CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

 

GIFT OF
Don Holbert

 

UNDEACRADUATE LIBRARY
DATE DUE

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- Cornell University Library
PS 3513.R45T6 1921

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TO THE LAST MAN
———

By ZANE GREY

To the Last Man

The Mysterious Rider

The Man of the Forest
Tales of Fishes

The Desert of Wheat

The U. P. Trail

Wildfire

The Border Legion

The Rainbow Trail

The Lone Star Ranger
The Light of Western Stars
Desert Gold

The He.itage of the Desert
Riders of the Purple Sage
The Young Forester

The Young Pitcher

The Young Lion-Hunter
Ken Ward in the Jungle

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
Established 1817

 

 
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TO THE LAST MAN

A Novel by

ZANE GREY

Author of
“THH MYSTERIOUS RIDER’ “‘THE MAN OF THH FOREST”
“RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGB”! “THE U. P. TRAIL’? BTC,

Illustrations by
FRANK SPRADLING

 

URIS LIBRARY

FEB 23 1988

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
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TO THE LAST MAN

 

Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America

E-v
FOREWORD

Ir was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic
history of the great West I should at length come
to the story of a feud. For long I have steered clear of
this rock. But at last I have reached it and must go
over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring
events of pioneer days.

Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote
corners of the West without seeing the lives of people
still affected by a fighting past. How can the truth be
told about the pioneering of the West if the struggle,
the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done. How
can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times,
unless it be full of sensation? My long labors have been
devoted to making stories resemble the times they depict.
I have loved the West for its vastness, its contrast, its
beauty and color and life, for its wildness and violence,
and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great
men and women who died unknown and unsung.

In this materialistic age, this hard, practical, swift,
greedy age of realism, it seems there is no place for writers
of romance, no place for romance itself. For many years
all the events leading up to the great war were realistic,
and the war itself was horribly realistic, and the after-
math is likewise. Romance is only another name for
idealism; and I contend that life without ideals is not
worth living. Never in the history of the world were
ideals needed so terribly as now. Walter Scott wrote
romance; so did Victor Hugo; and likewise Kipling,

Vv
FOREWORD

Hawthorne, Stevenson. It was Stevenson, particularly,
who wielded a bludgeon against the realists.. People
live for the dream in their hearts. And I have yet to
know anyone who has not some secret dream, some
hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the
dusk, some painted window leading to the soul. How
strange indeed to find that the realists have ideals and
dreams! To read them one would think their lives
held nothing significant. But they love, they hope, they
dream, they sacrifice, they struggle on with that dream
in their hearts just the same as others. We all are dreamers,
if not in the heavy-lidded wasting of time, then in the
meaning of life that makes us work on.

It was Wordsworth who wrote, ‘‘The world is too
much with us’; and if I could give the secret of my ambi-
tion as a novelist in a few words it would be contained in
that quotation. My inspiration to write has always come
from nature. Character and action are subordinated to
setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make
people see how the world is too much with them. Getting
and spending they lay waste their powers, with never a
breath of the free and wonderful life of the open!

So I come back to the main point of this foreword, in
which I am trying to tell why and how I came to write the
story of a feud notorious in Arizona as the Pleasant Valley
War.

Some years ago Mr. Harry Adams, a cattleman of
Vermajo Park, New Mexico, told me he had been in the
Tonto Basin of Arizona and thought I might find in-
teresting material there concerning this Pleasant Valley
War. His version of the war between cattlemen and
sheepmen certainly determined me to look over the
ground. My old guide, Al Doyle of Flagstaff, had led
me over half of Arizona, but never down into that won-

vi
FOREWORD

derful wild and rugged basin between the Mogollon Mesa
and the Mazatzal Mountains. Doyle had long lived on
the frontier and his version of the Pleasant Valley War
differed markedly from that of Mr. Adams. I asked other
old timers about it, and their remarks further excited my
curiosity.

Once down there, Doyle and I found the wildest, most
rugged, roughest, and most remarkable country either of
us had visited; and the few inhabitants were like the
country. I went in ostensibly to hunt bear and lion and
turkey, but what I really was hunting for was the story
of that Pleasant Valley War. I engaged the services of
a bear hunter who had three strapping sons as reserved
and strange and aloof as he was. No wheel tracks of any
kind had ever come within miles of their cabin. I spent
two wonderful months hunting game and reveling in the
beauty and grandeur of that Rim Rock country, but I
came out knowing no more about the Pleasant Valley
War. These Texans and their few neighbors, likewise
from Texas, did not talk. But all I saw and felt only
inspired me the more. This trip was in the fall of 1918.

The next year I went again with the best horses, outfit,
and men the Doyles could provide. And this time I did
not ask any questions. But I rode horses—some of them
too wild for me—and packed a rifle many a hundred
miles, riding sometimes thirty and forty miles a day,
and I climbed in and out of the deep cafions, desperately
staying at the heels of one of those long-legged Texans.
I learned the life of those backwoodsmen, but I did not
get the story of the Pleasant Valley War. I had, however,
won the friendship of that hardy people.

In 1920 I went back with a still larger outfit, equipped
to stay as long asI liked. And this time, without my ask-

ing it, different natives of the Tonto came to tell me about
vii
FOREWORD

the Pleasant Valley War. No two of them agreed on
anything concerning it, except that only one of the active
participants survived the fighting. Whence comes my
title, To the Last Man. Thus I was swamped in a
mass of material out of which I could only flounder to
my own conclusion. Some of the stories told me are
singularly tempting to a novelist. But, though I believe
them myself, I cannot risk their improbability to those
who have no idea of the wildness of wild men at a wild
time. There really was a terrible and bloody feud, per-
haps the most deadly and least known in all the annals
of the West. I saw the ground, the cabins, the graves,
all so darkly suggestive of what must have happened.

I never learned the truth of the cause of the Pleasant
Valley War, or if I did hear it I had no means of recognizing
it. All the given causes were plausible and convincing.
Strange to state, there is still secrecy and reticence all over
the Tonto Basin as to the facts of this feud. Many
descendents of those killed are living there now. But no
one likes to talk about it. Assuredly many of the incidents
told me really occurred, as, for example, the terrible one
of the two women, in the face of relentless enemies, saving
the bodies of their dead husbands from being devoured
by wild hogs. Suffice it to say that this romance is true
to my conception of the war, and I base it upon
the setting I learned to know and love so well, upon
the strange passions of primitive people, and upon my in-
stinctive reaction to the facts and rumors that I gathered.

ZANE GREY.

AVALON, CALIFORNIA,
April, r92r.
TO THE LAST MAN

CHAPTER I

T the end of a dry, uphill ride over barren country

Jean Isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the

cedars where a little rocky cafion, green with willow and
cottonwood, promised water and grass.

His animals were tired, especially the pack mule that
had carried a heavy load; and with slow heave of relief
they knelt and rolled in the dust. Jean experienced some-
thing of relief himself as he threw off his chaps. He had
not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren
lands. Stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of
clear water that tinkled over the red stones, he drank
thirstily. The water was cool, but it had an acrid taste—
an alkali bite that he did not like. Not since he had
left Oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water; and
he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests
he had loved. This wild, endless Arizona land bade fair
to earn his hatred.

By the time he had leisurely completed his tasks twilight
had fallen and coyotes had begun their barking. Jean
listened to the yelps and to the moan of the cool wind
in the cedars with a sense of satisfaction that these lonely
sounds were familiar. This cedar. wood burned into a
pretty fire and the smell of its smoke was newly pleasant.

“Reckon maybe I’ll learn to like Arizona,” he mused,
IT
TO THE LAST MAN

half aloud. “But I’ve a hankerin’ for waterfalls an’
dark-green forests. Must be the Indian in me... . Any-
way, dad needs me bad, an’ I reckon I’m here for keeps.”

Jean threw some cedar branches on the fire, in the
light of which he opened his father’s letter, hoping by
repeated reading to grasp more of its strange portent.
It had been two months in reaching him, coming by
traveler, by stage and train, and then by boat, and
finally by stage again. Written in 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 writin’ was always bad, but I never saw it so
shaky,” said Jean, thinking aloud.

Grass VALLY, ARIZONA.

Son JEan,—Come home. Here is your home and here your
needed. When we left Oregon we all reckoned you would not
be long behind. But its years now. I am growing old, son,
and you was always my steadiest boy. Not that you ever
was so dam steady. Only your wildness seemed more for the
woods. You take after mother, and your brothers Bill
and Guy take after me. That is the red and white of it.
Your part Indian, Jean, and that Indian I reckon I am
going to need bad. I am rich in cattle and horses. And
my range here is the best I ever seen. Lately we have
been losing stock. But that is not all nor so bad. Sheepmen
have moved into the Tonto and are grazing down on Grass
Vally. Cattlemen and sheepmen can never bide in this coun-
try. We have bad times ahead. Reckon I have more reasons
to worry and need you, but you must wait to hear that by
word of mouth. Whatever your doing, chuck it and rustle
for Grass Vally so to make here by spring. I am asking you to
take pains to pack in some guns and a lot of shells. And hide
them in your outfit. If you meet anyone when your coming
down into the Tonto, listen more than you talk. And last, son,
dont let anything keep you in Oregon. Reckon you have a
sweetheart, and if so fetch her along. With love from your dad,

Gaston IsBEL.
2
TO THE LAST MAN

Jean pondered over this letter. Judged by memory of
his father, who had always been self-sufficient, it had been
a surprise and somewhat of a shock. Weeks of travel
and reflection had not helped him to grasp the meaning
between the lines.

“Yes, dad’s growin’ old,” mused Jean, feeling a warmth
and a sadness stir in him. ‘He must be ’way over sixty.
But he never’ looked old. . . . So he’s rich now an’ losin’
stock, an’ goin’ to be sheeped off his range. Dad could
stand a lot of rustlin’, but not much from sheepmen.”’

The softness that stirred in Jean merged into a cold,
thoughtful earnestness which had followed every perusal
of his father’s letter. 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, opposed to his careless, free, and dreamy nature. No
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 a retreating
of the self that was tranquil and happy and a dominating
of this unknown somber self, with its menacing possi-
bilities. Yet despite a nameless regret and a loyalty to
Oregon, when he lay in his blankets he had to confess a
keen interest in his adventurous future, a keen enjoyment
of this stark, wild Arizona. It appeared to be a different
sky stretching in dark, star-spangled dome over him—
closer, vaster, bluer. The strong fragrance of sage and
cedar floated over him with the camp-fire smoke, and all
seemed drowsily to subdue his thoughts.

At dawn he rolled out of his blankets and, pulling on his
boots, began the day with a zest for the work that must

3
TO THE LAST MAN

bring closer his calling future. 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 re-
freshed by the grass and water of the little cafion. Jean
mounted 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.
It led, according to the meager information obtainable
at the last settlement, directly to what was called the
Rim, and from there Grass Valley could be seen down in
the Basin. The ascent of the ground was so gradual that
only in long, open stretches could it be seen. But the
nature of the vegetation showed Jean how he was climbing.
Scant, low, scraggy cedars gave place to more numerous,
darker, greener, bushier ones, and these to high, full-
foliaged, green-berried trees. Sage and grass in the open
flats grew more luxuriously. Then came the pifions, and
presently among them the checker-barked junipers. Jean
hailed the first pine tree with a hearty slap on the brown,
rugged bark. It was a small dwarf pine struggling to live.
The next one was larger, and after that came several,
and beyond them pines stood up everywhere above the
lower trees. Odor of pine nezdles mingled with the other
dry smells that made the wind pleasant to Jean. In an
hour from the first line of pines he had ridden beyond
the cedars and pifions into a slowly thickening and
deepening forest. Underbrush appeared scarce except in
ravines, and the ground in open patches held a bleached
grass. Jean’s eye roved for sight of squirrels, birds, deer,
or any moving creature. It appeared to be a dry, unin-
habited forest. About midday Jean halted at a pond

4
TO THE LAST MAN

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 must have been made by wild turkeys.

The trail divided at this pond. Jean had no idea which
branch he ought to take. ‘‘Reckon it doesn’t matter,”
he muttered, as he was about to remount. His horse was
standing with ears up, looking back along the trail.
Then Jean heard a clip-clop of trotting hoofs, and pres-
ently espied a horseman.

Jean made a pretense of tightening his saddle girths
while he peered over his horse at the approaching rider.
All men in this country were going to be of exceeding
interest to Jean Isbel. This man at a distance rode and
looked like all the Arizonians Jean had seen, 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 without a coat.

The rider came trotting up and halted several paces from
Jean.

“Hullo, stranger!’’ he said, gruffly.

“Howdy yourself!’ replied Jean. He felt an in-
stinctive importance in the meeting with theman. Never
had sharper eyes flashed over Jean and his outfit. He had
a dust-colored, sun-burned face, long, lean, and hard, a
huge sandy mustache that hid his mouth, and eyes of
piercing light intensity, Not very much hard Western
experience had passed by this man, yet he was not old,
measured by years. When he dismounted Jean saw he
was tall, even for an Arizonian.

“Seen your tracks back a ways,” he said, as he slipped
the bit to let his horse drink. ‘‘Where bound?”

““Reckon I’m lost, all right,’ replied Jean. ‘‘New
country for me.”

5
TO THE LAST MAN

“Shore. I seen thet from your tracks an’ your last
camp. Wal, where was you headin’ for before you got
lost?’’

The query was deliberately cool, with a dry, crisp ring.
Jean felt the lack of friendliness or kindliness in it.

“Grass Valley. My name’s Isbel,” he replied, shortly.

The rider attended to his drinking horse and presently
rebridled him; then with long owing of leg he appeared
to step into the saddle.

“‘Shore I knowed you was Jean Isbel,”’ he said. “‘Every-
body in the Tonto has heerd old Gass Isbel sent fer his
boy.”

“Well then, why did you ask?” inquired Jean, bluntly.

“‘Reckon I wanted to see what you’d say.”

“So? All right. But I’m not carin’ very much for
what you say.”

Their glances locked steadily then and each measured
the other by the intangible conflict of spirit.

“Shore thet’s natural,’’ replied the rider. His speech
was slow, and the motions of his long, brown hands,
as he took a cigarette from his vest, kept time with his
words. ‘‘But seein’ you’re one of the Isbels, I’ll hev my
say whether you want it or not. My name’s Colter an’
I’m one of the sheepmen Gass Isbel’s riled with.”

“Colter. Glad to meet you,” replied Jean. ‘An’ I
reckon who riled my father is goin’ to rile me.”

“Shore. If thet wasn’t so you’d not be an Isbel,”
returned Colter, with a grim little laugh. ‘‘It’s easy to
see you ain’t run into any Tonto Basin fellers yet. Wal,
I’m goin’ to tell you thet your old man gabbed like a
woman down at Greaves’s store. Bragged aboot you
an’ how you could fight an’ how you could shoot an’ how
you could track a hoss or a man! Bragged how you’d
chase every sheep herder back up on the Rim. ... I’m

6
TO THE LAST MAN

tellin’ you because we want you to git our stand right.
We're goin’ to run sheep down in Grass Valley.”

“Ahuh! Well, who’s we?” queried Jean, curtly.

“Wha-at? ... We—I mean the sheepmen rangin’ this
Rim from Black Butte to the Apache country.”

“Colter, ’'m a stranger in Arizona,” said Jean, slowly.
“T know little about ranchers or sheepmen. It’s true my
father sent for me. It’s true, I dare say, that he bragged,
for he was given to bluster an’ blow. An’ he’s old now.
I can’t help it if he bragged about me. But if he has, an’
if he’s justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I’m
goin’ to do my best to live up to his brag.”

“T get your hunch. Shore we understand each other,
an’ thet’s a powerful help. You take my hunch to your
old man,” replied Colter, as he turned his horse away
toward the left. ‘“‘Thet trail leadin’ south is yours.
When you come to the Rim you'll see a bare spot down
in the Basin. Thet "Il be Grass Valley.”

He rode away out of sight into the woods. Jean leaned
against his horse and pondered. It seemed difficult to
be just to this Colter, not because of his claims, but
because of a subtle hostility that emanated from him.
Colter had the hard face, the masked intent, the turn of
speech that Jean had come to associate with dishonest
men. Even if Jean had not been prejudiced, if he had
known nothing of his father’s trouble with these sheep-
men, and if Colter had met him only to exchange glances
and greetings, still Jean would never have had a favorable
impression. Colter grated upon him, roused an an-
tagonism seldom felt. .

“Heigho!” sighed the young man.” “‘Good-by to
huntin’ an’ fishin’! Dad’s given me a man’s job.”’

With that he mounted his horse and started the pack
mule into the right-hand trail. Walking and trotting, he

7
TO THE LAST MAN

traveled all afternoon, toward sunset getting into heavy
fore": of pine. More than one snow bank showed white
through the green, sheltered on the north slopes of shady
ravines. And it was upon entering this zone of richer,
deeper forestland that Jean sloughed off his gloomy
forebodings. These stately pines were not the giant
firs of Oregon, but any lover of the woods could be happy
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. Jean 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 immeas-
urable open space falling away from all around him.

The gobbling of wild turkeys awakened Jean, ‘‘Chug-
a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug.’’ There was not a
great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and
that of a tame one. Jean gotup,and taking his rifle, went
out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate 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 breakfast and
packing, Jean did not make a very early start. On this
last lap of his long journey he had slowed down. He was
weary of hurrying; the change from weeks in the glaring

sun and dust-laden wind to this sweet cool darkly green
8
TO THE LAST MAN

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. By and by he lost the trail. It had
just worn out from lack of use. Every now and then
Jean 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 bear sign
surprised him. Presently his keen nostrils were assailed
by a smell of sheep, and soon he rode into a broad sheep
trail. From the tracks Jean calculated that the sheep
had passed there the day before.

An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To
be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that
was why he was unreasonable. But on the other hand
this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless,
grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed
they destroyed. That was what Jean had against them.

An hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike
slope, where new green grass was sprouting and flowers
peeped everywhere. The pines appeared far apart;
gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against the
green wall of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like
a moving stream away down in the woods.

Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa
of sheep and the faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he
road toward these sounds a dog ran out from an oak
thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled a camp
fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of
smoke, and then a small peaked tent. Beyond the clump
of oaks Jean encountered a Mexican lad carrying a carbine.
The boy had aswarthy, pleasant face, and to Jean’s greeting
he replied, ‘‘Buenas dias.” Jean 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.”

2 9
TO THE LAST MAN

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 that staggered on their feet. Every-
where Jean saw tiny lambs just born. Their pin-pointed
bleats pierced the heavier baa-baa of their mothers.

Jean 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. Down this way the plaintive uproar
made by the sheep was not so loud.

“‘Hello there!”’ called Jean, cheerfully, as he approached
the tent. No answer was forthcoming. Dropping his
bridle, he went on, rather slowly, looking for some one
to appear. Then a voice from one side startled him.

**Mawnin’, stranger.”

A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a
rifle. Her face flashed richly brown, but she was not
Mexican. This fact, and the sudden conviction that she
had been watching him, somewhat disconcerted Jean.

“Beg pardon—miss,” he floundered. ‘‘Didn’t expect
to see a—girl.... I’m sort of lost—lookin’ for the
Rim—an’ thought I’d find a sheep herder who’d show
me. I can’t savvy this boy’s lingo.”

While he spoke it seemed to him an intentness of
expression, a strain relaxed from her face. A faint sug-
gestion of hostility likewise disappeared. Jean was not
even sure that he had caught it, but there had been some-
thing that now was gone. :

“Shore I'll be glad to show y’u,” she said.

“Thanks, miss. Reckon I can breathe easy now,” he

replied. ‘‘It’s a long ride from San Diego. Hot an’
ro :
TO THE LAST MAN

dusty! I’m pretty tired. An’ maybe this woods isn’t
good medicine to achin’ eyes!”’

“San Diego! Y’u’re from the coast?”

“*Ves.’’

Jean had doffed his sombrero at sight of her and he still
held it, rather deferentially, perhaps. It seemed to
attract her attention.

“Put on y’ur hat, stranger... . Shore I can’t recollect
when any man bared his haid to me.” She uttered a
little laugh in which surprise and frankness mingled with
a tint of bitterness.

Jean 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
an instinct in his meeting with Colter, there was more in
this. The girl half sat, half leaned against a log, with the
shiny little carbine across her knees. She had a level,
curious gaze upon him, and Jean had never met one just
like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear
and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown
depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze
dropped first. Then it was 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. Suddenly she drew back her
stockingless ankles and ill-sho little feet. When Jean
lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a
stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch
of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong,
taw, 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 Jean, presently.
II
TO THE LAST MAN

“Shore am,” she drawled. She had a lazy Southern
voice, pleasant to hear. ‘‘How’d y’u-all guess that?”’

‘Anybody can tell a Texan. Where I came from there
were a good many pioneers an’ ranchers from the old
Lone Star state. I’ve worked for several. An’, come
to think of it, I’d rather hear a Texas girl talk than
anybody.”

“Did y'u know many Texas girls?” she inquired, turn-
ing again to face him.

“Reckon I did—quite a good many.”

“Did y’u go with them?”

“Go with them? Reckon you mean keep company.
Why, yes, I guess I did—a little,” laughed Jean. ‘“‘Some-
times on a Sunday or a dance once in a blue moon, an’
occasionally a ride.”’

“Shore that accounts,” said the girl, wistfully.

_“For what?” asked Jean.

“Wur bein’ a gentleman,” she replied, with force.
“Oh, I’ve not forgotten. I had friends when we lived in
Texas. .. Three years ago. Shore it seems longer.
Three miserable years in this damned country!”

‘Then she bit her lip, evidently to keep back further
unwitting utterance to a total stranger. And it was
that biting of her lip that drew Jean’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 Jean.
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 Jean’s interest.

“Well, I reckon you flatter me,’’ he said, hoping to put
her at her ease again. ‘I’m only a rough hunter an’

fisherman—woodchopper an’ horse tracker. Never had
12
TO THE LAST MAN

all the school I needed—nor near enough company of
nice girls like you.”

“Am I nice?”’ she asked, quickly.

“You sure are,” he replied, smiling.

“In these rags,” she demanded, with a sudden flash
of passion that thrilled him. ‘‘Look at the holes.” She
showed rips and worn-out places in the sleeves of her
buckskin blouse, through which gleamed a round, brown

arm. ‘‘I sew when I have anythin’ to sew with... . Look
at my skirt—a dirty rag. An’ I have only one other to
my name. ...Look!’’ Again a color tinged her cheeks,

most becoming, and giving the lie to her action. But
shame could not check her violence now. A dammed-
up resentment seemed to have broken out in flood. She
lifted the ragged skirt almost to her knees. ‘‘No stock-

ings! No shoes!... How can a girl be nice when she has
no clean, decent woman’s clothes to wear?”’
“‘How—how can a girl...’ began Jean. ‘‘See here,

miss, I’m beggin’ your pardon for—sort of stirrin’ you to
forget yourself a little. Reckon I understand. You
don’t meet many strangers an’ I sort of hit you wrong—
makin’ you feel too much—an’ talk too much. Who
an’ what you are is none of my business. But we met.
... An’ I reckon somethin’ has happened—perhaps more
to me than to you. . . . Now let me put you straight
about clothes an’ women. Reckon I know most women
love nice things to wear an’ think because clothes make
them look pretty that they’re nicer or better. But they’re
wrong. You're wrong. Maybe it ’d be too much for a
girl like you to be happy without clothes. But you can
be—you are just as nice, an’—an’ fine—an’, for all you
know, a good deal more appealin’ to some men.”
“Stranger, y’'u shore must excuse my temper an’ the
show I made of myself,’’ replied the girl, with composure.
13
TO THE LAST MAN

“That, to say the least, was not nice. An’ I don’t want
anyone thinkin’ better of me than I deserve. My mother
died in Texas, an’ I’ve lived out heah in this wild country—
a girl alone among rough men. Meetin’ y’u to-day makes
me see what a hard lot they are—an’ what it’s done to
me.”

Jean smothered his curiosity and tried to put out of his
mind a growing sense that he pitied her, liked her.

“Are you a sheep herder?” he asked.

“‘Shore Iam now an’ then. My father lives back heah
in a cafion. He’s a sheepman. Lately there’s been
herders shot at. Just now we’re short an’ I have to
fill in. But I like shepherdin’ an’ I love the woods, and
the Rim Rock an’ all the Tonto. If they were all, I’d
shore be happy.”

“Herders shot at!” exclaimed Jean, thoughtfully.
“By whom? An’ what for?”

“Trouble brewin’ between the cattlemen down in the
Basin an’ the sheepmen up on the Rim. Dad says
there’ll shore be hell to pay. I tell him I hope the cattle-
men chase him back to Texas.”

“Then— Are you on the ranchers’ side?” queried
Jean, trying to pretend casual interest.

“No. I'll always be on my father’s side,” she replied,
with spirit. ‘But I’m bound to admit I think the cattle-
men have the fair side of the argument.”

“How so?”

“Because there’s grass everywhere. I see no sense in
a sheepman goin’ out of his way to surround a cattleman
an’ sheep off his range. That started the row. Lord
knows how it ‘ll end. For most all of them heah are from
Texas.”

“So I was told,” replied Jean. ‘An’ I heard ’most all
these Texans got run out of Texas. Any truth in that?”

14
TO THE LAST MAN

“Shore I reckon there is,” she replied, seriously.
“But, stranger, it might not be healthy for y'u to say
that anywhere. My dad, for one, was not run out of
Texas. Shore I never can see why he came heah. He’s
accumulated stock, but he’s not rich nor so well off as he
was back home.”

“Are you goin’ to stay here always?” queried Jean,
suddenly.

“Tf I do so it "ll be in my grave,” she answered, darkly.
“But what’s the use of thinkin’? People stay places until
they drift away. Y’u can never tell... . Well, stranger,
this talk is keepin’ y’u.”

She seemed moody now, and a note of detachment
crept into her voice. Jean rose at once and went for
his horse. If this girl did not desire to talk further he
certainly had no wish to annoy her. His mule had
strayed off among the bleating sheep. Jean 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. Jean was loath to bid her good-by.

“‘Which way is the' Rim?” he asked, turning to his

saddle girths.
“‘South,” she replied, pointing. ‘‘It’s only a mile or so.
I'll walk down with y'u. ... Suppose y’u’re on the way

to Grass Valley?”

“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. Jean strode ahead to her side. ‘‘Reckon
if you walk I won’t ride.”

So he found himself beside a girl with the free step of a
mountaineer. Her bare, brown head came up nearly to his
shoulder. It was a small, pretty head, graceful, well held,

15
TO THE LAST MAN

and the thick hair on it 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.

Jean 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 Jean ignored, manifestly to her growing constraint.
Presently Jean, having decided what he wanted to say,
suddenly began: ‘‘I like this adventure. Do you?”

“Adventure! Meetin’ me in the woods?” And she
laughed the laugh of youth. ‘‘Shore you must be hard up
for adventure, stranger.’’

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

“T might like it,” she answered, frankly, “‘if—if my
temper had not made a fool of me. I never meet anyone
I care to talk to. Why should it not be pleasant to
run across some one new—some one strange in this heah
wild country?’’

“We are as we are,” said Jean, simply. “I didn’t
think you made a fool of yourself. If I thought so,
would I want to see you again?”

“Do y’u?” The brown face flashed on him with sur-
prise, with a light he took for gladness. And because he
wanted to appear calm and friendly, not too eager, he had
to deny himself the thrill of meeting those changing eyes.

““Sure I do. Reckon I’m overbold on such short ac-
quaintance. But I might not have another chance to
tell you, so please don’t hold it against me.”

This declaration over, Jean felt relief and something of
16
TO THE LAST MAN

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
but the gold-brown tan and the blue tracery of veins
showed in her cheeks. 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
it set into the curve of her shoulder. Here in her quiver-
ing 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 arifle. It had an
effect on Jean 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,
an’ I tell you it means somethin’ to me. I’ve known
girls for months an’ never felt this way. I don’t know who
you are an’ I don’t care. You betrayed a good deal to
me. You’re not happy. Yow’re lonely. An’ if I didn’t
want to see you again for my own sake I would for
yours. Some things you said I’ll not forget soon. I’ve
got a sister, an’ I know you have no brother. An I
reckon...”

At this juncture Jean in his earnestness and quite with-
out thought grasped her 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 Jean, inhaling a deep breath and trying
to see through his bewilderment, held on bravely. He
imagined he felt a faint, warm, returning pressure. She
was young, she was friendless, she was human. By this
hand in his Jean felt more than ever the loneliness of her.
Then, just as he was about to speak again, she pulled her
hand free.

17
TO THE LAST MAN

“‘Heah’s the Rim,” she said, in her quaint Southern
drawl. ‘An’ there’s y’ur Tonto Basin.”

Jean 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, te be
struck mute.

He felt a sheer force, a downward drawing of an im-
mense 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 wall so high that he felt lifted aloft on the
rim of the sky.

“‘Southeast y’u see the Sierra Anchas,” said the girl,
pointing. ‘‘That notch in the range is the pass where
sheep are driven to Phoenix an’ Maricopa. Those big
rough mountains to the south are the Mazatzals. Round
to the west is the Four Peaks Range. An’ y’u’re standin’
on the Rim.”

Jean could not see at fiat 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 wall, 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. Jean had
never seen such a wild and rugged manifestation of
nature’s depths and upheavals. He was held mute.

“Stranger, look down,” said the girl.

Jean’s sight was educated to judge heights and depths
18
TO THE LAST MAN

and distances. This wall pon 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,
cafion merging into cafion—so the tremendous bowl
sunk away to its black, deceiving depths, a wilderness
across which travel seemed impossible.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Jean.

“Indeed it is!” murmured the girl. ‘‘Shore that is
Arizona. I reckon I love this. The heights an’ depths—
the awfulness of its wilderness!”

‘“‘An’ you want to leave it?”

“Ves an’ no. I don’t deny the peace that comes to me
heah. But not often do I see the Basin, an’ for that
matter, one doesn’t live on grand scenery.”’

“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 showed it to me first.”

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

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

“Shore I will,” she replied, softly, and turned to him.
It seemed then that Jean 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.

19
TO THE LAST MAN

Then her red lips parted. Their tremulous movement
was a magnet to Jean. 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 struck. ‘‘Girl—
I—I’’—he gasped in amaze and sudden-dawning con-
trition—‘‘I kissed you—but I swear it wasn’t intentional
—I never thought... .”

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

“‘Shore I reckon my callin’ y’u a gentleman was a little
previous,” she said, with a rather dry bitterness. ‘But,
stranger, yu’re sudden.”’

“You're not insulted?” asked Jean, hurriedly.

“‘Oh, I’ve been kissed before. Shore men are all alike.”

““They’re not,” 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 an’ I’d have gone on my knees to ask
your forgiveness.... But now I wouldn’t—an’ I
wouldn’t kiss you again, either—even if you—you wanted
it.”

Jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a
vague doubt, as if she was questioning him.

“Miss, I take that back,’’ added Jean, shortly. ‘‘I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to 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. An’ I ask your pardon.”

She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and

down into the Basin.
20
TO THE LAST MAN

“There’s Grass Valley. That long gray spot in the
black. It’s about fifteen miles. Ride along the Rim that
way till y’u cross a trail. Shore y’u can’t miss it. Then
go down.”

“Y’m much obliged to you,” replied, Jean, 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 Jean
she might be pondering a subtle change in his feeling
and attitude, something he was conscious of, yet could not
define.

“‘Reckon this is good-by,” he said, with 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.

“Ves, good-by till to-morrow or good-by forever. Take
it as y’u like.”

“Then you'll 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.

“Shore I’ll be glad to meet y'u. Day after to-morrow
about mid-afternoon. Right heah. Fetch all the news
from Grass Valley.”

“All right. Thanks. That ’ll be—fine,” replied Jean,
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
2I
TO THE LAST MAN

wondered at it and felt unsure of himself. He needed to
think.

“Stranger, shore I’m not recollectin’ that y’u told me
who y’u are,” she said.

“No, reckon I didn’t tell,” he returned. ‘‘ What dif-
ference does that make? I said I didn’t care who or
what you are. Can’t you feel the same about me?”

“Shore—I felt that way,” she replied, somewhat non-
plussed, with the level brown gaze steadily on his face.
“But now y’u make me think.”

“Let’s meet without knowin’ any more about each
other than we do now.”

“Shore. I’d like that. In this big wild Arizona a
girl—an’ I reckon a man—feels so insignificant. What's
a name, anyhow? Still, people an’ things have to be
distinguished. I’ll call y’u ‘Stranger’ an’ be satisfied—
if y’u say it’s fair for y’u not to tell who y’u are.”

“Fair! No, it’s not,” declared Jean, forced to con-
fession. ‘‘My name’s Jean—Jean Isbel.”

“‘Tsbel!”” she exclaimed, with a violent start. ‘‘Shore
y'u can’t be son of old Gass Isbel. ... I’ve seen both
his sons.”

“He has three,” replied Jean, with relief, 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 sup-
pleness of her seemed to stiffen.

‘‘My name’s Ellen Jorth,” she burst out, passionately.
“Does it mean anythin’ to y’u?”

“Never heard it in my life,” protested Jean. ‘‘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 Jean Isbel.... Ellen Jorth. It’s strange an’
22
TO THE LAST MAN

pretty. ... Reckon I can be just as good a—a friend
to you—”

“No Isbel can ever be a friend to me,’’ she said, with
bitter coldness. Stripped of her ease and her soft wistful-
ness, she stood before him one instant, entirely another
girl, a hostile enemy. Then she wheeled and strode off
into the woods.

Jean, in amaze, in consternation, watched her swiftly
draw away with her lithe, free step, wanting to follow her,
wanting to call to her; 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, and fought in
vain.
CHAPTER II

UT Ellen Jorth’s moccasined feet did not leave a

distinguishable trail on the springy pine needle

covering of the ground, and Jean could not find any trace
of her.

A little futile searching to and fro cooled his impulse
and called pride 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 and action.
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 to him an endless waste of wind-
scoured, sun-blasted barrenness. This black-forested
rock-rimmed land of untrodden ways was a world that
in itself would satisfy him. Some instinct in Jean called
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 been.

Every few moments there intruded into his flowing
consciousness the flashing face of Ellen Jorth, the way
she had looked at him, the things she had said. ‘‘Reckon
I was a fool,” he soliloquized, with an acute sense of
humiliation. ‘‘She never saw how much in earnest I
was.’ And Jean began to remember the circumstances
with a vividness that disturbed and perplexed him.

24
TO THE LAST MAN

The accident of running across such a girl in that lonely
place might be out of the ordinary—but it had happened.
Surprise had made him dull. The charm of her appear-
ance, the appeal of her manner, must have drawn him at
the very first, but he had not recognized that. Only at
her words, ‘‘Oh, I’ve been kissed before,’’ had his feelings
been checked in their heedless progress. And the utter-
ance of them had made a difference he now sought to
analyze. Some personality in him, 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.
Such defense seemed clamoring in him 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 called thoroughbred. Ragged and stained apparel did
not prove her of a common sort. Jean had known a
number of fine and wholesome girls of good family; and
he remembered his sister. This Ellen Jorth was that
kind of a girl irrespective of her present environment.
Jean championed her loyally, even after he had gratified
his selfish pride.

Tt was then—contending with an intangible and stealing
glamour, unreal and fanciful, like the dream of a forbidden
enchantment—that Jean arrived at the part in the little
woodland drama where he had kissed Ellen Jorth and had
been unzebuked. Why had she not resented his action?
Dispelled was the illusion he had been dreamily and nobly
constructing. “Oh, I’ve been kissed before!” The
shock to him now exceeded his first dismay. Half
bitterly she had spoken, and. wholly scornful of herself,
or of him, or of all men. For she had said all men were
alike. Jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every

3 25
’
pve Ny

TO THE LAST MAN

decent man hated. Naturally every happy and healthy
young man would want to kiss such red, sweet lips.
But if those lips had been for others—never for him!
Jean reflected that not since childish games had he kissed
a girl—until this brown-faced Ellen Jorth came his way.
He wondered at it. Moreover, he wondered at the
significance he placed upon it. After all, was it not
merely an accident? Why should he remember? Why
should he ponder? What was the faint, deep, growing
thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts?
Riding along with busy mind, Jean almost crossed a
_ » well-beaten trail, leading through a pine thicket and down
‘over the Rim. Jean’s pack mule led the way without
being driven. And when Jean 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 the
descent with a packed mule and a spirited horse, Jean
had no time for mind wanderings and very little for
occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the vast
blue hollow asleep under a westering sun.

The stones rattled, the dust rose, the cedar twigs
snapped, the little 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 Jean descended.

. He zigzagged down a thousand feet before the slope benched
into dividing ridges. Here the cedars and junipers failed
and pines once more hid the sun. Deep ravines were
black with brush. From somewhere rose a roar. of
running water, most pleasant to Jean’s ears. Fresh deer
and bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail.

Those timbered ridges were but billows of that tre-

mendous slope that now sheered above Jean, ending in a
26
TO THE LAST MAN

magnificent yellow wall of rock, greened in niches, stained
by weather rust, carved and cracked and caverned. As
Jean descended farther the hum of bees made melody,
the roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze
filled him with the content of the wild. Sheepmen like
Colter and wild girls like Ellen Jorth and all that seemed
promising or menacing in his father’s letter could never
change the Indian in Jean. So he thought. Hard upon
that conclusion rushed another—one which troubled with
its stinging revelation. Surely these influences he had
defied were just the ones to bring out in him the Indian
he had sensed but had never known. The eventful day
had brought new and bitter food for Jean to reflect upon.

The trail landed him in the bowlder-strewn bed of a
wide cafion, where the huge trees stretched a canopy of
foliage which denied the sunlight, and where a beautiful
brook rushed and foamed. Here at last Jean tasted
water that rivaled 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 thesgiant spread of a grizzly bear to the
tiny, birdlike imprints of a squirrel. Jean heard 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, Jean felt that he would nct
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 forget.

Wild and broken as this rolling Basin floor had apueared
from the Rim, the reality of traveling over it made that

27
TO THE LAST MAN

first impression a deceit of distance. ~ Down here all was
on a big, rough, broken scale. Jean did not find even a
few rods of level ground. Bowlders as huge as houses
obstructed the stream bed; spruce trees eight feet thick
tried to lord it over the brawny pines; the ravine was a ver-
itable cafion from which occasional glimpses through the
foliage showed the Rimas a lofty red-tipped mountain peak.

Jean’s pack mule became frightened at scent of a bear
or lion and ran off down the rough trail, imperiling Jean’s
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. Jean calculated that he covered ten miles
under the Rim before the character of ground and forest
began to change.

The trail had turned southeast. Instead of gorge after
gorge, red-walled 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, Jean would have fared ill
through this tough brush.

Jean 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 south- .
ward, and Jean began to have pleasurable expectations. '

The road, like the trail, led down grade, but no longer

at such steep angles, and was bordered by cedar and pifion,
28
TO THE LAST MAN

jack-pine and juniper, mescal and manzanita. Quite
sharply, going around a ridge, the road led Jean’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 Jean 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 log cabins and corrals.

As a village, Grass 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 Jean 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 Grass
Valley store and its immediate environment.

Jean 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 Jean 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
Jean entered. But the moment of that casual glance

29
TO THE LAST MAN

afforded Jean 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 merely thin air.

“Good evenin’,”’ said Jean.

After what appeared to Jean 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.
Jean’s sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the
slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans—for so Jean
at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew
him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley. All
but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces
in shadow under the wide-brimmed black hats. Motley-
garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave Jean the
same impression of latent force that he had encountered
in Colter.

“Will somebody please tell me where to find my father,
Gaston Isbel?” inquired Jean, with as civil a tongue as he
could command.

Nobody paid the slightest attention. It was the same
as if Jean had not spoken. Waiting, half amused, half
irritated, Jean shot a rapid glance around the store. The
placehad felt bare; and Jean, 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 rum.

Jean’s swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of

30
TO THE LAST MAN

whom were absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The
fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now
deigned to look at Jean. 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 Jean had not encountered many men to whom he
would have accorded more potency to stir in him the
instinct of self-preservation.

“Shore,” drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, ‘“‘old Gass
lives aboot a mile down heah.”” 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
to the game.

Jean muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted
again, and drove the pack mule down the road. ‘‘Reckon
I’ve run into the wrong folds to-day,” he said. ‘‘If T
remember dad right he was a man to make an’ keep
friends. Somehow I’ll bet there’s goin’ to be hell.”
Beyond the store were some rather pretty and comfortable
homes, little ranch houses back in the coves of the hills.
The road turned west and Jean saw his first sunset in
the Tonto Basin. It was a pageant of purple clouds with
silver edges, and background of deep rich gold. Presently
Jean met a lad driving a cow. ‘‘Hello, Johnny!” he said,
genially, and with a double purpose. “‘My name’s Jean
Isbel. By Golly! I’m lost in Grass Valley. Will you
tell me where my dad lives?’

“Yep. Keep right on, an’ y’u cain’t miss him,” replied
the lad, with a bright smile. ‘‘He’s lookin’ fer y’u.”

“How do you know, boy?” queried Jean, warmed by
,that smile.

31
TO THE LAST MAN

“Aw, I know. It’s all over the valley thet y’u’d ride in
ter-day. Shore I wus the one thet tole yer dad an’ he
give me a dollar.”

“‘Was he glad to hear it?’ asked Jean, with a queer
sensation in his throat.

“Wal, he plumb was.”

“‘An’ who told you I was goin’ to ride in to-day?”

“T heerd it at the store,’’ replied the lad, with an air of
confidence. ‘‘Some sheepmen was talkin’ to Greaves.
He’s the storekeeper. I was settin’ outside, but I heerd.
A Mexican come down off the Rim ter-day an’ he fetched
the news.” Here the lad looked furtively around, then
whispered. ‘‘An’ thet greaser was sent by somebody. I
never heerd no more, but them sheepmen looked pretty
plumb sour. An’ one of them, comin’ out, give me
a kick, darn him. It shore is the luckedest day fer
us cowmen.”

“‘How’s that, Johnny?”

‘‘Wal, that’s shore a big fight comin’ to Grass Valley.
My dad says so an’ he rides fer yer dad. An’ if it comes
now y’u'll be heah.”

“Ahuh!” laughed Jean. ‘An’ what then, boy?”

The lad turned bright eyes upward. “Aw, now, yu’all
cain’t come thet on me. Ain’t y’u an Injun, Jean Isbel?
Ain’t y’u a hoss tracker thet rustlers cain’t fool? ‘Ain’t
yu a plumb dead shot? Ain’t y’u wuss’ern a grizzly
bear in a rough-an’-tumble? . . . Now ain’t y’u, shore?”

Jean bade the flattering lad a rather sober good day
and rode on his way. Manifestly a reputation somewhat
difficult to live up to had preceded his entry into Grass
Valley.

Jean’s first sight of his future home thrilled him through.
It was a big, low, rambling log structure standing well out
from a wooded knoll at the edge of the valley. Corrals

32
TO THE LAST MAN

and barns and sheds lay off at the back. To the fore
stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and
horses grazed. At sunset the scene was one of rich color.
Prosperity and abundance and peace seemed attendant
upon that ranch; lusty voices of burros braying and cows
bawling seemed welcoming Jean. A hound bayed. The
first cool touch of wind fanned Jean’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. Jean espied a white-faced black
horse that gladdened his sight. ‘Hello, Whiteface! I'll
sure straddle you,” called Jean. Then up the gentle
slope he saw the tall figure of his father—the same as he
had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, shirt
sleeved, striding with long step. Jean waved and called
to him.

“Hi, you prodigal!” came the answer. Yes, the voice
of his father—and Jean’s boyhood memories flashed. He
hurried his horse those last few rods. No—dad was not
the same. His hair shone gray.

“Here I am, dad,” called Jean, and then he was dis-
mounting. A deep, quiet emotion settled over him,
stilling the hurry, the eagerness, the pang in his breast.

‘Son, I shore am glad to see you,”’ said his father, and
wrung his hand. ‘Wal, wal, the size of you! Shore
you’ve grown, an’ how you favor your mother.”’

Jean felt in the iron clasp of hand, in 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 Jean.

“Dad, I’m as glad as you,” replied Jean, heartily.
“Tt seems long we’ve been parted, now I see you. Are
you well, dad, an’ all right?”

33
TO THE LAST MAN

“Not complainin’, son. I can ride all day same as
ever,” he said. “Come. Never mind your hosses.
They'll be looked after. Come meet the folks. .
Wal, wal, you got heah at last.”

On the porch of the house a group awaited Jean’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, Jean, Jean, I’m glad you’ve come!”
she cried, and pressed him close. Jean 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 snapoing eyes in a brown, still face, and
he had the bow-legs of a cattleman. Both had married in
Arizona. Bil:’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.
Jean 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.
Then next to greet Jean were the little children, all shy,
yet all manifestly impressed by the occasion. A warmth’
and intimacy of forgotten home emotions flooded over
Jean. Sweet it was to get home to these relatives who
loved him and welcomed him with quiet gladness. But
there seemed more. Jean 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.

34
TO THE LAST MAN

“Son, this heah Tonto is a land of milk an’ honey,” said
his father, as Jean gazed spellbound at the bounteous
supper.

Jean certainly performed gastronomic feats on this
occasion, to the delight of Aunt Mary and the wonder of
the children. ‘‘Oh, he’s starv-ved to death,” whispered
one of the little boys to his sister. They had begun to
warm to this stranger uncle. Jean 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 Jean.

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.

“Wal, Jean, do you recollect them shootin’-irons?”
inquired the rancher, pointing above the fireplace. Two
guns hung on the spreading deer antlers there. One was
a musket Jean’s father had used in the war of the rebel-
lion and the other was a long, heavy, muzzle-loading
flintlock Kentucky rifle with which Jean had learned to
shoot.

‘“‘Reckon I do, dad,” replied Jean, and with reverent
hands and a rush of memory he took the old gun down.

“Jean, you shore handle thet old arm some clumsy,”
said Guy Isbel, dryly. And Bill added a remark to the
effect that perhaps Jean had been leading a luxurious and
tame life back there in Oregon, and then added, ‘‘But I
reckon he’s packin’ that six-shooter like a Texan.”

“Say, I fetched a gun or two along with me,” replied
Jean, jocularly. ‘‘Reckon I near broke my poor mule’s

35
TO THE LAST MAN

back with the load of shells an’ guns. Dad, what was the
idea askin’ me to pack out an arsenal?”

