"-- -- 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 sh.o.r.e 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," a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sionate 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

"d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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.

"h.e.l.l!" 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 h.e.l.l 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."

"Where's Somers?" demanded Colter.

"I reckon he's all shot up--if my eyes didn't fool me."

"Where is he?" yelled Colter.

"Jim--he's layin' up in the bushes round thet bluff. I didn't wait to see how he was hurt. But he sh.o.r.e stopped some lead. An' he flopped like a chicken with its--haid cut off."

"Where's Antonio?"

"He run like the greaser he is," declared Springer, disgustedly.

"Ahuh! An' where's Queen?" queried Colter, after a significant pause.

"Dead!"

The silence ensuing was fraught with a suspense that held Jean in cold bonds. He saw the girl below rise from her knees, one hand holding the blouse to her breast, the other extended, and with strange, repressed, almost frantic look she swayed toward the door.

"Wal, talk," ordered Colter, harshly.

"Jim, there ain't a h.e.l.l of a lot," replied Springer; drawing a deep breath, "but what there is is sh.o.r.e interestin'.... Me an' Somers took Antonio with us. He left his woman with the sheep. An' we rode up the canyon, clumb out on top, an' made a circle back on the ridge. That's the way we've been huntin' fer tracks. Up thar in a bare spot we run plump into Queen sittin' against a tree, right out in the open.

Queerest sight y'u ever seen! The d.a.m.n gunfighter had set down to wait for Isbel, who was trailin' him, as we suspected---an' he died thar. He wasn't cold when we found him.... Somers was quick to see a trick. So he propped Queen up an' tied the guns to his hands--an', Jim, the queerest thing aboot that deal was this--Queen's guns was empty! Not a sh.e.l.l left! It beat us holler.... We left him thar, an' hid up high on the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off. The hosses we left back of a thicket. An' we waited thar a long time. But, sure enough, the half-breed come. He was too smart. Too much Injun! He would not cross the open, but went around. An' then he seen Queen. It was great to watch him. After a little he shoved his rifle out an' went right fer Queen. This is when I wanted to shoot. I could have plugged him.

But Somers says wait an' make it sure. When Isbel got up to Queen he was sort of half hid by the tree. An' I couldn't wait no longer, so I shot. I hit him, too. We all begun to shoot. Somers showed himself, an' that's when Isbel opened up. He used up a whole magazine on Somers an' then, suddenlike, he quit. It didn't take me long to figger mebbe he was out of sh.e.l.ls. When I seen him run I was certain of it. Then we made for the hosses an' rode after Isbel. Pretty soon I seen him runnin' like a deer down the ridge. I yelled an' spurred after him.

There is where Antonio quit me. But I kept on. An' I got a shot at Isbel. He ran out of sight. I follered him by spots of blood on the stones an' gra.s.s until I couldn't trail him no more. He must have gone down over the cliffs. He couldn't have done nothin' else without me seein' him. I found his rifle, an' here it is to prove what I say. I had to go back to climb down off the Rim, an' I rode fast down the canyon. He's somewhere along that west wall, hidin' in the brush, hard hit if I know anythin' aboot the color of blood."