CHAPTER X
Two weeks of lonely solitude in the forest had worked incalculablechange in Ellen Jorth.
Late in June her father and her two uncles had packed and ridden offwith Daggs, Colter, and six other men, all heavily armed, some somberwith drink, others hard and grim with a foretaste of fight. Ellen hadnot been given any orders. Her father had forgotten to bid her good-byor had avoided it. Their dark mission was stamped on their faces.
They had gone and, keen as had been Ellen's pang, nevertheless, theirdeparture was a relief. She had heard them bluster and brag so oftenthat she had her doubts of any great Jorth-Isbel war. Barking dogs didnot bite. Somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly wounded,possibly killed, and then the feud would go on as before, mostly talk.Many of her former impressions had faded. Development had been sorapid and continuous in her that she could look back to a day-by-daytransformation. At night she had hated the sight of herself and whenthe dawn came she would rise, singing.
Jorth had left Ellen at home with the Mexican woman and Antonio. Ellensaw them only at meal times, and often not then, for she frequentlyvisited 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 hadstopped riding the black horse, Spades, she walked. Spades wasaccustomed to having grain, and in the mornings he would come down tothe ranch and whistle. Ellen had vowed she would never feed the horseand bade Antonio do it. But one morning Antonio was absent. She fedSpades herself. When she laid a hand on him and when he rubbed hisnose against her shoulder she was not quite so sure she hated him. "Whyshould I?" she queried. "A horse cain't help it if he belongsto--to--" Ellen was not sure of anything except that more and more itgrew good to be alone.
A whole day in the lonely forest passed swiftly, yet it left a feelingof long time. She lived by her thoughts. Always the morning wasbright, sunny, sweet and fragrant and colorful, and her mood waspensive, wistful, dreamy. And always, just as surely as the hourspassed, thought intruded upon her happiness, and thought broughtmemory, and memory brought shame, and shame brought fight. Sunsetafter sunset she had dragged herself back to the ranch, sullen and sickand beaten. Yet she never ceased to struggle.
The July storms came, and the forest floor that had been so sear andbrown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic. The green grass shotup, the flowers bloomed, and along the canyon beds of lacy ferns swayedin the wind and bent their graceful tips over the amber-colored water.Ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravineswhere the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink. She wanderedalone. But there grew to be company in the aspens and the music of thelittle waterfalls. If she could have lived in that solitude always,never returning to the ranch home that reminded her of her name, shecould have forgotten and have been happy.
She loved the storms. It was a dry country and she had learned throughyears to welcome the creamy clouds that rolled from the southwest.They came sailing and clustering and darkening at last to form a great,purple, angry mass that appeared to lodge against the mountain rim andburst into dazzling streaks of lightning and gray palls of rain.Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Rim there wasnever a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines.During the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did notcamp under the pines. Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, butfor Ellen the dazzling white streaks or the tremendous splitting,crackling shock, or the thunderous boom and rumble along thebattlements of the Rim had no terrors. A storm eased her breast. Deepin her heart was a hidden gathering storm. And somehow, to be out whenthe elements were warring, when the earth trembled and the heavensseemed to burst asunder, afforded her strange relief.
The summer days became weeks, and farther and farther they carriedEllen on the wings of solitude and loneliness until she seemed to lookback years at the self she had hated. And always, when the dark memoryimpinged upon peace, she fought and fought until she seemed to befighting hatred itself. Scorn of scorn and hate of hate! Yet even herbattles grew to be dreams. For when the inevitable retrospect broughtback Jean Isbel and his love and her cowardly falsehood she wouldshudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterlyfail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. Theclean and healing forest, with its whispering wind and imperioussolitude, had come between Ellen and the meaning of the squalid sheepranch, with its travesty of home, its tragic owner. And it was comingbetween her two selves, the one that she had been forced to be and theother that she did not know--the thinker, the dreamer, the romancer,the one who lived in fancy the life she loved.
The summer morning dawned that brought Ellen strange tidings. Theymust have been created in her sleep, and now were realized in theglorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across theblue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screechof the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. These heralded the dayas no ordinary day. Something was going to happen to her. She divinedit. She felt it. And she trembled. Nothing beautiful, hopeful,wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had been born todisaster, to suffer, to be forgotten, and die alone. Yet all natureabout her seemed a magnificent rebuke to her morbidness. The samespirit that came out there with the thick, amber light was in her. Shelived, and something in her was stronger than mind.
Ellen went to the door of her cabin, where she flung out her arms,driven to embrace this nameless purport of the morning. And awell-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 troubledlook.
"Oh! Uncle John! You startled me," exclaimed Ellen, shocked back toreality. 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. "Thefirst Jorth-Isbel fight has come off.... Reckon you remember makin' mepromise to tell you if I heerd anythin'. Wal, I didn't wait fer you tocome up."
"So Ellen heard her voice calmly saying. What was this lying calm whenthere seemed to be a stone hammer at her heart? The first fight--notso 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' sunnythis--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. Butexcoose me from hangin' round thet village last night! There wasshore--"
"Who--who was killed?" interrupted Ellen, her voice breaking low anddeep.
"Guy Isbel an' Bill Jacobs on the Isbel side, an' Daggs, Craig, an'Greaves on your father's side," stated Sprague, with something of awedhaste.
"Ah!" breathed Ellen, and she relaxed to sink back against the cabinwall.
Sprague seated himself on the log beside her, turning to face her, andhe seemed burdened with grave and important matters.
"I heerd a good many conflictin' stories," he said, earnestly. "Thevillage folks is all skeered an' there's no believin' their gossip. ButI got what happened straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off daybefore yestiddy. Your father's gang rode down to Isbel's ranch. Daggswas seen to be wantin' some of the Isbel hosses, so Evarts says. An'Guy Isbel an' Jacobs ran out in the pasture. Daggs an' some othersshot them down."
"Killed them--that way?" put in Ellen, sharply.
"So Evarts says. He was on the ridge an' swears he seen it all. Theykilled Guy an' Jacobs in cold blood. No chance fer their lives--noteven to fight! ... Wall, hen they surrounded the Isbel cabin. Thefight last all thet day an' all night an' the next day. Evarts saysGuy an' Jacobs laid out thar all this time. An' a herd of hogs brokein the pasture an' was eatin' the dead bodies ..."
"My G
od!" burst out Ellen. "Uncle John, y'u shore cain't mean myfather 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 thehogs," declared Sprague. "An' then, what d' ye think? The wimminfolkscome out--the red-headed one, Guy's wife, an' Jacobs's wife--theydrove the hogs away an' buried their husbands right there in thepasture. Evarts says he seen the graves."
"It is the women who can teach these bloody Texans a lesson," declaredEllen, forcibly.
"Wal, Daggs was drunk, an' he got up from behind where the gang washidin', 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 onguard.... An' last--this here's what I come to tell you--Jean Isbelslipped 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 toa quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment. "By whom?"
"Jean Isbel," replied Sprague, as if the name and the fact weremomentous.
Ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees. Slowly shefelt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below herneck. That name locked her thought.
"Ellen, it's a mighty queer story--too queer to be a lie," went onSprague. "Now you listen! Evarts got this from Ted Meeker. An' TedMeeker heerd it from Greaves, who didn't die till the next day afterJean Isbel knifed him. An' your dad shot Ted fer tellin' what heheerd.... No, Greaves wasn't killed outright. He was cut somethin'turrible--in two places. They wrapped him all up an' next day packedhim in a wagon back to Grass Valley. Evarts says Ted Meeker wasfriendly with Greaves an' went to see him as he was layin' in his roomnext to the store. Wal, accordin' to Meeker's story, Greaves came toan' talked. He said he was sittin' there in the dark, shootin'occasionally at Isbel's cabin, when he heerd a rustle behind him in thegrass. He knowed some one was crawlin' on him. But before he couldget 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 inthe 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 allGreaves remembered. He died soon after tellin' this story. He musthev fought awful hard. Thet second cut Isbel gave him went clearthrough him.... Some of the gang was thar when Greaves talked, an'naturally they wondered why Jean Isbel had said 'first for EllenJorth.' ... Somebody remembered thet Greaves had cast a slur on yourgood 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 bustedin some of the gang haw-hawed him an' said as how he'd get the thirdcut from Jean Isbel's bowie. Bruce was half drunk an' he began to cussan' rave about Jean Isbel bein' in love with his girl.... As bad luckwould have it, a couple of more fellars come in an' asked Meekerquestions. 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 yourfather! ... 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. Somebodygrabbed him before he could shoot Meeker again. They threw Meeker outan' he crawled to a neighbor's house, where he was when Evarts seenhim."
Ellen felt Sprague's rough but kindly hand shaking her. "An' now whatdo you think of Jean Isbel?" he queried.
A great, unsurmountable wall seemed to obstruct Ellen's thought. Itseemed gray in color. It moved toward her. It was inside her brain.
"I tell you, Ellen Jorth," declared the old man, "thet Jean Isbel lovesyou--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' heknows it.... What a queer deal it all is! Poor devil! To love youthet turribly an' hev to fight your people! Ellen, your dad had itcorrect. Isbel or not, he's a man.... An' I say what a shame you twoare divided by hate. Hate thet you hed nothin' to do with." Spraguepatted her head and rose to go. "Mebbe thet fight will end thetrouble. 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 myburros. Come up soon.... An', say, Ellen, don't think hard any more ofthet Jean Isbel."
