Zane Grey (10 page)

"Ann, do you think she's a bad girl?" demanded Jean, bluntly.

"Bad? Oh, Jean!" exclaimed Ann, in surprise and embarrassment.

"Dad said she was a damned hussy."

"Jean, dad hates the Jorths."

"Sister, I'm askin' you what you think of Ellen Jorth. Would you be
friends with her if you could?"

"Yes."

"Then you don't believe she's bad."

"No. Ellen Jorth is lonely, unhappy. She has no mother. She lives
alone among rough men. Such a girl can't keep men from handlin' her
and kissin' her. Maybe she's too free. Maybe she's wild. But she's
honest, Jean. You can trust a woman to tell. When she rode past me
that day her face was white and proud. She was a Jorth and I was an
Isbel. She hated herself—she hated me. But no bad girl could look
like that. She knows what's said of her all around the valley. But she
doesn't care. She'd encourage gossip."

"Thank you, Ann," replied Jean, huskily. "Please keep this—this
meetin' of mine with her all to yourself, won't you?"

"Why, Jean, of course I will."

Jean wandered away again, peculiarly grateful to Ann for reviving and
upholding something in him that seemed a wavering part of the best of
him—a chivalry that had demanded to be killed by judgment of a
righteous woman. He was conscious of an uplift, a gladdening of his
spirit. Yet the ache remained. More than that, he found himself
plunged deeper into conjecture, doubt. Had not the Ellen Jorth
incident ended? He denied his father's indictment of her and accepted
the faith of his sister. "Reckon that's aboot all, as dad says," he
soliloquized. Yet was that all? He paced under the cedars. He watched
the sun set. He listened to the coyotes. He lingered there after the
call for supper; until out of the tumult of his conflicting emotions
and ponderings there evolved the staggering consciousness that he must
see Ellen Jorth again.

Ellen Jorth hurried back into the forest, hotly resentful of the
accident that had thrown her in contact with an Isbel.

Disgust filled her—disgust that she had been amiable to a member of
the hated family that had ruined her father. The surprise of this
meeting did not come to her while she was under the spell of stronger
feeling. She walked under the trees, swiftly, with head erect, looking
straight before her, and every step seemed a relief.

Upon reaching camp, her attention was distracted from herself. Pepe,
the Mexican boy, with the two shepherd dogs, was trying to drive sheep
into a closer bunch to save the lambs from coyotes. Ellen loved the
fleecy, tottering little lambs, and at this season she hated all the
prowling beast of the forest. From this time on for weeks the flock
would be besieged by wolves, lions, bears, the last of which were often
bold and dangerous. The old grizzlies that killed the ewes to eat only
the milk-bags were particularly dreaded by Ellen. She was a good shot
with a rifle, but had orders from her father to let the bears alone.
Fortunately, such sheep-killing bears were but few, and were left to be
hunted by men from the ranch. Mexican sheep herders could not be
depended upon to protect their flocks from bears. Ellen helped Pepe
drive in the stragglers, and she took several shots at coyotes skulking
along the edge of the brush. The open glade in the forest was
favorable for herding the sheep at night, and the dogs could be
depended upon to guard the flock, and in most cases to drive predatory
beasts away.

After this task, which brought the time to sunset, Ellen had supper to
cook and eat. Darkness came, and a cool night wind set in. Here and
there a lamb bleated plaintively. With her work done for the day,
Ellen sat before a ruddy camp fire, and found her thoughts again
centering around the singular adventure that had befallen her.
Disdainfully she strove to think of something else. But there was
nothing that could dispel the interest of her meeting with Jean Isbel.
Thereupon she impatiently surrendered to it, and recalled every word
and action which she could remember. And in the process of this
meditation she came to an action of hers, recollection of which brought
the blood tingling to her neck and cheeks, so unusually and burningly
that she covered them with her hands. "What did he think of me?" she
mused, doubtfully. It did not matter what he thought, but she could
not help wondering. And when she came to the memory of his kiss she
suffered more than the sensation of throbbing scarlet cheeks.
Scornfully and bitterly she burst out, "Shore he couldn't have thought
much good of me."

