Early in July the hot weather came. Down in the red ridges of the Tonto it was hot desert. The nights were cool, the early mornings were pleasant, but the day was something to endure. When the white cumulus clouds rolled up out of the southwest, growing larger and thicker and darker, here and there coalescing into a black thunderhead, Jean welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down low from a canopy of black, and the roar of rain on the trees as it approached like a trampling army was always welcome. The grassy flats, the red ridges, the rocky slopes, the thickets of manzanita and scrub oak and cactus were dusty, glaring, throat-parching places under the hot summer sun. Jean longed for the cool heights of the Tonto Rim, the shady pines, the dark, sweet verdure under the silver spruce, the tinkle and murmur of the clear rills. He often had another longing, too, which he bitterly stifled.

  Jean’s ally, the keen-nosed shepherd dog, had disappeared one day, and had never returned. Among the men at the ranch there was a difference of opinion as to what had happened to Shepp. The old rancher thought he had been poisoned or shot. Bill and Guy Isbel believed he had been stolen by sheepherders who were always stealing dogs. Jean inclined to the conviction that Shepp had gone off with the timber wolves. The fact was that Shepp did not return, and Jean missed him.

  One morning at dawn Jean heard the cattle bellowing and trampling out in the valley, and, upon hurrying to a vantage point, he was amazed to see upwards of five hundred steers chasing a lone wolf. Jean’s father had seen such a spectacle as this, but it was a new one for Jean. The wolf was a big gray-and-black fellow, rangy and powerful, and, until he got the steers all behind him, he was rather hard put to it to keep out of their way. Probably he had dogged the herd, trying to sneak in and pull down a yearling, and finally the steers had charged him. Jean kept along the edge of the valley in the hope they would chase him within range of a rifle, but the wary wolf saw Jean and sheared off, gradually drawing away from his pursuers.

  Jean returned to the house for his breakfast, and then set off across the valley. His father owned one small flock of sheep that had not yet been driven up on the rim where all the sheep in that country were run during the hot dry summer down on the Tonto. Young Evarts and a Mexican boy named Bernardino had charge of this flock. The regular Mexican herder, a man of experience, had given up his job, and these boys were not equal to the task of herding the sheep up in the enemies’ stronghold.

  This flock was known to be grazing in a side draw, well up from Grass Valley, where the brush afforded some protection from the sun and there was good water and a little feed. Before Jean reached his destination, he heard a shot. It was not a rifle shot, which fact caused Jean a little concern. Evarts and Bernardino had rifles, but to his keen eyes no small arms. Jean rode up in one of the black-brushed conical hills that rose on the south side of Grass Valley, and from there he took a sharp survey of the country. At first he made out only cattle and bare meadowland and the low, encircling ridges and hills. But presently, up toward the head of the valley, he descried a bunch of horsemen, riding toward the village. He could not tell their number. That dark moving mass seemed to Jean to be instinct with life, mystery, menace. Who were they? It was too far for him to recognize horses, let alone riders. They were moving fast, too.

  Jean watched them out of sight, then turned his horse downhill again, and rode on his quest. A number of horsemen like that was a very unusual sight around Grass Valley at any time. What, then, did it portend now? Jean experienced a little shock of uneasy dread that was an unusual situation for him. Brooding over this, he proceeded on his way, at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheepherders was located. Upon coming in sight of it, he heard a hoarse shout. Young Evarts appeared running frantically out of the brush. Jean urged his horse into a run and soon covered the distance between them. Evarts appeared beside himself with terror.

  “Boy, what’s the matter?” queried Jean as he dismounted, rifle in hand, peering quickly from Evarts’s white face to the camp, and all around.

  “Ber-nardino! Ber-nardino!” gasped the boy, wringing his hands and pointing.

  Jean ran the few remaining rods to the sheep camp. He saw the little teepee, a burned-out fire, a half-finished meal—and then the Mexican lad lying prone on the ground, dead, with a bullet hole in his ghastly face. Near him lay an old six-shooter.

