Zane Grey (14 page)

About noon that day Ellen Jorth arrived at the Knoll, which was the
location of her father's ranch. Three canyons met there to form a
larger one. The knoll was a symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of
the three canyons. It was covered with brush and cedars, with here and
there lichened rocks showing above the bleached grass. Below the Knoll
was a wide, grassy flat or meadow through which a willow-bordered
stream cut its rugged boulder-strewn bed. Water flowed abundantly at
this season, and the deep washes leading down from the slopes attested
to the fact of cloudbursts and heavy storms. This meadow valley was
dotted with horses and cattle, and meandered away between the timbered
slopes to lose itself in a green curve. A singular feature of this
canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing
northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore
less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines. The
ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough comer of the largest
of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its
rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black
mud-holes of corrals upon the beautiful and serene meadow valley.

Ellen Jorth approached her home slowly, with dragging, reluctant steps;
and never before in the three unhappy years of her existence there had
the ranch seemed so bare, so uncared for, so repugnant to her. As she
had seen herself with clarified eyes, so now she saw her home. The
cabin that Ellen lived in with her father was a single-room structure
with one door and no windows. It was about twenty feet square. The
huge, ragged, stone chimney had been built on the outside, with the
wide open fireplace set inside the logs. Smoke was rising from the
chimney. As Ellen halted at the door and began unpacking her burro she
heard the loud, lazy laughter of men. An adjoining log cabin had been
built in two sections, with a wide roofed hall or space between them.
The door in each cabin faced the other, and there was a tall man
standing in one. Ellen recognized 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 comer, and this afforded her a
little privacy. Her possessions were limited in number. The crude
square table she had constructed herself. Upon it was a little
old-fashioned walnut-framed mirror, a brush and comb, and a dilapidated
ebony cabinet which contained odds and ends the sight of which always
brought a smile of derisive self-pity to her lips. Under the table
stood an old leather trunk. It had come with her from Texas, and
contained clothing and belongings of her mother's. Above the couch on
pegs hung her scant wardrobe. A tiny shelf held several worn-out books.

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

"I'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 movements 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.

"I 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 his eyes. Like the eyes of an eagle, they
were clear and hard, just now warmed by the dalliance of the moment,
but there was no light, no intelligence in them to prove he understood
her. The instant separated Ellen immeasurably from him and from all of
his ilk.

"Daggs, I was a child," she said. "I was lonely—hungry for
affection—I was innocent. Then I was careless, too, and thoughtless
when I should have known better. But I 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 y'u 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 other."

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

"I'll say to them what I've said to y'u," went on Ellen. "I'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've my suspicions about y'u. Y'u're a bad lot."

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

"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 spoke as he might have spoken to a man;
then turning swiftly on his heel he left her. Outside he encountered
Ellen's father. She heard 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't stop people's tongues," 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.

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

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

"Never mind, dad," she replied. "They 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.

"Yes, dad, I'm afraid a good deal," she said, hesitatingly. Then in
accordance with a decision Ellen had made she told him of the rumored
war between 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 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?"