“‘Son, shore all shootin’ arms an’ such are at a premium
in the Tonto,” replied his father. ‘‘An’ I was givin’ you
a hunch to come loaded.” 1

His cool, drawling voice seemed to put a damper upon
the pleasantries. Right there Jean sensed the charged
atmosphere. His brothers were bursting with utterance
about to break forth, and his father suddenly wore a look
that recalled to Jean critical times of days 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 be pushed forward by his sister and
brother and mother, and driven by yearnings of his own.
“There now, Lee. Say, ‘Uncle Jean, what did you fetch
us?’”’ The lad hesitated for a shy, frightened look at
Jean, and then, gaining something from his scrutiny of his
uncle, he toddled forward and bravely delivered the ques-
tion of tremendous importance.

“What did I fetch you, hey?” cried Jean, in delight, as
he took the lad up on his knee. ‘‘Wouldn’t you like to
know? I didn’t forget, Lee. I remembered you all. Oh!
the job I had packin’ your bundle of presents... .
Now, Lee, make a guess.”’

“T dess you fetched a dun,” replied Lee.

“A dun!—I’ll bet you mean a gun,” laughed Jean.
“Well, you four-year-old Texas gunman! 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 Jean.

36
TO THE LAST MAN

“Dad, where’s my pack?” cried Jean. ‘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!
heah’s three packs,”’ he called. ‘‘Which one do you want,
Jean?” a

“Tt’s a long, heavy bundle. all tied up,’’ replied Jean.

Guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a
whoop from the youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes
of the women. Jean 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
theroom. It gave forth metallic and rattling and crackling
sounds.

“Everybody stand back an’ give me elbow room,”
ordered Jean, majestically. ‘‘ My good folks, I want you
all to know this is somethin’ 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 an’ licked the thief. It rode on a burro
from San Diego to Yuma an’ once I thought the burro
was lost for keeps. It came up the Colorado River from
Yuma to Ehrenberg an’ there went on top of a stage.
We got chased by bandits an’ once when the horses were
gallopin’ hard it near rolled off. Then it went on the back
of a pack horse an’ helped wear him out.. An’ I reckon it
would be somewhere else now if I hadn’t fallen in with a
freighter goin’ north from Phoenix to the Santa Fe Trail.
The last lap when it sagged the back of a mule was the
riskiest an’ full of the narrowest escapes. Twice my mule

37
TO THE LAST. MAN

bucked off his pack an’ left my outfit scattered. Worst of
all, my precious bundle made the mule top heavy comin’
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 an’ other times the mule.
But it got here at last... . An’ 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, Jean 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 Jean, 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 Jean; yet even
that was clouded by the something which shadowed these
innocent children fatefully born in a wild place at a wild
time. Next Jean 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 Jean, ‘‘I con-
fess 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 munif-
38
TO THE LAST MAN

icence, and then awakening, she hugged Jean in a way
that took his breath. She was not a child any more, that
was certain. Aunt Mary turned knowing eyes upon
Jean. ‘“‘Reckon you couldn’t have pleased Ann more.
She’s engaged, Jean, an’ where girls are in that state these
things mean a heap. ... Ann, you'll be married in
that!’? And she pointed to the beautiful folds of material
that Ann had spread out.

““What’s this?” demanded Jean. His sister’s blushes
were enough to convict her, and they were mightily be-
coming, too.

“Here, Aunt Mary,” went on Jean, ‘“‘here’s yours, an’
here’s somethin’ for each of my new sisters.’’ This distri-
bution left the women as happy and occupied, almost, as
the children. It left also another package, the last one
in the bundle. Jean 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 Jorth’s passionate face as she looked
when she had made the violent action so disconcerting
to him. In this happy moment the memory seemed
farther off than a few hours. It had crystallized. It
annoyed 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 an’
the boys,”’ continued Jean. ‘‘Some knives, some pipes
an’ tobacco. An’ sure the guns.”

“Shore, you’re a regular Santa Claus, Jean,” replied
his father. ‘‘Wal, wal, look at the kids. An’ look at Mary.
An’ for the land’s sake look at Ann! Wal, wal, I’m gettin’
old. I’d forgotten the pretty stuff an’ gimcracks that
mean so much to women. We're out of the world heah.

39
TO THE LAST MAN

It’s just as well you’ve lived apart from us, Jean, for
comin’ back this way, with all that stwff, does us a lot of
good. I cain’t say, son, how obliged I am. My mind has
been set on the hard side of life. An’ it’s shore good to
forget—to see the smiles of the women an’ the joy of 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.

“How do, y’u-all!’’ he said, evenly.

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

“Jean, this is my friend, Andrew Colmor.”’

Jean knew when he met Colmor’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. Colmor’s estimate of him must have been
a monument built of Ann’s eulogies. Jean’s heart suf-
fered misgivings. Could he live up to the character that
somehow had forestalled his advent in Grass Valley?
Surely life was measured differently here in the Tonto
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. Jean forthwith had an interested
audience. How eagerly these lonely pioneer people
listened to news of the outside world! Jean talked until
he was hoatse. 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 sheepmen or any hint of rustlers! Jean

40
TO THE LAST MAN

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. Jean grasped that
this fact was one of significant satisfaction to his father.

“Shore we're all goin’ to live together heah,’”’ he de-
clared. ‘‘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. An’ you, Jean, where’s your girl? I shore
told you to fetch her.”

“‘Dad, I didn’t have one,’’ replied Jean.

“Wal, I wish youhad,” returned therancher. ‘“‘You’llgo
courtin’ one of these Tonto hussies that I might object to.”

“Why, father, there’s not a girl in the valley Jean
would look twice at,” interposed Ann Isbel, with spirit.

Jean laughed the matter aside, but he had an uneasy
memory. Aunt Mary averred, after thé manner of rela-
tives, that Jean would play havoc among the women of the
_ settlement. And Jean 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 Isbel to go
under,” he concluded.

“Son, you’re talkin’ wisdom,” said his father. ‘An’
shore that reminds me of the uncle you're named after.
Jean Isbel! . . . Wal, he was my youngest brother an’
shore a fire-eater. Our mother was a French creole from
Louisiana, an’ Jean must have inherited some of his
fightin’ nature from her. When the war of the rebellion
started Jean an’ I enlisted. I was crippled before we
ever got to the front. But Jean went through three
years before he was killed. His company had orders to
fight to the last man. An’ Jean fought an’ lived long
enough just to be that last man.”

4 i
TO THE LAST MAN

At length Jean was left alone with his father.

“Reckon you’re used to bunkin’ outdoors?” queried
the rancher, rather abruptly.

“Most of the time,’’ replied Jean.

“Wal, there’s room in the house, but I want you ta
sleep out. Come get your beddin’ an’ gun. I'll show
you.”

They went outside on the porch, where Jean 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? Wal, wal, there’s shore no better, if
a man can hold straight.” At the moment a big gray
dog trotted up to sniff at Jean. ‘‘An’ heah’s your bunk-
mate, Shepp. He’s part lofer, Jean. His mother was
a favorite shepherd dog of mine. His father was a big
timber wolf that took us two years to kill. Some bad
wolf packs runnin’ 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. Jean 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 Jean was scout for Liggett, one of the
greatest rebels the South had,” said the rancher. ‘An’
you're goin’ to be scout for the Isbels of Tonto. 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 happenin’s ’round
heah lately. If Shepp could talk he’d shore have lots to
tell us. Bill an’ Guy have been sleepin’ out, trailin’
strange hoss tracks, an’ all that. But shore whoever's

been prowlin’ around heah was too sharp for them. Some
42
TO THE LAST MAN

bad, crafty, light-steppin’ woodsmen ’round heah, Jean.
. .. Three mawnin’s ago, just after daylight, I stepped
out the back door an’ some one of these sneaks I’m talkin’
aboot 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. An’ some of my gray hairs that ’re stickin’ in
it!”

“Dad!” ejaculated Jean, with a hand outstretched.
“That’s awful! You frighten me.”

“No time to be scared,” replied his father, calmly.
““They’re shore goin’ to kill me. That’s why I wanted

you home. . . . In there with you, now! Go to sleep.
You shore can trust Shepp to wake you if he gets scent
or sound. ... An’ good night, my son. I’m sayin’ that

T'll rest easy to-night.”’

Jean mumbled a good night and stood watching his
father’s shining white head move away under the star-
light. Then the tall, dark form vanished, a door closed,
and all was still. The dog Shepp licked Jean’s hand.
Jean 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
shore goin’ to kill me.”” The shock of inaction passed.
Jean 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—all 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
43
TO THE LAST MAN

aunt, in the younger, fresher eyes of his sister—Jean
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 Jorth 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 Jean. 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,” Jean 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 Jorth? The idea grew on Jean. 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 Grass Valley.
And he reverted uneasily to the remarks of his father
until at last sleep claimed him.
44
TO THE LAST MAN

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

HE morning star, large, intensely blue-white, mag-

nificent in its dominance of the clear night sky,
hung over the dim, dark valley ramparts. The moon
had gone down and all the other stars were wan, pale
ghosts.

Presently the strained vacuum of Jean’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. Jean laid a hand on the
dog. ‘Hold on, Shepp,” he whispered. Then hauling
on his boots and slipping into his coat Jean 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
roused him. Jean 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 Jean that the dog would
have shown less eagerness to leave him, or none at all.

In the stillness of the morning it took Jean 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. Jean circled the
ranch house to the right and kept 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

46
TO THE LAST MAN

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 Jean.
At this moment he experienced a grim assurance of what
his instinct and his training might accomplish if directed
to astern and daring end. Perhaps his father understood
this; perhaps the old Texan had some little reason for
his confidence.

Every few paces Jean 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
Jean 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. “‘Ahuh!” muttered Jean.
“Cougar or some varmint pulled down that calf.” Then he
discharged his rifle in the air and yelled with all his might.
It was necessary then to yell again to hold Shepp back.

Thereupon Jean set forth down the valley, and tramped
out and across and around, as much to scare away what-
ever 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. Jean 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 Jean 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 Jean, 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 runnin’ around.”

47
TO THE LAST MAN

Jean found 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 lofers, we’re
goin’ to clash.”” Jean knew from many a futile hunt that
wolves were the wariest and most intelligent of wild
animals in the quest. 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. Jean tried
to restrain any curiosity as to his father’s dealings in
Grass Valley until the situation had been made clear.

Moreover, Jean 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 Jean threw off forebodings. Nothing
ever turned out so badly as it 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. Grass Valley shone like burnished silver
dotted with innumerable black spots. Burros were bray-
ing 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. Jean glanced thoughtfully at them and re-
flected 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

48
TO THE LAST MAN

mountain front, beautiful in the morning sunlight, lonely,
serene, and mysterious against the level skyline. Moun-
tains, ranges, distances unknown to Jean, always called to
him—to come, to seek, toexplore, 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 mawnin’, son,” called a cheery voice from the
porch. ‘Shore we-all heard you shoot; an’ 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 Jean ever slept of nights. Guy
Isbel laughed and there was warm regard in the gaze he
bent on Jean.

“You old Indian!” he drawled, slowly. ‘‘Did you get
a bead on anythin’?’”’

“No. I shot to scare away what I found to be some
of your lofers,’”’ replied Jean. ‘‘I heard them pullin’ down
a calf. An’ I found tracks of two whoppin’ big wolves.
T found the dead calf, too. Reckon the meat can be saved.
Dad, you must lose a lot of stock here.”

“Wal, son, you shore hit the nail on the haid,” replied
the rancher. ‘‘What with lions an’ bears an’ lofers—an’
two-footed lofers of another breed—I’ve lost five thousand
dollars in stock this last year.”

49
TO THE LAST MAN

“Dad! You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Jean, in
astonishment. To him that sum represented a small
fortune. :

“T shore do,” answered his father.

Jean 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 hap-
pen? Where were your herders an’ cowboys? An’ Bill
an’ Guy?”

Bill Isbel shook a vehement fist at Jean and retorted
in earnest, having manifestly been hit in a sore spot.
“Where was me an’ Guy, huh? Wal, my Oregon brother,
we was heah, all year, sleepin’ more or less aboot three
hours out of every twenty-four—ridin’ our boots off—
an’ we couldn’t keep down that loss.”

“Jean, you-all have a mighty tumble comin’ to you
out heah,’’ 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 lofers, an’ in winter time
they are hell to deal with. Lions thick as bees, an’ shore
bad when the snow’s on. Bears will kill a cow now an’
then. An’ whenever an’ old silvertip comes mozyin’
across from the Mazatzals he kills stock. I’m in with
half a dozen cattlemen. We all work together, an’ the
whole outfit cain’t keep these vermints down. Then two
years ago the Hash Knife Gang come into the Tonto.”

“Hash Knife Gang? What a pretty name!” replied
Jean. ‘‘Who’re they?”

“Rustlers, son. An’ shore the real old Texas brand.
The old Lone Star State got too hot for them, an’ they
followed the trail of a lot of other Texans who needed a
healthier climate. Some two hundred Texans around
heah, Jean, an’ maybe a matter of three hundred in-

50
TO THE LAST MAN

habitants in the Tonto all told, good an’ bad. Reckon it’s
aboot half an’ half.”

A cheery call from the kitchen interrupted the conversa-
tion of the men.

“You come to breakfast.”

During the meal the old rancher talked to Bill and
Guy about the day’s order of work; and from this Jean
gathered an idea of what a big cattle business his father
conducted. After breakfast Jean’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 Jean
had found most effective. He tried them out first, and
the shots he made were satisfactory to him and amazing
to the others. Bill had used 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. ‘Wal, reckon I’d better stick to mine.
Shore you cain’t teach an old dog new tricks. But you
boys may do well with the forty-fours. Pack ‘em on
your saddles an’ practice when you see a coyote.”

Jean 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 achieve-
ment 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 Jean. Bill and Guy Isbel were born cattlemen
—chips of the old block. Jean began to hope that his
father’s letter was an exaggeration, and particularly that

51
TO THE LAST MAN

the fatalistic speech of last night, ‘‘they are goin’ to kill
me,”’ was just a moody inclination to see the worst side.
Still, even as Jean 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. Jean was afraid his hopes had only
sentiment to foster them. Nevertheless, he forced back
a strange, brooding, mental state and resolutely held up
the brighter side. Whatever the evil conditions existing
in Grass Valley, they could be met with intelligence and
courage, with an absolute certainty that it was inevitable
they must pass away. Jean 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.

‘Wal, Jean, ride around the range with the boys,” said
the rancher. ‘Meet some of my neighbors, Jim Blaisdell,
in particular. Take a look at the cattle. An’ pick out
some hosses for yourself.”

“T’ve seen one already,’ declared Jean, quickly. ‘“‘A
black with white face. I’ll take him.”’

“Shore you know a hoss. To my eye he’s my pick.
But the boys don’t agree. Bill specially has degenerated
into a fancier of pitchin’ hosses. Ann can ride that black.
You try him this mawnin’.... An’, son, enjoy yourself.”

True to his first impression, Jean named the black
horse Whiteface and fell in love with him before ever he
52
TO THE LAST MAN

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 do what his rider wanted him to do.

A hundred or more horses grazed in the grassy meadow,
and as Jean 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 Jean
saw the gray-green expanse speckled by thousands of
cattle. The scene was inspiring. Jean’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 name was Everts and he
was father of the lad whom Jean had met near the village.
Everts was busily skinning the calf that had been killed
by the wolves. ‘‘See heah, y’u Jean Isbel,” said Everts,
“it shore was aboot time y’u come home. We-all heahs
y’u hev an eye fer tracks. Wal, mebbe y’u can kill
Old Gray, the lofer thet did this job. He’s pulled down
nine calves an’ yearlin’s this last two months thet I know
of. An’ we’ve not hed the spring round-up.”

Grass Valley widened to the southeast. Jean would
have been backward about estimating the square miles
init. Yet it was not vast dcreage so much as rich pasture
that made it such a wonderful range. Several ranches
lay along the western slope of this section. Jean 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.

Blaisdell struck Jean as being a lionlike type of Texan,

. 53
TO THE LAST MAN

both in his broad, bold face, his huge head with its up-
standing tawny hair like a mane, and in the speech and
force that betokened the nature of his heart. He was not
as old as Jean’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, ‘yangy, hard-
jawed, intent-eyed men Jean had begun to accept as
Texans.

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

“Wal, you’re like your sister Ann,” said Blaisdell.
‘‘Which you may take as a compliment, young man.
Both of you favor your mother. But you’re an Isbel.
Back in Texas there are men who never wear a glove on
their right hands, an’ shore I reckon if one of them
met up with you sudden he’d think some graves had
opened an’ he’d go for his gun.”

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

His further remarks, likewise, were exceedingly interest-
ing to Jean. The settling of the Tonto 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 Tonto accordin’ to the first settlers
they meet,” declared Blaisdell. ‘‘ An’ shore it’s my belief _
these first impressions never change. Just so strong they

54
TO THE LAST MAN

are! Wal, I’ve heard my father say there were men in
his wagon train that got run out of Texas, but he swore
he wasn’t one of them. So I reckon that sort of talk held
good for twenty years, an’ for all the Texans who emi-
grated, except, of course, such notorious rustlers as
Daggs an’ men of his ilk. Shore we’ve got some bad men
heah. There’s no law. Possession used to mean more
than it does now. Daggs an’ 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 Blaisdell spoke there were not
many sheepmen and cattlemen in the Tonto, considering
its vast area. But these, on account of the extreme wild-
ness of the broken country, were limited to the com-
paratively open Grass 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 ran their
flocks up on the Rim in summer time and down into the
Basin in winter time. A sheepman could throw a few
thousand sheep round a cattleman’s ranch and ruin him.
The range was free. It was as fair for sheepmen to graze
their herds anywhere as it was for cattlemen. This of
course did not apply to the few aeres of cultivated ground
that a rancher could call his own; but very few cattle
could have been raised on such limited area. Blaisdell
said that the sheepmen were unfair because they could
have done just as well, though perhaps at more labor, by
keeping to the ridges and leaving the open valley and
little flats to the ranchers. Formerly there had been room
enough for all;. now the grazing ranges were being en-
croached upon by sheepmen newly come to the Tonto.
To Blaisdell’s way of thinking the rustler menace was
more serious than the sheeping-off of the range, for the

55
TO THE LAST MAN

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 an’ fine steers,”
concluded Blaisdell. ‘‘Most of the first an’ some of the
last have struck the Tonto. The sheepmen have now got
distributin’ points for wool an’ sheep at Maricopa an’
Phoenix. They’re shore waxin’ strong an’ bold.”

“Ahuh!... An’ what’s likely to come of this mess?”
queried Jean.

“Ask your dad,” replied Blaisdell.

“Twill. But I reckon I'd be obliged for your opinion.”

“Wal, short an’ sweet it’s. this: Texas cattlemen will
never allow the range they stocked to be overrun by
sheepmen.”’

‘“‘Who’s this man Greaves?”” went on Jean. ‘‘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
heah. Says he’s from Missouri. Ha-ha! He’s as much
Texan asI am. He rode into the Tonto without even a
pack to hisname. An’ presently he builds his stone house
an’ freights supplies in from Phoenix. Appears to buy
an’ sell a good deal of stock. For a while it looked like
he was steerin’ a middle course between cattlemen an’
sheepmen. Both sides made a rendezvous of his store,
where he heard the grievances of each. Laterly he’s
leanin’ to the sheepmen. Nobody has accused him of that
yet. But it’s time some cattleman called his bluff.”

“Of course there are honest an’ square sheepmen in the
Basin?’’ queried Jean.

“Yes, an’ some of them are not unreasonable. But the
new fellows that dropped in on us the last few years—

they’re the ones we’re goin’ to clash with.”
56
TO THE LAST MAN

““This—sheepman, Jorth?’’ went on Jean, in slow
hesitation, as if compelled to ask what he would rather
not learn.

“‘Jorth must be the leader of this sheep faction that’s
harryin’ us ranchers. He doesn’t make threats or roar
around like some of them. But he goes on raisin’ an’
buyin’ more an’ more sheep. An’ his herders have been
grazin’ down all around us this winter. Jorth’s got to be
reckoned with.”

‘‘Who is he?”

“Wal, I don’t know enough to talk aboot. Your dad
never said so, but I think he an’ Jorth knew each other in
Texas years ago. I never saw Jorth but once. That was
in Greaves’s barroom. Your dad an’ Jorth met that day
for the first time in this country. Wal, I’ve not known
men for nothin’. They just stood stiff an’ looked at each
other. Your dad was aboot to draw. ._ But Jorth made
no sign to throw a gun.”

Jean saw the growing and weaving and thickening
thréads of a tangle that had already involved him. And
the sudden pang of regret he sustained was not wholly
because of 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 Colter. Who
is he?”’

“Colter? Shore he’s a new one. What'd he look
like?”

Jean described Colter with a readiness that spoke
volumes for the vividness of his impressions.

“T don’t know him,” replied Blaisdell. “But that only
goes to prove my contention—any fellow runnin’ wild in
the woods can say he’s a sheepman.”

‘Colter surprised me by callin’ me by my name,” con-
tinued Jean. ‘Our little talk wasn’t exactly friendly.

5 57
TO THE LAST MAN

He said a lot about my bein’ sent for to run sheep herders
out of the country.”

“Shore that’s all over,”’ replied Blaisdell, seriously.
“‘You’re a marked man already.”

‘‘What started such rumor?”

“Shore you cain’t prove it by me. But it’s not taken
as rumor. It’s got to the sheepmen as hard as bullets.”

“Ahuh! That accunts for Colter’s seemin’ a little
sore under the collar. Well, he said they were goin’ to
run sheep over Grass Valley, an’ for me to take that hunch
to my dad.”

Blaisdell 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 blue fire.

“The hell he did!’ he ejaculated, in furious amaze.

Jean gauged the brooding, rankling hurt of this old
cattleman by his sudden break from the cool, easy Texan
manner. Blaisdell cursed under his breath, swung his
arms violently, as if to throw a last doubt or hope aside,
and then relapsed to his former state. He laid.a brown
hand on Jean’s knee. y

‘‘Two years ago I called the re he said, quietly.
“Tt means a Grass Valley war.’

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

“Son, I shore hate to make your home-comin’ unhappy,”
he said, with evidence of agitation, ‘‘but so help me God
I have to do it!”

“Dad, you called me Prodigal, an’ I reckon you were
right. I’ve shirked my duty to you. I’m ready now to
make up for it,” replied Jean, feelingly.

58
TO THE LAST MAN

‘‘Wal, wal, shore that’s fine-spoken, my boy... .
Let’s set down heah an’ have a long talk. First off, what
did Jim Blaisdell tell you?”

Briefly Jean outlined the neighbor rancher’s conversa-
tion. Then Jean recounted his experience with Colter
and concluded with Blaisdell’s reception of the sheepman’s
threat. If Jean expected to see his father rise up like a
lion in his wrath he made a huge mistake. This news of
Colter and his talk never struck even a spark from Gaston
Isbel.

“Wal,” he began, thoughtfully, ‘‘reckon there are only
two points in Jim’s talk I need touch on. There’s shore
goin’ to be a Grass Valley war. An’ 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 Tonto Basin as a war between
rival sheepmen an’ cattlemen. Same old fight over water
an’ grass! ... Jean, my son, that is wrong. It ’ll not
be a war between sheepmen an’ cattlemen. But a war
of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin’ as sheep-
raisers! . . . Mind you, I don’t belittle the trouble be-
tween sheepmen an’ cattlemen in Arizona. It’s real an’
it’s vital an’ it’s serious. It "ll take law an’ order to
straighten out the grazin’’ 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 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 an’ right. Knowin’ that, a man can
fight a hundred times harder than he who knows he is a
liar an’ a thief.”

The old rancher wiped his perspiring face and breathed
slowly and deeply. Jean sensed in him the rise of a
tremendous emotional strain. Wonderingly he watched

59 :
TO THE LAST MAN

the keen lined face. More than material worries were at
the root of brooding, mounting thoughts in his father’s

eyes. f
“Now next take what Jim said aboot your comin’ to
chase these sheep-herders out of the valley. ... Jean,

I started that talk. I had my tricky reasons. I know
these greaser sheep-herders an’ I know the respect Texans
have fora gunman. Some say I bragged. Some say I’m
an old fool in his dotage, ravin’ aboot a favorite son. But
they are people who hate me an’ are afraid. True, son,
I talked with a purpose, but shore I was mighty cold an’
steady when I did it. My feelin’ was that you’d do what
I’d do if I were thirty years younger. No, I reckoned
you’d do more. For I figured on your blood. Jean,
you're Indian, an’ Texas an’ French, an’ you’ve trained
yourself in the Oregon woods. When you were only a
boy, few marksmen I ever knew could beat you, an’ I
never saw your equal for eye an’ ear, for trackin’ a
hoss, for all the gifts that make a woodsman. . . . Wal,
trememberin’ this an’ seein’ the trouble ahaid 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, an’, happenin’ into Greaves’s place one Saturday
night, I shore talked loud. His barroom was full of men
an’ some of them were in my black book. Greaves took
my talk a little testy. He said. ‘Wal, Gass, mebbe
you're right aboot some of these cattle thieves livin’
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 heah?’ That was where Greaves an’ me fell out.
I yelled at him: ‘No, by God, they’re not! My record
heah an’ that of my people is open. The least I can say

for you, Greaves, an’ your crowd, is that your records
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TO THE LAST MAN

fade away on dim trails.’ Then he said, nasty-like, ‘Wal,
if you could work out all the dim trails in the Tonto you’d
shore be surprised.’ An’ then I roared. Shore that was
the chance I was lookin’ 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 an’ when you got
heah these slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they
were, would shore 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. Blaisdell got between us.
When I was leavin’ I took a partin’ fling at him. ‘Greaves,
you ought to know the Isbels, considerin’ you’re from
Texas. Maybe you’ve got re@sons for throwin’ taunts
at my claims for my son Jean. Yes, he’s got Indian in
him an’ that ’ll be the worse for the men who will have
to meet him. I’m tellin’ you, Greaves, Jean Isbel is the
black sheep of the family. If you ride down his record
you'll find he’s shore in line to be another Poggin, or
Reddy Kingfisher, or Hardin’, or any of the Texas gun-
men you ought to remember. ... Greaves, there are
men rubbin’ elbows with you right heah that my Indian
son is goin’ to track down!’ ”

Jean bent his head in stunned cognizance of the noto-
riety with which his father had chosen to affront any and
all Tonto Basin men who were under the ban of his sus-
picion. What a terrible reputation and trust to have sad-
dled upon him! Thrills and strange, heated sensations
seemed to rush together inside Jean, 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 anythin’ but
blood spillin’ I’d never have given you such a name to

uphold,” continued the rancher. ‘‘What I’m goin’ to
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TO THE LAST MAN

tell you now is my secret. My other sons an’ Ann have
never heard it. Jim Blaisdell suspects there’s somethin’
strange, but he doesn’t know. I'll shore never tell anyone
else but you. An’ you must promise to keep my secret
now an’ after J am gone.”

“‘T promise,” said Jean.

“Wal, an’ now to get it out,” began his father, breath-
ing hard. His face twitched and his hands clenched.
“The sheepman heah I have to reckon with is Lee Jorth,
a lifelong enemy of mine. We were born in the same town,
played together as children, an’ fought with each other as
boys. We never got along together. An’ we both fell in
love with the same girl. It was nip an’ tuck for a while.
Ellen Sutton belonged to one of the old families of the
South. She was a beauty, an’ much courted, an’ I
reckon it was hard for her to choose. But I won her an’
we became engaged. Then the war broke out. I enlisted
with my brother Jean. He advised me to marry Ellen
before I left. But I would not. That was the blunder
of my life. Soon after our partin’ her letters ceased to
come. But I didn’t distrust her. That was a terrible
time an’ all was confusion. Then I got crippled an’ put in
a hospital. An’ in aboot a year I was sent back home.’

At this juncture Jean refrained from further gaze at
his father’s face.

“Lee Jorth had gotten out of goin’ to war,” went on the
rancher, in lower, thicker voice. ‘‘He’d married my
sweetheart, Ellen. . . . I knew the story long before I got
well. He had run after her like a hound after a hare. ...
An’ Ellen married him. Wal, when I was able to get aboot
I went to see Jorth an’ Ellen. I confronted them. I
had to know why she had gone back on me. Lee Jorth
hadn’t changed any with all his good fortune. He’d

made Ellen believe in my dishonor. .. . But, I reckon,
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TO THE LAST MAN

lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was faithless. In my absence
he had won her away from me. An’ I saw that she loved
him as she never had me. I reckon that killed all my
generosity. If she’d been imposed upon an’ weaned away
by his lies an’ had regretted me a little I’d have for-
given, perhaps. But she worshiped him. She was his
slave. An’ I, wal, I learned what hate was.

“The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many South-
erners. Lee Jorth went in for raisin’ cattle. He’d gotten
the Sutton range an’ after a few years he began to accumu-
late stock. In those days every cattleman was a little
bit of a thief. Every cattleman drove in an’ branded
calves he couldn’t swear was his. Wal, the Isbels were the
strongest cattle raisers in that country. An’ I laid a trap
for Lee Jorth, caught him in the act of brandin’ calves of
mine I’d marked, an’ I proved him a thief. I made hima
rustler. I ruined him. We met once. But Jorth was
one Texan not strong on the draw, at least against an
Isbel. He left the country. He had friends an’ rela-
tives an’ they started him at stock raisin’ again. But he
began to gamble an’ he got in with a shady crowd. He
went from bad to worse an’ then he came back home.
When I saw the change in proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton,
an’ how she still worshiped Jorth, it shore drove me near
mad between pity an’ hate. ... Wal, I reckon in a Texan
hate outlives any other feelin’. There came a strange
turn of the wheel an’ my fortunes changed. Like most
young bloods of the day, I drank an’ gambled. An’ one
night I run across Jorth an’ a card-sharp friend. He
fleeced me. We quarreled. Guns were thrown. I
killed my man... . Aboot that period the Texas Rangers
had come into existence. ... An’, son, when I said I never
was run out of Texas I wasn’t holdin’ to strict truth.

I rode out on a hoss.
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TO THE LAST MAN

“T went to Oregon. There I married soon, an’ there
Bill an’ Guy were born. Their mother did not live long.
An’ next I married your mother, Jean. She had some
Indian blood, which, for all I could see, made her only the
finer. She was a wonderful woman an’ gave me the only
happiness I ever knew. You remember her, of course,
an’ those home days in Oregon. I reckon J made another
great blunder when I moved to Arizona. But the cattle
country had always called me. I had heard of this wild
Tonto Basin an’ how Texans were settlin’ there. An’
Jim Blaisdell sent me word to come—that this shore was a
garden spot of the West. Wal, it is. An’ your mother
was gone— -

“Three years ago Lee Jorth drifted into the Tonto.
An’, strange to me, along aboot a year or so after his
comin’ the Hash Knife Gang rode up from Texas. Jorth
went in for raisin’ sheep. Along with some other sheep-
men he lives up in the Rim cafions. Somewhere back in
the wild brakes is the hidin’ place of the Hash Knife
Gang. Nobody but me, I reckon, associates Colonel
Jorth, as he’s called, with Daggs an’ his gang. Maybe
Blaisdell an’ a few others have a hunch. But that’s no
matter. As a sheepman Jorth has a legitimate grievance
with the cattlemen. But what could be settled by a
square consideration for the good of all an’ the future
Jorth will never settle. He’ll never settle because he is
now no longer an honest man. He’s in with Daggs. I
cain’t prove this, son, but I know it. I saw it in Jorth’s
face when I met him that day with Greaves. J saw more.
I shore saw what he is up to. He’d never meet me at an
even break. He’s dead set on usin’ this sheep an’ cattle
feud to ruin my family an’ me, even as I ruined him.
But he means more, Jean. This will be a war between
Texans, an’ a bloody war. There are bad men in this

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TO THE LAST MAN

Tonto—some of the worst that didn’t get shot in Texas.
Jorth will have some of these fellows... . Now, are we
goin’ to wait to be sheeped off our range an’ to be mur-
dered from ambush?”

“No, we are not,” replied Jean, quietly.

‘‘Wal, 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 aman’s head. Jean 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 Jean
with eyes in which there glinted dancing specks of fire,
like wild sparks.

“‘Son, this sneakin’ shot at me was made three mawnin’s
ago. I recollect movin’ my heid just when I heard the
crack of a rifle. Shore was surprised. But I got inside
quick.”

Jean 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 conscious-
ness 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. Blood was thick. His father
did not speak to dull ears. This strife of rising tumult in
him seemed 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 call of blood ties.

“That’s aboot all, son,”’ concluded the rancher. ‘‘You
understand now why I feel they’re goin’ to kill me. I
feel it heah.’? With solemn gesture he placed his broad
hand over his heart. ‘An’, Jean, strange whispers come

to me at night. It seems like your mother was callin’ or
65
TO THE LAST MAN

tryin’ to warn me. I cain’t explain these queer whispers.
But I know what I know.”

‘‘Jorth has his followers. You must have yours.”
replied Jean, tensely.

“‘Shore, son, an’ I can take my choice of the best men
heah,” replied the rancher, with pride. ‘‘But I’ll not do
that. I'll lay the deal before them an’ let them choose.
I reckon it ’ll not be a long-winded fight. It ’Il be short
an bloody, after the way of Texans. I’m lookin’ to you,
Jean, to see that an Isbel is the last man!”

“My God—dad! is there no other way? Think of
my sister Ann—of my brothers’ wives—of—of other
women! Dad, these damned Texas feuds are cruel,
horrible!”’ burst out Jean, in passionate protest.

“Jean, 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 thinkin’ 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.”

Jean 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, feudal blood lust of his
Texan father.

Then as he raised himself, gripped by a sickening cold-
ness in his breast, he remembered Ellen Jorth’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
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TO THE LAST MAN

of life still unlived. With confused vision and nameless
pain Jean thought of her.

“Dad, it’s hard on—the—the young folks,’ he said,
bitterly. ‘‘The sins of the father, you know. An’ the

- other side. How about Jorth? Has he any children?”

What a curious gleam of surprise and conjecture Jean
encountered in his father’s gaze!

“He has a daughter. Ellen Jorth. Named after her
mother. The first time I saw Ellen Jorth I thought she
was a ghost of the girl I had loved an’ lost. Sight of her
was like a blade in my side. But the looks of her an’
what she is—they don’t gibe. Old as I am, my heart—
Bah! Ellen Jorth is a damned hussy!”

Jean Isbel went off alone into the cedars. 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 vision. A face limned
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 Jorth? 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! Jean trembled. He looked around him as if he
were pursued or surrounded by eyes, by instincts, by
fears, -by incomprehensible things.

“Ahuh! That must be what ails me,’’ he muttered.
“The look of her—an’ that kiss—they’ve gone hard with
me. I should never have stopped to talk. An’ I’m goin’

to kill her father an’ leave her to God knows what.”
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TO THE LAST MAN

Something was wrong somewhere. Jean absolutely for-
got that within the hour he had pledged his manhood, 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 was no more thrilling and unintelligible in its
possibilities than this instinct which drew him irresistibly.

“Ellen Jorth! So—my dad calls her a damned hussy!
So—that explains the—the way she acted—why she never
hit me when I kissed her. An’ her words, so easy an’
cool-like. Hussy? That means she’s bad—bad! Scornful
of me—maybe disappointed because my kiss was inno-
cent! It was, I swear. An’ all she said: ‘Oh, I’ve been
kissed before.” ”

Jean 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, with this Ellen
Jorth? Was he jealous of the men who had the privilege
of her kisses? No! But his reply was hot with shame,
with uncertainty. The thing that seemed wrong was out-
side of himself. A blunder was no crime. To be attracted
by a pretty girl in the woods—to yield to an impulse was
no disgrace, nor wrong. He had been foolish over a girl
before, though not to such a rash extent. Ellen Jorth
had stuck in his consciousness, and with her a sense of
regret.

Then swiftly rang his father’s bitter words, the revealing:
“But the looks of her an’ what she is—they don’t gibe!””
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. But it didn’t
dawn on me at first. I—I was sort of excited. I liked to
look at her, but 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
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TO THE LAST MAN

and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold,
unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong,
clean, fine face rose before Jean, 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 like that, but she’s bad,” concluded Jean,
with bitter finality. ‘I might have fallen in love with
Ellen Jorth if—if she’d been different.”

But the conviction forced upon Jean 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 Jorth?” he asked.

“Yes, but not lately,” replied Ann.

‘Well, I met her as I was ridin’ along yesterday. She
was herdin’ sheep,” went on Jean, rapidly. ‘‘I asked her
to show me the way to the Rim. An’ she walked with
me.a mile or so. I can’t say the meetin’ was not interest-
in’, at least to me... . Will you tell me what you know
about her?”

“Sure, Jean,” replied his sister, with her dark eyes
fixed wonderingly and kindly on his troubled face. ‘‘I’ve
heard a great deal, but in this Tonto Basin I don’t believe
all I hear. What I know I'll tell you. I first met Ellen
Jorth 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. She seemed unhappy. The next time we
met was at a round-up. There were other girls with me
and they snubbed her. But I left them and went around
with her. That snub cut her to the heart. She was
lonely. She had no friends. She talked about herself—
how she hated the people, but loved Arizona. She had

nothin’ fit to’ wear. I didn’t need to be told that she’d
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TO THE LAST MAN

been used to better things. Just when it looked as if we
were goin’ to be friends she told me who she was and
asked me my name. I told her. Jean, I couldn’t have
hurt her more if I’d slapped her face. She turned white.
She gasped. And then she ran off. The last time I
saw her was about a year ago. I was ridin’ a short-cut
trail to the ranch where a friend lived. And I met Ellen
Jorth ridin’ with a man I’d never seen. The trail was
overgrown and shady. They were ridin’ close and didn’t
see me right off. The man had his arm round her.
She pushed him away. I saw her laugh. Then he got
hold of her again and was kissin’ her when his horse shied
at sight of mine. They rode by me then. Ellen Jorth
held her head high and never looked at me.”

‘Ann, do you think she’s a bad girl?’’ demanded Jean,
bluntly.

“Bad? Oh, Jean!’’ exclaimed Ann, in surprise and
embarrassment.

‘Dad said she was a damned hussy.”’

‘Jean, dad hates the Jorths.”’

‘Sister, I’m askin’ you what you think of Ellen Jorth.
Would you be friends with her if you could?”

Ves.”

“Then you don’t believe she’s bad.”

“No. Ellen Jorth is lonely, unhappy. She has no
mother. She lives alone among rough men. Such a girl
can’t keep men from handlin’ her and kissin’ her. Maybe
she’s too free. Maybe she’s wild. But she’s honest,
Jean. You can trust a woman to tell. When she rode
past me that day her face was white and proud. She was
a Jorth and I was an Isbel. She hated herself—she hated
me. But no bad girl could look like that. She knows
what's said of her all around the valley. But she doesn’t
care. She’d encourage gossip.”’

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TO THE LAST MAN

“Thank you, Ann,” replied Jean, huskily. ‘‘Please
keep this—this meetin’ of mine with her all to yourself,
won't you?”

‘‘Why, Jean, of course I will.”

Jean 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 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 him-
self plunged deeper into conjecture, doubt. Had not the
Ellen Jorth incident ended? He denied his father’s
indictment of her and accepted the faith of his sister.
“Reckon that’s aboot all, as dad says,” he soliloquized.
Yet was that all? He paced under the cedars. He
watched the sun set. He listened to the coyotes. He
lingered there after the call for supper; until out of the
tumult of his conflicting emotions and ponderings there
evolved the staggering consciousness that he must see
Ellen Jorth again.
CHAPTER IV

ees JORTH hurried back into the forest, hotly
resentful of the accident that had thrown her in
contact with an Isbel.

Disgust filled her—disgust that she had been amiable
to a member of the hated 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.

Upon reaching camp, her attention was distracted from ‘

herself. Pepe, the Mexican boy, with the two shepherd
dogs, was trying to drive sheep into a closer bunch to

save the lambs from coyotes. Ellen loved the fleecy, ”

tottering little lambs, and at this season she hated all the
prowling beast of the forest. From this time on for weeks
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 bears
alone. Fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few,
and were left to be hunted by men from the ranch.
Mexican sheep herders could not be depended upon to
protect their flocks from bears. Ellen helped Pepe drive
in the stragglers, and she took several shots at coyotes
skulking along the edge of the brush. The open glade in
the forest was favorable for herding the sheep at night,
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TO THE LAST MAN

and the dogs could be depended upon to guard the flock,
and in most cases to drive predatory beasts away.

After this task, which brought the time to sunset, Ellen
had supper to cook and eat. Darkness came, and a cool
night wind set in. Here and there a lamb bleated plain-
tively. 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. Dis-
dainfully she strove to think of something else. But there
was nothing that could dispel the interest of her meeting
with Jean Isbel. Thereupon she impatiently surrendered
to it, and recalled every word and action which she could
remember. And in the process of this meditation she
came to an action of hers, 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?” she mused, doubtfully. It
did not matter what he thought, but she could not help
wondering. And when she came to the memory of his
kiss she suffered more than the sensation of throbbing
scarlet cheeks. Scornfully and bitterly she burst out,
“Shore he couldn’t have thought much good of me.”

The half hour following this reminiscence was far from
being pleasant. Proud, passionate, strong-willed Ellen
Jorth 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 Jean Isbel as if it had never been. Pride.
could not efface it from her mind. The more she reflected,
the harder she tried to forget, the stronger grew a signif-..
icance 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.

6 73
TO THE LAST MAN

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 bleat-
ing of lambs, the sough of wind in the pines, and the
hungry sharp bark of coyotes off in the distance. Dark-
ness was no respecter of her pride. 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.

Ellen awakened late and failed of her usual alacrity.
Both Pepe and the shepherd dog appeared to regard her
with surprise and solicitude. Ellen’s spirit was low this
morning; her blood ran sluggishly; she had to fight a
mournful tendency to feel sorry for herself. And at first
she was not very successful. There seemed to be some
kind of pleasure in reveling in melancholy which her
common sense told her had no reason for existence. But
states of mind persisted in spite of common sense.

‘*Pepe, when is Antonio comin’ back?’’ she asked.

The boy could 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
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 glad to go to bed, for what with loss of sleep,
and weariness she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

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TO THE LAST MAN

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.

Not long was Ellen in associating this new and delight-
ful variety of sensations with the fact that Jean 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.

“Shore there’s no sense in my lyin’ to myself,” she
soliloquized, thoughtfully. ‘It’s queer of me—feelin’
glad aboot him—without knowin’. Lord! I must be
lonesome! To be glad of seein’ an Isbel, even if he is
different !’’

Soberly she aecepted the astounding reality. Her con-
fidence died with her gayety; her vanity began to suffer.
And she caught at her admission that Jean Isbel was
different; she resented it in amaze; 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 Jean Isbel again. Long she battled with this
strange decree. One moment she won a victory over this
Tew 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 Jean 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. She would
not go near him, not let him see her or guess of her presence.

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‘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 Jean 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 also she made a wide detour, and reached
the Rim a quarter of a mile west of the spot where she had
talked with Jean 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 Jorth 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 Jean 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
76

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TO THE LAST MAN

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. It was altogether unlikely that he
would come on foot.

“Shore, Ellen Jorth, y’u’re a queer girl,’ she mused.
“I reckon I wasn’t well acquainted with y’u.”

Beneath her yawned a wonderful deep cafion, 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 cafions in themselves. Shadows alternated with
clear bright spaces. The mile-wide mouth of the cafion
opened upon the Basin, down into a world of wild tim-
bered 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

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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. ‘‘Shore
I'm wonderin’ 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 Jean Isbel, and also the ap-
proaches 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. Reso-
lutely she held, as much as possible, to her sensorial percep-
tions. The meaning of Ellen Jorth 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 Jorth: ‘‘He’s not comin’,”
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
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her real self. She stretched there, burying her face in the
pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting noth-
ing 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 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’s. It was Isbel. He had come. Somehow
his coming seemed wonderful and terrible. Ellen shook
as she leaned on her elbows. Jean Isbel, true to his word,
in spite of her scorn, had come back to see her. The
fact seemed monstrous. He was an enemy of her father.
Long had range rumor been bandied from lip to lip—
old Gass Isbel had sent for his Indian son to fight the
Jorths. Jean 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
Jorth and Isbel was inevitable, she ought to kill this
Jean Isbel right there in his tracks as he boldly and con-
fidently waited for her. Fool he was to think she would
come. Ellen sank down and dropped her head until

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the strange tremor of her arms ceased. That dark and
grim flash of thought retreated. She had not come to
murder a man from ambush, but only to watch him, to
try to see what he meant, what he thought, to allay a
‘strange curiosity.

After a while she looked again. Isbel was sitting on
an upheaved section of the Rim, in a comfortable posi-
tion 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 advantage, compared with the
ragged and soiled apparel Ellen remembered. He did
not look so large. Ellen was used to the long, lean,
tangy 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. His
“hands were clasped round a knee—brown, sinewy hands,
very broad, and fitting the 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 Jean Isbel’s head and face.
He wore a cap, evidently of some thin fur. His hair
was straight and short, and in color a dead raven black.
His complexion was dark, clear tan, with no trace of 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. Ellen caught that in the
dark, intent, piercing eyes, in the wide, level, thoughtful
brows, in the stern impassiveness of his smooth face.
He had a straight, sharp-cut profile.

Ellen whispered to herself: ‘‘I saw him right the other
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day. Only, I’d not admit it... . The finest-lookin’
man I ever saw in my life is a damned Isbel! . . . Was
that what I come out heah for?”

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 Jean 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, he had kissed her, crudely and
forcibly. But that kiss had not been an insult. Ellen’s
finer feeling forced her to believe this. She remembered
the honest amaze 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 et her words, ‘‘Oh, I’ve been kissed before!’ She
was giad she had said that. Still—was she glad,
after all?

She 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
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the piercing gleam of his dark eyes. She saw, too, that
he was listening. Watching and listening for her! Ellen
had to still a tumult within her. It made her feel very
young, very shy, very strange. All the while she hated
him because he 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. He seemed an image carved in the
stone of the Rim, and he gave Ellen a singular impres-
sion of loneliness and sadness. 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 seemed to 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 until the old pride resurged. What if he
admired her? She remembered his interest, the wonder
and admiration, the growing light in his eyes. And it
had not been repugnant to her until he disclosed his
name. ‘‘What’s in a name?” she mused, recalling
poetry learned in her girlhood. ‘‘‘A rose by any other
name would smell as sweet’... . He’s an Isbel—yet
he might be splendid—noble. .. . Bah! he’s not—and
I'd hate him 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
82
 

x ren
5 2

HE STONE OF THE RIM, AND HE GAVE ELLEN A SINGULAR IMPRESSION OF

HE SEEMED AN IMAGE CARVED IN T
LONELINESS AND SADNESS
TO THE LAST MAN

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, might hear the
throbbing of her heart. 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 upon his face Ellen
saw that the time was near sunset. Turkeys were begin-
ning to gobble back on the ridge.

