Ellen 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, 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 plaintively. With her work done for the day, Ellen sat before a ruddy camp fire, and found her thoughts again centering around the singular adventure that had befallen her. Disdainfully 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 significance of interest. And when a hint of this dawned upon her consciousness she resented it so forcibly that she lost her temper, scattered the camp fire, and went into the little teepee tent to roll in her blankets.
Thus settled snug and warm for the night, with a shepherd dog curled at the opening of her tent, she shut her eyes and confidently bade sleep end her perplexities. But sleep did not come at her invitation. She found herself wide awake, keenly sensitive to the sputtering of the camp fire, the tinkling of bells on the rams, the bleating of lambs, the sough of wind in the pines, and the hungry sharp bark of coyotes off in the distance. Darkness 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.
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 delightful 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 accepted the astounding reality. Her confidence 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 new curious self, only to lose it the next. And at last out of her conflict there emerged a few convictions that left her with some shreds of pride. She hated all Isbels, she hated any Isbel, and particularly she hated 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.
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 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 canyon, rugged and rocky with but few pines on the north slope, thick with dark green timber on the south slope. Yellow and gray crags, like turreted castles, stood up out of the sloping forest on the side opposite her. The trees were all sharp, spear pointed. Patches of light green aspens showed strikingly against the dense black. The great slope beneath Ellen was serrated with narrow, deep gorges, almost canyons in themselves. Shadows alternated with clear bright spaces. The mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened upon the Basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines, valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the Sierra Anchas.
But for once Ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of wildness and grandeur. Her ears were like those of a listening deer, and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At first, in her excitement, time flew by. Gradually, however, as the sun moved westward, she began to be restless. The soft thud of dropping pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling. Finally she heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone. Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine thicket to the spot she had chosen. The little pines were so close together that she had to crawl between their trunks. The ground was covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant. In her hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the blood. She sucked the tiny wound. “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 approaches by which he might come. Rather nervously she realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the promontory. It was imperative that she be absolutely silent. Her eyes searched the openings along the Rim. The gray form of a deer crossed one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard. Then she lay down more comfortably and waited. Resolutely she held, as much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions. The meaning of Ellen 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 her real self. She stretched there, burying her face in the pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as that they might hide her. The moment was incomprehensible to Ellen, and utterly intolerable. The sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite relief.
The shrill snort of a horse sounded near at hand. With a shock Ellen’s body stiffened. Then she quivered a little and her feelings underwent swift change. Cautiously and noiselessly she raised herself upon her elbows and peeped through the opening in the brush. She saw a man tying a 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 confidently waited for her. Fool he was to think she would come. Ellen sank down and dropped her head until 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 position from which he could watch the openings in the forest and gaze as well across the west curve of the Basin to the Mazatzals. He had composed himself to wait. He was clad in a buckskin suit, rather new, and it certainly showed off to advantage, compared with the ragged and soiled apparel Ellen remembered. He did not look so large. Ellen was used to the long, lean, rangy Arizonians and Texans. This man was built differently. He had the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made him appear rather short. But his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was not short. Whenever he moved the muscles rippled. 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 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 at her words, “Oh, I’ve been kissed before!” She was glad 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 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 impression 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 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 beginning 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 conjectures 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 rifle leaning against a rock. Verily Jean Isbel had been far removed from hostile intent that day. She watched him stride swiftly up to his horse, untie the halter, and mount. Ellen had an impression of his arrowlike straight figure, and sinuous grace and ease. Then he looked back at the promontory, as if to fix a picture of it in his mind, and rode away along the Rim. She watched him out of sight. What ailed her? Something was wrong with her, but she recognized only relief.
When 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 camp. Long shafts of gold preceded her through the forest. 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 fury. She kicked the package again, and thought she would kick it into the smoldering camp-fire. But somehow she stopped short of that. She left the thing there on the ground.
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 contained? Manifestly it was a gift. She argued that she was highly incensed with this insolent Isbel who had the effrontery to approach her with some sort of present.
