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But, Ellen Jorth screamed piercingly and snatched her rifle from its resting place and, cocking it, she held it forward and low. Her scream and his uttered name stiffened him. "Y'u 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.
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. Evidently, from his strides and gestures, he was exhorting his listeners. Jean concluded this was either Daggs or Jorth.
"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.
"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.
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 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.
"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.
"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.
And he began to circle to the northwest, back toward the deep canyon 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.
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.
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." From 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.
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