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 conjectuies before, they were now multiplied.
Where was Jean Isbel going? Ellen sat up suddenly.
“Well, shore this heah beats me,” she said. ‘‘What
did he have in that package? What was he goin’ 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
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

Tifle leaning against a rock. Verily Jean Isbel had been
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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 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-walled faces. Deep down, the Basin was
turning shadowy dark blue, going to sleep for the night.

Ellen bent swift steps toward her --mp. Long shafts
of gold preceded her through the foress. Then they paled
and vanished. The tips of pines and spruces turned gold.
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. 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 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
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fury. She kicked the package again, and thought she
would kick it into the smoldering camp-fire. But some-
how she stopped short of that. She left the thing there
on the ground.

Pepe and Antonio hove in 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 Tonto 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 con-
tained? 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. 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. Wherewith 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
corner off the paper, she saw 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

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the inside she gathered that the package had come from a
store in San Francisco. ‘‘Reckon he fetched home a lot
of presents for his folks—the kids—and his sister,’’ mut-
tered Ellen. ‘‘That was nice of him. Whatever this is
he shore meant it for sister Ann.... Ann Isbel. Why,
she must be that black-eyed girl I met and liked so well
before I kmew she was an Isbel.... His sister!’

Whereupon for the second time 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 like his sister,’’ she said, thoughtfully. It appeared
to be an unfortunate thought. Jean Isbel certainly
resembled his sister. ‘‘Too bad they belong to the family
that ruined dad.”

Ellen went to bed without opening the package or with-
out 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 what-
ever way she moved them she could not escape the pres-
sure 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
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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 re-
member 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 Jean 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 ona burro. She did not have a horse, and therefore
had to walk the several miles to her father’s ranch.

She set off at a brisk pace, leading the burro and carry-
ing 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
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swift-changing, intimate, deep, and vague, not of yester-
day or to-day, nor of reality.

The big, gray, white-tailed squirrels crossed ahead of
her on the trail, scampered over the piny 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. A deer
lifted its head 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 Chevelon Cafion. 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 hitter dissatisfaction
with her home, a loyal struggle against the vague sense
that all was not as it should be.

At the head of this cafion 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 sheepmen or ranchers, From Black Butte
to the Cibique and from Chevelon Butte to Reno Pass he
knew every trail, cafion, ridge, and spring, and could find
his way to them on the darkest night. His fame, however,
depended mostly upon the fact that he did nothing but

taise burros, and would raise none but black burros with
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white faces. These burros were the finest bred in alt
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 Grass 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.

“Hello, Uncle John!” she called.

“Wal, if it ain’t Ellen!’ he replied, heartily. ‘‘When
I seen thet white-faced jinny I knowed who was leadin’
her. Where 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 herdin’ sheep,” replied Ellen. ‘‘And where
have y’u been, uncle? I missed y’u on the way over.”

“Been packin’ in some grub. An’ I reckon I stayed

‘longer in Grass Valley than I recollect. But thet was

only natural, considerin’—’’ ’
‘““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.
“Wal, come in an’ set down, won’t you?” he asked.
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“No, thanks,”’ replied Ellen, and she took a seat on the
chopping block. ‘Tell me, uncle, what’s goin’ on down in
the Valley?”

“Nothin’ much yet—except talk. An’ there’s a heap
of thet.”

“Humph! There always was talk,” declared Ellen,
contemptuously. ‘‘A nasty, gossipy, catty hole, that Grass
Valley!”

“Ellen, thar’s goin’ to be war—a bloody war in the
ole Tonto Basin,’”’ went on Sprague, seriously.

“War!... Between whom?”

“The Isbels an’ their enemies. I reckon most people
down thar, an’ sure all the cattlemen, air on old Gass’s side.
Blaisdell, Gordon, Fredericks, Blue—they’ll all be in it.”

‘““Who are they goin’ to fight?”’ queried Ellen, sharply.

“Wal, the open talk is thet the sheepmen are forcin’
this war. But thar’s talk not so open, an’ I reckon not
very healthy for any man to whisper hyarbouts.”’

“Uncle John, y’u needn't be afraid to tell me anythin’,”’
said Ellen. ‘ Ta never give y uaway. Y’u’ve been a good
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
an’ keep my mouth shet. .. . I’d like to know somethin’.
Hev you any relatives away from hyar thet you could go
to till this fight’s over?”

“No. All I have, so far as I know, are right heah.”

“How aboot friends?”

“Uncle John, I have none,” she said, sadly, with bowed i

head.
“Wal, wal, I’m sorry. I was hopin’ you might git
away.”
She liftec her face. ‘Shore y’u don’t think I’d run off
if my dad got in a fight?”’ she flashed.
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“T hope you will.”

‘“‘l’m a Jorth,” 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 an’ live thar till this blows
over.”

“Thank y’u, Uncle John. Y’u’re kind and good. But
V’ll stay with my father. His troubles are mine.”’

“Ahuh!... Wal, I might hev reckoned so... . Ellen,
how do you stand on this hyar sheep an’ cattle question?”

“T 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 y’u had cattle and I
had sheep. I’d feel as free to run my sheep anywhere
as y'u were to run your cattle.”

“Right. But what if you throwed your sheep round
my range an’ sheeped off the grass so my cattle would
hev to move or starve?”

“Shore I wouldn’t throw my sheep round y’ur range,”
she declared, stoutly.

“Wal, you’ve answered half of the question. An’ now
supposin’ a lot of my cattle was stolen by rustlers, but
not a single one of your sheep. What ’d you think
then?”’

“T’d shore think rustlers chose to steal cattle because
there was no profit in stealin’ sheep.”

“Egzactly. But wouldn’t you hev a queer idee aboot
it?”

“T don’t know. Why queer? What ’re y’u drivin’ at,
Uncle John?”

“Wal, wouldn’t you git kind of a hunch thet the rustlers
was—say a leetle friendly toward the shéepmen?”’

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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 thet way. Set down an’
don’t—”

‘Dare y’u insinuate my father has—”’

“Ellen, I ain’t insinuatin’ nothin’,” interrupted the old
man. ‘I’m jest askin’ you to think. Thet’s all. You're
‘most grown into a young woman now. An’ you've got
sense. Thar’s bad times ahead, Ellen. An’ I hate to see
you mix in them.” .

“Oh, y’u do make me think,” replied Ellen, with
smarting tears in her eyes. ‘‘Y’u make me unhappy.
Oh, I know my dad is not liked in this cattle country.
But it’s unjust. He happened to go in for sheep raising.
I wish he hadn’t. It was a mistake. Dad always was a
cattleman till we came heah. He made enemies—who—
who ruined him. And everywhere misfortune crossed his
trail...’. . But, oh, Uncle John, my dad is an honest
man.”

“Wal, 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 nothin’ I could do or say would ever change
what’s goin’ to happen. If only you wasn’t a girl! ...
Thar I go ag’in. Ellen, face your future an’ fight your
way. All youngsters hev to do thet. An’ it’s the right
kind of fight thet makes the right kind of man or woman.
Only you must be sure to find yourself. An’ by thet I
mean to find the real, true, honest-to-God best in you an’
stick to it an’ die fightin’ for it. You’re a young woman,
almost, an’ a blamed handsome one. Which means
you'll hev more trouble an’ a harder fight. This country
ain’t easy on a woman when once slander has marked her.”

Q2
TO THE LAST MAN

“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.”

‘**You’re wrong, child,” said Sprague, earnestly. ‘‘Pride
an’ temper! You must never let anyone think bad of
you, much less help them to.”

“TI hate everybody down there,” cried Ellen, passion-
ately. ‘‘I hate them so I’d glory in their thinkin’ me bad.
. . . 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 andme. That’s what I glory in.”

“Ellen, you’re a wild, headstrong child,” rejoined the
old man, in severe tones. ‘‘Word has been passed ag’in’
your good name—your honor... . An’ hevn’t you given
cause fer thet?”

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 stern, just 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 an’ blunt. I ain’t used to wimmen.
But I’ve love for you, child, an’ respect, jest the same as
if you was my own... . An’ I know you're good. . . ~
Forgive me. . . . I meant only hevn’t you been, say,
sort of—careless?’’

“‘Care-less?”’ queried Ellen, bitterly and low.

‘An’ powerful thoughtless an’—an’ blind—lettin” men

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kiss you an’ fondle you—when you're really a growed-up
woman now?’

“Yes—I have,” whispered Ellen.

“Wal, then, why did you let them?”

“T—I don’t know. ... I didn’t think. The men never
let me alone—never—never! I got tired everlastingly
pushin’ 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 y’u have made it look. .. . Then—
those few times ridin’ the trail to Grass Valley—when
people saw me—then I guess I encouraged such at-
tentions. . . . Oh, I must be—I am a shametess little
hussy!””

“Hush thet kind of talk,’”’ said the old man, as he took
her hand. “Ellen, you’re only young an’ lonely an’
bitter. No mother—no friends—no one but a lot of
trough men! It’s a wonder you hev kept yourself good.
But now your eyes are open, Ellen. They’re brave an’
beautiful eyes, girl, an’ if you stand by the licht in them
you will come through any trouble. An’ you'll be happy.
Don’t ever forgit that. Life is hard enough, God knows,
but it’s unfailin’ true in the end to the man or woman
who finds the best in them an’ stands by it.”

“Uncle John, y’u talk so—so kindly. Y’u make me
have 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. I'll find some good in me—or 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. Shore all my life
won't be lived heah. 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

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me... . And maybe some man who'd believe, in spite of all
they say—that I’m not a hussy.”’

“Wal, Ellen, you remind me of what I was wantin’
to tell you when you just got here. .. . Yestiddy I heerd
you called thet name in a barroom. An’ thar was a
fellar thar who raised hell. He near killed one man an’
made another plumb eat his words. An’ he scared thet
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—y’u?”’ asked Ellen, tremulously.

“Me? Aw, I wasn’t nowhere. Ellen, this fellar was
quick as a cat in his actions an’ his words was like
lightnin’.”

‘‘Who?”’ she whispered.

“Wal, no one else but a stranger jest come to these
parts—an Isbel, too. Jean 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
Jorth side—this Jean Isbel resented an insult to Ellen
Jorth.”

“No!” cried Ellen. Something terrible was happening
to her mind or her heart.

“Wal, he sure did,’ replied the old man, ‘‘an’ it’s
goin’ to be good fer you to hear all about it.”
CHAPTER V

LD John Sprague launched into his narrative with
evident zest.

“T hung round Greaves’ store most of two days. An’
I heerd a heap. Some'of it was jest plain ole men’s gab,
but I reckon I got the drift of things concernin’ Grass
Valley. Yestiddy mornin’ I was packin’ my burros in
‘Greaves’ back yard, takin’ my time carryin’ out supplies
from the store. An’ as last when I went in I seen a strange
fellar was thar. Strappin’ young man—not so young,
either—an’ he had on buckskin. Hair black as my burros,
dark face, sharp eyes—you’d took him fer an Injun. He
carried a rifle—one of them new forty-fours—an’ also
‘somethin’ wrapped in paper thet he seemed partickler
careful about. He wore a belt round his middle an’
thar was a bowie-knife in it, carried like I’ve seen scouts
an’ Injun fighters hev on the frontier in the ’seventies.
‘That looked queer to me, an’ I reckon to the rest of
the crowd thar. No one overlooked the big six-shooter
he packed Texas fashion. Wal, I didn’t hev no idee
this fellar was an Isbel until I heard Greaves call him
‘thet.

“« ‘Isbel,’ said Greaves, ‘reckon your money’s counterfeit
‘hyar. I cain’t sell you anythin’.’

“ ‘Counterfeit? Not much,’ spoke up the young fellar,
an’ he flipped some gold twenties on the bar, where they
vung like bells. ‘Why not? Ain’t this a store? I want
a cinch strap.’

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“*Greaves looked particular sour thet mornin’. I’d been
watchin’ him fer two days. He hedn’t hed much sleep,:
fer I hed my bed back of the store, an’ I heerd men come
in the night an’ hev long confabs with him. Whatever
was in the wind hedn’t pleased him none. An’ I calkilated
thet young Isbel wasn’t a sight good fer Greaves’ sore
eyes, anyway. But he paid no more attention to Isbel.
Acted jest as if he hedn’t heerd Isbel say he wanted a
cinch strap.

“T stayed inside the store then. Thar was a lot of
fellars I’d seen, an’ some I knowed. Couple of card
games goin’, an’ drinkin’, of course. I soon gathered thet
the general atmosphere wasn’t friendly to Jean Isbel. He
seen thet quick enough, but he didn’t leave. Between you
an’ me I sort of took a likin’ to him. An’ I sure watched
him as close as I could, not seemin’ to, you know. Reckon
they all did the same, only you couldn’t see it. It got
jest about the same as if Isbel hedn’t been in thar, only
you knowed it wasn’t really the same. Thet was how I
got the hunch the crowd was all sheepmen or their friends.
The day before I’d heerd a lot of talk about this young
Isbel, an’ what he’d come to Grass Valley fer, an’ what a
bad hombre he was. An’ when I seen him I was bound to
admit he looked his reputation.

‘Wal, pretty soon in come two more fellars, an’ I knowed
both of them. You know them, too, I’m sorry to say.
Fer I’m comin’ to facts now thet will shake you. The
first fellar was your father’s Mexican foreman, Lorenzo,
and the other was Simm Bruce. I reckon Bruce wasn’t
drunk, but he’d sure been lookin’ on red licker. When
he seen Isbel darn me if he didn’t swell an’ bustle all
up like a mad ole turkey gobbler.

“* ‘Greaves,’ he said, ‘if thet fellar’s Jean Isbel I ain’t
hankerin’ fer the company y’u keep.’ An’ he made no

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bones of pointin’ right at Isbel. Greaves looked up dry
an’ sour an’ he bit out spiteful-like: ‘Wal, Simm, we
ain’t hed a hell of a lot of choice in this heah matter.
Thet’s Jean Isbel shore enough. Mebbe you can persuade
him thet his company an’ his custom ain’t wanted round
heah!’

“Jean Isbel set on the counter an’ took it all in, but
he didn’t say nothin’, The way he looked at Bruce was
sure enough fer me to see thet thar might be a surprise
any minnit. I’ve looked at a lot of men in my day, an’
can sure feel events comin’. Bruce got himself a stiff
drink an’ then he straddles over the floor in front of
Isbel.

“Sir you Jean Isbel, son of ole Gass Isbel?’ asked
Bruce, sort of lolling back an’ givin’ a hitch to his belt.

“ "Yes sir, you’ve identified me,’ said Isbel, nice an’
polite.

““*My name’s Bruce. I’m rangin’ sheep heahaboots,
an’ I hev interest in Kurnel Lee Jorth’s bizness.’

“« “Hod do, Mister Bruce,’ replied Isbel, very civil an’
cool as you please. Bruce hed an eye fer the crowd thet
was now listenin’ an’ watchin’, He swaggered closer to
Isbel.

‘“* ‘We heerd y’u come into the Tonto Basin to run us
sheepmen off the range. How aboot thet?’

““ ‘Wal, you heerd wrong,’ said Isbel, quietly. ‘I came
to work fer my father. Thet work depends on what
happens.’

“Bruce began to git’ redder of face, an’ he shook a
husky hand in front of Isbel. ‘I'll tell y’u this heah, my
Nez Perce Isbel—’ an’ when he sort of choked fer more
wind Greaves spoke up, ‘Simm, I shore reckon thet Nez |
Perce handle will stick.’ An’ the crowd haw-hawed. Then
Bruce got goin’ ag’in. ‘I’ll tell y’u this heah, Nez Perce.

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Thar’s been enough happen already to run y’u out of
Arizona.’

‘« ‘Wal, you don’t say! What, fer instance?’ asked Isbel,
quick an’ sarcastic.

“‘Thet made Bruce bust out puffin’ an’ spittin’:
‘Wha-tt, fer instance? Huh! Why, y’u dam half-breed,
ywll git run out fer makin’ up to Ellen Jorth. Thet
won't go in this heah country. Not fer any Isbel.’

“ ‘You're a liar,’ called Isbel, an’ like a big cat he
dropped off the counter. I heerd his moccasins pat soft
on the floor. An’ I bet to myself thet he was as dangerous
as he was quick. But his voice an’ his looks didn’t change
even a leetle.

“*T'm not a liar,’ yelled Bruce. ‘I’ll make y’u eat thet.
I can prove what I say. ... Y’u was seen with Ellen
Jorth—up on the Rim—day before yestiddy. Y’u was
watched. Y’u was with her. Y’u made up to her. Y’u
grabbed her an’ kissed her! ... An’ I’m heah to say,
Nez Perce, thet y’u’re a marked man on this range.’

““*Who saw me?’ asked Isbel, quiet an’ cold. I seen
then thet he’d turned white in the face.

“Vu cain’t lie out of it,’ hollered Bruce, wavin’ his
hands. ‘We got y’u daid to rights. Lorenzo saw y’u—
follered y’u—watched y’u.’ Bruce pointed at the grinnin’
greaser. ‘Lorenzo is Kurnel Jorth’s foreman. He seen
y’u maulin’ of Ellen Jorth. An’ when he tells the Kurnel
an’ Tad Jorth an’ Jackson Jorth!... Haw! Haw!
Haw! Why, hell’d bea cooler place fer yu then this heah
Tonto.’

“Greaves an’ his gang hed come round, sure tickled
clean to thar gizzards at this mess. I noticed, howsom-
ever, thet they was Texans enough to keep back to one
side in case this Isbel started any action. .. . Wal, Isbel
took a look at Lorenzo. Then with one swift grab he

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jerked the little greaser off his feet an’ pulled him close.
Lorenzo stopped grinnin’, He began to look a leetle
sick. But it was plain he hed right on his side.

““*You say you saw me?’ demanded Isbel.

“**St, sefior,’ replied Lorenzo.

‘What did you see?’

‘““*T see sefior an’ sefiorita. I hide by manzanita. I
see Sefiorita like grande sefior ver mooch. She like sefior
keese. 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 an’ landed like a pack load of wood.
An’ he didn’t git up.

‘Mister Bruce,’ said Isbel, ‘an’ you fellars who heerd
thet lyin’ greaser, I did meet Ellen Jorth. An’ I lost
my head. I—TI kissed her....But it was an accident. I
meant no insult. I apologized—I tried to explain my
crazy action. ... Thet was all. The greaser lied Ellen
Jorth was kind enough to show me the trail. We talked
a little. Then—I suppose—because she was young an’
pretty an’ sweet—I lost my head. She was absolutely
innocent. Thet damned greaser told a bare-faced lie
when he said she liked me. The fact was she despised
me. She said so. An’ when she learned I was Jean
Isbel she turned her back on me an’ 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 dead-
locked in breathless suspense. All her emotions waited
for the end. She begged Sprague to hurry.

“‘Wal, I wish I could skip the next chapter an’ hev only
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the last to tell,’’ rejoined the old man, and he put a heavy,
but solicitous, hand upon hers. . . . ‘‘Simm Bruce haw-
hawed loud an’ loud... . ‘Say, Nez Perce,’ he calls out,
most insolent-like, ‘we air too good sheepmen heah to
hev the wool pulled over our eyes. We shore know what
yu meant by Ellen Jorth. But y’u wasn’t smart when
yu told her y’u was Jean Isbel! ... Haw-haw!’

“Isbel flashed a strange, surprised look from the red-
faced Bruce to Greaves and to the other men. I take it
he was wonderin’ if he’d heerd right or if they’d got the
same hunch thet ’d come to him. An’ I reckon he
determined to make sure.

“Why wasn’t I smart?’ he asked.

““*Shore y’u wasn’t smart if y’u was aimin’ to be one of
Ellen Jorth’s lovers,’ said Bruce, with a leer. ‘Fer if y’u
hedn’t give y’urself away y’u could hev been easy enough.’

“Thar was no mistakin’ Bruce’s meanin’ an’ when he
got it out some of the men thar laughed. Isbel kept
lookin’ from one to another of them. Then facin’ Greaves,
he said, deliberately: ‘Greaves, this drunken Bruce is
excuse enough fer a show-down. I take it that you are
sheepmen, an’ you’re goin’ on Jorth’s side of the fence in
the matter of this sheep rangin’.’

““*Wal, Nez Perce, I reckon you hit plumb center,’ said _
Greaves, dryly. He spread wide his big hands to the
other men, as if to say they’d might as well own the jig
was up.

“All right. You're Jorth’s backers. Have any of you
a word to say in Ellen Jorth’s defense? I tell you the
Mexican lied. Believin’ me or not doesn’t matter. But
this vile-emouthed Bruce hinted against thet girl’s honor.’

“‘Ag’in some of the men laughed, but not so noisy, an’
there was a nervous shufflin’ of feet. Isbel looked sort of
queer. His neck had a bulge round his collar. An’

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TO THE LAST MAN

his eyes was like black coals of fire. Greaves spread his
big hands again, as if to wash them of this part of the
dirty argument.

““When it comes to any wimmen I pass—much less
play a hand fer a wildcat like Jorth’s gurl,’ said Greaves,
sort of cold an’ thick. ‘Bruce shore ought to know her.
Accordin’ to talk heahaboots an’ what he says, Ellen Jorth
has been his gurl fer two years.’

“Then Isbel turned his attention to Bruce an’ I fer one
begun to shake in my boots.

“*Say thet to me!’ he called.

“““Shore she’s my gurl, an’ thet’s why Im a-goin’ to
hev y’u run off this range.’

“Isbel jumped at Bruce. ‘You damned drunken cur!
You vile-mouthed liar! ....I may be an Isbel, but by
God you cain’t slander thet girl to my face!’ ... Then
he moved so quick I couldn’t see what he did. But I
heerd his fist hit Bruce. It sounded like an ax ag’in’ a
beef. Bruce fell clear across the room. An’ by Jinny
when he landed Isbel was thar. As Bruce staggered up,
all bloody-faced, bellowin’ an’ spittin’ out teeth Ishel
eyed Greaves’s crowd an’ said: ‘If any of y’'u make a move
it "Il mean gun-play.’ Nobody moved, thet’s sure. In
fact, none of Greaves’s outfit was packin’ guns, at least in
sight. When Bruce got all the way up—he’s a tall fellar—
why Isbel took a full swing at him an’ knocked him back
across the room ag’in’ the counter. Y’u know when a
fellar’s hurt by the way he yells. Bruce got thet second
smash right on his big red nose... . I never seen any
one so quick as Isbel. He vaulted over thet counter jest.
the second Bruce fell back on it, an’ then, with Greaves’s
gang in front so he could catch any moves of theirs, he
jest slugged Bruce right an’ left, an’ banged his head on

the counter. Then as Bruce sunk limp an’ slipped down,.
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lookin’ like a bloody sack, Isbel let him fall to the floor.
Then he vaulted back over the counter. Wipin’ the blood
off his hands, he throwed his kerchief down in Bruce’s face.
Bruce wasn’t dead or bad hurt. He’d jest been beaten
bad. He was moanin’ an’ slobberin’. Isbel kicked him,
not hard, but jest sort of disgustful. Then he faced thet
crowd. ‘Greaves, thet’s what I think of your Simm
Bruce. Tell him next time he sees me to run or pull a
gun.. An’ then Isbel grabbed his rifle an’ package off
the counter an’ went out. He didn’t even look back. I
seen him mount his horse an’ ride away. ... Now, girl,
what hev you to say?”

Ellen could only say good-by and the word was so low
as to be almost inaudible. 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 Jorth was an unknown creature.
She sobbed now as she dragged the burro down the
cafion 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
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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 Jorth arrived at the Knoll,
which was the location of her father’s ranch. Three
cafions met there to form a larger one. The knoll was a
symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of the three cafions.
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
cafion 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 Jorth stood round the rough corner of the largest
of the three cafions, 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 Jorth approached her home slowiy, with dragging,

reluctant steps; and never before in the three unhappy
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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 Daggs, 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, ‘‘Jorth, heah’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 Jean 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 corner, 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

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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 ap-
pearance usual to it after Ellen had been away for a few
days. Whatever Ellen had lost during the retrogression
of the Jorths, 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. Anda considerable time elapsed before
she was disturbed.

A tall shadow darkened the doorway.

“Howdy, little one!” said a lazy, drawling voice.
“So y’u-all 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
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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, Daggs!” replied Ellen. ‘‘Where’s my dad?”

“‘He’s playin’ cairds with Jackson an’ Colter. Shore’s.
playin’ bad, too, an’ it’s gone to his haid.”’

“‘Gamblin’?”’ queried Ellen.

“Mah child, when’d Kurnel Jorth ever play for fun?’”
said Daggs, with a lazy laugh. ‘‘There’s a stack of gold
on the table. Reckon yo’ uncle Jackson will win it.
Colter’s shore out of luck.”

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

‘‘Heah, mah gal, give us a kiss,’’ he said.

“Daggs, I’m not your girl,’’ replied Ellen as she slipped.
out from under his hand.

Then Daggs 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.

“‘Daggs, y’u keep your paws off me,” she said.

“Aw, now, Ellen, I ain’t no bear,” he remonstrated.
““What’s the matter, kid?”

“T’m not a kid. And there’s nothin’ the matter.
Y’u’re to keep your hands to yourself, that’s all.”

He tried to reach her across the table, and his move--
ments were lazy and slow, like his smile. His tone was.
coaxing.

““Mah dear, shore you set on my knee just the other
day, now, didn’t you?”

Ellen felt the blood sting her cheeks.

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TO THE LAST MAN

“‘T was a child,” she returned.

“Wal, listen to this heah grown-up young woman.
All in a few days! . .. Doon’t be in a temper, Ellen.

. . Come, give us a kiss.”’

She deliberately gazed into hiseyes. 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.

“Daggs, I was a child,” aie said. ‘‘I was lonely—
hungry for affection—I was innocent. Then I was care-
less, too, and thoughtless when I should have known
better. But I hardly understood y’u men. I put such
thoughts out of my mind. I know now—know what
y’u mean—what y’u have made people believe I am.”

“Ahuh! Shore I get your hunch,’”’ he returned, with a
change of tone. ‘But I asked you to marry me?”

Yes yu did. The first day y’u got heah to my dad’s
house. And y’u asked me to marry y’u after y’u found
y’u couldn’t have your way with me. To y’u the one
didn’t mean any more than the othere’’

“Shore I did more than Simm Bruce an’ Colter,” he
retorted. ‘‘They never asked you to marry.”

“No, they didn’t. And if I could respect them at all
I’d do it because they didn’t ask me.”

“Wal, T'll be dog-goned!”’ ejaculated Daggs, thought-
fully, as he stroked his long mustache.

“T’ll say to them what I’ve said to y’u,” went on Ellen.
“T'll tell dad to make y’u let me alone. I wouldn’t marry
one of y’u—y’u loafers to save my life. I’vemy Suspicions
about y’u. Y’u’re a bad lot.”

Daggs changed subtly. The whole indolent nonchalance

of the man vanished in an instant.
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TO THE LAST MAN

“Wal, Miss Jorth, I reckon you mean we’re a bad lot
of sheepmen?” he queried, in the cool, easy speech of a
Texan.

“No,” flashed Ellen. ‘Shore I don’t say sheepmen. I
say y’u’re a bad lot.”

“Oh, the hell you say!” Daggs spoké 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
Daggs speak: ‘“‘Lee, your little wildcat is shore heah.
An’ take mah hunch. Somebody has been talkin’ to her.”’

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

“Lord only knows,” replied Daggs. ‘‘But shore it
wasn’t any friends of ours.”’

“We cain’tstop people’stongues,”’ said Jorth, resignedly.

“Wal, I ain’t so shore,”’ continued Daggs, with his slow,
cool laugh. ‘“Reckon I never yet heard any daid men’s
tongues wag.”

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. “Shore I’m
glad you’re home. This heah 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. In relation

to him she vaguely dreaded it.
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TO THE LAST MAN

Lee Jorth 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 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.
Jorth always persisted in wearing a white linen shirt,
likewise a relic of his Southern prosperity, and to-day it
was tagged and soiled as usual.

Ellen watched her father eat and waited for him to speak.
It occured 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 cared nothing for his
sheep.

“Ellen, what riled Daggs?’’ inquired her father, pres-
ently. ‘‘He shore 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 thou-
sand things sufficient to inflame his Southern pride and
temper.

“Daggs asked me to marry him again and I said he
belonged to a bad lot,” she replied.

Jorth laughed inscorn. ‘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,
IIo
TO THE); LAST MAN

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 cain’t marry
me.”

““Daggs said somebody had been talkin’ to you. How
aboot that?”

“Old John Sprague has just gotten back from Grass
Valley,’ said Ellen. ‘I stopped in to see him. Shore he
told me all the village gossip.”

“‘Anythin’ to interest me?’’ he queried, darkly.

“Ves, dad, I’m afraid a good deal,’’ she said, hesitating-
ly. Then in accordance with a decision Ellen had made
she told him of the rumored war between sheepmen and
cattlemen; that old Isbel had Blaisdell, Gordon, Fredericks,
Blue and other well-known ranchers on his side; that his
son Jean Isbel had come from Oregon with a wonderful
reputation as fighter and scout and tracker; that it was
no secret how Colonel Lee Jorth was at the head of the
sheepmen; that a bloody war was sure to come.

“Hah!” exclaimed Jorth, 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
Jean Isbel. If not he would hear as soon as Simm Bruce
and Lorenzo came back. She decided to forestall them.

“Dad, I met Jean Isbel. He came into my camp.
Asked the way to the Rim. I showed him. We—we
talked a little. And shore were gettin’ acquainted when—
when he told me who he was. Then I left him—hurried
back to camp.”

“Colter met Isbel down in the woods,” replied Jorth,
ponderingly. ‘‘Said he looked like an Indian—a hard
an’ slippery customer to reckon with.”

“Shore I guess I can indorse what Colter said,” returned
III
TO THE LAST MAN

Ellen, dryly. She could have laughed aloud at her deceit.
Still she had not lied.

“How'd this heah 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 men heah,”’ she
stammered.

“Did Sprague tell you aboot this half-Indian Isbel—
aboot his reputation?”’

“Yes.”

“Did he look to you like a real woodsman?”’

“Indeed he did. He wore buckskin. He stepped
quick and soft. He acted at home in the woods. He
had eyes black as night and sharp as lightnin’. They
shore saw about all there was to see.”

Jorth chewed at his mustache and lost himself in brood-
ing thought.

“Dad, tell me, is there goin’ to be a war?”’ asked Ellen,
presently.

What a red, strange, rolling flash blazed in his eyes!
His body jerked.

“Shore. You might as well know.”

“Between sheepmen and cattlemen?”’

“Yes,”

“With y’u, dad, at the haid of one faction and Gaston
Isbel the other?”

“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.

*Cain’t it be helped?” she repeated, stubbornly.

“No!” he declared, with deep, hoarse passion.

“Why not?”

II2
TO THE LAST MAN

“Wal, we sheepmen are goin’ to run sheep anywhere we
like on the range. An’ cattlemen won’t stand for that.”

“But, dad, it’s so foolish,” declared Ellen, earnestly.
“"Y’u sheepmen do not have to run sheep over the cattle
Tange.”

“T 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 overrunnin’. If some of the
tange is better in water and grass, then whoever got there
first should have it. That shore is only fair. It’s com-
mon sense, too.” /

“Ellen, I reckon some cattle people have been preju-
dicin’ you,”’ said Jorth, bitterly.

“Dad!” she cried, hotly.

This had grown to be an ordeal for Jorth. 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 heah, girl. You listen. There’s a clique of
ranchers down in the Basin, all those you named, with
Isbel at their haid. They have resented sheepmen comin’
down into the valley. They want it all to themselves.
That’s the reason. Shore there’s another. All the Isbels
are crooked. They’re cattle an’ horse thieves—have been
for years. Gaston Isbel always was a maverick rustler.
He’s gettin’ old now an’ rich, so he wants to cover his
tracks. He aims to blame this cattle rustlin’ an’ horse
stealin’ on to us sheepmen, an’ run us out of the country.”

Gravely Ellen Jorth 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. She

shuddered a little, loyally battling against the insidious
113
TO THE LAST MAN

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 long, however, some-
thing about him had troubled her, perplexed her. Fear-
fully 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.
“Tf 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 now.”

Then it was not the face of a liar that Jorth 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.

“Gaston Isbel an’ I were boys together in Weston,
Texas,” began Jorth, 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 an’ faced us. God! I'll never forget
that. Your mother confessed her unfaithfulness—by
Heaven! She taunted him with it. Isbel accused me of
winnin’ her by lies. But she took the sting out of that.
. . . Isbel never forgave her an’ he hounded me to ruin.

He made me out a card-sharp, cheatin’ my best friends.
I14
TO THE LAST MAN

I was disgraced. Later he tangled me in the courts—
he beat me out of property—an’ last by convictin’ me of
rustlin’ cattle he run me out of Texas.” .

Black and distorted now, Jorth’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? Jorth beat the table
with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the more
significant for their lack of physical force.

‘An’ so help me God, it’s 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.

“Shore 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
II5
TO THE LAST MAN

looked at them in amaze. 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.

“Shore! 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 heah!
Isbel or not, he’s shore...”

But Ellen Jorth could not utter aloud the conviction
her intelligence tried to force upon her.

“Tt ’d be a pity to burn them,” she mused. ‘“‘I cain’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 wall, she whispered:
‘Jean Isbel!... I hate him!”

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—
Daggs, with his superb head, like that of a hawk, un-
covered to the sun; Colter with his lowered, secretive
looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorth, her uncle,
huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and
hair, and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorth,
another brother of her father’s, younger, red of eye and

116
TO THE LAST MAN

nose, a weak-chinned drinker of rum. Three other limber-
legged Texans lounged there, partners of Daggs, 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
sheepmen. 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. Shore you ain’t goin’ to say good
mawnin’ to this heah bad lot?’’ drawled Daggs, with
good-natured sarcasm.

“Why, shore! Good morning, y’u hard-working indus-
trious maiana sheep raisers,” replied Ellen, coolly.

Daggs stared. The others appeared taken back by a
greeting so foreign from any to which they were accustomed
from her. Jackson Jorth 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 likin’ your talk,” he said, with a frown.

“Dad, when y’u play cards don’t y’u call a spade a
spade?”

“Why, shore I do.”

‘Well, I’m calling spades spades.”

“‘Ahuh!” grunted Jorth, furtively dropping his eyes.
“Where you goin’ with your gun? I’d rather you hung
round heah 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.”

117
TO THE LAST MAN

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

“‘Shore they’re bustin’ with news,’’ declared Daggs.

“They been ridin’ some, you bet,’’ remarked another.

“‘Huh!”’ exclaimed Jorth. ‘Bruce shore looks queer
to me.”

“‘Red liquor,” said Tad Jorth, sententiously. ‘‘You-all
know the brand Greaves hands out.”

“Naw, Simm ain’t drunk,” said Jackson Jorth. ‘Look
at his bloody shirt.”’

The cool, indolent interest of the crowd vanished at the
red color pointed out by Jackson Jorth. Daggs rose in a
single springy motion to his lofty height. The face Bruce
turned to Jorth 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 Jorth.

“‘Thet Nez Perce Isbel beat me half to death,” he
bellowed.

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

“Wal, Simm, I’ll be damned if you don’t look it.”

“Beat you! What with?” burst out Jorth, explosively.

“TI thought he was swingin’ an ax, but Greaves:
swore it was his fists,’ bawled Bruce, in misery and
fury.

“Where was your gun?’’ queried Jorth, sharply.

“Gun? Hell!’ exclaimed Bruce, flinging wide his arms.
“Ask Lorenzo. He hada gun. An’ he got a biff in the

jaw before my turn come. Ask him?”
118
7J THE LAST MAN

Attention thus directed to the Mexican showed a heavy
discolored swelling upon the side of his olive-skinned face.
Lorenzo looked only serious.

“Hah! Speak up,” shouted Jorth, impatiently.

‘‘Sefior Isbel heet me ver quick,’’ replied Lorenzo, with
expressive gesture. ‘‘I see thousand stars—then moocho
black—all like night.”

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

“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. ‘‘Wal, I
happened in Greaves’s store an’ run into Jean Isbel. Shore
was lookin’ fer him. I had my mind made up what to do,
but I got to shootin’ off my gab instead of my gun. I
called him Nez Perce—an’ I throwed all thet talk in his
face about old Gass Isbel sendin’ fer him—an’ I told him
he’d git run out of the Tonto. Reckon I was jest warmin’
up. ... But then it all happened. He slugged Lorenzo
jest one. An’ Lorenzo slid peaceful-like to bed behind the
counter. I hadn’t time to think of throwin’ a gun before
he whaled into me. He knocked out two of my teeth.
An’ 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.

“Wal, I'll be doggoned,” drawled Daggs.

“What do you make of this kind of fightin’?”” queried
Jorth.

119
TO THE LAST MAN

“Darn if I know,” replied Daggs in perplexity. ‘‘Shore
an’ sartin it’s not the way of a Texan. Mebbe this young
Isbel really is what old Gass swears he is. Shore Bruce
ain’t nothin’ to give an edge to a real gun fighter. Looks
to me like Isbel bluffed Greaves an’ his gang an’ licked
your men without throwin’ a gun.”

“Maybe Isbel doesn’t want the name of drawin’ first
blood,” suggested Jorth.

“That ’d be like Gass,” spoke up Rock Wells, quietly.
“T onct rode fer Gass in Texas.”’

“Say, Bruce,” said Daggs, ‘was this heah palaverin’ of
yours an’ Jean Isbel’s aboot the old stock dispute? Aboot
his father’s range an’ water? An’ partickler aboot

sheep?”’
“‘Wal—I—I yelled a heap,’’ declared Bruce, haltingly,
“but I don’t recollect all I said—I was riled... . Shore,

though it was the same old argyment thet’s been fetchin’
us closer an’ closer to trouble.”’

Daggs removed his keen hawklike gaze from Bruce.
“Wal, Jorth, all I'll say is this. If Bruce is tellin’ 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.
An’ Jean Isbel don’t run true to class. Shore there never
was a gunman who'd risk cripplin’ his right hand by
sluggin’ anybody.”

“Wal,” broke in Bruce, sullenly. ‘‘You-all can take
it daid straight or not. I don’t givea damn. But you’ve
shore got my hunch thet Nez Perce Isbel is liable to handle
any of you fellars jest as he did me, an’ jest as easy.
What’s more, he’s got Gites figgered. An’ youre know
thet Greaves is as deep in—”’

“Shut up that kind of gab,’ demanded Jorth, stridently.
‘An’ answer me. Was the row in Greaves’s barroom aboot
sheep?”

120
TO THE LAST MAN

“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, y’u’re a liar,”’ she said, bitingly.

The surprise of her sudden appearance seemed to root
Bruce to the spot. All but the discolored places on his
face turned white. He held his breath a moment, then
expelled it hard. His effort to recover from the shock
was painfully obvious. He stammered incoherently.

“Shore y’u’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 menace. ‘That
row was not about sheep... . Jean Isbel didn’t beat y’u
for anythin’ about sheep. ... Old John Sprague was in
Greaves’s store. He heard y’u. He saw Jean Isbel beat
y'uas y’u deserved.... An’ he told me!”

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 y’u sayin’?”’ hoarsely called
Jorth, in dark amaze.

“Dad, y’u leave this to me,” she retorted.

Daggs stepped beside Jorth, significantly on his right
side. ‘‘Let her alone Lee,’’ he advised, coolly. ‘“‘She’s
shore got a hunch on Bruce.”

“Simm Bruce, y’u cast a dirty slur on my name,” cried
Ellen, passionately.

It was then that Daggs grasped Jorth’s right arm and
held it tight. “Jest what I thought,” hesaid. “Stand
still, Lee. Let’s see the kid make him showdown.”

“That’s what Jean Isbel beat y’u for,” went on Ellen.
I2I
TO THE LAST MAN

“For slandering a girl who wasn’t there.... Me! Y’u
rotten liar!”

“But, Ellen, it wasn’t all lies,” said Bruce, huskily.
“T was half drunk—an’ horrible jealous.... You know
Lorenzo seen Isbel kissin’ you. I can prove thet.”

Ellen threw up her head and a scarlet wave of shame
and wrath flooded her face.

“Yes,” she cried, ringingly. ‘‘He saw Jean Isbel kiss
me. Once! ..An’ it was the only decent kiss I’ve had
in years. He meant no insult. I didn’t know who he
was. An’ through his kiss I learned a difference between
men.... Y’u made Lorenzo lie. An’ if I had a shred of
good name left in Grass Valley you dishonored it... . Y’u
made him think I was your girl! Damn y’u! I ought
to kill y’u. .. . Eat your words now—take them back—
or I’ll cripple y’u for life!”

Etlen lowered the cocked rifle toward his feet.

“Shore, Ellen, I take back—all I said,’ gulped Bruce.
He gazed at the quivering rifle barrel and then into the
face of Ellen’s father. Instinct told him where his real
peril lay.

Here the cool and tactful Daggs showed himself master
of the situation.

“Heah, listen!’ he called. ‘‘Ellen, I reckon Bruce was
drunk an’ out of his haid. He’s shore ate his words.
Now, we don’t want any cripples in this camp. Let him
alone. Your dad got me heah to lead the Jorths, an’
that’s my say to you. ... Simm, you’re shore a low-down,
lyin’ rascal. Keep away from Ellen after this or I'll
bore you myself... Jorth, it won’t be a bad idee for you
to forget you’re a Texan till you cool off. Let Bruce stop
some Isbel lead. Shore the Jorth-Isbel war is aboot on,
an’ I reckon we'd be smart to believe old Gass’s talk aboot
his Nez Perce son.”

122
 

 

 

 

 

6“

“SHORE Y’U’RE MORE THAN A LIAR, TOO,’’ CRIED ELLEN, FACING HIM WITH BLAZING EYES. “‘THAT ROW WAS
NOT ABOUT SHEEP. ... OLD JOHN SPRAGUE WAS IN GREAVES'S STORE. HE SAW JEAN ISBEL BEAT Y'U AS Y'U
DESERVED. ... AN’ HE TOLD ME!”
CHAPTER VI

PRoK this hour Ellen Jorth 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. Dream-
ing and indolence, habits born in her which were often a
comfort to one as lonely as she, would ill fit her for the
hard test she divined and dreaded. In the matter of her
father’s fight she must stand by him whatever the issue
or the outcome; in what pertained to her own principles,
her womanhood, and her soul she stood absolutely alone.
Therefore, Ellen put dreams aside, and indolence of
mind and body behind her. Many tasks she found,
and when these were done for a day she kept active in
other ways, thus earning the poise and peace of labor.
Jorth 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 ranches of his neighbors or 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. When the men did not gamble
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something immediate and perturbing was on their minds.
Ellen had not yet lowered herself to the deceit and sus-
picion of eavesdropping, but she realized that there was a
climax approaching in which she would deliberately do so.

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 a ranch. There was
absolutely no ranching done, and little work. Often
Ellen had to chop wood herself. Jorth did not possess a
plow. Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of
this lack dumfounded her. Even old John Sprague
taised some hay, beets, turnips. Jorth’s cattle and
horses fared ill during the winter. Ellen remembered
how they used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and
aspens. Many of them died in the snow. The flocks
of sheep, however, were driven down into the Basin
in the fall, and across the Reno Pass to Phoenix and
Maricopa.

Ellen could not discover a fence post on the ranch.
nor a piece of salt for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon,
nor any sign of a sheep-shearing outfit. She had never
seen any sheep 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 long-established understanding, her father and her
uncles were keen on horse trading and buying.

Then the many trails leading away from the Jorth
ranch—these grew to have a fascination for Ellen; and
the time came when she rode out on them to see for her-
self where they led. The sheep ranch of Daggs, supposed
to be only a few miles across the ridges, down in Bear
Cafion, never materialized at all for Ellen. This circum-

stance so interested her that she went up to see her friend
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Sprague and got him to direct her to Bear Cayion, so that
she would be sure not to miss it. And 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 Cafion. Sprague said there was only one
cafion by that name. Daggs had assured her of the exact
location on his place, and so had her father. Had they
lied? Were they mistaken in the cafion? There were
many cafions, all heading up near the Rim, all running
and widening down for miles through the wooded moun-
tain, and vastly different from the deep, short, yellow-
walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the Basin side.
Ellen investigated the cafions within six or eight miles
of her home, both to east and to 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.

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 alJ about it.
In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervous-
ness 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 Jorth rode home in the early morning, after an
absence of two nights. Ellen heard the clip-clop of
horses long before she saw them.

“Hey, Ellen! Come out heah,’’ called her father.

Ellen left her work and went outside. A stranger had
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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 had 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 struck
Ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred.

“Ellen, heah’s a horse for you,” said Jorth. with
something of pride. ‘‘I madea trade. Reckon I wanted
him myself, but he’s too gentle for me an’ maybe a
little small for my weight.”

Delight visited Ellen for the first time in many days.
Seldom had she owned a good horse, and never one like
this.

“Oh, dad!”’ she exclaimed, in her gratitude.

“Shore 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 cafion.”

‘‘Agreed. ... All daid black, isn’t he, except that white
face? What’s his name, dad?”

“T forgot to ask,” replied Jorth. as he began unsaddling
his own horse. ‘“‘Slater, what’s this heah black’s name?’’
The lanky giant grinned. ‘I reckon it was Spades.”

“Spades?” ejaculated Ellen, blankly. ‘‘What a name!
... Well, I guess it’s as good as any. He’s shore black.”

“Ellen, keep him hobbled when you’re not ridin’ him,”
was her father’s parting advice as he walked off with
the stranger.

Spades 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 tke woods and over
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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 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 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.

“Spades, y’u’ve shore cut out my burro Jinny,” said
Ellen, regretfully. ‘‘Well, I reckon women are fickle.”

Next day she rode up the cafion to show Spades to her
friend John Sprague. The old burro breeder was not at
home. As his door was open, however, and a fire smolder-
ing, Ellen concluded he would soon return. So she
waited. Dismounting, she left Spades 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 cafion 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
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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 Jean Isbel.

