Here he saw that the cabin adjoined another. Reaching the door, he was about to peep in when the thud of hoofs and voices close at hand transfixed him with a grim certainty that he had not an instant to lose. Through the thin, black-streaked line of trees he saw moving red objects. Horses! He must run. Passing the door, his keen nose caught a musty, woody odor and the tail of his eye saw bare dirt floor. This cabin was unused. He halted — gave a quick look back. And the first thing his eye fell upon was a ladder, right inside the door, against the wall. He looked up. It led to a loft that, dark and gloomy, stretched halfway across the cabin. An irresistible impulse drove Jean. Slipping inside, he climbed up the ladder to the loft. It was like night up there. But he crawled on the rough-hewn rafters and, turning with his head toward the opening, he stretched out and lay still.

  What seemed an interminable moment ended with a trample of hoofs outside the cabin. It ceased. Jean’s vibrating ears caught the jingle of spurs and a thud of boots striking the ground.

  “Wal, sweetheart, heah we are home again,” drawled a slow, cool, mocking Texas voice.

  “Home! I wonder, Colter — did y’u ever have a home — a mother — a sister — much less a sweetheart?” was the reply, bitter and caustic.

  Jean’s palpitating, hot body suddenly stretched still and cold with intensity of shock. His very bones seemed to quiver and stiffen into ice. During the instant of realization his heart stopped. And a slow, contracting pressure enveloped his breast and moved up to constrict his throat. That woman’s voice belonged to Ellen Jorth. The sound of it had lingered in his dreams. He had stumbled upon the rendezvous of the Jorth faction. Hard indeed had been the fates meted out to those of the Isbels and Jorths who had passed to their deaths. But, no ordeal, not even Queen’s, could compare with this desperate one Jean must endure. He had loved Ellen Jorth, strangely, wonderfully, and he had scorned repute to believe her good. He had spared her father and her uncle. He had weakened or lost the cause of the Isbels. He loved her now, desperately, deathlessly, knowing from her own lips that she was worthless — loved her the more because he had felt her terrible shame. And to him — the last of the Isbels — had come the cruelest of dooms — to be caught like a crippled rat in a trap; to be compelled to lie helpless, wounded, without a gun; to listen, and perhaps to see Ellen Jorth enact the very truth of her mocking insinuation. His will, his promise, his creed, his blood must hold him to the stem decree that he should be the last man of the Jorth-Isbel war. But could he lie there to hear — to see — when he had a knife and an arm?

  CHAPTER XIV

  THEN FOLLOWED THE leathery flop of saddles to the soft turf and the stamp, of loosened horses.

  Jean heard a noise at the cabin door, a rustle, and then a knock of something hard against wood. Silently he moved his head to look down through a crack between the rafters. He saw the glint of a rifle leaning against the sill. Then the doorstep was darkened. Ellen Jorth sat down with a long, tired sigh. She took off her sombrero and the light shone on the rippling, dark-brown hair, hanging in a tangled braid. The curved nape of her neck showed a warm tint of golden tan. She wore a gray blouse, soiled and torn, that clung to her lissome shoulders.

  “Colter, what are y’u goin’ to do?” she asked, suddenly. Her voice carried something Jean did not remember. It thrilled into the icy fixity of his senses.

  “We’ll stay heah,” was the response, and it was followed by a clinking step of spurred boot.

  “Shore I won’t stay heah,” declared Ellen. “It makes me sick when I think of how Uncle Tad died in there alone — helpless — sufferin’. The place seems haunted.”

  “Wal, I’ll agree that it’s tough on y’u. But what the hell CAN we do?”

  A long silence ensued which Ellen did not break.

  “Somethin’ has come off round heah since early mawnin’,” declared Colter. “Somers an’ Springer haven’t got back. An’ Antonio’s gone.... Now, honest, Ellen, didn’t y’u heah rifle shots off somewhere?”

  “I reckon I did,” she responded, gloomily.

  “An’ which way?”

  “Sounded to me up on the bluff, back pretty far.”

  “Wal, shore that’s my idee. An’ it makes me think hard. Y’u know Somers come across the last camp of the Isbels. An’ he dug into a grave to find the bodies of Jim Gordon an’ another man he didn’t know. Queen kept good his brag. He braced that Isbel gang an’ killed those fellars. But either him or Jean Isbel went off leavin’ bloody tracks. If it was Queen’s y’u can bet Isbel was after him. An’ if it was Isbel’s tracks, why shore Queen would stick to them. Somers an’ Springer couldn’t follow the trail. They’re shore not much good at trackin’. But for days they’ve been ridin’ the woods, hopin’ to run across Queen.... Wal now, mebbe they run across Isbel instead. An’ if they did an’ got away from him they’ll be heah sooner or later. If Isbel was too many for them he’d hunt for my trail. I’m gamblin’ that either Queen or Jean Isbel is daid. I’m hopin’ it’s Isbel. Because if he ain’t daid he’s the last of the Isbels, an’ mebbe I’m the last of Jorth’s gang.... Shore I’m not hankerin’ to meet the half-breed. That’s why I say we’ll stay heah. This is as good a hidin’ place as there is in the country. We’ve grub. There’s water an’ grass.”

