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."