Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
Quite distinctly he saw two little feet, with bare toes peeping out of worn-out moccasins, and then round, bare, symmetrical ankles that had been scratched by brush. Next he saw Ellen Jorth's passionate face as she looked when she had made the violent action so disconcerting to him. In this happy moment the memory seemed farther off than a few hours. It had crystallized.
As Ellen hurried to his side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody blotch. But he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was perfectly conscious. Ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet the mold of features, the look of the eyes, seemed strangely familiar. "You're Jorth's girl," he said, in faint voice of surprise. "Yes, I'm Ellen Jorth," she replied.
"Let them come," said Jean. "I sent for Blaisdell, Blue, Gordon, and Fredericks. Maybe they'll get here in time. But if they don't it needn't worry us much. We can hold out here longer than Jorth's gang can hang around. We'll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house." "Wal, I'll see to that," rejoined his father. "Jean, you go out close by, where you can see all around, an' keep watch."
But what could be settled by a square consideration for the good of all an' the future Jorth will never settle. He'll never settle because he is now no longer an honest man. He's in with Daggs. I cain't prove this, son, but I know it. I saw it in Jorth's face when I met him that day with Greaves. I saw more. I shore saw what he is up to. He'd never meet me at an even break.
"We're goin' to ride off on Jorth's trail an' one way or another kill him KILL HIM! ... I reckon that'll end the fight." What did old Isbel have in his mind? His listeners shook their heads. "No," asserted Blaisdell. "Killin' Jorth might be the end of your desires, Isbel, but it 'd never end our fight.
"We've got to be on the lookout for somethin' else fire, most likely." The old rancher's surmise proved to be partially correct. Jorth's faction ceased the shooting. Nothing further was seen or heard from them. But this silence and apparent break in the siege were harder to bear than deliberate hostility. The long, dark hours dragged by.
I heerd Blaisdell groan, an' Fredericks thar cussed somethin' fierce.... When your dad halted I reckon aboot fifty steps from Jorth then we all went numb. I heerd your dad's voice then Jorth's. They cut like knives. Y'u could shore heah the hate they hed fer each other." Blue had become a little husky. His speech had grown gradually to denote his feeling.
Later he tangled me in the courts he beat me out of property an' last by convictin' me of rustlin' cattle he run me out of Texas." Black and distorted now, Jorth's face was a spectacle to make Ellen sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate. The truth of her father's ruin and her own were enough. What mattered all else?
Often Ellen had to chop wood herself. Jorth did not possess a plow. Ellen was bound to confess that the evidence of this lack dumfounded her. Even old John Sprague raised some hay, beets, turnips. Jorth's cattle and horses fared ill during the winter. Ellen remembered how they used to clean up four-inch oak saplings and aspens. Many of them died in the snow.
He imagined it would be the catastrophe of Ellen Jorth's calm acceptance of Colter's proposition. But down in Jean's miserable heart lived something that would not die. No mere words could kill it. How poignant that moment of her silence! How terribly he realized that if his intelligence and his emotion had believed her betraying words, his soul had not! But Ellen Jorth did not speak.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking