there somewhere below that dead spruce. I'd sure like to see him."

"well, you'd be as crazy as Queen if you tried that," declared Summers. "We're not out of the woods yet."

"I reckon not," replied Coulter. "and I've lost my horse. Where'd you leave yours?"

"They're down the canyon, below that willow brake. and saddled and none of them tied. Reckon we'll have to look them up before dark."

"Coulter, what 're we going to do?" demanded Springer.

"Wait here a while -- then cross the canyon and work round up under the bluff, back to the cabin."

"and then what?" queried Summers, doubtfully eying Coulter.

"We've got to eat -- we've got to have blankets," rejoined Coulter, testily. "and I reckon we can hide there and stand a better show in a fight than running for it in the woods."

"well, I'm giving you a hunch that it looked like you was running for it," retorted Summers.

"Yes, and packing the girl," added Springer. "Looked funny to me."

Both rustlers eyed Coulter 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.

"sure that's a big lofer," declared Summers. "Reckon he scented us."

"There he goes along the Rim," observed Coulter. "He doesn't act one bit leery. Looks like a good sign to me. maybe the Isbels have gone the other way."

"Looks like a bad sign to me," rejoined Springer, gloomily.

"and why?" demanded Coulter.

"I seen that animal. Fust time I reckoned it was a lofer. Second time it was right near them Isbels. and I'm damned now if I don't believe it's that half-lofor sheep dog of Jesse Isbel's."

"well, what if it is?"

"Ha! ... sure we needn't worry about hiding out," replied Springer, sententiously. "With that dog Gene Isbel could trail a grasshopper."

"The hell you say!" muttered Coulter. 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. Summers slipped off into the brush, soon to return, with intent look of importance.

"I heard something," he whispered, jerking his thumb backward. "Rolling gravel -- cracking of twigs. No deer! ... Reckon it'd be a good idea for us to slip round acrost this bench."

"well, you boys go, and I'll watch from here," returned Coulter.

"Not much," said Summers, while Springer leered knowingly.

Coulter became incensed, but he did not give way to it. He possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts and silently joined his comrades. Together they noiselessly stole into the brush.

Ellen's 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 some one to his aid. Ellen grew convinced that the dog was near where Coulter 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. But calm consideration now convinced her that she could hardly be in a worse plight in the hands of the Isbels than if she was found by Coulter again. So she climbed out of the creek and 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 here?"

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 the way he'd come.

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 -- Jorges's -- girl," he said, in faint voice of surprise.

"Yes, I'm Ellen Jorges," she replied. "and are you Bill Isbel?"

"All that's left of me. But I'm thanking God somebody come -- even a Jorges."

Ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his abdomen. A heavy bullet had indeed, as Coulter had avowed, torn clear through the side of his belly. 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. "you've not long to live. I can't help you. God knows I'd do so if I could."

"All over!" he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond her. "I reckon -- I'm glad it's over.... But you can -- do something for or me. Will you?"

"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 something -- on my conscience," he whispered.

The woman spirit, sensitive in Ellen, understood and pitied him then.

"Yes," she encouraged him.

"I stole some of my own cattle -- and I made deals -- with Greaves so I could say they'd been stolen. I thought I was going to lose them anyway .... Well, the money's buried in the hen house in a tin can. -- Tell my wife, and tell my brother Gene – I want them to know."

"I'll try -- to tell him," Ellen whispered, to her own great amazement.

“God! how my Dad hated Jorges! Jorges, yes, who was -- your father.... well, they're even now."

"How -- so?" faltered Ellen.

"Your father killed my dad.... At the last -- dad wanted to -- save us. He sent word -- he'd meet Jorges -- face to face -- and let that end the feud. They met out in the road.... But someone shot dad down -- with a rifle -- and then your father finished him off."

"and then," Ellen added, with unconscious mocking bitterness, "Your brother murdered my dad!"

"What!" whispered Bill Isbel. "sure you've got -- it wrong. I reckon Gene -- could have killed -- your father.. many times.. But he didn't. Passing strange, we all thought."

"Ah! ... Then, who did kill my father?" Ellen burst out, and her voice rang like great hammers at her ears.

"It was Blue. He went in the store -- alone -- he braced the whole gang alone. Bluffed them -- taunted them -- told them he was King Fisher.... Then he killed -- your dad -- and Jackson Jorges.... Gene was out -- back of the store. We were out -- front. There was shooting. Chamberlain was hit. Then Blue ran out – he was bad hurt.... -- died in Meeker's yard."

"and so Gene Isbel has not killed a Jorges!" Ellen asked in strange, deep voice.

