He made me out a card-sharp, cheatin' my best friends.

I was disgraced.

Later he tangled me in the courts--he beat me out of property--an' last by convictin' me of rustlin' cattle he run me out of Texas." Black and distorted now, Jorth's face was a spectacle to make Ellen sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate.

The truth of her father's ruin and her own were enough.

What mattered all else?
Jorth beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the more significant for their lack of physical force.
"An' so help me God, it's got to be wiped out in blood!" he hissed.
That was his answer to the wavering and nobility of Ellen.