"I've somethin'--on my conscience," he whispered.
The woman, the sensitive in Ellen, understood and pitied him then.
"Yes," she encouraged him.
"I stole cattle--my dad's an' Blaisdell's--an' made deals--with Daggs.... All the crookedness--wasn't on--Jorth's side.... I want--my brother Jean--to know."
"I'll try--to tell him," whispered Ellen, out of her great amaze.
"We were all--a bad lot--except Jean," went on Isbel. "Dad wasn't fair.... God! how he hated Jorth! Jorth, yes, who was--your father.... Wal, they're even now."
"How--so?" faltered Ellen.
"Your father killed dad.... At the last--dad wanted to--save us. He sent word--he'd meet him--face to face--an' let thet end the feud. They met out in the road.... But some one shot dad down--with a rifle--an' then your father finished him."
"An' then, Isbel," added Ellen, with unconscious mocking bitterness, "Your brother murdered my dad!"
"What!" whispered Bill Isbel. "Shore y'u've got--it wrong. I reckon Jean--could have killed--your father.... But he didn't. Queer, we all thought."
"Ah! ... Who did kill my father?" burst out Ellen, and her voice rang like great hammers at her ears.
"It was Blue. He went in the store--alone--faced the whole gang alone. Bluffed them--taunted them--told them he was King Fisher.... Then he killed--your dad--an' Jackson Jorth.... Jean was out--back of the store. We were out--front. There was shootin'. Colmor was hit. Then Blue ran out--bad hurt.... Both of them--died in Meeker's yard."
"An' so Jean Isbel has not killed a Jorth!" said Ellen, in strange, deep voice.
"No," replied Isbel, earnestly. "I reckon this feud--was hardest on Jean. He never lived heah.... An' my sister Ann said--he got sweet on y'u.... Now did he?"
Slow, stinging tears filled Ellen's eyes, and her head sank low and lower.
"Yes--he did," she murmured, tremulously.
"Ahuh! Wal, thet accounts," replied Isbel, wonderingly. "Too bad! ... It might have been.... A man always sees--different when--he's dyin'.... If I had--my life--to live over again! ... My poor kids--deserted in their babyhood--ruined for life! All for nothin'.... May God forgive--"
Then he choked and whispered for water.
Ellen laid his head back and, rising, she took his sombrero and started hurriedly down the slope, making dust fly and rocks roll. Her mind was a seething ferment. Leaping, bounding, sliding down the weathered slope, she gained the bench, to run across that, and so on down into the open canyon to the willow-bordered brook. Here she filled the sombrero with water and started back, forced now to walk slowly and carefully. It was then, with the violence and fury of intense muscular activity denied her, that the tremendous import of Bill Isbel's revelation burst upon her very flesh and blood and transfiguring the very world of golden light and azure sky and speaking forestland that encompassed her.