The half hour following this reminiscence was far from being pleasant.
Proud, passionate, strong-willed Ellen Jorth found herself a victim of
conflicting emotions. The event of the day was too close. She could
not understand it. Disgust and disdain and scorn could not make this
meeting with Jean Isbel as if it had never been. Pride could not
efface it from her mind. The more she reflected, the harder she tried
to forget, the stronger grew a significance of interest. And when a
hint of this dawned upon her consciousness she resented it so forcibly
that she lost her temper, scattered the camp fire, and went into the
little teepee tent to roll in her blankets.

Thus settled snug and warm for the night, with a shepherd dog curled at
the opening of her tent, she shut her eyes and confidently bade sleep
end her perplexities. But sleep did not come at her invitation. She
found herself wide awake, keenly sensitive to the sputtering of the
camp fire, the tinkling of bells on the rams, the bleating of lambs,
the sough of wind in the pines, and the hungry sharp bark of coyotes
off in the distance. Darkness was no respecter of her pride. The
lonesome night with its emphasis of solitude seemed to induce clamoring
and strange thoughts, a confusing ensemble of all those that had
annoyed her during the daytime. Not for long hours did sheer weariness
bring her to slumber.

Ellen awakened late and failed of her usual alacrity. Both Pepe and
the shepherd dog appeared to regard her with surprise and solicitude.
Ellen's spirit was low this morning; her blood ran sluggishly; she had
to fight a mournful tendency to feel sorry for herself. And at first
she was not very successful. There seemed to be some kind of pleasure
in reveling in melancholy which her common sense told her had no reason
for existence. But states of mind persisted in spite of common sense.

"Pepe, when is Antonio comin' back?" she asked.

The boy could not give her a satisfactory answer. Ellen had willingly
taken the sheep herder's place for a few days, but now she was
impatient to go home. She looked down the green-and-brown aisles of
the forest until she was tired. Antonio did not return. Ellen spent
the day with the sheep; and in the manifold task of caring for a
thousand new-born lambs she forgot herself. This day saw the end of
lambing-time for that season. The forest resounded to a babel of baas
and bleats. When night came she was glad to go to bed, for what with
loss of sleep, and weariness she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

The following morning she awakened early, bright, eager, expectant,
full of bounding life, strangely aware of the beauty and sweetness of
the scented forest, strangely conscious of some nameless stimulus to
her feelings.

Not long was Ellen in associating this new and delightful variety of
sensations with the fact that Jean Isbel had set to-day for his ride up
to the Rim to see her. Ellen's joyousness fled; her smiles faded. The
spring morning lost its magic radiance.

"Shore there's no sense in my lyin' to myself," she soliloquized,
thoughtfully. "It's queer of me—feelin' glad aboot him—without
knowin'. Lord! I must be lonesome! To be glad of seein' an Isbel,
even if he is different!"

Soberly she accepted the astounding reality. Her confidence died with
her gayety; her vanity began to suffer. And she caught at her
admission that Jean Isbel was different; she resented it in amaze; she
ridiculed it; she laughed at her naive confession. She could arrive at
no conclusion other than that she was a weak-minded, fluctuating,
inexplicable little fool.

But for all that she found her mind had been made up for her, without
consent or desire, before her will had been consulted; and that
inevitably and unalterably she meant to see Jean Isbel again. Long she
battled with this strange decree. One moment she won a victory over,
this new curious self, only to lose it the next. And at last out of her
conflict there emerged a few convictions that left her with some shreds
of pride. She hated all Isbels, she hated any Isbel, and particularly
she hated Jean Isbel. She was only curious—intensely curious to see
if he would come back, and if he did come what he would do. She wanted
only to watch him from some covert. She would not go near him, not let
him see her or guess of her presence.

Thus she assuaged her hurt vanity—thus she stifled her miserable
doubts.