  “Whose gun is this?” demanded Jean as he picked it up.

  “Ber-nardino’s,” replied Evarts huskily. “He … he jest got it … the other day.”

  “Did he shoot himself accidentally?”

  “Oh, no! No! He didn’t do it … a-tall.”

  “Who did then?”

  “The men … they rode off … a gang … they did it,” panted Evarts.

  “Did you know who they were?”

  “No. I couldn’t tell. I saw them comin’ an’ I was skeered. Bernardino had gone fer water. I run an’ hid in the brush. I wanted to yell, but they come too close. Then I heered them talkin’. Bernardino came back. They ’peared friendly-like. That made me raise up to look, an’ I couldn’t see good. I heered one of them ask Bernardino to let him see his gun. An’ Bernardino handed it over. He was a big, tall man with shiny hair. He looked at the gun an’ haw-hawed, an’ flipped it up in the air, an’, when it fell back in his hand, it … it went off bang! An’ Bernardino dropped. I heered them talk some, but not what they said. Then they rode away. An’ I hid there till I seen you comin’.”

  “Have you got a horse?” queried Jean sharply.

  “No. But I can ride one of Bernardino’s burros.”

  “Get one. Hurry over to Blaisdell. Tell him to send word to Blue and Gordon and Fredericks to ride like the devil to my father’s ranch. Hurry now.”

  Young Evarts ran off without reply. Jean stood looking down at the limp and pathetic figure of the Mexican boy. “By heaven!” he exclaimed grimly. “The Jorth-Isbel war is on! Deliberate, cold-blooded murder! I’ll gamble Daggs did this job. He’s been given the leadership. He’s started it. Bernardino, you were a faithful lad, and you won’t go long unavenged.”

  Jean had no time to spare. Tearing the tarpaulin out of the teepee, he covered the lad with it, and then ran for his horse. Mounting, he galloped down the draw, over the little red ridges, out into the valley, where he put his horse to a run.

  Action changed the sickening horror that sight of Bernardino had engendered. Jean even felt a strange, grim relief. The long, dragging days of waiting were over. Jorth’s gang had taken the initiative. Blood had begun to flow, and it would continue to flow now till the last man of one faction stood over the dead body of the last man of the other. Would it be a Jorth or an Isbel? “My instinct was right,” he muttered aloud. “That bunch of horses gave me a queer feelin’.” Jean gazed all around the grassy cattle-dotted valley he was crossing so swiftly and toward the village, but he did not see any sign of the dark group of riders. They had gone in to Greaves’s store, there no doubt to drink, and to add more enemies of the Isbels to their gang. Suddenly across Jean’s mind flashed a thought of Ellen Jorth. What’ll become of her? What’ll become of all the women? My sister? The little ones!

  No one was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens, the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate Jean’s haste and his darkness of mind. This place was his father’s ranch. There was not a cloud in the summer sky.

  As Jean galloped up the lane, someone saw him from the door, and presently Bill and Guy, and then their gray-headed father, came out upon the porch. Jean saw how his father waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the lane. Bill and Guy reached his side first as Jean pulled his heaving horse to a halt. They all looked at Jean, swiftly and intently, with a little, hard, fiery gleam, strangely identical in the eyes of each. Probably before a word was spoken they knew what to expect.

  “Wal, you shore was in a hurry,” remarked Gaston Isbel.

  “What the hell’s up?” queried Bill grimly.

  Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean leaped off his horse.

  “Bernardino has just been killed … murdered with his own gun.”

  Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed bursting breath that let his chest sag. A terrible, deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.

  “A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel hoarsely.

  Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. They were silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their own minds. Then they listened absorbedly to Jean’s brief story.

  “Wal, that’s the start,” said his father. “I wish we’d had more time. Reckon I’d done better to listen to you boys an’ have my men close at hand. Jacobs happened to ride over. That makes five of us besides the women.”

