To the Last Man

in the forest had worked inca

vily armed, some somber with drink, others hard and grim with a foretaste of fight. Ellen had not been given any or

king dogs did not bite. Somebody, perhaps on each side, would be badly wounded, possibly killed, and then the feud would go on as before, mostly talk. Many of her former impressions had faded. Dev

en saw them only at meal times, and often not then, for she frequent

h and whistle. Ellen had vowed she would never feed the horse and bade Antonio do it. But one morning Antonio was absent. She fed Spades herself. When she laid a hand on him and when he rubbed his nose against

d colorful, and her mood was pensive, wistful, dreamy. And always, just as surely as the hours passed, thought intruded upon her happiness, and thought brought memory, and

d bent their graceful tips over the amber-colored water. Ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravines where the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink. She wandered alone. But there grew to

of rain. Lightning seldom struck near the ranch, but up on the Rim there was never a storm that did not splinter and crash some of the noble pines. During the storm season sheep herders and woodsmen generally did not camp under the pines. Fear of lightning was inborn in the natives, but for Ellen the dazzling white streaks or the treme

ven her battles grew to be dreams. For when the inevitable retrospect brought back Jean Isbel and his love and her cowardly falsehood she would shudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterly fail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. The clean and healing forest, with its whispering wind a

screech of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. These heralded the day as no ordinary day. Something was going to happen to her. She divined it. She felt it. And she trembled. Nothing beautiful, hopeful, wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had be

her arms, driven to embrace this nameless purport of the

te myself fer comin'. Because I've been to G

ere, with a smile that di

imed Ellen, shocked back to reality. And

which Sprague quickly took in

rst Jorth-Isbel fight has come off.... Reckon you remember makin' me promi

ed to be a stone hammer at her heart? The first fight-not so bad for the Jorths!

'm out of breath. Not used to walkin'. An' besides, I left Grass Valley, in the night-an

terrupted Ellen, her voi

' Daggs, Craig, an' Greaves on your father's sid

d she relaxed to sink ba

her, turning to face her, and he seemed b

t what happened straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off day before yestiddy. Your father's gang rode down to Isbel's ranch. Daggs was seen

at way?" put in

es-not even to fight! ... Wall, hen they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The fight last all thet day an' all night an' the next day.

ain't mean my father wouldn't stop fightin' long en

en, what d' ye think? The wimminfolks come out-the red-headed one, Guy's wife, an' Jacobs's wife-they d

h these bloody Texans a lesso

ut. They shot him to pieces. An' thet night some one of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on guard....

ll me that particularly

e queer-an' because, Ellen, your name was

and disgust gave way to a quickening process o

rague, as if the name an

Slowly she felt the blood recede from her face, prickling

behind him in the grass. He knowed some one was crawlin' on him. But before he could get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear. But it was a man. He shut off Greaves's wind an' dragged him back in the ditch. An' he said: 'Greaves, it's the half-breed. An' he's goin' to cut you-FIRST FOR ELLEN JORTH! an' then for Gaston Isbel!' ... Greaves said Jean ripped him with a bowie knife.... An' thet was all Greaves remembered. He died soon after tellin' this story. He must hev fought awful hard. Thet second cut Isbel gave him went clear through him.... Some of the gang was thar when Greaves talked, an' naturally they wondered why Jean Isbel had said 'first for Ellen Jorth.' ... Somebody remembe

ed to look h

did dad do?"

e spot an' gave Meeker a nasty wound. Somebody grabbed him before he could shoot Meeker again.

y hand shaking her. "An' now what do

ct Ellen's thought. It seemed gray in color.

ld man, "thet Jean Isbel loves you-loves

oesn't!" fa

he jes

he cain't believe

t. Isbel or not, he's a man.... An' I say what a shame you two are divided by hate. Hate thet you hed nothin' to do with." Sprague patted her head and rose to go. "Mebbe thet fight will end the trouble. I rec

ty power. It was like movement felt in a dream. She was being impelled upward when her body seemed immovable as stone. When her blood beat down this deadloc

ace in his mane and clung to him. Then just as violently she rushed for her saddle and bridle and carried the heavy weight as easily as if it had been an empty sack. Throwing them upon him, she buckled an

of thunder shook the sultry air. Up beyond the green slope of the canyon massed the creamy clouds, shading darker and darker. Spades loped on the levels, leaped the washes, trotted over the rocky ground, and took to a walk up the long slope. Ellen dropped the reins over the pommel. Her hands could not stay set on anything. They pressed her br

-blue sky flashed between the trees. The great white clouds sailed along with her, and shafts of golden sunlight, flecked with gleams of falling pine needles,

hick odor of pine, the flashes of brown and green and gold and blue, the soft, rhythmic thuds of hoofs, the feel of the powerful horse under her, the whip of

e all sped by her, as if she had ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of the B

n Isbel that unforgetable day. She rode to the promontory behind the pine thic

he east hung the storm-a black cloud lodged against the Rim, from which long, misty veils of rain streamed down into the gulf. The roar of rain sounded like the steady roar of the rapids of a river. Then a blue-white, piercingly bright, ragged streak of lightning shot down out of the blac

y, dusky, low-drifting clouds, horizon-wide, smoky, and sulphurous. And as Ellen watched, hands pressed to her breast, feeling incalculable relief in sight of this

heart-my very soul.... Oh, I know! I kn

ts. "Oh, I love Jean Isbel-an'

thicket, through the clutching, dry twigs, over the mats of fragrant needles to the covert where she had once spied upon Jean Isbel. And here she lay face down for a while, hands clutching the n

re control than she had over the glory of the sun. If she thought at all it was of her need to be hidden, like an animal, low down near the earth, covered by green thicket, lost in the wildness of nature.

f nature saw her in her abandonment. An ineffable and exquisite smile wreathed her lips, dreamy, sad, sensuous, the supremity of unconscious happiness. Over her dark and eloquent eyes, as Ellen gazed upward, spread a luminous film, a veil. She was looking intensely, yet she did not see. The wilderness enveloped her with its secretive, elemental sheaths of rock, of tree, of clou

ones were filled with instincts and emotions common to the race before intellect developed, when the savage lived only with his sensorial perceptions. Of all happiness, joy, bliss, rapture to which man was heir, that of int

blindness. When she crawled into the green-brown covert it was to escape too great perception. She needed to be encompassed by close, tangible things. And there her body paid the tribute to the realization of life. Shock, convulsion, pain, relaxation, and then unutterable and insupportable sensing

ook, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, scornful of her doubts. And now a blind, sweet, shuddering ecstasy swayed her. How weak and frail seemed her body-too small, too slight for this monstrous and terrible engine of fire and lightning and fury and glory-her heart! It must burst or break. Relentlessly memory pursued Ellen, and her thoughts whirled and emotion conquered her. At last she quivered up to her knees as if lashed to action. It seemed that first kiss of Isbel's, cool and gentle and timid, was on her lips. And her eyes closed and hot tears welled from under her lids. Her groping hands found only the dead twigs and the pine boughs of the trees. Had she reached out

ut the last spoken words lingered ha

e lie. She writhed, she shook under the whip of this inconceivable fact. Lost! Lost! She wailed her misery. She might as well be what she had made Jean Isbel think she was. If she had been shamed before, she was now abased, degraded, lost in her own sight. And if she would have given her soul for his kisses, she

was as nothing to this. To have awakened to a splendid and uplifting love for a man whom she had imagined she hated, who had fought for her name and had killed in reve