"No," replied Isbel, earnestly. "I reckon this feud -- was hardest on Gene. He never lived here.... and my sister Ann said -- he got sweet on you.... Now tell me, did he?"

Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen's eyes, and her head sank low and lower.

"Yes -- he loved me," she murmured, tremulously. She forced the tears out of her eyes and raised her hand to touch Bill's cheek. “And I love him with all my heart and soul. Even when Coulter told me that Gene had murdered my father and brother in cold blood, I couldn't quit loving him.

"Uh Huh! well, that accounts for a lot of things," replied Isbel, wonderingly. "Too bad! ... It might have been.... The most terrible words a man will ever hear; It might have been. I guess a man always sees -- differently when -- he's dying.... If I had -- my life -- to live over again! ... My poor kids -- deserted in their babyhood -- ruined for life! All for nothing.... 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 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 and moved out of her way. Then with all the flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to bathe Bill's face and allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words had changed her frailty to strength, her hate into love, and, the gloomy hell of despair melted into something unutterably exhilarating.

There was a crunch of gravel behind her and Ellen jerked her head around.

Gene Isbel, glanced at her, then kneeled down on Bill's other side. “How you holding out, brother?”

“Gone for sure,” said Bill. His chin nodded towards his belly. “Fading in and out fast.”

Gene pulled the shirt back, and gazed down into the bullet hole. “It ain't that bad, Bill. I've got an Indian way of fixing you right up, if you're game to try it.”

“Anything,” Bill declared. “I want to live. I want to see my kids grow up strong and tall and honest. I want to see your kids grow up, too. This little heifer is plumb sweet on you, she said."

Ellen was still kneeling at Bill's head, bathing his face and neck. She didn't dare look up until she felt Gene's hand touch her shoulder. Slowly she rose to her full height and collapsed against him. “I've been such a fool.”

Gene kissed her lightly on the cheek then jerked his head up the slope. “I'm asking you to climb out so you won't see what I'm doing. Will you do that for me?”

Ellen nodded numbly and began climbing out of the bench. Surprisingly, the lofer followed her out.

Gene kneeled down beside his brother and pulled out his bowie. “Bill, “I'm going to do some cutting on you to open you up. Then I'm going to do something to you that I'd rather you didn't see. All right.”

Gritting his teeth, Bill nodded. “I'll close my eyes,” he promised.

Gene slashed the bowie across the bullet hole twice, peeling the hide back in an X. He pulled the skin back and stood up. If Bill had not passed out he might have thought he heard the sound of falling water.

Once again Gene kneeled beside his unconscious brother and pulled the pieces of flesh back into place, folding the flesh over the bullet hole. Next he tore Bill's shirt apart and made a thick, heavy pad over the wound. Then he cut strips out of his rawhide shirt and tied the pad down where it couldn't move.

He stood up and glanced up the wall for the easiest way out. It was then he heard Ellen's voice for it seemed to be deliberately loud.

"Damn you, Jim Coulter!" her voice burst out, furiously. "You are a cold-blooded Texan! you are a thieving rustler! you are a bare-faced liar! ... You lied about my father's death. And I know why. you stole my father's gold and now you're stealing my horse...."

Gene climbed out of the wall and gazed upon the scene before him. Ellen saw him and began circling around so that Coulter had to keep turning to face her until his back was open towards Gene. "and now you want to steal me from Gene Isbel, too. Jim Coulter! ... I AM too good for you -- so help me God, you and all your rottenness can't drag me down to the slimy mud you want to bury your head in. I will not go with you and I will not be any part of your thieving, back-stabbing gang!

Coulter reached out with his rifle, his finger was on the trigger and visibly tightening. “You ARE going with me, Ellen. One way or another. Grab hold if you don't want me to shoot the living daylights out of you. Now, Come up here with me so we can get out of here. Ellen grabbed the rifle barrel as if to climb into the saddle behind Coulter. At the last second she fell backwards, twisting her body against the rifle barrel so that it was torn from Coulter's grasp.

“Why you dirty hussy,” Coulter screamed at her. Stay here and rot to hell for all I care.” He touched spurs to his mount just as Gene landed behind him on the saddle gear. Gene's bowie slid into Coulter's back, but the leap forward of Coulter's horse spilled Gene over backwards and he wasn't sure any damage had been done to Coulter. The breath had been knocked out of him. He heard a shot ring out, then nothing.

When Gene finally struggled to his feet Ellen was standing over the body of Jim Coulter. Seeing him she dropped the rifle and turned to face him. “I had to. He was stealing my horse.”

Then she fled straight into Gene's arms with her tears streaming. “Can you ever forgive me?” she cried.

