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Updated: June 29, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Toward sunset, when the besiegers appeared to grow restless or careless, Blaisdell fired at something moving behind the brush; and Gaston Isbel's huge 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.
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." During June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley. Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel's life.
"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 something on his mind.
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 fiance, 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.
"An' then 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."
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