  “Me — stay heah with y’u — alone!”

  The tone seemed a contradiction to the apparently accepted sense of her words. Jean held his breath. But he could not still the slowly mounting and accelerating faculties within that were involuntarily rising to meet some strange, nameless import. He felt it. 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. Her brown head hung thoughtfully. Her supple shoulders sagged a little.

  “Ellen, what’s happened to y’u?” went on Colter.

  “All the misery possible to a woman,” she replied, dejectedly.

  “Shore I don’t mean that way,” he continued, persuasively. “I ain’t gainsayin’ the hard facts of your life. It’s been bad. Your dad was no good.... But I mean I can’t figger the change in y’u.”

  “No, I reckon y’u cain’t,” she said. “Whoever was responsible for your make-up left out a mind — not to say feeling.”

  Colter drawled a low laugh.

  “Wal, have that your own way. But how much longer are yu goin’ to be like this heah?”

  “Like what?” she rejoined, sharply.

  “Wal, this stand-offishness of yours?”

  “Colter, I told y’u to let me alone,” she said, sullenly.

  “Shore. An’ y’u did that before. But this time y’u’re different.... An’ wal, I’m gettin’ tired of it.”

  Here the cool, slow voice of the Texan sounded an inflexibility before absent, a timber that hinted of illimitable power.

  Ellen Jorth shrugged her lithe shoulders and, slowly rising, she picked up the little rifle and turned to step into the cabin.

  “Colter,” she said, “fetch my pack an’ my blankets in heah.”

  “Shore,” he returned, with good nature.

  Jean saw Ellen Jorth lay the rifle lengthwise in a chink between two logs and then slowly turn, back to the wall. Jean knew her then, yet did not know her. The brown flash of her face seemed that of an older, graver woman. His strained gaze, like his waiting mind, had expected something, he knew not what — a hardened face, a ghost of beauty, a recklessness, a distorted, bitter, lost expression in keeping with her fortunes. But he had reckoned falsely. She did not look like that. There was incalculable change, but the beauty remained, somehow different. Her red lips were parted. Her brooding eyes, looking out straight from under the level, dark brows, seemed sloe black and wonderful with their steady, passionate light.

  Jean, in his eager, hungry devouring of the beloved face, did not on the first instant grasp the significance of its expression. He was seeing the features that had haunted him. But quickly he interpreted her expression as the somber, hunted look of a woman who would bear no more. Under the torn blouse her full breast heaved. She held her hands clenched at her sides. She was’ listening, waiting for that jangling, slow step. It came, and with the sound she subtly changed. She was a woman hiding her true feelings. She relaxed, and that strong, dark look of fury seemed to fade back into her eyes.

  Colter appeared at the door, carrying a roll of blankets and a pack.

  “Throw them heah,” she said. “I reckon y’u needn’t bother coming in.”

  That angered the man. With one long stride he stepped over the doorsill, down into the cabin, and flung the blankets at her feet and then the pack after it. Whereupon he deliberately sat down in the door, facing her. With one hand he slid off his sombrero, which fell outside, and with the other he reached in his upper vest pocket for the little bag of tobacco that showed there. All the time he looked at her. By the light now unobstructed Jean descried Colter’s face; and sight of it then sounded the roll and drum of his passions.

  “Wal, Ellen, I reckon we’ll have it out right now an’ heah,” he said, and with tobacco in one hand, paper in the other he began the operations of making a cigarette. However, he scarcely removed his glance from her.

  “Yes?” queried Ellen Jorth.

  “I’m goin’ to have things the way they were before — an’ more,” he declared. The cigarette paper shook in his fingers.

  “What do y’u mean?” she demanded.

  “Y’u know what I mean,” he retorted. Voice and action were subtly unhinging this man’s control over himself.

  “Maybe I don’t. I reckon y’u’d better talk plain.”

  The rustler had clear gray-yellow eyes, flawless, like, crystal, and suddenly they danced with little fiery flecks.

  “The last time I laid my hand on y’u I got hit for my pains. An’ shore that’s been ranklin’.”

  “Colter, y’u’ll get hit again if y’u put your hands on me,” she said, dark, straight glance on him. A frown wrinkled the level brows.

  “Y’u mean that?” he asked, thickly.

  “I shore, do.”

  Manifestly he accepted her assertion. Something of incredulity and bewilderment, that had vied with his resentment, utterly disappeared from his face.

  “Heah I’ve been waitin’ for y’u to love me,” he declared, with a gesture not without dignified emotion. “Your givin’ in without that wasn’t so much to me.”

  And at these words of the rustler’s Jean Isbel felt an icy, sickening shudder creep into his soul. He shut his eyes. The end of his dream had been long in coming, but at last it had arrived. A mocking voice, like a hollow wind, echoed through that region — that lonely and ghost-like hall of his heart which had harbored faith.

  She burst into speech, louder and sharper, the first words of which Jean’s strangely throbbing ears did not distinguish.

  “ —— you! ... I never gave in to y’u an’ I never will.”

  “But, girl — I kissed y’u — hugged y’u — handled y’u—” he expostulated, and the making of the cigarette ceased.