  “Aw, Dad, you don’t reckon they’ll attack us heah?” asked Guy Isbel.

  “Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old man. “But I never really believed they’d have the nerve. Shore I might have figgered Daggs better. This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush looked aboot Jorth’s size to me. But I reckon now we’ll have to fight without our friends.”

  “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.”

  “Who’s goin’ to tell the women?” asked Guy Isbel.

  The silence that momentarily ensued was an eloquent testimony to the hardest and saddest aspect of this strife between men. The inevitableness of it in no wise detracted from its sheer uselessness. Men from time immemorial have hated and killed each other, always to the misery and degradation of their women. Old Gaston Isbel showed this tragic realization in his lined face.

  “Wal, boys, I’ll tell the women,” he said. “Shore you needn’t worry none about them. They’ll be game.”

  Jean rode away to an open knoll a short distance from the house, and here he stationed himself to watch all points. The cedared ridge back of the ranch was the one approach by which Jorth’s gang might come close without being detected, but even so Jean could see them and ride to the house in time to prevent a surprise. The moments dragged by, and at the end of an hour Jean was in hope that Blaisdell would soon come. This hope was well founded. Presendy he heard a clatter of hoofs on hard ground to the south, and, upon wheeling to look, he saw the friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse. Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand and the sight of him gave Jean a glow of warmth. He was one of the Texans who would stand by the Isbels to the last man. Jean watched him ride to the house—watched the meeting between him and his life-long friend. Then old Blaisdell’s roar of rage floated out to Jean.

  Out on the green of Grass Valley, where a long swelling plain swept away toward the village, there appeared a moving dark patch. A bunch of horses! Jean’s body gave a slight start—the shock of sudden propulsion of blood through all his veins. Those horses bore riders. They were coming straight down the open valley, on the wagon road to Isbel’s ranch. No subterfuge or secrecy or sneaking in that advance! A hot thrill ran over Jean.

  “By Heaven, they mean business,” he muttered. Up to the last moment he had unconsciously hoped Jorth’s gang would not come boldly like that. The verifications of all a Texan’s inherited instincts left no doubts, no hopes, no illusions—only a grim certainty that this was not conjecture or probability, but a physical fact. For a moment longer Jean watched the slowly moving dark patch of horsemen against the green background, then he hurried back to the ranch. His father saw him coming—strode out as before.

  “Dad … Jorth is comin’,” said Jean huskily. How he hated to be forced to tell his father that! The boyish love of old had flashed up.

  “Whar?” demanded the old man, his eagle eyes sweeping the horizon.

  “Down the road from Grass Valley. You can’t see from here.”

  “Wal, come in an’ let’s get ready.”

  Isbel’s house had been constructed with the idea of repelling an attack from a band of Apaches. The large living room of the main cabin was the one selected for defense and protection. This room had two windows and a door facing the lane and a door at each end, one of which opened into the kitchen and the other into an adjoining cabin built later. The logs of this main cabin were of large size and the doors and window coverings were heavy, affording safer protection from bullets than the other cabins. When Jean went in, he seemed to see a host of white faces lifted to him. His sister Ann, his two sisters-in-law, the children, all mutely watched him with eyes that would haunt him.

  “Wal, Blaisdell, Jean says Jorth an’ his precious gang of rustlers are on the way heah,” announced the rancher.

  “Damn me if it’s not a bad day fer Lee Jorth!” declared Blaisdell.

  “Clear off that table,” ordered Isbel, “an’ fetch out all the guns an’ shells we got.”

  Once laid upon the table, these presented a formidable arsenal that consisted of the three new .44 Winchesters that Jean had brought with him from the Coast; the enormous buffalo, or so-called needle, gun that Gaston Isbel had used for years; a Henry rifle that Blaisdell had brought, and half a dozen six-shooters. Piles and packages of ammunition littered the table.

