United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What was he, what was his revengeful father, what were hate and passion and strife in comparison to the nameless something, immense and everlasting, that he sensed in this dark moment? But the rustlers Daggs the Jorths they had killed his brother Guy murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of Jean's a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish.
Your dad got me heah to lead the Jorths, an' that's my say to you.... Simm, you're shore a low-down lyin' rascal. Keep away from Ellen after this or I'll bore you myself.... Jorth, it won't be a bad idee for you to forget you're a Texan till you cool off. Let Bruce stop some Isbel lead.
He appeared to be the gloomiest of the Isbel faction. There was something on his mind. "Wal, the Jorths are bad, but I reckon they'd not burn us alive," replied Blaisdell. "Hah!" ejaculated Gaston Isbel. "Much you know aboot Lee Jorth. He would skin me alive an' throw red-hot coals on my raw flesh." So they talked during the hour from sunset to dark. Jean Isbel had little to say.
Of all men, that he should be the one to recognize the truth of her, the womanhood yet unsullied how strange, how terrible, how overpowering! False, indeed, was she to the Jorths! False as her mother had been to an Isbel! This agony and destruction of her soul was the bitter Dead Sea fruit the sins of her parents visited upon her.
The Jorths and the Isbels can't live on the same earth.... And you've got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and me." The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her. "Never, Jean Isbel!" she cried. "I'll never know truth from y'u.... I'll never share anythin' with y'u not even hell." Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins.
The supposition was that this cowardly attempt had been perpetrated, or certainly instigated, by the Jorths. But there was no proof. And Gaston Isbel had other enemies in the Tonto Basin besides the sheep clan. The old man raged like a lion about this sneaking attack on him. And his friend Blaisdell urged an immediate gathering of their kin and friends.
The distance was not more than fifty yards. As Jean rose to his knee and carefully lifted his rifle round to avoid the twigs of a juniper he suddenly experienced another emotion besides the one of grim, hard wrath at the Jorths. It was an emotion that sickened him, made him weak internally, a cold, shaking, ungovernable sensation. Suppose this man was Ellen Jorth's father! Jean lowered the rifle.
In this grim moment of indecision, when he knew his Indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage over the Jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love for the girl. He made no attempt to deny it any longer. Like the night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitableness of this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality.
"Who's after you?" yelled her father, as she pulled the black to a halt. Jorth held a rifle. Daggs, Colter, the other Jorths were there, likewise armed, and all watchful, strung with expectancy. "Shore nobody's after me," replied Ellen. "Cain't I run a horse round heah without being chased?" Jorth appeared both incensed and relieved.
Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths. The sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter. "Shore y'u might have had me that day on the Rim if y'u hadn't told your name," she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all the mystery of a woman's nature. Isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague.
Word Of The Day