  “Yes, y’u did — y’u brute — when I was so downhearted and weak I couldn’t lift my hand,” she flashed.

  “Ahuh! Y’u mean I couldn’t do that now?”

  “I should smile I do, Jim Colter!” she replied.

  “Wal, mebbe — I’ll see — presently,” he went on, straining with words. “But I’m shore curious.... Daggs, then — he was nothin’ to y’u?”

  “No more than y’u,” she said, morbidly. “He used to run after me — long ago, it seems..... I was only a girl then — innocent — an’ I’d not known any but rough men. I couldn’t all the time — every day, every hour — keep him at arm’s length. Sometimes before I knew — I didn’t care. I was a child. A kiss meant nothing to me. But after I knew—”

  Ellen dropped her head in brooding silence.

  “Say, do y’u expect me to believe that?” he queried, with a derisive leer.

  “Bah! What do I care what y’u believe?” she cried, with lifting head.

  “How aboot Simm Brace?”

  “That coyote! ... He lied aboot me, Jim Colter. And any man half a man would have known he lied.”

  “Wal, Simm always bragged aboot y’u bein’ his girl,” asserted Colter. “An’ he wasn’t over — particular aboot details of your love-makin’.”

  Ellen gazed out of the door, over Colter’s head, as if the forest out there was a refuge. She evidently sensed more about the man than appeared in his slow talk, in his slouching position. Her lips shut in a firm line, as if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate tongue. Jean, in his absorption, magnified his perceptions. Not yet was Ellen Jorth afraid of this man, but she feared the situation. Jean’s heart was at bursting pitch. All within him seemed chaos — a wreck of beliefs and convictions. Nothing was true. He would wake presently out of a nightmare. Yet, as surely as he quivered there, he felt the imminence of a great moment — a lightning flash — a thunderbolt — a balance struck.

  Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. He rolled it, lighted it, all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes as fiery as molten steel.

  “Wal, Ellen — how aboot Jean Isbel — our half-breed Nez Perce friend — who was shore seen handlin’ y’u familiar?” he drawled.

  Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.

  “Damn y’u, Jim Colter!” she burst out, furiously. “I wish Jean Isbel would jump in that door — or down out of that loft! ... He killed Greaves for defiling my name! ... He’d kill Y’U for your dirty insult.... And I’d like to watch him do it.... Y’u cold-blooded Texan! Y’u thieving rustler! Y’u liar! ... Y’u lied aboot my father’s death. And I know why. Y’u stole my father’s gold.... An’ now y’u want me — y’u expect me to fall into your arms.... My Heaven! cain’t y’u tell a decent woman? Was your mother decent? Was your sister decent? ... Bah! I’m appealing to deafness. But y’u’ll HEAH this, Jim Colter! ... I’m not what yu think I am! I’m not the — the damned hussy y’u liars have made me out.... I’m a Jorth, alas! I’ve no home, no relatives, no friends! I’ve been forced to live my life with rustlers — vile men like y’u an’ Daggs an’ the rest of your like.... But I’ve been good! Do y’u heah that? ... I AM good — so help me God, y’u an’ all your rottenness cain’t make me bad!”

  Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished.

  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. He must never have a chance to draw it.

  “Ahuh! So y’u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah, do y’u?” queried Colter. “Wal, if I had any pity on y’u, that’s done for it.”

  A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to move, brought his hand in clutching contact with her. And the force of it flung her half across the cabin room, leaving the sleeve of her blouse in his grasp. Pantingly she put out that bared arm and her other to ward him off as he took long, slow strides toward her.

  Jean rose half to his feet, dragged by almost ungovernable passion to risk all on one leap. But the distance was too great. Colter, blind as he was to all outward things, would hear, would see in time to make Jean’s effort futile. Shaking like a leaf, Jean sank back, eye again to the crack between the rafters.

  Ellen did not retreat, nor scream, nor move. Every line of her body was instinct with fight, and the magnificent blaze of her eyes would have checked a less callous brute.

  Colter’s big hand darted between Ellen’s arms and fastened in the front of her blouse. He did not try to hold her or draw her close. The unleashed passion of the man required violence. In one savage pull he tore off her blouse, exposing her white, rounded shoulders and heaving bosom, where instantly a wave of red burned upward.

  Overcome by the tremendous violence and spirit of the rustler, Ellen sank to her knees, with blanched face and dilating eyes, trying with folded arms and trembling hand to hide her nudity.

  At that moment the rapid beat of hoofs on the hard trail outside halted Colter in his tracks.

  “Hell!” he exclaimed. “An’ who’s that?” With a fierce action he flung the remnants of Ellen’s blouse in her face and turned to leap out the door.

  Jean saw Ellen catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while she sagged against the wall and stared at the door. The hoof beats pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside.

  “Jim — thar’s hell to pay!” rasped out a panting voice.

  “Wal, Springer, I reckon I wished y’u’d paid it without spoilin’ my deals,” retorted Colter, cool and sharp.

  “Deals? Ha! Y’u’ll be forgettin’ — your lady love in a minnit,” replied Springer. “When I catch — my breath.”