Sprague strode away, and Ellen neither heard nor saw him go. She satperfectly motionless, yet had a strange sensation of being lifted byinvisible and mighty power. It was like movement felt in a dream. Shewas being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. Whenher blood beat down this deadlock of an her physical being and rushedon and on through her veins it gave her an irresistible impulse to fly,to sail through space, to ran and run and ran.
And on the moment the black horse, Spades, coming from the meadow,whinnied at sight of her. Ellen leaped up and ran swiftly, but herfeet seemed to be stumbling. She hugged the horse and buried her hotface in his mane and clung to him. Then just as violently she rushedfor her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as ifit had been an empty sack. Throwing them upon him, she buckled andstrapped with strong, eager hands. It never occurred to her that shewas not dressed to ride. Up she flung herself. And the horse, sensingher spirit, plunged into strong, free gait down the canyon trail.
The ride, the action, the thrill, the sensations of violence were notall she needed. Solitude, the empty aisles of the forest, the farmiles of lonely wilderness--were these the added all? Spades took aswinging, rhythmic lope up the winding trail. The wind fanned her hotface. The sting of whipping aspen branches was pleasant. A deeprumble of thunder shook the sultry air. Up beyond the green slope ofthe canyon massed the creamy clouds, shading darker and darker. Spadesloped 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 thepommel. Her hands could not stay set on anything. They pressed herbreast and flew out to caress the white aspens and to tear at the mapleleaves, and gather the lavender juniper berries, and came back again toher heart. Her heart that was going to burst or break! As it hadswelled, so now it labored. It could not keep pace with her needs. Allthat was physical, all that was living in her had to be unleashed.
Spades gained the level forest. How the great, brown-green pinesseemed 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 goldensunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles, shone downthrough the canopy overhead. Away in front of her, up the slow heaveof forest land, boomed the heavy thunderbolts along the battlements ofthe Rim.
Was she riding to escape from herself? For no gait suited her untilSpades was running hard and fast through the glades. Then the pressureof dry wind, the thick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green andgold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of thepowerful horse under her, the whip of spruce branches on her musclescontracting and expanding in hard action--all these sensations seemedto quell for the time the mounting cataclysm in her heart.
The oak swales, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shadedaisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she hadridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open ofthe 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 ridde
n, and to the point where she hadwatched Jean Isbel that unforgetable day. She rode to the promontorybehind the pine thicket and beheld a scene which stayed her restlesshands upon her heaving breast.
The world of sky and cloud and earthly abyss seemed one ofstorm-sundered grandeur. The air was sultry and still, and smelled ofthe peculiar burnt-wood odor caused by lightning striking trees. A fewheavy drops of rain were pattering down from the thin, gray edge ofclouds overhead. To the east hung the storm--a black cloud lodgedagainst the Rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed downinto the gulf. The roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of therapids of a river. Then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streakof lightning shot down out of the black cloud. It struck with asplitting report that shocked the very wall of rock under Ellen. Thenthe heavens seemed to burst open with thundering crash and close withmighty thundering boom. Long roar and longer rumble rolled away to theeastward. The rain poured down in roaring cataracts.
The south held a panorama of purple-shrouded range and canyon, canyonand range, on across the rolling leagues to the dim, lofty peaks, allcanopied over with angry, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide,smoky, and sulphurous. And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to herbreast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this tempest and gulfthat resembled her soul, the sun burst out from behind the long bank ofpurple cloud in the west and flooded the world there with goldenlightning.
"It is for me!" cried Ellen. "My mind--my heart--my very soul.... Oh, Iknow! I know now! ... I love him--love him--love him!"
She cried it out to the elements. "Oh, I love Jean Isbel--an' my heartwill burst or break!"
The might of her passion was like the blaze of the sun. Before it allelse retreated, diminished. The suddenness of the truth dimmed hersight. But she saw clearly enough to crawl into the pine thicket,through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles tothe covert where she had once spied upon Jean Isbel. And here she layface down for a while, hands clutching the needles, breast pressed hardupon the ground, stricken and spent. But vitality was exceeding strongin her. It passed, that weakness of realization, and she awakened tothe 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 millioninherited instincts, quivering and physical, over which Ellen had nomore control than she had over the glory of the sun. If she thought atall it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near theearth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature. Shewent to nature, unconsciously seeking a mother. And love was a birthfrom the depths of her, like a rushing spring of pure water, longunderground, and at last propelled to the surface by a convulsion.