  “Sort out these heah shells,” said Isbel. “Everybody wants to get hold of his own.”

  Jacobs, the neighbor who was present, was a thick-set bearded man, rather jovial among those lean-jawed Texans. He carried a .44 rifle of an old pattern. “Wal, boys, if I’d knowed we was in fer some fun, I’d hev’ fetched more shells. Only got me a magazine full. Mebbe them new Forty-Fours will fit my gun.”

  It was discovered that the ammunition Jean had brought in quantity fitted Jacob’s rifle, a fact that afforded peculiar satisfaction to all the men present.

  “Wal, shore we’re lucky,” declared Gaston Isbel.

  The women sat apart, in the corner toward the kitchen, and there seemed to be a strange fascination for them in the talk and action of the men. The wife of Jacobs was a little woman with a homely face and very bright eyes. Jean thought she would be a help in that household during the next doubtful hours.

  Every moment Jean would go to the window and peer out down the road. His companions evidently relied upon him, for no one else looked out. Now that the suspense of days and weeks was over, these Texans faced the issue with talk and action not noticeably different from those of ordinary moments.

  At last Jean espied the dark mass of horsemen out on the valley road. They were close together, walking their mounts, and evidently in earnest conversation. After several ineffectual attempts Jean counted eleven horses, every one of which he was sure bore a rider.

  “Dad, look out!” called Jean.

  Gaston Isbel strode to the door and stood looking without a word. The other men crowded to the window. Blaisdell cursed under his breath. Jacobs said: “By Golly! Come to pay us a call!” The women sat motionless with dark, strained eyes. The children ceased their play and looked fearfully to their mother.

  When just out of rifle shot of the cabins, the band of horsemen halted and lined up in a half circle, all facing the ranch house. They were close enough for Jean to see their gestures, but he could not recognize any of their faces. It struck him singularly that not one of them wore a mask.

  “Jean, do you know any of them?” asked his father.

  “No, not yet. They’re too far off.”

  “Dad, I’ll get your old telescope,” said Guy Isbel, and he ran out toward the adjoining cabin.

  Blaisdell shook his big, hoary head and rumbled out of his bull-like neck: “Wal, now you’re heah, you sheep fellers, what are you goin’ to do aboot it?”

  Guy Isbel returned with a yard-long telescope that he passed to his father. The old man took it with shaking hands and leveled it. Suddenly it was as if he had been transfixed. Then he lowered the glass, shaking violently, and his face grew gray with an exceedingly bitter wrath.

  “Jorth!” he swore harshly.

  Jean had only to look at his father to know that recognition had been like a mortal shock. It passed. Again the rancher leveled the glass.

  “Wal, Blaisdell, there’s our old Texas friend, Daggs,” he drawled dryly. “An’ Greaves, our honest storekeeper of Grass Valley. An’ there’s Stonewall Jackson Jorth. An’ Tad Jorth with the same old red nose! An’, say, damn if one of that gang isn’t Queen, as bad a gunfighter as Texas ever bred. Shore I thought he’d been killed in the Big Bend country. So I heard. An’ there’s Craig, another respectable sheepman of Grass Valley. Haw! Haw! I don’t recognize any more of them.”

  Jean forthwith took the glass and moved it slowly across the faces of that group of horsemen. “Simm Bruce,” he said instantly. “I see Colter, and, yes, Greaves is there. I’ve seen the man next to him … face like a ham.…”

  “Shore that is Craig,” interrupted his father.

  Jean knew the dark face of Lee Jorth by the resemblance it bore to Ellen’s, and the recognition brought a twinge. He thought, too, that he could tell the other Jorths. He asked his father to describe Daggs, and then Queen. It was not likely that Jean would fail to know these several men in the future. Then Blaisdell asked for the telescope, and, when he got through looking and cursing, he passed it on to others who, one by one, took a long look, until finally it came back to the old rancher.