Long before the sun had begun to slant westward toward the
mid-afternoon Jean Isbel had set as a meeting time Ellen directed her
steps through the forest to the Rim. She felt ashamed of her
eagerness. She had a guilty conscience that no strange thrills could
silence. It would be fun to see him, to watch him, to let him wait for
her, to fool him.

Like an Indian, she chose the soft pine-needle mats to tread upon, and
her light-moccasined feet left no trace. Like an Indian also she made
a wide detour, and reached the Rim a quarter of a mile west of the spot
where she had talked with Jean Isbel; and here, turning east, she took
care to step on the bare stones. This was an adventure, seemingly the
first she had ever had in her life. Assuredly she had never before
come directly to the Rim without halting to look, to wonder, to
worship. This time she scarcely glanced into the blue abyss. All
absorbed was she in hiding her tracks. Not one chance in a thousand
would she risk. The Jorth pride burned even while the feminine side of
her dominated her actions. She had some difficult rocky points to
cross, then windfalls to round, and at length reached the covert she
desired. A rugged yellow point of the Rim stood somewhat higher than
the spot Ellen wanted to watch. A dense thicket of jack pines grew to
the very edge. It afforded an ambush that even the Indian eyes Jean
Isbel was credited with could never penetrate. Moreover, if by
accident she made a noise and excited suspicion, she could retreat
unobserved and hide in the huge rocks below the Rim, where a ferret
could not locate her.

With her plan decided upon, Ellen had nothing to do but wait, so she
repaired to the other side of the pine thicket and to the edge of the
Rim where she could watch and listen. She knew that long before she
saw Isbel she would hear his horse. It was altogether unlikely that he
would come on foot.

"Shore, Ellen Jorth, y'u're a queer girl," she mused. "I reckon I
wasn't well acquainted with y'u."

Beneath her yawned a wonderful deep canyon, rugged and rocky with but
few pines on the north slope, thick with dark green timber on the south
slope. Yellow and gray crags, like turreted castles, stood up out of
the sloping forest on the side opposite her. The trees were all sharp,
spear pointed. Patches of light green aspens showed strikingly against
the dense black. The great slope beneath Ellen was serrated with
narrow, deep gorges, almost canyons in themselves. Shadows alternated
with clear bright spaces. The mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened
upon the Basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines,
valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the
Sierra Anchas.

But for once Ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of
wildness and grandeur. Her ears were like those of a listening deer,
and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At
first, in her excitement, time flew by. Gradually, however, as the sun
moved westward, she began to be restless. The soft thud of dropping
pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked
spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen
ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling. Finally she
heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone.
Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine
thicket to the spot she had chosen. The little pines were so close
together that she had to crawl between their trunks. The ground was
covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant. In her
hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the
blood. She sucked the tiny wound. "Shore I'm wonderin' if that's a
bad omen," she muttered, darkly thoughtful. Then she resumed her
sinuous approach to the edge of the thicket, and presently reached it.

Ellen lay flat a moment to recover her breath, then raised herself on
her elbows. Through an opening in the fringe of buck brush she could
plainly see the promontory where she had stood with Jean Isbel, and
also the approaches by which he might come. Rather nervously she
realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the
promontory. It was imperative that she be absolutely silent. Her eyes
searched the openings along the Rim. The gray form of a deer crossed
one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard.
Then she lay down more comfortably and waited. Resolutely she held, as
much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions. The meaning of Ellen
Jorth lying in ambush just to see an Isbel was a conundrum she refused
to ponder in the present. She was doing it, and the physical act had
its fascination. Her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely
forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of
woodcraft.

A long hour passed by. The sun had slanted to a point halfway between
the zenith and the horizon. Suddenly a thought confronted Ellen Jorth:
"He's not comin'," she whispered. The instant that idea presented
itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret—something that
must have been disappointment. Unprepared for this, she was held by
surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned. Her spirit, swift and
rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense. She was a lonely,
guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to uphold, too fluctuating
to know her real self. She stretched there, burying her face in the
pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as
that they might hide her. The moment was incomprehensible to Ellen,
and utterly intolerable. The sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists
and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite
relief.