Ellen felt prey to the strangest quaking sensation she
had ever suffered. It took 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 Jorth 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 mornin’, Miss Ellen!’ he said.

Ellen did not return his greeting, but queried, almost
breathlessly, ‘‘Did y’u come by our ranch?”

“No. I circled,” he replied. :

“Jean Isbel! What do y’u want heah?” she demanded. :

“Don’t you know?” he returned. His eyes were in-

tensely black and piercing. They seemed to search
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Ellen’s very soul. To meet their gaze was an ordeal that’
only her rousing 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.

“It’s hard to call a woman a liar,” he returned, bitterly.
“But you must be—seein’ you’re a Jorth.”

“Liar! Not to y’u, Jean Isbel,’’ she retorted. ‘‘I’d
not lie to y’u to save my life.”

He studied her with keen, sober, moody intent. The
dark fire of his eyes thrilled her.

“Tf that’s true, I’m glad,” he said.

‘Shore it’s true. I’ve no idea why y’u came heah.”

Ellen did have a dawning idea that she could not force
into oblivion. But if she ever admitted it to her con-
sciousness, 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. ... Did y’u come to
see him?”

“No... . Did Sprague tell you anythin’ about the row
he saw me in?”

“He—did not,” replied Ellen, lying with stiff lips.
She who had sworn she could not lie! She felt the hot
blood leaving her heart, mounting in a wave. All her
conscious will seemed impelled to deceive. What had
she to hide from Jean Isbel? And a still, small voice
replied that she had to hide the Ellen Jorth 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.

“T’m glad of that,” Isbel was saying, thoughtfully.
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“Did you come heah to see me?” interrupted Ellen.
She felt that she could not endure this reiterated suggestion
of fineness, of consideration in him. . She would betray
herselfi—betray what she did not even realize herself.
She must force other footing—and that should be the one
of strife between the Jorths and Isbels.

‘“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... but
that’s no matter. You didn’t meet me that day on the
Rim.”

“Meet y’u!’”’ she echoed, coldly. “Shore y’u never
expected me?”

“Somehow I did,” he replied, with those penetrating
eyes on her. “I put somethin’ in your tent that day.
Did you find it?”

“Ves,” she replied, with the same casual coldness,

“What did you do with it?”

“T kicked it out, of course,” she replied.

She saw him flinch.

“‘And you never opened it?”

“‘Certainly not,’’ she retorted, as if forced. ‘‘Doon’t
y’u know anythin’ about—about people? . . . Shore even
if y’u are an Isbel y’u never were born in Texas.”

“Thank God I wasn’t!” 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 live
dry and hard as the cactus. Where I come from men
don’t live on hate. They can forgive.”

“Forgive! . .. Could y’u forgive a Jorth?”

“Yes, I could.”

“Shore that’s easy to say—with the wrongs all on your
side,” she declared, bitterly.

“Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side,” re-

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torted Jean, his voice full. ‘‘Your father stole my
father’s sweetheart—by lies, by slander, by dishonor, by
makin’ terrible love to her in his absence.”

“Tt’s a lie,” cried Ellen, passionately.

“Tt is not,” he declared, solemnly.

“Jean Isbel, I say y’u lie!”

“No! JI say you’ve been lied to,” he thundered.

The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth
at Ellen. It weakened her.

“‘But—mother loved dad—best.”’

“Yes, afterward. No wonder, poor woman!... But
it was the action of your father and your mother that
ruined all these lives. You’ve got to know the truth,
Ellen Jorth. . . . All the years of hate have borne their
fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood
must be spilled. The Jorths and the Isbels can’t live on
the same earth... . 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 alone upheld her.

“Never, Jean Isbel!’’ she cried. “I'll never know
truth from y’u. ... I'll never share anythin’ with y’u—
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 ina
flash—though I never knew it till after... . Why do you
hate me so terribly?”

Ellen felt a heavy, stifling pressure within her breast.
“Y'u’re an Isbel. . . . Doon’t speak of love to me.”

“JT didn’t intend to. But your—your hate seems

unnatural. And we'll probably never meet again... .
I3I
TO THE LAST MAN

I can’t help it. I love you. Love at first sight! Jean
Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn’t it? ... It was all
so strange. My meetin’ you so lonely and unhappy,
my seein’ you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin’ you so
good in spite of—”

“Shore it was strange,” interrupted Ellen, with scornful
laugh. She had found her defense. In hurting him she
could hide her own hurt. ‘‘Thinking me so good in
spite of— Ha-ha! And I said I’d been kissed before!’”

“Yes, in spite of everything,” he said.

Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her.
She felt a wild tumult in her heart. All that crowded
to her lips for utterance was false.

“Ves—kissed before I met you—and since,” she said,
mockingly. ‘And I laugh at what y’u call love, Jean
Isbel.”’ ;

“Laugh if you want—but believe it was sweet, honor-
able—the best in me,”’ he replied, in deep earnestness.

“Bah!” cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and
shame and hate.

“By Heaven, you must be different from what I
thought!’’ exclaimed Isbel, huskily.

“Shore if I wasn’t, I’d make myself... . Now, Mister
Jean Isbel, get on your horse an’ 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?”

“‘T—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 some pretty hard rides ahead of me.”
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“Y'u—y’u give—” whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening.

“Ves. He’s mine,” replied Isbel. With that he turned
to whistle. Spades 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 day before yesterday. 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 heah?” echoed
Ellen, without any evidence of emotion whatever. In-
deed, she seemed to have been turned to stone.

‘Trackin’ him waseasy. I wish for your sake it ’d been
impossible,’ he said, bluntly.

“For my sake?” she echoed, in precisely the same tone.

Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control.
He misunderstood it. With a hand far from gentle he
pushed her bent head back so he could look into her
face.

“Yes, for your sake!” he declared, harshly. ‘‘Haven’t
you sense enough to see that? ... What kind of a game do
you think you can play with me?”’

“‘Game!... Game of what?”’ she asked.

“Why, a—a game of ignorance—innocence—any old
game to fool a man who’s tryin’ to be decent.”

This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank question-
ing. And it inflamed Isbel.

“You know your father’s a horse thief!”’ he thundered.

Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been
prepared for an unknown and a terrible blow. It had

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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. Mbotionless 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 Jorth, you know your father’s in with this Hash
Knife Gang of rustlers,’’ thundered Isbel.

“Shore,”? she replied, with the cool, easy, careless
defiance of a Texan.

“You know he’s got this Daggs to lead his faction
against the Isbels?”’

‘‘Shore.””

“You know this talk of sheepmen buckin’ the cattlemen
is all a blind?”

“Shore,” reiterated Ellen.

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 fell in love with such as you!” he exclaimed,
and his other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless
pathos and impotence.

The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen—
body, mind, and soul. Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel!
Yet loved by him! In that divination there flamed up a
wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back
upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her
like whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan

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blue blood! It lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful
words of the last of that family to whom she owed her
degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and rustler!
Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting
her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the
Jorths. The sins of the father must be visited upon the
daughter.

“Shore y’u might have had me—that day on the Rim—
if y’u hadn’t told your name,’’ she said, mockingly, and
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?”

“Shore, I’d have been plumb fond of havin’ y’u make
up to me,” she drawled. It possessed her now with
irresistible power, this fact of the love he could not help.
Some fiendish woman’s satisfaction dwelt in her conscious-
ness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the good
in him.

“Ellen Jorth, you lie!” he burst out, hoarsely.

“Jean, shore 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 y’u hadn’t give yourself away—”

Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his
intention until his hard hand smote her mouth. In-
stantly 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—she pitied you.”

That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under
which she almost sank. But one moment longer could
she maintain this unnatural and terrible poise.

“Jean Isbel—go along with y’u,” she said, impatiently.
“I’m waiting heah for Simm Bruce!”

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At last it was as if she 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. In-
stinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had prompted the
speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock to him re-
bounded 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 Jorth, I’m thinkin’ yet—you lie!’ he said, low
and tense between his teeth.

“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 situation.

Isbel took her literally. She had convinced him. And
the instant held blank horror for Ellen.

“By God—then I'll have somethin’—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
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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 bruised 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,
all the while with his piercing gaze on her. His face had
been dark purple: now it was white.

“No—Ellen Jorth,” he panted, “I don’t—want any
of you—that way.” And suddenly he sank on the log
and covered his face with his hands. ‘‘What I loved in
you—was what I thought—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 that she could scarcely stand.

“Y’u—damned—Isbel!”” she gasped, with hoarse pas-
sion. ‘‘Y’u insulted me!”

“‘Insulted you?...’’ laughed Isbel, in bitter scorn. “It
couldn’t be done.”

“Ohl... I'll kill y’u!” 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 Jorth-
Isbel feud. It’ll be a dirty business. I’m sick of it
already. ... Killme!... First blood for Ellen Jorth!”

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

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hate. But she was as powerless as if she were still held
in Jean Isbel’s giant embrace.

“T—I want to—kill y’u,” she whispered, ‘‘but I cain’t.

. Leave me.”

“You're no Jorth—the same as I’m no Isbel. We
oughtn’t be mixed in this deal,” he said, somberly. ‘I’m -
sorrier for you than I am for myself. ,.. You're a girl. .
You once had a good mother—a act Rt home. And this
life you’ve led here—mean as it’s been—is nothin’ to
what you'll face now. Damn the men that brought you
to this! I’m goin’ to kill some of them.”

With that he mounted and'turned away. Ellen called
out for him to take his horse. He did not stop nor look
back. She called again, but her voice was fainter, and
Isbel was now leaving at a trot. Slowly she sagged
against the tree, lower and lower. He headed into
the trail leading up the cafion. How strange a relief
Ellen felt! She watched him ride into the aspens and
start up the slope, at last to disappear in the pines. It
seemed at the moment that he took 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? Low
she sank against the tree and closed her eyes.

Old John Sprague did not return. Hours dragged by—
dark hours for Ellen Jorth 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.

What had she learned? Sight of the black horse grazing
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near seemed to prompt the trenchant replies. Spades
belonged to Jean 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 only as a blind,
a consort of Daggs, 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 exter-
mination of the Isbels. It was all very plain now to Ellen.

“Daughter of a horse thief an’ rustler!’’ she muttered.

And her thoughts sped back to the days of her girlhood.
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 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 had known it. He had dragged her to
her ruin. That degradation had killed her. Ellen realized
that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against
her father. Had Gaston Isbel truly and dishonestly
started her father on his downhill road? Ellen wondered.
She hated the Isbels with unutterable and growing hate,
yet she had it in her to think, to ponder, to weigh judg-
ments in their behalf. She owed it to something in her-
self to be fair. But what did it matter whg was to blame
for the Jorth-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 Jorths were guilty, and she
clung to them and their creed, then she would be one of
them.

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“But I’m not,” she mused, aloud. ‘‘My name’s Jorth,
an’ I reckon I have bad blood... . 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... .
Shore my pride made me a fool. . . . An’ now have I
any choice to make? I’m a Jorth. I must stick to my
father.”

All this summing up, however, did not wholly account
for the pang 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. She had sworn away her honor. She had basely
made herself vile. She had struck ruthlessly at the great
heart of a man who loved her. Ah! That thrust had
rebounded to leave this dreadful pang in her breast.,
Loved her? Yes, the strange truth, the insupportable
truth! She had to contend now, not with her father and
her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Jean 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
kill it by 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 stopped so
low except in a moment of tremendous tumult. If she
had done sore injury to Isbel what had she done to herself?
How strange, how tenacious had been his faith in her
honor! Could she ever forget? She must forget it. But
she could never forget the way he had scorned those vile
men in Greaves’s store—the way he had beaten Bruce for
defiling her name—the way he had stubbornly denied her
own insinuations. She was a woman now. She had

learned something of the complexity of a woman’s heart.
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She could not change 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. ‘‘An’ 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. ‘‘Shore

I’m done for, one way or another. . . . I must stick to
Dad... . or kill myself?”

Ellen rode Spades back to the ranch. She rode 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 Spades at a full run.

“‘Who’s after you?’’ yelled her father, as she pulled the
black to a halt. Jorth held a rifle. Daggs, Colter, the
other Jorths were there, likewise armed, and all watchful,
strung with expectancy.

“Shore nobody’s after me,” replied Ellen. ‘‘Cain’t I
run a horse round heah without being chased?”

Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.

“Hah!... What you mean, girl, runnin’ like a streak
right down on us? You're actin’ queer these days, an’
you look queer. I’m not likin’ it.”

“Reckon these are queer times—for the Jorths,”’ replied
Ellen, sarcastically.

“Dagegs found strange horse tracks crossin’ the
meadow,” said her father. ‘‘An’ that worried us. Some
one’s been snoopin’ round the ranch. An’ when we seen
you runnin’ so wild we shore thought you was bein’
chased.”

“No. I was only trying out Spades to see how fast
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he could run,” returned Ellen. ‘‘Reckon when we do get
chased it'll take some running to catch me.”’

“Haw! Haw!” roared Daggs. ‘“‘It shore will, Ellen.”

“Girl, it’s not only your runnin’ an’ your looks that’s
queer,’”’ declared Jorth, in dark perplexity. ‘‘You talk
queer.”

“Shore, dad, y’u’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. “‘Say,
did you see any strange horse tracks?”

“T reckon I did. And I know who made them.”

Jorth stiffened. All the men behind him showed a
sudden intensity of suspense.

“Who?” demanded Jorth.

‘Shore it was Jean Isbel,’’ replied Ellen, coolly. ‘‘He
came up heah tracking his black horse.”

*‘ Jean—Isbel—trackin’—his—black ‘horse,” repeated
her father.

“Yes. He’s not overrated as a tracker, that’s shore.”

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 Jorth burst the silence with a
curse, and Daggs followed with one of his sardonic laughs.

“Wal, boss, what did I tell you?” he drawled.

Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a
strong hand, he held her facing him.

“Did y’u see Isbel?”’

“Ves,” replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had
asked.

“Did y’u talk to him?”

“Ves.”

“‘What did he want up heah?”

“T told y'u. He was tracking the black horse y’u stole.”
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Jorth’s hand and arm dropped limply. His sallow face
turned a livid hue. Amaze merged into discomfiture
and that gave place to rage. He raised a hand as if to
strike Ellen. And suddenly Daggs’s long arm shot out to
clutch Jorth’s wrist. Wrestling to free himself, Jorth
cursed under his breath. ‘‘Let go, Daggs,” he shouted,
stridently. “Am I drunk that you grab me?”

“Wal, y’u ain’t drunk, I reckon,” replied the rustler,
with sarcasm. ‘‘But y’u’re shore some things I’ll reserve
for your private ear.”

Jorth gained a semblance of composure. But it was
evident that he labored under a shock.

“Ellen, did Jean Isbel see this black horse?”’

“Yes. He asked me how I got Spades an’I told
him.”

‘Did he say Spades belonged to him?”

“Shore I reckon he proved it. Y’u can always tell a
horse that loves its master.”’

“Did y’u offer to give Spades back?”

“Yes. But Isbel wouldn’t take him.”

“Hah!... An’ why not?”

“He said he’d rather I kept him. He was about to
engage in a dirty, blood-spilling deal, an’ he reckoned
he’d not be able to care for a fine horse. . . . I didn’t want
Spades. I tried to make Isbel take him. But he rode
off... . And that’s all there is to that.”

“Maybe it’s not,’ replied Jorth, chewing his mustache
and eying Ellen with dark, intent gaze. “Y’u’ve met
this Isbel twice.”

“Tt wasn’t any fault of mine,” retorted Ellen.

“T heah he’s sweet on y’u. How aboot 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

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might think were matters of supreme indifference. Yet
she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.

“T heah talk from Bruce an’ Lorenzo,” went on her
father. ‘An’ Daggs heah—”

“Daggs nothin’! interrupted that worthy. ‘‘Don’t
fetch me in. I said nothin’ an’ I think nothin’.”

“Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad... but he will
never be again,’ returned Ellen, in low tones. With
that she pulled her saddle off Spades and, throwing it
over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.

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 y’u said ‘that horse
yu stole,’ I felt as if y’u’d knifed me... .”

Ellen sat atthe 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 that she would not see how 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

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that bound him to long-past happier times. She was her
mother over again—the woman who had betrayed another
man for him and gone with him to her ruin and death.

“Dad, don’t go on so,” said Ellen, breaking in upon her
father’s rant. ‘‘I will be true to y’u—as my mother was.
...lama Jorth. Your place is my place—your fight is
my fight... . Never speak of the past tomeagain. If God
spares us through this feud we will go away and begin
all over again, far off where no one ever heard of a Jorth.
... If we’re not spared we'll at least have had our whack
at these damned Isbels.”
CHAPTER VII

URING June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from
‘Grass Valley.

Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel’s
life. Another cowardly shot had been fired from ambush,
this time from a pine thicket bordering the trail that led
to Blaisdell’s ranch. Blaisdell heard this shot, so near
his home was it fired. No trace of the hidden foe could
be found. The ground all around that vicinity bore a
carpet of pine needles which showed no trace of footprints.
The supposition was that this cowardly attempt had been
perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the Jorths. But
there was no proof. And Gaston Isbel had other enemies
in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan. The old man
raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. And
his friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their
kin and friends. ‘‘Let’s quit ranchin’ till this trouble’s
settled,” he declared. ‘‘Let’s arm an’ ride the trails an’
meet these men half-way... . It won’t help our side any
to wait till you’re shot in the back.” More than one of
Isbel’s supporters offered the same advice.

““No; we'll wait till we know for shore,’”’ was the stub-
born cattleman’s reply to all these promptings.

“Know! Wal, hell! Didn’t Jean find the black hoss
up at Jorth’s ranch?’’ demanded Blaisdell. ‘‘What more
do we want?”

“Jean couldn’t swear Jorth stole the black.”

‘Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!”’ growled Blaisdell.
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““An’ we’re losin’ cattle all the time. Who’s stealin’
? em?’’

‘We've always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin’
heah.”’

“*Gas, I reckon y’u want Jorth to start this fight in the
open.”

“It'll start soon enough,” was Isbel’s gloomy reply.

Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost
or stolen cattle. Circumstances had been against him,
and there was something baffling about this rustling.
The summer storms set in early, and it had been his luck
to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he might
have followed. The range was large and cattle were
everywhere. Sometimes a loss was not discovered for
weeks. Gaston Isbel’s sons were now the only men left
to ride the range. Two of his riders had quit because of
the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go. So
that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen
until their tracks were old. Added to that was the fact
that this Grass Valley country was covered with horse
tracks and cattle tracks. The rustlers, whoever they
were, had long been at the game, and now that there
was reason for them to show their cunning they did it.

Early in July the hot weather came. Down on the red
ridges of the Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were
cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was
something to endure. When the white cumulus clouds
rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker
and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thunder-
cloud, Jean welcomed them. He liked to see the gray
streamers of rain hanging down from a canopy of black,
and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a
trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats,
the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita

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and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-
parching places under the hot summer sun. Jean longed
for the cool heights of the Rim, the shady pines, the dark
sweet verdure under the silver spruces, the tinkle and
murmur of the clear rills. He often had another longing,
too, which he bitterly stifled.

Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd dog, had gi
peared one day, and had never returned. Among men
at the ranch there was a difference of opinion as to what
had happened to Shepp. The old rancher thought he
had been poisoned or shot; Bill and Guy Isbel believed
he had been stolen by sheep herders, who were always
stealing dogs; and Jean inclined to the conviction that
Shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. The fact was
that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.

One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing
and trampling out in the valley; and upon hurrying to a
vantage point he was amazed to see upward of five hun-
‘dred steers chasing a lone wolf. Jean’s father had seen
such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean.
The wolf was a big gray and black fellow, rangy and
powerful, and-until he got the steers all behind him he
was rather hard put to it to keep out of their way. Prob-
bably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and pull
down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him.
Jean kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they
would chase him within range of a rifle. But the wary
wolf saw Jean and sheéred off, gradually drawing away
from his pursuers.

Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then
set. off across the valley. His father owned one small
flock of sheep that had not yet been driven up on the Rim,
where all the sheep in the country were run during the hot,

dry summer down on the Tonto. Young Evarts and a
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Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock.
The regular Mexican herder, a man of experience, had
given up his job; and these boys were not equal to the
task of risking the sheep up in the enemies’ stronghold.

This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well
up from Grass Valley, where the brush afforded some
protection from the sun, and there was good water and
a little feed. Before Jean reached his destination he heard
a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact caused Jean a
little concern. Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but, to
his knowledge, no small arms. Jean rode up on one of the
black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of
Grass Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of
the country. At first he made out only cattle, and bare
meadowland, and the low encircling ridges and hills.
But presently up toward the head of the valley he descried
a bunch of horsemen riding toward the village. He could
not tell their number. That dark moving mass seemed
to Jean to be instinct with life, mystery, menace. Who
were they? It was too far for him to recognize horses,
let alone riders. They were moving fast, too.

Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse
downhill again, and rode on his quest. A number of
horsemen like that was a very unusual sight around
Grass Valley at any time. What then did it portend now?
Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was
a new sensation for him. Brooding over this he proceeded
on his way, at length to turn into the draw where the camp
of the sheep-herders was located. Upon coming in sight
of it he heard a hoarse shout. Young Evarts appeared
running frantically out of the brush. Jean urged his horse
into a run and soon covered the distance between them.
Evarts appeared beside himself with terror.

“Boy! what’s the matter?” queried Jean, as he dis-

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mounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white
face to the camp, and all around.

“Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing
his hands and pointing.

Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp.
He saw the little teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished
meal—and then the Mexican lad lying prone on the
ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly face. Near
him lay an old six-shooter.

“Whose gun is that?’’ demanded Jean, as he picked it up.

“Ber-nardino’s,”’ replied Evarts, huskily. ‘‘He—he jest
got it—the other day.”

‘Did he shoot himself accidentally?”

“Oh no! No! He didn’t do it—atall.”

“Who did, then?”

“The men—they rode up—a gang—they did it,”’ panted
Evarts.

‘Did you know who they were?”

“No. I couldn’t tell. I saw them comin’ an’ I was
skeered. Bernardino had gone fer water. I run an’ hid
in the brush. I wanted to yell, but they come too close.
... Then I heerd them talkin’. Bernardino come back.
They ’peared friendly-like. Thet made me raise up to look.
An’ I couldn’t see good. I heerd one of them ask Ber-
nardino to let him see his gun. An’ Bernardino handed it
over. He looked at the gun an’ haw-hawed, an’ flipped
it up in the air, an’ when it fell back in his hand it—it went
off bang! .. . An’ Bernardino dropped. . . . I hid down
close. I was skeered stiff. I heerd them talk more, but
not what they said. Then they rode away.... An’ I
hid there till I seen y’u comin’.”

‘Have you got a horse?” queried Jean, sharply.

“No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”

“Get one. Hurry over to Blaisdell. Tell him to send
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word to Blue and Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the
devil to my father’s ranch. Hurry now!”

Young Evarts ran off without reply. Jean stood look-
ing down at the limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican
boy. “By Heaven!”’ he exclaimed, grimly “the Jorth-
Isbel war is on! ... Deliberate, cold-blooded murder!
I'll gamble Daggs did this job. He’s been given the
leadership. He’s started it.... Bernardino, greaser or not,
you were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.””

Jean had no time to spare. Tearing a tarpaulin out
of the teepee he covered the lad with it and then ran for
his horse. Mounting, he galloped down the draw, over
the little red ridges, out into the valley, where he put his
horse to a run.

Action changed the sickening horror that sight of
Bernardino had engendered. Jean even felt a strange,
grim relief. The long, dragging days of waiting were over.
Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative. Blood had begun
to flow. And it would continue to flow now till the last
man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last
man of the other. Would it be a Jorth or an Isbel?
“My instinct was right,” he muttered, aloud. ‘‘That
bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin’.”” Jean gazed all
around the grassy, cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so
swiftly, and toward the village, but he did not see any
sign of the dark group of riders. They had gone on to
Greaves’s store, there, no doubt, to drink and to add more
enemies of the Isbels to their gang. Suddenly across
Jean’s mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth. ‘‘What "Il
become of her? . . . What ’ll become of all the women?
My sister? .. . The little ones?”

No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it

appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The graz-
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ing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack
half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the
column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens,
the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate
Jean’s haste and his darkness of mind. This place was
his father’s farm. There was not a cloud in the blue,
summer sky.

As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from
the door, and then Bill and Guy and their gray-headed
father came out upon the porch. Jean saw how he
waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into
the lane. Bill and Guy reached his side as Jean pulled
his heaving horse to a halt. They all looked at Jean,
swiftly and intently, with a little, hard, fiery gleam
strangely identical in the eyes of each. Probably before
a word was spoken they knew what to expect.

“Wal, you shore was in a hurry,”’ remarked the father.

“What the hell’s up?” queried Bill, grimly.

Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned
slightly pale. Jean leaped off his horse.

“Bernardino has just been killed—murdered with his.
own gun.” 4

Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting
breath that let his chest sag. A terrible deadly glint,
pale and cold as sunlight on ice, grew slowly to dominate
his clear eyes.

“A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.

Not one of the three men asked who had done the
killing. They were silent a moment, motionless, locked
in the secret seclusion of their own minds. Then they
listened with absorption to Jean’s brief story.

“Wal, that lets us in,” said his father. ‘I wish we had
more time. Reckon I’d done better to listen to you

boys an’ have my men close at hand. Jacobs happened
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to ride over. That makes five of us besides the
women.”

“Aw, dad, you don’t reckon they’ll round us up heah?’’
asked Guy Isbel.

“Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old
man. ‘But I never really believed they’d have the
nerve. Shore I ought to have figgered Daggs better.
This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush
looked aboot Jorth’s size tome. But I reckon now we’lt
have to fight without our friends.”

“Let them come,” said Jean. “I sent for Blaisdell, Blue,
Gordon, and Fredericks. Maybe they’ll get here in time.
But if they don’t it needn’t worry usmuch. We can hold
out here longer than Jorth’s gang can hang around. We'll
want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house.”

“Wal, I'll see to that,” rejoined his father. ‘‘Jean,
you go out close by, where you can see all around, an’.
keep watch.”

““Who’s goin’ to tell the women?” asked Guy Isbel.

The silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent
testimony to the hardest and saddest aspect of this strife
between men. The inevitableness of it in no wise detracted
from its sheer uselessness. Men from time immemorial
had hated, and killed one another, always to the misery
and degradation of their women. Old Gaston Isbel
showed this tragic realization in his lined face.

“Wal, boys, I’ll tell the women,” he said. ‘‘Shore you
needn’t worry none aboot them. They'll be game.”

Jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from
the house, and here he stationed himself to watch all
points. The cedared ridge back of the ranch was the one
approach by which Jorth’s gang might come close without
being detected, but even so, Jean could see them and ride
to the house in time to prevent a surprise. The moments

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dragged by, and at the end of an hour Jean was in hopes
that Blaisdell would soon come. These hopes were well
founded. Presently he heard a clatter of hoofs on hard
ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw
the friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding
a big white horse. Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand,
and the sight of him gave Jean a glow of warmth. He
was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels
to the last man. Jean watched him ride to the house—
watched the meeting between him and his lifelong friend.
There floated out to Jean old Blaisdell’s roar of rage.

Then out on the green of Grass Valley, where a long,
swelling plain swept away toward the village, there ap-
peared a moving dark patch. A bunch of horses! Jean’s
body gave a slight start—the shock of sudden propulsion
of blood through all his veins. Those horses bore riders.
They were coming straight down the open valley, on the
wagon road to Isbel’s ranch. No subterfuge nor secrecy
nor sneaking in that advance! <A hot thrill ran over Jean.

“By Heaven! They mean business!’’ he muttered.
Up to the last moment he had unconsciously hoped
Jorth’s gang would not come boldly like that. The
verifications of all a Texan’s inherited instincts left no
doubts, no hopes, no illusions—only a grim certainty that
this was not conjecture nor probability, but fact. For
a moment longer Jean watched the slowly moving dark
patch of horsemen against the green background, then
he hurried back to the ranch. His father saw him com-
ing—strode out as before.

‘‘Dad—Jorth is comin’,” said Jean, huskily. How he
hated to be forced to tell his father that! The boyish
love of old had flashed up.

‘‘Whar?’’ demanded the old man, his eagle gaze sweep-
ing the horizon.

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“Down the road from Grass Valley. You can’t see
from here.”’

‘Wal, come in an’ let’s get ready.”

Isbel’s house had not been constructed with the idea
of repelling an attack from a band of Apaches. The long
living room of the main cabin was the one selected for
defense and protection. This room had two windows
and a door facing the lane, and a door at each end, one of
which opened into the kitchen and the other into an
adjoining and later-built cabin. The logs of this main
cabin were of large size, and the doors and window
coverings were heavy, affording safer protection from
bullets than the other cabins.

When Jean went in he seemed to see a host of white
faces lifted to him. His sister Ann, his two sisters-in-law,
the children, all mutely watched him with eyes that
would haunt him.

“Wal, Blaisdell, Jean says Jorth an’ his precious gang
of rustlers are on the way heah,”’ announced the rancher.

“Damn me if it’s not a bad day fer Lee Jorth!”’ declared
‘Blaisdell.

“Clear off that table,’”’ ordered Isbel, ‘‘an’ fetch out all
the guns an’ shells we got.”’

Once laid upon the table these presented a formidable
arsenal, which consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters
that Jean had brought with him from the coast; the
enormous buffalo, or so-called ‘‘needle’”’ gun, that Gaston
Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle which Blaisdell _
had brought, and half a dozen six-shooters. Piles and
packages of ammunition littered the table.

“Sort out these heah shells,” said Isbel. ‘‘Everybody
wants to get hold of his own.”

Jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set,
bearded man, rather jovial among those lean-jawed

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TO THE LAST MAN

Texans. He carried a .44 rifle of an old pattern. ‘Wal,
boys, if I’d knowed we was in fer some fun I’d hev fetched
more shells. Only got one magazine full. Mebbe them
new .44’s will fit my gun.”

It was discovered that the ammunition Jean had
brought in quantity fitted Jacob’s rifle, a fact which
afforded peculiar satisfaction to all the men present.

‘‘Wal, shore we’re lucky,’’ declared Gaston Isbel.

The women sat apart, in the corner toward the kitchen,
and there seemed to be a strange fascination for them in
the talk and action of the men. The wife of Jacobs was a
little woman, with homely face and very bright eyes.
Jean thought she would be a help in that household during
the next doubtful hours.

Every moment Jean would go to the window and peer
out down the road. His companions evidently relied
upon him, for no one else looked out. Now that the
suspense of days and weeks was over, these Texans faced
the issue with talk and act not noticeably different from
those of ordinary moments.

At last Jean espied the dark mass of horsemen out in
the valley road. They were close together, walking their
mounts, and evidently in earnest conversation. After
several ineffectual attempts Jean counted eleven horses,
every one of which he was sure bore a rider.

“Dad, look out!’’ called Jean.

Gaston Isbel strode to the door and stood looking, with-
out a word.

The other men crowded to the windows. Blaisdell
cursed under his breath. Jacobs said: ‘‘By Golly! Come
to pay us a call!’” The women sat motionless, with dark,
strained eyes. The children ceased their play and looked
fearfully to their mother.

When just out of rifle shot of the cabins the band of
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horsemen halted and lined up in a half circle, all facing the
ranch. They were close enough for Jean 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.

“Jean, do you know any of them?” asked his father.

“No, not yet. They’re too far off.”

“Dad, I'll get your old telescope,” said Guy Isbel, and
he ran out toward the adjoining cabin.

Blaisdell shook his big, hoary head and rumbled out of
his bull-like neck, ‘‘Wal, now you’re heah, you sheep
fellars, what are you goin’ to do aboot it?”’

Guy Isbel returned with a yard-long telescope, which
he passed to his father. The old man took it with shaking
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.

“Jorth!”” he swore, harshly.

Jean had only to look at his father to know that recog-
nition had been like a mortal shock. It passed. Again
the rancher leveled the glass.

“Wal, Blaisdell, there’s our old Texas friend, Daggs,”’
he drawled, dryly. ‘‘An’ Greaves, our honest store-
keeper of Grass Valley. An’ there’s Stonewall Jackson
Jorth. An’ Tad Jorth, with the same old red nose! .
An’, say, damn if one of that gang isn’t Queen, as bad a
gun fighter as Texas ever bred. Shore I thought he’d
been killed in the Big Bend country. So I heard... .
An’ there’s Craig, another respectable sheepman of Grass
Valley. Haw-haw!... An’, wal, I don’t recognize any
more of them.”

Jean forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across
the faces of that group of horsemen. ‘‘Simm Bruce,’’ he
said, instantly. ‘‘I see Colter. And, yes, Greaves is there.
I’ve seen the man next to him—face like a ham... .”

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“Shore that is Craig,” interrupted his father. :
|, Jean knew the dark face of Lee Jorth by the resemblance
it bore to Ellen’s, and the recognition brought a twinge.
He thought, too, that he could tell the other Jorths. He
asked his father to describe Daggs and then Queen. It
was not likely that Jean would fail to know these several
men in the future. Then Blaisdell 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.

‘‘Wal, Daggs is wavin’ his hand heah an’ there, like a
general aboot to send out scouts. Haw-haw!... An’
*pears to me he’s not overlookin’ our hosses. Wal, that’s
natural for a rustler. He’d have to steal a hoss or a
steer before goin’ into a fight or to dinner or to a funeral.”

“Tt ll be his funeral if he goes to foolin’ ’round them
hosses,” declared Guy Isbel, peering anxiously out of the
door.

“Wal, son, shore it "Il be somebody’s funeral,” replied
his father.

Jean paid but little heed to the conversation. With
sharp eyes fixed upon the horsemen, he tried to grasp at
their intention. Daggs 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 horses were his passion.

‘Looks like they’d do some horse stealin’,” said Jean.

“Lend me that glass,’’ demanded Guy, forcefully. He
surveyed the band of men for a long moment, then he
handed the glass back to Jean.

“I’m goin’ out there after my hosses,”’ he declared.

“No!” exclaimed his father.

“That gang come to steal an’ not to fight. Can’t you
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see that? If they meant to fight they’d do it. They're
out there arguin’ about my hosses.”’

Guy picked up his rifle. He looked sullenly determined
and the gleam in his eye was one of fearlessness.

“Son, I know Daggs,” said his father. ‘An’ I know
Jorth. They’ve come to kill us. It ‘ll be shore death
for y’u to go out there.”

“T’m goin’, anyhow. They can’t steal my hosses out
from under my eyes. An’ they ain’t in range.”

“Wal, Guy, you ain’t goin’ alone,’’ spoke up Jacobs,
cheerily, as he came 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 risk your life for a
horse or two.”

Jacobs laughed and answered, ‘‘Not much risk,’”’ and
went out with Guy. To Jean their action seemed fool-
hardy. 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 Daggs and Jorth had deadly intent.
Jean saw Daggs slip out of his saddle, rifle in hand.
Others of the gang did likewise, until half of them were
dismounted.

‘Dad, they’re goin’ to shoot,” called out Jean, sharply.
“Yell for Guy and Jacobs. Make them come back.”

The old man shouted; Bill Isbel yelled; Blaisdell lifted
his stentorian voice.

Jean 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

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nearing the horses, when Jean 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
rifles.

Guy Isbel stopped short, and, dropping his gun, he
threw up his arms and fell headlong. Jacobs acted as if
he had suddenly encountered an invisible blow. He had
been hit. Turning, he began to run and ran fast
for a few paces. There were more quick, sharp shots.
He let go of his rifle. His running broke. Walking,
reeling, staggering, he kept on. A hoarse cry came from
him. Then a single rifle shot ‘pealed out. Jean heard
the bullet strike. Jacobs fell to his knees, then forward
on his face.

Jean Isbel felt himself turned to marble. The sudden-
ness 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—killed!’”’ whispered a broken voice. “I was
watchin’. ... They’re both dead!”

The wives of Jacobs and Guy Isbel had slipped up be-
hind Jean and from behind him they had seen the tragedy.

‘“‘T asked Bill—not to—go,”’ faltered the Jacobs woman,
and, covering her face with her hands, she groped back
to the corner 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 Jean’s shoulder. She
had the nerve of aman. She had looked out upon death
before.

“Yes, they’re dead,”’ she said, bitterly. ‘‘An’ how are
‘we goin’ to get their bodies?”

At this Gaston Isbel seemed to rouse from the cold

spell that had transfixed him.
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TO THE LAST MAN

“God, this is hell for our women,” he cried out, hoarsely.
“My son—my son!... Murdered by the Jorths!”” Then
he swore a terrible oath.

Jean saw the remainder of the mounted rustlers get off,
and then. all of them leading their horses, they began to
move around to the left.

“Dad, they’re movin’ round,” said Jean.

“Up to some trick,” declared Bill Isbel.

“Bill, you make a hole through the back wall, say
aboot the fifth log up,’’ ordered the father. ‘‘Shore we’ve
got to look out.”

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 wornen
moved their chairs, and huddled together as if waiting
and listening.

Jean watched 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 Jean, and he went through the kitchen and cautiously
out another door to slip into a low-roofed, shed-like end
of the 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 Jean as if they intended
to attack the cabins. Then they halted at the edge of the
brush and held a long consultation. Jean could see them
distinctly, though they were too far distant for him to
recognize any particular man. One of them, however,

stood and moved apart from the closely massed group.
IOr
TO THE LAST MAN

Evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was exhorting
his listeners. Jean concluded this was either Daggs or
Jorth. Whoever it was had a loud, coarse voice, and this
and his actions impressed Jean with a suspicion that the
man was under the influence of the bottle.

Presently Bill Isbel called Jean in a low voice. ‘Jean,
I got the hole made, but we can’t see anyone.”

“I see them,” Jean replied. ‘‘They’re havin’ a powwow.
Looks to me like either Jorth or Daggs is drunk. He’s
arguin’ to charge us, an’ the rest of the gang are holdin’
back... . Tell dad, an’ all of you keep watchin’. I’ll let
you know when they make a move.” .

Jorth’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. Pres-
ently two of them went into the brush, probably back to
the horses. In a few moments they reappeared, carrying
a pack. And when this was deposited on the ground all
the rustlers sat down around it. They had brought food
and drink. Jean had to utter a grim laugh at their cool-
ness; and he was reminded. of many dare-devil deeds
known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife Gang.
Jean was glad of a reprieve. The longer the rustlers put
off an attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would
have to get here. Rather hazardous, however, would it
be now for anyone to attempt to get to the Isbel cabins
in the daytime. Night would be more favorable.

Twice Bill Isbel came through the kitchen to whisper to
Jean. The strain in the large room, from which the
rustlers could not be seen, must have been great. Jean
told him all he had seen and what he thought about it.
“ Eatin’ an’ drinkin’! ejaculated Bill. ‘‘Well, I’ll be —!
That ll jar the old man. He wants to get the fight
over.”

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TO THE LAST’MAN

‘Tell him I said it "Il be over too quick—for us—unless
we are mighty careful,” replied Jean, sharply.

Bill went back muttering to himself. Then followed a
long wait, fraught with suspense, during which Jean
watched the rustlers regale themselves. The day was hot
and still. And the unnatural silence of the cabin was
broken now and then by the gay laughter of the children.
The sound shocked and haunted Jean. 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. What
moust be in 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 Jean, grimly cocking his rifle,
muttered to himself that a few more rods closer would
mean the end of several of that gang. They knew the
range of a rifle well enough, 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 Jean’s
sight. This fact caused him alarm. They were, of
course, 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, and it was covered with
grass and little clumps of brush, from behind which the
tustlers could fire into the windows and through the clay
chinks without any considerable risk to themselves.
As they did not come into sight again, Jean 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.
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TO THE LAST MAN

“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. An’ they’re
goin’ to crawl down the ditch closer to us... . It looks bad.
They’ll have grass an’ brush to shoot from. We've got to
be mighty careful how we peep out.”

“Ahuh! All right,” replied his father. ‘‘You women
keep the kids with you in that corner. An’ you all better
lay down flat.”

Blaisdell, Bill Isbel, and the old man crouched at the
large window, peeping through cracks in the rough edges
of the logs. Jean took his post beside the small window,
with his keen eyes vibrating like a compass needle.
The movement of a blade of grass, the flight of a grass-
hopper could not escape his trained sight.

“Look sharp now!” he called to the other men. “I see
dust... . They’re workin’ along almost to that bare spot
on the bank... . I saw the tip of a rifle...a black hat...
more dust. They’re spreadin’ along behind the bank.”

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 Jean’s observation,
and also to a reckless disregard of danger.

Suddenly Jean caught a glint of moving color through
the fringe of brush. Instantly he was strung like a
whipcord.

Then a tall, hatless and coatless man stepped up in plain
sight. The sun shone on his fair, ruffled hair. Daggs!

“Hey, you —— Isbels!’? he bawled, in magnificent
derisive boldness. ‘‘Come out an’ fight!”

Quick as lightning Jean threw up his rifle and fired.
He saw tufts of fair hair fly from Daggs’s head. He saw
the squirt of red blood. Then quick shots from his

comrades rang out. They all hit the swaying body of the
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TO THE LAST MAN

rustler. But Jean knew with a terrible thrill that his
bullet had killed Daggs before the other three struck.
Daggs fell forward, his arms and half his body resting
over the embankment. Then the rustlers dragged him
back out of sight. Hoarse shouts rose. A cloud of yellow
dust drifted away from the spot.

““Daggs!”’ burst out Gaston Isbel. ‘‘ Jean, you knocked
off the top of his haid. I seen that when I was pullin’
trigger. Shore we over heah wasted our shots.”

“God! he must have been crazy or drunk—to pop up
there—an’ brace us that way,’’ said Blaisdell, breathing
hard.

“‘Arizona is bad for Texans,” replied Isbel, sardonically.
“Shore it’s been too peaceful heah. Rustlers have no
practice at fightin’. An’ I reckon Daggs forgot.”

“Daggs made as crazy a move as that of Guy an’
Jacobs,” spoke up Jean. ‘‘They were overbold, an’ he
was drunk. Let them be a lesson to us.”

Jean had smelled whisky upon his entrance to this cabin.
Bill was a hard drinker, and his father was not immune.
Blaisdell, too, drank heavily upon occasions. Jean made
a mental note that he would not permit their chances

,to become impaired by 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 Jean, narrowly missing him. Another volley
followed, then another. The rustlers had repeating rifles
and they were emptying their magazines. Jean 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,

with silence of relief. The cabin was full of dust, mingled
165
TO THE LAST MAN

with the smoke from the shots of Jean and his com-
panions. Jean heard the stifled breaths of the children,
Evidently they were terror-stricken, but they did not cry
out. The women uttered no sound.

A loud voice pealed from behind the embankment.

“Come out an’ fight! Do you Isbels want to be killed
like sheep?”’

This sally gained no reply. Jean returned to his post
by the window and his comrades followed his example.
And they exercised extreme caution when they peeped out.

“Boys, don’t shoot till you see one,” said Gaston Isbel.
““Maybe after a while they’ll get careless. But Jorth will
never show himself.”

The rustlers did not again resort to volleys. One by
one, from different angles, they began to shoot, and they
were not firing at random. A few bullets came straight
in at the windows to pat into the walls; a few others
ticked and splintered the edges of the windows; and
most of them broke through the clay chinks between the
logs. It dawned upon Jean that these dangerous shots
were not 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 Jean had not
been lying flat he would have been hit twice. Presently
he conceived the idea of driving pegs between the logs,
high wp, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep out
from the upper edge of the window. But this position was
awkward and difficult to hold for long.

He heard a bullet hit one of his comrades. Whoever
had been struck never uttered a sound. Jean turned to
look. Bill Isbel was holding his shoulder, where red
splotches appeared on his shirt. He shook his head at

Jean, evidently to make light of the wound. The women
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TO THE LAST MAN

and children were lying face down and could not see what
was happening. Plain is was that Bill did not want them
to know. Blaisdell 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. Jean did not fire again that afternoon. Toward
sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow restless or
careless, Blaisdell fired at something moving behind the
brush; and Gaston Isbel’s hugo buffalo gun boomed out.

“Wal, what ’re they goin’ to do after dark, an’ what ’re
we goin’ to do?”’ grumbled Blaisdell.

“Reckon they’ll never charge us,” said Gaston.

“They might set fire to the cabins,’’ added Bill Isbel.
He appeared to be the gloomiest of the Isbel faction.
There was something on his mind.

“Wal, the Jorths are bad, but I reckon they’d not burn
us alive,” replied Blaisdell.

“Hah!” ejaculated Gaston Isbel. ‘‘Much you know
aboot Lee Jorth. He would skin me alive an’ throw red-
hot coals on my raw flesh.”

So they talked during the hour from sunset to dark.
Jean Isbel had little to say. He was revolving pos-
sibilities 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 them-
selves in the logs, causing but little anxiety to the Isbels.

“Jean, what you make of it?” asked the old rancher.

“Looks to me this way,” replied Jean. “‘They’re set for
along fight. They’re shootin’ just to let us know they’re
on the watch.”

“Ahuh! Wal, what ’re you goin’ to do aboot it?”

“I’m goin’ out there presently.”

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TO THE LAST MAN

Gaston Isbel grunted his satisfaction at this intention’
of Jean’s.

All was pitch dark inside the cabin. The women had
water and food at hand. Jean 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 a little in their corner.

About nine o’clock Jean signified his intention of going
out to reconnoitre.

“Dad, they’ve got the best of us in the daytime,” he
said, ‘‘but not after dark.”

Jean 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 leaned
against the log cabin, waiting for his eyes to become
perfectly adjusted to the darkness. Like an Indian, Jean
could see well at night. He knew every point around
cabins and sheds and corrals, every post, log, tree, rock,
adjacent to the ranch. After perhaps a quarter of an
hour watching, during which time several shots were fired
from behind the embankment and one each from the
rustlers at the other locations, Jean slipped out on his
quest.

He 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 could see 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.
Jean heard the bullet hit the cabin. Then silence enfolded
the lonely ranch and the darkness lay like a black blanket.

A low hum of insects pervaded the air. Dull sheets of
: 168
TO THE LAST MAN

lightning illumined the dark horizon to the south. Once
Jean heard voices, but could not tell from which direction
they came. To the west of him then flared out another
rifle shot. The bullet whistled down over Jean to thud
into the cabin.