It developed that the usually cheerful Antonio had returned taciturn and gloomy. All Ellen could get out of him was that the job of sheep herder had taken on hazards inimical to peace-loving Mexicans. He had heard something he would not tell. Ellen helped prepare the supper and she ate in silence. She had her own brooding troubles. 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 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,” muttered 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 knew 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 without burning it. And to her annoyance, whatever way she lay she appeared to touch this strange package. There was not much room in the little tent. First she put it at her head beside her rifle, but when she turned over her cheek came in contact with it. Then she felt as if she had been stung. She moved it again, only to touch it presently with her hand. Next she flung it to the bottom of her bed, where it fell upon her feet, and whatever way she moved them she could not escape the pressure of this undesirable and mysterious gift.
By and by she fell asleep, only to dream that the package was a caressing hand stealing about her, feeling for hers, and holding it with soft, strong clasp. When she awoke she had the strangest sensation in her right palm. It was moist, throbbing, hot, and the feel of it on her cheek was strangely thrilling and comforting. She lay awake then. The night was dark and still. Only a low moan of wind in the pines and the faint tinkle of a sheep bell broke the serenity. She felt very small and lonely lying there in the deep forest, and, try how she would, it was impossible to think the same then as she did in the clear light of day. Resentment, pride, anger—these seemed abated now. If the events of the day had not changed her, they had at least brought up softer and kinder memories and emotions than she had known for long. Nothing hurt and saddened her so much as to remember the gay, happy days of her childhood, her sweet mother, her, old home. Then her thought returned to Isbel and his gift. It had been years since anyone had made her a gift. What could this one be? It did not matter. The wonder was that 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 on a 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 carrying her rifle. And soon she was deep in the fragrant forest. The morning was clear and cool, with just enough frost to make the sunlit grass sparkle as if with diamonds. Ellen felt fresh, buoyant, singularly full of, life. Her youth would not be denied. It was pulsing, yearning. She hummed an old Southern tune and every step seemed one of pleasure in action, of advance toward some intangible future happiness. All the unknown of life before her called. Her heart beat high in her breast and she walked as one in a dream. Her thoughts were swift-changing, intimate, deep, and vague, not of yesterday or to-day, nor of reality.
The big, gray, white-tailed squirrels crossed ahead of her on the trail, scampered over the 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 Canyon. It was rough going and less conducive to sweet wanderings of mind. Ellen slowly lost them. And then a familiar feeling assailed her, one she never failed to have upon returning to her father’s ranch—a reluctance, a bitter dissatisfaction with her home, a loyal struggle against the vague sense that all was not as it should be.
At the head of this canyon in a little, level, grassy meadow stood a rude one-room log shack, with a leaning red-stone chimney on the outside. This was the abode of a strange old man who had long lived there. His name was John Sprague and his occupation was raising burros. No sheep or cattle or horses did he own, not even a dog. Rumor had said Sprague was a prospector, one of the many who had searched that country for the Lost Dutchman gold mine. Sprague knew more about the Basin and Rim than any of the sheepmen or ranchers. From Black Butte to the Cibique and from Chevelon Butte to Reno Pass he knew every trail, canyon, 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 raise burros, and would raise none but black burros with white faces. These burros were the finest bred in all 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.
“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. “I’d never give y’u away. 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 head.
“Wal, wal, I’m sorry. I was hopin’ you might git away.”
She lifted her face. “Shore y’u don’t think I’d run off if my dad got in a fight?” she flashed.
“I hope you will.”
“I’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 I’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?”
“I think what’s fair for one is fair for another. I don’t like sheep as much as I like cattle. But that’s not the point. The range is free. Suppose y’u had cattle and I had sheep. I’d feel as free to run my sheep anywhere as y’u were to ran 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?”
“I’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?”
“Wal, wouldn’t you git kind of a hunch thet the rustlers was—say a leetle friendly toward the sheepmen?”
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.
“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.”
“I hate everybody down there,” cried Ellen, passionately. “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 and me. That’s what I glory in.”
“Ellen, you’re a wild, headstrong child,” rejoined the old man, in severe tones. “Word has been passed 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 stem, 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 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?
“I—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 attentions.... Oh, I must be—I am a shameless 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 rough 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 light 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. Yu 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 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.”
