“Jorth!” replied Blaisdell, huskily. “Son, we couldn’t hold your dad back.... We couldn’t. He was like a lion.... An’ he throwed his life away! Oh, if it hadn’t been for that it ’d not be so awful. Shore, we come heah to shoot an’ be shot. But not like that.... By God, it was murder—murder!”
Jean’s mute lips framed a query easily read.
“Tell him, Blue. I cain’t,” continued Blaisdell, and he tramped back into the cabin.
“Set down, Jean, an’ take things easy,” said Blue, calmly. “You know we all reckoned we’d git plugged one way or another in this deal. An’ shore it doesn’t matter much how a fellar gits it. All thet ought to bother us is to make shore the other outfit bites the dust—same as your dad had to.”
Under this man’s tranquil presence, all the more quieting because it seemed to be so deadly sure and cool, Jean felt the uplift of his dark spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties that must wait. The little gunman seemed to have about his inert presence something that suggested a rattlesnake’s inherent knowledge of its destructiveness. Jean sat down and wiped his clammy face.
“Jean, your dad reckoned to square accounts with Jorth, an’ save us all,” began Blue, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “But he reckoned too late. Mebbe years; ago—or even not long ago—if he’d called Jorth out man to man there’d never been any Jorth-Isbel war. Gaston Isbel’s conscience woke too late. That’s how I figger it.”
“Hurry! Tell me—how it—happen,” panted Jean.
“Wal, a little while after y’u left I seen your dad writin’ on a leaf he tore out of a book—Meeker’s Bible, as yu can see. I thought thet was funny. An’ Blaisdell gave me a hunch. Pretty soon along comes young Evarts. The old man calls him out of our hearin’ an’ talks to him. Then I seen him give the boy somethin’, which I afterward figgered was what he wrote on the leaf out of the Bible. Me an’ Blaisdell both tried to git out of him what thet meant. But not a word. I kept watchin’ an’ after a while I seen young Evarts slip out the back way. Mebbe half an hour I seen a bare-legged kid cross, the road an’ go into Greaves’s store.... Then shore I tumbled to your dad. He’d sent a note to Jorth to come out an’ meet him face to face, man to man! ... Shore it was like readin’ what your dad had wrote. But I didn’t say nothin’ to Blaisdell. I jest watched.”
Blue drawled these last words, as if he enjoyed remembrance of his keen reasoning. A smile wreathed his thin lips. He drew twice on the cigarette and emitted another cloud of smoke. Quite suddenly then he changed. He made a rapid gesture—the whip of a hand, significant and passionate. And swift words followed:
“Colonel Lee Jorth stalked out of the store—out into the road—mebbe a hundred steps. Then he halted. He wore his long black coat an’ his wide black hat, an’ he stood like a stone.