"Uncle John, y'u shore cain't mean my
father wouldn't stop fightin' long enough to drive the hogs off an'
bury those daid men?"

"Evarts says they stopped fightin', all right, but it was to watch the
hogs," declared Sprague. "An' then, what d' ye think? The wimminfolks
come out--the red-headed one, Guy's wife, an' Jacobs's wife--they
drove the hogs away an' buried their husbands right there in the
pasture. Evarts says he seen the graves."

"It is the women who can teach these bloody Texans a lesson," declared
Ellen, forcibly.

"Wal, Daggs was drunk, an' he got up from behind where the gang was
hidin', an' dared the Isbels to come out. They shot him to pieces. An'
thet night some one of the Isbels shot Craig, who was alone on
guard.... An' last--this here's what I come to tell you--Jean Isbel
slipped up in the dark on Greaves an' knifed him."

"Why did y'u want to tell me that particularly?" asked Ellen, slowly.

"Because I reckon the facts in the case are queer--an' because, Ellen,
your name was mentioned," announced Sprague, positively.

"My name--mentioned?" echoed Ellen. Her horror and disgust gave way to
a quickening process of thought, a mounting astonishment. "By whom?"

"Jean Isbel," replied Sprague, as if the name and the fact were
momentous.

Ellen sat still as a stone, her hands between her knees. Slowly she
felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below her
neck. That name locked her thought.

"Ellen, it's a mighty queer story--too queer to be a lie," went on
Sprague. "Now you listen! Evarts got this from Ted Meeker. An' Ted
Meeker heerd it from Greaves, who didn't die till the next day after
Jean Isbel knifed him. An' your dad shot Ted fer tellin' what he
heerd.... No, Greaves wasn't killed outright. He was cut somethin'
turrible--in two places. They wrapped him all up an' next day packed
him in a wagon back to Grass Valley. Evarts says Ted Meeker was
friendly with Greaves an' went to see him as he was layin' in his room
next to the store. Wal, accordin' to Meeker's story, Greaves came to
an' talked. He said he was sittin' there in the dark, shootin'
occasionally at Isbel's cabin, when he heerd a rustle behind him in the
grass. He knowed some one was crawlin' on him. But before he could
get his gun around he was jumped by what he thought was a grizzly bear.
But it was a man. He shut off Greaves's wind an' dragged him back in
the ditch. An' he said: 'Greaves,