Jean made a careful study of the obscure, gray-black
open before him and then the background to, his rear. So
long as he kept the dens: shadows behind him he could
not be seen. 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 Jean sheered
off to the right. Patches of brush, clumps of juniper,
and isolated cedars covered this slope, affording Jean a
perfect means for his purpose, which was to make a
detour and come up behind the rustler who was firing from
that side. Jean 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.
Jean’s intention was to crawl up on this one of the Jorth
gang and silently kill him with a knife. If the plan
worked successfully, Jean meant to work round to the
next rustler. Laying aside his rifle, he crawled forward
on hands and knees, making no more sound than a cat.
His approach was slow. He had to pick his way, be
careful not to break twigs nor rattle stones. His buckskin
garments made no sound against the brush. Jean located
the rustler sitting on the top of the ridge in the center
of an open space. He was alone. Jean saw the dull-

12 169
TO THE LAST MAN

red end of the cigarette he was smoking. The ground

- on the ridge top was rocky and not well adapted for Jean’s
purpose. He had to abandon the idea of crawling up
on the rustler. Whereupon, Jean turned back, patiently
and slowly, to get his rifle.

Upon securing it he began to retrace his course, this
time more slowly than before, as he was hampered by
the rifle. But he did not make the slightest sound, and
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. The distance was not more than fifty
yards.

As Jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle
round to avoid the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experi-
enced another emotion besides the one of grim, hard wrath
at the Jorths. It was an emotion that sickened him,
made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable
sensation. Suppose this man was Ellen Jorth’s father!
Jean 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—that he could
not do it—awakened Jean 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 Jorths, 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 inevitable-
ness of this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing,
a fact, a reality. He breathed to his own inward ear,
to his soul—he could not kill Ellen Jorth’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
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TO THE LAST MAN

Ellen Jorth. He did not want the love of a girl of her
character. But he loved her. And his struggle must be
against the insidious and mysterious growth of that pas-
sion. It swayed him already. It made him a coward.
Through his mind and heart swept the memory of Ellen
Jorth, 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. Jean lifted his face to the heavens, to the pitiless
white stars, to the infinite depths of the dark-blue sky.
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—Daggs—the Jorths—they had killed
his brother Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly.
Guy had been a playmate of Jean’s—a favorite brother.
Bill had been secretive and selfish. Jean had never loved
him as he did Guy. Guy lay dead down there on the
meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course.
Jean steeled his nerve. The hot blood crept back along
his veins. The dark and masterful tide of reenge waved
over him. The keen edge of his mind then cut out sharp
and trenchant thoughts. He must kill when and where
he could. This man could hardly be Ellen Jorth’s father.
Jorth would be with the main crowd, directing hostilities.
Jean could shoot this rustler guard and his shot would be
taken by the gang as the regular one from their comrade.
Then swiftly Jean leveled his rifle, covered the dark form,
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
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face, the hollow of his hands, his breast. A horrible,
leaden, thick sensation oppressed his heart. Nature had
endowed him with Indian gifts, but the exercise of them
to this end caused a revolt in his soul.

Nevertheless, it was the Isbel blood that dominated him.
The wind blew cool on his face. 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 precau-
tion that had actuated him on the slope, only here he did
not pause so often, nor move so slowly. Jean aimed to
go far enough to the right to pass the end of the embank-
ment behind which the rustlers had found such efficient
cover. This ditch had been made to keep water, during
spring thaws and summer storms, from pouring off the
slope to flood the corrals.

Jean miscalculated and found he had come upon
the embankment somewhat to the left of the end, which
fact, however, caused him no uneasiness. He lay there
awhile to listen. Again he heard voices. After a timea
shot pealed out. He did not see the flash, but he calculated
that it had come from the north side of the cabins.

The next quarter of an hour discovered to Jean that
the nearest guard was firing from the top of the embank-
ment, perhaps a hundred yards distant, and a second one
was performing the same office from a point apparently
only a few yards farther on. Two rustlers close together!
Jean had not calculated upon that. For a little while he

pondered on what was best to do, and at length decided
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to crawl round behind them, and as close as the situation
made advisable.

He found the ditch behind the embankment a favorable
path by which to stalk these enemies. It was dry and
sandy, with borders of high weeds. The only drawback
was that it was almost impossible for him to keep from
brushing against the dry, 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 sitting
figure of a man, black against the dark-blue sky. This
rustler had fired his rifle three times during Jean’s slow
approach. Jean watched and listened a few moments,
then wormed himself closer and closer, until the man was
within twenty steps of him.

Jean smelled tobacco smoke, but could see no light of
. pipe or cigarette, because the fellow’s back was turned.

“Say, Ben,” said this man to his companion sitting
hunched up a few yards distant, ‘‘shore it strikes me queer
thet Somers ain’t shootin’ any over thar.”

Jean 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.
CHAPTER VIII

‘“T WAS shore thinkin’ thet same,’’ said the other man.
“An’, say, didn’t thet last shot sound too sharp fer
Somers’s forty-five?”

“Come to think of it, I reckon it did,” replied Greaves.

“Wal, I'll go around over thar an’ see.”

The dark form of the rustler slipped out of sight over the
embankment.

“Better go slow an’ careful,” warned Greaves. ‘‘An’
only go close enough to call Somers. . . . Mebbe thet
damn half-breed Isbel is comin’ some Injun on us.”

Jean heard the soft swish of footsteps through wet
grass. Then all was still. He lay flat, with his cheek on
the sand, and he had to look ahead and upward to make
out the dark figure of Greaves on the bank. One way or
another he meant to kill Greaves, and he had the will
power to resist the strongest gust of passion that had ever
stormed his breast. If he arose and shot the rustler; that
act would defeat his plan of slipping on around upon the
other outposts who were firing at the cabins. Jean wanted
to call softly to Greaves, ‘‘You’re right about the half-
breed!’ and then, as he wheeled aghast, to kill him as he
moved. But it suited Jean to risk leaping upon the man.
Jean 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.

Jean drew-a long, deep breath and held it. He let go

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of his rifle. He rose, silently as a lifting shadow. He drew
the bowie knife. Then with light, swift bounds he glided
up the bank. Greaves must have heard a rustling—a
soft, quick pad of moccasin, for he turned with a start.
And that instant Jean’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, Jean 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. Yet there was
more, and as Jean 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 the face
of Simm Bruce. Greaves had leered—he had corroborated
Bruce’s vic msinuation about Ellen Jorth. So it was
more than hate that actuated Jean Isbel.

Greaves was heavy and powerful. He whirled himself,
feet first, over backward, in a lunge like that of a lassoed
steer. But Jean’s hold held. They rolled down the bank
into the sandy ditch, and Jean landed uppermost, with
his body at right angles with that of his adversary.

“Greaves, your hunch was right,” hissed Jean. ‘‘It’s
the half-breed. . . . An’ I’m goin’ to cut you—first for
Ellen Jorth—an’ then for Gaston Isbel!”

Jean gazed down into the gleaming eyes. Then his right
arm whipped thebig blade. Itflashed. It fell. Lowdown,
as far as Jean could reach, it entered Greaves’s body.

All the heavy, muscular frame of Greaves seemed to
contract and burst. His spring was that of an animal
in terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke
Jean’s hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared,
swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled

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free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift, he got
to his knees. He had his gun out when Jean reached him
again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot,
but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough.
Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the
bowie. Greaves’s strength went out in an awful, hoarse
cry. His gun boomed again, then dropped from his hand.
He swayed. Jean let go. And that enemy of the Isbels
sank limply in the ditch. Jean’s eyes roved for his rifle
_and caught the starlit gleam of it. Snatching it up, he
leaped over the embankment and ran straight for the
cabins. From all around yells of the Jorth faction He
tested to their excitement and fury.

A fence loomed up gray in the obscurity. Jean aie
it, darted across the lane into the shadow of the corral,
and soon gained the first cabin. Here he leaned to regain
his breath. His heart pounded high and seemed too
large for his breast. The hot blood beat and surged all
over his body. Sweat poured off him. His teeth were
clenched tight as a vise, and it took effort on his part to
open his mouth so he could breathe more freely and
deeply. But these physical sensations were as nothing
compared to the tumult of his mind. Then the instinct,
the spell, let go its grip and he could think. He had
avenged Guy, he had depleted the ranks of the Jorths,
he had made good the brag of his father, all of which
afforded him satisfaction. But these thoughts were not
accountable for all that he felt, especially for the bitter-
sweet sting of the fact that death to the defiler of Ellen
Jorth could not efface the doubt, the regret which seemed
to grow. with the hours.

Groping his way into the woodshed, he euienid the
kitchen and, calling low, he went on into the main cabin,

‘‘Jean! Jean!’’ came his father’s shaking voice.

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“Yes, I’m back,” replied Jean.

“‘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 bleedin’ a little.
But it’s nothin’.” ‘

Jean heard soft steps and some one reached shaking
hands for him. They belonged to his sister Ann. She
embraced him. Jean felt the heave and throb of her
breast.

“‘Why, Ann, I’m not hurt,” he said, and held her close.
“Now you lie down an’ try to sleep.”

In the black darkness of the cabin Jean led her back
to the corner and his heart was full. Speech was difficult,
because the very touch of Ann’s hands had made him
divine that the success of his venture in no wise changed
the plight of the women.

“Wal, what happened out there?”’ demanded Blaisdell.

“T got two of them,’ replied Jean. ‘‘That fellow who
was shootin’ from the ridge west. An’ the other was
Greaves.”

“Hah!” exclaimed his father.

“‘Shore then it was Greaves yellin’,” declared Blaisdell.
“By God, I never heard such yells! Whad ’d you do,
Jean?”

“T knifed him. You see, I’d planned to slip up on one
after another. An’ I didn’t want to make noise. But I
didn’t get any farther than Greaves.”

“Wal, I reckon that ’ll end their shootin’ in the dark,”
muttered Gaston Isbel. ‘‘We’ve got to be on the lookout
for somethin’ else—fire, most likely.”

The old rancher’s surmise proved to be partially correct.
Jorth’s faction ceased the shooting. Nothing further was
seen or heard from them. But this silence and apparent
break in the siege were harder to bear than deliberate

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hostility. The long, dark hours dragged by. The men
took turns watching and resting, but none of them slept.
At last the blackness paled and gray dawn stole out of the
east. The sky turned rose over the distant range and
daylight came.

The children awoke hungry and noisy, having slept
away their fears. The women took advantage of the
quiet morning hour to get a hot breakfast.

““Maybe they’ve gone away,” suggested Guy Isbel’s
wife, peering out of the window. She had done that
several times since daybreak. Jean saw her somber gaze
search the pasture until it rested upon the dark, prone
shape of her dead husband, lying face down in the grass.
Her look worried Jean.

“No, Esther, they’ve not gone yet,’’ replied Jean.
“T’ve seen some of them out there at the edge of the
brush.” :

Blaisdell was optimistic. He said Jean’s night work
would have its effect and that the Jorth contingent would
not renew the siege very determinedly. It turned out,
however, that Blaisdell was wrong. Directly after sun-
rise they began to pour volleys from four sides and
from closer range. During the night Jorth’s gang had
thrown earth banks and constructed log breastworks,
from behind which they were now firing. Jean and his
comrades could see the flashes of fire and streaks of smoke
to such good advantage that they began to return the
volleys.

In half an hour the cabin was so full of smoke that
Jean could not see the womenfolk in their corner. The
fierce attack then abated somewhat, and the firing became
more intermittent, and therefore more carefully aimed.
A glancing bullet cut a furrow in Blaisdell’s hoary head,

making a painful, though not serious wound. It was
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Esther Isbel who stopped the flow of blood and bound
Blaisdell’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 thar,” he kept repeating, ‘‘an’
kill them all.”’

“No, we’re goin’ to stay heah,” replied Gaston Isbel.
“Shore I’m lookin’ for Blue an’ Fredericks an’ Gordon
to open up out there. They ought to be heah, an’ if they
are y’u shore can bet they’ve got the fight sized up.”

Isbel’s hopes did not materialize. The shooting con-
tinued without any lull until about midday. Then the
Jorth faction stopped.

“Wal, now what’s up?” queried Isbel. ‘‘ Boys, hold your
fire an’ 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. Jean saw her suddenly start
violently, then stiffen, with a trembling hand out-
stretched.

“Look!” she cried.

“Esther, get back,” ordered the old rancher. “Keep
away from that window.”

“‘What the hell!’ muttered Blaisdell. ‘She sees some-
thin’, or she’s gone dotty.”

Esther seemed turned to stone. ‘‘Look! The hogs have
broken into the pasture!.... They’ll eat Guy’s body!”

Everyone was frozen with horror at Esther’s statement.
Jean took a swift survey of the pasture. A bunch of big
black hogs had indeed appeared on the scene and were
rooting around in the grass not far from where lay the

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bodies of Guy Isbel and Jacobs. This herd of hogs be-
longed to the rancher and was allowed to run wild.

“Jane, those hogs—’’ stammered Esther Isbel, to the
wife of Jacobs. ‘‘Come! Look!...Do y’u know any-
thin’ about hogs?”

The woman ran to the window and looked out. She
stiffened as had Esther.

“Dad, will those hogs—eat human flesh?’’ queried Jean,
breathlessly.

The old man stared out of the window. Surprise
seemed to hold him. A completely unexpected situation
had staggered him.

“‘Jean—can you—can you shoot that far?” he asked,
huskily.

“To those hogs? No, it’s out of range.”

“Then, by God, we’ve got to stay trapped in heah an’
watch an awful sight,”’ ejaculated the old man, completely
unnerved. ‘‘See that break in the fence! ... Jorth’s
done that... . To let in the hogs!”

“Aw, Isbel, it’s not so bad as all that,’’ remonstrated
Blaisdell, wagging his bloody head. ‘“‘Jorth wouldn’t do
such a hell-bent trick.”

“Tt’s shore done.”

“‘Wal, mebbe the hogs won’t find Guy an’ Jacobs,’
returned Blaisdell, weakly. Plain it was that he only
hoped for such a contingency and certainly doubted it.

“Look!” cried Esther Isbel, piercingly. ‘‘They’re
workin’ straight up the pasture!”

Indeed, to Jean it appeared to be the fatal truth. He
looked blankly, feeling a little sick. Ann Isbel came to
peer out of the window and she uttered a cry. Jacobs’s
wife stood mute, as if dazed.

Blaisdell swore a mighty oath. ‘“‘———! Isbel, we
cain’t stand heah an’ watch them hogs eat our people!”

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“Wal, we'll have to. What else on earth can we do?”

Esther turned to the men. She was white and cold,
except her eyes, which resembled gray flames.

“Somebody can run out there an’ bury our dead men,”
she said.

“Why, child, it ’d be shore death. Y’u saw what hap-
pened to Guy an’ Jacobs... . We’ve jest got to bear it.
Shore nobody needn’t look out—an’ see.”

Jean wondered if it would be possible to keep from
watching. The thing had a horrible fascination. The big
hogs were rooting and tearing in the grass, some of them
lazy, others nimble, and all were gradually working closer
and closer to the bodies. The leader, a huge, gaunt boar,
that had fared ill all his life in this barren country, was
scarcely fifty feet away from where Guy Isbel lay.

“Ann, get me some of your clothes, an’ a sunbonnet—
quick,” said Jean, forced out of his lethargy. ‘‘I’ll run
out there disguised. Maybe I can go through with it.”

“No!” ordered his father, positively, and with dark
face flaming. ‘‘Guy an’ Jacobs are dead. We cain’t help
them now.”

“But, dad” pleaded Jean. He had been wrought to a
pitch by Esther’s blaze of passion, by the agony in the
face of the other woman.

“T tell y’u no!” thundered Gaston Isbel, flinging his
arms wide.

“T will go!” cried Esther, her voice ringing.

“You won’t go alone!” instantly answered the wife of
Jacobs, repeating unconsciously the words her husband
had spoken.

“You stay right heah,” shouted Gaston Isbel, hoarsely.

“I’m goin’,” replied Esther. ‘‘You’ve no hold over
me. My husband is dead. No one can stop me. I’m

goin’ out there to drive those hogs away an’ bury him.”
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“Esther, for Heaven’s sake, listen,” replied Isbel. ‘“I£
y’u show yourself outside, Jorth an’ his gang will kill
yu.”

“They may be mean, but no white men could be so
low as that.”

Then they 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. Jean turned
to the window in time to see both women run out into the
lane. Jean looked fearfully, and listened for shots. But
only a loud, ‘‘Haw! Haw!” came from the watchers
outside. That coarse laugh relieved the tension in Jean’s
breast. Possibly the Jorths were not as black as his
father painted them. The two women entered an open
shed and came forth with a shovel and spade.

“Shore they’ve got to hurry,” burst out Gaston Isbel.

Shifting his gaze, Jean understood the import of his
father’s speech. The leader of the hogs had no doubt
scented the bodies. Suddenly he espied them and broke
into.a trot.

“Run, Esther, run!’ yelled Jean, with all his might.

That urged the women to flight. Jean began to shoot.
The hog reached the body of Guy. Jean’s shots did not
reach nor frighten the beast. All the hogs now had
caught a scent and went ambling toward their leader.
Esther and her companion passed swiftly out of sight
behind a corral. Loud and piercingly, with some awful
note, rang out their screams. The hogs appeared fright-
ened. The leader lifted his long snout, looked, and
turned away. The others had halted. Then they, too,
wheeled and ran off.

All was silent then in the cabin and also outside wher-
ever the Jorth faction lay concealed. All eyes mani-
festly . -e fixed upon the brave wives. They spaded up

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the sod and dug a grave for Guy Isbel. For a shroud
Esther wrapped him in her shawl. Then they buried him.
Next they hurried to the side of Jacobs, who lay some
yards away. They dug a grave for him. 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. But she remained standing and did not look
as if she prayed. Her aspect was tragic—that of a
woman who had lost father, mother, sisters, brother,
and now her husband, in this bloody Arizona land.

The deed and the demeanor of these wives of the
murdered men surely must have shamed Jorth and his
followers. They did not fire a shot during the ordeal nor
give any sign of their presence.

Inside the cabin all were silent, too. Jean’s eyes blurred
so that he continually had to wipe them. Old Isbel made
no effort to hide his tears. Blaisdell 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.

“Wal, they’re comin’ back,” declared Isbel, in immense
relief. ‘‘An’ so help me—Jorth let them bury their
daid!”’

The fact seemed to have been monstrously strange to
Gaston Isbel. When the women entered the old man
said, brokenly: ‘I’m shore glad... . An’ I reckon I was
wrong to oppose you... an’ wrong to say what I did
aboot Jorth.”

’ No one had any chance to reply to Isbel, for the Jorth
gang, as if to make up for lost time and surcharged feel-
ings of shame, renewed the attack with such a persistent

and furious volleying that the defenders did not risk a
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return shot. 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 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 ceased.

“Ahuh! Shore they’ve shot their bolt,” declared
Gaston Isbel.

“Wal, I doon’t know aboot that,” returned Blaisdell,
“‘but they’ve shot a hell of a lot of shells.”’

“Listen,’”’ suddenly called Jean. ‘‘Somebody’s yellin’.”

“Hey, Isbel!’’ came in loud, hoarse voice. ‘‘Let your
women fight for you.”

Gaston Isbel sat up with a start and his face turned
livid. Jean needed no more to prove that the derisive
voice from outside had belonged to Jorth. The old
rancher lunged up to his full height and with reckless
disregard of life he rushed to the window. ‘‘Jorth,” he
roared, ‘‘I dare you to meet me—man to man!”

This elicited no answer. Jean dragged his father away
from the window. After that a waiting silence ensued,
gradually less fraught with suspense. Blaisdell started
conversation by saying he believed the fight was over for
that particular time. No one disputed him. Evidently
Gaston Isbel was loath to believe it. Jean, however,
watching at the back of the kitchen, eventually discovered
that the Jorth gang had lifted the siege. Jean 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. Jean saw bodies, evidently of dead men,

lifted into the wagon, to be hauled away toward the
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village. Seven mounted men, leading four riderless
horses, rode out into the valley and followed the wagon.
“Dad, they’ve gone,” declared Jean. ‘‘We had the
best of this fight... . If only Guy an’ Jacobs had listened!”
The old man nodded moodily. He had aged con-
siderably during these two trying days. His hair was
grayer. Now that the blaze and glow of the fight had
passed he showed a subtle change, a fixed and morbid
sadness, a resignation to a fate he had accepted..

The ordinary routine of ranch life did not return for the
Isbels. Blaisdell returned home to settle matters there,
so that he could devote all his time to this feud. Gaston
Isbel sat down to wait for the members of his clan.

The male members of the family kept guard in turn
over the ranch that night. And another day dawned.
It brought word from Blaisdell that Blue, Fredericks,
Gordon, and Colmor were all at his house, on the way to
join the Isbels. This news appeared greatly to rejuvenate
Gaston Isbel. But his enthusiasm did not last long.
Impatient and moody by turns, he paced or moped
around the cabin, always looking out, sometimes toward
Blaisdell’s ranch, but mostly toward Grass Valley.

It struck Jean as singular that neither Esther Isbel nor
Mrs. Jacobs suggested a reburial of their husbands. The
two bereaved women did not ask for assistance, but
repaired to the pasture, and there spent several hours
working over the graves. They raised mounds, which
they -sodded, and then placed stones at the heads and
feet. Lastly, they fenced in the graves.

“T reckon I’ll hitch up an’ drive back home,” said Mrs.
Jacobs, when she returned to the cabin. ‘‘I’ve much to
do an’ plan. Probably I’ll go to my mother’s home.
She’s old an’ will be glad to have me.”’

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“Tf I had any place to go to I’d sure go,” declared
Esther Isbel, bitterly.

Gaston Isbel heard this remark. THe raised his face
from his hands, evidently both nettled and hurt.

“Esther, shore 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.

‘“‘Gaston Isbel, all I’ve got to say to you is this,” she
retorted, with the voice of aman. ‘‘Seein’ that you an’
Lee Jorth hate each other, why couldn’t you act like

men?... You damned Texans, with your bloody feuds,
draggin’ in every relation, every friend to murder each
other! That’s not the way of Arizona men. ... We've

all got to suffer—an’ we women be ruined for life—
because you had differences with Jorth. If you were half
aman you’d go out an’ kill him yourself, an’ not leave
a lot of widows an’ orphaned children!”

Jean himself writhed under the lash of her scorn. Gaston
Isbel turned a dead white. He could not answer her.
He seemed stricken with merciless truth. Slowly dropping
his head, he remained motionless, a pathetic and tragic
figure; and he did not stir until the rapid beat of hoofs de-
noted the approach ofhorsemen. Blaisdell appeared on his
white charger, leading a pack animal. And behind rodea
group of men, all heavily armed, and likewise with packs.

“Get down an’ come in,” was Isbel’s greeting. ‘‘Bill—
you look after their packs. Better leave the hosses
saddled.”

The booted and spurred riders trooped in, and their
demeanor fitted their errand. Jean 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.

His mother had been an Isbel. Gordon, too, was related
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to Jean’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, a habit not often noted
in Texans, and almost never in Arizonians.

Colmor, Ann Isbel’s fiancé, was the youngest member
of the clan, and the one closest to Jean. His meeting
with Ann affected Jean powerfully, and brought to a
climax an idea that had been developing in Jean’s mind.
His sister devotedly loved this lean-faced, keen-eyed
Arizonian; and it took no great insight to discover that
Colmor reciprocated her affection. They were young.
They had long life before them. It seemed to Jean a
pity that Colmor should be drawn into this war. Jean
watched them, as they conversed apart; and he saw
Ann’s hands creep up to Colmor’s breast, and he saw
her dark eyes, eloquent, hungry, fearful, lifted with
queries her lips did not speak. Jean stepped beside them,
and laid an arm over both their shoulders.

' “Colmor, for Ann’s sake you’d better back out of this
Jorth-Isbel fight,” he whispered.

Colmor looked insulted. ‘‘But, Jean, it’s Ann’s father,”
he said. ‘‘I’m almost one of the family.”

‘“‘You’re Ann’s sweetheart, an’, by Heaven, I say you
oughtn’t to go with us!”’ whispered Jean.

“Go—with—you,”’ faltered Ann.

“Ves. Dad is goin’ straight after Jorth. Can’t you

tell that? An’ there ’Il be one hell of a fight.”
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Ann looked up into Colmor’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 Colmor 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.

“Jean, your dad started me in the cattle business,”
said Colmor, earnestly. ‘‘An’ I’m doin’ well now. An’
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 the time passed
an’ he made more enemies, he finally consented. I reckon
he needs me now. An’I can’t back out, not even for Ann.”

“TI would if I were you,” replied Jean, and knew that
he lied.

“Jean, I’m gamblin’ to come out of the fight,” said
Colmor, with a smile. He had no morbid fears nor
presentiments, such as troubled Jean.

‘“‘Why, sure—you stand as good a chance as anyone,”
rejoined Jean. ‘“‘It wasn’t that I was worryin’ about so
much.”

“What was it, then?” asked Ann, steadily.

“Tf Andrew does come through alive he'll have blood
on his hands,” returned Jean, with passion. ‘‘He can’t
come through without it... . I’ve begun to feel what it
means to have killed my fellow men.... An’ I’d rather
your husband an’ the father of your children never felt
that.”

Colmor did not take Jean as subtly as Ann did. She
shrunk a little. Her dark eyes dilated. But Colmor
showed nothing of her spiritual reaction. He was young.

He had wild blood. He was loyal to the Isbels.
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Q

‘Jean, never worry about my conscience,” he said,
with a keen look. ‘‘Nothin’ would tickle me any more
than to get a shot at every damn one of the Jorths.”

That established Colmor’s status in regard to the
Jorth-Isbel feud. Jeanhadnomoretosay. He respected
Ann’s friend and felt poignant sorrow for Ann.

Gaston Isbel called for meat and drink to be set on the
table for his guests. When his wishes had been complied
with the women took the children into the adjoining
cabin and shut the door.

“Hah! Wal, we can eat an’ talk now.”

First the newcomers wanted to hear particulars of what
had happened. Blaisdell had told all he knew and had
seen, but that was not sufficient. They plied Gaston
Isbel with questions. Laboriously and ponderously he
rehearsed the experiences of the fight at the ranch, accord-
ing to his impressions. Bill Isbel was exhorted to talk,
but he had of late manifested a sullen and taciturn dis-
position. In spite of Jean’s vigilance Bill had continued
to imbibe red liquor. Then Jean was called upon to
relate all he had seen and done. It had been Jean’s
intention to keep his mouth shut, first for his own sake
and, secondly, because he did not like to talk 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 Colter 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.
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““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 Jean forcibly.

“Shore thet was a strange-an’ a hell of a way to kill
Greaves. Why’d you do thet, Jean?”

“T told you. I wanted to avoid noise an’ I hoped to
get more of them.”

Blue nodded his lean, eagle-like head and sat thought-
fully, as if not convinced of anything save Jean’s prowess.
After a moment Blue spoke again.

“Then, goin’ back to Jean’s tellin’ aboot trackin’
rustled cattle, I’ve got this to say. I’ve long suspected
thet somebody livin’ right heah in the valley has been
drivin’ off cattle an’ dealin’ with rustlers. An’ now I’m
shore of it.”

This speech did not elicit the amaze from Gaston Isbel
that Jean 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. Shore we all knowed Greaves was crooked.
But what I’m figgerin’ is thet some so-called honest man
in our settlement has been makin’ crooked deals.”

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 im-
pression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean’s
surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who
supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was
strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition
of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean 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
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to by Blue? Dismissing the conjecture, Jean listened
earnestly.

“An’ if it’s true it shore makes this difference—we
cain’t blame all the rustlin’ on to Jorth,” concluded
Blue.

“Wal, it’s not true,” declared Gaston Isbel, roughly.
“‘Jorth an’ his Hash Knife Gang are at the bottom of all
the rustlin’ in the valley for years back. An’ they’ve
got to be wiped out!”

“‘TIsbel, I reckon we’d all feel better if we talk straight,”
replied Blue, coolly. ‘I’m heah to stand by the Isbels.
An’ y’u know what thet means. But I’m not heah to
fight Jorth because he may bearustler. The others may
have their own reasons, but mine is this—you once stood
by me in Texas when I was needin’ friends. Wal, I’m
standin’ by y’u now. Jorth is your enemy, an’ so he is
mine.”

Gaston Isbel bowed to this ultimatum, scarcely less
agitated than when Esther Isbel had denounced him.
His rabid and morbid hate of Jorth 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, Gaston Isbel had the fact flung at him
that other men must suffer, perhaps 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 Jean, who, in
love and pity that hourly grew, saw through his father.
Wasittoolate? Alas! Gaston Isbel could never be turned
back! Yet something was altering his brooding, fixed
mind.

“Wal,” said Blaisdell, gruffly, ‘‘let’s get down to
Igt
TO THE LAST MAN

business. .. . I’m for havin’ Blue be foreman of this heah
outfit, an’ all of us to do as he says.”

Gaston 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 goin’
to do,” replied Blaisdell.

“We're goin’ to ride off on Jorth’s trail—an’ one way
or another—kill him—kill him! ...1 reckon that’ll end
the fight.”

What did old Isbel have in his mind? His listeners
shook their heads.

“No,” asserted Blaisdell. ‘‘Killin’ Jorth might be the
end of your desires, Isbel, but it ’d never end our fight.
We'll have gone too far... . If we take Jorth’s trail from
heah it means we've got to wipe out that rustler gang,
or stay to the last man.’

“Yes, by God!” exclaimed Fredericks.

“Let’s drink to thet!” said Blue. Strangely they all
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. Then his voice, his
look, his influence were those of a fighter. They all
drank with him, even Jean, who hated liquor. And this
act of drinking seemed the climax of the council. Prepara-
tions were at once begun for their departure on Jorth’s
trail.

Jean 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.
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Jean tried not to watch Bill Isbel say good-by to his
children, but it was impossible not to. Whatever Bill
was, 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? Jean caught that dark, fatalistic
presentiment. Bill Isbel’s convulsed face showed that
he also caught it. Jean did not see Bill say good-by to
his wife. But he heard her. Old Gaston Isbel forgot
to speak to the children, or else 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. Jean saw
woman’s love, woman’s intuition, woman’s grief in her
eyes. He could not escape her. ‘‘Oh, Jean! oh, brother!”
she whispered as she enfolded him. ‘‘It’s awful! It’s
wrong! Wrong! Wrong!...Good-by!...If killing
must be—see that y’u kill the Jorths! .. . Good-by!”’

Even in Ann, gentle and mild, the Isbel blood spoke at
the last. Jean gave Ann over to the pale-faced Colmor, who
took her in his arms. Then Jean fled out to his horse.
This cold-blooded devastation of a home was almost more
than he could bear. There was love here. What would
be left? ‘

Colmor 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 dif-
ferent from grief. His face was the face of an Isbel.

“Daddy—kill ’em 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.

193
CHAPTER IX

ALF a mile from the Isbel ranch the cavalcade passed
the log cabin of Evarts, father of the boy who had
tended sheep with Bernardino.

It suited Gaston Isbel to halt here. No need to call!
Evarts and his son appeared so quickly as to convince
observers that they had been watching.

“Howdy, Jake!” said Isbel.. “I’m wantin’ a word with
y’u alone.”

“Shore, boss, git down an’ come in,” replied Evarts.

Isbel led him aside, and said something forcible that
Jean divined from the very gesture which accompanied
it. His father was telling Evarts that he was not to join
in the Isbel-Jorth war. Evarts 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. An’ that settles it.”

They returned to the horses, and, before mounting,
Isbel, as if he remembered something, directed his somber
gaze on young Evarts.

“Son, did you bury Bernardino?”’

“Dad an’ me went over yestiddy,”’ replied the lad. ‘‘I
shore was glad the coyotes hadn’t been round.”

“How aboot the sheep?”

“T left them there. I was goin’ to stay, but bein’ all
alone—I got skeered. ... The sheep was doin’ fine.
Good water an’ some grass. An’ this ain’t time fer
varmints to hang round.”

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“Jake, keep your eye on that flock,” returned Isbel.
“‘An’ if I shouldn’t happen to come back y’u 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 Jean 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 Jean
rode to his father’s side and asked him why he had wanted
the Evarts boy to come to Grass 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 Jorth gang would hold forth. This appeared reasonable
enough, therefore Jean 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, Jean’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
Jorth’s gang had looked to Jean. It was an orderly,
trotting march that manifested neither hurry nor excite-
ment. But any Western eye could have caught the singu-
lar 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 had been watched for or had been already
reported. Jean saw men, women, children peeping from
behind cabins and from half-opened doors. Farther on
Jean espied the dark figures of men, slipping out the back
way through orchards and gardens and running north,

195
TO THE LAST MAN

toward the center of the village. Could these be friends
of the Jorth crowd, on the way with warnings of the
‘approach of the Isbels? Jean felt convinced. of it. He
“was learning that his father had not been absolutely
‘correct in his estimation of the way Jorth and his fol-
‘lowers were regarded by their neighbors. Not improb-
ably there were really many villagers who, being more
interested in sheep raising than in cattle, had an hon-
est leaning toward the Jorths. Some, too, no doubt,
had leanings that were dishonest in deed if not in
‘sincerity.

Gaston Isbel led his clan straight down the middle of

the wide road of Grass Valley until he reached a point
opposite Abel Meeker’s cabin. Jean 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, Gass!” he said. ‘‘What’s the good word?”
‘Wal, Abel, it’s not good, but bad. An’ it’s shore
started,’”’ replied Isbel.. ‘‘I’m askin’ y’u to let me have
your cabin.”

““You’re welcome. I'll send the folks ‘round to Jim’s,”
returned Meeker. ‘‘An’ if y’u want me, I’m with y’u,
Isbel.”

“Thanks, Abel, but I’m not leadin’ any more kin an’
friends into this heah deal.” ’

“Wal, jest as y’u say. But I’d like damn bad to jine
with y’u. ... My brother Ted was shot last night.”

Ted! ‘Is he daid?” ejaculated Isbel, blankly.

“We can’t find out,’’ replied Meeker. ‘‘Jim says thet
Jeff Campbell said thet Ted went into Greaves’s place
last night. Greaves allus was friendly to Ted, but

Greaves wasn’t thar—”’
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“No, he shore wasn’t,” interrupted Isbel, with a dark
smile, ‘‘an’ he never will be there again.”

Meeker nodded with slow comprehension and a shade
crossed his face. '

‘‘Wal, Campbell claimed he’d heerd from some one who
was thar. Anyway, the Jorths were drinkin’ hard, an’
they raised a row with Ted—same old sheep talk—
an’ somebody shot him. Campbell said Ted was thrown
out back, an’ he was shore he wasn’t killed.”

“Abuh! Wal, I’m sorry, Abel, your family had to
lose in this. Maybe Ted’s not bad hurt. I shore hope
so.... An’ y’u an’ Jim keep out of the fight, anyway.”

“All right, Isbel. But I reckon I’ll give y’u a hunch.
Tf this heah fight lasts long the whole damn Basin will be
in it, on one side or t’other.”’

“Abe, you’re talkin’ sense,”’ broke in Blaisdell. ‘‘An’
that’s why we’re up heah for quick action.”

“T heerd y’u got Daggs,” whispered Meeker, as he
peered all around.

“Wal, y’u heerd correct,” drawled Blaisdell.

Meeker muttered strong words into his beard. ‘“‘Say,
was Daggs in thet Jorth outfit?”

“He was. But he walked right into Jean’s forty-four.
... An’ I reckon his carcass would show some more.”

‘*An’ whar’s Guy Isbel?’’ demanded Meeker.

‘*Daid an’ buried, Abel,’’ repled Gaston Isbel. ‘‘An’
now I’d be obliged if y’u’ll hurry your folks away, an’
let us have your cabin an’ corral. Have y’u got any hay
for the hosses?”’

“Shore. The barn’s half full,” replied Meeker, as he
turned away. ‘‘Come on in.”

“No. We'll wait till you’ve gone.”

When Meeker had gone, Isbel and his men sat their
horses and looked about them and spoke low. Their

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TO THE LAST MAN,

advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to
the imminence of the 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 walking to and fro, from fence
to fence, whispering 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.
Jean distinctly saw the forms of men, some dark, others
in shirt sleeves, come to the wide door and look down
the road.

“Wal, I reckon only aboot five hundred good hoss
steps are separatin’ us from that outfit,’’ drawled Blaisdell.

No one replied to his jocularity. Gaston 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 repre-
sentative of intense preoccupation of mind. The look of
him thrilled Jean, 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
Jorth followers and the silent, boding front of Isbel and
his men summed up for Jean the menace of the moment
that must very soon change to a terrible reality.

At a call from Meeker, who stood at the back of the
cabin, Gaston Isbel rode into the yard, followed by the
others of his party. ‘‘Somebody look after the hosses,”
ordered Isbel, as he dismounted and took his rifle and
pack. ‘‘Better leave the saddles on, leastways till we see
what’s comin’ off.”

Jean and Bill Isbel led the horses back to the corral.
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While watering and feeding them, Jean somehow received
the impression that Bill was trying to speak, to confide
in him, to unburden himself of some load. This peculiar-
ity 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, Jean
believed that his brother might have gotten rid of his
emotion, or whatever it was, had they not been interrupted
by Colmor.

“Boys, the old man’s orders are for us to sneak round
on three sides of Greaves’s store, keepin’ out of gunshot
till we find good cover, an’ then crawl closer an’ to pick
off any of Jorth’s gang who shows himself.”

Bill Isbel strode off without a reply to Colmor.

“Well, I don’t think so much of that,” said Jean,
ponderingly. ‘‘Jorth has lots of friends here. Some-
body might pick us off.”

“T kicked, but the old man shut me up. He’s not to
be bucked ag’in’ now. Struck me as powerful queer.
But no wonder.”

“Maybe he knows best. Did he say anythin’ about
what he an’ the rest of them are goin’ to do?”

“Nope. Blue taxed him with that an’ got the same as -
me. I reckon we'd better try it out, for a while, anyway.”

“Looks like he wants us to keep out of the fight,”
replied Jean, thoughtfully. ‘‘Maybe, though ... Dad’s
no fool. Colmor, you wait here till I get out of sight.
T’ll go round an’ come up as close as advisable behind
Greaves’s store. You take the right side. An’ keep
hid.”

With that Jean 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

che reached a line of sheds and corrals, to which he held

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TO THE LAST MAN

until he arrived at the road. This point was about a
quarter of a mile from Greaves’s store, and around the
bend. Jean 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
Grass Valley. Crcssing the road, Jean 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 pas-
sage 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. Jean half expected
a shot from this quarter, such were his growing doubts,
but he was mistaken. A man, unknown to Jean, closely
watched his guarded movements and then waved a hand,
as if to signify to Jean that he had nothing to fear. After
this act he disappeared. Jean believed that he had been
recognized by some one not antagonistic to the Isbels.
Therefore he passed the cabin and, coming to a thick
scrub-oak tree that offered shelter, he hid 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 storé ran the road.
Jean’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. Jean 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
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TO THE LAST MAN

the store. Then he boldly hurried into the open, and sooti
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 Jorth contingent came out the
back way they would be within reach of his rifle. Jean
took the risk of being shot at from either side.

So sharp and roving was his sight that he soon espied
Colmor slipping along behind the trees some hundred
yards to the left. All his cfforts to catch a glimpse of
Bill, however, were fruitless. And this appeared strange
to Jean, 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.

Colmor disappeared among some shrubbery, and Jean
seemed left alone to watch a deserted, silent village.
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 Jean’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.

Jean was deadly certain that some of the Jorth clan
would show themselves. He strained to still the trem-
bling those sudden shots and that significant yell had.
caused him. No man appeared. No more sounds.
caught Jean’s ears. The suspense, then, grew unbearable..

It was not that he could not wait for an enemy to appear,,
14 201
TO THE LAST MAN

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? Revolver
shots of different caliber, surely fired by different men!
What could they mean? It was not these shots that
accounted for Jean’s dread, but the yell which had fol-
lowed. 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.

Colmor 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 Jean’s flashing
glance, was apparently deserted. Blue sat on the door-
step, lighting a cigarette. Then on the moment Blaisdell
strode to the door of the cabin. Jean had never seen
him look like that.

**Jean—look—down the road,’’ he said, brokenly, and
with big hand shaking he pointed down toward Greaves’s
store.

Like lightning Jean’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! Jean’s recognition was as swift as his sight. His
father! They had killed him! The Jorths! It was
done. His father’s premonition of death had not been

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TO THE LAST MAN

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 Jean 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 Jean.

“‘Jorth!” replied Blaisdell, huskily. ‘‘Son, we couldn’t
hold your dad back.... We couldn’t. He was like a lion.
. .. An’ he throwed his life away! Oh, if it hadn’t been
for that it ’d not be so awful. Shore, we come heah to
shoot an’ be shot. But not like that.... By God, it was
murder—murder!”’

Jean’s mute lips framed a query easily read.

“Tell him, Blue. I cain’t,” continued Blaisdell, and
he tramped back into the cabin.

“Set down, Jean, an’ take things easy,” said Blue,
calmly. ‘‘You know we all reckoned we'd git plugged
one way or another in this deal. An’ shore it doesn’t
matter much how a fellar gits it. All thet ought to bother
us is to make shore 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,
Jean 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 in-
herent knowledge of its destructiveness. Jean sat down
and wiped his clammy face.

‘Jean, your dad reckoned to square accounts with
Jorth, an’ save us all,” began Blue, puffing out a cloud
of smoke. ‘‘But he reckoned too late. Mebbe years

ago—or even not long ago—if he’d called Jorth out man
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to man there’d never been any Jorth-Isbel war. Gaston
Isbel’s conscience woke too late. That’s how I figger it.”

“Hurry! Tell me—how it—happened,” panted Jean.

“Wal, a little while after y’u left I seen your dad
writin’ on a leaf he tore out of a book—Meeker’s Bible,
as y'ucan see. I thought thet wasfunny. An’ Blaisdell
gave me a hunch. Pretty soon along comes young
Evarts. The old man calls him out of our hearin’ an’
talks to him. Then I seen him give the boy somethin’,
which I afterward figgered was what he wrote on the leaf
out of the Bible. Me an’ Blaisdell both tried to git out
of him what thet meant. But not a word. I kept
watchin’ an’ after a while I seen young Evarts slip out
the back way. Mebbe half an hour I seen a bare-legged
kid cross the road an’ go into Greaves’s store... . Then
shore I tumbled to your dad. He’d sent a note to Jorth
to come out an’ meet him face to face, man to man!...
Shore it was like readin’ what your dad had wrote. But
I didn’t say nothin’ to Blaisdell. I jest watched.”

Blue drawled these last words, as if he enjoyed re-
membrance 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:

“Colonel Lee Jorth stalked out of the store—out
into the road—mebbe a hundred steps. Then he halted.
He wore his long black coat an’ his wide black hat, an’
he stood like a stone.

“What the hell!’ burst out Blaisdell, comin’ out of his
trance.

“The rest of us jest looked. I’d forgot your dad, for
the thinnit. So had all of us. But we remembered soon

enough when we seen him stalk out. Everybody had a
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hunch then. I called him. Blaisdell begged him to come
back. All the fellars had a say. Nouse! Then I shore
cussed him an’ told him it was plain as day thet Jorth
didn’t hit, me like an honest man. I can sense such
things. I knew Jorth had a trick up his sleeve. I’ve not
been a gun fighter fer nothin’.

“Your dad had no rifle. He packed his gun at his hip.
He jest stalked down thet road like a giant, goin’ faster
an’ faster, holdin’ his head high. It shore was fine to see
him. But I was sick. I heerd Blaisdell groan, an’
Fredericks thar cussed somethin’ fierce... . When your
dad halted—I reckon aboot fifty steps from Jorth—then
we all went numb. I heerd your dad’s voice—then
Jorth’s. They cut like knives. Y’u could shore heah
the hate they hed fer each other.”

Blue had become a little husky. His speech had grown
gradually to denote his fzeling. Underneath his serenity
there was a different order of man.

“I reckon both your_dad an’ Jorth went fer their guns
at the same time—an even break. But jest as they drew,
some one shot a rifle from the store. Must hev been a
forty-five seventy. A big gun! The bullet must have.
hit your dad low down, aboot the middle. He acted thet
way, sinkin’ to his knees. An’ he was wild in shootin’—
so wild thet he must hev missed. Then he wabbled—an’
Jorth run in a dozen steps, shootin’ fast, till your dad
fell over. . . . Jorth run closer, bent over him, an’ then
straightened up with an Apache yell, if I ever heerd one.
... An’ then Jorth backed slow—lookin’ all the time—
backed to the store, an’ went in.”

Blue’s voice ceased. Jean seemed suddenly released
from an impelling magnet that now dropped him to some
numb, dizzy depth. Blue’s lean face grew hazy. Then

Jean bowed his head in his hands, and sat there, while a
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slight tremor shook all his muscles at once. He grew
deathly cold and deathly sick. This paroxysm slowly
wore away, and Jean grew conscious of a dull amaze at
the apparent deadness of his. spirit. Blaisdell placed
a huge, kindly hand on his shoulder.

“Brace up, son!” he said, with voice now clear and
resonant, ‘Shore it’s what your dad expected—an’ what

we all must look for. ... If y’u was goin’ to kill Jorth
before—think how —— —— shore y’u’re goin’ to kill
him now.”

“‘Blaisdell’s talkin’,’’ put in Blue, and his voice had a
cold ring. ‘‘Lee Jorth will never see the sun rise ag’in!”’

These calls to the primitive in Jean, to the Indian,
were not in vain. But even so, when thedark tide rose
in him, there was still a haunting consciousness of the
cruelty of this singular doom imposed upon him. Strangely
Ellen Jorth’s face floated back in the depths of his vision,
pale, fading, like the face of a spirit floating by.

“Blue,” said Blaisdell, ‘‘let’s get Isbel’s body soon as
we dare, an’ bury it. Reckon we can, right after dark.”

“Shore,” replied Blue. ‘‘But y’u fellars figger thet out.
I'm thinkin’ hard. I’ve got somethin’ on my mind.”

Jean grew fascinated by the looks and speech and
action of the little gunman. Blue, indeed, had some-
thing 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.

