didn't intend to. But your—your hate seems unnatural. And we'll probably never meet again.... I can't help it. I love you. Love at first sight! Jean Isbel and Ellen Jorth! Strange, isn't it? ... It was all so strange. My meetin' you so lonely and unhappy, my seein' you so sweet and beautiful, my thinkin' you so good in spite of—"
"Shore it was strange," interrupted Ellen, with scornful laugh. She had found her defense. In hurting him she could hide her own hurt. "Thinking me so good in spite of— Ha-ha! And I said I'd been kissed before!"
"Yes, in spite of everything," he said.
Ellen could not look at him as he loomed over her. She felt a wild tumult in her heart. All that crowded to her lips for utterance was false.
"Yes—kissed before I met you—and since," she said, mockingly. "And I laugh at what y'u call love, Jean Isbel."
"Laugh if you want—but believe it was sweet, honorable—the best in me," he replied, in deep earnestness.
"Bah!" cried Ellen, with all the force of her pain and shame and hate.
"By Heaven, you must be different from what I thought!" exclaimed Isbel, huskily.
"Shore if I wasn't, I'd make myself.... Now, Mister Jean Isbel, get on your horse an' go!"
Something of composure came to Ellen with these words of dismissal, and she glanced up at him with half-veiled eyes. His changed aspect prepared her for some blow.
"That's a pretty black horse."
"Yes," replied Ellen, blankly.
"Do you like him?"
"I—I love him."
"All right, I'll give him to you then. He'll have less work and kinder treatment than if I used him. I've got some pretty hard rides ahead of me."
"Y'u—y'u give—" whispered Ellen, slowly stiffening. "Yes. He's mine," replied Isbel. With that he turned to whistle. Spades threw up his head, snorted, and started forward at a trot. He came faster the closer he got, and if ever Ellen saw the joy of a horse at sight of a beloved master she saw it then. Isbel laid a hand on the animal's neck and caressed him, then, turning back to Ellen, he went on speaking: "I picked him from a lot of fine horses of my father's. We got along well. My sister Ann rode him a good deal.... He was stolen from our pasture day before yesterday. I took his trail and tracked him up here. Never lost his trail till I got to your ranch, where I had to circle till I picked it up again."
"Stolen—pasture—tracked him up heah?" echoed Ellen, without any evidence of emotion whatever. Indeed, she seemed to have been turned to stone.
"Trackin' him was easy. I wish for your sake it 'd been impossible," he said, bluntly.
"For my sake?" she echoed, in precisely the same tone,
Manifestly that tone irritated Isbel beyond control. He misunderstood it. With a hand far from gentle he pushed her bent head back so he could look into her face.
"Yes, for your sake!" he declared, harshly. "Haven't you sense enough to see that? ... What kind of a game do you think you can play with me?"
"Game I ... Game of what?" she asked.
"Why, a—a game of ignorance—innocence—any old game to fool a man who's tryin' to be decent."
This time Ellen mutely looked her dull, blank questioning. And it inflamed Isbel.
"You know your father's a horse thief!" he thundered.
Outwardly Ellen remained the same. She had been prepared for an unknown and a terrible blow. It had fallen. And her face, her body, her hands, locked with the supreme fortitude of pride and sustained by hate, gave no betrayal of the crashing, thundering ruin within her mind and soul. Motionless she leaned there, meeting the piercing fire of Isbel's eyes, seeing in them a righteous and terrible scorn. In one flash the naked truth seemed blazed at her. The faith she had fostered died a sudden death. A thousand perplexing problems were solved in a second of whirling, revealing thought.
"Ellen Jorth, you know your father's in with this Hash Knife Gang of rustlers," thundered Isbel.
"Shore," she replied, with the cool, easy, careless defiance of a Texan.
"You know he's got this Daggs to lead his faction against the Isbels?"
"Shore."
"You know this talk of sheepmen buckin' the cattlemen is all a blind?"
"Shore," reiterated Ellen.
Isbel gazed darkly down upon her. With his anger spent for the moment, he appeared ready to end the interview. But he seemed fascinated by the strange look of her, by the incomprehensible something she emanated. Havoc gleamed in his pale, set face. He shook his dark head and his broad hand went to his breast.
"To think I fell in love with such as you!" he exclaimed, and his other hand swept out in a tragic gesture of helpless pathos and impotence.
The hell Isbel had hinted at now possessed Ellen—body, mind, and soul. Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that family to whom she owed her degradation. Daughter of a horse thief and rustler! Dark and evil and grim set the forces within her, accepting her fate, damning her enemies, true to the blood of the Jorths. The sins of the father must be visited upon the daughter.
"Shore y'u might have had me—that day on the Rim—if y'u hadn't told your name," she said, mockingly, and she gazed into his eyes with all the mystery of a woman's nature.
Isbel's powerful frame shook as with an ague. "Girl, what do you mean?"
"Shore, I'd have been plumb fond of havin' y'u make up to me," she drawled. It possessed her now with irresistible power, this fact of the love he could not help. Some fiendish woman's satisfaction dwelt in her consciousness of her power to kill the noble, the faithful, the good in him.
"Ellen Jorth, you lie!" he burst out, hoarsely.
"Jean, shore I'd been a toy and a rag for these rustlers long enough. I was tired of them.... I wanted a new lover.... And if y'u hadn't give yourself away—"
Isbel moved so swiftly that she did not realize his intention until his hard hand smote her mouth. Instantly she tasted the hot, salty blood from a cut lip.
"Shut up, you hussy!" he ordered, roughly. "Have you no shame? ... My sister Ann spoke well of you. She made excuses—she pitied you."
That for Ellen seemed the culminating blow under which she almost sank. But one moment longer could she maintain this unnatural and terrible poise.
"Jean Isbel—go along with y'u," she said, impatiently. "I'm waiting heah for Simm Bruce!"
At last it was as if she struck his heart. Because of doubt of himself and a stubborn faith in her, his passion and jealousy were not proof against this last stab. Instinctive subtlety inherent in Ellen had prompted the speech that tortured Isbel. How the shock
