changed any with all his
good fortune. He'd made Ellen believe in my dishonor. But, I reckon,
lies or no lies, Ellen Sutton was faithless. In my absence he had won
her away from me. An' I saw that she loved him as she never had me. I
reckon that killed all my generosity. If she'd been imposed upon an'
weaned away by his lies an' had regretted me a little I'd have
forgiven, perhaps. But she worshiped him. She was his slave. An' I,
wal, I learned what hate was.

"The war ruined the Suttons, same as so many Southerners. Lee Jorth
went in for raisin' cattle. He'd gotten the Sutton range an' after a
few years he began to accumulate stock. In those days every cattleman
was a little bit of a thief. Every cattleman drove in an' branded
calves he couldn't swear was his. Wal, the Isbels were the strongest
cattle raisers in that country. An' I laid a trap for Lee Jorth,
caught him in the act of brandin' calves of mine I'd marked, an' I
proved him a thief. I made him a rustler. I ruined him. We met once.
But Jorth was one Texan not strong on the draw, at least against an
Isbel. He left the country. He had friends an' relatives an' they
started him at stock raisin' again. But he began to gamble an' he got
in with a shady crowd. He went from bad to worse an' then he came back
home. When I saw the change in proud, beautiful Ellen Sutton, an' how
she still worshiped Jorth, it shore drove me near mad between pity an'
hate.... Wal, I reckon in a Texan hate outlives any other feelin'.
There came a strange turn of the wheel an' my fortunes changed. Like
most young bloods of the day, I drank an' gambled. An' one night I run
across Jorth an' a card-sharp friend. He fleeced me. We quarreled.
Guns were thrown. I killed my man.... Aboot that period the Texas
Rangers had come into existence.... An', son, when I said I never was
run out of Texas I wasn't holdin' to strict truth. I rode out on a
hoss.

"I went to Oregon. There I married soon, an' there Bill an' Guy were
born. Their mother did not live long. An' next I married your mother,
Jean. She had some Indian blood, which, for all I could see, made her
only the finer. She was a wonderful woman an' gave me the only
happiness I ever knew. You remember her, of course, an' those home
days in Oregon. I reckon I made another great blunder when I moved to
Arizona. But the cattle country had always called me. I had heard of
this wild Tonto Basin an' how Texans we