I'll swear it by the memory of my daid mother," protested Colter.
"Wal, when night come the Isbels rode down on us in the dark an' began
to shoot. They smashed in the door--tried to burn us out--an' hollered
around for a while. Then they left an' we reckoned there'd be no more
trouble that night. All the same we kept watch. I was the soberest
one an' I bossed the gang. We had some quarrels aboot the drinkin'.
Your dad said if we kept it up it 'd be the end of the Jorths. An' he
planned to send word to the Isbels next mawnin' that he was ready for a
truce. An' I was to go fix it up with Gaston Isbel. Wal, your dad went
to bed in Greaves's room, an' a little while later your uncle Jackson
went in there, too. Some of the men laid down in the store an' went to
sleep. I kept guard till aboot three in the mawnin'. An' I got so
sleepy I couldn't hold my eyes open. So I waked up Wells an' Slater
an' set them on guard, one at each end of the store. Then I laid down
on the counter to take a nap."

Colter's low voice, the strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation
with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple,
matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to
Ellen Jorth. Her vague doubt of him had been created by his attitude
toward her. Emotion dominated her intelligence. The images, the
scenes called up by Colter's words, were as true as the gloom of the
wild gulch and the loneliness of the night solitude--as true as the
strange fact that she lay passive in the arm of a rustler.

"Wall, after a while I woke up," went on Colter, clearing his throat.
"It was gray dawn. All was as still as death.... An' somethin' shore
was wrong. Wells an' Slater had got to drinkin' again an' now laid
daid drunk or asleep. Anyways, when I kicked them they never moved.
Then I heard a moan. It came from the room where your dad an' uncle
was. I went in. It was just light enough to see. Your uncle Jackson
was layin' on the floor--cut half in two--daid as a door nail.... Your
dad lay on the bed. He was alive, breathin' his last.... He says,
'That half-breed Isbel--knifed us--while we slept!' ... The winder
shutter was open. I seen where Jean Isbel had come in an' gone out. I
seen his moccasin tracks in the dirt outside an' I seen where he'd
stepped in Jackson's blood an' tracked it to the winder. Y'u shore can
see them bloody tracks yourself, if y'u go back to Greaves's store....
Your d