"Meet y'u!" she echoed, coldly. "Shore y'u never expected me?"
"Somehow I did," he replied, with those penetrating eyes on her. "I put somethin' in your tent that day. Did you find it?"
"Yes," she replied, with the same casual coldness.
"What did you do with it?"
"I kicked it out, of course," she replied.
She saw him flinch.
"And you never opened it?"
"Certainly not," she retorted, as if forced. "Doon't y'u know anythin' about--about people? ... Shore even if y'u are an Isbel y'u never were born in Texas."
"Thank God I wasn't!" he replied. "I was born in a beautiful country of green meadows and deep forests and white rivers, not in a barren desert where men live dry and hard as the cactus. Where I come from men don't live on hate. They can forgive."
"Forgive! ... Could y'u forgive a Jorth?"
"Yes, I could."
"Shore that's easy to say--with the wrongs all on your side," she declared, bitterly.
"Ellen Jorth, the first wrong was on your side," retorted Jean, his voice fall. "Your father stole my father's sweetheart--by lies, by slander, by dishonor, by makin' terrible love to her in his absence."
"It's a lie," cried Ellen, passionately.
"It is not," he declared, solemnly.
"Jean Isbel, I say y'u lie!"
"No! I say you've been lied to," he thundered.
The tremendous force of his spirit seemed to fling truth at Ellen. It weakened her.
"But--mother loved dad--best."
"Yes, afterward. No wonder, poor woman! ... But it was the action of your father and your mother that ruined all these lives. You've got to know the truth, Ellen Jorth.... All the years of hate have borne their fruit. God Almighty can never save us now. Blood must be spilled. The Jorths and the Isbels can't live on the same earth.... And you've got to know the truth because the worst of this hell falls on you and me."
The hate that he spoke of alone upheld her.
"Never, Jean Isbel!" she cried. "I'll never know truth from y'u.... I'll never share anythin' with y'u--not even hell."
Isbel dismounted and stood before her, still holding his bridle reins. The bay horse champed his bit and tossed his head.
"Why do you hate me so?" he asked. "I just happen to be my father's son. I never harmed you or any of your people. I met you ... fell in love with you in a flash--though I never knew it till after.... Why do you hate me so terribly?"