Ellen gradually lost her tense rigidity and relaxed. Her bodysoftened. She rolled over until her face caught the lacy, goldenshadows cast by sun and bough. Scattered drops of rain pattered aroundher. The air was hot, and its odor was that of dry pine and sprucefragrance penetrated by brimstone from the lightning. The nest whereshe lay was warm and sweet. No eye save that of nature saw her in herabandonment. An ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips,dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness. Overher dark and eloquent eyes, as Ellen gazed upward, spread a luminousfilm, a veil. She was looking intensely, yet she did not see. Thewilderness enveloped her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock,of tree, of cloud, of sunlight. Through her thrilling skin poured themultiple and nameless sensations of the living organism stirred tosupreme sensitiveness. She could not lie still, but all her movementswere gentle, involuntary. The slow reaching out of her hand, to graspat nothing visible, was similar to the lazy stretching of her limbs, tothe heave of her breast, to the ripple of muscle.
Ellen knew not what she felt. To live that sublime hour was beyondthought. Such happiness was like the first dawn of the world to thesight of man. It had to do with bygone ages. Her heart, her blood,her flesh, her very bones were filled with instincts and emotionscommon to the race before intellect developed, when the savage livedonly with his sensorial perceptions. Of all happiness, joy, bliss,rapture to which man was heir, that of intense and exquisitepreoccupation of the senses, unhindered and unburdened by thought, wasthe greatest. Ellen felt that which life meant with its inscrutabledesign. Love was only the realization of her mission on the earth.
The dark storm cloud with its white, ragged ropes of lightning anddown-streaming gray veils of rain, the purple gulf rolling like acolored sea to the dim mountains, the glorious golden light of thesun--these had enchanted her eyes with her beauty of the universe. Theyhad burst the windows of her blindness. When she crawled into thegreen-brown covert it was to escape too great perception. She neededto be encompassed by close, tangible things. And there her body paidthe tribute to the realization of life. Shock, convulsion, pain,relaxation, and then unutterable and insupportable sensing of herenvironment and the heart! In one way she was a wild animal alone inthe woods, forced into the mating that meant reproduction of its kind.In another she was an infinitely higher being shot through and throughwith the most resistless and mysterious transport that life could giveto flesh.
And when that spell slackened its hold there wedged into her mind aconsciousness of the man she loved--Jean Isbel. Then emotion andthought strove for mastery over her. It was not herself or love thatshe loved, but a living man. Suddenly he existed so clearly for herthat she could see him, hear him, almost feel him. Her whole soul, hervery life cried out to him for protection, for salvation, for love, forfulfillment. No denial, no doubt marred the white blaze of herrealization. From the instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel'sdark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now,and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond herken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance--to the threetimes she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of hisreturned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! Hehad sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now ablind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How weak and frail seemedher body--too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engineof fire and lightning and fury and glory--her heart! It must burst orbreak. Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled andemotion conquered her. At last she quivered up to her knees as iflashed to action. It seemed that first kiss of Isbel's, cool andgentle and timid, was on her lips. And her eyes closed and hot tearswelled from under her lids. Her groping hands found only the deadtwigs and the pine boughs of the trees. Had she reached out to clasphim? Then hard and violent on her mouth and cheek and neck burnedthose other kisses of Isbel's, and with the flashing, stinging memorycame the truth that now she would have bartered her soul for them.Utterly she surrendered to the resistlessness of this love. Her lossof mother and friends, her wandering from one wild place to another,her lonely life among bold and rough men, had developed her for violentlove. It overthrew all pride, it engendered humility, it killed hate.Ellen wiped the tears from her eyes, and as she knelt there she sweptto her breast a fragrant spreading bough of pine needles. "I'll go tohim," she whispered. "I'll tell him of--of my--my love. I'll tell himto take me away--away to the end of the world--away from heah--beforeit's too late!"
It was a solemn, beautiful moment. But the last spoken words lingeredhauntingly. "Too late?" she whispered.
And suddenly it seemed that death itself shuddered in her soul. Toolate! It was too late. She had killed his love. That Jorth blood inher--that poisonous hate--had chosen the only way to strike this nobleIsbel to the heart. Basely, with an abandonment of womanhood, she hadmockingly perjured her soul with a vile lie. She writhed, she shookunder the whip of this inconceivable fact. Lost! Lost! She wailedher misery. She might as well be what she had made Jean Isbel thinkshe was. If she had been shamed before, she was now abased, degraded,lost in her own sight. And if she would have given her soul for hiskisses, she now would have killed
herself to earn back his respect.Jean Isbel had given her at sight the deference that she hadunconsciously craved, and the love that would have been her salvation.What a horrible mistake she had made of her life! Not her mother'sblood, but her father's--the Jorth blood--had been her ruin.
Again Ellen fell upon the soft pine-needle mat, face down, and shegroveled and burrowed there, in an agony that could not bear the senseof light. All she had suffered was as nothing to this. To haveawakened to a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she hadimagined she hated, who had fought for her name and had killed inrevenge for the dishonor she had avowed--to have lost his love and whatwas infinitely more precious to her now in her ignominy--his faith inher purity--this broke her heart.