"Child, there's nothing to forgive," he responded weakly, still struggling for his breath to even out. "nothing... Please, Ellen..."

"I lied to you!" she stammered. "I lied to you!"

"Ellen, listen -- darling." And the tender epithet brought her head up and her arms back close-pressed to him.

"Gene -- I love you -- love you -- I love you!" It seemed to her that if she quit saying it she would go on thinking those words forever. She struggled for her breath and her dark eyes burned up into his.

"Ellen, Bill is still alive, if we can get him close to a fire pretty quick I can stitch him back together again with horse hair and a devil's claw" he said. "But first, I want to hold you for just a second – and -- ..."

“And?” she asked, rearing back to see him through eyes too blurry.

“And I want to marry you just as soon as we get home.”

Ellen laughed. “That's a lot better offer than the last three proposals I've had,” she admitted.



The end
 

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The Author:  Lin Stone has been writing professionally since 1990.

This is his first book of fiction.  You can find many of his other products available on http://www.talewins.com/StoneSoup.htm

You might well be asking, what is a hybrid book? A hybrid book takes a book in the public domain, and TO THE LAST MAN is a good example because it was published in 1921, and builds a new book over the foundation of that original. Major changes are made to the plot, characters, location and outcome.

In this manner, a new book can be written, by a good rewriter at least, in 1/3 the time. It's kind of like the edge writers have when turning out a new story in a television series. Everything is already set up for them and all they have to do is drop the new story in place.

ORIGINAL FOREWORD

Charles Dickens began his career by using bits and pieces from his predecessors; so too most writers – willingly, or unwittingly forge new permutations from the things they have read or learned from their past; from their teachers and from their friends. Helen Keller's first work was proven, to her complete consternation, to have been taken almost whole cloth from a story she had been exposed to in her childhood. No writer seems to be immune from this pattern any more than our scientists -- or our farmers – produce any new disciplines entirely from pure, unadulterated mental activity of their own devisings.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that his most renowned creation sprang from picking the brain of Edgar Alan Poe, one of his predecessors. Even though Sherlock Holmes is a uniquely polished and precious work, he owes his very existence to previous works of art produced from the mind of Poe. Agatha Christie learned her craft from both these masters and from those others that also learned their craft from their predecessors. The more great writers mankind produces the more permutations our literary field will embroider.

Alexandre Dumas PAID other writers to research and provide him with stories he could then do his form of polishing and plot enhancements.  What they started, he finished with his master's skill.In this way he was able to treble his output, and classics like The Three Musketeers are still selling to this day.  

Most of our movies are derived works of art; legions of writers have loyally protested the changes made to their work by Hollywood. But, when any work of art is poured into another discipline, changes can and must be made, depending on the rights endowed and the purpose of the new producer.

The book TO THE LAST MAN. was published in 1921 and therefore it is in the public domain. It can be legally used by anyone, for any purpose. For years, Lin Stone has sustained himself by rewriting materials spilling hot from the minds of others, usually executives hard pressed for time to do the polishing they would like. These skills are employed in this work.

In complete honesty and in some like manner THE SHEEP WAR has been derived by Lin Stone from Zane Grey's classic book, TO THE LAST MAN.

THE SHEEP WAR is written for modern readers of romance novels that may not ever have read a Zane Grey western in their life. It is not written for Zane Grey aficionados, for the pedigreed purists of the world to enjoy, for historians or for English professors. The original work is a classic and is still widely available for these markets to enjoy.

It is not suggested or claimed that THE SHEEP WAR is better writing than TO THE LAST MAN, but only that THE SHEEP WAR is a distinctly different book serving a very different audience.

The primary function of any literary production is to entertain, enlighten and satisfy. To this end, major modernizing changes have been made to Zane Grey's original work. Consequently, names, now unfamiliar. have been altered, cowboy speech patterns and spellings have been eliminated or at least updated. Basic substitutions have been used in the plots, new channels and new characters have been produced, some small changes, some wide and extensive, and an assorted good many changes are indiscernible to the naked eye The result is a new book that combines and intertwines the best inspiration of the two authors, as if they had actually sat down side by side with the intent to produce a modern romance novel. With Lin Stone using a word processor, changes could be implemented quickly.  One and all, these changes constitute a new work, and therefore this production is not to be trifled with, or altered by any unhallowed hand.

ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED!

Of course, you may go to the original source of the story and do as you wish with that material. If you wish to produce your own work of art for the pedigreed purists of the world to enjoy, go ye to the source (If it is in the public domain) and begin as is stipulated by the Great Grecian Ghost of Homer.

Thank you.

Lin Stone

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