“All right. Let’s rustle. Mebbe y’u’ll not have to give much more ’n ten minnits. Because I tell y’u I can find him. It’d been easy—but, Jim, I reckon I was afraid.”
“Leave your hoss for me an’ go ahaid,” the rustler then said, brusquely. “I’ve a job in the cabin heah.”
“Haw-haw! ... Wal, Jim, I’ll rustle a bit down the trail an’ wait. No huntin’ Jean Isbel alone—not fer me. I’ve had a queer feelin’ about thet knife he used on Greaves. An’ I reckon y’u’d oughter let thet Jorth hussy alone long enough to—”
“Springer, I reckon I’ve got to hawg-tie her—” His voice became indistinguishable, and footfalls attested to a slow moving away of the men.
Jean had listened with ears acutely strung to catch every syllable while his gaze rested upon Ellen who stood beside the door. Every line of her body denoted a listening intensity. Her back was toward Jean, so that he could not see her face. And he did not want to see, but could not help seeing her naked shoulders. She put her head out of the door. Suddenly she drew it in quickly and half turned her face, slowly raising her white arm. This was the left one and bore the marks of Colter’s hard fingers.
She gave a little gasp. Her eyes became large and staring. They were bent on the hand that she had removed from a step on the ladder. On hand and wrist showed a bright-red smear of blood.
Jean, with a convulsive leap of his heart, realized that he had left his bloody tracks on the ladder as he had climbed. That moment seemed the supremely terrible one of his life.
Ellen Jorth’s face blanched and her eyes darkened and dilated with exceeding amaze and flashing thought to become fixed with horror. That instant was the one in which her reason connected the blood on the ladder with the escape of Jean Isbel.
One moment she leaned there, still as a stone except for her heaving breast, and then her fixed gaze changed to a swift, dark blaze, comprehending, yet inscrutable, as she flashed it up the ladder to the loft. She could see nothing, yet she knew and Jean knew that she knew he was there. A marvelous transformation passed over her features and even over her form. Jean choked with the ache in his throat. Slowly she put the bloody hand behind her while with the other she still held the torn blouse to her breast.
Colter’s slouching, musical step sounded outside. And it might have been a strange breath of infinitely vitalizing and passionate life blown into the well-springs of Ellen Jorth’s being. Isbel had no name for her then. The spirit of a woman had been to him a thing unknown.