‘Jean, 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,

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“Gordon, y’u stand in the door an’ keep your eye
peeled,’’ went on Blue. . . . ‘‘Now, boys, listen! I’ve
thought it all out. This game of man huntin’ is the same
to me as cattle raisin’ is to y’u. An’ my life in Texas all
comes back to me, I reckon, in good stead fer us now.
I’m goin’ to kill Lee Jorth! Him first, an’ mebbe his
brothers. JI had to think of a good many ways before
I hit on one I reckon will be shore. It’s got to be shore.
Jorth has got to die! Wal, heah’s my plan... . Thet
Jorth outfit is drinkin’ some, we can gamble on it. They’re
not goin’ to leave thet store. An’ of course they’ll be
expectin’ us to start a fight. I reckon they’ll look fer
some such siege as they held round Isbel’s ranch. But
we shore ain’t goin’ to do thet. I’m goin’ to surprise
thet outfit. There’s only one man among them who
is dangerous, an’ thet’s Queen. "™ know Queen. But
he doesn’t know me. An’ I’m goin’ to finish my job
before he gets acquainted with me. After thet, 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.

‘Wal, what’s your trick?”’ demanded Blaisdell.

“Vu all know Greaves’s store,” continued Blue.
“How them winders have wooden shutters thet keep a.
light from showin’ outside? Wal, I’m gamblin’ thet as.
soon as it’s dark Jorth’s gang will be celebratin’. They’ll
be drinkin’ an’ they’ll have a light, an’ the winders will be
shut. They’re not goin’ to worry none aboot us. Thet
store is like a fort. It won’t burn. An’ shore they’d
never think of us chargin’ them in there. Wal, as soon
as it’s dark, we'll go round behind the lots an’ come up
jest acrost the road from Greaves’s. I reckon we'd better

leave Isbel where he lays till this fight’s over. Mebbe
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TO THE LAST MAN

y’u'll have more ’n him to bury. We'll crawl behind them
bushes in front of Coleman’s yard. An’ heah’s where
Jean comes in. He’ll.take an ax, an’ his guns, of course,
an’ do some of his Injun sneakin’ round to the back of
Greaves’s store... . An’, Jean, y’u must do a slick job of
this. But I reckon it ‘ll be easy fer you. Back there
it ‘ll be dark as pitch, fer anyone lookin’ out of the
store.. An’ I’m figgerin’ y’u can take your time an’
crawlright up. Now if y’u don’t remember how Greaves’s
back yard looks I'll tell y’u.”
1. 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.
, ‘Jean, I take particular pains to show y’u where this
hole is,”’ said Blue, “because if the gang runs out y’u
cculd duck in there an’ hide. An’ if they run out into
the yard—wal, y’u’d make it a sorry run fer them... .
Wal, when y’u’ve crawled up close to Greaves’s back door,
an’ waited long enough to see an’ listen—then you’re to
run fast an’ swing your ax smash ag’in’ the winder. Take
a quick peep in if y’u want to. It might help. Then
jump quick an’ take a swing at the door. Y’u’ll be
standin’ to one side, so if the gang shoots through the
‘door they won’t hit y’u. Bang thet door good an’ hard.
... Wal, now’s where I come in. When y’u swing thet
ax I’ll shore run fer the front of the store. Jorth an’ his
outfit will be some attentive to thet poundin’ of yours
on the back door. So I reckon. An’ they’ll be lookin’
thet way. I'll run in—yell—an’ throw my guns on
Jorth.”

“Humph! Is that all?” ejaculated Blaisdell.

“T reckon thet’s all an’ I’m figgerin’ it’s a hell of a

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lot,’ responded Blue, dryly. ‘‘Thet’s what Jorth will
think.”

‘“Where do we come in?”

‘Wal, y’u all can back me up,” replied Blue, dubiously.
“Y'u see, my plan goes as far as killin’ Jorth—an’ mebbe
his brothers. Mebbe I'll get a crack at Queen. But I'll
be shore of Jorth. After thet all depends. Mebbe it ‘ll
be easy fer me to get out. An’ if I do y’u fellars will
know it an’ can fill thet storeroom full of bullets.”

“Wal, Blue, with all due respect to y’u, I shore don’t
like your plan,’’ declared Blaisdell. ‘‘Success depends
upon too many little things any one of which might go
wrong.”

“Blaisdell, I reckon I know this heah game better than
y’u,” replied Blue. ‘“‘A gun fighter goes by instinct.
This trick will work.” \

“But suppose that front door of Greaves’s store is
barred,’”’ protested Blaisdell.

“Tt hasn’t got any bar,” said Blue.

“Y’u’re shore?”’

“Ves, I reckon,” replied Blue.

“Hell, man! Aren’t y’u takin’ a terrible chance?’’
queried Blaisdell.

Blue’s answer to that was a look that brought the blood
to Blaisdell’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.

“Blaisdell, did y’u ever heah of me in Texas?” he
queried, dryly.

“Wal, no, Blue, I cain’t swear I did,” replied the
rancher, apologetically. ‘‘An’ Isbel was always sort of
mysterious aboot his acquaintance with you.”

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“‘My name’s not Blue.”

“Ahuh! Wal, what is it, then—if I’m safe to ask?”
returned Blaisdell, gruffly.

“It’s King Fisher,’’ replied Blue.

The shock that stiffened Blaisdell must have been com-
municated to the others. Jean certainly felt amaze, and
some other emotion not fully realized, when he found
himself face to face with one of the most notorious char-
acters ever known in Texas—an outlaw long supposed to
be dead.

“Men, I reckon I’d kept my secret if I’d any idee of
comin’ out of this Isbel-Jorth war alive,” said Blue.
“But I’m goin’ to cash. I feel it heah. . . . Isbel was my
friend. He saved me from bein’ lynched in Texas. An’
so I’m goin’ to kill Jorth. Now I'll take it kind of y’u—
if any of y’u come out of this alive—to tell who I was an’
why I was on the Isbel side. Because this sheep an’
cattle war—this talk of Jorth an’ the Hash Knife Gang—
it makes me sick. I know there’s been crooked work on
Isbel’s side, too. An’ I never want it on record thet I
killed Jorth because he was a rustler.”’

“By God, Blue! it’s late in the day for such talk,”
burst out Blaisdell, in rage and amaze. ‘‘But I reckon
y’u know what y’u’re talkin’ aboot. . . . Wal, I shore
don’t want to heah it.”

At this juncture Bill Isbel quietly entered the cabin,
too late to hear any of Blue’s statement. Jean was
positive of that, for as Blue was speaking those last
revealing wérds 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 Jean to add further mystery to the long secret

causes leading up to the Jorth-Isbel war. Did Bill know
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what Blue knew? Jean had an inkling that he did.
And on the moment, so perplexing and bitter, Jean gazed
out the door, down the deserted road to where his dead
father lay, white-haired and ghastly in the sunlight.

“Blue, you could have kept that to yourself, as well
as your real name,” interposed Jean, with bitterness.
“It’s too late now for either to do any good... . But I
appreciate your friendship for dad, an’ I’m ready to help
carry out your plan.”

That decision of Jean’s appeared to put an end to
protest or argument from Blaisdell 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. Jean 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 emotions in his breast, and the one that stirred
there most was pity. The pity of it! Gaston Isbel
lying face down in the dust of the village street! Patches
of blood showed on the back of his vest and one white-
sleeved shoulder. He had been shot through. Every
time Jean saw this blood he had to stifle a gathering of
wild, savage impulses.

Meanwhile the afternoon hours dragged by and the
village remained as if its inhabitants had abandoned it..
Not even a dog showed on the side road. Jorth 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 impor-
tance. About sunset they went back into the store, clos-
ing door and window shutters. Then Blaisdell called the
Isbel faction to have food and drink. Jean felt no

hunger. And Blue, who had kept apart from the others,
2Ir
TO THE LAST MAN

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.

“Wal, I reckon it’s aboot time,’’ said Blue, and he led
the way out of the cabin to the back of the lot. Jean
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.

‘“‘Thet’s where the road turns off,” he said to Jean.
“ An’ heah’s the back of Coleman’s place. . .. Wal, Jean,
good luck!’

Jean felt the grip of a steel-like hand, and in the
darkness he caught the gleam of Blue’s eyes. Jean 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 im-
portant, but it seemed to him that Blue had coolly taken
the perilous part. And this cowboy with gray in his
thin hair was in reality the great King Fisher! Jean
marveled at the fact. And he shivered all over for Jorth.
In ten minutes—fifteen, more or less, Jorth would lie
gasping bloody froth and sinking down. Something in
the dark, lonely, silent, oppressive summer night told
Jean 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

Jean’s heart leap. The Jorth contingent were burning
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the big lamp that hung in the center of Greaves’s store.
Jean 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 Gaston Isbel was being celebrated by revel.

In a few moments Jean had regained his breath. Then
all his faculties set intensely to the action at hand. He
seemed to magnify his hearing and his sight. His move-
ments made no sound. He gained the wagon, where he
crouched a moment.

The ground seemed a pale, obscure medium, hardly
more real than the gloom above it. Through this gloom
of night, which looked thick like a cloud, but was really
clear, shone the thin, bright point of light, accentuating
the black square that was Greaves’s store. Above this
stood a gray line of tree foliage, and then the intensely
dark-blue sky studded with white, cold stars.

A hound bayed lonesomely somewhere in the distance.
Voices of men sounded more distinctly, some deep and
low, others loud, unguarded, with the vacant note of
thoughtlessness.

Jean gathered all his forces, until sense of sight and
hearing were in exquisite accord with the suppleness and
lightness of his movements. He glided on about ten short,
swift steps before he halted. That was as far as his
piercing eyes could penetrate. If there had been a guard
stationed outside the store Jean would have seen him
before being seen. He saw the fence, reached it, entered
the yard, glided in the dense shadow of the barn until
the black square began to loom gray—the color of stone
at night. Jean peered through the obscurity. No dark
figure of a man showed against that gray wall—only a
black patch, which must be the hole in the foundation

mentioned. ,A ray of light now streaked out from the
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TO THE LAST MAN

little black window. To the right showed the wide, black
door.

Farther on Jean glided silently. Then he halted.
There was no guard outside. Jean heard the clink of a
cup, the lazy drawl of a Texan, and then a strong, harsh
voice—Jorth’s. It strung Jean’s whole being tight and
vibrating. Inside he was on fire while cold thrills rippled
over his skin. It took tremendous effort of will to hold
himself back another instant to listen, to look, to feel, to
make sure. And that instant charged him with a mighty
current of hot blood, straining, throbbing, damming.

When Jean leaped this current burst. In a few swift
bounds he gained his point halfway between door and
window. He leaned his rifle against the stone wall.
Then he swung the ax. Crash! The window shutter
split and rattled to the floor inside. The silence then
broke with a hoarse, ‘‘What’s thet?’

With all his might Jean 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
batterin’ the back door!”

Jean swung again, high on the splintered door. Crash!
Pieces flew irside.

“They’ve got axes,’’ hoarsely shouted another voice.
‘Shove the counter ag’in’ the door.”

“No!” thundered a voice of authority that denoted
terror as well. ‘‘Let them come in. Pull your guns an’
take to cover!”

“They ain’t comin’ in,’”’ was the hoarse reply. ‘‘They’ll
shoot in on us from the dark.”

“Put out the lamp!” yelled another.

Jean’s third heavy swing caved in part of the upper
half of the door. Shouts and curses intermingled with the

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sliding of benches across the floor and the hard shuffle of
boots. This confusion seemed to be split and silenced by
a piercing yell, of different caliber, of terrible meaning.
It stayed Jean’s swing—caused him to drop the ax and
snatch up his rifle.

“Don't anybody move!”

Like a steel whip this voice cut the silence. It belonged.
to Blue. Jean swiftly bent to put his eye to a crack in the
door. Most of those visible seemed to have been frozen
into unnatural positions. Jorth stood rather in front of
his men, hatless and coatless, one arm outstretched, and
his dark profile set toward a little man just inside the door.
This man was Blue. Jean needed only one flashing look
‘at Blue’s face, at his leveled, quivering guns, to understand.
why he had chosen this trick.

‘‘Who ‘re—you?”’ demanded Jorth, in husky pants.

“Reckon I’m Isbel’s right-hand man,” came the biting
teply. ‘‘Once tolerable well known in Texas. ... King
Fisher!”

The name must have been a guarantee of death. Jorth
recognized this outlaw and realized his own fate. In the
lamplight his face turned a pale greenish white. His out-
stretched hand began to quiver down.

Blue’s left gun seemed to leap up and flash red and
explode. Several heavy reports merged almost as one,
Jorth’s arm jerked limply, flinging his gun. And his body
sagged in the middle. His hands fluttered like crippled
wings and found their way to his abdomen. His death-
pale face never changed its set look 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
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TO THE LAST MAN

he was, had paused to watch Jorth in his last mortal
action. Jorth’s followers began to draw and shoot.
Jean saw Blue’s return fire bring down a huge man, who
fell across Jorth’s body. Then Jean, quick as the thought
that actuated him, raised his rifle and shot at the big
lamp. It burst in a flare. It crashed to the floor.
Darkness followed—a 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. Jean shoved his
rifle barrel inside the door and, holding it low down, he
moved it to and fro while he worked lever and trigger
until the magazine was empty. Then, drawing his six-
shooter, he emptied that. A roar of rifles from the front
of the store told Jean that his comrades had entered the
fray. Bullets zipped through the door he had broken.
Jean ran swiftly 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. Blaisdell
and the others were firing into the door of the store.
With nimble fingers Jean reloaded his rifle. Then swiftly
he ran across the road and down to get behind his com-
trades. Their shooting had slackened. Jean saw dark
forms coming his way.

“Hello, Blaisdell!”” he cafled, warningly.

“That y’u, Jean?” returned the rancher, looming up. '
“Wal, we wasn’t worried aboot y’u.”’

“Blue?” queried Jean, sharply.

A little, dark figure shuffled past Jean. ‘‘Howdy,
Jean!” said Blue, dryly. “Y’u shore did your part.
Reckon I’ll need to be tied up, but I ain’t hurt much.”

“‘Colmor’s hit,’ called the voice of Gordon, a few yards
distant. ‘‘Help me, somebody!”

Jean ran to help Gordon uphold the swaying Colmor.

216 ‘
TO THE LAST MAN

“Are you hurt—bad?” asked Jean, anxiously. The
young man’s head rolled and hung. He was breathing
hard and did not reply. They had almost to carry him.

““Come on, men!”’ called Blaisdell, turning back toward
the others who were still firing. ‘‘We’ll let well enough
alone. . . . Fredericks, y’u an’ Bill help me find the body
of the old man. It’s heah somewhere.”

Farther on down the road the searchers stumbled over
Gaston Isbel. They picked him up and followed Jean
and Gordon, who were supporting the wounded Colmor.
Jean looked back to see Blue dragging himself along in the
rear. It was too dark to see distinctly; nevertheless,
Jean got the impression that Blue was more severely
wounded than he had claimed to be. The distance to
Meeker’s cabin was not far, but it took what Jean felt
to be a long and anxious time to get there. Colmor
apparently rallied somewhat. When this procession en-
tered Meeker’s yard, Blue was lagging behind.

“Blue, how air y’u?”’ called Blaisdell, with concern.

“Wal, I got—my boots—on—anyhow,”’ replied Blue,
huskily.

He lurched into the yard and slid down on the grass
and stretched out.

“Man! Y’u’re hurt bad!” exclaimed Blaisdell. The
others halted in their slow march and, as if by tacit,
unspoken word, lowered the body of Isbel to the ground.
Then Blaisdell knelt beside Blue. Jean left Colmor to
Gordon and hurried to peer down into Blue’s dim face.

“No, I ain’t—hurt,” said Blue, in.a much weaker voice.
“T’m—jest killed! ... It was Queen!... Y’u all heerd me
—Queen was—only bad man in that lot. Iknowedit....
I could—hev killed him. .. . But I was—after Lee Jorth—
an’ his brothers. . . .”

Blue’s voice failed there.

15 at7
TO THE LAST MAN

“Wall!” ejaculated Blaisdell.

“Shore was funny—Jorth’s face—when I said—King
Fisher,’ whispered Blue. ‘Funnier—when I bored—
him through. .. . But it—was—Queen—”’

His whisper died away.

“Blue!” called Biaisdell, sharply. Receiving no answer,
he bent lower in the starlight and placed a hand upon the
man’s breast.

‘Wal, he’s gone. . . . I wonder if he really was the old
Texas King Fisher. No one would ever believe it... .
But if he killed the Jorths, I’ll shore believe him.”
CHAPTER X

‘WO weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked
incalculable change in Ellen Jorth.

Late in June her father and her two uncles had packed
and ridden off with Daggs, Colter, and six other men, all
heavily armed, some somber with drink, others hard and
grim with a foretaste of fight. Ellen had not been given
any orders. Her father had forgotten to bid her good-by
or had avoided it. Their dark mission was stamped on
their faces.

They had gone and, keen as nad 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 Jorth-Isbel war. Barking dogs did not
bite. Somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly
wounded, possibly killed, and then the feud would go on
as before, mostly talk. Many of her former impres-
sions 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.

Jorth had left Ellen at home with the Mexican woman
and Antonio. Ellen saw them only at meal times, and
often not then, for she frequently visited old John Sprague
or came home late to do her own cooking.

It was but a short distance up to Sprague’s cabin, and
since she had stopped riding the black horse, Spades, she
walked. Spades was accustomed to having grain, and in

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the mornings he would come down to the ranch and
whistle. Ellen had vowed she would never feed the
horse and bade Antonio do it. But one morning Antonio
was absent. She fed Spades herself. When she laid a
hand on him and when he rubbed his nose against her
shoulder she was not quite so sure she hated him. “‘Why
should I?” she queried. ‘A horse cain’t help it if he
belongs to—to—”’ Ellen was not sure of anything except
that more and more it 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 sear and brown and dry and dusty changed as if
by magic. The green grass shot up, the flowers bloomed,
and along the cafion 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
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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
tim and burst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray
palls of rain. Lightning seldom struck near the ranch,
but wp 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 some-
how, 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 Jean 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

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—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, wonder-
ful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had been born
to disaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone.
Yet all nature about her seemed a magnificent rebuke
to her 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, whee she flung out
her arms, driven to embrace this nameless purport of the
morning. And a well-known voice broke in upon her
rapture.

“Wal, lass, I like to see you happy an’ I hate myself
fer comin’. Because I’ve been to Grass Valley fer two
days an’ I’ve got news.”

Old John Sprague stood there, with a smile that did
not hide a troubled look.

“Oh! Uncle John! You startled me,’ exclaimed
' Ellen, shocked back to reality. And slowly she added:
“Grass Valley! News?”

She put out an appealing hand, which Sprague quickly
took in his own, as if to reassure her.

“Yes, an’ not bad so far as you Jorths are concerned,”

he replied. ‘‘The first Jorth-Isbel fight has come off....
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Reckon you remember makin’ me promise to tell you
if I heerd anythin’, Wal, I didn’t wait fer 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 Jorths!
Then it had been bad for the Isbels. A sudden, cold
stillness fell upon her senses.

“‘Let’s sit down—outdoors,’’ Sprague was saying.
“Nice an’ sunny this—mornin’. I declare—I’m out of
breath. Not used to walkin’. An’ besides, I left Grass
Valley in the night—an’ I’m tired. But excoose me
from hangin’ round thet village last night! There was
shore—”’

““Who—who was killed?” interrupted Ellen, her voice
breaking low and deep.

“Guy Isbel an’ Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, an’ Daggs,
Craig, an’ Greaves on your father’s side,” stated Sprague,
with something of awed haste.

“Ah!” breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back
against the cabin wall.

Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning
to face her, and he seemed burdened with grave and
important matters.

“T heerd a good many conflictin’ stories,” he said,
earnestly. ‘‘The village folks is all skeered an’ there’s
no believin’ their gossip. But I got what happened
straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off day before
yestiddy. Your father’s gang rode down to Isbel’s ranch.
Daggs was seen to be wantin’ some of the Isbel hosses,
so Evarts says. An’ Guy Isbel an’ Jacobs run out in the
pasture. Daggs an’ some others shot them down...”

“Killed them—that way?” put in Ellen, sharply.

“So Evarts says. He was on the ridge an’ swears he

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seen it all. They killed Guy an’ Jacobs in cold blood.
No chance fer their lives—not even to fight!.. . Wal, then
they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The fight lasted all
thet day an’ all night an’ the next day. Evarts says
Guy an’ Jacobs laid out thar all this time. An’ a herd of
hogs broke in the pasture an’ was eatin’ the dead
bodies...”

“My God!” burst out Ellen. ‘‘Uncle John, y’u shore
cain’t mean my father wouldn’t stop fightin’ long enough
to drive the hogs off an’ bury those daid men?”

“Evarts says they stopped fightin’, all right, but it was
to watch the hogs,” declared Sprague. ‘‘An’ then, what
d’ ye think? The wimminfolks come out—the red-
headed one, Guy’s wife, an’ Jacobs’s wife—they drove the
hogs away an’ buried their husbands right there in the
pasture. Evarts says he seen the graves.”

“Tt is the women who can teach these bloody Texans a
lesson,’’ declared Ellen, forcibly.

“Wal, Daggs was drunk, an’ he got up from behind
where the gang was hidin’, an’ dared the Isbels to come
out. They shot him to pieces. An’ thet night some one
of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on guard... .
An’ last—this here’s what I come to tell you—Jean
Isbel slipped up in the dark on Greaves an’ knifed him.”

“Why did y’u want to tell me that particularly?”
asked Ellen, slowly.

“Because I reckon the facts in the case are queer—an’
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?”

“Jean Isbel,”’ replied Sprague, as if the name and the
fact were momentous.

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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
thought.

“Ellen, it’s a mighty queer story—too queer to be a
lie,” went on Sprague. ‘‘Now you listen! Evarts got
this from Ted Meeker. An’ Ted Meeker heerd it from
Greaves, who didn’t die till the next day after Jean Isbel
knifed him. An’ your dad shot Ted fer tellin’ what he
heerd. .. . No, Greaves wasn’t killed outright. He was
cut somethin’ turrible—in two places. They wrapped
him all up an’ next day packed him in a wagon back to
Grass Valley. Evarts says Ted Meeker was friendly
with Greaves an’ went to see him as he was layin’ in his
room next to the store. Wal, accordin’ to Meeker’s story,
Greaves came to an’ talked. He said he was sittin’ there
in the dark, shootin’ occasionally at Isbel’s cabin, when
he heerd a rustle behind him in the grass. He knowed
some one was crawlin’ 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 an’ dragged him back in the ditch. An’
he said: ‘Greaves, it’s the half-breed. An’ he’s goin’ to
cut you—first for Ellen Jorth! an’ then for Gaston Isbel!’
. .. Greaves said Jean ripped him with a bowie knife.
... An’ thet was all Greaves remembered. He died soon
after tellin’ this story. He must hev fought awful hard.
Thet second cut Isbel gave him went clear through him.
... Some of the gang was thar when Greaves talked, an’
naturally they wondered why Jean Isbel had said ‘first for
Ellen Jorth.’ . . . Somebody remembered thet Greaves
had cast a slur on your good name, Ellen. An’ then they
had Jean Isbel’s reason fer sayin’ thet to Greaves. It

caused a lot of talk. An’ when Simm Bruce busted in
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some of the gang haw-hawed him an’ said as how he’d
get the third cut from Jean Isbel’s bowie. Bruce was
half drunk an’ he began to cuss an’ rave about Jean Isbel
bein’ in love with his girl... . As bad luck would have it, a
couple of more fellars come in an’ asked Meeker questions.
He jest got to thet part, ‘Greaves, it’s the half-breed, an’
he’s goin’ to cut you—first for Ellen Jorth,’ when in
walked your father! ... Then it all had to come out—
what Jean Isbel had said an’ done—an’ why. How
Greaves had backed Simm Bruce in slurrin’ you!”

Sprague paused to look hard at Ellen.

“Oh! Then—what did dad do?’’ whispered Ellen.

‘*He said, ‘By God! half-breed or not, there’s one Isbel
who’s a man!’ An’ he killed Bruce on the spot an’
gave Meeker a nasty wound. Somebody grabbed him
before he could shoot Meeker again. They threw Meeker
out an’ he crawled to a neighbor’s house, where he was
when Evarts seen him.”

Ellen felt Sprague’s rough but kindly hand shaking her.
*An’ now what do you think of Jean Isbel?’’ he queried.

A great, unsurmountable wall seemed to obstruct
Ellen’s thought. It seemed gray in color. It moved
toward her. It was inside her brain.

“T tell you, Ellen Jorth,” declared the old man, “thet
Jean Isbel loves you—loves you turribly—an’ he believes
you're good.”

“‘Oh no—he doesn’t!” faltered Ellen.

“Wal, he jest does.”

“Oh, Uncle John, he cain’t believe that!” she cried.

“Of course he can. He does. You are good—good as
gold, Ellen, an’ he knows it... . What a queer deal it all is!
Poor devil! To love you thet turribly an’ hev to fight
your people! Ellen, your dad had it correct. Isbel or

not, he’s a man.... An’ I say what a shame you two are
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divided by hate. Hate thet you hed nothin’ to do with.”
Sprague patted her head and rose to go. ‘‘Mebbe thet
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... . An’, say, Ellen, don’t think hard any
more of thet Jean Isbel.”

Sprague strode away, and Elfen neither heard nor saw
him go. She sat perfectly motionless, yet had a strange
sensation of being lifted by 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 all
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, Spades, 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 cafion
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 the
added all? Spades 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
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rumble of thunder shook the sultry air. Up beyond the
green slope of the cafion massed the creamy clouds, shad-
ing darker and darker. Spades 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 any-
thing. 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.

Spades 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 Spades 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 swales, 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

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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 Jean 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 wall 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 rain poured down in roaring cataracts.

The south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range
and cajion, cafion 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.

“Tt is for me!” cried Ellen. ‘‘My mind—my heart—

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my very soul.... Oh, I know! I know now!...I love
him—love him—love him!”

She cried it out to the elements. ‘‘Oh, I love Jean Is-
bel—an’ 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 Jean 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 pro-
pelled 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. Scat-
tered 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
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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 com-
mon 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.

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tangible things. And there her body paid the tribute
to the realization of life. Shock, convulsion, pain,
relaxation, and then wunutterable 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—
Jean 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 protec-
tion, for salvation, for love, for fulfilment. No denial,
no doubt marred the white blaze of her realization.
From the instant that she had looked up into Jean.
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 ec-
stasy 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
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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, sting-
ing 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.
T’'ll tell him to take me away—away to the end of the
world—away from heah—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 Jorth blood in her—that poisonous hate—
had chosen the only way to strike this noble Isbel to the
heart. Basely, with an abandonment of womanhood,
she had mockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie. She
writhed, she shook under the whip of this inconceivable
fact. Lost! Lost! She wailed her misery. She might
as well be what she had made Jean Isbel think she was.
Tf she had been shamed before, she was now abased,
degraded, lost in her own sight. And if she would have
given her soul for his kisses, she now would have killed
herself to earn back his respect. Jean Isbel had given

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her at sight the deference that she had unconsciously
craved, and the love that would have been her salvation.
What a horrible mistake she had made of her life! Not
her mother’s blood, but her father’s—the Jorth blood—
had been her ruin.

Again Ellen fell upon the soft pine-needle mat, face
down, and she groveled and burrowed there, in an agony
that could not bear the sense of light. All she had
suffered was as nothing to this. To have awakened to
a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she had
imagined she hated, who had fought for her name and
had killed in revenge for the dishonor she had avowed
—to have lost his love and what was infinitely more
precious to her now in her ignominy—his faith in her
purity—this broke her heart.
CHAPTER XI

HEN Ellen, utterly spent in body and mind,

reached home that day a melancholy, sultry
twilight was falling. Fitful flares of sheet lightning swept
across the dark horizon to the east. The cabins were
deserted. Antonio and the Mexican woman were gone.
The circumstances made Ellen wonder, but she was too
tired and too sunken in spirit to think long about it or to
care. She fed and watered her horse and left him in the
corral. Then, supperless and without removing her
clothes, she threw herself upon the bed, and at once
sank into heavy slumber.

Sometime during the night she awoke. Coyotes were
yelping, and from that sound she concluded it was near
dawn. Her body ached; her mind seemed dull. Drowsily
she was sinking into slumber again when she heard the
rapid clip-clop of trotting horses. Startled, she raised
her head to listen. The men were coming back. : Relief
and dread seemed to clear her stupor.

The trotting horses stopped across the lane from her
cabin, evidently at the corral where she had left Spades.
She heard him whistle. From the sound of hoofs she
judged the number of horses to be six or eight. Low
voices of men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps
and flopping of saddles on the ground. After that the
heavy tread of boots sounded on the porch of the cabin
opposite. A door creaked on its hinges. Next a slow
footstep, accompanied by clinking of spurs, approached.

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Ellen’s door, and a heavy hand banged upon it. She
knew this person could not be her father.

“Hullo, Ellen!”

She recognized the voice as belonging to Colter. Some-
how 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 y’u there?” added Colter, in louder voice.

“Yes. Of course I’m heah,” she replied. ‘‘What do y’u
want?”

“‘Wal—I’m shore glad y’u’re home,” he replied. ‘‘An-
tonio’s gone with his squaw. An’ I was some worried
aboot y’u.”

“Who's with y’u, Colter?’”’ queried Ellen, sitting up.

“Rock Wells an’ Springer. Tad Jorth was with us, but.
‘we had to leave him over heah in a cabin.”

‘“What’s the matter with him?”

“Wal, he’s hurt tolerable bad,’’ was the slow reply.

Ellen heard Colter’s spurs jangle, as if he had uneasily
shifted his feet. _

“‘Where’s dad an’ Uncle Jackson?” asked Ellen.

A silence pregnant enough to augment Ellen’s dread
finally broke to Colter’s voice, somehow different. ‘‘Shore
they’re back on the trail. An’ we're to meet them where
‘we left Tad.”

“Are y’u goin’ away again?”

“Treckon. . . . An’, Ellen, y’v’re goin’ with us.”

“T am not,” she retorted.

“Wal, y’u are, if I have to pack y’u,’” he replied,
forcibly. ‘‘It’s not safe heah any more. That damned
half-breed Isbel with his gang are on our trail.”

That name seemed like a red-hot blade at Ellen’s leaden
heart. She wanted to fling a hundred queries on Colter,
but she could not utter one.

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‘Ellen, we've got to hit the trail an’ hide,” continued
Colter, anxiously. ‘‘Y’u mustn’t stay heah alone. Sup-
pose them Isbels would trap y’u! ... They’d tear your
clothes off an’ rope y’u to a tree. Ellen, shore y’u’re
goin’,... Y’u heah me!”

“Yes—I'll go,” she replied, as if forced.

“‘Wal—that’s good,” he said, quickly. ‘‘An’ rustle
tolerable lively. We've got to pack.”

The slow jangle of Colter’s spurs and his slow steps
moved away out of Ellen’s hearing. Throwing off the
blankets, she put her feet to the floor and sat there a
moment staring at the blank nothingness of the cabin
interior in the obscure gray of dawn. Cold, gray, dreary,
obscure—like her life, her future! And she was com-
pelled to do what was hateful to her. As a Jorth she
must take to the unfrequented trails and hide like a
rabbit in the thickets. But the interest of the moment,
a premonition of events to be, quickened her into action.

Ellen unbarred the door to let in the light. Day was
breaking with an intense, clear, steely light in the east
through which the morning star still shone white. A
ruddy flare betokened the advent of the sun. Ellen
unbraided her tangled hair and brushed and combed it.
A queer, still pang came to her at sight of pine needles
tangled in her brown locks. Then she washed her hands.
and face. Breakfast was a matter of considerable work
and she was hungry.

The sun rose and changed the gray world of forest.
For the first time in her life Ellen hated the golden
brightness, the wonderful blue of sky, the scream of the
eagle and the screech of the jay; and the squirrels she
had always loved to feed were neglected that morning.

Colter came in. Either Ellen had never before looked
attentively at him or else he had changed. Her scrutiny

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TO THE LAST MAN

of his lean, hard features accorded him more Texan
attributes than formerly. His gray eyes were as light,
as clear, as fierce as those of an eagle. And the sand
gray of his face, the long, drooping, fair mustache hid
‘the secrets of his mind, but not its strength. The instant
Ellen met his gaze she sensed a power in him that she
instinctively opposed. Colter had not been so bold nor
so rude as Daggs, but he was the same kind of man,
perhaps the more dangerous for his secretiveness, his cool,
waiting inscrutableness.

““Mawnin’, Bleak: he deamiled: “Yu shore look
good for sore eyes.”

“Don’t pay me compliments, Cotter,” replied Ellen.
‘An’ your eyes are not sore.”

‘Wal, I’m shore sore from fightin’ an’ ridin’ an’ layin’
out,” he said, bluntly.

“‘Tell me—what’s happened,”’ returned Ellen.

“Girl, it’s a tolerable long story,’ replied Colter. ‘‘An’
‘we've no time now. Wait till we get to camp.”

“Am I to pack my belongin’s or leave them heah?’’
asked Ellen.

“‘Reckon y’u’d better leave—them heah.”

“But if we did not come back—”’

“Wal, I reckon it’s not likely, we'll. come—soon,”’ he
said, rather evasively.

“Colter, I'll not go off into the woods with just the
clothes I have on my back.”

‘Ellen, we shore got to pack all the grub we can.
This shore ain’t goin’ to be a visit to neighbors. We're
shy pack hosses. But y’u make up a bundle of belongin’s
-y’u care for, an’ the things y’u'll need bad. We'll throw
it on. somewhere.”

Colter stalked away across the lane, and Ellen found

herself dubiously staring at his tall figure. Was it the
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TO THE LAST MAN

situation that struck her with a foreboding perplexity
or was her intuition steeling her against this man? Ellen
could not decide. But she had to go with him. Her
prejudice was unreasonable at this portentous moment.
And she could not yet feel that she was solely responsi-
ble to herself.

When it came to making a small bundle of her belongings
she was in a quandary. She discarded this and put in
that, and then reversed the order. Next in preciousness
to her mother’s things were the long-hidden gifts of Jean
Isbel. She could part with neither.

While she was selecting and packing this bundle Colter
again entered and, without speaking, began to rummage
in the corner where her father kept his possessions. This
irritated Ellen.

“What do y’u want there?’ she demanded.

“Wal, I reckon your dad wants his papers—an’ the
gold he left heah—an’ a change of clothes. Now doesn’t
he?’’ returned Colter, coolly.

“Of course. But I supposed y’u would have me pack
them.”

Colter vouchsafed no reply to this, but deliberately
went on rummaging, with little regard for how he scattered
things. Ellen turned her back on him. At length, when
he left, she went to her father’s corner and found that,
as far as she was able to see, Colter had taken neither
papers nor clothes, but only the gold. Perhaps, however,
she had been mistaken, for she had not observed Colter’s
departure closely enough to know whether or not he
carried a package. She missed only the gold. Her
father’s papers, old and musty, were scattered about,
and these she gathered up to slip in her own bundle.

Colter, or one of the men, had saddled Spades, and he
was now tied to the corral fence, champing his bit and

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pounding the sand. Ellen wrapped bread and meat in-
side her coat, and after tying this behind her saddle she
was ready to go. But evidently she would have to wait,
and, preferring to remain outdoors, she stayed by her
horse. Presently, while watching the men pack, she
noticed that Springer wore a bandage round his head
under the brim of his sombrero. His motions were slow
and lacked energy. Shuddering at the sight, Ellen refused
to conjecture. All too soon she would learn what had
happened, and all too soon, perhaps, she herself would
be in the midst of another fight. She watched the men.
They were making a hurried slipshod job of packing food
supplies from both cabins. More than once she caught
Colter’s gray gleam of gaze on her, and she did not like it.

“Tl ride up an’ say good-by to Sprague,”’ she called to
Colter.

“Shore y’u won’t do nothin’ of the kind,” he called
back.

There was authority in his tone that angered Ellen, and
something else which inhibited her anger. What was
there about Colter with which she must reckon? The
other two Texans laughed aloud, to be suddenly silenced
by Colter’s harsh and lowered curses. Ellen walked

out of hearing and sat upon a log, where she remained
until Colter hailed her.

“Get up an’ ride,” he called.

Ellen complied with this order and, riding up behind
the three mounted men, she soon found herself leaving
what for years had been her home. Not once did she
look back. She hoped she would never see the squalid,
bare pretension of a ranch again.

Colter and the other riders drove the pack horses across
the meadow, off of the trails, and up the slope into the

forest. Not very long did it take Ellen to see that
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Colter’s object was to hide their tracks. He zigzagged
through the forest, avoiding the bare spots of dust, the
dry, sun-baked flats of clay where water lay in spring,
and he chose the grassy, open glades, the long, pine-needle
matted aisles. Ellen rode at their heels and it pleased
her to watch for their tracks. Colter manifestly had been
long practiced in this game of hiding his trail, and he
showed the skill of a rustler. But Ellen was not con-
vinced that he could ever elude a real woodsman. Not
improbably, however, Colter was only aiming to leave
a trail difficult to follow and which would allow him and
his confederates ample time to forge ahead of pursuers.
Ellen could not accept a certainty of pursuit. Yet Colter
must have expected it, and Springer and Wells also, for
they had a dark, sinister, furtive demeanor that strangely
contrasted with the cool, easy manner habitual to them.

They were not seeking the level routes of the forest
land, that was sure. They rode straight across the
thick-timbered ridge down into another cafion, 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 cafions and ridges, had no
idea where she was. No stop was made at noon to rest
the laboring, sweating pack animals.

Under circumstances where pleasure might have been
possible Ellen would have reveled in this hard ride into a
wonderful forest ever thickening and darkening. But
the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and the
deep, bronze-walled cafions left her cold. She saw and
felt, but had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of
alarm when Spades slid to his haunches down some steep,
damp, piny declivity.

All the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer,

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greener as they traveled farther west. Grass grew thick
and heavy. Water ran in all ravines. The rocks were
bronze and copper and russet, and some had green patches
of lichen.

Ellen felt the sun now on her left cheek and knew that
the day was waning and that Colter was swinging farther
to the northwest. She had never before ridden through
such heavy forest and down and up such wild cafions.
Toward sunset the deepest and ruggedest cafion halted
their advance. Colter rode to the right, searching for a
place to get down through a spruce thicket that stood
onend. Presently he dismounted and the others followed
suit. Ellen found she could not lead Spades because he
slid down upon her heels, so she looped the end of her
reins over the pommel and left him free. She herself
managed to descend by holding to branches and sliding
all the way down that slope. She heard the horses crack-
ing the brush, snorting and heaving. One pack slipped
and had to be removed from the horse, and rolled down.
At the bottom of this deep, green-walled notch roared a
stream of water. Shadowed, cool, mossy, damp, this nar-
row gulch seemed the wildest place Ellen had ever seen.
She could just see the sunset-flushed, gold-tipped spruces
far above her. The men repacked the horse that had
slipped his burden, and once more resumed their progress
ahead, now turning up this cafion. 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 cafion.

At length Colter broke a way through a heavy thicket
of willows and entered a side cafion, the mouth of which
Ellen had not even descried. It turned and widened,

and at length opened out into a round pocket, apparently
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TO THE LAST MAN

inclosed, and as lonely and isolated a place as even
pursued rustlers could desire. Hidden by jutting wall and
thicket of spruce were two old log cabins joined together
by roof and attic floor, the same as the double cabin at
the Jorth ranch.

Ellen smelled wood smoke, and presently, on going
round the cabins, saw a bright fire. One man stood be-
side it gazing at Colter’s party, which evidently he had
heard approaching.

“‘Hullo, Queen!’ said Colter. ‘‘How’s Tad?”

‘‘He’s holdin’ on fine,’”’ replied Queen, bending over the
fire, where he turned pieces of meat.

‘“‘Where’s father?” suddenly asked Ellen, addressing
Colter.

As if he had not heard her, he went on wearily loosening
a pack.

Queen looked at her. The light of the fire only par-
tially shone on his face. Ellen could not see its expres-
sion. But from the fact that Queen did not answer her
question she got further intimation of an impending
catastrophe. The long, wild ride had helped prepare
her for the secrecy and taciturnity of men who had
resorted to flight. Perhaps her father had been delayed
or was still off on the deadly mission that had obsessed
him; or there might, and probably was, darker reason
for his absence. Ellen shut her teeth and turned to the
needs of her horse. And presently, returning to the fire,
she thought of her uncle.

“Queen, is my uncle Tad heah?” she asked.

“Shore. Hle’s in there,’’ replied Queen, pointing at the
nearer cabin.

Ellen hurried toward the dark doorway. She could see
how the logs of the cabin had moved awry and what a big,
dilapidated hovel it was. As she looked in, Colter loomed

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TO THE LAST MAN

over her—placed a familiar and somehow masterful hand
upon her. Ellen let it rest on her shoulder a moment.
Must she forever be repulsing these rude men among whom
her lot was cast? Did Colter mean what Daggs had
always meant? Ellen felt herself weary, weak in body,
and her spent spirit had not rallied. Yet, whatever
Colter meant by his familiarity, she could not bear it.
So she ciipped out from under his hand.

“Uncle Tad, are y’u heah?”’ she called into the black-
ness. She heard the mice scamper and rustle and she
smelled the musty, old, woody odor of a long-unused
cabin,

“Hello, Ellen!’ came a voice she recognized as her
uncle’s, yet it was strange. ‘‘Yes. I’m heah—bad luck
tome!... How ’re y’u buckin’ up, girl?”

“T’m all right, Uncle Tad—only tired an’ worried.
J—”’

“Tad, how’s your hurt?” interrupted Colter.

‘“‘Reckon I'm easier,” replied Jorth, wearily, ‘‘but shore
I’m in bad shape. I’m still spittin’ blood. I keep tellin’
Queen that bullet lodged in my lungs—but he says it
went through.”

“Wal, hang on, Tad!’’ replied Colter, with a cheerful-
ness Ellen sensed was really indifferent.

‘Oh, what the hell’s the use!’”” exclaimed Jorth. ‘It’s
all—up with us—Colter!”

‘Wal, shut up, then,” tersely returned Colter. “It
ain't doin’ y’u or us any good to holler.”

Tad Jorth did not reply to this. Ellen heard his
breathing and it did not seem natural. It rasped a little
—came hurriedly—then caught in his throat. Then he
spat. Ellen shrunk back against the door. He was
breathing through blood.

“Uncle, are y’u in pain?” she asked.

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“Yes, Ellen—it burns like hell,” he said.

“Oh! Dm sorry. ...Isn’t there something I can do?”

“T reckon not. Queen did all anybody could do for me
—now—unless it’s pray.”

Colter laughed at this—the slow, easy, drawling laugh
of a Texan. But Ellen felt pity for this wounded uncle.
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 y’u,” she said, softly.

The change in his voice held a note of sadness that she
had been quick to catch.

“Ellen, y’u’re the only good Jorth—in the whole
damned lot,” he said. “God! I see it all now. .
We've dragged y’u to hell!’’

“Yes, Uncle Tad, I’ve shore been dragged some—but
not yet—to hell,” she responded, with a break in her
voice.

“Vu will be—Ellen—unless—”’

‘‘Aw, shut up that kind of gab, will y’u?’’ broke in
Colter, harshly.

It amazed Ellen that Colter should dominate her
uncle, even though he was wounded. Tad Jorth had been
the last man to take orders from anyone, much less a
rustler of the Hash Knife Gang. This Colter began to
loom up in Ellen’s estimate as he loomed physically over
her, a lofty figure, dark motionless, somehow menacing.

“Ellen, has Colter told y’u yet—aboot—aboot Lee an’
Jackson?’ inquired the wounded man.

The pitch-black darkness of the cabin seemed to help
fortify Ellen to bear further trouble.

“Colter told me dad an’ Uncle Jackson would meet us
heah,” she rejoined, hurriedly.

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Jorth could be heard breathing in difficulty, and he
coughed and spat again, and seemed to hiss.

“Ellen, he lied to y’u. They'll never meet us—heah!”’

‘‘Why not?” whispered Ellen.

‘*Because—Ellen—”’ he replied, in husky pants, “your
dad an’—uncle Jackson—are daid—an’ buried!”

If Ellen suffered a terrible shock it was a blankness, a
deadness, and a slow, creeping failure of sense in her knees.
They gave way under her and she sank on the grass against
the cabin wall. 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 and bitter realization.

An hour later Ellen found strength to go to the fire and
partake of the food and drink her body sorely needed.

Colter 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, y’u’re shore game,” said Colter, admiringly.
‘An’ I reckon y’u never got it from the Jorths.”

“Tad in there—he’s game,”’ said Queen, in mild protest.

“Not to my notion,” replied Colter. “Any man can
be game when he’s croakin’, with somebody around. ...
But Lee Jorth an’ Jackson—they always was yellow clear
to their gizzards. They was born in Louisiana—not
Texas. ... Shore they’re no more TexansthanIam. Ellen
heah, she must have got another strain in her blood.”

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To Ellen their words had no meaning. She rose and
asked, ‘‘Where can I sleep?”

“T’ll fetch a light presently an’ y’u can make your bed
in there by Tad,” replied Colter.

“Ves, I’d like that.”

“Wal, if y’u reckon y’u can coax him to talk you’re
shore wrong,’’ declared Colter, with that cold timbre of
voice that struck like steel on Ellen’s nerves. ‘‘I cussed
him good an’ told him he’d keep his mouth shut. Talkin’
makes him cough an’ that fetches up the blood... .
Besides, I reckon I’m the one to tell y’u how your dad
an’ uncle got killed. Tad didn’t see it done, an’ he was
bad hurt when it happened. Shore all the fellars left
have their idee aboot it. But I’ve got it straight.”

“‘Colter—tell me now,” cried Ellen.

‘Wal, all right. Come over heah, ” he replied, and
drew her away from the camp fire, out in the shadow
of gloom. ‘‘Poor kid! I shore feel bad aboot it." He
put a long arm around her waist and drew her against
him. Ellen felt it, yet did not offer any resistance.
All her faculties seemed absorbed in a morbid and sad
anticipation.

“Ellen, y’u shore know I always loved y’u—now don’t
y’u?” he asked, with suppressed breath.

“No, Colter. It’s news to me—an’ not what I want
to heah.”

“Wal, y’u may as well heah it right now,” he said.
“Tt’s true. ~An’ what’s more—your dad gave y’u to me
before he died.”

“What! Colter, y’u must be a liar.”

“Ellen, I swear I’m not lyin’,” he returned, in eager
passion. ‘I was with your dad last an’ heard him last.
He shore knew I’d loved y’u for years. An’ he said he’d
rather y’u be left in my care than anybody’s.”

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TO THE LAST MAN

“My father gave me to y’u in marriage!” ejaculated
Ellen, in bewilderment.

