Authors: To the Last Man
During June Jean Isbel did not ride far away from Grass Valley.
Another attempt had been made upon Gaston Isbel's life. Another
cowardly shot had been fired from ambush, this time from a pine thicket
bordering the trail that led to Blaisdell's ranch. Blaisdell heard
this shot, so near his home was it fired. No trace of the hidden foe
could be found. The 'ground all around that vicinity bore a carpet of
pine needles which showed no trace of footprints. 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.
"Let's quit ranchin' till this trouble's settled," he declared. "Let's
arm an' ride the trails an' meet these men half-way.... It won't help
our side any to wait till you're shot in the back." More than one of
Isbel's supporters offered the same advice.
"No; we'll wait till we know for shore," was the stubborn cattleman's
reply to all these promptings.
"Know! Wal, hell! Didn't Jean find the black hoss up at Jorth's
ranch?" demanded Blaisdell. "What more do we want?"
"Jean couldn't swear Jorth stole the black."
"Wal, by thunder, I can swear to it!" growled Blaisdell. "An' we're
losin' cattle all the time. Who's stealin' 'em?"
"We've always lost cattle ever since we started ranchin' heah."
"Gas, I reckon yu want Jorth to start this fight in the open."
"It'll start soon enough," was Isbel's gloomy reply.
Jean had not failed altogether in his tracking of lost or stolen
cattle. Circumstances had been against him, and there was something
baffling about this rustling. The summer storms set in early, and it
had been his luck to have heavy rains wash out fresh tracks that he
might have followed. The range was large and cattle were everywhere.
Sometimes a loss was not discovered for weeks. Gaston Isbel's sons
were now the only men left to ride the range. Two of his riders had
quit because of the threatened war, and Isbel had let another go. So
that Jean did not often learn that cattle had been stolen until their
tracks were old. Added to that was the fact that this Grass Valley
country was covered with horse tracks and cattle tracks. The rustlers,
whoever they were, had long been at the game, and now that there was
reason for them to show their cunning they did it.
Early in July the hot weather came. Down on 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 thundercloud, Jean
welcomed them. He liked to see the gray streamers of rain hanging down
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 Rim, the shady
pines, the dark sweet verdure under the silver spruces, 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 clog, had disappeared one day, and
had never returned. Among 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 sheep herders, who were always stealing dogs; and 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 upward 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 sheered 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 the 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 risking 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 knowledge, no small arms. Jean rode up on 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
a new sensation for him. Brooding over this he proceeded on his way,
at length to turn into the draw where the camp of the sheep-herders 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 that?" 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—atall."
"Who did, then?"
"The men—they rode up—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 heerd them talkin'. Bernardino come
back. They 'peared friendly-like. Thet made me raise up, to look. An'
I couldn't see good. I heerd one of them ask Bernardino to let him see
his gun. An' Bernardino handed it over. 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 hid down
close. I was skeered stiff. I heerd them talk more, but not what they
said. Then they rode away.... An' I hid there till I seen y'u 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, greaser or not, you
were a faithful lad, and you won't go long unavenged."
Jean had no time to spare. Tearing a 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 on 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 farm.
There was not a cloud in the blue, summer sky.
As Jean galloped up the lane some one saw him from the door, and then
Bill and Guy and their gray-headed father came out upon the porch. Jean
saw how he' waved the womenfolk back, and then strode out into the
lane. Bill and Guy reached his side 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 the father.
"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 with absorption to Jean's brief story.
"Wal, that lets us in," said his father. "I wish we 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 round us up 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 ought to 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 had hated, and killed one another, 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 aboot 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 hopes that Blaisdell would soon
come. These hopes were well founded. Presently 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 lifelong friend. There floated out to Jean
old Blaisdell's roar of rage.