Colter’s ready assurance did not carry him 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.

“Wal, your dad belonged to Daggs’s gang, same as I
do,” replied Colter, recovering his cool ardor.

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Yes, he shore did, for years,” declared Colter, posi-
tively. ‘‘Back in Texas. An’ it was your dad that got
Daggs to come to Arizona.”

Ellen tried to fling herself away. But her strength and
her spirit were ebbing, and Colter increased the pressure
of hisarm. 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 . . . an’ who—who—”’

Colter bent over so he could peer into her face. In the
darkness El’2n 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—the gloom, the moan of the wind, the weird
solitude, and this rustler with hand and will like cold
steel.

‘““We'd come back to Greaves’s store,’ Colter began.
‘An’ as Greaves was daid we all got free with his liquor.
Shore some of us got drunk. Bruce was drunk, an’
Tad in there—he was drunk. Your dad put away more ’n
I ever seen him. But shore he wasn’t exactly drunk.
He got one of them weak an’ shaky spells. He cried an’
he wanted some of us to get the Isbels to call off the
fightin’... . He shore was ready to call it quits. I reckon

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TO THE LAST MAN

the killin’ of Daggs—an’ then the awiul way Greaves
was cut up by Jean Isbel—took all the fight out of your
dad. He said to me, ‘Colter, we'll take Ellen. an’ leave
this heah country—an’ 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.

“Tl swear it by the memory of my daid mother,”
protested Colter. ‘‘Wal, when night come the Isbels
rode down on us in the dark an’ began to shoot. They
smashed in the door—tried to burn us out—an’ hollered
around for a while. Then they left an’ we reckoned
there’d be no more trouble that night. All the same we
kept watch. I was the soberest one an’ I bossed the gang.
We had some quarrels aboot the drinkin’. Your dad
said if we kept it up it ’d be the end of the Jorths. An’
he planned to send word to the Isbels next mawnin’ that
he was ready for a truce. An’ I was to go fix it up with
Gaston Isbel. Wal, your dad went to bed in Greaves’s
room, an’ a little while later your uncle Jackson went in
there, too. Some of the men laid down in the store an’
went to sleep. I kept guard till aboot three in the
mawnin’. An’ I got so sleepy I couldn’t hold my eyes
open. So I waked up Wells an’ Slater an’ set them on
guard, one at each end of the store. Then I laid down
on the counter to take a nap.”

Colter’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 Jorth. Her vague
doubt of him had been created by his attitude toward
her. Emotion dominated her intelligence. The images,
the scenes called up by Colter’s words, were as true as
the gloom of the wild gulch and the loneliness of the

17 249
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night solitude—as true as the strange fact that she lay
passive in the arm of a rustler.

“Wal, after a while I woke up,” went on Colter, clearing
his throat. “It was gray dawn. All was as still as
death. . . . An’ somethin’ shore was wrong. Wells an’
Slater had got to drinkin’ again an’ now laid daid drunk
or asleep. Anyways, when I kicked them they never
moved. Then I heard a moan. It came from the room
where your dad an’ uncle was. I went in. It was just
light enough to see. Your uncle Jackson was layin’
on the floor—cut half in two—daid as a door nail. . . «
Your dad lay on the bed. He was alive, breathin’ his
last. . . . He says, ‘That half-breed Isbel—knifed us—
while we slept!’ .. . The winder shutter was open. I
seen where Jean Isbel had come in an’ gone out. I seen’
his moccasin tracks in the dirt outside an’ I seen where
he’d stepped in Jackson’s blood an’ tracked it to the
winder. Y’u shore can see them bloody tracks yourself,
if y’u go back to Greaves’s store. . . . Your dad was goin’,
fast. . . . He said, ‘Colter—take care of Ellen,’ an’ I
reckon he meant a lot by that. He kept sayin’,‘My God!
if I’d only seen Gaston Isbel before it was too late!’
an’ then he raved a little, whisperin’ out of his haid.. . :
An’ after that he died... . I woke up the men, an’ aboot
sunup we carried your dad an’ uncle out of town an’
buried them. . . . An’ them Isbels shot at us while we
were buryin’ our daid! That’s where Tad got his hurt.
... Then we hit the trail for Jorth’s ranch... . An now,
Ellen, that’s all my story. Your dad was ready to bury
the hatchet with his old enemy. An’ that Nez Perce Jean
Isbel, like the sneakin’ savage he is, murdered your uncle
an’ your dad. . . . Cut him horrible—made him suffer
tortures of hell—all for Isbel revenge!”

When Colter’s husky voice ceased Ellen whispered

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TO THE LAST MAN

through lips as cold and still as ice, ‘‘Let me go... leave
me—heah—alone!”’

‘‘Why, shore! I reckon I understand,” replied Colter.
“T hated to tell y’'u. But y’u had to heah the truth
aboot that half-breed. . . . I'll carry your pack in the
cabin an’ unroll your blankets.”

Releasing her, Colter strode off in the gloom. 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. Into the stormy blast of hell! In her
despair she longed, she ached for death. Born of in-
fidelity, 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 had she left to live for? Revenge! An eye
for an eye! A life for a life! But she could not kill
Jean Isbel. Woman’s love could turn to hate, but not the
love of Ellen Jorth. He 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 she would whisper she
loved him and that she had lied to him to kill his faith.

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It was that—his strange faith in her purity—which had
won her love. 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! False,
indeed, was she to the Jorths! 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.

“Tl end it all,’’ 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. It would be easy, it would be a last
thrill, a transport of self-abasement and supreme self-
proof of her love for Jean Isbel to kiss the Rim rock
where his feet had trod and then fling herself down into
the depths. She was the last Jorth. So the wronged
Isbels would be avenged.

“But he would never know—never know—I lied to
him!” she wailed to the night wind.

She was lost—lost on earth and to hope of heaven. She
had right neither to live nor to die. She was nothing
but a little weed along the trail of life, trampled upon,
buried in the mud. She was nothing but a single rotten
thread in a tangled web of love and hate and revenge.
And she had broken.

Lower and lower she seemed to sink. Was there no
end to this gulf of despair? If Colter had returned he
would have found her a rag and a toy—a creature de-
graded, fit for his vile embrace. To be thrust deeper
into the mire—to be punished fittingly for her betrayal
of a man’s noble love and her own womanhood—to be
made an end of, bedy, mind, and soul.

But Colter did not return.

The wind mourned, the owls hooted, the leaves rustled;
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the insects whispered their melancholy night song, the
camp-fire flickered and faded. Then the wild forestland
seemed to close imponderably over Ellen. All that she
wailed in her deapair, all that she confessed in her abase-
ment, was true, and hard as life could be—but she be-
longed to nature. If nature had not failed her, had God
failed her? It 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
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.

The gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade,
split asunder to show a glimpse of a radiant star, pierc-
ingly white, cold, pure, a steadfast eye of the universe,
beyond all understanding and illimitable with its mean-
ing of the past and the present and the future. Ellen
watched it until the drifting clouds once more hid it from
her strained sight.

What had that star to do with hell? She might be
crushed and destroyed by life, but was there not some-
thing beyond? Just to be born, just to suffer, just to die
—could that be all? Despair did 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 won-
derful 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 she checked the dark
flight of her soul toward destruction.
CHAPTER XII

CHILL, gray, somber dawn was breaking when
Ellen dragged herself into the cabin and crept under
her blankets, there to sleep the sleep of exhaustion.

When she awoke the hour appeared to be late after-
noon. Sunand sky shone through the sunken and decayed
roof of the old cabin. Her uncle, Tad Jorth, 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.

The floor underneath Ellen’s blankets was bare clay.
She and Jorth were aloe in this cabin. It contained
nothing besides their 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 looked out to see
that Slater and Somers had joined their party—an addi-
tion that might have strengthened it for defense, but did
not lend her own situation anything favorable. Somers
had always appeared the one best to avoid.

Colter espied her and called her to ‘‘Come an’ feed
your pale face.’ His comrades laughed, not loudly, but

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guardedly, as if noise was something to avoid. Never-
theless, they awoke Tad Jorth, who began to toss and
moan on the bed.

Ellen hurried to his side and at once ascertained that
he had a high fever and 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 hisarm. This scant bandage had worked
loose. Going to the door, she called out:

‘Fetch me some water.’’ When Colter brought it,
Ellen was rummaging in her pack for some clothing or
towel that she could use for bandages.

.. ‘“Weren’t any of y’u decent enough to look after my
uncle?” she queried.

“Huh! Wal, what the hell!” rejoined Colter. “We
shore did all we could. I reckon y’u think it wasn’t a
tough job to pack him up the Rim. He was done for then
an’ I said so.”

“T’ll do all I can for him,’’ said Ellen.

“Shore. Go ahaid. When I get plugged or knifed by

that half-breed I shore hope y’u’ll be round to nurse me.”’
* “V4 seem to be pretty shore of your fate, Colter.’’

“Shore as hell!” he bit out, darkly. ‘‘Somers saw
Isbel an’ his gang trailin’ us to the Jorth ranch.”

“Are y’u goin’ to stay heah—an’ wait for them?”

“Shore I’ve been quarrelin’ with the fellars out there
over that very question. I’m for leavin’ the country.
But, Queen, the damn gun fighter, is daid set to kill that
cowman, Blue, who swore he was King Fisher, the old
Texas outlaw. None but Queen are spoilin’ for another
fight. All the same they won’t leave Tad Jorth heah
alone.”

Then Colter leaned in at the door and whispered:

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“Ellen, I cain’t boss this outfit. So let’s y’u an’ me
shake ’em. I’ve got your dad’s gold. Let’s ride off
to-night an’ shake this country.”

Colter, muttering under his breath, left the door and
returned to his comrades. Ellen had received her first
intimation of his 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. It 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 died. At length he went
to sleep.

And Ellen, sitting beside him in the lonely, silent dark-
ness of that late hour, received again the intimation of
nature, those vague and nameless stirrings of her inner-
most being, those whisperings out of the night and the
forest and the sky. Something great would not let go
of her soul. She pondered.

Attention to the wounded man occupied Ellen; and
soon she redoubled her activities in th‘s regard, finding
in them something of protection against Colter.

He had waylaid her as she went to a spring for water,
and with a lunge like that of a bear he had tried to em-
brace her. But Ellen had been too quick.

“Wal, are y’u goin’ away with me?” he demanded.

“No. Ill stick by my uncle,” she replied.

That motive of hers seemed to obstruct his will. Ellen

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was keen to see that Colter and his comrades were at a
last stand and disintegrating under a severe strain.
Nerve and courage of the open and the wild they pos-
sessed, but only in a limited degree. Colter seemed
obsessed by his passion for her, and though Ellen in her
stubborn pride did not yet fear him, she realized she
ought to. After that incident she watched closely, never
leaving her uncle’s bedside except when Colter was
absent. One or more of the men kept constant lookout
somewhere down the cajfion.

Day after day passed on the wings of suspense, of
watching, of ministering to her uncle, of waiting for some
hour that seemed fixed.

Colter was like a hound upon her trail. At every turn
he was there to importune her to run off with him, to
frighten her with the menace of the Isbels, to beg her to
give herself to him. It came to pass that the only relief
she had was when she ate with the men or barred the
cabin door at night. Not much relief, however, was there
in the shut and barred door. With one thrust of his
powerful arm Colter could have caved it in. He knew
this as well as Ellen. Still she did not have the fear
she should have had. There was her rifle beside her,
and though she did not allow her mind to run dazkly on
its possible use, still the fact of its being there at hand
somehow strengthened her. Colter was a cat playing with
a mouse, but not yet sure of his quarry.

Ellen came to know hours when she was weak—weak
physically, mentally, spiritually, morally—when under
the sheer weight of this frightful and growing burden
of suspense she was not capable of fighting her misery,
her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same
time wholly withstanding Colter’s advances.

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He would come into the cabin and, utterly indifferent
to Tad Jorth, he would try to make bold and unrestrained
love to Ellen. When he caught her in one of her unre-
sisting moments and was able to hold her in his arms and
kiss her he seemed to be beside himself with the wonder
of her. At such moments, if he had any softness or
gentleness in him, they expressed themselves in his sooner
or later letting her go, when apparently she was about
to faint. So it must have become fascinatingly fixed in
Colter’s mind that at times Ellen repulsed him with
scorn and at others could not resist him.

Ellen had escaped two crises in her relation with this
man, and as a morbid doubt, like a poisonous fungus,
began to strangle her mind, she instinctively divined that
there was an approaching and final crisis. No uplift of
her spirit came this time—no intimations—no whisper-
ings. How horrible it all was! To long to be good and
noble—to realize that she was neither—to sink lower
day by day! Must she decay there like one of these
rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and
ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use? What
did it matter? Who would ever think of Ellen Jorth?
““O God!” she whispered in her distraction, ‘‘is there
nothing left—nothing at all?”

A period of several days of less torment to Ellen fol
lowed. Her uncle apparently took a turn for the better
and Colter let her alone. This last circumstance non-
plused Ellen. She was at a loss to understand it unless
the Isbel menace now encroached upon Colter so for-
midably that he had forgotten her for the present.

Then one bright August morning, when she had just
begun to relax her eternal vigilance and breathe without
oppression, Colter encountered her and, darkly silent

and fierce, he grasped her and drew her off her feet. Ellen
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struggled violently, but the total surprise had deprived
her of strength. And that paralyzing weakness as-
sailed her as never before. Without apparent effort
Colter carried her, striding rapidly away from the cabins
into the border of spruce trees at the foot of the cafion
wall.

“‘Colter—where—oh, where ave y’u takin’ me?’’ she
found voice to cry out.

“By God! I don’t know,” he replied, with strong,
vibrant passion. ‘‘I was a fool not to carry y’u off long
ago. But I waited. I was hopin’ y’u’d love me!...
An’ now that Isbel gang has corralled us. Somers seen the
half-breed up on the rocks. An’ Springer seen the rest
of them sneakin’ around. I run back after my horse
an’ y’u.”

“But Uncle Tad! ... We mustn’t leave him alone,”
cried Ellen.

““We’ve got to,” replied Colter, grimly. ‘‘Tad shore
won’t worry y’u no more—soon as Jean Isbel gets to
him.”

‘Oh, let me stay,” implored Ellen. ‘‘I will save him.”

Colter laughed at the utter absurdity of her appeal
and claim. Suddenly he set her down upon her feet.
“Stand still,” he ordered. Ellen saw his big bay horse,
saddled, with pack and blanket, tied there in the shade of
a spruce. With swift hands Colter untied him and
mounted him, scarcely moving his piercing gaze from
Ellen. He reached to grasp her. ‘‘Up with y’u!...
Put your foot in the stirrup!” His will, like his powerful
arm, was/irresistible for Ellen at that moment. She
found herself swung up behind him. Then the horse
plunged away. What with the hard motion and Colter’s
iron grasp on her Ellen was in a painful position. Her
knees and feet came into violent contact with branches

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and snags. He galloped the horse, tearing through the
dense thicket of willows that served to hide the entrance
to the side cafion, and when out in the larger and more
open cafion he urged him to a run. Presently when
Colter put the horse to a slow rise of ground, thereby
bringing him to a walk, it was just in time to save Ellen
a Serious bruising. Again the sunlight appeared to shade
over. They were in the pines. Suddenly with backward
lunge Colter halted the horse. Ellen heard a yell. She
recognized Queen’s voice.

“Turn back, Colter! Turn back!’’

With an oath Colter wheeled his mount. ‘‘If I didn’t
run plump into them,” he ejaculated, harshly. And
scarcely had the gcaded horse gotten a start when a shot
rang out. Ellen felt a violent shock, as if her momentum
had suddenly met with a check, and then she felt herself
wrenched from Colter, from the saddle, and propelled
into the air. She alighted on soft ground and thick grass,
and was unhurt save for the violent wrench and shaking
that had rendered her breathless. Before she could rise
Colter was pulling at her, lifting her to her feet. She saw
the horse lying with bloody head. Tall pines loomed
all around. Another rifle cracked. “Run!’’ hissed
Colter, and he bounded off, dragging her by the hand.
Another yell pealed out. ‘‘Here we are, Colter!” Again
it was Queen's shrill voice. Ellen ran with all her might,
her heart in her throat, her sight failing to record more
than a blur of passing pines and a blank green wall of
spruce. Then she lost her balance, was falling, yet could
not fall because of that steel grip on her hand, and was
dragged, and finally carried, into a dense shade. She
was blinded. The trees whirled and faded. Voices and
shots sounded far away. Then something black seemed

to be wiped across her feeling.
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It turned to gray, to moving blankness, to dim, hazy
objects, spectral and tall, like blanketed trees, and when
Ellen fully recovered consciousness she was being carried
through the forest.

“Wal, little one, that was a close shave for y’u,” said
Colter’s hard voice, growing clearer. ‘‘Reckon your
keelin’ over was natural enough.”’

He held her lightly in both arms, her head resting above
his left elbow. Ellen saw his face as a gray blur, then
taking sharper outline, until it stood out distinctly, pale
and clammy, with eyes cold and wonderful in their intense
flare. As she gazed upward Colter turned his head to
look back through the woods, and his motion betrayed a
keen, wild vigilance. The veins of his lean, brown neck
stood out like whipcords. Two comrades were stalking
beside him. Ellen heard their stealthy steps, and she
felt Colter sheer from one side or the other. They were
proceeding cautiously, fearful of the rear, but not wholly
trusting to the fore.

“‘Reckon we’d better go slow an’ look before we leap,’
said one whose voice Ellen recognized as Springer’s.

“Shore. That open slope ain’t to my likin’, with our
Nez Perce friend prowlin’ round,” drawled Colter, as he
set Ellen down on her feet.

Another of the rustlers laughed. “Say, can’t he
twinkle through the forest? I had four shots at him.
Harder to hit than a turkey runnin’ crossways.”

This facetious speaker was the evil-visaged, sardonic
Somers. He carried two rifles and wore two belts of
cartridges.

“Ellen, shore y’u ain’t so daid white as y’u was,” -
observed Colter, and he chucked her under the chin with
familiar hand. ‘Set down heah. I don’t want y’u

stoppin’ any bullets. An’ there’s no tellin’.”’
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Ellen was glad to comply with his wish. She had
begun to recover wits and strength, yet she still felt shaky.
She observed that their position then was on the edge
of a well-wooded slope from which she could see the
grassy cafion floor below. They were on a level bench,
projecting out from the main cafion wall that loomed
gray and rugged and pine fringed. Somers and Colter
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 con-
cern. Somers lit a cigarette; Springer wiped his face
with a grimy hand and counted the shells in his belt, .
which appeared to be half empty. Colter stretched
his long.neck like a vulture and peered down the slope
and through the aisles of the forest up toward the
cafion 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 Somers.

“Ahuh! Wal, I reckon they ain’t trailin’ us yet,”
replied Colter. ‘‘We gave them a shade better ‘n they
sent us.”

‘Short an’ sweet!” ejaculated Springer, and he re-
moved his black sombrero to poke a dirty forefinger
through a bullet hole in the crown. ‘‘Thet’s how close I
come to cashin’. I was lyin’ behind a log, listenin’ an’
watchin’, an’ when I stuck my head up a little—zam!
Somebody made my bonnet leak.”

‘“Where’s Queen?” asked Colter.

“He was with me fust off,” replied Somers. ‘An’ then
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TO THE LAST MAN

when the shootin’ slacked—after I’d plugged thet big,

red-faced, white-haired pal of Isbel’s—”’

“Reckon thet was Blaisdell,” interrupted Springer.

“Queen—he got tired layin’ low,’”’ went on Somers.
“He wanted action. I heerd him chewin’ to himself, an’
when I asked him what was eatin’ him he up an’ growled
he was goin’ to quit this Injun fightin’, An’ he slipped
off in the woods.”

“Wal, that’s the gun fighter of it,” declared Colter,
wagging his head. ‘‘Ever since that cowman, Blue,
braced us an’ said he was King Fisher, why Queen has
been sulkier an’ sulkier. He cain’t help it. He'll do
the same trick as Blue tried. An’ shore he'll get his
everlastin’. But he’s the Texas breed all right.” --

“Say, do you reckon Blue really is King Fisher?”
queried Somers.

“Naw!” ejaculated Colter, with downward sweep of
his hand. “Many a would-be gun slinger has bor-
rowed Fisher’s name. But Fisher is daid these many
years.”’ ,

“Ahuh! Wal, mebbe, but don’t you fergit it—thet
Blue was no would-be,” declared Somers. ‘‘He was the
genuine article.”

“T should smile!’’ affirmed Springer.

The subject irritated Colter, and he dismissed it with

» another forcible gesture and a counter question.

“How many left in that Isbel outfit?”

‘‘No tellin’. There shore was enough of them,” replied
Somers. ‘‘Anyhow, the woods was full of flyin’ bullets.
... Springer, did you account for any of them?”

“Nope—not thet I noticed,’’ responded Springer,
dryly. ‘I had my chance at the half-breed. ... Reckon
I was nervous.”

‘‘Was Slater near you when he yelled out?”’
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TO THE LAST MAN.

“No. He was lyin’ beside Somers)”

“‘Wasn’t thet a queer way fer a man to act?” broke in
Somers. “‘A bullet hit Slater, cut him down the back
as he was lyin’ flat. Reckon it wasn’t bad. But it hurt
him so thet he jumped right up an’ staggered around.
He made a target big as a tree. An’ mebbe them Isbels
didn’t riddle him!”

“That was when I got my crack at Bill Isbel,”’ declared
Colter, with grim satisfaction. ‘‘When they shot my
horse out from under me I had Ellen to think of an’
couldn’t get my rifle. Shore had to run, as y’u seen.
Wal, as I only had my six-shooter, there was nothin’ for
me to do but lay low an’ listen to the sping of lead.
Wells was standin’ up behind a tree aboot thirty yards
off. He got plugged, an’ fallin’ over he began to crawl
my way, still holdin’ to his rifle. I crawled along the log
to meet him. But he dropped aboot half-way. I went
on an’ took his rifle an’ belt. When I peeped out from
behind a spruce bush then I seen Bill Isbel. He was
shootin’ fast, an’ all of them was shootin’ fast. That was
when they had the open shot at Slater... . Wal, I bored
Bill Isbel right through his middle. He dropped his
rifle an’, all bent double, he fooled around in a circle
till he flopped over the Rim. I reckon he’s layin’ right
up there somewhere below that daid spruce. I'd shore
like to see him.”

“Wal, you’d be as crazy as Queen if you tried thet,”
declared Somers. ‘‘We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“T reckon not,” replied Colter. ‘‘An’ I’ve lost my
horse. Where'd y’u leave yours?”

“They’re down the cafion, below thet willow brake.
An’ saddled an’ none of them tied. Reckon we'll have to
look them up before dark.”

“Colter, what ’re we goin’ to do?’’ demanded Springer.

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‘“Wait heah a while—then cross the cafion an’ work
round up under the bluff, back to the cabin.”’

‘An’ then what?’’ queried Somers, doubtfully eying
Colter.

‘“We’ve got to eat—we’ve got to have blankets,”
rejoined Colter, testily. ‘An’ I reckon we can hide there
an’ stand a better show in a fight than runnin’ for it in the
woods.”

“Wal, I’m givin’ you a hunch thet it looked like you
was runnin’ fer it,’’ retorted Somers.

“Yes, an’ packin’ the girl,” added Springer. ‘‘Looks
funny to me.”

Both rustlers eyed Colter with dark and distrustful
glances. What he might have replied never transpired,
for the reason that his gaze, always shifting around, had
suddenly fixed on something.

“Is that a wolf?’ he asked, pointing to the Rim.

Both his comrades moved to get in line with his finger.
Ellen could not see from her position.

“Shore thet’s a big lofer,” declared Somers. ‘‘Reckon
he scented us.”

“There he goes along the Rim,” observed Colter.
“He doesn’t act leary. Looks like a good sign to me.
Mebbe the Isbels have gone the other way.’’

“Looks bad to me,” rejoined Springer, gloomily.

“An’ why?’’ demanded Colter.

“T seen thet animal. Fust time I reckoned it was a
lofer. Second time it was right near them Isbels. An’
I’m damned now if I don’t believe it’s thet half-lofer sheep
dog of Gass Isbel’s.”

“Wal, what if it is?”

“Ha!... Shore we needn’t worry about hidin’ out,’”
replied Springer, sententiously. ‘‘With thet dog Jean
Isbel could trail a grasshopper.”

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“The hell y’u say!’’ muttered Colter. Manifestly
such a possibility put a different light upon the present
situation. The men grew silent and watchful, occupied
by brooding thoughts and vigilant surveillance of all
points. Somers slipped off into the brush, soon to return, -
with intent look of importance.

“T heerd somethin’,” he whispered, jerking his thumb
backward. ‘‘Rollin’ gravel—crackin’ of twigs. No deer!
.... Reckon it ’d be a good idee for us to slip round
acrost this bench.”

“Wal, y’u fellars go, an’ I'll watch heah,” returned
Colter.

“Not much,” said Somers, while Springer leered
knowingly.

Colter became incensed, but he did not give way to it.
Pondering a moment, he finally turned to Ellen. ‘“Y’u
wait heah till I come back. An’ if I don’t come in
reasonable time y’u slip across the cafion an’ through the
willows to the cabins. Wait till aboot dark.”” With that
he possessed himself of one of the extra rifles and belts
and silently joined his comrades. Together they noise-
lessly stole into the brush.

Ellen had no other though: than to comply with
Colter’s wishes. There was her wounded uncle who had
been left unattended, and she was anxious to get back
to him. Besides, if she had wanted to run off from
Colter, where could she go? Alone in the woods, she
would get lost and die of starvation. Her lot must be
cast with the Jorth faction until the end. That did not
seem far away.

Her strained attention and suspense made the moments
fly. By and by several shots pealed out far across the
side cafion on her right, and they were answered by reports

sounding closer to her. The fight was on again. But
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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, yélp 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. Ina
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 Colter had
said Bill Isbel had plunged over the declivity. Would
the dog yelp that way if the man was dead? Ellen
thought not.

No one came, and the continuous yelping of the dog
got on Ellen’s nerves. It was a call for help. And
finally she surrendered to it. Since her natural terror
when Colter’s horse was shot from under her and she
had been dragged away, she had not recovered from fear
of the Isbels. But calm consideration now convinced
her that she could hardly be in a worse plight in their
hands than if she remained in Colter’s. So she started
out to find the dog.

The wooded bench was level for a few hundred yards,
and then it began to heave in rugged, rocky bulges up

toward the Rim. It did not appear far to where the dog
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was barking, but the latter part of the distance proved
to be a hard climb over jumbled rocks and through
thick brush. Panting and hot, she at length reached the
base of the bluff, to find that it was not very high.

The dog espied her before she saw him, for he was
coming toward her when she discovered him. Big, shaggy,
grayish white and black, with wild, keen face and eyes he
assuredly looked the reputation Springer had accorded
him. But sagacious, guarded as was his approach, he
appeared friendly.

‘‘Hello—doggie!”” panted Ellen. ‘‘What’s—wrong—
up heah?”

He yelped, his ears lost their stiffness, his body sank a
little, and his bushy tail wagged to and fro. What a gray,
clear, intelligent look he gave her! Then he trotted back.

Ellen followed him around a corner of bluff to see the
body of a man lying on his back. Fresh earth and gravel
lay about him, attesting to his fall from above. He had
on neither coat nor hat, and the position of his body and
limbs suggested broken bones. As Ellen hurried to his
side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a
bloody blotch. But he could lift his head; ‘his eyes
were open; he was perfectly conscious. Ellen did not
recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet the mold of features,
the look of the eyes, seemed strangely familiar.

“You’re—Jorth’s—girl,” he said, in faint voice of
surprise.

“Yes, I’m Ellen Jorth,” she replied. ‘‘An’ are y’u
Bill Isbel?”’

“All thet’s left of me. But I’m thankin’ God some-
body come—even a Jorth.”

Ellen knelt beside him and examined the wound in his
abdomen. A heavy bullet had indeed, as Colter had

avowed, torn clear through his middle. Even if he had
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not sustained other serious injury from the fall over the
cliff, that terrible bullet wound meant death very shortly.
Ellen shuddered. How inexplicable were men! How
cruel, bloody, mindless!

“Isbel, I’m sorry—there’s no hope,” she said, low
voiced. ‘Y’u’ve not long to live... . I cain’t help y’u.
God knows I’d daggo if I could.”’

‘All over!” he sighed, with his eyes looking beyond
her. ‘‘Ireckon—I’m glad. ... But y’u can—do somethin’
forme. Will y’u?”

“Indeed, yes. Tell me,” she replied, lifting his dusty
head on her knee. Her hands trembled as she brushed
his wet hair back from his clammy brow.

“‘T’ve somethin’—on my conscience,’’ he whispered.

The woman, the sensitive in Ellen, understood and
pitied him then.

“Yes,” she encouraged him.

“T stole cattle—-my dad’s an’ Blaisdell’s—an’ made
deals—with Daggs. . . .All the crookedness—wasn’t on—
Jorth’s side. ... I want—my brother Jean—to know.”

“T’ll try—to tell him,” whispered Ellen, out of her great
amaze.

“We were all—a bad lot—except Jean,’”’ went on Isbel.
‘Dad wasn’t fair... . God! how he hated Jorth! Jorth,
yes, who was—your father. ... Wal, they’re even now.”

““How—so?”’ faltered Ellen.

“Your father killed dad... . At the last—dad wanted to
—saveus. He sent word—he’d meet him—face to face—
an’ let thet end the feud. They met out in the
road. .. . But some one shot dad down—with a rifle—
an’ then your father finished him.”

“An’ then, Isbel,’’ added Ellen, with unconscious
mocking bitterness, ‘“‘your brother murdered my dad!”

““What!”? whispered Bill Isbel. “Shore. y’u’ve got—
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it wrong. I reckon Jean—could have killed — your
father... . But he didn’t. Queer, we all thought.”

“Ahl... Who did kill my father?” burst out Ellen,
and her voice rang like great hammers at her ears.

“It was Blue. He went in the store—alone—faced the
whole gang alone. Bluffed them—taunted them—told
them he was King Fisher. .. . Then he killed—your dad—
an’ Jackson Jorth. ... Jean was out—back of the store.
We were out—front. There was shootin’. Colmor was
hit. Then Blue ran out—bad hurt.... Both of them—
died in Meeker’s yard.”

*‘An’ so Jean Isbel has not killed a Jorth!” said Ellen,
in strange, deep voice.

“No,” replied Isbel, earnestly. ‘‘I reckon this feud
—was hardest on Jean. He never lived heah. ... An’
my sister Ann said—he got sweet on y’u.... Now didhe?”

Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen’s eyes, and her head
sank low and lower.

““Ves—he did,” she murmured, tremulously.

“Ahuh! Wal, thet accounts,” replied Isbel, wonder-
ingly. ‘‘Too bad!...It might have been....A man
always sees—different when—he’s dyin’....If I had—
my life—to live over again!. . . My poor kids—deserted
in their babyhood—ruined for life! All for nothin’... .
May God forgive—”’

Then he choked and whispered for water.

Ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his
sombrero and started hurriedly down the slope, mak-
ing dust fly and rocks roll. Her mind was a seething
ferment. Leaping, bounding, sliding down the weath-
ered slope, she gained the bench, to run across that, and
so on down into the open cafion to the willow-bordered
brook. Here she filled the sombrero with water and

started back, forced now to walk slowly and carefully.
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It was then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular
activity denied her, that the tremendous import of Bill
Isbel’s revelation burst upon her very flesh and blood
and transfiguring the very world of golden light and azure
sky and speaking forestland that encompassed her.

Not a drop of the precious water did she spill. Nota
misstep did she make. Yet so great was the spell upon
her that she was not aware she had climbed the steep
slope until the dog yelped his welcome. Then with all the
flood of her emotion surging and resurging she knelt to
allay the parching thirst of this dying enemy whose words
had changed frailty to strength, hate to love, and the
gloomy hell of despair to something unutterable. But.
she had returned too late. Bill Isbel was dead.
CHAPTER XIII

EAN ISBEL, holding the wolf-dog Shepp in leash,

was on the trail of the most dangerous of Jorth’s
gang, the gunman Queen. Dark drops of blood on the
stones and plain tracks of a rider’s sharp-heeled boots
behind coverts indicated the trail of a wounded, slow-
traveling fugitive. Therefore, Jean Isbel held in the dog
and proceeded with the wary eye and watchful caution
of an Indian.

Queen, true to his class, and emulating Blue with the
same magnificent effrontery and with the same paralyzing
suddenness of surprise, had appeared as if by magic at
the last night camp of the Isbel faction. Jean had seen
him first, in time to leap like a panther into the shadow.
But he carried in his shoulder Queen’s first bullet of that
terrible encounter. Upon Gordon and Fredericks fell the
brunt of Queen’s fusillade. And they, shot to pieces,
staggering and falling, held passionate grip on life long
enough to draw and still Queen’s guns and send him reeling
off into the darkness of the forest.

Unarmed, and hindered by a painful wound, Jean
had kept a vigil near camp all that silent and menacing
night. Morning disclosed Gordon and Fredericks stark
and ghastly beside the burned-out camp-fire, their guns
clutched immovably in stiffened hands. Jean buried |
them as best he could, and when they were under ground
with flat stones on their graves he knew himself to be
indeed the last of the Isbel clan. And all that was wild

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and savage in his blood and desperate in his spirit rose to
make him more than man and less than human. Then
for the third time during these tragic last days the wolf-
dog Shepp came to him.

Jean washed the wound Queen had given him and
bound it tightly. The keen pang and burn of the lead
was a constant and all-powerful reminder of the grim
work left for him to do. The whole world was no longer
large enough for him and whoever was left of the Jorths.
The heritage of blood his father had bequeathed him,
the unshakable love for a worthless girl who had so
dwarfed and obstructed his will and so bitterly defeated
and reviled his poor, romantic, boyish faith, the killing
of hostile men, so strange in its after effects, the pursuits
and fights, and loss of one by one of his confederates—
these had finally engendered in Jean Isbel a wild, un-
slakable thirst, these had been the cause of his retrogres-
sion, these had unalterably and ruthlessly fixed in his dark-
ened mind one fierce passion—to live and die the last man
of that Jorth-Isbel feud.

At sunrise Jean left this camp, taking with him only
a small knapsack of meat and bread, and with the eager,
wild Shepp in leash he set out on Queen’s bloody trail.

Black drops of blood on the stones and an irregular
trail of footprints proved to Jean that the gunman was
hard hit. Here he had fallen, or knelt, or sat down,
evidently to bind his wounds. Jean found strips of
scarf, red and discarded. And the blood drops failed to
show on more rocks. In a deep forest of spruce, under
silver-tipped spreading branches, Queen had rested,
perhaps slept. Then laboring with dragging steps,
not improbably with a lame leg, he had gone on, up
out of the dark-green ravine to the open, dry, pine-
tipped ridge. Here he had rested, perhaps waited to see

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if he were pursued. From that point his trail spoke an
easy language for Jean’s keen eye. The gunman knew
he was pursued. He had seen his enemy. Therefore
Jean proceeded with a slow caution, never getting within
revolver range of ambush, using all his woodcraft to
trail this man and yet save himself. Queen traveled
slowly, either because he was wounded or else because
he tried to ambush his pursuer, and Jean accommodated
his pace to that of Queen. From noon of that day they
were never far apart, never out of hearing of a rifle shot.
The contrast of the beauty and peace and loneliness
of the surroundings to the nature of Queen’s flight often
obtruded its strange truth into the somber turbulence of
Jean’s mind, into that fixed columnar idea around which
fleeting thoughts hovered and gathered like shadows.
Early frost had touched the heights with its magic
wand. And the forest seemed a temple in which man
might worship nature and life rather than steal through
‘ the dells and under the arched aisles like a beast of prey.
The green-and-gold leaves of aspens quivered in the
glades; maples in the ravines fluttered their red-and-
purple leaves. The needle-matted carpet under the pines
vied with the long lanes of silvery grass, alike enticing to
the eye of man and beast. Sunny rays of light, flecked
with dust and flying insects, slanted down from the
overhanging brown-limbed, green-massed foliage. Roar
of wind in the distant forest alternated with soft breeze
close at hand. Small dove-gray squirrels ran all over the
woodland, very curious about Jean and his dog, rustling
the twigs, scratching the bark of trees, chattering and
barking, frisky, saucy, and bright-eyed. A plaintive
twitter of wild canaries came from the region above the
treetops—first voices of birds in their pilgrimage toward
the south. Pine cones dropped with soft thuds. The
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blue jays followed these intruders in the forest, screeching
their displeasure. Like rain pattered the dropping seeds
from the spruces. A woody, earthy, leafy fragrance,
damp with the current of life, mingled with a cool, dry,
sweet smell of withered grass and rotting pines.

Solitude and lonesomeness, peace and rest, wild life and
nature, reigned there. It was a golden-green region,
enchanting to the gaze of man. An Indian would have
walked there with his spirits.

And even as Jean felt all this elevating beauty and
inscrutable spirit his keen eye once more fastened upon
the blood-red drops Queen had again left on the gray
moss and rock. His wound had reopened. Jean felt the
thrill of the scenting panther.

The sun set, twilight gathered, night fell. Jean crawled
under a dense, low-spreading spruce, ate some bread and
meat, fed the dog, and lay down to rest and sleep. His
thoughts burdened him, heavy and black as the mantle of
night. A wolf mourned a hungry cry fora mate. Shepp
quivered under Jean’s hand. That was the call which
had lured him from the ranch. The wolf blood in him
yearned for the wild. Jean tied the cowhide leash to his
wrist. When this dark business was at an end Shepp
could be free to join the lonely mate mourning out there
in the forest, Then Jean slept.

Dawn broke cold, clear, frosty, with silvered grass
sparkling, with a soft, faint rustling of falling aspen leaves.
When the sun rose red Jean was again on the trail of
Queen. By a frosty-ferned brook, where water tinkled and
ran clear as air and cold as ice, Jean quenched his thirst,
leaning on a stone that showed drops of blood. Queen,
too, had to quench his thirst. What good, what help,
Jean wondered, could the cold, sweet, granite water, so
dear to woodsmen and wild creatures, do this wounded,

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hunted rustler? Why did he not wait in the open to
fight and face the death he had meted? Where was that
splendid and terrible daring of the gunman? Queen’s love
of life dragged him on and on, hour by hour, through the
pine groves and spruce woods, through the oak swales
and aspen glades, up and down the rocky gorges, around
the windfalls and over the rotting logs.

The time came when Queen tried no more ambush.
He gave up trying to trap his pursuer by lying in wait.
He gave up trying to conceal his tracks. He grew
stronger or, in desperation, increased his energy, so that
he redoubled his progress through the wilderness. That,
at best, would count only a few miles a day. And he
began to circle to the northwest, back toward the deep
cafion where Blaisdell and Bill Isbel had reached the end
of their trails. Queen had evidently left his comrades,
had lone-handed it in his last fight, but was now trying
to get back to them. Somewhere in these wild, deep
forest brakes the rest of the Jorth faction had found a
hiding place. Jean let Queen lead him there.

Ellen Jorth would be with them. Jean had seen her.
It had been his shot that killed Colter’s horse. And he
had withheld further fire because Colter had dragged
the girl behind him, protecting his body with hers.
Sooner or later Jean would come upon their camp. She
would be there. The thought of her dark beauty, wasted
in wantonness upon these rustlers, added a deadly ‘rage
to the blood lust and righteous wrath of his vengeance.
Let her again flaunt her degradation in his face and, by
the God she had forsaken, he would kill her, and so end
the race of Jorths!

Another night fell, dark and cold, without starlight.
The wind moaned in the forest. Shepp was restless.
He sniffed the air. There was a step on his trail. Again

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a mournful, eager, wild, and hungry wolf cry broke the
silence. It was deep and low, like that of a baying hound,
but infinitely wilder. Shepp strained to get away.
During the night, while Jean slept, he managed to chew
the cowhide leash apart and run off.

Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen. Fog and
low-drifting clouds in the forest and a misty rain had
put the rustler off his bearings. He was lost, and showed
that he realized it. Strange how a matured man, fighter
of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his
last stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost!
So Jean Isbel read the signs of the trail.

Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping
forest until he headed down into a cafion. It was one
that notched the Rim and led down and down, mile after
mile into the Basin. Not soon had Queen discovered his
mistake. When he did do so, night overtook him.

The weather cleared before morning. Red and bright
the sun burst out of the east to flood that low basin land
with light. Jean found that Queen had traveled on and
on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had lost. But
in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes
instead of back up the cafion. And here he had fought
the hold of that strange brush of Spanish name until he
fell exhausted.

Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere
in this devilish thicket for Jean to catch up with him.
Many and many a place Jean would have chosen had
he been in Queen’s place. Many a rock and dense thicket
Jean circled or approached with extreme care. Man-
zanita grew in patches that were impenetrable except for a
small animal. The brush was a few feet high, seldom
so high that Jean could not look over it, and of a beautiful
appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden berry,

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and branches of dark-red color. These branches were
tough and unbendable. Every bush, almost, had low
branches that were dead, hard as steel, sharp as thorns,
as clutching as cactus. Progress was possible only by
endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between
patches, or else by crashing through with main strength
or walking right over the tops. Jean preferred this
last method, not because it was the easiest, but for the
reason that he could see ahead so much farther. So he
literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush.
Often he fell through and had to step up again; many
a branch broke with him, letting him down; but for the
most part he stepped from fork to fork, on branch after
branch, with balance of an Indian and the patience of a
man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable.

On that south slope under the Rim the sun beat down
hot. There was no breeze to temper the dry air. And
before midday Jean was laboring, wet with sweat, parch-
ing with thirst, dusty and hot and tiring. It amazed
him, the doggedness and tenacity of life shown by this
wounded rustler. The time came when under the
burning rays of the sun he was compelled to abandon
the walk across the tips of the manzanita bushes and
take to the winding, open threads that ran between.
It would have been poor sight indeed that could not have
followed Queen’s labyrinthine and broken passage through
the brush. Then the time came when Jean espied
Queen, far ahead and above, crawling like a black bug
along the bright-green slope. Sight then acted upon
Jean as upon a hound in the chase. But he governed
his actions if he could not govern his instincts. Slowly
but surely he followed the dusty, hot trail, and never a
patch of blood failed to send a thrill along his veins.

Queen, headed up toward the Rim, finally vanished
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from sight. Had he fallen? Was he hiding? But the
hour disclosed that he was crawling. Jean’s keen eye
caught the slow moving of the brush and enabled hima
to keep just so close to the rustler, out of range of the
six-shooters he carried. And so all the interminable
hours of the hot afternoon that snail-pace flight and
pursuit kept on.

Halfway up the Rim the growth of manzanita gave
place to open, yellow, rocky slope dotted with cedars.
Queen took to a slow-ascending ridge and left his bloody
tracks all the way to the top, where in the gathering dark-
ness the weary pursuer lost them.

Another night passed. Daylight was relentless to the
rustler. He could not hide his trail. But somehow ina
desperate last rally of strength he reached a point on the
heavily timbered ridge that Jean recognized as being
near the scene of the fight in the cafion. Queen was
nearing the rendezvous of the rustlers. Jean crossed
tracks of horses, and then more tracks that he was certain
had been made days past by his own party. To the left
of this ridge must be the deep cafion that had frustrated
his efforts to catch up with the rustlers on the day Blaisdell
lost his life, and probably Bill Isbel, too. Something
warned Jean that he was nearing the end of the trail,
and an unaccountable sense of imminent catastrophe
seemed foreshadowed by vague dreads and doubts in his
gloomy mind. Jean felt the need of rest, of food, of ease
from the strain of the last weeks. But his spirit drove
him implacably.

Queen’s rally of strength ended at the edge of an open,
bald ridge that was bare of brush or grass and was sur-
rounded by a line of forest on three sides, and on the
fourth by a low bluff which raised its gray head above the
pines. Across this dusty open Queen had crawled,

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leaving unmistakable signs of his condition. Jean took
long survey of the circle of trees and of the low, rocky
eminence, neither of which he liked. It might be wiser
to keep to cover, Jean thought, and work around to
where Queen’s trail entered the forest again. But he
was tired, gloomy, and his eternal vigilance was failing.
Nevertheless, he stilled for the thousandth time that bold
prompting of his vengeance and, taking to the edge of the
forest, he went to considerable pains to circle the open
ground. And suddenly sight of a man sitting back against.
a tree halted Jean.

He stared to make sure his eyes did not deceive him.
Many times stumps and snags and rocks had taken on
strange resemblance to a standing or crouching man.
This was only another suggestive blunder of the mind
behind his eyes—what he wanted to see he imagined he
saw. Jean glided on from tree to tree until he made sure
that this sitting image indeed was that of a man. He
sat bolt upright, facing back across the open, hands
resting on his knees—and closer scrutiny showed Jean
that he held a gun in each hand.

Queen! At the last his nerve had revived. He could not
crawl any farther, he could never escape, so with the
courage of fatality he chose the open, to face his foe and
die. Jean had a thrill of admiration for the rustler.
Then he stalked out from under the pines and strode
forward with his rifle ready.

A watching man could not have failed to espy Jean.
But Queen never made the slightest move. Moreover, his
stiff, unnatural position struck Jean so singularly that he
halted with a muttered exclamation. He was now about
fifty paces from Queen, within range of those small guns.
Jean called, sharply, ‘““Queen/’” Still the figure never
relaxed in the slightest.

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Jean advanced a few more paces, rifle up, ready to fire
the instant Queen lifted a gun. The man’s immobility
brought the cold sweat to Jean’s brow. He stopped to
bend the full intense power of his gaze upon this inert
figure. Suddenly over Jean flashed its meaning. Queen
was dead. He had backed up against the pine, ready
to face his foe, and he had died there. Nota shadow of a
doubt entered Jean’s mind as he started forward again.
He knew. After all, Queen’s blood would not be on his
hands. Gordon and Fredericks in their death throes had
given the rustler mortal wounds. Jean kept on, marveling
the while. How ghastly thin and hard! Those four days
of flight had been hell for Queen.

Jean reached him—looked down with staring eyes.
The guns were tied to his hands. Jean started violently
as the whole direction of his mind shifted. A lightning
glance showed that Queen had been propped against the
tree—another showed boot tracks in the dust.

“By Heaven, they’ve fooled me!’’ hissed Jean, and
quickly as he leaped behind the pine he was not quick
enough to escape the cunning rustlers who had waylaid
him thus. He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead
before he heard a rifle crack. A bullet had ripped
through his left forearm. From behind the tree he saw
a puff of white smoke along the face of the bluff—the
very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had descried
as one of menace. Then several puffs of white smoke
and ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters.
Bullets barked the pine and whistled by. Jean saw a man
dart from behind a rock and, leaning over, run for another.
Jean’s swift shot stopped him midway. He fell, got up,
and floundered behind a bush scarcely large enough to
conceal him. \Into that bush Jean shot again and again.

He had no pain in his wounded arm, but the sense of the
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shock clung in his consciousness, and this, with the
tremendous surprise of the deceit, and sudden release of
long-dammed overmastering passion, caused him to
empty the magazine of his Winchester in a terrible
haste to kill the man he had hit.

These were all the loads he had for his rifle. Blood
passion had made him blunder. Jean cursed himself,
and his hand moved to his belt. His six-shooter was
gone. The sheath had been loose. He had tied the gun
fast. But the strings had been torn apart. The rustlers
were shooting again. Bullets thudded into the pine and
whistled by. Bending carefully, Jean reached one of
Queen’s guns and jerked it from his hand. The weapon
wasempty. Both of his guns were empty. Jean peeped
out again to get the line in which the bullets were coming
and, marking a course from his position to the cover of
the forest, he ran with all his might. He gained the
Shelter. Shrill yells behind warned him that he had been
seen, that his reason for flight had been guessed. Looking
back, he saw two or three men scrambling down the
bluff. Then the loud neigh of a frightened horse pealed
out.

Jean discarded his useless rifle, and headed down the
ridge slope, keeping to the thickest line of pines and
sheering around the clumps of spruce. As he ran, his
mind whirled with grim thoughts of escape, of his neces-
sity to find the camp where Gordon and Fredericks were
buried, there to procure another rifle and ammunition.
He felt the wet blood dripping down his arm, yet no pain.
The forest was too open for good cover. He dared not
run uphill. His only course was ahead, and that soon
ended in an abrupt declivity too precipitous to descend.
As he halted, panting for breath, he heard the ring of

hoofs on stone, then the thudding beat of running horses
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on soft ground. The rustlers had sighted the direction
he had taken. Jean did not waste time to look. Indeed,
there was no need, for as he bounded along the cliff to
the right a rifle cracked and a bullet whizzed over his head.
It lent wings to his feet. Like a deer he sped along,
leaping cracks and logs and rocks, his ears filled by the
rush of wind, until his quick eye caught sight of thick-
growing spruce foliage close to the precipice. He sprang
down into the green mass. His weight precipitated him
through the upper branches. But lower down his spread
arms broke his fall, then retarded it until he caught. A
long, swaying limb let him down and down, where he
grasped another and a stiffer one that held his weight.
Hand over hand he worked toward the trunk of this
spruce and, gaining it, he found other branches close
together down which he hastened, hold by hold and step
by step, until all above him was black, dense foliage, and
beneath him the brown, shady slope. Sure of being
unseen from above, he glided noiselessly down under the
trees, slowly regaining freedom from that constriction of
his breast.

Passing on to a gray-lichened cliff, overhanging and
gloomy, he paused there to rest and to listen. A faint
crack of hoof on stone came to him from above, apparently
farther on to the right. Eventually his pursuers would
discover that he had taken to the cafion. But for the
moment he felt safe. The wound in his forearm drew
his attention. The bullet had gone clear through without
breaking either bone. His shirt sleeve was soaked with
blood. Jean rolled it back and tightly wrapped his scarf
around the wound, yet still the dark-red blood oozed out
and dripped down into his hand. He became aware of a
dull, throbbing pain.

Not much time did Jean waste in arriving at what was

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best to do. For the time being he had escaped, and
whatever had been his peril, it was past. In dense,
tugged country like this he could not be caught by
rustlers. But he had only a knife left for a weapon,
and there was very little meat in the pocket of his coat.
Salt and matches he possessed. Therefore the imperative
need was for him to find the last camp, where he could
get rifle and ammunition, bake bread, and rest up before
taking again the trail of the rustlers. He had reason
to believe that this cafion was the one where the fight on
the Rim, and later, on a bench of woodland below, had
taken place.

Thereupon he arose and glided down under the spruces
toward the level, grassy open he could see between the
trees. And as he proceeded, with the slow step and
wary eye of an Indian, his*mind was busy.

Queen had in his flight unerringly worked in the direc-
tion of this cafion until he became lost in the fog; and
upon regaining his bearings he had made a wonderful
and heroic effort to surmount the manzanita slope and
the Rim and find the rendezvous of his comrades. But
he had failed up there on the ridge. In thinking it over
Jean arrived at a conclusion that Queen, finding he
could go no farther, had waited, guns in hands, for his
pursuer. And he had died in this position. Tnen by
strange coincidence his comrades had happened to come
across him and, recognizing the situation, they had taken
the shells from his guns and propped him up with the
idea of luring Jean on. They had arranged a cunning
trick and ambush, which had all but snuffed out the last
of the Isbels. Colter probably had been at the bottom
of this crafty plan. Since the fight at the Isbel ranch,
now seemingly far back in the past, this man Colter had

loomed up more and more as a stronger and more danger-
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TO THE LAST MAN

ous antagonist then either Jorth or Daggs. Before that
he had been little known to any of the Isbel faction.
And it was Colter now who controlled the remnant of
the gang and who had Ellen Jorth in his possession.

The cafion wall above Jean, on the right, grew more
rugged and loftier, and the one on the left began to show
wooded slopes and brakes, and at last a wide expanse
with a winding, willow border on the west and a long, low,
pine-dotted bench on the east. It took several moments
of study for Jean to recognize the rugged bluff above this
bench. On up that cafion several miles was the site where
Queen had surprised Jean and his comrades at their camp-
fire. Somewhere in this vicinity was the hiding place of
the rustlers.

Thereupon Jean proceeded with the utmost stealth,
absolutely certain that he would miss no sound, move-
ment, sign, or anything unnatura! to the wild peace of
the cafion. And his first sense to register something was
his keen smell. Sheep! He was amazed to smell sheep.
There must be a flock not far away. Then from where he
glided along under the trees he saw down to open places
in the willow brake and noticed sheep tracks in the dark,
muddy bank of the brook. Next he heard faint tinkle
of bells, and at length, when he could see farther into the
open enlargement of the cafion, his surprised gaze fell
upon an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out
acres and acres of grass. Thousands of sheep were grazing
there. Jean knew there were several flocks of Jorth’s
sheep on the mountain in the care of herders, but he had
never thought of them being so far west, more than twenty
miles from Chevelon Cafion. His roving eyes could not
descry any herders or dogs. But he knew there must be
dogs close to that immense flock. And, whatever his

cunning, he could not hope to elude the scent and sight
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of shepherd dogs. It would be best to go back the way
he had come, wait for darkness, then cross the cafion
and climb out, and work around to his objective point.
Turning at once, he started to glide back. But almost
immediately he was brought stock-still and thrilling by
the sound of hoofs.

Horses were coming in the direction he wished to take.
They were close. His swift conclusion was that the men
who had pursued him up on the Rim had worked down
into the cafion. One circling glance showed him that he
had no sure covert near at hand. It would not do to risk
their passing him there. The border of woodland was
narrow and not dense enough for close inspection. He
was forced to turn back up the cafion, in the hope of
soon finding a hiding place or a break in the wall where
he could climb up.

Hugging the base of the wall, he slipped on, passing the
point where he had espied the sheep, and gliding on until
he was stopped by a bend in the dense line of willows.
It sheered to the west there and ran close to the high
wall. Jean kept on until he was stooping under a curling
border of willow thicket, with branches slim and yellow
and masses of green foliage that brushed against the wall.
Suddenly he encountered an abrupt corner of rock.
He rounded it, to discover that it ran at right angles
with the one he had just passed. Peering up through
the willows, he ascertained that there was a narrow
crack in the main wall of the cafion. It had been con-
cealed by willows low down and leaning spruces above.
A wild, hidden retreat! Along the base of the wall there
were tracks of small animals. The place was odorous,
like all dense thickets, but it was not dry. Water ran
through there somewhere. Jean drew easier breath.

All sounds except the rustling of birds or mice in the
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willows had ceased. The brake was pervaded by a
dreamy emptiness. Jean decided to steal on a little
farther, then wait till he felt he might safely dare go back.

The golden-green gloom suddenly brightened. Light
showed ahead, and parting the willows, he looked out
into a narrow, winding cafion, with an open, grassy,
willow-streaked lane in the center and on each side a
thin strip of woodland.

His surprise was short lived. A crashing of horses back
of him in the willows gave him a shock. He ran out
along the base of the wall, back of the trees. Like the
strip of woodland in the main cafion, this one was scant
and had but little underbrush. There were young
spruces growing with thick branches clear to the grass,
and under these he could have concealed himself. But,
with a certainty of sheep dogs in the vicinity, he would not
think of hiding except as a last resource. These horse-
men, whoever they were, were as likely to be sheep
herders as not. Jean slackened his pace to look back.
He could not see any moving objects, but he still heard
horses, though not so close now. Ahead of him this
narrow gorge opened out like the neck of a bottle. He
would run on to the head of it and find a place to climb
to the top.

Hurried and anxious as Jean was, he yet received an
impression of singular, wild nature of this side gorge.
It was a hidden, pine-fringed crack in the rock-ribbed
and cafion-cut tableland. Above him the sky seemed
a winding stream of blue. The walls were red and bulged
out in spruce-greened shelves. From wall to wall was
scarcely a distance of a hundred feet. Jumbles of rock
obstructed his close holding to the wall. He had to
walk at the edge of the timber. As he progressed, the

gorge widened into wilder, ruggeder aspect. Through
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the trees ahead he saw where the wall circled to meet
the cliff on the left, forming an oval depression, the
nature of which he could not ascertain. But it appeared
to be a small opening surrounded by dense thickets and
the overhanging walls. Anxiety augmented to alarm.
He might not be able to find a place to scale those rough
cliffs. Breathing hard, Jean halted again. The situation
was growing critical again. His physical condition was
worse. Loss of sleep and rest, lack of food, the long
pursuit of Queen, the wound in his arm, and the desperate
run for his life—these had weakened him to the ‘extent
that if he undertook any strenuous effort he would fail.
His cunning weighed all chances.

The shade of wall and foliage above, and another jumble
of ruined cliff, hindered his survey of the ground ahead,
and he almost stumbled upon a cabin, hidden on three
sides, with a small, bare clearing in front. It was an old,
ramshackle structure like others he had run across in the
cafions. Cautiously he approached and peeped around
the corner. At first swift glance it had all the appearance
of long disuse. But Jean had no time for another look.
A clip-clop of trotting horses on hard ground brought the
same pell-mell rush of sensations that had driven him
to wild flight scarcely an hour past. His body jerked
with its instinctive impulse, then quivered with his
restraint. To turn back would be risky, to run ahead
would be fatal, to hide was his one hope. No covert
behind! And the clip-clop of hoofs sounded closer.
One moment longer Jean held mastery over his instincts
of self-preservation. To keep from running was almost
impossible. It was the sheer primitive animal sense to
escape. He drove it back and glided along the front of
the cabin.

Here he saw that the cabin adjoined another. Reaching
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the door, he was about to peep in when the thud of hoofs
and voices close at hand transfixed him with a grim
certainty that he had not an instant to lose. Through
the thin, black-streaked line of trees he saw moving
red objects. Horses! He must run. Passing the door,
his keen nose caught a musty, woody odor and the tail of
his eye saw bare dirt floor. This cabin was unused. He
halted—gave a quick look back. And the first thing his
eye fell upon was a ladder, right inside the door, against
the wall. He looked up. It led to a loft that, dark and
gloomy, stretched halfway across the cabin. An irresist-
ible impulse drove Jean. Slipping inside, he climbed
up the ladder to the loft. It was like night up there.
But he crawled on the rough-hewn rafters and, turning
with his head toward the opening, he stretched out and
lay still.

What seemed an interminable moment ended with a
trample of hoofs outside the cabin. It ceased. Jean’s
vibrating ears caught the jingle of spurs and a thud of
boots striking the ground.

“Wal, sweetheart, heah we are home again,” drawled
a slow, cool, mocking Texas voice.

“Home! I wonder, Colter—did y’u ever have a home
—a mother—a sister—much less a sweetheart?” was the
reply, bitter and caustic.

Jean’s palpitating, hot body suddenly stretched still
and cold with intensity of shock. His very bones seemed
to quiver and stiffen into ice. During the instant of
realization his heart stopped. And a slow, contracting
pressure enveloped his breast and moved up to constrict
his throat. That woman’s voice belonged to Ellen Jorth.
The sound of it had lingered in his dreams. He had
stumbled upon the rendezvous of the Jorth faction.

Hard indeed had been the fates meted out to those of the
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Isbels and Jorths who had passed to their deaths. But
no ordeal, not even Queen’s, could compare with this
desperate one Jean must endure. He had loved Ellen
Jorth, strangely, wonderfully, and he had scorned evil
repute to believe her good. He had spared her father and
her uncle. He had weakened or lost the cause of the
Isbels. He loved her now, desperately, deathlessly,
knowing from her own lips that she was worthless—
loved her the more because he had felt her terrible shame.
And to him—the last of the Isbels—had come the
cruelest of dooms—to be caught like a crippled rat
in a trap; to be compelled to lie-helpless, wounded, with-
out a gun; to listen, and perhaps to see Ellen Jorth
enact the very truth of her mocking insinuation. His
will, his promise, his creed, his blood must hold him
to the stern decree that he should be the last man of the
Jorth-Isbel war. But could he lie there to hear—to see—
when he had a knife and an arm?
CHAPTER XIV

HEN followed the leathery flop of saddles to the soft
turf and the stamp of loosened horses.

Jean heard a noise at the cabin door, a rustle, and then
a knock of something hard against wood. Silently he
moved his head to look down through a crack between the
rafters. He saw the glint of a rifle leaning against the sill.
Then the doorstep was darkened. Ellen Jorth sat down
with a long, tired sigh. She took off her sombrero and
the light shone on the rippling, dark-brown hair, hanging
in a tangled braid. The curved nape of her neck showed
a warm tint of golden tan. She wore a gray blouse,
soiled and torn, that clung to her lissome shoulders.

“Colter, what are y’u goin’ to do?” she asked, sud-
denly. Her voice carried something Jean did not re-
member. It thrilled into the icy fixity of his senses.

“We'll stay heah,” was the response, and it was fol-
lowed by a clinking step of spurred boot.

“Shore I won’t stay heah,” declared Ellen. ‘It makes
me sick when I think of how Uncle Tad died in there
_alone—helpless—sufferin’. The place seems haunted.”

“Wal, I’ll agree that it’s tough on y’u.... But what the
hell can we do?”

A long silence ensued which Ellen did not break.

“‘Somethin’ has come off round heah since early mawn-
in’,” declared Colter. ‘‘Somers an’ Springer haven’t got
back. An’ Antonio’s gone. . . . Now, honest, Ellen,
didn’t y’u heah rifle shots off somewhere?”

“T reckon I did,’’ she responded, gloomily.

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“‘An’ which way?”

“‘Sounded to me up on the bluff, back pretty far.”

“Wal, shore that’s my idee. An’ it makes me think
hard. Y’u know Somers come across the last camp of

the Isbels. An’ he dug into a grave to find the bodies... .

of Jim Gordon an’ another man he didn’t know. Queen
kept good his brag. He braced that Isbel gang an’
killed those fellars. But either him or Jean Isbel went
off leavin’ bloody tracks. If it was Queen’s y’u can bet
Isbel was after him. An’ if it was Isbel’s tracks, why
shore Queen would stick to them. Somers an’ Springer
couldn’t follow the trail. They’re shore not much good
at trackin’. But for days they’ve been ridin’ the woods,
hopin’ to run across Queen. .. . Wal now, mebbe they
run across Isbel instead. An’ if they did an’ got away
from him they’ll be heah sooner or later. If Isbel was
too many for them he’d hunt for my trail. I’m gam-
blin’ that either Queen or Jean Isbel is daid. I’m
hopin’ it’s Isbel. Because if he ain’t daid he’s the last
of the Isbels, an’ mebbe I’m the last of Jorth’s gang... .
Shore I’m not hankerin’ to meet the half-breed. That’s
why I say we’ll stay heah. This is as good a hidin’ place
as there isin the country. We’vegrub. There’s water an’
grass.”

‘‘Me—stay heah with y’u—alone!”’

The tone seemed a contradiction to the apparently
accepted sense of her words. Jean held his breath.
But he could not still the slowly mounting and accelerat-
ing faculties within that were involuntarily rising to meet
some strange, nameless import. He felt it. He imagined
it would be the catastrophe of Ellen Jorth’s calm accept-
ance of Colter’s proposition. But down in Jean’s
miserable heart lived something that would not die.

No mere words could killit. How poignant that moment
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of her silence! How terribly he realized that if his
intelligence and his emotion had believed her betraying
words, his soul had not!

But Ellen Jorth did not speak. Her brown head hung
thoughtfully. Her supple shoulders sagged a little.

“Ellen, what’s happened to y’u?”’ went on Colter.

“All the misery possible to a woman,” she replied,
dejectedly.

“Shore I don’t mean that way,” he continued, per-
suasively. ‘‘I ain’t gainsayin’ the hard facts of your life.
It’s been bad. Your dad was no good.... But I mean
I can’t figger the change in y’u.”

“No, I reckon y’u cain’t,” she said. ‘Whoever was
responsible for your make-up left out a mind—not to
say feeling.”

Colter drawled a low laugh.

“Wal, have that your own way. But how much
longer are y’u goin’ to be like this heah?”’

“Like what?’ she rejoined, sharply.

“Wal, this stand-offishness of yours?”’

“Colter, I told y’u to let me alone,” she said, sullenly.

“Shore. An’ y’u did that before. But .this time
y’u're different... . An’ wal, I’m gettin’ tired of it.”

Here the cool, slow voice of the Texan sounded an
inflexibility before absent, a timber that hinted of il-
limitable power.

Ellen Jorth shrugged her lithe shoulders and, slowly
rising, she picked up the little rifle and turned to step
into the cabin.

“Colter,” she said, “‘fetch my pack an’ my blankets in
heah.”’

“Shore,” he returned, with good nature.

Jean saw Ellen Jorth lay the rifle lengthwise in a chink
between two logs and then slowly turn, back to the

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wall. Jean knew her then, yet did not know her.
The brown flash of her face seemed that of an older,
graver woman. His strained gaze, like his waiting mind,
had expected something, he knew not what—a hardened
face, a ghost of beauty, a recklessness, a distorted, bitter,
lost expression in keeping with her fortunes. But he had
reckoned falsely. She did not look like that. There
was incalculable change, but the beauty remained, some-
how different. Her red lips were parted. Her brooding
eyes, looking out straight from under the level, dark
brows, seemed sloe black and wonderful with their
steady, passionate light.

~ Jean, in his eager, hungry devouring of the beloved
face, did not on the first instant grasp the significance of
its expression. He was seeing the features that had
haunted him. But quickly he interpreted her expression
as the somber, hunted look of a woman who would bear
no more. Under the torn blouse her full breast heaved.
She held her hands clenched at her sides. She was
listening, waiting for that jangling, slow step. It came,
and with the sound she subtly changed. She was a
woman hiding her true feelings. She relaxed, and that
strong, dark look of fury seemed to fade back into her eyes.

Colter appeared at the door, carrying a roll of blankets
and a pack.

“Throw them heah,”’ she said. ‘I reckon y’u needn’t
bother coming in.”

That angered the man. With one long stride he
stepped over the doorsill, down into the cabin, and flung
the blankets at her feet and then the pack after it. Where-
upon he deliberately sat down in the door, facing her.
With one hand he slid off his sombrero, which fell outside,
and with the other he reached in his upper vest pocket
for the little bag of tobacco that showed there. All the

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time he looked at her. By the light now unobstructed
Jean descried Colter’s face; and sight of it then sounded
the roll and drum of his passions.

“Wal, Ellen, I reckon we’ll have it out right now an’
heah,”’ he said, and with tobacco in one hand, paper in the
other he began the operations of making a cigarette.
However, he scarcely removed his glance from her.

“Yes?” queried Ellen Jorth.

“T’m goin’ to have things the way they were before—
an’ more,’’ he declared. The cigarette paper shook in his
fingers. ‘

“What do y’u mean?’’ she demanded.

“YV'u know what I mean,” he retorted. Voice and ac-
tion were subtly unhinging this man’s control over himself.
‘“Maybe I don’t. I reckon y’u’d better talk plain.”

The rustler had clear gray-yellow eyes, flawless, like
crystal, and suddenly they danced with little fiery flecks,

“The last time I laid my hand on y’u I got hit for my
pains. An’ shore that’s been ranklin’.”

“Colter, y’u’ll get hit again if y’u put your hands on
me,” she said, dark, straight glance on him. A frown
wrinkled the level brows.

“V’u mean that?” he asked, thickly. ee

“T shore do.”

Manifestly he accepted her assertion. Something of
incredulity and bewilderment, that had vied with his |
resentment, utterly disappeared from his face. ,

“‘Heah I’ve been waitin’ for y’u to love me,” he declared,
with a gesture not without dignified emotion. ‘Your
givin’ in without that wasn’t so much to me.”

And at these words of the rustler’s Jean Isbel felt an
icy, sickening shudder creep into his soul. He shut his
eyes. The end of his dream had been long in coming,
but at last it had arrived. A mocking voice, like a

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hollow wind, echoed through that region—that lonely and
ghost-like hall of his heart which had harbored faith.

She burst into speech, louder and sharper, the first
words of which Jean’s strangely throbbing ears did not
distinguish.

«______ yvou!... I never gave in to y’u an’ I never
will.”

“But, girl—I kissed y’u—hugged y’u—handled y’nx—”
he expostulated, and the making of the cigarette ceased.

“Yes, y’u did—y’u brute—when I was so downhearted
and weak I couldn’t lift my hand,”’ she flashed.

“Ahuh! Y’u mean I couldn’t do that now?”’

“T should smile I do, Jim Colter!” she replied.

“Wal, mebbe—I’ll see—presently,” he went on, strain-
ing with words. ‘‘But I’m shore curious. ... Daggs, then
—he was nothin’ to y’u?”’ .

“No more than y’u,” she said, morbidly. ‘‘He
used to run after me—long ago, it seems.... . I was
only a girl then—innocent—an’ I’d not known any but
rough men. I couldn’t all the time—every day, every
hour—keep him at arm’s length. Sometimes before I
knew—I didn’t care. I was a child. A kiss meant
nofing to me. But after I knew—”

Ellen dropped her head in brooding silence.

“Say, do y’u expect me to believe that?’’ he queried,.
with a derisive leer.

“Bah! What do I care what y’u believe?” she cried,
with lifting head.

“How aboot Simm Bruce?”

“That coyote! . .. He lied aboot me, Jim Colter.
And any man half a man would have known he lied.”

“Wal, Simm always bragged aboot y’u bein’ his girl,”
asserted Colter. ‘An’ he wasn’t over-particular aboot

»9

details of your love-makin’.

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Ellen gazed out of the door, over Colter’s head, as if
the forest out there was a refuge. She evidently sensed
more about the man than appeared in his slow talk, in
his slouching position. Her lips shut in a firm line, as
if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate
tongue. Jean, in his absorption, magnified his percep-
tions. Not yet was Ellen Jorth afraid of this man, but
she feared the situation. Jean’s heart was at bursting
pitch. All within him seemed chaos—a wreck of beliefs
and convictions. Nothing was true. He would wake
presently out of a nightmare. Yet, as surely as he
quivered there, he felt the imminence of a great moment
—a lightning flash—a thunderbolt—a balance struck.

Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. He rolled
it, lighted it, all the time with lowered, pondering
head, and when he had puffed a cloud of smoke he sud-
denly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes as fiery
as molten steel.

“Wal, Ellen—how aboot Jean Isbel—our half-breed
Nez Perce friend—who was shore seen handlin’ yu
‘familiar?’ he drawled.

Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face
turned a dusty scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.

“Damn y’u, Jim Colter!” she burst out, furiously.
“T wish Jean Isbel would jump in that door—or down
out of that loft! ... He killed Greaves for defiling my
name!... He’d kill y’u for your dirty insult.... And I'd
like to watch him do it... . Y’u cold-blooded Texan!
Y’u thieving rustler! Y’u liar!... Y’u lied aboot my
father’s death. And I know why. Y’u stole my father’s
gold... . An’ now y’u want me—y’u expect me to fall
into your arms. ... My Heaven! cain’t y’u tell a decent
woman? Was your mother decent? Was your sister
decent?... Bah! I’m appealing to deafness. But y’u’ll

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heah this, Jim Colter! ... I’m not what y’u think I am!
I’m not the—the damned hussy y’u liars have made me
out. ... I’m a Jorth, alas! I’ve no home, no relatives,
no friends! I’ve been forced to live my life with rustlers
—vile men like y’u an’ Dagegs an’ the rest of your like. ...
But I’ve been good! Do y’u heah that?... I am good—
an’, so help me God, y’u an’ all your rottenness cain’t
make me bad!”

Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the
man vanished.

Vanished also was Jean Isbel’s suspended icy dread,
the cold clogging of his fevered mind—vanished in a
white, living, leaping flame.

Silently he drew his knife and lay there watching
with the eyes of a wildcat. The instant Colter stepped
far enough over toward the edge of the loft Jean meant
to bound erect and plunge down upon him. But Jean
could wait now. Colter had a gun at his hip. He must
never have a chance to draw it.

“Ahuh! .So y’u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah,
do y’u?” queried Colter. ‘Wal, if I had any pity on
y’u, that’s done for it.”

A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to
move, brought his hand in clutching contact with her.
And the force of it flung her half across the cabin room,
leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his grasp. Pantingly
she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him
off as he took long, slow strides toward her.

Jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovern-
able passion to risk all on one leap. But the distance was
too great. Colter, blind as he was to all outward things,
would hear, would see in time to make Jean’s effort futile.
Shaking like a leaf, Jean sank back, eye again to the
crack between the rafters.

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Ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move. Every
line of her body was instinct with fight, and the magnificent
blaze of her eyes would have checked a, less callous brute.

Colter’s big hand darted between Ellen’s arms and
fastened in the front of her blouse. He did not try to
hold her or draw her close. The unleashed passion of
the man required violence. In one savage pull he tore
off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders
and heaving bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned
upward.

Ovecome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the
rustler, Ellen sank to her knees, with blanched face and
dilating eyes, trying with folded arms and trembling hand
to hide her nudity.

At that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard
trail outside halted Colter in his tracks.

“Hell!” he exclaimed. ‘An’ who’s that?” With a
fierce action he flung the remnants of Ellen’s blouse in
her face and turned to leap out the door.

Jean saw Ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap
it around her, while she sagged against the wall and
stared at the door. The hoof beats pounded to a solid
thumping halt just outside.

“‘Jim—thar’s hell to pay!’ rasped out a panting voice.

“Wal, Springer, I reckon I wished y’u’d paid it without
spoilin’ my deals,’”’ retorted Colter, cool and sharp.

“Deals? Ha! Y’u’ll be forgettin—your lady love—
in a minnit,’’ replied Springer. ‘When I catch—my
breath.”

“Where’s Somers?” demanded Colter.

“T reckon he’s all shot up—if my eyes didn’t fool me.”

“‘Where is he?”’ yelled Colter.

“‘Jim—he’s layin’ up in the bushes round thet bluff.
I didn’t wait to see how he was hurt. But he shore

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stopped some lead. An’ he flopped like a chicken with
its—haid cut off.”

‘‘Where’s Antonio?”

“He run like the greaser he is,” declared Springer,
disgustedly.

“Ahuh! An’ where’s Queen?’ queried Colter, after a
significant pause.

“Dead!”

The silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that
held Jean in cold bonds. He saw the girl below rise from
her knees, one hand holding the blouse to her breast, the
other extended, and with strange, repressed, almost
frantic look she swayed toward the door.

“Wal, talk,’”’ ordered Colter, harshly.

“Jim, there ain’t a hell of a lot,” replied Springer,
drawing a deep breath, ‘‘but what there is is shore in-
terestin’. ... Me an’ Somers took Antonio with us. He
left his woman with the sheep. An’ we rode up the
caficn, clumb out on top, an’ made a circle back on the
ridge. That’s the way we’ve been huntin’ fer tracks.
Up thar in a bare spot we run plump into Queen sittin’
against a tree, right out in the open. Queerest sight y’u
ever seen! The damn gunfighter had set down to wait
for Isbel, who was trailin’ him, as we suspected—an’ he
died thar. He wasn’t cold when we found him... .
Somers was quick to see a trick. So he propped Queen
up an’ tied the guns to his hands—an’, Jim, the queerest
thing aboot that deal was this—Queen’s guns was empty!
Not a shell left! It beat us holler. ... We left him thar,
an’ hid up high on the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off.
The hosses we left back of a thicket. An’ we waited
thar a long time. But, sure enough, the half-breed come.
He was too smart. Too much Injun! He would not

cross the open, but went around. An’ then he seen
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Queen. It was great to watch him. After a little he
shoved his rifle out an’ went right fer Queen. This is
when I wanted to shoot. I could have plugged him.
But Somers says wait an’ make it sure. When Isbel got
up to Queen he was sort of half hid by the tree. An’ I
couldn’t wait no longer, so I shot. I hit him, too. We
all begun to shoot. Somers showed himself, an’ that’s
when Isbel opened up. He used up a whole magazine
on Somers an’ then, suddenlike, he quit. It didn’t take
me long to figger mebbe he was out of shells. When I
seen him run I was certain of it. Then we made for the
hosses an’ rode after Isbel. Pretty soon I seen him
runnin’ like a deer down the ridge. I yelled an’ spurred
after him. There is where Antonio quitme. But I kept
on. An’ I got a shot at Isbel. He ran out of sight. I
follered him by spots of blood on the stones an’ grass
until I couldn’t trail him no more. He must have gone
down over the cliffs. He couldn’t have done nothin’
else without me seein’ him. I found his rifle, an’ here
it is to prove what Isay. I had to go back to climb down
off the Rim, an’ I rode fast down the cafion. He’s some-
where along that west wall, hidin’ in the brush, hard hit
if I know anythin’ aboot the color of blood.”

“Wal!...that beats me holler, too,” ejaculated Colter.

“Jim, what’s to be done?” inquired Springer, eagerly.
“Tf we’re sharp we can corral that half-breed. He’s the
last of the Isbels.”’

“More, pard. He’s the last of the Isbel outfit,” de-
clared Colter. ‘If y’u can show me blood in his tracks
I'll trail him.”

“V’u can bet I’ll show y’u,”’ rejoined the other rustler.
“But listen! Wouldn’t it be better for us first to see if
he crossed the cafion? I reckon he didn’t. But let’s

make sure. An’ if he didn’t we'll have him somewhar
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along that west cafion wall. He’s not got no gun. He’d
never run thet way if he had... . Jim, he’s our meat!”’

“Shore, he’ll have that knife,’ pondered Colter.

“We needn’t worry about thet,” said the other, posi-
tively. ‘‘He’s hard hit, I tell y’u. All we got to do is
find thet bloody trail again an’ stick to it—goin’ careful.
He’s layin’ low like a crippled wolf.”’

“Springer, I want the job of finishin’ that half-breed,”
hissed Colter. ‘‘I’d give ten years of my life to stick a
gun down his throat an’ shoot it off.”

“Allright. Let’s rustle. Mebbe y’u'll not have to give
much more ’n ten minnits. Because I tell y’u I can find
him. It’d been easy—but, Jim, I reckon I was afraid.”

‘Leave your hoss for me an’ go ahaid,”’ the rustler
then said, brusquely. ‘“‘I’ve a job in the cabin heah.”’

“Haw-haw!... Wal, Jim, I’ll rustle a bit down the
trail an’ wait. No huntin’ Jean Isbel alone—not fer
me. I’ve had a queer feelin’ about thet knife he used
on Greaves. An’ I reckon y’u’d oughter let thet Jorth
hussy alone long enough to—”’

“‘Springer, I reckon I’ve got to hawg-tie her—” His
voice became indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a
slow moving away of the men.

Jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch
every syllable while his gaze rested upon Ellen who
stood beside the door. Every line of her body denoted
a listening intensity. Her back was toward Jean, so
that he could not see her face. And he did not want to
see, but could not help seeing her naked shoulders. She
put her head out of the door. Suddenly she drew it in
quickly and half turned her face, slowly raising her
white arm. This was the left one and bore the marks of
Colter’s hard fingers.

She gave a little gasp. Her eyes became large and
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staring. They were bent on the hand that she had
removed from a step on the ladder. On hand and wrist
showed a bright-red smear of blood.

Jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that
he had left his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had
climbed. That moment seemed the a terrible
one of his life.

Ellen Jorth’s face blanched and her eyes darkened and
dilated with exceeding amaze and flashing thought to
become fixed with horror. That instant was the one in
which her reason connected the blood on the ladder
with the escape of Jean Isbel.

One moment she leaned there, still as a stone except
for her heaving breast, and then her fixed gaze changed
to a swift, dark blaze, comprehending, yet inscrutable,
as she flashed it up the ladder to the loft. She could see
nothing, yet she knew and Jean knew that she knew he
was there. A marvelous transformation passed over her
features and even over her form. Jean choked with the
ache in his throat. Slowly she put the bloody hand
behind her while with the other she still held the torn
blouse to her breast.

Colter’s slouching, musical step sounded outside.
And it might have been a strange breath of infinitely
vitalizing and passionate life blown into the well-springs
of Ellen Jorth’s being. Isbel had no name for her then.
The spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown.

She swayed back from the door against the wall in
singular, softened poise, as if all the steel had melted out
of her body. And as Colter’s tall shadow fell across the
threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring with eyeballs
that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who
in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her
transfiguration. He saw but could not comprehend.

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TO THE LAST MAN

“Jim—I heard—all Springer told y’u,” she said.
The look of her dumfounded Colter and her voice
seemed to shake him visibly.

“Suppose y’u did. What then?” he demanded,
harshly, as he halted with one booted foot over the thresh-
old. Malignant and forceful, he eyed her darkly, doubt-
fully.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

“What of? Me?”

“No. Of—of Jean Isbel. He might kill y’u and—
then where would I be?”

‘Wal, I’m damned!” ejaculated the rustler. ‘‘What’s
got into y’u?” He moved to enter, but a sort of fascina-
tion bound him.

“Jim, I hated y’u a moment ago,” she burst out.
“But now—with that Jean Isbel somewhere near—hidin’
—watchin’ to kill y’u—an’ maybe me, too—I—I don’t
hate y’u any more. ... Take me away.”

“Girl, have y’u lost your nerve?” he demanded.

“My God! Colter—cain’t y’u see?” she implored.
“Won't y’u take me away?”

‘*‘T shore will—presently,”’ he replied, grimly. ‘But
ywll wait till I’ve shot the lights out of this Isbel.”

“No!” she cried. ‘‘Take me away now... . An’ I'll
give in—I’ll be what y’u—want. ... Y’u can do with me—
as y’u like.”’

Colter’s lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting
blood. With a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom
over her.

“‘Am I out of my haid, or are y’u?” he asked, in low,
hoarse voice. His darkly corded face expressed extremest
amaze.

‘Jim, I mean it,” she whispered, edging an inch nearer
him, her white face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in

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their eloquence and mystery. ‘I’ve no friend but y’u.
... [ll be—yours. ... I’m lost... . What does it matter?
... If y’u want me—take me now—before I kill myself.”

‘Elen’ Jorth, there’s somethin’ wrong aboot y’u,”’ he
responded. ‘‘Did y’u tell the truth—when y’u denied
ever bein’ a sweetheart of Simm Bruce?”

“Yes, I told y’u the truth.”

“Ahuh! An’ how do y’u account for layin’ me out
with every dirty name y’u could give tongue to?”

“Oh, it was temper. I wanted to be let alone.”

“Temper! Wal, I reckon y’u’ve got one,” he retorted,
grimly. An’ I’m not shore y’u’re not crazy or lyin’.
An hour ago I couldn’t touch y’u.”

“Yu may now—if y’u promise to take me away—at
once. This place has got on my nerves. I couldn’t sleep
heah with that Isbel hidin’ around. Could y’u?”

“Wal, I reckon I’d not sleep very deep.”

“Then let us go.’’»

He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful
vehemence, and his piercing gaze studied her distrust-
fully. Yet all the while there was manifest in his strung
frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in abeyance
to his will.

“That aboot your bein’ so good?’’ he inquired, with a
return of the mocking drawl.

‘‘Never mind what’s past,” she flashed, with passion
dark as his. ‘‘I’ve made my offer.”

‘Shore there’s a lie aboot y’u somewhere,” he muttered,
thickly.

“Man, could I do more?’’ she demanded, in scorn.

“No. But it’s a lie,” he returned. ‘‘Y’u’ll get me to
take y’u away an’ then fool me—run off—God knows
what. Women are all liars.”

Manifestly he could not believe in her strange trans-

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formation. Memory of her wild and passionate denuncia-
tion of him and his kind must have seared even his
calloused soul. But the ruthless nature of him had not
weakened nor softened in the least as to his intentions.
This weather-vane veering of hers bewildered him,
obsessed him with its possibilities. He had the look of a
man who was divided between love of her and hate, whose
love demanded a return, but whose hate required a proof
of her abasement. Not proof of surrender, but proof of
her shame! The ignominy of him thirsted for its like.
He could grind her beauty under his heel, but he could
not soften to this feminine inscrutableness.

And whatever was the truth of Ellen Jorth in this
moment, beyond Colter’s gloomy and stunted intelli-
gence, beyond even the love of Jean Isbel, it was some-
thing that held the balance of mastery. She read Colter’s
mind. She dropped the torn blouse from her hand and
stood there, unashamed, with the wave of her white breast
pulsing, eyes black as night and full of hell, her face
white, tragic, terrible, yet strangely lovely.

‘‘Take me away,” she whispered, stretching one white
arm toward him, then the other.

Colter, even as she moved, had leaped with inarticulate
cry and radiant face to meet her embrace. But it seemed,
just as her left arm flashed up toward his neck, that he
saw her bloody hand and wrist. Strange how that
checked his ardor—threw up his lean head like that of a
striking bird of prey.

“Blood! What the hell!’’ he ejaculated, and in one
sweep he grasped her. ‘‘How’d y’u do that? Are y’u
cut?... Hold still.”

Ellen could not release her hand.

“T scratched myself,” she said.

“Where? ... All that blood!” And suddenly he flung
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her hand back with fierce gesture, and the gleams of his
yellow eyes were like the points of leaping flames. They
pierced her—read the secret falsity of her. Slowly he
stepped backward, guardedly his hand moved to his
gun, and his glance circled and swept the interior of the
cabin. As if he had the nose of a hound and sight to
follow scent, his eyes bent to the dust of the ground before
the door. He quivered, grew rigid as stone, and then
moved his head with exceeding slowness as if searching
through a microscope in the dust—farther to the left—
to the foot of the ladder—and up one step—another—a
third—all the way up to the loft. Then he whipped out
his gun and wheeled to face the girl.

“Ellen, y’u’ve got your half-breed heah!’’ he said,
with a terrible smile.

She neither moved nor spoke. There was a suggestion
of collapse, but it was only a change where the alluring
softness of her hardened into a strange, rapt glow. And
in it seemed the same mastery that had characterized her
former aspect. Herein the treachery of her was revealed.
She had known what she meant to do in any case.

Colter, standing at the door, reached a long arm toward
the ladder, where he laid his hand on arung. Taking it
away he held it palm outward for her to see the dark
splotch of blood.

“See?”

“Yes, I see,”’ she said, ringingly.

Passion wrenched him, transformed him. “All that—
aboot leavin’ heah—with me—aboot givin’ in—was a lie!”

“No, Colter. It was the truth. I'll go—yet—now—
if y’w’ll spere—him!” She whispered the last word and
made a slight movement of her hand toward the loft.

“Girl!” he exploded, incredulously. ‘“Y’u love this
half-breed—this Isbel? . . . Y’u love him!”

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TO THE LAST MAN

“With all my heart!... Thank God! It has been my
glory... .It might have been my salvation. ... But now
I'll go to hell with y’u—if y’u'll spare him.”

“Damn my soul!’ rasped out the rustler, as if some-
thing of respect was wrung from that sordid deep of him.
“Vu—y’u woman!... Jorth will turn over in his grave.
He’d rise out of his grave if this Isbel got y’u,”

“Hurry! Hurry!” implored Ellen. ‘“‘Springer may
come back. I think I heard a call.”

“Wal, Ellen Jorth, I’ll not spare Isbel—nor y’u,’’ he
returned, with dark and meaning leer, as he turned to
ascend the ladder.

Jean Isbel, too, had reached the climax of his sus-
pense. Gathering all his muscles in a knot he prepared
to leap upon Colter as he mounted the ladder. But
Ellen Jorth screamed piercingly and snatched her rifle
from its resting place and, cocking it, she held it forward
and low.

“Colter!”

Her scream and his uttered name stiffened him.

“Yu will spare Jean Isbel!”’ she rang out. ‘‘Drop that
gun—drop it!”

“Shore, Ellen.... Easy now. Remember your temper.
... I'll let Isbel off,” he panted, huskily, and all his body
sank quiveringly to a crouch.

“Drop your gun! Don’t turn round. . . . Colter!
—I'll kill y’ul”

But even then he failed to divine the meaning and the
spirit of her.

“* Aw, now, Ellen,’ he entreated, in louder, huskier tones,
and as if dragged by fatal doubt of her still, he began to
turn.

Crash! The rifle emptied its contents in Colter’s breast.

All his body sprang up. He dropped the gun. Both
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hands fluttered toward her. And an awful surprise
flashed over his face.

“‘So—help—me—God!”’ he whispered, with blood thick
in his voice. Then darkly; as one groping, he reached
for her with shaking hands. ‘Y’u—y’u white-throated
hussy!... 0M...”

He grasped the quivering rifle barrel. Crash! She
shot him again. As he swayed over her and fell she had
to leap aside, and his clutching hand tore the rifle from
her grasp. Then in convulsion he writhed, to heave on
his back, and stretch out—a ghastly spectacle. Ellen
backed away from it, her white arms wide, a slow horror
blotting out the passion of her face.

Then from without came a shrill call and the sound of
rapid footsteps. Ellen leaned against the wall, staring
still at Colter. ‘‘Hey, Jim—what’s the shootin’?”
called Springer, breathlessly.

As his form darkened the doorway Jean once again
gathered all his muscular force for a tremendous spring.

Springer saw the girl first and he appeared thunder-
struck. His jaw dropped. He needed not the white
gleam of her person to transfix him. Her eyes did that
and they were riveted in unutterable horror upon some-
thing on the ground. Thus instinctively directed, Springer
espied Colter.

“V’u—y’u shot him!” he shrieked. ‘“‘What for—y’u
hussy?... Ellen Jorth, if y’u’ve killed him, Pll...”

He strode toward where Colter lay.

Then Jean, rising silently, took a step and like a tiger
he launched himself into the air, dowh upon the rustler.
Even as he leaped Springer gave a quick, upward look.
And he cried out. Jean’s moccasined feet struck him
squarely and sent him staggering into the wall, where his
head hit hard. Jean fell, but bounded up as the half-

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stunned Springer drew his gun. Then Jean lunged for-
ward with a single sweep of his arm—and looked no more.

Ellen ran swaying out of the door, and, once clear of
the threshold, she tottered out on the grass, to sink to
her knees. The bright, golden sunlight gleamed upon
her white shoulders and arms. Jean had one foot out of
the door when he saw her and he whirled back to get her
blouse. But Springer had fallen upon it. Swatching up
a blanket, Jean ran out.

“Ellen! Ellen! Ellen!” he cried. ‘“‘It’s over!” And
reaching her, he tried to wrap her in the blanket.

She wildly clutched his knees. Jean was conscious
only of her white, agonized face and the dark eyes with
their look of terrible strain.

“Did y’u—did y’u. . .”” she whispered.

““Ves—it’s over,” he said, gravely. ‘‘Ellen, the Isbel-
Jorth feud is ended.”

“Oh, thank—God!” she cried, in breaking voice.
‘‘Jean—y’u are wounded . . . the blood on the step!”

“My arm. See. It’s not bad... . Ellen, let me wrap
this round you.” Folding the blanket around her shoul-
ders, he held it there and entreated her to getup. But
she only clung the closer. She hid her face on his knees.
Long shudders rippled over her, shaking the blanket,
shaking Jean’s hands. Distraught, he did not know what
todo. And his own heart was bursting.

“Ellen, you must not kneel—there—that way,” he
implored.

“Jean! Jean!’’ she moaned, and clung the tighter.

He tried to lift her up, but she was a dead weight, and
with that hold on him seemed anchored at his feet.

“T killed Colter,” she gasped. ‘‘I had to—kill him!...
I offered—to fling myself away... .”

“For me!’’ he cried, poignantly. ‘‘Oh, Ellen! Ellen!

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the world has come to an end! ... Hush! don’t keep
sayin’ that. Of course you killed him. You saved my
life. For I’d never have let you go off with him....
Yes, you killed him... . You’rea Jorth an’ I’m an Isbel...
We’ve blood on our hands—both of us—I for you an’
you for me!”

His voice of entreaty and sadness strengthened her and
she raised her white face, loosening her clasp to lean
back and look up. Tragic, sweet, despairing, the loveli-
less of her—the significance of her there on her knees—
thrilled him to his soul.

“Blood on my hands!” she whispered. ‘‘Yes. It was
awful—killing him. . . . But—all I care for in this world
is for your forgiveness—and your faith that saved my
soul!”

“Child, there’s nothin’ to forgive,’ he responded.
“Nothin’... Please, Ellen...”

“T lied to y’u!” she cried. ‘I lied to y’u!”

“Ellen, listen—darlin’.”” And the tender epithet
brought her head and arms back close-pressed to him.
“T know—now,”’ he faltered on. “I found out to-day
what I believed. An’ I swear to God—by the memory
of my dead mother—down in my heart I never, never,
never believed what they—what y’u tried to make me
believe. Never!’’,

“‘Jean—I love y’u—love y’u—love y’u!’’ she breathed
with exquisite, passionate sweetness... Her dark eyes
burned up into his.

“Ellen, I can’t lift you up,” he said, in trembling eager-
ness, signifying his crippled arm. ‘‘But I can kneel with
you!...”

THE END
 

  

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